The Wanted

Chapter One—Sunday Morning

He was watching them that morning, but they didn’t know.

During the night, a spectacular thunderstorm dynamited the sky and torrents of rain pounded the steel roof for what seemed an eternity. Menacing thunder rumbled and cracked against the glass walls and shook the floor under their bed while Benjamin and Elizabeth Diamond lay huddled together, eyes wide open, watching the sky burst and waiting for Armageddon. Their two dogs hid themselves under the bedclothes, firmly pressed against the bodies of their masters, until the thunder and lightning gradually faded away and crossed the lake into the distance.

When peace finally reclaimed the skies, all four of them fell into a quiet sleep and slept like death until the summer sun finally came full force through the unshaded clear glass wall of their bedroom. The dazzling bright sunlight finally prompted Liz and Ben to open their sleepy, squinting eyes to face the new, clear, and freshly washed Sunday morning.

Good morning, sunshine, he whispered, kissing his wife on her bare shoulder as she sat up, loudly yawned, and stretched her arms to acknowledge the day. The dogs followed suit and enthusiastically did their morning stretch and face-licked both husband and wife while wildly wagging their bushy tails in happy anticipation of whatever was next on the day’s agenda.

Some storm last night, Liz mumbled as she pushed the button next to the bed that mechanically lowered and closed the blinds covering the bedroom portion of the glass wall. They kept the blinds open most of the time, both day and night, for them to enjoy the uninterrupted special effects offered by lake and sky in summer and winter, in all kinds of weather, and especially in brilliant thunderstorms. Sometimes the need for privacy necessitated rolling the blinds down to a closed position, but not very often. Since the Diamonds began their married lives together, forty-five years before, they enjoyed the freedom of going to bed without the hindrance of any clothing; so, when they needed to be screened from possible observers cruising on the lake (with binoculars) or snooping from the beach below, they closed the blinds for a short time.

As the blinds slowly descended, they walked from their tousled bed into their respective walk-in closets. A few minutes later Liz emerged, looking young and beautiful, wearing a white sundress and sandals appropriate for a sunny summer Sunday morning. Ben emerged in a pair of wrinkled running shorts, running shoes, and a white tee shirt with a black logo advertising the Highland Park Recreational Center. They were dressed for the day.

The Diamonds’ home was happily situated about twenty-five miles north of Chicago in the suburban community of Highland Park, Illinois—one of the larger upscale North Shore coastal communities. Chicago’s entire North Shore is blessed on its eastern boundary by an expanse of continuous white sand beaches, extending from far south of the city skyline, to many miles north—way up the coast to the Wisconsin border and beyond. Adjacent to the Highland Park beaches, a high bluff rises to a height of about 100 feet and runs up and down the coast for several miles. The Diamonds’ property included a portion of beach and its adjacent bluff, so they built their house on top of the bluff, set back from its beach overlook by lawn, garden, and wooden deck. Their ample backyard stretched from the bluff’s edge, upon which grew a variety of shrubbery and an abundant, well-tended flower garden, then across an expanse of green manicured lawn to a furnished redwood deck that graced much of the backside of their ultra-modern, steel-and-glass single-story house.

It was a tranquil Sunday morning, precursor to a hot summer day in mid-August, as Liz and Ben followed the dogs out of their sliding deck door to the bluff stairway and down the multiple wooden stairs descending to the beach. When they were down, they removed their shoes and let the warm, clean soft sand squeeze between their toes. Gentle lake waves sparkled in the bright sunshine as they rippled to the shore, inched up on the beach, moistened the sand, and then quietly slipped back offshore. The dogs happily splashed into the water, interrupting the hypnotic pattern of the encroaching and receding surf, and they began to swim with all but their heads submerged, gracefully paddling through the cool water toward some unknown destination.

Liz picked up a long stick and side-armed it several yards into the lake. The dogs excitedly watched the stick splash and quickly changed direction to retrieve it. Storm, the large male with a truly golden coat, surged ahead of his adopted (smaller and blonder) sister Zoie and grabbed the floating piece of wood broadside. The captured stick shaped his mouth into a broad canine smile as he swam back toward the shore for a repeat of the familiar game.

He had almost reached the beach when he suddenly abandoned his prize and turned to swim toward a spot where what appeared to be a pile of rags lay on the sand—about 100 feet down the shore. Vigorously shaking himself, Storm emerged from the water and ran headlong toward the pile, with Zoie closely following. They slowed just short of it and started to bark, cautiously circling whatever it was that lay there.

The dogs ignored Ben’s vigorous, Storm, Zoie, COME!—as they usually did when their attention was focused elsewhere. They had both flunked out of obedience training, mostly for lack of conscientious masters.

