Dolphin Dreams

by Lyle Nicholson

  After much hesitation, he decided to call his daughter back in Finland. It was approaching 1:45 a.m., and it was six hours ahead in Finland. He was no longer sure if it was Wednesday or Thursday, but he knew Ansa was an earlier riser.

  He dialed her cell phone number and was delighted when he heard, “Ansa Okkonen here.” Niklas could hear the confidence in the sixteen-year-old’s voice. It made his heart skip.

  “Hello, Ansa, it’s me, Papa,” Niklas said after drawing a few breathes.

  “Pappa, are you home?” Ansa asked.

  “No, Ansa, I’m still here in Cancun. I have one last thing to do, and then I’m coming home.” Niklas stared up at the ceiling, and tears formed at the edges of his eyes at the sound of her voice.

  “Papa, the lady at the university, Elsa Groop, called Grandpa Magnus to tell him you missed your presentation at the conference again. She said the university will fire you for sure. Papa, have you gone a bit crazy over there? This is not like you.”

  Niklas ran his hand through his hair. “Crazy …well, yes and no, Ansa. I have gone a little crazy, but in a good way.”

  “What do you mean, Papa? How can crazy be good?”

  Niklas was silent for a moment. “You know, it’s about how you think of crazy. I’m about to do something that some will think crazy and some will think quite sane.”

  “Oh my god, Papa, what are you about to do?”

  “Ansa, I hope I’m about to free some dolphins, but for reasons …well, they asked me to …and —”

  “Papa, this sounds more than crazy. You have to stop this.”

  Niklas could hear the desperation in Ansa’s voice. He wished he had never made the phone call. There was no way back from this conversation. “Ansa, you’ll just have to trust that what I am about to do will be —” Niklas stopped. He had heard a crack outside. The sea wall was beginning to crack. “Ansa, I have to go.” Niklas hung up and ran out of the room.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  A TAIL OF ESCAPE

  Running down the stairs two at a time, Niklas reached the sea wall just in time to see it start to cave and the water from the pool start to gush out. He stood, watching, waiting to see if the dolphins would flow out just like in the vision they had shown him. The water was rushing past his feet.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder and whirled around to see Maria standing behind him in a wet suit. “Maria, what …” He could barely form the words. For some reason he thought she was going to release the dolphins from the inner pool. He never expected her on the beach.

  “Someone must make sure they make it into the water and past the reef,” Maria said. Her hair was tied tightly back, her face set in determination. She motioned behind her to Tepeu and Elisa, also dressed in wet suits and standing at the waters edge. “We will swim with the dolphins and guide them.”

  Before Niklas could say anything more, another loud crack sounded from the wall and the large section between the two cracks gave way. A massive flood of water poured out in a roar, and the first of two dolphins flew out. Their tails propelled them along with the torrent of water.

  The dolphins hit the beach and rolled just short of the tide. Tepeu and Elisa were there and started dragging them into the surf by their tails. Niklas and Maria ran back to help. Once the dolphins were deep enough in the water, their powerful tails kicked them out to sea. Elisa rode on the back of one. She was their guide to open water.

  Another dolphin shot out of the pool, then another. Tepeu, Maria, and Niklas grabbed them by the tails one by one and pulled them to the ocean, and Elisa rode back and guided them out to sea in twos and threes.

  It took only a few minutes, but it seemed like forever, and then all twelve dolphins were free. Elisa rode the dorsal fin of the lead, and Tepeu grabbed onto another, and they rode out into the blackness of the ocean. Niklas could hear the dolphins calling to each other some three hundred meters out.

  Niklas looked at Maria, and they began laughing, and hugging, and kissing in the surf. He had never felt more alive than he did at that moment, never more free. He looked into Maria’s eyes to see her expression of sheer joy, and he was about to say something when he heard Tepeu shout, “Policia!”

  It took Niklas’s brain a moment or two to translate policia to the Finnish word polis and then to police. He wheeled around to see two men in black uniforms, armored vests, and machine guns advancing from the wall towards him.

