A King's ransom

by James Grippando

  “The blood, stop the blood!” he cried in a panic.

  The other guard grabbed a dirty white bedsheet and shoved it against his neck. In seconds it had soaked through, bright red. Cerdo got up on one knee, shook his fist weakly at Matthew, then fell to the floor. He lay motionless in his own blood.

  No one moved. Matthew stared at the lifeless body, then turned his gaze to Joaquin, certain that he was about to be executed.

  Joaquin stepped around the pool of blood to face Matthew directly. He drew his nine-millimeter pistol from his holster and aimed at the prisoner’s forehead. Matthew stared down the barrel of the gun, looking straight into the dark, narrow tunnel of death. It hardly seemed a fair trade, his life for trash as worthless as Cerdo. But it was the closest thing to justice that a prisoner could hope for.

  “Go ahead,” he said defiantly. “Shoot me.”

  The gun was shaking, Joaquin was so angry. His finger tensed on the trigger, but he didn’t pull it. “Lock him up!” he shouted.

  Cerdo’s buddy looked confused and horrified, but Joaquin shouted the order again. “Lock him up!”

  This time the guard obeyed, and Matthew didn’t resist. When the cuffs were in place, Joaquin came to him, put the gun to Matthew’s temple, and said, “I promise, I will shoot you. Right before your son’s eyes.”

  71

  Alex brought dinner back to the apartment, but I didn’t touch the food. As much as she’d assured me that the negotiations weren’t really over, that Joaquin would cool down, it was hard not to take his outburst as final. My mind was already at my father’s funeral, or perhaps memorial service was a more appropriate term, as I was certain that we’d never recover the body.

  We sat at opposite sides of the kitchen table, saying little. Another tearful bolero of lost love was playing on the evening program of Radio Recuerdo. The Holy Infant and Our Lady of Perpetual Help were watching us from framed pictures on the wall. Alex kept apologizing for eating in the face of my total loss of appetite, but I was caught up in my own thoughts.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have mentioned Jaime.” It was out of the blue, a random comment that had jumped the track in my speeding train of thought.

  Alex looked up from her plate of pasta. “Are you going to dissect every word of that phone call?”

  “I just remembered catching my heart in my throat when you mentioned Jaime. For all we know, he was Joaquin’s uncle or cousin or whatever. Telling him that Jaime was dead might have been the very thing that triggered his anger.”

  “He was bound to find out sooner or later. Better that I presented it as a suicide, rather than let him leap to the conclusion that you killed him, the same way the police did.”

  I went to the refrigerator for a bottled water. I was trying to stay focused on my father and deal with one problem at a time. Soon, however, I’d have to clear my own name back home.

  “Do you think I killed him?”

  She coughed and said, “What?”

  “You heard me. Do you think I killed Jaime?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Why not? After all, the guy turned my father over to kidnappers.”

  “I didn’t say you didn’t have motive.”

  “Then how can you answer my question so quickly and say ‘Of course not’? Why wouldn’t I kill him?”

  She was half smiling. “Because you have much more self-restraint than I do.”

  “Thanks. I think.”

  Her expression turned serious. “You’re not the only one who had motive, you know. Maggie Johans had motive, too. So did a lot of people at Quality Insurance, people who stood to lose plenty if Jaime started to name names. The police will realize that.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “I know I’m right.”

  I saw no doubt in her eyes, only a reassuring blend of confidence and sincerity. “Thanks.”

  A knock on the door broke the silence. “Visitors?” I asked, confused.

  “Let me check.” She rose quickly and went straight to her room. In seconds she was back with gun in hand. It was the first time I’d seen her react so defensively, a sure sign that I wasn’t the only one feeling the tension.

  Standing to the side of the door, she asked in Spanish, “Who is it?”

  “Father Balto.”

  It sounded like his voice, and he was the only person to whom Alex had given our address. She opened the door cautiously, leaving it chained.

