Which is why I told Frieda to keep her distance, and why I didn’t go charging right in.
We followed the mob down the sandy drive, past the pool bar, and then under the condo parking to the beach where rental kayaks and canoes were neatly stacked by the water. I kept looking and looking, and finally picked out JoAnn, Rhonda, Ransom, Claudia, and Amelia moving along with the mob, in their own tight little group. I ran up behind them, grabbed Ransom and JoAnn by the arms, and yelled to them above the noise, “You ladies come with me. We’re going to watch this from the docks.” Meaning I didn’t want to risk some drunk taking a swing at any of us.
Ransom wouldn’t budge, though. “Mister pretty man and his friends, they all jump on Jeth at once. Know how it started? One of their guys, he drunk, and he find out who Amelia was, and he ask her, right out loud, ‘Tell us the truth about the drug deal that got your buddies killed. Everybody in Florida know you’re lying.’ That’s when Jeth step in. Then their women friends, they try to rip Jeth’s shirt off him. You think I’m gonna let them city trash get away with something like that?”
“Ransom, please! As a favor to me. Okay?”
She didn’t want to follow me, but she finally relented, allowing the mob to move away from us, and I led the five of them-Frieda had wisely vanished-up the ridge to the docks where we could watch the scene from the aspect of open water.
It was not a pretty thing to watch.
They’d torn off all of Jeth’s T-shirt except for the collar and a patch of material down his back. He was faced off against Camphill while a few men but mostly women stood around them in a ragged circle, screaming. In peripheral skirmishes, I noticed that a couple of our guides, big Felix Lane and Javier Castillo-a Cuban immigrant-were moving from fight-cluster to fight-cluster, separating the combatants until they could tell who was who, then systematically cold-cocking anyone they didn’t recognize as one of us, an islander-something else that was not pretty to watch.
But the main event was Jeth Nicholes, the local fishing guide who’d just lost the love of his life, and Gunnar Camphill, the film hero.
So far, it looked as if Jeth had gotten the worst of it. His face was swollen, and blood was pouring from his nose. I watched Camphill use his nasty side-kick to batter Jeth into the canoe rack, then almost drop him with a spinning back elbow to the ribs. Jeth staggered, nearly fell, but managed to keep his feet.
I badly wanted to help him, but I couldn’t. You can’t fight another man’s battle. Jeth wasn’t going to quit, and he would have taken my intrusion as an admission that he was beaten.
But he wasn’t.
I watched him take a deep breath, charge Camphill, and manage to wrestle his arms around the man’s chest. The actor knew all the pressure points, all the dangerous places to hit. But Jeth held on and, with the slow determination of a boa constrictor, worked his way upward until he got Camphill’s neck cradled in his strong right arm, then used his left hand to apply pressure-a headlock.
That’s when the momentum began to turn.
Jeth grabbed a fistful of Camphill’s hair and levered him over his hip onto the sand-a weird thing to see because a cap-sized patch of the actor’s hair actually came off in Jeth’s hand. Jeth looked at the thing, shocked, and then flung it into the water.
It made no sense at first, but then I realized-a small crown toupee. Camphill wore a hairpiece.
Maybe the psychological impact of being exposed had something to do with it, or maybe Camphill was just exhausted. Whatever the reason, Jeth ended it quickly, using his fists to pound away at the man’s face until Camphill rolled into a fetal position, hands protecting his head, calling, “Enough! Enough! I quit, goddamn it!”
Jeth stood shakily; he seemed a little surprised that it was over and he had won.
But it wasn’t over yet. He still had a small mob to deal with, pointed-face and tennis player among them, plus a couple dozen women and men. The little mob began to walk toward Jeth as he retreated, backing away faster and faster until he was running as they pursued him.
He chose exactly the right escape route. I watched him vault over the railing of the dock where we stood, then sprint toward us, not realizing, at first, that we were there-he probably had planned to jump into the water to get away.
His expression, when he saw us, was touching. It’s a frightening thing to have a mob after you, and his face registered panic, then puzzlement, as his brain scanned to identify us and analyze the situation. Then his expression changed to pure relief.
