by Ed Teja
“We have business to talk about,” he said.
“I thought we might.”
“I have a sweet brown package that I think you’d like to get back.”
“Gazele,” I said. I bit my tongue to keep from uttering the banal threat that popped into my head, and probably the head of everyone listening.
“She’s a pretty lady, but she has quite the mouth on her,” he said.
“Can you blame her for sounding off? First you shoot at her, then you kidnap her. Would’ve made more sense the other way around.”
“What are you talking about?” He sounded surprised.
“This morning. You shot at us.”
He paused. “Why would I do that?”
“Why would you do anything?”
“Look, I don’t know what the fuck you are talking about.”
“Sure.”
“Okay, bring this down to reality. I have your lady, but I have no desire to see anything bad happen to her. She runs a nice place. The world could use more like her.”
“Good to know.”
“Then we can negotiate.”
“If you aren’t lying, your attitude makes that process simple. You put her back on shore and tell us where she is. For my part, I will make sure nothing bad happens to anyone.”
“Well, that does sound lovely, but I still need to get a hold of Donna.”
“Did you grab the wrong woman?”
“No.” He sounded offended. “I grabbed the one I could find. I saw you two. It looked like she might mean something to you. If that’s true, the good news for you is that I’ll gladly let her go if you help me get my hands on Donna, but that has to happen sooner rather than later.”
“I don’t know — ”
“This is your fault, Captain. Entirely your own doing. Several times I asked you, and nicely, to help me out with this. I explained why it is important, and yet, you haven’t been any help at all. You haven’t told me where she was.”
“Only because I don’t know.”
“And you don’t know because you haven’t made the slightest effort to find out. A resourceful guy like you could have found her long ago. It finally dawned on me that the problem was that you didn’t have a stake in helping me find her. My mistake was assuming you would care. So, I took this step as a way of creating an incentive program to get your cooperation.”
“Well, I hate to shit on the bluebird of happiness, but like I keep telling you, I don’t know where she is. Not a clue where to start looking. We met out on the reef and she came to my boat a couple of times. She isn’t hiding in either place.”
“She was on your fucking boat? Come on… why didn’t you grab her when you had a chance?”
“She had a gun and moved like it was an old friend. The odds against that working out well for me seemed rather slim.”
“Fair enough.”
“I tried to build some trust with her, but you were right.”
“I was?”
“She had seen us talking in the bar. That made her decide that hanging around me wasn’t the smartest idea. She thinks we are working together.”
“Well, that makes it hard for you. Even if I believe that, the clock is still ticking.”
“So you say.”
“I have this deadline to get her off this island and back for treatment.”
“I can see your concern. It’s the classic case of a caring husband kidnapping people to get his wife medical attention. Have you considered getting better insurance coverage?”
“Actually, the little beauty I’ve got, and you want, will do nicely.”
“How about if we rethink this situation? Step outside the box for a moment.”
“Okay. I’m listening.”
“Forget Donna for a moment.”
“Not happening.”
“Tell me about this ticking clock. I’m very good with clocks and maybe if I know why you have this deadline, I can find a way to help you get more time.”
He laughed. “No fucking way. That’s not outside the box, that’s off a cliff. So, getting back to Plan B, it’s dinnertime now, and I’m going to pretend I believe you and give you until lunch tomorrow. Noon. You have until then to find Donna and do whatever it takes to convince her to come along with you to wherever I say to take her.”
“Where?”
“I’ll decide then.”
“What happens then, after noon, if I can’t find her?”
“You know what happens.”
“I’m still curious about what’s going on. It might spur me on, give me ideas.”
“It’s none of your business. All you need to know is that after noon tomorrow the game will have changed. After that, well, finding Donna won’t be so important, so your pretty lady friend won’t have much value to me.”
I looked around the table, seeing the concerned frowns on every face. “Let me talk to Gazele.”
“Can’t do that, I’m afraid.”
“You aren’t so great with the truth, Nate.”
“That hurts, Martin.”
“I need proof you haven’t killed her already.”
“Look, I’m not being difficult. I’d be glad to let you talk to her. What do I care if you two have a chat? I’d be glad to, but she isn’t really handy.”
“Well, if assuring us that she is alive is inconvenient for you — ”
“That’s not it, dummy. I’m out running some errands right now. There is shit that’s gotta be done. I left your lady in Nick’s tender care. I promise that no harm has come to the lady — so far. But you are going to have to take my word for it.”
“Errands?”
“Well, I hate to repeat myself, but it’s none of your business.”
“Then why do you keep mentioning it?”
“Because I want you to understand that I have important shit I need to do and there is a timeline. I will mention that, seeing that you haven’t been exactly reliable so far, one of my errands is hunting Donna on my own. I think you could find her faster, but what the hell, right? Keep in mind that, if I find her before noon, I won’t need your unreliable help or any insurance. There won’t be any trade. Letting Gazele go would just complicate my life, and I see no need to do that.”
