Tampa Burn (6 page)

It was a little before eight P.M. on a Tuesday night so humid that the air had a steam-bath weight. I could feel water molecules settling upon my skin. It was ten minutes or so until sunset, and a couple hours past low tide, so the tidal lake that is Dinkin's Bay was refilling.

I rose from my chair and began to pace.

Pilar said, “It happened Wednesday night or early Thursday morning. We live in a place you'll remember—the
Claustro la Concepción.
The old nunnery right across from the presidential palace.”

Yes, I remembered. Stone walls, high ceilings, lots of wood and shadow. It smelled of canvas and heavy furniture, like a museum. In the city, it had been the only safe meeting place for Pilar and me, our one refuge. A convent where lovers rendezvoused. Ironic.

“Safety,” she said. “That's why Laken and I lived there. When I was involved with the government, Masagua had a period of stability. Brief stability—
I'm
not taking credit, understand. The first in its history, but that's changed. It's become a political nightmare again.”

From news reports on my shortwave radio, that was true. I knew generalities, not the details.

Masagua is the smallest country in Central America. It's on the Pacific Coast, between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. It's made up of rural islands, mountains, active volcanoes, and rainforest. It's also the poorest country in the region. Unemployment and infant mortality rates are high, the median income low.

Nothing catalyzes political unrest like a failed economy. I knew there were two rebel armies vying to take control. Jorge Balserio was the head of the most powerful rebel force—the F.L.N., or National Liberation Front. I'd heard he'd formed a government in exile based somewhere in Florida. Miami, probably.

The fact that he'd faked his assassination—killing some of his own men in the process—just to save his own skin had apparently been forgotten.

“Our rooms,” Pilar said, “are on the second floor of the convent. Laken's room is down the hall from mine. Because I still work as a government consultant, the military provides armed guards. See? I thought we were safe.”

I interrupted. “Is General Rivera still the head of the military?”

Juan Rivera was an old political enemy but also my old friend. He's a baseball freak—a left-handed pitcher who carried his fantasy of playing pro ball into middle age. Picture Fidel Castro: the fatigues, the beard, but bigger and without the psychosis.

“No, the general's been gone for more than a year. After he lost his command, he disappeared—to avoid a firing squad, some say. Which was a terrible loss for me. Juan was one of the few people in the government I could still trust.

“That's something you need to know. Our government's close to collapse. There are so many traitors and rebel insiders now, there's almost no one—I'm not exaggerating—
no one
that I can speak to in confidence. I trusted Juan, but almost no one else. No longer. That's why I couldn't speak openly on the telephone.

“The armed guards I mentioned? I thought our son's personal guard, Gilberto, was devoted. But the night of the kidnapping, Gilberto went home, saying he was sick. I've been told he's joined the rebels.”

Because I hoped it would nudge her into telling us more about the kidnapper, I asked, “What makes you think Balserio's involved?”

“Because they delivered a video and he's mentioned in a way that implicates him. I brought it so you can see for yourself. The man who abducted Laken”—she stopped, visibly pained—“I can't call him a man. I
won't.
Jorge Balserio, he's responsible for what's happened, and he'll burn in hell for what he's done. Bringing that terrible person into Masagua.”

It took Tomlinson's gentle questioning to get the story out of her. Less than three years before, Balserio's rebel army had been so ineffective that it had become the butt of jokes. No respect from the general population meant no support. Desperate for power, Balserio had taken desperate military risks—one was a stab at psychological warfare.

Using political connections and bribes, he bought the freedom of a hundred or so of the most dangerous criminals in Nicaragua and Colombia. In exchange for their freedom and other perks, the criminals agreed to fight for Balserio as mercenaries.

I was explaining to Tomlinson that such bartering wasn't uncommon among guerrilla armies, when Pilar interrupted. “Letting men out of prison, that's one thing. I've heard of that. But Jorge, he took inmates from asylums, too.
Insane
asylums. And animals who
should
have been in insane asylums. He wanted the sickest kind of men. Men who'd do things so brutal that people would support him out of fear.

