Why did I get the impression that the black-haired man with the dimpled chin and scar beneath his right eye had come into the room for no other reason than to initiate visual contact with us?
In the world of espionage fieldcraft, an individual who is a target for any reason is “made” when the assigned agent contrives a reason to view the target in the flesh. Even a brief, firsthand visual confirmation is more reliable than a photograph.
I had the feeling dimple-chin wanted to be able to recognize us down the road.
Or maybe he did it because he wanted to see if we’d recognize him.
The image of the man in coveralls climbing into the pickup truck, hiding his face behind an open palm, came to mind. The hair was similar. The size was about right.
But why go to such extremes?
He was a lean man, medium height, dressed in expensive slacks and a black, short-sleeved Polo sweater, patent-leather shoes, his hair razor cut, stylish. He carried himself with a kind of easy grace; had the looks and athleticism that most women find attractive. Something else I noticed: He had a pale, quarter-sized scar on his right arm that had probably once been a tattoo.
I found the diminutive size of the tattoo interesting.
We were in the Sawgrass corporate office, which was not far from the main gate, where, this time, security guards waited in golf carts, expecting us. They did a poor job of cloaking their hostility-word that we’d hurt a couple of their brethren had obviously gotten around-but they followed orders. They offered us bottled water, and drove us to meet their leader.
Now we were sitting in an empty conference room, waiting, when the door was opened suddenly. In walked the man with the dimpled chin and scar. He made quick eye contact with each of us, plucked a book off a shelf and left again without a word.
Because I’ve spent many years in dangerous places, dealing with covert foreign-service types, I have a bad case of the overlies. I am overly suspicious. I am overly cautious. And I am overly aware that 99.9 percent of Americans are easy targets for anyone who wants to take advantage of them for any reason. Why? Because we never expect it. Not really.
So when the man closed the door, I stood and made a quick survey of the room, pretending to look at the same bookshelf, then through a window that opened onto a courtyard where a statue of a happy Buddha served as a fountain, pouring water onto a garden of stone.
On the wall, beneath a modernistic Darryl Pottorf painting, was a minicamera lens.
When I dropped the book I’d taken from the case, I knelt to retrieve it. Beneath the conference table, I saw at least one pen-sized microphone. Presumably, there were others.
Trying to communicate with Tomlinson and DeAntoni, using intense eye contact- We’re being recorded -I said, “It’s nice of Bhagwan Shiva to be so cooperative. He must be a decent sort of man.”
Tomlinson picked right up on it. “Oh, for sure, man, for sure. You read so much negative stuff these days about the religious types, it’s kind of refreshing to have the critics proven wrong.”
DeAntoni wasn’t so quick. “Hey… are you two guys out of your gourds? Shiva sounds like a fucking snake-oil salesman to me-and you know how I feel about snakes.”
My warning look stopped him. There were just the three of us now. When I’d asked Billie Egret if she wanted to listen to what Shiva had to say, she’d declined. “After five minutes alone with that man, I feel like I need a shower. We don’t have a shower on Chekika’s Hammock, and I’m not going back to my condo in Coral Gables until Monday afternoon. So thanks, but no thanks.”
Carter McRae wasn’t with us, either, because he had to drive to Naples Community Hospital to visit his wife.
So now the three of us sat, waiting. I had a strong suspicion that the man with the dimpled chin was now waiting, too. Probably in a separate office, eavesdropping, listening to what we had to say.
To Tomlinson, I said, “Tell Frank and me your theory about how earth energy works. Power places-the whole vortex philosophy. I really enjoy your insights.”
Tomlinson’s expression was one of surprise, then delight. “Are you serious? Man, I’d love to.”
I sat back, smiling at DeAntoni’s expression: Oh, God, here we go again…
I checked my watch, wondering how long dimple-chin could bear listening to Tomlinson’s philosophical rambling.
It wasn’t long.
The man who called himself Bhagwan Shiva was a sportsman. An outdoorsman-he told us that. A regular sort. He liked getting outside, hitting the ball around on the tennis court, or playing eighteen. He particularly liked shooting trap-which he was scheduled to do right now.
We were in an elongated golf cart that had a Rolls-Royce grille. Dimple-chin was driving. Smiling, not saying much. He’d yet to introduce himself, deferential in the same way a chauffeur would not presume to introduce himself to people he was being paid to drive.
Shiva was wearing a collarless Nehru shooting jacket, khaki slacks tucked into snake boots, and a purple safa-a turban made from a single, colorful strip of cloth. Several shotguns, in aluminum cases, were stacked at angles on the seat beside him. He might have been a rajah on his way to a tiger hunt on the Punjab.
His tone personable, upbeat, Shiva said, “I’m sure you’ve known priests, other clergymen-political leaders. There’s an example-men who’ve had a strong calling to serve. Underneath it all, though, we’re people. I’m just a man. Just like anyone else. With certain gifts, of course.” He looked at Tomlinson, who was seated beside him, when he added, “We all have our own peculiar gifts, don’t you agree?”
Tomlinson answered, “Oh, for sure, for sure. Some more peculiar than others.”
Which made DeAntoni chuckle.
There was a perceptible tension between Tomlinson and the Bhagwan, which I found interesting. There was an instant animus, like opposite poles meeting. When Shiva introduced himself, Tomlinson pretended as if he did not see the man’s outstretched hand-a subtle refusal that caused Shiva momentary embarrassment.
This was a stubborn, confrontational Tomlinson I’d never seen before.
Now they were trading far more subtle barbs.
“My point,” Shiva continued, “is that I want you gentlemen to feel at ease during our visit. I suspect you’re aware of who I am, what I’ve tried to accomplish for the world as a spiritual leader. It… it intimidates some people. What I’m telling you is, there’s no need to treat me any differently. We’re all on the same level here.”
In the same veiled tone, Tomlinson replied, “Don’t sell yourself short, Mr. Singh. You’re on a much different level.”
Which irked the man. Even sitting on the rear bench of the golf cart, I could see the skin of Shiva’s face tighten into a forced smile. “Perhaps you have a point, Mr. Tomlinson. It’s true that I have-and this is just a rough estimate-but I have more than a quarter-million followers around the world.”
Tomlinson replied, “Really? I’m curious. What happens when your followers catch up? Do they still cling to the initial delusion?”
Shiva started to say something, but then reacted with a forced laugh. “Are you trying to insult me, Mr. Tomlinson?”
“No-o-o-o, man, of course not. I wouldn’t try to insult you. I wouldn’t want to risk being misunderstood.”
“I see.” Shiva was still smiling, showing us he was under control once again. “You seem so sure of yourself; so quick to judge. That’s such an endearing… childlike quality. I bet… I bet that you’re the kind of man who still plays children’s games.”
Tomlinson patted the cased shotguns. “You mean the kind of games that don’t involve metaphorical penis symbols?”
“Oh, now, now, now, please. I bet that, secretly, you like things that go boom. What child doesn’t like an explosion?”
He meant something by that. Which caused Tomlinson to stumble. It set me back a beat, too.
Shiva continued smoothly, “I don’t claim always to be accurate, but clairvoyance is one of my peculiar gifts. Give me a moment to concentrate…” Shiva had both of his palms pressed to his temples. After a few seconds, he said, “… the children’s game you play is baseball. Yes, baseball. And the position you play… I don’t know the American equivalent, but in the sport of cricket, you’d be called a ‘bowler.’”
Dimple-chin said, “A pitcher. That’s the same thing.”
DeAntoni said, “Is that true, he’s a pitcher? Come to think of it, he does look like a pitcher. I’ll be damned. How do you people do that?”
I was thinking: They did a computer search while we were waiting, as Shiva continued, “I perceive that you feel you are an excellent pitcher. In fact, I perceive that you feel superior in a number of ways. Ego-that’s a character flaw you should address, Mr. Tomlinson. In a book, I once wrote, ‘A large ego is the favorite habitat of a small mind.’”
Tomlinson replied, “Interesting. So tell me, what’s it like, having all that room for your brain to move around in?”
Shiva fired back, “You must be speaking of my Palm Beach Ashram. You should come and visit one day, experience it for yourself. You’d have a chance to understand that there’s a far more satisfying world waiting for someone like you. Many drug addicts-even unconvicted murderers -have found peace and health there. What would you say if I challenged you to come and sit through my Basic Auditing lecture?”
Pulling at his scraggly hair, not smiling and as troubled as I’ve ever seen him, Tomlinson replied, “I’d probably tell you the truth, Jerry: I’m just too fucking busy. Or vice versa.”
On our way to the skeet range, dimple-chin drove past the private airstrip, the Sawgrass minimall where trams were shuttling vacationing members, then into what Shiva called, “our nature preserve and the Cypress Ashram Center.”
The nature preserve consisted of several dozen Everglades animals caged in fiberglass dioramas that were constructed to resemble natural habitat. The zoo was on a boardwalk. The boardwalk was part of a self-guided nature tour. There were birds, mammals, gators and snakes. In one of the larger cages, an oversized male Florida panther watched us with glowing yellow eyes as we rolled past.
What Shiva called his “Cypress Ashram” was really an outdoor amphitheater. It was a stage attached to an acoustic dome that was elevated above concentric levels of seating. The place was big; had to seat a thousand or so people. The theater was built at the edge of what must have been a cypress stand, though only a few cypress trees remained growing knee-deep in red water.
At what was the equivalent of a ticket house, a life-sized bronze statue of a bearded and smiling Bhagwan Shiva welcomed visitors. In one hand, he held a lantern, in the other a globe. The statue stood along the cart trail entrance, and Shiva ignored it with a practiced and bored disinterest as we rolled past.
To Shiva, Tomlinson said, “Hey, Jerry! Has there ever been a time in your life when, just once, you’d love to be a bird?”
Shiva reacted as if it were a good-natured joke; played right along. “Do you like birds? Then you’ll enjoy our next stop.”
Which made no sense until dimple-chin steered us down a gravel service path where a wooden sign read COMMUNAL FARM.
It was an oversized garden, really, laid out in an odd shape-a pentagon, I finally realized. Two acres or so of tomatoes, beans, squash, corn and other vegetables planted in rows. There were compost bins, equipment lockers and a shed for a small John Deere tractor. There was also a long hutch screened with chicken wire.
“We grow a lot of our own food,” Shiva told us. “Organically, of course. For our restaurants, and for our church members. Plus, we raise chickens and our own special variety of pigeon.”
DeAntoni said, “Pigeons? Those things are like rats with wings. Why’d anybody want to raise pigeons?”
Shiva was getting out of the cart and used his hand to tell us to wait for him. “You’ll see,” he said.
There were three women working in the garden. All were dressed in white robes belted at the waist. Shiva called to one of them, “Kirsten! You are needed.”
I watched an attractive blond teenager hurry to him, her head bowed, not making eye contact. Then she knelt before the bearded man, reached, and kissed the back of Shiva’s right hand. She nodded as he spoke to her-I couldn’t hear what he was saying-and she remained on one knee as he turned and walked away.
Back in the cart, Shiva said to dimple-chin, “They’ll be ready for us in about twenty minutes.”
Then he turned and spoke to DeAntoni, saying, “Now’s a good time if you want to ask me about Geoff Minster. I don’t know what I can add, but I’ll help in any way I can. There’s a favor I need to ask in return, however-” Shiva turned his eyes to Tomlinson, then to me. His eyes were an unusual color, I realized-a luminous amber flecked with brown-and they jogged a recent memory.
