Tomlinson was paying attention now. “That had to cost him a chunk of money.”
“He had to mortgage his place on Gumbo Limbo. Something else,” I said. “He says he found two gold pesos lying in a sand clearing. Just lying there, not far from the propeller.”
“I’ll be damned,” Tomlinson said. “Sounds like it really could be the gold plane.”
Batista’s gold plane, that’s the way it’s referred to in Florida legend. No need to explain the backstory. The only thing typical about Tomlinson is that he has lived a boat bum’s atypical life, gunk-holing the Caribbean, cruising from port to port, seeking a larger universe by simplifying his life within the cabin walls of an old Morgan sailboat named No Más. Like me, he has heard a thousand miles of treasure stories, including the legend of Batista’s plane. Like me, he is seldom impressed.
“Did he show you the coins?”
I said, “He says he keeps them in his truck because it has a better security system than his house. Which I don’t doubt is true.”
Tomlinson said, “Hmm,” before asking, “This thing killed a full-grown bull, huh?” He was more interested in a giant alligator than a massive fortune, I could tell—characteristic of the man.
“He claims something killed a yearling steer, not a bull. Even so, an animal that age would have to weigh seven or eight hundred pounds. And it wasn’t the first time it happened. The rancher told Arlis his family had lost a lot of cattle in that area over the years.”
“How many years?”
“Forty or fifty,” I said, and couldn’t help smiling.
Tomlinson was smiling, too. “Florida’s version of the Loch Ness monster, huh? So the thing’s become a family legend.”
“The rancher doesn’t actually work the land much anymore,” I told him. “He inherited it. But back to the steer—”
“Bull or steer, what’s the difference?” Tomlinson interrupted. “Half the males I know have lost their balls, one way or the other. That makes them malleable--and marriageable—not eatable. What’s harder to believe is some rancher hired Arlis to kill a nuisance gator instead of doing it himself.”
I said, “Yeah, I’ve got a problem with that, too.”
Florida’s interior is home to a sizable population of cowboys. Real cowboys, although historically they are known as cow hunters. The tourist brochures have no reason to mention that beef cattle are among the state’s leading exports.
I added, “The way Arlis tells it, the rancher’s afraid to go near that lake. The same with the men who work for him. Plus, the place is tough to access. There’s no road, you’ve got to hike or cut a path.”
Tomlinson continued shucking oysters, his expression dubious, as I said, “A more likely explanation is that the wildlife cops have cracked down on killing protected species. If you get caught killing a gator, there’s a big fine, even some jail time. But Arlis has a state license, so it makes sense that the rancher called him.”
“That’s right,” Tomlinson agreed, “he’s licensed, which adds up, you’re right. So he went to the lake, caught the gator and found the propeller, plus the two coins. So far, so good—not that I’m sold yet.”
I shook my head. “He didn’t find the gator—if there is one. There’s more than one lake in the area, he says. The property I’m talking about is fifty miles inland, northeast, near a little crossroads named Venus. You know the place. It’s in Highlands County—hilly country, by Florida standards.”
Tomlinson nodded. It was mushroom country, too, although he didn’t say it. Fanciers of psilocybin mushrooms tend to be closemouthed about their favorite hunting areas. Instead, he said, “There’s a lot of cattle pasture and palmetto, elevation more than a hundred feet above sea level. Sure, I’ve spent a day or two in that area. But you wouldn’t notice the elevation unless you’re on a bicycle. I remember a Baptist church and a stand at a crossroads where they sell beef jerky and boiled peanuts. Really good peanuts.”
I said, “It’s probably still there—for now. It used to be ten thousand hectares of free-range cattle, but the strip malls are closing in. Now the rancher is ready to sell off a few hundred acres, and I guess he was afraid a cow-killing gator might ruin the realtor’s sales pitch. That’s why he accepted Arlis’s offer and sold him a little chunk that included this lake.”
“It was probably a panther,” Tomlinson said. “Or wolves. I hear they’re making a comeback.”
“They found the steer—what was left of it—floating in the water. It could be anything.”
