CHAPTER NINETEEN

I woke up at eight the next morning. By that time, we were almost halfway to the ransom deadline the kidnappers had decreed.

By nine o’clock, I was outside Don Carlos’ bank on the Key. It was right next to a tanning salon. You would think a tanning salon in South Florida would do about as much business as an ice company in Alaska, but trade was brisk—and beautiful too. I got a couple of sparkling white smiles out of golden tanned faces.

Then Manuel drove up in the silver SUV with Don Carlos in the front seat. Don Carlos wasn’t as beautiful as the tanning clients, but he was paying me.

He got out carrying a cowhide briefcase and told Manuel to return to the house. The old chauffeur took off, and Don Carlos turned to me. If anything, he had put on a pound or two in the last couple of days. He appeared to be not only drinking his way through the crisis but trying to eat his way through it too. I felt bad for his horses.

“Come with me,” he said.

We entered the bank, passed a line of people leading to the teller cages and sidled up to the service desk. The man behind the counter was short and young, with wire-rimmed glasses, a three-button black suit and a very loose, large knot in his silver tie as if he hadn’t finished tying it. I hoped he locked the safe better than he secured his tie.

He obviously recognized Don Carlos and had heard about Catalina’s abduction. His face fell, and he started to express his sincere regrets.

Don Carlos held up a hand and whispered. “I don’t need everyone in this bank to know who I am, especially not now. I need to get into my safe deposit box.”

The young man nodded nervously, then led us to a small room in the corner with a metal gate for a door. He opened it with a magnetized card, like a credit card, and ushered us into a space that was safe deposit boxes wall to wall, floor to ceiling.

The room couldn’t have been bigger than eight feet by eight feet, but two closed-circuit television cameras were installed in the corners, diagonally across from each other. A flea couldn’t move in there without being detected.

Don Carlos was obviously a frequent and important customer. The young bank officer knew exactly which box was his—a large one in the far corner, right at eye level. Just like the prize horses at the ranch with their eye-level hay holders, the Estradas were not expected to bend over.

The bank officer stuck his key in the left brass lock, and Don Carlos slipped his key in the right. A moment later, the younger man swung open the door and pulled the handle of the large, shiny metal box. It slid out smooth as silk. Don Carlos took it from him, and the bank officer led him to a small private room annexed to the safe deposit boxes. It was painted an umber color, with a simple counter covered in Formica and two vinyl-covered chairs.

Don Carlos put down the box and sat. The young bank officer still stood in the doorway, ogling both of us. It was obvious he knew why we were there—to remove riches that might be used for ransom. It didn’t happen every day.

“You can close the door behind you,” Don Carlos said sternly.

The other man flinched and did as he was told.

“Lock the door,” Don Carlos said.

I threw the latch, and only then did Don Carlos lift the hinged cover of the box. It was about a foot wide, eighteen inches long and about eight inches deep, the size of an old-fashioned bread box. And bread, of a sort, is what was in there.

On top were some papers and under them a manila envelope. When he removed those, he revealed several wads of U.S. bills secured with thick rubber bands. He took them out and placed them on the counter next to the box. I glanced at them casually, as casually as you can glance at what appeared to be four-inch piles of hundred-dollar bills.

But that wasn’t what he was after. Under the bills was a leather pouch, about the size of a wineskin. He pulled it out and untied a leather thong that held it closed. He reached in and removed a piece of black velvet about a foot square that he spread on top of the Formica.

Then he tilted the pouch and poured out the contents.

Emeralds.

Not one or two or five or six. I’m talking a couple dozen. And I don’t mean chips. The smallest one had to be five carats. They were like translucent walnuts.

Some were dark green, others had a blue hue. Some were rounded, others were faceted. They all sparkled under the fluorescent lights like water reflecting the sun. They were dazzling.

He spread them out and gazed at them a minute, as if he were calculating how much they might be worth. God only knew, and even God might not be able to afford them.

But Don Carlos wasn’t done.

