40

Finney woke just before sunrise to the familiar sound of Kareem Hasaan’s prayers. Groggy, the judge managed to sit on the edge of the bed, coughing as the monotone chants floated through the patio door.

“Allahu akbar,” Finney heard Kareem say. “Subhana rabbiya al azeem.”

Finney stumbled into the bathroom and brushed his teeth. He threw on a pair of baggy swim trunks, a T-shirt with cutoff sleeves featuring a Virginia Beach logo, and his frazzled John Deere ball cap. He put on some deodorant and padded out to the kitchen to start the coffee.

“Allahu akbar,” he heard Kareem say again. Finney knew that this roughly meant, “Allah is the greatest.” “Subhana rabbiya A’ala . . .”

Finney listened absentmindedly as he threw away last night’s coffee grounds and picked up the mess in his kitchen. The card game had been a doozy, going until nearly 1:00 a.m. For an old man like Finney, it might as well have been all night.

He stepped onto the patio and watched Kareem while the coffee slowly brewed. Every morning, the same routine. The same prayers—praising Allah, seeking forgiveness, reciting the Koran. The same prayer positions—standing upright, bowing down, kneeling, and then prostrating himself.

Finney thought the monotony of it must surely make the prayer time lose its zeal. But when Finney had raised the issue at dinner last night—a drawn-out affair as all the contestants stuffed themselves in preparation for the time of fasting—Kareem said that just the opposite occurred. The very discipline of the salah five times a day kept him in close relationship with Allah. When he finished his prayer, his heart would be filled with remembrance of Allah. A proper prayer time, Kareem said, would help him strive successfully against all kinds of evils and temptations and remain steadfast in times of trial and adversity.

Finney poured a cup of coffee, then placed it on the counter and coughed until he bent over. The last few days, his lungs had been hurting more when he coughed. More phlegm came up in the process, he wheezed a fair amount afterward, and he had no appetite. He found it harder to catch his breath after even moderate amounts of exercise. Absent a miracle, Finney thought, I probably won’t make it to the end of the year.

This is my last summer.

The thought steeled him. How many men had a chance to reach an entire generation during the last year of their lives? Maybe his whole life had been preparing him for this.

He took his coffee to the patio and watched Kareem finish his prayers as the sun peeked over the ocean. Finney himself prayed—silently, with his eyes wide open. He thanked God for the promise that one day he would be perfectly healed. He asked for strength to finish strong. He prayed for wisdom and courage in the next few days. The plan he was contemplating would require more than he had to give.

And he prayed for Kareem. So much passion, but he was missing God’s grace. Lord, please show him the way.

By 7:30 local time, the sun dominated the eastern sky while a few wispy clouds inched their way from south to north. The prevailing winds this morning were virtually nonexistent, providing a good excuse to skip the sailing but also sending a bad omen for tomorrow night. It was the first day that the winds hadn’t been in at least a ten- to fifteen-knot range since they had arrived on the island.

Finney walked down to the small shed on the beach that housed the snorkel gear, past a meditating Swami. Five or ten minutes later, Dr. Kline showed up. She and Finney talked about taking a day off from sailing in order to do some snorkeling. They mentioned the schools of fish they had been seeing while sailing and the coral reefs they wanted to investigate. Since God had cooperated with their ruse, Finney also mentioned the lack of wind.

Finney took off his mike and laid it carefully on a lounge chair. He pulled off his T-shirt, feeling exposed in his baggy swim trunks. His bony and pale chest, sporting more gray hair than black, was not going to earn him any points in the beefcake department. He put his snorkel on quickly and did a quick Joe-muscle-beach flex, which brought a hoot from his friend Horace hiding behind the camera.

But Finney quickly lost Horace’s attention, as Horace turned his camera to Dr. Kline, who didn’t mind stripping down to her small turquoise two-piece swimsuit in front of a camera recording her for all of America. She had a toned body and washboard abs, with an even tan that obviously predated her time on the island. To Horace’s credit, he avoided hooting, but he never took the camera off Dr. Kline as she adjusted her ponytail so it wouldn’t interfere with the elastic band of the snorkel.

