The Mangrove Coast df-6

by Randy Wayne White

  “You think it’ll make a difference?”

  “With the cops? No. Not right away. But at least it will keep your mom’s file open in case there really is something wrong.”

  Talking about Merlot, all that missing money, had upset her, so I tried to swing the conversation around before I said good-bye; give her a chance to calm down. Sat there with the phone wedged against my ear, looking out at the water, at small boats fishing the mangrove hedge, while I listened to her ask more questions about her father.

  There was something oddly forlorn and touching in her tone. She was frightened for her mother’s safety and deeply missed the father she had never met. She had no conscious recollection of ever seeing the man, of being held by him, but she was inexorably connected; seemed to know and understand him on a bone-marrow level. One thing I did not doubt: Amanda was the daughter of my old friend Bobby Richardson.

  I answered her questions as best I could. Then she changed the subject on her own: told me she’d spoken with Tucker Gatrell a couple of times since she’d gotten home.

  I said, “You mean he’s been calling you?”

  “No, I called him. I like him. He makes me laugh. And I think he’s honestly worried about what’s happened to my mom. So I told him I’d keep him updated on how it was going, what we were doing. He seems to know a lot about Central America. He was asking me all kinds of questions.”

  I said, “Central America. Yeah, he used to be in the import-export business down there. Just ask him, he’s a real expert.”

  I’d never risked inquiring, but there wasn’t much doubt that, along with dealing cattle from Managua to Colon, Tucker had dabbled in drug running during the wide-open, early years of dope smuggling. A Florida cowboy who’d somehow found his way to the jungle. He liked the women, the lawlessness of the place. Probably liked the way that a man with money could live like royalty. Something else I never asked was how he’d managed to piss all that easy money away.

  Amanda said, “He wants to help. I told him that’d be fine with me.”

  I said, “Oh?”

  “Why not? What could it hurt?”

  All my life I’ve been baffled at how someone as transparently self-serving as my uncle can so quickly and completely earn the confidence and loyalty of otherwise-intelligent strangers. Tucker was a rare, rare being in that you had to know him well before you could distrust and dislike him.

  I said, “Just don’t loan him any money. And don’t let him get you alone in a room.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. An old man like that?”

  “Look, I know what I’m talking about. You don’t… okay, let me tell you a story. I listened to a TV reporter interview him; this attractive woman not much older than you. This was a couple of years ago. Tuck was trying to get rich selling swamp water, saying it was from the Fountain of Youth. The way you just laughed, you don’t think I’m serious, but I am. That’s exactly the con he was trying to pull.

  “So this woman’s interviewing him, talking to him like he’s the Old Man of the Everglades, which is a role he loves to play. And she asks him, ‘Mr. Gatrell, at what age does a man stop thinking about his own needs and start thinking about more spiritual things?’ Tuck didn’t miss a beat. He said, ‘Sweetheart, if you’re talking about sex, you’re gonna have to ask someone a hell of a lot older than me. You want, I’ll prove my point.’”

  Amanda was laughing. “But he was joking.”

  “No. No, he wasn’t joking. It was one of the few honest things I’ve ever heard him say.”

  “Hey, come on, Doc, it isn’t my place to tell you, but… okay, you seem like the nicest guy, a very reasonable man until you start talking about your uncle. Why? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  I told Amanda, “Believe me, it makes sense. I know him. You don’t.”

  “Is it the way he acts? He likes to be the center of attention, there’s no doubt about that. Or was it something he did?”

  I said, “It’s both. But mostly it was something he did.”

  We talked for a while longer after I’d said, yeah, maybe someday I’d tell her about it.

  So, slightly after noon, when I was finished with my morning’s work in the lab, I wandered over to the marina to see if Amanda’s package had arrived. Stopped on the dock and talked to Mack for a little bit. Mack is stocky and rumpled, smokes expensive cigars and wears cheap flipflops. Mack’s a displaced Kiwi who came to the U.S. where, as he is fond of saying, “Free enterprise is just a little free-er.” He owns Dinkin’s Bay Marina. Most of it, at least. And he is the marina’s devoted advocate, peacemaker, judge, host of Friday-night beer bashes, boat trader, wheeler-dealer, fish cleaner and collector of clowns, both real and clowns painted on canvas. Mack normally maintains an attitude of predatory amusement that he shields with a professional coolness not uncommon among those who must deal day-in, day-out with the marina-going public. But on this hot April afternoon, Mack was anything but cool. He was, in fact, in a fiery mood.

