I ran into the room, which was dark except for a bright flashlight beam strobing on Escobar’s monstrous, distorted face near the doorway.
“Ten, watch out—” Dad said.
I’ve told the story a hundred times, but I’m still not clear on the sequence. A gunshot first? Then a loud pop, the hiss of spray, and fire in my eyes? Or did the fire in my eyes come first and then the gunshot?
I never saw exactly what happened. Even in my dreams, all I see is darkness.
I know now that the fire in my eyes was a six-ounce tear-gas grenade Escobar had hidden in his pocket. Thick, acidic smoke clogged my eyes, nose, and mouth in the confined room, stealing my breath. I was barely aware of the sound of a struggle, but I was calling my father’s name when I heard the second gunshot.
I have no confusion about the second gunshot. The sound is crisp and vivid in my memory, just to the left of where I had fallen against the wall to catch my balance, almost close enough to touch. Impossibly loud, rattling my bones. A shot to end the world.
I heard Escobar running toward me for the doorway, and instinct made me try to block him, but he easily dodged me and pushed me out of his way because I couldn’t see.
I heard my father groan and cough. Thank God he’s alive, I thought.
“Dad?” I said.
“I’m . . . okay,” my father said through his coughing.
I stumbled toward where I thought I’d heard my father, and my hand felt his wheelchair’s armrest. I pushed the chair, trying to angle it back toward the open doorway and the adjoining room that wasn’t shrouded in poisonous smoke. The tear gas followed us, but it wasn’t as thick. I saw splashes of light. I closed the door behind me and stumbled toward the glass patio door, where I tugged and tried to flush the room with fresh air. Precious seconds passed while I tried to find the lock. All the while, my eyes screamed. The ocean gusts were a balm on my face.
I thought we were better off in the next room than we would be in the hall. We might be vulnerable to Escobar in the hall, and there was sure to be smoke in the hallway, too. Fresh air was best. I could already breathe better past my burning lungs.
“Rinse your . . . eyes,” my father said.
I stumbled to the bathroom and flipped on the ceiling fan. I could still only see in sparks of light, but I grabbed a hand towel and drowned it in water. I brought the towel to my father and pressed it to his face. “You, too,” I said. “Rinse.”
“Forget about . . . me,” Dad said. “Go get him, Ten.”
I stood over the sink and splashed my face until my clothes were soaked. My shirt stung my skin, so I pulled it off. My first concerns were my father and my blindness. Thoughts of Gustavo Escobar were far away.
The next time I found my way to my father’s chair, I smelled blood for the first time. That smell froze my world.
“Dad?” I said. “Were you hit?” Hadn’t I asked him before?
“Flesh wound,” Dad said. “Barely. You all right?”
I tugged at his clothing, trying to see his injury with my blurry vision. For a man in my father’s condition, there was no such thing as a minor gunshot wound. A round from a .22 could do a lot of damage. “Where? Let me see.”
No blood or entrance wound on his chest or his head. That was good.
“I’m . . . fine, Ten,” Dad said, pushing me with surprising strength. “Go get that SOB.”
“Where were you shot?”
“He’s getting away,” Dad said. “Do you want it to be for . . . nothing?” My father still had the gun. The nozzle was warm. He raised it to give it to me, his fevered eyes staring hard into mine. “Eight rounds left.”
“Tell me,” I said. Worry was turning into horror.
Reluctantly, my father took my hand and laid it across his stomach. His shirt was moist with blood. I knew what had happened: Escobar had tried to take the gun away from my father but couldn’t. Instead, he’d forced my father to shoot himself in the stomach.
When I was a kid, Dad had told me that a gunshot wound to the stomach was one of the most painful ways to die. On his stakeout nights, I’d felt torn between hoping he would come home soon and praying that he wouldn’t come home at all. That was where my father and I had started, before we traveled our mighty long way together.
I exhaled with a wounded sound I did not recognize. The room spun.
I fumbled around the room for a telephone and called the operator to say my father had been shot and needed medical attention. I gave the room number. Beside me, my father’s breathing sounded heavier and heavier, each breath a labor. Maybe a part of me always knew.
