After Tomlinson read the letter, he looked at me and said, “You know what he’s doing, don’t you?”
We’d walked outside, putting some distance between Dunn and ourselves so we could speak privately. The three of us standing in the shade of a big oak, Spanish moss hanging, Mango Bay holding blue light beyond, its islands undefined, ledges of black and gray.
“Taking one last opportunity to manipulate people,” I answered. “He could have trusted his attorney with the letters, the photos, the coins, everything. But that just wasn’t Tuck’s way.”
Tomlinson was shaking his head, his arm over Ransom’s shoulder, telling me I was wrong. “No. You don’t see the pattern? It’s for Ransom. All of it. And you. What he’s doing is making sure the daughter he never really got to know sees the Florida he loved. Tucker had his quirks, I don’t argue that, but he was crazy about this country. That’s what this is all about. He figured out a way to get you two together, a way so you’d have to take her around to the places he cared about, the places that made him the man he was.”
Ransom found that touching. I could see it in her expression as she said, “You really think that it?”
“I’d bet on it. I didn’t know Tucker well, but there was always a reason for his goofy ideas. Everything on separate levels. You think about it, Doc, the man’s whole life is a metaphor for all kinds of stuff. With some people, their only attempt at art is the way they live their lives.”
I had my hands on my hips, indifferent, not the least bit interested in hearing it.
Ransom sniffed and touched a finger to the corner of her eye. “Back when I was a little girl, I used to pray he’d come take me away. And when my sweet boy, Tucker, disappear in Horse Eatin’ Lake, I prayed even harder. Now he done it. My daddy found a way to come take me.” Then: “What that stuff about Koreshans mean? He talkin’ about that crazy man who burned up with all them people awhile back?”
Tomlinson took the letter again, rereading it, as I explained that no, there wasn’t a connection. At the turn of the century, Florida attracted-and continues to attract-odd religious splinter groups. The Koreshans had been led by a New York physician, Dr. Cyrus R. Teed, who convinced his gifted followers to come to Florida and found a New Jerusalem in the wilderness. They’d built a beautiful, functional little town on the banks of the Estero River. Teed had also preached celibacy, which is probably why his sect hadn’t lasted beyond the lives of its followers.
Not that requirements of celibacy intimidated Tuck. Joseph Egret had once told me that my uncle kept a boat at the Koreshan docks because of all the love-starved women who lived in the female dormitory there. He’d pole his boat in quiet, at night, and leave a little lantern on for ladies watching from windows to see.
Tomlinson folded the letter. “Isn’t there an Ingraham Bay down below Shark River? That whole Cape Sable area, it’s beautiful. No roads, no houses for thirty, forty miles. That’s where he wants us to go next.”
I told him, “You two find the Koreshan music hall, I’ll go to Shark River alone. I’ll either rent a boat in Chokoloskee or run the Maverick down. Depending on the weather.”
Chokoloskee is an island south of Everglades City. There’s a boat ramp there, a few rental skiffs, and a small marina.
I thought about it for a moment. How much delay should I allow the Colombians? There had to be sufficient time for logistics to be arranged. I thought about the guy in the Taurus, the guy who’d try to tail me, telling me about the three men in the Chrysler. I thought about Dunn describing Clare and Izzy-not that there was any reason to expect Clare and Izzy to react, anticipate, or understand, nor could I rely on their behavior. After a moment, I said, “Tomorrow afternoon, that’s when I’ll go. I’ll head down there right after the guides leave and the fuel pumps are open.”
“You don’t want company? Amigo, it just so happens I got the whole weekend free. I’d love to go.”
“Nope.”
I am rarely so short with Tomlinson and he was taken aback. “You seem undecided-hah! Kidding, just kidding.” Then: “What’s the problem, Doc? You don’t buy my theory that the old cowboy-Tucker I’m talking about-that Tuck came up with a way to get you two together. Ingenious. It really is. So you at least ought to take Ransom, plus it’s been more than a year since I poked around Shark River myself. I wouldn’t mind going back.”
