He said, “Let’s go for a walk. We have important stuff to discuss.”
Bern practically had to shove the man to get him moving. That’s how suspicious Moe was.
Now it was 10:35 P.M., the two of them walking toward the canal that was cement seawall on one side, mangroves on the other. The rubble of the boat barn was to their right, the fuel docks brightly lit ahead, as Bern said, “I’ve been discussing your progress with some of the people in the organization.”
Moe said, “Your family back in Wisconsin?”
It was irritating, the way he said it, but Bern remained pleasant. “The company employs hundreds of people, not just relatives. Don’t ever think that some of us get ahead just because we’re related. Hard work, that’s all that counts. And talent. Just like in the NFL.”
Moe nodded. His boss had played two seasons of professional football, and liked to drop it in whenever possible.
“Anyway, we’ve been talking. We like your initiative, your organizational skills. We’ve been thinking maybe it’s time for the next step. Like maybe it’s time you were director of a place like this.”
Moe kept his lips pursed, sometimes nodding, as if he somehow had a brain that analyzed information.
“As director of a resort community,” Moe asked, speaking thoughtfully, “are you saying I’d be doing, existentially, what your job is now?”
Existentially. Did the idiot mean essentially?
Bern put his hand on Moe’s shoulder, moving him along. “Exactly right. I’ll keep my condo here, of course. But we’d find something just as nice for you.”
“Housing, too?”
“One of the perks of being an executive. Expense account, too. You’ve got to make nice with people, after all. It’s what we do.”
“Dealing with the public,” Moe said, relaxing enough to make a chuckling sound, “I do it every day.”
Moe had been so jumpy when he’d arrived that, if Bern moved a hand to swat a mosquito, or to wipe his bald head, the man had flinched. He was calmer now as they walked along the seawall beneath the sodium lights that made the boats and fuel pumps look yellow, the water black.
“Funny thing is, Bern, I thought you were mad at me because of this afternoon.” That laugh of his, it was as disgusting as his tattoos, both arms looking like he’d dipped them in Easter egg dye.
“Mad because you told the cops the truth? No, no, it was a tough situation. You and me, we didn’t have time to discuss what you found on the boat, to agree on a story. If it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t have had the stuff back in the first place.”
They were almost there.
They had crossed the parking lot, all the empty boats making it seem quieter, and were nearly to the bay where there was more seawall and a boat ramp. Security lights were bright along the water, showing docks, and the gravel area where Bern had parked the bulldozer.
Nearby, spaced along the seawall, were a dozen fifty-gallon drums in various colors. They stored dirty oil from boat engines in black drums. The yellow drums held insecticides. The green drums were for fertilizers, used mostly on the golf course.
When Moe noticed the barrels, he said, “What are those doing there?”
Bern said, “I mentioned that someone from the EPA was coming, right? I requested an inspection so they could test our water quality, take soil samples, that sort of thing.”
Which was craziness, but Moe listened. Listened to Bern tell him that, when the state had declared the marina a hazardous area, it was only good for a month. The month was up in a few days, which meant that boat owners would be allowed to come onto the property. Bern said they needed more time to move the boats to a secure area where they could be auctioned before the owners knew if their vessels had been damaged or not.
A few more weeks, they’d be ready.
“I told the EPA we were missing drums of oil, poisons, and stuff because of the hurricane. The feds could close this place for another month if our water’s so polluted it’s dangerous.” Bern used his smile. “They pay for cleanup, plus reimburse us for lost business—and the public won’t be allowed within a mile of the place.”
“FEMA, because it’s a disaster area. Right?”
Bern gave Moe a nudge toward the bulldozer. “You’ve got a brain. That’s what we like about you.”
For the next ten minutes, Bern used a digital camera to film what Moe was doing under the security lights. He was intentionally dumping petroleum products and pesticides into the bay, which also happened to be a federal wildlife preserve.
Lots of close-ups of the face: Moe beneath his cowboy hat, oblivious at the controls.