“They’re sending paramedics,” I told him. “Don’t worry.”
“I’m all right,” Dad said, his voice unsteady with the lie. “Go get him, Ten. Don’t let him . . . get away.”
I took the wet towel I’d given him for his eyes and pressed it to his belly instead.
“Pressure right there,” I said. It was only something to say. Anything to do.
“Go, Ten,” Dad said. “No matter what . . . I’m all right.”
I hung my head, eyes closed tight. I wanted to pretend I couldn’t hear him. I wanted to pretend the whole night away. He wasn’t just asking me to go catch Esocbar; he was asking me to walk away.
I don’t know if it was my life’s bravest moment or the most cowardly. I kissed my father’s forehead and took the gun from his hand. Still half-blind, I brought myself to my feet, wheezing to breathe past the embers in my lungs.
“I’ll get him, Dad,” I said.
I stumbled out into the smoky hallway and ran.
That hallway was empty except for curious residents poking their heads out of their rooms, coughing from tear-gas vapors. I hoped that Escobar had wasted time at the elevator. He might have as much as a ninety-second head start and probably the advantage of full vision. I ran straight for the stairs, flying down so fast that I don’t know how I stayed upright.
Distantly, floors below me, I heard quickly tapping footsteps. Escobar could have exited the stairwell at any floor, but instead, he had chosen to run all the way down to the lobby. I ran on the balls of my feet, trying to minimize the sound. If he didn’t hear me coming after him, he might slow down.
My first taste of luck. Escobar could have been long gone, but he wasn’t.
The smell of my father’s blood on my skin made my stomach lurch. Every other step, I wanted to turn back to be with him, but that would have been selfish. My father had never needed hand-holding; he needed something much more important from me that night.
He’ll be all right, I told myself. One day, we would both share a laugh over how he’d called his gut shot a “flesh wound.” The promise of future laughter kept me on my feet.
On the fifth floor, I nearly tripped over a prosthetic arm discarded on the steps. I didn’t have the full picture yet, but I knew that the phony arm was part of the reason Escobar had been able to reach his tear gas while Dad held him at gunpoint. I’d thought I was clever to prop my prosthetic head in the bed, but Escobar had prepared for us, too.
We had underestimated him.
“Is that you I hear, mijo?” a voice called from below. My teeth locked, but I shoved my emotions away, trying to learn. He sounded as winded as I felt, and he hadn’t just sucked in a lungful of tear gas after running up ten flights of stairs.
“I didn’t mean for that to happen,” he went on when I didn’t answer. He sounded distraught. “He left me no choice, do you understand? Unlike you, he was a good man.”
As long as he was monologuing, he wasn’t running as fast as he could. I leaped down six stairs to the next landing, ignoring the hot pain that shot up my leg. I wished I could swoop down on him like Old Testament wrath.
“You can stop this now, Tennyson!” he went on, his voice bouncing against the concrete walls from everywhere. “Tend to your father. Don’t force me to destroy you!”
At the next floor, I leaped down eight steps and felt my ankle twinge, nearly giving way.
I had to balance myself against the wall before I could keep running. My palm smeared the wall with my father’s blood.
Escobar must have heard my approach, because he went silent. A door opened below me with a cone of light. He had reached the lobby! If he got to the cab stand, he would melt in the wind. As I raced down the last three flights, I tried to remember what Escobar was wearing. With my vision so blurry, I would be lucky to see him. A lightweight dark boating jacket? I’d barely glanced at him in the dark before the tear-gas blast.
I reached the lobby, scanning as quickly as I could. Because of the lobby’s size, Escobar had to run a distance before he could vanish from sight, my only chance. The blue-lighted floor of the bar glowed on one side, and the rest looked like a football field of white tiles.
Nothing and no one seemed to stir. I tried to slow my breathing so I could crane my ears, and I made out the clicking footsteps again, several yards to my right. My eyes swept the blur until I barely saw a dark spot moving across the floor, toward the exit.
Not the beach side. The cab side.