“Over here, Horace,” Finney called, waving at the camera, but he might as well have been talking to an island iguana. Horace knew what America expected on its reality shows, and it wasn’t a fifty-nine-year-old judge whose chicken legs sprouted out of the bottom of his baggy swim trunks.

“Yeah, over there,” Dr. Kline said as she waded out in the knee-deep surf and put on a pair of flippers. Finney followed her in, losing his balance once or twice as he struggled to fit his size ten feet into the flippers. He soon got everything situated and joined Victoria just past the small breaks in the surf. The two began exploring the underwater world of Paradise Island.

The clear water made it seem as if you could reach out and touch schools of small fish swimming several feet below the surface. The colors amazed Finney as he swam with Dr. Kline, pointing and gawking, stopping occasionally so that he could surface and cough.

“Two-thirds of the earth’s living organisms are beneath the surface of the ocean,” Victoria said when they both came up for a break. They were treading water directly over a colorful coral reef and sponge field. “Let’s head back toward the Swami.”

“Okay,” Finney said. They pulled their masks back down and started snorkeling again, meandering in the general direction of the Swami and his yoga exercises. Finney and Kline surfaced again and yelled for the Swami to join them. It didn’t take much coaxing, and a few minutes later the Swami had his own snorkel on and swam toward his fellow contestants a hundred feet from shore.

On cue, Kareem walked down to the beach, wearing nothing but his swim shorts.

“You coming in?” the Swami yelled.

“No.”

“Why not? There’s some great stuff out here!” Finney shouted.

“I’ll take your word for it.”

But the three snorkelers were not to be denied. After some serious cajoling and a confession by Kareem that he didn’t swim, he grudgingly agreed to join them if they stayed closer to shore. He took off his microphone and headed for the snorkel masks. A few minutes later, the four contestants were standing in chest-deep water, talking in a small circle. When the small waves crested, Kareem held his arms out to the side as if he couldn’t get them wet, while Victoria pointed and lectured about the cool things they were seeing under the surface.

“We don’t have long,” Finney said, keeping his voice low. “So, Victoria, why don’t you bring us up to speed?”

For the next few minutes, Victoria Kline talked about her visits with Bryce McCormack and what she had discovered. She also confirmed, under questioning from Finney, that Ando had declined to join them this morning.

“Is he working with them?” the Swami asked.

“I don’t think so,” Victoria replied. “But he has this strange way of looking at life. It’s pretty much a let-it-be approach. Plus, it’s hard to really understand what he’s thinking when you can only communicate through that pinprick cipher.”

Finney stole a glance toward the camera crews on the beach. Horace and the others weren’t even filming, huddled in their own little cluster. “The way I see it,” Finney said, “we’ve got three choices. One: keep playing the game but try to get some more information in the next few days before they select the finalists. Two: leak some information about these threats to the media and let Murphy and McCormack know we’ve done that. That way, they won’t dare try anything. Or three: bring in the authorities right away.”

“How can we do number two or three?” Victoria asked. “They’ve got us cooped up on this island. I can’t even get in touch with my agent. If McCormack won’t let me talk to someone outside the island, I seriously doubt if anybody else can.”

“I think I can figure out a way,” Finney said. Another glance toward shore told him that a few of the cameramen were getting suspicious. “Tell you what,” Finney said. “Everybody put on your snorkels and swim around a little . . . except you, Kareem. You just walk around. Let’s huddle up in a few minutes.”

Victoria and the Swami stole a look toward shore. “Sounds good,” Victoria said, pulling her snorkel over her face and taking off.

“I’m with her,” the Swami said.

After five minutes of snorkeling, the contestants regrouped around Kareem.

“Did you see that turtle?” the Swami asked. “He was huge.”

“I saw him,” Dr. Kline said.

“And those . . . like angelfish that are purple and gold—what are they called?”

“Will options two or three involve any risk of the producers going public with the blackmail material they have against us?” Kareem directed his question toward Finney with the same take-no-prisoners look he wore in court during Finney’s cross-examination.

