Salt River

by Randy Wayne White

  I wanted to ask about Lydia, Jimmy’s ex. Why did Ellis, the Australian, believe she was still alive? Were he and his associates closing in? But could only say, “Yeah, it’s the way the world works.”

  Leo tried again. “How about a thirty–seventy split? Hell, twenty–eighty, and expenses come off my end? That IRS whistleblower thing is already off the table. I’m not going to screw you after what you did yesterday. My last three hundred bucks, plus my computer, was in that bag.”

  In my experience, it is sometimes easier to help a stranger. To convey debt to a friend, even as a gift, is to risk the friendship. I was trying to think of a way when Leo muttered, “Shit, okay. If we can’t work a deal, how about helping me keep the deal I had with Ray and Ellis?”

  “If I can,” I said.

  It had to do with the Sanibel resident, Leo explained, who had agreed to spy on me. “His name is”—I heard papers rustling—“Capt. Moses Berg. Sounds Jewish. You know him?”

  Morris Berg was the alias I’d used, not Moses. Rayvon or Ellis had gotten it wrong, but that was okay.

  “There was an old-time baseball player, Moe Berg,” I said. “A catcher. But this guy, no. Is he new on the island?”

  “All I know is, Ray trusts him for some reason. The idiot’s got this racial thing about being from the Lost Tribes of Israel or some such crap. That could be part of it. Anyway, so far they haven’t been able to find out a damn thing about any Capt. Moses Berg on Sanibel. With all my contacts, that’s what I’m good at, so Ellis asked me to dig up everything I could. He has no idea I’ve been talking to you.”

  “Rayvon trusts a man he knows nothing about?” I asked.

  “Ray’s a degenerate crook. Crooks are used to working with scum they don’t know anything about. This guy, Berg, supposedly is a multimillionaire. Flies a Learjet, Ray claims, and does salvage on an international scale, but always behind the scenes. No photographs of Berg either.” Leo paused, perhaps linking this oddity to me, suspicious that Berg and I were the same person. But he was not. “Anyway, Ford, that’s how you can help me out. Sanibel’s a small island, right?”

  “A Learjet,” I said, half smiling. “Sure, Leo. I’ll find out what I can about this Moses Berg and get back to you.”

  * * *

  —

  I arrived at Hannah’s dock for the second time that day. The path led me up the shell mound to a house of old yellow pine, tin-roofed, where she had lived as a child, and had just put Izaak down for a nap.

  Or so I was told from a distance. “Go away,” an acidic voice called. “Baby’s sleeping.”

  I replied, “Afternoon, Miz Smith,” and kept walking.

  “You deaf, mister? If you’re after a poke, my daughter’s a prude. And me? I’m spoken for by the king who rules these parts. Better men than you,” she warned, “have died trying.”

  Something I hadn’t considered before proposing to Hannah was that the woman who eyed me from the porch, Loretta Smith, might one day become my mother-in-law. The two refusals had given me time to reflect. Loretta had also been a single mother. With her oversized and active daughter, Hannah, who’d swum varsity and played the clarinet, the woman had spent a lifetime scraping by.

  “Get the hell away from here,” Loretta instructed with a flourish.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I responded, but didn’t slow.

  An aneurysm and two brain surgeries had clouded the woman’s mind, not her spirit. She was also shrewd enough to know the surgeries were a handy excuse for all sorts of outrageous behavior. This included smoking weed whenever Tomlinson visited, cheating at bingo, fantasies about a pre-Columbian Indian king, and an artillery of profanities always kept at the ready.

  I opened the door and stepped onto a screened porch that encircled the little box that was the house. There were ceiling fans, a hammock. Loretta, in a housecoat and fluffy pink slippers, sat watching a television so old, it had rabbit ears for an antenna.

  “Oh,” she said, looking up, “it’s you again, the fish doctor who can’t take no for an answer. Since you’re here, might as help me try and fix this goddamn TV. Jeopardy!’s due on after bowling.”

  Protocol permitted me to lean and kiss the forehead of my fiancée-to-be’s mother, but I didn’t. No way would I ever try embracing the woman again.

  “Mama, please watch your language,” Hannah’s voice called softly from inside.

