"He's sick," groaned the nurse.
Doorbal, whose bride-to-be had just become an accessory to a capital crime, said nothing.
Cindy Eldridge's honeymoon with Adrian Doorbal turned into a nightmare on Main Street
"Little Mario" Gray declined the chance to be shot with tranquilizer darts but agreed to move a few barrels
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On Sunday morning Griga's Lamborghini was found three miles west of the Florida Turnpike, just north of Okeechobee Road. The car was abandoned in a desolate, wooded area known to police as a weekend site for Santería rituals. The doors were left open, the windows down, and the key was still in the ignition. A state trooper at the scene found no clues in the nearby brush. Nor had the car been reported stolen. A tow truck was summoned from Opa-locka to haul the vehicle to a police impound facility.
That afternoon Lugo approached another Sun Gym member for recruitment into the gang. "Little Mario" Gray had been badgering him about a job for a couple of weeks, but he'd already turned down one opportunity to earn some quick money. All he'd been asked to do was stand still while Lugo shot him with a pneumatic tranquilizer gun. Lugo had wanted to see exactly how far the steel dart would penetrate into human flesh. It had been test-fired once already, in Doorbal's apartment, and the dart had penetrated all the way through a wall and stuck in the bedroom wall. Lugo offered Gray $500 in cash. Just to shoot him one time! But Gray had refused.
Now Lugo came back with a second offer, this one requiring actual work. It was a simple night job, transporting barrels from Lugo's warehouse. Sure, Gray said, and that night, he drove out to the warehouse. Waiting for him were three drums, welded shut. Together he, Lugo, and Doorbal lifted the barrels into a rented truck. Two of the drums were especially heavy. As Gray lifted one of them, acrid smoke snaked through a tiny opening. The three men drove to a drainage ditch in southwest Miami and heaved the barrels into the murky water. The drums settled next to a submerged refrigerator.
After getting married at the Delray Beach courthouse on Tuesday, May 30, Doorbal and Cindy returned to the Main Street townhouse to find the answering machine filled with messages from Attila Weiland, Beatriz's ex-husband. It was he who'd arranged their introduction to Frank Griga.
Doorbal called him back, full of good news: He and Cindy were now husband and wife. After the courthouse nuptials, the couple enjoyed a romantic lunch at Nick's Italian Fishery overlooking the Atlantic Ocean --
Weiland cut him off. "Adrian! Adrian! Hello? Are you crazy?" he shouted into the phone.
"What?"
"The police, Adrian! My messages? They've been around ... about Frank and Krisztina!"
"The police?"
"The police are everywhere! They want to talk to you! They consider Frank dead. Frank's sister, Zsuzsanna, she's calling from Hungary and threatening me and you. If you had anything to do with this, please, please say something, Adrian!"
"How the fuck am I supposed to know where those people are?"
"I told the police everything, Adrian! So did Beatriz."
"You know, Attila," said Doorbal in a voice heavy with disappointment, "you're supposed to be my friend. You should hope you stay my friend, Attila."
That afternoon Daniel Lugo stopped by Doorbal's townhouse. Cindy stayed out of their way; they were immersed in serious discussions. All their usual playfulness had vanished. She heard Doorbal say, "You're either going to be arrested or killed!" And she heard Lugo: "If they mention my name to the police, I'm going to have them and their families killed!"
Things were suddenly going very badly. Lloyd Alvarez had seen them on the road. Beatriz was talking to the cops, and so was Attila. And just count the people who'd been at Griga's house as they headed out to dinner that Wednesday: Alvarez, the housekeeper and her child, their neighbor Judi Bartusz, whose husband was Frank's business partner.
Frank Griga and Krisztina Furton had been missing for eight days by the time private investigator Ed Du Bois got a phone call from Capt. Al Harper, the 27-year Metro-Dade Police veteran who had tried to help him with the Marc Schiller kidnapping. It was 8:00 a.m., and Harper had just overheard at roll call that suspects were under surveillance in the possible abduction of the wealthy Hungarian businessman and his girlfriend. The suspects worked at a gym, and their names had a familiar ring. Could they be the same group Du Bois had identified back in April?
Du Bois ran down the facts of the Schiller case, and Harper felt a shot of adrenaline. Du Bois had to talk to the homicide team supervisor, Sgt. Felix Jimenez, he said. They arranged to meet at Du Bois's North Miami office. The private investigator showered, dressed, and headed off to the meeting in high spirits. This was his vindication; the Schiller investigation was coming back to life. If more cops had listened to him sooner, those deranged goons wouldn't have had the chance to strike again.
Jimenez sat riveted as he listened to Du Bois's story of Schiller's kidnapping; how the Sun Gym boys had nabbed Schiller at his franchise delicatessen near the airport, held him chained to a warehouse wall for a month, tortured him until he'd signed over all his assets. How they'd tried to kill him in a fiery crash and run him down twice for good measure. How he'd miraculously survived and was trying to get his life back in order in Colombia.
