Free A Shark in Calle Ocho by Joe Curtis Page A

the background, the pilot and copilot looking nervously over their shoulders.
    “When you were born, your mother should have put you in a sack and drowned you like the dog that you are.”
    Laughter erupted like a volcano. Hector’s pals grabbed their stomachs and slapped each other on the back, and the pilots gave each other high fives. Hector’s blood drained out from his face as Mary Catherine turned around and seductively walked back to her seat. She hadn’t felt so good in years. She wore a coy smile for the rest of the trip, and Hector hardly said a word.
    ***
    Bob’s mind was working overtime. While driving to the police station, he started mentally going over the interview. There were a few things that didn’t add up. First, the newspaper article said somebody stole the ambulance and was thrown in jail. Lauren failed to mention that. Also, while he’d heard of prisoners committing suicide in jail, the fact that the guy was connected to a drug lord set off alarms in Bob’s head.
    “Very strange,” he said aloud, keeping his eyes on the road. He liked what he was feeling. All his senses were working together, trying to figure out a puzzle that had disturbed so many lives. Bob sped up. He was excited; this was adventure like he’d never experienced before.
    ***
    It was a twenty-minute drive from Care Ambulance Service to Shark’s mansion. That worked out for Lauren. It gave her time to go over the entire interview and get her facts straight before seeing her boss. He didn’t like when one of his employees would call to see him and be only half ready to share information. She turned her Audi into Shark’s driveway and stopped at the gates. They were nearly twenty feet tall. Each gate had a shark with its mouth open at a visitor in the middle. She rolled her window down and waved at the camera. The gates creaked open, and she drove through. It was a long, winding driveway with thick twenty-foot greenery on both sides that created a canopy over the road. This provided more privacy from snoops on the highway and in the air, and if he had to bail suddenly the thick mass of shrubs and vines made a perfect cover. Lauren finally pulled up to the mansion with its adobe front and large, perfectly aged wooden doors. The driveway culminated in a circle whose pavement turned from asphalt to cobblestone, with a huge fountain in the middle. It was an angel whose hands were raised to the heavens, with water coming out of her palms to flow down her body and into the pool, which was filled with colorful oriental goldfish. Coming around the circle to the front of the mansion made Lauren feel as if she were on an ancient road in Europe. She exited her car, and the gardener greeted her with a nod as he raked the grass. The perfection of the manicured lawn made it look like an emerald green carpet that ran along the front of the house and accentuated the tropical bushes that dotted the lawn. Lauren returned the nod and noticed the side arm that he wore. He must have noticed Lauren’s eyes scanning him, and with a wink he patted his Glock.
    A tall, middle-aged Hispanic women greeted her at the doors and bid her to come in with a warm smile. Lauren didn’t know the woman’s name, but she’d seen her many times on previous visits.
    “This way. Shark has been expecting you,” the woman said in broken English. She turned, and they walked down the hall by ancient works of art—mainly pottery in this section of the house. Lauren followed closely, inspecting the woman and realizing she resembled Mary Poppins from the old Walt Disney movie. She suppressed a laugh.
    Mary Poppins showed her to the room where Shark was waiting. It was deep in the mansion, and because of the mahogany lined walls it was dark. Aside from the bit of light that leaked between the thick drapes in front of the windows covering the back wall, there were two Tiffany lamps—one on a coffee stand next to a large leather sofa, and the other on the opposite side