  Loretta glared through dazzling rheumy blue eyes. “Shoulda had that girl’s knees sewn shut and made her wear a raincoat—not that it woulda helped on a cold day, the way she’s built. What’d you do, hypnotize her or get her drunk? Sure ain’t your good looks. Hey”—she perked up—“where’s Tommyson? That man’s worthy of a good tumble and heartache. Did he send me a little something—you know, a present, maybe, to help me sleep?”

  Something else I would never do again is deliver one of my pal’s homegrown joints. Once was enough. Instead of sleeping, we’d tracked Loretta by flashlight to an archaeological site behind the house—a burial mound. She had been in a state of undress and was pleading for King Carlos to fly down from the moon and reclaim his vanished Indian nation.

  “Darn, must’ve forgot,” I said, kneeling in front of the TV. The screen was all snow and static.

  “The hell you did,” she growled. Then squinched her face up and sniffed. “Damn, boy, you stink. You been rolling in something? Or fishing mullet?”

  No, I’d been in the water, photographing Lyngbya bacteria. A dumb oversight on my part.

  “Be right back,” I said. “I left something on the boat.”

  At the rear of the house was an outdoor shower. Spare clothes were in the forward hold of the Pathfinder. When I returned, Loretta sniffed, then sniffed again. Cloudy eyes cleared. They speared me with a searing lucidity. “Hannah ain’t never gonna marry you, Mr. Fish Doctor.” She was keeping the subject just between us. “Know why? You’re a heathen. A despoiler of the Lord’s Word. And . . . you’re a cold-blooded killer.”

  This was a charge never voiced before.

  “Killer? That’s a new one.” I hoped she would notice my smile. “Why not let me bring you some sweet tea, Miz Smith?”

  The woman shook her head. “Lie to me, but you can’t lie to the Lord. You’re a godless assassin. Yep, all the details came to me in a dream last week. There’s blood on your hands—not that murder makes you a bad person.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yep. I’ve kilt at least three myself.”

  Rumor was, this was true—more or less. When younger, Loretta had helped dispatch the abusive husband of her best friend. In the 1980s, after a net fishing ban, she had also joined her pinochle pals in smuggling “square grouper”—marijuana. It was a dangerous trade. At least one other pushy male had been added to the hit list of Loretta’s female covenant.

  “Hid their bodies, too,” the old woman bragged.

  “That right?” I said. This claim had more to do with a brain aneurysm than reality, I suspected.

  “You didn’t hear it from me,” she whispered. “Hannah doesn’t know, but don’t let me catch you digging out back by the citrus grove. As a godless assassin, you’ll understand my meaning.”

  I replied, “Miz Smith, most folks think I’m a nice guy. Certainly not a killer. Are you sure you don’t want that tea?”

  “Stop brownnosing,” she sputtered. “Who hasn’t lost his temper a time or two? Fact is, I sorta like knowing my only grandson might inherit fire in his veins.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” I asked.

  “You’re not rich, dumbass,” she snapped. “And selling fish ain’t no way to make a living. Hannah’s got another suitor, you know. What he knows about fish you could put in a thimble, but the man drives a nice car and carries Christ in his heart.”

  I lowered my voice. “Is he Australian?”

  “Is he . . . No, he’s
a damn foreigner. Got a castle somewhere, I think. Flies all over the world when he’s not worshipping the Lord.”

  “From Great Britain?” I pressed.

  “All I know is, he don’t sell mullet. Love might get a woman through the night, but it’s money that gets her through the days. Propose all you want, Mr. Fish Doctor, Hannah won’t say yes. Why? Because whatever I tell that bullheaded girl to do, she does just the opposite. And I ain’t watching my grandbaby grow up poor.”

  After a final lucid glare, Loretta cackled and retreated into her handy camouflage. “Now, damn you, fix my TV. And where’s that glass of sweet tea you promised?”

  * * *

  —

  Hannah lowered her iPhone, and said, “What do you have against me taking pictures? Doc, I sometimes wonder if you’re a wanted man.” There it was again, her suspicions about my mysterious trips.

