Then again, Rieks might have had a jealous fit and attacked Victor. He certainly was capable, and Victor might have killed him in self-defense. Well … maybe. But premeditation was out of the question.
Whatever the cause of Rieks’s death, it would be logical for Victor—desperate and aware that his brilliant future was almost as dead as Rieks—to stage this kidnapping melodrama to try and save something from his sinking ship.
That night, van Dongen made several decisions. First and second: wait until there was definite proof that Rieks was dead and for the autopsy to reveal the cause of death.
Third: be in on the payment of the ransom to observe Victor’s behavior and that of his accomplice or accomplices.
Fourth: do nothing to defend Vincent Groote’s money or anything belonging to the family—who had always treated him like shit (except for Rieks). He was sorry for Christina, Rieks’s widow, who was a nice person and had always done right by him, but in the final analysis, sooner or later she would have found out about his homosexuality, and she would have suffered bitterly. Furthermore, the four million ransom would be generously offset by his ten-million-dollar life insurance policy. Although she would never know it, she would come out ahead on both counts.
Fifth: although it was obvious that Victor was trying to milk the body for four million, Jan would not turn him in. In his position, he would have done the same thing, or something similar, with no conscience pangs. That was, if Victor was innocent of murder, and by this time, Jan was certain he was. Besides, he knew Rieks and was aware of the extent to which he could get hysterical and aggressive when he had his attacks of morbid jealousy and paranoia.
In the end, if time proved that Victor was a stupid murderer, Jan could easily enough have him put away or put out of the way in Rieks’s memory.
Chapter
Thirty-Eight
The strange man with the black moustache and dark hair walked into the Triton Hotel that morning at exactly 07:00 with what appeared to be a very heavy white valise. In fact, the valise contained about one hundred pounds of diving weights. He was dragging a black canvas bag about six feet long and a foot and a half in diameter. When the half-asleep bellhop came to help him, the man held onto the white bag.
“That’s OK; I’ve got it. But please take this case and be very careful; it contains a theolodite and some very delicate surveying instruments,” he explained in horrible Spanish intended to sound like a Dutch accent.
Strictly according to their plan, Alicia showed up half an hour later. She went directly to the room, where she put on her latex gloves and got to work with Victor.
“Is this valise big enough?”
“Yes. I brought it because it was large enough to carry the orange valise that van Dongen is going to use for the money.”
They immediately got to work setting up the heavy-duty fishing gear that was in the black canvas bag. Then they started in on the steel angle irons. By 08:20, Victor had finished putting together the six parts of a rectangular frame that he placed before the window giving onto the terrace. The front part of the frame had a fifteen-inch stainless steel tube welded to it. The inside diameter of the tube was just large enough to hold the handle of the thick fishing rod. The heavy fiberglass material would bend under a load of two hundred pounds, but it would take more than a thousand to twist it into a U.
When he finished locking the rod and reel into the frame with a safety screw, Victor opened up the white valise and began removing the lead weights. He pulled half the stuffing out of the leather ottoman and replaced it with the lead, setting the whole thing on the back part of the frame.
“Now what is that supposed to be?” Alicia asked, more than a little mystified.
“Well, this is supposed to be screwed into the floor, but with these damn terrazzo floors, it would take a friggin’ jackhammer to do that,” Victor explained. “In any case, your weightplus the weight of the lead, multiplied by the one-yard lever arm, will be more than enough to compensate for the weight of the money. Come on over and try it.”
Alicia got on the ottoman and started cranking the reel. Judging from Victor’s pleased expression, she deduced that everything was in order, though she was not all that confident in his technical and mechanical abilities.
“Are you certain this thing can lift seventy pounds?”
“Shit, Alicia, I’ve been deep-sea fishing for twenty years, and I’ve seen little old ladies bag three-hundred-pound Warsaw groupers with that kind of gear. Here, I’ll show you,” he said, looking around the room.
Victor finally dashed to the armoire and pulled out the mini-fridge, dragging it over to put it in line with the fishing frame. With the dexterity of an experienced fisherman, he tied high-test fishing line around it, leaving a loop on top, while Alicia watched in frank admiration.
“OK! This shit weights at least eighty pounds. Now, try to reel it in.”
Alicia began to crank the reel and saw how the little refrigerator leaned slightly toward her and then left the floor almost effortlessly. Amazed by her own increased strength, she went on reeling until the fridge was a full yard in the air.
“Well, how about that. Tell Arnold to move over.”
“It seems you’re convinced. Now, whenyou reel in the bag with the money, you put it into the white one. Then you pack up the gear. Take your time; you don’t have to hurry. In about five or seven minutes, you’ll be in the elevator. You won’t have any difficulties. The important thing is to look like a tourist going on one of the excursions. All right?”
“I guess so,” she said, looking down at the junk on the floor. “So what happens when they find all this crap?”
“Nothing happens. The room was paid up for a week, so when they find all this stuff, the only connection they’ll be able to make is with the dark man with the Dutch name. The police will assume that the kidnappers used the passport for what they in fact did. And Hendryck Groote will not be available for verification of anything.”
