Sanibel Flats

by Randy Wayne White

  "Where's Tomlinson? I need to talk to him. He had a young boy with him—"

  "They have both returned to the United States. The doctor who tended you said the boy was sick and that he should go home. The boy wanted very badly to go home. So the great

  DiMaggio went with him, but he said he would return if you did not get better."

  "Then I need to call him—"

  "I will have my men get word to him when they go to town. There's no phone here. Now you need food and rest."

  Ford sat up once more, remembering something. "Pilar was here, Juan. She talked to me. I'd like to see her. Can you tell her that I'm awake?"

  Rivera had picked up the lamp, and now he looked uncomfortable. "That would be difficult to do."

  "Why? Did she already leave?"

  Rivera looked at the flame in the lamp, not at Ford. "In a way she has left. Pilar Balserio is dead."

  Ford stayed in the convent another night and another day, and then the doctor came—a small, bald man with a mustache—and said he would have to rest for at least one more night before starting the long trip home. Ford protested; Rivera insisted, and without Rivera's help there would be no leaving. So he stayed. The nuns nursed him. They brought him books and food, and he was never so anxious to leave a place in his life. The one thing he did enjoy was the chanting. He would sneak out and watch the nuns through the portal; watch them march solemnly around the domed chamber with its tiny penance cells where the nuns, by choice, could go to suffer alone on the cold rock floors or by tying themselves with the penance ropes that hung suspended from the ceiling.

  Sometimes Rivera came to talk. Yes, Zacul was dead. They had found his body floating. The men had crossed themselves when they pulled his body from the water, so terrible was the expression of horror on his white face. The sharks had not bitten him, though. Even so, the mountain people were already saying that the sharks had taken him; that one more evil man had died from the bite of El Dictamen. Rivera said he was certain that someday the story would be told as truth throughout the mountains of Masagua.

  Zacul's men had bolted, Rivera said, though some had already returned to join the Masaguan People's Army. Zacul's officers had been taken prisoner, though four had been found dead of some strange illness—wagging his eyebrows at this, for Tomlinson had already told him about the poison. With his own army now stronger, with Zacul's guerrillas scattered leaderless around the country, and with the government forces in Masagua City already fighting among themselves, Rivera's destiny seemed clear.

  But he would not answer Ford's questions about Pilar Balserio. Once he came close.

  "She's not dead, Juan. That was no dream I had. She was here."

  "Always it's the same thing with you. Eat your nasty soup."

  "I heard her. She talked to me."

  "With a woman of her spirit, all things are possible. But the Pilar you knew is dead. It was a ghost. A holy vision from the gods."

  "It wasn't a ghost, damn it!"

  "Don't use such language when you speak of Ixku!" Flaring at him, really angry.

  "Ixku? Who in the hell—"

  "Yes Ixku! Would I agree to forgo my rightful presidency for anyone less?"

  And that was all he would say.

  Ford left on a Saturday, one week after the battle at Zacul's camp. Rivera brought him his clothes and made a request; a favor, though he insisted that Ford would be repaid. Ford agreed and said payment was not necessary. Rivera said it had already been done and left. That seemed rather cryptic until Ford put on his pants. The emeralds he had picked up that night on the dock were still in his pockets. Seven of them.

  Three of Rivera's men took him to Utatlan where there, amazingly, was the Land Cruiser—not even a gas cap missing.

  He flew LACSA out of San Jose on Sunday, had a long layover in Miami, then flew Air Florida to Fort Myers.

  It was 11 P.M. when the cab dropped him at Dinkin's Bay Marina. The island air was moist, like a warm veil, and the moon was three days past full, tumid with light.

  Ford could smell jasmine as he walked down the dock to his stilt house.

  TWENTY-TWO

  His sharks were gone. Ford could see that even before he got the door open to turn on the lights. The water within the shark pen was cobalt in the moonglow and still. Dead water and Ashless.

