Slowly, slowly, I lowered the pistol, index finger parallel to the barrel. I used the decocking lever to release the hammer, then squatted and placed the weapon on the floor. When the silver-haired Navarro motioned me to step away from the gun, I did so without hesitation.
Whatever they told me to do, I would do-for now-because they had Shelly Palmer.
The giant, Angel Yanquez, had his arm around the woman’s throat. He was holding the detective’s pistol to her temple, grinning at me, head down as he made eye contact, showing me his stub of a horn like a rhino.
32
The rhino-sized Cuban pushed Detective Shelly Palmer into the stable as the older man, with his neat gray hair and tidy mustache, locked the door, then pointed the pistol he was carrying at me. It had a laser sight. My eyes squinched shut, temporarily blinded by the red dot that painted my face.
“Sit!” the man yelled. “Sit on your hands!”
When Navarro emphasized Sit!, his dentures clicked, just as I’d been told they would. So it was Farfel… Farfel and his giant assistant, Hump.
I sat immediately. Palmer did not, which gave Hump reason to grab her hair and trip her legs from beneath her. She collapsed on the floor beside me, her body making a bone-on-cement thump, as he yelled something in Spanish about her being stubborn like a mule.
Palmer righted herself, pulling her skirt over her knees, then turned to me, eyes dazed. Her lip was bleeding, and there was a cut above her right eye. She hadn’t surrendered without a struggle.
“I’m so damn sorry,” the detective said, her voice shaking. “I should have believed you. Who are these people?”
I whispered, “Did you get a chance to radio?,” as Farfel yelled, “Quiet!”
I watched the woman’s eyes blink No, then move around the stable. She froze when she came to Nelson Myles, then leaned away as if to create distance. A corpse is an overpowering presence. It shrunk the room and weighted the air with a tangible dread, an absence of energy and a silence-an inexorable silence.
The nearby power drill was more unsettling because Farfel knew who I was. I could tell by his reaction as he went through my billfold, checking the driver’s license, then looking from the photo to me, before pocketing my cash and credit cards.
Maybe he recognized my name from the newspapers: the civilian who’d gone through the ice with Choirboy. I hoped that was the reason.
“Marion Ford,” Farfel said with a heavy accent, tossing my billfold aside. “Finally, some luck that is good! It is what we need, an excellent boat captain to drive us to Cuba. Not an idiot boat captain, one who steers like a farmer pulling a plow.” He shot a withering look at Yanquez, who looked like he’d been in a minor car wreck: His right ear was scabbed over by a recent injury and there was a goose-egg-sized bruise on his forehead.
Newspapers hadn’t mentioned my prowess with boats, so now I hoped Myles had told him about me. What I feared was that Farfel had gotten info from someone else, a person who knew about my former life-Tinman possibly. If that’s how the Cuban knew, I wouldn’t survive the night.
The drill: I couldn’t keep my eyes off the thing. It was a perverse magnet demanding my attention, so I stared at the floor, choosing not to make eye contact. For someone like Farfel, even a poor reason to torture a man was good enough. It was terrifying to imagine him doing to me what he’d done to Myles.
Fear is an antonym of bravery. I am often afraid but only occasionally brave. We all deal with small, nagging fears on a daily basis. But I had never been in a situation where I risked the ultimate indignity, the violation of my own skull. The fear I felt was a cloying, physical manifestation. It sucked the air from my lungs, making it difficult to breath or think clearly.
Farfel startled me when he stepped closer, demanding, “In a boat to Havana, how many trips do you have? You are an expert with boats, yes?” The man used reversed syntax characteristic of Spanish.
When I didn’t respond immediately, he pressed, “I know of your identity. You are Dr. Ford but not a real doctor. You are the marine scientist. Or…”-the little man was examining my face-“… or the one who is a trained killer, some say. Which?”
Myles could have told him I was experienced with boats or about my role as a hit man earlier, but something in Farfel’s eager contempt suggested he knew I hadn’t been acting back on the dirt road. The question produced a quizzical stare from Palmer, her expression asking What’s he talking about?
I glanced at her and replied with a slight shake of the head: Don’t ask.
