Most Dangerous Place

by James Grippando

“In Miami?”

  “Yeah. She lives here.”

  “Fatima Sosa lives in Miami?”

  “Yeah. Bird Road and Ninety-seventh Avenue.”

  “And how’s her English?”

  “Nonexistent. We spoke Spanish. Why do you ask?”

  Jack wasn’t about to tell Posten. “Ah, it’s not important.”

  But that was a lie. Jack knew it was important. It had to be important. Fatima Sosa lived in Miami and spoke only Spanish.

  The letters that Sylvia Hunt had spilled out onto her desk were written in English and postmarked Caracas.

  “Now, about my quote,” said Posten.

  “Sorry, Mike. I’m going to have to get back to you on that.”

  Chapter 64

  Isa wanted to be alone. The news from Jack wasn’t good, but it wasn’t unexpected. She just needed a few minutes to recover.

  She put a pan of Tater Tots in the oven for Melany—the deal was that she got them only if she ate the spinach salad that was on its way up from the hotel’s kitchen—and went to the master bedroom. Keith was outside, on his cell, pacing from one end of the terrace to the other, waking up everyone he knew from Zurich to Hong Kong and sharing the good news about his acquittal.

  Isa tried not to lie down. If she did, she would surely pass out from exhaustion, and the Tater Tots would go up in flames. She sat on the edge of the mattress. The framed photograph on the nightstand caught her eye. Keith and her on their wedding day in Zurich. Happy times. No worries. Not like today.

  Isa was worried about many things, and not just the jury that she would face alone on Monday morning. She worried about Melany losing her mother if she was convicted. She worried about her future with Keith—even if she was acquitted.

  Isa had withheld information from her husband, no question. Her actions had left doubts in his mind about her, she knew. Keith had managed to convince himself that their life together would have been so much better, that they would be in such a better place now, if only Isa had told him everything from the very beginning.

  You are so wrong, Keith.

  There was a night early in their relationship that Keith and Isa never talked about. They were both drunk. They got naked and jumped into bed. It wasn’t the best sex two people had ever had. It wasn’t even the best sex she’d ever had with Keith. In fact, it was awful. It was the worst by far—and not just because of a moment that, afterward, Keith had tried to laugh off with her as “awkward.” Keith was under the impression that Isa had whispered another man’s name in the heat of passion, which of course would have been “awkward.”

  Awkward didn’t begin to describe what Isa had felt, or what had actually happened.

  She loved Keith, and Isa never wanted him to think that sex was anything but a strong point in their relationship. The very last thing she wanted was for him to fear that he was forcing himself on her in the bedroom. But the truth was that, on that particular night, she didn’t want sex. Keith was smashed, and in his drunken confidence he had pushed it. The situation was so confusing, so murky, and so negative that it triggered a memory that Isa had managed to suppress for years. She was hardly aware that she’d verbalized it, that in a moment of psychological transference she’d seen her lover in that light. For one horrific instant—in anything but “a moment of passion”—she’d felt so helpless and repulsed by the man she loved that she couldn’t stop the words from coming, even if they hadn’t come as audibly or as clearly as she remembered.

  “Get off me, Gabriel!”

  “Hey, honey,” said Keith, and his voice startled her as he entered the bedroom. He sat beside her on the edge of the mattress.

  “Hey,” she said, breathless.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. I guess I was zoning out for a second there.”

  “I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what happened to you. Sorry for what you’ve gone through. But I want you to know that I’m going to be here for you. I’ll be there for the rest of the trial. And when it’s over, I’ll help you through this.”

  He hugged her, but it didn’t make Isa want to hug back. He couldn’t possibly have understood, but this was the very reason she hadn’t told him in the first place. Keith was a fixer. A problem solver. Isa didn’t want his help. She didn’t want a savior. She wanted her husband back. Her man.

  Keith just kept hugging her, and he wouldn’t let go.

  That was awkward.

  Chapter 65

  Jack picked up his grandmother and drove west on Bird Road. They were headed to Fatima Sosa’s house.

  “Is she a Communist?” Abuela asked in Spanish.

