Mangrove Lightning

by Randy Wayne White

  “I’m not the only one?”

  “Oh yeah. My grandniece, Gracie, said the same; got real excited. She’s one of those kids dresses like a vampire and has tattoos. Her and her boyfriend stopped here about ten days ago, on their way north. Some boyfriend—a big fella old enough to be her daddy, or near about. I’m worried about that girl.”

  It was because no family member had seen or heard from Gracie since.

  —

  In the cabin, a Florida road map with markings lay on the table. “Three accidents, supposedly unrelated. I made little red stars where they happened. What do you think?” Tootsie stepped back to make room.

  “Did anyone report Gracie missing?”

  “Her mama, a second cousin of mine, says that’s just her way—go off for weeks at a time without calling. I tried telling the cops myself, but they don’t listen. Know what’s strange?”

  “The accidents all happened in central Florida,” Tomlinson said, “but these two”—he touched the map—“are a couple hundred miles apart. No . . . it’s three hundred miles to Gainesville. The voices Gracie heard, what did they say?”

  “I was talking about cops. A body gets a certain age, you turn invisible. Don’t matter how famous a guide I was. Used to be, a cop stopped me, he’d talk my ear off about fishing before saying, ‘Have a nice day, Cappy.’ Not even a warning ’cause of who I am. Or was. Oh, you’ll find out. Might as well be a ghost. They stare right through you, the young ones, and don’t return calls.”

  “Storm troopers,” Tomlinson said. “I’d love to be invisible when it comes to them. Mind if I make notes while we go over this? ‘Freak accidents’—tell me about those.”

  When they were done, and the map was folded and put away, they took another break.

  Tootsie returned with a leather-bound Bible; gilded edges, very old. “No one knows what I’m about to show you.” Solemn, the way he said it. Like a warning.

  “I’ll swear an oath, if you want.”

  That wasn’t it. Tootsie’s father, on his deathbed, had written a confession in the back of the Bible; several pages of neat block printing on lines provided for notes, or branches of the family tree.

  “Do you remember when Albert died?”

  “Your dad? Five years ago,” Tomlinson said. “That’s how we met. Well, one of the reasons.”

  “You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t trust you. It don’t seem so long ago, but”—he tilted the Bible open—“read the first page of what Albert wrote. Don’t skip ahead, just the first page. When the Lord tells me it’s okay, you can read the rest. I got your word on that?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  “Your heart, huh? Guess that’ll have to do. I’ll wait on the porch, then I ’spect you’ll have to leave for home. It’s almost sunset, and we’ll have time tomorrow.”

  Tomlinson carried the Bible to a desk where light filtered in. The first page of Albert Barlow’s confession was sufficient to pique his interest—an ugly, murderous admission that promised darker revelations to come.

  He closed the book, thinking, May God have mercy on their souls . . .

  5

  At sunset, Ford raised Andros Island, west of Nassau, twenty miles of green water astern. By dark, he was beached in Stafford’s Creek and talking to the local who’d rented him the Zodiac.

  “Man! What the hell happen, she’s damaged so bad?” Donell—that was the local’s name—circled the boat as warily as if it were a snake. “You make the crossing from the north side, all the way, like this?”

  “From the south side of Nassau,” Ford said.

  Donell knew he was lying. From the rocks at Small Hope Bay, he’d seen the boat surfing downwind, as boats often did after crossing from the Atlantis Hotel or possibly Chub Cay.

  He let it go. “Lucky you made it, no matter which direction. One tube, it got no air. This here other tube, she’s leaking bad. What you hit?”

  Ford said, “Hold the flashlight.” The moon was down; coconut palms shadowed the stars. He took a seat and counted out ten stacks of hundred-dollar bills. “Will that cover the damage?”

  Donell gave some thought to demanding more, but decided, Not here. Not with him.

  He reached for the money.

  Ford covered it with his hand. “When I’m sure my plane’s okay, that was our deal. There are a couple of other things I want you to do.”

