Tampa Burn

EIGHTEEN

When the phone rang forty-five minutes later, I came rushing out of the lab to answer. Got to it on the third ring, picked it up, and said, “What’d you find, Bernie? Did you get the information?”

After what turned out to be momentary surprise, a woman’s voice replied, “This isn’t Bernie, but I do have some news. Dr. Ford? You are Marion Ford.”

I realized I was speaking to Detective Tamara Gartone. After I’d identified myself, she apologized for calling so late, but said she was required by law to contact the victim.

I said, “Huh?”

“You,” she said. “You, the victim. Normally, someone at the county jail would have made the notification. But I told you I’d call personally, so I am.”

What was she talking about? I was still flustered by my blunder answering the phone.

“The man who assaulted you is going to be released from jail within the next few hours,” she said. “Don Jorge Balserio. That’s what we’re required to let you know. Personally, Dr. Ford, I think it’s a hell of a mistake, and I can’t believe we’re doing it. Turns out, though, we’ve got no choice. Balserio-it’s General Balserio-holds a diplomatic passport. Nicaragua.”

Finally, I’d caught on. “You’re letting Balserio out of jail tonight?”

“Later on this morning. I know, it feels like the same day. I’m not certain of the exact time he’ll be released. It’s because of his diplomatic status. Are you aware of what that means?”

I told her I was. Diplomatic immunity has allowed rapists, thieves, and DUI killers to leave U.S. soil and live happily ever after without trial or punishment. It’s well documented that a serial rapist, the son of a Ghanaian attache to the United Nations, waved and laughed at police from his Newark departure gate, while his last victim lay near death in a Yorkville hospital. Because of an archaic treaty, neither our county, state, nor even the federal government can detain or prosecute a foreign official who holds a diplomatic passport.

She seemed impressed that I was so well informed. “It’s been that way since the Vienna Convention of 1961,” she said. “Because we’re so close to Miami, we deal with it occasionally. Just like this guy Balserio, they’re always pompous jerks, and they never cooperate, because they know they’re going to walk no matter what.”

“What about the other two? The ones with the Nicaraguan driver’s licenses.”

“No, they don’t have diplomatic status. But the charges against them aren’t nearly as serious. They’ll be out soon anyway. General Balserio, though. I make him as the bad one.”

Her agency had followed procedure. They’d contacted the U.S. Department of State, which had contacted the Nicaraguan embassy, formally requesting that Balserio’s immunity be waived. The request had been denied, so the man would soon be free.

I could hear the beep-beep of my telephone’s call-waiting alert as she added, “On the bright side, he has to leave the country. They’re flying him out, probably this afternoon. So he shouldn’t give you any more trouble.”

I thought: Unless he decides to return illegally.

She paused, listening. “Are you getting another call?”

I said, “Yeah, and I’m afraid I’m going to have to take it. Can we talk another time?”

The lady sounded professional, even chilly when she said, “You’re a busy man, Dr. Ford. Such unusual business hours. Give Bernie my best.”

It wasn’t Bernie.

I touched the flash button, answered with a more restrained, “Hello?” and heard the voice of Merlin T. Starkey say, “Ford? Tell me you don’t know why I’m callin’.”

I said, “Detective Gartone just hung up. I know how disappointed you must be. So why don’t you have a glass of warm milk and crawl back into bed?”

The old man didn’t sound the least bit sleepy for 2:20 in the morning. “Not before I’m finished tellin’ you what I got to say. The guy you framed so he’d get jailed? Turns out he’s some big, important foreign diplomat. Someone like him, he ain’t gonna let it slide. You really hung Miz Tamara out there on a limb all by her lonesome, didn’t you, sonny boy?”

Ransom was sitting in the reading chair, the marina’s black cat, Crunch amp; Des, curled in her lap. With a mortar and pestle she’d been grinding bits of blue rock, powder, leaves, occasionally pausing to add a few drops of turpentine. But she now stopped. She seemed to know that someone hostile was on the other end of the line. Her intuition was good that way.

Ransom was watching me closely as I said, “He’s not going to blame her, so stop worrying. And she’s not going to hear any more about what happened on the Loop Road.”

