Bone Deep

by Randy Wayne White

  “I’ve been chased before,” I said. “You’re going about this all wrong.”

  He looked at me, really looked at me. “That’s bullshit. What did you do?”

  I smiled a grim smile but only replied, “We should have headed into the backcountry. Some creek with mangrove cover so we can lose a helicopter if that’s what they send.”

  Pistol sights found my forehead. “Hey, goddamn it, I asked you a question.”

  I waited for the barrel’s angle to change before I answered, “Police wanted to arrest me for murder. No . . . not arrest me. They would have questioned me first, then shot me. Newspapers would have said they tried to arrest me.”

  “In Florida?”

  “No. This was a few months ago in another country.”

  “Where?”

  “South of here. The name doesn’t matter.”

  “Arrested for murder?”

  “An assassination, is what they called it, but the same thing.”

  The pistol, in profile, returned to the windshield. “Christ,” he said, worried about it, then asked, “Did you do it?”

  Ahead, I could see a color change, water translucent green, now that we were two miles offshore, the murk of mangrove rivers and nutrient crude thinning. I also saw a Styrofoam ball in the distance—a trap marker, blue crab, or a marker forgotten by a stone crabber. The ball would be attached to a hundred feet of nylon rope and a heavy cage. I steered toward it, turning the wheel gradually, while I answered, “It doesn’t matter. What I’m telling you is, I’ve been through this.”

  “Did you do it or didn’t you?”

  I looked at him and said, “They were convinced. Same difference.”

  Color was fading from his face. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Are they still looking?”

  “Of course. It’s a capital offense.” Then asked, “Did you shoot someone? Or just rob a house?”

  For a moment, he came close to answering. The moment passed, and he vented his frustration by yelling at the sky, “Son of a bitch! Out of all the boats in Florida, I’ve got to pick one owned by a goddamn wanted killer.” Flipped his middle finger at clouds, then looked north. “Then you better not let them catch us. What about Tampa? It’s only an hour by car. How long in a boat?”

  I found the starboard trim tab with a finger, getting ready for what came next. “Too far,” I said, then lied, “but Saint Pete’s just up the beach. You can see it from where you’re standing.”

  My abductor was on his knees, not standing. I wanted him to get to his feet and reach for a starboard handhold—a finesse that might be less time-consuming than snagging a crab trap. He shielded his eyes to see. “Where? That’s bullshit. Saint Pete’s way the hell north of here.”

  “Right there. Are you blind?”

  Then he did it—he stood, balance unsteady—which is when I made my move. Before his hand found a support, I trimmed the boat’s starboard chine deep and buried the throttles while spinning the wheel hard in the opposite direction. Engines cavitated . . . deck bucked like a trampoline . . . the man bellowed, “Hey!” Then he belly-skidded along the starboard tube for an instant and tumbled overboard.

  If the pistol went flying, I didn’t see it, yet I spared him from the propellers by turning immediately to starboard. If I’d known for certain he’d shot my friends, it might have been different, I might have increased speed as I circled back and hit him again while he floundered on the surface. Coast Guard investigators are good at their jobs, but I had just staged an “accident” scenario that kills boaters year after year. Usually, the passenger falls off while pissing, then becomes an unintended victim when his catcalling buddies return to fetch him.

  A dozen variations of that scenario were still possible as I slowed and turned. Who would investigators believe? A dead criminal or his frightened captive? Never mind the thousands of hours I have logged at a helm.

  I wasn’t sure Tomlinson and Dunk had been shot, however. So I idled toward him, yelling, “Show your hands!”

  He did—not because I demanded it but because jogging suits absorb water, and my abductor was fighting to stay on the surface. Like a dog learning to swim, his arms flailed, pistol on the bottom by now.

  “Asshole. You did that on purpose.”

  I checked the GPS while he hollered threats and paddled toward my boat. We were 2.1 miles off the beach, close enough to see Finn Tovar’s roof of orange tile; to the south, a ridge of silver roofs, houses built shoulder to shoulder. We weren’t close enough to hear sirens . . . or had the sirens stopped?