Finney met his gaze. “If we tell McCormack and Murphy that we’ve leaked information to the press, it will probably keep them from hurting anyone. But I would expect them to retaliate by making the blackmail information, as you call it, public. The same would be true if we go to the authorities, unless we could get the authorities to conduct some kind of surprise raid and shut the rest of the show down.”

“On what basis?” Kline asked.

“That’s the problem,” Finney said, swishing his hands back and forth in the water. “Right now, our evidence is pretty thin.”

“I’d rather die than have that blackmail information released.” Kareem looked from one contestant to the next, making sure everyone realized how serious he was.

Which didn’t stop the Swami. “Dude, what could be that bad?”

“I said I’d rather die than have it revealed,” Kareem said. He cut an imposing figure, his sculpted pecs glistening in the sun, his furrowed brow hooding his eyes.

“I get that,” the Swami said. “But it just feels like we’re playing right into their hands. I don’t see how anything could be that bad.”

“It is.”

Nobody spoke for a beat. “I know the feeling,” Dr. Kline said. “I’d survive if my information became public, but my career wouldn’t. I’d rather figure out a way to ensure our safety that doesn’t compromise that information.”

Finney glanced at the camera crew again. A few of them watched the contestants intently. “I’ve been thinking about a plan,” Finney explained softly, “that probably wouldn’t risk that information becoming public for anyone but me.”

He could tell immediately that he had Kareem’s and Victoria’s attention. He provided the details as quickly as possible, pointing into the water and out to the horizon as he spoke.

When they all agreed, Victoria swam off toward the shed that housed the snorkel gear. A split second later, the Swami took off in hot pursuit. Finney removed his flippers and walked toward the beach with Kareem.

“There really is some amazing stuff out there,” Finney said.

Kareem didn’t respond. Instead, he stared toward the shore as if Finney had never spoken.

“’Course, if you can’t swim, it’s a little hard to see the best stuff.”

Kareem took a few more steps, still ignoring Finney. “It was adultery,” he said, his voice so low that Finney wasn’t sure he had heard the man right. “Almost ten years ago—a one-weekend deal.” They walked a few more steps in silence. “My wife never found out. My kids don’t know. What’s amazing is that the show’s producers somehow found out.”

Finney looked straight ahead as well, sensing that for some reason Kareem didn’t want to share this face-to-face.

“They had me hooked up to that lie detector and asked me a few preliminary questions. As a Muslim, how could I defend clients I knew were guilty? That type of thing.”

Finney thought about his own preliminary questions—the ones about Nikki he had refused to answer.

“Then, out of the blue, they showed me a picture of the woman. I denied it, but the lie detector probably bounced off the chart.” Kareem paused, still stunned by the ambush. “Ten years,” he said. “I thought it was ancient history.”

It was uncanny, Finney thought, the amount of preshow investigation these guys had done on each contestant. “I don’t know how they found out about my sins either,” Finney said. “Because of my negligence, a drug dealer was released. Recently, he killed a woman.”

“I dishonored Allah,” Kareem said. “I betrayed my wife.” They were now getting dangerously close to shore. Kareem stopped. Finney did the same. They stood there for a moment, facing the shore, water dripping from their bodies.

Finney bent over and washed out his mask. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked.

“Because you’re going to stick your neck out for me,” Kareem said, “and I want you to know how critical this is to me.” But before Finney could get warm and fuzzy, his Muslim friend continued. “And if anybody finds out about my adultery, I’ll hold you personally responsible. Whatever you do, don’t put them in a position where they need to release that lie detector information. It would destroy my family.” He paused, but Finney sensed he wasn’t done. “I’d rather die first. In fact, Allah may require it.”

The camera crews on the beach had moved in too close for Finney to risk saying what he really felt. He wanted to talk about forgiveness and about Kareem confessing the matter to his wife, but all that would have to come later, if at all. For now, he could only say something that would be innocuous if overheard.

“I’ll take care of it,” Finney said.

“Good.” Kareem started toward the shore, a half step ahead of Finney, his mask and attached snorkel shoved on top of his head. He took it off and plastered his wet hair back, the water dripping from his broad shoulders. To Finney, he looked like a Navy SEAL emerging from a special mission.

Except that Kareem couldn’t swim. The Muslim was full of surprises, Finney thought.