I was shaking my head, walking away. “Another time. I’ve got my reasons.”
I listened to Ransom say, “See? Didn’t I tell you something had him very scared? He a very frightened man, though he won’t admit it,” as I opened the door of my old truck, removed the cell phone off the dashboard, slipped it into my pocket.
19
That afternoon, I finished work around the lab and made phone calls. I tried to contact Hal Harrington at the numbers he’d given me, but his secretaries in Cartagena, San Jose, and D.C. told me he was away from the office. The secretary in D.C. said that he was not expected back until morning.
To each, I said, “Tell him that tomorrow I’ll be leaving for Cape Sable, just below Shark River. I’ll probably camp on the beach there. He can call me on the cell phone.”
If they found the long message odd, they gave no indication.
I told the same thing to Lindsey, who did seem puzzled. “That sounds like the place you told me about. And you’re going there without me? I’m jealous. I wish you could wait a week. Last night, when I was talking to him, my dad said he thought it’d be safe for me to be on my own, it wasn’t likely the kidnappers would try again, but just give it five or six more days.”
I explained to her that the trip wasn’t recreational, it was family business, and that we’d go another time. We talked for a little while before I asked her if she knew where her dad was.
She said, “He’s in Virginia. He’ll be back in D.C. tomorrow,” then I listened to her tell me about the skiing, how damn cold and boring it was up there when she wasn’t on the slope, and that she wished she had my bear paws to warm her, or was back in Florida, lying in the sun on some deserted beach alone with me.
Then she told me she had to run, Big Ben and Little Ben, her bodyguards, were outside in the Range Rover, waiting to take her back to the lifts. The two of them were a hoot, especially Big Ben.
I said, “I’ll call you in the morning before I leave Dinkin’s Bay,” making doubly certain she was clear about my schedule.
Twenty minutes later, I was inside South Trust Bank on Periwinkle. I made it just before they closed.
I found one of the managers, signed the log sheet, then went into the little room where she opened my safety-deposit box and handed me an old leather attache case, which I didn’t open until I was back in the lab.
Crunch amp; Des lay in the window watching me with disinterest as I opened the attache case and looked inside to make sure everything was there. I saw one folder labeled OPERATION PHOENIX and another with the words DIRECCION: BLANCA MANAGUA written on a label in red felt-tip pen, plus several others.
I returned all the folders to the leather case and put it in a garbage bag to keep it dry. Then I made myself busy readying my skiff for a long trip. I packed the starboard locker with water, ice, Diet Coke, and beer.
I packed the port locker with canned beans, corned beef, and a couple of tinned hams-enough food for several days, plus my stout Loomis bait-casting rod with a fine old ABU reel loaded with twenty-pound test. I carry it for stopping big-shouldered fish around mangroves when I need to put food on the table.
I didn’t know how long I’d be gone. I doubted if it would be more than two days, but I had no way of knowing for certain.
There is a saying I remembered from a month spent in Burma working with The King’s Own Gurkha Rifles: To catch a tiger, you must understand the behavior of goats.
After packing tent, mosquito netting, jungle boots, Navy issue crewneck sweater, watch cap, and miscellaneous camping gear, I reloaded Tucker’s old Smith amp; Wesson and placed it beneath the boat’s cons
ole beside my Sig Sauer.
Even though I hadn’t shot one in years, I’d have much preferred to have a rifle-something big bore with a first-rate scope.
I’d already spoken with Ransom. She’d seemed bubbly, almost giggly. She told me about their visit to the Koreshan Unity. Something Tuck never anticipated had happened: The place had become a state park, completely fenced in with a guard gate, so she’d had to distract the nice, handsome ranger man while Tomlinson slipped into the Music Hall and found the hidden papers, right where Tuck had said.
Interesting papers, which she described. There were personal notes and letters, all to Tucker, from enthusiastic fishermen and hunters he’d guided and introduced to Florida’s backcountry. The letters were signed by men such as Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Charles Lindbergh, Dick Pope, and Walt Disney. There were lots of photographs, too-all signed.