Another pouch lay in the bottom of the box. He brought it out, loosened its leather thong, reached in and brought out three separate pieces of jewelry, each wrapped in a piece of white silk. He unwrapped them one at a time.

One was a bracelet that alternated rows of small green emeralds and white pearls—four rows each.

The other two pieces were necklaces. One was a strand of medium-sized emeralds linked by a fine chain of gold. In the very center of that strand hung a large, faceted dark green emerald pendant that had to be forty or fifty carats. I know it was the biggest single precious jewel I had ever seen.

The second necklace was an even more elaborate production. It involved a double strand of jewels that alternated cut emeralds and faceted diamonds. The gems were smaller where they would touch the nape of the neck and grew larger as they descended toward the décolletage of the lucky woman who would wear them.

Even Don Carlos, who owned it, and had presumably placed his bloodshot eyes on it a few times before, was dazzled by it. He held it in his hands and tilted it back and forth as if it were quicksilver dripping from his fingers.

I had known Colombia was a capital of the world’s emerald trade. What I hadn’t been aware of was that the Estrada family constituted a major thoroughfare in that capital.

Finally Don Carlos put the jewels back in the leather pouches. The pouch holding the finished pieces, he dropped into his cowhide briefcase. The pouch holding the loose stones went back into the safety deposit box. He went to the next room, slid the box back into its slot and locked it. He produced a set of handcuffs from inside the briefcase, closed the case, locked his wrist to the handle and stood up. “We’re going now,” he said. “You walk in front and watch the street for anyone who seems suspicious. You do have the gun on you?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

I led him out of the bank, my right hand under the flap of my sport jacket touching my handgun. None of the sleek, well-to-do Key Biscayne housewives we encountered in the parking lot launched an attack on us.

When we reached the car, Don Carlos ordered me to drive to downtown Miami, which was across the causeway about fifteen minutes away. He held the briefcase on his lap.

On the way, I tried to make conversation. I still didn’t want to tell him about my meeting at the prison, but I did want to delve a bit into what Ratón had told me. “Are you convinced it was the guerrillas who grabbed the girl?” I asked.

“Who else would it be?”

“One of the policemen I spoke with yesterday asked me if it might not be drug smugglers who took her hostage.”

That idea surprised him. For most Colombians, being in the hands of the cartel killers would be even more frightening than being captured by the guerrillas. The guerrillas normally gave their captives back after receiving a ransom. The cartels, on the other hand had a no-return policy.

Don Carlos considered it, but then he scowled. “Why would the narcos want to do that? That isn’t their business. It makes no sense at all.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know why he suggested it. The police here don’t have dealings with the guerrillas, although they do go up against the smugglers. Maybe it’s as simple as that.”

Don Carlos nodded. “If that’s all your police friends know about Colombia, then it’s better that they not be involved in this.”

He turned away in aggravation.

“This is a very difficult, complicated situation for you, isn’t it?” I said.

He frowned. “What do you mean by complicated?”

“The fact that the kidnappers, whoever they are, grabbed this girl. You hardly know her. And the fact that Doña Carmen feels the way she does about the possibility of a child.”

The word “possibility” carried my doubts with it and a suggestion of deceit.

He studied me some before responding. “Is there anything you heard or saw while you were transporting Catalina that would convince you she is lying?”

I shrugged. “Not exactly, but she did have a strange encounter recently.”

I told him then of the run-in with the woman outside the coffee store and her heated conversation with Catalina.

“Who was this woman?”

“I don’t know, but she’s an albino.”

That astounded him. “An albino!”

The word seemed not just to amaze him but even scare him a bit. Maybe Colombians had superstitions in their culture about people who were white as ghosts. I didn’t know.

“Yes, that’s what she was. Do you know anyone who matches that description?”

He shook his head slowly and grimaced out the windshield as if he were seeing a car accident from under the brim of his Stetson. “No, I don’t. How could I know such a person?”

He said it as if albinos came from another planet. Then he fell back into a brooding silence that lasted until we were all the way downtown.