I could have stopped chasing Escobar then. Instead, I heard my father’s voice in my head: Go get him, Ten.
“Escobar!” I shouted loudly enough to wake the dead. With that cry of rage, I ran across the massive lobby floor toward the doors.
I vaguely heard people trying to call to me, ordering me to halt, a couple of women screaming at the blood on me or maybe the gun in my hand. But I ran on. I burst through the doors into the cool night.
The air was thick with the scent of seawater. Sirens wailed their distant approach. The line of cabs waiting outside the hotel lobby was a blurred yellow snake.
I almost ran headlong into a bellman, suddenly in sharp focus. He was in his mid-twenties, small-boned, and hadn’t lived long enough to deal with someone like me. I grabbed his shoulder hard enough to pinch nerves, the gun’s muzzle planted at his chin. I would never terrorize a bystander that way, but I was someone else.
“Which way?” I said.
The speechless bellman shook his head as if to claim he didn’t know what I was asking, but I saw his involuntary reflex as his eyes darted to the right.
Not the cabs, then. Toward the marina.
I let the bellman go and raced down the walkway toward the white hulks that were the marina’s resident yachts. The gate to the marina was wide open, my second piece of luck. Was the Rosa docked at the Fontainebleau? If so, Escobar would barely have time to board before I would catch him.
The marina was a maze of choices. Right or left? Which way?
Even the telltale footsteps were silent, and for a moment, I had to stop running, unsure. In that instant of stillness, fatigue and breathlessness made me feel lightheaded. Could I go on? My eyes were sheets of tears as they tried to wash away the poison.
A flock of seagulls squawked with annoyance just ahead of me, disturbed from their evening sleep. Escobar! I ran full speed toward the commotion. A cloud of gray-white wings and feathers flapped near my face as I tried to keep my feet on the wooden dock rather than straying to the water below. I heard the footsteps again, building speed, and I matched their fervor.
Sharp right turn. Then left. I could barely make out Escobar, but I saw him in flashes.
Where was he going? The yachts were behind us. As the skyline opened up, Escobar seemed to be running toward the bay itself.
Fine. If he planned to drown himself, I would give him all the help he needed.
Escobar suddenly leaped, and he was out of my sight. But there was no splash when he should have hit the water. Instead, I heard the zipping burr of a motorboat engine. Dammit! He had a boat ready for him. All alone, he’d planned to escape by water.
I was so fixated on trying to see Escobar that I nearly lost my footing at the end of the pier, waving my arms to keep my balance. He was the hazy gray form retreating at a good clip. I could hear him better than I could see him. I paced the pier with a cry of frustration, trying to wipe my eyes clear with my free palm.
No no no no no no
If I didn’t stop Escobar, I had nothing except whatever grief was waiting for me back in my hotel room, the consequences of the choices I’d made. Already, I wanted to sink to my knees and beg God for a chance to live the night again.
Instead, I lay on my stomach flat on the pier and leaned over the edge to try to see if I could find another motorboat. My eyes were close to useless, but I made out a bright orange life vest only a few yards to my left.
A boat! The life vest lay on its bench. Two identical small boats lay within easy reach, tied side-by-side. They might have been the hotel’s property, used for transporting residents.
I don’t know much about boats. I’d operated motorboats maybe three times in twenty years, usually on vacation with clients. I didn’t have a permit or real training, but I leaped down into the boat closest to the pier. The boat bobbed from my sudden weight, but I caught my balance on the fiberglass rim.
It was a simple outboard speedboat with seating for five. I didn’t see an anchor line; the boat was only tied to the dock.
I could still hear Escobar’s engine.
I pulled on the life jacket, figuring I would need it, and untied the boat with a few yanks of the rope. I saw a bright red flashlight nestled in a compartment, so I turned it on for much-needed light as I tried to start the engine. I vaguely remembered hasty lessons about connecting the fuel tank to the motor and how to set the throttle and drive selector. My efforts were far from textbook, but my hands took control from my brain.