  We were in the house. Loretta was still on the porch where I’d plugged in a VCR that was as old as the rabbit ears TV. Our son was a peaceful warmth in the baby carrier strapped to my chest. It was new, made by Mission Critical. Sort of resembled a bulletproof vest. I’d picked it out myself.

  “Come on, just a couple of snapshots,” she said. “A picture of Izaak and his daddy for the mantel.” Hannah, barefoot, wore jeans and a loose blue blouse with a wet spot on the left breast. She had just finished nursing.

  I looked toward the fireplace, once the only source of heat in a house that had just recently gotten AC. The mantel was all too public, if my own suspicions about her new friend were correct.

  “For his scrapbook, I guess that would be okay,” I said to show my reluctance.

  Again, she raised the phone—“Say keys”—then lowered it again. “Marion, what is your problem?”

  I employed an excuse formulated months ago. Explained it dated back to high school, when I was living with my crazy uncle, Tucker Gatrell. “His partner, Joseph Egret—Joe, we called him—claimed a camera robbed a piece of your spirit every time the shutter clicked. For some reason, it stuck with me.”

  “Superstitious? You?” She wanted to respect the spiritual inference, but it didn’t jibe. “He was Seminole? I’ve read that—that Native Americans don’t—”

  “Joe claimed he was the last of the Calusa,” I said. “A huge man.” The Calusa was a pre-Columbian tribe, as Hannah was well aware. They had built the mound on which the house sat, and other shell mounds on the back ten acres, where there was an archaic citrus grove—and possibly three bodies.

  This connection to a Calusa king allowed me to seek help by calling through the wall, “Loretta, would King Carlos allow his picture to be taken?”

  The woman couldn’t hear me over organ music and a rerun of Days of Our Lives.

  Hannah found my adolescent ploy irksome. Also sort of funny. She laughed, touched the phone screen, and said, “Then how about video?” She started shooting.

  * * *

  —

  An awkwardness between us varied in degrees but was always present. The temperature spiked when I tried to get personal. “Loretta mentioned the man you’ve been seeing—an Australian or from the U.K., I think she said, a foreigner.”

  “We agreed not to discuss our private lives” was Hannah’s prim reply. “A foreigner? Why, that’s just . . . And I don’t appreciate you pumping Loretta for information. You know she’s not right in the head.”

  “Your mother’s just fine when she wants to be,” I countered. “Is that who asked you to go to the Bahamas? I think it’s fair to ask who our child is traveling with. Better yet, go with me. But let’s go somewhere else, not there. Just the three of us.”

  Hannah’s nephew, Luke, a nice kid newly arrived from the Midwest, was in the house, entertaining the baby. She had walked me to my boat after an otherwise pleasant afternoon. We’d talked and laughed and spent an hour on the porch listening to Loretta’s mad ramblings about her “pot-hauling days” as the mistress of a rich man.

  Details about her pinochle club and murder were omitted.

  It was hard not to like Loretta. Her stories about smuggling were stitched with the woes of those who fished or clammed commercially. They had transitioned naturally into tales of past disasters. The worst, according to the old woman, was the lethal red tide of 1947, which had sent locals scurrying to church, convinced the End Times had arrived.

  Now, though, on this late-August afternoon, a heavy chill was evident in Hannah’s response to my prying. “Is that what you think of me, Doc? I’m so loose in my behavior, I’d accept an invitation from . . . That I’d fly off and sleep with a man while my baby’s in the same room? Oooh!”

  She made a sputtering sound and faced me. “Just because I gave in to you at a time of weakness doesn’t mean I would ever . . . Not again anyway . . . Not as a single woman . . . Besides, he—my friend—he feels as strongly about such things as I do.”

  In light of modern standards, it was hard to believe we were having this conversation. “The sanctity of marriage?” I asked. “What’s this paragon’s name?”

  “A very nice gentleman. And that’s all I’m going to say. This morning at church, didn’t you hear a word the minister said?”

  She had me there. The sermon had had something to do with morality—governing one’s passions, perhaps—but a buzzing fly, and the woman snoring in the pew behind us, had caused me to drift off.

  “I’m not suggesting you’ll hop into bed with the guy,” I said, although that’s precisely what I believed would happen. “Just tell me a little about him. If not his name, at least where he’s from.”

