Tampa Burn Read online

  To my left, along the east wall near the door, were more tanks filled with fish and crabs and eels. My lab always smells of fish, formaldehyde, disinfectant, books, old planking, and barnacles that grow at water level on pilings below the pine slab flooring.

  Tomlinson touched the computer’s Play button. As the DVD began to spin, aerators charged the air with ozone and provided a pleasant, bubbling backdrop for a video that was anything but pleasant.

  When Lake’s face filled the screen, mouth taped, I felt Pilar place her hand on my arm for support. Or perhaps to support me. It was the first time I’d felt any emotional or physical connection from her since her arrival.

  At first, the audio was garbled. But then, off camera, I heard a man’s smoky voice say in Spanish, “Grunt so that your mother can hear you. One grunt for yes, two for no. Have we hurt you?”

  The man had a distinctive lisp. I also noted that he had an equally unusual accent. The dominant inflection was the cracker-American that is poor white Southern. But there was something else mixed in there, too. French? Close but not quite right.

  The man waited before he said again, “Make some noise, kid. Have we hurt you?”

  The tone was threatening. Even so, there was another long pause before the boy grunted twice. No.

  Pilar whispered, “I know him too well to believe that. He’s injured. They’ve done something to him.”

  The man asked, “Have we treated you all right?”

  Once again, the long hesitation said more than the boy’s single grunt. Yes.

  During that space of silence, the cry of a bird could be heard from outside. It was a muted, two-toned whistle.

  The man: “Do you think we’ll kill you if your mother doesn’t cooperate?”

  This time, the boy grunted instantly. Yes.

  Now the shot widened so that much of the room was visible. I could see that Lake was barefooted and wore blue jeans without a belt—he’d dressed in a hurry. I pressed my glasses to my face and leaned closer, trying to focus on detail.

  There appeared to be a raised ribbon of welt that ran the length of the boy’s right forearm. It might have been a burn were it not so narrow. Flames are seldom projected like water from a hose or, say, from a Bunsen burner. Something else I noticed: His feet seemed to be stained with something. Blood?

  Possibly.

  He wore a dark blue T-shirt, only a portion of an insignia visible: An M and a T overlaid.

  The boy was a Minnesota Twins fan. He liked the Cubs, the Red Sox, and the Mets, too. Some combination.

  That’d earned him an Internet introduction to Tomlinson, which is why they were now e-mail pals, too.

  I remembered Lake writing to explain. He liked the Twins because they had one of the lowest payrolls in baseball, but still produced winning teams. He liked the Cubs, the Mets, and the Red Sox because they were perennial underachievers, plus the brilliant and quirky Bill “Spaceman” Lee had pitched for the Sox. Tomlinson loved him for that.

  An advocate of the underdog. It was a characteristic I credited to his mother.

  As the shot widened, the camera jolted, then the aperture became fixed. A person then moved into the frame—a large man who was oddly dressed, I realized.

  When he appeared, Pilar’s fingers squeezed my arm.

  At first, the man’s face wasn’t visible because he wore the kind of hooded cloak that I associate with cloistered monks. The hood was pulled over his head.

  Also, he was holding a Miami Herald up to the camera. It was the Latin-American edition, printed in Spanish. He held the paper long enough so the day and the date could be read. He had a big Caucasian left hand, and hairless fingers that were thick and badly burn-scarred. I noticed that he didn’t wear a wristwatch.

  The paper had been published on Thursday, five days before.

  I wasn’t prepared for what I saw when the man lowered the paper.

  Perhaps I should have been. There are certain varieties of bank robbers, kidnappers, and other career criminals who use disguise as an excuse for wearing bizarre clothing. It’s a kind of fetish. Part of the psychological profile.

  This guy was certainly dressed bizarrely. He wore black sunglasses over a mask that had painted eyebrows and rouged cheeks. The mask may have been more than a fetish, though, because there was enough of his forehead showing to see that, like his hand, his face had been scarred by fire. A tuft of blond hair protruded from a waxen area of skull that was visible from within the cloak.

