Dead Silence (45 page)

Hopefully, it was the last mistake the two Cubans would ever make.

Since then, I had been steadily stretching the tape, working it off my hands so it now covered them like gloves. I had been polite and cooperative and acceptably submissive.

I had remained submissive as I listened to Hump warn me, “You will learn to jump if I tell you. You have never dealt with a man such as me.”

I had answered honestly, saying in Spanish, “You are very strong—stronger than me—you’ve proven that.”

“Yes, it is true,” he had replied. “Many men have said so.”

We had been talking long enough by then for me to risk mentioning Will Chaser. I still didn’t know if he was alive or dead so I had nudged the truth closer, saying, “With your size, you should have been an athlete in the Olympics. Cuba always does very well. You could have been a great boxer or weight lifter. Boys all over the world would have admired you. Boys everywhere, even here in the United States.”

Hump had nodded, his expression saying
If you say it’s true, I won’t argue.
“When I was only twelve, I could lift the front end of a Lada from the ground! I could have held an entire Calina over my head, but they are difficult to balance, those ugly Russian cars.”

I suggested, “By the time you were fourteen, you probably could put a horse under your arm.”

The man made the association. “Don’t mention boys or horses to me. I never want to hear about them again. I have always distrusted horses, but now I distrust them both. The boy you call William, can you guess what my name for him was?”

I shrugged.

“Devil Child, that is what I called him. I was afraid of that brat, I admit it! What man wouldn’t be afraid of a vicious demon? Have you noticed that he ate part of my ear? It is true!”

Hump turned his head to show me and I felt another surge of admiration.

“Perhaps it was because the boy was an Indian, an Apache, he claimed, like the painted ones I watched on television in René’s barbershop in Havana. They are savages, you know. Why, the Devil Child even threatened to scalp me.” He lowered his voice to confide, “The child put a curse on me. He admitted it, then bragged of it!”

Hump had already let other information slip. I now knew that he and Farfel had planned the kidnapping with men from two different organizations. Choirboy wanted documents that would embarrass Rome. There was an American who took orders from another American, Tinman, although Hump didn’t say it. They wanted
all
the files destroyed but were also in it for the money.

I already knew why Hump and Farfel were involved, so now I was concentrating on the boy. This was the first time Hump had spoken openly of Will, but he was using the past tense.

Hump was borderline mentally retarded, I was convinced. It took him many sentences to communicate even simple facts. But he spoke with the carefully constructed syntax of a slow learner. It was unlikely he would confuse tenses, but I refused to be so easily convinced because I didn’t want to believe it.

“I wouldn’t have wanted to spend much time around William Chaser,” I told Hump. “One time, the boy swore at me. He threatened me, too. It’s true.”

“Hah!” The man was pleased to hear it. “What a dangerous hostage he made. As I said to Farfel”—the man craned his neck to confirm that Navárro couldn’t hear—“no one will pay ransom for a demon teenager. We should kill the boy, I told him, before the U.S. demands money from us.”

I affected a casual disinterest. “Good. Sometimes, a bullet’s the best way.” “Not in this case. Because of the curse, you see. Also, we have made certain promises. Unlike Farfel, when I give my word I keep it! So we buried the boy in a box. He is less than three kilometers from here.” The man motioned toward the bay, then stopped to focus on something that surprised him. “What is that orange light in the distance?”

He was looking toward a line of mangrove islands, dark shapes on moon-blue water. Beyond the islands was an orange corona of light. It pulsed like a slow-motion explosion.

I said, “A fire. Maybe a boat,” but was thinking of Tamarindo, more worried than I’d been before.

Because his attention was still on the fire, it took a moment for Hump to reply, “We used a little fan. I connected the fan to a battery for air . . . for the boy, I’m telling you. By now, though”—Hump didn’t have a watch so his eyes moved to the night sky—“the battery was not strong, and the fan, it didn’t work so very well. So the brat, he is probably dead. Although, personally, I hope he is not.”

I said, “What?,” before remembering I didn’t care.

