by Iris Chacon
“Hello,” Iglesias said, keeping his pistol out of sight. “Remember me?”
“Non, monsieur. Please forgive me if I should know you. I suffered an injury some time ago, and most of my memories were lost.”
“No matter. I remember enough for both of us.” Iglesias smiled a shark’s smile.
“Perhaps the lady downstairs did not tell you, monsieur, but the public is not allowed on this floor of the building....”
“Oh, yes. She did tell me that. But that does not matter, either, because you have finished your work here. You’re going to take me to your boat.”
“My boat?” Jean looked mystified. His eyes glanced left and then right, as if he was searching the corners of his mind for some clue to this strange turn of events. “My boat?”
“That’s right.”
“But ... why?”
Iglesias pointed his pistol at Jean. “Because I do not want to have to drag your unconscious body to the trunk of my car for the trip to the marina. It’s hot outside, and I don’t care to ruin this suit with unnecessary perspiration.”
Jean became extremely still. “The lady downstairs ...?”
“She will awaken with a headache, but she will awaken. Unless you do not cooperate. Give me your cellphone now, please.” The hand not holding the pistol extended itself toward Jean, palm up.
Jean was silent for so long that Iglesias gripped the pistol more tightly, preparing to be attacked by the bigger man. But the attack never came.
Instead, Jean produced his cellphone from his pocket and placed it in the outstretched hand, saying, “It is a beautiful day for sailing, monsieur. Shall we walk to the marina from here?”
Iglesias exhaled a long breath and tried not to look too relieved. “No need to walk. You can drive my car.” He stepped out of the doorway and gestured for Jean to precede him down the stairs.
“I hope so,” Jean muttered, hoping that his driving lessons with Hector had been sufficient to prepare him for this. They had not yet covered Driving At Gunpoint or Driving While Abducted.
Dr. Oberon was making morning rounds at the hospital. She had just emerged from a patient’s room and begun making notes on the computer at the nurses’ station when Hector called her name.
She turned in her chair, smiling, prepared to offer a cheery greeting, but the smile vanished when she saw Hector’s face. “What’s wrong?”
“You know that lady, the fancy one, who works at the gallery where they sell Jean’s paintings?”
Mitchell nodded. She had looked in the gallery windows often, so the clerk was a familiar sight. “What about her?”
“She’s in the ER, and the cops are with her. Something went down at the gallery this morning, and....” He trailed off, either unwilling or unable to complete the sentence.
“And?”
“I think you better come down and talk to her.”
“If she needs a surgeon, they’ll call me.”
Hector shook his head. “Doctor O, you better come talk to this lady and the cops. Jean’s missing.”
Mitchell’s lips mouthed “what?” but no sound came out. She left the chair spinning when she bolted for the nearest elevator.
A short time later, having gotten what little information was available from the gallery clerk and the two police officers interviewing her, Mitchell was inside a linen storage room, placing a call on her cellphone.
“Mandy, it’s Mitchell,” she said when the other party answered. “I think Johnny’s in serious trouble. I need to talk to Agen—I need to talk to Frank, please.”
Mandy must have recognized that only a dire need would put that particular tone in Mitchell’s voice, and nothing less than life-or-death would make Mitchell talk to Frank Stone. Mandy had Frank on the phone in two seconds.
Mitchell explained what she had learned about the attack on the gallery clerk. “Johnny was upstairs when the man arrived, but when she came to, everyone was gone. Johnny’s missing.”
“Any blood?” Stone said coldly.
“N-no,” Mitchell stumbled over the word and what his question could mean. “Wh-who do you think it is? Who would do this? Where would they take him? And why?”
“You’re sure it’s not just some art critic?” Stone quipped, while his mind raced through a dozen possible scenarios.
“Not funny, Stone!”
“No, it’s not. Sorry. Listen, if they just wanted to kill him, they could’ve done it right there. There’s a reason they’ve gone to the trouble of taking him away – and they’ll have some trouble, believe me. Duby won’t make anything easy for them, if he can help it.”
