Brothers and Bones (51 page)

Every now and then I take the letter from its envelope, unfold it carefully, and read it. Jake’s last words to me, words from the other side of dying. I look at his confident handwriting and smile.

Dear Charlie,

I don’t want to sound like a cliché from an old movie, but if you’re reading this, I’m probably dead. And if the person reading this isn’t Charlie, then screw off and die, asshole, because you’re probably the one who killed me.

That line still cracks me up. I read on, though I could practically recite the letter by heart now.

But I’m going to assume it’s you, Charlie. That, if I needed to, I found a way to leave you a clue where to find this, and that you were smart enough to figure it out. I have no doubt about the last part, actually.

The reason I wrote above that I’m probably dead is that I’ve gotten myself involved in something dangerous.

In the next several sentences, Jake described how the then young Andrew Lippincott had hired then-even-younger Carmen Siracuse to murder his autistic son, and how he’d learned this from Carmen Siracuse’s anonymous blackmailer, the man who stole the tape from Siracuse and used it to squeeze a small fortune out of the mob boss over the years. Jake wrote how the man played the tape for him over the phone but had tragically misjudged how fast the door was closing on his life, dying within hours of the phone call, before Jake got the chance to meet with him to obtain the tape. Then came the first of Jake’s surprises.

Charlie, I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you now. If you don’t want my memory tarnished, don’t read on. Still reading? Last chance…okay, here goes. I thought about what I knew. I did a little digging and discovered that the case against Simon Tolliver, the boy convicted of killing little Tommy Lippincott, was considered open-and-shut. Any evidence to the contrary, other than that tape, would have been lost or buried a long time ago. I suppose I could have gone to the police and at least tried to convince them of the truth, but I had no proof, and the people involved were big—far too big to go after without hard evidence. So I decided to pretend that I did, in fact, have the tape, and then follow my dead informant’s lead. I blackmailed both Siracuse and Lippincott. Sorry, Charlie, but that’s what I did. And what I’m still doing. I’ve continued to look for evidence against those two dirtbags, evidence of the murder, and when I find it, I’ll go to the nearest police station with it. In fact, the reason I’m writing this letter right now is that things might get a little dangerous for me soon. I may have a promising lead, someone who worked at the hospital at the time of the murder. For all I know, Siracuse keeps an eye on such people, but I’m willing to take the risk. Wish me luck.

That answered a question that had bothered me. I’d wondered what Jake had done to cause Siracuse to have someone make that phony call to Jake while he was dining with his reporter friend, the one that lured him away to be kidnapped. Before I knew Jake had been blackmailing Siracuse and Lippincott, I wondered what he’d done to draw their attention. But as I read about the blackmailing in Jake’s letter, I’d wondered why they suddenly took him in. They must have figured he’d have a backup plan. Well, it turns out he didn’t. My guess is, he didn’t want to endanger anyone else. But they didn’t know that. They might have found out that he was trying to find other evidence of their murder conspiracy. It could very well have been the “promising lead” Jake wrote about that tipped them off. So they grabbed him.

So, I hope you can see that I didn’t do what I’ve done out of greed, Charlie. But, still, I beg your forgiveness. Nobody else’s but yours. I never want to hurt you, to cause you shame. My only excuse is that I’m doing it out of love. See, the insurance money from Mom’s and Dad’s deaths? The money we lived on for years? The money that put you through college? That’s putting you through law school as I write this? It didn’t come from Mom and Dad. Or their insurance company. Dad had a great legal mind, but he never really had a head for details in his personal life. He let the policies lapse. We had nothing. And I didn’t want that for you, Charlie. I wanted you to have what you needed to start a life. You deserved that. You had it rough ever since you were a kid. Our parents dying. Me never around, working all the time. You deserved better. And
that’s
why I’m doing what I’m doing.

Next, Jake gave me the account numbers for two separate bank accounts in the Cayman Islands. Apparently, there were over three million dollars in them at the time Jake wrote the letter more than thirteen years ago. The money sat there patiently after that, waiting, gaining interest.

