A King's ransom

by James Grippando

  “That was before I saw the way you looked at her at Duffy’s.”

  I chuckled nervously. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  She had a way of stepping on my tail, no wiggling away. “Alex, I’m just trying to do the right thing here.”

  “I think you’re testing my theory.”

  “That is so not true.”

  “Then, if you think Jenna’s the answer, by all means, go with her.”

  “I’m hoping to make a decision tonight.”

  “The sooner the better. Just remember one thing, will you?”

  “What?”

  “Do what’s best for your father.”

  Her delivery was mellifluous, but it still felt as if I’d been hit between the eyes. “Of course,” I said. “That’s all this has ever been about.”

  “Let me know what you decide.”

  “I will,” I said, but there was a click on the line before my response was out. She’d hung up without saying good-bye.

  I met Jenna for dinner in Coral Gables at seven o’clock, as planned. She’d chosen an unpretentious Vietnamese restaurant near her office, called Miss Saigon Bistro. It was the kind of place where Mom cooked her own recipes while her grown kids waited tables, dressed in traditional Vietnamese silk wraps. The tasty smells of beef with lemongrass and steamed soybeans greeted us at the door, as did a singing waiter named Richard, who told us that it would be about an hour before he could seat us.

  We ordered a couple of Bahamian beers and waited outside. Jenna had walked straight from her office on Alhambra Circle and was still wearing her lawyer uniform. I was sporting what might have been called the casual-chic, I’m-out-of-work-but-my-kidnapped-father-has-ten-million-bucks-stashed-somewhere-in-Nicaragua look. We made small talk for a few minutes, but Jenna seemed to sense that I was eager for her answer.

  “I’ve decided to do it.”

  “Do you mean it?”

  “I wouldn’t kid about something like this.”

  “That’s fantastic,” I said, raising my beer in a toast. “Have you cleared it with your firm?”

  “To a point.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “We have a small office. It’s just eight of us. If I spend a substantial amount of time on your case, they naturally would like to know if there’s any hope of getting paid.”

  “There’s no hope for a big hit, if that’s what they’re wondering. The policy limit is three million. Most plaintiff’s attorneys would want a cut of the cash recovery, but in this case the entire amount has to go to the payment of the ransom. That’s the main problem I had in talking to other lawyers.”

  “You talked to other lawyers?”

  My foot was squarely in my mouth. “Yes. But only because I didn’t think you’d say yes.”

  “That’s okay. I didn’t think I’d say yes either.”

  We exchanged a little smile, and then she turned serious. “My partners will be happy with whatever fee the court awards over and above the damages recovered. That’s if we win, of course. They’re more concerned about what happens if we lose.”

  “I’ll pay your hourly rate, but you’ll have to give me terms. Say, six months to pay it off?”

  “Nick, I’m not going to charge you.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “That’s my decision.”

  “I can’t let you do that.”

  “It’s not your decision. Like I said on the phone, I’m doing this for your dad. I owe him that much.”

  “You owe him?”

  She lowered her eyes, the way she always did when touched by emotion. “When my father died last year, I was devastated.”

  “I remember.”

  “It was the worst thing I’d ever gone through. There were days when I wondered if I was ever going to be myself again. Now, of course, I realize I was just fortunate to have been that close to him.”

  “That’s true.”

  “But I was also lucky to have someone like your father to talk to.”

  “My dad?”

  “He was wonderful. That was such a dark time, and he filled a void for me. Just to have someone to turn to for fatherly advice was important to me. That’s something I’m truly indebted to him for.”

  “I never knew that.”

  “That’s the kind of person your father is. He works quietly.”

  I smiled wanly. “Thank you for telling me. I feel better.”

  “About what?”

  “Honestly, it hurt me at first, the way you stressed that you weren’t doing this for me but only for my dad. Now that you’ve explained, it’s nice to hear that someone loves him.”

  “Everyone loves your dad.”

  “That’s what I always thought. But there have been some strange goings-on since the kidnapping. Even his own mother has been saying horrible things about him.”

  “Doesn’t she have Alzheimer’s?”

  “Yeah. But it still bothers me, the way she treats me. She thinks I’m my father. The last two times I visited her, she threw me out of the house. Screamed at me, called me a lousy son. She even made stuff up about a sister that my father never even had, as if to suggest that my dad had somehow mistreated her.”

  “I don’t know about the mistreating part. But your father did have a sister.”

  I did a double take. “He did?”

  “Yeah. He mentioned her in a conversation we had right before my father’s funeral. My mother wanted an open casket, and I didn’t want to see him that way. Your dad said he felt the same way when his sister died. Didn’t want to see her dead. Of course, he was only six or something like that at the time.”

  “How did she die?”

  “He didn’t say. He didn’t really want to talk about it, and I suppose I was too wrapped up in my own grief to probe.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me this?”

  “I guess I figured you knew.”

  “I didn’t know,” I said, with too much edge.

  “I’m sorry. But that isn’t my fault.”

  I took a step back, mindful that I’d been coming on too strong. “You’re right. It’s not your fault.”