It took me an instant to make the association. The panther we’d just seen; the caged animal with the golden, glowing eyes. Shiva’s eyes possessed a similar lucency.
Shiva said, “The favor I’m going to ask is that you allow us to record our conversation. A legal precaution-I’m sure you understand.”
I watched dimple-chin remove a digital recorder from his pocket as Shiva added, “So, if you wouldn’t mind stating your names and home addresses for our records…”
At first, Shiva said nothing about Minster that was unexpected. His versions of their first meeting, and of their business history were similar to Sally’s versions.
He talked along freely, answering all DeAntoni’s questions. But his manner was disinterested, almost bored. It was as if he were just marking time, waiting for something more interesting to happen.
There was one small revelation when he said, “Am I convinced that Geoff’s dead? Probably, but I’m not certain of it. He had a lot going for him here. I was about to appoint him to my Circle of Twenty-eight-a group of my most trusted advisors worldwide. That’s quite an honor.
“In terms of business, Geoff was doing better than he’d been doing for the simple reason that he’d turned over almost all decision-making responsibilities to me and my staff. If that sounds immodest, I apologize. But the fact is, we are good at what we do.”
Shiva added that, emotionally, though, Minster was having some problems. “I’m not a gossip, and I’m certainly not going to breach the confidential nature of my relationship with a student. But I will tell you what is publicly known: Geoff was not happy in his marriage. It’s possible that his unhappiness was reason enough for him to intentionally disappear.”
DeAntoni said, “What you’re saying to me is that the guy was having an affair. That he maybe ran off to be with another woman.”
Shiva said, “I’m suggesting no such thing. We teach that sex is healthy. He had no reason to hide it.”
“Then why do you consider it a possibility?”
The blond girl in the white robe was walking toward us, motioning for us to follow-they were ready for us on the skeet range.
Shiva said, “I’m suggesting it because, two months before he disappeared, he used one of our Ashram computers to transfer slightly more than a hundred thousand dollars in cash to a private account on Grand Cayman Island. I told the police. Check, and you’ll see-it’s already part of the public record.” chapter twenty-one
The Sawgrass trap range was a professionally designed complex of courses, sporting clays and authentic field stations, all approved by the Amateur Trapshooting Association-or so said the laminated notice on the wall of the range master’s office.
There was no range master in attendance, though, which I found odd-until I learned the sort of targets Shiva preferred.
The facility was, in fact, deserted. Shiva insisted on having the grounds to himself, he told us. In hindsight, I understood why. He didn’t want witnesses.
We got our first hint as he walked us through the shooting course, briefing us on the history of what he called his newest “path to awareness.”
“Are you familiar with the Japanese art of Kyudo? It’s longbow shooting-a beautiful form of archery practiced by Zen Buddhists. Kyudo demands the precision of ballet and extraordinary concentration-yet, to perform well, the shooter must calm himself, empty his mind and allow his body to react automatically. Mushin is the Japanese word for it. It’s a Zen expression that means ‘no mind.’”
Tomlinson replied, “I think I’ve read somewhere or other about Kyudo, and Mushin. ” He said it with a hint of irony so subtle that I was the only one to detect it.
Shiva said, “Then you may be able to appreciate my new love of shooting. To hit a moving target with a shotgun, it requires the same
… well, the same letting-go of conscious control. If you know anything about how our right brain and left brain work, you’ll understand that shooting uses primarily the right brain. That’s why it’s such an effective tool for meditation.”
Shiva added, “As I tell my students, ‘You cannot think linearly or logically about shooting. If you do, you will never hit a thing.’ When the target appears, you must apprehend the spatial situation instantly and, at the same time, shoot. This truly is the Zen of sport.”
DeAntoni said, “You’re telling us that you think popping off a few rounds is some kind of religious deal, huh?” His tone, his expression, said, Jesus, now I’m dealing with two weirdos.
Shiva laughed. We were walking toward the shooting course. Dimple-chin was already at the trap house, opening gun cases and filling shooting aprons with shells.
Shiva said, “For me, shooting’s part of my religious discipline. For you, though, it might be just a relaxing way to spend an afternoon. Even the history of the sport is fascinating!”
Like most men accustomed to being in control, Shiva was prone to lecture. He gave us a brief lecture now, telling us that trap-shooting dated back to the 1700s, when English gentlemen would walk a course upon which their manser vants had hidden wild birds in holes. The holes were covered with silk top hats.
“Jolly good fun,” Shiva said, demonstrating that he had a puckish side.
“But these days,” he added, “the most common targets are called clay birds-although they’re actually made of a limestone composite.”
He motioned with his hand. The ground was littered with orange shards. “They’re thrown from trap houses at a variety of angles. In trap, you shoot from five different positions. In skeet, you shoot from eight positions.” He gestured again. “All shooting is done between the two trap houses. It’s fun. But it’s not my favorite. If you like, I’ll show you my favorite. It’s called sporting clays.”
As Tomlinson and I exchanged looks- Why is he telling us this? -Shiva explained that sporting courses were laid out in natural surroundings. Typically, they included ten shooting stations.
“It makes you get out into the bush,” he said, “and interact with nature. You have to walk from station to station. The target can fly out from anywhere. Or run-a rabbit or even a deer target. It’s exciting. Something else: When I come to shoot, staff always adds an interesting little twist. Just for me.”
Shiva was loading what appeared to be a 12-gauge over-and-under Weatherby. When he finished, he looked up and smiled. “I expect you gentlemen to join me. We have plenty of guns and ammunition.”
Tomlinson told him, “I’ve never shot a gun in my life. I don’t plan to start now.”
“Ah, I’d forgotten-your oversized ego. You’re afraid you won’t shoot well.”
“No, Jerry. Fact is, man, it’s the company.”
Shiva wasn’t going to allow himself to be baited again. He stood with the shotgun, breech open, cradled beneath his arm. “Then come along and watch. Once you get into the spirit of the sport, I’ll bet you change your mind.”
As they walked away, I knelt as if to tie my boating shoes. Actually, I stopped so as to use two careful fingers to pick up a 12-gauge shell I’d seen dimple-chin accidentally drop. I slid the shell in my pocket, then followed along.
There was something wrong about the guy…
Shiva didn’t use clay targets on his sporting course. He used live birds. It explained why his staff raised pigeons, and also his insistence on referencing trap shooting’s history. It gave the practice veracity.
The first station was at a pond fringed with swamp maples. Shiva touched a hand to his turban, readying himself, then yelled, “Pull!”
Two birds came flapping out of a camouflaged station, zigzagging wildly, struggling to gain altitude. Shiva shot the first bird cleanly, but wounded the second. It spiraled to the ground, and then lay there, flapping with one damaged wing.
After a moment of dumb shock, Tomlinson began to run toward the floundering bird, yelling, “What the hell are you doing? You bastard. You killed them for no reason!”
Shiva popped the spent casings out of his Weatherby, and said very calmly, “All my targets are alive-that’s the spiritual component. To create a precise intersection between life and death. Birds, rabbits, deer. That’s the Zen of it. What possible enlightenment could anyone gain from shooting at miniature Frisbees. ”
Dimple-chin, I noticed was staying close to Tomlinson, walking fast. Why was he still carrying the digital recorder in his hand?
Shiva looked from DeAntoni to me. His expression of tolerance seemed a careful affectation-a mask for elation. I couldn’t tell if he was happy because he’d killed something, or because he’d finally infuriated Tomlinson. To us, he said, “I think it’s far more humane to give animals a chance to escape rather than simply kill them in their pens.”
I heard DeAntoni say, “Oh yeah. You’re a real fucking sport,” as Tomlinson knelt and cradled the wounded bird in his hands.
Then he walked toward us, carrying the bird, saying, “Guess what this asshole’s using to get his little rocks off, Doc. It’s a white-crowned pigeon. Singh-are you telling us that you’re raising white-crowned pigeons?”
Shiva was reloading, unconcerned. “First of all, I don’t appreciate your tone of voice, or your vulgarity. And yes, we are raising pigeons. They nest in the mangroves. Staff collects the eggs, and we incubate them. See? We’re helping the environment.”
DeAntoni didn’t understand the significance of it, but I did. Florida’s white-crowned pigeon has little in common with the tame pigeon you find in parks. It is a wild Caribbean dove that migrates between Florida and the West Indies, making long open-sea crossings. The gray-blue body makes the bird’s white crest conspicuous. I’ve seen them off the Dry Tortugas, far out at sea. I’ve seen them in Key West, sitting at the Green Parrot Bar, too.
Up until the turn of the previous century, white-crowned pigeons nested in colonies of thousands. But they were hunted almost to extinction until laws were passed to protect them. Even so, they are not a bird that is commonly seen.
Shiva told us, “I prefer the white-crowned dove to the common pigeon because it’s faster. A more difficult target. The challenge is part of the meditative exercise.”
Tomlinson was facing him now, and Shiva sniffed, shrugged, indifferent as Tomlinson yelled, “Meditation, my ass, you ridiculous phony. It’s murder. Why are you killing these birds?”
Shiva’s smugness seemed calculated, an intentional technique to exasperate. “There’s a basic spiritual concept,” he replied, “that you clearly don’t understand. Death is an illusion. Meaningless. The bird you’re holding-you, your friends, all living things-we don’t die. We simply change forms.
“The kindest thing you could do for that bird right now? If you really do care about suffering. The kindest thing you could do for it is snap its neck. Allow it to move on to its next incarnation.”
Shiva turned and looked at dimple-chin. “Or let Izzy do it. He wouldn’t mind at all.”
Dimple-chin smiled, enjoying himself. “My pleasure.”
Izzy.
So the Bhagwan’s assistant had a name. The man whose fingerprints, presumably, were on the shotgun shell I’d collected.
I’d never seen Tomlinson so furious. His skin was blotched red, his eyes fierce, as he said, “You’re doing this intentionally. You’re trying to make me angry. Why? ”
Shiva said, “I’m trying to instruct you, not anger you. I’m a teacher. Why can’t you let go of your ego? Open yourself up to wisdom, and allow yourself to be our student. There’s much we can teach you.”
“ You pretend to be able or worthy to teach me?”
“Why does that frighten you? You are a young soul. I’ve been sent here to help people such as yourself. People who are lost.”
To Tomlinson, I said, “You’re right. He’s doing it intentionally. And they’re recording every word, so don’t say another thing. Let’s get out of here.”
But he waved me away, holding the bird in one hand, staring into Shiva’s face. “You said there are ten stations on this course. Does that mean your going to try to kill eighteen more birds?”
“Actually, there are sixteen doubles-birds, naturally. And two rabbit traps. I was hoping you fellows would shoot with me. So staff has quadrupled the number of targets.” Smiling at Izzy, Shiva added, “It looks like I’m going to have a lot of shooting today.”
Tomlinson said, “Then why do you have that gizmo loaded with targets?”
He pointed at a manual, spring-operated trap catapult that sat on wheels fifteen yards or so from the shooting deck. In the machine were stacked several dozen clay plates.
“The clay birds are for members. Not everyone gets to shoot live pigeons-it’s a rare opportunity that I’m offering. A chance for real spiritual exploration. Are you sure you won’t give it a try?”
For a moment, Tomlinson focused his attention on the bird he was holding, stroking it as he made a low cooing sound. Then he lifted the dove in both palms, blew softly into its face, and said, “You’re not hurt. You’re okay, now,” and tossed it upward.