“It worked,” she added. “He's winning the war. People are afraid to leave their homes at night. They're flying his flag, and they'll vote for his party because they don't want one of his monsters to come knocking on their door.”

I clubbed my thigh with my fist again as I listened to her describe how frantic she'd been when she found the door to the boy's room forced open, his bed empty, plus this odd discovery: All the fish in his main aquarium were dead.

I said, “Dead? How?”

She shrugged. “It was as if they'd exploded.”

That made no sense. My brain started to consider the possibilities, but then swung back to task. I had to ask again, “What makes you think they hurt Lake?”

Pilar had brought a simple straw purse. It was the type they sell in the open markets of Central America, and that are used by peasant women. From the purse she took a CD.

“Judge for yourself. On Thursday morning, a brown paper package was found outside the compound gate. It makes me nauseous to watch it. Do you have a computer that plays DVDs?”

I didn't, but Tomlinson did.

“My laptop's in the marina office,” he said. “I'll be right back.”

 

 

ASIDE
from exchanging e-mail photos, I hadn't seen my son in nearly four years. Now here he was on a computer screen, his pale eyes staring out into mine, looking so lost and alone that his fear seemed directly proportional to the dread I now felt.

He was lying on a bare mattress in a poorly lighted room. They'd used duct tape. His wrists and mouth were taped, and a section of rope tied around his waist suggested they'd used it to pull him along, leading him to this dingy-looking place.

There was a window, Venetian blinds drawn, pale light leaking through, and a floor lamp. A moth was beating itself against the lamp's nicotine shade. It could have been a cheap motel. It could have been a cabin in the woods.

The video began with a close-up of the boy's face, his eyes blinking into the lens. There is something heartbreakingly vulnerable about people who have been bound and gagged. The physical debasement is implicit. It is something that might be done to animals before they are thrown over the hoods of hunting vehicles.

Looking at my son's face, I wondered how long he would be scarred by this violation. I wondered if he would live long enough to suffer through it and heal.

Those two words had once seemed a foreign combination. But I'd come to like the sound.

Maybe we're all trapped, to a degree, by our own self-image. I'm an anti-gizmo snob. I'd once had Internet service because I'd needed it for research, but canceled it when I was done. Bringing another computer into the lab had taken some convoluted rationalizing.

Tomlinson hadn't helped matters when he told me, “Buy it, man. Hell, I just got a cellular phone
and
a beeper. So my Zen students—when they're panicked, or in trouble with the cops—I'm just ten digits away. I'm thinking about getting one of those infrared laser pointers, too. From my boat, I can screw with the guides at night. Hell, I'm a Buddhist monk, but I've come to the conclusion we're all destined to be microchip whores.”

I bought the desk PC anyway, and so it was through the Internet that I got to know Lake. In the last year or so, we'd been e-mailing almost daily. Sometimes we wrote in Spanish, sometimes in English. The early letters had been strained, but they'd gotten to be friendly and often funny. They'd certainly become far more familiar. He'd started out addressing me as “Father,” then as “Dad” when he wrote in English. He seemed most comfortable, though, calling me “Doc”—two friendly equals exchanging thoughts and news—and that's the way it had stayed.

Fact was, I'd been fretting about why I hadn't heard from him in nearly a week.

Now I knew.

He was a smart kid; loved natural history. He knew his birds, reptiles, and plants. He asked a lot of questions about my work in the marine sciences. Lately, he'd been setting up several of his own saltwater aquaria. I'd been helping.

I saved his letters. Sometimes, alone at night, I'd reread my favorites.

Science is its own language. Lake already knew that. Science was the language we shared.

