Water from My Heart (34 page)

“Please.”

“My father used to hire men with troubled pasts. Prison. Everything. Give them a second chance when no one else would. One of them—a murderer—asked him one time while they were picking beans shoulder to shoulder, ‘How does a man wipe his life clean?' You know what my father said to that man?”

I shook my head.

“He said, ‘With the one that you have.'”

She leaned her head on my shoulder and turned to look at me. We were walking along the northern end of the island—within a few feet of where Shelly had returned in the helicopter and given me my watch. Atlantis under our feet. She said, “Can you guess who that man was?”

“No.”

“Paulo.” She registered my reaction with a slight smile. “You look surprised.”

“I didn't see that one coming.”

She nodded. “My father would have liked you.”

The amazing thing about Leena is that while I had pushed her away, she'd not recoiled. What I'd thought would push her away had brought her closer. I said, “I saw you one time.” A single nod—gesturing toward my past. “Back then.”

She looked surprised. “When?”

“After we foreclosed. You'd lost everything. Parents. Mango Café. Your husband. You were pregnant, walking down the mountain. I'd been in León packing up my office at the hotel. Before I flew out, I rented a bike and rode up in the mountains. I was wrestling with what we—with what I—had done to these innocent, unsuspecting, hardworking, beautiful people. And when I saw them walking down the mountain, and you specifically, I knew I'd done the one thing that Hurricane Carlos and the loss of everything else could not do.”

“What's that?”

“Broken your hope.”

She weighed her head side to side, considering my words. “Bruised it? Yes.” Then she cracked a smile and shook her head. “Never broke it.”

How I love that woman.

The next day, before they climbed into Colin's jet, Paulo shook my hand and held it several seconds. “
Gracias, hermano.
You dig well.” Isabella clung to my leg. I kissed her forehead and the two disappeared inside the plane. Leena touched my hand and then began climbing the steps. Reaching the door to the plane, she stopped and returned. She lifted my Costas off my face so she could see my eyes and placed her finger on my lips. “You don't scare me, Charlie. Never have.”

The plane lifted off and quickly disappeared into a blue sky, carrying a part of my heart with it. Colin, Marguerite, and the kids had gone with them, as they planned to route through Costa Rica and spend a week or two at the house. That left me alone on my island. As my heart disappeared into the sky, one emotion bubbled up: Her forgiving me is one thing. Me forgiving me is another.

I spent the week roaming the beaches of Bimini. Getting my strength back. Then a second week during which I'd walk for miles at a time. Somewhere in the third week, I actually went for a jog and ended up running several hours, clearing my head. Standing barefoot on the beach, sweat pouring off me, I knew what needed to be done.

I bought a ticket to Boston. Time to see the old man.

I
didn't bother to make an appointment, as I was pretty sure I wouldn't get one. Besides, the only card I had left to play was surprise, and I would need it if I had any thought of winning this hand. Pickering and Sons had moved, so I gave the cabbie the address and he dropped me off on the curb. Modern, trendy, the building reflected Marshall's desire to remain relevant as well as Brendan's desire to wrest the company away from him. Fat chance. The conflict between the design and the artwork was thick enough to cut with a knife.

The receptionist's smile quickly turned to a frown as I walked past her toward the suite of extravagant offices. There were three. Amanda on the left. Brendan on the right, across the hall. Both doors were shut. Marshall's door stood open in the center. The receptionist offered a verbal protest, but when I ignored her and walked past her, she began quickly dialing. It was too late.

Marshall sat behind his desk staring at one of his three screens covered in numbers that measured the value of his world. He was smiling. He'd aged but he'd aged well. Still trim. Fit. His hair had turned completely white. He stood to meet me. “Charlie, you should have called.”

