Black Horizon

by James Grippando

  Conch Republic

  90 Miles from Cuba

  A protestor covered in black oil stood beside the buoy with a homemade sign of her own: LESS THAN FIFTY MILES FROM CUBAN OIL. A long line of more protestors squeezed past her, their bodies likewise covered with oil. They brandished poster-sized photographs of dead animals on an oil-drenched beach—porpoises, manatees, giant sea turtles, and birds of all kinds.

  “Stop the drilling, stop the killing,” was their chant.

  Jack walked to a grassy area adjacent to the buoy that had been cordoned off with yellow police tape. It was for “media only.” The famous marker and the steady line of protestors made Southernmost Point coveted space for TV morning shows and endless hours of “spill coverage.”

  The Action News interview of Harry Swyteck was already under way. The former governor and Rhea Sonnet, the attractive brunette co-host of Ronaldo & Rhea, were seated in matching director’s chairs, their backs to the turquoise water. Behind them, cleanup crews prepared for the worst, maneuvering huge oil-containment booms into position. The police tape kept Jack and the other onlookers at a distance from the makeshift set, but the interview was broadcast in real time over a concert-quality loudspeaker.

  “What are they talking about?” asked Theo.

  “How the U.S. government needs to get American expertise to the source of the spill.”

  Theo asked another question, but Jack blew him off, his focus on the interview. The Action News reporter continued her line of questioning.

  “Governor, right now the Cuban navy is standing between the source of the spill and U.S. cleanup capabilities. What can be done about that?”

  “This is a major crisis. If dispersants aren’t applied close to the source, uncontained oil can’t be dispersed, burnt, or skimmed. That means all of our standard response technologies, like containment booms, are ineffective once the oil drifts out of Cuban waters. We have to break the standoff. Our responders and equipment need to get through.”

  The wind was kicking up, and the reporter fought to keep her hair out of her face. “Do you mean military action?”

  “No, of course not. Diplomatic channels.”

  “Action News has heard unconfirmed reports that the Cuban government will roll back the naval blockade and allow U.S. cleanup efforts in Cuban waters only if the U.S. agrees to end the fifty-year trade embargo against Cuba. Do you care to comment on that?”

  “I hope that’s not true. But that’s an issue for the White House, not a retired governor.”

  Another gust from the ocean, and Rhea struggled to keep the windward side of her oversprayed hair from flapping in the breeze like a loose jib.

  “Fair enough,” she said. “Since it has been more than a decade since you left the Governor’s Mansion, let’s refresh our viewers on where you stood on some of the key issues raised by the current crisis. You opposed offshore drilling, am I right?”

  “Yes. And so did the overwhelming majority of Floridians, who elected me to two terms in office.”

  “You were also a firm supporter of the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba.”

  “That is true.”

  “Looking back on it now, do you find it surprising that voters back then didn’t see the linkage between the two issues?”

  Jack was standing fifty feet away from the interview, but even at that distance he could see the discomfort in his father’s body language.

  “Linkage?” said Harry. “I don’t see any linkage.”

  “Really?” she said. “Let me share with you a quote that was issued this morning by a senior official in Cuba’s diplomatic corps. He states: ‘When Cuba decided to drill offshore in the Gulf of Mexico in the mid-1990s, the first letters sent by Cuba’s government to invite foreign concerns to participate went exclusively to U.S. energy companies. They declined interest, due to the embargo, and Cuba looked for partners elsewhere.’ Your reaction, sir?”

  Again Harry hesitated, seemingly tongue-tied. “I . . . I don’t know anything about that.”

  “You were governor during that time period, correct?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “The implication seems obvious, does it not? But for the embargo, we would now have U.S. oil companies with two decades of deepwater drilling experience in the Cuban basin. Instead, we have an underexperienced Chinese, Russian, and Venezuelan consortium spilling oil on Florida’s beaches.”

  “Well . . . that’s . . . uh.”

