Nevada Barr - Anna Pigeon 11 - Flashback

by Flashback(Lit)

  Because it seemed wrong not to do so, disrespectful or at least untidy, she gently wiped the digit free of ink before restoring it to its temperature-controlled sarcophagus.

  Following the chief ranger's instructions, she scanned the print into the computer and e-mailed it to the man he'd recommended at the FBI office in Miami. Chief Ranger Flescher had worked with the agent a time or two and knew the man to be an avid diver. Anything that helped keep the park pristine he was glad to do.

  Anna also faxed him a copy, though the final printout probably wouldn't be clear enough to read.

  Mission accomplished, she returned to her station at the phone. Ironically, never a big fan of telephones, she had spent a good bit of her life on them. Molly, whom she saw once a year if she was lucky, stayed close in mind and heart over the phone. The last semiserious relationship she'd had with a man-an FBI agent now married to her sister-had been conducted largely over the telephone. Still, she hated it as a woman on life support might come to detest the tubes and pumps that kept her among the living.

  Knowing herself destined to live with this love/hate relationship for many more years, Anna dialed Manny Silva, Lieutenant Henriquez's contact in the coast guard. Her run of luck was at an end. Silva was out. She left a message on his voice mail and went home. Fortified with an egg-salad sandwich and a coke, she hurried back toward the office.

  It surprised her that the day was still gray, that the wind still blew. Crossing the parade ground, a few spatters of rain hit her face. Anna loved wild weather and threw her arms out as if to catch it. Wind made her crazy, like a cat in autumn leaves. An exhilarating sense of expectation. A hurricane would have been grand. The thought engendered a stab of guilt. Not all that many years ago Hurricane Andrew had devastated the town of Homestead. Park employees living there lost everything. Most didn't stay to rebuild but scattered to parks across the country. The demoralizing effect had been felt by the entire service.

  Still and all... a hurricane would have been grand.

  Having checked the answering machine to satisfy herself that she hadn't missed Manny Silva's call, she settled down with the old crossword puzzles.

  Puzzles were done. Anna knew way more than she'd ever wanted to concerning what the paper in Key West considered news. Finally, the phone deigned to ring.

  It wasn't Manny. It was Agent Tad Bronson of the FBI office in Miami. Before he would give Anna any information, she was forced to pay for it by talking dives and fishes and wrecks for a quarter of an hour. By bringing to bear what rudiments of southern hospitality she'd picked up in Mississippi, she managed not to snap, "Cut to the chase" even once.

  Finally her patience was rewarded. "But I guess we've frittered away enough of the taxpayers' money on blue water. You'll be wanting to know about your fingerprints. Where'd you find this guy anyway?"

  Anna paid another installment on the coveted information by telling Tad of the explosion, dives and body parts recovery.

  "Well, we got a match on your boy," he said when she'd answered half a dozen questions on gear, water clarity and scavenger fishes.

  'Bout goddamn time. "What did you turn up?"

  "Guy's name is Ramon Diego, born in Cuba, came to the U.S. at the age of twelve with his mother. Became a citizen at twenty-two. No wants, no warrants. His prints were on file because he and his mom entered the U.S. illegally. Mother and son were kept in a holding area by immigration for a couple of months. That's where his prints got into the system."

  "Anything else on him?" Anna asked.

  "Nope, he lived a good clean life since coming to the promised land. No trouble. He hasn't gotten so much as a DUI, according to the records. I do have the DOB. According to his birth date, your guy would have been forty-three day before yesterday."

  "I hope the fishes blew out the candles before they ate him," Anna said.

  "What do you want this guy for?"

  "I don't know yet," she said truthfully. "But he was up to something." Anna promised him the rest of the story next time he came to the park to dive, and he allowed her to disconnect.

  Leaning back till two chair legs left the floor, Anna put her feet on Lanny Wilcox's desk. Thought came more easily when the body was disconnected from the earth. Two guys on a go-fast boat. One probably knew Theresa Alvarez. No ID on him yet. Prints probably not in the system. A tattoo supposedly favored by smugglers. The other guy on the boat was a Cuban refugee-become-U.S.-citizen. Given his age, he would have lived in Cuba around the time Castro threw out the landowning Americans, including William Macintyre's parents. Anna didn't know Mack's age. His skin was so sun-damaged it was impossible to tell. If he were younger than he looked, it was possible he'd met Diego either in Cuba when he was a little boy or in the refugee holding area in Florida.

  She put her feet back on the floor. Too much speculation with too few facts. Nothing suggested Mack knew the men killed on the green boat, only that he knew Theresa and that she knew one of them.

  Picking up the phone, she began punching in Manny Silva's number at the coast guard office. The receiver hadn't even cooled off completely from her last call. Thinking she'd probably end up with some bizarre fungus caused by holding damp plastic against her ear for too many hours, she settled in to listen to the rings, leave another message if need be.

  "Manny Silva."

