Tampa Burn df-11 Read online

  The bird call. She was still punishing herself for not zeroing in on the quetzal.

  She added, “That morning, while I was watching this awful thing, Laken was just a few miles away? We could have sent in soldiers and saved him. Oh dear God. I feel terrible I didn’t understand…”

  Tomlinson reached and put his big hand to her shoulder, communicating with touch- Don’t blame yourself. Victims should never blame themselves -but stuck to business, saying, “O.K., O.K. We’re done with the subject. There’s nothing more to learn from background noise. Let’s discuss other elements in the video.”

  He watched me nod before saying, “So far, we both agree that Lourdes videoed this by himself. But I’m still thinking he had to have one or more accomplices.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because the way Pilar describes it, your son was kidnapped from a place that’s downtown in a busy city. And from a building that was guarded. There almost had to be a driver. Don’t you think? Or a chopper maybe. Someone waiting to get away fast.”

  I said, “O. K, I’ll go along with that.”

  He turned to Pilar. “Do private planes fly in and out of the international airport?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  I was looking at the moth on the screen, comparing it with photos in the book. The insect’s wingspan was massive-more than six inches. Finally, I found it: Ascalapha odorata, the Bruja Negra or Black Witch moth. An insect common to Central America-further confirmation that the video had been shot in the region.

  I said, “That’s what I’m asking myself. Why would someone kidnap the son of a popular political figure, then head straight for a hideout close to the airport?”

  Tomlinson was now allowing the video to play in slow motion-an eerie thing to watch-as he asked, “Does your ex-husband have enough political juice in neighboring countries to get passports for Lourdes and your son? Visas, I.D. s? I’m talking about credentials good enough so they could hop on a private plane and take refuge in another country. No way you can fly a kidnapped child out on a commercial plane, so that leaves military or private.”

  I leaned close to study my son’s haunted eyes staring back at me, then focused upon the red welt that snaked up his arm. I’d dismissed the possibility of it being a burn. Now, though, I reconsidered.

  As Pilar replied, “Yes, documents, passports, Balserio could get anything he wanted,” I looked across my laboratory sink at the Bunsen burner. I pictured the scalpel-blue flame it produced, then reviewed variations of propane torches.

  A portable welder’s torch came to mind. They were cheap, easy to use, readily available even in Third World countries, and intimidating if used as a weapon-something that would appeal to a sociopath who liked fire.

  I remembered Pilar saying that the fish in Lake’s main aquarium had been killed. Stick a welder’s torch in an aquarium, and the swim bladders of fish would soon explode, expanding in the super-heated water.

  Son-of-a-bitch.

  Lake had been burned. The wound seemed a defensive variety. People under attack throw their forearms up to protect their face.

  It told me something that I couldn’t share with Pilar, and would not share with Tomlinson. That brand of assault is indicative. If Praxcedes Lourdes had already burned Lake, then he planned to kill him. That seemed probable to me.

  What was the statistic I’d read? It had been compiled by some government agency in Britain. In kidnapping cases worldwide, only about forty percent of the victims are recovered alive even after the ransom is paid in full. If the victim has been seriously abused or mistreated-severed ears or pinkie fingers are common examples-then chances of the abductee surviving drops to nearly zero.

  Paying Lake’s ransom, following his kidnapper’s orders, made sense only in that it might buy us a little time.

  I jumped, startled that anyone could speak calmly when Tomlinson said, “As long as we have the computer out, maybe you should check your e-mail. They said you should check it often.”

  Pilar still sounded despondent. “You’re probably right. I tried from my hotel last night, then again this morning. So far, nothing. I need to buy a laptop while I’m here. I don’t have one.”

  I pointed to my desk model on the far side of the room. “You can use mine, or we can hook Tomlinson’s up to the phone. His’ll be faster.”

  We did. She checked.

  She had an e-mail from the kidnappers. There was also a note from our son.

  Sitting at the computer, nervously regarding what she was about to read, Pilar said, “When Jorge Balserio is back in the presidential palace-and he probably will be, unfortunately-he’ll owe that animal a debt more than favors and money. I wonder how he’ll deal with his famous monster then?”