The bird flapped unevenly for a moment, came close to tumbling, but then seemed to feel air beneath its wings, and righted itself.
Surprised, I watched the bird fly toward the swamp maple horizon where, I noticed, a much larger bird was perched. It was a snail kite. The snail kite, I noted, was the same size and color of the rare bird we’d seen standing on the mahogany tree at Chekika’s Hammock. The kite looked like a blue hawk.
Tomlinson’s manner now became oddly buoyant as he said, “Looks like you’re only batting five hundred, Jerry. One of your savage animals got away. You say you enjoy sports? I’ve got a sporting offer for you.”
Shiva said, “Really? Sporting. A kind of wager?”
“In a way. How about this: Let me try to break a target. Load a gun with two bullets and let me try. If I hit at least one of the targets, you agree not to shoot any more pigeons.”
Shiva began to chuckle. “First of all, shotguns don’t fire bullets, they fire pellets from a cartridge. Which is why that hardly seems fair. Even if you’ve never shot a gun before, it’s possible that you might get lucky. One target in two shots?” He was shaking his head now, seeming to relish the circumstances. “No, I don’t like those odds.”
Tomlinson’s voice became steely as he said, “Then how about giving me one cartridge? One group of pellets, and I’ll break two targets. If I break any fewer than two targets with one cartridge, I’ll shoot the rest of the stations with you. I’ll kill live birds. I give you my word.”
DeAntoni said, “I’d like to get in on some of this action,” as I told my friend, “Listen to me just for once. Most experts couldn’t make a shot like that. Just stop. Let it go. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
But Tomlinson wouldn’t be swayed. He accepted a shotgun from a grinning Izzy, then a single 12-gauge shell. Tomlinson held the shell in his long fingers, inspecting it. I doubt if he’d ever seen one before.
The shell was the size of a miniature sausage and had a brass cap attached to a red plastic casing. He bounced the shell in his hand, feeling the weight of it.
Then, to me, he said, “Show me how to operate this thing, brother.”
The shotgun was a 12-gauge Beretta over-and-under, which means that the two barrels were mounted vertically as opposed to side by side. I demonstrated how to load his single cartridge in the top barrel, then showed him how the safety worked. When he seemed to understand, I opened the chamber and grabbed the shell as it popped out. I handed both the shell and shotgun to him.
As I said to Tomlinson, “You’re making a mistake,” Shiva, standing off to the side, told him, “Izzy’s all set when you are.”
Dimple-chin was standing by the catapult, clay targets in place, the spring arms cocked.
I watched Tomlinson pause to tuck his purple-and-pink Hawaiian shirt into his baggy shorts and pull his scraggly hair back. Then he stepped onto the shooting deck, shotgun ready-an incongruous combination and an absurd thing to witness.
I listened to Shiva say, “What an amusing little soul you are.”
I listened to DeAntoni say, “Concentrate, Mac. You can do it. Wait until just before the plates cross, then squeeze the trigger.”
I listened to Izzy say, “Tell me when you’re ready. I’m throwing two at once.”
Then I heard Tomlinson call, “Pull!”
There was the fluttering sound of spring compression as twin clay targets arched high toward the pond-but Tomlinson didn’t shoot. Instead, he snapped open the shotgun and plucked out the unfired shell with his big right hand. Then he whirled like the gangly pitcher he is, and rocketed the shell toward the mechanical catapult, narrowly missing Izzy.
But he hit his target. The 12-gauge cartridge had to have been traveling close to eighty miles an hour when it crashed into the stack of clay birds mounted vertically into the machine. Several of them shattered.
In the microsecond of silence that followed, I heard two soft plop-plop s as the airborne disks landed in the pond.
Tomlinson tossed the shotgun on the ground with theatrical contempt. Then he walked toward Shiva. “No more live pigeons for you, Jerry. You’re going to keep your word. Like the big-time religious guru you claim to be. Right?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You cheated. You tricked me.”
“Nope. I told you if I broke any fewer than two targets with one shell, you win. But I broke five or six. Maybe more. Count ’em if you want. You know what the key is? Mushin. That’s a Japanese word.”
Shiva’s smugness was gone now. Beneath the beard, his face was turning shades of ruby, his neck muscles spasming. His voice was more of a hiss as he said, “You pompous, meddling son-of-a-bitch. I want you out of here. I want you off my property. Get the fuck away from me!”
Tomlinson was only an arm’s length away from Shiva now, nose to nose, smiling. “No more pigeons, Jerry. You promised. Or don’t promises mean anything to you?”
Shiva began to reply, but then he appeared to think of something. The sudden grin on his face was manic. Abruptly, Shiva raised his shotgun, leaned, and fired both barrels.
The snail kite perched in the maples exploded in a smoking swirl of feathers, blue and gray. The corpse of the bird tumbled like a wingless plane. It made a melon sound when it hit the ground.
Shiva lowered his shotgun and yelled into Tomlinson’s face, “Okay, smartass! I won’t shoot any more pigeons. But the blood’s on your hands, not mine.”
For the first time since I’ve known the man, I saw Tomlinson break emotionally. Eyes bulging, he lunged toward Shiva. He got his huge hands around the man’s neck just as I grabbed him from behind. I had to call for DeAntoni to help-Tomlinson had surprising, freakish strength. I’ve never experienced anything like it. It took us both to restrain him.
I believe-I truly do believe-he would have tried to kill Shiva if we’d let him loose.
As we dragged Tomlinson away, he was screaming every foul word, all aimed at Shiva, and interspaced with this refrain: “You’re ruined, Jerry. The Everglades won’t allow it! I swear to God almighty, that we will ruin you…”
I noticed that Izzy, holding the recorder, was relaxed. He seemed very pleased about something.
It was on our way home, just after sunset and while we were crossing the Sanibel Causeway, that DeAntoni’s cell phone rang. I looked at a sky that was streaked with iridescent clouds, mango gold and conch-shell pink, and listened to his side of the conversation.
I heard him say, “Hey, Mrs. Minster, good to hear from you. Oh.. . okay, Sally.”
We were riding over sand islands, Lighthouse Point an elevated darkness off to our left, as I heard: “You’re kiddin’ me. And you knew the guy?”
After a full minute of silence, DeAntoni spoke again into the phone, saying, “I’ll drop off Doc and Tomlinson and come straight to your place. It’ll take me about three hours. Maybe we can have a late dinner. If it’s not an imposition.”
He closed his phone, and glanced at me. “Ironwood, the gated community where Sally lives, has a night security guard. A guy named Johnson. He disappeared last night, and they found him floating in the bay this afternoon, dead. Sally said the guy took special care of her. Kept an eye on her house because of the break-ins she’s been having.”
I said, “How’d he die?”
“They don’t know yet. Maybe a stroke and he fell off a dock. That’s what the cops are guessing. But Sally doesn’t believe it. She says someone was in her bedroom again last night. They went through her drawers. She thinks maybe Johnson surprised the guy.”
Sitting sprawled in the backseat, working on his seventh or eighth beer since we’d left Sawgrass and already slurring his words, Tomlinson said, “Evil, man. There’s something evil in the air. There is a very wicked mojo seeping around Sawgrass. The whole scene. Like swamp gas, man. I can feel it.”
DeAntoni said, “Um-huh. Have another beer.”
“An excellent idea. I think I will.”
There was the carbonation sssush of a can being cracked.
DeAntoni was chuckling. “I got to hand it to you, Tinkerbell. You stuck it right up that weirdo’s cheap seats. The only thing that separates Shiva’s lips from his asshole is a couple of feet of tubing-and you proved it.”
For the fourth or fifth time, Frank said to me, “The skinny fucker’s got an arm on him. I’ll never question that again.”
Meaning Tomlinson.
Sounding miserable, Tomlinson replied, “Wrong, wrong, wrong. Shiva won, man. The way I behaved, it’s against everything I believe and stand for. What happened is, he proved I’m as much a fraud as he is.”
Tomlinson had been talking that way since we left Sawgrass.
To DeAntoni, I said, “When you talked to her about the dead guard, did Sally sound frightened?”
“Yeah. But in control. Not too bad. There’s an ex-cop who works with me sometimes, lives in Hialeah. I’ll call him, ask him to hop over to Ironwood and keep an eye on things ’till I get there.”
“I think that’s a great idea, Frank. We don’t want anything to happen to her.”
Showing some emotion, DeAntoni said, “If anybody touches that lady, by the time I’m done, they’ll need a compass to find all the parts they got missing.” Then: “Hey, you know what? She said she’d have dinner with me. Just the two of us alone. That she’d be delighted. ”
He was sounding pretty delighted himself. chapter twenty-two
The next afternoon, Sunday, April 13th, at 6 P.M., I was working in my lab when I felt the framework of my stilt house vibrate with what seemed to be a series of three distinct tremors.
I was standing at my stainless-steel dissecting table when it happened. I immediately looked to my right where, beneath the east windows, and on a similar table, is a row of working, bubbling aquaria-octopi, squid and fish therein. There are more glass aquariums above on shelves.
In each aquarium, the tremors had created seismic oscillating circles on the surface, and miniature waves.
Nope. I wasn’t imagining things. And, no, it wasn’t because I’d just built my third drink: the juice of two fresh Key limes mixed with Nicaraguan rum, crushed ice and a splash of seltzer.
To my left, along the east wall, near the door, there are more tanks, all heavily lidded and locked because they contain stone crabs and calico crabs. Octopi, I’d learned, are master thieves when it comes to their favorite food-thus the locks.
The water in those tanks was vibrating as well.
I was working late in the lab because I was running low on supplies. Restocking inventory was long overdue. On a yellow legal pad clamped to a clipboard, I’d written: compartmented petri dishes (pack/20); Tekk measuring pipets (dozen); Pyrex tubes (mm/various/72); ultraviolet aquarium sterilizer; tetracycline tablets (pack/20); methyl-chrome; clarifier; pH test paper.
The shopping list wasn’t close to being complete. I was leafing through my Carolina Science amp; Math catalog, thinking about adding a neat little portable water tester to the list when the house began to shake.
At first, I thought to myself, Sonic boom? But then I felt it twice more, and I thought, Construction blasts.
I walked to the center of the room where I’ve installed a university-style lab workstation. It’s an island of oaken drawers and cupboards beneath a black epoxy resin table, complete with a sink, two faucets, electrical outlets and double gas cocks for attaching Bunsen burners or a butane torch.
I placed the catalog on the table, pushed open the screen door and walked outside, carrying my drink along with me.
I wasn’t the only one who’d felt the tremors. The unusual sensation of earth and water shaking had stirred our little liveaboard community to action on this quiet Palm Sunday afternoon. Across the water, I could see Rhonda Lister and Joann Smallwood exiting their cabin door onto the stern of their wood-rotted Chris-Craft cruiser, Satin Doll. They were looking at the sky, as if expecting to see fighter jets.
Jeth Nicholes, the fishing guide, was standing on the balcony of his apartment above the marina office. Janet Mueller, I was surprised to see, was standing beside him-a recent development in what has been an old and complex love affair.
Dieter Rasmussen, the German psychopharmacologist, and his nubile Jamaican girlfriend, Moffid Seemer, were climbing onto the fly bridge of his classic, forty-six-foot Grand Banks trawler, Das Stasi, heads turning. Dieter was in his underwear, and Moffid, I couldn’t help but notice, was topless. When people are surprised, they react without considering how they are dressed.
