A King's ransom

by James Grippando

  “You’re making this personal. And you’re going to regret it.”

  “It already is personal. And my only regret is that it took my father’s kidnapping to open my eyes.”

  The chime sounded and the tram doors opened. Even though we were five stops away from the courthouse, Duncan started for the platform. On his way out he glared at me and said, “This was low. Even for you.”

  He stepped off, the doors closed, and the tram pulled away from the station.

  It had actually felt good to air my true feelings, not just about the kidnapping but about the kind of lawyer Duncan had tried to mold me into. But watching him through the window as he hurried down the steps to street level, my heart sank with the fear that another precious door had just closed on my father. For good.

  56

  Matthew had no idea where he was. Without the benefit of pack mules they’d marched deep into the valley. At the first sighting of a real road, the prisoners were blindfolded, first Emilio and then Matthew.

  They walked about another hundred meters, the barrel of the rifle poking him in the back, urging him forward. They stopped on command. He heard a car door open, and he was shoved into the back of a van. He heard Emilio bang his head and curse, which strangely comforted Matthew. At least he knew he wasn’t going alone. The door slammed, the engine started. The van pulled away, a very bumpy ride at first, then a little smoother. It felt like the same road that they’d taken from Cartagena when this whole nightmare had started, but with the blindfold he had no way of knowing.

  “Emilio?” he whispered.

  “?Silencio!” said the driver.

  He recognized the voice as Joaquin’s. Matthew retreated into darkness, strangely deprived of more than just his sight by the thick blindfold. Bouncing in the rear of the van had put his entire equilibrium off.

  He lay on his side on the metal floor, the tires of the van whining just below his ear. Seated in front were at least two guerrillas. Matthew sensed the presence of others, but he’d heard only two voices. The driver was definitely Joaquin, and he was pretty sure the other guy was Cerdo. He was complaining that his new street clothes were too tight, but Matthew’s mind had already raced beyond the petty gripes. If they were wearing new clothes, they were leaving their guerrilla fatigues behind. Matthew knew what that meant.

  They were headed for the city.

  He tried not to start the emotional roller coaster, but his spirits soared anyway. A trip to the city could certainly be a sign that his release was in the works. The blackness behind the blindfold was suddenly a happy place. He saw Cathy’s smiling face, his hand on her pregnant belly. He saw Thanksgiving dinner in Coral Gables with Nick and Lindsey at the table. He saw hot showers and razor blades and juicy sirloin steaks.

  He didn’t care if silence was the rule. He needed to ask a question.

  “?Adonde vamos?” Where are we going?

  “?Silencio!” shouted Joaquin.

  It was risky to act up, but Matthew was tired of the abuse, tired of knowing nothing. “?Adonde vamos?” he asked once more.

  The other guy, Cerdo, said something that made Joaquin laugh. Matthew didn’t understand what he’d said.

  “?Donde?” he said.

  Neither one answered. Joaquin was still chuckling softly to himself. Finally Matthew heard a whisper from Emilio in English.

  “He says we’re headed for the hostage hotel.”

  Matthew retreated into dark silence. Somehow it hadn’t struck him as all that funny.

  57

  Dinner was at Mom’s house. I worried about her a lot lately, and tonight’s dinner only heightened my concerns. Since the kidnapping we’d made it a practice to eat only in the kitchen, never in the dining room where she and Dad had normally shared dinner. Tonight, however, without explanation, she methodically set three places at the dining table. One for her. One for me. And one for Dad.

  I sat across the table from Mom eating my beef Stroganoff in silence, trapped by fear. It might have helped to talk things out, but I didn’t want to risk showing Mom how worried I was. Alex and I were supposed to deliver the ransom in a matter of days, and I still had no idea where the money would come from.

  “Dinner was delicious,” I said as I planted a kiss on her forehead.

  “My obstetrician says I’m not gaining enough weight. I make the most fattening food in my cookbook, and I’m still the skinniest pregnant woman in his office.”