I pushed him past me, saying, “You okay?” not expecting an answer. Then I began to walk shoreward, toward pointed-face and tennis player, who were leading the mob.
Both men stopped abruptly when they realized who I was. The men and women behind them suddenly went quiet, perhaps sensing pointed-face’s uneasiness. They saw the way he was looking at me, seeming to get smaller as he took a step back, then another, retreating as I continued to walk toward him, his little mob bunched up behind him now, blocking his escape.
When I was just a couple of paces away, hearing sirens warbling in the distance, he yelled, “Stay away from me, damn you! Don’t you touch me!”
He looked at me blankly when I asked, “Can you swim?” Then I lifted him and vaulted him into the bay.
9
Amelia told me, “You’ve sobered up a little-maybe we all have-but not enough for me to talk about the boat. The one that maybe picked up Janet, Michael, and Grace.”
“You’re absolutely certain you saw it?”
“It wasn’t light yet, but it wasn’t dark. You know that time of morning when it’s powdery gray, like fog? I hadn’t heard the Coast Guard helicopter in a while, or the search plane. Like maybe they’d gone back to base or something to refuel. That’s when it went by, maybe a mile off. No lights, like a ghost ship, and it stopped out there. But what I think might have happened, the way I feel about it all, let’s save for the morning. Maybe because I’m a public defender, dealing with all those indigents in trouble, I’ve learned never to discuss anything serious when I’m drinking. That’s what nails them each and every time. And this is about as serious as it gets.”
It was a little after 3 A.M. We were back at Dinkin’s Bay, a couple dozen of us, bruised and scarred a little, but the whole group intact, no one arrested, no one hospitalized, although Jeth was going to need a doctor to check out that crooked nose of his. Camphill had almost certainly broken it.
We were in a small open area of grass and sand by the seawall near the boat ramp and canoe racks. A couple of the guides had built a fire of driftwood, piled the wood on high, and now we all sat around it, feeling the heat, watching sparks comet skyward, little pockets of us set off in shadows, the familiar faces of friends suspended like orange masks above the flames, a tribal effect. There was a tribal feel, too. We’d drawn blood and been bloodied together, and now we were back in camp, our secluded mangrove village.
The feeling was not unknown to me. But it had been a very, very long time since I’d experienced it.
Only two of us were missing: Tomlinson and Ransom. After leaving the ’Tween Waters docks, I spent half an hour searching around, convincing myself that someone hadn’t knocked him unconscious during the brawl and left him to die in the condo parking area or facedown in the shallows.
Instead, I found Tomlinson near the water facedown in the sand at Jensen’s Marina, passed out at the base of the palm tree totem pole there everyone calls Queenie. When I rolled him over to make certain he was still breathing, he pulled a curtain of scraggly hair away from his face, struggled to focus, and, after a few beats, finally realized who I was. “Ah… my compadre. Back from the Crusades, I see. Did Jeth slay the black knight?” He slurred the sentences together, wincing as if it pained him to form words.
Ransom came up beside me, as I said, “Yeah. His nose is a few inches off center, he took some bad shots, but he won.”
“You realize that actor’s handlers are never going to look at him the same ag
ain. In fact, man- poof, like prestochango- his career may be over once word gets around. Him and his small, teenager soul. See? Good sometimes does triumph, Marion. Not always, but sometimes. You should find that reassuring.”
I took his arm. “We need to get you up and back to the No Mas. ”
He shook his head. “No. I want to lay here and feel the earth. I’m hurting, my friend. Deep, deep in my Bodhi-mind, my Dharma-kaya, the pain, my God, the pain. All my life, I’ve wondered how I stand it. But no matter how many times my heart breaks, it still refuses to turn to stone.” He burped, burped again, then made a groaning sound before he added, “So I’ve just got to lay here and suck it up until the fat lady finally sings.” From the sound of his voice, the look of his face, I could see that he’d been crying.
I said, “What? You’re so drunk you’re making even less sense than usual.”
