"More than long enough," Castillo said. "Thank you."
"Can I offer you a cup of coffee while we're waiting?"
"Yes, thank you."
Lowery went through the door again, and returned shortly with three china mugs.
"I know Tony takes his black," Lowery said. "But there's…"
"He takes it black? Then what's that thirty-eight-dollar item for cream and sugar, Santini?"
Lowery looked at him, then laughed.
"Tony's been telling me about your problem," Castillo said.
"What problem is that?" Lowery asked warily.
"The missing wife," Castillo said.
Lowery flashed Santini a dirty look.
Santini rose to it.
"Come on, Ken, it's not as if Mr. Castillo works for the New York Times."
Lowery considered that for a moment.
"Actually, just before you came in, I was wondering how long it will be before the Times guy hears about it." He paused, then added: "What did Tony tell you?"
"Just that the wife of the chief of mission is missing under mysterious circumstances."
"The husband's climbing the walls, understandably," Lowery said. "She was waiting for him in a restaurant in San Isidro. When he got there, her purse and car were there, and she wasn't."
"And you think she was kidnapped?"
Lowery hesitated before replying, then asked, "Have you got much experience with this sort of thing, Mr. Castillo?"
"A little."
Once, for example, I helped snatch two Iraqi generals, one Russian general, one Russian colonel, and half a dozen other non-Iraqis from a Scud site in the Iraqi desert. I don't think that's what you have in mind, but let's see where this goes.
"Frankly, I don't," Lowery said. "Let me tell you what I've got, and you tell me what you think."
"Sure."
"I don't think these people were just hanging around the Kansas parking lot to grab the first woman they thought looked as if someone would pay to get her back. Too many well-heeled folks pass through that parking lot on any given night, and never a nab. They were looking for Mrs. Masterson."
"That suggests they think the government would pay to get her back. Don't they know that we don't pay ransom to turn people loose?"
"Jack Masterson has money," Lowery said. "Lots of money. You don't know who he is?"
Castillo shook his head.
"'Jack the Stack'?" Lowery asked.
Castillo shook his head again.
"The basketball player?"
That didn't ring a bell, but there was a very slight tinkle. "Oh."
"In the fourth month of his professional basketball career," Lowery explained, "for which, over a five-year period, Jack the Stack was to be paid ten million dollars…"
Castillo's eyebrows went up. Christ, now I know! "But he was run over by a beer truck when leaving the stadium," Castillo said.
"Driven by a guy who had been sampling his product," Lowery finished. "He had twice as much alcohol in his blood than necessary to be considered legally under the influence."
"And there was a settlement," Castillo said.
"One hell of a settlement. Without even going to court. Jack wasn't badly injured, but enough so that he would never be able to play professional ball again. The brewery didn't want to go to court because not only were they going to lose-they were responsible and knew it; the truck driver was their agent-but there would be all sorts of the wrong kind of publicity. They paid not only the ten million he would have earned under his contract, but also what he could reasonably have expected to earn in the rest of his professional career. It came to sixty million, not counting the money he could have made with endorsements."
"I always wondered what happened to him after he left the game," Castillo said.
My thoughts were unkind. I wondered how long it would take him-like the winners of a lottery or heavyweight champions-to piss away all that money and wind up broke, reduced to greeting people in the lobby of some casino in Las Vegas.
And he wound up a diplomat?
Oh, you are a fine judge of character, Charley Castillo!
"Jack could have, of course, bought an island in the Bahamas and spent the rest of his life fishing, but he's not that kind of guy. He wanted to do something with his life, and he had an education."
"The foreign service seems a long way from a basketball court," Castillo said.
"Not if your wife is the daughter of an ambassador- and, for that matter, your brother-in-law a pretty highly placed guy in the United Nations. Jack had a degree- cum laude-in political science, so when he took the foreign service examination and passed it with flying colors, no one was really surprised."
"You don't think of pro athletes having cum laude degrees in anything," Castillo said.
Do I believe that?
No. I know better. There have been exceptions.
But the accusation has been made, justifiably, that C. G. Castillo has a tendency toward political incorrectness.
"Once Jack was in the foreign service, he started working his way up. Quickly working his way up. He's good at what he does. After this tour, they'll probably make him an ambassador."
"And you think the people who grabbed his wife knew this story?"
"Hell, this is the age of satellite television. The average Argentine twenty-year-old knows more about American professional basketball than I do."
Certainly more than I do. I have never understood why people stay glued to a television screen watching outsized mature adults in baggy shorts try to throw a basketball through a hoop.
"There aren't very many African Americans in Argentina," Lowery said. "Even fewer who stand six-feet-eight and get their pictures on the TV and in La Nacion and Clarin when they're standing in for the ambassador, or explaining a change in visa policy. 'Who is that huge black guy? Looks like a basketball player. Why, that's Jack the Stack, that's who he is, the guy who got all those millions when the cerveza truck ran over him.'"
"That makes sense."
"'Let's snatch his wife'" Lowery concluded.
"Yeah," Castillo agreed.
"So far, not a word from the kidnappers," Lowery said.
"Is that unusual?"
"The Policia Federal tell me they usually call within hours just to tell the family not to contact the police, and make their first demands either then, or within twenty-fourhours. It's been-my God, it will be forty-eight hours at seven tonight."
"How good are the police?"
"The ones that aren't kidnappers themselves are very good."
"Really?"
"They fired the whole San Isidro police commissariat-like a precinct-a while back on suspicion of being involved in kidnappings there."
"Were they?"
"Probably," Lowery said.
He looked thoughtfully at Castillo for a moment.
"Have I made it clear that I like Jack Masterson? Personally and professionally?"
Castillo nodded.
"I'm worried about him, both personally and professionally," Lowery said.
"How so?"
"The policy of never dealing with terrorists or kidnappers makes a lot of sense intellectually," Lowery said. "But emotionally? My wife hasn't been kidnapped, and I don't have the money to pay any ransom."
"You think if they contact him, he'll pay?"
"I don't know. If he did, he might get his wife back, and he might not. These people have… Just a couple of months ago, after a rich Argentine businessman paid an enormous ransom… after the kidnappers sent him his son's amputated fingers…"
"Santini told me that story," Castillo interrupted.
"… they found the boy's body. They'd shot him in the head."
"Nice people," Castillo said.
"Who are entirely capable of doing the same thing to Betsy Masterson," Lowery went on. "Worst-case scenario, Jack doesn't get Betsy back, and it comes out that he paid a ransom. In violation of strict policy with which he is familiar. That'd mean he would have lost both his wife and his career in the State Department. Or he does get her back, and they find out he's paid the ransom, and that would end his career."
A price any reasonable man would be happy to pay, I think. Wives are more important than money or careers.