Below Naples was a hundred miles of wilderness coastline. Collier had been a visionary. He bought thousands of hectares sight unseen and extended his railroad south, then went to work building a road across the Everglades to connect the thriving Port of Tampa with Miami—the Tamiami Trail.
Chinese laborers had played a role.
Things had gone smoothly until 1924, when a hundred or so homesteaders on Marco Island realized their land had been bought out from under them. Legally. Worse, for once in their lives, they, too, were thriving, thanks to their boating skills and five years of Prohibition. They were a rough lot, a mix of hardscrabble fishermen, war vets, and criminals on the run. Outsiders, especially representatives of the new land baron, were turned around at the point of a gun.
To get kicked off dirt-poor land was one thing. Abandoning water access to Cuban rum was a Screw you deal breaker.
In 1925, Collier played his trump card. He established his own county, thereby legalizing his personal branch of law enforcement. The sheriff, William R. Maynard, was right out of Cool Hand Luke, no shit. He carried a six-gun, a bullwhip, and owned a bloodhound. Deputies were handpicked, and Collier’s 110-foot yacht augmented the arsenal.
Violence began as skirmishes. An example was a story in the weekly American Eagle, August 23rd of the same year. It contained familiar names:
With his head swathed in numerous bandages, J. H. Cox, deputy sheriff of Collier County, with headquarters at Marco Island, was in Fort Myers Saturday evening for surgical aid.
Saturday morning, he attempted to arrest Walter Lambeth on a charge of being drunk and disorderly and using profanity, and started to take the prisoner away when he was attacked by a mob of a dozen or more and badly manhandled.
The deputy’s coat was cut with a razor until his revolver fell from the pocket, and one man cut him on the face and neck. Many hit him with their fists, and Cox stated to a reporter he would probably have been murdered if his wife had not come to the rescue.
He was seriously but not dangerously injured. His wife and two children traveled with him to Fort Myers for medical attention on Saturday night.
On Sunday, Sheriff Maynard, of Collier County, went to Marco with deputies and his famous tracking hound. While searching for the assailants, they captured a cargo of liquor valued at $1,000 that was said to have come directly from Cuba. Four suspects were arrested, including Albert Barlow, who is a well-known seaman, and is said to have ridden a Ferris wheel with notorious Chicago gangster Al Capone on a recent trip to Havana.
Capt. Barlow is being lodged at the Collier County Jail at Everglades. To date, the whereabouts of Capt. Lambeth is unknown.
Ridden a Ferris wheel? Well, in the words of Hunter S. Thompson, tell the truth and let the facts fall where they may. Certain links jumped out: Chicago, Cuba, Capone.
Walter Lambeth threaded them all, but from the shadows.
Tomlinson’s interest moved to human trafficking. A search for a Chinese cemetery, after all, had lured him to Key West. Several stories referenced Cuban- and Bahamian-Chinese, the terms always hyphenated, but focused on the plight of the smugglers, not their human cargo. In the 1920s, an estimated twenty thousand Chinese had slipped in through Florida after completing their eight-year contract with the Cuban government to work in the cane fields. Yet, not one word of description about the immigrants, nor a single interview.
Like Lambeth, the Chinese had existed in the shadows. No wonder they had come willingly into his dark world.
As Tomlinson wound through reels of archives, an interesting pattern emerged. Over and over, history repeated itself—which, in his mind, hinted at the existence of a parallel universe.
News story, September 2010: Five Broward County residents were indicted for an international smuggling ring that brought hundreds of Chinese nationals into the state using fake travel documents. In 2016, a similar operation out of Canton Province was uncovered by the feds.
Stories of smuggling rum, whiskey, and drugs also ping-ponged through the decades.
Good ol’ Florida. The peninsula’s phallic shape was a metaphor for something, Tomlinson wasn’t sure what. One fact was certain: the state had a relentless hard-on when it came to trafficking flesh and sin.
His phone buzzed—a breach of library etiquette. He packed his stuff and went outside to return Gracie’s call.