  Jack cringed. It was the kind of spit-in-your eye remark that called for sharp response, and one obvious comeback was that the Deepwater Horizon disaster had managed to become the most expensive man-made disaster in history without any involvement at all from Chinese, Russian, or Venezuelan companies. But Harry was still fumbling for words.

  Shit, Dad. She’s killing you.

  “Look, I—we . . . um.”

  “Governor, wouldn’t you admit that this is a case of twenty-first-century technology and environmental policy bumping up against Cold War ideology?”

  Harry paused, then finally managed a sentence: “As a nation, the appropriate thing is to deal with the problem at hand, not point fingers.”

  Jack allowed his gaze to drift toward the shoreline, away from the journalistic carnage on the makeshift set. While his father had held his own and done Jack proud at the White House with the chief of staff and at the airport with the FBI, there was nothing like a live media ambush to expose the vulnerability of a retired politician who was no longer in the day-to-day fray. Governor Swyteck in his prime would not have been so easily pushed around, and it was a painful reality check for Jack: his dad was getting older, if not old.

  “The guv ain’t gonna like that tape,” said Theo.

  Mercifully, the segment ended. The reporter thanked the governor, cut to a commercial, and then stepped out of the ocean breeze to fix her hair.

  Jack wondered if he should quietly slip away, if the best thing would have been to let his father think he’d missed the interview. But Harry spotted him in the crowd and waved him over. A police officer let Jack pass under the tape. The governor met him halfway between the morning-show crew and the spectators.

  “Pretty awful, wasn’t it?” Harry said impishly.

  “Oh, I didn’t think it was so bad.”

  Harry smiled. “Liar.”

  “Okay, you’ve done better.”

  “It’s been a rough week,” Harry said, his smile fading. “Really rough.”

  Jack felt a wave of guilt—and a splash of insight. Guilt about the stress and anxiety his trip-to-Cuba troubles had caused; insight into the fact that he and Andie knew virtually nothing about the never-ending job of parenting. “I’m sorry about that, Dad.”

  Harry blinked awkwardly, as if he had something in his eye—both eyes.

  “Are you okay?” asked Jack.

  “Like I said, rough week. Can you do me a favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “First, keep smiling.”

  Jack rolled his eyes. “Okay.”

  “I’m serious. The media are swarming all over the place. It’s very important to keep smiling.” Harry dug his car keys from his pocket and handed them to Jack.

  “You want me to move your car?” asked Jack.

  “No.” Again Harry blinked hard, this time even more awkwardly.

  “Dad, are you sure you’re okay?”

  Harry took a breath. “You and I are going smile our way right past the cameras, the reporters, and everyone else between here and my car.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then,” said Harry, taking another breath. “Then I want you to drive me to the emergency room.”

  Chapter 29

  Jack was desperate for information.

  The largest hospital in Key West was Lower Keys Medical Center, at the opposite end of the island from Southernmost Point, but still fewer than five miles away. Even in traffic, it had taken Jack less than fifteen minutes to get his father into the ER. A doctor evaluated him immediat
ely. Jack hadn’t heard a thing since they’d whisked his father away in a wheelchair to radiology for a CT scan.

  Stroke was the unspoken fear.

  “Any word yet?” Jack asked the desk attendant.

  “Not yet.”

  “It’s been two hours.”

  “We’re totally jammed. Lots of injuries with people preparing for the oil spill. Three hernias and two ruptured discs already this morning. They shouldn’t make those sandbags so heavy.”

  Jack returned to the waiting room. A woman with a vomit bucket in her lap had taken his chair by the window. Whatever ailment she had, Jack didn’t want it. He moved to the other end of the room, closer to the homeless guy with infected needle marks on his arms.

  “Got any coin, dude?”

  The homeless guy had his hand out. Jack gave him a buck and turned his attention to more spill coverage on the TV. Jack caught a glimpse of what cleanup crews were doing with those heavy sandbags on the beaches.

