Tampa Burn (28 page)

By three A.M., Saturday morning, the ship was moored at a wing of isolated phosphate loading docks on a river near a highway bridge, and Micki was finishing the last of the paperwork so the two Port Authority inspectors could go on their merry way.

They knew Micki, they knew the ship, and their inspection had been no more thorough than others.

When they left the
Repatriate,
the U.S. authorities stationed a single male security guard at the bottom of the gangplank, on the starboard side of the vessel, so the crew could not disembark.

There was no security of any kind, not a soul watching the port—or river side—of the ship. And, at this hour, there was almost no car traffic on the usually busy highway bridge.

Micki was smart. That's the way she always timed it.

By four-thirty A.M., Prax was ashore in his own double-wide trailer, and the boy was safely locked away in another.

The kid hadn't been any trouble at all. In fact, the little brat actually seemed to get into the adventure of it, climbing down the rope ladder, sneaking around in boats at night.

Ashore, in the weird little trailer park where Prax had grown up, the kid had even stopped outside in the moonlight, taken a good look around and started identifying early morning bird calls and shit, insect noises and frogs, too. Like he was a damn little scientist or something.

Oddball kid. A nerd who didn't look like a nerd. Not with that gorgeous face of his.

 

 

NOW home, the first thing Prax did was take a satellite phone from his bag and put it in its charger base. He would be needing the phone soon because he'd be needing a lot more cash very soon. Micki had told him she'd be back in a week, maybe less, and he'd better damn well be ready with the money, or she'd leave his ass.

The number of the phone he'd left for Pilar Fuentes was taped to the back of the charger, and he also had the number written down in a couple of other places.

Next, he poured himself a tumbler of Scotch over ice, lighted a big Cohiba—an El Presidente—and sat at his laptop computer. He had the fast DSL system here in the States—it wasn't like using those shitty, slow phone lines back in Masagua—and he was instantly on the Internet, checking and sending e-mails.

Yes! There was one from Dr. Valerie Santos.

The famous Dr. Valerie was so attentive. Was very free with information to a correspondent who claimed to be a poor young South American burn victim.

 

 

PRAX
had first written to the “Contact Dr. Valerie” link on the surgical group's Web page nearly six months ago. It was a con that he'd thought might work, but he'd had no idea how far he'd be able to take it.

He'd written:

After giving details about that, using stuff he knew—like the burn center in Managua—he'd continued:

The first couple of replies came from the woman's assistant, Prax could tell by the wording. But then he uploaded and sent a photo that he'd found on the Internet of some teenage Latina crispy critter whose face had been scorched by napalm.

That did it. Prax started getting personal attention from “Dr. Valerie,” as she signed her e-mails. Sometimes, she wrote to him daily.

The e-mail he opened now began,

Prax deleted the letter, thinking,
No shit.

Two days later, responding to a note he'd written earlier, Dr. Santos replied:

Lourdes found that useful.

Then, the next evening, when he was pissed off at Pilar Fuentes and her new asshole pals, and whoever the hell it was following them in the black Chevy, he received a very valuable e-mail from the nice doctor lady:

A list of medicines followed. All sophisticated stuff that was new to him.

How in the hell was he going to put his hands on all those drugs?

Lourdes had brought the boy into the trailer with him. He'd done that the last couple of nights, which he didn't mind so much. It gave him somebody to talk to; take his mind off it when the headaches and the facial pain came.

The last few years, the facial pain had been as bad or worse than the pounding inside his head. When the headaches came shooting up his spine, the first jolt now seemed to bathe his face in acid. Fucking miserable. So talking took his mind off it.

Otherwise, all the kid did was read. About the only time he opened his mouth was to ask for more books, or to do research on the Internet—which Prax allowed, as long as he was right there to keep an eye on the little brat.

The kid was reading now, sitting at a chair in the corner. Some book about bugs or snakes or some damn thing.

Prax watched him for a second before he said, “Have you ever heard of drugs called cyclosporine or prednisone? I've never heard of the fuckin' stuff.”

The kid looked up from his book and thought about it for a moment before he said, “Cyclosporine, no, but prednisone, yeah. I remember reading about it because the body produces its own form of prednisone, a chemical called cortisol.”

“Really?”

“Um-huh. I've been reading a lot about medicine lately, because . . . well, a friend of mine has some emotional problems. There are so many new drugs coming out that can help—almost always from the United States—it's kind of interesting. The chemistry of it, I mean. I think I'm going to be a doctor.”

Prax said, “No shit? A fuckin' doctor.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

The kid was like that. A smart-ass, but
smart.

Maybe the brat would have some ideas on how to get his hands on those brand-new drugs. . . .