  The mask keyed some long-gone memory. Where had I seen one similar? The Maya of Central America are big on masks. They use them in all kinds of festivals and ceremonies. In the States, it’s Halloween only. In Maya country, though, masks are part of the culture.

  Guatemala?

  No . . .

  Then I remembered. It was during the civil war in Nicaragua. I’d been traveling the country doing marine research, but I was also imbedded, doing government service.

  That’s where I’d seen a similar mask. Several, actually. Members of guerrilla death squads wore them to hide their identities. The masks were light, made of wire mesh, like mosquito screening, so they were cool in the jungle heat. I’d been told they were modeled after some old Mayan mask that had been used in sacrificial ceremonies.

  The Indios relish their blood traditions.

  The cosmetic touches—painted eyebrows, pink cheeks—seemed satirically feminine.

  I watched the mask move on the man’s face as he said, “The kid can’t really talk right now, so I’ll have to talk for him. That’s because he’s all tied up!” Then the three of us listened to him make an oddly high-pitched clucking sound that became a staccato barking—laughter.

  It could have been the parody of some inane comic, but the tactlessness wasn’t intentional. Even in Spanish, there was a clumsy white-trash stupidity about the way he hammered the punch line.

  He’s all tied up!

  It was a bully’s joke, a bully’s laughter.

  I wanted to jump through the screen, grab him by the throat, and squeeze until his eyes bulged. People who’ve been scarred or disfigured are usually eager to spare others pain because they’ve endured the worst that life and human nature have to offer.

  Not this one. His scars seemed tailored to his personality. He seemed right at home with a face that he preferred to keep hidden.

  Still chuckling, he said, “So, hello, hello, hello, to the beautiful and famous Pilar Fuentes Balserio. I’ve got a message for you from your husband, Jorge. When I lead him back to the presidential palace, me and the General and the rest of his army expect you to be in the bedroom, with your clothes off, waiting to . . .”

  He then launched into a sexually graphic tirade so angry that it was more like an assault, a scenario with details designed to shock.

  After enduring less than a minute, Tomlinson said, “My Spanish isn’t the best, but this guy’s a freak, man. A serious wack job.” I said, “Listen,” as Masked Man continued the rant. It went

  I said, “Listen,” as Masked Man continued the rant. It went on for another half-minute before his mood seemed to darken and he abruptly shifted subjects.

  “But enough about me!” he said—that heavy comedic punch again. “The point is, we’ve got your kid. He’s alive. If you want him to stay alive, and if you want to get him back, you’re going to do exactly what we tell you to do. If you don’t, the General says I can have him. Me. That’s an honor. For you, I mean. So here’s what we want you to do—”

  Not looking away from the screen, I asked Pilar, “Should I get some paper? Or have you already made a transcript?”

  She was no longer touching my arm. She had, in fact, moved closer to Tomlinson. “I have every word on paper, even the sick parts. There’s only about another minute left. Watch first, then read the transcript.”

  The demands he made seemed to be the first of a long list. They weren’t random. They’d been thought out. He knew exactly what he wanted—or what he was supposed to say.
One of those demands was that Pilar go as soon as she possibly could to Miami, where, he said, she would receive further instructions.

  Balserio’s government-in-exile was in Florida, I remembered.

  When the video ended, I said to Tomlinson, “There are parts of this I’d like to see again. Can you use the computer to freeze-frame and zoom in?”

  Tomlinson was tugging at his samurai horn nervously. “You name it. Modern times, man. Whatever you want.”

  THREE

  ALONG with the DVD, Pilar told us, the package also contained an Iridium satellite phone receiver. The kidnappers could contact her, but it couldn’t be used to call out.

  Though I didn’t mention it, I knew that the phone could probably also be used as a tracking device. Global Positioning System trackers are neither expensive nor difficult to acquire. For a few hundred bucks, a suspicious hubby or wife can hide a GPS transmitter in the family car and follow every movement.

