A King's ransom

by James Grippando

  “How many more?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on. The family deserves to know the truth.”

  He seemed to be searching for a positive spin. “The truth is, worldwide only about nine or ten percent of kidnapping victims are killed or die in captivity.”

  “Only?” I said.

  “The flip side is that there’s a ninety percent chance of survival. Pretty good odds.”

  “Oh, really? Think of the last ten people you said hello to. Now imagine one of them dead. How good do those odds sound to you now?”

  His expression fell, as if he’d never thought of it quite that way.

  “We need the FBI on this case,” I said. “Let’s get that State Department invitation.”

  He said nothing, but I knew what he was thinking. I needed to get to work on my list of connections. It was time for me to call on friends in high places.

  Now I just had to figure out who the hell they were.

  4

  Faster than you can say “Who do you know?” I was back in my office-or, more precisely, Duncan Fitz’s office.

  Working as an associate in one of the largest law firms on earth certainly had its disadvantages. The lawyers who set my salary and measured my progress toward partnership knew me only from written annual review forms completed by the handful of partners in the Miami office. Ninety-eight percent of my colleagues were virtual strangers, whom I would never meet, never even talk to on the telephone. They worked in different states, different countries, different time zones. Many spoke English as a second or even third language. When one of them was fired-or sometimes even when an entire office closed-I usually found out about it weeks after the fact, usually by happenstance, and then only by inference from the fact that an e-mail I’d sent was returned as “undeliverable.” Cool Cash could be an overwhelming, impersonal workplace.

  At the same time, it had a way of making the world seem very small.

  Duncan was in an exceptionally good mood, having just returned from a long celebration lunch at the City Club with his client from Med-Fam Pharmaceuticals. From the looks of his red nose, it appeared as though a few glasses had been raised to the health of the not-so-healthy Gilbert Jones.

  “Sorry you didn’t join us,” said Duncan, seated behind his antique desk. “Where did you run off to?”

  “Emergency. I got some distressing news.”

  His grin completely vanished. “Those bastards didn’t call the judge, did they?”

  “No. It’s not about the Med-Fam case.”

  “Good.”

  “It’s about my father.”

  As a rule, Duncan didn’t shift easily from work to personal issues, but he listened with concern as I told him everything I knew so far-the phone call from Mom, the meeting with the FBI agent. I didn’t come right out and ask for any favors. That wasn’t the way to operate with Duncan. I just made it clear that the FBI wouldn’t get involved in the case without an invitation from the State Department and that political connections might expedite the process.

  “Consider it done,” said Duncan.

  “You can help?”

  “Can camels spit?”

  I had to think about that one.

  “We have a former undersecretary of state working in our Washington office. I’ll call him right now.”

  “That’s fantastic. I can’t believe it.”

  “Believe it,” he said proudly. He leaned back in his leather chair and rested his hand atop the globe on his credenza. It was another antique, a distinctive but ugly piece with the oceans in black. He gave it a spin and asked, “What do you see here?”

  “The world?” I said tentatively, sensing a trick question.

  “Look closer. It’s Coolidge, Harding and Cash. We’re everywhere. Which is very good news for your father. This phone call I’m about to make is only the beginning.”

  “Thank you.”

  He opened his desk drawer, removed a three-ring notebook, and handed it to me. “Open it.”

  I thumbed through the first few pages. The book was filled with pictures and bios of influential people-members of Congress, the U.S. attorney general, even the president of Costa Rica. It went on for pages, at least two inches thick. “What is this?”

  “It doesn’t have an official name, but call it our A-list alumni registry. Everyone in that book has worked at this law firm in one of our offices around the world. If you think any of them might be able to help your father, you just let me know. All I ask is that you let me make the phone calls for you. Nobody is going to jump for a young associate in the Miami office, even if your father is kidnapped.”

  “Damn, Duncan. Maybe you aren’t the heartless son of a bitch everybody says you are.”

  “Don’t be so sure. It doesn’t hurt to have the most promising young lawyer in Miami beholden to me for life.”

  He was half smiling, but I knew Duncan well enough to know he was at least half serious. Sure, I’d owe him big time if he could pull this off, and that was fine by me. Dad would have sold off his fleet to save me. At least I liked to think so.

  I moved to the edge of my seat as Duncan picked up the phone and dialed our Washington office.

  An hour later I was at my mother’s house, trying to cheer her with a little good news. The wheels were in motion, I assured her, and I tried to put on my best face. I was fooling her no more than she was fooling me, the way she emerged from her bedroom every forty-five minutes, trying to hide her red and puffy eyes, assuring me it was allergies.

  We sat down together at the kitchen table and made a list of people we should notify. Mom made the first few calls, but it was emotionally exhausting. I picked up where she left off, and soon the grapevine was in full swing. By midafternoon our phone was ringing off the hook. Dad’s friends, Mom’s friends, friends of friends, people we hadn’t heard from in years-all were offering to help in any way they could. Other than to keep Dad in their prayers, we didn’t know what to tell them. This was all foreign to us. The only thing we knew was that, by the end of the day, the one phone call we’d wanted had yet to come.

