On Hallowed Ground Read online

  I winced in consolation, but she wasn’t finished.

  “Then about a year ago, my son José was kidnapped as he drove from our home in Medellín to a nearby town, where he was to visit one of our branch banks. He’s my only child. I had begged him never to resist if they came for him, and he didn’t. I paid a large ransom right away, but even then they held him for seven months before releasing him.”

  She shrugged. “Of course, we were fortunate. Other families have paid plenty only to find their loved ones lying dead on some muddy roadside.”

  I nodded. I had read the stories. Colombia was the kidnapping capital of the planet. Colombian guerrillas and the criminal gangs they sometimes did business with snatched hundreds of victims every year. Abduction for profit was a major industry there, from Cali to Medellín, from Bogotá to Barranquilla. Colombia was probably the only country in the world that could list “ransom payments” as part of its gross domestic product.

  I sipped. “So what is the problem I can help you with now?”

  “The problem is this,” she said. “I’m afraid someone may try to kidnap my son again. We are in need of added security.”

  “I see. So you would like me to go to Colombia.”

  She frowned. “No. There is no need for you to travel to Colombia.”

  “Then where is your son?”

  “He’s here in Key Biscayne. We are living with my brother-in-law, Carlos Estrada, at a house not far from here. What I’m worried about is that someone will try to kidnap him right here.”

  That stopped me. I’d never heard of Colombian kidnapping gangs working the Miami side of the Caribbean. In fact, that was why rich Colombians like the Estradas had moved to Miami in droves over the past two decades: to escape the kidnappers. What she was worried about was highly unlikely.

  It wasn’t, however, the first time I had heard someone raise the issue in Miami. I once briefly dated a Colombian woman who I liked very much. At one point, she expressed fears of kidnapping, and I chided her that there was really no need to fret in Miami. She became extremely upset with me for not taking her concerns seriously.

  “You can make believe you live in paradise, but I cannot,” she said.

  Very shortly afterwards, she broke off the relationship. Her name was Susana, and I still thought of her. I didn’t want to make the same mistake with my new client.

  “Why do you think your son is in danger of being kidnapped here on the Key?”

  “Recently, moments have occurred that have made me worry.”

  “What moments were those?”

  She put down her daiquiri. “The first was when I overheard my son and his girlfriend themselves discussing the possibility of a Colombian being kidnapped here on Key Biscayne. They were saying that so many of the wealthy families from our country had moved here that it only made sense for the kidnappers to come here too. When I interrupted and asked them about it, they tried to tell me they were just joking and that they considered the idea preposterous.”

  She shook her head sternly. “Some joke.”

  Then, she tapped my knee with a blood-red fingernail. “The truth is many new Colombians are here these days in Miami, not just the wealthy. We have no idea who they are or what they’re doing here. I have even heard my own servants say that kidnappers might as well come here.”

  She paused for dramatic effect.

  “And the other moments that made you worry?” I asked.

  “On several occasions recently, the phone has rung and when we pick it up, no one is there. Then several nights ago, around sunset, I happened to look out the window of our house here and saw a silver car crawl by very slowly, as if someone were watching our property closely. A minute later, it came by again in the opposite direction at the same decreased speed.

  “Finally, yesterday, a very dangerous-looking individual—a man wearing a shirt with bright flowers, with long, black hair and a scar across his face—came to the front gate and asked who lives in the house. When nobody would tell him, he just walked away. You see what I mean, Mr. Cuesta? I believe they have their sights set on us again.”

  I nodded in commiseration and didn’t say what I was thinking. Her fears were based mostly on a bit of idle conversation, servants’ gossip and the kind of aborted phone calls that everyone receives now and then. As for the cars cruising by, the real estate market in Miami was always active despite economic downturns, and people were constantly out perusing neighborhoods. They were looking to make a killing, but not the kind Doña Carmen feared. As for the guy with the scar, who knew? Maybe he was selling magazines.

