Tomlinson was in the lab, barefooted, wearing a baseball uniform, jersey unbuttoned, hair braided Willie Nelson style. He was talking on the VHF radio when I pushed the screen door open, and he paused to wag a warning finger. Quiet.
He’d been as irreverent and optimistic as ever, but was also dealing with a loss of personal confidence, so I attempted humor. “Sorry. I thought this was the men’s room.”
I closed the door, crossed the breezeway to my quarters, and went inside, switching on lights. I use yellow bulbs near windows because mosquitoes have primitive eyes that don’t recognize the color yellow. The little bastards do not fly toward light they cannot see.
Mosquitoes come with the location. I live in what is known as a “fish house”-two small houses built over water on stilts, under a single tin roof. In the early 1900s, fish were stored in one house, fishermen in the other. I now own the property-outdoor shower, rain cistern, and wobbly boardwalks included. Shay was right. I like the place. It’s become part of who I am.
Dinkin’s Bay Marina, three hundred yards down the mangrove shore, is a neighbor. Another is Tomlinson, whose sailboat, No Mas, is moored equidistant from the docks, although he behaves as if he owns my property, too-irritating, at times.
Tonight, though, it was okay. He’d been at the propane stove earlier-I could smell fried fish-and he is one of the few self-anointed gourmets who doesn’t overcook seafood. Just as uncommon, he cleans up after himself.
I walked beneath ceiling fans to the galley, where I found a platter of snapper, fresh lime, and mango slices. I squeezed lime on the fillets until they glistened, I squeezed lime on the mango, then went through the day’s mail as I ate.
There was a manila envelope from a medical lab in Tampa. It contained copies of an MRI brain scan my neurologist had ordered because of headaches that had become more than occasional. I assumed they were caused by a head injury. The doctor wasn’t convinced, so I spent half an hour in a tube that bonged and clanked while electron magnets scanned.
The neurologist had already called with the results, so I only stared at the envelope for a moment before I pushed it aside. Then I stacked bills atop it, separating envelopes that were addressed by hand.
There was a letter from an Iowa attorney that I knew would be distressing-it concerned my daughter, and visitation rights. Two other letters from women were of mild interest. A fourth letter, from a man, was of uncommon interest. I studied the labored handwriting. The return address read, Merlin T. Starkey.
Merlin Starkey had been a cop in the Everglades south of Sanibel. Years ago, he’d investigated the boat explosion that killed my parents, back when I was a kid. Officially, it was ruled an accident of “undetermined cause,” but Starkey and I both knew better. For years, I blamed it on a faulty fuel valve installed by my crazy uncle.
Wrong, Starkey informed me awhile back. He knew who did it, he’d told me-but he wouldn’t share the name until after his own death.
I had read Starkey’s obituary in last week’s newspaper. Even so, to see the man’s shaky handwriting days after he, too, had gone to ground was unexpected, and I was momentarily flummoxed.
Merlin Starkey was an old-time Southern cop: Stetson hat, boots, string bow tie with ingratiating manners that masked a nasty disposition. He’d bait punks with his slow, dumb drawl-“You tellin’ the truth, young captain?”-professional enough to baton the big city out of them without leaving a bruise. But the man kept his word.
Here was proof, the letter he’d promised. Inside was the name of the person responsible for the deaths of my mother and father… the person who’d murdered them, or so Starkey had insinuated.
I am not sentimental. Even as a child I was impatient with the ceremonies of childhood. By the time I was nineteen, I’d logged too many miles to abide unnecessary baggage. But I have a sustained interest in learning the truth. Not a driving interest, but an interest. As a biologist, assembling puzzles is what I do.
Finally, here was a puzzle’s last piece.
Who did it?
So why did I now find myself reluctant to open Starkey’s letter?
Strange.
I held the envelope between thumb and index finger, as if it were evidence, then held it to the light. It was inexpensive paper, taped at the back, stationery folded inside, no writing visible. I shook it, sniffed it, and nearly smiled. It smelled of horse stalls. Distinctive. Starkey had used Copenhagen snuff until the end.