  “That’s because you’ve hardly touched your food. Please, try to eat something.”

  Her eyes drifted toward the living room in an empty gaze.

  I took my plate to the kitchen, then came back to the table and reached for the clean plate at Dad’s chair.

  “No,” she said sharply. “That stays until your father walks through that door.”

  I backed off. Whatever helped her to get from one day to the next was healthy in the big picture, I supposed.

  “Have you talked to Grandma this week?” I asked.

  “I saw her on Monday. She’s slipping more and more each day. I doubt she’ll know her son when he returns.”

  “I know about that,” I said, thinking of the way she’d booted me out twice. “It’s good that you visit her. Maybe it will keep some spark alive somewhere inside her.”

  “I hate the way she talks about your father. He was such a good son to her, and she somehow has it in her head that he’s good for nothing.”

  “Alzheimer’s can make people say horrible things. Things they don’t mean.”

  “I know. I went through a little bit of the same thing with your father when he used to drink. Every now and then I used to wonder if the disease was making him say things he didn’t mean. Or if it was unleashing his true feelings. Is that silly?”

  “Totally,” I said as I squeezed her hand in mine.

  “I shouldn’t even be thinking of that. Every day since your father has been gone, I’ve tried to remember the good times. But tragedy has a way of bringing back the bad times as well. Is it that way for you, too?”

  I could see the pain in her eyes. I moved closer, held her in my arms. “Try to think of what’s good,” I said, hoping that she wouldn’t notice the way I hadn’t really answered her question.

  I felt like a hypocrite. There I was, telling Mom to think only good thoughts, when for fifteen years I hadn’t been able to purge my own heart.

  Ironically, the physical separation caused by the kidnapping had made me realize how stupid I’d been to let things fester all these years. The emotional gap between my father and me wasn’t exactly oceans wide, but it was definitely born of the sea. Dad had always taught me to respect the ocean, but he’d pushed me to conquer all fears of it as well. Perhaps it was somehow connected to the loss of his sister in that boating accident, which I’d known nothing about until Jenna had told me just a couple of weeks before. Whatever the root, it had always seemed somewhat irrational to me. When he drank, it could get downright ugly.

  Alone in the family room, I felt my mind drifting, but I didn’t want to go there. I had to follow my own advice and think only of the good times.

  I grabbed the remote control and started to channel-surf, lying on the couch. A hundred stations of nothing to watch, as usual. I switched off the set, and my gaze drifted toward my father’s big saltwater aquarium across the room. The angelfish were fighting as always, chasing each other around the submerged plastic shipwreck at the bottom. As a child I used to imagine myself diving around that wreck and pulling up treasure. I could see myself in mask and fins knifing through the depths, the world’s greatest diver who didn’t even use tanks. A diver was what I’d wanted to be-before my worst day ever with my father, our last on the water together. I was twelve years old. Dad and I had joined a group of other fathers and sons on a boating trip to Biscayne Bay, skindiving for lobsters. I tried never to think of that day, and I didn’t want to think about it now. But I was getting lost in that aquarium, lost in my past. .

  Gulf stream
waters felt warm all around me, caressing my skin, making me almost giddy. Though completely submerged, I could glance up and see the sun. So clear was the water that intermittent clouds were actually casting shadows across the bottom of the bay. I was skin diving at a depth of fifteen feet with a mask and snorkel, no scuba tanks, poking around some rocks.

  Other boys around me were gathering lobsters into sacks. We’d come upon a huge colony. The floor was moving with crustaceans. I saw a big one scamper over a grassy hump, then behind some rocks. I swam right to the hole and reached inside.

  Suddenly an eel lunged from a crevice. I immediately pulled back, but its powerful jaws locked on to my forearm. I struggled to get away, but the rear half of the eel was coiled around a large rock. My diving gloves extended up to my elbow, so the bite didn’t break the skin. But the eel was too strong, and I couldn’t shake free. I needed to surface for air, but it was holding me under. In my panic I was taking in water, a little at first, then huge mouthfuls.