“That’s what you keep sayin.’ But here’s what I want you to know. I think something real dirty’s goin’ on between you and them foreigners. And it ain’t done yet. So what I’m thinkin’ is, someone needs to keep a real tight eye on you, Ford. I still got a few connections in Tallahassee. I can get Florida Department of Law Enforcement to assign me temporary duty. They’ll let me roam all over the state with my nose on your butt. In fact, I think I will do that. You and those Latinos, I got the feeling something real bad’s gonna happen soon.”

I said quickly, “Starkey, don’t do that. Believe me, you don’t understand the situation.”

My sudden eagerness pleased him-he was back in control. “See there, I knew I was right. I’m gonna call my friends tomorrow and get me assigned TDY.”

One nasty old bastard.

Because I could tell he was ready to hang up, and because I was too pissed off to think it out, I said in a rush, “Hey, Merlin? That story you told me about how Tucker Gatrell ruined your career. I thought it was funny as hell.”

The man who never used foul language said, “Fuck you, sonny boy,” and slammed the phone in my ear.

I was in the midst of explaining to Ransom how and why the old man had infuriated me, when the phone rang again.

She returned to mixing her powders, saying, “I’ll put that ol’ fool on my juju list, too,” as I picked up the phone and said carefully, “Hello…?”

Bernie had Pilar’s password, said it was no problem. Passwords, actually. She had two Internet accounts. Her personal account was through Hotmail. com, which was free and the most commonly used server in Central America. Her other account was used mostly for business and more formal correspondence. It was through the Masaguan government and a thing called ISTMO Communication Group.

“It’s an Internet presence provider,” he explained, adding that it offered hosting services and domain registration, with headquarters in Panama, and offices in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Miami.

Bernie told me the big international accounts were the easiest for someone like him to hack. “At AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, even stuff that’s deleted-passwords, name it-is stored on the archived Internet service provider’s hard drive. That’s in case the FBI or someone like me wants to come looking.”

This early in the morning, I wasn’t certain I wanted to hear all the details, but did my best to sound interested. Like most great artists, the man took joy in the intricacies of his craft.

“I downloaded all her files and sent them to you as an attachment. I don’t know if you’re worried about being caught spending time online by the real subscriber or not. They gonna send the Internet police up from Central America to slap you on the wrist? I know, I know-so why should we care?”

The note Pilar had received telling us to meet the tattooed giant in Miami was from xyxq37@nicarado. org. Bernie referred to that person as “X.” Retrieving X’s password wasn’t so easy, he said.

“Nicarado’s the server used by libraries and schools in Nicaragua and Masagua,” he said. “All the accounts are free, and there’s an unlimited number of accounts a person can set up. If this person’s smart, doesn’t want to be tracked, doesn’t want his e-mails hacked, he can just keep changing names and accounts, traveling all over Central America. Sure, I can get you passwords. But that’s not going to help if the account address keeps changing.”

I said, “You couldn’t get his password?”

Bernie sounded hurt. “He asks me such a question. A man I’ve known so many years, he asks a question like that. Yes, Marion, I do have X’s password. Yes, it took me all of twenty minutes, but I got it. It’s a strange one, too. It doesn’t sound Spanish, but you speak the language so well, you maybe know it. The password is Bozark. ”

I said, “Bozark? No… not Spanish. Maybe Tlaxclen Maya, but nothing I know in Spanish. It sounds American. Regional.”

Which made sense. Lourdes spoke with an American accent, plus a hint of something else.

Bernie said, “I did a web search on it. Ran it backward, rearranged the letters. Bozark’s a common family name. Nothing else came up. Same thing I found in X’s files. Nothing. Which is what I was telling you. The password may be worthless because X left nothing to read. Nothing that I can access without physically going to the main computer, anyway. There’s a history of one transmission to her address, and that’s it. So I think we’re dealing with someone who knows the system, who keeps changing accounts to hide his tracks.”

I asked, “Bernie, is there any way you can narrow down where in Central America the e-mails are originating?”

What I’d been considering was grabbing a plane to Masagua and hunting for Prax Lourdes while Pilar and Tomlinson took care of the ransom demands here in Florida. I liked the thought of that; moving in on him while he thought I was still back in the States, hustling drugs for some wounded revolutionary.

In a singsong voice, Bernie answered, “Maybe yes, maybe no, maybe. Which I was just about to tell you if you’d show a little patience. Every e-mail has a routing code. How it reads depends on the server, but internationally, it’s a mess. It’s not like zip codes or telephone routing numbers. It varies with the place and the server. Take… well, for instance, if you send me something over the Internet, I can tell it’s from Florida in the United States. But Nicarado, it’s a mess with a capital M.”