  “No. I’m told she is anti-Chavista.”

  “Bueno. Then we will be great friends.”

  In Abuela’s book, the only thing better than an enemy of Castro was an enemy of Castro’s protégés—even the dead ones. Jack told her the mission: find out who really wrote those letters to the state attorney in English and mailed them from Venezuela.

  Jack knew from Michael Posten the general area in which Fatima lived. He’d searched online unsuccessfully for the exact address, so he’d enlisted the faithful and reliable assistance of Bonnie the Roadrunner. She got it in thirty seconds, reminding him that there was this thing called a phonebook that was actually still in print and that provided the name, address, and phone number for every landline in Miami-Dade County.

  The sun was setting as Jack and his abuela pulled up and parked across the street from the ranch-style house on Southwest Fortieth Terrace. Jack ran through the mission one more time. Abuela said she understood. They agreed that the mere sight of Jack would cause Fatima to slam the door in his face. Jack waited in the car and watched from across the street as Abuela walked alone to the front door and rang the bell.

  No one answered. She turned around, looked at Jack, and shrugged.

  Then the door opened.

  Jack wasn’t sure what Abuela would say. Frankly, he never knew what might come out of her mouth. But he’d made it clear that this was important, and he knew that she would do her best. The two women appeared to be talking, which Jack took as a positive sign. A minute later they were still talking—a very positive sign. Still talking. Jack checked his watch. It was going on five minutes.

  Jack couldn’t imagine what could hold these two old women in conversation for so long. Maybe the fact that they’d both lost a twenty-something-year-old child gave them a point of connection. Finally, the front door closed. Abuela turned, walked back to Jack’s car, and climbed into the passenger seat.

  “I should work for the CIA,” she said.

  “You got it?”

  “Sí,” she said as she pulled the door shut.

  “Who wrote the letters?”

  “La novia de Gabriel.”

  “Gabriel Sosa’s fiancée?”

  “Sí. Alicia Morales.”

  Jack took a breath, thanked Abuela, and then dialed Theo on his cell. “Pack an overnight bag, dude. And your passport.”

  “Where are we going?”

  The postmark on the envelopes was their destination. “Caracas,” said Jack.

  Chapter 66

  At 1:40 a.m. Saturday, Santa Barbara Airlines flight number 1526 began its descent into Simón Bolívar International Airport. It was the last nonstop of the day from Miami to Caracas, and Jack and Theo were on it.

  Jack had a window seat and slept all but the final thirty minutes of the three-and-a-half-hour flight. He woke in time to glimpse the countless twinkling lights that stretched across the hills near the airport. Los ranchitos—the mud huts and tin-roofed shacks of crime-ridden barrios—seemed peaceful and pretty enough at night from an airplane, but no sane visitor dared to enter, day or night, not even with a bodyguard.

  The flight attendant cleared away the empty mini-bottles from Theo’s tray in preparation for landing. A steady supply of rum and Cokes had made quick friends of the ladies across the aisle, Mercedes and her even more attractive sister, who swore that her
name was Benz.

  “I’m sure,” said Jack, speaking more to himself than to Theo. “And who are their parents? German engineering?”

  The flight landed just after two a.m. They cleared customs and took a cab to the VIP Caracas, a modestly priced boutique hotel in the relatively safe business district. Their rooms had no air-conditioning, but since they were on the second floor, the desk clerk assured them that it was safe to leave the window open. Jack’s mattress was reasonably comfortable, and he slept for another couple of hours. He and Theo met for breakfast in the dining room at eight a.m.

  “Catch any z’s?”

  “Yeah, thank God,” said Jack. He’d been getting about four hours per night throughout the trial.

  “You didn’t hear the gunshots around five?”

  Theo had obviously taken the clerk’s word for it and kept the window open. Jack had played it safe. Caracas consistently ranked second or third in any worldwide ranking of violent crime in major cities that weren’t considered war zones. On any given weekend, murder tallies as high as forty were not uncommon. Gun ownership was legal only for the army, police, and Venezuela’s booming private security industry, which meant that illegal ownership tallied somewhere in the millions.

