Burden of Proof Read online

  The same man in the grey suit counted Ethan’s money with fluid swiftness. “I make that as nine thousand three hundred.”

  Ethan used both hands to clear the perspiration from his face. He had decided on the train ride up that he was going to add Adrian’s five to the pile. If his memories still worked, Adrian needed to benefit. If everything was wrong or off or whatever the word was . . .

  Ethan realized the man was waiting for him to respond. “Correct.”

  Jeff left and swiftly returned with another batch of tickets. The guy showed no interest in Ethan’s nerves. As far as he was concerned, Ethan was simply another mark, here to lose. There was nothing different about him except the size of his bet.

  The man in the grey suit watched Ethan slip the tickets into his briefcase and asked, “Where are you headed now, sir?”

  “Back to the train station.”

  “I believe we can arrange a ride. Jeff?” As the brute departed the back way, the man ushered Ethan through the casino proper with a meaningless smile. He did not offer his hand as he said, “Good luck, sir.”

  The stretch limo’s rear doors were emblazoned with the Trump logo. After it took him to the station, Ethan thanked Jeff and watched the limo disappear. He knew a sinking feeling as the limo swam down the asphalt stream, a mindless carnivore already hunting its next meal.

  Ethan waited less than five minutes for the train, collapsed into his seat, and gave in to the tremors. He’d had no idea how hard it was to gamble.

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  The next morning, Ethan returned with Adrian to Jacksonville. He was already tired of walking the New York streets and being alone in a crowd. Plus he wanted to try to start preparing to save his brother’s life. How, he had no idea. But he had to begin.

  Fifteen days.

  Adrian had left earlier than planned because of another meeting with the opposing counsel. He spent the flight studying legal papers and staring grimly out the side window. Sonya had just arrived in New York that morning, and Adrian intended to return as soon as he could.

  When he and Ethan settled into a taxi outside the Jacksonville airport, Adrian asked, “You okay, little bro?”

  “Fine. Why?”

  “You seem really worried.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Is it the deal?”

  “My investment,” he corrected. “Partly. Sure.”

  “Anything else you want to tell me?”

  A huge amount was his response. Ethan felt locked in a straitjacket of tension he couldn’t share or unload. “Thanks for asking. It means a lot.”

  “That’s a no, right?”

  “For now.”

  Adrian reopened his files and asked, “Okay if the driver drops me first by the office?”

  “My car’s still in the office lot, remember?”

  “Sure.” He scrawled an illegible notation in the margin. “When does school start?”

  Ethan had no idea, nor did he know what he was going to do, especially if the outcome was not as he remembered. “Not long now.”

  Adrian looked up from his pages. “Any word on the investment?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  “When should you hear?”

  That, Ethan could answer. “Eleven days.”

  “Pretty specific for an investment.”

  “I know.”

  “You holding up okay?”

  Ethan shrugged. “Depends on the hour. Nights are tough.”

  Adrian nodded slowly. “It’s all gone?”

  “Not gone. But invested. I kept a little back.”

  “How much?”

  After the expense of New York . . . “A few hundred.”

  “Yeah, I figured you were going to blow my five on this too.” Adrian leaned forward and extracted his wallet.

  “Bro, look, I can’t . . .”

  “Quiet.” Adrian pulled out everything he had, kept a few bills, then offered the rest. When Ethan did not accept it, Adrian stuffed the money into his hands. “Add it to the balance. You win, you pay.”

  Ethan stared at the money. Then he looked at his brother, who was already lost once more in his work. “Adrian . . .”

  “Don’t get all gooey on me. The Barrett boys don’t do mush.”

  Ethan waited until Adrian disappeared inside the building, then shifted his car from the firm’s visitor space to a relatively unused floor. He swiftly changed from his New York duds into clothes he had brought up with him from Cocoa Beach, locked the suitcase in the Jeep, and carried his backpack into the humid afternoon.

