A King's ransom

by James Grippando

“Not to deflate your ego, Romeo, but if my father wouldn’t allow it, that would be all the more reason for Lindsey to keep right on seeing you.”

  His wounded expression slowly gave way to a wry smile. “I know that. Hey, maybe I was too old for her.”

  “Or too married.”

  “Jeez, you’re really fixated on that.”

  “Must be a faulty synapse or something. Marriage. Fidelity. Not sure why those concepts are linked in my brain.”

  “Okay, I get your point. You’re the big brother, and I understand how this is touchy for you. But the bottom line is, I haven’t seen your sister in at least a month.”

  His phone rang. He excused himself, picked it up, and grunted a few clipped “Uh-huh”s to whoever was on the other end of the line. He hung up and said, “Sorry to break this off, Nick, but I have to meet a customer. How about dinner tonight?”

  “Sure.”

  He walked me to the door. “I’m sorry about this Lindsey situation. Didn’t mean to drop a bomb on you.”

  “Hey, Lindsey’s always been a box of surprises.”

  “Surprises aren’t good. I always say it’s best to get things out in the open. So tonight I’ll treat you to some Flor de Cana, best rum in Central America. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

  “Deal.”

  “Call me around seven,” he said, then closed the office door.

  My smile faded as I headed down the hall, past the chapel, wondering if there was enough rum in all of Nicaragua to get Guillermo talking about the ten million dollars the FBI seemed to think he was worth.

  39

  Matthew had expected some form of punishment. But not this.

  After the death of Nisho’s husband, it had been straight to solitary confinement for Matthew. Not in a thatched hut or wooden shack, like the one in the FARC camp where he’d met Emilio. This was five days in a hole in the ground. It was deep enough for him to sit upright but not stand. He could lie on his side in the fetal position, but there was no room to stretch out to his full length. The roof overhead was at ground level, made of chopped branches, wide jungle leaves, and thick mosses. It kept out the daylight but not the steady mountain rainfall. In a matter of hours the sides and bottom of his pit were nothing but slimy mud. Last night it had rained hard, and today the chilly water was up to his ankles, as the ground was too saturated for it to drain away.

  Matthew still couldn’t erase the sight of that man sprawled on the rocks beside the river. Joaquin had left him there, of course, no proper burial. All the way back from the tragic sight, Matthew had protested his innocence. Nisho, the new widow, hadn’t seen anything, so she couldn’t say whether Matthew or Jan was lying. Joaquin didn’t have time to sort out the truth. Immediately upon their return to camp, Joaquin ordered his men to start digging. Matthew was thrown in one hole, and Jan went in another one twenty yards away. Better to punish the innocent than to risk letting a guilty man go free. Justice according to Joaquin.

  Matthew tried to think of Cathy, his family-anything to take his mind away from this place. He recounted fishing trips he’d taken, bonefish in the Bahamas, peacock bass in Venezuela. That only brought to mind the ancient fisherman’s motto-“Allah does not subtract from the allotted time of man the hours spent fishing.” He wondered about the hours spent kidnapped, knee-deep in mud in a dark hole in the earth.

  He suddenly cringed. There it was again, that sharp pain in his belly. It had first come upon him two days ago after lunch, a violent episode. Ironically, he’d thought the guards had acted out of kindness in allowing him to eat in daylight with the roof pulled back. Turned out they merely wanted to watch the show. Within ten minutes of finishing his cornmeal, he was doubled over in pain. The vomiting and diarrhea were utterly uncontrollable. He couldn’t even climb out of his hole, and the guards wouldn’t lift him out. They only laughed, and he knew that they’d slipped him something to make him so sick.

  It was back again, the same stabbing sensation in his lower abdomen.

  “Son of a bitch!” he shouted as the pain ripped through his body. He fell on his side in the darkness, mired in filthy water. His body twisted and erupted in the same violent motions, but after two days of this, there was nothing left to expel. His stomach had kept nothing down for at least thirty-six hours. The guards refused to give him more than a few sips of water, insisting that it would only make the diarrhea worse. That wasn’t additional punishment. These morons just couldn’t comprehend the concept of dehydration.

