The Mangrove Coast df-6

by Randy Wayne White

  As she typed she said, “We get his number, we’ll find out who he is.”

  There was that fairy dust noise again. Darkrume: Maybe I’ll call later. Know what I’m thinking about right now? Remember the way we both got off the best? Gail73679: You always got me off. I hope I always got you off. Darkrume: No, this way was special. We were all naked. We were in a hot tub. We were drinking good wine and all three of us had a bottle of baby oil. Rubbing it on each other. I watched you rub the oil all over her body. It was you and me and what’s her name? Gail73679: Umm-m-m. Sounds wonderful. Tell me her name. I remember her name, but do you? I think I’m in love. Darkrume: Yes. I remember her name. It was the three of us. You and me and… If you remember, say the name.›:+{o} Gail73679: You say the name. I’m too hot to think. Darkume: Okay. Okay. It was you and me and… she had these weird eyes you told me. Not like yours. Different. Crossed eyes. Her name was Amanda. You and me plus your ugly daughter.

  The chair went tumbling backward when Amanda jumped to her feet. “The son-of-a-bitch. He set me up!”

  My hands were shaking, but I had my arms out and around her now.

  Behind me, I could hear Tomlinson making a strange whoofing noise. Was he groaning or fighting back nausea?

  “Let it go,” I told her. “Let it go.”

  “My mom wouldn’t have done that! My mom would never have done that! I don’t care what he says! You bastard!” She was yelling and now she smacked the screen with her open hand. “You filthy-minded creep!”

  I pressed Amanda into Tomlinson’s arms as I took her spot in front of the computer and began to type a reply. Gail73679: The trick’s on you. This isn’t Gail.

  I could hear Amanda crying, still furious, as I waited for the fairy dust sound. Darkrume: I know that!): =) Gall73679: Why so sure? Darkrume: Wouldn’t you like to know. You’re Amanda. The daughter. Gail73679: Amanda’s not here. Darkrume: You’re lying. Either Amanda or some computer nerd friends. Someone to figure Momma’s password. Not smart enough to do it alone. Gail73679: You changed her password? Darkrume: Just in case. Someone has to protect our privacy. Gail73679: Pretending to know Gail, pretending to know Amanda, too. You’ve never met either of them. Darkrume: ‹- Smile smile smile! Right. Never met you. The ugly daughter.

  I was fighting it, trying hard not to get mad. Gail73679: Why so mean? Darkrume: Not mean. I’m happy. HAPPY! Want to do to you what I did to your mom.

  What then followed was a graphic litany of his sexual triumphs with Gail. Real or imagined, it was impossible to judge. But very specific. Each outrage was listed as a conquest.

  I waited patiently. Then: Darkrume: You want the same things done to you? Gail73679: Love it. Let’s arrange a meeting. Tell me who you are. Darkrume: Figure it out. Gail73679: Okay. Darkrume: I’m serious. Try. Gail73679: We’ll go through your letters, they’ll tell us. Lots to choose from. Pick the best ones and take them to the police. Darkrume: Be my guest. Better hurry!

  From behind me, Tomlinson said, “What the hell does that mean?”

  He still had his arm around Amanda, reading along with me.

  Gail73679: Why so evasive? You’re a friend of Gail, we’re friends of Gail. So what’s the problem. What are you scared of?

  Tomlinson said, “That’s the wrong approach, man. This guy wants to be in charge, let him be in charge. Don’t push him.”

  Darkrume: Why should I care about Gail? Already done everything I wanted to do to Gail. But I wouldn’t mind meeting you. Got any videos?

  “This is a sick, sick person.”

  “Yeah, man. He is truly and honestly twisted.” Gail73679: Got a great video. You’ll love it. Tell me where to send it. Darkrume: Find me, asshole.

  “He’s not going to cooperate.”

  “Nope, not a chance.”

  “Then I’m done playing his game.”

  “Don’t blame you. Fire away.” Gail73679: Find you. Exactly what I plan to do. Darkrume: Oh. You sound so dangerous. Gail73679: I’m not. Darkrume: Didn’t think so! Gail73679: No. Amateurs are dangerous. Darkrume: ‹- Shivering with goose bumps. That means nothing. You expect me to be scared? Gail73679: No, I expect you to be inept. Darkrume: You jerk. I don’t waste my time worrying about people like you. Gail73679: I’m counting on that, too. Darkrume: On what? Gail73679: Your stupidity. Darkrume: Fuck you! Darkrume: Fuck you! Gail73679: You illustrate my point. Darkrume: FUCK YOU!