“Stop looking at the woman,” the Cuban yelled. “Look at me!”
I said, “I’m sorry,” gauging the distance to Farfel’s ankles, picturing how I might work it. Trip the man to the floor and wrestle the pistol away before the giant crushed me from behind. No… both men would have time to shoot. Even if Navarro missed me, he might hit Palmer.
I was also considering the distance to the winch-two bare, bloodstained hooks hanging near the ground-as Farfel said, “Look how I was forced to treat poor Mr. Nelson Myles.” He motioned toward the body, enjoying himself. “I considered it yet another experiment. As a scientist, you may appreciate the precision of my technique. I am a real doctor, unlike you. Does that impress you? It should.”
I shrugged, a nonanswer that I expected to irritate him. It did.
Voice louder, he said, “The experiment I conducted earlier I can also apply to you. You see, I knew all about Mr. Myles. That he murdered a poor, young girl, as the rich often do, yet he tried to deceive me. When men talk, they tell me everything or they talk never. If you do not cooperate, I will conduct the same experiment on you.”
Once again, the woman was staring at me. She had to be wondering what form of insanity I had led her into.
Eyes on the floor, I replied, “Tell me what you want me to do, I’ll do it. But I want something in exchange. Tell me where the boy is. Is Will Chaser still alive?”
The man began to pace, checking the windows, checking his watch. “Shut up! What do I care about some American brat? He is no longer my responsibility.”
Farfel wasn’t just desperate, I realized, he was as frightened as Palmer and me. Until that moment, I hadn’t considered his predicament. He had tortured men-American men-a few of whom were still alive. No matter how many years had passed, they would jump at a chance for revenge, to tell their horror stories in a U.S. court or World Court. With the media in attendance, Rene Navarro would spend his last years like an animal in a zoo, condemned to die in a cage.
Now the man was working hard to project an overbearing confidence, yet it only made his anxiety more apparent. He was terrified because he was trapped. Maybe he’d wanted to recapture power he had enjoyed as a younger man, but it had all gone bad. He and Yanquez had been abandoned by their partners. The boat scheduled to take them to safety-and wealth-hadn’t appeared.
There is nothing more dangerous than a killer who has been cornered. But maybe the man was so desperate that I could manipulate him into the mistake of allowing me to help.
“Tell me about the boy,” I said, “and I’ll cooperate. You want to go to Cuba? I’ll take you. Do you have the keys to his boat?” I motioned vaguely to Myles without looking because I didn’t want to take my eyes off Farfel.
The Cuban nodded. “The dock is only fifty meters from here.”
I said, “Then let’s make a trade. Tell me what happened to the boy, help me save him if he’s still alive. I’ll agree to drive the boat. I can have you in international waters in less than an hour. By sunrise, you’ll be close enough to Cuba to see Havana. But the woman stays here, understood? That’s the agreement. Just the three of us go.”
I watched the man thinking about it, probably envisioning a scenario that included throwing me overboard once the boat was in open water. He was disgusting to look at, with his rodentian cheek structure, his manicured hair and his crazed metallic eyes. Farfel: a fitting name, not only because of his dentures but because of his precise and delicate physiology.
&
nbsp; He was older than I had pictured: mid-sixties. He looked exhausted, in his outdated tweed slacks, torn at the knees, and a white guyaberra shirt that was spattered with sea grass and blood. People who are compulsively neat sometimes react to dirt as if it were physical pain. Farfel struck me as one of those, with his perfect hair and his mannerisms.
“It is easy to pretend driving a boat to Havana is so easy,” the little man said, “but the waters of Florida are shallow, as we’ve discovered. Channels are narrow and the rich man’s boat is the size of a house. This imbecile, who is the idiot son of an associate-a medical school colleague-he ran us onto many obstacles: rocks and bars of shell. I had to wade in the water and push!” Farfel was glaring at Hump, who had positioned himself behind me. “This fool also claimed it would be easy to drive a boat to Havana. But you pretend it is different with you. Why?”
I said, “Because I’ve done it before.”
Farfel wanted to believe me, but he also wanted to keep me in my place. “Are you admitting that you are him? The man who trespassed in my country many times?”
