W. Griffin - The Hostage

Betty was wheeled in on a gurney. She didn't see Castillo until the technicians had moved her from the gurney onto the bed and moved out of the way.

Then she raised her hand and almost moaned, "Oh, Charley!" through her wired-shut jaws.

Castillo went to the bed and took her raised hand, and kissed it, and then bent over and kissed her very gently on the forehead. Then they just looked at each other.

Thirty seconds or so later, he took a chance that his voice would work.

"Wiener schnitzel, baby," he said.

Betty smiled at him.

"If you don't mind, Costello, our mother wants to see her!" Lieutenant Frank Schneider said behind him.

Castillo turned.

Standing behind Betty's brother was the couple Charley presumed were the parents. Behind them were the clergyman and another man.

"What's the matter with you, Francis?" Betty's mother snapped. "Can't you see the way she's looking at him?"

"I'm sorry," Castillo said.

Reluctantly, Betty let go of his hand.

Betty's mother touched Castillo's cheek, and stepped around him to the bed.

Betty's father eyed him icily.

Castillo walked out of the room, followed by Fernando, and a moment later by Lieutenant Schneider.

Did he leave because he wanted his mother and father and the minister to be alone with Betty? Or did his mother tell him to get out?

"Costello!" Lieutenant Schneider said.

Castillo turned. Schneider walked very close to him and asked, "You remember one time I promised to break both your legs?"

Both the highway patrolman and the Secret Service agent guarding Betty's door were now on their feet.

"The name is Castillo," Charley said evenly. "And, yes, I seem to remember something like that."

"I knew you were bad news the minute I laid eyes on you," Schneider said. "She's in there because of you."

Castillo nodded slightly. "Guilty."

"If you ever show your face around her again, I swear I'll break both your legs and then tear off your arms and shove them up your ass!"

Castillo didn't reply.

Fernando took a couple of steps closer. "Let me tell you something, Shorty," he said, aware that "Shorty" was relative. Lieutenant Schneider, at six-feet-one, was at least two inches shorter-and maybe forty pounds lighter-than Fernando Lopez.

"Butt out, lardass!" Lieutenant Schneider said.

"That's enough, Lieutenant!" Chief Inspector Kramer barked. "Back off! Now!"

"What I was about to tell the lieutenant," Fernando said, matter-of-factly, "is that the way it is in our family, anyone wanting to get at Charley has to get past me first."

"Don't pour gas on a fire," Chief Inspector Kramer said. "Ask any fireman. Both of you shut up."

Castillo chuckled.

"You open your mouth once more, Schneider, and I'll order you out of here. Capische?"

Schneider nodded.

"Say 'Yes, sir,' Lieutenant!"

"Yes, sir," Schneider said, reluctantly.

"Charley, I need to talk to you," Kramer said. "And O'Brien wants to know what's going on, too. If I order our gorilla to wait at that end of the corridor"-he pointed-"can you get your gorilla to wait down there?" He pointed in the other direction.

Castillo looked at Frank Schneider. "I think you have a right to hear what I'm going to tell the chief," he said. "Can you behave?"

Lieutenant Schneider nodded curtly.

"Say 'yes' or 'no,' goddammit, Schneider," Kramer snapped.

"Okay, okay," Lieutenant Schneider said.

"We can use the waiting room," Kramer said, and pushed the door open. "Well, Frank, what do you think?" Chief Inspector Kramer inquired of Captain O'Brien when Castillo had finished.

"A lot of cocaine comes here from Argentina," O'Brien said.

"I didn't know that," Fernando said.

"They fly it from Colombia to Bolivia or Paraguay- sometimes direct to Paraguay-and then get it into Argentina," O'Brien explained. "And then they mule it to Miami from Buenos Aires. The Argentine drug cops- they call them SIDE-are smart. Instead of arresting the critters, they let them get on a plane, and then call our DEA guys down there. The DEA in Miami meets the airplane. That way the cocaine gets stopped, and we have to pay to try the critters and the cost of keeping them in the slam for fifteen to twenty."

"SIDE does more than drugs, Captain," Castillo said. "It's the Argentine FBI, CIA, and DEA under one roof."

"I didn't know that," O'Brien said. "What I'm thinking is that the drug guys-here, there, everywhere-do this kind of casual whacking. Anybody they think might be in the way of anything, anybody they think may have seen or heard something, gets whacked. Including members of their family."

"I'm not saying you're wrong," Castillo said. "But that didn't come up down there, either from a DEA guy I know, who would have told me, or from the head of SIDE." "What did they think was going on?"

"They had no idea," Castillo said. "All we know-and I didn't know this in Argentina-is that somebody wants to get their hands on Jean-Paul Lorimer, and is perfectly willing to kill anybody to do that."

"We had a job here in Philadelphia a couple of years ago," Kramer said. "Drugs shipped from… where, Frank?"

"Senegal," O'Brien furnished.

"From Senegal to their UN Mission in New York. With diplomatic immunity. What happened was… out of school?"

Castillo nodded.

"Our dogs-not K-9, but the drug sniffers, those little spaniels or whatever-sniffed the cocaine in freight handling. We couldn't get a warrant to open the boxes, of course, but I happened to be down there looking for explosives and one of the boxes happened to get knocked over. Not much damage, but put enough of a crack in the box for me to be able to stick one of those meat-basting hypodermic needles… You know what I mean? They have great big needles?"

Castillo nodded again.

"… into the box and come out with a white powder that tested to be really high-grade coke. So we called in the DEA. Who called in the FBI and customs and the State Department. It got to be a real Chinese fire drill. The State Department didn't believe the white power had just dribbled out of the box; they as much as accused us of violating diplomatic immunity. They were afraid the Senegalese ambassador would be pissed and give an anti-American speech to the general assembly.

"What finally happened was that the shipment was passed through customs. Then the FBI brought in the New York City cops, told them what we knew, and the New York cops put some heavy surveillance on the Senegalese mission, and they finally caught one of their diplomats… he was number two, right, Frank?"

"Number three. Deputy chief of mission," O'Brien corrected him.

"… in the midst of a five-kilo sale to a guy in the Plaza Hotel. All they could do was charge the buyer with conspiracy to traffic. They couldn't even hold the Senegalese. He had diplomatic immunity. The State Department wouldn't even ask for the UN to send him home. They said they couldn't because they 'had knowledge of the legally highly questionable manner in which the alleged facts triggering the investigation had been conducted.'

"This really pissed off the New York cops, so wherever, wherever the Senegalese diplomat went for the next couple of months he had at least two cops sitting on him. And then one day, he had enough, went out to Kennedy, and got on an airplane and went home."

"Jesus Christ!" Fernando exploded.

"So when you find this guy you're looking for, Charley, maybe you better keep the drug angle in mind," Kramer said.

"I will," Castillo said.

"How do you rate the threat against Sergeant… sorry, Special Agent Schneider?" Kramer asked.

"I don't think these bastards were after her; they were either after me or anybody-like a Secret Service agent- to make their point to Mrs. Masterson. So I don't think there's much of a threat here. Having said-"