The downtown districts contained Jacksonville’s historic core, courthouses, and central business districts. The first major high-rises were taking shape, soon to house regional or national headquarters of CSX, Fidelity National, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, AT&T, and Aetna. Already the sidewalks were fronted by shiny new restaurants and upscale shops. The former derelict port area was being refashioned into Riverwalk, a trendy pedestrian zone with some of the south’s hottest nightlife. Most of the faces Ethan saw were young, vibrant, excited to call Jacksonville home.
Ethan sectioned the downtown region with the Duval County Courthouse at its center. For two solid days he scoured the area surrounding East Bay Street, walked the courthouse corridors, studied the stairs and front plaza soon to be stained with his brother’s blood.
But not this time.
All the while, he argued with himself over tactics. By his third morning walking the city streets, Ethan had decided his original plan was the right one. If or when he scored on the Open bet, he would bring in his version of heavy artillery.
The nights were awful and endless. When the pallet grew too hard, he walked the room’s threadbare confines, trying to formulate a plan that did not depend upon money. He would have to tell Adrian everything. He repeatedly imagined his brother’s scorn, the accusations of drug use, the questions for which he had no answers.
Adrian would change his tactics, of course he would. Ethan would give him no choice. But say his brother didn’t appear on the courthouse steps. Say he survived that morning. What then? The police had never identified the shooter.
The dread prospect of Adrian living through that attempt, only to die a few days later, finally drove Ethan from the city. As he took I-95 south in the decrepit Wagoneer, the wind rushing hot and fragrant through his open window, Ethan’s mind kept pounding through a desperate refrain.
He had to win that bet.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
While the early rounds of the US Open continued, Ethan did his best to remain detached. He surfed, cruised the beaches, ate with his friends, and watched a tennis tournament that seemed to last for months.
The United States Open Tennis Championship was a hard-court tournament held annually over a two-week period. It was the fourth and final tourney that made up the Grand Slam events—Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, then New York. The main tournament consisted of five championships—men’s and women’s singles, men’s and women’s doubles, and mixed doubles. Since 1978, the tournament was played on acrylic hard courts at the USTA Center in Flushing, Queens. All this Ethan learned in the local library, where he spent at least an hour each morning, checking the newspapers and researching a world he only half remembered.
Boris Becker and top-seeded John McEnroe continued on their collision course, winning their third-round matches with surprising ease. Becker was only seventeen years old and was already being referred to as the new wunderkind.
Ethan spent far too many hours in the confines of his summer rental. He watched parts of matches on their awful television. The sound was scratchy and the image worse. He could have gone to one of the new sports bars and watched on a wide screen. But if he had wanted to spend the tense hours being lonely in the company of strangers, he could have stayed up north.
Mostly he fretted.
His lack of forward momentum grew more frustrating by the hour. Twice he started to head back to Jacksonville, only to be halted by the utter futility of the act.
Added to his internal cauldron were any number of questions he could not answer. Time and again he returned to how Sonya and her as-yet unborn daughter had confronted him. In the aftermath of Adrian’s death, Sonya had lost her lab and her life’s work. What if more was at stake here than a crazed gunman acting on his own? Ethan was no professional sleuth, but the more he pondered the upcoming events, the more he feared his dilemma did not end with bullets fired on the courthouse steps.
His growing suspicions only magnified his mounting anxiety over the Open. If his suspicions about Sonya’s work were correct, then his task required not just stopping a gunman but uncovering a conspiracy.
And for that to happen, he needed cash. Lots of it. Security, a team of investigators, and something more besides. He had to convince both Adrian and Sonya the entire issue was real.
Adrian liked to describe his professional life as high-stakes gambling in the harshest casino of all. He lived and breathed facts and evidence and tactics and the arguments required to win over a jury.
Sonya was certainly no easier a sell. Ethan had no idea if telling her about the pregnancy would be enough. And if not, what could he possibly say? The woman could hardly bear to be in the same room with him. Would it be enough for him to declare what had happened at her own hand and beg her for help? Or would she toss him and his threats to their security out the door?
It all came down to having hard evidence.
Ethan needed to win.
His buddies started their final chaotic weeks of summer, drinking themselves insensible each night. They closed down the bars and slumped into work in pain-wracked stupors, then did it all again the next night. Ethan played designated driver, even though the term had not yet entered current culture. He went to the bars, sat in the corners, nursed his ginger ale, and smiled at girls who were impossibly fresh-faced and innocent and young. They were often magnetic in their appeal, until they opened their mouths. And then they only made Ethan feel ancient. But at least it gave him something to do while he endured the endless wait.
On the other side of the chart, Ivan Lendl and Yannick Noah both advanced into the third round. In the women’s competition, Chris Evert Lloyd crushed a south Korean in her third-round match, and Martina Navratilova trounced Lisa Bonder.
By the time the next stage began, Ethan was hardly sleeping.
Jimmy Connors and Chris Evert Lloyd, the two winningest players in US Open history, both advanced. The battles were fierce. Lloyd, the number-one seed and hunting her seventh Open title, reached the semis for the eighteenth consecutive year by defeating Claudia Kohde-Kilsch. Her next foe would be Hana Mandliková, an unseeded Czech who had stunned the world by defeating Helena Sukova.
Ethan’s heart stopped several times watching Ivan Lendl’s match against the seventeen-year-old Jaime Yzaga of Peru, a qualifier. Lendl self-destructed in the first set with seventeen unforced errors. But the Czech right-hander finally found his accuracy on his crucial ground game. The quarters would match Lendl against Yannick Noah of France, ranked seventh in the world.
The next day, defending Open champion John McEnroe overcame a ridiculously bad call and a wild temper tantrum to beat Sweden’s Joakim Nyström in straight sets. The crowd was then stunned by the young Steffi Graf of West Germany, who beat fourth-seeded Pam Shriver. The previous year Graf had been crushed by Shriver in the first round.
Then former ball girl Hana Mandliková shocked the world by beating Chris Evert Lloyd in a three-set nail-biter. The victory sent her into the title match against Martina Navratilova, who crushed Steffi Graf in straight sets.
Ivan Lendl ignored the 112-degree courtside heat and powered through the semis, crushing Yannick Noah in straight sets. Later that evening, Jimmy Connors defeated Heinz Günthardt in a match that even the announcers said was lackluster.
Then on Saturday it started to come together.