Friendly as ever, he walked around the desk to shake my hand with his right and pat me on the shoulder with his left. His smile said one thing, the coldness in his eyes said another. He called past me, “Amanda. Brendan.” I heard a noise behind me as both Amanda and Brendan walked in. Brendan had plumped up a bit. Amanda had not. She walked up and hugged me, kissed me on the cheek. Amanda was as beautiful as ever, but she, too, had aged and the years had not been kind. She looked older, less vibrant. She, like her father, looked cold. Pilates, yoga, personal trainer, whatever, she'd obviously done them all and it showed. As did the plastic surgery both above and below her neckline, which did not mask the sadness beneath her eyes or in her chest. I almost felt sorry for Brendan. A decade “in the family” and the whipped look on his face told the story. He'd been conquered and, like a dog pulled on his collar by his chain, had become Marshall's yes-man. His face was rounder. Belly, too. Bags beneath his eyes. I acknowledged him but did not offer to shake his hand. “Gunslinger. How's that moving target treating you?”

He laughed an embarrassed chuckle.

Marshall attempted to cut the air. “What brings you to Boston?” He waved his hands across the plush sofa behind me. “Please, sit.”

I did not.

I'd played with this man enough to know that he was still and always better. I really had only one play, and it would be my first, as I wouldn't get a second. I needed to catch him a bit off guard, I needed to pick a fight, and I needed to go all in, all in the same move. “Cinco Padres Café Compañía.”

One of the things that Colin had discovered for me was that during the foreclosure, the shell companies for Pickering and Sons had ended up with the deeds to Cinco Padres. I thought those deeds had been sold on the courthouse steps, but when the Cinco Padres companies were closed, all assets were not sold but transferred to Pickering. Aka, to Marshall. Where the deeds collected dust with more than a hundred other companies. Though I had not known this until Colin dug it up in his research, I'd be willing to bet it had been Marshall's plan all along.

Marshall attempted to look like he didn't know what I was talking about, but the old man had aged and his bluffs weren't quite as polished. Or maybe the time away had seasoned me as a player after all. He scratched his chin and nodded, attempting to act as if the cloud were clearing and the fog lifting. “Seems like I remember something about some coffee and Central America. Nicaragua maybe.” He turned to Brendan. “What do we know about Cinco Padres?”

The two-word shortening of the name told me he knew exactly what I was talking about. A check and a raise. Brendan walked behind Marshall's desk, punched several keys, and the screens quickly changed. He scanned them and then began reciting values like a robot. He finished with his assessment, which Marshall neither wanted nor cared about. “Dead weight. No production. It's a total of five farms and the dirt is worth more than any possible coffee production as those ignorant people have never recovered from the mudslide that put them out of business in the first place—along with that stubborn old man who, I imagine, wishes he had sold now. Might find a possible buyer in a rum company looking for sugarcane soil.”

Amanda sat across from me. Legs crossed. The beginnings of a slight smirk. She was enjoying herself. Marshall leaned on the front of his desk, one leg to the side, his foot off the ground. The total value of his suit, shoes, and watch was hovering around two hundred and fifty. He spoke to Brendan while never taking his eyes off me. He knew the answer without asking. “And what's the value of that dirt to the right buyer?”

Brendan checked his screens. “Five. Maybe six.”

Marshall considered his cards. Then raised. “Seven.” The smiled spread across his face as he expected me to fold. I paused and turned to Amanda, who shook her head ever so slightly. Marshall saw something he must not have liked in my eyes because he raised again. He tapped the table. “Closing in seventy-two hours.”

I stepped toward Marshall into his personal space—which he did not like—and extended my hand, shaking his firmly. “Deal.”

I walked to the door and turned to stare at two ashen white faces and one smiling. Guess I don't need to tell you who was smiling.

I returned to Miami and knocked on Colin's door. I had three days to find a lot of money. I had about half in the bank. I still owned my childhood home across from the beach in Jacksonville. My shack in Bimini. And I felt I could get a loan from Colin, but I needed to do some digging first. Zaul answered the door, shadowed by Colin. “Was wondering if you felt like flexing those muscles.”

“Sure.”