“But we have to do something! We have to find him!”
“We will, Doctor, we will. Let me make some calls, and I’ll get a look at the footage from security cameras inside and outside the gallery. If I can I.D. the abductor, we’ll have a better idea where they might be.”
“You’ll call me on my cell!”
“I’ll call.” Stone disconnected.
Mitchell wiped her damp cheeks, squared her shoulders, and left the linen room. In minutes, she had arranged for shift coverage and was headed for her car.
When Mitchell arrived at Commodore Plaza, she had to park nearly two blocks away from the Barnacle Gallery. The street nearest the gallery was packed with squad cars, a crime scene investigation van, and Frank Stone’s nondescript old sedan. The draperies remained closed at the gallery, but the front door was ajar and investigators were coming and going at intervals.
Mitchell sprinted from her parked car to the gallery and burst through the door just as Frank Stone looked up from the computer on the clerk’s desk, where he was viewing security camera footage.
“I know him,” Stone said in answer to her raised eyebrows. The way he said that, it didn’t sound like good news.
Iturralde Iglesias was learning more than he wanted to know about sailing, and he was still nowhere near the boat. Jean had reasonably pointed out that certain items were necessary before they could float off to another country in the Do Bee 2.
They stopped at a nautical supply house to obtain maps and charts of the Florida Straits and the coast of Cuba. Jean doodled on a receipt some customer had left behind, while the employees retrieved all the charts he requested.
After a few minutes of waiting, during which Iglesias glared and fidgeted an arm’s length from Jean’s shoulder, a tanned, muscular young man in a “Divers Do It Deeper” tee shirt arrived from a back room and dumped an armload of maps and charts on the counter beside the cash register.
“See if that’ll do it,” Dive Shirt said with a smile.
Jean flipped through the maps and charts, and agreed they covered all the area he required.
Dive Shirt began to ring up the purchase on the computer/register, saying, “You want to partner up for the spearfishing rodeo this year? We used to be a pretty radical team, you and me.”
“Thanks for thinking of me,” Jean said casually, “but I will be partners with Frank.”
Dive Shirt looked confused. “Frank? Frank Stone?”
“Oui.”
“You’re entering the spearfishing rodeo with Frank Stone.”
“Oui. I know he looks like a manatee in a wetsuit, but he can really shoot straight. And, you can tell him I said that. I would say the same if he was standing right behind me.”
Dive Shirt glanced at the man who was, at that moment, standing right behind Jean. “Okay,” he said. “Just don’t come cryin’ to me when you come in second, ‘cause this year’s blue ribbon is goin’ home with yours truly.” He told Jean the total amount of the purchase.
“You can put it on my tab, right? I mean, it’s not like you don’t know where I live!” Jean chuckled at his own joke and winked at Dive Shirt. “Oh, and here’s my new cellphone number,” Jean continued, quickly jotting a phone number on his scrap of doodling paper. He lifted it so that Iglesias could see that it was only a phone number, no messages or cries for help, nothing about being kidnapped
or held hostage.
Iglesias nodded. Jean took his maps, bade a cheery goodbye to Dive Shirt, and the two customers left the shop together.
Dive Shirt watched them get into a rental car, with Jean driving. As soon as the car was out of sight of the shop windows, Dive Shirt picked up a phone and dialed the number Jean had written.
“Stone,” a man’s voice answered.
“Frank Stone?”
“How’d you get this number? Do I know you?” Stone looked at the police officers standing near him in the Barnacle Gallery, with a nod alerting them and Mitchell that the call was relevant to the crime they were investigating.
“I’m an old dive buddy of Duby’s. He gave me your number just a minute ago. He said you’re going to be his partner at the spearfishing rodeo this year?”
“That’s not just a no, that’s a hell no,” said Stone. “If he said that, he’s in real trouble. What else did he say?”
Dive Shirt repeated every word that had been spoken, to the best of his recollection, as well as describing the man who accompanied Jean and what Jean had purchased. “And he told me to put it on his tab. Then he gave me this number, said it was his new cellphone.”
