Albert stammered, “The instructions were clear. You yourself were supposed to come.”
Mickie shook her head. “The instructions were clear yesterday, too. Dr. Meyers came, and he lost his life. If anything goes wrong this time, Charity will still have one parent left alive.”
At that moment, Dr. Reyes stepped into the back. He growled at Albert, “What is the delay?”
“The wrong person is here.”
“What? Who’s in the car?”
“Victoria. She sent the maid. Victoria.”
“Does the maid have the currency?”
Mickie answered through the screen, “Yes, she does. All of it. And in the denominations you requested.”
Dr. Reyes grunted. He told Albert, “All right. Then go get it.”
I had never seen Albert so nervous. “That’s not the plan. Ms. Meyers was supposed to come here. That was the plan.”
Dr. Reyes dismissed his objections with a flick of his wrist. He answered, “So this is the new plan. Go.”
After a tense moment, Albert got up and stalked out across the field, toward the car. As he did, the driver’s-side door opened and I saw the white dome light reflect off Victoria’s hair. She climbed out of the Mercedes, closed the door, and placed her own vidscreen on the car roof. Then she stood and waited for my kidnappers.
As soon as he got within five meters, Albert shouted, “Where’s the currency?”
Victoria’s eyes widened. Her hand shot to her mouth like she had seen a ghost. She stifled most of a scream. Then, with a visible effort of will, she calmed herself enough to ask, “You? Albert? It’s you?”
He answered brusquely: “Yes.”
“How can this be? You—you work for RDS. You are part of the fam—”
Albert snapped, “It is me! That’s all you need to know. It is me, and you need to give me the bag of currency. Now!”
Victoria pulled back, apparently afraid of what he might do. But she answered him in a strong voice: “I need to talk to you about that.”
“No! No talking! Give me the currency now. You have your instructions.”
Victoria raised her chin resolutely. “Yes, I do. From Ms. Meyers. Her instructions are that I need to see Charity before I give you the ransom.”
Albert shook his head angrily. “No! Here’s how it’s going to work—”
Victoria cut him off, as if she were talking to a lazy repairman. “If you cannot show Charity to me immediately, I will need to speak to your boss. Where is he?”
Albert sounded flabbergasted. “What?”
“Your boss. The one who sent the instructions. Dr. Reyes. I’ll talk to him now, not to you.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Yes, it is. Or we are going to be standing here for a long time.” They glared at each other for about twenty seconds, exchanging looks of pure hatred.
Finally, Dr. Reyes leaned toward my screen and growled at Victoria, “You heard what he said!”
“And you heard what I said. I will only do business with you.”
Dr. Reyes threw up his hands. His eyes darted to the clock on the screen. “All right! I’m coming out there.” He hurried to the doorway. I followed his jerky movements as he slid himself down to the ground and landed on an asphalt roadway. I leaned forward enough to look out and see that we were parked on a country road bordered by a shallow ditch.
Dr. Reyes started walking with difficulty, through the ditch and across the rutted field. As he did, I heard Albert break the silence with Victoria by asking the strangest question: “How did your father die?”
After a stunned pause, Victoria whispered, “What?”
“Your father. How did he die?”
“What are you talking about? What does my father—”
“What disease did he die from?”
I saw Victoria stick out her hands, speechless.
He persisted: “Just tell me and we’ll move forward. Was it cancer?”
Victoria watched Dr. Reyes’s slow progress for a moment. Then she answered quietly, “Yes.”
“What kind?”
“Skin cancer. Melanoma.”
“That is detectable by a simple screening. And it is one hundred percent curable if caught early. Remember that.”
“Remember what?”
“That it is a curable disease.”
She asked him, “Have you lost your mind?”
I was wondering the same thing. Dessi looked worried, too. He zoomed the lens closer. Victoria’s face was a mixture of confusion and anger. She snarled at Albert, “Listen to you! What do you think you are, a doctor? You are nothing of the kind. You are a disgrace! That’s all you are.”