Two hours later, Colin, Zaul, and I walked into the San Angeles Catholic Chapel on the northern tip of Bimini. They'd ceased services here decades ago and now used the chapel only for weddings. It was tucked into the trees but backed up to the beach just a few yards away. Making sure we were alone, Zaul and I slid the stone altar out of the way and began hacking at the floor with an ax and a pick. The double layer of boards beneath the tile were solid, reminding me that when I'd buried this money, I'd buried it. Zaul swung with an apparent glee at the thought of tearing something up and finding money. He smashed through the floor and there beneath sat my duffel bag and my $250,000. He unzipped the bag. “Good thing I didn't know that was here until now.”

I smiled.

He was stepping out of the hole when I pointed at the concrete below him. He shrugged. “More?”

“Let's just call it a hunch.”

Zaul began breaking up the concrete while I sat on the front pew and remembered my friend Hack and how he loved cigarettes and a good cup of coffee. When Zaul's pick smashed through the floor into a cavity beneath him, he looked at me with wide eyes. I told him, “Be careful. I'm not real sure what's down there.”

An hour later, Zaul had unearthed four large trunks. “Jamaican Rum” had been stamped on the top. We lined them up and pried off the top of the first. Zaul's jaw dropped. “That's a lot of money.”

The other three were just like it. Colin smiled. “Always loved that old guy.”

Zaul looked up at me. “What're you planning on doing with all this?”

I smiled at Colin, then Zaul. “How would you like to learn the coffee business?”

After seventy-one hours and fifty-three minutes, I pushed a cart carrying five duffel bags into Marshall's building and rode the elevator to the top. The receptionist didn't protest as I walked by. Marshall was standing at the window. Three men in suits I did not know sat busying themselves with a pile of papers at the conference table. I pushed in the cart prompting Marshall to acknowledge it and then me. Amanda and Brendan followed me in.

When Colin had heard my plan, he immediately offered to finance whatever I needed. Thanks to Hack, I didn't need much. To help me and help me quickly, Colin agreed to buy my house in Jacksonville Beach along with my shack in Bimini—where he told me I was welcome to stay anytime. Then I took out a gentleman's agreement loan with Colin for $500,000—using the land as collateral. Given that I was employing Zaul, he offered to give it to me, but I declined, stating that it might help for Zaul to play some role in paying it back. That gave me $5 million plus Hack's $2 million. Marshall would never see it coming.

I placed the transfer confirmations on top of the duffels. “Five million transferred this morning, plus…two million in cash.” The attorneys raised their eyebrows. Marshall had never said “how” he'd like me to make payment and that was coming back to bite him at this moment. Which is what the awkward smile on his face told me.

His question was the first time I sensed a crack in his wall. “What do you expect me to do with that?”

“I'm sure you can launder it through a hundred different companies or pay your hired guns in cash, so through your ingenious bonus system, you can avoid any taxes or payments of penalties.”

The attorneys looked up at me, wondering how I knew about the payment scale for bonuses. I walked to the table and checked the deeds to make sure they'd been designated per my instructions. Finding them in order, I ignored Marshall and looked at the lawyers. “Where do I sign?” They looked at Marshall, who reluctantly nodded, bringing a satisfied smile out of Amanda.

There was always the chance that Marshall could double-cross me after I'd left, but I still had one ace in the hole. She stopped me as I turned to walk out. She said, “I'll ride down with you.” When we stepped onto the elevator, Brendan tried to ride with us, but I put my index finger on his chest and pushed him backward. The doors shut, Amanda stood at my side. We stared at each other in the reflection of the doors. She spoke first. “I'll make sure that goes through.”

“Thank you.”

The elevator signaled as we descended each floor.

She turned to me. “You look good.”

“I am.”

“Any regrets?”

I shook my head. “No.”

She nodded once. “I have one.”

The doors opened, and we walked out into the glass-walled foyer. She kissed my cheek and then gently wiped off the lipstick with her thumb. “Take care.” Holding my hand, she kissed me again. “Send us some coffee.”

