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.