CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

What happened in the next hour became the stuff of headlines in Miami and across the country for more than a week. It eclipsed the original kidnapping, the bombing at the Key Biscayne mall and the soccer field fiasco. I had journalists calling me for days, from Tampa to Tucson. That’s because when it was all over, I was the only one left on the scene to say exactly what had occurred. Everybody else was long gone, in one way or another.

The police questioned me for two days afterwards. I admitted that, yes, I had used Ratón Ramírez to find the whereabouts of Catalina. And, yes, I had sprung her from the hostage house where she was being held without notifying them and bringing them in on the operation. But that didn’t mean I had provoked in any way what occurred next. And, held at gunpoint, I couldn’t have prevented what went down.

The next thing José and Catalina did before we left the motel room, was unbind my feet and hands.

“We’re untying you, but don’t forget for one minute that we all have weapons and we expect you to do what we tell you,” José said.

I told him my memory was good enough to remember that.

Then we left the room, and the four of them escorted me to the SUV. Catalina drove, José sat beside her and I was wedged between the two strangers in the back seat, leaving me nowhere to bolt.

The Seaquarium is less than ten minutes from that motel. When we approached the toll plaza, one of the strangers poked me in the ribs with the barrel of his gun and advised me to be a good boy. Catalina paid the toll, and I gave the lady in the booth my best hostage smile.

We drove across the causeway, headed for the Seaquarium, just like a loving family out for a bit of Florida vacation fun. As we drove, I gazed out over the gorgeous bay and wondered whether it would be one of my last visions in this world. If it was, at least it was beautiful.

Several minutes later, we reached the Seaquarium and the killer whale balloon bobbing overhead. As we approach the parking attendant, the guy next to me again tickled my ribs with his gun and told me to behave. We paid and kept going.

When we had parked, José turned to me. “Here, we will put our guns away, but they will be in our hands in our pockets.”

I nodded. I didn’t need to be told twice.

We approached the booth, and Catalina purchased five adult tickets. A promotion was in progress, and with each admission, we received a keychain with the image of a killer whale engraved in it. Given the mission we were on, it seemed fitting.

No metal detector is in place at the Seaquarium, or we would have set off more alarms than a small army. I guess they figure no one will try to steal a shark. We walked about fifty yards onto the grounds. Another large leaping plastic sailfish was exhibited there, and we stopped just beyond it. We could see the entrance from there, but a person entering probably wouldn’t be able to see us.

After a brief huddle, one of the strangers and Catalina advanced farther back into the Seaquarium, along a winding path through the aquariums and amphitheaters.

“They going to see the seal show?” I asked José.

“Don’t you worry about where they’re going. You’ll see soon enough.”

We waited several minutes. One of the stage shows was starting and I heard music. That seemed fitting, too, because what we were embarked on was also a kind of production.

A minute later, we saw Carlos Estrada enter the grounds between the two ticket booths. He wore a bright blue and white tropical shirt over white pants, but it was his big Stetson hat that allowed me to identify him right away. He carried a black backpack. He stopped and gazed around, blinking into the sunlight, searching for someone who was waiting for him.

José pressed a button on the cell phone and handed it to the second stranger. Moments later, I saw Carlos Estrada reach into his pocket, pull out his phone and answer.

The stranger made it brief.

“Estrada? We can see you. We want you to walk toward the very back, past the last buildings, toward the bay. You will reach the last exhibits, and you will see Cuesta, and then you will see Catalina Cordero. Deliver the money, and you will get them both.”

I watched Estrada listen to those instructions. When the stranger hung up, so did he and then he started to trudge our way. I saw no sign that he had brought anyone with him.

José turned and led us to the rear of the grounds. We passed between more large aquarium buildings and amphitheaters. More people were in attendance than the last time I’d been there. Some school kids had come to spend the day. Groups of them roamed amid the attractions. At the moment, most of them were headed in the direction of the amphitheater where I’d seen the killer whales.

José and I, accompanied by one of the strangers, walked against the flow and found ourselves in the far corner of the Seaquarium, which was now almost empty. The very last exhibit consisted of a concrete moat surrounding a small island. An arching foot bridge, maybe twenty feet long, crossed to that island and you could stand and observe large fish swimming beneath you in the moat.

The stranger left us there and disappeared behind junglish plants to one side.

José and I walked to the top of the bridge.

“You stay here,” José told me and then he walked down the slope of the bridge onto the island where he wouldn’t be seen.

I did as told, staying put at the top of the foot bridge. I looked down and saw several barracuda floating just under the bridge. They were dark gray, each about three or four feet long and shaped like hand-rolled cigars, tapered at each end. Inside those tube-shaped bodies, they were mostly teeth, razor-sharp teeth. I had been there before, and I knew handlers fed them from the bridge. The fish had arrived early for their next meal.