  “Didn’t hear a thing,” said Jack.

  Theo made his first run at the breakfast buffet. Jack checked his e-mails on his phone and was happy to see that a friend of Andie’s had come through for him. Jack would never ask his wife to tap directly into FBI resources, but she knew plenty of retired agents-turned-private-investigator who could nail down a current address for the right Alicia Morales—and there were hundreds, by Jack’s estimate, in Caracas.

  “Alicia lives in the Catia borough,” said Jack.

  Theo took a monster-sized bite of fresh pineapple. “Where’s that?”

  “West of here. Actually not far from the presidential palace.”

  “Is it safe?”

  “No.”

  “Are we going?”

  “That’s why you’re here, pal.”

  After breakfast they walked to the motor court in front of the hotel. The fifth cabbie they approached was either brave enough, stupid enough, or hungry enough to take them to their destination. Ten minutes into the ride, however, Jack was starting to question the route they were taking. His Spanish was a continual work in progress, but he was determined to raise Riley bilingual, and since her birth Jack had improved his own skills sufficiently to challenge the driver. The man’s impassioned explanation seemed to be on the up-and-up.

  “What did he say?” asked Theo.

  “He says he doesn’t take the highway past the slums anymore. The gangs throw rocks from the overpasses. When the driver stops to check the damage, the other gang members run out from the bushes and rob him. One of his friends was shot in the head two weeks ago.”

  “Nice,” said Theo.

  Caracas sits in a valley by Mount Avila, a nine-thousand-foot peak that separates the city from the Caribbean Sea and dominates most of the city’s landscape. The rich lived to the east of the central business district. In the western hills were the barrios, home to roughly half the city’s population of some five million. Jack and Theo’s driver took them along the Avenida Sucre in western Caracas and past the Mikro supermarket, where a few hundred people of all ages had queued up in the morning sun. “Hoping to reach the door before the sugar and flour runs out,” the driver told Jack. The roads worsened and the ride got bumpier as the taxi climbed higher into the hills. Like many Venezuelans, the driver loved conversation. He talked about everything from the dry toilet project in La Vega barrio, a district with no access to the municipal water grid, to the lyrics of the late political activist Alí Primera, who once sang passionately about the truth of Venezuela, which was in the hills—the people, and their unrest. If that was so, “the truth” was right outside Jack’s window.

  The cab stopped. The driver pointed to a house across the street. He gave them some final advice, speaking Spanish slowly enough for Jack to understand. Be careful. Don’t flash money. And remember, in the barrios, like many places with terrible reputations, most people are friendly. Just keep your eyes open for the bad ones.

  “Gracias,” said Jack. He paid the fare and gave the driver an extra fifty bucks to wait for them so that they would be sure to have a ride back to the hotel. The driver gladly agreed and took the money. Jack and Theo climbed out of the cab and closed the door.

  The tires squealed as the driver got the hell out of there.

  “I guess fifty bucks wasn’t enough,” said Jack as he watched the taxi speed away from them.

  “Hope you have a plan B, dude.”

  Jack was still working on it. Theo followed him across the street. This wasn’t the tin-roof and mud-house neighborhood that stupid American tourists ventured into in hopes of spicing up their vacation postings on Instagram, only to end up lying in a ditch somewhere, naked, penniless, and wondering how they were going to get home with no phone and no passport. But it was poor by any standard, and Jack was glad to have Theo’s muscle in his company.

  “Does Felipe Bornelli live around here, too?” asked Theo.

  “Not anymore. Isa said her parents grew up in this area, but Felipe did well for himself under Chavez. He lives on the east side now. I doubt Isa ever set foot here.”

  “But Alicia Morales was her friend, right?”

  “Her friend from Miami, when Alicia’s mother worked for Felipe.”

  “So this is where you end up after you work in the Venezuelan consul’s office?”

  It did seem strange, and Theo’s question went to the heart of the enigma.

  The Morales residence was a one-story house of unpainted blocks and sloppy masonry. The low-slung roof sagged in the middle, and the foundation listed badly to the left, matching the slope of the hill. Laundry flapped in the breeze on a line that hung like a sad smile between Alicia’s house and their next-door neighbor’s.