  “Are you alone?”

  “Yes. May I come in, please?”

  She peered into the hallway through the opening, then removed the chain and let him in.

  His black raincoat was wet with the early-evening drizzle. Alex took it and left it on the hall tree with his umbrella. He greeted me kindly as we gathered at the kitchen counter.

  “I have a message from Joaquin,” he said.

  I caught my breath. “Good or bad news?”

  “Good, I believe. He will take the deal.”

  “Seriously?”

  “One point five million, simultaneous exchange. On one condition,” he said, raising a finger to make his point. “The son delivers the ransom.”

  “No,” said Alex.

  “How can we say no?”

  “I don’t like it,” she said. “I would have expected him to make us wait, sweat a few days. That was too fast on the turnaround. Makes me nervous.”

  “That’s Joaquin,” said the priest. “I said it before. He’s very volatile.”

  “Which means that we can’t keep pushing his buttons,” I said. “He’s cut the ransom in half. He’s giving us a simultaneous exchange. We have to give him something.”

  “That doesn’t mean we should give him you,” said Alex.

  “He said this is his final offer,” said the priest.

  “Kidnappers always say that.”

  “Maybe this time he means it,” I said.

  She hesitated. I could see in her eyes that she didn’t want to go out on that limb, telling me that Joaquin didn’t mean it, only to have my father’s death on her own hands.

  “If you go,” she said, “I’m going with you.”

  “How about it, Father?” I asked.

  He shrugged, struggling. “Technically, he didn’t say you had to come alone. He just wants the son to deliver the ransom.”

  “Then it’s settled.”

  Father Balto placed his cell phone on the counter. “Joaquin asked that I give you this. From here on out, your instructions will be by cell phone.”

  Alex reached for it, but the priest stopped her. “You can join in the delivery of the ransom, but I think he’s expecting to speak directly with the son.”

  She stepped back warily. “I don’t like this, Nick.”

  “Nobody does, least of all my father.” I took the phone and tucked it into my pocket. “But none of us has a choice.”

  Father Balto and I shared his umbrella on the short walk down the street to the drugstore. I had no conception of the traceability of long-distance calls from Bogota to Miami, but I didn’t want to learn the hard way. The last thing I needed was to lead the FBI’s legal attaches to the apartment. I closed myself in a phone booth in the back of the drugstore and dialed Jenna. I wanted to tell her what had been happening, but she seemed more eager to tell me something.

  “I found you a lawyer. A sharp former prosecutor named Jerry Houlihan.”

  “I’ve heard good things about him.”

  “I was hoping you’d approve. Your mom and I authorized him to start working right away. The police executed a search warrant on your Jeep today.”

  “They what?”

  “They found your father’s gun under the front seat.”

  I could have clubbed myself with the phone. “Damn. I put it there when the police got to Jaime’s house and ended up going straight to the airport from the police station. Couldn’t very well take it on the plane with me.”

  “Nick?”

  “What?”

  “Why did
you take a gun with you to Jaime’s house?”

  “Because he invited me there, and I didn’t know what to expect. Hell, the last time I went there, he pulled a knife on me. You know all about that.”

  “I don’t know as much as you think. You and Jerry have to talk soon. He keeps asking me questions that I can’t answer.”

  “I’ll try to call him tomorrow.”

  “Try hard, please. I don’t mean to downplay the kidnapping, but this is serious. They could charge you with murder.”

  “Don’t get discouraged, all right? And tell my mom not to worry either. We’ll straighten the whole thing out when I get home. Could be soon.”

  “Is something about to happen with your father?”

  “Definitely.”

  “You think it could finally be over?”

  “One way or the other, yes. It could be over.”

  She paused, as if she didn’t like the sound of that. “Be careful, okay?”

  “I will.”

  “This is really scaring me.”

  “Me, too,” I said, my voice fading.