He replied, “Really? A disgrace to what? To fake English butlers in monkey suits?”
“No! A disgrace to human beings. To people who are what they say they are. To people who speak the truth.”
“Oh? Is that right? So is your name Victoria? Are you a pretty little maid from Paris? Or is it London?”
“That is not my name, but I am an honest person! The things I say are true. I am not some phony, kidnapping liar. Some Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
“You don’t know who I am. After all these years, you have no idea.”
“I know who you are now! And you’d better not have hurt that child!”
Dr. Reyes finally arrived, huffing, at the car. Without preamble, Victoria demanded, “I want to see Charity now. I want to take her away with me now.”
Dr. Reyes answered breathlessly, “That is not the plan. You give us the currency. You drive away. We release the girl. That is the plan. The only plan.”
“No. Ms. Meyers has instructed me not to give you the currency until I have seen Charity.”
“Ms. Meyers is not giving the orders here! I am.”
I watched mesmerized as Victoria, always a lady, did the most unladylike thing. She bent forward slightly and spat on the ground at Dr. Reyes’s feet. “I am not afraid of you. None of you. You would abuse a helpless little girl? You deserve to die for that! If you bring her out here now, you can have your trash bag, and you can run away like pigs. Show me Charity. That is the new plan. Take it or leave it!”
Albert stepped forward menacingly, like he was about to slap her.
Dessi turned away from the screen. I could see the tension in his face. He placed his body in the frame of the doorway, his back to me, and spread out his arms and legs. He was now blocking my view, and my escape.
I had seen and heard enough. They were all losing it. Their stupid Plan B wasn’t working. They knew they were going to be hunted down as murderers. They knew that I could identify them all, and testify against them all. Why would they ever let me go? Why would they ever let me live to be a witness?
I looked back at my vidscreen. At that exact second, Victoria took off running across the field! Albert turned and looked dumbly at Dr. Reyes, who barked at him, “Let her go! Look: the currency is there, on the front seat of the car.”
Suddenly I knew what I had to do, too. Without a doubt. Victoria had shown me the way. I had to make a run for it—into the dark, into the night. I had to run for my life.
Dessi remained wedged in the ambulance door, his arms and legs splayed out before me like a large letter X. I crept forward to the bottom of the stretcher and lowered my feet to the floor. Then I dropped my right shoulder, took a deep breath, and launched myself at him, ramming him in the middle of his back.
Dessi’s body bowed outward; then his fingers lost their grip and he pitched headfirst onto the asphalt. My momentum carried me to the lip of the open door, where I tottered for a second and then fell forward, landing on my feet just behind the prostrate, gasping figure of Dessi.
I jumped over his legs and took off running to the left, down the roadway. If Albert and Dr. Reyes hadn’t heard me ramming Dessi, then I had a few precious minutes to run for my life.
And run for it I did.
I’m not out of shape, but I’m not in run-for-your-
life shape, either. After about forty meters, my lungs started burning; then my legs started cramping. I had to slow down; I had to stop to breathe. I bent over, with my elbows on my knees, and gulped for air. I was on the verge of throwing up, but I didn’t. I shook my head and my legs and my arms, trying to revive my body for another sprint.
I looked to my right. I was just past the dirt field, at the beginning of the citrus grove. I looked behind me. Dessi was back up on his feet and running fast, faster than I ever could, right at me. I took off again in a panic, running on sheer adrenaline: running for my life.
Dessi caught me after ten more meters. He clapped a hand on my shoulder and turned me around. This threw me off balance, and I fell. I hit the asphalt and rolled downhill, until I landed in the center of the ditch. I tried to scramble back up, but I couldn’t. I slipped and fell again, right on my face, in some slimy weeds.
I looked up and Dessi was standing over me, panting and sweating. He choked out the words, “Are you crazy? What are you doing?”
I got up to a kneeling position. My eyes cast about for a weapon—a rock, a stick, anything. I wasn’t going to die without a fight.
