Water from My Heart (3 page)

This did not make them happy, and as they had some pull in the city, they blackballed me in every game in and around not only Boston, but the Northeast. It didn't matter. I'd tired of poker and I'd tired of Boston. My eyes had hit the horizon, and I was looking for a new game. And I found one.

In London.

T
he water was waist-deep, gin-clear, and given no breeze, a sheet of glass. Deeper out, it faded from turquoise to midnight blue. Off to my right, the sun was falling en route to a beautiful setting. Twenty feet away, a lobster scurried to an underwater hide. A ray hovered just inches off the ocean floor. Two hundred meters out, a couple of boats were anchored. Kids in the water. Snorkels. Masks. Lobster bags. Laughter. Floating in circles around them, oil-soaked adults lay baking on rafts. The smell of salt, coconut oil, rum, and spent fuel suggested they'd been there the better part of the day.

Most every weekend, folks out of Miami motored out of Biscayne Bay, through Stiltsville, and across the forty-four miles between us, appearing early and packing this place with dozens of boats. At just over three miles long and a quarter mile wide—​l
ittle
more than a white speck in the Atlantic—the Bahamian island of Bimini is a blue marlin and bonefish hot spot, an offshore oasis for the Miami jet set, a famed Hemingway hangout, and one of the last vestiges of Her Majesty's empire. It's also a convenient escape for the disillusioned and a pretty good place for a rather successful drug runner to live uninhibited. The beach behind me sat bleach white and relatively untouched. The sand lay dotted with hundreds of conch shells. The northern tip of the island, including this beach, had been privately owned for a couple generations, but it sold last year to a casino, which was rapidly carving the landscape. In its wake, quaint fishing village had given way to the worst a casino has to offer. Local legend held that the lost city of Atlantis sat out in front of me just beyond the anchored boats. The legend held merit given the inexplicable geometric rock formations just below the water's surface. I guess you don't need me to tell you the name of the casino. The entrepreneurial owners had already cashed in on the legend and were ferrying visitors out to the rocks in glass-bottom boats. Not surprisingly, the legend had grown considerably. Mermaids had been sighted.

I landed on this island much like Columbus. By mistake. Been here a decade. Jimmy Buffett said it best: “Summers and winters scattered like splinters…”

Still no sight of her on the beach. My left foot was tapping on its own. She'd be here any minute. Right? Right. The magistrate had first balked when I asked him to marry us on the beach at 7:00 p.m., but then I laid a wad of cash on the table and his entire countenance changed. Started talking about how he loved marrying folks on the beach at sunset. Still no sign of him, either, but he had a few moments to go yet.

In the moments following my not-so-romantic proposal, I'd asked Shelly where she'd like to get married. She pointed at her feet. “Right here.” Which explained my present location. She wanted the setting sun on her face. Breeze in her hair. My hand in hers. She believed that our marrying here, in this turquoise water, would wash off the memory and pain of her first. I'd never been married, but that does not suggest I didn't have memory and pain. I stood there, ankle-deep, envisioning her, the wind tugging her hair across her eyes, her cheeks. Draping her cover-up across her bathing suit. Bare feet. Tanned. That smile. Wading out to meet me. Taking my hand.

Out of habit, I glanced at my wrist to check the time, but my watch still wasn't there. Nothing but the tan line noting its absence. Shelly was going to ask, and I had to think up a story without lying to her face.

Colin said he was coming over for the weekend on the Bertram—a sixty-foot sportfishing yacht powered by two supercharged Cat diesels producing more than a thousand horsepower each. Given its tanks and capacities, the Bertram had a range of several thousand miles and was the perfect vessel for longer voyages down to the Keys or even Cuba and points south. With three staterooms, a kitchen and living area, not to mention expansive areas on both the bow and stern to stretch out and get away or sit in the fighting chair and wrestle a tuna or blue marlin, it allowed ample room for Marguerite, Zaul, and Maria.

While south Florida was beautiful in many respects, it suffered from one problem, which no politician could fix. In the event of storm or a natural disaster, there were only a few roads out. Which, when clogged with the millions who lived there, became a parking lot preventing a speedy exit. Colin had bought the Bertram more as a ferry for his family in the event that they needed to get out and could not. But, over the years, it had also become a great way to travel to the islands—which they did several times a month. Its forty-knot speed meant he could crank the engines, navigate out of the canals, skim across Stiltsville, and be in Bimini in less than an hour and twenty minutes.

