Duby's Doctor (29 page)

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.”

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.”