So credit the Internet for changing the way I felt about my boy. He went from being the child I'd fathered, to an individual. He became the articulate young man whose sense of humor and intellect exceeded my own. I began to think of him not just as our son, but as
my
son. Laken Fuentes—the name “Laken” taken from some obscure Mayan legend. He didn't seem to mind when I shortened the name to Lake.

I liked that. People who get pissy about their names being shortened make me uneasy.

 

 

MY house is actually two small wooden houses built under a single tin roof. The houses are separated by a breezeway, or what used to be called a “dog trot.”

I live in one of the houses. The other is a small but well-equipped laboratory from which I run my company, Sanibel Biological Supply. Collecting marine specimens to sell to schools and research labs around the country is not a booming enterprise, but it's what I do, and I do it to the best of my abilities.

We were in the lab now. In the center of the room, I've installed a university-style science work station: an island of oaken drawers and cupboards beneath a black epoxy table, complete with a sink, faucets, electrical outlets, and double gas cocks for attaching Bunsen burners.

We were standing at the work station. Tomlinson's white Apple laptop was open before us. To my right, beneath the east windows, on a similar table, was a row of working aquaria, octopi and fish therein. There were additional glass aquaria above on shelves.

To my left, along the east wall near the door, were more tanks filled with fish and crabs and eels. My lab always smells of fish, formaldehyde, disinfectant, books, old planking, and barnacles that grow at water level on pilings below the pine slab flooring.

Tomlinson touched the computer's Play button. As the DVD began to spin, aerators charged the air with ozone and provided a pleasant, bubbling backdrop for a video that was anything but pleasant.

When Lake's face filled the screen, mouth taped, I felt Pilar place her hand on my arm for support. Or perhaps to support me. It was the first time I'd felt any emotional or physical connection from her since her arrival.

At first, the audio was garbled. But then, off camera, I heard a man's smoky voice say in Spanish, “Grunt so that your mother can hear you. One grunt for yes, two for no. Have we hurt you?”

The man had a distinctive lisp. I also noted that he had an equally unusual accent. The dominant inflection was the cracker-American that is poor white Southern. But there was something else mixed in there, too. French? Close but not quite right.

The man waited before he said again, “Make some noise, kid. Have we hurt you?”

The tone was threatening. Even so, there was another long pause before the boy grunted twice.
No.

Pilar whispered, “I know him too well to believe that. He's injured. They've done something to him.”

The man asked, “Have we treated you all right?”

Once again, the long hesitation said more than the boy's single grunt.
Yes.

During that space of silence, the cry of a bird could be heard from outside. It was a muted, two-toned whistle.

The man: “Do you think we'll kill you if your mother doesn't cooperate?”

This time, the boy grunted instantly.
Yes.

Now the shot widened so that much of the room was visible. I could see that Lake was barefooted and wore blue jeans without a belt—he'd dressed in a hurry. I pressed my glasses to my face and leaned closer, trying to focus on detail.

There appeared to be a raised ribbon of welt that ran the length of the boy's right forearm. It might have been a burn were it not so narrow. Flames are seldom projected like water from a hose or, say, from a Bunsen burner. Something else I noticed: His feet seemed to be stained with something. Blood?

Possibly.

He wore a dark blue T-shirt, only a portion of an insignia visible: An M and a T overlaid.

The boy was a Minnesota Twins fan. He liked the Cubs, the Red Sox, and the Mets, too. Some combination.

That'd earned him an Internet introduction to Tomlinson, which is why they were now e-mail pals, too.

I remembered Lake writing to explain. He liked the Twins because they had one of the lowest payrolls in baseball, but still produced winning teams. He liked the Cubs, the Mets, and the Red Sox because they were perennial underachievers, plus the brilliant and quirky Bill “Spaceman” Lee had pitched for the Sox. Tomlinson loved him for that.

An advocate of the underdog. It was a characteristic I credited to his mother.

As the shot widened, the camera jolted, then the aperture became fixed. A person then moved into the frame—a large man who was oddly dressed, I realized.