He’d written my name and Sanibel Island, FLA with a fountain pen. But my address was squeezed between in blue ballpoint, a woman’s hand-the old man had sealed the envelope, but didn’t know my address, so a nurse or maybe an attorney’s secretary had added it later.
What did these additional fragments matter? I was stalling. Why?
Did I fear the truth? Or treachery? The same crazed uncle I’d blamed for the explosion was guilty of swindling Starkey, and Starkey had nursed a grudge for fifty years. Maybe duping me, a nephew, was a way of finally getting even. What if the note was blank? Or Starkey had named an innocent person?
Or… did I fear something else?
Enough.
I placed Starkey’s letter on the counter by the stove with the rest of the mail. I’d waited a lifetime to learn the truth. I could wait another hour… if there was truth to be learned.
There were more pressing matters. I opened the letter from the Iowa attorney I’d hired-distressing, as expected, and out of my control. So I turned my attention to things I could control. I’d promised Shay that her video would be safe. My past was past. Her future was bright. Maybe brilliant.
I washed the platter, then carried the briefcase to my sleeping quarters and pushed the bed aside. Beneath was a recent addition: ship’s carpentry. By turning two flush-set brass locks, I could remove a section of flooring and access a locker that was roomy, dry, and difficult to find.
From the locker, I took a fireproof box, swung it onto the bed, and unlocked it. Inside, I hid the evidence of Shay Money’s secret weekend among mementos of my own secret life: notebooks, counterfeit passports, emergency euros, emeralds, and Mayan jade from the jungles of Central America.
There was also a gold locket engraved with a smiling full moon. I held the locket for a moment before sealing the box away.
At the laboratory door, I called, “Permission to enter?”
Once again, Tomlinson raised an impatient finger. He turned from the radio’s mic and said, “You’re not gonna believe this one. Something very weird’s happening out there tonight.”
I asked, “Weird on the Tomlinson scale, or by amateur standards?” as I placed my briefcase on the dissecting table, and crossed the room to a row of saltwater aquaria. The aquaria were glowing rectangles inhabited by fish, squid, octopi, and predatory shells that I’d collected from local waters. There were also a couple of new specialty tanks.
“That’s what I’m trying to find out. There’s a lady in distress. But I lost contact.”
“Why am I not surprised? I bet she’s beautiful, too. So hail the lady again.”
“I just did. I’m giving it a few seconds.”
I’d stopped to inspect the new aquarium systems. They were unconventional. One contained poisonous shrimp. The other, venomous jellyfish. Both were projects recently contracted. The research was interesting. My new employer, less so. It was a State Department intelligence agency that had offered me a fat, full-time contract to work as a “preemptory specialist.” My task was to anticipate ways the bad guys might attack the U.S. economy through tourism and saltwater food products.
The offer was not unexpected. A man named Kal Wilson had asked me to say yes if the agency came knocking. When a former president of the U.S. asks a favor from his deathbed, how can you refuse?
So I’d signed the contract. Tomorrow morning, three supervisors were coming to inspect my work, and to discuss my PATEE-Personnel Attitude and Task Efficiency Evaluation.
I dreaded it. There was a lot of paperwork to finish before they arrived at 10 a.m.
“How was the trip?” Tomlinson was looking at the briefcase, eyebrows raised. He’d been in the lab four nights earlier when Shay asked me to fly to Saint Arc. Fly to Saint Lucia, actually, and then take the ferry four miles to Saint Arc.
I told him, “Smoother than I’d hoped. They’re pros. But instead of helping her, I think I only dug the hole deeper.”
“You mean we dug the hole deeper.” He was shaking his head, instantly mad at himself. “A Zen master’s supposed to have balls, man. Lately, I couldn’t find mine with a magnifying glass and a hammer.”
I said, "Huh?” After a moment, I said, “Oh.”
Tomlinson had tried to resist. He had warned Shay about deception and negative energy. I’d warned her that negotiating with an extortionist was like asking a cannibal to change the menu. Yet, she’d won us both over.
“Shay’s persuasive.”
“No. Shay’s a steamroller. She didn’t give us time to think it through. Start her marriage with a lie? It put me in such a karmic spin, I’ve already started the grunt research because I know the kimchi’s gonna hit the fan.” I followed his gaze to the office computer where he’d stacked articles on the desk. “Did she finally tell you why she’s being blackmailed?”
