Tampa Burn

TWO

Pilar said, “They’ve taken our son, Marion. He’s been kidnapped.”

Her words seemed to bang around, echoing inside my auditory canal. I had to wait for a moment until my brain translated the noise.

“ Kidnapped. When?”

“Five days ago. Slightly less.”

“ Who? Who did it?’

“Balserio.”

As Tomlinson said, “Oh God,” I banged my fist on my thigh and said, “Why didn’t you tell me right away? On the phone.”

“I’ll explain why. Now’s not the time to second-guess my decisions. Please.”

I said, “Wherever he is, we’ll find him. Don’t worry. I’ll find him.” My head snapped around. “Do you think they hurt him? Do you have any information at all?”

I watched her battle to hold the tears in check. “That’s the worst. I think they may have hurt him, but I don’t know how badly. Laken is so strong-willed. In his room, there was a struggle. Some furniture was broken. Some glass. Plus”-she paused for another moment-“plus, when you hear about the man who took him. Who did the kidnapping. He’s… he’s horrible. Sick. A monster. Everyone in Masagua is afraid of him.”

When I began to press for details-Who was the man? Had federal investigators been assigned to the case?-she shushed me with a warning finger. “I’ll explain it all. We don’t have enough time to waste it by rushing.”

From her reaction, though, I got the strong impression that it disturbed her to linger on the subject of Lake’s abductor. It scared me, her reaction. Gave me a chill.

The three of us were outside, sitting in cane-backed bar stools on the northeastern side of my porch. It’s the portion of porch that hangs over my shark pen and looks out over the bay.

On the teak table between Pilar and myself were Ball jars filled with iced tea. Tomlinson held a tumbler of dark Guyana rum cloaked in his big bony hands, as if trying to warm it. Unseen below us, beneath dark water, two bull sharks and a smaller, 70-pound hammerhead shark circled. Like ocean currents, sharks are always moving.

It was a little before eight P.M. on a Tuesday night so humid that the air had a steam-bath weight. I could feel water molecules settling upon my skin. It was ten minutes or so until sunset, and a couple hours past low tide, so the tidal lake that is Dinkin’s Bay was refilling.

I rose from my chair and began to pace.

Pilar said, “It happened Wednesday night or early Thursday morning. We live in a place you’ll remember-the Claustro la Concepcion. The old nunnery right across from the presidential palace.”

Yes, I remembered. Stone walls, high ceilings, lots of wood and shadow. It smelled of canvas and heavy furniture, like a museum. In the city, it had been the only safe meeting place for Pilar and me, our one refuge. A convent where lovers rendezvoused. Ironic.

“Safety,” she said. “That’s why Laken and I lived there. When I was involved with the government, Masagua had a period of stability. Brief stability- I’m not taking credit, understand. The first in its history, but that’s changed. It’s become a political nightmare again.”

From news reports on my shortwave radio, that was true. I knew generalities, not the details.

Masagua is the smallest country in Central America. It’s on the Pacific Coast, between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. It’s made up of rural islands, mountains, active volcanoes, and rainforest. It’s also the poorest country in the region. Unemployment and infant mortality rates are high, the median income low.

Nothing catalyzes political unrest like a failed economy. I knew there were two rebel armies vying to take control. Jorge Balserio was the head of the most powerful rebel force-the F.L.N., or National Liberation Front. I’d heard he’d formed a government in exile based somewhere in Florida. Miami, probably.

The fact that he’d faked his assassination-killing some of his own men in the process-just to save his own skin had apparently been forgotten.

“Our rooms,” Pilar said, “are on the second floor of the convent. Laken’s room is down the hall from mine. Because I still work as a government consultant, the military provides armed guards. See? I thought we were safe.”

I interrupted. “Is General Rivera still the head of the military?”

Juan Rivera was an old political enemy but also my old friend. He’s a baseball freak-a left-handed pitcher who carried his fantasy of playing pro ball into middle age. Picture Fidel Castro: the fatigues, the beard, but bigger and without the psychosis.

“No, the general’s been gone for more than a year. After he lost his command, he disappeared-to avoid a firing squad, some say. Which was a terrible loss for me. Juan was one of the few people in the government I could still trust.

“That’s something you need to know. Our government’s close to collapse. There are so many traitors and rebel insiders now, there’s almost no one-I’m not exaggerating- no one that I can speak to in confidence. I trusted Juan, but almost no one else. No longer. That’s why I couldn’t speak openly on the telephone.