  His body shivered. The water in the bottom of the hole was very cold, but he was too sick to sit up. A thought crossed his mind, a sure way out. If he could just force himself to roll over, he’d be facedown in the thick mud. The water was more than deep enough to drown in. The question was, Could he hold himself down? The survival instinct was strong, but perhaps his body was too weak for his mind to engage it.

  With both fists clenched, he pounded the mud in anger. He was furious with the guards, naturally, and with himself for even having considered the coward’s way out. Mostly he was angry in ways that even he didn’t fully understand. The nausea, the weakness, the darkness in the hole-it was all ganging up on him, pushing him to the brink of hallucination.

  His shivering stopped. The pain remained in his belly, but it was on some other level, a more conscious level, a level at which he was no longer operating. In the darkness he could suddenly see himself as a boy in the Florida Keys, back in the old Red Cross house in which he’d grown up. .

  “Leave her alone!”

  He was five years old and shouting at his father. His terrified sister was standing right behind him, two years older than Matthew but dressed in a diaper. She’d wet the bed the night before, and their father’s solution was to send her off to the school bus dressed in nothing but a diaper, so that all the other kids could see what a baby she was. That would break the habit.

  “Stay out of this, boy!” His father was drunk, as usual. Six o’clock in the morning, and he’d been out all night.

  “Run, Stacy!”

  His father pulled off his belt, slapped the leather strap on the couch. “Don’t move, you little bastards!”

  Matthew charged straight at him, a fifty-pound bull of a boy plowing into a two-hundred-pound drunk. He knocked his old man flat, shattering a lamp in the tumble.

  “Run!” shouted Matthew.

  His father was cursing and swinging wildly, trying to get off his back.

  “Run, Stacy! Run!” Matthew turned to escape, but just as he did, a huge hand grasped his ankle. “Let me go! Let me go!”

  “?Silencio!”

  Matthew was suddenly shaken from his memories. The voice in Spanish had come from somewhere above his dark, covered hole, a place beyond the misery of his childhood. He’d been unaware of his own shouting, though it had obviously been loud enough for the guards to hear.

  The leaves rattled overhead. Someone was opening the roof. Matthew prepared himself for the sudden burst of light, but even on a cloudy day the brightness was too much for eyes that lived in darkness. He couldn’t look up.

  “Lunch,” the man said.

  The familiar voice surprised him. It wasn’t a guard, he knew, since none but Joaquin spoke English. Slowly he looked up toward the hole in the roof, and his eyes began to focus. “Emilio?” he said.

  “Yeah,” he said, then made a face. “Man, it stinks in here.”

  Matthew was still woozy. “What-what are you doing here?”

  “Bringing you lunch.”

  “Are you crazy? They’ll shoot you.”

  “No. I’m a trusty now.”

  “Huh?”

  He handed down a tin plate with two cold sausages. Just the sight of processed meat had Matthew on the verge of relapse.

  “Joaquin trusts me now, so he gives me little tasks.”

  His head was pounding, his belly racked with cramps. It was all so confusing. “Why?”

  “He just does.”

  Matthew slowly rose to
his knees, looked Emilio in the eye as best he could from his hole. His thoughts were jumbled from fever, but he struggled to string the truth together. “You ratted on Jan, didn’t you?”

  “What?”

  “Jan and I talked, just before Nisho’s husband was killed. He accused you of telling Joaquin that he was planning an escape. I told him he was crazy. But it wasn’t paranoia, was it? You told.”

  Emilio checked over his shoulder, as if to see whether any of the guards were close enough to overhear. “Of course I told,” he said softly.

  “I can’t believe you did that.”

  “I had to. That Swede is trouble. That first day we left the FARC camp, Joaquin warned us what would happen if you tried to escape. If you failed, Joaquin would kill me, the daddy. If you succeeded, he’d kill Rosa, the mommy.”

  “He made those rules to keep me from escaping.”