I nodded. “The basics. But it’s up to her to decide-”
“I’m not asking. I figured it out on my own. Caribbean islands aren’t exactly free with their crime stats, but I mixed Google with some of my old psychic-viewing techniques. Take a look.”
I went to the desk. For all his recreational excesses, chemical and otherwise, Tomlinson is an academic at heart. The research was methodical. He’d compiled stats and articles on Caribbean crime, along with figures from the wedding industry-average costs, median costs-all unrelated data until I picked up the yellow legal pad where he’d made notes.
Tomlinson’s handwriting is an eloquent dance of loops and swirlsSpenserian script, he calls it. He credits it to his former life as a shipping clerk in eighteenth-century London.
I read:
On the Island of Saint Joan of Arc, in the Caribbean, where crime against tourists is seldom prosecuted, someone may have created a niche industry by targeting women for blackmail.
Statistically, victims are U.S. citizens, eighteen to sixty, women traveling alone or with other women…
Preferred targets are engaged to be married, and on holiday during the chaotic weeks prior to their wedding. These women are easy prey because: 1.) They are emotional wrecks. 2.) They have access to bank accounts that can be emptied quickly. 3.) Their wedding day adds the fear of public humiliationto the risk of personal humiliation…
Women in this demographic are viewed as raw product by the industry- not unlike harp seals in the fur industry. Entrapment using corrupt police, drugs, sex, hidden cameras, staged events, and phony arrests are likely methods.
I looked away from the legal pad. Tomlinson was adjusting the squelch on the radio. “How’d you come up with the connection between blackmail and wedding bank accounts?”
The best guess he and I had mustered was that Shay had pissed off some government official, and I was traveling to Saint Arc to pay off the cops.
He said, “Intuitive reasoning. It’s no secret I haven’t been at peak strength, but my paranormal powers aren’t completely on the fritz. So I gave it a shot.”
“It’s shrewd. Maybe brilliant.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding.”
He appeared pleased and surprised. I could also tell that he was very stoned. “Well, the data provided indicators. Behavioral patterns can be predicted even if statistical interactions are vague. A statistical etching appeared, but I let Universal Mind fill the blanks. Universal Mind is all-knowing energy that-” He drifted. His focus shifted. “Are you stroking my ego? Or do you really think I’m right?”
Tomlinson had suffered a loss of confidence in the last few months. It happens.
“I think you nailed it. Shay’s a perfect candidate. It’s possible they started tracking her the day she made reservations.” I was reviewing the figures. “These numbers are accurate? It’s insane what people spend on weddings.”
“Spoken like a determined bachelor-outrage mixed with secret relief. I agree, even though, prorated, my own wedding cost about a hundred bucks a week. Unless you tally the pounds of flesh taken by that Japanese succubus I married-”
I stopped him before he could get going. “You were telling me how you made the connection.”
“Oh… yeah. The concept just came to me, man. The vision flowed into my consciousness the way things used to before I lost my cosmic rhythm. So maybe I’m getting my chops back. Or it could’ve been a lucky guess. Hey-Saint Arc isn’t far from Venezuela. South America is your old stomping grounds. You have lots of special contacts. Why not have one of your spook pals check out the island, see if I’m right?”
I said, “I’m not sure if my special contacts talk to me anymore,” referring to my recent change of employers.
Tomlinson considered that for a few seconds. “Ironic, huh? Your contacts in the jungle dried up at the same time my contacts in the cosmos took a powder. I can tell you exactly when it happened, too.”
I shrugged. Tell me.
“It was when, after all those years of dealing with guilt-wham-we were both set free. Pardoned. You know what I’m talking about.”
I nodded. Yes, I knew.
“But it’s not like I thought it would be. Free to live like so-called average citizens? Safe little nine-to-five lives? That’s a statistical trap, man, not freedom. Let me remind you that the average American citizen has one testicle, one breast, a three-inch clitoris, and watches football every fourteen days. I wasn’t born to be average …”
Tomlinson stopped and looked at the radio, then changed subjects. “That’s her. Listen.”