“The armed guards I mentioned? I thought our son’s personal guard, Gilberto, was devoted. But the night of the kidnapping, Gilberto went home, saying he was sick. I’ve been told he’s joined the rebels.”

Because I hoped it would nudge her into telling us more about the kidnapper, I asked, “What makes you think Balserio’s involved?”

“Because they delivered a video and he’s mentioned in a way that implicates him. I brought it so you can see for yourself. The man who abducted Laken”-she stopped, visibly pained-“I can’t call him a man. I won’t. Jorge Balserio, he’s responsible for what’s happened, and he’ll burn in hell for what he’s done. Bringing that terrible person into Masagua.”

It took Tomlinson’s gentle questioning to get the story out of her. Less than three years before, Balserio’s rebel army had been so ineffective that it had become the butt of jokes. No respect from the general population meant no support. Desperate for power, Balserio had taken desperate military risks-one was a stab at psychological warfare.

Using political connections and bribes, he bought the freedom of a hundred or so of the most dangerous criminals in Nicaragua and Colombia. In exchange for their freedom and other perks, the criminals agreed to fight for Balserio as mercenaries.

I was explaining to Tomlinson that such bartering wasn’t uncommon among guerrilla armies, when Pilar interrupted. “Letting men out of prison, that’s one thing. I’ve heard of that. But Jorge, he took inmates from asylums, too. Insane asylums. And animals who should have been in insane asylums. He wanted the sickest kind of men. Men who’d do things so brutal that people would support him out of fear.

“It worked,” she added. “He’s winning the war. People are afraid to leave their homes at night. They’re flying his flag, and they’ll vote for his party because they don’t want one of his monsters to come knocking on their door.”

I clubbed my thigh with my fist again as I listened to her describe how frantic she’d been when she found the door to the boy’s room forced open, his bed empty, plus this odd discovery: All the fish in his main aquarium were dead.

I said, “Dead? How?”

She shrugged. “It was as if they’d exploded.”

That made no sense. My brain started to consider the possibilities, but then swung back to task. I had to ask again, “What makes you think they hurt Lake?”

Pilar had brought a simple straw purse. It was the type they sell in the open markets of Central America, and that are used by peasant women. From the purse she took a CD.

“Judge for yourself. On Thursday morning, a brown paper package was found outside the compound gate. It makes me nauseous to watch it. Do you have a computer that plays DVDs?”

I didn’t, but Tomlinson did.

“My laptop’s in the marina office,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

Aside from exchanging e-mail photos, I hadn’t seen my son in nearly four years. Now here he was on a computer screen, his pale eyes staring out into mine, looking so lost and alone that his fear seemed directly proportional to the dread I now felt.

He was lying on a bare mattress in a poorly lighted room. They’d used duct tape. His wrists and mouth were taped, and a section of rope tied around his waist suggested they’d used it to pull him along, leading him to this dingy-looking place.

There was a window, Venetian blinds drawn, pale light leaking through, and a floor lamp. A moth was beating itself against the lamp’s nicotine shade. It could have been a cheap motel. It could have been a cabin in the woods.

The video began with a close-up of the boy’s face, his eyes blinking into the lens. There is something heartbreakingly vulnerable about people who have been bound and gagged. The physical debasement is implicit. It is something that might be done to animals before they are thrown over the hoods of hunting vehicles.

Looking at my son’s face, I wondered how long he would be scarred by this violation. I wondered if he would live long enough to suffer through it and heal.

My son.

Those two words had once seemed a foreign combination. But I’d come to like the sound.

Maybe we’re all trapped, to a degree, by our own self-image. I’m an anti-gizmo snob. I’d once had Internet service because I’d needed it for research, but canceled it when I was done. Bringing another computer into the lab had taken some convoluted rationalizing.

Tomlinson hadn’t helped matters when he told me, “Buy it, man. Hell, I just got a cellular phone and a beeper. So my Zen students-when they’re panicked, or in trouble with the cops-I’m just ten digits away. I’m thinking about getting one of those infrared laser pointers, too. From my boat, I can screw with the guides at night. Hell, I’m a Buddhist monk, but I’ve come to the conclusion we’re all destined to be microchip whores.”

I bought the desk PC anyway, and so it was through the Internet that I got to know Lake. In the last year or so, we’d been e-mailing almost daily. Sometimes we wrote in Spanish, sometimes in English. The early letters had been strained, but they’d gotten to be friendly and often funny. They’d certainly become far more familiar. He’d started out addressing me as “Father,” then as “Dad” when he wrote in English. He seemed most comfortable, though, calling me “Doc”-two friendly equals exchanging thoughts and news-and that’s the way it had stayed.

