Baja Florida by Bob Morris Read Free Book Online Page A

eventually spoke with a young man who tried his best not to sound bored as he asked me questions.
    â€œHas the person you are looking for officially been declared missing?”
    â€œNo,” I said.
    â€œHave you specific reason or evidence to suspect foul play?”
    â€œNo,” I said.
    â€œAre you among this person’s immediate family?”
    â€œNo,” I said. “But I represent the father.”
    â€œAre you an attorney?”
    â€œNo,” I said. “Just a friend.”
    â€œHmm, I see,” said the young man.
    Cut to the chase: Not a damn thing he could or would do for me.
    I thought maybe I should double my plan of attack. Maybe I should also set my sights on finding Abel Delgado. Maybe I could throw some green incentive at Strecker, the kid lawyer, and get him to help me locate his client.
    Gloria Delgado telling me, “He said when it was all over he’d have money…”
    That could mean Delgado had succeeded in finding Jen Ryser and was trying to leverage it for more serious coinage. Or it could just as easily mean that he was barhopping his way around the Bahamas and living life large until the ten-thousand-dollar retainer was all gone. At which point, he would call Mickey Ryser and try to extract a little more. Meanwhile, his soon-to-be-ex-wife and his two kids were sitting in a crummy crackerbox house way out in the Redlands, watching TV on a sofa with no idea where life was leading them.
    I sipped Heineken. I ate the last slice of cheese.
    I thought about the Bahamas.
    It might seem like a small place, just specks on the map. In total land area, it’s only about the size of dinky little Connecticut. But that land is spread out over more than three thousand islands, cays, and islets, only about seventy of which are inhabited. And the entire archipelago, stem to stern, stretches nearly eight hundred miles, like the drive from San Francisco to Seattle.
    Baja Florida, I call it.
    Once you’re over the border, no one asks too many questions. A little money, you can hole up, be anyone you want to be.
    Drift here, drift there. A lot of territory.
    And plenty of places to hide.

 
    â€œShe musta really got you worked up, huh?”
    â€œYou complaining?”
    â€œNot at all. I’ve been itching for you, baby. It’s been too long.”
    â€œJust a couple of weeks.”
    â€œBut all that time I had to watch the two of you, going on like you did. You know what that was like?”
    â€œI had to do some watching, too.”
    â€œYeah, but you could tell I wasn’t enjoying it.”
    â€œYou faked it pretty good then.”
    â€œWe both did.”
    â€œThat’s what we do.”
    â€œStill…”
    â€œStill what?”
    â€œI don’t know. I just keep thinking maybe we should have kept it simple. Like before. Take the boat, get some money, disappear. Now we’ve got her to worry about.”
    â€œOpportunity comes along, you grab it.”
    â€œMaybe we tried to grab too much. Maybe we should just get rid of her.”
    â€œTrust me, it’ll work.”
    â€œWhat makes you so sure?”
    â€œBecause I’ve got confidence in you.”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œYou and me, we’re a team. We’re gonna pull this off.”
    â€œAnd then what?”
    â€œYou know. We talked about it.”
    â€œTell me again. I like to hear you say it.”
    â€œAnd then we’re set. We can live the life. Do anything we want to do, go anywhere we want to go.”
    â€œArgentina?”
    â€œIf you want. Yeah, sure. Argentina.”
    â€œMoney can go a long way there.”
    â€œWhat I’ve heard, too.”
    â€œSouth Africa. I always wanted to go on a safari. Wouldn’t that be cool?”
    â€œYeah, wherever.”
    â€œYou don’t like South Africa?”
    â€œLet’s get this over with first, OK? Then we can talk about the rest. Lots of things still have to fall