  She was talking, once again, about the possibility that Balserio had provided passports and a private plane. She was also talking about the man who’d abducted our son.

  I was picturing the burn scar on Lake’s arm, my child’s terrified eyes staring back into mine, and I was thinking: If Balserio’s smart, he’ll kill Lourdes.

  But I was also thinking: If I get to Lourdes first, he’ll never have the chance.

  FOUR

  The night he kidnapped the boy, Prax Lourdes told his driver, Reynaldo, “Drive fast, but not so damn crazy that you bring the federales down. I got us this far, don’t screw it up now.”

  He was sitting in the back of a dented Toyota Camry, his hood down, still wearing the mask. Engine running, the car sat in the shadows of a park that separated the presidential palace from the convent, and a line of colonial buildings-columns, plazas, balconies-built in the 1700s.

  Through the tinted windows, Prax could see shadowed ficus trees and royal palms in the park, homeless adults and children sleeping on benches, and a horse grazing near the ornate marble band shelter. The horse was all head and ribs.

  Lourdes wasn’t hot, yet he couldn’t stop sweating. Returning through the tunnel, goading the boy along ahead of him, he’d felt that same shitty fear, like drowning. The tunnel walls, the darkness, seemed to crush at the muscles in his heart.

  But he’d endured it. The boy was in the trunk now, mouth, hands, legs all taped.

  He’d not come easily. A surprise. The kid wasn’t just a smart-ass, he had some balls, too. He’d even taken a swing at him back in the room. Big kid for his age, with muscles. Quick, too. But still just a kid.

  Prax had thrown him down by the hair, and scorched his arm with a quick shot of the blowtorch. He’d screamed out, but only briefly and not loud. But then he became real cooperative when Prax told him, “You try that shit again, I’m going straight to your mother’s room and set her hair on fire. Or I’ll have my pals do it. How’d you like to hear your mother scream?”

  Yeah, that was the key to this kid. Threaten the mother with make-believe hacks, and he’d do absolutely anything. Prax got no more trouble from the little bastard after that.

  Lourdes knew he couldn’t linger, but he still took the time to go through the kid’s drawers. The kid had lied when he said he didn’t have any cash hidden away. Stashed among baseball cards and a bunch of beetles pinned to a board, he found slightly more than five hundred dollars in Masaguan cordobas, and a thousand in U.S. currency: ten crisp $100 bills.

  Clipped to the bills was a business card that read:SANIBEL BIOLOGICAL SUPPLY / MARION FORD, and signed, Happy Birthday, Lake! There was also a photograph that showed a studious-looking man with glasses.

  When Prax flashed the photo at the kid and said, “Who’s the creep who sent you the money?” the kid had replied in a very odd tone, “He’s a man I hope you get a chance to meet real soon, mister.”

  The way the kid said it, it was like the creep was supposed to be scary or something.

  They’d left the boy in a rental cabin, still taped, and also handcuffed to the bed. Now Reynaldo parked the Toyota a few blocks away from the cabin at the edge of a smoldering industrial dump, behind a corrugated building next to the airport
, as he’d been ordered to do. He sat shivering in the morning darkness, lights off, Lourdes beside him, waiting for some early flight to arrive. Reynaldo didn’t know why.

  He continued to shiver as Lourdes said, “I said I’d tell you how it happened. About what the soldiers did to me. You said you wanted to know.”

  Lourdes’ voice was smoky deep. He spoke softly, but because of his harsh American accent, he sounded loud.

  Uneasy, Reynaldo replied, “Only if you want to discuss it. Another time, if you like. It doesn’t have to be now.”

  There was a hint of irony in Lourdes’ voice when he said, “Oh yeah? I think you’re wrong. I think it’s now or never.”

  There was a meanness in there, too.

  “But first, tell me what you’ve heard. I always enjoy hearing the bullshit going around about me. Being lied about comes with being famous.”