  My father swam over to help. He poked at the eel with a stick, but it only tightened its grip on my glove. My father grabbed a rock and hit it. Its tail uncoiled from the rock that had anchored it, but the snakelike head was still staring me in the face, locked to my arm. It was at least three feet long-monstrous to me. Dad grabbed the eel and me, pulling us up. We broke the surface, and I gasped for air. I wasn’t even sure what was happening. My arm felt numb, but the eel was still with me. Dad pushed us to the dive platform at the stern, then climbed up and pushed us into the boat.

  I was screaming, more shocked than in pain. The eel was flopping on the deck, refusing to let go. My father was screaming, too-at me.

  “I told you never to poke your hands in those rocks. Use a stick!”

  “Get it off me!”

  “If I hadn’t been there to pull you up, you could have drowned!”

  “I’m sorry!”

  I just wanted this awful thing off me. Even as a boy, I knew that an eel would never let go. The only way to get free was to cut off its head.

  “Cut it off!” I cried.

  “You do it!”

  Dad handed me the knife. But I was too afraid, too shaken.

  “Do it, Nick!”

  “I can’t, I can’t!”

  He grimaced and grabbed the knife, shouting, “Damn it, Nick! For one lousy day in your life, can’t you just act like your father’s son!”

  He lopped off the head. The long body fell limp to the deck.

  I rolled away sobbing, more stunned by my father’s words than by the bite of the eel. I was lying on the deck, holding my arm, my lips quivering. I’d have a bad bruise, for sure, but the diving glove had protected my skin.

  I looked up and saw immediate contrition in my father’s eyes. He knelt beside me and took me in his arms. Tears were streaming down his face. “God, I’m so sorry, Nicky!”

  I could smell the liquor on him. I didn’t know which to believe, the outburst against me or the tearful apology. But it was too late for forgiveness anyway. I looked up and saw the stunned faces aboard the boat that had anchored beside us.

  I’d been utterly emasculated in front of my five closest friends and their very sober fathers. .

  The chiming clock on the wall roused me from my memories. It was 9:00 P.M., and time was marching toward a deadline we might not be able to meet. But mercifully, time also had a way of healing. I had long ago gotten over the embarrassment of that diving trip, and Dad had won his battle with alcoholism. What had yet to be laid to rest, however, was the underlying fear that Mom had verbalized earlier tonight-that his drinking had perhaps unleashed his true, inner feelings. In all honesty, I didn’t always act like my father’s son. But I was still his son, always would be.

  I vowed that when he came home-just as soon as he walked through the front door and sat down for dinner at the place Mom had set for him-I’d say those exact words to him.

  Finally we’d be past it.

  “Nick!” my mother called.

  I shot bolt upright. It was almost eleven, and I’d dozed off on the couch.

  “Come here!”

  The urgency in her voice propelled me down the hall. I found her in the living room holding an envelope.

  “I just took out the garbage and saw this tucked under your wiper blade.”

  It was a plain white envelope, no addressee, no return address, no markings of an international courier service. It was unlike any of the past deliveries from the kidnappers.

  I opened it. Inside was a single sheet of paper.

  “What is it?” asked Mom.

  I read it, but the point didn’t register. “Just a guy’s name and address. Jaime Ochoa.”

  “Sounds Hispanic. You think he works for the kidnappers?”

  I started to answer, then stopped. The name was suddenly familiar to me. I checked the back side. “Oh, my God.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t think Mr. Ochoa works for the kidnappers. Check this out.”

  She read aloud. “ ‘Nick. Ask why he got fired. A friend.’ ” She looked up at me and asked, “Who’s ‘a friend’?”

  It was just a guess, but the only person who came to mind was Duncan’s secretary. I smiled thinly and said, “Thank you, Beverly.”