Tomlinson was out, too. Standing on the cabin roof of No Mas, a black sarong knotted around his waist, his head tilted, as if listening.
I was surprised to see him. We’d played baseball earlier in the day at Terry Park, a classic old Grapefruit League anachronism in East Fort Myers. After the game, still in his baseball uniform, he’d invited me to drive with him to Siesta Key Beach and join in the weekly drum circle that is held there at sunset.
“Is that the sort of thing where a couple of hundred beach hipster-types stand around a fire, banging on drums?” I said.
Tomlinson replied, “ Exactly. I know, I know, it sounds almost too good to pass up. Tonight, I’ve been asked to serve as the lead Djembe drummer. Quite an honor.”
So I was surprised he was still aboard his boat… or maybe he was just leaving-yes, that was it. I watched him reach into the cabin of No Mas and lift a massive skin drum from the hold, his eyes still searching the sky.
Then, as if on cue, everyone looked in the direction of my stilt house, as if seeking an explanation. I held both hands out and shrugged, meaning that I had no idea what’d caused the tremors.
They all made the same universal gesture: We don’t know, either.
So I walked to the marina, where Joann, Rhonda and Dieter and I stood around discussing it.
“What a weird feeling,” Joann said. She’s a short, dark-haired woman with a Rubenesque body and a bawdy sense of the absurd. “It was like I was suddenly standing on jelly. I’ve had the feeling a couple of times, but it was always while I was having good sex. Never when I was brushing my teeth.”
When I suggested that the tremors were caused by a construction blast, Dieter said, “Daht does not seem reasonable. A construction blast at six P.M. on a Sunday? Even Germans don’t work on Sundays.”
I told them, “Well, one thing we know it’s not. It wasn’t an earthquake. Florida’s not on a fault line. There’s never been an earthquake in Florida as far as I know.”
I would soon learn otherwise.
The next morning I was awakened by a heavy pounding on the door. I swung out of bed, checked the brass alarm clock and thought, Damn. Overslept again.
It was 8:45 A.M.
Wearing only khaki shorts, I padded barefooted across the wooden floor, gave Crunch amp; Des a quick scratch in passing and opened the door to find my old friend, Dewey Nye, standing before me. She was wearing Nikes, blue jogging shorts over a red tank suit, blond hair haltered in a ball cap, and she had her fists on her hips-a pose that seemed as aggressive as the expression on her face.
“Goddamn it, Thoreau, you stood me up again! We agreed to work out early this morning, remember? You were supposed to meet me at Tarpon Bay Beach at seven, run to Tradewinds and back, then swim. So I stood around like a dumbass, waiting, when I should’a known all along that you’d screwed me over again.”
She made a huffing noise, glaring at me, before she added, “What’s this make? The fifth, sixth time you’ve promised that we’d start working out together? And, every time, you come up with some lame-ass excuse. Or you just don’t show-no call, no nothing. What the hell’s wrong with you, Ford?”
Yawning, I pushed open the screen door so she could enter. “Dew, I’m sorry. I guess the alarm clock didn’t go off. You know how punctual I usually am-”
“That’s bullshit. The old Ford, yeah, he was punctual. You could always count on him. But not now. Not you. You’re almost always late, you’ve become undependable as hell, and, as far as I’m concerned, a promise from you doesn’t mean a goddamn thing!”
I was still holding the door open; could smell the good odor of shampoo, fabric softener and girl sweat as she pushed by me. But, when she finished the sentence, I let the door slam shut. Then I stared at her until her cheeks flushed and her eyes flooded. That quickly, she went from fury to near tears.
She said, “Now I’ve hurt your feelings. I’m sorry. I don’t really mean it. I do trust, you, Doc. I’ll always trust you. But… damn it”-she had a rolled newspaper in her hand, and she slapped it into her palm for emphasis-“you’ve got to quit standing me up!”
I motioned her into a chair, and said, “For the second time: Sorry. I mean it. It’s inexcusable.” I walked toward the galley. “Coffee?”
“Why not? I need something to get my heart going. It’s not like I had anyone to push me on my run this morning. Which was boring as hell, not having anyone to talk to.”
Another not-so-subtle cut.
I like big, tomboy women, which is why Dewey remains one of my favorites. She’s a little under six feet tall, 145 pounds or so, blue-blue eyes, blond hair cut boyishly short, and she has the vocabulary of a sailor. She once also had one of the most beautiful faces I’d ever seen: one of those California-beach-girl faces, all cheekbones and chin with deep-set eyes.
Her face is different now-and for heartrending reasons-but she’s still a striking woman. Because Dewey’s had a long and volatile love affair with an internationally known woman tennis star, sex-or the prospect of sex-is no longer a component in our relationship. That it has made us even closer friends is a phenomenon I do not find surprising. The quickest and most common way to end a male-female friendship is to take the friendship into the bedroom.
So she sat in the breakfast booth, reading the paper while I made coffee. The sink was still piled with dishes; the counter was still a greasy mess. Added to the mess was now a single red 12-gauge shell I’d sealed in a plastic Baggie.
There was something about Shiva’s assistant, Izzy, that troubled me on a subliminal level. Watching him, I felt a sense of subconscious threat, but also recognition-of what, I couldn’t say.
But it’d bothered me enough to want to keep something that might carry his fingerprints. Which is why I’d stolen the shell.
I put the shell in a drawer. I switched on the coffeemaker as I listened to Dewey make small talk, seemingly trying to reestablish a comfortable mood, which was a sure sign that she had something more serious on her mind
Finally, she said, “There’s something I need to talk to you about. I’ve been putting it off. But no longer.”
“Is it about Walda? If she’s still jealous of you and me, I can call her if you want. Explain how it is between us. It might help.”
Dewey said, “Yeah, well, that, too. She is such a constant pain in the ass. But that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about you.”
“Okay. What about me?”
“I don’t want to offend you, and I don’t want to hurt your feelings again. We’ve been through a lot together. I love you as one of my best friends.”
I said to her, “I’m fond of you, too. So why do I get the feeling this is preface to some more criticism?”
She rattled the newspaper. “It’s not criticism. What I’m going to tell you is the truth. But you’ve got to remember that sometimes the truth hurts.”
I turned away from the stove. “Then go ahead. I’ve got big shoulders. Fire away.”
Dewey said, “The truth is, Doc… you look like hell. If you had a decent-sized mirror in this place, perhaps you’d know. You’ve gained at least fifteen or twenty pounds since we used to be workout partners. But it’s not even the weight. You’re starting to look soft. Puffy. And look at those circles under your eyes! Plus this weird crap about going from one of the most rock-solid men on earth to being undependable as some goofy teenager.”
She stood and held me by both arms, looking into my eyes. “The point is, pal, I’m worried about your health. Maybe something’s wrong with you. Maybe you need to see a doctor; get a physical. Something. Or start working out with me again. Probably both. And you need to do it soon, because it’s getting harder and harder to be your friend. ”
I said, “That sounds like an ultimatum.”
“In a way, it is. I care too much. I’ve got too much respect for you to watch you go down the shitter. If you’re dead set on doing it to yourself, don’t expect the people who love you to stand around and watch. It’s too painful.”
I turned and poured coffee into a brace of Navy-issue mugs, then sat across from her in the booth. I felt tired and empty and disgusted with myself. I said, “Read the paper. Tell me if there’s anything interesting going on out there in the real world. After that, let’s jog down Tarpon Bay Road to the beach and go for a swim.”
She sighed, momentarily relieved, her blue eyes brim ming again. “If there’s anything you want to tell me, you can. What’s wrong with you?”
“A short run and a short swim,” I said. “That’s enough for starters.”
Dewey said, “It’s in the paper this morning about the earthquake. I heard the checkout clerk talking about it at Bailey’s when I stopped to get a banana and yogurt.”
She turned the newspaper’s local section toward me so I could read the small headline: EARTHQUAKE? SCIENTISTS INVESTIGATING.
“The clerk said that on Sanibel and Captiva, the only ones who felt it live on the beach. Or on boats. What about you?”
“I felt something. So’d Joann, Rhonda and the rest of the liveaboards. In that way, it makes sense. Water’s a better conductor than air.”
“Well, at my house, I didn’t feel a damn thing-but then, I was on the phone fighting with Walda around six, so pissed off I wouldn’t’a felt it if the ceiling caved in.”
Surprised, and pleased that we’d been provided an interesting diversion, I took the paper from her and read parts of the story aloud.
Yes, I was wrong about earthquakes in Florida. Seismographic experts from the University of Florida are investigating the source of three or more earth tremors that were reported yesterday afternoon by South Florida residents from the Everglades to Captiva. According to seismologist Dr. Smith Douglas, the University of Florida maintains a seismograph network with stations in Gainesville, at the Everglades Beard Research Station and at Oscar Shearer State Park near Sarasota. “We’ll be checking our data, and working with the National Earthquake Information Center in Denver to determine the origin of the tremors,” Dr. Douglas said. “It’s certainly possible it could have been a small earthquake. According to the Florida Geologic Survey of 1983, Florida’s had approximately thirty earthquakes or ‘events’ that date as far back as 1727. This could be another.”
I stopped reading, took a gulp of my coffee and said to Dewey. “I grew up here and never heard anyone ever mention earthquakes.”
“Live and learn,” she said. “It’s kind of interesting.”
Yeah, it was.
I continued reading: According to the National Earthquake Information Center in Denver, Florida is mistakenly considered “earthquake free,” yet several quakes have occurred here. One of Florida’s most violent earthquakes occurred in 1879. In St. Augustine, in the northeastern part of the state, walls were shaken down and articles were thrown from shelves. The tremor was strong at Daytona Beach and Tampa, where residents reported a trembling motion, preceded by a rumbling sound. Two shocks occurred, each lasting 30 seconds, and were felt as far south as Punta Rassa and Bonita Springs. In January 1880, Cuba was the center of two strong earthquakes that sent severe shock waves through the town of Key West. The tremors occurred at 11 p.m. on January 22 and at 4 a.m. on the 23rd. Many buildings were thrown down and some people were killed. In August 1886, the next serious tremor experienced by Floridians had its epicenter at Charleston, South Carolina. The shock was felt throughout northern Florida, ringing church bells in cities and villages in the northern half of the state. In recent history, southwest Florida experienced minor quakes in July 1930 and December 1940 that were felt from Fort Myers to the Everglades. In November 1948 an earth tremor caused jars to break and windows to rattle in Lee and Collier counties. Residents reported that the apparent earthquake was accompanied by sounds like distant, heavy explosions. According to anecdotal stories, however, the deadly Mississippi River Valley earthquakes of 1811-12 rumbled through the American South, and may have caused the most powerful tremors ever experienced in Florida. The anecdotal information comes from Florida’s Anglo pioneers, and some Native Americans, both Seminole and Miccosukee. Usually referred to as the New Madrid (Missouri) earthquakes, they rank as the most powerful and deadly in U.S. history. The area damaged by the New Madrid quakes was three times larger than that of the 1964 Alaskan earthquake, and ten times more violent than the infamous 1906 San Francisco earthquake. As described by one survivor of the New Madrid quakes: “The ground began to rise and fall, bending trees until their branches intertwined and opened deep cracks in the ground. Large areas of land were uplifted. Larger areas sank and were covered with water. Huge waves on the Mississippi River overwhelmed many boats and washed others high on the shore. Mountains caved and collapsed into the river.” The New Madrid earthquakes traumatized people throughout the South. In his journal, George Heinrich Crist, a Kentucky farmer, wrote: “There was a great shaking of the earth this morning-all of us knocked out of bed. The roar I thought would leave us deaf if we lived. All you could hear was screams from people and animals. It was the worst thing that I have ever witnessed. “In a storm you can see the sky and it shows dark clouds and you know that you might get strong winds, but with this you can not see anything but a house that just lays in a pile on the ground. “A lot of people thinks that the devil has come here. Some thinks that this is the beginning of the world coming to a end.”