  The call came at midnight, the distinctive chirping of a cell phone on the end table. I nearly jackknifed in response, launching my tired body from a comfortable slumber on the couch. Alex came running from the bedroom. I flipped open the receiver, swallowed the lump in my throat, and answered.

  “Hola.”

  He didn’t answer right away, but I recognized the voice as soon as he began. “We’ll do this in English, but I’ll only say it once. So listen good. Understand?”

  Alex sat right beside me on the couch, her ear close enough to listen.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “Five-thirty tomorrow evening. Be at Cementerio Central.”

  “The cemetery?”

  “Don’t interrupt! Go to the grave of Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada. Bring the money and the cell phone. Wait in front of the monument. I’ll call you. Don’t be late.”

  “Wait, what grave?”

  “I told you I’d say it once.” The line clicked.

  “Damn it! What grave!” I clutched the phone tightly, shaking it in frustration.

  “Don’t worry, I got it,” said Alex.

  “You sure?”

  “It’s probably the largest monument in the cemetery. He’s the founder of Bogota.”

  “Why would Joaquin send us there?”

  “A quiet, isolated spot in the middle of a city of eight million people. If something goes wrong, he has hundreds of escape routes down surrounding side streets in every direction.”

  “He could have sent us to the park.”

  “He could have. But that wouldn’t have set your mind to thinking the way a cemetery does, would it?”

  “No,” I said, trying to keep my mind from going there. “Definitely not.”

  72

  We reached the cemetery right on schedule, just a few minutes before 5:30 P.M. Our arrival was timed perfectly. We didn’t want to be standing around any longer than necessary with one and a half million dollars in a knapsack, even if we were both armed.

  Alex had insisted that I carry a gun, which made good sense to me. It had taken her only a small portion of that Monday to scrounge up an Austrian-made Glock nine-millimeter pistol.

  “This will stop a charging rhinoceros in its tracks,” she’d said, placing the gun in my hand. “Use it only if you intend to kill someone.”

  Her warning had unleashed weeks of pent-up emotions that suddenly bubbled forth to form a conscious thought that chilled me. I’d never laid eyes on this Joaquin, but for all he’d done to my father, my mother, my family, I did indeed want him dead. Trading in human lives had to be the most despicable crime on earth.

  The afternoon was overcast, the sun completely hidden. Less than a half hour of daylight remained. Trees stood leafless against a sad, gray November sky. There was a slight chill in the damp air, no breeze to stir it. Bogota’s notorious smog, the by-product of more than a million vehicles, hovered over the graves like the stench of death itself. The cemetery grounds covered a vast rectangular expanse, surrounded by a city that had grown around it. Many of the magnificent stone memorials were centuries old, discolored and decaying from the elements, the pollution, the vandals. Blaring horns and other rumblings of urban life could be heard in the distance, not loud enough to be disruptive, but enough to make me wonder if anyone here truly rested in peace.

  Alex and I followed the footpath to the impressive crypt of Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada. She hadn’t overstated the size of the plot. In the rear was a crypt as large as some churches. Before it was an impressive stone marker in a courtyard setting. The entrance was flanked by two short, decorative iron posts that were linked by a single strand of black chain. It sagged in the middle, like a sad smile.

  A man emerged from behind the crypt. I started, then calmed at the familiar sight of Father Balto.

  “Joaquin asked me to come,” he said. “I’m supposed to go with you from here.”

  “Go where?”

  The question had barely left my lips when the cell phone rang. “Hello,” I answered.

  “Walk a hundred meters to the statue of the Blessed Virgin. Wait there. Just you and Father Balto.”

  “We have Alex with us.”

  “Not Alex. If I see anyone but you and the priest at that statue, your father gets a bullet. Got it?”

  He hung up, leaving no room for debate. I switched off the phone and repeated his orders, verbatim, to Alex.

  “You can’t go without me,” she said.

  “He said he’d kill my father if you come.”