  Jack went to the front door and knocked. No one answered. Jack noticed the home security system: broken bottles and other jagged spikes of glass cemented onto the window sills to deter a break-in, or punish anyone who tried.

  “Hey, Jack—say cheese,” said Theo, as he snapped Jack’s picture from the street.

  “Are you crazy?”

  “It’s on its way,” said Theo, and Jack’s phone chimed in his pocket with the message.

  “Damn it, Theo! Put that phone away before you get us mugged.”

  The next-door neighbor came to the fence, looking at them suspiciously. “Who are you?”

  Jack answered, and they continued the conversation in Spanish. The man didn’t know who Isabelle Bornelli was, but he knew the name Felipe Bornelli.

  “Alicia is not here,” said the neighbor.

  “Where can we find her?”

  “I wouldn’t tell you if I knew. She has no interest in helping anyone in the Bornelli family.”

  “Why is that?” asked Jack.

  “Why?” he asked, incredulous. “Felipe Bornelli sent her fiancé to Vista Hermosa.”

  “Vista Hermosa?”

  “In Ciudad Bolívar. It’s a prison.”

  “Hell on earth,” said Theo, speaking only to Jack. “I seen grown men cry at the thought of being deported and sent there. FSP is a fucking five-star hotel compared to that place.”

  Jack continued with the neighbor in Spanish. “What was his crime?”

  “Political prisoner. Which is false. He was a Chavista. Like all the people of the hills.”

  Jack didn’t argue with him, but he knew for a fact that Gabriel’s mother wasn’t. Abuela wouldn’t have lasted fifteen seconds on the front porch of a Chavista.

  “Jack,” said Theo, “incoming at three o’clock.”

  Jack glanced toward the side street. A group of eight young men were approaching. They could have been looking for a ninth to field a béisbol team, but Jack trusted Theo’s instincts. He’d also read enough travel advisories to know about the
neighborhood enforcers who replaced police presence—thugs who enforced their own rule of law.

  “Not safe here for you,” the man said. “You should go.”

  A horn tooted, and a taxi pulled up. The same taxi. Their cabdriver had returned.

  Thank God.

  Jack thanked the neighbor, and then he and Theo hurried to the taxi and jumped in the backseat.

  “I thought you left us,” Jack told him in Spanish as they pulled away.

  “No, no. I have to keep moving. Those boys would slit my throat for the cash you gave me.”

  Jack settled into the backseat.

  “What did he say?” asked Theo.

  Jack glanced out the rear window. A dog ran across the street. A barefoot young girl chased after it. The gang of eight was watching her.

  “He says I shouldn’t be doing this shit anymore,” said Jack. “I have a two-year-old.”

  Chapter 67

  Isa felt drawn to the U.

  Keith and another dad from Melany’s kindergarten class took their daughters bowling on Saturday. Isa rode the Metrorail to University station. Her purse was in her lap, along with the flyer from Emma about the campus rally at the University of Miami.

  Isa had told no one that she was going. She hadn’t made up her mind until that morning. She was staring at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, contemplating who she was.

  Victim? Murderer?

  Victim? False accuser?

  Victim? Liar?

  The meeting with her father at Cy’s Place had been the low point—until Ilene Simpson’s testimony, which became the new low point. Then came the lowest point of all: the meeting in Jack’s office, where it became painfully obvious to Isa that there was an inborn processing defect in all men—even good men—that made the concept of “date rape” almost impossible to compute.

  A small crowd was gathered on the quad. Some were standing, and maybe a couple dozen were seated in folding chairs on the lawn, facing a small stage. Isa stood toward the back. It was no accident that an event to promote awareness of sexual assault on college campuses was held near the residence halls, and Isa was all too aware of the fact that she was just two buildings away from her old dorm room. The “Students Against Sexual Assault” banner stretched between the trunks of two palm trees. Campus television was covering the event. Isa moved to an open seat in the last row of chairs as the president of the student body yielded the podium to SASA president Emma Barrett.