When I stopped reading, Dewey took the paper from me. Folding it, she seemed subdued and reflective, as she said, “Sooner or later, I guess we all experience an earthquake or two. It’s inevitable.”
I said, “Yeah. Inevitable.” Then I said, “Let’s go run.”
Twenty minutes later, I was standing a little more than two miles from the shell road that leads to Dinkin’s Bay Marina, bent at the waist, hands on knees, my T-shirt soaked with sweat and gasping for oxygen.
Dewey stood beside me patiently, not sweating and not breathing much faster than normal. “Sorry, Doc. Maybe I was pushing a little hard. I’ll slow the pace way down.”
Her kindness hurt me far worse than her characteristic sarcasm.
“How long’s it been since the last time you ran?”
I had to clear my throat to form words. “Eight months,” I croaked. “A year.”
“Oh my God, no wonder. Maybe we should just walk. Have a nice relaxing stroll, then get you back to the house.”
She said it sincerely. Like she was talking to her decrepit old father. chapter twenty-three
On Wednesday, April 16th, three days before an associate and friends reported Frank DeAntoni and Sally Carmel Minster as missing, the wide-bodied former wrestler called me on his cell phone just to talk, he said, but also to ask a favor.
Because my answering machine has a recording that suggests callers try me at the marina’s number, that’s where he found me.
I was sitting on the stool behind the glass counter next to the cash register where Mack, the owner and manager of Dinkin’s Bay, holds court and keeps an eye on the money. Mack’s originally from New Zealand; a Kiwi who loves cold cash even more than he loves cold Steinlager.
We’d been discussing the most recent of governmental outrages imposed upon our little boating community. It concerned Captain Felix Blane-all six-feet-five inches and 250 pounds of him-who’d been out in his twenty-four-foot Parker, Osprey. He’d had a party aboard when an unmarked flats boat came screaming up alongside, portable blue lights flashing, and forced him to stop.
Two plainclothes U.S. Fish and Wildlife officers then proceeded to accuse him of ignoring the new Manatee Protection Laws that require boaters to travel at idle speed when within five hundred feet of certain mangrove areas.
“One of the Feds had a ponytail,” Mack told me. “The smart-ass undercover-agent type, and he gave Felix a lecture about how he needed to learn basic boating skills, and start caring about wildlife. In front of his clients.”
Captain Felix, who’s been guiding around Sanibel for nearly thirty years endured the lecture like the professional he is, then told the officers, “Do you have navigational equipment? Check your GPS. We’re more than half a mile from the mangroves. I’m way outside the manatee zone. I haven’t broken any laws.”
The long-haired officer replied, “In my judgment, we’re closer to the mangroves than your GPS says. And that’s all that matters. If you want to hire an attorney, I’ll see you in Tampa federal court five or six times over the next few months. So you can start canceling your bookings for May right now.”
May, the beginning of tarpon season, is one of the busiest times of year for guides on Sanibel and Captiva.
I said, “If that’s true, it’s terrible. That’s a sophisticated kind of extortion. No fishing guide can afford to fight federal attorneys, plus miss all those days on the water over a couple-hundred-dollar ticket.”
Mack said, “It is true. Almost the exact thing happened to one of the guides out of Cabbage Key. You know Captain Doug. The plainclothes Feds stopped him twice. The same hippy-looking bugger pointed and told him where he was allowed to run his skiff above idle, then a second unmarked boat pulled him over and wrote him a ticket. It’s not that they tricked him. It’s just that those sots don’t know the area, they don’t know boats and they don’t know the water.”
Sadly, he was right-I’d heard too many similar horror stories to doubt it. I was nodding, as he added, “I enjoy the outdoors and wildlife, manatees, as much as the next man, but it’s just getting too crazy. Environmental wackos, mate. I think they’re tryin’ to take over the entire bloody earth.”
Because I didn’t want to get into an argument with Mack, I shut my mouth tight, walked out to the docks and stepped down into my twenty-one-foot Maverick. I had several five-gallon buckets aboard, and I’d stopped at the marina to fuel up before heading out on a collecting trip.
I don’t have much patience with the term environmental wackos or the callous, shortsighted philosophy the phrase seems to signal. As a marine biologist, I am also, necessarily, an environmentalist. I take pride in the fact that some of the research I’ve done, certain papers I’ve published, have played a role in protecting our dwindling marine resources.
In the minds of many, what is now known as the “environmental movement” began in 1962 with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. It is a fact that, at the time, America’s natural resources were in terrible shape. The Great Lakes were so polluted they were unsafe for swimming. Our rivers were such cesspools of chemicals and petroleum waste that they caught fire and burned. In industrial cities, all six of the most dangerous air pollutants tracked by the EPA measured off the scale.
Private enterprise and a profited-minded government were slowly killing an entire continent. The environmental movement deserves full credit for changing that.
Half a century later, though, what was once a movement has now become the very thing its founders battled. So-called “environmentalism” has become a profit-driven, power-hungry industry in which private political agendas are more important than biological realities, and monetary objectives excuse any perversion of scientific fact.
A few months back, I was talking with someone familiar with Mote Marine, the organization I’m now doing contract work for. He told me that Mote had received an official letter of protest from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) that condemned Mote for housing and studying jellyfish. I’m paraphrasing, but there was a line in the letter that read, “These magnificent creatures should be allowed to roam free in the wild!”
That a national “environmental” organization could pen a letter so stupid, so childishly ignorant of the species that they referenced, is not just sad, it is frightening. Unthinking extremists have taken possession of what was once a noble title, environmentalist, and they are destroying our credibility, just as surely as they are giving credence and power to people who use sad phrases such as environmental wackos.
In the Everglades, when I’d listened to Billie Egret’s short tirade against legislated efforts to save the region, I’d disagreed with her cynicism, but I understood the source of her mistrust: the environmental industry. The En-dustry is made up of governmental agencies, private businesses and “nonprofit” organizations.
Fortunately, each has, in my experience, at least a few men and women who are rational and well-intended, who put the well-being of the environment before their own self-interests. But, like our own natural resources, the numbers of honest ones seem to be dwindling.
I don’t trust the En-dustry, either. No thinking environmentalist should.
So I was sitting in my skiff, ruminating over national matters that are far, far out of my control, when Mack paged me over the PA, telling me that I had a phone call in the office.
It was Frank.
As I listened to DeAntoni, I was also aware that Mack, Jeth and Captain Neville were listening, too, and so I told him I’d telephone him from my house.
A few minutes later, Frank answered, saying, “So how’s it going with you, Dr. Nerd? You still hanging out with that dope-smoking goofball with the cannon for an arm?”
I told him that Tomlinson had pitched against Naples on Sunday, had given up six runs in three innings, plus done a lot of heavy drumming later that night, and so his “cannon” was probably still hurting him on this clear spring morning.
“Fucking Tinkerbell, man. You could throw a tent over the guy and call him a circus. Weird thing is, though? I kind’a like the skinny little dork.”
I had to laugh. It was Tomlinson’s guileless candor that made him likeable, and DeAntoni possessed the same rare quality. You couldn’t help but like the man.
He was headed for Miami, he told me. Traffic sucked. There were so many Third World former donkey-cart drivers on the road, Cubans and Haitians, that I-95, he said, should have its named changed to the Refugee Express. If he survived, he was going to meet Sally for lunch, then spend the rest of the night in his car, watching her house.
“Stu Johnson, the security guard they found floating? The medical examiner says he died of a cerebral hemorrhage. A vessel in his brain popped. But there was also a nasty bruise on his throat. So they’re figuring maybe he hit the dock when he fell. That’s what my cop buddies are telling me.”
I said, “The question is, why would a security guard get out of his car and go stand on a dock?”
DeAntoni said, “Exactly. Sally swears someone’s been in her room, and that lady’s word’s good enough for me.” There was a little smile in his voice, when he added, “Hey, listen to this. We had a great dinner together Saturday night. She was real upset about Mr. Johnson and her dog, too, but we still managed to have some laughs. So we’ve had dinner together every night since. But this one, you’re not going to believe, Ford.”
I said, “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I went to church with her, Mac. Me, the big wop who stopped going to confession when I started having shit to confess. Sitting there in a sport coat in this little white church with a bunch of jigs and crackers and beaners, but they were all nice as hell, everybody singing and clapping. It was fun, Doc. I enjoyed it.”
DeAntoni’s voice had a schoolboy quality. He sounded like an adolescent with a crush, but his tone changed abruptly when he said, “But that’s not why I called. I’m calling ’cause I need someone I trust. Someone who knows how to take care of himself, and bust a head or two if things get tough. I need a favor.”
He then told me that he suspected that one or more men were following Sally. He didn’t know who, or why. But he wanted to set a trap for whoever it was, and the trap required a third party to do a careful, long-distance surveillance.
As he explained the circumstances, asking for my help, I felt a sickening tension building in my stomach. Lately, when I have attempted to help friends, the results have been tragic. If I’m involved, the people I’m trying to help are almost always the ones who end up getting hurt.
I said, “Whoever it is breaking into Sally’s house, that’s who you think’s following her?”
“Bingo. I need someone to watch me while I’m watching her. From a distance, understand? That’s the only way to nail them. Something else, Ford: Whoever’s doing it, he’s a pro. And he’s very, very damn good. ”
“What about asking your cop pal in Hialeah?”
“He left on a cruise two days ago. You’re the only other guy I’d trust. Hey, I’ll tell you the truth. Most guys, they’re either too stuffy or too Mister Macho, which is to say they’re a pain in the ass. But you, I wouldn’t mind hanging out with some. Tell you what, come to Coconut Grove, help your old pal Sally, and we’ll have some yucks, you and me.”
I told DeAntoni that I’d like that-and meant it-but that I’d have to check my work schedule to see if I could take the time off.
It was a lie.
Same thing when I told him I’d call him later that night.
Sailors have an old word for it-Jonah. I was bad luck, a Jonah, when it came to helping friends. I wasn’t going to risk contaminating Sally.
DeAntoni finished, saying, “Hell, what we could start doing is find a gym with wrestling mats. Maybe shoot for takedowns, get in a little bit of shape. Roll around a little; get rid of our bellies. We’re both carrying a few extra pounds.”
I told him that sounded like a good thing to do, too. We chatted for a while longer before I hung up the phone.
It was the last time I would ever hear Frank DeAntoni’s voice.
As I headed back to the docks, I noticed that Tomlinson was standing by the Red Pelican Gift Shop, encircled by a dozen or so people-tourists, judging by the number of cameras they carried. When he saw me, his wave was more of a signal- Wait for me -and he then began to walk in my direction.
The people with whom he’d been talking watched for a moment, then, as a group, began to follow him.
Glancing over his shoulder, Tomlinson walked faster.