When we reached Flagler Street, the main drag, Don Carlos directed me to a specific small parking lot. I took the ticket, the gate swung open and we parked.

Before we climbed out, Don Carlos gazed around.

“Okay, let’s go. Walk right across the street in front of me and into that first building.”

I did as I was told. I, myself, was starting to feel like one of his paso fino horses. I moved when he wanted and I stayed put when he wanted. If only he could teach me to do that fancy stepping the horses had mastered.

We approached the building he had indicated. I recognized the place from my days on the Miami Police Department. It was called the Seybold Building, an old brown-brick, ten-story structure, probably from the 1940s or earlier. It didn’t look like much, but it was a repository of unexpected treasures.

During my days in patrol I had once responded to an alarm there and had been amazed by the dozens and dozens of gem cutters and jewel salesmen who did business in the place. The building was nothing but gem joints top to bottom.

People traveled from all over Latin America and from other parts of the world as well, to buy and sell jewelry there and to get fine jewels fashioned from rough stones. Often, they were very big, very expensive rough stones. In pure stock on hand and works in progress, the Seybold might contain more wealth than any other building in all of Miami. Tens of millions? Hundreds of millions? A couple of billion? Who knew?

We passed two heavily armed, uniformed security guards standing at the entrance and walked by a couple of large jewelry stores on each side of the lobby. Trays and trays of loose diamonds lay in their show windows, sparkling like pure sunlight.

Just beyond them we approached a bank of elevators. When one of the doors slid open, Don Carlos made sure it was empty, entered, pressed the button for the eighth floor and wedged himself into a corner. I stood in front of him, a human shield.

When the elevator stopped, he said, “Watch my back.”

He got out ahead of me and stalked quickly down a dusky, linoleum-floored hallway, flanked on each side by small gem cutters’ workshops. Every door was covered in alarm permits and equipped with combination locks and also security speakers so that customers could identify themselves before being admitted. Above each door, hung a security camera.

Some of the shops had windows made of bullet-proof glass that allowed you to peep in. Except for the electricity, the work spaces looked very old and traditional, as if they had been transported through time from the European jewel-cutting centers of centuries past.

You saw old, scarred wooden work tables holding old-fashioned grinding wheels, porcelain bowls containing some kind of paste used in the grinding and polishing, and ancient mechanical scales for weighing the finished products. The digital world hadn’t reached the place yet.

Hunched over the wheels were jewelry-makers, mostly older men, with eyeshades pulled down low on their foreheads and eyepieces that had hinges built in so that with a flick of a finger, they could swing right over one expert eye. Most of the men wore yarmulkes. They might have been in eighteenth century Europe, except for the banks of fluorescent lights.

Don Carlos finally stopped outside one specific workshop that didn’t have a window. Stenciled on the door was:

Joseph Tenblad

Fine Gems

Underneath the name were listed cities where the company did business, including Miami, Hong Kong, Antwerp, Osaka and Yellow Knife. I didn’t know where Yellow Knife was—possibly some place in South Africa—but I figured they had diamonds there.

Don Carlos rang the buzzer and waited.

A voice came from the speaker.

“That you, Estrada?” The accent was Yiddish.

Don Carlos stepped back so that the camera could see him. The door buzzed, and we went in.

This particular workshop was equipped with a small anteroom that contained two stuffed chairs and a glass table with black velvet cloth on it. It served as a showroom where customers might view potential purchases.

We didn’t stop there. Another buzzer sounded, and we went directly into the workshop. It appeared much like the others, but it was overstuffed with generations of small appliances: old lamps, propane tanks, hot plates, a couple of microwaves. Mr. Tenblad apparently didn’t like to discard anything that had once served him well.

Classical music, a string quartet, sounded from a ghetto blaster that sat on top of a small refrigerator. Above it, taped on the wall, were several postcards. Some were new some were old, but they were all from Israel.