  They hiked inland. Stafford’s Creek broadened, then bowed. A small seaplane floated in darkness on buoyant tethers. It was a Maule amphib with a four-cylinder turbo. The fuselage was blue on white, with leather seats inside and Plexiglas doors, but it looked silver on this tropical night with stars. The craft was designed to land damn near anywhere and equipped to make long hauls. Fully fueled, she could cruise at 160 knots for more than six hundred nautical miles.

  “You leavin’ tonight, sir?”

  “I want to clear customs before the shift change.”

  “Owens Town?”

  “West Palm. You told me it was all taken care of in Owens Town.”

  “It is, sir, I assure you of that. But why not stay? The missus, she make you a nice breakfast. Fresh kingfish and bammy bread. Or”—a smile came into his voice—“could be green turtle meat somehow got in my icebox. Believe you mentioned a fondness for that.”

  “Poaching turtles, Donell? I must’ve heard wrong. A sergeant in the Royal Police Force could lose his stripes for that.”

  Donell was head constable in these parts.

  “Lose your stripes for all sorts of things,” he countered. “Not worth it unless the pay’s right. What’s them other things you want me to do?”

  Ford went over it, before saying, “When I’m home safe, you can stop worrying about those extradition papers. I’d hate to think of you back in Miami-Dade Correctional.” He took off his shoes, ready to wade to the plane. “Get rid of the Zodiac while I make sure I’ve still got fuel . . . and the battery’s not missing.”

  “Man, who you think you’re dealing with?”

  “Let’s call it the No Gambling in Casablanca syndrome. A safety precaution, that’s all.”

  Donell grumbled until he was out of sight and chortled on his way to the beach. Then sobered when he panned the light over the inflatable boat and, for the first time, took a close look.

  Oh hell . . . What had he gotten himself into?

  A deflated tube was pocked with what appeared to be bullet holes. Awash on the deck was the clotted residue of what might be blood. He knelt, tested the viscosity with his fingers, then sniffed.

  Metallic, the smell. Something else: a bloody swatch of medical gauze was trapped in a scupper. When he reached for it, his eyes noticed the glitter of gold. A bullet casing, he thought.

  No . . . When he held it to the light, it was a woman’s earring.

  Beautiful. The earring looked expensive, one bonny white pearl attached. He searched on hands and knees but found no mate.

  What to do? If he gave it to the wife, she’d wonder why there was only one. Sell it, he might be linked to something bad; maybe even a murder charge.

  It was smarter, Donell decided, to use it as proof of his integrity—and also to remind the American that blackmail could work both ways.

  He hustled back to the plane, shined the light around. No sign of the man until, from somewhere nearby, Ford’s voice said, “That was fast. Why don’t I smell rubber burning?”

  “Man, best if you take off first. A fire might draw attention. But don’t you worry—”

  Ford stepped clear of the shadows. “Until you get rid of that Zodiac, your money stays on the plane with me. Oh, another thing. Careful when you wade out, there’re lionfish all over the place. I’ve never seen so many. How long have they been a problem?”

  Donell turned slowly, expecting to see a gun, but, no, just the man standing there, serious about wh
at he’d just asked.

  “You worried about fish? Now?”

  “I’m interested.”

  “I don’t know, fifteen years maybe. They good to eat, but them fins, you’re right, they kill a man. I heard tourists brought the damn things from somewhere. Or they come in through the blue holes; them holes deep. Some say they go all the way to China. You believe that?”

  Ford said, “Would anyone?”

  “Some do. The old folk, they say monsters live down there, come and go as they please. Lusca is one, a giant octopus or dragon. Chin-ums is another.”

  Ford, talking more to himself than Donell, said, “Fifteen years ago—that’s when the Atlantis Hotel finished its sea aquarium. The timing’s about right.”

  “For dragons?”

  “Lionfish. They don’t belong in this hemisphere. What I mean is, they started showing up in the Keys about five years after that aquarium opened, probably earlier here. I bet it’s not a coincidence. Yesterday, I paid a guy to let me walk around the aquarium plant. They pump in eight million gallons of seawater a day; an open, raw water system. There’s nothing to prevent fertilized eggs, even immature fry, from being vented back out to sea.”