Even so, he explained, there was still enough routing information for him to have a pretty good idea, geographically, where it came from. I listened closely as he added, “But I noticed something very fishy in the coding,” he said. “A little time delay indicator almost no one in the world would have caught but me-excuse me for bragging, but true. The person who sent this e-mail? I’d bet he or she was in the country of Masagua. Almost definitely on a public computer. A library; a school. But the person who wrote the e-mail, the place where the e-mail originated, I’d say he’s probably not in Masagua. Maybe not even in Central America.”

I said, “What?”

“I think he sent the e-mail to a confederate in Masagua who then forwarded it on under the Nicarado address. Maybe the confederate copied it, maybe retyped it. I can’t say; I’m going simply on an anomaly in the routing code.”

So much for the idea of flying to Masagua and beginning my search. That would come soon enough, though. I was counting on it.

I said, “X writes the e-mail, and sends it from someplace unknown to a library or school in Masagua. X’s partner then forwards it to the States under a Nicarado address.”

“Exactly.”

I checked my watch as I thanked Bernie for his help. I was eager to get into Pilar’s e-mail and see if Lourdes had sent her anything more.

There was nothing surprising about Pilar’s password. It was Ixku-ixku -another Mayan word that she was fond of, the name of an ancient goddess.

The guilt of a voyeur has an uneasiness attached; a slimy feel.. .

That was the sensation, scanning Pilar’s e-mail.

Pilar had something going with her jeweler friend Kahlil in Masagua. There were nearly a dozen unread e-mails from him in her in-box. Some of the subject headings were “Missing my love,” “My heart is with you,” “Long for your touch.”

Or maybe Kahlil just had it bad for Pilar. I hadn’t checked her Mail Sent file. Maybe her replies weren’t as sappy.

Not that I opened and read the man’s letters. Nor would I. I agree with Bernie: A person’s privacy is sacred. And I didn’t like that voyeur feeling.

There were two e-mails, though, that I opened immediately. Like the earlier e-mail Pilar had received from the kidnappers, the subject heading was blank, and both notes came from addresses that seemed to be a random series of letters and numbers. Both also came from the server Nicarado. org.

The first was dated the previous day, Wednesday, at 11:10 P.M. At that exact moment, I’d been on my way back from the Everglades after dealing with Balserio. The second e-mail had just now arrived; was delivered electronically only a few minutes before I sat down at the desk in my lab and signed on with Pilar’s password.

I was tempted to open the new e-mail first. Instead, I forced myself to read them in the order they arrived: Rich bitch. Florida called us and said you were being followed, which is so fucking stupid of you. Trick us again, the brat dies. No more warnings. Tomorrow night, drive to St. Petersburg. Be in the downtown area no later than 10 at night. Have the satellite phone, someone will let you know. If you threw it away, you’re the losers because you didn’t get our permission. The money better be packed in a hard photographer’s case exactly like you were told. Make sure of that. No more fuck-ups. Answer this message immediately so we know you have it.

I kept the e-mail as new and saved it to my filing cabinet, wondering about the photographer’s carrying case. Why was that so important? When Lourdes mentioned it on the video, I’d considered a couple of vague explanations, but didn’t linger long enough to think them through. Maybe the pick-up man would be posing as a photographer. Or… a camera case was rugged, durable, which made it ideal if they intended to bury the money until they were sure law enforcement wasn’t waiting to nail them. The cases were also shockproof. They could send us down some lonely road and have us throw the case out the window on command.

Tomlinson would be a good one to ferret other possibilities-if he and Pilar ever resurfaced.

I opened the second e-mail.

Maybe because I’d just gotten off the phone with Lourdes, I could hear his voice as I read: Big-shot scientist. The brat says you can do anything; well, let’s see. Your industrialist whores up there are paying for the bullets killing our peasants, so I feel good about you stealing the medicine to help keep some of them alive. One of our important people got hit bad and has an operation coming up, but the doctors say they don’t have the best medicine, and that’s where you come in. We want the following supplies, and you have until Sunday afternoon to get it, and don’t even ask for more time because the answer is “Fuck you.” When you get it, pack it good in the same kind of case as the money. The hard photography kind that seals tight without having to lock. Don’t go to St. Petersburg tonight because we’ll do the exchange all at the same time. Answer back fast.