The little gaggle of people walked faster.
Then Tomlinson began to jog.
They began to jog-a mixed group, mostly younger men and women with gaunt, European-looking faces, plus a couple of Asians.
Now Tomlinson was running, his long hair swinging behind him like a flag, barefooted in tank top and baggy surfer shorts. As he ran, he called to me, “Doc! Are you headed out on your skiff?”
I stood for a moment, engrossed by the bizarre scene, then called back, “I’m leaving right now.”
“If you got room, I’m going with you!”
“Plenty of room. Come aboard.”
I stepped into my skiff, started the engine and popped the lines.
Quick-release knots-I love them.
A second later, Tomlinson swung down onto the deck beside me, breathing heavily. On the dock behind him, his pursuers stopped abruptly, cameras up and snapping photos, as a Japanese-looking girl, her accent heavy, said, “Why do you refuse us, to be our Roshi? We have come so far, and searched so long. It was you who wrote the divine Surangama of this new century. Our destinies, our desire for kensho, we are now all mingled!”
Tomlinson groaned. “My dear, you are wrong. So wrong. All of you.” His voice sounded pained and apologetic, and he was holding up both palms- Please stop. “I’m not worthy to teach you or anyone else. Not anymore. I’m… I’m a terrible person. I abuse drugs. I’m a fornicator- nothing’s beneath me. My God, I tried to strangle a man a few days ago! Basically, I’m an absurd wanderer. I… I was sent to this planet to conduct inhuman experiments on the human liver.”
Tomlinson put his hand on my shoulder, and pointed to me, adding, “Ask this man. He knows me. I’m the island drunk-and that’s saying something on these islands.”
I was nodding. “Oh, he’s a drunk, all right.”
“In the entire history of the Sanibel Police Department, I’m the only person to have ever been stopped for DUI while on a skateboard. And the police chief is a distant relative.”
True.
“I’m no longer fit to teach!”
We were idling away, nearly out of earshot. Touching my hand to the throttle, I said to them, “This man’s scum. Worthless trash that I wouldn’t trust with my daughter. Do yourselves a favor. Leave him alone.”
Tomlinson said, “That’s right, I am scum-” but then stopped. Looking surprised and offended, he turned to me and said, “Hey. That’s pouring it on a little heavy, isn’t it, man?”
Smiling, I said, “Why are those kids following you?”
He sighed and sat in one of the three seats bolted into the stern platform. “Remember that paper I mentioned? The one I sent to Mr. McRae to help him deal with his wife’s condition?”
I pretended as if I had to think about it. “Yeah. That’s the one you were supposed to send to me, too. But didn’t.”
“I wrote it when I was in college. I’d drunk a case of Bud weiser, eaten two blotters of acid and a candy-looking substance that might have been mescaline. I’m not sure. Or it was an M amp;M. Whatever the hell it was, I sat down and wrote this paper for a class I was taking on world religions. The whole thing in one frenzied sitting. ‘Twenty Ways to Duct-Tape Your Life.’ That was the original title. Then I changed it to ‘One Fathom Above Sea Level.’”
I said, “So?”
He sounded sad and concerned, saying, “So someone’s been circulating it on the Internet. People all over the world have been reading the thing. It’s been translated, for Christ’s sake, like, into twenty-some languages. People who read it get the entirely wrong idea about the kind of person I am. There are some-an increasing number-who come looking for me, thinking I’m… well, that I’m some kind of prophet. Tomlinsonism. That’s what some are calling it. My own religion. Like Taoism.”
“That’s scary,” I said.
Tomlinson was standing now, rummaging through the ice locker. “You got any beer in here?”
A few minutes later, a Bud Light in his hand, he said, “You’re telling me.”
I followed the markers across Dinkin’s Bay to Woodring Point, cutting behind the fishhouse ruins. Pelicans and egrets flushed off the spoil islands, their wings laboring in the heat and heavy air, gaining slow altitude as their shadows panicked baitfish in the shallows.
I ran straight across the flats, but at reduced speed, concentrating on the mangrove fringe to my left, then on the horizon of water that opened before me.
My skiff’s big 225-horsepower Mercury made a pleasant Harley-Davidson rumble as we sped along, but it was still quiet enough to converse in a normal tone.
Mercury Marine, once a maker of classic American outboards, had had a bad couple of years in which their image and their reputation took a beating. It was not a good time for the company, or boaters who used their product.
Those of us who make our living on the water are necessarily fussy about equipment. We talk freely about what is good and what is bad. A year or so back, I’d begun to hear the rumors that Mercury was back on track. They’d finally gotten it right again.
So I made the switch. A lot of the guides were making the switch, too.
It was a nice day to be on the water. The bay was a gelatin skin that lifted and fell in broad sections; moving with the slow respiration of distant oceans, faraway storms. The air was balmy, scented by the tropics, it had a winter clarity. The sky was Denver-blue, and on the far curvature of sky, beyond Pine Island, were cumulous snow peaks. The clouds were coral and silver: vaporous sculptures, carved by wind shear, adrift like helium dirigibles.
Standing at the wheel, I could look down and see the blurred striations of sea bottom. I could see white canals of sand that crossed the flat like winding rivers, and I could see meadows of sea grass-blades leaning in the tide as if contoured by a steady breeze. Ahead, there were comets’ tails of expanding water as redfish and snook spooked ahead of us. The fish created bulging tubes on the water’s surface, as if they were trapped beneath Pliofilm.
Behind us, in our slow, expanding wake, the tiny clearing that was Dinkin’s Bay Marina-wooden buildings, a few cars and docks, the Red Pelican Gift Shop, my house on pilings-was the only break in the great ring of mangroves.
Sitting to my right, Tomlinson finished his beer, crushed the can in his hand and said, “When’s the last time you and I did a Bay Crawl?”
“Bay Crawl” is a local euphemism for an afternoon spent going from island to island, barhopping-or pub-crawling-by boat.
“It’s been a while,” I said. “Too long. But I have to fill that order for horseshoe crabs. This time of year, it’s not going to be easy.”
Which was true. Each winter, horseshoe crabs appear on South Florida’s mangrove flats en masse; a slow, clattering minion plowing blindly to copulate. Thousands of creatures ride the floodtides into the shallows; the big cow crabs dragging smaller males behind, each tuned in to the instinctive drive to exude and spray; to lay and fertilize. They are animals as archaic as the primal ooze to which they are attracted, dropping bright blue eggs in the muck; hatching one more generation of a species that has not changed in two hundred million years.
Come spring, though, they are not as easily found.
Tomlinson said, “I don’t want to go back to the marina for a while. So I’ll help you collect the little darlings. Then let’s say we start at the Waterfront Restaurant at St. James City, have a few beers and say hello to the twins. Then hit the Pool Bar at ’Tween Waters. After that, work our way up to Cabbage Key, and maybe even Palm Island. The Don Pedro softball team’s supposed to play the Knight Island team tonight. Plus, Passover begins at sundown-what better reason to celebrate?”
I touched the throttle; felt the pleasant, momentary G-shock as we gained speed, a jet-fighter sensation, as I listened to Tomlinson add, “Speaking of baseball, I got an e-mail from Marino today.”
Marino Laken Balserio is my son. He lives in Central America with his brilliant and beautiful mother, Pilar. Having Marino was unplanned; a surprise to both of us.
I said, “I know. We trade letters a lot now.”
“He told me he loves the Wilson catcher’s mitt you sent him. Said the Rawlings mitt is a piece of junk, plus he hates the way that Rawlings does business in Costa Rica. Can you believe they’re still connected with Major League baseball? Bionts have infiltrated our sport.”
I chuckled. “He inherited his mother’s intellect, and her heart.”
“So there’s another good reason to go bay-crawling. You have a brilliant son.”
“I’ll drink to that,” I said, pushing the throttle forward.
Much of what Tomlinson and I did that night remains a blur. Like most drunken intervals, the evening came back to me in a series of lucid snapshots rather than a continuous flow of memory.
After collecting more than a hundred horseshoe crabs and depositing them in a holding pen near my stilt house, we ran east across the bay to Pine Island, where we had two or three beers at the Waterfront, and ate a bucket of local clams. Then we sped back-country to Pineland and the Tarpon Lodge, where we had more beer, and a spectacular portabello stuffed with fresh oysters.
By then it was close to sunset, so we made a straight shot between Patricio Island and Bokeelia to Boca Grande, and tied off at Mark Futch’s seaplane dock. We walked to the Temptation Restaurant where Annie, behind the bar, served us drinks, but refused to read the tarot cards for us.
“Not when you two are together,” she said. “I done it once, and once was too much.”
Weaving only slightly, Tomlinson told her, “I remember when you did the reading. But you didn’t tell us what the cards said. What’s our fate?”
He was grinning.
Annie wasn’t.
“I didn’t tell you for a reason,” Annie said cryptically. “So please don’t ever ask me again.”
The next mental snapshot I have is of us pulling into the Palm Island docks, off Lemon Bay. We had ribs with Swamp Sauce at Rum Bay Restaurant, then borrowed Jill Beck-stead’s golf cart and drove around Don Pedro Island with a tin bucket filled with ice and beer, feeling a dark, sea-oat wind, smelling Gulf air off the beach.
On the way back, we stopped at Cabbage Key-two more beers with Rob and Terry at the bar-then we were at the Green Flash, drinking Rogerita Margaritas with Andreas, the owner. I remember getting into an intense discussion with a tourist lady from Seattle-her name was Gail-about the important role horseshoe crabs play in cancer research.
As scientists around the world have discovered, I told her, the blue blood of the horseshoe crab, Limulus polyphemus, reacts dramatically when endotoxins are introduced. Endotoxins, which are dead cell walls and bits of bacteria, cause horseshoe crab blood to clot immediately. The blood is an excellent diagnostic tool.
I told her, “It’s actually an arthropod, not a crab at all. It’s more closely related to ticks and scorpions. Fascinating, huh?”
Gail was an attractive redhead with lively green eyes. Turning away from me, she said, “Not really.”
Moonrise that Wednesday night was a little after ten, and by the time Tomlinson and I idled into the Dinkin’s Bay Marina boat basin, it was adrift above the mangrove rim, a gaseous orange mass in a sky that was weightless, black.
“The paschal moon,” Tomlinson said. “The first full moon before Easter Sunday.”
When I told him it was a couple of days past full, he said, “Details. It’s still the Passover moon.”
We’d both sobered on our trip back. Comfortable silence is one of the barometers of friendship, and we rode most of the trip wordlessly, watching the moonrise, enjoying the familiar bay nightscape of strobeing channel markers, hedgerows of mangrove shadow, pocket constellations of light on island enclaves such as Useppa, Safety Harbor, De mery Key, South Seas.
As I banked through the mouth of Dinkin’s Bay, Tomlinson finally spoke, mentioned the moon and then said, “If I haven’t told you already, I’m embarrassed about the way I behaved at Sawgrass. It makes me want to scream, the way that wicked bastard manipulated me. I feel embarrassed. Weak and guilty as hell.”
I said, “I can relate,” in a tone so bitter that the intensity startled even me.
“That’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about, man. Doc, there’s something been chewing you down to the core. You’re not yourself, and we all know it. A couple of days ago, I walked into your galley. You weren’t there. There was a gun lying out, bullets on the table. A square black pistol. Why?”
I waited for a moment before I said, “Cleaning it. That’s all.”
