Maverick Lawyer Nick Sanchez is on the verge of a midlife crisis. Although his trial skills are in high demand, his needs are simple, and his wants are few. Fortunately, his feisty workaholic law partner, Londi Francolino, is more than happy to carry the load rather than have him moping around the office dreaming of sailing his beloved classic sloop, "Laughing Gull." Just when Nick is about to leave on yet another voyage, he receives an alarming phone call from his Aunt Raisa in Havana that his favorite nephew, Lazaro, has hired a shady rogue to smuggle him into the States through Mexico.
The hunt for the missing teenager is full of false leads, dead-ends, and life-threatening peril. Lazaro was double-crossed by his trafficker and wasn’t taken to Mexico but to a super-secret island where nefarious medical experiments are performed. Nick and his coterie of unlikely heroes have to act fast, or the consequences for all of them could be fatal.
Maverick Lawyer Nick Sanchez is on the verge of a midlife crisis. Although his trial skills are in high demand, his needs are simple, and his wants are few. Fortunately, his feisty workaholic law partner, Londi Francolino, is more than happy to carry the load rather than have him moping around the office dreaming of sailing his beloved classic sloop, "Laughing Gull." Just when Nick is about to leave on yet another voyage, he receives an alarming phone call from his Aunt Raisa in Havana that his favorite nephew, Lazaro, has hired a shady rogue to smuggle him into the States through Mexico.
The hunt for the missing teenager is full of false leads, dead-ends, and life-threatening peril. Lazaro was double-crossed by his trafficker and wasn’t taken to Mexico but to a super-secret island where nefarious medical experiments are performed. Nick and his coterie of unlikely heroes have to act fast, or the consequences for all of them could be fatal.
Prologue
Lazaro Sanchez lurked motionless in the darkness behind the dilapidated bait shack at the end of the dock, waiting for the boat to arrive to take him out of Cuba a hundred-twenty-five miles across the Yucatan Channel to Mexico. It had cost him seven thousand U.S. dollars to pay the smuggler to drive him four hours from Havana to the seedy little town of Arroyos de la Mantua on the island’s western tip. But, of course, there was no guarantee the boat would show up at all. All he had to rely on was the information he had gathered off the back streets of Old Havana, that the shady facilitator who had set up the deal, “El Cabrón,” despite the vulgarity of his moniker, was reliable and could be trusted. Lazaro had his cell phone, but he was too far from Rio Pinar to call anyone if he should become stuck here and have to ditch the plan.
Around two a.m., he heard the low rumble of an engine. A decrepit wooden trawler, showing no lights, appeared out of the darkness and pulled alongside the dock. A man stepped off the boat and lit a cigar, the match lighting up the blackness of the night like a flare. Lazaro did not know if the man was El Cabrón or maybe somebody else. A few seconds later, the man struck another match as if to indicate his cigar had to be relit. Two flares. That was the signal. Three or four other figures appeared out of the shadows and made their way onto the dock. Lazaro stepped out from his concealment behind the shed and followed them.
The man spoke hurriedly, “Date prisa amigos. Tenemos que estar fuera. Vámanos.” Let’s go.
PART I
Lazaro
~1~
Everything was going great for me. All the pieces seemed to be in place. Well, almost all the pieces. I am still practicing law, sort of. I have an office, but I only go there when I feel like it. The best thing I ever did was to partner up with Londi Francolino. She’s an absolute dynamo and the best trial lawyer I have ever run across. I have known Londi for quite a while. She earned her stripes as a prosecutor in the State Attorney’s office until she was hired away by the ubiquitous P.I. sweatshop, Monroe & Monroe. They worked her slavishly but paid her well. But when I broached the subject of her coming to work with me, she jumped at the opportunity. It is a perfect match. Networking and rainmaking are not her strong suits, and she is somewhat of a loner. Consequently, she has few local connections. If it were up to her, she would live in the office.
Tampa is my home, and I have lived here all my life, so I know everybody. I have more cases than I can handle and still find time to follow my real passion-sailing my classic thirty-five-foot Maine Friendship sloop, Laughing Gull. Londi has never complained about her workload, and she doesn’t mind my frequent absences. She says it beats the hell out of her last job, where she had to answer to junior partners, who had to answer to senior partners, who answered to the office manager, who ultimately answered to the king of the castle, Benjamin Monroe, the nation’s premier ambulance chaser.
When I got to our office in Ybor City, Londi was in the library busily jotting on a yellow legal pad surrounded by piles of books and papers. Her laptop sat blinking away across the table.
“Good morning, counselor,” I said. “It’s nice to see someone is minding the store. Trial coming up?”
