He pulls a phone out of his pocket. “Call him.”
“I don’t know his phone number.” This is actually the truth. I never have to call him, and even if I did, I’d just go to the listing under contacts and press the call button. Dad’s number is programmed in my phone under Asshat, which, on the rare occasion he does call me, always gives me a smile when Asshat Calling shows up on the screen.
“Just press call,” Snaggletooth snaps. I wonder whose phone this is. I press call and bring the phone up to my ear. There isn’t anything in sight except for water, but we must be near land because the phone has reception. Or they have one hell of a cell service provider.
“Hey, who’s your cell phone provider?” I ask.
They both ignore me. The phone is ringing. It rings exactly two and a half times and then Dad’s voicemail picks up. Which means he pressed the ignore button. Great, Dad. Thanks.
This is Carl Alexander. Leave a message and I will get back to you at my earliest convenience . . .
“You want me to leave a message?” I ask.
Snaggletooth grabs the phone from me. “Goddammit,” he says. “He really doesn’t give a shit, does he?”
“I’ll tell you what,” I say. “If you guys let me go, I’ll fly home to New York and threaten to move back in, unless he gives your boss the 7.2 million and the confession. Me doing that is far more likely to get you what you want, trust me. Here, give me the phone and I’ll call him back and leave that on his voicemail.”
“Fuck.” Bandana throws his beer overboard.
Snaggletooth shoves the phone back into his pocket. “The condition of your release is twofold, the confession, actually, being the more important. So if we get the money but no confession, we kill you. If we get the confession but no money, we kill you. If we get both . . . maybe we’ll kill you anyway.” Snaggletooth comes over and stands next to me. “Why don’t you get your ass back down below.” He pulls out a diving knife, an Atomic Ti6, made of titanium, a nasty looking motherfucker with a serrated blade. I have the very same model—which I had strapped to my leg last summer when I went diving off of Kadavu Island—though I widen my eyes and take a step back.
“I don’t like knives,” I say, shuddering. “And I’ll go back down if you want, but it really wouldn’t make a difference if I’m up here. It’s not like there’s anywhere I can go. I can’t swim,” I lie.
He stares at me, running a tongue over those picket fence teeth.
“It’s true,” I continue. “My dad was always after me to join him swimming at the country club, but I had better things to do. Like playing polo and eating caviar.” That would actually be my brother, Cam, but they don’t have to know that. The only thing caviar is good for is smearing on your front teeth for primo photo ops.
Bandana looks at me in disbelief. “So you can ride a horse but you can’t swim?”
“Right,” I say, thinking of all my swim team trophies my mother proudly displays on the mantelpiece in the sitting room. “So if this were the Wild West and you boys had kidnapped me on horseback, I might be in okay shape, but out here on the water . . .” I smile and shrug. “I’m as good as dead anyways. Hope you weren’t planning on getting that money. Or that confession.”
Bandana glances at Snaggletooth and then looks back at me. “You’re lyin’,” he says. “Your dad will pay. Shit, to a guy like him, we’re not even askin’ for that much to begin with.”
“Maybe he’ll liquidate my trust fund. It’s about ten million. He might not want to deal with the headache of having to do that, though. He’ll probably just tell you to kill me. Have you talked to him? Have you talked to dear old Dad?”
“We talked to him in Thailand,” Bandana says defensively. “And he sounded very concerned.”
I laugh. “Then you must’ve dialed the wrong number.” I try to imagine Dad taking that call. It probably lasted all of 2.6 seconds before he hung up. “There is someone else I could try calling,” I offer. They look at me skeptically. “Unless you’ve kidnapped him, too.” But I know that’s impossible, because Cam would never let himself get into a situation where he would be kidnapped. Cam does not dance to techno, nor imbibe anything more toxic than a glass of cognac with Dad every now and then. Cam probably sleeps with his f**king eyes open, if you want to know the truth. And maybe, just maybe, if anyone can help get me out of this mess, it will be him.
Snaggletooth grudgingly hands the phone back. “Don’t even think of trying to call the authorities,” he says. “You’ll be dead before you get word one out.”
“Don’t worry, buddies; the authorities are no friends of mine either.” They watch me carefully as I dial. The phone rings exactly once and he answers.
“Hello?” His voice is smooth, like water running over sea glass or caramel getting drizzled over ice cream. I can’t remember the last time I talked to my brother, yet every time I hear his voice, I can’t help but think: This time will be different. This time he’ll decide he actually likes me.
“Cam,” I say. “It’s Griffin.”
Silence.
“Your brother,” I add. Snaggletooth is watching me closely.
“Are you sure we got the right guy?” I hear Bandana whisper loudly. “No one in his family seems to know him.”
“Griffin,” Cam says finally. “Carl said you might be calling.”
“Oh, did he? Then maybe he filled you in on my . . . situation.”
“And which situation would that be? Tripping on acid in Tokyo? Losing your passport in Belize? Getting thrown into a Mexican jail? Would you like me to go on? I could go on.”
“Actually—”
“This is nothing you haven’t heard before, Griffin, so I’m not really sure why I’m bothering to repeat myself, but some of us work for a living. Some of us go out into the world and try to make something of ourselves, instead of thinking life is a twenty-four hour party. Whatever situation you’ve gotten yourself into this time, I highly doubt I’d be able to help you out.”
“You’re not even a little curious?”
“Would you like me to be honest?”
“Of course.”
“No, I’m really not. This might come as something of a shock, but I’m not trying to live vicariously through you.”