“Cleaning a gun for no reason.”
I didn’t reply.
Tomlinson said, “I don’t buy it, my brother. That’s why I want to tell you this. I’m drunk, but not too drunk to say what’s true. I’m aware that you have blood on your hands. But so do I. You know it now, you’ve always known it. Since we met, you’ve always known what I really am.”
I said, “Yes.”
“And you were assigned to take care of me. Right? Right? Like you took care of Jeff Ruben at the Slope Bar in Aspen.”
I said nothing.
“Well, guess what, man. I’m guilty. Guilty as sin. But not you. Guilt requires malicious intent. You were an employee. A messenger. ”
I chuckled. “Tell that to Amelia Gardner. Or about fifteen other people.”
Tomlinson put his hand on my shoulder. “Billie Egret called me yesterday. We talked about Shiva. We also talked about you. Because of her father, what you meant to Joseph, she takes her relationship with you very seriously.
“Know what she told me? She said that balance and equilibrium are the central elements of the Maskoki universe, the Seminole world. Reciprocity, she called it. If you give bad, you get bad in return. If you take, you have to give.
“Doc, you give as much as any person I’ve ever met. There’re a bunch of us who depend on you, count on you. Goddamn it, you’re the strong one. It’s scaring us that you’re acting weak. You’ve given back a hell of a lot more than you’ve taken.”
I steered silently, the stainless-steel wheel cool beneath my fingers, seeing a sprinkling of lights in the mangrove lake darkness: Dinkin’s Bay Marina.
Tomlinson said, “Billie told me to tell you that. I don’t know why. Something else I’m supposed to tell you, too: After that little tremor on Sunday, water level in the marsh around Chekika’s Hammock dropped. Remember James Tiger saying they could only find Lost Lake when the water’s down? Well, the lake’s visible now. The tarpon have shown up. She wants you to come with me Sunday, and see it.”
I said, “I’d like that. It’s something I’ve always heard about. A hole in the Everglades that opens out to the ocean. Maybe take some dive gear if there’s any visibility.”
Then I said, “Hey, why Sunday? The traffic will be a pain in the ass, and we can’t go by boat.”
Tomlinson said, “I don’t know. A strong woman like Billie, she didn’t leave much room for discussion.”
“But we’ve got a game. Baseball at Terry Park.”
“Not this Sunday,” Tomlinson reminded me. “This Sunday, we’re off because it’s Easter.” chapter twenty-four izzy
On the morning of April 18th, Good Friday, Izzy Kline took a cab to E-Z U-Haul Rental Center off Powerline Road and S.W. 10th Street, Deerfield Beach. He used a postal money order, a Social Security number he’d lifted from the Internet and a newly counterfeited driver’s license to rent a truck.
He’d already given them his assumed name, a credit card number and expiration date over the phone.
What he chose was U-Haul’s four-wheel-drive, five-ton “Thrifty Mover,” a medium-sized diesel with a fourteen-foot cargo trailer built over the back. Its maximum load capacity was three thousand pounds. That was more than enough for what Izzy needed.
As he left, the clerk said, “Thanks, Mr. Tomlinson. See you on Monday.”
Izzy, wearing a baggy, knitted Rasta hat, and an expensive theatrical goatee, waved to cover his face, and replied, “Save the Earth, brother! Fight the madness!”
The hat and goatee were in a 7-Eleven trash Dumpster before he got back to the Interstate.
After that, he went straight to his condo in West Palm Beach, and moved the last of his personal items-a DVD player, a big-screen TV, similar electronic stuff-into the truck, and drove to Port of the Everglades. He paid three Mexican illegals to pack it all in boxes alongside his Astro van, his Suzuki motorcycle, all his furniture and clothing, in a semi-sized container that was already loaded on a cargo ship. The ship was scheduled to leave tomorrow, Saturday, for Central America.
With the truck empty, Izzy drove south on I-95, headed for Sawgrass. He had the speakers turned loud, playing one of his favorite CDs, World’s Most Beloved Waltzes.
“Edelweiss” was playing now, the Boston Philharmonic, one of the classics. That one-two-three beat made him want to dance, so he pounded out the rhythm on the steering wheel, feeling good; pleased with himself and smiling, until his cell phone rang.
A minor irritation.
He checked the caller ID. It was Shiva’s private number.
Izzy turned down the volume, pressed the talk button and said, “Talk to me, Jerry!”
He could call Shiva by his first name now. The Bhagwan was delighted by the results of the coordinated explosions on Sunday. The two men had never been on friendlier terms.
Izzy listened to Shiva say, “I’m spending the weekend at the Cypress Ashram. We still all set for the second service?”
“Service” meant “detonation.”
Izzy said, “I’m on my way there now.”
“Easter Sunday at sunset?”
“Yep. Seven fifty-seven sharp. I checked the almanac.”
“The church appreciates your dedication.”
“Thanks,” Izzy said. “One more thing: Make sure to remind Mr. Carter to answer his cell phone when I call. If he doesn’t, I’ll be seeing both of you on Monday.”
They had reason to be encouraged. The first series of explosions had been more convincing, and had received wider attention, than Shiva anticipated.
A reporter for the Seminole Tribune, “Voice of the Unconquered,” had interviewed a number of people, including Shiva, for a story they were doing on the recent earthquake. Izzy didn’t know or care about the particulars, but Shiva had jabbered on and on because the Indian writer knew about Tecumseh right away; what he’d predicted.
The real reason Shiva was so happy? It was because the Seminole Tribe of Florida were at least talking to him. They’d treated him like a con man right off the bat.
That might impress the less savvy tribe of Egret Seminoles.
Izzy was kicked-back, pleased with himself. He’d pulled it off. It had all gone so damn smoothly. And so far, the Feds hadn’t come snooping around.
Not that it was all luck. No.
First off, he’d taken the trouble to make certain Tomlinson, Ford and the Italian dick-Frank something-hadn’t eyeballed him when he was down there in the rock quarry, scoping out where to park the U-Haul while he was filling boreholes with ammonium nitrate. Which was a risky pain-in-the-ass, but had to be done.
They hadn’t. Didn’t say a word about him when they were sitting alone in the waiting room.
He’d taken his time learning how to do explosives, too. Did all the reading. Found out how to do it right. He’d put together a booklet of Bureau of Mines publications describing research on acceptable levels of underground disturbance. Cross the lines, you were inviting scrutiny.
He’d also learned that there was a subscience to achieving maximum efficiency with fewer explosives by drilling several “shot holes” or boreholes in a precise semicircular pattern. The holes had to be five to fifteen feet deep or so, with small diameters. Then the boreholes had to be “stemmed,” or packed tight with rock.
No problem.
For his Easter Sunday’s fireworks-the grand finale-Izzy had drilled thirteen boreholes in a sequential pattern (“delay intervals,” the literature called them) and in the exact semicircle shape of the Cypress Ashram’s elevated stage. Even though each of the boreholes was more than half a mile away from the outdoor theater, the series of explosions would rock the place in precisely connecting gradients-and much of the Everglades as well.
This was something else Izzy had learned: Water cannot be compressed. If he extended the boreholes below the water table, the power of the shock waves was quadrupled.
In the Everglades, the water table was seldom more than a few feet beneath the surface. Swampland was a demoli tionist’s dream. So, this final blast would register way over the government’s line of acceptable level of disturbance. Which would invite all kinds of heavy investigation.
Izzy didn’t care. He’d be on a plane, gone by late Sunday, never to return. He’d fly to Paris, stay long enough to switch passports, then fly to London, then back to Managua.
Plus, he now had a fall guy.
So there’d be a series of five substantial explosions, followed by a really big boom-the U-Haul truck packed with explosives, backed in tight against the wall of the old rock quarry.
The typical problem with ammonium nitrate, though, was that it wasn’t easy to detonate. Use commercial blasting caps, only a third of the stuff would probably explode. Because the truck would be holding six drums of fertilizer mixed with fuel oil, Izzy had decided to use a high-voltage-capacitor-discharge mini-blaster to detonate the rig. That meant he’d have to leave the truck’s engine running, hardwired to the mini-blaster to provide the necessary voltage.
The mini-blaster’s timer ran on a single dry-cell battery, but that was okay. He’d mount the timer and the dry-cell battery inside the truck so they couldn’t get wet. The other boreholes would be rigged to waterproof individual timers.
All the timers worked on twenty-four-hour clocks. He’d set the first charge to go off at 19:48 hours-7:48 P.M. Maybe a minute or two earlier or later. It had to seem random. After that, there would be five more “tremors” approximately one minute apart.
The last and largest explosion would be exactly at sunset, 19:57 hours. The truck going off. A ton of ammonium nitrate.
To people half a mile away, it would be like the sun exploding.
Religious types were big on sunrise, sunset. Same with the moon.
Izzy liked all of it. Liked the complicated engineering, the precision work, making it happen, fucking with self-important weirdos and geeks like Tomlinson and Ford.
Izzy was mostly happy about the money-his bonus-and moving to his island in Lake Nicaragua where he could afford all the women he wanted; get them to do anything.
There was an idea. Start with his sweet little video of Mrs. Minster, the Merry Widow, in her bathroom, then expand the business. Down there in Nicaragua, no one would much care. No one would lift a finger to stop him.
The image of Sally Minster, naked, looking at herself in the mirror, the color of her face changing, came into his mind.
He felt his thigh muscles twitch.
Izzy still had cameras and recorders hidden in her bedroom and bathroom, and he had a LACSA flight to Managua booked for late Sunday.
So why not visit the pretty blond lady’s house tonight?
Izzy was in the Bayliner, idling along Tahiti Beach and what looked to be some kind of county park-kids were necking in cars up there on shore, parked beneath coconut palms.
It was sunset. Harsh light angled across Biscayne Bay, coating the high-rise condos and hotels in shades of neon pink and gold, setting windows ablaze. Windy, too. The wind seemed to blow right out of the sun.
Izzy didn’t like being on boats when it was windy. It made him queasy, all the odors you never really noticed unless you were on a boat that was rocking. So he shoved the throttle forward and banged and splashed his way back to the marked entrance to Coral Gables Canal.
Shitty, cheap boat. Waves coming over the front got Izzy’s sports jacket and gray slacks soaked.
He idled west down the canal, pretending not to notice that the Italian, Frank what’s-his-name, was still parked outside the entranceway to Ironwood in his Lincoln Town Car. With the tinted windows and gold rims, the black car looked like some pimpmobile you’d find in Liberty City.
Izzy thought, Typical guinea, irked that this guy was screwing up his plans.
He’d rushed like hell mucking around in the swamp, mixing fertilizer in fifty-gallon drums, using a forklift to lift them into the U-Haul. Got all his work done, everything but the timers set. All ready for Sunday-which gave him a holiday feeling. His last two nights on American soil.
So he’d showered and changed at the bachelors’ club, hopped in a company car and raced up to Coconut Grove to see if he might discover some more interesting video of the church lady having fantasy sessions in her bedroom. Or maybe even meet her in person.
This late in the game, that would be okay, too.
But now the big greaser was spoiling the entire evening.
Izzy touched his left shoe to the ankle holster in which he carried a. 22 Beretta Model 71-a signature weapon of Mossad assassins.
Why not? Why not tap on the window, look into the guy’s eye. Say something fun, like “Remember me?” then pop him. Or “Do you really want to find Geoff Minster? I can arrange it.” Then pull the trigger.
