“The place happened to be holding a limbo contest that night. You may remember what a superb limbo dancer I am.”
I shook my head. “Un-uh. The last time I can remember you limboing was at the marina. It was almost a year ago at the Friday cotillion, maybe longer. You were wearing that red sarong you like, nothing else, so I left. Walked out on the docks, along with most of the other people there. Some things, you just don’t want to see.”
“Then take my word for it. I’m one of the all-time great limbo dancers. It’s like a gift from God, the rhythm, the balance-actually a very delicate form of levitation if done properly. The great poet Basho wrote about it once. Metaphorically, of course-he didn’t use the word ‘limbo.’ ”
I said, “Ah.” I’d returned my attention to the woman. She was lying there with her eyes closed, stretched out in the winter heat. “So you met her at the bar. Then what?”
“We danced. We laughed. We drank. As you know, people tend to trust and confide in me quickly.”
“Yep, that I can certainly confirm.”
“Before I knew it, she was leaning against my shoulder, crying. She told me the whole long, sad story. She’d been holding in the hurt for so long that, clinically, she was on the verge of a complete breakdown. I couldn’t go off and leave her alone. No way. That night, she slept in my bed. But I didn’t touch her-not in any romantic, sexual sense. She was much, much too vulnerable. Sometimes, being a moraled man in an immoral world is a gigantic pain in the ass.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” I said, smiling. “You were on your best behavior. But somehow the relationship changed.”
“Not then. We were together for the next three nights. Gradually, I talked her into a more peaceful frame of mind.
“We’ve stayed in contact since, and she’s finally worked up the nerve to leave her asshole husband. She agreed to meet me here-not as a student, but for a few days of rest and relaxation. That was coincidental, too. I’d actually invited someone else, a woman I’ve never seen face to face. It was someone I really wanted us both to meet. But she backed out at the last minute.”
There was something odd about his tone, but I didn’t inquire.
Now, as his head turned toward the pool, his expression became a slow description of frustration and sadness. “Nimba arrived three days ago, the afternoon of my last Beginner’s Mind class. You wondered why I haven’t been here for the last few sunsets? I’ve spent all three nights in that gorgeous woman’s duplex, and I couldn’t perform. I tried and tried, and I just couldn’t. The little bastard’s turned traitor on me. Not that I’m so little,” he added quickly. “Let’s face it. Everybody at the marina knows. No way to hide the damn thing. I’m hung like a bull dolphin.”
I said, “Very famous with the island women, no question about that. How’d she react?”
“Not good. She blames herself, of course. That abusive husband of hers has absolutely destroyed her self-confidence. Then I come along and add to her pain.” He looked at me. “You understand now why I want to get that tattoo on my ass?”
“I think you’re making too much of it. You say the problem’s not physiological, so you need to back up a couple of steps. Take your own emotional survey. Figure out what’s going on. Are you feeling any unusual amount of stress? Depression, maybe?” I hesitated before adding, “Or guilt? From what I’ve read about the brain’s chemistry, guilt can be a very powerful inhibitor. Affects all kinds of behavior and body functions. Because of certain chemicals released, and there’s another one-serotonin, I think-it creates a shortage of serotonin so there’s a direct physiological reaction.”
He wasn’t looking at me as I added, “Or maybe it has something to do with all the dope you’ve been smoking and alcohol. Seems to me you stepped it up a few notches in the last six months or so.”
Tomlinson was nodding, thinking about that. “Could be, could be. The source of all karma bondage is delusion, and there’s a very fine line between being seriously fucked up and fucked up seriously. Now that you mention it, I have been having an unusual amount of werewolf mornings.” When I didn’t respond, he explained, “A werewolf morning, that’s when you wake up, look around the room hoping not to see blood because you can’t remember what happened the night before.”
I said, “I’m no physician, but I suspect that’s not a good sign. Once again, maybe you need to take that survey. Depression or guilt. Something’s going on up there in that great big brain of yours, old friend.”