  There was still no word from the FBI or the State Department.

  I decided to stay with Mom that night, though my being there only seemed to highlight the fact that my sister wasn’t. In a crisis like this, I suppose it was natural for Mom to want both of her children, even if she and her daughter weren’t even technically on speaking terms.

  My parents had given me the right amount of freedom as a child, but Lindsey they’d strangled. Especially my mother. From preschool on, whatever Lindsey was doing, Mom was right there, as room mother, assistant soccer coach, teacher’s aide, you name it. It was all out of love, surely, but Mom just couldn’t seem to grasp that taking her eyes off her daughter for more than five consecutive minutes didn’t constitute abandonment. A disastrous semester of home schooling in the eighth grade made it almost inevitable that Lindsey would run with the wrong crowd in high school, and by her junior year she was barely speaking to either parent. I became Lindsey’s only lifeline to the family. Knowing that she was a bright kid, I talked her into going to college, though it was her own idea to enroll at the University of Puget Sound near Seattle, farther away from home than any other school in the contiguous United States. She earned a degree in journalism, and for the past two years she’d been traveling across the Americas in search of her first byline. Unlike my mother, I didn’t see it as the end of the world that she wanted to go out and find herself. She never phoned our folks, and even her calls to me were pretty rare, maybe once every six weeks. I’d find out where she’d been, send her a little money, whatever she needed. For my parents’ benefit, I’d subtly try to convince her that finding herself didn’t necessarily mean losing her family. She didn’t seem to be biting.

  Mom and I stayed up talking till after the eleven o’clock news, then said good night. My old room was virtually unchanged since the day I’d moved out to go to college, preserved like a time capsu
le. The dim light of the moon shone through the window, just bright enough to reveal an outline of my past. The Miami Dolphins team poster I’d worshipped as a teenager was still on the wall, hovering over the old dinosaur of a computer I’d used to explore everything from Super Mario Brothers to-well, dinosaurs. I half expected the door to open at any minute and my father to check on me the way he did when I was in high school. Spot checks were his way of keeping his teenage son from sneaking out at midnight to hang with the cool crowd in Coconut Grove. But as the minutes slowly passed, the house slipped deeper into an eerie silence. It seemed empty without Dad, and it made me ache inside. I wondered where he was sleeping tonight, if he was sleeping, if he was still alive.

  The phone rang at half past midnight. My immediate hope was that they’d found Dad. My fear was that they’d found his body. It was FBI Agent Nettles on the line, which put my heart directly into my throat.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s sort of an administrative issue.”

  “At this hour?”

  “I’ve just received confirmation that the Colombians are officially treating this case as an abduction. Which is good news. That means they have reason to believe your father is still alive.”

  “Have they heard from the kidnappers?”

  “No, but their divers have searched the area thoroughly. No body was found.”

  No corpse. That was good news, I supposed. “Will the FBI take the lead now that it’s officially a kidnapping?”

  “It’s not legally a kidnapping until there’s a demand for ransom. It’s an abduction.”

  “We’re still talking about a United States citizen. I’d like to see the FBI assert itself.”

  “That’s the other reason for my call. I’m afraid that the FBI isn’t going to intercede in this case.”

  I’d been pacing across the bedroom with the phone to my ear, but I suddenly stopped cold in my tracks. “Come again?”

  He paused, as if measuring his words. “As I explained to you and your mother earlier, the FBI can’t get involved in cases of international abductions or kidnappings unless the State Department invites us.”

  “That’s being taken care of. The supervising partner at my law firm assured me that the State Department would extend an invitation within twenty-four hours.”

  “That much has been done. They’ve extended an invitation.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “The FBI has declined it.”

  “What?”

  “The State Department placed certain conditions on the FBI’s involvement that were out of line. It was impossible to accept their invitation.”

  “What kind of conditions?”

  “I’m not at liberty to elaborate.”

  “Come on. You have to give me something.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t.”

  “Look, I’m not trying to put you in a bad spot. Let’s set up a meeting with your supervisor first thing in the morning.”

  “It won’t do any good. This decision wasn’t made in the Miami office.”

  “I’ll fly to Washington if I have to. Just give me the name of the person to talk to.”

  “I don’t have any specific names for you.”

  I didn’t understand it, but clearly I was being stonewalled, and it was making me angry. “So that’s it? ‘Too bad, so sad, see you later?’ That’s totally unacceptable. At least tell me which door to knock on. Should I start with the FBI or the State Department?”

  “I wouldn’t go either of those routes, if I were you.”

  “Is that some kind of threat?”

  “No. I’m trying to steer you in the right direction, so listen carefully to what I’m saying. If it was my father who was kidnapped, I wouldn’t waste time trying to change the way the FBI and State Department think.”

  “If your father was kidnapped, the FBI and State Department wouldn’t be bogged down in political testosterone.”

  He fell silent, then replied in a noticeably softer tone. “I wish I had better news for you. I mean that sincerely.”

  “Just what my father needs. Sincerity.”

  He bade me a hollow “Best of luck,” and with the click in my ear, I had the unsettling sense that the whole FBI had just hung up on me.