  Prax watched the driver take a gulp from the bottle of aguadiente he now held between his legs, and saw that his hand shook. Lourdes got a kick out of that.

  “I’ve heard what most have heard,” the driver began. “That you were adopted by a tribe of Indians on the Moskito Coast of Nicaragua. As a young teenager. That your parents must have been killed in a shipwreck, because they found you starving, wandering the beach.”

  “The Suma tribe,” Prax said. “Moskito Indians. They took me in. They named me. I became one of them. My adopted father was the village leader.”

  Reynaldo said, “Yes, your father was the leader, and so soldiers came to kill him. That they burned your house, your whole family. Only you survived. After that, you dedicated your life to revenge-”

  “To the Revolution. Anything against the government whores.”

  “-that you dedicated your life to the Revolution. That is what I heard.”

  “Yeah,” Prax said. “The same old stuff. But since we’re working together, since we’ve become such close buddies, you and me, I’ll tell you the details. Things almost no one knows. Then you can go back to your village, brag about it, and act like a big important man.”

  Reynaldo smiled for the first time, saying, “Yes, I’d like that.”

  He meant it.

  Lourdes said, “Before I tell you, let me ask you a couple of questions first. Nothing too personal. Just some stuff I want to know. I heard you and General Balserio are tight. At least, I hear the General trusts you. That you guys go way back together.”

  “I have served the General over many years, and in many ways,” Reynaldo said modestly. “When he has special needs, special assignments such as this, he calls on me. It is an honor.”

  Then, because he could sense Lourdes was driving at something, maybe trying to extract confidential information, the driver added, “But we are not friends as neighbors are friends. I only do what he tells me to do, and he only tells me what I need to know.”

  Prax said, “For this job, he told me he would send an amount of cash to cover expenses, plus my fee. He said that someone-you, I’m thinking-would deliver the money to me. And that this same person would arrange for a plane to take me and the kid to one of the General’s hideouts in Nicaragua. Do you have the money?”

  Because Reynaldo had been ordered to give Lourdes the money-but only when he was safely on the General’s plane-he felt he could answer truthfully. “Yes. It’s in a briefcase. I will give it to you soon.”

  “And the plane?”

  “Yes. Everything’s arranged.”

  Lourdes asked, “After the kid and I get to the General’s camp, do you know what his plan is after that? How’s it going to work?”

  “I have no knowledge of anything once you get on the plane,” the driver said.

  Prax Lourdes adjusted his mask and nodded. He believed that the man knew nothing else. But he was pretty sure of what General Balserio had planned. The entire population of Masagua was terrified of Incendiario. News that he’d kidnapped the son of Pilar Fuentes, the General’s former wife-and perhaps the mother of the General’s son, some still whispered-would make Lourdes the focus of a united, national hatred.

  “I will then rescue the boy,” Balserio had told him. “It will be something to be done for cameras. But you will escape, Praxcedes. That I promise you! You will escape, and I will become an even more popular national hero. And you, of course, will be rich with the additional money I’ll pay you in my gratitude.”

  That last part, Prax didn’t believe. What he believed was, Balserio planned to murder him during the boy’s rescue. Get that on film, and the people of Masagua wouldn’t just make him president, they’d make him king.

  Lourdes used his big hand to pat the driver on the shoulder. Felt him shrink away as he said, “Tell you what: Show me the cash. Let me count it first-you’re going to give it to me in a couple of hours anyway. Then I’ll tell you what almost no one else knows about me. What the soldiers did, and what I’ve done to a bunch of those bastards since. All the juicy little details. Deal?”

  The money was right there in the car. Reynaldo had it hidden in the space where the spare tire had been kept. He watched Lourdes count it-a little less than seventy-five thousand dollars-before they got back into the car.

  Prax didn’t tell Reynaldo the whole deal. He’d never told anyone the entire truth. He just told him about the soldiers, and the hospital, and about how he’d dedicated his life to taking revenge for all the poor peasants.

  Same old bullshit.