“Mr. Tommy, he tol’ me some of these papers might be worth more than our coins. Not that we’d want to sell them, ’course. I’m just pointing out how Daddy Gatrell thought of his daughter and took care of her.”
She also told me, if I didn’t mind, that she and Mr. Tommy had gotten a room at the Naples Hilton to celebrate. He’d been telling her about something called a massage, an herbal wrap, and a facial, womanly things she’d never heard of but wanted to try because, at her age, she said she wanted to try everything she could while she could.
She added, “If you not leaving for Shark River ’til tomorrow morning, why don’t you pull in here and pick us up? Mr. Tommy, he say Naples is right on your way. I don’t want you to make that trip alone, Doc. I got me a very bad feeling about what it is you doing. I touch my gris-gris bag, I touch my beads, and I get the really strong feeling someone gonna die.”
I told her that I wasn’t going to die no matter what her beads said-a subtle avoidance that she didn’t catch-and to please put Mr. Tommy on the phone.
After a moment, I heard Tomlinson’s voice say, “Doc? Wait ’til you see what it was the old bastard left for you two at the Koreshan Unity. These amazing letters and pictures. A handwritten letter from Lindbergh inviting Tuck to visit him in Hawaii. A letter from Walt Disney thanking Tuck for a great day fishing and his advice about where to build in Florida. There’s this other letter-you won’t believe who wrote it. This other letter-”
I said, “Hold it; be quiet for a second.” Tomlinson was talking about one thing, but the nervous quality of his voice told me he was thinking about something else, which is why I cut him off. I said, “Tomlinson? Tell me something. Are you planning on sleeping in the same room with Ransom tonight?”
“Well, because of the prices and all; it’s tourist season, you know… and we are at the Hilton. It was all kind of Ransom’s idea because she wanted to be closer to Mango so we can stop back there in the morning and really take a look around. She’s considering moving into Tuck’s old place-can you dig that?-which is why I thought-”
Yep, he was nervous alright.
I interrupted again. “Please, please… spare me, okay? I know what’s going on in that twisted and lecherous brain of yours. How many times have you told me that you’d never met an attractive woman in your life without immediately calculating the best way to get her into bed. Which is why you’re not-repeat, are not -sleeping with Ransom tonight, damn it.”
“Hey, amigo, as we both know, my you-know-what doesn’t work worth a you-know-what-”
“I don’t care about that. It’s just not right.”
Heard Tomlinson say, “Ransom? Would you excuse me for a moment?” Then, after a short pause, “Doc, I need to remind you of a couple of things. Ransom’s a grown woman-a lot older than some of the women you date, by the way. She’s been married and divorced. She’s a mother. Call me a hopeless bleeding heart feminist, but I think she’s capable of making her own decisions about who she sleeps with.”
“Absolutely not. The only reason you’re interested in her is because of the way she looks, that body of hers, and because you’re hoping she knows some kind of island spell, Obeah I’m talking about, that’ll make your equipment work. Which is bullshit, and I don’t want her to be a part of something like that.”
“Am I really hearing this?”
“You bet you are.”
“I don’t get it. Yeah, Ransom’s spectacular, but not just because she’s great-looking, man. It’s because of her age, her personality. It’s the whole far-out package. There’s like this truly karmic gig going on between us, not the least of which is that we’re both worried shitless about you. About what the hell kind of crazy, dangerous thing you are up to now.”
“I’m not going to listen to this, Tomlinson. You two are not sleeping together. You just met! End of story.”
“But why?”
“It’s not obvious? I don’t want you to sleep with her, damn it all, Tomlinson, because she’s my-” I caught myself. I’d almost said because she was my sister. Instead, I said, “Because she’s a blood relative, and the potential for complications is just too great. It would be like dating someone from the marina. And we both agree about the dangers of that.”
“I’m sorry, I really am, Doc, but no promises,” he said. “I just can’t. The attraction’s too strong, man. Very heavy vibes, which I think she feels, too. Ransom’s one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met; that’s just the way it is. But I’ll let you know.”