Dessi gasped, “Dr. Reyes will kill you if you try to escape. Don’t you know that?”
I clenched my fists and struggled to my feet. I snarled at him, “He’ll kill me either way. No! This is my life! You’re not going to take my life without a fight!”
He stretched his hands out, puzzled. When he spoke, it was a plea. “No. No, I’m not going to take your life. I never was.”
“Mantlè! Liar!”
“No, I swear. That was never the plan.”
“The plan? There’s no plan! Did you plan to kill my father?”
Dessi’s eyes widened. “No. Never. And…we didn’t kill him. He killed himself. He was drunk.”
“You did! You’re guilty as sin. You’re just as guilty as Reyes!”
“No. He doesn’t tell me his plans.”
“Right. Right. It’s all on a need-to-know basis. Explain that, in pathetic detail, when you’re on Speakers’ Corner.”
“No. No, listen to me! Listen! I have my own plan.”
“You? You have a plan? Mr. I Don’t Know Crap?”
“Yes, I do. Ever since your father…got killed. I’ve been working this out in my mind. I am not a murderer.”
“You’re a kidnapper! It’s the same thing.”
“No, it isn’t. Some kidnappers would go that far, yes. But I would not. Never. And they knew that.” He jerked his head back toward the field. “From the beginning, the deal was that you wouldn’t get hurt, in any way. I knew that much. We might make threats, but we were bluffing.”
“Oh, right! Tell that to my father!”
“I swear! I swear that is true. And I’ll prove it to you. I was going to let you go tonight no matter what. Even if Reyes said not to. Even if Monnonk said not to. I was going to find a way to set you free.”
We both looked back at the field. The dome light inside the Mercedes was on again.
Dessi bent and looked in my eyes. “So you got yourself free. So let’s keep going. I’ll go with you; I’ll help you.”
I looked down the country road into endless darkness. I was desperate enough to ask him, “Where? Where can I go?”
He pointed at the row of trees. “There are houses down there, houses for the fruit pickers. Dozens of them. You can hide out in one. Then I’ll call for help on the two-way.”
I stared hard at Dessi, wanting to believe him. In the end, I had no choice. I said, “All right. Come on. Let’s run.”
Dessi jumped down and landed beside me. He cupped his hand under my arm. We climbed out the other side of the ditch and started running down a narrow path between rows of citrus trees. Both of us tripped and stumbled on the clots of dirt and the tall weeds, but we made steady progress.
Then we heard Albert’s voice ringing sharp and clear: “Neve!” We froze until we realized the voice was coming through the two-way. “Neve! Where are you? Where’s Charity?”
Dessi pulled the two-way out of his pocket. Albert continued, in a shrill tone, “Neve! Where are you? You better answer me, or you’ll regret it!”
Dessi looked at me. “What should I do?”
I pointed toward a space between two trees. “Throw it in there. He might use it to trace us.”
Dessi didn’t hesitate. He flipped it away in a sidearm motion that sent the two-way crashing into the dark undergrowth. Then we started running again. When we reached the end of the row, we found ourselves outside a circle of six wooden houses all resting on cinder blocks, all painted light blue.
Dessi stared at them for a moment, then decided: “No. Not enough cover. Not enough houses. Let’s keep going.” So we ran on, up a hill, to the edge of a blacktop road. “We’re not very far from Mangrove,” he told me. “We drove around for a while so you wouldn’t know where you were. Do you think you can run for five more minutes?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I can.”
We climbed up onto the roadway and turned left. I ran as hard as I could, two steps ahead of Dessi, who kept turning to check for the ambulance/truck. When he finally did see its headlights, he grabbed my arm and jerked me to the right. We fell and rolled down an embankment, crashing to a stop in some sharp branches.
Dessi whispered, “Keep your head down. Don’t look at them, and don’t move.” The white truck drove by, slowly. When it was safely past us, he said, “We have to find a place to hide you, fast.”