A woman’s voice was calling, “Hello? Are you there? I’m trying to contact the man…” But then her voice faded.
He made a face, frustrated. “Damn, she keeps switching channels, so I get nothing but skip or bleed, then she’s gone before I can catch her.”
He pressed the transmit button. “This is base station Sanibel Biological Supply. I read you. Say again, please.”
After a few seconds, he hailed her once more. I realized he was staring, interested in my reaction, as he said into the microphone, “I’m attempting recontact with the vessel that reported sharks attacking the beach. I say again: The vessel reporting sharks attacking the beach, are you standing by, channel sixty-eight?”
I echoed, “Sharks attacking the beach?”
His expression replied: See? I told you. Weird.
Tomlinson wears baseball uniforms almost as often as he wears sarongs, but he’d actually played a game earlier, I realized. His pin-striped pants were stained orange from sliding, one thigh a strawberry blotch of blood. As we waited for the woman to respond, he mouthed the words, I pitched today.
I was interested. “You win?”
He shook his head. No fucking defense.
I smiled. “It should be on tombstones. Every pitcher’s epitaph.” Aloud, he shot back, “Not just pitchers, man. Position players, too. It’s the universal condition.”
I shrugged, looking at his leg. “Steal a base?”
He tried to make me lip-read, but I didn’t understand.
“Something bit me.”
"What?”
He squinted at the radio, getting impatient. Why didn’t the woman respond? He tried hailing her again, then waited through a long silence before answering my question. “About four nights ago, I got bit by something. An insect, maybe.”
“Are you sure…?” There was too much blood for an insect bite.
“Maybe. I didn’t feel it at first. Then it started to burn… then yesterday morning, wow. My nervous system fired up. I felt like I had my lips on a moonshine still when lightning zapped it.”
“An insect did that?”
“No… it doesn’t compute. So maybe it was a snake. Or a vampire bat… something that injects high octane. I was in the lab when it happened, so who knows with all the far-out creepy crawlers you’ve been dealing with lately.”
“It couldn’t have been four nights ago. Shay was here. A Sunday.”
“Then it was Monday… no, Tuesday, the night before you left for Saint Arc.”
Zero time perception. Yes, the man was stoned.
I said, “That was night before last, not four days ago.”
“Exactly. You had a date with the lady biologist, so I stopped by the lab to use the computer. I got nailed in here or on the porch. The hammock, possibly, where I paused to smoke a joint. I wish to hell I knew what bit me. I’ve felt like a million bucks ever since.”
“You liked it?”
“Incredible. Like a pint of carburetor cleaner got pumped through my cerebral cortex. Now all my neuroreceptors feel real sparkly.”
I was eyeing one of the new tanks, a low-turbulence Kreisel aquarium. It contained miniature jellyfish shipped to me in polyp stage from Australia. Carukia. The sea jellies were lucent parachutes, quarter-sized, with four retractable tentacles armed with a neurotoxin more potent than cobra venom. The stingers injected minuscule amounts, but could still be deadly.
It was a dangerous association to investigate, but I had to ask.
“When you were alone in the lab, did you follow safety procedures? Never lean over the tanks without safety glasses… or reach into the water without rubber gloves-”
“Have you confused me with Wally Cleaver? Of course I didn’t follow the rules. But even drunk, on acid, I know better than to stick my ass into an aquarium full of fucking jellyfish. How stupid do you think I-”
There was the clack of a mic key, then a woman’s voice came from the radio. Tomlinson turned up the volume.
“Hey, it’s her again!”
“Someone hears me? Thank God! We have a rental boat, and I’m not sure how to work the radio. Is this the channel people talk on?”
Tomlinson grunted, frustrated again. The woman didn’t release the microphone key when she was done transmitting. It was pointless to respond until she did. We could hear a child shouting in the background, then we heard a scream, then more clicking.
I asked, “Where are they?”
“I don’t know. I got her first transmission as you came up the steps. She said something about sharks. It sounded like she said sharks were attacking the beach. But that can’t be right. She’s not faking-she’s scared. It’s tarpon season. The oceangoing meat-eaters have come shallow to feed. I’m afraid some midnight swimmer got whacked.”