A list of several drugs then followed. I was familiar with only a couple of the names. Because he demanded relatively small quantities, it seemed to support his story that they were needed for a specific operation.

Lourdes’ e-mail ended, You should have seen the look on your brat’s face when I told him you said we should go ahead and kill him, Papa didn’t want to pay all that money.

I thought to myself: Lake had to know it’s not true. That I said it only to get leverage.

I kept the e-mail as new, then forwarded it to my own business address at Sanibel Biological Supply. If I wanted to send him a question about the drug list, I wanted to be able to do it without going into Pilar’s account. As I did, I told myself that Lake understood, hoping the boy was secure enough and smart enough to know I had to play it tough from my end. Even so, it made me feel sick inside-and furious, too.

I’d thought about it before, but now I thought about it again: Praxcedes Lourdes would one day feel a tap on his shoulder and turn to find me standing there, the two of us off all alone.

Imagining the moment displaced the anger, made it fade.

I began to write a note confirming that I’d received his e-mail, but then stopped. Lourdes wanted a fast response, but it didn’t have to be that fast. Why not take a little extra time and maybe think of a way to make my reply work for me? Use it to my advantage if I could.

I knew nothing about several of the medicines he’d demanded, had no idea if I could get them-but Lourdes didn’t know that. I decided to do some cursory research. If I sounded authoritative, if I convinced him I knew what I was talking about, maybe it’d give Masked Man a little extra incentive to keep me happy.

There were several common antibacterials on the list. I didn’t bother with them. I went to work looking up the medicines that were less common. One was cyclosporine. He wanted five hundred 100 mg capsules, plus 50 mg of cyclosporine for intravenous infusion, packaged in 5 ml sterile ampules.

Another was prednisone. He wanted five hundred 20 mg capsules. He also wanted drugs named ATGAM and Thymoglobulin, and something called OKT3, all in intravenous infusion bags or ampules, plus the needles and tubes required as delivery systems.

Maybe one or all three of these were the experimental medicines he’d talked about.

My impression of Lourdes was that he was vicious and shrewd but poorly educated. This was an extremely sophisticated and detailed list of supplies, and he’d put it together very quickly. Who was he fronting for? Or who was supplying him with data?

Using internet search engines, I began to research the drugs one by one. I started with what might be the experimental types first.

In a medical journal, I read an article about OKT3: The antibody OKT3 blocks the functions of human cells that reject foreign bodies. We explored its effectiveness in treating the rejection of renal allografts. Of 123 patients suffering acute rejection of cadaveric renal transplants, those treated with OKT3 daily for a mean of 14 days, 73 percent experienced marked recoveries.

Cadaveric renal transplants? Lourdes wanted the drugs for someone who needed a kidney transplant?

Well… not necessarily.

I ran the names of the others. Except for the more common drugs on the list, the rest were antirejection or immunosuppressant drugs. They were medicines administered to patients either during or after receiving a transplanted heart, limb, liver, or lung, a skin graft, or any other procedure where a foreign organ is introduced.

Someone was getting a transplant. Soon, apparently. He needed the most powerful immunosuppressants available.

Ruined organs and lost limbs are not uncommon among battlefield casualties.

But something about the scenario bothered me. I’ve spent much of my life dealing with the military, and military people. For Lourdes to tell me, an American civilian, that one of their top military people had been wounded and was about to undergo a serious operation seemed to be a terrible breach of security. What kind of army was Balserio running?

If the story was true, not a very good one, I decided.

At ten minutes until three in the morning, I wrote a note to Lourdes confirming I’d read his demands. I wrote it in English to see how he’d react. If I could get him to reply in what I suspected was his native language, I’d learn a lot more about him: Reception confirmed. Please consult your doctors again before I waste my time getting all this stuff. Our people here usually recommend ATGAM and Thymoglobulin over OKT3, particularly for acute rejection episodes. Side effects are similar to OKT3, but are usually less severe. Do your doctors know what they’re doing? None of it’s going to be easy to find, so make sure it’s what they want. I’m not doing anything until we start getting e-mails from the boy. His letters need to include a reference to something current so we know they weren’t written in advance. They also need to be personal enough so we know only he could have written them. This is nonnegotiable, and we expect his first e-mail later today.