He sighed. “Doc, some of the things I’ve done in my life, I’d give my left nut to change. Know how, on a computer, you can drag down, highlight, then hit delete? I’d trash a couple years of my life, no problem. Maybe even a whole decade, I was such a crazed asshole. Some mistakes, though, there’s no going back. You just keep paying and paying. The masters teach that there are five deadly sins, and one of them is destroying your own Buddha nature. Maybe way back, that’s what I did. And wouldn’t you just know that my dick would be the first to show symptoms.”
I told him, “Most people, the honest ones, would like to go back and change a few things. Some of the dumb things we do, some of the idiotic things we say. I’m talking about myself, by the way. You’ve got your demons, who doesn’t? Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
He turned to face me. “You mentioned guilt, man. It’s like you just tuned right into my brain frequency. Your intuition, it just keeps getting better and better, which, if you don’t mind my saying, is a good thing for someone who started out with no more emotional sensitivity than a meat thermometer. No offense.”
I was smiling again. “None taken.”
“But this guilt thing… what might be bothering me, is some of my old screwups have come back to mess with my brain. Like in my dreams. Bad stuff I did, I mean really bad stuff. Just in the last few months the memories have come back, so yeah, maybe that’s what’s taking the lead out of my pencil. Doc…” I watched his fingers search and find another strand of hair to tug, the tremor even worse. “Doc… there’s something I’ve been wondering about, but never had the balls to ask.”
“Ask away.”
“I’ve always kinda wondered if… well, do you know about some of the shit I got involved with? A long time ago, I’m talking about. It worries me that you’ve always known, and I’ve never taken the time or had the courage to try and explain.”
I don’t often lie, particularly to friends, but sometimes it’s necessary. “Nope. I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t want to know. Whatever you did, whatever you think you did, all the good you’ve done for people-all the good I’ve seen you do-that should more than make up for it.”
Beyond the tennis courts and the palms, I made peripheral note of two yellow Scarab-type high-performance boats idling in the direction of Guava Key’s small back dock. I recognized the boats as being from the Mercury engine test center at Placida, fourteen miles north. All day long, those yellow boats could be seen flying up and down the Intracoastal Waterway, logging hours on experimental engines. Why were they out this late in the day? And why were they now idling into Guava Key?
Another little alarm bell went off in my head.
I stood and said, “It’s time for my run.”
“That’s it? No more advice? No encouragement?”
I smiled. “I encourage you to take the lady home, sit her down, and tell her exactly what you’ve already told me about your so-called problem. If she’s as bright as you’ve described, she’ll understand and she won’t blame herself and she won’t blame you, either. I then encourage the two of you to drink a bottle or two of wine and have fun-whether your equipment works or not.”
I stepped through the French doors into the master bedroom, where I changed to shorts and Nikes. I stretched for a couple of minutes, then headed out along the island’s conch-pink sidewalk. From above me and behind, I heard Tomlinson call, “Hey, I almost forgot-did you get your message from the front desk?”
I turned to see him stil
l balanced cross-legged on the roof, a curious scarecrow shape, sitting as if he were, indeed, levitating. I answered, “I didn’t get any messages. But then, I don’t expect any messages so I never stop to check.”
“Exactly what I figured. I was at the office this morning and the lady gave it to me to give to you. Someone called from the mainland-wanted to come over on the boat taxi to see you. The island’s got to give permission, you know. Someone named Ebanks.”
I said, “Ebanks? I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“They left a number to call.”
I told him, “Maybe when I get back,” and jogged away.
2
Guava Key is contoured by high hills and valleys, which are really the remains of pyramidlike temples built of shell by contemporaries of the Aztecs, a people known as the Calusa. After a couple hundred years of neglect and detritus rot, the shell base was now covered by loam and trees and designer landscaping.
I jogged down the highest hill through a grove of citrus trees, limbs heavy with tangerines and little yellow Spanish limes, then north along the beach. Ran past rows of modern vacation homes that were careful imitations of tin-roofed Cracker houses, and so thereby emphasized their newness. Where the pink sidewalk looped and ended, I cut toward the bay side of the island, picking up the pace as my lungs seemed to expand and become more efficient.