  He had no hope of escape. He whispered to Maria, “swim away quickly,” and pushed her into the surf. She treaded water five meters from the shore, not wanting to leave. A dolphin rose up beside her, and with her hand on its dorsal fin, she was transported into the darkness.

  Niklas only hoped that Maria, Elisa, and Tepeu were far enough out that the lights from the hotel would not give them away. He walked slowly out of the water, his hands half raised by his sides.

  He thought of making up a story: he was a hotel guest out for a walk who had just witnessed a strange thing of a wall breaking and Dolphins escaping out to sea. He pasted a grin on his face and was waiting for the first available policeman to tell his story to when a large shadow suddenly loomed over him.

  Almost in slow motion, Niklas turned to see the security guard he had called “Mexican Mountain” by his side. He saw the large truncheon in his large hand aimed towards his head. He thought about how much it would hurt if it hit him. It did. It hurt like hell. The last thing he heard before he blacked out was a woman’s scream.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  AWAKENING TO CHAOS

  The first thing Niklas heard upon waking up was the sound of retching. Then came the smell of vomit, stale beer, and pungent aftershave.

  He opened one eye, then the other, and finally sat up. His body was lying against a cement wall on a concrete floor. The room was large and dimly light, and a sea of bodies lay, sat, and stood before him.

  Focusing and rubbing his eyes in the half light, he realized he was in a jail cell full of young men in various stages of recovering from alcohol —the unfortunate spring break partiers. He was in the Cancun drunk tank.

  A young man with blond hair, a pimply face, and one black eye stood beside him, leaning into the wall. He looked down at Niklas. “Hey, mister.” His voice was soft as a whisper.

  Niklas turned and looked up at the lanky youth. He wore a torn and bloodied T-shirt that advertised a beer logo and dirty cargo shorts. He stood on one foot that was wearing a sandal. The other foot, bare, was pressed into the wall.

  “Hey, mister,” the boy said again. “You must’ve been at one hell of a wedding.” He shifted to his other foot and rubbed his stomach under his torn shirt.

  Niklas let the words sink in. Wedding, what wedding? Then he realized he was wearing the Mexican beach wedding shirt. “No, no, I just wear this because it’s comfortable.” He did not have the energy to give a detailed reply. He put his hand to his head, and when he pulled it away, it had dried blood on it. He felt the throbbing pain where the security guard had hit him.

  “How’d you get picked up?” The young man asked.

  Niklas realized he’d have to give an answer, only to get the lad to stop asking more questions, “A misunderstanding on the beach,” He finally ventured. His words came out slowly over a tongue swollen with lack of moisture.

  The boy examined his one sandaled foot for a moment and then his torn T-shirt. “Well, I guess the price will be the same for you as for me then.”

  Niklas looked up the boy, realizing he was still talking. “The price? What price?”

  “The price to get out, you know, the price to get out of here.” The boy scratched his hairless chest under his shirt and looked as if he had just made a profound remark.

  “A price to get free?”

  “Oh yeah,” the youth responded with conviction. “These Mexicans got it figured. See, they know we foreigners don’t want nothing to do with their legal system, so they fix a price on you —somewhere from five hundred to a thousand American dollars. You pa
y it, or get someone to pay it, and you’re free.”

  “Really,” Niklas said, intrigued. He shifted himself more upright against the wall and looked directly at the boy. “How do you know so much about this? You have friends who have experience with this?”

  “Hell no,” the young man said with a weak smile, revealing a missing tooth. “I was in here just four days ago. They took five hundred dollars cash and dropped me back on the street.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I expect they kept the picture they took of me and will want to double that now.” He blew out his breath with a sense of finality. “This is gonna play hell on my daddy back in Atlanta.”

  Niklas felt the young man’s pain. He was a parent himself. He wondered how he would feel if his daughter Ansa ever ended up here. A cold shudder went down his spine as he remembered the last phone call he had made to his daughter, just before he was captured by the police. He had told her to trust him.