The motor growled to life with my first yank of the starter cord. My journey away from the dock wasn’t pretty—I came precariously close to plowing into two different yachts as I tried to master forward and reverse—but soon the wind was smacking my face as I rounded my way out of the marina’s bay and headed out to open sea. Toward Escobar.
I could barely hear his engine over mine, but the whisper was enough.
I plunged ahead into the black night.
I sped after Escobar’s ghost on the ocean. The rough water flung my little craft around at will; sometimes I felt as if I wasn’t moving forward, only up and down. I had never learned the rules about navigating choppy seas, much less memorized them. More than once, as the nose plunged down sharply, I expected to capsize. I bounced from my seat and landed hard on the cushion, barely keeping control of the boat as seawater sprayed my face.
But somehow I kept up my chase. The wind cleared the tears from my eyes, and my vision improved. Larger vessels appeared in the distance, backdrops to show me Escobar’s progress as he blinked past their lights, changing direction to try to lose me. Sometimes I could see his foamy wake. His engine grew louder as I gained on him.
Then a boat appeared about sixty yards to the right of me. Starboard? Port? Port and left both have four letters. Starboard. It was dressed up in lights. It was the only cabin cruiser in sight, and I recognized it from a distance: Rosa. Escobar had planned to escape from the hotel, ride the speedboat out to sea, and meet his floating accomplice.
But his plans hadn’t counted on me.
The Rosa would be a far easier target to follow than the near-invisible speedboat. As long as I didn’t run out of gas, it was mine. I didn’t know how fast my boat could go, but I doubted that the Rosa could travel much faster, especially since Escobar would need time to board.
I had swashbuckling visions straight out of Captain Blood as I drew closer to the larger boat, so at first I didn’t notice that Escobar was racing too fast toward the Rosa without slowing. He’s going to—I hadn’t finished the thought before the bright golden flames appeared in a perfect fireball that melted into a shower of sparks and debris.
I shot to my feet, seething with rage. He had no right! I called Escobar every filthy name I could think of, shouting myself hoarse. Suicide was too good for him. He had no right.
Dad had told me to get Escobar. I could still hear his voice: Go get him, Ten.
Gustavo Escobar had
robbed me of the chance to fulfill my father’s dying wish.
I’D FORGOTTEN THAT I had an open cell-phone line to my father’s phone, and no one had turned off the phone in my father’s pocket. By the time I remembered my dangling ear bud as I approached the shore, strangers’ voices were confirming what I already knew.
“. . . shock . . . blood loss . . .” a man’s voice recited from my earpiece.
“Any next of kin?” a woman’s dispassionate voice said.
They weren’t in a hurry, trying to save a life. They were chronicling a death.
Richard Allen Hardwick was pronounced dead at 3:33 A.M. in room 1027 of the Fontainebleau Hilton Hotel in Miami Beach. He never made it to the hospital; at least he would have been glad of that. The bullet caused severe liver damage, and he suffered a cardiac arrest while he was bleeding to death. Paramedics tried to revive him at the scene, but Dad had chosen his time and place. With our phones to tether us, he had been with me until the end.
He died doing God’s work.
The Coast Guard escorted me back to the pier, and the police and news vans were waiting in a pack. I recognized Detective Hernandez in the uniformed crowd, but she didn’t meet my eyes, or maybe I didn’t notice if she did. Now she had her circus after all.
Marcela was sleeping, or she might have heard about Dad’s death on the news.
But the main story, of course, was Gustavo Escobar.
I’d wanted to stop a serial killer. Be careful what you wish for.
I couldn’t avoid a day in jail.
With a dead old man, an exploded speedboat, and a beloved director presumed dead, the police figured it was safest to keep me close. Very close. I was spared the perp walk, and I got a cell to myself, but after a three-hour interrogation, I was a guest of the South Beach Police for the next twelve.
Not that it mattered. The world had gone gray, surreal. Instead of racing, my mind was completely still, the kind of state I’d sought in meditation for years. My biggest sadness was informing Marcela and Chela by phone that Dad was gone. I don’t remember what I said to either one of them or much of what they said to me. I had dropped out of my own life.
South by Southeast Page 18