Shelly had planned to make rounds this morning; she had a few surgeries up and through lunch, then she was going to run a few errands, shop for a few things, and meet Colin at the dock at 4:30 p.m.

I scanned the horizon for any sign of a boat, but still no Bertram.

I'd been there a while when a glistening speck crested the horizon, but it was not the Bertram. For Shelly not to show meant one of two things: She'd had second thoughts, which I rather doubted, or something at work—something she couldn't pass off to one of her partners—demanded she miss her own wedding. Colin, on the other hand, had been giddy at the thought of my marrying. Other than a pressing family need, I could think of no reason that Colin wasn't standing on this beach. The fact that he wasn't dropping anchor right now suggested something serious, and sudden, had happened to his family. For both of them not to show meant that “something” involved both of them: i.e, boat trouble, which was possible though unlikely, or Colin had need of Shelly professionally. As in, he needed a doctor.

After standing in the water for what felt like an hour, I waded onto the beach and asked an older lady walking her dog down the beach, “You know the time?”

She eyed her watch. “Quarter past eight.”

Something was way bad wrong. I stood arms folded, lips pursed. I carried a cell phone, but I seldom dialed out on it and I hadn't the foggiest idea how to tell someone how to call me. Using the same phone on a regular basis was an occupational hazard because law enforcement agencies could use it to triangulate my position. Given this, Colin gave me a new SIM card every week—sometimes several times a week—and a new phone at least once a month. When I first got in the game, I tried to memorize each change, but after twenty new numbers and four new phones in less than four months, I gave up. Colin was the only one who knew my number, and as a testimony to his genius and his photographic memory, he never wrote them down. He stored everything upstairs. This pattern had been a major reason we'd stayed in the game so long and with such success.

The sun had fallen, and the moon was chasing the sunlight off the beach when I heard the rotors of the helicopter. Colin hated traffic—despised inefficiencies—so he used it routinely to check on locations for his import business or to hop to the island for lunch. The helicopter circled, landed, and Shelly stepped out, walking slowly. The light from the helicopter lit her approach.

She wasn't wearing her bathing suit.

Her medical scrubs looked like they'd been sprayed with tomato puree. She approached, arms crossed, and stood at a distance. She'd been crying. Still was. I reached for her and she stepped back, not making eye contact. When the helicopter had quieted, she glanced at me, looked away, then glanced again and held it.

I'd never seen such sadness.

The wind scraped the beach and blew the sand against my calves, stinging my ankles. After a minute, she brushed the hair out of her face and again crossed her arms. Holding herself tighter.

She retreated a step. The tears returned. She spoke without looking. “Last night, Life Flight brought in this little girl. A pit bull attacked her face. Lost most of her blood.” She looked at me. “She got caught in the middle between bad people doing bad stuff.” She stared at her hands, finally looking me in the eyes. “I spent eight hours trying to—” Shelly stopped. She was shaking. I tried to hold her, but she turned and slapped me as hard as she could across the face. Then again. She spoke through gritted teeth. “Get her smile back.” She shook her head. “I'm not sure she'll—”

I waited. She shook her head and wiped her nose on her arm. She had finished with whatever she'd come to say.

Keeping her distance, she extended her other hand, palm down. Like she wanted to give me something. I responded, and she stared at her closed fist, which was shaking slightly. I touched her hand with mine, and she opened her fingers, dropping my watch in my hand. The watch was sticky and the face smeared. I couldn't read the time. She spoke while looking at it. “Maria was wearing this when they brought her in. It—” She cracked, then recovered. “Just dwarfed her little wrist.”

Finally, it hit me. I pointed at my heart. My voice rose. “My Maria?”

Shelly swallowed but didn't acknowledge me. I'd already lost her.

I pressed her. “Will she live?”

Shelly only shrugged, nodded. She took one step toward the helicopter, then stopped and spoke over her shoulder. “Colin—” She hesitated and looked at her hands, finally continuing, “Told me…everything. Starting with the day you two met.” She shook her head in disbelief. “I told him I did not know that man. Never met that man. That the man I loved would never lie to me. Never put me in danger.” Her voice turned acrid. “Never use me like that.” A pause. “When I left the hospital, three cops were sitting in their cars, typing reports. Tactical guys. Tattoos. Black clothing. They were with Maria when she came in. I asked them if they had any suspects. All they said was ‘Corazón Negro,' and that they'd been chasing him off and on for a decade. Said he's a ghost.” Eye contact again. A single shake. “You should have told me.” Shelly had been in Miami for a long time, and her Spanish was very good. Far better than mine. She didn't offer a translation, and I didn't ask.