Guava Key once had a grass airstrip on the narrow, southern point of the island, but it had been recently closed and platted for building. On an island where property values are astronomical, a half-mile strip of open land was an impossible indulgence. I turned south on the strip, running hard on the straightaway. On either side was mangrove fringe. Through hedges of black limbs, I could see patterns of shadow and light and the brassy gold of water at sunset.
At the very tip of the island, ahead of me but not yet in sight, was a canal for small boats and a boardwalk that wound through the trees to a dock. It is the only deserted part of the island. No houses, no golf cart trails, too many mosquitoes for foot traffic. Yet, I knew that if I followed the boardwalk to the dock, I would find the girl joggers I’d seen earlier, the two of them standing there, cooling down from their run, watching the sunset.
I also knew from our few previous encounters that the blonde’s greeting would be slightly cheerier, more inviting than Ponytail’s grim nod.
I am reluctant to impose on anyone’s solitude, so I’d decided to do what I’d done for the last two evenings: turn around at the boardwalk, thereby avoiding the women.
But, as I ran, something happened that caused me to change my mind. Nothing dramatic. It was a very small thing, indeed. What happened was, ahead of me and to my right, a flock of parrots flushed out of the mangroves, screaming and cawing their way into clumsy flight. Parrots aren’t indigenous to Florida. Birds escape, meet, breed, reproduce, then tumble around in groups like feral outlanders. From my years in Central and South America, however, I am very familiar with the warning alarm that parrots make, and that was the sound I heard as the birds flushed.
Someone or something was in those mangroves.
Not that I suspected anything sinister. I have an orderly mind that naturally seeks explanation for the unexplained. This was an oddity, a small incident that did not mesh with the expected pattern of cause and effect. A mangrove fringe is an inhospitable area. Those swampy borders stink of muck and sulfur. They’re a breeding ground for mosquitoes. People avoid mangroves for good reason.
So what had spooked the birds?
As I approached the boardwalk, still running, I heard a voice call, “’Scuse me, mister big man. Hello? Could you maybe give me some information?” A female voice with the breezy, singsong rhythm of the Bahamas. When she said “maybe,” I heard “maw-be.” When she said “big man,” I heard “beeg mon.”
I glanced to see a tall, coffee-brown woman pulling a canoe up onto the bank of the little canal. Late twenties, early thirties, wading-bird legs, heavy breasts without bra that swooped and strained, defining themselves. She wore a tie-dyed T-shirt, scarlet and blue, over canvas shorts that emphasized her legs and muscular rump. I noted that her hair was braided cornrow-style with red beads at the ends and her gaunt, chocolate-colored skin stretched tight over athletic cheeks, bones, and jaw. A striking figure.
I held up an index finger-“Back in a minute!”-and mounted the boardwalk, ducking beneath mangrove limbs, feeling my own weight in the vibration of wood.
The boardwalk tunneled through the mangrove fringe for more than fifty meters, then made a sharp right toward the bay. When I made that turn, I saw what had frightened the parrots. I also knew immediately that the two runners, Blonde and Ponytail, were headed for a very nasty fall. Not that they realized it. Nope, not yet, and not surprising. Targets who are about to become victims seldom see it coming.
Ahead of me, the boardwalk became a low dock on pilings that poked a couple hundred feet out into the bay. The girls were at the end of the dock, leaning against the railing, faces toward the parachute-sized sphere that was the setting sun. The sky was a lucent indigo streaked with citrus and peach. The bay was glazed with molten gold.
Between the shore and the girls were two men. The men were walking toward the end of the dock, backs to me. Each wore blue coveralls, the legs of the coveralls showing fresh mud stains up to the calves.
They’d just waded through the mangroves, flushing birds.
Another telltale indicator: Both men also wore ski masks.
Except for 7-Eleven clerks and the occasional bank teller, we don’t see a lot of ski masks in Florida.