The only time Bern got nervous about Moe using the bulldozer was when the retard made a beeline toward a mound of fill dirt on the far edge of the property. Nobody was supposed to disturb that, Bern had told everybody.
Moe remembered in time, and swung the bulldozer around.
Enough. Moe’s ass was his anytime he wanted it. Bern switched off the camera and headed back to the condo.
His thoughts swung back to that dork, Ford. Just let him get the man alone…
9
I was in my laboratory, leaning over a shallow tray of sodium hydroxide that I’d just prepared by mixing distilled water with laboratory grade NaOH pellets. A weak solution, into which I’d placed the silver death’s-head, with its diamond eyes and swastika. The bronze eagle, too.
I’d done a clumsy job of butterflying my split cheek but it felt okay, and my headache, which had become chronic, had eased. Work can be an enjoyable distraction. I was enjoying this.
I’d separated a couple more interesting objects from the cluster Jeth had found, and they were also in the tray: a cigarette lighter, barely recognizable, and two silver coins. Both coins were German five-mark pieces, eagles and swastikas on the back, a man’s bust on the front indistinguishable because of ridges of calcium carbonate.
One coin was dated 1938, the other 1943.
More and more, it was looking as if the wreck was circa World War II, not the detritus of some unlucky modern collector whose plane, or boat, had gone down.
I straightened and braced a hand on the stainless table, testing and discarding explanations.
Was it possible that local stories about a sunken U-boat were based on fact? It’d been several years since I’d researched the subject, but I remembered reading that there were three, maybe four German subs unaccounted for after the war. A theory was that one of the missing subs had been used by high ranking Nazis to escape before the Reich fell. The others had been scuttled, or stolen by the Soviets.
A U-boat off Sanibel? No…the scenario was implausible. Islanders would have known if a vessel that size had been attacked so close to shore. In forty feet of water? For a submarine, that was rendezvous depth, not battle depth. Even a small submarine needed one hundred feet of water to submerge.
There were dozens of people living on Sanibel and Captiva who had lived on the islands during the Second World War. Details of a sunken U-boat would have been anchored in oral history. Fact, not legend.
I t was nearly 7 P.M. I went out a screen door, exiting my lab, and crossed a breezeway to another screen door, which is the entrance to my home.
An unusual structure, for an unusual lifestyle.
I live in a house built on stilts over water, connected to land by fifty feet of boardwalk. Dinkin’s Bay Marina, with its ship’s store, take-out restaurant, and docks, is just along the shore, a quick walk through the mangroves. Tomlinson, nonconformist that he is, lives on the other side of the channel, aboard No Mas, the sailboat that has been his home for years.
I’d had to rebuild the boardwalk after the hurricane. Felt lucky that any of it survived. Same with my house. It had been built in the early 1900s by a thriving fish company that constructed similar piling houses all along the coast. They’d built them to house fishermen and also as storage depots where fish could be iced.
The design of the buildings varied but not much: there
’s a lower platform for mooring boats and an upper platform with two small cottages under a single tin roof. One cottage served as a bunkhouse large enough to sleep a dozen men. The other was used for storing ice, so the walls are triple thick.
These structures—fish houses, they’re called—had to be as well built as any seagoing vessel, so the company had used cypress, or Miami yellow pine, which, when cured, is so rock hard you can’t drive a nail in it.
So, yes, I felt lucky my house and lab had survived. There was a lot of damage—I’d had to gut the place because a tornado took the roof off. On a laboratory wall, I’ve tacked photos of the way it had looked the day after the storm, even though the details were vivid in my memory: the tin roof shredded, lower decking gone, pilings and lamp poles all leaning at the same precise angle, still pointing toward the hurricane’s exit path—northeast. There was something accusatory in their uniformity; the impression that my home had been violated.
It had been violated. I’m not a sentimental person, but it was painful to look at the mess. Stare at my damaged property too long, and the image became penetrating, like staring at a strobe light.
As Tomlinson said when he came to check on me after the storm, “Looks like she collided with an iceberg. Which is kinda far-out, if you think about it. Your place has always seemed more like a ship than a house, anyway.”