  Tomlinson said, “You’re getting to him.”

  “Apparently. Let’s hope he’ll hang on until he lets some information slip.” Darkrume: You don’t have a goddamn clue who you’re talking to. Gail73679: Wrong. I know the type of person you are. So did Gail. That’s why she stopped writing. Darkrume: She never stopped, you idiot. Gail73679: But she refused to meet with you and she told me why. Darkrume: I’m the one refused to meet her, scum. That slut would have met me anytime anyplace.

  “There,” Tomlinson said, “we just learned something.” Gail73679: Because of the problem you have, she said she felt bad for you. I’m your friend, too. That’s why I’m telling you this. Darkrume: You got the problem, not me. Gail73679: No, but I’m sympathetic. Impotence or homosexuality, nothing to be ashamed of.

  In the long pause that followed, I suspect that he typed and erased a number of replies. I wish that I could have read them. Finally: Darkrume: You think I’m stupid. You must really think I’m stupid. Gall73679: Already told you: inept. Is your memory really that bad? Darkrume: Time to show you how smart I am. How much smarter than a cross-eyed hag like you ever thought of being. You say I don’t know you. You’re so wrong about that it makes me laugh. ‹- laughing right now. Remember the letters you planned on reading? Read them now. Bitch!

  The Instant Message screen was suddenly filled with a series of strange figures.

  Behind me I heard Tomlinson say, “What the hell… Hey… HEY!” He lunged over my shoulder, began to click the mouse frantically, but our cursor was now frozen.

  “He’s pumping in some kind of… he’s uploading a file into our system. Look at that crap… it’s like taken complete control, shooting its way right in here…” Tomlinson slapped the desk with his hand. “Shit! Now he’s taken over the whole computer.”

  The screen continued to pulse with line after line of figures:

  Just before the screen froze, the last instant message from Darkrume read:

  You lose! ‹: +))

  “I appreciate the fact, man, that you’re trying to concentrate. Trying to pull off one of those total-recall deals. But do you really have to drive so slow?”

  We were midway across Alligator Alley, the Everglades holding the horizon in all directions. Saw grass, globes of cypress shadow, gators baking mud gray on canal banks, black vultures cauldroning.

  I’d asked Tomlinson to give me some silent time. Let me think about the few letters we’d had time to read.

  “I suppose that means no radio, too.”

  He’d been switching back and forth between WAXY 106 and ZADA 94. Miami and Lauderdale, all the old hard-rock classics.

  “The radio’s fine. The radio I don’t have to think about.”

  “Yeah, well… the radio doesn’t make you think ‘cause you weren’t the one who dated Janis Joplin. But don’t get me started on THAT weird episode.” He was tinkering with the dials. “Hey… you know, it wouldn’t kill you to have a tape player installed in this truck. Maybe a set of earphones for your noise-loving buddies.”

  I just nodded.

  What was it about the few letters I’d read and my exchange with Darkrume that I found so troubling?

  Something. Couldn’t manage to nail it down. Perhaps it was tone or implication; a word or a phrase that nagged at me. But if it was important, really important, why couldn’t I dredge it up out of the narrowest processing conduits of my brain?

  I kept fumbling with it, going over and over what details I could remember. Not that there was any alternative. Whatever data Darkrume had uploaded into Gail’s computer had destroyed or garbl
ed the entire program system.

  A call into Bernie Yager had confirmed it. “So you sit there, don’t switch off the machine, and let someone invade you? Doc, the memory bits that were destroyed were in HER computer, you didn’t even have to be on-line at that point. Now you expect me to help? Believe me, if there was anything left to save, I’d do it. But the virus you just described, what’s left after something like that?”

  Nothing, apparently.

  “The piranha programs, I’ve heard you can buy, them from the heavy-duty hackers,” Tomlinson told me. “I’ve come across cyber punks who pretended to have them. Same kind of weird crap shoots across your screen. But this was the first time I ever saw anyone actually do it.”