My first reaction was surprise: damn! Then, as my brain translated the visual data, my reaction changed to: oh-h-h-h-h damn, because some kind of involvement was now impossible to avoid.
The men had some bulk to them and moved with a disconcerting confidence. One carried some kind of semiautomatic pistol in his left hand, the bottle-sized sound arrestor pointed downward, as if to hide it. The other man carried what looked to be a walkie-talkie or cell phone. On the south side of the dock, the yellow Scarab hull was idling in for a landing, its engines making a slow, thunderous rumble. It looked to be pretty close to thirty feet long and had the Wellcraft logo on the side. The other boat sat off several hundred yards, as if waiting to see what happened.
In panic situations where events unfold rapidly, the brain sometimes processes those events in what seems to be slow motion. That was the way my brain now reacted. It was as if I were viewing a film run at half-speed. My eyes suddenly enjoyed absolute clarity in which I seemed to see everything at once, interpreting and understanding what was happening and why.
Clarity is not always an aspect to be envied.
What I saw were professionals who’d done their homework. It is what the really good ones must do to succeed and survive. They learn their target’s habits, their target’s routes.
There’s a very good reason for that.
All routes have a chokepoint-a section of road or walkway the target must take to reach his or her final destination. The most suitable chokepoints also possess a contained area that can be easily sealed and controlled by the assassin or his accomplices. That precise place where the hit will be made is known to people in the business as the X-spot.
What I had stumbled into was an attempt to murder or to kidnap one or both of the women runners. The shooter would shoot, confirm his kill, then escape in the yellow boat. Or the men would wrestle one or both of the girls into the boat, transport them at speed to another vessel or waiting car, kidnapping complete.
The second yellow boat could be there to serve as a decoy in the event someone gave chase, or as a backup. The boats were stolen, of course. Choosing Mercury test boats suggested a level of professional sophistication that was unsettling. They were fast boats but a part of the common seascape, boats that always followed the same Intracoastal route, so very easy to anticipate, track, and take down.
Steal a couple high-performance boats, then abandon them when do
ne. That was probably the plan. The actual escape vehicle would be nearby, a boat or a car on some island or maybe a chopper.
Unfortunately, in those few moments of clarity, I didn’t process the wisest course of action. Charge into a group of armed men who were being assisted by other men, who were, presumably, also armed?
Suicidal.
I should have turned, tucked my tail, and lumbered off to the nearest phone.
My instincts are usually pretty good. Not this time, though. This time, my poor judgment nearly got me killed.
The engines of the boat now lying aside the dock were rumbling at idle, the vibration so loud that it radiated through water and wood. The noise masked the sound of my heavy feet.
There was another man in the Scarab, standing at the helm, his face covered by a bandana. Three men in all, two on the dock, one aboard, and their attention was laser-focused on the women who were their targets.
That was encouraging. It seemed to give me the extra few steps I believed I needed.
The women had finally noticed the approaching men. I could see the expression on Blonde’s face change from surprise to puzzlement and then to fear when she correctly interpreted the only reason why men would wear ski masks in the late winter heat. I saw Ponytail’s expression change from indifference to an emotion that may have been anger. Her reaction certainly wasn’t passive.
As always, Ponytail was wearing a gray belly pouch strapped around her waist. I watched her reach into the pouch with her right hand as she threw her left hand up, palm out as if to hold the men away. Heard her yell, “Freeze! No closer!” as she drew a chrome, short-barreled revolver from the pouch, probably a. 38, crouching as she lifted the weapon into the classic combat position.
Surprise, surprise. The lady jogger was armed.
I was sprinting now, seeing everything in articulate, slow detail as it happened. I watched the man with the big semiautomatic raise his pistol in the same instant. Watched his left hand bounce with the recoil of firing. Heard two distinct th-h-wap-waps as Ponytail’s revolver flew high into the air then banged its weight upon the deck. I expected her to fall, but she didn’t. I expected to see blood, but there was none. The woman wasn’t hit. She was stunned, probably, and spasmed by shock.
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