“Let me guess,” Stone said. “He doesn’t run a tab at your place.”
“No.”
“And from the charts, it sounds like he’s headed for Cuba.”
“Yep.”
“Anything else he said that might be some kind of message?”
“Well, ... um, ... oh! He said something about how I know where he lives.”
“Confirming he’ll be using his own boat. That’s good.” Stone was scribbling notes in a pocket notebook while holding his cellphone between his ear and shoulder. “Okay. This is great. Thanks for the call. I’ll get right on it.” He disconnected the call.
Stone looked up from his notebook into the faces of Mitchell and several police officers, all of them with questions in their eyes. “An international fugitive named Iturralde Iglesias is holding Duby. Sounds like he’s forcing Duby to take him to Cuba on Duby’s boat, since he’d be intercepted if he tried to leave the country any other way. Duby’s dragging his feet as much as he can, giving us time to get to the marina ahead of them, but we’ve got to be quick.”
“We’ll call it in and have a team staging inside the seafood restaurant at Dinner Key in fifteen minutes,” one of the officers said, and all the uniformed officers headed for the gallery door.
“What can I do?” Mitchell asked.
“Go home and stay safe. I’ll call you when it’s over,” said Stone.
“Not gonna happen,” she said.
“Look, Doctor, if this thing goes south—“
“You mean, if that man kills Jean.”
“I mean that anything could happen, and you wouldn’t want to be there to see it, if it’s bad.”
“Mister Stone, I’ve been a surgeon for several years now, and I’ve worked hundreds of night shifts in a trauma center emergency room. If it’s bad, I’ve already seen it, believe me.”
Stone looked at her without emotion. Finally, he stepped around her toward the gallery door saying, “I don’t have time to argue. I told you what to do, now I need to meet that team at Dinner Key to get briefed on the plan.” And he was out the door and into his car before Mitchell had taken two steps.
When she reached the sidewalk and saw Stone’s old sedan make a U turn and speed away, she spun and raced toward where she had parked her car. He thinks they’ve got a plan? More cops, more guns, more drama—that’s their plan!
She was about to open her car door when she looked up at the boutique across the street, and she froze for a second. I’ll show you a plan, Mister Stone! She sprinted toward the shop with the designer swimsuits in the window.
Duby’s errands continued, and everywhere they went, Iglesias stood a few feet away with a pistol in his pocket, ready to fire.
They stopped at the Whole Foods grocery to stock up on galley necessities, because Jean said they could meet with bad weather or contrary winds that would force them to stay on the boat one or two nights longer than they anticipated.
They stopped for bags of ice.
They stopped for bottled water.
They stopped at the ATM, because Jean needed cash to pay for fuel.
“Fuel!” Iglesias shouted across the front seat of the car at Jean. “What the devil does a sailboat need with fuel? Don’t mess with me, Painter!” He spat the word “painter” and waggled his gun, out of sight, below dashboard level.
“If you kill me, who will sail the boat for you, monsieur?”
“You can still sail it for me if you’re only bleeding a little. Don’t tempt me.”
“Even sailboats have engines, monsieur. If the wind stops or we need to maneuver in a tight place, you will be glad to have an engine with fuel in it.”
“Okay. But, that is all. No more stops. Drive straight to the marina from here. No detours, no more stalling.”
CHAPTER 27 - INTERVENTION
Jean knew he had pushed his luck as far as was prudent, and he drove obediently – and directly – to the marina. From the parking lot, as he unloaded armloads of purchases from the trunk of Iglesias’ rental car, he took quick, surreptitious glances at the surrounding land and buildings. He could see nothing that indicated a police presence, and he prayed that his message to Stone had been delivered, understood, and acted upon promptly. In the absence of any evidence, Jean could only trust that his rescuers were hidden nearby, watching for the opportunity to act safely and effectively.