  Stopped, I decided. Two miles and a mild shore breeze separated us, but sound carries over water. What had silenced the sirens? A corpse or two might be enough to turn an emergency into an academic recovery. The temptation was to return at top speed and find Tomlinson. I couldn’t call him. My phone and wallet were soaking in my abductor’s blue jogging suit . . . or drifting toward the bottom.

  I thought about using the VFH radio, then decided, Not yet. Call the Coast Guard and I would have to either rescue the man or kill him before a chopper was scrambled from Tampa. Go off and leave him, he would drown, and that risked dealing with paperwork and questions later.

  An alternative popped into my mind.

  In the stern locker, I keep a spare anchor that’s attached to a buoy the size of a volleyball. I use it when tarpon fishing—a rig I can jettison before a tarpon strips my reel, then retrieve later. No big deal if I lost it.

  I decided to risk losing it now.

  Engines in neutral, I gathered buoy, line, and anchor and dumped it all over the side . . . watched the buoy flutter as the line unpeeled. Then I backed the boat away from the approaching swimmer to send him a message.

  The man looked at the buoy, then at me. “Hey . . . what are you doing?”

  I continued backing.

  “Hey, goddamn it. You can’t leave me out here.”

  Yes I could. I’d found the buoy on the beach, the anchor while diving—neither could be traced back to me.

  “That’ll float you for a while,” I called. “Maybe someone will come by.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  I answered that by asking, “Remember what I did in South America?” then put twenty yards between us before switching off the engines.

  I wanted to see what was in the duffel bag he’d brought aboard. Even if I learned nothing, it would give my abductor time to panic. When he did, I would demand information—along with my wallet, phone, and multi-tool. My phone was in what some PR person deemed a “waterproof” case, which meant it was probably ruined by now.

  If it still worked, a call to Tomlinson would decide whether I left my abductor way out here to drown.

  • • •

  THE BAG WAS BIG, constructed for military deployment. Roomy enough for four Pelican cases. I ignored the man’s pleas while opening the first case. Inside were dozens of gigantic shark’s teeth, some mounted for display, most thrown in by a burglar who was in a hurry. They were remnants of extinct monsters, sharks that could swallow a great white in a gulp. The teeth were fossilized blue-gray ivory, some bigger than my hand.

  Think of it as blue ivory—Leland Albright’s words.

  No doubt now that the late Finn Tovar’s house had been robbed.

  I opened the second case, then the third, noting the contents in a rush: bones and prehistoric skulls, arrowheads of volcanic black and blazing orange or coral pink—hundreds of them—and a serrated dart, eight inches long, notched for a spear. When I saw that, my hand moved involuntarily to my chest. It was the barb of a prehistoric stingray retooled as a weapon. Lethal, as I knew too well.

  I sealed the cases one by one, wondering if I should bother opening the fourth. Police would confiscate the stuff anyway, and it had been ten minutes since I’d left Tomlinson and Fallsdown. I had to make a decision.

  “Kee
p the shit, we’ll make a deal.” My struggling abductor, thirty yards away, had changed tactics and was trying to negotiate. He had the buoy clutched to his chest but was running out of steam.

  I ignored him until he added, “The gold alone’s worth twenty grand.”

  Gold?

  I opened the fourth case. It contained several sealed display boxes. I peeked into a few: a silver bar encrusted with coral . . . two coins of gold, their archaic crosses struck off-center—doubloons from Conquistador times. Something big wrapped in plastic: an elephant tusk, mammoth or mastodon. It had a polished blue-black density when touched. The thing was heavy, almost a yard long.

  Splashing to stay afloat, the man yelled, “I know where we can sell that shit, too!” while my brain cataloged the items as Spanish Contact portion of the Finn Tovar collection.

  But I was wrong. When I opened the smallest box, I knew it—after recovering from my surprise. Looking back at me was an owl’s face, its eyes rimmed with white as if once set with pearls.

  Most definitely not Spanish.