I knew what it meant, and I knew that she knew what it meant.

A wave spilled across our feet. She knelt, reached into the water, and washed the blood from my watch off her hands. The helicopter pilot read her body language and the rotors began spinning. Winding up. When she stood, she palmed the tears from her eyes and turned to look at me. Her face was puffy, shrouded in darkness, and her eyes looked like smoldering embers. She said, “Charlie, have you ever considered that life is
not
a poker game and that we aren't chips that you just toss about the table 'cause you feel like it?” A steeliness returned to her eyes and face. “There's an evil in you. And…” She waved her hand across the splattered blood. “It stains everyone but you.” It was over. She stepped closer. “Don't ever contact me again.” She turned, glancing out across the water. “Ever.”

Arms crossed, wind tugging at her scrubs and hair, she stepped into the helicopter; it lifted off the beach and disappeared west with the night. I cannot say I was brokenhearted at her leaving. I'm not sure I wanted to marry Shelly as much as I didn't want to lose her. Marrying her said something about her. Losing her said something about me, and I was afraid to hear that indictment.

The truth of me had broken us.

G
iven the size of Harvard's endowment and the immense block of recently freed-up time in my schedule, and having worn out my welcome in and around Boston, I began looking into study abroad scholarships and found one custom-made for guys like me—finance-minded juniors with off-the-charts test scores, all A's in math, no parents, no siblings, and no extended family. What the scholarship board called a “child of prodigy and hardship.” Funny how there's so little difference between “prodigy” and “prodigal.” The summer after my junior year, the Pickering-Kuscht Scholarship sent me to London, where I studied derivatives, leverage, and the emerald-green eyes of a goddess named Amanda Pickering.

Amanda was beautiful, self-confident, loved to run, and—​f
ortunatel
y for me—directionally challenged. After I quit track, I rediscovered my love of running—much of which I did at night, so while most of my classmates made the rounds of the British pubs sampling gallons of Guinness, I ran the streets of London. Incidentally, so did Amanda. Only difference was that I could find my way back to my hotel once I turned around. We'd been in a couple of classes together but given that she was a bit guarded, it was no wonder that we'd never said two words to each other. Amanda also had one other trait much talked about among the fathers and sons of the New England elite: She was the sole heir to the Pickering fortune. Her college experience was her father's personal talent search among the East's best and brightest to find someone to manage his precious money. One night, about 1:00 a.m., I found her—several miles from our hotel—standing next to an Underground sign attempting to read a map. She glanced at me but was too proud to admit she needed help.

It was pretty common knowledge that her father had put her up in one of those top-floor penthouses at the Ritz. I put my finger on the map. “The Ritz is here.”

She glanced at me out of the corners of her eyes, nodded, and acted as though she were studying the map for an alternate route home. “Yep.”

Her eyes still had yet to land on any one point on the map. I pointed again. “And…you're over here.”

This only served to push the skin between her eyes closer and deepen the wrinkle, so I pointed behind her. “Which means you should run that way.”

She tilted her head, still trying to make sense of the map and not admit defeat. Finally, she turned to me. “I'll bet you're good with a Rubik's Cube.”

“Fifty-two seconds.”

She shook her head and spoke, still trying to make sense of the map. “Been coming here my whole life but”—she wiped the sweat off her face—“looks so different in the daytime, and we always had a driver.”

I pushed against the lamppost like I was stretching my calves. “Yeah…me, too. 'Cept mine would never shut up. Talked the entire time. Couldn't help but learn something. Knew this town like the back of my hand by the time I was eight.”

“I'm lost, and you're making fun of me.”

I shook my head and continued to poke fun at her. “Good help is just tough to find these days.”

She smiled. “I've heard of you.”

“Really?”

“You're that arrogant runner who's been taking everybody's money in poker. Even won a car.”

I shrugged. “It was his father's and he's got several more.”

A knowing chuckle. “Yes, he does.” She continued. “Then you went in front of Father's scholarship board with some song and dance about how you're all alone in this world. Making everybody feel sorry for you.”