“Before I filled the grave, the boy promised he would remove the curse if I returned. I told him I would come back. I would like to. It would be a wise thing to do. He’s going to die anyway, so I could kill him later. What’s the difference?”

The man reached and lifted a necklace from beneath his shirt. “These beads are blessed to protect me from evil. I also made a small offering to the Devil Child. But it didn’t help. Not ten minutes later, Farfel crashed our boat.”

I pretended to look at the beads, as I said, “Well . . . the boy
is
an Indian.”

“An Indian priest, he told me, but used a word I do not know.”

“Some people scoff at religion,” I said. “Not me. I’ve heard of voodoo curses and Santería curses. People have died—it’s been documented. Some say they can bring the dead back to life. That, I doubt. But from an Indian? Maybe your curse isn’t fatal.”

“You think I don’t know of these things? I have Santería priests who instruct me. Don’t make the mistake of thinking me a fool. I am not. Even Farfel now takes my advice. Sometimes, I come right out and tell Farfel what we must do! Of course . . . I do this privately. Why embarrass an old man?”

He was swerving off topic, so I said, “Personally, I don’t care if the kid’s dead or alive. But, if you’re asking me to help, the answer is no.”

Confused, Hump said, “Help do what?,” then demanded, “Why are you refusing me?”

“Because I can’t. I’m not taking you back to where you buried the boy just to have a curse removed.”

Hump had been leaning against the safety railing, his attention now on the shell road watching for the senator’s car to appear. He straightened. “You told me curses sometimes kill people!”

“It’s not part of our agreement. I’m taking you to Cuba, that’s all. Sorry. I follow Dr. Navárro’s orders, not yours.”

“But Farfel is not the one who has been doomed by that bastard savage! If you expect me to go with you to Havana and drink beer, then you should at least—”

That’s when the rental van appeared.

Hump crouched low as he touched the gun to my head, saying, “Get down.”

M
en shout and bellow when they’re angry. But men who have transcended anger, who function daily with murder in their brains, are transformed when the moment finally does arrive.

The normal voice is displaced by a primitive voice that is linked, unencumbered, to the limbic cortex—the
lizard brain,
an aficionado like René Navárro might call it.

I could hear a lizard voice speaking to Navárro now, saying, “Quit lying. You think I could ever forget your face? Those eyes? Stop backing away . . .
Farfel.
You don’t have a gun? You always did. Question is, how many rounds?”

Because I had heard the wise-guy bluster of Otto Guttersen, I would not have believed it was him. It was similar in volume yet had a whispered edge that rasped, as if Guttersen’s larynx had been scarred by the memory of a long-ago scream.

“What are you talking about? I’m an associate of Dr. Ford’s. He asked me to show you aboard.” Farfel the interrogator had assumed the role of Cuban physician after stepping from the storage shed to introduce himself to Barbara and her unwelcome companion.

He was sticking to the role as Guttersen thrust his wheelchair forward, pursuing the man while making rasping accusations. Farfel had been as shocked to see Guttersen as Guttersen was to see his former tormentor.

Where had they met? No idea. Only Barbara had mentioned the showtime wrestler’s military background. But all the information I needed was in Guttersen’s venom the first time he spoke the name
Farfel
.

The invalid had been a POW—somewhere. As Roxanne Sofvia had said, “Does it matter which war?”

I had thought the woman naïve, although her bitterness was justified. But she was right, I was wrong. These recent seconds had exposed my comfortable certainty as ignorance.

From the flybridge, peeking over the fairing, I had an elevated view of the area. The parking area was directly beneath me.

I could see that Guttersen was getting frustrated because of the sand, as he tried to press his attack on Farfel. And there was Barbara, dumbstruck, standing near the van, where the doors were still open, dome light on. Like the men, she was in shock.

Trailing southward was the estate’s private canal, water star-black, roiled by current where it emptied into an ocean inlet near mangrove bushes thirty yards away.

The yacht sat with its bow pointed toward the inlet, moored portside to a commercial-grade dock. The dock adjoined a party deck, where there was a chiki hut, a grill and outdoor speakers, all of it—parking area included—lighted by low-voltage lamps. The deck extended out over the water on pilings.