  “Not just you. He had the same rules for Jan. And then the idiot came to me, asking me to escape with him. He expected me to leave Rosa behind for Joaquin to execute. Wouldn’t you have snitched?”

  Matthew tried to focus, but in his weakened, sick condition, things were starting to spin. Murders, false accusers, snitches. This was Pitcairn Island.

  “If Joaquin trusts you,” said Matthew, “then get me out of here. You know I didn’t kill Nisho’s husband.”

  “Just because Joaquin lets me bring you lunch doesn’t mean I can sit down and negotiate with him.”

  “Try,” he said, his voice breaking. “Somebody has to get me out of this hole. I’m going crazy in here.”

  “Hang in there, okay? I don’t think you’ll be in much longer. He let Jan out yesterday.”

  “Him?” Matthew said, nearly losing it. “Why him? Why am I getting the worse punishment?”

  “Maybe Joaquin thinks your spirit is stronger. He wants to break it.”

  A wave of nausea hit him, chipping away at his will to endure. “If he’s going to kill me, tell him to just do it. Please, I don’t want to go through this hell and end up dead anyway.”

  “You can’t give up, Matthew. I don’t think he’ll kill you, even if he thinks you killed Nisho’s husband.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The guards tell me that the Japanese guy wasn’t such a big loss, at least from Joaquin’s point of view. He thinks Nisho’s family will pay as much for her release as they would have paid for both of them. It’s not like buying two cars with a price tag for each of them. These kidnappers just come up with a big number that they think the family can pay. Joaquin’s not going to lower his price just because it’s only Nisho’s life on the line and not Nisho and her husband.”

  “So I guess he’s glad her husband is gone.”

  “I wouldn’t say ‘glad.’ ”

  “I would. Have you seen the way he looks at Nisho? He’s more than happy to have her husband out of the way.”

  “I haven’t really noticed.”

  “Then take notice. I don’t care if you are a trusty, Emilio. I know you’re a decent man. If somebody doesn’t stand up to these guards, they’re going to have their way with Nisho, then Rosa, then Nisho again, and again, and again. I can’t do anything from in here, so it’s up to you. Don’t let it happen, you hear me?”

  Their eyes locked. Matthew was stone-faced, unflinching.

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Emilio pulled away. Matthew just watched as the leaves and fronds returned to their place on the roof overhead, and his hole returned to darkness.

  40

  Guillermo canceled on me. I didn’t get a specific reason, just a message at my hotel that he couldn’t take me out for the Flor de Cana rum and additional rounds of truth-telling that he’d promised. Somehow I wasn’t surprised.

  I ate dinner in my room, alone, then called my mother to let her know that I hadn’t been eaten by cannibals, thrown into a raging volcano as a human sacrifice, or otherwise victimized in any of the horrible ways that she’d imagined were commonplace in Central America.

  I didn’t tell her about Guillermo and Lindsey.

  By nine o’clock I was bored out of my mind. I went to the balcony and checked out the street life three stories below. Pretty dead, except for the usual sights. Teams of kids in the intersection were still selling junk and begging for cordobas. I was pretty sure they were the same kids I’d seen almost eight hours ago. The boy with one leg I definitely remembered. Ditto for the girl with the baby face who already had two babies of her own, one in each arm. Farther up the street the strip club with the big red lips painted on the door seemed to be hopping. Groups of men would walk in drunk, get all steamed up, and then come out, one at a time, to cut a ten-dollar deal with one or more of the thirteen-year-old girls who walked the street in their fishnet stockings and five-inch heels.

  What in the hell were my father and sister doing here?

  I went back inside. I was feeling lonely, a little depressed, and definitely confused. I picked up the telephone and started to dial Alex’s number. I hung up on impulse and called Jenna instead.

  “Hey, it’s Nick. You got a minute?”

  “Um-okay.”

  I suddenly realized it was Saturday night, almost 11:00 P.M. in Miami, and that she might be with someone. “I can call back.”