  No, I didn’t dare say that to her. I had been around long enough to know you don’t simply talk a mother out of her fears for her children. I could have told her that in Colombia, kidnappers go to prison. In the U.S., in some cases, kidnapping is a capital crime. You could end up laying on a table, getting jabbed with a lethal injection. Snatch someone Stateside and you might be buying into “The Big Sleep.” But I didn’t think telling her that would calm her worries either.

  “How long has your son been here?” I asked her.

  “About a month. I had been trying to convince him to come ever since they released him last year. He said he refused to be run out of his own country by outlaws. He added bodyguards and went right back to work at the bank in Colombia, which my late husband’s family has run for decades. Finally, though, we were able to convince him to come here.”

  “He listened to reason.”

  She shrugged. “It wasn’t so much me who convinced him. It was his girlfriend. She has been with him only a few months, but she already has more influence on him than I do.”

  Mention of the new girlfriend brought a distinct edge to her tone. I couldn’t help but notice. My eyes narrowed, and so did hers.

  “I won’t tell you I’m happy about this match, Mr. Cuesta. I’m not a snob, but Catalina—that’s her name—is a girl from the countryside. She’s very beautiful, but I don’t think she and José have enough in common.”

  Her eyes welled with emotion. “Believe me, I want nothing more on this earth than for my José to marry and give me grandchildren. I dream of it and I’m running out of time. But in a family as wealthy as ours, you have your suspicions about young women who suddenly appear at the side of your son. The fact that she convinced him to abandon Colombia and come here counts for something, but I still have my suspicions.”

  “And now you’re afraid she and José may not have run far enough.”

  She fixed on me. “I know you must be thinking that I am a crazy old woman who worries at every person in proximity and every car she sees. Please, try to understand me. You can call me crazy, but you are not Colombian. You have not lived what we have lived these past decades. You haven’t had a husband killed. You haven’t had your only child kidnapped. You haven’t stayed awake thinking maybe you were the mother of a corpse. And now I am worried that they may try to take him a second time.”

  Again, I wasn’t about to argue. It was true the Colombians had been through hell. In fact, they had their own Colombian corner of it. What Doña Carmen feared was outliving her only child, and for a mother, that just might be the deepest depth of hell.

  “So what is it you want me to do, señora?”

  “I want you to protect my family, in particular my son.”

  “Not you?”

  She shook her head. “Me they can have, although they probably wouldn’t want me. I have a reputation for being very difficult when I need to be. They would end up shooting me just to shut me up and never see a dollar for their efforts.”

  “And your brother-in-law?”

  “They have even less use for him. Carlos is overweight and has a bad heart, a bad liver and high blood pressure. He would never survive a kidnapping and a hike to some mountain hovel. He would probably die the first day.

  “My son, however, is a different matter. We have a watchman at the house, but that isn’t enough. I want you to provide security whenever José
leaves the property. Since Catalina is with him almost at all times, like his shadow, you will, in effect, be protecting her as well. I want you to be their bodyguard, on call seven days per week.”

  I rattled off my usual day rate and overtime charges.

  She didn’t blink. “That’s fine. I’d like you to start today.”

  There must be some big cows on those cattle ranches of hers.

  “I’ll take you to the house and introduce you to José and Catalina, and I’ll warn you right now that José is not happy about this. He doesn’t like the idea of someone being around him all the time.”

  I told her I was sure we could work something out.

  As we stood up to leave, the stone lions attached to the fountains outside suddenly spurted water from their mouths.

  It was a jungle out there.

  CHAPTER THREE

  You never know how things are going to go with a new client. In some cases, it makes them uncomfortable to relate their most intimate affairs to a complete stranger, and in the end, they never forgive you for listening.

  But it didn’t always work that way. Over the years, I’d become quite close to some of my customers. They shared their secrets and worries with me, and the bond between us was hard-welded by that trust. Doña Carmen was part of that second group. We would become very fond of each other over the coming days. She was quite a lady.