Tomlinson was smiling. He liked that. “Something big lives in that lake.”
I said, “The steer could have died of natural causes and fallen in. Or it could have waded in and drowned. Still . . . an oversized gator is easier to believe than a plane loaded with gold.”
“Then how do you explain the two coins?”
I replied, “I don’t doubt that Arlis found a plane wreck. But it’s unlikely he found the plane wreck,” as I crossed the room to make sure the windows were sealed tight.
I had been standing at the propane stove, making one of my specialties: pan-seared snapper with peanut gravy, which is sort of like satay sauce only easier. Fish renderings in a pan, then add a glob of peanut butter, a couple shots of chili oil, then simmer with flour and water until it thickens.
I was feeling the chill now, though, despite the propane burners on the stove. I live in what is known as a “fish house”—two small cottages built over water on stilts, under a single tin roof. In the early 1900s, fish were stored in one house, fishermen in the other. When I bought the place, I converted the larger cottage into a lab, the other into my home.
Dinkin’s Bay Marina, just down the mangrove shore, is a neighbor. Same with the dozen or so people who live there aboard a mixed bag of million-dollar yachts and waterlogged junkers. Tomlinson, who keeps his sailboat, No Más, moored equidistant from the docks, is a local icon, a trusted friend and now my business partner, too. Not in the marine-specimen business. The man opened a rum bar only a mile from the marina, and I had recently bought a small interest.
It was cold when I’d started cooking, but now it was colder. Wind had shifted northwest, and a filament of winter moon floated in the corner window above my reading chair and shortwave radio. Next to the desk, my new telescope—an eight-inch Celestron—sat on its tripod, angled skyward, as if straining to have a look.
I was eager to get outside and take a peek myself. Saturn was suspended in the same small window, tethered to the lunar elliptic. The planet was brighter than the landing lights of a jetliner that was now arcing down over Sanibel Island.
February is tourist season. A few hundred souls on that plane, eager to de-ice in the tropic heat, were about to be disappointed upon landing. The temperature was descending more rapidly than the jet.
I didn’t want to fire up the Franklin stove, but I had guests coming. Two women and a tough, judgmental kid. I could feel wind sieving up through the pine-slat floor, icy off the water. Concession was nipping at my toes.
Tomlinson said, “Looks like Arlis is right on about the weather,” breaking into my thoughts.
“It’s looking that way,” I said. “I guess we’d better warm things up a little.”
“I’ll bring in wood,” Tomlinson replied, still on target.
A few minutes later, he returned, his arms loaded with driftwood, muttering, “It’s so cold that just to take a whiz, I had to goose myself and grab Zamboni when he jumped out. Temperature must have dropped twenty degrees in the last hour.”
I was at the stove again, stirring a pot of milk, ready to add half a stick of butter, pink Caribbean sea salt and crushed pepper, as I replied, “Certain images don’t mix with oyster stew—do you mind? And don’t forget to wash your hands.”
He dropped the wood onto a tarp near the Franklin stove, saying, “Doc, your lack of sensitivity used to worry me. Now I sort of miss the good old days—back when you were about as sensitive as this stove.”
H
e busted a branch over his knee, pushed it into the fire and clanged the iron door shut.
A few minutes later, he said, “So what’s the verdict? When do we dive the lake?”
He was doing it again. I had been picturing Arlis Futch as he idled away from my dock in his mullet boat. The last thing he had said was, “I’m right about the cold front, and I’m right about Batista’s gold plane, too. Tomorrow’s no good. Monday, either. But it should be warm enough by Tuesday. Have all your gear rigged and ready.”
To Tomlinson, I said, “Maybe we’ll give it a try Tuesday morning. I think the weather will be okay by then.”
“Is that what Arlis said?”
I replied, “He’s not the only one who listens to marine radio.”
Now my mind was on Jeth Nicholes, the fishing guide, who had already told me that he had trips booked solid until the end of February. He needed the money and couldn’t break away on something so risky as hunting for lost treasure. I’d had to admit to Jeth that the chances of finding anything valuable were slim, so that had settled the matter.