Walking toward the phone, I said, “I’ll call the Coast Guard just in case,” as Tomlinson tried again. “Sanibel Bio to the rental boat on channel sixty-eight. Listen to me! Press the button to talk. Release the button to listen. Tell me your name and location. Over.”
The woman was already transmitting before he finished. “… I’ll say it a third time! My name’s Lynn. My daughters and I are camped on an island. We’re on North Captiva, about a mile from the southern point. It’s really dark because there’s no moon, but we have flashlights. We’re seeing what we think are sharks. Did you hear that? Sharks. Big sharks swimming with the waves right up on the beach. It’s like they’re trying to get to our tents. Everyone I talk to thinks I’m joking but damn it, I am not joking! Sometimes the sharks make it halfway. Then the water pulls them back. But they keep trying. It’s like on TV when sharks chase seals. We’re afraid to go near our tent!”
I told Tomlinson, “Those are not sharks.”
He nodded as he lifted the mic. “I copy, Lynn. I’m here. Stay with me. I’ve got a question. How big are they? How big are the fish you think are sharks? Over.”
“Big. Three or four times bigger than the porpoises we saw at Sea World. That’s what I’m telling you! They’re great white sharks, we think. Just like on TV. But they’re black…”
In the background, a girl shrieked as the woman added, “My God, now two of them are out of the water! They’re almost on the beach by our tents, slapping their tails. Why are they doing this?”
I finished dialing the phone as Tomlinson tried to calm the woman. “You’re not in danger. Trust me on this, Lynn. Listen to what I’m about to tell you…”
Then I couldn’t hear him because I was moving fast out the door, across the breezeway, talking on the phone as I stuffed medical supplies and towels into a backpack. I called the Coast Guard. Next, I called Pete Hull, of Mote Marine Lab near Sarasota. Called him at home because it was the fastest way to get in touch with a leading cetacean expert, his wife, Kim.
When I was packed, Tomlinson was waiting for me on the dock next to my flats skiff-an open boat designed for running fast and dry in shallow water. He, too, had assembled supplies.
“Beer?” he asked, offering me a bottle. He had a cooler aboard, a backpack, and a couple of shovels.
“Not now-when we’re under way. Do you believe her story?”
He nodded, already drinking my beer. “She’s consistent. They’re bigger than dolphins. They’re black, not gray. Lynn counted more than a dozen with her flashlight while I talked her through it.”
I said, “They’re whales, not sharks.” I was picturing pilot whales or false killers, sleek as dolphins, the size of my boat, with teeth. Rare.
He was nodding, distressed. “Yep. They’re killing themselves. Two are already ashore. The others are trying to follow-a mass stranding just getting started.”
He was referring to a little-understood behavior, sometimes associated with disease, or underwater noise pollution. Whales ground themselves and die together, sometimes in pairs, sometimes by the hundreds.
“Doc? Strandings are a chain reaction-whales react to distress calls from an injured whale. That’s the theory.”
I said, “That’s one theory.” I was idling away from the dock, more interested in navigation than conversation. Wind was gusting out of the stars on this black night. Visibility was poor.
“That would explain the radio contact. If we can save the sick whale, we might save the others.”
“You lost me.”
“I should’ve understood right away. Lynn and her daughters are from Canada. She doesn’t know anything about the sea, but she has a radio. Get it? That’s why the whales came to her. They used Lynn to contact me. It’s classic third-party transferal communication.”
“You’re telling me the whales knew you’d be in the lab, monitoring channel sixty-eight…?”
“You’re being too linear. Universal Mind is connective. Whales are tuned in, man. They sense kindred beings who can help. If you embrace the destination, Universal Mind provides the pathway. I won’t be the only healer they contact-watch. Other enlightened souls will arrive.”
Over the years, I’ve heard so many ridiculous claims about the psychic and intellectual powers of dolphins and the family Cetacea that my response has been pared to a single word. I use a flat monotone to discourage discussion.
“Interesting,” I said.
“Isn’t it?” Tomlinson was scratching at the bite on his thigh, excited. “Maybe I am getting the old mojo back.”
I attempted diplomacy. “I was never convinced you lost it. But don’t expect too much, okay?”
I added the warning because whale strandings seldom have happy endings.