Alicia did not want to leave the slightest detail to chance. “What if one of the bellhops describes the fishing gear bag to the police? It was your bag.”
“Well, yes, officer,” Victor mimicked, “Mr. King does own a gear bag. Yes, I remember it; it’s blue, has a large yellow dolphin on it, and a garish collection of contest stickers and patches. Yes, sir. We all thought it was a very silly bag.”
They broke into laughter at the same time and Alicia teased, “You’re an evil genius. You should be in Batman. But—”
“I ripped off the patches and the dolphin and painted it with shoe polish.”
Sobering up from the laughter, Alicia asked, “How much does the gear weigh?”
“About fifteen pounds. Why?”
“It’s just that one hundred pounds of money, plus fifteen pounds of gear on that flimsy little cart … I don’t know … Won’t it be too much for me … or for the cart?”
“This thing may look light, but I can assure you it’s very strong. These rods are made of steel,” Victor said, as he grabbed the handle and squatted on the rack.
“Go ahead. I weigh 180 pounds; take it and pull me around the room.”
As she struggled, Victor caressed the back of her legs and the cleft between her thighs, which did nothing for her concentration. She took a while to move the thing without dropping Victor, but when she got it down, she saw that everything he had said was true. Carrying the bag would be a breeze, and despite the distraction of his caresses, she wheeled him around the room several times, just for the practice.
Karl Bos was operating the automatic counting machine that had been delivered from their bank in Venezuela. With a sigh of relief, he took the last bundle out of the machine and handed it over to Victor, who placed it endwise into another machine that put a transparent plastic band around it. The band material was specially designed to stick to itself, but not to the bills, and every two inches it showed a consecutive number and the text ABNAMRO in a blue oval.
“Now you coun
t it, Jan, just to make sure …”
“That won’t be necessary, Karl, the bands all have consecutive numbers. Look at the last four we did. You see? 397, 398, 399, 400. Four hundred bundles containing $10,000 each makes four million. No problem.”
As Bos made a gesture of mock admiration, Victor bent a packet over and let the bills fan through his fingers. Then, exaggerating the motions of shooting a free throw, he tossed the bundle into the bag, where it landed almost exactly where it was supposed to go.
Taking the cue, van Dongen lifted a rose from a thin silver vase and, with a theatrical flourish, placed it in the bag.
Karl Bos failed to appreciate the levity of his two colleagues and glared at van Dongen over his reading glasses. “Now what was that supposed to be, Jan?”
“Damn the kidnappers, but a rose to the kidnapperess,” he recited, provoking a hearty laugh from Victor and a grudging “heh, heh” from Bos.
When they had the bag closed and locked, Victor grabbed it by the loop on the end and started pulling it around the room, over the edge of the rug and along the terrazzo floor. “It works great. The wheels are sturdy and big; they won’t get stuck in the cracks in the sidewalk. You’re not going to have any trouble with this bag, Jan.”
“Well, it looks like we’re ready,” Bos said with a huge sigh.
Van Dongen nodded and looked at his watch as Bos wheeled the bag into the safe and closed the door.
“The call should be coming in any moment now. Damn, I wish this nightmare were over.”
Chapter
Thirty-Nine
November 17, 1000 hours
The three men in the inner office heard the telephone ringing through the thin partitions in the Trade Building and everything came to a standstill. They heard Bos’s secretary pick up the receiver: “Groote International, good morning … Yes, just a moment; I’ll let Mr. Bos know you’re calling.”
A little red diode lit up on the intercom. “Mr. Bos, there’s a call for you from a Miss Myriam.”
Karl Bos arched his eyebrows, looked at the two men, and answered in his everyday tone, “Yes, I’ll take it now.”
Victor was staring at him in expectation and van Dongen was looking out the window with an air of total calm.
“Hello? Yes … Yes … I understand … yes, let me jot that down,” he said, making notes on the pad he kept beside the telephone. “OK, it’ll be there in a few minutes, but …”
When he explained that they wanted to accompany van Dongen in another car, he was quite surprised to hear: “Of course, but van Dongen comes alone; the others can follow behind in another car.”
Bos hung up and sprang out of the chair, excited. He looked down at his notes.
“How do they want the drop done?” Victor asked.
“Simple, so far. I’ll explain along the way.”
Bos walked quickly to the corner of the room, dropped to one knee, and started dialing the combination to the safe mechanism. When the door opened, Victor took the bag by the loop, again verifying that it rolled easily on its small plastic wheels and that it weighed the same as before.
The three men walked single-file through the side door of the office and down the brightly lit corridor to the elevator bank. Standing there before the brushed aluminum doors, Bos finally told them the plan.
“They say it’s all right if we follow in another car, but,” laying a hand on Jan’s shoulder, “you have to go alone with the money in the lead car. When you get to the Triton Hotel, you go to the Reception Desk, where there will be an envelope with your name on it. The envelope will give you the next instructions.”
“Should we go directly to the garage floor?” Victor asked, before pressing the button.