I listened to Tomlinson tell me, “Jeth’s booked solid, so no point in even asking. Same with all the fishing guides.” He let me think about that for a few seconds, before saying, “What about Will-Joseph? We’ll need at least four people, and he’s certified.”
It was Tomlinson’s pet name for the troubled teenager. The boy was spending the week in Florida, the guest of a woman I had been seeing, Barbara Hayes. Twice the boy had run away from a halfway house near his Oklahoma reservation. Barbara had finally stepped in and offered to help. Temporarily.
The woman had her reasons for feeling indebted to Will.
I was thinking, No way in hell is that boy going with us.
I had my reasons, too.
The boy carried a lot of baggage, and, when it comes to travel or diving, I prefer partners who pack light.
Will Chaser had survived something that would have driven most people to the brink of insanity. Only a few weeks earlier, extortionists had buried him in a box, a copycat crime modeled on the Barbara Jane Mackle kidnapping of the late 1960s. Mackle had survived seventy-two hours in her grave; Will had escaped after less than a day, but only after killing one of his abductors.
Unless one is a sociopath, there is no such thing as guiltless homicide. No matter how good the reason, if you kill a man, he lives with you the remainder of your days. I had never discussed it with the boy, although Tomlinson had been nudging me to do so. Emotional scar tissue, like religion, is a private matter. As I told Tomlinson, from what I’d observed the boy appeared nonplussed by what he’d endured and done.
“Precisely why someone like you should talk to him,” Tomlinson had countered.
The man was probably right, but dealing with young males, at the peak of hormonal flux, can be a gigantic pain in the ass. I wanted nothing to do with it.
“Will’s too young,” I told Tomlinson, as I scanned a list of alternatives, narrowing it down to people I hadn’t yet contacted.
I could hear driftwood crackling. The fire was filling the room with a bouncing, ascending light as Tomlinson replied, “Shallow-up, Doc. Will’s a good kid. Full of testosterone and anger, that’s all. Besides, it’s just a scout dive. If we find anything interesting, we’ll have to replace the boy, anyway. He goes back to Oklahoma on Friday.”
I said, “I doubt if he’s even done an open-water dive. It’s a bad idea.”
Tomlinson was chuckling. “You know better than that. Why do you think Barbara took him to Key Largo before coming here?”
It was true, I knew it, but I said, “He didn’t mention anything to me about liking it.”
“That’s because you and the boy haven’t said two words to each other since he got here. Or maybe you didn’t notice that, either.”
Yes, I had noticed. It had created tension between Barbara and me—not entirely Will’s fault, because our relationship, I suspected, was coming to an end, anyway.
I said it again. “He’s too young, and not enough experience. Truth is, we don’t really need a fourth diver. You, me and Arlis. That’s enough.”
When he gets serious, Tomlinson has a way of lowering his voice to ensure attention. “As a personal favor, let the kid come along, okay? I’ll take full responsibility. What could be safer than a freshwater pond in the middle of Florida? A nice, safe, shallow-water dive. The kid’s a rodeo rider, for God’s sake. He’ll be fine, Doc.”
I was thinking of an obvious objection, as Tomlinson added, “As long as that monster gator’s not around, of course.”
FOUR
TWO DAYS LATER, A MONDAY, I FINISHED CHECKING and packing enough dive gear for an expedition instead of what I had expected to be a pleasant one-day trip, then tiptoed to my bedroom. I wanted to check on a Saturday dinner guest who had left with the others, but then returned in the cold wee hours of the morning, saying, “I pictured you sleeping up here all alone and wondered if you might need a little extra heat.”
It wasn’t Barbara Hayes. She had left in a huff because of some imagined slight. My bedroom guest was Marlissa Kay Engle, my workout pal and surprising new lover. She was spending Monday night at my place, too.
Marlissa is a beautiful woman, all curves and flowing hair, and I stood in the doorway until I had confirmed that she was safe and asleep. Startled by something—a dream, perhaps—Marlissa stirred. Her rhythmic snoring was interrupted by a low moan.