  He popped the lock and stepped into the stale air of a house that hadn't been inhabited for nearly two weeks. There were several handwritten notes on the table but no mail. MacKinley had been keeping his mail at the marina. Ford put his bag on the floor, hit the outside lights, then walked down the steps to the fish tank. The fish stirred in the glare of the overhead bulb; the eyes of the shrimp glowed.

  Two of his squid were gone and one of them floated, partially decomposed, in the ripple of the water jets.

  Not a happy homecoming.

  Ford stood on the lower porch looking at the bay. At the marina, the lights of the boats shimmered on the water, but it was quiet; a quiet Sunday night. Tomlinson's mast light was on, but the windows of his sailboat were dark, and that meant he wasn't aboard. Far out on the point, Jessica McClure's porch light was on; she was also away.

  Ford went to the shark pen and confirmed that the bull sharks were gone. There was a great dent in the fencing, as if someone had purposely trampled it. Why would someone do that? Disgusted, he went inside and took a quart of cold beer from the little refrigerator. It was the first beer he'd had in nine days, and he drank from the bottle as he read the messages on the table.

  Two were from Tomlinson.

  The first note said that he'd noticed the dead squid and had Ford ever tested for electrolysis? Maybe that was the problem. He'd taken the liberty of testing the water with a meter and got a small reading—he hoped Ford wouldn't mind. So maybe if he added some lead plates to the ground cable, it might help.

  Ford almost smiled. Electrolysis, sure, that could be the problem. He'd never built an aquarium this close to a modern marina before, and with all that electricity going into the water his ground line would be drawing it right into the tank. Adding lead to the cable would stop the migration of ions. The second note read:

  Doc, in case you get back before I do, I'm taking Jake to Harvey Hollins's in West Virginia. He says he could fly alone, but I think I'd better stick with him. That bitch he has for a mother shouldn't have been the one to tell him about his father's death. If I'd known what she was like, I'd have told him myself. She blamed Jake for running off with his father and for his father killing himself, which I guess was her excuse for not wanting him anymore. I'm not going to let Jake fly up there alone, not after what he's been through.

  There was a message from Jeth Nicholes, so nervously written and apologetic that the block letters almost seemed to stutter. Some kids or someone had busted down the shark pen and maybe got into the house through the window, but they didn't seem to take anything or leave any mess, but Jeth would pay for it if something was missing, only he didn't know how much sharks cost, but that's how bad he felt about it.

  There were a couple of other notes from MacKinley. One said he had an important package sent registered mail, but he'd have to sign for it at the post office. Another said a man had called from D.C. and left an urgent message. It didn't say who, but Ford knew. The message was: "The antique salesman jumped bail. Whereabouts unknown." The package, like the phone message, could only be from Donald Piao Cheng. The Kin Qux Cho was at the post office waiting for him.

  Ford got to his feet and walked through the roofed passageway and unlocked the door of his lab. It looked just the way he had left it, nice and neat, with microscopes under their covers and stainless-steel tables glistening. He went to the shelves of marine specimens and began to inspect the jars of small sharks and shark embryos. He took one of the jars from the shelf. The lid didn't seem to be screwed as tightly as he normally left lids, and there seemed to be more preservative in the jar than there should have been—an odd combination considering evaporation.
<
br />   Ford put the jar back on the shelf and dialed Major Les Durell's home number. Durell's wife answered, sounding sleepy. Ford identified himself and said it was important. Durell came on a few moments later, sounding even sleepier, and said without preamble, "You don't follow directions very well, do you, boy?"

  Ford, taken aback, said he didn't know about any directions.

  "Like you didn't get my letter, huh? Like the mail between Fort Myers and Sanibel's that bad. You're not very good at playing innocent."

  "I've been out of the country for two weeks, Les. I just got back. I haven't even seen my mail. "

  "Oh. No kidding? Jesus, what time is it?" He made a grunting noise as if trying to clear his head, or maybe pulling a chair out to sit. "Well, it was in the letter. It was an official letter. I told you not to contact me again unless it was through your attorney. I told you we'd be seating a grand jury in a couple of weeks to look into that matter we discussed, and that any further testimony you wanted to deliver would have to be through the grand jury system."

  "About Rafe's murder, you mean?"

