Chapter 7

Babs asked, "How could anyone, male or female, get so messed up in the head as to enjoy something like that? I will never understand it. Thanks for keeping me from making a complete fool of myself."

I said, "I don't understand it either, but I think that a part of growing up is letting people live their own lives without feeling obligated to tell them how things should be done. Well, that's over and done with. Let's get back to the business at hand."

We switched back to our previous disguise, I hesitate to call them cover clothes. Babs looked as luscious and desirable as ever, but she had a facial expression that killed the effect. "Honey, relax. You are going to blow our cover by looking like the world just rained on your parade."

"Sorry, you're right. I'll work on it." She smiled and that changed everything. For me at least, it was like the world just lit up. I guess I'll just have to admit it to myself—I'm in love. I just hope the feeling is reciprocated, but I'll have to hold off following up on that until later.

We had walked another half mile when we were alerted by Genie. It looks like we have found him. Duck into some shadows and I will transport you here.

A moment later, we were standing with Gecko and Komodo next to an old freighter that looked like it was held together by its rust. Genie elaborated, I have looked inside one of the holds and I have found a young man who is being held captive. I could not see his face, so I am not certain who he is, but that's kind of beside the point. The man needs rescuing. He is alone right now, so I could transport him out to anywhere you would like without raising a big ruckus. Chameleon, what should I do?

Please transport him and all of us to one of our empty bedrooms at our house. We can talk to him in complete safety, there.

The next moment, we four were standing beside a man tied to a chair. We were all still in uniform, and I mentally warned everybody to stay that way until further notice. Apparently, the man, whose face was covered by a hood, had not noticed any change in his condition, because he was flabbergasted when Gheko gently removed his hood. Basilisk untied him and helped him to lie down on the bed.

I said, "You have been rescued from your captors. Do you need anything—water, food, or anything else?"

He looked around and said, "You are the 'Fabulous Four, ' aren't you." That's what the press has started calling us as a group, and we did not object, so I nodded agreement. "I have no idea how you did it, but thank you so very much. Those bastards acted like they were looking forward to carving me into little pieces so that Dad would pay the ransom. In answer to your question, I am not particularly thirsty, by I am starving."

I asked, "How would you like to join us for some beer and pizza?" Unsurprisingly, I got some dirty looks from Gecko and Basilisk, but I know what a hungry man really wants. "By the way, this is Gecko, this is Basilisk, this is Komodo, and I am Chameleon. We believe that your name is Tom Algren. Is that correct?"

"Yeah, I'm Tom Algren, and you cannot imagine how happy I am to meet y'all. Beer and pizza would be great, but can I have four-cheese; I'm allergic to pepperoni."

Genie, please conjure up the beer and pizza. We'll eat at the kitchen table. Babs, please contact your father to tell him that we have rescued Tom Algren, but that I would like to keep him under wraps for a few days. "Tom, would you like to stop off in the bathroom before we go eat?"

Genie, would it be possible for you to create a duplicate of Algren and put him back on that boat so that the kidnappers would not know he had been rescued? I would like to know if there is more to this than a simple kidnapping for ransom.

Yes, I can do that, but two perfect avatars are stretching my abilities to the limit in that direction.

Thanks, I have faith in you, but I'll try not to overload you. Please see to it, then. You can use the chair, hood, and ropes here in the bedroom, if that would be any help.

We all jumped when the chair and other stuff vanished. I didn't comment, but Komodo winked at me, and we headed for the kitchen.

I'm not sure how the women felt about the beer and pizza, but Tom and I congratulated Komodo on whipping up such a fabulous repast on such short notice. I'm pretty sure that Tom assumed that the pizza had come from the freezer and had been heated in the microwave. I think that the women were pissed at me for preempting them on the food choice. I just have an unholy, abiding fear of watercress sandwiches.

After we had eaten, I told Tom that his family had been notified of his rescue, but he would be kept under wraps while we investigated further, just in case this was more than a simple kidnapping. He was agreeable, especially when he found that he had free use of the swimming pool and the exercise equipment.

We set up surveillance of the ship where we had rescued Tom Algren. Genie admitted that he could teach all of us the transport trick, though we could only jump to places that we had already visited in the normal manner or that Genie had jumped us to. That meant that I could transport to the hold of the ship we were interested in and go over it thoroughly. I could go into stealth mode and visit the whole ship without being seen, so I planned to put that at the top of my priority list.

Genie jumped me into an empty compartment, and I took over from there. I scoured the ship and figured out that it was out of service because it was obsolete and could not compete with modern freight haulers. Nominally, it was sitting around waiting to be broken up for scrap, but its actual use was as a safe house for a gang of Latinos. The former crews' quarters had been converted into a sort of bunk house for the low-level gang members. That place was filthy! It was littered with trash and food scraps. I expected that it would soon be a breeding ground for all sorts of diseases, and I made a point of using a breathing mask while I was in there.

The captain's and other officers' cabins had been converted into rather luxurious apartments, only some of which seemed to be currently in use. This fact raised several possibilities that needed to be investigated. Not being a trained investigator did complicate matters for me, but Genie had planted in my head the full training course for Dade County and FBI investigators, so I did have some idea of what I was doing. The fact that I was not gathering evidence for a trial did make things a little easier for me.

The most useful information came from the former captain's cabin. It looked to me like some unnamed individual from Mexico City was planning on moving in on the Miami/Dade County/South Florida crime families and taking over. I gathered that this kidnapping was a test case to see how well the Mexico City modus operandi would work in Florida. Shit! I could see a big gang war developing out of this if we didn't put a stop to it real quick-like. The local crooks were bad enough, we sure didn't want even more trouble imported from Mexico City.

I asked Genie to bug the ship every place he thought was worthwhile and to route the information to my office at home. Maybe Tom would like the job of monitoring whatever came in via that route. I found some stuff that I thought an accountant ought to look over, so I photographed it before I left the ship.

The only people on board at the time were the guards assigned to Tom Algren, so it didn't look to me like there was much more to learn on board the ship at this time. I called for everyone to return home for now, so that we could go over what I had learned. We met in the kitchen, and I laid out what I had learned aboard the ship. Tom Algren was in on the meeting, since I thought he might tumble onto something. After all, he had been on the ship for several days.

It turned out that Tom was not much help on other things, but he spotted some stuff with the ledger photos that caught his eye. He was a trained accountant who had passed the CPA exam, but had never done anything with it. Anyway, he asked for the chance to study the photos, and we all agreed for him to look all he wanted. Tom was fluent in Spanish, so he quickly recognized some rather crude Spanish words used to code some of the entries. In only a few minutes, Tom said that this looked to him like a record of major dealings in drugs and white slavery.