I replied, “Iceberg. Interesting metaphor, this close to the equator.”
“She almost sunk but didn’t. That’s what I’m telling you. You’ll get her fixed up fast, though. People say things’ll never be the same? Dude, I am glad. It’s exciting. Your place will be better than ever.”
Hard to believe at the time, but it was turning out to be true. No, I wasn’t surprised that my ship of a house was standing.
M y kitchen, appropriately, is the size of a ship’s galley. There’s a two-burner propane stove, and copper-bottomed pots and stainless pans hanging from the ceiling. My office desk is across the room near the reading chair, and the wooden RCA shortwave radio I sometimes use. I went to the desk now and rummaged through it until I found an unused notebook. In pencil, I labeled the notebook, NAZI ARTIFACTS, and returned to my lab.
Through the north window, storm clouds leaned westward toward a harsh and angular light. The sunlight fired distant mangroves, transforming gray trees to silver, dark limbs to copper. I could see a pod of bottlenose dolphins cruising along the oyster bar that edges the channel. Their skin was luminous as sealskin.
I watched them for a while—fluke tails slapping; herding mullet into the shallows—before returning to work. I placed the new notebook beside the tray of sodium hydroxide, and snapped on fresh rubber gloves.
Beside the tray was a smaller basin that contained a ten percent solution of nitric acid. I’d already dipped the artifacts in the acid bath, and rinsed with freshwater. All but the cigarette lighter were cleaning up nicely.
I was wearing rubber gloves because the artifacts, I decided, were too delicate to risk tongs. So I was using my hands—taking all the precautions, because archaeological restoration is not my field.
I’m a biologist. That’s my business: collecting, and selling, marine specimens. Vertebrates, invertebrates, sharks, rays, sea urchins, mollusks, and plants. I sell them live, mounted, or preserved to schools and labs around the country. Sanibel Biological Supply, Inc. I also do consulting work, which pays most of the bills, as well as my own research—a passion.
These artifacts were becoming another passion.
The silver death’s-head now lay on the bottom of the tray, diamond eyes focused upward through the lens of sodium hydroxide. I couldn’t keep my own eyes off it. Each time I came near the thing, I paused to stare. Couldn’t quite define why.
The cigarette lighter drew my interest, too. It had been engraved with a person’s initials, which added a sense of intimacy. Some long-gone man or woman had carried it, held it, leaned their face to it in darkness. I wouldn’t know what the initials were until the barnacle scars were removed, but the etching was unmistakable. A portion of an N showing? Or an M. Possibly a V, or a K.
The lighter was personal.
I paused to look at the lighter now. Tried to project what the initials might be. Stopped, though, when I heard the engine of Tomlinson’s dinghy start in the distance. Checked my watch: an hour or so before sunset. That’s when he usually came ashore.
I returned to the window and there he was: yellow shirt adorned with bright hibiscus flowers, his hair stuffed under a Boston Red Sox cap. On the bow of the red dinghy was a ditty bag—he always carried it when he planned to shower at my place. A long, warm-water shower instead of a sponge bath aboard No Mas. Ladies, he told me, appreciated the extra effort.
Which meant that he was stopping by the lab for a beer, a shower, and then to stroll the docks until after dark. After that, he’d vanish. Him on his bicycle, sometimes for hours. Occasionally, most of the night. Presumably, he was with his new love interest. Washed and fresh for the woman he seldom mentioned and we’d yet to meet. Tomlinson’s “mystery woman,” the guides called her.
I’d never met her, but I knew where his mystery woman lived.
A week or so after the hurricane, I’d gone for a late jog. The moon was full, it was impossible to sleep, so I’d run toward the Gulf along Tarpon Bay Road to the beach. Continued running on a ridge of firm sand when I happened to notice Tomlinson’s bike in the moonlight. It was chained to a boardwalk that led into bare trees.
Unmistakable, Tomlinson’s bike: a fat tire cruiser, peace signs painted on the fenders, and a plastic basket on the handlebars that reads: FAUSTO’S KEY WEST.
