much booze and a spiked drink. A month passed and I slowly began to pull things together. Then this arrived in the mail.”
He reaches for a file I had not noticed. As he opens it he says, “Post, I’ve never shown this to anyone.” He hands me an 8x10 color photo. It’s Tyler, in his boxers, dangling from the zip line with his feet just inches above the raging open mouth and jagged teeth of a large crocodile. The terror in his face is indescribable. It’s a close shot, with nothing in the background to indicate place or time.
I gawk at it, then look at Tyler. He’s wiping a tear from a cheek and says in a weak voice, “Look, I need to make a call, okay? It’s business. Grab another beer and I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. There’s more to the story.”
23
I put the photo back in the file and leave it on the table, never to see it again, I hope. I walk to the edge of the terrace and gaze at the ocean. There are too many wild thoughts spinning around to grab just one and analyze it. But fear dominates them all. Fear that drove Tyler out of the profession. Fear that keeps his secrets buried. Fear that weakens my knees some twenty years after his abduction.
I’m lost in my thoughts and do not hear him return to the terrace. He startles me with “What’s your main thought right now, Post?” He’s standing beside me with black coffee in a paper cup.
“Why didn’t they just kill you? No one would ever know.”
“The obvious question and one that I’ve had twenty years to think about. My best answer is that they needed me. They had their conviction. Quincy was headed to prison forever. They must have had some concern about his appeal, and since I was writing it they wanted me to back off. And I did. I raised all the obvious legal issues on appeal, but I really toned down the language. I took a knee, Post. I mailed it in. You’ve read it, right?”
“Sure, I’ve read everything. I thought your brief was sound.”
“Legally, yes, but I was going through the motions. Not that it would’ve mattered. The Florida Supreme Court was not going to reverse his conviction regardless of what I wrote. Quincy had no idea. He thought I was still raging against his injustice, but I backed off.”
“The Court affirmed unanimously.”
“No surprise there. I filed the usual perfunctory appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Denied as always. And I told Quincy it was over.”
“And that’s why you didn’t ask for post-conviction relief?”
“That, plus there was no new evidence at that time. I threw in the towel and walked away. Needless to say, I wasn’t getting paid at that point. Two years later, Quincy filed his own motions from prison, got one of the jailhouse lawyers to help him, but they went nowhere.”
He turns and walks back to the table and takes his seat. He places the file in an empty chair. I join him and we sit for a long, silent spell. Finally, he says, “Just think of the logistics, Post. They knew I was going fishing in Belize, knew where I would be staying, so they must have been listening to my phones. This was before the Internet, so no e-mails to hack. Think of the manpower it took to spike my drink, drag me away, load me up in a boat or plane and take me to their little camp where they made sport out of feeding their enemies to the crocodiles. The zip line was pretty elaborate, the crocs plentiful and hungry.”
“A well-organized gang.”
“Yes, one with plenty of money, resources, contacts with local police, maybe border agents, everything the best narco-traffickers need. They certainly made a believer out of me. I finished the appeal, but I was a wreck. I finally got some counseling, told my therapist I’d been threatened by people who could make good with their threats, and that I was cracking up over it. He got me through it and I eventually packed up and left town. You need any more proof that Quincy didn’t kill Russo?”
“No, and I really didn’t need this.”
“This is a secret that will never be told, Post. And this is the reason I’m not getting involved with anyone’s efforts to help Quincy.”
“So you know more than you’re telling?”
He considers this while he sips coffee. “Let’s just say that I