I looked at the steel cable as if staring out the window. “Many times, yes.”
Was he asking if I was a spy? If so, he was speaking English for the benefit of Detective Palmer. He would have assumed I spoke Spanish.
Yes, he was doing it for Palmer. I understood when Farfel smiled, as if something had been confirmed, saying, “Then you are the one I have heard stories about! The famous Dr. Ford!” He laughed. “The Bearded One hated you. I heard it was because you made him appear foolish, many years ago, at a baseball game in Havana. Is such a thing true?”
I could sense Palmer looking at me, wondering what the man was talking about, thinking, Who are you?
The Bearded One. During Fidel Castro’s reign, Cubans either spoke of the dictator as the Maximum Leader or El Barbudo, the Bearded One. They rarely used his name because it was dangerous to risk even a complimentary remark. It could be interpreted as an insult by eavesdropping Party members.
Farfel knew things about me Myles could not have suspected, even from an Internet search. Farfel knew my real identity and that meant I was dead. I was sure of it now. But how I would die, and when, was still within my control.
I asked, “Mind if I stand?,” getting to my feet without waiting for permission, then saying to Farfel, “Who are you talking about, the Bearded One?”
“Sit-sit on the floor. On your hands!” Click, the man’s dentures snapped, adding emphasis.
I ignored him, watching him take another step back, hoping he’d elevate the pistol to improve his field of vision. It would give me room to dive for his legs. But I was unprepared when Yanquez-Hump-hammered the back of my neck with his elbow. Hit me so hard that I dropped to my knees.
Next, as if rehearsed, in one smooth motion Farfel took a dance step forward and kicked me hard in the ribs. When I almost caught his leg as he backed out of range, the man’s face spasmed, nervous as a jackal. From behind, Hump kicked me again, then a third time, before I curled up in a ball on the floor.
A moment later, I heard the snap of precision metal. It was Farfel thumbing back the hammer of his gun. As I lay there, some perverse, frightened instinct in me wanted this nightmare to end and hoped he would shoot. I preferred a bullet to a drill.
Instead, Farfel produced a phone from his pocket-my cell phone-saying, “If you do something so stupid again, I will kill you. But I can see that…”-he was reading my face-“… I believe that the threat does not frighten you. So!”-he swung the pistol toward Palmer-“I will shoot the woman first. I will shoot her above the abdomen. The solar plexus, I think. Dr. Ford, have you ever seen a person with a wound in this sensitive area?”
Farfel had years of experience reading fear in the faces of frightened men and he read mine accurately. Yes, I knew what he was threatening and I didn’t want to see the woman suffer that sort of agony.
“Good,” he said, relaxing a little. “You will do what I tell you to do. Understood? Sit! You will look at me when I speak. You will answer when I ask a question.”
Slowly, I got to my knees, then sat with my legs crossed, saying, “Anything you want, name it.”
The slang puzzled him, because he replied, “The senator who is your friend-what is the name, Barbara Hayes-Sorrento?-the woman from your government who controls the property stolen from the Bearded One. The senator telephoned you earlier. Now you will telephone her.”
He placed the phone on the floor and moved away to give me room.
“The senator will be in Florida tonight,” Farfel said, sounding proud he’d manipulated information. “She lands at midnight in Tampa. The senator told me this personally, so I know it to be true.”
Midnight? It was after one a.m. now. Maybe there’d been a layover in Atlanta and Barbara called me just before boarding.
I listened to Farfel say, “You will tell your famous friend to meet you, not us. You will tell the senator that you are alone. If you choose, say you have found the obnoxious little brat. I don’t care what you tell her but convince her to come.”
“Come where?”
“Here! Where the boat is docked. Are all boat drivers idiots? Tell her it is important. You will have the boat running and will invite her for a voyage-” The man paused midsentence, head tilted, his attention shifting to a faraway sound. It was a familiar sound to me: the rhythmic strokes of helicopter blades.
A helicopter…
To me, it was the sound of a cavalry bugler. As I listened, I experienced the buoyant optimism it had produced in me years ago in a faraway jungle.
