A King's ransom

“We’re still talking about a United States citizen. I’d like to see the FBI assert itself.”

“That’s the other reason for my call. I’m afraid that the FBI isn’t going to intercede in this case.”

I’d been pacing across the bedroom with the phone to my ear, but I suddenly stopped cold in my tracks. “Come again?”

He paused, as if measuring his words. “As I explained to you and your mother earlier, the FBI can’t get involved in cases of international abductions or kidnappings unless the State Department invites us.”

“That’s being taken care of. The supervising partner at my law firm assured me that the State Department would extend an invitation within twenty-four hours.”

“That much has been done. They’ve extended an invitation.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“The FBI has declined it.”

“What?”

“The State Department placed certain conditions on the FBI’s involvement that were out of line. It was impossible to accept their invitation.”

“What kind of conditions?”

“I’m not at liberty to elaborate.”

“Come on. You have to give me something.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t.”

“Look, I’m not trying to put you in a bad spot. Let’s set up a meeting with your supervisor first thing in the morning.”

“It won’t do any good. This decision wasn’t made in the Miami office.”

“I’ll fly to Washington if I have to. Just give me the name of the person to talk to.”

“I don’t have any specific names for you.”

I didn’t understand it, but clearly I was being stonewalled, and it was making me angry. “So that’s it? ‘Too bad, so sad, see you later?’ That’s totally unacceptable. At least tell me which door to knock on. Should I start with the FBI or the State Department?”

“I wouldn’t go either of those routes, if I were you.”

“Is that some kind of threat?”

“No. I’m trying to steer you in the right direction, so listen carefully to what I’m saying. If it was my father who was kidnapped, I wouldn’t waste time trying to change the way the FBI and State Department think.”

“If your father was kidnapped, the FBI and State Department wouldn’t be bogged down in political testosterone.”

He fell silent, then replied in a noticeably softer tone. “I wish I had better news for you. I mean that sincerely.”

“Just what my father needs. Sincerity.”

He bade me a hollow “Best of luck,” and with the click in my ear, I had the unsettling sense that the whole FBI had just hung up on me.

Me and my father.

5

It was my job to tell Grandma everything. Or not. Mom left it up to me to decide what a seventy-eight-year- old woman could stand to hear about her only child.

I left the house at 9:00 A.M. It was an hour’s drive, so I phoned Duncan on my cellular with an update. He was as baffled as I about the FBI’s declination of the State Department’s invitation to intervene in the case.

“Those twits,” he groused. “Let me make another phone call.”

“Who are you going to call this time?”

“Whoever it takes. I’ve been concentrating only on the State Department so far, but sounds like it’s time for a full-court press. I’m sure we know someone who can get right to the FBI director.”

I loved it when Duncan was fired up about something I needed done. I thanked him several times before hanging up.

By ten o’clock I was in the Upper Keys, having driven slowly. I wasn’t sure how to put a positive spin on this for Grandma, and part of me kept hoping that the whole conversation would be preempted by a sudden phone call from Mom, a miraculous message that Dad had somehow found his way to the U.S. embassy unharmed. He’d been missing for almost thirty-six hours, however, and the possibility of his successful escape seemed less likely with each passing minute. Abduction was the only logical inference.

Unless he was dead.

Not in a million years would Grandma believe that her son had fallen at the hands of some deadbeat Colombian guerrillas. Her son was a fighter, a survivor, like her. Grandma was a “Conch,” a native of the Florida Keys. When she was twelve years old, her house was destroyed by the monster hurricane of 1935 that killed more than four hundred people. The Upper Keys were ravaged, entire families were lost, a rescue train was washed into the sea. At least one fool braved the storm trying to save his fishing boat. Grandma found her father’s body naked in the mangroves, his clothes ripped away by two-hundred-mile-per-hour winds. Nine months later she and her mother moved into one of twenty-nine houses built by the Red Cross for the survivors who’d insisted on staying put and rebuilding their shattered lives. They were built for fishermen and farmers, plain folk who had lost everything. They were built to last. The frame, the walls, the roof were all poured concrete, two hundred fifty tons of it, reinforced by another hundred and fifty thousand pounds of steel rods-all for a two-bedroom house that was a mere six hundred square feet of living space. It was a bunker, virtually indestructible, symbolic of the Conch spirit. Grandma inherited the house when her mother died and made it her home as a young bride. That was the house my father had grown up in.

It wasn’t an easy life. I remembered seeing an old photo of my father as a young boy seated in the kitchen, each leg of the table resting in a tin can of kerosene to keep the cockroaches from climbing up and walking off with the family meal. Not that there was ever much food around the house. At the age of six my father became the man of the house. He loved the ocean, but hunger had really inspired him to fish. He caught them, Grandma cooked them. It was all they had and all they needed, each other and their Red Cross house. Together they’d survived the occasional hurricane and anything else the world could throw at them.

Now it was up to me to tell Grandma that her son was missing.

“Get out!” she shouted.

I was standing just inside the front door, hadn’t even set foot inside the living room. It wasn’t a case of killing the messenger. It was just one of her bad days. Grandma had Alzheimer’s disease.

She was seated on the couch watching Judge Judy on the tube, dressed casually in a cotton blouse and plaid Bermuda shorts. Her hair was done the way she’d always worn it, neatly cut with a hint of reddish tint. She looked just fine, and it pained me to see her act this way. For months my parents had been trying to persuade her to move in with them, but she wouldn’t budge from her concrete bungalow. A home-care nurse helped her get by from day to day.

“It’s okay, it’s only me, your-”

“Don’t you dare set foot in this house!”

The nurse interceded. “Now, don’t be rude, Marion. It’s family.”

I tried to make eye contact from across the room, hoping to establish a connection. Her expression was cold, though it wasn’t an unknowing blank stare. She seemed to know me all right. She just didn’t seem to like me very much.

“I stopped by for a visit,” I said.

“You pop in once a year, that’s supposed to make everything okay?”

“It’s okay if you don’t remember, but I was here last month.”

“Just go!” she shouted, this time flinging an ashtray across the room.

I ducked as it flew over my head, then shattered on the wall behind me. The nurse pulled me into the hall, out of Grandma’s line of fire. “It’s not a good day for her.”