He would have been comforted if he could have seen Frank Stone and a team of Special Weapons and Tactics officers settling into their places on the roof of the seafood restaurant on the far edge of the parking lot. The SWAT team leader, a police lieutenant, approached Stone and knelt beside him, behind the concrete parapet of the rooftop.
“Surprised to see you here, Stone. Thought I heard you’d retired.”
Stone lowered the binoculars he was using to scan the marina. “Right. But I need to observe on this one – if you’ll give me that much, for old times’ sake. My boy’s out there.”
“Duby?”
Stone nodded, looking through the binoculars again.
“Sorry he’s got himself into a situation,” the team leader said, “but, on the other hand, it’s good to know he’s back. Active again. That’s great.” He smiled and gave Stone a pat on the back.
“Not so great. He’s just a civilian, now. Matter of fact, he probably knows less about this kinda business than a normal civilian, really.” Stone lowered the glasses and turned to speak discreetly to the team leader. “He doesn’t remember ever seeing this kind of action on TV or in a movie, much less being a part of an operation like this.”
The team leader wrinkled his forehead, confused. “But, you said he stalled the kidnapper, and he got a message to you, tipping us off. That sounds like the Duby I used to know.”
“Yeah, but he’s not the guy we used to know. He’s just a guy smart enough to put two and two together and do whatever he could think of to get some help in a tough situation.”
Jean left the parking lot with shopping bags dangling from both arms and shoulders. Iglesias carried nothing but a gallon jug of water, keeping his other hand free to grip the pistol in his pocket – the pistol pointed always at Jean.
The men on the restaurant roof watched through their sniper scopes and binoculars as Jean led his captor to the terminus of a pier, where two small boats bobbed gently at the end of their mooring lines. Jean’s boat had a small, electric motor that Dan Kavanaugh had installed when Jean first came home from the hospital, when his left shoulder was not yet strong enough to row the boat from the pier out to the Do Bee 2.
Jean turned away from the motorized boat, and dumped his packages carefully into the other small boat, the one with two hefty wooden oars lying inside. Hoping that no one would hail him and accuse him of stealing their dinghy, he held the boat steady for Iglesias
to climb in, then unwound the mooring line from the pier cleat and lowered himself into the boat. He took up the oars and, facing the pistol-pointing Iglesias, began to row toward his distant sailboat. He rowed as ponderously and slowly as he could without alerting the gunman to his tactic, and he hoped that Frank Stone and the police were nearby, making good use of the time he was buying them.
Eventually, the two men reached the sailboat. Jean shipped the oars and tied the dinghy’s mooring line to a cleat on the Do Bee 2’s starboard side. Then he heaved the shopping bags from the belly of the dinghy, over the gunwale, into the cockpit of the sailboat.
He turned to offer a hand to help Iglesias into the cockpit, but Iglesias waved him off with a waggle of the pistol. “You first.”
Jean climbed into the sailboat, then obeyed Iglesias’ gestured command to back off and stand still while Iglesias climbed in. Jean moved as if to step around Iglesias and pick up the shopping bags, but Iglesias stopped him with a look. “You stay on that side. Between me and the shore. Nobody needs to see me, and you’re as good a shield as any.”
Atop the restaurant, a spotter with his binoculars focused on the Do Bee 2 exclaimed, “There’s the perp! Just got on the sailboat. Boy, LT, you weren’t kiddin’ when you said this guy’s armed and dangerous. Even if he wasn’t armed, he’d be dangerous! The guy’s huge!”
“Let me see that,” the team leader took the man’s binoculars and looked at the boat for himself. “The big guy’s not the perp. That’s Dubreau, the victim.”
“Are you sure? Because that’s one guy I sure wouldn’t approach without backup.”
The lieutenant handed the binoculars back to the spotter. “Well, you’d be smart to stick to that decision if you ever have to detain Dubreau, but in this case the fugitive is the little guy. The one holding the gun.”
“Oh, yeah. Good clue.”
“Ya think?”
A second spotter, scanning a different quadrant of the marina, reported in. “Female civilian approaching the sea wall, LT. Could be heading in the direction of our target.”