  My abductor had gone after the most valuable artifacts first and he had used this case. Items were more carefully packed, each protected by bubble wrap, including the small rosewood box in my hand.

  I cleaned my glasses, removed the artifact, and set the box aside. Came damn close to smiling when I looked closer. Photos taken decades ago had not captured the pearl sheen around the eyes nor the black glisten of soapstone. The carving possessed an ancient weight when held in my modern hand. But it was only three inches tall, not six as Fallsdown had told me.

  Hypnotic, those stony eyes. I had to look away to wonder, Where’s the second owl?

  I hurried through the rest of the items, but it wasn’t there. So I returned the carving to the little box, slipped it beneath the console, and repacked the duffel bag. Maybe my abductor knew the answer, so I started engines and idled toward him.

  Soon, he was clinging to the side of the boat. I had my wallet, my Gerber, and cell phone, too, which still worked, just as advertised.

  Phone in hand, I told him, “If you lied to me, I’ll leave you out here.”

  I had asked the obvious questions by then.

  “I believe you,” he said.

  Maybe it was something he saw in my eyes when I punched in Tomlinson’s number. While the phone rang, the man tried to pull himself into the boat. When the call went to voice mail, I stepped on his hands until he yelped and fell back into the water.

  “My friend doesn’t answer,” I said, looking down. “What happened to him, Deon?”

  That was his name, Deon Killip—probably fake, but I had filed it away. Criminals under duress often use the name of an accomplice.

  “How should I know, man? Yeah, okay, I robbed the damn house. But I didn’t shoot anyone—I swear.”

  Prior to my call, he’d claimed he had permission to enter Finn Tovar’s house.

  “Keep talking,” I said.

  “But I never fired that gun. I told you, it was some other dude. The guy shows up out of nowhere wearing a ski mask. Carrying a pistol. He shot at me. Would’a killed me. That’s why I had to get away from the beach.”

  I didn’t believe him. Mick the tour guide wasn’t the ski mask type. Plus, Mick had been shirtless, wearing baggy shorts that couldn’t conceal a weapon. Tomlinson and Fallsdown were automatically eliminated.

  “That’s your second lie,” I said. “What happened was, three men showed up and surprised you. You panicked. Two were friends of mine, so I’m not going to ask again. Who did you shoot?”

  His confusion appeared genuine. “Three? I heard footsteps upstairs, but I was already on my way out. My bike was hidden in the trees and that’s where I was headed when this dude in a ski mask steps out. Like, waiting for me, you know? The asshole shoots at me. Then I hear sirens. I figure shit’s about to really go down, so I took off, hoping he would try to cut me off at the road. When he did, I circled back to the beach and saw you.”

  A burglar, hoping to escape with a heavy duffel bag, would not arrive on a bicycle. Strike three.

  I did a slow scan—no boats around—then told Deon, “Lose the sweatsuit. You might make it to the beach.”

  When my propellers were clear, I turned the boat and didn’t look back.

  • • •

  HALFWAY TO THE BEACH, my cell rang. It was Tomlinson. He talked for two nonstop minutes, and answered one question, before I interrupted, “There’s something I have to do. Call you back.”

  Deon Killip—the man’s real name, it turned out—was bawling when I dragged him onto my boat. “The next time you talk to someone like me,” I suggested, “don’t say ‘bike’ when you mean ‘motorcycle.’”

  “Awful,” he gasped. “I thought sharks would bite my legs off before I drowned. Thought I was gonna die for sure out here, man.”

  “You still might,” I said.

  In the cooler, buried in ice, were bottles of beer. I opened a Kalik and fit it into Deon’s shaking hand.

  “Now,” I added, “is when you tell me everything.”

  SEVEN

  When I spotted Tomlinson, he was wandering the beach three miles south of the late Finn Tovar’s house—he, too, had done some running from a man in a ski mask.

  “Heard some shots, looked out the window, and there he was,” he had told me on the phone. That’s as far as Tomlinson got before I had interrupted and turned the boat around to retrieve Deon. Half an hour later, when I called him back, Tomlinson offered his approximate location, but added, “Can’t talk right now. I’ll fill you in on the way to Dinkin’s Bay.”