  Darkrume had indeed done it. All trace of Gail’s correspondence was now gone.

  So I’d spent my driving time trying to visualize the letters I’d read. Not easy because my brain kept slipping into a replay of the exchange with Darkrume-It was your ugly daughter! — and I became furious all over again.

  Now Tomlinson said, “Maybe if you speed up to like seventy, it’ll bounce something loose in your noggin. Can’t hurt and might help.”

  “Know what, Tomlinson? That was one of the cruelest things I’ve ever witnessed. What that guy did to Amanda. Gail Richardson must have extraordinarily bad judgment to get hooked up with someone like that. And to send him videos?”

  “We’ve been through all this. Why keep going over it? Women in that situation, especially the nice ones, they’re just too damn vulnerable. Hey-you want me to drive? We can pull over, take a whiz and let me get behind the wheel.”

  Tomlinson was a tailgater, a lane-weaver, a terrible driver.

  “Nope.”

  “I wouldn’t mind getting to Dinkin’s Bay before sunset, man. Brewskies on the dock with the guides. Maybe order in some appetizers. Chicken wings, they’re sounding tasty.”

  “I’ll go faster.”

  “Man, I wish I had a bottle of beer for every car that’s passed us this trip. Sixty-five, man, that’s Winnebago speed. Zoom zoom zoom the cars just crackin’ past and us tooling along like two catheter cadets in a Caddy.”

  He chuckled. The alliteration was unintentional and pleased him.

  I started to remind Tomlinson that he’d promised me at least twenty minutes of silence, but I stopped in mid-sentence.

  I said softly, “Straightaways.”

  “Yeah, man, you go slow, no matter what. Dozens assed us.”

  I changed the inflection. “Straight away. Straight away. “

  “Uh-huh, which is embarrassing ‘cause a couple of those cars were from Ohio, Indiana, the neck-bender places. No offense.”

  “In Merlot’s letter to Gail, what did he write? ‘I was so upset that when I left your house, I drove straight away to the beach.’ Something like that. You remember that?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “That’s more British than American. ‘Straight away,’ used like that. Or a phrase you might hear in the British colonies. Hong Kong, maybe Kuala Lumpur.”

  “Sure, it jumped right out at me, man. But then I’m a scholar. Colonial English-Merlot’s sentences had that kind of weird syntax. And honor, the way he spelled things. He spelled it H-O-N-O-U-R like the Brits do.”

  Was it true? I couldn’t remember.

  I said, “He used British spelling as well? You’re sure?”

  “Positive. There was this line where he said that the first thing he wanted to do was take her to the beach, some secluded harbour-he spelled it O-U-R — ” Tomlinson stopped talking and looked at me, a new awareness in his expression.

  I finished his sentence for him: “He spelled harbor H-A-R-B-O-U-R. But Merlot didn’t write that.”

  “He… shit! You’re right. It was Darkrume, that’s what he wrote to her.”

  “Exactly. Darkrume. The same British usage, the same spelling.”

  “You’re saying… I’ll be damned. Okay, okay, this is really fucking with my composure, man. You’re telling me that Darkrume and Merlot, they’re the same person.”

  I was waving my hand at him, telling him to be quiet. “Give me some time, let me think about this a little bit.” After a couple of minutes I said, “Yeah. Two different screen names, but the same person. Can you have two different names on the Internet?”

  “Absolutely. And the dude could have been anywhere, Colombia, Fumback, Egypt, you name it, and sign on with either name.”

  “What do you think the chances are of two people in different parts of the country, two American men who don’t even know each other, affecting the same limey style?”

  “Zero. Almost zero anyway.”

  “Then that’s what happened. Darkrume said he’s the one who refused to meet her. That’s what kept nagging at me. He was furious by the time he said it, which is why it had the ring of truth. But why would an on-line hustler refuse to meet with the woman he’s hustling? He’s seen her videos, he knows she’s beautiful. You’re more familiar with this business than I am, but my impression of this on-line romance stuff is that it attracts the lonely, the desperate and the predatory. Does that seem accurate?”

  “Hey now, man, don’t forget I’ve got a couple of cyber mistresses myself.”

