Got the Look (8 page)

Salazar said, I'll pay you for it.

Now you're talking, the caller responded.

Five thousand dollars, said Salazar.

Ten.

Salazar paused, as if he had to think about it. All right. Ten. My attorney will handle the money. His name is Jack Swyteck. S-w-y-t-e-c-k.

Andie wanted to stuff a sock in his mouth. It was so gratuitous, so unnecessary to inject Swyteck's name at this juncture.

Tell Swyteck he can expect to hear from me.

When? asked Salazar.

When I feel like it. Now, what proof do you want? Pictures?

Pictures don't prove anything in a digital world. I want the answer to a question. A question that only Mia would know how to answer.

Okay, name it.

Andie glanced at the tech agent, who shook his head, as if to say that the FBI's trace effort was going nowhere.

Salazar said, I want to know

The pause made Andie nervous. They'd rehearsed this part a dozen times. Mia was a horse lover, and the first one she'd ever owned was a mare named AzAocar. Andie waited for Salazar to ask the question, but it was as if he'd frozen stiff, the way actors sometimes forgot lines they'd uttered a hundred times before.

Andie grabbed a pencil and scribbled a prompt on a yellow Post-it: Her horse!

His smugness only confirmed that he hadn't forgotten anything. An almost imperceptible smile creased his lips as he spoke into the phone. Ask Mia this question: What does a kiss have in common with real estate?

What? the man said.

What? Andie wanted to say. It wasn't even one of the questions they had considered, let alone settled upon.

That's all I want to know, Salazar told the kidnapper. What does a kiss have in common with real estate?

Andie wanted to snatch the phone from him, but what could she tell Mia's kidnapper - that Mr. Salazar couldn't chat any longer because he was a very bad boy who refused to follow the FBI's plan? Her only option was to ride out this stunt and hope for damage control. As she watched Salazar scratch out a message on another Post-it, however, she was beginning to feel a bit like the victim of a hijacking.

MY RULES he wrote in all capital letters, the word my underlined three times.

I'll wait to hear from you, Salazar said into the phone. The kidnapper disconnected, and Salazar laid the receiver in the cradle, seemingly unfazed by the laserlike glares from the FBI.

Chapter
10

Theo scratched his head, pondering his friend's question. Got it! said Theo. They both end up costing a shitload more then you thought they would.

No, man, said Jack. It's location, location, location. Comprende? That's what kisses have in common with real estate.

They were in Jack's kitchen, and Theo was standing in front of the open refrigerator. He wasn't hungry. It was eighty-eight degrees at 7 P. M., a near record for winter in Miami, and Jack was determined to put off his big air-conditioning repair bill until at least April. Theo rolled a cold can of soda across his sweaty forehead and said, So it's like you and that fancy-pants attorney, William Bailey, right?

Huh?

The way you was kissing his hairy ass to get new clients before this thing with Mia blew up in your face.

I wasn't -

Theo got down on one knee, puckered up, and made a long, loud kissing noise. Oh, Mr. Bailey, I just loves this location, location, location. Matter of fact, this here be my very favorite loca -

All right, all right. Knock it off. I wasn't sucking up that much.

Theo arched an eyebrow, no words needed.

Fine, said Jack. Maybe I got a little carried away with the thought of finally snagging a client who can actually afford to pay his bill. But that's beside the point.

What is the point?

Jack took a seat on the barstool at the kitchen counter. I talked with Agent Henning today. She and Salazar got a call from Mia's kidnapper last night.

He tell him to pound sand on the ransom?

Not yet. They wanted confirmation that Mia is still alive, so Salazar asked a proof-of-life question.

Theo popped open the soda, chuckling to himself. What'd he ask? What's real estate and kisses got in common?

Yes.

You shittin' me?

Henning says he completely coldcocked her. That wasn't even close to the question they'd agreed upon.

Course it wasn't. Pretty much sucks as far as proof-of-life questions go. Anyone who knows anything about real estate could probably figure out the answer to the joke, if they thunk about it long enough. It ain't like askin' what's the inscription inside Ernesto's wedding band. Something Mia would know but that a kidnapper could never guess.

That's the issue, said Jack. Are we talking about a guy who's just making bad decisions? Or is he deliberately trying to sabotage the whole rescue?

What do you think?

A southeasterly breeze rustled the curtains over the sink. More hot air. Just for argument's sake, let's give him the benefit of the doubt on the proof-of-life question. You say it's not a very good one, but maybe Ernesto asked it because it was Mia's favorite joke. He made his money in real estate. Probably he's the one who told it to her.

Or?

Jack chased his scattered thoughts, trying to organize them into words. Maybe it was his way of telling Mia that he knows about me and her. That he's known all along.

How's that?

She told that same joke to me.

When?

Just a few hours before I met her husband. That same night, in fact.

She told you at the snobfest?

No. We were here in the house.

The bedroom?

No. Right here in the kitchen.

It was as if an Arctic blast had suddenly cut through the room, displacing the heat. Theo made a slashing gesture across his throat, signaling cut. He stepped away from the counter and moved to the center of the kitchen. His gaze swept the room like some kind of electronic eavesdropping detector, over cabinets and counters, around the appliances. Not that he had X-ray vision, but the wheels were clearly turning in his head as he tried to figure out where he would put a listening device if he were bugging this room. Finally, he zeroed in on the ceiling fan suspended over the island. Jack watched, impressed, as his friend stood on a chair and pointed toward the brass plate that connected the fan to the ceiling. It would have been virtually invisible to anyone not looking for it, but a small black nub was protruding from a screw hole in the brass.

