David Lindsey: The Rules of Silence

At that moment a fourth man came through the laurel allee as if he'd been there all along and approached the courtyard from the side. He stepped into the pale light spilling off the veranda.

“Don't be alarmed, Mr. Titus Cain, ”he said with Spanishaccented English, “you are safe. Perfectly safe. Please, everything is fine.”

He stopped at the edge of the veranda as if awaiting permission to go farther. Of average height and weight, he was perhaps sixty-four, sixty-five, with wavy, gray-streaked hair. A narrow nose, long upper lip. Nice looking. He was wearing a dove gray suit and a white shirt with broad navy stripes, very English, no tie, the collar open, the suit coat buttoned.

“I've come to visit with you, Mr. Cain, to have a conversation about concerns of mutual interest.”

Titus clung to fragments of logic. His alarm system was the best. So these people had to be very good. The fountain was on the same circuit. He hoped they hadn't killed the dogs.

“I would like to sit down with you, ”the man said, holding his hand out to one of the wrought-iron chairs as if asking permission.

Titus couldn't bring himself to speak or even nod.

The man stepped onto the veranda and approached politely. Watching Titus carefully, as if he were trying to discern his disposition, he pulled one of the chairs away from the table and sat down. His suit was silk. Very silk. French cuffs, the glint of a discreet gold bracelet on his right wrist. Gold ring with a cabochon garnet.

Slowly, as if he were demonstrating there were no tricks up his sleeve, he reached into his coat pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes. He offered one to Titus, who just stared at him. The man took one for himself and lighted it, laying the pack on the table with the lighter.

“My name is Alvaro, ”he said. He smoked. “What I am about to tell you will take some lengthy explanation, ”he said, “but from this moment, Mr. Cain, I am afraid that you must consider yourself secuestrado. ”

Titus gaped at him.

“Yes, kidnapped, ”Alvaro said.

The shadow men stayed in the shadow courtyard. Titus heard the coyotes now, yippingyippingyipping on the far side of the valley, below the amber lights of houses clustered near the crests of the next ridge of hills.

Alvaro smoked, clenching his teeth as though there were something tart but savory in the taste of the cigarette before opening his lips to exhale.

“First of all, ”he said, “I must give you a few moments to control yourself, to comprehend the reality of your situation. For the next half hour or so, I am going to explain to you how your life has changed.?Bueno?”

Titus's ears were ringing. His face was hot, and he felt a little giddy.

“As you must already know, ”Alvaro went on, “this kind of enterprise is much practiced in Latin America. In the past it has been a very crude business, and it still is most of the time. Unnecessarily complicated for everyone. Idiots in the mountains holding hostages in filthy conditions. The idiot K and R people based in London or Paris or Washington negotiating with the idiots in the mountains on behalf of the sweaty corporate lackey worrying about how much his employer's insurance is going to go up. Wild demands negotiated down to stupidly small sums. Imbecilic police.”

Titus was dumbstruck. This guy just wasn't for real. It was like going to the theater with Rita, one of those productions in the round where the actors come out into the audience to include them in the drama. He was always uneasy with that.

Alvaro rested his right elbow on the arm of his chair, his forearm vertical, cigarette tucked deep into the crotch of his first and second fingers. His eyes grew lazy.

“Forget all of that, ”he said, flicking his hand dismissively. “As you will see, this is something quite different altogether. First, this is occurring right here in the U.S.-Texas, no less- not in Latin America.

“Second, we are not going to take you away. No. You are free to go on living your life normally, as you please.

“Third, no negotiations. No haggling.

“Fourth, no police, no federal authorities, no intermediaries, no K and R guys. In fact, no one will ever know that this has even happened.”

Titus's adrenaline high had greatly heightened his perceptions. The sticky smack of phlegm in Alvaro's throat when he spoke certain words was amplified to the point of distraction. And though the light on the veranda was only a glow, Alvaro sat before him in sharp three-dimensional clarity, outlined very precisely from the darkness behind him, his face glimmering like a hologram.

“I have gone to a great deal of trouble to learn about you,” Alvaro went on. He looked around and lifted his chin. “This house, for example, is as familiar to me as my own home. I could find the light switches in every room in the darkness. I know your company and its history inside out. I know your biography better than my own father's.”

He spoke with a grounded sureness, without animation, his voice almost devoid of inflection.

Titus hadn't taken another swallow of his beer. He was entranced. Immobile, he waited for the emerging revelation. It was like seeing the moment of his own death coming down a long road, a small speck, slowly, slowly growing larger as it made its shambling approach. It was a horrible thing to see, and fascinating. He couldn't pull himself away from the spectacle of it, even to flee.

Alvaro continued. “CaiText is worth two hundred and fifty-six million dollars, Mr. Cain. I want the equivalent of a quarter of that.”

In the warm breeze of the summer night, Titus went slowly, serenely cold.

Alvaro waited, seemingly understanding what Titus was going through.

“Are you all right, Mr. Cain? We have a long way to go yet.”

Titus couldn't answer.

“The most important thing in this entire negotiation, ”Alvaro said, “is secrecy. I want to acquire the money in clean, legal silence. Indirectly, of course. Through business arrangements.”

Titus's mind latched on to the words business arrangements. Reality. Something he could wrestle with. Something he understood. The hallucination shuddered.

The embodied shadows drifted now and again in the darkness, and like the hour hand of a clock, they moved without moving. They were here, and then they were elsewhere. But they were always there.

“What kind of business arrangements? ”Titus finally managed to ask. A negotiation. A deal, something that required him to rein in his wildly scattered thoughts.

“I have a number of enterprises that I want you to invest in, ”Alvaro answered. “Foreign enterprises. You will be given opportunities to invest in international charities. Good causes. All of them are front companies through which the money will wash away to places unknown.”

He smoked the cigarette again, clenched his teeth, parted his lips, and let the stench seep out into the air. Titus thought he saw an ocherous tint to the smoke, to the edges of it, maybe. The stench seemed not to have its source in the cigarette so much as in Alvaro's own rancid nostrils or, more precisely, from somewhere within him.

“Why me?”

“Oh, there are many reasons, Mr. Cain, but there are a few obvious ones. Neither you nor your company is flamboyant. You keep a very low profile. You are relatively small, but the company has been a solid and profitable enterprise for more than a decade. And you have refused to take it public. You are a wholly owned, private company. You are CaiText. You answer to no one, normally an enviable position.”

Titus could hardly make himself formulate the next question in his mind, but it wouldn't go away. It kept trying to take shape, a venomous idea lingering in the place of hazy fears at the back of his mind.