  "No, Sealife Corporation. The governor's office sealed their records on Wednesday. Really took the bastards by surprise and got everything. I mean everything. Some of the assistant D.A.'s have been going through the stuff and they already have enough to put half the city officials behind bars and keep the other half in tax court for the next ten years. That includes that scuzzball Mario DeArmand. That bastard's going to jail, even if the feds don't come up with gun-smuggling charges. "

  Ford said, "They will," trying not to sound as pleased as he felt. Then: "What about Rafe?"

  "What about him? If it makes you feel any better, that newspaper jackal Melinski has raked up enough muck on Hollins's ex-wife to get her and Judge what's-his-name run out of the city—if there's any city left when the grand jury gets through. He got some interesting stuff on when Hollins worked for Sealife, too, back when they were just starting to develop Sandy Key. They had a hell of a mosquito problem and they hired Rafe to fly their spray chopper. They had him spraying some kind of poison—quig-something-tox, I forget the name. "

  "Queleatox?" Ford said.

  "Yeah, that's it. How did you know?"

  Ford was thinking that if they had been spraying queleatox in the area, maybe his squid weren't dying from electrolysis after all. In Africa, queleatox was used to exterminate weaver birds; massive fish kills always followed for a long, long time afterward. Ford said, "Just an unlucky guess."

  "Anyway, this poison was death on mosquitoes, but it was death on birds and fish, everything else, too, plus it was cumulative. It never went away. According to Melinski, Rafe found out what he was spraying, raised a fuss, and got himself fired. So you can bet the city fathers were more than happy to get rid of him nice and quiet and fast enough so reporters wouldn't get the idea of poking around into his background."

  "He was murdered, Les, and he's got a nice little boy who's going to grow up thinking his father committed suicide and left him in a place you can't even imagine."

  "Now you're starting to sound like Melinski. I'll bet you anything his story's going to make it all sound like my fault. That vulture has had me working day and night, looking over my shoulder, second-guessing me. What gives him the right? The shithead. I don't mind when reporters act like they've been elected. It's when they start pretending they've been ordained that I really get pissed off." Durell paused, catching himself before he got madder. "Why did you call me?"

  "My house was broken into. I wanted to tell you—"

  "Doc, I don't know how you got the idea I'm your own private police force, but get it out of your head. Like my letter says, we shouldn't talk anymore."

  "But I think the person who broke in was—"

  "If it's an emergency, the number is nine one one. If it's not, look it up in the book. " And hung up.

  Ford considered calling Don Cheng in D.C., but when he glanced out the window he noticed that Jessica's porch light was no longer on.

  He locked the lab.

  He would call Cheng in the morning.

  He almost took his skiff, but that would be noisy. So he walked his bike down the dock and pedaled out to Periwinkle, Sanibel's main street. He rode the bikepath east past the restaurants and small boutiques. Coconut Grove, Mc T's, and the rest, then took Dixie Beach Road north to the water's edge where the road became shell, following the cusp of the peninsula to the mouth of Dinkin's Bay.

  Jessica's house sat in the shadows of casuarina trees, its tin roof white beneath the summer moon. There were lights downstairs and he could hear music playing, saxophone and piano— public radio doing jazz. Ford leaned his bike against a tree. There was only one car in the drive, Jessica s car, and he touched the hood as he passed. It was cool. She had either been out walking, which seemed unlikely, or someone had dropped her off and left, or . . . there was another possibility. Staying in the shadows, he walked around the house to the dock. Her boat was still tied, shifting uneasily in the tidal flow. There were empty water jugs on the deck and something brown rolled into a bundle like a sleeping bag. He reached out and touched the small outboard engine. It was still warm.

  Ford walked up the sand pathway to the porch but then he hesitated just before rapping on the door.

  What was that noise?

  The windows were open, and, through the screens, he could hear the music and he could hear the creak of the ceiling fans, but there was something else, too: a familiar low moan and the slap of belly skin against thigh.