  Right then, I followed her back across the lobby, past those fleshy roses and out of the hotel.

  “You can ride with me now, and my chauffeur, Manuel, can bring you back.”

  Moments later, a big black SUV swung up next to us. A white-haired, earthen-colored, heavyset man sat behind the wheel. He dressed casually but wore a black cap that might pass as a chauffeur’s chapeau. He looked a bit like Odd Job in the old James Bond movie.

  “Don’t get out, Manuel,” Doña Carmen said through the open window.

  I opened the back door for her and climbed in the front. As I did, my eyes fell on the holstered .45 caliber handgun lying on the floor of the passenger seat. Manuel picked it up to get it out of my way and balanced it on his lap.

  I introduced myself, gave him a high-caliber smile, closed the door and we took off.

  “As you can see, Manuel provides some security,” Doña Carmen said, “but as you can also see, he isn’t as young as he used to be. Are you, Manuel?”

  The chauffeur glanced into the rearview mirror and nodded in eager agreement with his employer.

  “Sí, señora.”

  He could still drive however. We headed out the snaking driveway, off the premises and then farther down the main drag of Key Biscayne. We passed a strip mall, which on Key Biscayne was a different matter than in the rest of Miami. It included a gourmet food shop, a very high-end jeweler, a dermatologist specializing in plastic surgery, a tanning salon, a boulangerie and a bank. No laundromats on Main Street, not on the Key.

  We were slowed down by a stretch of construction on the road, but we finally turned into a neat residential neighborhood. A couple blocks later, we crossed a very short bridge, no more than twenty feet long, onto a spit of land bearing the name Mashita Island.

  Right away, the manses grew more conspicuous and, I’m sure, much more expensive. It occurred to me that they could have done without the bridge and filled in those few yards with earth, but people in Miami liked island addresses and paid more for them too.

  Doña Carmen pointed down a cross street.

  “President Nixon lived near here many years ago.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  Nixon had used his home on the Key as his “winter White House.” With only one way in and one way out—a seven-mile causeway across Biscayne Bay—the Secret Service had found it an easy place to protect.

  Later, in the 1970s and ’80s, some wild-ass anti-Castro Cubans had shot up the Key once or twice. And even later, some cocaine cowboys called it home. But it had calmed down again quickly.

  In the 1990s, with political upheaval exploding all over Latin America, the wealthy from those countries searched for a place where they would be safe from guerrilla warfare. And, for the Colombians in particular, that long causeway made it just about kidnap-proof. So many of them had moved to the Key that it could have been renamed Hostage Haven.

  Doña Carmen seemed to read my mind.

  “It’s beautiful and peaceful here, isn’t it?” she said.

  I told her it was.

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “You would think that nothing bad could happen here. We believed that was true at our beautiful and peaceful house outside Medellín. But that was where my husband Mario was murdered. There is no heaven on earth, Mr. Cuesta. There is no Shangri-La. We Colombians have had to learn that, especially those of us who are mothers.”

  She made me recall what my old Colombian girlfriend, Susana, had said when she split from me. No part of the earth, no matter how rich, is a corner of paradise. No zip code is immune from evil.

  Finally, Manuel pulled the SUV up to a black, wrought-iron gate before a bayside mansion. In addition to that big gate, the property was surrounded by a tall white stucco wall, with sharp metal spikes embedded in the top.

  Manuel wielded a remote, and the gate swung open. We followed a semi-circular driveway to the door of a two-story, cream-colored house about a half block long.

  Doña Carmen led me up a short flight of steps to the wooden front door, which was also protected by a wrought-iron grate. The window embrasures had bars built in, even on the second floor. Along the roofline, spotlights pointed down, although they were not on at the moment. The place possessed its own original architectural style—a mixture of Mediterranean and early twenty-first century penitentiary.