C
olin offered to fly me, but I told him I was a child of the water. Always had been. As a thank-you for finding Zaul, and for giving him a job when he was quite certain no one else would, he handed me the title to
Storied Career
. When I tried to protest, he waved me off. “Charlie, shut up and take the boat.”

I did.

I packed up my life in Bimini, including my Costa collection, said good-bye, bought a couple cases of water, and charted a south-southwesterly course where the week on the water was food for my soul. I returned through the Caribbean, across the Panama Canal, and into the Pacific, where I motored up the coast, finally turning into the inlet that bordered the resort that Zaul and his friends had wrecked. I tossed the owner my bowline. He said, “How you been?”

“Good. Wondering if you wouldn't mind letting me dock this thing here?”

“Sure. I'll put her next to mine. How long?”

I looked around. “How 'bout forever?”

He chuckled. “Sounds good to me.”

“You don't happen to have a bike I could rent, do you?”

“No, but—” He pointed. “A block that way. Guy has a shop next to the hardware store. He'll sell or rent.”

I bought a KTM 600 similar to Colin's, made one additional purchase at an outdoor store that catered primarily to college kids trekking from hostel to hostel across Central America, and then headed toward Valle Cruces. It was hot, getting hotter, and the only thing missing were two hands wrapped around my stomach.

Over the last week I'd realized, really for the first time, that what Leena said was true. I'd been letting the pain of my past dictate the hope and promise of my future. As much as it surprised me, I had become an adult and my single overriding characteristic was that I was afraid to hope and, even more, afraid to let others hope in me. If she was right and hope was the currency of love, then I'd been broke a long time.

That's a crummy way to live.

I pulled into Valle Cruces carrying only a backpack and a ring from a jewelry store in León. I stopped at the roadside builders' supply store—primarily a lumber and construction supplier—bought what I needed, and carefully slid it in my pocket. The house was empty when I arrived, and given that it was Wednesday, this did not surprise me. Everyone was up top. Wanting to stretch my legs, I left the bike and started walking. People came out of their houses as I walked by. They waved and were genuinely happy to see me. People hugged me and walked with me. One set of teenagers stopped me, laughing. “
El doctor
, you dig well,” one said with a shake of his head followed by more laughter. “Fight not so good.”

For the first time in my life, I was home. I glanced at the kid. “There were twelve of them. One of me.”

He put his arm around me. A wide smile displaying a mouthful of large white teeth. “Not one anymore.” He waved his hand across a street filling with people. “Now you are many.”

I took my time walking on, letting the sweat pour off me. Soak me.

When the trees grew large, towering overhead, where the monkeys howled at me on all sides and the breeze fluttered through the leaves and the shade cooled my skin, I turned left and walked the narrow well-worn path around the side of the mountain to the twin white crosses.

The grave no longer looked fresh. Weeds had sprouted up through the dirt and covered the ground in a blanket of green. Someone had placed fresh-cut flowers against the crudely carved headstone as early as this morning.

I took off my hat and smeared my forearm across my brow. Several minutes passed as I stood there trying to find the words.

I couldn't. Above me a monkey was racing through the mango tree, plucking fruit and throwing it down where he anticipated eating it later. A mango rolled up next to me, so I sat, peeled it, and started carving slices.