  “Forget it. I know you’re under a lot of pressure.”

  “Pressure isn’t the half of it. It seems like I learn something new about my dad every day.”

  “You need to stay focused. Is any of it really all that important?”

  I glanced toward the bar across the street, the lights playing tricks with swirls of cigar and cigarette smoke inside. “Honestly, I don’t know what’s important anymore.”

  “What does that mean?”

  I looked her in the eye and said, “Do you think you could hold down the legal fort a few days if I went away?”

  “Sure. What do you have in mind?”

  “If we’re going to bring my father home, the first thing I’d better do is maybe find out who he is.”

  “Where do you plan to do that?”

  She seemed amused, but I was completely serious. “I’ll start in Nicaragua.”

  PART THREE

  38

  It looked dead. Perfectly still, milky green, no sign of life, Lake Managua stretched for miles below me. As the commercial jet turned to make its final descent, I noticed a lone fishing boat below, no lines cast. I doubted that anything edible could be pulled from these waters.

  I’d done a little homework for my trip, enough to know that Nicaragua was the largest country in Central America and one of the poorest. Tourism was virtually nonexistent, though extreme hikers liked to explore its extensive rain forests in the north-central mountains and along the eastern coast. Ninety percent of the population lived in the Pacific lowlands to the west, mainly in the capital city of Managua, tens of thousands surviving in open-air, tin-roofed shacks like the ones around Sandino International Airport. The lake was the repository of all things to be expected from a city with too many people and too little infrastructure.

  My f
light was an hour late. We taxied down the runway, past the old machine-gun stands that had defended the airport during the bloody Contra-Sandinista war of another decade. Nicaragua was at peace now, but with my father kidnapped by so-called revolutionaries in Colombia, I had to wonder what those former Contras were doing these days with all the leftover guns and ammunition that my own country had so freely provided.

  “Bienvenido,” said the customs agent. “Welcome.” I passed without a search. No one seemed to care what I was bringing into the country. It was what people took out that raised eyebrows.

  “Senor Rey?”

  I turned to see a young man holding a cardboard sign with my name on it. “I’m your driver,” he said in English.

  My first instinct was to thank him and hand him my bag, but I remembered Alex’s words of caution in Colombia. I couldn’t take anything for granted. “Who sent you?”

  “Senor Guillermo Cruz.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Ignacio.”

  That was the name Guillermo had given to me in the previous night’s telephone conversation. Satisfied, I followed Ignacio outside and loaded my bags into the new Mitsubishi Montero waiting at the curb. Ignacio drove us to downtown Managua.

  Last night I’d told Guillermo very little about the purpose of my visit. I’d simply said that some business and personal matters needed to be hashed out. He graciously invited me to stay as long as I wanted.

  “Hold on!” said Ignacio as he slammed the brakes. A herd of goats crossed the busy street in front of us. A group of boys was playing baseball in the wide median, and the goats had been eating the grass in left field before being shooed away.

  Ignacio put the SUV in gear, then stopped short again. This time it was an old guy riding some three-wheeled contraption. A huge basket in front held two squealing hogs-big ones, larger than my old golden retriever. They were throttling each other in a futile effort to break free, their twisted legs protruding through the basket’s wire mesh. One was upside down, on its head. The shrill screeches made me want to jump out and slap the owner. Animal cruelty was something that really bothered me, but this wasn’t Coral Gables.

  “Dinner,” said Ignacio.

  This was my introduction to the nation’s capital and its bustling city center, to the extent it had one. The real heart of Managua had been leveled by a 1972 earthquake that had left six thousand dead, and the temporary shelters that had sprung up were still here. Shacks along the road sold everything from used tires to mattresses. Newer stores abutted vacant lots, crumbling old buildings, and other signs of a thirty-year-old disaster that had yet to be cleaned up. Shoeless kids with dirty faces and tattered clothes were at every intersection, hawking radios, cashews, cigarettes, steering wheels, live parrots in homemade cages, and anything else they could get their hands on. Skinny horses pulled rickety wooden carts laden with vegetables. The taxis were mostly dilapidated old Russian cars, probably from Cuba. If Times Square had its neon signs, Managua had its floppy, hand-painted banners, one after another stretched across the busy streets advertising events and products. Up ahead was the Palace of Justice, its walls bearing the work of Nicaragua’s extremely busy graffiti artists. The most popular image was that of Augusto Sandino, the assassinated revolutionary hero who, from beneath his broad-brimmed sombrero, seemed to survey the country from every available wall and lamppost. A few blocks past the palace, overlooking an urban field of rocks, weeds, and cardboard homes, was the famous black, three-story statue of the campesino with a machine gun over his shoulder.

  “Have you met Senor Cruz before?” asked Ignacio.

  “Only on the telephone. I honestly don’t know much about him, other than that he’s my father’s partner.”

  “I see.”

  “Is he a good man?”

  “You mean Senor Cruz?

  “Yes.”

  He steered through the intersection, smiling at my question. “He’s my boss,” he said simply. I waited for more, but he left it at that.