“Naw. Just a mediation tomorrow.”
“Yeah, the Vesper case, right? I’d ask if you needed help, but I already know the answer. I at least try to keep up with what’s going on in the office. I’m not that much of a slouch.”
“What you mean, Nick, is you don’t care what’s going on so long as I’m here to cover for you. So, what brings you in today and so early?”
“One of the many things I love about you, Londi. You don’t cut me any slack.”
Londi never complains. We agree that I bring in the cases, she works them, and we split everything down the middle. If she generates the business, she keeps all of it. I don’t know anyone in town who has a better deal. Her name went on the letterhead the day she started - Sanchez & Francolino, LLC. If she suggested that her name should be first, that would be fine with me.
My cell phone rang as I headed down the hall to my office. The screen said only “Overseas Caller.” The only calls I ever get like this are from my seventeen-year-old nephew, Lazaro, in Havana. I had not talked to him for the past couple of months. I have been trying to arrange his legal residence in the States for years.
“Hola, sobrino. ¿Que pasa, muchacho?”
The voice on the other end was not Lazaro, but my aunt, Lazaro’s mother, Raisa. I speak fluent Spanish, but her rapid, exited patter was challenging to understand. I had to ask her to slow down.
“Tí, más despacio. Esta bíen.” It’s OK, I said.
She proceeded to tell me that she was worried about Lazaro. He hadn’t come home nor shown up for over a week at the hotel where he worked. I asked her when she last talked to him and whether she had spoken with his friends or other relatives. People in Cuba are understandably paranoid about saying anything that somebody might overhear. I told her to calm down.
It had been more than a year since I had gone to Cuba to visit my relatives. But that would have to wait. I planned on taking a laidback sail across the Gulf of Mexico to Cozumel. My boat, Laughing Gull, was provisioned and ready to shove off. I decided against going to the Bahamas this trip because it was anything but a leisurely vacation the last time I was there. I damned near got dumped overboard by my ex-boss and his psycho boat captain. The last thing I wanted to do right now was drop everything and fly to Havana.
The more I tried to calm my aunt down, she became more hysterical. I kept pressing her for more information, but she seemed reluctant to let on anything more that she had not heard from Lazaro, and something like this had never happened before.
“Auntie, what would you like me to do? Would you like me to come down there?”
“Oh, Nicky, I couldn’t ask you to do that.”
I took that as a desperate yes.
***
Getting to Cuba was a piece of cake-just a short ninety-minute commercial flight from Tampa until a couple of years ago. Now there are fewer options, but I had an idea. My buddy, Nate Brisco, has his own jet. Usually, he’s game for just about anything. So I decided to give him a call.
“Sup, Captain Nick? When are you going to be heading out? The lady and I were planning a little bon voyage sendoff for you. Is Joulie going with you?
“Change of plans,” I said. “A family situation. I’ve got to get down to Cuba. You being a world traveler and all, I thought you might give some ideas about the quickest way for me to get there.”
Nate wouldn’t have batted an eye if I had just come out and asked him to fly me there, but I’m reluctant to ask friends for favors.
“Oh, hell yeah. Let’s go. I love that place. When do you want to leave? Can we bring the girls?”
That was easier than I thought, but I hadn’t planned on the trip being a two-couple vacation. Containing Nate’s enthusiasm has always been problematical.
“That would be fantastic, Nate, but this is more like an emergency family crisis. It’s bad enough already that I’ve got to cancel my plans to go cruising.”
“Gotcha. Care to fill me in on a few details? Either way, I’m coming along for the ride.”
I explained that my nephew had gone missing and that my aunt was beside herself. I didn’t know what to do about it, but I had to get to Havana as quickly as possible.
“Say no more. I’ll call Dave, my pilot. He’ll have the jet fueled up and ready to go.
I am of Cuban descent. I grew up in Tampa in a bilingual household. But it wasn’t until my parents passed away a few years ago that I went to Cuba myself to look up my relatives. I’ve grown particularly close to my nephew, Lazaro. Of all my family, Lazaro is the most restless and discontent. He speaks fluent English and is smart as a whip. He knows more about the U.S. and its pop culture than I do, and he can call off the names of every major league baseball player and their stats. He plays shortstop on one of Havana’s better teams and dreams of being drafted by the Boston Red Sox. So he gets a big kick about razzing me about their American League East rival, my hometown Tampa Bay Rays.
***
Within three hours, we were winging our way to Havana on Nate’s Gulfstream G650-a mere puddle jump considering the plane’s range is six thousand miles.