  As much as I would have liked to, Tomlinson’s oddities were not easy to forget.

  I said, “But generally speaking. Give me one other reason why Darkrume would have refused to meet with Gail. She expected to have sex, right? That’s a hustler’s whole objective, yet he chose not to. Why? Because if they met, Gail would know he wasn’t some handsome photographer from California. He was her fat friend, just down the street.”

  He was nodding. “Somehow I felt it all along but didn’t know why. Merlot invented Darkrume. He orchestrated the whole thing, which is some serious sick shit, man. Very serious.”

  I said, “He plays good cop, bad cop. He sets her up, has her send the videos to some mail-forwarding service with a P.O. box. Maybe in Florida but probably another state. Maybe sends her pictures of some good-looking guy through the same service and says it’s him, Darkrume, this sexy professional photographer. Then he springs the trap, blackmail, and Merlot is right there saying I told you not to trust Darkrume. Let me help you get out of the mess you’re in. He tells her, yeah, the smart thing to do is just pay the guy off. And the whole time, she’s becoming increasingly dependent on Merlot ‘cause only he knows her terrible secret.”

  I mulled it over for a minute. “If he sent a blackmail demand by instant message, there’re no handwriting samples to worry about. And no record of it either, right?”

  Tomlinson said, “Unless Gail copied it and saved it to a whole separate file, no.”

  “Then that’s probably the way he played it.”

  “Or maybe he’s got a partner. Some guy and he had him call Gail and play the roll of Darkrume. A guy with a nice voice. Convincing.”

  We talked about that. There were several ways to make it work.

  I said, “I’m supposed to meet with Frank Calloway tomorrow. He hired an investigator to dig up dirt on Merlot, and he’s going to let me see the file. But I think I’m going to call tonight and make reservations to fly down to Cartagena. You’re right, it seems serious. Leave Friday or Saturday if I can get a flight.”

  “The sooner the better.”

  “I agree. What I should have done is head down there right away. Now I’m worried. This guy really is a freak.”

  When Tomlinson is very serious or concerned, he speaks more softly and becomes more articulate. “I think you need to find this lady, Doc. I really, truly do. Find her and make her believe the truth. Or scare the fat man away. Whatever it takes. He’s making a fool out of that nice woman. He may try to do worse.”

  Yes, maybe a lot worse.

  I drove in silence for a while, looking at the saw grass and the sky: gold on blue. The saw grass, the way it showed currents of wind, reminded me of elephant grass, the twelve-foot-high grass of the Mekong River and around ma
rshy Tonle Sap Lake, Cambodia.

  Once Bobby and I hiked into a bamboo village, drawn by the amplified buzzing of what we thought might be hiving bees.

  But no…

  It was the sound of flies, fat iridescent green flies. Thousands of flies, millions of flies, a gray haze. All drawn to what had been hung on hooks to die at the center of that village…

  Thinking about it, seeing it again but not wanting to see it, I said to Tomlinson, “If Bobby were alive today, and someone like Merlot hurt his wife or child, I think he would probably-” I stopped. Was there any way to exaggerate what Bobby was capable of doing?

  No. Just as there was no way to communicate some of the atrocities we’d witnessed in the jungles of Southeast Asia. So why discuss it?

  I, on the other hand, was far removed from that place and time, so I would handle it differently.

  Right?

  I would have to handle it differently.

  I listened to Tomlinson say, “I wish I could go with you to Colombia, man. But tomorrow, Musashi gets here with my little girl. I’ve been looking forward to it for months.”

  I told Tomlinson not to worry about it. If Merlot and Gail weren’t out cruising, it probably wouldn’t take me more than a couple of days to locate them. I had photographs. There weren’t that many marinas. And very, very few hugely fat gringos visited the land of cocaine, cartels and kidnappers. So I’d track down the boat, play it by ear. And tomorrow what I might do is ask Frank Calloway to go along with me.

  Tomlinson said, “You serious?”

  Yeah, I told him, but first I had to meet the man, get a feel for how he’d handle himself on the road. A place like Colombia, you didn’t want a whiner tagging along, but I needed someone to vouch that I was on Gail’s side. Not Amanda, though. Not if I could talk her out of it. I’d had bad luck traveling with women in the past.