I read the thing over more than a half a dozen times, wondering if it was too tough. Decided it needed to be tough.

Finally, I inserted the sentence “Natural history is a familiar topic” just before the sentence that began, “This is nonnegotiable.. .” I hoped Lake would see it; that it would give him the hint he needed.

If he could get outside, or see outside, there were ways for him to tell me where he was geographically. Narrow it down, at least.

I sent the e-mail unsigned.

I got up, stretched, walked through the breezeway that separates the lab from my house, and peeked through the screen door: Ransom and the black cat were curled up in the chair, dozing. She’d transferred the concoction she’d been creating into a clear glass beaker. It was my smallest Pyrex boiling flask from the lab. A boiling flask has a bulbous bottom and a tubular neck. Filled with the turquoise potion, it was as exotic-looking as a genie’s lamp. The flask sat atop my old trans-oceanic shortwave radio-a bizarre combination. Looked like it really could perform voodoo magic.

I wondered how she was going to use the stuff. Did her victims have to come in contact with the goo?

I should have been exhausted, but still felt wakeful, so I decided to make a more careful search of Pilar’s e-mail. I didn’t know how many times Lourdes or his accomplices had communicated with her via the Internet-I hadn’t asked-so there might be more to learn. I returned to the lab, cleaned my glasses, sat at the computer, and began to scan.

Pilar is a methodical woman. She’s also extremely private. I was not surprised to discover that she saved many-maybe all-of the e-mails she’d written (for her records, of course), but preserved few of the e-mails she’d received. Nearly everything in her Old Mail file had been deleted. With the exception of several messages from Lake-his Chamaeleo address jumped out at me-and a dozen or so others, the file was empty. None had a Nicarado. org address, so I went into her Mail Sent file and concentrated on studying the subject headings and addresses there.

Her replies to the kidnappers might well tell me the content of their messages to her.

On Thursday, May 1, the day she discovered Lake missing, she’d written to a lot of people. Same was true of Friday, May 2. The numbers suggested a kind of emotional frenzy. Understandable.

Judging from the recipient addresses, many of the letters had to do with inquiring about travel, contacting the Masaguan counsul general’s office, and also arranging for people to look after her private affairs while she was away.

Several were to Kahlil39. Her correspondence with him was busy. Not as sappy from her end, but still something serious going on. Subject headings were: “One heart,” “Dear Man.” On the day that Lake disappeared, it was “Desperate!”

I was tempted to actually read one of her earlier letters to him, but that ugly voyeur-guilt stopped my hand on the mouse. I wondered how Kahlil would feel if he knew she’d vanished with one of America’s horniest, most sexually active Zen Buddhist monks.

Pilar had even saved the note she’d sent to an ex-lover she now reviled-me. I saw my Sanibel Biological Supply e-mail address; saw the subject heading-“Personal/important”-and opened it so that I could re-read: Greetings to you. I’m arriving in Miami on Monday, and would very much like to speak to you in person about an important matter. May I visit you Tuesday afternoon on Sanibel? Please give my warm regards to Tomlinson…

It had seemed chilly when I read it then. It seemed chillier now.

Several of the recipients had Nicarado. org addresses. That got me excited, but my excitement was wasted. I opened each to find that Pilar was usually replying to a teacher or a librarian who had a public account.

Now I was tired. Her stack of sent mail was so lengthy that I decided I’d done enough, and I’d had enough. I’d been awake for slightly more than twenty-one hours-twenty-one very active hours-and so I moved the mouse for a final quick scan of subject headings before signing off… and then I stopped, confused… then baffled.

On the afternoon that Pilar discovered Lake missing, she had written an e-mail to Tinman@Fight4Right. org. The first two words of the subject heading were the same as on her note to me, “Personal/important.” But added to that were three incongruous words: “About our son.”

About our son?

Whose son? Lake, our son, was her only child.

Confused, I looked at the top of the page. Maybe I was dopey from exhaustion. I checked to make certain I was still in her Mail Sent file.

Yes, I was.

I checked to see if she was forwarding a letter from someone else.

No.

Had she actually written the e-mail and sent it?

Yes, hers was the source address. The subject heading was Pilar’s: “Personal/important about our son.”

One of the first symptoms of shock can be a roaring sound in the inner ear.

Nearly deafened, I clicked on the subject line. Then I opened the e-mail to read what was inside.