  He found what he was looking for a block off the waterfront, an aging city hotel now standing in the shadow of the city’s new Skyway. The hotel mostly catered to the monorail’s construction workers. Its rusting sign outside the wire-glass doors offered air conditioning and clean rooms. And very little else.

  He could have stayed at Adrian’s. But that would have required him to explain why he was hanging around. Plus there was the risk of Sonya coming home early from New York. Ethan was definitely not ready for that little confrontation.

  His room was on the sixth floor and faced north, away from the Skyway’s platform under construction. The noise and dust were manageable. His bed sagged like a tired old man, but Ethan had spent time in far worse places. Not in a long while, but still. After a decent enough meal at a local diner, he made a pallet on the floor and slept fine.

  Ethan spent the next two and a half days reacquainting himself with the city. He had visited Adrian there any number of times, but not for years. His annual visits to the Saint Augustine cemetery had never included a visit to the city itself.

  Jacksonville was pretty much as he remembered. The place was busy shrugging off its roots as a sleepy southern sister to the much larger Augusta. The Jacksonville of 1985 was a city on the rise.

  The downtown districts contained Jacksonville’s historic core, courthouses, and central business districts. The first major high-rises were taking shape, soon to house regional or national headquarters of CSX, Fidelity National, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, AT&T, and Aetna. Already the sidewalks were fronted by shiny new restaurants and upscale shops. The former derelict port area was being refashioned into Riverwalk, a trendy pedestrian zone with some of the south’s hottest nightlife. Most of the faces Ethan saw were young, vibrant, excited to call Jacksonville home.

  Ethan sectioned the downtown region with the Duval County Courthouse at its center. For two solid days he scoured the area surrounding East Bay Street, walked the courthouse corridors, studied the stairs and front plaza soon to be stained with his brother’s blood.

  But not this time.

  All the while, he argued with himself over tactics. By his third morning walking the city streets, Ethan had decided his original plan was the right one. If or when he scored on the Open bet, he would bring in his version of heavy artillery.

  The nights were awful and endless. When the pallet grew too hard, he walked the room’s threadbare confines, trying to formulate a plan that did not depend upon money. He would have to tell Adrian everything. He repeatedly imagined his brother’s scorn, the accusations of drug use, the questions for which he had no answers.

  Adrian would change his tactics, of course he would. Ethan would give him no choice. But say his brother didn’t appear on the courthouse steps. Say he survived that morning. What then? The police had never identified the shooter.

  The dread prospect of Adrian living through that attempt, only to die a few days later, finally drove Ethan from the city. As he took I-95 south in the decrepit Wagoneer, the wind rushing hot and fragrant through his open window, Ethan’s mind kept pounding through a desperate refrain.

  He had to win that bet.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  While the early rounds of the US Open continued, Ethan did his best to remain detached. He surfed, cruised the beaches, ate with his friends, and watched a tennis tournament that seemed to last for months.

  T
he United States Open Tennis Championship was a hard-court tournament held annually over a two-week period. It was the fourth and final tourney that made up the Grand Slam events—Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, then New York. The main tournament consisted of five championships—men’s and women’s singles, men’s and women’s doubles, and mixed doubles. Since 1978, the tournament was played on acrylic hard courts at the USTA Center in Flushing, Queens. All this Ethan learned in the local library, where he spent at least an hour each morning, checking the newspapers and researching a world he only half remembered.

  Boris Becker and top-seeded John McEnroe continued on their collision course, winning their third-round matches with surprising ease. Becker was only seventeen years old and was already being referred to as the new wunderkind.

  Ethan spent far too many hours in the confines of his summer rental. He watched parts of matches on their awful television. The sound was scratchy and the image worse. He could have gone to one of the new sports bars and watched on a wide screen. But if he had wanted to spend the tense hours being lonely in the company of strangers, he could have stayed up north.

  Mostly he fretted.