—
That morning, the girl had signed into the county detention center as Gracie Barlow but exited feeling as if she were Gracie Lambeth because of what Slaten had said after hearing what she feared was bad news.
“You belong to me. Nothing, prison, not even death, will change that.”
“’Til death do us part” was a more formal way of putting it. The sentiments were the same. Gracie had never experienced such soaring happiness. She wanted to tell someone, but who? Slaten, the cute gangster in his orange jumpsuit, had warned, “Your mother? After kicking you out, that bitch won’t understand.”
He said basically the same about her uncle, then showed a jealous side, telling her, “I don’t want you talking to that long-haired freak. He’s a pussy hound. If he so much as touches you, I’ll cut his head off.”
After Slaten said it, the smoky look in his eyes had made her skin vibrate. It reminded Gracie of what she’d been missing.
Slaten had been right about her family, but Tomlinson wasn’t a threat. Jealousy? That was silly—as if she could ever want another man. It put a smile on her face while she crossed the street, rough-looking rednecks and blacks everywhere, oblivious to what she was feeling. Slaten’s van had been impounded, so she was in a little rental Chevy, driving east, before deciding, He’s protective because he loves me. Slaten doesn’t have to know.
Tomlinson, when he answered his phone, said, “Hola, young princess. How’d the lady shrink treat you today?”
State law provided three months of counseling, which was another reason she liked talking to her uncle’s sweet-natured friend. Tomlinson understood. He’d given her a famous book he’d written years ago while in a psychiatric ward.
“Same old crap, so I blew it off. I called and cancelled, just like I promised you if I decided not to go. You won’t tell Tootsie, will you . . . ?”
Tomlinson could be trusted. He asked if she was staying clean, meaning drugs, before she continued on with a bounce in her voice, saying they’d allowed her thirty minutes with Slaten, then got to the fun part. “Guess what?”
“You’re pregnant,” the man replied gently.
“Wow . . . you’re good. I only did the pee strip thing this morning. How’d you know?”
“Lucky guess. I bet you were afraid Slaten would freak out, but he didn’t. In fact, I bet he was happy about it, right?”
Gracie, driving with the phone against her ear, was stunned. “How could you possibly know so much? I just left there not—”
“Sometimes things come to me,” Tomlinson said. “Don’t let it spook you. Not that it doesn’t scare me on occasion, but I don’t want to get into that. Some people, I have an immediate connection. You’re one of them, Gracie.”
She liked the way he spoke, as if she had value as a person. “Hey, maybe this proves it. I haven’t read a book since middle school, but I’m already to the third chapter of yours. It’s unreal, some of the things you say, like now, like you’re right inside my head, but my thoughts are already there on paper.”
“Tell me how Slaten handled the news,” Tomlinson replied.
“That’s what I was worried about. A couple of times—this was on trips, usually to North Florida—he said he hated kids, but you should’ve seen his face light up when I told him. Know what he said? That we’d always be together. Get married! I’m still in shock, I guess, and that’s why—”
Tomlinson knew what was coming. She wanted him to convince Tootsie that someone else, not Slaten, had tortured her and attacked those
girls in Gainesville. The arraignment date, she told him, had been set for Friday, only two days away. If the judge dismissed the case, she and Slaten would need a place to live.
“My uncle hates staying in that cabin, and you know it. I’ll fix it up real nice, maybe even plant a garden—live healthy, for a change. It would be good for all of us. Would you mind talking to him . . . please?”
“The state prosecutor is the one you need to convince,” Tomlinson said.
“That’s where I’m headed now,” she said. “My attorney, the one the judge appointed, he doesn’t think the state has a case if I don’t change my testimony. And I won’t because it’s the truth. All those nights I was chained up, I would’ve known it was Slaten. But it wasn’t, and I’m ready to swear to it now. You believe me, don’t you?”
“What about the girls who were assaulted in Gainesville?”
Gracie, getting defensive, said, “He wasn’t even in Florida at the time. Why would you ask such a thing?”