We struggled to our feet and looked around. A cluster of cement houses lay thirty meters to the right. We ran toward them. The houses appeared to be abandoned. Beyond them were some old trailers arranged in a haphazard line. Some of the trailers were inhabited. We could hear faint sounds coming from them, and we could see the blue glows of vidscreens.
Dessi said, “This will have to do. We’ll hide you inside one of these empty houses. I’ll check out the trailers. I’ll find a friendly house that’ll let me make a call. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Dessi said, “Point to a house. Now! Don’t even think about it.”
I pointed to the fourth one. We ran to its front door and tried the knob. The door pushed open with a low creak. The light from the half moon peeked in through the door and through a cracked front window, but only for about three meters. The rest of the house was in complete blackness, like a monster’s cave.
My eyes quickly adjusted to the low light, and it was not a pleasant sight. The house had been abandoned for so long that it was returning to nature. Weeds were growing up through cracks in the cement floor. Spiderwebs and animal nests filled every corner. I could not see bugs, or rodents, or other animals, but I could hear them scurrying.
Dessi whispered, “Stay away from the door and the window. Stay as far from the front as you can.” I peered, terrified, into the blackness before me. He added, “I think I heard some Creole in that first trailer. Maybe they’re my frès. Maybe they’ll let me make a call. All right?”
I stammered, “All right.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. So I’m going now.”
I grabbed his arm. “Listen, Dessi?”
“What?”
“I want to thank you.”
“All right.”
“And I want to tell you what I’ve been thinking.”
“All right, but hurry.”
“I was thinking that this is exactly what Ramiro would do.”
“That’s what you’re thinking!”
“Yes.”
“Well, start thinking about surviving; about keeping away from the front; about keeping your head down.”
“Okay. All right.” I lowered my head immediately and turned toward the back.
Then Dessi tried to leave, but he never got past the first step. I could feel him freeze just a meter away from me. Instinctively, I turned back to see what had happened. As soon as I did, I stifled a scream.
A big
, menacing figure now stood before Dessi, blocking his getaway. And there was no question who it was—Albert.
Dessi stammered, “How? How did you get here?”
Albert raised one hand up and pointed at Dessi’s U of Miami sweatshirt. He spoke calmly. “I’ll show you. Empty your left pocket.”
Dessi and I exchanged a hopeless look. Then he slowly obeyed. He held something up in his hand, something too small for me to see clearly.
Albert told him, “It wasn’t hard to track you, Neve.”
Dessi was suddenly outraged. “The GTD! You planted that on me! How could you?”
“Keep your voice down.”
Dessi held the little ball bearing up. “This is what you think of me? This is how much you trust me?”
Albert spoke quizzically: “What are you saying? That you didn’t lose your nerve? That you didn’t just betray us and run away?”
“I thought this was about trust. And respect.” Dessi threw the ball bearing at his uncle’s feet. “This is not respect!”
Albert took one step back. He reached to his left and pulled in a bag from outside. A large black trash bag. Even in the dim light, I could see that it was packed to the ripping point with currency.
He held it out toward Dessi. “This is what it was about. And it’s time to take your share.”
Dessi now seemed on the verge of tears. “Oh, is that right? I thought it was about my mother, and you, and me.” He took two steps forward and, with a karate-like kick, knocked the bag right out of Albert’s hand. Wads of tightly bound multicolored bills spilled out onto the cement floor.
I thought to myself, That’s what Ramiro Fortunato would have done, too.
Albert leaned over calmly. He picked up the wads of paper and stuffed them back into the bag. Dessi and I exchanged another quick, desperate look. Did we dare to make a run for it? I backed a little farther into the house, looking for a possible way out through the blackness. I looked hard at the rear wall, but I could see nothing, not even a window.
When I turned around again, there was a second figure blocking the doorway.
Dr. Reyes had come up behind Albert. He was carrying a black bag, too, but it wasn’t filled with currency. I knew what it was from the time I spent in my father’s office. It was a doctor’s emergency bag.