  His lack of forward momentum grew more frustrating by the hour. Twice he started to head back to Jacksonville, only to be halted by the utter futility of the act.

  Added to his internal cauldron were any number of questions he could not answer. Time and again he returned to how Sonya and her as-yet unborn daughter had confronted him. In the aftermath of Adrian’s death, Sonya had lost her lab and her life’s work. What if more was at stake here than a crazed gunman acting on his own? Ethan was no professional sleuth, but the more he pondered the upcoming events, the more he feared his dilemma did not end with bullets fired on the courthouse steps.

  His growing suspicions only magnified his mounting anxiety over the Open. If his suspicions about Sonya’s work were correct, then his task required not just stopping a gunman but uncovering a conspiracy.

  And for that to happen, he needed cash. Lots of it. Security, a team of investigators, and something more besides. He had to convince both Adrian and Sonya the entire issue was real.

  Adrian liked to describe his professional life as high-stakes gambling in the harshest casino of all. He lived and breathed facts and evidence and tactics and the arguments required to win over a jury.

  Sonya was certainly no easier a sell. Ethan had no idea if telling her about the pregnancy would be enough. And if not, what could he possibly say? The woman could hardly bear to be in the same room with him. Would it be enough for him to declare what had happened at her own hand and beg her for help? Or would she toss him and his threats to their security out the door?

  It all came down to having hard evidence.

  Ethan needed to win.

  His buddies started their final chaotic weeks of summer, drinking themselves insensible each night. They closed down the bars and slumped into work in pain-wracked stupors, then did it all again the next night. Ethan played designated driver, even though the term had not yet entered current culture. He went to the bars, sat in the corners, nursed his ginger ale, and smiled at girls who were impossibly fresh-faced and innocent and young. They were often magnetic in their appeal, until they opened their mouths. And then they only made Ethan feel ancient. But at least it gave him something to do while he endured the endless wait.

  On the other side of the chart, Ivan Lendl and Yannick Noah both advanced into the third round. In the women’s competition, Chris Evert Lloyd crushed a south Korean in her third-round match, and Martina Navratilova trounced Lisa Bonder.

  By the time the next stage began, Ethan was hardly sleeping.

  Jimmy Connors and Chris Evert Lloyd, the two winningest players in US Open history, both advanced. The battles were fierce. Lloyd, the number-one seed and hunting her seventh Open title, reached the semis for the eighteenth consecutive year by defeating Claudia Kohde-Kilsch. Her next foe would be Hana Mandliková, an unseeded Czech who had stunned the world by defeating Helena Sukova.

  Ethan’s heart stopped several times watching Ivan Lendl’s match against the seventeen-year-old Jaime Yzaga of Peru, a qualifier. Lendl self-destructed in the first set with seventeen unforced errors. But the Czech right-hander finally found his accuracy on his crucial ground game. The quarters would match Lendl against Yannick Noah of France, ranked seventh in the world.

  The next day, defending Open champion John McEnroe overcame a ridiculously bad call and a wild temper tantrum to beat Sweden’s Joakim Nyström in straight sets. The crowd was then stunned by the young Steffi Graf of West Germany, who beat fourth-seeded Pam Shriver. The previous year Graf had been crushed by Shriver in the first round.

  Then former ball girl Hana Mandliková shocked the world by beating Chris Evert Lloyd in a three-set nail-biter. The victory sent her into the title match against Martina Navratilova, who crushed Steffi Graf in straight sets.

  Ivan Lendl ignored the 112-degree courtside heat and powered through the semis, crushing Yannick Noah in straight sets. Later that evening, Jimmy Connors defeated Heinz Günthardt in a match that even the announcers said was lackluster.

  Then on Saturday it started to come together.

  When Adrian called from New York that night, he was hoarse from cheering. He greeted Ethan with the exact same words as the last time. “The bridesmaid stole the show, shot the priest, hijacked the limo, and is currently headed out on somebody else’s honeymoon.”