  “Fry?”

  “Baby fish. I’m surprised no one’s made the connection before.”

  “Oh . . . yes, they got thousands of them at the Atlantis. Rare fish of all types. The missus and me, we go there and gamble sometimes. But, sir, the reason I come back was—” Donell extended his hand and used the flashlight to show the earring.

  “Thanks,” Ford said, taking it. Didn’t say another word until he was in the plane and had handed over the cash. “Do a good job, maybe we’ll work again sometime.”

  “Landing in West Palm, sir?”

  The biologist nodded, and flew away; no lights—just charcoal wings visible when the plane banked.

  —

  A mile out, he switched on running lights and turned not west toward Florida but east toward a nearby fishing camp. According to the APIS flight plan he’d filed, he was scheduled to clear customs in West Palm tomorrow. There were ways to sneak in under Fat Boy, the down-looking radar at Cudjoe Key, but he’d already taken too many risks for one day.

  Andros was a hundred miles long, bigger than all of the Bahamas islands combined yet among the least populated. Fresh water was hard to come by on the vast mangrove flats and salt pans. The land was a limestone sieve. There were hundreds of underwater caves and linking tunnels, more than anyplace its size in the world.

  Chino Hole came to mind.

  Ford leveled off and followed a glowing chart plotter through darkness to a sprinkling of lights in the distance: Flamingo Cay. It was a private and very expensive bonefish camp owned by a friend, Charles Beckett. The place didn’t advertise, and only opened when Charles was in the mood. No need to lure clients. The Beckett family had remained loyal to the British Crown during the American Revolution, so the Windsor family had rewarded them with a massive land grant—much of Andros, and some surrounding islands. Their wealth had quadrupled during Prohibition. They still owned prime waterfront and dockage in Nassau where liquor had been stored and shipped.

  Beckett’s roots ran deep in the Bahamas. They intertwined with wealth on both sides of the Atlantic.

  After he signaled the camp with a flyover, landing strip lights blossomed in an orderly line.

  On the ground, he checked his phone and found he’d passed close enough to a tower to receive a text from Tomlinson. Nothing about Gillian Cobourg, but his pal had seen tarpon at Chino Hole. He and the famous fishing guide would continue to explore the area tomorrow.

  This was good news.

  —

  Ford was in a guest cottage: screened windows, ceiling fans, and a porch built over the water. At midnight, the generator went off. He lit an oil lamp and sat with a book, reading.

  What Donell had said about holes reaching through the Earth to China was nonsense, of course. But there was a possibility that karst formations below the Gulf Stream did form a complex conduit, linking Florida with the Bahamas.

  Lionfish were on his mind. It had as much to do with Florida as what he’d experienced in Nassau.

  Lionfish, with their venomous manes, were natives of the South Pacific and Indian Ocean. In the 1980s, a few Florida sightings had been reported, always attributed to sloppy hobbyists. They weren’t a serious problem until the mid-2000s, when they began to show up en masse in the Keys. Now the dangerous exotics had made their way north to the Panhandle and the coast of Alabama.

  The Atlantis Hotel had opened its “Mayan Temple and Aquaventure” between 1998 and 2002. There were fourteen “lagoons”; more than fifty thousand aquatic animals and two hundred and fifty species. Most commercial aquariums manufactured their own seawater. Not the Atlantis. They piped it in from the Tongue of the Ocean, six thousand feet deep; a free-flowing exchange between the casino’s freakish aquarium show and the sea.

  On the table was a chart of Florida and the Bahamas. The timing was right; the complex swirl of ocean currents meshed. Even if there was no underground linkage, fertile spawn and fry spewed by the hotel’s unfiltered vents might account for what could be a disaster.

  Again, he wondered, Why didn’t someone make the connection years ago?

  Maybe they had, and he’d missed it. Ford was pragmatic enough to admit he sometimes deluded himself to bolster his own pet theories. In this case, the pet theory suggested he might find lionfish in a “bottomless” lake in the Everglades.