  Me and my father.

  5

  It was my job to tell Grandma everything. Or not. Mom left it up to me to decide what a seventy-eight-year-old woman could stand to hear about her only child.

  I left the house at 9:00 A.M. It was an hour’s drive, so I phoned Duncan on my cellular with an update. He was as baffled as I about the FBI’s declination of the State Department’s invitation to intervene in the case.

  “Those twits,” he groused. “Let me make another phone call.”

  “Who are you going to call this time?”

  “Whoever it takes. I’ve been concentrating only on the State Department so far, but sounds like it’s time for a full-court press. I’m sure we know someone who can get right to the FBI director.”

  I loved it when Duncan was fired up about something I needed done. I thanked him several times before hanging up.

  By ten o’clock I was in the Upper Keys, having driven slowly. I wasn’t sure how to put a positive spin on this for Grandma, and part of me kept hoping that the whole conversation would be preempted by a sudden phone call from Mom, a miraculous message that Dad had somehow found his way to the U.S. embassy unharmed. He’d been missing for almost thirty-six hours, however, and the possibility of his successful escape seemed less likely with each passing minute. Abduction was the only logical inference.

  Unless he was dead.

  Not in a million years would Grandma believe that her son had fallen at the hands of some deadbeat Colombian guerrillas. Her son was a fighter, a survivor, like her. Grandma was a “Conch,” a native of the Florida Keys. When she was twelve years old, her house was destroyed by the monster hurricane of 1935 that killed more than four hundred people. The Upper Keys were ravaged, entire families were lost, a rescue train was washed into the sea. At least one fool braved the storm trying to save his fishing boat. Grandma found her father’s body naked in the mangroves, his clothes ripped away by two-hundred-mile-per-hour winds. Nine months later she and her mother moved into one of twenty-nine houses built by the Red Cross for the survivors who’d insisted on staying put and rebuilding their shattered lives. They were built for fishermen and farmers, plain folk who had lost everything. They were built to last. The frame, the walls, the roof were all poured concrete, two hundred fifty tons of it, reinforced by another hundred and fifty thousand pounds of steel rods-all for a two-bedroom house that was a mere six hundred square feet of living space. It was a bunker, virtually indestructible, symbolic of the Conch spirit. Grandma inherited the house when her mother died and made it her home as a young bride. That was the house my father had grown up in.

  It wasn’t an easy life. I remembered seeing an old photo of my father as a young boy seated in the kitchen, each leg of the table resting in a tin can of kerosene to keep the cockroaches from climbing up and walking off with the family meal. Not that there was ever much food around the house. At the age of six my father became the man of the house. He loved the ocean, but hunger had really inspired him to fish. He caught them, Grandma cooked them. It was all they had and all they needed, each other and their Red Cross house. Together they’d survived the occasional hurricane and anything else the world could throw at them.

  Now it was up to me to tell Grandma that her son was missing.

  “Get out!” she shouted.

  I was standing just inside the front door, hadn’t even set foot inside the living room. It wasn’t a case of killing the messenger. It was just one of her bad days. Grandma had Alzheimer’s disease.

  She was seated on the couch watching Judge Judy on the tube, dressed casually in a cotton blouse and plaid Bermuda shorts. Her hair was done the way she’d always worn it, ne
atly cut with a hint of reddish tint. She looked just fine, and it pained me to see her act this way. For months my parents had been trying to persuade her to move in with them, but she wouldn’t budge from her concrete bungalow. A home-care nurse helped her get by from day to day.

  “It’s okay, it’s only me, your-”

  “Don’t you dare set foot in this house!”

  The nurse interceded. “Now, don’t be rude, Marion. It’s family.”

  I tried to make eye contact from across the room, hoping to establish a connection. Her expression was cold, though it wasn’t an unknowing blank stare. She seemed to know me all right. She just didn’t seem to like me very much.

  “I stopped by for a visit,” I said.

  “You pop in once a year, that’s supposed to make everything okay?”

  “It’s okay if you don’t remember, but I was here last month.”

  “Just go!” she shouted, this time flinging an ashtray across the room.

  I ducked as it flew over my head, then shattered on the wall behind me. The nurse pulled me into the hall, out of Grandma’s line of fire. “It’s not a good day for her.”

  “I didn’t mean to bring this on.”

  “You didn’t. Just try again some other time.”

  “Would it really make a difference?”

  “You’d be amazed. The earlier in the day, the better. Before breakfast is best.”

  “I can come back tomorrow.”

  “I’ll call and let you know how she’s doing before you drive all the way down.”

  I thanked her and started out the door.

  “You bastard, Matthew! What kind of a son are you anyway?”

  I looked at the nurse, almost speaking to myself. “She thinks I’m my father?”

  “She’s terribly confused today. But truthfully, you two do look a lot alike. You even sound alike.”

  It wasn’t the first time I’d heard that, but usually it was intended as a compliment. I had my dad’s smile, my dad’s good heart, whatever. No one-least of all his own mother-had ever mistaken me for my father the bastard.