Which really infuriated me.
After I hung up, I worked around the lab. I got everything I could packaged and mailed off.
I waited until an hour after dark to trailer the skiff behind my pickup, then I drove it south toward the Everglades, Mango, and the islands beyond.
I pulled into Everglades City at a little after 8:30 P.M. It was a half-moon night with stars. Everglades is a mangrove town built at the border of sawgrass and sea by a turn-of-the-century visionary and power baron. It was to have been the political seat of a great county. The village’s fortunes ascended briefly, but isolation and swamp are formidable consorts, and it ultimately returned to being the outpost it was destined to remain.
Everglades had changed much, though, in just the last year or two-lots of new tourist facilities, several new restaurants, and a billboard near the village circle advertising a trailer park on the narrow road to Chokoloskee. There were authentic Seminole souvenirs, gator tail sandwiches, birding tours and airboat rides, all the tacky, touristy standbys that are the historic mainstays of tacky, touristy South Florida.
Like Mango, the modern world had finally moved to within reach of Everglades City and begun the slow, osmotic process of change and homogenization.
I crossed the elevated river bridge and dropped down onto a slow boulevard of palms. The village has had the same streetlights since the 1930s, glass moon-globes on ornate iron stems. The streetlights were set apart at incremental distances, creating theatrical islands of light as I toured slowly through town. I was tempted to stop and have dinner at the Rod amp; Gun Club. I remembered, fondly, a nice lady I’d once overnighted with in one of the little cottages there. We’d spent it holding one another, nothing more, two friends providing comfort. One of the few and truly good ones. I remembered her good eyes and strong heart, and I wished her another private, silent farewell.
I make it a rule not to linger in sentimentality, however; I seem to have less and less tolerance for it. Tomlinson insists that the opposite is true. He says that I have grown both spiritually and emotionally since I opened the lab at Dinkin’s Bay. He doesn’t seem to understand that I don’t consider that a compliment.
I decided not to waste time ordering dinner at a restaurant. I had canned goods in the boat, drinks, too. Instead, I turned back through town and stopped at the Circle K, where I loaded on more ice and fuel, then launched my skiff at the boat ramp.
The tide on the Baron River was ebbing. At idle, the black current swept me southward through the village and into the night. I stood at the wheel of my boat, big engine rumbling, and looked at the lights of
the village. I could see people moving across scrims of windows, framed by leaves and vines, a micro-snapshot of lives being lived in this isolated Florida place.
Then, far off to the left, I could see the glow of Chokoloskee as I powered to plane across Chokoloskee Bay, running the flashing markers out Indian Key Pass, the moon following along behind me, its blue light strobing through the limbs of mangroves. The tops of the trees were individualized and set apart in starlight, a primeval canopy against the brighter sky. Then the mangroves thinned, fell away, and disappeared so that it was like breaking some gravitational hold, and I was suddenly free, running straight into blackness and a horizon of stars.
When I was well offshore, clear of coral rock and oyster bars, I banked southwest. Sea and sky were lucent spheres joined at the horizon. I sledded across, down the surface of one sphere, then up the surface of another.
In a few minutes, I picked up the gloom of Pavilion Key, the westernmost of the Ten Thousand Islands, and an effective range to deep water.
Twenty miles or so beyond, I knew, was Shark River.
I stopped only once. I calculated that I was slightly south of Lostman’s River. I took a whiz off the stern, looking up at the sky. No boats, no lights, nothing. The coast-line was all darkness here. I might have been the only human being left on earth. I switched off the engine. I sat drifting there, in no hurry now. I stripped off my clothes and swung over the side, my only way to bathe for the next few days.
The February ocean was chilly, in the low seventies, nearly cold.
Back in the boat, I dried myself and checked the cut on my left arm. It seemed to be closing nicely. I squirted antibiotic cream onto gauze and taped it into place. Then I put on fresh clothes. I hadn’t worn these clothes in so long that their use suggested ceremony. I put on camo BDUs, the dense Navy sweater over a T-shirt and the black watch cap.
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