“You’ll never get off the island alive, Nate.”
“Don’t bother trying to get me looking down that road, Martin. I have my methods and reasons. You don’t know shit about what is going on. Stick to your primary job, your reason for living — find Donna fast. You grab her and call me at this number, and we can set something up in terms of a swap. I’m sure Gazele would appreciate it a great deal if you got a move on. Nick isn’t the best company.”
And then he hung up.
“Well, that didn’t tell us much that we didn’t know,” Bill said.
Jeff slammed his fist on the table. “No, we learned that we have to find my sister before noon tomorrow or she is gonna die.”
The room went quiet.
16
With the blackmail threat out in the open and the knowledge that Nate would kill Gazele hanging over us, I decided to call Inspector George again. No matter how things went down, he needed to be involved from the beginning. If things went well, it would save explanations and recriminations later. If things went wrong, maybe his involvement would be even more important.
“I’m out front of The Barracuda now,” he said. “My people are setting up security for this damn official visit coming up. I’ll come in and we can all talk, face to face.” Clearly, taking care of ministers and their all-too important visitors didn’t meet the inspector’s idea of critical police work. I couldn’t blame him.
Inspector George came in with Walter in his wake. Sally got them each a lemonade, and we settled around a table so I could tell him what had happened. The details made him shake his head. “So, this man grabbing Gazele to force you to find this Donna for him?”
I told him what I knew
, what Nate had said. “He saw us flirting in the bar and decided she’d be some kind of leverage.”
“Gazele all the time flirting with people,” Walter pointed out.
“She likes Martin a lot,” Bill said. “Martin likes her. And Nate, unfortunately, turns out to be an observant guy.”
“What do you think he saw?” I asked.
Bill ignored me. “He is playing to Martin’s weakness — his romantic nature. He is clever and saw that would be enough to motivate him.”
The inspector scowled at me, studying my face. “And you do care about her that much?”
“I do.” It felt weird to say it out loud though, and even Bill looked at me with a bit of surprise before grunting.
“Seems this Nate is a student of human psychology. Just a few minutes around Martin and he figured him right—the kind of guy who doesn’t want anyone killed on his account, especially if he likes them.”
I nodded. “He didn’t think I was going out of my way to find Donna, which was true as well.” I looked at the inspector. “Once I told you what I knew, I’ve been trying to stay out of this whole mess. I didn’t much care what the deal was between Donna and Nate, and anything illegal was your business, not mine.”
He gave me the eye. “So this kidnapper saying he gonna trade Gazele for Donna.”
“Right.”
“But you don’t know where she is.”
“That’s right. I told him the same thing, but either he thinks I’m lying or doesn’t care, because he thinks I can find her.”
“Can you?”
The question stopped me. “I haven’t tried.” That made me realize that I had no idea if I could. All along, I assumed I could, but she’d done a fine job of eluding the police. Although the young constables might not be great detectives, but they’d grown up on the island. They knew it far better than I and were better able to get people to tell them where someone, a foreigner, was hiding. “If I had enough time, I’m sure I could.”
“You don’t. The man is in a rush,” the inspector said tiredly.
Jeff nodded. “Until noon tomorrow, but only if he don’t find her first.”
Inspector George sighed. “Well, I’ve got my men looking for both women. This Donna is good at not standing out.”
I pushed back. “Okay, all this summarizing is good, but I need to get out there and find Donna.”
“How?” The inspector asked.
“I don’t know.”
“And, after you find her, what then?” the inspector asked.
“What do you mean?”
He pointed to the entry way. “Suppose she walked in here right this minute, came over and sat down at this table. What would you do?”
That stopped me too. Inspector George turned out to be good at seeing the way things were. That’s a great quality in a person and incredibly valuable in a cop.
“Well, if I could do it, I’d be tempted to give her to the man; make the swap to get Gazele back.”
“And let the man kill her?”
I grimaced. “This Donna Devro, if that’s her real name, has been nothing but a pain in the ass.”
“And you’d give her up, even thinking this Nate might want her just so he could kill her? I don’t think so. You’d still have a muddle.”
“One crisis at a time,” I said.
Bill waved a big, fat finger. “The Inspector here has your number, Martin. He and Nate both pegged you for the knee-jerk good guy you are.”
“I’m trying to reform,” I said. Then I turned to the inspector. “Okay, I doubt I’d hand her over, but I’d surely be tempted to use her for bait.” I gave Bill’s teasing all the attention it deserved — none.
The inspector nodded and then stared at me. “Tell me how that would work. You got Donna sitting here… then what?”
“I’d call him up and tell him I had her. He’d want to set up a swap and once I knew the details, I’d look for a way to ambush him.”
The Inspector nodded, chewing over some idea that seemed to have just come up, interfering with his concentration like a bad lunch. “Now, as I understand, these men don’t know for sure that you don’t know where she is. Is that right?”