  “The goddamn bureaucrats,” he told me. “The goddamn bureau RATS… there, that’s more like it. They were snooping around the marina this morning, acting like they owned the place, telling me how to run things. They were telling me I had to do this, I had to fix that or they’d shut me down, and you know what? Those tight-assed little bastards don’t have a clue what it’s like to run a business. They’ve never made a payroll in their life. They’ve never gambled their own savings on a business of any kind, let alone a ballbuster like a marina. And they’ve never lain awake all night worrying that they wouldn’t take in enough cash the next day to make a mortgage payment that’s due by four P.M. And they’re judging me? They’re telling me how to run MY business?”

  I said, “One of the inspectors find a snake in the restaurant again?”

  A year or so before, that’s exactly what had happened. While looking behind one of the refrigerators, a woman from some esoteric state agency had come eyeball to eyeball with a very large and very territorial rat snake. How long the snake had lived there, Joyce, the fry cook, could not guess, but the woman’s reaction had coupled hysteria with a mobile incontinence that darkened a fast trail between the restaurant and the parking lot.

  After that incident, Mack had had to shut down the takeout’s fry vats and the grill for more than a week. It cost him several hundred dollars, plus the snake disappeared and no one got a chance to admire the thing or even reward it.

  Now he said, “I wish to hell it’d been a bloody rattlesnake. Or… one of those tiger snakes from Oz. One of the deadliest snakes in the Outback. See how they deal with somethin’ that’s real instead of their tight-assed little rules and regulations. Those people live in a bloody fantasy land. The way they act is, we work for them. Like they’re doing us a favor just to let us stay in business. Mark my word, when bureaucrats refuse to respect private enterprise, this country’s in big trouble! And ninety percent of the inspectors they send ‘round, I wouldn’t hire as dock help. They got attitude without brains. Cadillac dingoes. They remind me of bloody Cadillac dingoes!”

  When Mack said Cadillac dingoes, he meant poodles. When he said Oz, he meant Australia.

  Yes, he was definitely in a mood. And since I count among my good and trusted friends several of the “goddamn bureau-rats” to whom he referred, I decided to leave him to his anger. For many years, it was car salesmen and insurance salesmen who drew the generalized contempt of a judgmental public. Then it was attorneys. These days, it’s government employees. I have known too many first-rate men and women who happened to be car salesmen or attorneys, or worked for county or state governments, to fall into that easy and unfair trap. Want a tough job? Try selling Oldsmobiles, whole-life or anything else for a living. Try dealing with red tape and outraged citizens all day long. But I have noticed that the contempt reserved for bureaucrats seems more fervent than that aimed at other groups. Why? Mack is a good and fair businessman, and I trust his judgment and his intellect. And he is quite right: There is someth
ing desperately amiss when government and private enterprise are at philosophical odds.

  The whole gradual shift in attitude suggests an unhealthy antagonism: the government cadre (count teachers and union workers among them) versus businesses large and small, as well as any self-reliant individual who chooses to live independently by his or her own wits. There is no doubt that the cadre’s membership is dominated by talented, reasonable professionals. Unfortunately, it is the cadre’s least-gifited members who tend to be the nosiest. It is this group that the Macks of the world find infuriating because these members project an attitude of intellectual elitism that is, in truth, the kind of adolescent stupidity that nearly destroyed China. It now threatens Westernized powers, Mack’s New Zealand among them.

  These dopes loathe the public and anything that the public embraces. It is this stunted, snobby minority that generates genuine hatred from the “bourgeois.” That a few of them have their hands near the reins of power is a frightening thing indeed.

  Mack’s anger was real. One or more of the stunted ones had, apparently, visited the marina and my friend’s reaction was both protective and illustrative.

