James Grippando - A King's ransom

“You had a right to be mad.”

“No. I should never have opened my mouth and accused you of playing games. Whatever is going on between you and your ex-fiancee is your business.”

“There’s nothing going on between me and Jenna.”

“That’s not the point. I was letting my personal feelings get in the way.”

She caught me in mid-sip, and I nearly choked. “You mean for me?”

“No, I mean for Duffy’s beer and popcorn. Yes, of course for you, dummy.”

“When you say personal feelings, do you mean. .”

“I’m not head over heels, okay? We’ve simply been spending a lot of time together lately, and-and would you please stop being so obtuse?”

“I just had no idea.”

“I wasn’t exactly trying to make it obvious, given our professional relationship.”

“I’m sorry, I just didn’t think that. . you know, you and me.”

“Now you’re lying.”

I wasn’t accustomed to this kind of directness, but in a way it was refreshing. “Okay, so maybe I was sensing a little something. But there’s nothing to apologize for.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. Your father was kidnapped, and I offered to help. It’s totally unprofessional for me to inject anything else into that equation.”

“Maybe you should let me be the judge of that.”

“No.”

I waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t. “That’s it?” I asked. “A simple no?”

“What more is there to say? You have my word that I won’t send any more confusing signals.”

I nodded, though the present signals were plenty confusing. “If that’s the way you want it.”

“I’ve thought about it all week. On principle, I refuse to back down and dump your case. I won’t let any insurance company dictate my client list to me.”

“I can respect that.”

“Then I’m sure you’ll understand that the only way I can be effective is if we agree to keep things strictly professional.”

I was speechless. Here was an intelligent, beautiful woman confessing a vague but potentially romantic interest in me, and I’d been too wrapped up in my own world to recognize the signs. To be sure, a kidnapping could have made any man oblivious. My fear, however, was that the real hang-up was still Jenna.

“I can live with that,” I said.

“Good.”

“But if you’re sticking with me on principle, you need to be aware that this is going to be a dogfight. From what the lawyers at my firm said yesterday, they might even accuse me of being a co-conspirator in the fraud.”

“I’m not worried about that. I’ve checked you out.”

“What does that mean?”

“Exactly what I said. You’re not the type to scam an insurance company.”

“I’m glad you think so. But the way the ransom demand matched the policy limit right down to the last dollar, I’d probably be suspicious of you if the tables were turned.”

“Did you make that list I told you to make?”

“List?”

“Anyone who would have known your father’s travel plans and who might have known he had insurance.”

“I’ve mulled it over in my head, but I can’t say I’ve physically made a list.”

“Let me help you. Did your father pay for the policy out of his own pocket, or did he get it through his company?”

“I believe he bought it himself.”

“The reason I ask is because insurance is the kind of thing he might have discussed with his partners. Oftentimes employees try to get their company to pay for it.”

“You’re suggesting that Guillermo might have set him up?”

“I’m saying that his partners might have known about the insurance. It’s up to you to figure out if they set him up.”

“I’ll look into it,” I said.

“I recommend it. Highly.”

“Why?” I asked, half kidding. “Did you check out Guillermo, too?”

She smiled thinly, almost imperceptibly. Then she put on her sunglasses and turned her gaze toward the joggers across the street, as if she’d said enough.

I watched her, intrigued. One minute she was direct and assertive, bold enough to bare her feelings. The next she was a mysterious cipher pointing me toward Nicaragua. It was possible that she’d targeted Guillermo purely as a matter of deductive reasoning. I couldn’t help but wonder, however, if something more was behind her suggestion-something that for some reason she wasn’t telling me.

“I’ll definitely check it out,” I said, staring at her nebulous reflection in my tall, empty glass.

Monday morning was perfect for windsurfing. Sunny and eighty degrees, surf temperature almost as high, a steady breeze from the southeast. Not bad, considering that at least fifty million Americans to the north were already scuffle deep in fallen leaves and wiping frost off their pumpkins. I strapped the board atop the roll bars on my Jeep, drove to Biscayne Bay, and took off.

Key Biscayne is an island southeast of downtown Miami, and the relatively flat, shallow bay waters off the causeway that link it to the mainland are practically in the shadows of the office towers on Brickell Avenue. As I skimmed across the waves, chances were excellent that several of my colleagues at Cool Cash were peering out the window from thirty stories up, wishing they were that lucky guy windsurfing out on the bay. I could have waved. Or flipped them the bird. It seemed like a fitting way to begin my suspension.

As teenagers, J. C. and I had gone out on the bay every Saturday, a couple of thirteen-year-old studs in our own minds. Our not-so-secret desire was to meet that girl in the opening credits of Miami Vice , the one in the skimpy bikini whose board is knifing through the water at thirty miles an hour when she arches that incredible body, throws her head back, soaks her long blond hair in the bay, and keeps right on going. The bay was a great escape from school, the world, the hassles of being a teenager-and from my father. Finding my own passion on the water was a convenient way of telling him that the disastrous fishing trip we’d taken together was going to be our first and last. At age twelve I’d seen a side of him that I never wanted to see again. So I decided I’d never be alone with him again, at least not in a setting where he was not just my father but the captain of the ship. A drunken captain of the ship.

Seeing him that way had been bad enough. What he’d done that day changed us forever.

As I packed my equipment back onto my Jeep, I realized that the old wounds were very much a part of the pain and personal strife that had been brought on by the kidnapping.

“Lemonade, friend?”

I turned at the sound of the man’s voice. It was Nate, a cheery old guy who in the past twenty years had peddled his frozen lemonade cart up and down the bicycle path enough times to circle the globe. Business today was so slow that he couldn’t break a twenty, so I let him keep the change. That was only fair. He didn’t recognize me, but J. C. and I probably owed him at least a hundred bucks for all the frozen lemonades he’d let us put on our tab.

I climbed into my Jeep and was about to start the engine when another voice startled me.

“Can we talk, Nick?”

He was right beside my Jeep, but with the sun shining directly in my eyes I wasn’t a hundred percent sure on the ID. “Agent Nettles?” I said, squinting.

“In the flesh.”

Nettles had been the initial FBI agent assigned to my father’s case. I hadn’t heard from him since the narcotics arm of the FBI had seemingly taken over. “What’s there to talk about?”

“Your father’s case, of course.”

I released the parking brake, letting him know that I was leaving. “Look, you were much nicer than the drug agents who interrogated me, but I’m giving you the same answer I gave them. I think it’s wrong for the FBI to tell me they won’t help my father unless I play spy and help your narcotics agents pin some unspecified crime on his business partner.”