Like the barracuda, I waited. I looked around but didn’t see either Catalina or the strangers. In fact, I didn’t see anyone but a lone, attendant in a dinghy at the far end of the moat, painting the walls.

A minute later, Carlos Estrada came into view. He walked past the last amphitheater, where I could hear the show in progress.

Estrada stopped and looked around, searching for us.

José spoke from the vegetation on the island behind me. “Wave to him,” he said.

I did as ordered.

Estrada saw me and advanced slowly toward the foot of the bridge. I could see he was freaked. He was searching all about for other bodies, but he and I and the man in the dinghy were the only ones in sight.

A large cheer escaped the nearest stadium, and that startled him. He stopped momentarily, turned and looked around. He realized the crowd wasn’t cheering for him. Multitudes don’t usually cheer guys paying off blackmailing kidnappers to avoid murder charges.

He made up his mind to keep coming. As he reached the foot of the bridge, Carlos Estrada and I made eye contact. That seemed to reassure him.

He walked up the slope of the footbridge and stopped in front of me.

“Where are they, and where is the girl?”

That was when José left his hiding place and walked up the slope of the bridge behind us and stopped right next to me. Carlos’ eyes expanded with the sight of him.

“What are you doing here?”

“Hello, uncle,” José said.

Carlos Estrada again looked all around.

“Where are they?”

“Where are who?” José asked.

“The kidnappers and Catalina.”

Carlos Estrada appeared completely confused. José availed himself of that moment to take the backpack full of money from his uncle’s hand and put it down on the bridge.

“The person you owe that money to is me,” José said.

Carlos Estrada scowled. “What are you talking about?”

José stepped very close to him.

“What I’m saying is that you killed my father. You and Cósimo murdered him, and then you spread rumors that ruined his reputation.”

Carlos’ flushed face gaped with surprise. His eyes jittered in their sockets, but José’s stare was stony and unwavering.

Carlos turned to try to run back down the bridge, but the strangers and Catalina had suddenly appeared there. The strangers both held handguns where we could see them, but nobody behind them could.

Estrada froze, and José stepped even closer.

“You didn’t give my father a chance at all. You and Cósimo just shot him in the head after he found out about your operations with Ratón Ramírez. That was after my father looked out for you, did you every favor, shared with you every bit of brotherly love. You never had his brains or his character. He knew that, and he did most of the work. And then you gave him no chance at all. But I am going to provide you opportunity to save yourself. We will see if you can swim to save your life.”

Carlos started to reach for his belt, and I assumed he had a gun waiting there to grab, but José didn’t give him a chance to do that. He chopped at his uncle’s arm. The Stetson fell off and into the water, José grabbed his uncle by his mane of white hair, swung him against the low wall of the bridge, doubled his back over the edge and shoved him over.

Carlos Estrada fell face-up and hit the water with a large, noisy splash. He made such a large impact that I saw the barracudas flinch and dart out of the way. The water was about ten-feet deep. Estrada flailed, gained control of himself and then started to swim toward a ladder about twenty feet away.

The barracudas had become momentarily spooked and maintained their distance. They didn’t go for him right away, but the splash had attracted other tenants from the far side of that moat.

Estrada was less than halfway to the ladder when I saw a long, dark shadow come smoothly and quickly around the bend of the moat ahead of me, swimming just below the surface. When it straightened out, I saw the distinct design of a hammerhead shark. A moment later, a second hammerhead passed right beneath me from under the bridge where I stood, heading toward Estrada from the rear.

I started to yell, but Estrada beat me to it. He had seen the first one coming right at him and screeched in terror, but he never did see the second one, which hit him first in the small of the back. I saw the contact, and then the other one hit him in the left kidney. Carlos Estrada got off one more long, rasping scream before he was dragged beneath the surface. The water was roiling and already turning red when the barracudas darted in his direction in a hungry pack. I turned away and saw nothing more.

Then I heard a whistle being blown again and again: the attendant in the dinghy who had been painting the walls. The next thing I knew, people were pouring out of the nearest amphitheater. The show in the shark moat had won out over the dolphins.

In the midst of all that, I heard a boat motor nearby. A low chain-link fence separated the back of the Seaquarium from a strip of beach and the bay. A long, sleek speedboat was racing away.

José, Catalina, and the two strangers were all gone, and so was the backpack.

The surviving Colombians had all disappeared as if they had never been there at all.

All that was left was the Stetson hat bobbing on the blood-red water beneath me.