Fact was, I’d been fretting about why I hadn’t heard from him in nearly a week.

Now I knew.

He was a smart kid; loved natural history. He knew his birds, reptiles, and plants. He asked a lot of questions about my work in the marine sciences. Lately, he’d been setting up several of his own saltwater aquaria. I’d been helping.

I saved his letters. Sometimes, alone at night, I’d reread my favorites.

Science is its own language. Lake already knew that. Science was the language we shared.

So credit the Internet for changing the way I felt about my boy. He went from being the child I’d fathered, to an individual. He became the articulate young man whose sense of humor and intellect exceeded my own. I began to think of him not just as our son, but as my son. Laken Fuentes-the name “Laken” taken from some obscure Mayan legend. He didn’t seem to mind when I shortened the name to Lake.

I liked that. People who get pissy about their names being shortened make me uneasy.

My house is actually two small wooden houses built under a single tin roof. The houses are separated by a breezeway, or what used to be called a “dog trot.”

I live in one of the houses. The other is a small but well-equipped laboratory from which I run my company, Sanibel Biological Supply. Collecting marine specimens to sell to schools and research labs around the country is not a booming enterprise, but it’s what I do, and I do it to the best of my abilities.

We were in the lab now. In the center of the room, I’ve installed a university-style science work station: an island of oaken drawers and cupboards beneath a black epoxy table, complete with a sink, faucets, electrical outlets, and double gas cocks for attaching Bunsen burners.

We were standing at the work station. Tomlinson’s white Apple laptop was open before us. To my right, beneath the east windows, on a similar table, was a row of working aquaria, octopi and fish therein. There were additional glass aquaria above on shelves.

To my left, along the east wall near the door, were more tanks filled with fish and crabs and eels. My lab always smells of fish, formaldehyde, disinfectant, books, old planking, and barnacles that grow at water level on pilings below the pine slab flooring.

Tomlinson touched the computer’s Play button. As the DVD began to spin, aerators charged the air with ozone and provided a pleasant, bubbling backdrop for a video that was anything but pleasant.

When Lake’s face filled the screen, mouth taped, I felt Pilar place her hand on my arm for support. Or perhaps to support me. It was the first time I’d felt any emotional or physical connection from her since her arrival.

At first, the audio was garbled. But then, off camera, I heard a man’s smoky voice say in Spanish, “Grunt so that your mother can hear you. One grunt for yes, two for no. Have we hurt you?”

The man had a distinctive lisp. I also noted that he had an equally unusual accent. The dominant inflection was the cracker-American that is poor white Southern. But there was something else mixed in there, too. French? Close but not quite right.

The man waited before he said again, “Make some noise, kid. Have we hurt you?”

The tone was threatening. Even so, there was another long pause before the boy grunted twice. No.

Pilar whispered, “I know him too well to believe that. He’s injured. They’ve done something to him.”

The man asked, “Have we treated you all right?”

Once again, the long hesitation said more than the boy’s single grunt. Yes.

During that space of silence, the cry of a bird could be heard from outside. It was a muted, two-toned whistle.

The man: “Do you think we’ll kill you if your mother doesn’t cooperate?”

This time, the boy grunted instantly. Yes.

Now the shot widened so that much of the room was visible. I could see that Lake was barefooted and wore blue jeans without a belt-he’d dressed in a hurry. I pressed my glasses to my face and leaned closer, trying to focus on detail.

There appeared to be a raised ribbon of welt that ran the length of the boy’s right forearm. It might have been a burn were it not so narrow. Flames are seldom projected like water from a hose or, say, from a Bunsen burner. Something else I noticed: His feet seemed to be stained with something. Blood?

Possibly.

He wore a dark blue T-shirt, only a portion of an insignia visible: An M and a T overlaid.

The boy was a Minnesota Twins fan. He liked the Cubs, the Red Sox, and the Mets, too. Some combination.

That’d earned him an Internet introduction to Tomlinson, which is why they were now e-mail pals, too.

I remembered Lake writing to explain. He liked the Twins because they had one of the lowest payrolls in baseball, but still produced winning teams. He liked the Cubs, the Mets, and the Red Sox because they were perennial underachievers, plus the brilliant and quirky Bill “Spaceman” Lee had pitched for the Sox. Tomlinson loved him for that.

An advocate of the underdog. It was a characteristic I credited to his mother.

As the shot widened, the camera jolted, then the aperture became fixed. A person then moved into the frame-a large man who was oddly dressed, I realized.

