Randy White - Tampa Burn

I remembered Pilar saying that the fish in Lake’s main aquarium had been killed. Stick a welder’s torch in an aquarium, and the swim bladders of fish would soon explode, expanding in the super-heated water.

Son-of-a-bitch.

Lake had been burned. The wound seemed a defensive variety. People under attack throw their forearms up to protect their face.

It told me something that I couldn’t share with Pilar, and would not share with Tomlinson. That brand of assault is indicative. If Praxcedes Lourdes had already burned Lake, then he planned to kill him. That seemed probable to me.

What was the statistic I’d read? It had been compiled by some government agency in Britain. In kidnapping cases worldwide, only about forty percent of the victims are recovered alive even after the ransom is paid in full. If the victim has been seriously abused or mistreated-severed ears or pinkie fingers are common examples-then chances of the abductee surviving drops to nearly zero.

Paying Lake’s ransom, following his kidnapper’s orders, made sense only in that it might buy us a little time.

I jumped, startled that anyone could speak calmly when Tomlinson said, “As long as we have the computer out, maybe you should check your e-mail. They said you should check it often.”

Pilar still sounded despondent. “You’re probably right. I tried from my hotel last night, then again this morning. So far, nothing. I need to buy a laptop while I’m here. I don’t have one.”

I pointed to my desk model on the far side of the room. “You can use mine, or we can hook Tomlinson’s up to the phone. His’ll be faster.”

We did. She checked.

She had an e-mail from the kidnappers. There was also a note from our son.

Sitting at the computer, nervously regarding what she was about to read, Pilar said, “When Jorge Balserio is back in the presidential palace-and he probably will be, unfortunately-he’ll owe that animal a debt more than favors and money. I wonder how he’ll deal with his famous monster then?”

She was talking, once again, about the possibility that Balserio had provided passports and a private plane. She was also talking about the man who’d abducted our son.

I was picturing the burn scar on Lake’s arm, my child’s terrified eyes staring back into mine, and I was thinking: If Balserio’s smart, he’ll kill Lourdes.

But I was also thinking: If I get to Lourdes first, he’ll never have the chance.

The night he kidnapped the boy, Prax Lourdes told his driver, Reynaldo, “Drive fast, but not so damn crazy that you bring the federales down. I got us this far, don’t screw it up now.”

He was sitting in the back of a dented Toyota Camry, his hood down, still wearing the mask. Engine running, the car sat in the shadows of a park that separated the presidential palace from the convent, and a line of colonial buildings-columns, plazas, balconies-built in the 1700s.

Through the tinted windows, Prax could see shadowed ficus trees and royal palms in the park, homeless adults and children sleeping on benches, and a horse grazing near the ornate marble band shelter. The horse was all head and ribs.

Lourdes wasn’t hot, yet he couldn’t stop sweating. Returning through the tunnel, goading the boy along ahead of him, he’d felt that same shitty fear, like drowning. The tunnel walls, the darkness, seemed to crush at the muscles in his heart.

But he’d endured it. The boy was in the trunk now, mouth, hands, legs all taped.

He’d not come easily. A surprise. The kid wasn’t just a smart-ass, he had some balls, too. He’d even taken a swing at him back in the room. Big kid for his age, with muscles. Quick, too. But still just a kid.

Prax had thrown him down by the hair, and scorched his arm with a quick shot of the blowtorch. He’d screamed out, but only briefly and not loud. But then he became real cooperative when Prax told him, “You try that shit again, I’m going straight to your mother’s room and set her hair on fire. Or I’ll have my pals do it. How’d you like to hear your mother scream?”

Yeah, that was the key to this kid. Threaten the mother with make-believe hacks, and he’d do absolutely anything. Prax got no more trouble from the little bastard after that.

Lourdes knew he couldn’t linger, but he still took the time to go through the kid’s drawers. The kid had lied when he said he didn’t have any cash hidden away. Stashed among baseball cards and a bunch of beetles pinned to a board, he found slightly more than five hundred dollars in Masaguan cordobas, and a thousand in U.S. currency: ten crisp $100 bills.

Clipped to the bills was a business card that read:SANIBEL BIOLOGICAL SUPPLY / MARION FORD, and signed, Happy Birthday, Lake! There was also a photograph that showed a studious-looking man with glasses.

When Prax flashed the photo at the kid and said, “Who’s the creep who sent you the money?” the kid had replied in a very odd tone, “He’s a man I hope you get a chance to meet real soon, mister.”

The way the kid said it, it was like the creep was supposed to be scary or something.

They’d left the boy in a rental cabin, still taped, and also handcuffed to the bed. Now Reynaldo parked the Toyota a few blocks away from the cabin at the edge of a smoldering industrial dump, behind a corrugated building next to the airport, as he’d been ordered to do. He sat shivering in the morning darkness, lights off, Lourdes beside him, waiting for some early flight to arrive. Reynaldo didn’t know why.

He continued to shiver as Lourdes said, “I said I’d tell you how it happened. About what the soldiers did to me. You said you wanted to know.”

Lourdes’ voice was smoky deep. He spoke softly, but because of his harsh American accent, he sounded loud.

Uneasy, Reynaldo replied, “Only if you want to discuss it. Another time, if you like. It doesn’t have to be now.”

There was a hint of irony in Lourdes’ voice when he said, “Oh yeah? I think you’re wrong. I think it’s now or never.”

There was a meanness in there, too.

“But first, tell me what you’ve heard. I always enjoy hearing the bullshit going around about me. Being lied about comes with being famous.”

Prax watched the driver take a gulp from the bottle of aguadiente he now held between his legs, and saw that his hand shook. Lourdes got a kick out of that.

“I’ve heard what most have heard,” the driver began. “That you were adopted by a tribe of Indians on the Moskito Coast of Nicaragua. As a young teenager. That your parents must have been killed in a shipwreck, because they found you starving, wandering the beach.”

“The Suma tribe,” Prax said. “Moskito Indians. They took me in. They named me. I became one of them. My adopted father was the village leader.”

Reynaldo said, “Yes, your father was the leader, and so soldiers came to kill him. That they burned your house, your whole family. Only you survived. After that, you dedicated your life to revenge-”

“To the Revolution. Anything against the government whores.”

“-that you dedicated your life to the Revolution. That is what I heard.”

“Yeah,” Prax said. “The same old stuff. But since we’re working together, since we’ve become such close buddies, you and me, I’ll tell you the details. Things almost no one knows. Then you can go back to your village, brag about it, and act like a big important man.”

Reynaldo smiled for the first time, saying, “Yes, I’d like that.”

He meant it.

Lourdes said, “Before I tell you, let me ask you a couple of questions first. Nothing too personal. Just some stuff I want to know. I heard you and General Balserio are tight. At least, I hear the General trusts you. That you guys go way back together.”