William Lashner - Bitter Truth

“And now it is over?” I ask.

“Absolutely.”

“And you’re pleased with yourself?”

“Absolutely. More tea?”

“I intend to collect on my judgment, Nat.”

“Well then, I am going to disappoint you, because I no longer have one hundred million dollars.”

“The records show that more than that was channeled into the Wergeld Trust by Faith Shaw.”

“Yes, it was. As I said, she was trying to make recompense, poor deluded thing, but the money is not mine anymore. Just after her death, and before either of your so-called wrongful killings, I irrevocably transferred all but a few paltry million into trust for my son. He knew nothing of my plans, knew for certain of my guilt only after I had fled. The boy doesn’t even know that the Wergeld trust is his upon my death. So you see, Victor, I couldn’t pay it to you even if I wanted to, which I don’t.”

I stare at him for a moment, wondering whether to believe him or not, and suddenly I do. We had traced money, all right, but not all of what should have been there. The amount that had been transferred from the Cayman Islands to a bank in Luxembourg to a bank in Switzerland, through Libya and Beirut and back through the Cayman Islands, had been just about ten million dollars. I had hoped, somehow, in this meeting, to smoke out the rest and that’s what I have done. It is gone. To Harrington. Out of my reach. A despair falls onto my shoulders.

“There’s still ten million in your control,” I say, clutching at anything. “We know that.”

“Yes, that’s about right, maybe less. Enough to support me through my old age. I like it here, Victor. I like Canek and the country and this jungle and this river and my orchids. I like it here very much. It has become a home, but if you force me to move I will. Guatemala or Paraguay or the Seychelles if need be. Do you know the Seychelles?”

“Off the coast of Africa?”

“That’s it. They have offered a nonextraditable citizenship to anyone willing to pay ten million dollars to the government. They have some very exciting orchids in the Seychelles from what I understand, Madagascan epiphytes like the African leopard orchid and the spectacular Angraecum sesquipedale . If I must I’ll pay the money to them and live quite peacefully with my orchids under their protection. But then, of course, there’d be nothing left for you.”

“What are you proposing?”

“Stop. That’s what I brought you here to tell you. Stop your efforts to trace my money. Stop your lawyer in Belize City from continuing his suit. Do what you can to stop the investigation by the FBI. Tell no one you have seen me here and stop your efforts to hound me as if I were a common criminal. I like it here. I like the jungle. Go away and let me live here in peace and when I die I will provide that all of what remains of my money will go to satisfy your judgment. The interest the Swiss give is rather paltry, but I spend very little here and the amount will grow over time. Go away and leave me alone and someday you’ll get some money out of me.”

“And you would get away with everything.”

“I’ve already gotten away with everything.”

“It’s a rotten deal.”

“It’s the only deal I’m offering, the only way you’ll ever see a dime.”

I stare at him and think it over for a moment and then I take a long drink of tea.

“Do you know what evil is, Nat?” I ask.

He looks at me for a moment, bemusement gently creasing his face. “Failure?” he suggests.

I make a loud sound like a buzzer going off. “No, I’m sorry. Wrong answer.”

On the Macal River, Cayo, Belize

CANEK IS PADDLING ME BACK DOWNthe river, toward San Ignacio. From there I’ll take one of the ubiquitous taxis to the airport. I’m ready to get the hell out of Belize. My hand hurts from a bite, it is swelling with a frightening rapidity, and I suspect the botfly larva is squirming there beneath my skin. I wonder if I have to declare the beefworm to customs when I land. I scratch it and it burns and I scratch it some more. Maybe they have some glue and some Scotch tape at the hotel. I scratch it and think on Caroline.

I suspected that Nat was Caroline’s father before he ever admitted it to me, the remark by Calvi before our gun-fight on Pier Four was what clued me, but I didn’t tell Caroline about Kingsley’s vasectomy or my suspicions and I won’t tell her of Nat’s admission of paternity either. It is not my place, I think, to tell her that her real father is an evil son of a bitch.

We have ended whatever it was we had, Caroline and I. The love expressed between Emma and Christian too powerfully illuminated what wasn’t between us to allow us to continue as anything but friends. True to her word, after learning from the letter why her grandfather had thrown away his medal, she signed the contingency fee agreement. She found something else in the letter too, the one good thing she had been looking for, the transformation of her grandfather from a coward to a man. She has taken again to wearing her grandfather’s medal and she is working, along with her therapist, to re-create for herself the history of her life, building on the base of Christian Shaw’s transformation and late-found love, as well as on her understanding of the crimes that so deformed her family. This exercise in self-emendation has given her an attractive tranquility. She smokes less, drinks less, has taken some of the hardware out of her body. She doesn’t interrupt me anymore when I speak. She has even adopted Sam the cat. Now that she has learned her family truths, her ailurophobia seems to have receded. She has not become one of those strange cat people, she does not allow Sam to sleep in her bed nor does she talk incessantly about how cute he is, but they have reached an understanding and he seems quite content in his new home in her loft on Market Street. I guess, like his former master, he figures anything beats Florida. Caroline pines still for Harrington, I think, not knowing he is her brother and not understanding why he can’t be with her anymore. I suspect he’ll tell her someday.

Caroline and Beth have become fast friends. I fear they talk about me over coffee when I am not around, though they deny it. Beth left the Church of New Life a while ago, turned off finally by the avarice with which Oleanna envelops her truths, and is now trying out Buddhism. Caroline went with her on her last Zen retreat, to an ashram in New Jersey. I maintain that seeking enlightenment in New Jersey is oxymoronic but they think they are on to something. Both women seemed subtly changed by the weekend, more at peace.

“What did you talk about?” I asked.

“We didn’t talk.”

“What did you do?”

“We did nothing.”

“What did you think about?”

“We denied ourselves the luxury of thought.”

“I’m not impressed,” I said. “I spent the whole weekend watching golf on television and did the exact same thing.”

The most hopeful aspect of Caroline’s progress is that she is devoid of the bitterness over the past that has plagued the Pooles. There is a great peril to history. As a Jew I have learned to never forget, but some history, I believe, is best left behind. History is a warning to ourselves, and only by remembering where we have been and how low we have fallen can we know to where we aspire, but we lose everything when it is history that drives us completely, as it drove Nat and his mother and her mother and her husband. If we are to be more than pigeons pecking for pellets then we must transcend the bitterest of our histories and strike out on our own. Remembrance without forgiveness is a curse and there is no better proof of that than the Reddmans and the Pooles, fighting through generations over a fortune like two dogs worrying a bone. Caroline is learning of the necessity of forgiveness, as did Christian Shaw and as did, surprisingly, his wife, Faith.