  This time Ethan knew what he was talking about. “I saw. Parts, anyway.”

  “It was some of the best tennis of any time, any race, any match—male, female, Chihuahua. I tell you, bro, that lady deserved her win.” Adrian went on to give Ethan a blow-by-blow of Mandliková’s stunning defeat of world champion Martina Navratilova. Ethan did not interrupt, mostly because his tension had grown to where the power of speech belonged to a different guy.

  Adrian asked, “You watch any of the men’s semis?”

  “Some.” Ethan had paved a new track around the house, popping in occasionally, catching the scores, then doing another round.

  Adrian said, “Lendl pounded Jimmy Connors into the dust. It was embarrassing.”

  Ethan let Adrian talk, trying to take some comfort in getting it right so far. But when he hung up the phone, there was nothing to do but pace.

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  That evening, Ethan used some of his remaining cash and took a room at the beachside Holiday Inn. The summer season was over. September and October formed the slowest tourist season unless there was a launch, but NASA’s next rocket was scheduled for Thanksgiving week. Ethan got an oceanfront room for the cost of a highway single.

  He walked down to a strip mall serving the local business community and bought a portable calculator. But he left it in the bag on the shelf in the closet. He didn’t want to think about it just then. He simply wanted to be ready. In case.

  Ethan spent most of the finals match out on the balcony. The ocean had returned to standard Florida calm, so the play was clearly audible. He was tempted several times to shut the doors and just wait. His hands shook and his eyes felt scratchy. He had not eaten a decent meal in six days. He had slept a maximum of a few hours each night.

  The announcers kept up their standard patter through the first two sets. In their eyes, John McEnroe had already won. It was just a matter of time.

  Ivan Lendl had been defeated by McEnroe every time they had met but one. Earlier that year, McEnroe had defeated Lendl in straight sets at two different major tournaments. Lendl’s expected defeat would mean he had lost in the finals four years in a row, a record matched only once before, by William Johnston in 1925.

  When the third set started, the announcers finally changed their tune. And Ethan found the courage to reenter his room. He watched the entire third set standing in front of the television. He did not breathe. He could not move.

  Lendl forged ahead with a magnificent series of blasting serves. Then he
set himself up for the title by breaking McEnroe’s own service twice. Lendl did not just win. He obliterated the world number one in straight sets.

  When Lendl lifted the cup over his head, Ethan crashed to the floor.

  He lay there through the interviews as Lendl described how he had changed tactics and sought to lead a normal life throughout the tournament. Ethan lay on the carpet and let Lendl’s accented words wash over him. “I tried to do everything like I would every other day and just went to my matches. I went to aerobic classes. I played golf. I played with my dogs. I tried to keep myself relaxed.”

  Ethan rolled onto his back and laughed at the popcorn ceiling. He and Lendl should have had this conversation a week ago.

  Finally Ethan managed to crawl over and turn off the set. He sat there awhile, gathering strength, staring at the ocean. Then he rose, went to the closet, opened the bag, and got out his calculator. He did not need to check the tickets. He remembered the odds. All of them.

  Each of the casinos had offered slightly different odds, ranging from 29–1 to 34–1. Ethan’s fingers trembled so badly he botched the first three attempts. On the fourth go he grabbed the pad and pen off the bedside table and wrote down each set of numbers in turn. Then he had to stop and go out on the balcony before he could work up the nerve to add them together.

  He had invested $29,200. He had won $905,200.

  Adrian’s money and his share of the winnings came to $155,000.

  Which meant Ethan was going to walk away with $750,000 and change.

  He staggered back out on the balcony and blindly stared out over the crystal-blue sea.

  He was rich, and he knew what was going to happen next. He had a month to try to make things right.

  It would all begin with saving his brother’s life.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  Ethan did not sleep well. Becoming an almost millionaire changed nothing in that regard.