  “Birdy Tupplemeyer’s going with us,” she fired back.

  That threw me. Birdy was Hannah’s best friend. She was a decorated sheriff’s deputy and a SWAT team sergeant. Birdy had a very un-church-like wild side when it came to men—and just about anything else that wasn’t illegal.

  I said, “The guy invited her, too? Honey, ask around. To me, it sounds like a setup. Borderline kinky.”

  Fists clenched, Hannah looked skyward, then at my boat. “You got a bottle of water in there? I need to cool down before I lose my temper.”

  “Step aboard,” I said. I had something I wanted to give her anyway.

  She sat in one of the plush captain’s chairs. It was shady under the boat’s T-top. Over the mainland, towering thermals vacuumed a breeze off the Gulf. Useppa, Cayo Costa, and, to the north, Boca Grande were stolid outposts in the heat, all visible from the dock.

  “Sorry, that was unfair,” I said. “Birdy, sure, I can see her signing on for a trip like that. But not you. It’s not that you’re naïve, Hannah, just a little too trusting when it comes to—”

  “Would you just park yourself and listen?” she interrupted. I returned from the forward hatch with my tactical bag, got a beer and a bottle of water from the cooler, and took a seat. She gave me a long, sad look of concern. “If you don’t respect who I am by now, how can we—” She switched threads. “Okay, Birdy won some kind of contest. Six nights, all expenses paid, for her and a guest at a resort down there—Stanley Key, I think. She’s the one who invited me and Izaak.”

  “Staniel Cay?” I suggested. The island was midway down the Bahamian chain. Forty miles, at least, from the remote spot where I’d found Jimmy Jones’s stash. “What kind of contest?”

  “That’s the island’s name,” she said. “Very fancy. We’d have our own little beach cottage, room service. And there’s a spa for pedicures and things—girl fun, you know? Birdy doesn’t make much money. She could never afford a trip like this. And, Lord knows, I can’t. Not after that awful red tide. And, for a fishing guide, this is the slowest time of year.”

  She talked wistfully about this opportunity to stay at an exclusive resort where the restaurant served high tea and people dressed for dinner. “Marion,” she added with an innocence that squeezed my heart, “I’ve only been out of Flori
da once in my life—Atlanta, for a swim meet, back in high school. I’d planned to say yes to Birdy until you surprised me by asking if we—”

  The woman stopped and regrouped, suddenly emotional. “You’ve been all over the world. A piddly little trip to the Bahamas might not seem like much to you, but”—she looked toward the house where, when she was growing up, her mother had barely managed—“it’s the sort of thing I used to daydream about as a girl. I so wish you had asked me before.”

  My god, she was right. I had never invited her on a trip, even a weekend getaway. To me, travel was a euphemism for personal, unsavory business. Geezus, what a revelation. On the other hand, Hannah’s own blue-collar sensibilities had negated any thought of destinations with elegant, expensive resorts. She was a jeans-and-boots girl who carried a toolbox in her SUV. And sometimes a gun. Why bother with exotic travel when we could stay right here and eat or fish whenever we wanted?

  “I’m an idiot,” I said. “Name it. Anyplace in the world.”

  “It’s my fault for not mentioning it,” she replied. “I don’t need such things. But it is nice to be with . . . To be understood, you know? Accepted for the person I am. I’m done being ashamed for what I believe.”

  A meaningless apology, words of comfort came out of my mouth. I put my arm around her in the hopes she would lean against me. Instead, her muscles tensed. Then slowly, out of politeness, Hannah pulled away. We had been through our ups and downs, but this time I had a panicky sense that I had to make things right or I would never get another chance.

  I said, “This is totally unrelated, but I brought you something. Take a look.”

  From my bag I removed a folder containing paperwork I’d planned to give her anyway. Next, I handed her a second gift. It was a leather bank portfolio embossed with CFS—Cayman Financial Services. I got up and pretended to be busy so she’d have time to go through it all.

  The folder contained a Florida Prepaid College Plan for our son—four years’ tuition, paid in advance. I’d also opened a modest 529 college fund account. “In case he wants to go out of state,” I said in response to her stunned expression. “West Point or the Naval Academy, it would cover those, too. That’s up to Izaak, of course.”