  As I walked away, Mack called to me, “The guy who was the worst of them, I told him I’d run his ass off if he ever came back to the marina again. Took up two solid hours of my time with absolute bullshit. You know-just to prove he was in control; making sure I understood that I might pay all the bills and taxes, but he was the one in charge. Know what he said when I threatened to run him off? He said ‘Try it.’ My property, all the work I’ve put into this place, and his exact words were: ‘ Try it. ’”

  From my lab, I’d telephoned in an order for a fried conch sandwich, coleslaw and iced tea, which Joyce served to me in a brown-paper sack with a stack of napkins. As I left, she said, “In case you haven’t heard, stay out of Mack’s way. He’s on the warpath.”

  I said, “Too bad the snake didn’t make an appearance. That would have made him happy.”

  “Oh yeah, the snake. What I’m still worried about is that drunk we had as a part-time cook-Laurie? — that Laurie cooked the thing and served it. The snake I’m talking about. When I was away on vacation, she have any specials with Italian sausage? Bratwurst, anything like that?”

  I was smiling. “I usually stick to the conch or the grouper.”

  “Playing it safe, I don’t blame you. Just the same, it worries me. And I meant it about Mack.”

  I said, “I know, I know,” and carried my lunch, along with Amanda’s envelope, out onto the docks.

  The fishing guides were just returning from the morning charters, and I watched them tie up their skiffs as I took a seat at the picnic table which was beside the big bait tank between the Red Pelican gift shop and the water. Jeth Nicholes was now running an eighteen-foot Hewes, BUSHMASTER painted in red script on port and starboard sides. Big Felix Blane-all six feet, five inches and 250 pounds of him-was backing his twenty-four-foot Parker, Osprey, into its slip, and Nelson Esterline was hunkered down in the live well of his Lake amp; Bay, transferring fish into a bucket, getting ready to head to the cleaning table.

  The guides always drew an audience, which they not only knew, but enjoyed, each of them handling the attention with a kind of jaunty, wind-weary cheerfulness that put their audience at ease and, more importantly, attracted new clients.

  If you meet an aloof, self-important fishing guide, he probably isn’t a very experienced guide.

  I watched a crowd of tourists collect around Nels as he carried the bucket toward the filet table-a couple of big redfish judging from the tails protruding, and several trout. A half dozen pelicans waddled along in pursuit, while an umbrella of gulls and terns circled above. There was lots of noisy squawking and screaming; tourists moving in a hurry now, trying to get a good spot to watch. Then Jeth came behind with three large tripletail-a strange fish that resembles a massive leaf because the dorsal and anal fins are situated far to the rear: effective mimicry, which allows the animal to float suspended on its side and ambush smaller fish that come to it seeking shade or protection. These fish looted as if they ranged between ten and fifteen pounds. Nice tripletail.

  The docks were a good place to have lunch at the marina. There was always something interesting to watch while you ate.

  As I munched my sandwich, I called to Felix, “You tarpon-fishing today?” speaking loudly above the noise of the birds.

  He flashed me an appreciative look: Good, let the tourists know why he wasn’t standing at the cleaning table with the other guides. “My angler, Mr. Palmona, he wanted to see what it was like to fish Boca Grande. Left before sunrise, we just got back. You ever see so many boats in your life, Mr. Palmona?”

  Felix’s client was a lean, dark-haired man who had the articulate, easygoing look of old money. He stood on the dock packing his gear into a little duffel, getting ready to leave while Felix cleaned his boat. “I thought Felix was exaggerating. A show like that, I wouldn’t have missed for the world. All of those attractive women in the bikinis, he told me what it would be like, but…” The man gave a bemused shrug.

  In crowded Boca Grande Pass, the largest and most expensive of the fishing yachts were invariably bedecked with lounging, sun-lazy, beach-browned women who were proud of their improbable bodies-living, breathing symbols of wealth whom the guides appreciated as interesting adjuncts to the great tarpon-fishing. Emboldened by the built-in anonymity that boats provide, it was not unusual for some of these women to sunbathe topless. The guides always made running commentary on the VHF of what they saw, and since I hadn’t spoken to Felix by radio that day, he updated me while I ate.