Theo smiled, as if to say Bingo. He yanked out the bug and tossed it on the floor, then hopped off the chair and smashed it to bits.

Adios, SeA+-or Salad Bar.

Jack was about to say Salazar, but Theo stopped him. There could be more, he whispered. Let's go outside.

Jack followed him to the back patio and closed the California doors behind them. They walked toward the seawall, stopping just short of the fishing boat that Theo docked at Jack's place. Theo said, See what you get for being too cheap to install AC, leaving your windows open all day long like that? Looks like Ernesto had one of his boys pay you a visit and wire you for sound.

So, you don't suspect even for a minute that it could be someone else? said Jack.

That equipment was standard PI shit sold at any spy shop, easy enough for any schmo to install. Perfect for keeping tabs on a wandering spouse. No way the FBI uses that crap.

I wasn't thinking FBI. I was wondering more about Mia's kidnapper.

Has to be Salazar. Can't be a coincidence that his proof-of-life question matches a joke that Mia told you before the two of you hopped into bed.

Jack drew a deep breath and let it out. The thought of him hearing every sound Mia and I made

Sounds that his wife was no longer making in their own bedroom, mind you.

So she tells me, said Jack.

That's enough to make a married man extremely angry.

Angry enough to sabotage the rescue of his wife from a kidnapper? I guess that's the question.

Puh-lease, said Theo. How about angry enough to feed her to the fishes and make it all look like a kidnapping?

In that case, maybe I was right after all.

Yup. Maybe the person who bugged your kitchen is the kidnapper.

Jack looked toward the bay, considering it. I think I need to have a talk with Agent Henning.

Chapter
11

The sweep of Jack's house turned up no new bugs. FBI tech agents searched for transmitting devices with a spectrum analyzer. They looked behind walls and ceiling tiles with a thermal imaging camera. Phone and cable lines were tested with a time-domain reflectometer. They even checked the electrical wiring with a Fluke multimeter. Their assortment of gadgets sounded like a Dr. Seuss catalog, and Jack was beginning to wonder when it would be time for the Whoville rammer-jammer rectal thermometer.

Who's gonna sweep to see if the FBI planted any bugs of their own? said Theo, standing in the driveway.

Don't be so paranoid.

Don't be so naive, said Theo.

Jack leaned against Theo's car, thinking. Once a criminal defense lawyer, always a criminal defense lawyer. Know anybody with the right toys?

Yup, said Theo.

Bring him through tonight.

Will do, boss.

Agent Henning was staying at the Salazar estate in Palm Beach, her center of operation until the kidnapping was solved or until Mr. Salazar kicked her out, whichever came first. By eight thirty she was supposed to head to Jack's place, but he didn't want her to show up in the middle of Theo's reinspection. Distrusting the FBI was one thing, but letting them know the exact level of your distrust was quite another. So Jack offered to save her the drive over to Key Biscayne and meet on the mainland for coffee. They agreed on Perricone's, near the Brickell Avenue financial district.

Perricone's Marketplace and Cafe was a slice of old Miami by way of New England. Like so much of Miami's history, the house that originally sat on the property had been destroyed. In lemons-to-lemonade fashion, a visionary restaurateur bought himself an eighteenth-century barn in Vermont; moved the hand-hewn beams, walls, and floor planks to Miami; and then, piece by piece, rebuilt the homey atmosphere of a long-lost My-amma. The front half was a gourmet market, and out back, overlooking a park, was a screened-in dining area beneath a forest of sprawling oaks. No one would ever guess that a coastline crowded with high-rise condominiums was just a couple of short blocks to the east. Add good food at decent prices, and in Jack's book Perricone's was one of the most welcome Yankee transplants to south Florida since Jackie Gleason.

But the Great One still used better beans to make his coffee.

Sorry I wasn't able to make it back in time for your house sweep, said Andie.

They were outside at a corner table, alone, as every other patron had opted for inside seating with air-conditioning. No problem, said Jack. Getting to Miami can be a bear even on weekends.

I'm still getting used to that. I've only been here a few months.

Not like Seattle, is it?

Seattle and Miami are actually a lot alike.

Yeah. Must be the mountains.

I'm serious. Both are these geographic paradises tucked away in a corner of the lower forty-eight states. Both have their share of ethnic tensions. And they both get way more than their share of lunatics. You think it was pure coincidence that Ted Bundy started in Seattle and ended in Florida?

Never thought of it that way, said Jack.

See, you learned something.

She had a nice smile, and she seemed more relaxed than the last time they'd met. She was dressed more stylishly, too. Perhaps it was the Palm Beach influence. In any event, Jack was getting a fuller appreciation of the initial report from his old boss that Henning was a real looker. The raven black hair and amazing green eyes made for a striking, exotic beauty.

So, Jack, what did you want to talk to me -

So, what brought you to Mi -

They were talking on top of each other, and they both stopped in midsentence. Hers was clearly a business question. Jack's wasn't, which embarrassed him a little. This isn't a date, Swyteck.

The waiter brought them two lattes, then disappeared. Andie waited for him to leave, then asked, You really want to know why I came to Miami?

I wasn't trying to be nosy or anything.

It's fine. Basically, I needed a change.

Good career move, I imagine.

Not really. I was doing fine in Seattle. The ASAC was my former supervisory agent, and we had a great relationship.

Just wanted something different?

It's hard to explain. Most people can't relate.

To someone with a job like yours, you mean?

No. To a half-Indian girl who was adopted and raised by white parents. Don't get me wrong. My parents are great people, and I'm not some head case walking around with a chip on her shoulder. I just felt like it was time to move on, that I should find a place where I didn't even have to think about fitting into one culture or the other.