“Tootsie thinks the guy is using you, and—don’t get mad, okay?—maybe Slaten is using you. Or was. Your uncle thought that, even before you told the truth about your cousin’s pickup truck. I’m not trying to be mean. It’s important you take a step back and see the bigger picture.”
“My uncle could tell the cops what we did, in other words.”
“It wasn’t a threat. I want you to understand there could be repercussions, that’s all.”
The girl took a patient breath before saying, “It wasn’t Slaten. Seriously, if you can read my mind, tell me. Am I lying or telling the truth about him?”
She was telling the truth, but Tomlinson found it hard to say what he did, which was, “I believe you. I have from the start.”
“Thank god someone does. Can you call my uncle now?”
“About the cabin?”
Yes. The girl needed a place tonight because of an argument with her mother.
“You can’t stay out there all alone, and Tootsie’s gone to Key Largo for a few days.”
“Oh . . . damn, yeah, you’re right,” she said. “I don’t mind being by myself usually, but not there, not after what . . . what we talked about.”
Gracie had heard voices, too. It was the first of several connections they’d shared.
“The thing is,” she added, “if I get a hotel tonight, I’m afraid I might be tempted to go out and celebrate the good news. Me, pregnant. I won’t, of course. Promise. I’m just telling you how I feel.”
Tomlinson had dealt with enough addicts to know what that meant.
“I’ll meet you there a little after sunset,” he said. “You stay in the cabin, I’ll sleep in my van.”
—
An old article in the Key West Citizen beckoned him to Petronia Street, off Duval, in search of a Chinese woman, Natsumi Min-Juan. Two decades ago, she had celebrated her seventieth birthday with friends at her little house on Chapman Lane. If still alive, Ms. Min-Juan would be in her nineties. Well worth a search, judging from the article:
“Sumi,” as she is known, came to Florida from Havana as an infant in 1927 on a boat that tragically sank off Cape Sable. Only Ms. Min-Juan and three others survived. As a young girl, Sumi worked as a domestic until she’d saved enough money to open her first restaurant on Duck Key. In later years, she was active in Miami’s Chinese community . . .
Interesting. Cape Sable, a wilderness of sand and shoals, was north of Key West, halfway to Marco Island, for a boat traveling from Cuba. The woman might be a valuable resource if he could find her—and if she was willing to talk to a long-haired stranger with two boxes of purloined bones in the back of his van.
Formalities of some sort were requisite.
Tomlinson had a long, complex history in Key West. He made a few calls before driving to a Buddhist zendo on Stock Island, a quiet hipster enclave where a female student, who might have been Asian, said, “I haven’t visited Madame Min-Juan in a while. May I go with you, Roshi?”
Fate had taken a hand.
The Zen student was Lia Park, from San Francisco and Miami via her job as a Delta pilot. She phoned ahead. They stopped and bought flowers, which Lia carried to the door of a small pink house with chickens in the yard. Once inside, she spoke Chinese before summoning Tomlinson from the porch.
Madame Natsumi Min-Juan, although a tiny woman, possessed the bearing of royalty—a withered countenance that had outlived surprise and fear. Attended by a nurse, she held court from a throne of wicker, although her eyes drifted occasionally to the TV.
“The Price Is Right,” she confided, “is almost as old as I am.”
Bamboo chimes mimicked the sound of her laughter.
They sat in a room spiced with incense while the nurse poured tea. Tomlinson asked questions, which Lia sometimes translated into Chinese if English lacked the necessary nuance. It gave him time to absorb the history on the walls. Amid photos were citations and awards neatly framed. Several were from an organization with the initials CCBA. He asked what they stood for and struck gold, but didn’t realize it until later when he referenced Key West Cemetery.
“I’ve spent more time there than most,” he said, “and don’t remember seeing a Chinese tombstone. It can’t be a racial issue. Lord knows, pirates of every shade are buried out there.”
“We have been buried in that cemetery,” the old woman corrected, “but we seldom stay for long.” This odd response was accompanied by more chiming laughter.