  “One of the Futch boys was running some big corporate boat, had five or six girls topside, out there on the bow all oiled up and baking. Frank Davis had him an even bigger boat and more women above deck. The swimsuits now, they come in these bright colors like pieces of Easter candy. That’s the way the girls looked. Sweet as candy out there. Two of them had just their bottoms on and both seemed to like Mr. Palmona. They waved a lot.”

  Felix’s client had a dreamy, reflective expression on his face.

  Yeah, he’d enjoyed his morning fishing in Boca.

  I glanced around to see if any of the manna’s female liveaboards were nearby. I don’t have much patience for the hardcore politically correct It’s the newest form of Fascism. But living on a boat requires a certain drive and independent spirit that, for good reason, would not allow our marina women to tolerate their kindred being discussed as mindless confections. JoAnn Smallwood, pretty Donna Legges of the sailboat Bowhard, and Janet Mueller were aboard Tiger Lily, sitting in deck chairs and locked in animated conversation. But they were close, well within listening distance, so I decided to change the subject. “You catch any fish?”

  “We jumped four tarpon, landed one. About a hundred-pounder, wasn’t he, Mr. Palmona? One of those juiced-up males, Doc, that’s harder than hell to get to the boat.”

  Felix’s client was still wearing the bemused expression. He wasn’t following the conversation. “The girl in the apple-green bikini,” he said, “she really did seem to be waving at me. There was eye contact, I’m absolutely certain. Looked right at me and kept looking at me. I’d swear to it, I really would.” He seemed to be talking to himself.

  Felix said, “Or the fish could’ve gone maybe one-ten. Pretty good-sized tarpon, Doc, but one of the kind that doesn’t want to jump. We had to chase him through the whole fleet, then follow him halfway to Siesta Key. He was a beauty, huh, Mr. Palmona?”

  I smiled at Felix when the man said, “Beauty? Oh, she was absolutely gorgeous. Her hair, that kind of cinnamon-colored hair, it’s my favorite. The green suit, the red hair. And the way she singled me out and waved at me. I found that very flattering. It was a wonderful day on the water. An absolutely wonderful day. Wish I didn’t have to fly home to Chicago, Felix, or I’d book another trip. Maybe two or three trips. But if I work things right, get one of our younger partners to cover for me
, it’s possible, just possible, I can be back in a couple of weeks. Will the big boats still be fishing Boca Grande Pass?”

  Felix was smiling back at me. Guides made their living on repeat business, and Mr. Palmona clearly planned to be a regular. “You bet, Mr. Palmona. Fishing will actually get better, plus there’ll probably be lots more big boats carrying pretty girls.” Then, as he finished swabbing out his boat, Felix said to me, “Hey, I forgot to ask. How’d you and Tomlinson do in your baseball game Sunday?”

  I had opened Amanda’s manila envelope and was shuffling through the contents. There were several bank statements, to which I gave a quick look and then set aside, as I answered Felix: “We lost, six to four. Pretty good team from Minnesota. Their pitcher had a nasty slider.”

  “You catch?”

  More bank statements that verified many withdrawals and, surprisingly, several computer-printed deposit slips. I placed those in the stack. “Yeah. Went oh-for-three but hit the ball hard twice. Their centerfielder made a heck of a play.”

  “What about Tomlinson?”

  There were two glossy photographs. The first was of Gail Richardson Calloway and ex-husband, Frank. She hadn’t changed that much since the photos I had seen years ago in Cambodia. Dark hair that swept across her forehead and curved to her shoulders. Cheeks and chin and eyes, those eyes. I could picture her in an aerobics class, dark leotard, a mature woman working hard to stay fit… or in a 1940s movie, black and white, with a lot of night scenes, streetlights and bus stops, the kind of film where women with faces as haunting as hers paused on street corners to light cigarettes. Frank looked articulate, moneyed, smart. I said, “Tomlinson has had better games.”

  “Yeah? What, he make a few errors?”

  I put the photo of Gail aside. “It wasn’t so much that as he just kind of… well, he wasn’t there.”