  It was possible. Tarpon, another saltwater fish, had been documented in Chino Hole. Ford could think of no more reliable source than Captain Tootsie Barlow, who’d confirmed what Tomlinson had seen.

  He carried the lamp inside. Mosquito netting draped over the bed added a safari touch. Naked, he turned the light low and was getting settled when the creaking screen door put him on alert. The pistol was on the nightstand. But where the hell had he put his shorts?

  A towel would have to do.

  Towel in hand, he was exiting the bathroom when a woman’s voice said, “Don’t bother. I’ve come to thank you properly.”

  Gillian Cobourg, in a silken robe, stood in the doorway. “I heard you land. You could have at least come and said hello to your patient.”

  “How’s your foot?”

  She extended her leg, toes visible through a gauze wrapping. “Almost no pain. A bloody miracle worker, you are. I’ve been soaking it in hot water like you told me.”

  Ford said, “Let me get some clothes on and I’ll walk you back. We can’t be seen together.”

  “That’s what you’re worried about? Simple. I’ll lock the door.” She did; limped inside and placed her flashlight on the table while he finished knotting the towel. “Your friend Charles and his wife are delightful, but they play their cards close to the vest. They said it wasn’t your plane, but I knew better. Did you tell them why I’m—”

  “No, nothing about you being blackmailed,” Ford said. “I’m not sure they would’ve believed me anyway. There aren’t many sisters who would do what you’ve done to protect a—”

  “He’s more than just my brother. Billy is a Member of Parliament. You really didn’t know?”

  “Or care. I’m paid to do what I do.”

  “Of course, a cold bastard. You try so hard to convince people. I wasn’t being noble, if that’s why you doubt my story. Some of the things they made me do I enjoyed. Self-destruction, the ultimate taboo. A tart’s fantasy. Does that shock you?” Staring up at him, she allowed the silken robe to blouse open as if unaware.

  He was tempted to ask about Jimmy Lutz. It was no coincidence she’d had a neighboring suite at the hotel, but now was not the time. “I’ve done worse things for worse reasons, I suppose.”

  “Oh for god’s sake, please drop the shield. It would break our father’s heart if he—”
/>
  “Found out his son’s a pedophile?” Ford interrupted. “You’re right. There’s nothing noble about that. Or setting me up to be killed.” For a moment, he expected the woman to slap him. “Sorry. It doesn’t matter now. You switched teams.”

  “That’s something else I should thank you for. The opportunity. Marion?” She had never used his first name before. “You’re wrong about Billy.”

  It was possible. Hopefully, the truth would be on the thumb drives he had stolen. “The people I work for will be in touch, Gillian. You need to leave.”

  She stepped closer, face tilted. “Not like this. Please. I wanted to see you again. To . . . make amends. I feel so damn fidgety because of what happened back there. I’ve never been shot at before.”

  He back-stepped, hands out to stop her, but let her come into his arms anyway. “Have you been drinking?”

  “You tell me,” she said, and kissed him. Then again, deeper. “Taste alcohol? That’s another reason I can’t sleep. This is the first night in months I’ve gone to bed sober.”

  “You’ll get through it,” Ford said. “And, if you don’t, think about the consequences. Now, back to your room.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I do,” he said, yet allowed his hands to slide up the woman’s ribs to the undersides of her breasts, their softness a warm, expanding weight.

  Her breathing slowed, then spasmed. “I like that,” she said. Then, her body tight against his, whispered, “It was so unreal when that man started shooting. In a way, my life’s such a damn, awful mess, I felt so, I don’t know . . .”

  “Scared. You’re not the only one.” Ford, aware that his own breathing had changed, attempted objectivity.

  “Please don’t mistake me for a well-adjusted woman. What I felt was . . . alive—really alive, and glad to be alive, for the first time in . . .” Her fingers unknotted the towel and cupped him, exploring as if she were blindfolded, while he stood and let it happen.

  “My favorite line from Lady Chatterley,” she said. “Use me.”

  “What?”