EVEN
though I seemed to be moving in slow motion, the satellite phone was still ringing when I got the car door open.

The phone was made by Motorola, cased in black plastic, the size and shape of a standard cell phone, but it had an oversized antenna and a flat face with no keypad. There was an On-Off button, a menu key, and a couple of other buttons. Stupidly, I hadn't bothered to familiarize myself with the thing.

It rang once more, green face plate flashing, as I held it beneath the car's dome light, trying to figure out how to answer.

Finally, I pressed the largest button and slammed the phone to my ear. “Hello. Hello?”

There was silence on the other end. Silence . . . but it was an inhabited silence. Someone was listening.

After a few seconds, I realized that the silence may have been catalyzed by surprise—because the caller was expecting Pilar to answer. Quickly I said in Spanish, “My name's Ford. I'm the boy's father.
Laken's
father. I'm all alone, no police. The mother's . . . indisposed right now.”

More silence.

“Hello! Talk to me. Let me talk to my son.”

Then I heard
click.

I kept talking until I was certain they'd disconnected. Then I hit the Off key.

I was aware that Janet was watching me from the house. Because I didn't want to have to explain, I waved goodbye, got in the car, and drove slowly back toward the beach, the satellite phone in my lap.

The phone still wasn't taking my telepathic commands.

It was nearly one A.M., but I was so hyped-up, I knew there was no chance of sleep. Besides, there were still a few proactive steps to take, I decided.

The reasonable thing to do now, and what we
should
do, was check Pilar's e-mail to see if the kidnappers had supplemented their call with another written message. Trouble was, Pilar—and her password—were in Miami.

I was justified in asking her for it. No question about that. She and Tomlinson had to be in the room by this late hour, so I grabbed the cell phone, dialed the Radisson.

No answer.

I was furious.

I redialed the hotel immediately and asked the clerk, “Are you sure they haven't checked out?”

He used a practiced, polite and frosty tone that showed disdain, but from a safe distance. “Oh yes, sir, I'm positive, sir.”

“Then make sure they get my message the instant they get in.”

“Yes sir!”

As I drove, I rehearsed some of the bitter, cutting things I would say to my old pal and to the mother of the boy who, for all we knew, was fighting for his life at this very instant. I indulged in that ugly rehearsal for several miles before I recognized the kind of emotional spiral I was in. Negative cycling is as irrational as Pollyanna optimism.

I stopped and made myself review. Tomlinson is a flake and a womanizer, but he is also brilliant, decent, and one of the kindest people I know. Pilar and I had issues, but I had no reason to doubt her devotion as a parent. Quite the opposite. Neither of them would put their own pleasure ahead of our son's well-being. If they weren't in their hotel room, or weren't answering the phone, there was almost certain to be a good reason.

Now . . . what the hell that reason was, I couldn't imagine. But I decided that I should, at the very least, give them a chance to explain before I passed judgment.

I was hyped, all right. Juiced on a day of adrenal overload. It was O.K. to stay aggressive, but I also needed to stay constructive.

I took it easy through the curves south of 'Tween Waters, then slowed to a crawl at Blind Pass Bridge.

To my right, the moon was enormous over the Gulf of Mexico. It was a gaseous sphere, meteor scars showing, sitting on a rim of atmosphere that buffered Captiva Island from the emptiness of outer space. Beyond the bridge, white surf rolled out of a far horizon that touched Yucatan and the jungles of Central America.

I stared, eyes soft-focused, thinking that only water separated me from a shore where someone held my son prisoner. Islands may be isolated by water, but they also seem more intimately linked to a wider world because of the uninterrupted plane. Lake seemed close. Just over there. Just beyond the moon.

I touched my foot to the accelerator.

As I drove, I concentrated on how to take the next necessary step: check Pilar's e-mail. Lake's well-being was too important to let it wait until morning. The kidnappers might want us in Miami the next afternoon, and we wouldn't know about it until too late. But how could I get the woman's password at one A.M. without talking to her?

I knew a way. Maybe.

I had a friend I could call. A man by the name of Bernie Yeager. He could help—if he was home, and if he was agreeable. An elite and distinguished member of the U.S. electronic warfare and intelligence community, Bernie didn't qualify as law enforcement. Not by my definition, anyway.

Under my agreement with Pilar, contacting Bernie was permissible.

On the way back to Dinkin's Bay, there was someone else I decided to telephone: my cousin, Ransom Gatrell.

Under any other circumstances, I wouldn't have bothered her so late. But Ransom's a night owl—she's always up at odd hours—plus, my sensitivity to the power of blood linkage had been heightened.