“Seems that way. Nate said he thinks I’m lying.” I gave him a grin. “You and Nate shared that opinion, at least.”
He ignored the dig. “And this plan you just told me about, it doesn’t involve really giving her to him.”
“No.”
The inspector just stared at me and Bill started laughing.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“The inspector nailed it,” he said.
I stared at the inspector. “I was thinking that if you were gonna use this Donna for bait, maybe you don’t even need to know where she is. You just need them to think you do.”
“How would that work?” I asked.
Inspector George grinned. “Well, it gotta work just the same as if you had the woman, except instead of going to all the trouble of finding her, you call the man up and lie. Tell him you got her, or that you know where she is. After thinking on it, you decided you’d give her up — in trade.”
He was onto something, something vaguely resembling a plan was starting to take shape. It wasn’t quite tangible yet. I couldn’t see it.
“He’d want to talk to her, just as I want to talk to Gazele.”
He pursed his lips. “Maybe you couldn’t arrange it. Maybe you just know where the police are holding her.”
“And I offer to break her out.”
“Exactly.”
“That will require a little play acting.”
“I think we can manage that. I have a few ideas.”
“I bet you do.”
“Seems we can work our end the same as if you had the woman.” He touched his nose. “You tell them you can produce this Donna, but first you need proof of life for Gazele, and if you get it, then you will negotiate a swap.”
“That’s possible. But he’s going to want to know why I told him I didn’t know where Donna was?”
“Let’s say, for talking purposes, that the story is that my boys caught her in a house-to-house search. But, with all this confusion, you just found out. See, I’m not keeping her at the jail, like normal because she is so worried about this Nate, but because the constables are so sociable, now you know where she is. You are calling because you figured out you can break her out.”
“Why not just say I know where she is and I can bring her to him?”
He waggled a finger. “First, then he gonna want to talk to her. But also, he knows that woman. He knows that woman ain’t gonna sit still for letting you swap her. But if you tell him you gonna bust her out, then it makes sense she’d go along right fine.”
“I like it,” Bill said.
“So, where are you holding Donna?”
“That’s what I’m thinking. Perhaps…” he grinned, “we need to pretend I keeping her under guard, say in a room at Gazele’s place.”
“The man appreciates irony,” Bill said, clapping his hands. “I’m a fan, Inspector.”
I snorted. “If they think you have her, why would they need to swap? Wouldn’t they bust in and grab her themselves?”
The inspector tapped the table. “And that’s exactly what I figure they gonna do. He will agree to the swap but schedule it for the morning. He is going to see if he can find out where she is. Of course, people talk on the island, so that won’t be hard. Folks will notice when policemen escort some woman to Gazele’s place and they’ll see we station some men as a guard.”
“What if they don’t go for it?” Jeff asked.
I patted his arm. “Then we go ahead with ambushing them when we meet to make the swap. But I think the inspector is right. Their best option is to grab Donna and not risk a swap at all.”
The inspector nodded. “Exactly. We set this up right, and when they show up to get her, we get them. And all that without having
to worry about protecting some actual prisoner.”
As I considered the idea, I began to smile. It had merit. I looked at Jeff. “You and Sally get out the word that the police caught the woman.”
“So how we gonna use this to rescue Gazele?” Jeff asked, getting into it now.
“We will have to move fast once we grab whichever one of them comes for her,” I said. “I doubt either of them will just roll over and we will need to squeeze Gazele’s location out of him.” I grinned at the inspector. “Your men might want to be a little slow in making the arrest.”
“I can see to that,” he said.
Bill nodded. “While we are chatting with him, it might be good to convince him to tell us what the business is about this clock. I have a hunch things are more complicated than we know.”
“Okay, but since we don’t know how this will go, we need to prepare for several eventualities,” I said. “Just in case they have some reason to prefer a swap, we need to be ready to go through with that.”
“We have to wait until he tells you when and where,” Bill said.
“Right. And we need to set up the stage to make it look like Donna is being held at Gazele’s.”
“Posting some guards and such,” Inspector George said.
“And lastly, we need to be ready for them to change the rules altogether.”
“Things do tend to go sideways if you get locked into a plan that is too well defined,” Bill agreed.
“While you putting on that show, what can we do to help Gazele?” Jeff asked.
“We have to work every angle,” I told him. “I want you to keep the search going the way it has been. Keep pressing the fishermen and anyone sailing around to look for that yacht. I’m fairly sure they’ll keep close to the island because of their mysterious business. Don’t let up on that. If we can get Gazele freed before they come for Donna, that would be even better. We can all breathe a sigh of relief when she is safe.”
“I want to be there, at the guesthouse when they come,” Jeff said.
“I really need you running the hunt, Jeff. Our best shot, Gazele’s best shot, is if we can find out where she is as soon as possible, and you know everyone. Besides, if we catch the man, that won’t be the right time to show him exactly how upset you are.”