I closed the curtains and went outside, through the shadows of mangroves, toward the marina. As I walked past the marina office, I could hear a television babbling from the upstairs apartment, a newscaster saying something about multiple homicides near Winter Haven.
I stopped long enough to listen. Five people had been murdered by two or more robbers at a secluded property north of Winter Haven, not far from Haines City. The owner of the house, his maid and her three children had all been killed. Shot or stabbed or both. Yesterday, cops had spotted the maid’s car on I-75, heading toward Atlanta. Three suspects had been arrested, all illegals from Haiti.
Even Dinkin’s Bay can’t insulate itself from the outrages of the outside world.
I turned right at the bait tank, onto the docks, walking past the dozing cruisers and trawlers—Tiger Lilly, Das Stasi, Playmaker—and was about to knock to see if my friend Mike Westhoff was aboard when I noticed a lone figure in the shadows by the boat ramp dragging a canoe out of the water. I watched for a second, then called out a name, because there was no mistaking the jeans, the western shirt and the headband.
It was Will Chaser.
As I helped Will drain the canoe, then flip it onto the rental rack, I asked him, “Were you fishing? Or visiting Tomlinson?”
No Más, moored a hundred yards from the yacht basin, blended with mangrove shadows, its mast a frail exclamation point that was tipped with stars. The portholes were dark, but there was a bead of yellow light strobing on the stern—a candle. The candle told me that Tomlinson was meditating—it was his morning and nightly ritual—but maybe the boy had just left. It was a risky combination: two delinquents with more than enough common interests to bridge the age gap.
“He was telling me about that lake you’re diving,” Will replied, “but he wouldn’t say why. Why a lake instead of the Gulf, I mean?”
I was tempted to ask the boy if he had Barbara’s permission to be out paddling a canoe so late, but it would have only put him on the defensive.
I asked, “How’d you get here? Rental bike?”
“Yeah, but I usually walk. It’s only a mile to our beach condo, and I like this side of the island better. When I was paddling back from the creek, Tomlinson saw me, so I pulled alongside for a few minutes. He gets nervous around me. I think it’s because he’s stopped smoking weed until I leave the island.”
It was true, I had insisted upon it, but it surprised me that Will knew. I said, “Uhh . . . are you saying you think Tomlinson smokes marijuana?”
“Unless he uses a bong for ast
hma, that would be my guess. Have you ever been on his boat?” The teenager lifted his head and sniffed. “Hell, I can smell the stuff from here. But I’ve got a better nose than most.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Illegal drugs, that’s a pretty silly risk for a man his age to take. You could be wrong.”
There was a sarcastic pause, and I pictured the boy rolling his eyes before he ignored the lie, saying, “Mostly, though, I was canoeing. I paddled way back in the sanctuary.”
I asked, “See anything interesting?”
The boy shrugged.
“Next time, I can loan you a flashlight.”
Will had racked the two paddles and was now trying to force the rusty latch on the lifejacket locker. “Got one,” he said.
“I have a bunch of really good small LEDs. It’s sort of a hobby of mine. I could loan you one to try.”
From his pocket, he took out a cheap rubber-coated flashlight to show me. “That’s okay. I use my own stuff.”
I said, “Ah,” and became even more determined to have a conversation. “Did you see any alligators? You’ve got to watch yourself in the mangroves, even in a canoe. There are some big ones.”
He replied, “Yeah,” then punctuated the long silence by kicking the latch with the heel of his shoe—he wasn’t wearing cowboy boots, I noticed. He usually did. Will kicked the latch twice more, hissing, “You stubborn son of a bitch,” before the thing finally opened.
It was an aggressive display that had as much to do with my presence as the rusted locker. A full minute later, though, the boy sounded almost friendly when he added, “The same’s true of coyotes out west.”
I replied, “Huh?”
“Coyotes are dangerous when they’re in a pack. People think animals act the way they see them on TV or in the zoo. Not me. Animals are always on a feed—the ones in the wild, anyway.”
I was taken aback. The kid suddenly sounded well grounded and reasonable. And he wasn’t done talking.
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