  As she told us about the phone, I read the transcript once again, reviewing the list of demands made by Masked Man:

  She had to leave for Miami within forty-eight hours. She couldn’t contact law enforcement. If she’d already contacted police, she must now stop cooperating. Along with the phone, she was to either carry a portable computer or find a way to check her e-mail at least twice a day while traveling.

  Masked Man said they would contact her via satellite phone or Internet and tell her how next to proceed. As long as she continued to cooperate, they would continue to provide proof that Laken was alive.

  In the video, he used the royal “we.” Excessively, it seemed.

  “Before you leave for Miami,” he said, “collect half a million dollars in cash, U.S. Don’t ask us how. The Masaguan treasury has plenty. You’ve got pull and connections. Find a way. Pack it in the kind of briefcase photographers use to protect their stuff. The kind that seals tight without locking. Then have the briefcase delivered by diplomatic pouch to the Masaguan consul general’s office in Miami no later than Wednesday morning. Don’t wire the money, don’t transfer it from a foreign bank. Do it just the way we say.

  “Once you’re in the States, we’ll call and tell you when to go to the consul general’s office and get it. Don’t do it until we tell you. Or check your e-mail. Check it a lot. The half-million is for starters. Just to show us you really care about your kid. We’ll want more than that. This is all about politics. Political change. Jobs and better pay. Schools, health care, all the standard stuff. And quit fucking over the Indios”—the staccato laughter again—“I bet you Spaniard bastards regret that you ever burned a single Indian at the stake now. Especially since they let yours truly back out on the street. Paybacks are a bitch, huh?”

  That’s how the video ended. With Masked Man walking toward the camera, his chest blackening the screen.

  A couple of details interested me. Things that I thought might give us information the kidnappers didn’t expect us to have, or want us to know.

  As Tomlinson futzed with the computer, I asked Pilar, “Has anyone else studied this? I’d be interested in hearing what your experts had to say.”

  She said, “The first thing I did when I found Laken’s room empty, I called the head of our national police. The same when the video was delivered. Two investigators were with me when I watched it for the first time. But you heard the demands. They said I had to stop cooperating, so I did. The police wanted to stay on the case, but I said absolutely not, leave me alone.”

  “Just because you’re not cooperating doesn’t mean they’ve dropped it,” I said.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. As I told you, I can’t trust anyone in the government. You hear one thing, but something else is really happening.”

  “Did your treasury department come up with the money? A half-million’s a lot of money. If you’re not cooperating, why would they provide the ransom?”

  “I didn’t ask the treasury. I would have had to explain why I needed the money. People gossip, and the wrong people could find out. I wasn’t going to put Laken at greater risk.”

  Pilar explained that, instead, she’d gone to an old and trusted friend for help, her country’s wealthiest jeweler. Like Colombia, Masagua is famous for its emeralds. Pilar had inherited stones from her family estate, and she’d also collected emeralds since childhood. She’d asked her friend to spend the weekend liquidating her collection on the international market.

  “It’s all the savings I have, and I loved those stones. I mean, I really loved some of them. But what choice did I have? I hate those bastards for putting me in this position!”

  She was furious.

  Trying to calm her, Tomlinson told her that money, jewels, and other such things were nothing more than symbolism.

  “They’re trophy collections,” he said. “But when someone you love is in danger”—he made a poof noise with his lips—“the trophies, your collection, it becomes meaningless.”

  Nodding as if agreeing, she said, “Yes, but I had so many superb stones . . . I just hope there’s enough.”

  I said, “You’re not alone in this. I’ll put up at least half. I can get the cash in—” My main account is on Grand Cayman Island. I took a moment to calculate how long it would take to transfer money to my bank on Sanibel . . . how much I could borrow, and how quickly my broker could sell off most . . . probably all of my stock portfolio. “By tomorrow afternoon late. Or I’ll just reimburse you. That’ll be easiest.”

  I live so simply, have so little interest in the things money buys, that I’ve saved quite a bit over the years. Emeralds I’d taken from Masagua had contributed to my pile.

  “No,” she said, “you don’t have to do that.”