When he appeared, Pilar’s fingers squeezed my arm.

At first, the man’s face wasn’t visible because he wore the kind of hooded cloak that I associate with cloistered monks. The hood was pulled over his head.

Also, he was holding a Miami Herald up to the camera. It was the Latin-American edition, printed in Spanish. He held the paper long enough so the day and the date could be read. He had a big Caucasian left hand, and hairless fingers that were thick and badly burn-scarred. I noticed that he didn’t wear a wristwatch.

The paper had been published on Thursday, five days before.

I wasn’t prepared for what I saw when the man lowered the paper.

Perhaps I should have been. There are certain varieties of bank robbers, kidnappers, and other career criminals who use disguise as an excuse for wearing bizarre clothing. It’s a kind of fetish. Part of the psychological profile.

This guy was certainly dressed bizarrely. He wore black sunglasses over a mask that had painted eyebrows and rouged cheeks. The mask may have been more than a fetish, though, because there was enough of his forehead showing to see that, like his hand, his face had been scarred by fire. A tuft of blond hair protruded from a waxen area of skull that was visible from within the cloak.

The mask keyed some long-gone memory. Where had I seen one similar? The Maya of Central America are big on masks. They use them in all kinds of festivals and ceremonies. In the States, it’s Halloween only. In Maya country, though, masks are part of the culture.

Guatemala?

No…

Then I remembered. It was during the civil war in Nicaragua. I’d been traveling the country doing marine research, but I was also imbedded, doing government service.

That’s where I’d seen a similar mask. Several, actually. Members of guerrilla death squads wore them to hide their identities. The masks were light, made of wire mesh, like mosquito screening, so they were cool in the jungle heat. I’d been told they were modeled after some old Mayan mask that had been used in sacrificial ceremonies.

The Indios relish their blood traditions.

The cosmetic touches-painted eyebrows, pink cheeks-seemed satirically feminine.

I watched the mask move on the man’s face as he said, “The kid can’t really talk right now, so I’ll have to talk for him. That’s because he’s all tied up!” Then the three of us listened to him make an oddly high-pitched clucking sound that became a staccato barking-laughter.

It could have been the parody of some inane comic, but the tactlessness wasn’t intentional. Even in Spanish, there was a clumsy white-trash stupidity about the way he hammered the punch line.

He’s all tied up!

It was a bully’s joke, a bully’s laughter.

I wanted to jump through the screen, grab him by the throat, and squeeze until his eyes bulged. People who’ve been scarred or disfigured are usually eager to spare others pain because they’ve endured the worst that life and human nature have to offer.

Not this one. His scars seemed tailored to his personality. He seemed right at home with a face that he preferred to keep hidden.

Still chuckling, he said, “So, hello, hello, hello, to the beautiful and famous Pilar Fuentes Balserio. I’ve got a message for you from your husband, Jorge. When I lead him back to the presidential palace, me and the General and the rest of his army expect you to be in the bedroom, with your clothes off, waiting to…”

He then launched into a sexually graphic tirade so angry that it was more like an assault, a scenario with details designed to shock.

After enduring less than a minute, Tomlinson said, “My Spanish isn’t the best, but this guy’s a freak, man. A serious wack job.” I said, “ Listen, ” as Masked Man continued the rant. It went

I said, “Listen, ” as Masked Man continued the rant. It went on for another half-minute before his mood seemed to darken and he abruptly shifted subjects.

“But enough about me!” he said-that heavy comedic punch again. “The point is, we’ve got your kid. He’s alive. If you want him to stay alive, and if you want to get him back, you’re going to do exactly what we tell you to do. If you don’t, the General says I can have him. Me. That’s an honor. For you, I mean. So here’s what we want you to do-”

Not looking away from the screen, I asked Pilar, “Should I get some paper? Or have you already made a transcript?”

She was no longer touching my arm. She had, in fact, moved closer to Tomlinson. “I have every word on paper, even the sick parts. There’s only about another minute left. Watch first, then read the transcript.”

The demands he made seemed to be the first of a long list. They weren’t random. They’d been thought out. He knew exactly what he wanted-or what he was supposed to say. One of those demands was that Pilar go as soon as she possibly could to Miami, where, he said, she would receive further instructions.

Balserio’s government-in-exile was in Florida, I remembered.

When the video ended, I said to Tomlinson, “There are parts of this I’d like to see again. Can you use the computer to freeze-frame and zoom in?”

Tomlinson was tugging at his samurai horn nervously. “You name it. Modern times, man. Whatever you want.”