“Hah! ’Cause you don’t understand, Marion. It’s Janet. Our Janet. She was still out there when the Coasties called off the search. I know it. I could feel it, man, Janet’s strong vibes. That’s why I stayed at sea for a couple more days. I could communicate with her spirit, but I couldn’t find her physical body. Maddening!”
I said slowly, “You mean her dead body. Her corpse.”
“No! She was still alive!”
I don’t believe in fortune-tellers or parapsychology, but I’ve been around Tomlinson long enough to know that his intuition and perceptions are sometimes eerily accurate. How he does it, comes up with some of the things he knows, I don’t pretend to understand.
I said, “What about now? Do you think she’s alive now? It’s been three weeks exactly.”
He groaned again as he got up onto one elbow. “I don’t know. I can’t find her anymore. Her spirit, I mean. The first week after the boat sank, she’d come to me at night, in dreams, if I’d really smoked a lot of my good Colombian and chanted the Surangama sutra. Janet and the two others. I could see what happened, what they were doing, how they felt. I could even hear what they were saying. Phrases. Snatches of emotion. That’s why I overmedicated myself tonight. I was trying to break through again. I’m still trying to break through, trying to find her, but no luck.”
I told him, “I can’t leave you here. You get sick when you’re passed out, you could choke and die.”
Tomlinson used his hand to wave me away, then settled himself back in the sand, eyes closed, curled in a fetal position. “Demon rum,” he said. “Not a bad way to go. Only thing I’ll miss is going into town and playing ball come Sunday.”
We both played Roy Hobbs baseball, a fairly serious brand of ball.
Beside me, Ransom said, “I’ll stay with him.” She sat herself in the sand, using Queenie the totem pole as a backrest, and combed her fingers gently through Tomlinson’s long hair. “Poor old bony hippie man. This boy drive me crazy, but he in my heart and ain’t nothin’ I can do about it.” She looked at him for a moment, shaking her head. “He got a toothache in his soul, my brother, and there ain’t nothin’ I can do about that, either.”
I said, “Yes, he does. I think he probably always will.”
I left the two of them to sleep in the sand, because that’s what they wanted, and headed back to Dinkin’s Bay, determined to get Amelia alone long enough to ask her about the boat. Maybe it was possible. Maybe Tomlinson and Amelia were both right-there was a chance Janet had been picked up and was still alive.
Now, sitting by the fire, Amelia said to me, “I’m going to stay at your sister’s house-if we ever get to bed. She says you’re a runner. How about we go for a run tomorrow, and I’ll tell you all about it. A couple miles along the beach, maybe?”
I told her that would be just fine. She was probably right. Certain subjects are appropriate for drunk talk, other subjects are not. The fate of three missing people deserved elevated status. So I asked her about something she probably would feel comfortable talking about-how the fight started back at’Tween Waters.
“I’ve almost gotten used to it,” she told me. “I was sitting at one of the big tables with Jeth, Ransom, and the two women who live here-JoAnn and Rhonda?-and Claudia, too. Claudia was asking me more questions about Janet. What did we talk about when we were hanging on to the anchor line? She asked a lot of little details about what went on after we were set adrift. That sort of thing.
“I don’t know how they found out who I was, but a couple of guys from the bar came over and introduced themselves. Part of the SAM crowd, one was from Jacksonville, the other from Palm Beach. The moment the first one opened his mouth, I knew how it was going to go, that’s how many times I’ve been through it in the past few weeks. The ones who don’t believe my story, they always start out very polite-like, hey, congratulations, what an honor to meet you. They’ve read all about it, know all the details. Which fooled me the first couple of times, but not anymore.
“It’s something in the tone of their voice. That’s how I can tell. Way too friendly and impressed, trying to make me feel important, but what they’re really trying to do is set me up, trap me, like amateur interrogators. Tonight, the guy from Palm Beach-and he was pretty drunk, too-goes on for ten minutes or so, making backhanded accusations by telling the story to his friend, until finally he stops, looks at me, and says, ‘Lady, how stupid do you think people really are? You’re telling us that three adults in inflated vests just vanished off the face of the earth? Bullshit. Okay, so pretend like we’re not all idiots here and tell the truth. What happened was, you cooked up some drug deal with some badasses from Miami or maybe South America, and they wasted your three pals to make it nice and clean. Somehow you had an in with them. Maybe one of the drug bosses had a taste for redheads, so they let you live.