  Just as he didn’t tell him he was going to double-cross that pompous asshole, Jorge Balserio. That he was going to steal the money and the kid, then split.

  He had everything all set: A guy he’d bullied at the national library to do the Internet stuff for him, because he would need to have e-mails forwarded once he and the kid were in hiding. Plus, his own chartered plane, not Balserio’s. And a ship. An old freighter, but with an infirmary that was going to be very specially equipped once he got his hands on that money.

  So he was tempted to tell the General’s little stooge that he was going to burn Balserio-but burn him in a different kind of way. It would’ve fed Lourdes’ ego to let an insider know that he was outsmarting the famous man.

  But he didn’t. Didn’t say a word, even though he’d already decided that the driver would never get the chance to tell anyone.

  FIVE

  The olfactory memory has no linkage in time, so reading e-mail over Pilar’s shoulder, our bodies so close, her familiar odor reconnected us across years. I might, once again, have been with the woman whom I believed to be my love.

  The temptation was to rest my hand on her shoulder. But she no longer invited that kind of familiarity.

  She read the kidnapper’s e-mail aloud, first in Spanish, then made a quick translation into English for Tomlinson’s benefit, her voice animated:

  “On Wednesday, May seventh, at two in the afternoon, be at the Cacique Restaurant on West Flagler near Northwest Miami Court. It’s across from the Dade County courthouse in downtown Miami. You’ll hear from us. Don’t bring the money. If you contact the police, if you’re followed, your brat dies. Answer this so we know you got it.”

  The e-mail was unsigned, the subject line blank. It came from an Internet address that seemed to be a random series of letters and numbers: xyxq37.

  Because she was a mother, though, and because it was the human thing to do, she’d opened Lake’s e-mail first-which is why it was so difficult to control the emotion in her voice as she read aloud.

  His note-if he’d actually written it-was distressing: Mother, Do what they say. I want to come home. Please help me. I’m afraid. He says if you cooperate, he’ll let me write to you again.

  That Lake switched in reference from “they” to “he,” I noted, was suggestive.

  Seeing his e-mail name, Chamaeleo@Nicarado, at the bottom of the note produced an unexpected surge of emotion in me.

  Chamaeleo.

  It was an unusual name chosen by an unusual boy. It’d taken some thought. Chamaeleon is the genus of wise-cracking
lizards once used in popular beer commercials. Kinda funny.

  Over time, though, I learned the name had more complex meanings. Chamaeleon is also the genus of certain sea iguanas similar to those found in the Galapagos Islands. Charles Darwin drew important inferences from the iguanas while aboard the HMS Beagle touring South America, making notes that led to his theory of natural selection.

  Lake had finally told me that.

  Impressive.

  I’d added my own third interpretation: Chameleons adapt and change appearance fast-something that would appeal to a boy his age.

  I think most parents come to learn what I was slow to realize: It is the unwise adult who assumes that youth automatically equates to an absence of depth and wisdom. Children are complicated.

  Reading over Pilar’s shoulder, smelling the good odor of hair and skin, I said, “They want you to respond. What are you going to say?”

  “I’ll write that I’m going to do exactly what they tell me to do. I don’t want them to hurt Laken. What do you expect?”

  “I think you should add something like… well, that you aren’t cooperating with authorities, but you are bringing a male friend to Miami. Because I’m going with you. Big cities can be dangerous. Write something like that. Even if you aren’t carrying the money, you need protection. Say there’re no cops involved, but you have to watch out for your own safety.”

  “And what if they write back and tell me to come alone?”

  “Pretend like you didn’t get the e-mail. Don’t acknowledge it.”

  Because she was shaking her head, not buying it, I added, “Look, Pilar, there’s something very basic you need to keep in mind here. You’re a target. What some might consider an easy target. Stop shaking your head and listen.

  “You’re the one who told us there are people in the Masaguan government who know you’re picking up a half-million in cash from the consul general’s office. Two feds saw the DVD, heard the demands. So now maybe their entire office knows. Or staff members in dozens of offices. You can’t trust them. Your words.