  A noise came from the hallway, and then two jail guards came through the large door. One was thin and tall, his belt looped twice around his body to hold up his pants, the other squat and stout, his pants clinging tightly to his waist. They stood at the entrance of the large jail cell, surveying the crowd. The teenagers, and Niklas, shuffled nervously. Some stood up; some sat up.

  The guards came up to Niklas, hauled him to his feet, and escorted him out of the cell. The young men in the jail visibly relaxed, and the one embracing the toilet went back to dry heaving.

  Niklas was marched down a long hallway and then up two flights of stairs. As he and the guards passed more jail cells, faces peeked out from the confines, some white, some very brown. Hands hung out of some, and some waved a solemn greeting. One made the sign of the cross.

  Niklas tried to think of what his price might be. His recently awakened mind tried to formulate a number of excuses or alibis that would release him for five hundred, a thousand, or even a few thousand euros. He had a good limit on his Visa. He wondered if they took Visa.

  They arrived at a large, ornate wooden door. A brass plate with the word Commandant in black lettering hung from it. For the briefest of moments, Niklas thought his chances were good, as he assumed he was seeing the boss of the prison. The guards knocked, a voice from behind the door yelled a command, and Niklas was ushered inside.

  A very small man in a black police uniform populated with gold braid, gold leaf, and gold buttons sat at a massive desk. The Mexican flag and pictures of various Mexican war heroes cluttered the wall behind him. The small man had perfectly formed features set off by a pencil-thin mustache expertly trimmed to accentuate small and perfect lips. If Mattel made a Mexican police doll, it would look like him.

  Niklas was forced into a hard, wooden chair by the two guards, who then positioned themselves at his side. Niklas breathed in slowly, composing himself. He started thinking that perhaps they had not seen anything. He would claim to be an innocent person who had been swept up by the police while walking on the beach. He waited for the commandant to speak before he began his appeal.

  The commandant let his eyes flicker over Niklas for a moment, then picked up a piece of paper from the side of his large desk. “Ah, Señor Niklas Okkonen. The commandant had difficulty pronouncing his last name, and it came out sounding like “Jokkongon.”

  Niklas was not worried about the mispronunciation of his name —what worried him was the fact that the commandant was reading the name from a Finnish passport that was obviously his. The police were in my hotel room, he thought. He wondered what else they had found.

  The commandant began slowly in English with a soft Spanish accent. “Señor Jokkongon, my report says you caused much destruction at the hotel. You and your friends by setting the dolphins free have caused much expense to the hotel also. Very expensive these dolphins to train —and now they are out to sea.” The commandant finished his statement and looked over the report at Niklas.

  Niklas waited a few moments, swallowed hard, then began his well-thought-out appeal. “Commandant, with due respect.” He shifted himself a little more upright in his chair. “I am a guest at the hotel. I was walking on the beach when the wall collapsed. I saw the dolphins on the beach in obvious need of help, and I pulled them into the water to save them. I meant no harm to the hotel. I was only trying to save the dolphins from dying.” Niklas sat back in his chair, suppressing a grin. It was an excellent speech. He almost believed himself.

  The commandant regarded Niklas, put the report down, and tapped his passport on the desk. “I see, I see.” He pursed his lips in thought and scratched his brow. “You were only a bystander, is this it? This is what you want to say?”

  “Yes, only a bystander.” A bystander, one who stands by and watches. This interview is going very well.

  The commandant flashed a quick smile. “Let me show you something.” He picked up an iPad from his desk, turned it on, and flipped the screen around. “This was a Christmas present from my wife —the latest model. Very nice, yes?” He beamed with obvious pride.

  Niklas nodded his head. “Yes, yes, it’s very nice.” He wondered if showing Christmas gifts was customary among Mexicans.

