A King's ransom

I put down my three-year-old copy of Parenting magazine and went inside. Mom was seated on the examination table.

“Well?” I said, a little too cheery.

She looked at me and clutched a tissue. Her eyes were red and puffy. I feared the worst-no fetal heartbeat. “Is everything okay?”

She nodded, then sniffled.

I went to her and held her hand. “Why were you crying?”

“It just makes me so damn sad that your father wasn’t here to see this.”

She laid her head against my arm. I held her for a minute, searching for the right thing to say. Before I could get it out, she handed me the picture the nurse had taken of the fetus. It was a ghostly white image against a solid black background, actual size, no bigger than a peanut.

“Holy cow, it’s another Einstein. Look at the size of that brain.”

“That’s the placenta, wise guy.”

I almost had her smiling. “Boy or girl?”

“I asked her not to tell me.”

“Oh, come on. You’re going to keep us in suspense?”

“I’m saving that. Your father and I will find out together once he’s home.”

Her eyes welled again. Just the mention of Dad in this setting seemed to choke her up.

“Please don’t cry. You have a healthy baby. That’s a lot to be thankful for.”

“I’m just so sorry he missed this. I know he’s sorry, too. We didn’t get to do ultrasounds with you or Lindsey. He was so excited about seeing it.”

“Dad really wanted this baby, huh?”

“As much as I did. Maybe more.”

I paused, unsure whether to pursue my thought. But the morning talk with Duncan about the FBI had stirred up my curiosity, and I couldn’t let it go. “If Dad knew you were pregnant, why would he take the risk of going to a place as dangerous as Colombia?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“You mean you don’t know or you can’t tell me?”

She looked at me funny. “I mean I don’t know.”

“Did he tell you why he was going there?”

“No. But that’s just the way your father operates. It was dangerous to go to Nicaragua, too. But he didn’t dwell on the risks, and he didn’t give me all the scary details.”

“Nicaragua’s one thing. That’s where the company is. I just don’t understand what could have been so pressing about a trip to Colombia that he would take chances while you were pregnant.”

“Your father has a different perception of risk than most people.”

“But he still saw it as risky enough to buy kidnap-and-ransom insurance.”

“That’s true. Which leads me to believe that he must have had a very good reason for going there.”

“I’m sure,” I said, knowing that “good” didn’t necessarily mean “legal.”

Mom got up from the table, hit the eject button on the VCR, and grabbed the videotape that the technician had made of my future sibling. “Let’s go home,” she said.

“Sure. I’m right behind you.”

27

On Tuesday night I met Alex for a drink. It was business, of course, but she didn’t want to meet in her office. She was on retainer with Quality Insurance Company, and so long as my family was in a coverage dispute, it was best for me not to visit her place of business or for her to be seen coming and going from my home. She suggested neutral territory, like a bar, trusting that I’d pick a place reasonably obscure. I told her I’d see her at Duffy’s Tavern at eight.

Duffy’s was on Red Road between historic Coral Way and what was once just plain old Eighth Street, now Calle Ocho, the main drag through Miami’s Little Havana. The Duffy’s side of Red Road was a commercial mixed bag, home to adult video stores, run-down repair shops, and a little Italian restaurant that served the best minestrone I’d ever tasted. The other side marked the boundary to Coral Gables, where expensive Old Spanish-style homes and manicured lots faced tree-lined streets with dreamy names like Valentia or Obispo. Of course, most of those picture-perfect side streets didn’t feed into Red Road anymore. Many had been tastefully barricaded with recently erected metal gates, stone pillars, and thorny hedges. The idea was to eliminate quick escape routes for brazen thugs who followed wealthy women home from the grocery store and clubbed them over the head for an emerald ring or diamond tennis bracelet. As more residents became victims-some for the second, third, or even fourth time-more barricades went up, until it seemed that the ultimate goal was to turn the entire city of Coral Gables into one big gated community.

In a weird way it reminded me of Bogota.

Duffy’s was a curiously popular hangout that over the years had become something of a local institution. It was the kind of place my father’s friends might have gone for a beer after a hot day of bone fishing, or where a group of University of Miami grad students might unwind over a pitcher of beer. Its brick facade and blackboard for daily specials were more suited to a South Boston tavern than the typical slick Miami sports bar. Inside, the floors were old wood planks that bore the stains of countless spilled drinks. Long shelves at near-ceiling height displayed a seemingly endless collection of empty beer cans, one after another, like an aluminum crown molding. Varnished- over baseball cards served as wallpaper. Pendants, posters, framed newspaper articles, and just about anything else that had ever commemorated a sporting event were mounted everywhere, including the ceiling. The U-shaped bar was crowded with beer-guzzling carnivores who enjoyed their weekly quota of protein and cholesterol in one meal-size patty with cheese while watching twelve television sets at once, each tuned to a different sports channel. A bumper sticker behind the bar proclaimed DUFFY’S-WHERE THE ELITE MEET TO EAT.

I took a table by the window and ordered a pitcher of beer and a basket of jalapeno poppers. The group next to me was counting aloud as one of their buddies pitched peanuts into the air and caught them in his mouth, never missing. It was part of the atmosphere, though I was beginning to wonder if it was Alex’s style.

“Come here often?” said Alex as she slid into the chair across from me.

“Nice line,” I said.

The college kid at the next table was choking, then finally coughed up a flying peanut that had gone down the wrong pipe.

“It’s not a line,” she said. “Do you really come here often?”

I poured her a beer into a frosty mug. “Don’t be a snob.”

“You’re right. I guess this is one place I can relax and not worry about the CEO of Quality Insurance walking through the door and seeing us together.”

“Actually, that’s him right over there.”

Across the room was a fat, drunk old man dressed in a tight T-shirt and spandex bicycling shorts that were at least two sizes too small. He was dancing a waltz by himself, eyes shut, his arms around his imaginary Ginger Rogers.

Alex snickered at the sight. Then she turned serious, eager to hear the upshot of my meeting with Duncan Fitz. For the next several minutes she listened without a word. The last bit of news, I thought, was sure to elicit a telling reaction of some sort.

“The insurance company denied the claim as fraudulent.”

“I know,” she said without hesitation.

“You know?”

She nodded, as if no explanation were needed.

“Then why are you sticking with me?” I asked.

“Because you’re cute.”

I blinked twice and probably even blushed a little.