  “A whole dollar, huh?” said the homeless guy. “That don’t buy much dish soap for all those birdies about to be covered in oil.”

  Jack ignored him, but it triggered a weird chain of thought. Freddy Foman popped into his brain, along with countless other lawyers who, at the first sight of oil, would point to the birds and file for billions of dollars in “lost profit” claims on behalf of anyone with his hand out.

  The sliding door opened. A nurse rolled Harry into the waiting room in a wheelchair. Jack popped up from his seat and went to him.

  “What’s the word?”

  “I’m fine,” said Harry. “Just stress.”

  Just stress. “People die from stress.”

  “I’m not dying.”

  “Why are you still in a wheelchair?”

  The nurse answered for him. “Anyone who gets any kind of diagnostic testing on the brain or head leaves in a wheelchair. It’s hospital policy.”

  A policy born of lawsuits filed by the likes of Freddy Foman, no doubt. “So you’re fine, really?” asked Jack.

  “Really,” said Harry. “Just needed to adjust my blood-pressure medication.”

  Jack felt relief. Stroke and Alzheimer’s had been among the parade of horribles coursing through his brain in the previous two hours. He just hoped his father was being completely straight with him.

  “Can you drive me back to the hotel?” asked Harry.

  “Sure. I’ll bring the car around.”

  The nurse wheeled Harry across the waiting room as Jack walked ahead to the exit. A pleasant morning had turned into a hot afternoon. Jack was crossing the car port just outside the ER when his phone rang. It was Bianca. He talked while continuing to the parking lot.

  “I had lunch with Theo,” she said. “He says Josefina gave you more letters that Rafael wrote to me. Why didn’t you tell me? I would love to see them.”

  Jack didn’t answer right away. Before the court hearing, he had shared the good news with her—that he had brought back the wedding photographs and the marriage certificate. He hadn’t shared the bad news about the letters.

  “I’m sorry, Bianca. I don’t have the letters anymore.”

  “What happened?”

  Jack measured his response. His kidnapping was not public information, and he was under strict orders from the FBI not to say anything about it to anyone—his client included—until law enforcement could investigate the kidnapper’s claim of sabotage on the Scarborough 8.

  “My bag was stolen,” said Jack.

  “Where?”

  “In Havana.”

  “Did they catch the guy?”

  “No.”

  “How did it happen?”

  Jack didn’t want to make things up, but the truth was that the letters had been the only things missing from his bag when his kidnapper released him.

  “There’s not much I can tell you,” said Jack. “The FBI is involved.”

  There was silence on the line. Bianca was young and new to America, but she wasn’t stupid.

  “Over stolen luggage? What can the FBI do about a little crime like that in Havana?”

  Jack found his father’s Cadillac baking in the sun. Oven-like heat poured from within as he opened the door and climbed behind the wheel. Black interior in Florida made no sense to Jack. He broke a sweat in just the few seconds it took him to turn the key and power on the AC.

  “It’s complicated,” said Jack. “I’ll try to explain later. Right now I’m at the hospital.”

  “Hospital? Why?”

  “That’s another story.”

  “Stop it!” she said. It was the first time she had raised her voice at Jack.

  “I hear your frustration,” said Jack.

  “This is not fair! I asked Theo lots of questions at lunch, but he says almost nothing. And now you say everything is ‘complicated’ or ‘another story.’ Why the secrets? Why are you not telling everything to me about Havana? This is my case. My life.”

  Jack let the car idle in park but put the air on MAX, all vents aimed at his face. It wasn’t just the heat that had him sweating.

  “Okay, Bianca. You’re right. I can’t be specific, but your case is going through a few changes. At first, I was looking at human error or maybe a technical failure on the Scarborough 8 that caused an explosion. Rafael’s death may involve more than that. We are seriously looking at sabotage.”

  “You mean someone did this on purpose? Who?”