“Yes! Let’s go.”
1005 hours
Alicia came out the front door of the hotel with a kerchief covering her hair and dressed in her chubby American tourist persona. She turned in the direction of the swimming pool and walked down the paved path to a point directly below the window of the room they had reserved on the third floor. She looked up and down, assessing the distances and, as she reached into her purse for a cigarette, dropped a tube of red tempera. When she bent over to pick up the tempera, she quickly drew a six-inch circle on the pavement.
1020 hours
Victor was just turning off the wide avenue as van Dongen finished parking in one of the slots closest to the hotel entrance. Taking their cue from Jan, Victor and Bos parked a few yards away, parallel to the first car. There were several cars between them, but from their vantage, they could easily follow all of Jan’s movements up to the hotel lobby.
They watched closely as van Dongen got out of the car, came around the back, took the bag out of the trunk, and moved toward the hotel. From her window, Alicia was also watching van Dongen’s every move.
A uniformed bellhop came out to help him with his heavy bag, and together they climbed the few steps leading into the broad lobby, where they disappeared from view.
Victor and Bos sat back to wait. Alicia dropped the field glasses on the bed and got to work with her gear.
1027 hours
Jan van Dongen and the bellhop arrived at the reception desk, where a young woman smiled brightly at them. “How may I help you today?”
“My name is van Dongen—I was told there would be an envelope here for me.”
“Right away, sir,” she said, looking though her papers.
“Simmons, Terry, van Dongen. Here it is, sir.”
Taking the envelope from the clerk, van Dongen tipped the bellhop and moved a few steps toward the door before opening the instructions.
Go through the Duty Free Shop and out of the main building of the hotel. Turn right and follow the paved path toward the pool until you come to the men’s showers. From there, count the tiles and stop when you come to tile twenty-six, where you will see a red circle. Stand there and wait for a sign.
1031 hours
Victor and Bos almost jumped when they saw van Dongen reappear through the Duty Free Shop. They could see that he still had the bag, so the operation was not over. They watched him turn toward the pool and walk carefully, like a man looking for something he had lost, the bag following easily behind him on the end of the leather loop. When he came to a halt by the building, they wondered what he was doing, but they did not have to wonder long.
“Look, there’s something coming out the window. There it is … some kind of rod. And there’s a sign. The bastards are right there on the third floor.”
Victor stopped biting his nails, which were about to start bleeding. He twisted his neck to see the window, but, of course, all he saw was the rod and the sign being reeled down.
Bos, who had given up his beloved Dutch cigars when he came to Cuba, had chomped his Havana down to an unsightly mockery of the elegant Cohiba it had once been. He kept right on cursing, and Victor went back to his nails.
1032 hours
Van Dongen was startled when he suddenly found the sign he had been waiting for practically hitting him in the face.
The big black letters on the white background read:
HANG THE BAG ON THE HOOK.
TURN AROUND. DO NOT STOP.
DO NOT LOOK BACK.
Van Dongen slipped the handle over the enormous snag-hook on the end of the line beside the sign, executed a perfect about-face, and walked back along the path, following his instructions to the letter.
From the car, Victor and Bos watched the bag levitate gracefully toward the third floor. Bos chomped and Victor bit as a hand came out of the window, withdrawing the bag from their view.
The foreign tourists lounging around the pool who saw the maneuver were all from countries where it was very unseemly for people to notice or comment on other people’s affairs. There were some Cuban witnesses, of course, but they figured that as long as these foreigners kept the tips coming in and did nothing openly offensive, well, they could have their luggage delivered to their rooms any way they wished.
1034 hours
Alicia quickly put the bag in the large white valise, placed it on the luggage cart, and tied it up every which way with the elastic cords. She took apart the fishing tackle and stored it in the black bag. Following Victor’s instructions, she left the frame and lead weights where they were. They would be too heavy for her, anyway.
Lastly, she opened the door, took off her gloves, and walked down the long hall. Still in her chubby American disguise, she timidly said hello to the couple waiting for the elevator and descended with them to the lobby.
Van Dongen had gone through the delivery with Dutch calm. But now he suddenly felt like vomiting, and he rushed to the bathroom in the hotel lobby. Coming out of the elevator, Alicia spied his nose in the crowd and, in a display of bravado and pure balls, she stopped to smoke a cigarette, long enough to watch him leave the hotel, cross the parking lot, go past his own car, and approach Victor’s.
Van Dongen leaned against the car roof and complained that he was not feeling well.
“No, you don’t look well,” Bos answered. “Did everything go according to plan?”
“All I know is what you saw, but they obviously got it.”
“Fine,” Bos said, “take whatever time you need to recover. Would you like us to drive you home?”
“No, all I need is a sedative and some rest. I’ll see you some time this afternoon, at the office.”
1042 hours
Alicia got out of the taxi at her mother’s house and asked the driver to help her with the bag in the trunk. With the chubby American gone, it was the old Alicia who walked toward the door her mother was holding open.
Adios Muchachos Page 15