The Alibi Man

Chapter 18

They sat around a mosaic-tile-topped table imported from Italy. It was three hundred years old and had come from the villa of a wealthy merchant in Florence. It weighed as much as any one of the polo ponies grazing in the irrigated field on the far side of the vast, manicured back lawn and gardens.

Jim Brody believed in living the good life, and he had more than enough money to do it. With nothing but a BA, a big ego, id a good bluff, he had started his own firm in 1979, representing professional athletes in contract and endorsement negotiations. In the beginning, his knack for picking up underestimated athletes about to become superstars had built his reputation. His reputation for big-dollar deals had then brought big-dollar players.

He often called his practice “a license to print money.” And he had no problem spending it.

Two young Hispanic men in white jackets and black slacks served the breakfast. Omelets made to order, bacon, sausage, hash owns, pastries, fruit, three kinds of juice, champagne, and fresh-ground coffee Brody had flown in monthly from a private plantation in Colombia.

His friends gathered here weekly for breakfast. The Alibi Club, they called themselves. Men who shared his passions for money, polo, beautiful women, and assorted other vices. Sebastian Foster, forty-three, at one point the fifth-ranked tennis player in the world. Paul Kenner, forty-nine, former major-league-baseball all-star, one of Brody’s early successes. Antonio Ovada, fifty-one, Argentinian, old money, owner of one of the top polo teams in Florida, breeder of top-dollar ponies. Bennett Walker, forty-five, Palm Beach, old money, Brody had known him for years. Charles Vance IV, fifty-three, CEO of a company that owned a fleet of luxury private charter jets. Juan Barbaro, thirty-three, Spanish, one of the top polo players in the world.

“Have the detectives spoken with you yet?” Ovada asked.

“No.”

“They will. And when they do, what will you tell them?”

Brody looked across the patio, not really seeing the lounge chairs or the pool. “That she was at my party. I knew the girl. That’s not a crime.”

“I suppose not.”

“What will you tell them?” Brody asked.

“That I saw her at the party. I didn’t see when or with whom she left. I was with you, here, for the rest of the night, drinking your most expensive scotch and smoking illegal Cuban cigars.”

“Me too,” Kenner said.

“And the woman you were with?” Ovada asked. “What will she say?”

“Nothing. She doesn’t want her husband to know. I don’t want him to know either. He’s the size and temperament of a grizzly bear.”

“I’ve met him,” Foster said. “You definitely need an alibi.”

“You slept with her too?” Kenner asked.

“Yeah. Nice piece of ass, but not worth getting my legs broken.”

Bennett Walker, in dark glasses, hungover, shifted restlessly on his chair.

Charles Vance sliced a piece of sausage on his plate and chewed enthusiastically. “Home with my wife,” he said. “The in-laws are sitting. I wasn’t at the party more than an hour. I have witnesses.”

Brody looked down the table at Barbaro.

“I was passed out on my friend’s pool table,” the Spaniard said with a grin. “You know how to throw a party, Patron. Bennett was a corpse himself the next day. Neither of us would have been of any use to a woman. Isn’t that so, my friend?”

Walker looked at him, distracted, and lifted a hand as if to say, whatever, then got up from the table and went into the pool house.

“What’s his problem?” Kenner asked.

Barbaro shrugged. “Too much vodka at Players last night.”

“Is his wife having trouble again?” Vance asked.

“Who can know? She is always a fragile creature, is she not?”

“I’d wish him my sympathy,” Vance said, “but considering what I gained marrying her, she doesn’t seem like that much of an inconvenience.”

“You don’t have to live with her,” Kenner said.

“Neither does he,” Vance pointed out. “When was the last time Bennett crossed the bridge to the Island?”

Walker emerged from the pool house and came back to the table. His hair was wet and slicked back.

“How’s Nancy these days, Ben?” Brody asked.

“She’s fine. Helping her mother plan some charity event. Keeps her mind occupied.”

Walker’s wife was the daughter of one of the wealthiest old-money families in Connecticut. A beautiful but emotionally unavailable girl, Nancy Whitaker seemed to live in her own world much of the time, doped to the gills just so she could function, in and it of mental hospitals and sanitariums.

Some people had been surprised when it was announced the very eligible Bennett Walker was going to marry her. Other people looked at the net worth of the two families and saw a merger, not a marriage.

That was seventeen or eighteen years in the past. Brody hadn’t yet made the Palm Beach scene, but he’d been aware of Bennett Walker. Walker’s alleged rape and beating of a local girl had been in the national news. Privileged heir to a huge fortune accused of taking what he wanted and walking away scot-free in the end. The stuff of tabloid headlines.

The marriage to Nancy Whitaker a year later had given the impression that Bennett had settled down, that clearly he was a good guy, otherwise the Whitakers would never have allowed their daughter to marry him.

The reality was that the Whitakers had married off their problem child, the Walkers had gained business and political connections worth millions, and Bennett’s wife’s condition allowed him the freedom to do as he pleased. Not a bad trade-off, Brody thought.

“So, everybody’s covered,” he said.

They always made certain of that, watched one another’s back. That was what the club was all about. No man went without an alibi if he needed one. One of them always covered. Hookers, mistresses, drugs, booze, gambling-whatever the vice, one of them always covered for another.

It had seemed harmless for the most part, in the beginning. Who cared who fucked who? So what was the big deal, telling a little white one for a buddy with a small cocaine problem? Company money lost on a sure-thing bet in the fifth race at Gulfstream? Not a problem. They covered for one another.

As he sat there looking at his friends, all of them with secrets of their own, he wondered if any one of them had ever imagined covering for a murderer.