  We reached headquarters around three o’clock.

  Just the word “headquarters” had me thinking that I was headed for an office building. Rey’s Seafood Company, however, was based in an old ranch-style house that had been converted to commercial use. Security bars covered the windows. Big red flowers brightened the tiny front lawn. Inside, I was greeted by a team of extremely friendly people, none of whom seemed to have any qualms about working a full day on a Saturday as a matter of course.

  “So you’re the son of Senor Rey,” I heard about a dozen times. Invariably some expression of concern for my father followed.

  “We have been praying to the Blessed Virgin every day,” said the receptionist. She was young and quite pretty. All the women here were young and pretty. I wondered if my father was in charge of hiring. For Mom’s sake, I assumed it was Guillermo.

  “Is Guillermo here?” I asked.

  “In back,” said Ignacio. “I’ll take you.”

  We walked through another part of the old house that appeared to have been a garage at one time. A stack of cans filled with marine paint lined the hallway. The branded hide of a brown-and-white cow was draped on the other. We continued through one added-on room after another, somewhere well beyond the footprint of the original house. These were purely administrative offices, not the processing plant. The lab was in one room, where they tested small samples of products that were ready for export. Freezers were in the next room, chain-locked, of course, to keep the frozen shrimp from walking out the door. In the back was the employee kitchen, which smelled of beans and seafood. Finally we reached the end of the hallway. A crucifix was on the door.

  “Senor Cruz is in the chapel.”

  “The chapel?”

  “Of course,” Ignacio said, as if every office had one. “He prays every day. The last few days, twice a day.”

  “For my dad?”

  “He wants it to stop raining on our shrimp farms near Honduras.” He seemed to catch himself, then added, “I’m sure he prays for your father, too.”

  We were talking loud enough to be heard in the next room, and sure enough the door opened. Out walked Guillermo.

  “Nick, good to see you.”

  He gave me a hug, which seemed a bit too affectionate coming from a man I’d never met in person. He must have sensed my stiffness.

  “I feel like I know you, I’ve heard so much about you from your old man.”

  “A few good things, I hope.”

  “Only good things. He’s very proud of you.”

  “That’s nice to hear.”

  “Come back to my office, where we can talk.”

  Ignacio left us, and I followed Guillermo down yet another hallway. He was making small talk about Nicaragua, all the things I needed to see while I was here. The volcanoes, the big cathedral in Granada.

  Guillermo was younger than I’d expected, or at least younger-looking. He was almost as tall as I was, a good six feet, which definitely wasn’t the norm among Nicaraguan men. His smile was as smooth as his walk, and those big, dark eyes would have served him well if he were a Latin singer of love songs. Now that we’d met, I was certain that he, and not my father, had hired all the pretty young girls out front.

  “Good flight over?” he said as we entered his office.

  “Fine.” I took the chair facing his desk. He went around to the other side. I opened my carry-on bag and dumped the box of pastries on his desk. “Here’s the goodies you asked for.”

  “Ah, thank you so much. You know, it’s not that you can’t find guava and cream cheese in Managua. But you just can’t beat the Cuban bakeries in Miami.” He unwrapped one and gulped it down. “So how can I help you?” he said with a mouthful of goo.

  I paused, not sure where to begin. It didn’t seem wise to jump into the FBI allegations about my father’s business partner less than five minutes after meeting him. “My mother and I are getting concerned about Lindsey.”

  “In what way?”

/>   “Granted, it’s not unusual for us to hear nothing from her for weeks, sometimes months. That’s the way she’s decided to live her life. But with Dad kidnapped, we’re starting to worry.”

  “When did you last hear from her?”

  “About two weeks before the kidnapping.”

  He nodded, then reached for another pastry. “Not sure I can help you there.”

  For the first time since the introductory hug, he’d finally stopped smiling. I said, “Last time she called, she was somewhere in Nicaragua. So I was thinking maybe. .”

  “That I was hiding something?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  He seemed too defensive. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not here to accuse anyone of anything, least of all you.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way. But why don’t we just clear the air right away? It’s over between me and Lindsey.”

  The words hit me like ice water. “What do you mean, ‘over’?”

  “Done. Finished. I know your father didn’t approve. Your mother probably didn’t even know.”

  “Are you saying that you and Lindsey. .”

  He arched an eyebrow. “You mean you didn’t know either?”

  “I didn’t know anything.”

  “I thought you came here to talk about Lindsey.”

  “I did, but- What were you doing going out with my sister?”

  He leaned back in his chair, seeming to look past me as he spoke. “It started a few months ago, maybe longer. We saw each other once every couple of weeks, then once a week. Pretty soon she was dropping by here pretty regularly, and people started to talk.”

  “What did my father say?”

  “In a nutshell: Keep your hands off my daughter. He had a million reasons. I’m too old for her, it’s bad for the business, he doesn’t want his daughter hanging around the office. .”

  “You’re married,” I said, using my Earth-to-Guillermo tone of voice.

  “Well, that, too.”

  “So you broke it off?”

  “Not exactly. She did. She said your father wouldn’t allow it.”