“Father's?”

“You're Dad's scholarship pick.”

“I thought a board decided that.”

She didn't look at me. “You thought wrong.”

“I spent over an hour answering their questions.”

“Evidently, you answered them quite well.”

“I have a talent for telling people what they want to hear.”

“Are you always like this?”

“Like what?”

“Self-effacing.”

“If I knew what that meant, I'd answer you.”

She shook her head once. “An honest man at Harvard.”

That's twice in my life I'd been called honest. Funny. I didn't feel it. I shrugged. “Sometimes being honest and telling the truth are not the same.”

She sized me up. “Daddy will be so impressed.”

“You tell him everything?”

“What I don't tell him, Mr. Pickering discovers on his own.” A pause. “Money has its…responsibilities.”

“A lot of guys would shoulder that burden for you.”

A pause. “That include you?”

“I think whoever shoulders your financial burden will get your father's approval long before he gets yours, and I have no desire to play that game.”

As one of the richest twenty-five and unders in the United States, my guess was that Amanda was not accustomed to being spoken to so plainly and with so little regard for how much financial leverage she wielded. I didn't know whether she believed me or not, but she perceived my honesty as a breath of fresh air. “And you'd be right about that.”

“I'll bet your high school experience was a blast.”

“It had its moments.”

“How many times did you run away?”

She smiled. “Every night.”

I chuckled. “Like now.”

More honesty. Another nod. “Yes, like now.”

I held out my hand. “Charlie Finn.”

She held my hand several seconds. “Amanda Pickering.”

I turned. “Come on. This conversation would've been over long ago if you knew your way home.”

The best way to describe our friendship was one of curious amusement. Unlike the other guys who'd literally stalked her, looking for the opportunity to strike and share their résumés—and, hopefully, her money—I'd stumbled upon her, and rather than play the rescuing knight, I'd poked fun at her—which set me apart from everyone else and which I think she appreciated.

My reason for this was pretty simple. I'd been playing poker long enough to know that there's always somebody with greater skill, more chips, and better cards. This dictated that my chances with Amanda were zero, so why waste my time acting otherwise. As a result, we adopted somewhat of a take-it-or-leave-it attitude with each other. That meant unlike all the other guys lining up to take her out, we actually spent a good bit of time together.

The finance class I was taking culminated in a single project. On the first day, the professor had issued everyone a hundred thousand dollars in Monopoly money, then told us to create our own portfolio and keep him abreast of all trades. Stock picking had never really been my thing but research was, so I made some good decisions, shorted a few stocks, covered myself with some options and calls, and, as was consistent with my personality, held very few long positions. When the summer semester came to a close, my portfolio had outperformed my classmates'. This, more than my relationship with his daughter, caught the eye of Marshall Pickering. On the day before my return to Boston, Amanda offered to let me tag along on the family G5. A couple of other guys would be there. As tough as it was, I knew that if I wanted a chance with that girl I needed to
not
be like those guys. I needed to play it cool. I also had a pretty good idea the invite came through her father, given that I'd just won his portfolio contest. So I declined. “I've never traveled Europe much, so I'm going to take the train back through France and Spain. Get lost for a few days. Sample the beer and maybe the food.” I knew if I invited her that she'd come, and I knew she wanted to. I also knew that this relationship would never make the return trip across the ocean. Daddy would see to that. I waved her off. “I'll see you back in Boston.” I smiled and then pointed west. “It's that way.”

She laughed, held my hand for a second longer than she should, and that's when I knew she'd fallen for me. Amanda was strong, independent, highly intelligent, incredibly good-looking, and she had—or would have—more money than she could spend in ten lifetimes. She was also a pawn in Daddy's world. And while her dad loved her, I had a feeling he loved his money more.

The next two weeks were some of the loneliest I'd ever known. I forced myself to stay gone a week longer with no contact just to give an impression. The bluff worked. When I landed in Boston, her driver was waiting on me at the airport. He stood next to his limo. “Mr. Finn?”

The window behind him rolled down slightly and Amanda's emerald-green eyes smiled at me. We didn't leave each other's side for nearly a week.