  There was no sinister message in his reply, but I’d rocketed along the beach anyway, searching. Now I understood. My hipster pal had taken solace in the company of three women, all carrying bags and tiny shovels, all dressed in swimsuits designed to cover, not reveal. Modest, middle-aged ladies who were so busy digging, I was almost to the beach before their male companion noticed. I watched him hug the ladies one by one before he got in the boat, then waved good-bye while I backed away.

  “They’re in their bittersweet years,” Tomlinson observed, when it was safe to speak. “Sweet enough to want more and too old for bitterness if they make new mistakes. Fun, when they’re that age. We exchanged cell numbers. Lillian—the stocky brunette?—she’s a doll.”

  “Where’s Duncan?” I asked.

  “With me until we heard sirens, then he disappeared. Mick, who knows? He went out a window. I don’t think he actually had permission to be in the house.”

  “What a shocker,” I said. “Does Dunk have a cell phone?”

  “It’s one of those disposable phones that migrants buy. I left two messages but kept it short. I didn’t want to burn all his minutes.”

  “We’re not leaving without him. Ever cross your mind he’s handcuffed in the back of a squad car while you were hunting seashells with your new girlfriends?”

  “Shark’s teeth,” he corrected, and produced a handful from his pocket. “They were everywhere, man. Never seen anything like it.” Then shook his head. “The sirens were probably an ambulance or firefighters. Maybe cops, but just a coincidence. They stopped a few blocks away. Scared the hell out of the guy in the ski mask—or maybe he actually was chasing me. That’s what I thought, anyway, for the first quarter mile.”

  On the beach, the ladies were still watching us, so I steered farther offshore before shutting down. “We’re staying right here,” I said, “until we hear from Duncan—or you give me a good reason.”

  Tomlinson eyed the duffel bag that contained the four Pelican cases, but minus one little wooden box. “You’re the one who ran off and left us, hermano. Where’d the bag come from? The guy in the ski mask?” My friend’s expression changed. “Geezus . . . don’t tell me you killed the guy, Doc.”

  I said, “I didn’t see anyone with a ski ma
sk.”

  “Yeah? Well, we sure as hell didn’t leave Dinkin’s Bay carrying a bagful of camera cases. I’d remember that.”

  I pushed the bag away with my foot. “We’re not leaving without Duncan. Tell me what happened.”

  Tomlinson’s Buddha eyes accused You did something, but he said, “Dunk is a Yavapai Apache, for heaven’s sake. Stop worrying.”

  “He said he was Crow.”

  “Ask him about it when you see him. Dunk’s probably halfway to Sanibel by now.”

  “Atlanta, more likely, with his sense of direction,” I said. Then stifled my Christmas Day eagerness to show off the owl carving by insisting, “Tomlinson—talk.”

  The story he told matched details in Deon Killip’s story, plus filled in a few holes. Deon claimed to be a full-time bartender and part-time burglar—a drug addict, too, which I assumed because of his constant sniffing. He’d overheard two customers talking about Finn Tovar’s death and a treasure in antiquities in Tovar’s home that had yet to be inventoried before probate.

  The customers were attorneys, Deon believed, or at least successful businessmen from the way they had dressed and the twenty-dollar tip they’d left.

  He’d heard the men say that the court had sealed Tovar’s house with padlocks because the man’s enemies started filing claims against the estate the day after Tovar died. The violent antiquities collector, according to Deon, had also been a lifelong thief. Thief, as in digging on phosphate company land, but also thief as in thief.

  “The old man lived alone in that big house,” my abductor had told me. “I checked around. No one knew for sure what was in there, but there were a lot of rumors. I tracked down a maid he’d fired—she hated Tovar. Nice old lady living in this trailer park, trying to support her daughter’s babies. She described what sounded like a false wall downstairs—he’d slapped the shit out of her just for being in the room. I don’t think she believed I was an undercover repo man. That’s what I told her, but it didn’t matter. We worked out a deal.”