  "Hallelujah."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  Manny Silva sounded like a parody of the generic midwestern radio announcer. His voice held none of the salsa or music implied by the name. Anna missed it, while being glad communication would be facilitated.

  Explaining her outburst would be a waste of time and she couldn't think of any way to do so that wouldn't carry the insult of implying he should have gotten back to her sooner.

  She let it pass, introduced herself and reminded him that she was the lady who'd sent him the boat engine registration number by way of Lieutenant Henriquez.

  "Yes. Yes. We did get something on that. Hold, please."

  Anna would have given up coffee for a week to see this man. He didn't say "yeah" it was "yes" and his voice was so neutral and careful she pictured him looking more like a Bob Johnson and suffering mild embarrassment that a warmer-blooded ancestor had saddled him with a name he couldn't live up to.

  "Here. I was going to call George with this. I didn't know there was a rush on it." He left a short silence for Anna to apologize and tell him there was no rush.

  She'd taken against his voice and said nothing.

  "The boat was bought from the manufacturer by Eurico's Marine Supply in Miami. It was purchased new in May of this year."

  "Anything on who Enrico's sold it to?"

  "Inquiries were made, but Enrico's was not forthcoming."

  Manny Silva was not particularly forthcoming himself.

  "Could you run it from the other end? If I gave you a name could you see if he had a boat registered anywhere in Florida?"

  "Not everyone registers, licenses or even names their boats for a variety of reasons, not all of them criminal, but yes, I can do that."

  "Ramon Diego," Anna said and waited. The faint clicking of fingers on a keyboard passed the time. Manny evidently was not one to give out progress reports or make small talk.

  "Nothing. Many Diegos. No Ramon Diego."

  "How about boats reported stolen?"

  "No. We ran that automatically. Only one Scarab was reported. It was last year's model and cherry-red in color. I suppose it could have been repainted and the year written down wrong."

  "I'll check into it," Anna said but she wouldn't. She'd pawed through enough smithereens of the blasted boat, she was certain she would have noticed if there'd been a coat of red paint beneath the green.

  She appreciated he'd wasted none of her time with chitchat and thanked him with a degree of genuine sincerity.

  Her investigation had reached a dead end. On her lieu days she could rent a car and drive up to Miami to question the people at Enrico's, but it would be a waste
of time. If they weren't telling the coast guard, they certainly weren't going to tell her. With no crime but dying in a boat not your own, she was nowhere near getting a subpoena.

  For a while she sat like a lump, thinking of nothing at all. There were things she could do: check out the boat Patrice had reported, start writing the reports on Bob's injury and the loss of the Bay Ranger. None of the options struck her as entertaining. Sitting in a dim air-conditioned room with the phone to her ear had sapped her of motivation. A nap sounded good.

  Three fifteen. The day was about shot anyway.

  There was another call she could make, Anna realized. It was based on a hunch, but an informed hunch. The pieces she'd collected came together. Mack-William "Mack" Macintyre-and Theresa met in the Cuban neighborhood in Miami where they had grown up.

  Once again she dialed the number of Theresa's aunt.

  "Mrs. Alvarez, it's Anna Pigeon with the National Park Service again." Anna expected the woman to be irritated-as well she had a right to be. It was bad practice to call a source over and over. An officer should have her ducks in their assigned places in the row before making contact. Anna had started out with only a couple ducks and no row.

  Fortunately Mrs. Alvarez was not only cooperative but sounded glad to get a third call. This welcome was fueled, Anna guessed, by the hope that finally the authorities were going to find her wayward niece. Anna suffered a momentary stab of guilt or sadness-the two had become so linked over the years she wasn't sure where one stopped and the other began. Theresa would probably never be found. If she were, it would be washed ashore on some lonely key, her body munched upon by crabs.

  "One last question," Anna promised. "Do you know if Theresa knew a man named Ramon Diego?"

  "He was a neighborhood boy." Mrs. Alvarez answered without hesitation. Anna wondered how many long-established white residents had such a working knowledge of who they lived and raised their children next door to.

  "Does he still live there?"

  "No. Old Mrs. Diego did till she died, but Ramon got a good job and I guess he travel all the time. We didn't see him for long times."

  "Where did he get the job?" Anna asked.

  "Some big boat place. I think he sells boats but I don't know for sure."

  Again Anna thanked her and rang off. A big boat place. The Scarab was originally sold to Enrico's, which Anna had heard was a Cuban-owned and -operated marine supply in Miami. Enrico's had been investigated for harboring and/or employing illegal aliens.

  One more call, Anna promised herself and reached for the phone. She didn't pick it up right away. Given Enrico's checkered past with authority figures, particularly those investigating the whereabouts and origins of Cuban immigrants, honesty would probably not be the most productive policy. The employees might be laboring under a double need for secrecy. Maybe they had something to hide and maybe, where they came from, the police weren't nice people who were trained not to hurt you if you didn't hurt them first.

  She toyed with the idea of affecting a Spanish accent. From her years in Texas she was actually quite good at it. The idea was quickly abandoned. If the accent wasn't believed whoever answered would be put on guard. If it was they'd let loose in rapid-fire Spanish and Anna'd be lost.