  Doña Carmen rang the bell. Moments later, a dark-skinned woman about forty in a black maid’s uniform answered. She bore a marked resemblance to the chauffeur, Manuel, and was almost certainly his daughter.

  “Thank you, Lorena,” Doña Carmen said. “Are José and Catalina here in the house?”

  “Sí, señora.”

  I stepped into the foyer, which was about the size of the living room in my apartment in Little Havana. I could have fit my furniture and TV in there without much fuss. Beyond that, the house opened up into large high-ceilinged spaces with white walls and large expanses of pink marble floor. It seemed the interior designer had been inspired by the Vatican.

  Doña Carmen explained to me that she needed to find her son. So I parked myself in a high-backed chair in the living room.

  Given the size of the place, it might take her quite a while.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I sat and gazed at my surroundings. Propped in that throne-like chair, I felt a bit like the pope.

  While I waited, I called my brother Tommy. The club wasn’t open during the day, but he was there counting the take of the night before and ordering the liquor and food for the coming days.

  I told him where I was and that, if necessary, I would find someone to cover for me at the club over the next few nights.

  “Key Biscayne? Not bad. Maybe you can find yourself a nice millionaire lady over there and make Mamá happy.”

  Tommy has a wife and three kids. Me, I’m on my own and have been for some time. I was married once to a lady who I met shortly after she had arrived in Miami on a raft from Cuba. We were together for several years, most of them happy. Then one day, the tides of life, of change, of a love that turned out to be not quite deep enough, swept her away from me again. We’ve been divorced for a long while now. My mother frets that I haven’t found someone else.

  “I’ll keep an eye out,” I told Tommy, and we hung up

  Then I got up and checked out the baby grand piano in the corner. The top of it was covered with framed family photos.

  Doña Carmen was pictured in various shots taken over the years, standing next to a shorter, olive-skinned, green-eyed, burly man who I assumed was her late husband Mario. He wore gold-rimmed glasses and was partial to white dress shirt
s and suspenders. Given his pugnacious expression, I could picture him putting up a fight against anybody who tried to kidnap him.

  Most of the other photos featured a boy who very much resembled Don Mario, right down to his father’s green eyes. Doña Carmen had told me that her son José had followed his father into banking, but he was a much more casual banker. He was most often pictured in T-shirt and jeans.

  In one of those snapshots, what appeared to be a relatively recent one, he posed with a slim dark-skinned young woman. I figured she was the country girlfriend, Catalina, whom Doña Carmen was so suspicious of. Me, I would have gotten over any doubts downright quick. She was quite beautiful.

  An old Juan Luis Guerra song sounded in my head about a poor boy who had fallen in love with a wealthy girl:

  She has a residence with sauna and a pool,

  in my rented room, I use buckets of water to keep myself cool . . .

  In this case, José had the loot and Catalina was from bucket country.

  At that point, Lorena, the maid, came back in with coffee for me and also provided some information on the people in the photos. She identified José, Catalina and also Uncle Carlos, a tall, flushed, big-bellied man in a cowboy hat who was always photographed either riding a horse or standing next to a beautiful steed.

  I learned that Uncle Carlos had run the family cattle ranches and coffee plantations in Colombia and now lived most the time at a farm he owned in south county near the Everglades. Out there he raised thoroughbred paso fino—fine step—prancing horses, which was an old Colombian tradition.

  Posed next to him in one shot was his son, who Lorena referred to as Cousin Cósimo.

  “He ran the family banana plantations,” she said, “but now he is here too.”

  “He was the top banana,” I said, but she didn’t get it.

  Cósimo was about the same age as José but didn’t look anything like him. He was shorter and more muscular, his head was shaved bald and shiny like a dark brown egg, and he sported a thick black, arching moustache. Around his neck hung a gold chain, and dangling from it was a religious medal of some kind, nestled in his dark chest hairs.