“This plane is overkill for this short trip, but it’s the best I could do on short notice,” Nate said. “This one belongs to my former company, but my parachute agreement includes the right to use it when available. My little Learjet would have been fine, but it’s chartered now.”
Nate is a dot-com gazillionaire. He sold his Silicon Valley company a few years ago for a fortune, but he still retains all the perks. He never flaunts his considerable wealth and lives relatively moderately compared to his billionaire peers. Most of his time is spent sleuthing on the dark web or tinkering with his gorgeous sailboat, Yottabyte. He’s been much more tolerable since he met his girlfriend, Tarah.
We landed in Havana in less time than it takes to drive from Tampa to Orlando. Clearing customs was a breeze. In Cuba, they don’t even stamp your passport. They are thrilled to have you and your money on the island. The current U.S. travel restrictions prohibit Americans from staying in hotels owned by the Cuban government. I don’t know how Nate managed for us to go to Cuba at a moment’s notice. Usually, one would need a visa and a tourist card to clear Cuban customs, but Nate assured me he had already taken care of this.
We were met at the plane by a car and driver who Nate said would take us to Hotel Conde de Villanueva, a lovely boutique hotel in the center of Old Havana. I got out my cell phone to call my Auntie Raisa, and she answered immediately. She was a nervous wreck.
“Thank God you have come,” she said. “I talked to Rene, one of Lazaro’s friends from the hotel. He told me Lazaro has left Cuba on a boat.”
“Is he trying to come to Florida?” I asked.
“No sė.” I don’t know. “Rene said Lazaro is going to Mexico.”
Thousands of Cubans are stranded in Mexico at the border, waiting to gain legal entry into the U.S. Most enter at one of the Mexican Gulf cities, such as Vera Cruz or Isla Mujeres. Their journey north can be arduous and fraught with peril. The drug cartels frequently prey on such caravans, shake them down, and relieve them of their meager possessions. I promised my aunt I would do everything I could to find Lazaro and either get him to the States or, at least, bring him back home.
“Problems, compadre?” Nate asked.
“I don’t know where to start, Nate. My nephew has left the country. I don’t know how to begin to look for him. The only thing I can think of offhand is to find the guy who works with him and see what I can find out.”
“You can go to work on that,” Nate said. “I’m going to set up a satellite uplink, so we don’t have to worry about prying eyes from the local spies.”
Don’t ask me how Nate knows about all that stuff. I’ve given up asking him about it. When he tries to explain it, I nod and pretend I understand what he is talking about. The information he ferrets out may not always be helpful, but you can be damned sure it’s reliable.
My cell rang. It was my aunt again.
“Oh, mi precioso, I have news.”
Attorney Nick Sanchez is just about to leave for his sailing vacation across the Gulf of Mexico to Cozumel when his cell phone rings. It registers as “Overseas Caller,” and Nick picks it up, expecting to hear the voice of his nephew, Lazaro. Instead, his Aunt Raisa is on the other end of the call from Cuba, crying hysterically. Seems Lazaro got tired of waiting for Nick to bring him to the United States, saved all the money sent to him by Nick as gifts, and paid an unscrupulous man to arrange his passage to Mexico aboard a wooden trawler in questionable condition. The captain of the ship is a man who has the self-proclaimed and horrible moniker, El Cabrón (The “Dumbass”) and will transport any human to wherever either they want to go, or where it benefits him more financially. Nick drops everything and rushes to Cuba, having nothing more than the clue of the smuggler’s name. A series of clues and events lead Nick all around Cuba over the course of several trips, mostly due to the generosity of Nick’s best friend, Ben. Everything points to a seedy medical clinic on a tiny island in the south of Cuba, one of many in the Archipiélago de Los Canarreos. He must enlist the least likely of aides to complete a daring rescue in order to bring Lazaro home safely.
This is such a fun read—I thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish. Nick never gave up on finding his nephew, and not only did his best friend help any way he could, but also enlisted his ship captain brother-in-law and his first mate to help as well. He made contacts in Old Havana, and for a price, got the answers he needed. It does seem very unlikely that the ally Nick chose would be the one to successfully help him rescue Lazaro, but it definitely made for a good plot and great reading! The scenery and characters were well-built and seemed very authentic in their roles throughout the storyline, and the author, Len Vincenti, is a very successful storyteller. I would consider the book more of an action-adventure/mystery than a thriller, but in order to decide yourself, you should definitely pick up a copy or ebook of “Yucatan Channel” and enjoy for yourself!
I’d like to thank ReedsyDiscovery, and Len Vincenti for the ability to read and review this ARC.