  Her tone told me more. It said to accept my offer equated to indebtedness, and she preferred not to be indebted to me. She didn’t want my help.

  I said, “I insist.”

  Pilar made a noncommittal gesture that dismissed the subject, then told us that her friend was going to pack the money in a heavy-duty photographer’s briefcase addressed to her. He’d make certain it got into the consul general’s diplomatic pouch and on a flight in time so that it was in Miami by tomorrow morning, Wednesday.

  Clever. It’s illegal to bring more than ten thousand dollars cash in or out of the U.S. without declaring it, so it would have been idiotic to try and sneak a half-million through Miami customs. Diplomatic pouch—which, by international law, could not be searched—was the only safe, legal way to get that amount of money into the country.

  I asked, “Before you told the two feds to drop the case, did they happen to make any comments about the video?”

  Pilar hesitated. “They did. But what I’d prefer first is for you to tell me what you think. Maybe you saw something they didn’t. I don’t want to bias your thinking. Does that seem reasonable?”

  It seemed more than reasonable. So Tomlinson and I batted it back and forth.

  For starters, I’d gotten the impression that Masked Man may have spent many years in Central America, but he wasn’t a member of the two most common ethnic groups. He was neither Mayan nor of Spanish descent.

  It wasn’t just the accent, either. His sentence rhythms had a white-trash crudeness. Same with his tasteless, honky-tonk comedian shtick. There are degrees of inappropriate behavior that raise hackles on the back of the neck, and Masked Man exceeded the limits. His pornographic rant, the mood shifts, his showy behavior, all pointed to either a personal viciousness or pathology. The line is sometimes fine, and difficult to decipher.

  Tomlinson said, “Just from the few scars that were visible, his face has gotta be a mess, man. Normally, I’d feel sympathy for someone like that. But I’ve got a very strong vibe that this one’s got snakes crawling around up there where his brain should be. He was all messed up on the inside long before he got those scars on the outside. That’s my read.”

  Tomlinson and I were sitting on lab stools, the laptop between us. Pilar stood listening, letting us talk even though
our words hurt her—her expression was not difficult to interpret.

  Something else we agreed on was that only two people were in the room. Just Lake and Masked Man, although for some reason he wanted us to think there were more. The way he consistently referred to “we” or “us.” It seemed intentional.

  “Maybe it’s a power trip,” Tomlinson guessed. “The more people he’s got behind him, the more power he has. He wants us to see him that way. He’s in control, man. A force. But it’s bogus.

  “The same with his political tirade. The pro-Indian stuff. More schools, jobs, and hospitals. He didn’t mean any of it; complete bullshit. I agree with the whole power-to-the-people philosophy, but that’s not where that dude’s head was at. The vicious ones, the really bad dogs, they manufacture excuses for revenge. Politics, injustice to the Indians. I think that’s his excuse.”

  I’d been watching Pilar’s reactions. Now I said to her, “You know a lot more about this guy than you’ve told us. I’d like to hear it.”

  Years ago, when Pilar was nervous or upset, she couldn’t stand still. In that way, at least, she hadn’t changed.

  I watched her move across the lab and pause by a tank that held snappers, then cross to another that held octopi. She stopped and stared at octopi that were peeking out from their rocky ambush holes, focusing on her with golden, glowing cat eyes.

  Without turning, she said, “You two are good together. Maybe it’s the combination, one of you analytical, the other intuitive. You’re right on most points. Maybe all points. I don’t know enough about him to say. What I do know is, out of all the mercenaries that Balserio brought into the country, the criminal you just saw is the worst.

  “Our federal police identified him right away. Everyone in Masagua knows him by reputation. Not by his name. His reputation. His real name’s Praxcedes Lourdes. He’s a Nicaraguan. During their revolution, he was a death squad assassin. But when the war ended, he kept on killing. The police tried to catch him, but they never did, so the courts tried him in absentia. They found him guilty and sentenced him to time in a psychiatric prison. When that didn’t bring him in, they finally sentenced him to death by firing squad.”