James Grippando - A King's ransom

I burst through the door, ran past the taxis that Alex had warned me not to take. I followed the sidewalk to the parking lot, sprinting as fast as I could. A car suddenly cut in front of me and slammed on the brakes. I tried to stop but couldn’t. My bag flew, and I ended up on the hood.

“You idiot!” I shouted, then froze.

It was Alex. “Get in!”

“How’d you get the car so fast?”

“You went the long way, dummy. Now, get in!”

I hurried to the passenger side and was barely inside before Alex squealed the tires. We flew past the taxis, past the airport entrance, past a breathless FBI agent who was hobbling toward a bench, holding his aching back.

We took a circuitous route to the apartment, just in case we were being followed. We finally arrived around 6:00 A.M., certain that we’d beaten whatever tail they might have tried.

Before going upstairs, I had Alex stop at a pay phone. I desperately needed sleep, but first I needed to call home. I’d expected to get my mother, but Jenna answered.

“Nick, where are you?”

“Bogota.”

“Jeez, your mom’s a wreck. I’ve been here with her all night. Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I couldn’t call till I got here. Just in case somebody asked, I wanted Mom to be able to say she didn’t know where I was.”

“Well, believe me, they’re asking. This Detective Gutierrez won’t leave us alone. It’s crazy, but I think he has you pegged for murdering Jaime Ochoa.”

“Don’t worry about that. The guy hanged himself.”

“No, he didn’t. Somebody killed him.”

“What?”

“What I’m hearing from Gutierrez, somebody forced him up on the kitchen chair, probably at gunpoint, and then tied a rope around his neck and hung him from the ceiling fan. Something about ligature marks around his wrists. It looks like his hands were untied after he was dead so it would look like suicide.”

That didn’t totally shock me, but I hated to think that lawyers I had once respected might have taken the cover-up this far. “This just keeps getting worse.”

“It didn’t help matters much when your mother told Gutierrez that you stopped by the house to pick up your father’s gun on your way over to see Ochoa.”

“Oh, my God.”

“And now the way you raced out of town, that doesn’t look so good either.”

“It’s not like I want to be here.”

“Nick, I know I don’t have to ask you, but. .”

“No! He was dead when I got there.”

She paused, as if relieved to hear me say it. “I know you have a lot on your mind. But when you get home, I hope you can prove it.”

“I can’t believe this.”

“I’ll find a criminal defense lawyer while you’re away. I’ll get a good one, I promise.”

I lowered my head, closing my eyes in disbelief. “Thanks.”

I was about to hang up, then said, “Hey, Jenna?”

“Yes?”

“Get a really good one.”

Even the rain seemed black. Sunday was my third predawn climb to the summit of Monserrate and definitely the darkest, even darker than the fog had made our last visit. It wasn’t a downpour, more a steady drizzle that soaked you to the core. The grass and mosses along the way were weighted down, saturated. Stones in the path that normally aided climbers with their footing were slippery and treacherous, shining wet in the beams from our flashlights. The temperature dropped a few degrees with the ascent, but I was sweating beneath a rain poncho that didn’t breathe. The good news was that lousy weather lessened our chances of being stopped by bandits. The last thing I needed was to have our radio stolen minutes before the most important communication with the kidnappers.

“Is it the rainy season?” I asked, wiping the raindrops from my chin.

“October and November can be pretty wet in Bogota,” said Alex.

I thought of my poor dad braving the elements, assuming he was anywhere near Bogota. Assuming he was in Colombia, for that matter. With all the time that had elapsed, he could have been taken just about anywhere.

It took us longer to climb this time, better than ninety minutes nonstop. The rain was falling harder as we neared the church at the top. Muddy brown water was running downhill in the gutters. The vendor stands that catered to tourists were locked and closed. We chose a table in the picnic grounds behind the church and rigged up an umbrella to keep the radio dry. Alex and I worked in silence. It was becoming a routine, one that I definitely wouldn’t miss when this was finally over.

I checked my watch. Sunrise was perhaps minutes away. Alex switched on the radio. I sat in the darkness with my back to it, hearing only the falling rain.

A sudden noise startled me, a lonely cawing sound that soon grew into a chorus. It was a flock of birds near the church.

“Macaws,” said Alex.

It was too dark to see them, but I had no trouble conjuring up the image of the big, colorful birds from my visits as a kid to Miami’s Parrot Jungle.

“I wonder what startled them.”

Their cawing ceased as abruptly as it had started. Alex and I stared into the darkness, trying to listen beyond the patter of raindrops. In the glow of our flashlight I could see the concentration on her face.

“Do you hear something?” she asked.

I wasn’t sure if it was the altitude or the simple effects of rainfall, but I was having trouble discerning anything. “Maybe like a shuffling?”

“More like a squish-squish to me.”

Alex bristled, listening more closely. Now I could hear it, too. It sounded like footsteps. She reached for her knapsack, where she kept her gun.

“ Buenos dias. ”

The voice had come from total darkness. Alex shone her flashlight, revealing a man beneath an umbrella.

“Stop right there,” she answered in Spanish.

He stopped about ten meters away. His eyes narrowed, as both Alex and I had our flashlights trained on his face. Shiny drops of rain dripped from the rim of his black umbrella.

“You are the Rey family, I presume?”

She asked, “Who wants to know?”

“Joaquin.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m here to pick up the money for Matthew. My name is Father Balto.”

I looked at Alex, not quite believing. “A priest?”

Alex slipped her hand inside her bag, grasping her gun. It was obvious that she didn’t take anything at face value.

“Come forward, Padre. I have a few questions for you.”

“Why don’t we go inside the church, where it will be warm and dry?”

“We’re waiting for a radio transmission at sunrise.”

“There will be no transmission this morning,” he said. “They’ve sent me for the money.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I think we’ll wait here a few minutes to make sure.”

He shrugged and said, “I’ll wait inside. Please come visit when you’re satisfied that I’m speaking the truth.”

He turned and walked away, back into the darkness of the falling rain, beyond the reach of our flashlights.

We waited for nearly an hour past sunrise. The rain continued. The sky brightened slightly, but the sun never really came. No message came either. The radio was silent.

We gathered our equipment and headed for the church. The main doors were locked, but we found a side entrance with a bell beside it. I rang it twice. Father Balto answered, clearly having expected us.

“I spoke the truth, no?” he said as he led us to a small room off the vestibule.

Perhaps he had been truthful about the kidnappers, but he’d lied about it being warmer and drier inside. The stone walls were moist with condensation, and with our coats off it actually felt colder and damper in here. We sat around a simple wooden table that had been worn smooth around the edges from decades of human touch. A cluster of three candles burned in the center, a meager enhancement to the glow of one burning bulb in an eight-socket chandelier overhead.