From behind the forest of propane tanks, a man emerged. He was stocky and balding, with a white beard and tufts of white hair over his ears. He wore a white shirt, broad suspenders, a yarmulke, no eyeshade but a metal band around his head with an eyepiece attached. As he got closer I saw he had pronounced veins running down his forehead toward his bright blue eyes. The eyes looked like gems. He turned them on me. He wasn’t expecting me and wasn’t happy to see me.

“Who’s this?” he asked.

Don Carlos introduced me and said I was security. Tenblad looked me up and down; I don’t wear jewelry and he didn’t think much of me.

He sat down in a chair at an old wooden work table. “Okay, show me.”

Don Carlos unlocked the chain cuff, opened the briefcase and removed the leather pouch. Tenblad unceremoniously untied it and poured the contents onto the desk before him.

He unwrapped the first piece of white silk and uncovered the bracelet. Next to it he poured out the first emerald necklace. He paused a moment to appreciate them as they sparkled in the bright pool of light. He went first to the bracelet, picked up a small white toothbrush and briskly buffed the stones. He lowered the eyepiece into position, and rotated the bracelet in his thick, blunt fingers.

“The pearls are Tahitians,” Tenblad muttered, more to himself than to us. “They are small but extremely pure. The emeralds come from the Coscuez deposits in Colombia, I assume. I’ve seen this darker green stone from there in the past.”

“That’s right,” said Don Carlos, “and the blue emeralds on the necklace next to it are from the Muzo mines a bit to the south of Coscuez in the Río Minero region. The stones were mined during the colonial period. The two pieces were created in the nineteenth century and have been in my family ever since.”

Tenblad picked up the necklace Don Carlos had referred to, buffed it briefly and examined carefully the large pendant emerald. It took him about two minutes, turning the stone this way and that, to inspect all its facets and dazzling depths. At one point, the fluorescent light caught a combination of the exterior and interior angles, and light leapt from the necklace like a blue-green laser.

“A stone of this quality is worth about $150,000 per carat on its own,” Tenblad muttered finally. “This whole piece I would say can bring you on short notice, about a million dollars. It’s worth more, but if you need the money as quickly as you said over the telephone, you can get about one million.”

Don Carlos flinched a bit; I got the feeling he was expecting more.

Tenblad then untied the last white silk bundle and poured the second necklace onto the velvet cloth. This time, his eyes widened appreciably and a grunt escaped him against his will. A guy like Tenblad didn’t gasp or sigh. Such wonder wasn’t in him. A grunt was apparently a sign of supreme appreciation for him.

He didn’t bother to buff this time. The jewelry he was holding was so spectral there was no need. He lowered the eyepiece and inspected the alternating diamonds and emeralds. His blunt fingers caressed the stones as if he were caressing a woman.

He glanced up at Don Carlos. “These are not Colombian.”

“No, they aren’t. They are Mughal emeralds from India. At the time of Indian independence in 1948, a coffee importer from India who the family did business with contacted my grandfather and asked if we might be interested in purchasing a collectors’ item. The diamonds are, of course, from South Africa. The necklace was created by Henri Cartier in Paris in 1935. It was made originally for a maharajah. It wasn’t for his wife but for himself. He used to wear it on the throne of his principality in northern India.”

Tenblad couldn’t resist the name Cartier. He uttered an exclamation in Yiddish or Hebrew, and we knew he was impressed.

“If you had more time, I could get you two and a half million just for this. But given your schedule, I would ask two million.”

“And what they pay for the small bracelet will be your commission,” Don Carlos said, “but only if you can have the money to me by tomorrow morning.”

I could tell Tenblad liked that idea. The bracelet had to be worth many thousands, and he would earn it in a matter of a few hours. Don Carlos hadn’t told him why he needed so much money so quickly, but Tenblad had probably been contracted by other Colombians in similar circumstances. He seemed to know instinctively why the Estradas were desperate for the money and why Don Carlos wouldn’t demand top dollar.

“Tomorrow morning?” he asked.

“Yes. Can you make your contacts by then?”

The old gem cutter thought it over and then nodded. “Yes, I can close the deal.”