  “No, it’s okay. It’s my fault for answering. Now you know I’m one of those lonely girls who sit at home Saturday nights watching reruns on Lifetime.”

  Shame on me, but that made me feel good.

  I talked a little about the legal case against the insurance company, but only as a pretext for having called her. She steered the conversation toward what she’d done all day, I brought it back to the amazing things I’d seen since landing in Managua, and the rest just flowed. It was easy, reminiscent of countless nights after midnight that we’d gone back to her place with a pint of ice cream and just talked, not really noticing how the time was passing until one of us would look at the clock and say, “My God, it’s four A.M.”

  “You think you’ll find Lindsey?” she asked.

  It was a hard question to answer without giving her the background. I hadn’t told my mother, but another perspective would have been helpful. Jenna’s point of view was one I’d always respected, so I told her.

  “Wow,” she said. “Didn’t expect that out of your little sister.”

  “Tell me about it. We didn’t expect Duncan Fitz to accuse her of masterminding my father’s kidnapping either.”

  “I don’t want to give Duncan’s theory too much credence. But still, have you given any thought as to which way the affair with Guillermo cuts?”

  “How do you mean?” I asked.

  “Let me step into Duncan Fitz’s shoes for a second,” she said. “You start with the idea that your father wasn’t very happy about his twenty-four-year-old daughter having an affair with a married man twice her age. He forbids her to see Guillermo. It’s at least plausible that Lindsey arranged her father’s kidnapping as retaliation for his trying to control her life.”

  “Pretty diabolical, don’t you think?”

  “Or it could be collusion,” said Jenna. “Lindsey and Guillermo may have teamed up and gotten rid of your father because he disapproved of their winter-spring romance.”

  “Now you’re thinking more like Duncan Fitz than Duncan Fitz does.”

  “Are you saying that you’re not even considering those possibilities?”

  “Are you saying I should?”

  She didn’t answer. I tried to read her silence, but my thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. I checked the clock. After midnight. Even without two spoons and a pint of Oreos ‘n’ Cream, we’d lost track of time.

  “Someone’s at the door. I better go.”

  “Ditto. It’s two o’clock here.”

  I hesitated, afraid to push the personal issues too far. “Jenna?” I said, as if testing the waters.

  “Yeah?”

  “All this Lindsey stuff aside, it was good talking to
you. I mean, really talking. I miss that.”

  I sensed a smile on the other end of the line. “Anytime.”

  I smiled to myself.

  “But, Nick?”

  I winced. I hated those “But, Nick”s. “What?”

  “Don’t ignore what I said about Lindsey. And be very careful down there.”

  Her voice had a tone that I knew well. She really meant it.

  “I will,” I said. “Good night.”

  Her “good night” was followed almost immediately by another knock on my hotel door. I hung up the phone and walked to the peephole. The light in the hallway was burned out, however, and I saw only a silhouette in the darkness.

  “Who is it?”

  “Maria.”

  “Maria who?”

  “Portilla. From Rey’s Seafood. We met this afternoon, remember?”

  I looked again through the peephole, and now the shape was familiar. It was the pretty young receptionist who’d said she’d been praying to the Blessed Virgin for my father. “Just a second.”

  I was wearing only jogging shorts, since my “air-conditioned” room came with a noisy old window unit that was, frankly, more full of hot air than Guillermo was. I pulled on a T-shirt, then unchained the lock and opened the door. Maria stepped in without waiting for an invitation. She seemed a little nervous as I closed the door.

  “I’m sorry to come by this late.”

  From the expression on her face, I could tell this was important. “That’s okay. I was awake anyway.”

  “I just came from dinner with some of the girls from the office. I didn’t know, but one of them said that she thought you were here looking for your sister.”

  “I didn’t really want to announce that. But, yes, that’s one of the reasons I came here.”

  She seated herself on the edge of the bed. I pulled up the desk chair and straddled it, my arms atop the backrest.

  “I might be able to help you,” she said.

  “How?”

  “I was one of the few friends Lindsey made here. I was the only one she told about her and Guillermo.”

  “So it’s true they were lovers?”