What the hell is that? he asked Liz as they quickly headed for the object of the dogs’ noisy attention.

I think I don’t want to know, she replied. A look of concern transformed the usual happy lines of her yet-beautiful face as she jogged by Ben’s side down the beach. A wisp of her straight black hair became dislodged from its usual resting place and moved behind a lens of her sunglasses to hinder one eye, slightly impairing her vision as they approached the pile.

Moving in closer, the rumpled and lifeless object began to take shape. It looks like a life-sized rag doll, Ben said. But it quickly became clear: Lying on the beach before their very eyes sprawled the terrible presence of a bedraggled human body, apparently washed ashore during the turbulence of the previous night’s storm.

When Liz realized what it was, she softly uttered an Oh shit, turned around, and quickly retreated until she was some distance back toward the house.

Ben warily approached. He could now see that the face of the disheveled corpse was totally obscured and thus had no identifying facial features. The body, he astutely assumed, had once belonged to a male, because it was wearing what appeared to be men’s pants. He further noticed that the corpse was missing both hands, cut off at the wrists—no fingerprints—as if taken by sharks…had any sharks or other predatory fish existed in Lake Michigan. Without further thought, he took his cell phone from the pocket of his shorts and called 911.

Hello, this is Benjamin Diamond. We live at 500 Bluff in Highland Park. A few minutes ago, my dogs discovered a body—I think it is a male body—just down the beach from us. Please come as soon as you can.

By the time he put his phone back in his pocket, Liz had successfully called the dogs and with them closely following, was halfway up the long stairway to the house. Ben knew he needed to stay until the police arrived, for he had successfully practiced criminal defense law for far too many years not to know the usual routine in a situation involving possible homicide. Come to think of it, he thought, most anyone who watches idiot TV knows the usual routine. He certainly had defended more than enough accused murderers in his day. But his day was now in its final phase. Pushing seventy, he planned to see his current pending trial to its conclusion, call it a day, and spend the rest of his old age with Elizabeth and dogs in the solitude of his not-so-humble house on the lake.

Ben was a senior partner in a prestigious, fifteen-lawyer Chicago litigation firm: Diamond, Atkins & Coleman. He had started the firm with two of his fellow Assistant United States Attorneys upon leaving that office, and he continued to thrive in the practice for about forty years. Both Atkins and Coleman departed from life way too soon, and Ben Diamond decided to take it easy for as many retirement years life would spare him. It was time, he’d decided. Sanford Atkins and Roger Coleman passed quietly away about a year and a half previously, within a few months of each other. Sanford fought the good fight of smoker versus lung cancer, but succumbed after only a three-month battle. Roger died in his sleep of a brain aneurism, never having experienced a prior significant sick day in his totally healthy life.

Contemporary partners, friends, and relatives were falling all around him. He had developed, of late, the routine of checking the morning’s obituaries to see if anybody known to him had recently left the world—to compare their age with his own and to make sure his name was not included amongst them. It was as if he lived in a battlefield with spraying bullets hitting random targets, lately with greater frequency—the aneurism bullet, the heart-attack bullet, the cancer bullet, the stroke bullet, the accident bullet, the screwed-up surgery bullet, the don’t-know-what-hit-you bullet. As the years went by, the bulletproof vests, fitted at birth, became tattered and less effective with age. It seemed to him only a matter of sheer luck against narrowing odds that one or another bullet would continue to miss him. Ben would retire and enjoy life for as long as the bullets flew by.

The only thing he did not have to worry about anymore was dying young—that was the good news. The question of what was in store when his time came was of growing concern in his day-to-day ponderings. Fortunately, however, such thinking didn’t cloud his perpetual optimism.

Ben wondered what original event set the ultimate death of this handless and faceless person in motion. What phenomenon, eons ago, perhaps at the origin of the universe, determined the course of events that led us to find this corpse on this beach on this Sunday morning? Were those events part of a master plan, drawn up by a master planner? Or were they the unalterable chance encounters that occur in an uncontrolled, chaotic universe? Philosophy 101. He caught his mind drifting, as it did more and more these days. Like a little kid asking a parent Why? in every other sentence, the unanswerable questions he kept asking himself were in need of answers at this stage of his life. But no one knew the answers, and he wouldn’t be able to accept answers based on faith. Like a jury, he needed facts.

The jury trial he was in the process of finishing was taking place in the Federal District Court in Chicago, a location of comfortable familiarity to him. He had spent the major part of his career frequenting the hallowed halls and courtrooms of that esteemed courthouse. He had been there when it was a smaller image of the nineteenth-century Beaux-Arts neoclassical US Capitol building in Washington DC—when it had historical charm with a majestic dome and marble rotunda. He watched the old building come down and the new larger, square and cold modern Mies van der Rohe structure take its place. He witnessed the old, friendly judges retire or die, to be replaced by new ones who matched the new architecture of the courthouse. He was likewise there when the profession he loved became a business dedicated to the pursuit of money. Part of his desire to retire was his displeasure with the business of law as it had become over the years: greedy, competitive, dishonorable, and dishonest. Enough, he thought. Enough.