‘Or maybe what happened was, you and your pals decided to sink the boat for insurance money, and something went real wrong. They weren’t wearing their vests, like you said. Something else I heard was about you and the others maybe being involved with some kind of porno ring.
…’”
Amelia let the sentence trail off, and I noticed that her hands had gradually clenched into fists. After a moment, she said, “That’s when I stopped him. I’d had enough. It’s true that I once had to defend this porno slimeball, and the case got a lot of press, so that’s where that nasty little rumor got started. But no way was I going to let him associate the other three with that.
“You know how they say redheads have a temper? I can’t speak for the others, but I’ll only let someone push me so far. So I stood up and let the guy have it with both barrels. I know all the words, and how to use them. I realize I’m no great beauty, but I’ve had to back off enough of the casting-couch macho types to know exactly where to aim, and the guy didn’t like where my words hit him. So that’s when Jeth stood up and got involved. Then, out of nowhere, the actor was there, right in his face. Gunnar Camphill to the rescue, take two. It was a damn ugly thing to watch, wasn’t it, Doc? Makes me feel sick inside to think about the sound their fists made when they were hitting each other. The flesh-on-bone sound.”
I’d known her for, what? less than eight hours, but I’d already accepted her as what Tomlinson once defined as a PBR-a person who is reality based. One night, over beer, we’d kicked around the definition and more or less refined it. A PBR wasn’t just a brand of blue-collar beer, it was also someone who was not dominated by neurosis, ambition, or ego. It was a person who was relatively honest, rational, and reasonable most of the time; a man or woman who had a general sense of his or her own worth and limitations, who acknowledged the worth of others, who demonstrated a sense of humor, and didn’t take him- or herself too seriously.
With a definition so broad, you’d expect to meet lots and lots of PBRs.
Instead, I seem to be meeting fewer and fewer.
In my opinion, Amelia Gardner qualified, and I would trust her until, if, and when she did something to make me think otherwise. Now I reached over, put my hand on her arm, and squeezed gently. “That remark you made about ‘great
beauty,’ I hope you’re not suggesting you aren’t attractive. Because you are. But you’re tired, I can see it in your face. Know what might be a good thing for you to do right now? It doesn’t look like Ransom’s going to be back any time soon, so let me walk you over to my house, change the sheets, and put you to bed. I’ve got a big hammock strung on the porch. A starry night like this, no bugs, I’d rather sleep out there anyway.”
Laughter can communicate a variety of emotions. The amused sound she made was shy, a little weary, but pleased. “I was always the lanky, gawky tomboy girl. All elbows and legs, with no chest at all. I kept waiting for my body to change, but it never did, so now I’m the lanky, gawky attorney lady, all elbows and legs and still no chest at all. But thanks anyway. It was a nice way to tell me I look tired.” She stood, stretched, and yawned, still smiling. “Let me say my good nights, and I’ll take you up on the offer.”
I waited while Amelia fetched an overnight bag from her car, then I walked her to the house. Gave her a quick look at my lab-no octopi or crabs missing-and then took her through the screen door into the cottage and showed her how things worked. Little propane stove for tea. Small ship’s refrigerator if she wanted a snack. If she couldn’t sleep, there were books on the shelves and a shortwave radio near the Celestron telescope that was angled toward the north window. I laid out fresh sheets and towels, then returned along the mangrove path, back to the marina, to give her some time and privacy to use the outdoor shower and change into the XX T-shirt I’d loaned her to use as a nightgown.
I expected the party would have ended. It was well after three by now, but Mack and Jeth, most of the liveaboards and guides, were still there, still sitting around the blazing fire, laughing softly, talking in early-morning voices. Still riding that emotional, adrenaline high, replaying the events at’Tween Waters. We’d won the battles and won the war, and each and every member wanted to cement his or her role in the way things had transpired, secure their place in the marina’s oral history here and now, at the edge of the fire, before memories were tarnished by the edge of the first morning light.
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