A King's ransom

11

For only the second time in my life, I was taking a woman home to meet my mother and desperately wanted them to hit it off. Obviously the circumstances were very different, as were my motivations. Yet, I was strangely reminded of Jenna as Alex and I wove through traffic in my Jeep with the canvas top down. It was a rare comfortable evening in early autumn, without the persistent mugginess that usually lingered in South Florida until almost Halloween. Alex had removed her jacket and pulled her shoulder-length hair back to keep it from blowing in the breeze. Her profile was classic. Whether she was the more beautiful was hard to say, but, no slight to Jenna, she was definitely more intriguing.

“So, how’d you get caught up in FARC?”

We were stopped at a traffic light on Coral Way. Just ahead was the world’s first Burger King restaurant. Decades later it was still there, but everything around it had changed as the new Miami took over the old Miami-“My-ama,” my grandmother used to call it, an era as extinct now as the old notion of a “healthy” suntan. To my left was the original Latin American Cafeteria, where people waited in line outside for a chance to sit at the long, horseshoe-shaped counter and order everything from medianoche sandwiches to milkshakes made with exotic fruits like mamey. At the walk-up cafe across the street stood a group of Spanish-speaking men dressed in guayaberas, traditional Cuban shirts. Espresso served in little plastic cups inspired friendly arguments over beisbol and politicians who were too soft on Castro. Just ahead, the man in the intersection with the big straw hat was hawking bags of limas from the tree in his neighbor’s backyard. It was the Miami I’d grown up with, the cultural mix I liked.

Alex said, “I wouldn’t say I was caught up in FARC. I just joined.”

“Why?”

“The usual burning philosophical issues that propel teenage girls to do anything.”

“Meaning what?”

“My boyfriend was in it.”

“I suppose we’ve all been there on some level. Except that the craziest thing I ever did was sign up for the glee club.”

“Hmm. Not sure which of us was the bigger sucker.”

“True. I got dumped about two weeks after I signed up. How about you?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Did he meet someone else?”

“No. He took a bullet in the head.”

For a second I felt like I’d taken the bullet. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. He was a drug-addicted worthless piece of trash who didn’t think twice about kidnapping people like your father.”

“Did he ever kill anyone?”

“Yes.”

I hesitated, then asked, “Did you?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Just thought it might come up with my mother. You know, the natural progression of things. ‘Hello, how are you, ever been a revolutionary?’ ”

She smiled cryptically. “Would it make a difference to you if I had?”

I wasn’t sure it would, but I was beginning to wish I hadn’t asked. “I suppose not. Like you said in Duncan’s office, that was your other life.”

“Exactly.”

The light turned green, and we were flowing with the traffic again. I waited for her to elaborate, but after several moments of silence it was clear that she wasn’t about to. FARC was her other life. That was that. Maybe she had killed someone, maybe she hadn’t.

Just don’t piss her off, Nick.

“Tell me about your father,” she said. “What’s he like?”

“Just a regular guy.” I reconsidered, then said, “Actually, he’s pretty extraordinary. Dad never went to college. Went straight from high school to Vietnam in the early seventies, came home and fell in love with my mom. She was nineteen when she got pregnant. They married, and six months later it was the three of us.”

“So you’re a love child?”

“Yeah, but they didn’t stay together for twenty-six years because of me. After all these years, after all they’ve been through, they really are still in love.”

“Does your mom help in the business?”

“That’s totally my dad’s passion. He started it with one old lobster boat that on a good day broke down only once. Now his company has forty boats pulling twenty tons of lobster a week out of Nicaragua. It’s a cutthroat business, but I daresay there’s not a guy in it who doesn’t trust my dad.”

“Sounds like you think highly of him.”

“I do.”

“You two must be close.”

That gave me pause. To hear me gush, it did sound as though we were close. I gave her the same kind of half-baked answer that she’d given me when I’d asked about her body count with FARC. “I’m sure we’d be closer if I’d gone into the fishing business with him.”

We were a half block from my house when I noticed a van in the driveway, Action News emblazoned on its side. The media had found us. I pulled up in the driveway beside it, jumped down from the Jeep, and confronted a couple of tech guys packing away their equipment. They were leaving, not coming.

“What are you doing here?”

“Our job,” he said in a flat, sanctimonious tone.

“Did you interview my mother?”

“She was great. It’s over.”

Alex laid her hand on my shoulder, as if to calm me down. “It’s okay,” she said. “We’ll deal with it.”

I took it down a notch, but knowing how upset my mother had been lately, the thought of someone’s sticking a microphone in her face really angered me. “Where’s your reporter?”

“Gone. You’re not the only news in this city. Just relax. No one was traumatized here.”