In his swan song trial, he was defending two small-time Waukegan, Illinois, ex-theatrical agents: Porter Amos and Curt Johnson. The Feds had indicted them for conspiring, along with James Terry (aka Sharky, now a fugitive), to commit crimes in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Specifically, bribing an Iraqi government official in Baghdad during the Iraq war, thereby causing him to overlook violations of local gambling laws. The indictment alleged that Porter and Curt, with Terry, ran an illegal gambling operation in a Baghdad club owned by Terry. The charge originated as a result of an ousted club patron’s complaints to the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. The Baghdad police thereupon arrested Terry and brought him before a local magistrate to face the gambling charge. According to the indictment, the magistrate released Terry in exchange for a $25,000 bribe.

James Terry, nicknamed Sharky, was the ex-pat American owner of the nightclub in question and had lived in Baghdad for several years. The police arrested him again on the bribery charge and threw him into a local prison. Upon his arrest, Porter and Curt immediately fled Baghdad and went home to Waukegan where, sometime thereafter, the US government indicted them in Chicago on the Corrupt Foreign Practices bribery charges and the FBI proceeded to arrest them. Several witnesses were brought from Baghdad to Chicago for the trial, which received lots of publicity in the local newspapers.

Later, Sharky wrote Porter of his escape from the Iraqi prison, after spending over four painful months there following his arrest. He had since made it out of the country but wouldn’t say to where. At the time of the letter, the authorities in Las Vegas wanted him for non-payment of alimony and child support owed to his abandoned wife, the Vegas mob collectors wanted him for cheating their casino, and the IRS wanted him for income tax evasion. The local Baghdad authorities likewise wanted him in Iraq after his escape, and the US Marshal had issued an arrest warrant for his failure to appear to answer to the bribery charges in the federal case in Chicago. Everyone wanted him.

Porter and Curt, on numerous occasions, swore to Ben that they had been framed and had never paid anyone so much as a nickel to get out of trouble. Furthermore, they swore no gambling had taken place in the club before the arrest of Terry. Ben felt the trial was going well, and he had presented sufficient evidence to the jury to disprove the charges. He hoped to prevail in the case, end his career happily, and go out a winner.

************

The Highland Park police finally arrived on the beach in the form of two uniforms with children inside. The blond kid, who looked to be about twelve years old, wore purple pilot sunglasses and came down to the beach holding a flashlight—it was midmorning in bright sunshine. His partner wore identical sunglasses covering his chubby face and looked about five years below the legal drinking age. They tried very hard to appear serious when they greeted Ben.

Are you Mr. Diamond?

Yes, I am. How do you do?

Did you call us?

Yes. Didn’t they tell you why?

It’s my duty to warn you—

Forget the warning; I am a lawyer and I know my rights.

OK, where’s your client?

For Christ’s sake, I have no client. We—my wife and I—found this body here on the beach… I mean, our dogs found this body and I called you. Now do your thing.

Oh, is this the body you found?

Jesus, what body do you think this is? How many bodies do you see lying around here?

Both cops bent over the decaying corpse and appeared to study it from top to bottom. Blondie whispered to Chubby, I think he’s dead. We’d better call the inspector. I might throw up.

Did he say he thought the lifeless corpse was dead? thought Ben. Now I want to throw up—to think that these children are the guardians of my safety! Chubby walked off a short distance with his cop phone, obviously to be out of Ben’s earshot. Ben, of course, could hear every word he said.

Murphy, get the fuck over here. We got a body, and it’s a dead one. I may puke. Yeah, dead. It has some torn-up trousers on, but ya can’t even make out a face. Oh yeah, its hands are gone, too. OK, we’ll wait…but ASAP, OK?

Blondie looked at Benjamin and asked, Is this where you found it? Did you or your dogs touch anything, or touch him?

Finally, an intelligent question. Yes, we found it here and no, we stayed away from him, and so did the dogs.

That’s good, said Blondie. How long has he been here?

I believe he was here when we came down, about forty-five minutes to an hour ago. The dogs spotted him while they were in the water chasing a stick. They started barking and thus brought him to our attention. So I have no idea how long he had been there before we saw him, but we came down yesterday and he wasn’t around then. We would have noticed. My guess is the storm last night washed him ashore. That was quite a storm.