On my way back, the bike was still there, and I heard music coming through the trees. A piano played elegantly. I recognized the melody but couldn’t name it. Something from the 1930s or ’40s, not big band. Torchy, with smoky subtleties.
I stopped to enjoy the music, my shadow huge on the white sand. Among the trees was a two-story house I hadn’t known existed, the foliage had once been so dense along that stretch of beach. The storm had taken most of the trees, though, so the house was now exposed, a Cape Cod–sized place with gables and an upstairs balcony. It appeared solitary on its own grounds, a moneyed estate that had once been hidden—an indignity to be endured.
I felt like a voyeur. Which is what I was, in fact. The music stopped a couple of minutes after I did, yet I stood looking at the house, oddly pleased that I’d never suspected the house was there.
Something else that pleased me was that I could also see the rhythmic flare of Sanibel Lighthouse, far, far down the beach. The lighthouse had been built in the 1880s during the era of train barons: a tower of steel rails, one hundred feet high, and capped with a crystal lens.
Until the storm, it hadn’t been visible from this section of beach.
As the music was ending, Tomlinson appeared on the balcony. He wore a white linen jacket, and slacks he’d bought at the consignment store on Palm Ridge Road, his favorites. There was a last alto flourish on the piano, and then a woman appeared, her hair silver in the moonlight.
His mystery woman. Finally.
The woman was thin as a reed in her sequined gown. She moved elegantly, like her music. Elegantly…but with a measured slowness that I associate with injury, or old age. It was incongruous with the way the gown hung on her body, the sleek contours, and also incongruous with what happened next: the woman stopped, held her hands up, palms outward—an invitation to Tomlinson. There was no music, but she wanted to dance.
For a few seconds longer, I watched as they joined and began to sway, dancing to the cadence of storm waves and a pulsing lighthouse beacon.
Their shadows were a single vertical stripe on the house’s gray shingles, elongated by moonlight.
I crossed the lab to get a rack of test tubes. Returned to the artifacts, and, once again, found myself staring at the death’s-head.
Why?
I thought about it for a moment, trying to pinpoint the allure
. It seemed important that the attraction be defined—another compunction not easily understood.
Part of the fascination was the historical linkage: days that would live in infamy; boogie-woogie bugle boys who battled their way to the gates of gas chamber horrors.
There was an underlying component, though. A more intimate association.
What?
I leaned to focus, letting the nearby cigarette lighter, and bronze eagle blur. I’m not a fanciful person. I had to consciously will my imagination to wander.
Was it the design?
Yes. The medal’s design had something to do with it. The skull had a hint of smile showing above the diamond swastika. Smiling as it screamed. It was a design that celebrated the killing of one’s enemies. It seemed to encourage the action while depersonalizing the act. It hinted that, to participate, was to be part of a joyous brotherhood.
There was a wink in the death’s-head’s smile. A secret shared by few.
That secret; the brotherhood—I know both. Knew them better than I could admit. I am a marine biologist. But I’ve done other work in my life, too. Clandestine work in South America, Indonesia, Southeast Asia. In the world’s most dangerous places, a man who studies fish does not invite suspicion.
I have traveled the world. I still do.
The death-head’s secret, and its brotherhood—I was more than aware. I was a colleague.
The association with the Third Reich was unsettling until I reminded myself of a core precept: I belonged to a just brotherhood. There was a moral partition.
Or was there?
I felt a gathering uneasiness. The association was repellent; the connection stronger than I cared to explore.
Instead, I chose to focus on detail: twenty-six diamonds. Silver filigree.
Presumably, a man awarded such a thing was an exalted member of the brotherhood and good at it. Good at killing. Or delegating. As I’d told Jeth, this wasn’t an ornament worn by pretenders. It was real. It was murder’s totem.
I pictured the badge pinned to the chest of a German officer. The bronze eagle, too. An award ceremony with drums. Black boots goose-stepping, a Nazi war hero at attention, insulated by ritual as his homeland self-destructed…
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