I risked a glance at Shelly Palmer as the chopper approached. She was staring at the ceiling, her expression eager. The helicopter was coming straight for us. No mistaking the thrashing whompa-whompa-whompa of its blades.
I moved my head as if tuning an antenna. Was the aircraft descending?
No…
The building shuddered as the chopper roared overhead, flying low and fast toward the southwest.
The helicopter wasn’t coming for us. It was the aircraft Myles had been promised. He’d been told the sheriff ’s department would check Tamarindo for unusual activity. But if the multimillionaire wasn’t on the island to meet the crew, would they keep looking?
Farfel was rattled. He began to pace again, muttering. His reaction explained why he wanted to lure Barbara onto the boat. He needed a more important hostage to guarantee his escape. He needed his original target, a U.S. senator.
I wasn’t convinced that law enforcement was closing in, but the Cubans believed it. It showed.
Farfel used his eyes to communicate something to Hump as he shouted at me, “Why haven’t you done what I told you to do? Are you stubborn as well as stupid?” His eyes moved to the phone. It was midway between us on the floor.
I started to reply, but he talked over me, demanding, “Call the senator now. Convince her, say whatever is necessary. But I warn you, don’t attempt your silly code words to trick me. Mr. Myles told us the meaning of those numbers, eight and seven. He told me everything I wanted to-”
I didn’t hear him finish because Hump collapsed his weight on me. No finesse, just dropped his body down on me with the weight of a floor safe. The unexpected impact dazed me and might have broken my neck if I hadn’t turned first, alerted by the sound of his feet.
By the time my head cleared, I was lying on my belly, struggling to breathe beneath Hump’s bulk. He weighed more than three hundred pounds.
I heard Farfel giving instructions, telling Hump to pull my arms behind my back, to make sure I couldn’t move. As I looked up, Farfel was walking toward me. He had the phone in one hand, the electric drill in the other, feeding out the extension cord as he crossed the floor.
Palmer was yelling, “What are you doing? This is crazy! Why?, ” as I experimented with Hump’s weight, testing to see if I could find purchase with my shoes and create enough lift to get my knees under me. The giant lay atop me like a blanket, most of his w
eight centered on my upper body. That was good for me, bad for him. So I didn’t struggle as he levered my left wrist up behind my shoulder blades.
I was lying on my right arm. He wanted that, too, but I pretended I couldn’t move when he tried to thread his hand under my bicep and pry my hidden wrist free.
In Spanish, Hump told Farfel, “I have him, don’t worry. He can’t move now.” He was breathing heavily, already winded.
Hump was wrong. Only another wrestler would understand, but the man had positioned himself too close to my shoulders to control the strongest part on my body: my legs. He was riding too high, in wrestling terms, a mistake all beginners make.
Hump could have weighed four hundred pounds, it would have made no difference. Whenever I wanted, I could loop my right hand over the back of his neck, then buck him forward and over my head as I scrambled free from beneath him. Out the back door: more wrestling slang.
Next to my head-that’s where Farfel would soon be kneeling. He had done the same thing to Nelson Myles when Myles was talking to me on the phone, used the drill to intimidate. As Farfel drew nearer, he pressed the drill’s trigger for effect, its cat-high whine like fingernails on a blackboard.
I arched my back to take a look. The little man was grinning, enjoying himself, letting Palmer see the drill, holding the thing like a trophy, revving it like a motorcycle. Showing off his power, as Farfel had probably done a hundred times before to torment prisoners.
The woman was on her feet now, still yelling, demanding that he stop, saying, “I’ll make your goddamn call for you. I’ll do anything you want, just stop, please!”
I wanted her to shut up, to move away and to let Farfel get closer. I wanted him close enough to kneel and to touch the drill to my skull. If I timed it right, if I synchronized the movement of my legs and free hand, Hump would soon somersault atop Farfel, crushing the little man instead of me.
But Palmer didn’t move away. She continued screaming, so angry she was now taking zombie steps toward Farfel, who appeared irritated at first, then vicious. Before I could reassess, he used the drill to club the woman. Hit her fast with the butt, knocking her to the ground. Then Farfel dropped down over her, his knees pinning her shoulders and framing her face like a vise.
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