  “We don’t know. The FBI asked me not to even mention the word sabotage, and you can’t, either. If this goes public, it could compromise the investigation. That doesn’t help law enforcement, and in the long run, it doesn’t help your case. Right now, the important point is this: if it was sabotage, we are up against some ruthless people. We all need to be aware of that. And we should be a little extra careful.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I don’t want to scare you. The FBI is not advising that we all go out and hire bodyguards. Just don’t be afraid to call me or Theo anytime, for any reason.”

  “Like, for what?”

  “For—”

  A loud slap to the rear window sent Jack’s heart into his throat. The passenger-side door flew open. Harry Swyteck got in.

  “Damn, Jack. How long does it take to bring a car around?”

  Jack covered his phone. “Sorry. I needed to take this call.”

  “Never been chased out of a hospital before.”

  “What?”

  “I gave some homeless guy a buck to help clean up the birds, and he went running all over the waiting room, shouting at the top of his lungs about what a cheapskate I am.”

  There but for the grace of God . . .

  Jack went back to his phone call. “Bianca, I’m going to stay the night in Key West. Let’s meet for breakfast and talk tomorrow morning before I head back to Miami. Say nine-thirty?”

  “Okay. Oh, and, Jack. One more thing.”

  “What?”

  “Thank you.”

  It took him aback. A simple expression of gratitude wasn’t something he often heard from clients, not even when he was winning.

  “You’re welcome, Bianca.”

  Chapter 30

  Bianca spent the rest of the afternoon running errands. She was home before five. Her Tuesday shift at Rick’s Key West Café was six p.m. to two a.m. She put the groceries away in short order and jumped in the shower.

  “Come on, come on,” she said into the showerhead. She and another waitress shared a 2/2 mobile home that hadn’t been “mobile” in decades. If more than two people in the trailer park were showering or flushing the toilet at the same time, forget about it. The property manager had promised to fix the water pressure—and the oven, and the roof, and about thirty other things on the punch list. Maybe she’d ask Jack to sue him. Violation of constitutional rights: Life, liberty, and a decent shower.

  She went stingy on the shampoo, knowing that it would have taken a good twenty minutes of this drizzle to rinse out a full lather. At leas
t the water was hot. She closed her eyes and let soapy rivulets run down her face and body.

  Bianca knew there was something her lawyer wasn’t telling her. Something important. A meeting tomorrow morning was a good idea. It would be her chance to ask the right questions and push Jack for real answers. She liked Jack. He meant well. She knew he wasn’t trying to freak her out, but she needed to lay down some rules. First among them: never, ever color the most important part of a conversation with “I don’t mean to scare you but . . .”

  Bianca froze. She heard a noise.

  Just the pipes, she told herself.

  She heard it again. Definitely not the familiar rumble of mobile-home plumbing. It sounded like the front door. She turned off the water, peeled back the edge of the shower curtain, and listened.

  “Carolina, is that you?”

  Her roommate worked the four-to-midnight shift at Sloppy Joe’s. It would have been odd for her to come home at this hour, even on a normal Monday, and with the media and cleanup crews flooding into Key West for the oil spill, no way would her boss have sent her home early.

  Bianca stood silent, dripping wet, waiting for a reply. There was none. The trailer carried sound like a tin can, even noises as far away as the front door. She was pretty sure that she’d heard something. She had definitely heard something.

  Stop it. Stop scaring the crap out of yourself.

  She checked her hair for residue. Getting out all the shampoo was impossible with this water pressure, but it would have to do. She toweled off, wrapped her hair in a makeshift turban, and stepped from the shower. Her robe was on a hook beside the foggy mirror. She slipped it on and started toward the bathroom door. The fan was broken, and the window didn’t open, so she needed to open the door a crack, just enough to clear some of the shower steam. But as she reached for the knob, something made her stop. Again, she listened.

  Not a sound on the other side of the door.

  “Carolina?” she said, keeping the door closed.

  More silence. An uneasy silence. The decrepit old trailer was never that quiet. Something didn’t feel right, and she wasn’t sure what to do about it, but Jack’s words were suddenly replaying in her head: