“I can understand why Barbara wouldn’t buy into something like that. Besides, it’s not like the Bahamas is a kidnapping hotspot.”

  “I did check into another way to get the money, Zack.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Cash on hand. Orb Media has to pay several different production vendors each month. Mostly these are pre-press companies that make color separations for the magazines, and then there are the various printing houses. It’s the biggest cash account, bigger even than payroll, and we keep it separate. I could talk to the different vendors. We’re current and in good standing with all of them. Maybe we could work something out.”

  “How much would that get us?”

  “Not a million. Maybe four or five hundred thousand. I don’t know for sure. It would depend on how many of them would buy into it and let us ride for a few months.”

  “Well, that seems like the best direction for the time being. Why don’t you get moving on that end of it?”

  “OK, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “What’s wrong with working all the ends, Zack? Why not just go ahead and contact the F.B.I. and contact the State Department and let everyone know what’s going on?”

  I could sense her anxiety slipping out. I had to remember that Steffi was just a kid, maybe twenty-four or twenty-five, and I was asking her to help orchestrate something with which damn few people twice her age have any experience. Plus, I was trying not to let my own anxieties slip out and upset her.

  “I told Lynfield Pederson that I would give him a couple of days to see what he could do.”

  There was a long pause on Steffi’s end. Finally, she said, “Zack, I know I’m no authority on this, and I don’t want you to think I am trying to tell you what to do here, because I’m not. But this one Web site I checked—and, I know, there’s lots of whacko Web sites, but this was one run by a security group that works for companies that issue kidnap insurance—it had these tips for, as they called it, ‘dealing with a kidnap and rescue situation.’ I know, it sounds crazy that someone even comes up with something like this, but I printed it out and, I’ve got it right here. Is it OK if I read you what it says?”

  “Sure, let’s hear it.”

  “It says: ‘If someone you know is kidnapped in a foreign country do not call the local police. In many cases, the police are likely to be working in conjunction with the kidnappers and will only help them jack up the ransom demands. Your first order of business should be to call the U.S. Embassy.’”

  “Well, I’m afraid we’re way past that point, Steffie.”

  “You trust this Pederson guy?”

  “I’ve got to,” I said.

  And after I hung up with Steffie, that was who I called.

  36

  Lynfield Pederson was just leaving the police station when I got him on the phone. He said he had some business to take care of and that he’d swing by Valentine’s and meet me at the boat about ten o’clock. I didn’t want to wait around that long, so I told him I’d go on to the Downey compound and he could meet me there.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t want you going back there again without me. Wait for me on the boat.”

  After sidestepping him the day before, I felt like I owed him something. So I went back to the marina and waited for him. It was equal parts hell and heaven—the agony of waiting to hear from the kidnappers, the joy of being aboard Miz Blitz once again. Naw, scratch that. It was mostly hell. I couldn’t enjoy anything until I knew Barbara was safe.

  Ten o’clock came and went. Then eleven, then noon. It was almost 1 P.M. when Pederson finally got there, and I was pacing the deck. He didn’t apologize for being late, nor did he seem to be in any particular hurry. Island time. It takes more than murder and a kidnapping to speed it up.

  Pederson spent a few moments admiring Miz Blitz and, at Boggy’s insistence, polished off a leftover plateful of grouper and grits. Then he and I loaded up in the white van.

  “So where’s that buddy of yours come from?” he asked as we rolled along Bay Street, then turned east toward the beachside.

  “You mean Boggy?”

  “Yeah, he’s got an Indian look to him.”

  “He’s Taino.”

  Pederson cut me a look.

  “Taino? Like in the Dominican Republic?”

  “Yeah, I’m impressed. Most people have never heard of the Taino.”

  “Oh, I’ve heard of them. Just thought they were all long dead. Thought the Spanish conquistadors killed them off.”

  “Don’t tell Boggy that. Nothing riles him up as much as people thinking he’s extinct.”

  So I gave Pederson the short version of how I had met Boggy. It was on a solo cruise through the Caribbean the season after I’d left the Dolphins. I was snorkeling around some rocks on the southeast coast of the Dominican Republic, near Punta Azu, when a tidal surge sucked me into a thicket of black sea urchins, the kind with those wicked poisonous spines. I was rolling around on the beach, hollering like a baby, when I looked up to see a short, stout brown man with a long, black ponytail gazing down on me. He had a face like one of those monolithic deities from Easter Island—at first glance it seemed devoid of expression, but the more I looked at it the more it seemed connected to eternity. He might have been twenty, then again, he might have been sixty. Even now, I have no idea how old Boggy is.

  As I lay there howling, the short brown man pulled down his pants, unfurled his not-so-short member, and unleashed a stream of hot pee all over me. Before I could protest, he was kneeling in the sand, rubbing the urine into my wounds.

  “Is medicine,” he said.

  A few minutes later, after I was back on my feet and the pain was miraculously gone, Boggy announced, “I work for you.”

  As it turned out, Miz Blitz needed some work done on her and I could use an extra hand. But after all the repairs were finished, it became evident that Boggy’s offer extended past my stay in the D.R. He intended to keep working for me and go wherever I went. I tried my best to convince him otherwise. I told him I wasn’t in the market for hired help.

  “I do not want money,” Boggy said. “This is something I must do.”

  “Why must you do it?”

  “Because it was foretold,” he said.

  “Foretold? You mean, like somebody predicted it?”

  Boggy nodded.

  “My grandfather,” he said. “He saw my future.”

  “Yeah, right,” I said. “You mean to tell me your grandfather looked into the future and saw you walking along the rocks at Punta Azul and saw me getting stung by a sea urchin and saw you pissing on me and the two of us meeting up because of that?”

  Boggy shrugged.

  “More or less,” he said. “My grandfather spoke in symbols. It was left to me to interpret them.”

  There was no talking him out of it. He wrapped a few belongings in an old blanket, strung a hammock on the sailboat, and when I set course back to Florida he was on board. I figured they’d waylay him when we went through immigration, but he produced a U.S. passport. Turns out he’d been born in Miami, but returned to the D.R. as a child.

  “His real name is Cachique Baugtanaxata,” I told Pederson.

  “I can understand why you call him Boggy.”

  “In Taino his name means ‘Chief of the Cenote.’”

  “Cenote? Those are caves, right?”

  “Caverns, really. Giant sinkholes. The Taino call them ‘Navels of the Earth.’ They’re sacred, places of worship. Boggy says he comes from a long line of priests and shamans.”

  “You believe him?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I do.”

  I had plenty of reasons for believing Boggy was exactly who he said he was, stories galore. And I would have gladly shared them with Pederson, but we were pulling into the Downey compound. The time for reminiscing was over.

  37

  “You did what?” Lynfield Pederson said.

  I would have asked the same thing, only I was speechless.

  “We gave them the money,” said Zoe Applequist.

  We were sitting in the living room at the pink house, just Zoe Applequist, Pederson, and me. Zoe said Burma was in her bedroom, resting. And if Tiffani St. James was around, then she wasn’t showing herself. Neither was Clarissa Percival.

  “When did you give them the money?” asked Pederson.

  Zoe closed her eyes and took a deep breath, letting Pederson know that it required every fiber of her mortal being just to tolerate his presence. There had already been a major scene after I showed up with Pederson in tow. Zoe had called me a traitor and liar. At first, she had refused to let us inside, but I had managed to calm her down.

  Now Zoe looked at Pederson, and said, “They called approximately one hour and forty-five minutes ago. I know, because it was only moments after Burma and I returned from the bank. And we gave them the money shortly after that.”

  Zoe Applequist was wearing a blue unitard and looked like she had just finished a workout Her long black hair was kept at bay with a Nike headband and she was dripping sweat. The arches of both feet were wrapped in white tape. So were the knuckles of both hands. There was one of those big Everlast punching bags hanging in a comer of the living room. Nothing sexier than a woman boxer. Unless it’s a guy who’s a synchronized swimmer.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” I asked Zoe.

  “We didn’t have time. They called us. We had the money. And we gave it to them.”

  “What did they do?” said Pederson. “Did they just drive up, ring the doorbell and say, ‘Hello, we’re here for the money’? And then you handed it to them and they drove away?”

  “This is not a joking matter,” said Zoe.

  “You’re got-dam right it’s not. That’s why you should have gotten in touch with my office from the outset.” He turned to me. “That goes for you, too.”

  Pederson sat down in a chair. He flipped his legal pad to a blank page and took out a pencil from a shirt pocket He said to Zoe Applequist: “You gave them two hundred fifty thousand dollars, is that right?”

  “Yes, that is correct.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking,” said Pederson, “exactly how did you get that kind of money so quickly? It’s Monday morning. Banks were closed yesterday.”

  “Actually, I do mind you asking. Miss Downey’s financial affairs are none of your business.”

  “Listen, I don’t care how much money she has,” Pederson said. “I’m just trying to figure out how she managed to get her hands on so much of it so fast. I understood the money would be coming from London.”

  “It did,” said Zoe. “And for your information, London is five hours ahead of us here. We were up quite early calling Burma’s bank in London and making arrangements.”

  Pederson thought about it. Then he said, “How did you deliver the money to them?”

  “We delivered it to them in the manner in which they requested.”

  I could see Lynfield Pederson flexing his jaw. He said, “And in which manner would that be?”

  “Miss Downey has made it clear that she does not want police intervention in this matter.”

  “Too bad,” said Pederson. “You’ve got it anyway. How did you deliver the money?”

  Zoe Applequist unwrapped the tape from one of her hands. She stretched her fingers and rolled her wrist. She took the tape off the other hand and did the same thing. Maybe she was trying to intimidate us. So far, she’d been doing a pretty good job of it. She sat down directly across the coffee table from me and said, “Mr. Chasteen, if you insist upon involving the police in this matter, then we must insist that we go about settling this in our separate fashions.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means that we are prepared to negotiate individually with the kidnappers for Lord Downey and Lord Downey alone. It means that we will follow their instructions to the very letter. It means that we will provide them with our half of the money and then we will await Lord Downey’s safe return. This is not some kind of package deal.”

  “What makes you think they would go for that?” I asked.

  “Oh, please, Mr. Chasteen. We’ve already discussed it with them.”

  I looked at Pederson. As far as I was concerned, this was his cue for breaking out the handcuffs and hauling Zoe Applequist and her bod of steel to the Harbour Island slammer. Which was probably the same stuffy garage where they had kept Bryce Gannon’s body before carting him off to get iced down at the fish house. Better yet, put her in the cooler with Gannon’s body. A few hours of that and she might suddenly become a more reasonable human being.

  “This cell phone they’ve been calling you on,” I said. “Where is it?”

  Zoe went to the kitchen counter and came back holding the chrome cell phone. When I reached for it, she pulled away.

  “Let me see it,” I said.

  She gave me an icy look. Then she put the phone in the palm of her hand and stuck it out to me. I grabbed it and punched the power button. Nothing happened. I punched redial. Then I punched power again. Nothing and more nothing.

  “It doesn’t work,” I said.

  “Battery’s dead. It died not long after we last spoke with them.”

  “So how do they plan on getting in touch with you now?”

  “In our last conversation, they said we would be receiving a new cell phone each time they wanted to contact us.”

  “What did the guy on the phone sound like?” asked Pederson.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, did he speak with an accent? Was he American? Was he Bahamian? What did he sound like?”

  “No accent,” Zoe said. “At least not one that I noticed.”

  “So, you talked to him this time?” I said.

  “What?” said Zoe.

  “The first time he called, he insisted on talking to Burma. This time he spoke to you?”

  “Yes. When he called I answered and then I gave the phone to Burma. Just like before. And he gave her the instructions.”

  “Did she write them down?” I asked.

  “Why yes, of course.”

  “May I see what she wrote down?” I said.

  “She wrote on the chalkboard,” Zoe said. “We erased it.”

  “Could you ask her to write it again?”

  “Like I told you, Burma is resting and I don’t think it is in her best interest to be disturbed at this time. Why can’t you just take my word for what the man on the phone told her?”

  “Please,” I said. “We’re all upset here. I’m just trying to understand everything that’s going on.”

  Zoe stood up in a huff.

  “Alright, alright,” she said. “I’ll go back there and ask her to write down exactly what the man told her. And then, if you don’t mind, I’ll be asking you to leave.”

  Pederson and I sat in the living room and waited while Zoe went back to Burma Downey’s bedroom. We didn’t talk. About five minutes later Zoe returned with a piece of notebook paper. She handed it to me. I recognized Burma Downey’s shaky handwriting from my previous visit.

  I read the note with Pederson looking over my shoulder. It said: The man on the phone said put the money in a white pillow case. He said where to leave it. He said someone would be watching. He said no one should be with Zoe or they would kill my father and Ms. Pickering. He said he would call about how to deliver the other $750,000. Zoe put the money in the pillowcase and left it where the man said. They seem very well organized.

  I tucked the note in a pocket.

  Then Zoe said, “If you don’t mind me asking, Mr. Chasteen, when do you think you might have your part of the money ready?”

  “I don’t mind you asking at all. But I don’t really have an answer. All I can tell you is that we’re working on it. There are lots of things that have to fall in place.”

  Zoe nodded.

  “I understand,” she said. “Good luck.”

  I stood. So did Pederson.

  “Miss Applequist,” he said, “I expect you to get in touch with me the moment you have any further contact with the other party. Do you understand?”

  Zoe Applequist didn’t reply. She walked to the door. “Good day, gentlemen,” she said.

  This time there were no good-bye hugs.

  38

  “So what do you think?” asked Pederson.

  We were standing by the white van in the driveway at the Downey compound.

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” I said. “I think I shouldn’t have been sitting on my dead ass for three hours waiting for you to come pick me up at the boat. I should have been here when they got the phone call, dammit.”

  Pederson didn’t say anything. It was getting hot. He fanned himself with the legal pad.

  I said, “What were you doing anyway?”

  “What do you mean what was I doing?”

  “I mean, what were you doing for those three hours that was so goddam important that we couldn’t have come here first thing like I wanted to?”

  “Police business,” he said.

  “That’s it? Police business? You can’t do better than that? That’s all you got?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s all I got.”

  We had squared off, and I was trying to figure out what to say next, trying to figure out if maybe Zoe and Burma had been right in wanting to leave the police out of this. Then a voice called out, “Lyn . . .”

  We both turned to see Clarissa Percival standing at the back door of Lord Downey’s house.

  “Excuse me,” Pederson said.

  “Gladly,” I said.

  He walked off to join Clarissa. And I headed back to Miz Blitz.

  I was just a couple of hundred yards down Front Street when I began to suspect that I was being followed. The guy was maybe fifty yards behind me. I couldn’t tell much about him except that he was definitely overdressed for August in the Bahamas. He was wearing long pants and a navy blue windbreaker zipped up tight. He looked to be medium build, a little on the chunky side. Any more than that I couldn’t tell from the distance, but it was a good bet he was sweating something fierce in that getup he was wearing. I didn’t have on half as many clothes and the perspiration was pouring off me.

 

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