Alex and I went inside. She waited behind in the living room as I continued to the kitchen. Mom was seated alone at the table, sipping a glass of orange juice. She was dressed nicely, with her makeup on, which I was glad to see. If she was going to be on television, it wouldn’t have done her any good to have people saying that she looked as if she were falling apart. She smiled nervously as I entered, perhaps rethinking the things she’d told the reporter.

“I didn’t know what to do,” she said. “They just showed up at my door, no notice, and said they wanted a live interview for their six o’clock broadcast. I said no at first, but the reporter was very nice and convinced me that a little publicity might help your father’s cause. I was going to call you, but she had to do it right then. I shouldn’t have done it, I guess.”

“It’s okay. I’m sure you were fine.”

“Can I say something?” Alex was standing in the doorway, not really eavesdropping. It would have been impossible for her not to overhear.

“Who are you?”

“Alex Cabrera. I’m with Crowell Associates.”

“She’s a private consultant,” I added. “The insurance company pays for her.”

“Mrs. Rey, dealing with media under these circumstances can’t be pleasant for you, but don’t second-guess yourself. Even the experts disagree on whether the families of kidnap victims should lie low or try to drum up publicity. Since cases of international kidnapping are often tinged with politics, some people think that publicity helps bring pressure on the politicians to resolve them quickly. Others think that if a case gets a lot of publicity, the kidnappers will infer that they’ve caught a really big fish, which inflates their demands.”

“They already think they have a gold mine,” said Mom.

“And nothing you said on the evening news is going to affect that view one way or the other. But from now on let’s have an agreement, all right? No one talks to the media unless it’s something we all agree on in advance.”

“I only did the one interview.”

“And that’s probably enough for now. Once you get a ransom demand and we know for sure that FARC or whoever is behind the kidnapping, then we can develop a media strategy.”

I offered Alex a chair, then pulled one up for myself at the kitchen table. “Shouldn’t we also give some thought on how we might use the media? We haven’t heard anything from the kidnappers yet. Maybe it’s a way to get a message across.”

“That’s something to consider, but it takes planning. You have to ask yourself, what message do you want the kidnappers to hear? And how will it be interpreted by everyone else who hears it? The general public. The police. It’s even possible that your father will hear you on Voice of America or RNC radio.”

“I hadn’t really thought of Dad hearing anything while in captivity.”

“Some prisoners are more isolated than others, but I know that FARC does on occasion give radio privileges to some. So if we do decide to use the media-and I’m not saying we will-it might make sense to have more than one person in the family do interviews. The longer this drags on, it could be of psychological benefit for him to hear his wife’s voice, then his son’s voice, his daughter’s voice, and so on.”

“How do you know so much about these kidnappings?” Mom asked.

Alex looked at me, as if to say that the message would flow best from my lips.

“Remember that group Agent Nettles told us about, FARC? She used to be a member.”

Mom blinked hard, as if my words weren’t quite computing. After several moments of silence, she was slowly turning green.

“Are you okay, Mom?”

Her shoulders started to heave. “Excuse me,” she said as she bolted from the table.

Alex gave me an awkward look. “Maybe I should leave.”

A strange noise emerged from the bathroom at the end of the hall, like a goose honking. Mom sounded really sick.

“Wait here. Let me check on her.”

The retching noise grew louder as I headed down the hall. The door was half open. I was almost afraid to look inside. After several moments of silence, I heard the toilet flush, then silence. Figuring the worst had passed, I tapped lightly on the door and entered.

Mom was kneeling on the floor, her arm resting on the rim of the bowl.

“I’m sorry, Mom. I should have warned you about Alex. I know you’re under a lot of stress, and I-”

“It’s not her. It’s morning sickness.”

“What?”

“It may be nighttime, but my stomach doesn’t know it. All damn day long, I’ve got morning sickness. It was the same way with you and Lindsey.”

“You’re pregnant?”

“Yes. I’m pregnant.”

“How?”

Her expression said, How do you think?

I checked my astonishment slightly, reminding myself that she’d become my mother just a year out of high school. “Does Dad know?”

“Yes. It wasn’t planned, but he was actually excited. We both were. And now,” she said, her voice shaking, “now, I might already be a widow and not even know it. This is such a disaster.”

I sat on the floor beside her, my hand atop her stomach. “This is not a disaster. This is the most important reason in the world for Dad to reach inside himself and find the will to survive, no matter what happens. And it’s the most incredible reason on earth for me to do everything I can to make sure he gets home.”

Tears welled in her eyes. She reached out for me, our first hug ever on the bathroom floor. She wasn’t just holding me; she was holding on to me. I’d never thought of my mother as weak. But if Alex was right-if this ordeal could last twelve months-I honestly wasn’t sure how Mom would deal with it. Especially now.

“We’ll be fine,” I said as we rocked gently in each other’s arms on the cold tile floor. “The whole new family is going to be just fine.”