  The noise sensitized the hair on his neck even before he realized what it was, and Ford found himself being drawn inexorably to the expanse of living-room window. The television was on and the room was aglow with mercurial light—a music video station, so it wasn't public radio after all. The television's glare threw long shadows and, on the screen, two black musicians sweated over their saxophones. Ford watched the musicians for a time because he found it difficult to look at Jessica.

  Jessica McClure was on the couch with her back to Ford. She sat astride some man who lay with his feet aimed at the window, a faceless creature who was all legs and long arms. Her head was cast back, auburn hair in a sheet over her buttocks, and she massaged her own breasts while pivoting on the man; lifting, sliding, then ingurgitating him with all the precision of a German clock. Every time she lifted, Ford could see the underside of her like an anatomy lesson.

  He stood watching for a moment, detached, feeling no emotion stronger than disappointment, then turned and walked quietly back to the dock. He sat on the dock listening to the smack-thump of mullet jumping, swatting at mosquitoes. There were several big whelk shells in the sand, shells Jessica had collected and left to bleach in the sun. Ford picked up one of the shells, shook the sand out, and fitted his hand through the aperture, gripping the spire so that it was like a boxing glove. After about fifteen minutes, he saw silhouettes against the window, then heard the toilet flush. Ford leaned over the boat and yanked on the rope, starting the engine. Then he grabbed the whelk shell and knelt beside the low hedge of mangroves by the dock.

  He heard their voices above the music, a quizzical garble, then the screen door slammed and the man came running out. Ford waited until the man was about to leap onto the dock, then swung out of the bushes and hit him in the face with the whelk shell. He mistimed the punch and the shell glanced off the man's cheek, but he still went down as if he had been shot. Then Ford stepped over the man expecting to see Benjamin Rouchard, the New York art dealer who had jumped bail. Instead, he saw Rafe Hollins.

  Ford stood numbly as if in a dream, unable to speak, unable to move; stood wondering if maybe he wasn't having a hallucination from the concussion. But it was Rafe, all right, lying there blinking up at him, wearing only a T-shirt and Jockey shorts, holding his cheek, which was bleeding. Hollins began to slide away from him, backward in the sand, then slowly got to his feet. He said, "Is that any way to greet an old friend, Doc?" Then: "How in the hell did you find me?
"

  Ford was breathing heavily, still staring. He dropped the whelk shell, grabbed Hollins's T-shirt in both fists, and ran him backward into the mangroves, holding him against the limbs and yelling: "You son of a bitch, your little boy was dying down there. They had him living like an animal! I almost got killed getting him out.'

  Hollins wrapped his hands around Ford's arms, not fighting him but shaking him, as if trying to shake information out. "You mean you have him? Jake's alive?"

  "As if you care."

  "Is he okay?"

  "Yes!"

  "You've got to tell me where he is! I've got to go see him."

  Ford smacked Hollins's hands away. "Real convincing. But then you always were good at tricks." And he hit Hollins in the face again. Hollins fell back into the mangroves, tried to catch his balance, but the limbs sprung him out into the sand.

  Another voice said, "Go ahead, Ford. Go ahead and beat him to death." Jessica was walking toward them, barefooted, a robe pulled tight around her neck, and speaking softly in a husky alto voice that sounded cold, cold. "Make everything nice and neat, just the way you like it. Your dead friend isn't dead, so go ahead and solve the problem—eliminate the data that doesn't fit. Kill him."

  Ford pointed his finger at her. "Why don't you run along and take a shower? You look a little dirty tonight."

  "There! Now you've put me in my place. You're doing marvelously, Ford. Actually showing some emotion." She stepped onto the boat and shut off the engine. In the sudden silence she said, "I knew you had a heart banging around someplace in that big chest of yours. "

  Hollins was sitting up groggily, snorting blood into the sand, trying to breathe. "Don't hit me again, Doc. I mean it. If you hit me again I'm gonna have to fight back. "

  Ford said, "Don't make promises you can't keep."

  "I don't want to fight you, but lay off, damn it."

  "Jake was down there sleeping in his own crap. He's got open sores all over his legs. They had him chained to a wall. And your buddy Zacul came this close to getting his hands on him."