She explained. Chinese custom required that the dead be returned to their home provinces. No one was better qualified to expound on the subject than Ms. Min-Juan, who for decades had been active in the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association. Since the 1880s, the CCBA had been repatriating the bones of immigrants from Florida to California, and as far north as Alaska.
“Bone houses,” she added, “that’s where our people were stored in the old days while they waited. It was complicated work, all the permits required, so we shipped every seven years, first to San Francisco, then on to China. Miami and Key West were our primary ports. So you see? There’s no mystery. Here, I’ll show you.” She motioned to the nurse, who returned with a photo and a booklet, the paper so old it flaked.
Tomlinson opened the book, then passed it to Lia. “What’s it say?”
It was a guide for field-workers; a step-by-step tutorial on how to exhume, clean, and store human remains.
Lia read from the introduction. “‘Responsible workers should follow these steps. Search carefully for graves, and don’t be casual about it. Be mindful!’” She shared a smile with the Zen master, before continuing, “‘Treat your lost ancestors with the respect that one day will be granted you on your final journey home.’”
The book provided a recovery team duty roster: grave locators, a skilled exhumer, a chief gatherer and scraper, and expert packers to wash, dry, and properly wrap the bones. Of great importance was that the queue, or pigtail, not be separated from the skull.
Lia, charmed by the language, read more. “‘Rituals as required by each step are imperative when engaged in a process so fraught with supernatural danger. Do it properly and the spirits of the deceased will welcome you. Fail, and the dangers can be serious.’”
Tomlinson thought, I nailed this one, yet wanted to know more before revealing what was in his van.
A photo, an old black-and-white, showed the interior of a brick room where boxes were stacked floor to ceiling. Metal boxes, not large, etched with Chinese glyphs. A bone house.
“The metal was called white iron,” Madame Min-Juan said, “but they were actually zinc-coated. Not inexpensive, and paid for entirely by donations. Our volunteers were already experts by the time I got involved. That was”—she had to think back—“in the early 1960s. The work was hard but rewarding. In our culture, there is no higher good deed than rescuing restless bones, or covering an uncovered coffin.
As we were taught, honoring the dead is a sign of virtue and respect toward one’s elders.”
She continued on about traditions, then the process of repatriating bones, her focus on Lia, the young Asian woman, while keeping a wary eye on Tomlinson.
“Along with procedural problems, Florida was difficult for other reasons. Boat captains often kept no records of Chinese who’d paid for transport from Cuba and the Bahamas. If a passenger died, or even a dozen passengers, well”—she shrugged—“they might throw their bodies overboard. Or sometimes dig a mass grave. Smuggling was illegal, of course, so the graves were often left unmarked, which is understandable, I suppose. However, how and why some Chinese died before they even . . . Well, I would say more, but choose not to be indelicate.”
Tomlinson put down his cup and saucer. “I read that you came from Cuba as an infant. That you were only one of three survivors after your boat foundered off Cape Sable. Is that how it really happened?”
The woman’s gaze sharpened while she adjusted her robe of blue silk. “Why are you interested in such things, young man? Old stories that do not concern you? Yes, about the boat, that’s what I have told reporters.”
“I think it does involve me, and not by choice. The doctrines of karma and samsara—our cyclical paths—brought me here.” He let that sink in for a moment. “In my van are two boxes meant to be delivered to you. I didn’t know until just now, but first I want to understand what we’re dealing with. I’m a sailor; I know Cape Sable well. In a storm, it’s very unlikely an infant could have survived. A boat would break up on those shoals.”
Inscrutable—it fit, the way her face became a blank shield. “I was very young, not an infant, yet remember almost nothing. A black night and waves. Men yelling in English. That’s all.”
“It was an unfair question,” Tomlinson agreed. “When you were older, did someone—another survivor, perhaps—tell you where the boat was headed? From Cuba, Key West would have been the logical stop, but your boat continued north another sixty-some miles. Marco Island would have been the next landfall.”
Mangrove Lightning Page 15