  She switched personas, picked up the phone and dialed.

  "Enrico's Marina. Buenos dias." The voice was heavily and unapologetically Hispanic.

  "Hey. This is Anna Putnam. I need to talk to Ramon Diego. Can you get him for me?"

  "I'm sorry we do not know no Ramon Diego."

  The woman said this quickly and with the pat disinterest of someone uttering a standard response. Anna doubted it was the truth. Or if it was, it was purely coincidental.

  "Oh pooh," Anna said. "It's his goddaughter. She's been asking for him. This was the only place I knew to call. Shoot. She's only seven, and since the accident..." Anna let that hang there, hoping Cuban Hispanics had the same cultural love of family and children she'd noticed in Mexican-American women.

  For a moment the woman said nothing, then she chose for the fictional child. "Give me your number. He comes in, I have him call."

  Anna rattled off a Miami area code and the first seven numbers that came to mind. Nobody would be bothered; Ramon was through making telephone calls for this lifetime.

  The office had grown dark. Living in the strange tunnels of telephone communications, Anna'd not noticed the light going. She glanced at the wall clock expecting to find half a day gone, but it was just after four. She walked to the window at the parade-ground side of the walled-in case-mate and raised the blind. The sky was low and fast and dark. The trees, usually so serene in their brick-walled sanctuary, tossed their branches in wild celebration of the storm.

  Anna turned on the office radio. It was already tuned to the weather frequency. Gale warnings. Gusts to fifty knots, seas six to ten feet. The hurricane Anna'd hoped for was not to be. She turned the radio off and sat down without bothering to turn on the lights. Darkness at midday called on the ancient in her bones, filled her with a sense of portents and omens. With the wild race of clouds and the trees in jubilation, the foreboding swelled to a strange expectation-of what, she didn't know.

  Placing both hands palm down on Teddy's desk, she stared out the small window and let her mind race with the wind. Theresa, Ramon Diego, Mack, all from the same neighborhood. Diego and Mack both born in Cuba, both spending their first months on American soil in immigration's custody. Diego employed by Enrico's, a marine supply known for its connection with illegal aliens. Mack scarred at the hands of the Cuban military. Theresa, always supportive "of her people," introduced to Lanny by Mack. Theresa who seemed uninterested in the older man but moved out to Fort Jefferson to live with him. Theresa who fell in love with Lanny later on.

  Her first mistake. Very probably her last.

  Then the go-fast boat exploding twice, once from the haste of the pilot in his desire to avoid law enforcement, the second time because the boat carried fuel. The boat from Enrico's, piloted by a boyhood friend of Mack and Theresa. Theresa who was photographed with a man wearing the tattoo alleged to be the mark of a smuggler's gang.

  Patrice, on the radio, telling Anna she'd seen a red go-fast boat headed east from Loggerhead. The only Scarab reported stolen a red model. Had Anna been paying attention to what was going on around her instead of keeping her ear and brain affixed to the telephone, the obvious anomaly would have stuck her.

  The go-fast was headed east, out to sea. A tropical storm watch had been on the radio since morning. Small craft would have been fleeing for the coast.

  "Jesus Christ," Anna muttered. "Not drugs."

  She headed for the dock.

  22

  Following the quarrel and the removal of Dr. Mudd, Mr. Arnold retired to his cell and closed the door. When I'd done questioning Joel six ways from Sunday and learning nothing more than that the row between Mrs. Mudd and Arnold had been the latter calling the former a thief and the former accusing the latter of being responsible for his prison woes, I determined to take the matter to Mr. Arnold, closed door or no. My rapping and calling "Mr. Arnold" was made somewhat easier by the fact that the cells at Fort Jefferson may very well end up being a man's home but by no stretch of the imagination can they be considered his castle.

  Mr. Arnold opened the door and bowed ever so slightly but said nothing.

  I told him about Tilly's experience with the union soldiers, how she'd boasted of having proof of Mudd's innocence. Despite Molly's constant reminders about airing our dirty linen in public, I told him that Tilly had been hiding papers or letters from me-or that I believed she had-and that I believed she had carried something away from his cell earlier and hidden it.

  Several times he asked where I thought she might have hidden these supposed papers. Human nature is a peculiar thing. The moment I came to believe the whereabouts of an item or items regarding which he'd not yet confided in me were important to him was the moment I decided not to tell him. Th
is once I was determined to keep my secrets, such as they were, till I found an honest person.

  After too much cat's play, each of us batting at the crumpled bit of honesty we'd allowed ourselves, Mr. Arnold told me the following.

  The mail had come several days before. Both he and Dr. Mudd had received letters and packages.

  This much I know to be true-Tilly collected our mail then, from the guardroom where we asked to be brought to Joel that day; she'd taken the conspirators' mail to them. From here on I cannot say whether Mr. Arnold was telling me the truth or not. I expect he was but only so much as he wanted me to know.