A month later, she invited me to have dinner with her folks, private plane, helicopter, yacht, the Hamptons, all in a casual effort to meet the family. I was no dummy. Mr. Pickering had a file on me six inches thick. I was pretty certain he knew my grades in grammar school, how many pizzas I'd delivered, that I'd had my wisdom teeth pulled my senior year of high school, and he could recite my college transcripts from memory. He was either allowing me to come to dinner to publicly undress me in front of his daughter and show her the fraud I really was, or he was raising an eyebrow and wanting to know what I was made of. His future son-in-law might marry into this family, but he'd earn every penny of her money.

After kissing his daughter, he extended his hand and put his arm around me. “Charlie. Welcome. Come in. We've heard so much about you.” He could not have been warmer. My first thought was,
This guy is good. Remind me to never play poker with him
.

Too late. We were already playing.

I chose my words at dinner, speaking only when spoken to, responding to Amanda's mom, who fired off most of the questions. These people had made up their minds long before I walked in that door, so I enjoyed my meal and answered honestly and casually. I figured that by
not
trying to impress her folks, I was actually doing a better job of impressing them—if that was possible. When asked, I gave the short details of my life—which I was pretty sure they already knew. Dad drove a cab but killed himself when he wrapped it around a concrete barrier with a blood alcohol of about .3. Mom worked two to four jobs to support us but followed Dad my junior year of high school. Three questions shy of acing the SAT. Harvard full ride. 4.0 GPA. Four-minute, seven-second mile. Would graduate a semester early.

Her mother raised a finger. “Following the death of your mother, who raised you? Supported you?”

“I did.”

“How did you survive? Buy food? Pay the power bill?”

“I delivered pizza and sold drugs.”

While she laughed at the joke, thinking I was making one, he sat back and smiled smugly—telling me he knew I was not.

Amanda's dad poured wine for everyone at the table and saw it as his personal mission to stoop to the level of a butler and make sure everyone was sufficiently happy with his “house” wine, which, Amanda whispered, wholesaled at $200 a bottle. I didn't touch it and every time he offered I declined.

He noticed my lack of consumption before we ate our salads and watched with curiosity as my wine sat untouched all night. When they lit the bananas Foster, he asked almost with disappointment, “Could we get you something else?”

This was it. His first push and I knew it. He was raising me. I shook my head and answered only what I was asked. “No thank you.”

Another push. A raise. “You don't like my wine?”

I met his raise and raised again. “Don't know. Haven't tried it.”

He waited, eyeing the cards in his hand.

Amanda sipped and smiled. More amusement. She tapped my foot below the table.

A single shake of my head. “Don't drink.”

He knew this, but rather than admit that, he raised his glass and toasted me and then his daughter and finally his wife and their Persian dog. I wouldn't say that I won that hand as much as I had succeeded in earning myself a seat at the invite-only table.

Following dinner, we “retired” to his porch, looking out across the water. He offered me a cigar. Again, I refused. He rolled his around his mouth, lit it, and then sucked on it until the end glowed like a hot iron. Oddly, the color matched his eyes. Drawing several times on the Cuban, he exhaled and filled the air around us with a haze of smoke. “You don't appear to have any vices, Charlie.”

I was in way over my head. Any idiot sitting in my chair knew that. This guy ate guys like me for breakfast and picked his teeth with what remained of our backbones. Somewhere around the third course, his stiffening body language told me that I'd be seeing less of Amanda following dinner. Little I could say or do would change that. He wanted someone strong but not someone who would so willingly challenge him—which is what I'd been doing all night. And he knew that. And he knew that I knew that.

Given that I could read the cards I'd been dealt, I again decided on the honest approach. I can't really tell you why other than I had a pretty good feeling that this guy could read my bluffs far better than I could make them. Besides, I'd never had dinner with a man worth almost a billion.

Halfway through his cigar, he said, “Amanda tells me you're a bit of a poker player.”

“I've played some.”

He pointed to a felt-covered table. An innocent fatherly face. “Shall we?”

I folded my legs and rested my hands in my lap. “No need.”

He studied his cigar, drawing deeply. I think he was starting to get irritated. “Really?”

“I made money by playing trust fund kids who viewed poker as entertainment. And I sincerely doubt you brought me here to entertain you.”

He chuckled, admiring the red tip. “You preyed on gullible people.”

“I provided a service to kids who were burning through Daddy's money and should know better.”

“And you know better?”

“I saw an opportunity.”

He nodded. “And seized on it. I like that.” The innocence drained out. “I pay a lot of money for people who can read other people.”