  “If I don’t come, he’ll kill your dad and take you in his place.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “He’s a kidnapper and a murderer. Your only hope is if I’m there.”

  “I’d agree with you, if he’d told me to come alone. But I have Father Balto with me. That has to be a show of good faith.”

  “Are you crazy? These people would shoot you in front of God Himself. They kidnap people from churches.”

  “Can I say something?” the priest said.

  “Sure.”

  “I’ve dealt with Joaquin before. My only wish is to help you get your father back safely, but I’m not going anywhere if we don’t follow Joaquin’s instructions to the letter.”

  Alex was about to say something when a sudden noise silenced us, a cry from somewhere beyond the statue. I listened more closely. It came again, this time more clearly.

  “Nick!”

  It was my father. Just the sound of his voice had my adrenaline pumping. I looked at Alex and said, “Cover us. But stay out of sight.”

  I checked my gun, slung the money over my shoulder, and started toward the statue of the Blessed Virgin, just me and Father Balto.

  The gag was back in his mouth, fastened tightly behind his head. A fresh cigarette burn smoldered just below his eye in the soft, sensitive skin near the tear duct. Matthew had refused to play a voluntary role in Joaquin’s scheme. He’d yielded to the command and shouted his son’s name only after the pain had become unbearable.

  Joaquin peered out over the top of a huge granite marker. Matthew was even better concealed, kneeling in a half-dug grave behind a pile of fresh dirt. Joaquin’s partner, the one who’d watched Cerdo bleed to death, kept the prisoner in check at gunpoint. Only now did Matthew finally recognize him as one of the executioners who, along with Joaquin, had taken Will the Canadian for his last walk into the jungle.

  The sound of approaching footsteps made Matthew cringe. He knew that his son was coming. Worse, he knew it was an ambush.

  Joaquin cocked his pistol and smiled. “Way to go, fisherman. You reeled him in nicely.”

  73

  “That’s far enough.”I stopped just a few paces away from the statue of the Blessed Virgin. I recognized the voice as Joaquin’s, yet I resisted the impulse to turn and look behind me, fearing the consequences of any sudden movements.

  “Look stra
ight ahead, put the money on the ground, and put your hands over your head. Move very slowly.”

  I did exactly as told, moving almost in slow motion. I slipped the knapsack off my shoulder and lowered it to the ground, then raised my hands.

  “Count it, Padre.”

  Father Balto knelt on the grass and opened the knapsack. His hands shook as he fumbled through the stacks of hundred-dollar bills. I watched for a few seconds, then better used the time to get a lay of the land, though my line of sight was shrinking in the waning daylight. With each passing moment another distant row of stone crosses and headstones slipped into the dark onset of night.

  “It all appears to be here,” the priest shouted.

  Joaquin said, “Take the bag and step over to the statue.”

  He took it, then retreated in silence to the statue of the Blessed Virgin.

  “Turn around, yanqui.”

  I assumed that was me. I turned my head slowly, then my whole body. I visualized myself reaching for my gun, trying to discern how quickly I could get to it, if needed. Not quickly enough, I feared.

  The gray skies were nearly black. All around the perimeter of the darkening cemetery, city lights began to twinkle, marking the end of another day. Deep within this vast urban graveyard it was as if we were falling into a black hole. Distant lights were visible, but my immediate surroundings were fading into the shadows. Slowly my eyes began to adjust, and I could almost make out the pained expression on the familiar face that was staring back at me from twenty meters away. The body was slimmer than I’d remembered, but the countenance was the same.

  The man with the gun to his head was definitely my father.

  My eyes locked on his battered image. Weeks of captivity seemed to have taken a greater toll than a lifetime at sea.

  My gaze shifted toward Joaquin. “You have your money. Now let him go.”

  “Is that what you expect?”

  “That was the deal.”

  “We have a deal, you say? Is that how you think this works? You change it every which way you please, and then finally you announce that we have a deal?”

  “We were negotiating.”