  PART FOUR

  58

  I was in Hialeah before the morning rush hour. I hadn’t bothered with a phone call before starting out on the road. From what I remembered of my last meeting with Jaime Ochoa, hitting him cold was the way to go.

  The note was cryptic, but it was just enough to set my thoughts in motion. Jaime was the so-called psychic who’d sent me the e-mail a little more than a week after my father’s kidnapping, claiming to know his whereabouts. I’d thought it was a total scam. With this latest note, however, I had a compelling sense that Jaime really did know something and that his knowledge was linked to the vague question of “why he got fired.”

  I knocked twice before he came to the door dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, no shoes.

  “Hey, Mr. Nick, I knew you’d be back.”

  A predictable greeting from a guy who’d claimed to “know” everything. “I wanted to follow up on some things. Got a few minutes?”

  “Sure.” He opened the door and led me back to the kitchen. I entered carefully, checking for that Doberman pinscher that had pinned me against the wall last time. I heard barking outside, looked out the window, and was relieved to see Sergeant chained to the doghouse.

  Jaime went to the espresso machine on the Formica counter and measured out a scoop of ground Pilon. “Have you reconsidered my power package?”

  “Let’s not waste time with that psychic stuff again, all right?”

  “I do know all.”

  “But not because you’re psychic.” I was pushing it, but I had to pretend to know more than I did. “It’s from your other job, isn’t it? The one you were fired from.”

  He placed his espresso cup beneath the drip and said, “Jaime Ochoa has never been fired from any job.”

  “I’m not talking about just any job,” I said, still fishing.

  “I know exactly what you’re talking about. Jaime Ochoa never worked for Quality Insurance Company.”

  My heart raced. He was in denial, but at least he’d confirmed my suspicions that we were talking about Quality Insurance. “That’s not what I hear,” I said, bluffing.

  “Then you heard wrong. Jaime Delpina was fired from Quality Insurance. Not Jaime Ochoa.”

  “Who’s Jaime Delpina?”

  The little espresso cup was full. He downed it in one swallow, then said, “Yours truly.”

  “You changed your name?”

  “They made me change it.”

  “The company?”

  “Claro.”

  “Why would you let them do that?”

  “Because they gave Jaime Delpina a choice. Go to jail or disappear.”

  “I’m pretty sure I know the reason, but you tell me. Why did they want you to disappear?”


  He smiled thinly. “Sorry, my friend. For the rest of the story I must tap into my inner clairvoyance.”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s all you get for free, Jack,” he said flatly.

  “You expect me to pay you money?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “That’s extortion.”

  “It’s just business.”

  “Not when the business is kidnapping. Maybe I’ll call the state attorney and see what she thinks it is.”

  “You’d be a fool to do that.”

  “Watch me.” I started for the door.

  “Hold it.”

  I stopped.

  He said, “Let’s be reasonable about this. The policy limit is three million dollars. You’ll probably deliver the ransom by pack mule through two or three intermediaries. Do you honestly think the kidnappers will even notice that you slipped a little something to me?”

  “You’ve seen the policy, haven’t you? That’s how you know it’s three million.”

  “I told you, I know all.”

  “And you’re going to tell all, too.”

  “Surely, for fifty thousand dollars, cash.”

  “I don’t have to pay you fifty cents. I’ll subpoena you.”

  “And I’ll forget everything I know.”

  With that, something snapped inside me. I was tired of being extorted by kidnappers and scumbags like Jaime. I started toward him and said, “Maybe I’ll just beat it out of you.”

  “Bad move,” he said as he grabbed a big kitchen knife from the counter.

  I stopped cold, then took a step back. “Take it easy, pal. I wasn’t serious.”

  “You looked serious.”

  “There’s no need for a knife.”

  “I don’t see any other way to keep you from walking out that door.”

  “Just let me pass, all right?”

  “Can’t let you go to no state attorney. I changed my name to stay out of prison.”