As the juice smeared across my face and dripped down the right side of my mouth, I made myself say something. “Sir—it's Charlie. I'm…I'm back.” Feeling foolish, I shook my head, put my hat on, then took it back off. “I wanted to stop by and tell you that, if you were here, I'd ask your permission for what I'm about to do. But since you're not and since I have no way of knowing how you'd respond, I'm…well…I want to tell you that if what I'm doing doesn't meet your approval that I'm sorry. That said, I'm doing it. If that's wrong, I'm sorry for that, too. Sir, I never really had a dad, and I can't tell you that I've been a good man. I have not. In fact, I've been a child of evil. Spreading more poison than anything else. I'm, or I have been, the exact opposite of you and your daughter and granddaughter—who, by the way, really favors her mom and she's really something. You'd be proud. But, back to me, if I could say one thing in my defense, it's that I know that what I'm doing—” I eyed my backpack sitting next to me. My hands were sticky and dripping. I sliced another piece and shoved it in my mouth. “What I'm carrying to the top of this mountain—well, I've never done anything like this before. This is real different. I'm not sure I can tell the difference right now between what's good and what's not, but if this is evil, then I'm at a loss as to what is good. To what could be. And I guess what I'm saying is—” Tears spilled out the corners of my eyes and dripped onto the dirt below. “I guess what my heart would really like to hear is that you approve and, just being gut-level honest, that you're proud of me, 'cause maybe for the first time in my life I am. Or I could be. I've got forty years of stuff I'm not proud of that I'd like to bury down there with you, but this right here, this I'd like to keep topside. Let it sprout. Grow up. This is the one thing in my life that has the potential to live beyond me. To make good on some of the bad or just take the sting out of it. To buy back some of what I sold a long time ago.” Fingers sticky, I pulled the brass lensatic compass out of my pocket—my outdoor store purchase—and set it on the beam of the cross where the red tip of the needle waved from eleven o'clock to three o'clock, finally settling at one thirty, pointing north through the summit of Las Casitas. I wrapped the paracord around the hinge and secured it to the beam. “Sir, I've never lived by one of these. Checked no compass. No magnetic north. Until I stepped foot on this mountain, it was a foreign concept. Which would explain the splinters of my life. Then Leena trips over me on the sidewalk and that precocious and precious Isabella pries open my eyelid. I think maybe that's the moment. That right there might be my beginning.” I brushed my hand across the face of the compass. “You've been this for a lot of people for a long time. And without really knowing it or trying to, you are this for me. I'm just telling you that, and I hope that's okay with you.” A long pause. “If I'm wrong, if you're lying down there shaking your head and you don't think this is a good idea, well, I'm sorry for that, too. It won't be the first time I've drifted off course.” I attempted an uncomfortable chuckle. “If I've proven one thing time and time again in my life, I'm good at making a mess.” I turned to go, but stopped. Turned back. “I guess the idea that's got me walking up this mountain is Paulo and the fact that you took a chance on him when nobody else would. That you saw past what was…to what could be. I'm standing here with my hat in my hand, hoping that the dirt and distance between us doesn't blind you to what might be possible. With me.” Another mango lay several feet away. Despite a loud and howling verbal objection from the monkey who didn't like me stealing his mangoes, I picked it up, peeled it, and bathed myself in the taste of Nicaragua.

Thirty minutes later, I reached the top, walked past the well, and dunked my head under the pump spigot, washing my face as the cold water trickled down my back. Through the trees, I could see Paulo's truck and a line of people snaking away from it. Rubber-gloved Leena, blowing strands of hair out of her face with her mouth, was leaning over my friend Anna Julia and pulling a tooth while Isabella entertained the kids. Paulo stood just beyond in the tractor barn helping a man change a tractor tire.

Life had continued—and the pace had not changed.

I walked up next to her. She was holding a pair of needle-nose pliers inside the open mouth of Anna Julia, who was looking out of the corner of her eye at me. I looked over Leena's shoulder and said, “Better pull the right one. She doesn't have too many left.”

She smiled but held her hands steady. Leena pulled the tooth and handed it to Anna Julia, who smiled at it and then slid it into her pocket. Leena pulled off her gloves and threw her arms around my neck. Followed by Isabella, Paulo, and then about fifty of the people standing in line. Gave a new meaning to the term “group hug.”

When they'd finished, Leena looked at me, blushing, having totally lost her concentration on the group in front of her. I chuckled. “Miss me?”

She kissed me. Then kissed me again. “Just a little.”