  A grainy image came into focus on the screen: Niklas on the sea wall pouring something into holes and ramming it in with a length of rebar. Someone on one of the balconies had seen him and filmed him with a telephoto lens using a low-light setting. He shook his head. He wore a silly smile on his face, the same one he had worn while feeding the laxative to his dog back in Finland. It was a look of quiet and relaxed determination. He was doomed.

  The video continued again with the dolphins flowing out of the pool and into the sea and Niklas running to pull them into the water. What the video did not show was the faces of the others with him. There were only two shadows. The edge of the ocean was in darkness.

  The commandant said something in Spanish to the guards. They produced a black garbage bag and dumped the contents on the floor —a pair of jeans and T-shirt, the ones from his room, stained with concrete dust and sand. Then an empty bag of Dexpan fell out as they shook the bag again. They emptied another garbage bag containing the used bucket and drill.

  The commandant sat back and tapped his small hand on the desk. The start of a smile graced his lips under the perfectly trimmed moustache. He watched Niklas as the full weight of the situation dawned on him. He could see Niklas’s pupils dilate, the sure sign of one under stress. The little commandant loved that look of stress in suspects —it sent tingles up his spine.

  “Now, Señor Jokkongon, you can see we have much evidence against you. If you tell us about your friends who helped you in this, perhaps we can reduce your sentence in jail. You will see that we here in Mexico are reasonable people.” He finished his words with a smile, a raised eyebrow, and a quick brush of his mustache.

  Niklas realized just how bad his situation was. Not only was he caught, but they knew he had accomplices. How much do they know, he wondered? He had never played this game of cat and mouse in an interrogation. He had watched similar situations play out in movies and on television. Desperately, his mind clicked over responses, options, until he finally decided there was only one option: denial. He would use it and get a lawyer.

  “I did this myself. No one helped me in any way,” Niklas finally said. His voice sounded raspy, unused, and unready for the task at hand. He crossed his arms in defiance. He would not implicate Maria, Tepeu, or Elisa. The dolphins were free and so were they.

  The commandant listened to Niklas while looking at his fingernails. Examining his need for a manicure, he said, “But we captured your friends, Señor Jokkongon. They are in the other room.”

  Niklas unfolded his arms and almost jumped out of his chair. “What!”

  The commandant flashed a very bright smile, and his eyes became wide with excitement. “Yes, yes, you will want to see them. They are in the other room.”

  The two guards grabbed Niklas under the shoulders and hoisted him up. The commandant opened the large door, and they al
l marched into the next room. Niklas realized he was trembling. He was afraid of seeing Maria caught by the police.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  MEETING OF THE COMPAÑEROS

  The Commandant opened the door of the room next door, and with a nod to the guards, they ushered Niklas into the room. The room was small with dim lighting, barely fitting the square table and four chairs. Occupying two of the chairs were a man and a woman dressed in orange coveralls, their heads down, and their hands in shackles. Niklas felt his heart sink. A guard turned the lights up, and the two prisoners raised their heads.

  “Pekka, Caroline, what are you doing here?” Niklas stood in shock and disbelief. The guards pushed him forward and into a chair.

  Pekka stared at Niklas. “They say we are involved in some plot with you …you must tell them that this is crazy. You must tell them …Niklas …” His words trailed off. He looked a mess. His hair was covered in dirt, and his face was scratched. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

  Caroline could barely contain herself. “My God, Niklas, what have you gotten us into! This silly prank of yours with the dolphins —please tell them we are not involved in this.” Caroline looked worse than Pekka. Her once perfectly coiffed hair was straggly, and her makeup ran down her face, which could not mask the terror she felt.

  Niklas was at a loss as to why the two were in prison. The last time he had seen them they were drunk, making out, and wandering the beach. He turned to the commandant. “I don’t understand why you have arrested these two.”

  The commandant could barely hide his pleasure. “These two came out of the water right after you. We think they helped you set the dolphins free. They are your compañeros, your friends.”

  “We were having a swim,” Pekka protested.

  “Naked,” the commandant countered.