Farfel, I realized, wasn’t actually fleeing. Why would he? He had his laser-sighted pistol, although he hadn’t produced it. Instead, he was leading Guttersen toward the deck, where there was no railing, only a two-foot drop to the water.

Tide had flooded, current starting to turn.

“You cowardly sonuvabitch, why you running? My legs don’t work. You know why. You’re the one who did it!”

Barbara had finally recovered enough to attempt an intervention, saying, “What’s going on here? Mr. Guttersen, I think you’re overreacting. Why don’t we all calm down and discuss whatever it is that—”

Guttersen’s voice sounded close to normal as he snapped at her, “Shut up! If you want to do something useful, call one of them big shots, Minneapolis National Guard. They’ll tell you who this snake is! Or the doctors at the VA!”

“But you must be mistaken—”

Guttersen had reared his wheelchair onto the deck and was now using his fist to hammer at sand clogging the brakes. “Are you blind, lady? Look at his face! If you can’t see he’s lying, you’re dumb as rice, I shit thee not!”

Barbara was looking toward the yacht now, calling, “Ford! Where the hell are you?”

Beside me, Hump pressed the gun harder into my neck, and said, “After Farfel drowns the cripple, he’ll be mad if you answer. He told me that he would enjoy killing you more than killing the woman.”

At first I thought,
Barbara
.
Farfel’s going to kill a senator?
But then I understood. Hump was talking about Shelly Palmer.

“Navárro killed the woman detective?” I demanded.

Hump realized that he’d slipped up. “Uhhh . . . maybe I imagined him saying that before he returned to the stable. Yes, I’m sure now, because of our agreement.”

I felt an emotional jolt: a flurry of denial and self-reproach . . . then a flooding change in blood chemistry that was anger.

My arms were extended behind me. With my hands, I was doing what children do when they interlace their fingers and play
Here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open up the doors and here’s—

“Stop moving,” Farfel said. “I have never shot a gun, but I know it’s loud. My ear, it is already aching.”

He was kneeling to my right, starboard side. When I glanced at him, I noticed something in the water, something moving. It was an elongated shadow gliding across the black water toward the dock where Farfel was standing, now taunting Guttersen with his patient denials.

The shape was pointed like the snout of an alligator—a huge gator, if I was right. It had to be fourteen feet long. It was moving fast, propelled by an effortless wake.

“Are you trying to trick me?” Hump was straining to follow my gaze without turning away.

I wanted to remove my glasses and clean them. Mangrove shadows cloaked details, but the speed was right, as well as the low, surface-flush profile. It’s illegal to feed gators in Florida, which makes people even more eager to do so. The big ones come to associate people with food. Gators have killed a dozen strollers and swimmers in recent years.

If Guttersen went into the water, drowning was the least of the man’s worries.

I whispered fast, “I’ll take you to the boy. He can remove the curse like he promised if you help me disarm Farfel. Just show me where you buried him.”

My offer keyed an alpha-male response and Hump used his left hand to slap the back of my head. “He was my father’s friend! Do you take me for an idiot?”

Behind my back, I snapped my fingers inward, levered my wrists outward and my hands exited the duct tape as if exiting a cave.

“Can you swim?” I asked the man.

“Of course! Not well, but—”

Before Hump could finish, I slapped the gun away, then looped my arm under his crotch as he attempted to stand, using the man’s own upward momentum to vault him over the railing. His three hundred pounds felt light because of my adrenal surge.

The man somersaulted backward, hollering,
“Hey!,”
as if offended. His body imploded the water surface with the sound of a refrigerator.

I looked to see the gator’s reaction, but it had disappeared—in front of the yacht possibly. Or it was now submerged, swimming toward the vibration of the huge Cuban’s thrashing.

I looped the noose off my neck, stripped the ball of tape from my wrists and knelt.

Shelly Palmer’s pistol was on the deck. A Glock—not a favorite, but it was loaded. I checked to make sure before scrambling down the ladder. As I sprinted across the gangway, I heard a man’s scream.

I hoped it was Hump. It wasn’t.