Isabella hung vacuum-wrapped around my leg. With no explanation, I opened my backpack and handed Leena the folder of documents. She eyed them. “What's this?”

I wasn't quite sure how to answer. I swallowed and offered what I could. “Love with legs.” A shrug. “Water from my heart.”

She opened the folder and the draining look of suspicion told me she never saw it coming. She began flipping more quickly through the documents. Reaching the end, she looked at Isabella, Paulo, and then me as the tears that she'd held a decade broke loose and rained down. Disbelief set in along with the it's-too-good-to-be-true look, so she turned back to the beginning and read the names again. Her voice cracked, then rose. “You did this?”

A nod.

“How?”

“Long story but it involved selling everything I owned and then digging up old drug money in an abandoned church.”

“You bought Mango Café with drug money?”

“No, I bought Cinco Padres with drug money.”

She looked confused and began flipping back through the documents. “What?”

“All five farms.” I laughed. “I hope you like the coffee business 'cause you're neck deep in it now.” Paulo was listening to me, but he was having a difficult time making out exactly what I was saying.

She shook her head in disbelief as she read back through the documents. Slowly the fog lifted. Paulo looked at me confused, and like him, the crowd milling around couldn't tell if she was happy or sad. Finally, she turned to me. Even with all her strength and tenacity, the absence of one name was too much. She looked at me. Eyes welling. She pointed. “But your name's not on here.” A shake of her head. “Anywhere.” She wiped her face with her shirtsleeve. “Are you…you leaving?”

This time I had enough presence of mind not to cheat the woman I loved out of the moment she desired and deserved. I knelt and extended my hand, uncurling my fingers to reveal the simple gold band cradled in my palm. “Not if you let me stay.”

Word spread. Quickly.

When people found out that Leena and Isabella owned all of Cinco Padres, they came out of the woodwork to congratulate her.

The next morning, I was awakened in the chicken coop by the sight of sleepy-eyed Leena holding a steaming mug beneath my nose. She'd let down her hair, which draped across her shoulders and rested on mine. It was the beginning of an intimate revelation. Leena was sharing herself with me—a sign of things to come. I sat up, sipped, and said, “I haven't been entirely honest with you.”

“Oh, really.”

“First, I told Zaul I'd give him a job. He'll be here in a few days.”

“And?”

“You need to know that I have nothing. I am completely and totally broke. I don't have enough money to fill up the tank in my boat, which, if I'm honest, I should sell so we'll have something when it rains. I don't know where we will get money to do anything. When I tell you I am broke, I mean we are week-old-leg-stubble-with-a-rusty-razor-don't-have-enough-to-buy-a-new-one broke.”

Leena stood and held my hand. “Let me show you something.” She walked me to the door of the coop, leaned into me, wrapping her arms around my waist and chest. “We don't need money.” She waved across the world spread before her. “This is Nicaragua.”

Across the backyard, a dozen or so pigs, a few cows, and several goats had been tied to trees. Baskets of fruit and vegetables filled every inch of the yard. Melons had been stacked along one wall. Flowers had been laid out. It was as if someone had spilled a grocery truck on the back lawn. She laughed. “They've been coming all morning.” I looked down the street, which was flooded with people carrying baskets and leading animals. Paulo stood smiling in the center of the yard, ghost white in awestruck amazement. Leena continued. “We have water, food, we have”—she placed her hand on my chest—“your mountain, and we have the best coffee…anywhere.”

I nodded. “And we have a guy in the States who has promised to import every bean we grow. Even has some famous friends who he thinks will help market it.”

She hung her arms around my neck. “I've always wanted to get married beneath my father's mango tree.”

“If word gets out that you're getting married, you're liable to have five thousand people show up.”

“My father would love nothing better.”

Isabella wrapped her arm around my leg and stood hugging me. Pressing her cheek to my thigh. I picked her up and cradled her in my arms. “How about you?”

She smiled, pressed her forehead to mine, and cradled my cheeks in her palms.

I'd never felt so clean.