Just then, Inspector Murphy came running down the steep wooden stairs wearing a uniform that looked like he’d slept in it. He was the stereotypical middle-aged Irish cop, huffing and puffing as he came up to shake Ben’s hand. I am Inspector Murphy—with the force since my stint in Nam. You are Mr. Diamond, right? I have heard of you somehow… Lawyer on some case or something.

Ben nodded. Murphy wore the look of a cop who had been around. He was almost bald with a crew cut, scar over his right eye, and eyes bloodshot, from lack of sleep or a bad night at the Nite ᾽N Gale.

Jesus Christ, Murphy said, looking at the body. This guy looks like he had a rough go. Either he’s been dead forever, or did a lot of swimming. You can see he washed up from the lake—had his hands taken off like he got caught stealing by them Taliban, or by the mob. Nobody’s going to get a make on his face, his teeth are beyond a dentist’s records, and he sure don’t have no fingerprints. Come on, guys. Let’s look around and get him to the morgue. In case we have any questions, Diamond, stick around town for a while. By the way, who found the body?

We were down here with the dogs and they spotted it.

Well, keep them around, too; we may have some questions for ’em. He chuckled as he and the others did a perfunctory search of the area. There were several obscured footprints, but they took no note of them since the rain had distorted them too severely to be useable. Murphy directed Blondie and Chubby to come around the access road to the beach with their van and take some pictures of and around the body. They were then to roll the stiff into a tarp, place the tarp onto their stretcher, and haul it off to the morgue. He would meet them there.

Ben asked if he could leave and Murphy said OK. As the sun reached higher in the summer sky, Ben left and climbed the steep wooden stairway to the house. He thought he saw a blur—a slight movement in the thick bushes halfway up the bluff—but he attributed it to the infrequent but welcome lake breeze. The stairs got steeper every day as his hair got whiter and his muscles got softer. Arthritis was finally beginning to become a noticeable factor, signifying the inevitable ravages of age.

************

The man they called Sharky was also feeling arthritic pains in his knees from squatting so not to be seen in the bushes halfway up the Diamonds’ bluff, about thirty feet from the man ascending the stairs.

Chapter Two—The Watcher

Sharky had slept for only two hours that morning: From the time he arrived back at Porter Amos’ Waukegan apartment after their Saturday night adventure until well before sunrise on Sunday. He needed to know everything was going according to plan before he left, and thus decided to go back to the Diamonds’ beach and watch.

After dressing in a black bathing suit and black tank top—to look like a tourist in mourning out for a day at the beach—he found Porter’s truck keys and drove to the free public indoor parking lot in Highland Park. He parked the truck there and walked to the eastern end of Central Avenue, where he entered the downtown public beach. Turning north, he followed the sand along the lake to the Diamonds’ beach.

He had been there with his two friends, Porter and Curt, the night before, in a drenching rainstorm, and the sand was still wet. The fresh, cool lake air invigorated and awakened him from his early-morning, too-little-sleep stupor.

Sharky arrived at the Diamonds’ beach well before sunrise, which was scheduled to occur about six o’clock that morning. The day was still completely dark—no moonlight, no electric lights, no illumination whatsoever to reveal Sharky’s figure as he scaled the bluff in an almost blind search for a place to hide himself during the long summer day. He found the perfect hiding place behind a clump of thick bushes, about halfway up, where he thought he could see but not be seen. The bushes hardly moved as he made himself as comfortable as possible amongst the fallen sticks and dirt mixed with sand that lined his new hidden observation overlook. A variety of unseen birds, sparsely located around him, began to sing their morning chants in anticipation of the soon-to-happen sunrise. He would wait there and observe until the late evening, when he could make his escape back to the truck again under cover of darkness.

Soon a bright orange sun popped from behind the horizon and convinced the lake to transform from perfect black to an orange-and-pink-streaked blue, and then to a lighter blue as the sun rose higher in the cloudless sky. Morning was upon him, as well as upon the land and the water. He could clearly see the corpse they placed in the lake the night before, now lying on the beach almost directly below his perch. The air temperature rapidly climbed with the sun to an uncomfortable level, even in the shade of the surrounding bushes, portending an afternoon of extreme heat. He was prepared to stoically withstand the discomfort, no matter its intensity.

Sharky had packed a small leather bag to sustain his needs for food and drink throughout the day. The heat, however, had already melted most of the chocolate bar he had counted on for his breakfast. He ate it anyway by sucking the melted substance from its wrapping, which left chocolate spread all over his serious face. Taahira would have laughed, he thought. When he took his handkerchief and wiped off the residue, a column of ants—very interested in the smell—invaded his sanctuary, followed by a few mosquitoes and several flies. Swatting them away with his hands kept him busy, but after two hours, he had nothing but bites, birds, bugs, and his thoughts to