The irony of Jake’s blackmail wasn’t lost on me, and I’m sure it wasn’t lost on him. Hell, maybe it wasn’t lost on Lippincott or even Siracuse. After all, Siracuse used the tape—even after he no longer had possession of it—to blackmail Lippincott. An anonymous person, probably some associate or underling of Siracuse’s, stole the tape from him and blackmailed the mob boss with it. Then Jake came along and, though he never actually got the tape in his hands, used its existence and the knowledge of what was on it to blackmail Siracuse and Lippincott. Finally, there was me. Bluffing my way through, pretending I had the tape to get what I wanted, which were the lives of Jessica and Bonz, as well as my own.

Now the product of Jake’s blackmail waited for me in the Caribbean Sea, growing larger by the day. Frankly, I’m not sure how I would have felt about claiming all that money if Jake hadn’t written what he’d written next.

I know you, Charlie. You’re not going to want the money. You’re too good. Better than I. But if I were you, I’d take it. Do whatever you want with it. Keep it. Donate it to charity. Spend it on silly hats. Whatever. You may not truly deserve it, but you sure as hell deserve it more than the scumbags who have been giving it to me do.

Hard to argue with him there.

So that’s all, Charlie. I hope you never see this letter. I hope we both live forever. I hope I grow old and can watch you grow almost as old (you’ll always be eleven years younger, remember). But if that isn’t to be, I hope you make a good life even if I’m not around. And you marry someone extraordinary. And you have kids. And you’re happy. Please do this, Charlie. If you do, my own life will have had meaning.

Your loving brother, Jake

Maybe someday I’ll be able to read this letter without having to wipe a tear from my eye afterward. But that day hasn’t yet arrived.

So Jake wasn’t quite the man I thought he was. In my mind, he’d always been flawless. To be honest, he
couldn’t
have been the man I thought him to be. No one could. Well, maybe one man was, but a lot of people believe he was nailed to a cross a long, long time ago.

Jessica and I haven’t decided what to do with all that money. Will we keep it? At least some of it, I think. We’ve already set up an account for Bonz with a good chunk of it. I figure a million dollars will get him off to a decent start. I’ll tell him about it soon. We also made a sizable anonymous donation to Saint John’s church. I’m still not sure whether I believe in God, but Father Sean does, and he believed in me when almost no one else did, and that’s easily worth a quarter of a million dollars in my book. We completed our philanthropy with anonymous donations totaling another quarter million to various charities providing assistance to the homeless people of Boston. There is, however, at least one personal use to which we intend to put just a little of the money—the completion of the inscription on Jake’s headstone. Have the date of his death, or the best I can approximate it, carved on it.

In his letter, Jake asked for my forgiveness. That was unnecessary. What he did, he did for me. That’s the way he lived most of his life. Everything I am, everything I might someday be, I owe to him.

Some people would question Jake’s choices, his decision to turn to blackmail, and I guess I couldn’t blame them. But I don’t. In fact, it doesn’t bother me at all.

To me, it’s just Jake.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is the work of many people. First and foremost, I thank Colleen, always my first reader, biggest fan, and caring wife. Without her steadfast support. enthusiastic encouragement, keen sense of humor, and depthless love, the lonely pursuit of a writing life would be a lot lonelier. Heartfelt thanks to my writer friends, Daniel Suarez, Adam Winston, and Don Lamoreaux, who vastly improved the book with their thoughtful input. Thanks also to John Hankins, a sharp-eyed reader and a pretty darn good brother. Thanks as well to attorneys Susan Hankins (my brilliant sister) and John R. Gulash (my brilliant brother-in-law) for their advice on criminal law. A huge heap of thanks to my family and friends for their constant and kind encouragement. Many thanks also to my agent, Michael Bourret of Dystel & Goderich Literary Management, for his unswerving faith in me. Finally, there are undoubtedly others on whom I relied for advice, opinions, or information as I wrote this book, and though I may have neglected to mention them by name, I thank them all.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JAMES HANKINS lives in Massachusetts with his wife and two sons. He used to be a lawyer. Before that he wrote screenplays. Now he writes books and helps raise his boys. Please visit his website at www.jameshankinsbooks.com.