A King's ransom

“I’ll turn it on!”

“No, not my hand!”

“Then talk!”

“Let me go, I’m begging you, man. I’m your friend.”

The word “friend” made me think of the note. Maybe it hadn’t come from Beverly. “Are you saying you’re a friend?”

“I’m your only friend, man.”

I wasn’t sure what he was saying, but I wasn’t backing down. The cut on my arm was throbbing and bleeding. He’d sliced it deeper than I’d thought. “Tell me what you know, or I swear I’ll grind your fingers to the nub.”

He grimaced, shaking his head defiantly. “No, no, man! Not for free!”

“Don’t make me do this.”

“Please!”

“You got till the count of three. One. Two-”

“Okay, okay,” he said, his whole body shaking. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

I took my hand off the switch and prepared to listen.

59

I had everything, but in effect I had nothing. That was the legal conclusion Jenna and I reached in her office that afternoon.

Jenna was seated behind her desk. I was in the silk wing chair facing her. She’d listened to my detailed recount of Jaime’s confession without much apparent amazement, as his story jibed with our own theory: It was an inside job.

“We have the same problem we’ve always had,” I said. “How do we prove it?”

“You think Jaime’s long gone?”

“Absolutely. He was happy to sell me information on the sly, but he wasn’t about to walk into a courtroom and testify against Quality Insurance Company under any circumstances. He’s terrified of them.”

“The way they strong-armed Judge Korvan into recusing herself from our case, I guess he has good reason to be afraid.”

“Even if I could somehow corral him, could you imagine the cross-examination?”

Jenna was right with me, breaking into role. “Mr. Ochoa, exactly how close did your hand come to being ground into a Quarter Pounder before you spit out the lies that Mr. Rey wanted to hear?”

Her saying it made me wince. “I wouldn’t have actually done it, you know.”

“Done what?”

“Flipped the switch.”

“I wouldn’t have blamed you. The creep handed your father over to kidnappers.”

I stared out the window, thinking. Jenna said, “Have you thought about making good on your threat to Jaime? Why not go to the state attorney?”

“I need three million dollars by Sunday. Can you think of anything that would make a company circle the wagons and pay me nothing faster than the threat of a criminal investigation?”

“I suppose you’re right.”

I rose and started pacing across the Oriental rug. “There has to be something we can do.”

“I don’t know what, short of finding another witness.”

I stopped. A wry smile came upon me as I looked at her and said, “Now that is a great idea.”

60

Matthew smelled rum. He was in the slow, disorienting transition between dreams and the dark reality of life behind a blindfold, and he thought surely that his mind was playing tricks as he woke. His last cocktail had been more than fifteen years ago, but he could have sworn that a strong Cuba Libre was right beneath his nose.

He raised his head from the floor and sniffed the air. Giving up the sauce hadn’t robbed him of his memory. The place definitely smelled of rum and Coke.

A screech pierced his darkness, the shrill sound of a chair sliding away from the table on a hard tile floor. He heard footsteps, and it finally registered that he was no longer in the van. He had no memory of being moved into a building, and he couldn’t possibly have slept through that. The throbbing pain behind his eyes made him guess drugs.

As the footsteps drew closer, he instinctively raised his hands for protection. Chains rattled. The slack quickly disappeared, and metal handcuffs pinched his wrists. His wrists were cuffed in front of his body, rather than the more restrictive behind-the-back method. But the range of motion was still only about a foot.

“Buenos dias.” The slurred Spanish had sounded like bad Castilian, Buenoth, diath. The voice was definitely Cerdo’s, but the inescapable breath was Bacardi’s. As hot as this room was, Matthew surmised that the sweat oozing from his captor was about eighty proof.

Matthew answered in Spanish. “Man, how much have you had to drink?”

“Enough to make me wish you were Nisho.”

Just the smell of this pig had him pitying poor Nisho. You’re gonna wish you’d never laid a hand on her.

“Where are we?”

“Can’t tell you.”

“How long was I asleep?”

“A while.”

“How long do I have to wear this blindfold?”

“As long as I say.”

As stupid as he was, Cerdo could handle questions with the skill of a politician. “Just take it off, would you? I already know what you look like.”

“True,” he said. Cerdo’s thick fingers fiddled with the knot behind Matthew’s head. The blindfold fell from his face.

His eyelids fluttered in the sudden burst of light. The room was dimly lit, but the adjustment from total darkness came slowly. It seemed to take forever for him to focus, and even then he had to alternate eyes, closing one and then the other to alleviate the discomfort.

Images slowly began to materialize. He was on the floor, chained to the frame of a metal bed with a lumpy mattress and no linens. The small room had no other furniture and no window. The walls were filthy, paint peeling away, graffiti everywhere. He could only guess at the original color of the floors, they were so dirty. The only source of light was a low-wattage bulb hanging by a wire from the ceiling. The door was open, and in the hallway outside were a chair and a small table, Cerdo’s guard post.

His eyes turned back to his captor, settling on the hideous paisley-pattern tattoo that covered the left side of his face. This close, Matthew got a full appreciation of the tattoo’s purpose. It did a fair job of hiding a ghastly scar that started at the corner of Cerdo’s mouth, curled back across the cheek, and then up over the ear. It looked as though, years ago, someone had tried to remove the skin from his skull with dull scissors.

“What are you looking at?”

Matthew rubbed his eyes. “Nothing. Takes a little getting used to the light, that’s all.”