Under the car bridge next to Cocoplum Plaza, Izzy put the boat in neutral, feeling the vibration of Friday-night car traffic rolling over him. He sat there thinking about it, smelling the exhaust fumes, wanting to do it, but not wanting to risk the noise.
But then he didn’t have to worry about it anymore.
He saw the lights of the pimpmobile go on. Then he saw Sally Minster’s blue BMW come through the electronic gate, then stop beside the pimpmobile. After a minute or so, both cars drove away, the pimpmobile following the Beamer.
Perfect.
The only trouble was, Izzy didn’t know how much time he’d have. So he couldn’t lie around on her bed, browsing through the new video. He’d have to snatch the cameras and recorders, then watch the tapes later in his apartment at Sawgrass.
Or maybe… maybe he would wait for her to come back. When the guinea was on the job, he always stayed outside in his car. So how could he know what was going on inside the woman’s house?
Izzy liked that idea. It made him twitch again, picturing it, imagining meeting the church lady in her bedroom, giving her a special farewell, seeing her naked in the flesh, the two of them together on the bed with the cameras rolling.
How nice would it be to take that back to Nicaragua?
And if the guinea followed her in?
Izzy could deal with that, too.
Wearing surgical gloves, Izzy entered through the pool area, jimmied the back lock, stopped and touched-in the security code.
He liked the way the house smelled. It smelled of woman; it smelled like her.
He’d been in the place so many times, he knew the layout as if it were his own home. He paused at the fridge, took an apple from the crisper. He walked up the carpeted stairs, munching away.
At the top of the stairs, Izzy stopped. Stopped walking. Stopped chewing. Stopped moving.
The door to the church lady’s bedroom was open.
Odd.
She was tidy, consistent in her habits. Sally Minster always kept her bedroom door closed. As if she didn’t want unexpected visitors to get a glimpse of where she lived her private life.
There was something else, too. A different odor? Maybe. Something new added to the mix of fresh linen, makeup, shampoo and perfume.
Izzy lifted his head, foxlike, and sniffed the air.
Yep. He didn’t know what it was, but it was different.
Izzy pulled at his trouser leg, squatted and unholstered the Beretta with his right hand. There was already a round in the chamber-the only way to carry a weapon. He cupped the little semiautomatic in his hand, and moved cautiously through the door into the bedroom.
He stopped again, eyes scanning, ears straining. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest.
The two micro-cameras and both VCRs lay in the middle of the lady’s bed, wires black on the yellow bedspread.
Shit.
Izzy had the Beretta up now, locked in both hands, combat-position, as he began to back out of the bedroom. He was almost to the stairs when he heard movement off to the right. He had just enough time to turn slightly when something massive hit him from the side.
It was like being hit by a car. Hands and feet flailing, Izzy felt himself go airborne, the gun tumbling from his hand and over the stairway banister, as he crashed into a wall.
Sitting, dazed, Izzy looked up to see the short Italian private investigator coming at him.
“Get on your feet, Mac. I’m gonna smack you around a little before I call the cops. You fucking little slimeball.”
Izzy rolled hard to his left and stood, backing slowly as the Italian approached. During his four years in Israel, Izzy had excelled at martial arts. He’d once almost killed a man in a bar fight by slamming fragments of nose cartilage into the guy’s brain.
Izzy crouched now, his right hand a fist, his left hand a blade, ready. When the Italian was close enough, he did a variation of a swing dance step, and kicked the man hard in the groin-or tried to.
But it was as if the Italian knew exactly what he was going to do before he did it. The man caught Izzy’s leg, somehow dropped to one knee, and then, like a fireman carrying a kid, he had Izzy up on his shoulders, off the floor.
Izzy was kicking and clawing, trying to gouge his way free as he heard the man say, “ Oh. You want me to put you down?”
Then the Italian hammered him back-first onto the carpet.
Izzy felt such a searing pain through his spine, he wondered if his back might be broken. But no, he could still move. He began to scramble toward the stairs as the Italian came at him again. The man grabbed him by the belt, lifting him off the carpet like it was nothing. Then the guy forced him to stand on two feet, and shoved him up against the wall, holding him by the throat with one hand. Izzy had to get up on his tiptoes to keep from being choked.
He’d been in five or six fights in his life, and done some amateur full-contact tournament stuff, but he’d never before experienced what it was like to be physically dominated by another man.
It was happening to him now. He was helpless.
Terrifying.
“You fucking little pervert Peeping Tom. On a lady as nice as her. What I maybe might do is break both your arms, then pull your kneecaps off.” The Italian was nodding, his expression crazed. “Yeah, both kneecaps. I’ll push ’em down by your ankles. Make it so you got to crawl around on your belly.”
Barely able to breathe with the man’s hand clenching his throat, Izzy was shaking his head desperately. In a rasping whisper, he said, “You’ve got the wrong idea. Geoff Minster… trying to find out what happened to Geoff. Investigating. Like you.”
The Italian loosened his grip slightly. “Sure, Mac. What the hell you guys care about Minster?”
“He stole money from us. A hundred… a hundred grand.”
Actually, Izzy had stolen the money; set it up to look as though Minster had done it.
The Italian seemed to be considering it, though; as if it might be true. His grip became even looser as he said, “Bullshit. You hid cameras in her bathroom to find out about her husband? How dumb you think I am, Mac?”
Izzy didn’t hesitate. He used the momentary lapse to knock the Italian’s hands free, then tried to slam the heel of his open palm into the big man’s nose.
Same thing. It was as if the man knew in advance what Izzy was going to try.
He blocked the punch, no problem, then slapped Izzy three times, very fast. The slow smile that then spread across the Italian’s face was chilling. He grabbed Izzy’s right wrist, saying, “Like those pigeons last Saturday. Let’s find out if you can fly, motherfucker.”
Then the man lifted him without effort, grunted and spun him over the stairway banister.
Falling toward the ground floor, Izzy screamed-a shrill falsetto-kicking wildly. He landed hard on his left side, and lay there, groaning, hearing the heavy footsteps of the Italian coming down the stairs, in no hurry now.
It felt to Izzy like his left shoulder might be broken. Like there was something sharp sticking out of his own skin. From the first-aid classes he’d taken during Mossad training, he knew the term. Compound fracture. There’d been a photograph in the manual. Sickening to see.
Experimentally, he touched his shoulder with the gloved fingertips of his right hand, expecting to feel bare bone. Instead of bone, though, he felt the checkered grip of his. 22 Beretta.
He’d landed on his own gun.
Fucking stupid guinea!
Izzy pulled the gun into his hands, and was already aiming it at the Italian as he got to his knees, then his feet. When the Italian realized what had happened, saw Izzy standing there, the gun trained on him, the big man’s expression changed. It was like a shade being pulled.
He stopped halfway down the stairs. Stood there considering the situation, thinking about it. Then the man’s expression changed once more-got that same crazed glare-and he started down the stairs again.
Izzy said, “Stop right there, asshole! You get any closer, I’ll shoot you.”
Which Izzy didn’t want to do. Not here. Not in the house. Way too much evidence. Which the Italian also seemed to know, because he kept walking, his eyes like lasers. “Go ahead and shoot me, Mac. A little sissy gun like that, if I get my hands on you, I’m going to tear your fucking head right off anyway. So make it good.”
This guy’s a freak.
Now Izzy was backing away, holding the gun, but still afraid of the man who was walking calmly toward him, wanting to end it somehow, make him stop. So he said, “If you don’t cooperate, I’ll have to kill the woman, too, when she gets back. I’ll have to shoot her because you’re not giving me any other choice.”
That did it. The Italian stopped, furious, but at least becoming rational about the situation. “Then why don’t you just get the fuck out of here right now!”
Izzy said quickly. “I will. But you’ve got to do what I say. Stay cool, cooperate, you won’t get hurt. The lady won’t get hurt. First, you got to tell me-who drove off in your car?”
The Italian paused a little too long. “Two off-duty cops. They’re going to be back any minute.”
He was lying.
“Are you carrying a weapon?”
“You think I’m going to tell you, dumbass? Why don’t you search me and find out.”
No way was he going to let the guinea get close enough to get his hands on him again. It didn’t look like he was carrying: a refrigerator-sized man with biceps, wearing a seedy white shirt and wrinkled slacks. A guy trying to look sharp, but didn’t know how to pull it off. No holster visible.
Izzy said, “Look, all I want to do is get my camera shit and get out of here. So, we’re going to find some tape. I’m going to have you tape your right wrist to your ankles. Just to slow you down a little. Then I’m out of here.”
When the Italian didn’t budge, Izzy used the pistol to motion toward the kitchen. “Goddamn it, move! You do what I tell you to do, no one gets hurt. Fuck with me, I’m gonna have to kill her.”
His heart was pounding; he was scared- Jesus, how am I going to make this work? But there was still a trace of a smile on Izzy’s face as he added, “Trust me, man. I promise.”
It turned out, the guy who drove off in the pimpmobile was a chicken-skinny man even older than the security guard who’d surprised Izzy the week before.
He was the guinea’s landlord, for God’s sake. Just some old retired dude who had nothing better to do then hang out, doing favors. Probably wanted to add a little excitement to his life; help the dick set his little trap.
Well, he got it.
When the old dude and Sally came into the house, calling, “Hey, Frank, we’re back. Frank! Frank? ” Izzy waited until they were in the kitchen before he swung open the closet door, pointed the Beretta at them and said, “Frank’s kind of tied up right now.”
Man, the look on the woman’s face. It was like all the blood went out of her. Same with the old guy, whose cheeks started trembling like he might cry.
Both of them looked from the gun to the closet, to the gun again then back to the closet.
There was Frank: His right hand was duct-taped to his right ankle; his left hand was taped to the left ankle so that he was still mobile. He could still walk in a crablike way if properly motivated. There was more silver tape over the man’s mouth, and over that big, crooked wop nose, too, just his dark eyes showing.
When Frank looked at Sally, he shook his head slowly, eyes blinking. It seemed a gesture of apology.
Izzy thought: Pathetic, but he enjoyed the feeling it gave him. It was an adrenaline feeling; a sensation of power.
Later, after Izzy had robbed the house; trashed it-the cops would be thinking motive -and after he got the old dude and the Italian crammed into the trunk of the pimpmobile, Izzy took off his surgical gloves and touched the church lady’s face, his skin against her bare skin for the first time.
Soft.
When she jerked away from him, weeping, Izzy told her the same thing he’d told the guinea. “Cooperate with me, do what I tell you, and no one gets hurt.”
Feeling better about everything now, he added, “Relax a little; we’re going for a boat ride. I know things about you. You might even enjoy it.” chapter twenty-five
I knew something was terribly wrong the instant I saw the expression on Tomlinson’s face.
It was around noon. He came idling across the bay in his dinghy; tied up at his usual spot next to my bay shrimper. Then he came up the steps, shoulders sagging as if he were under the influence of some gravitational force.
I’d been talking on the phone, looking out the window of my lab, when I saw him leave the marina.
Not my regular phone.
I’d received a call on a phone that I seldom use, but always keep charged and hidden away in my lab’s galvanized chemical cupboard. I keep it hidden because it is a government-issue, military SATCOM Iridium satellite telephone.
It is a recent addition. Not a welcomed one.
SATCOM is a satellite-based, global wireless personal communications network designed to permit easy phone communication from nearly anywhere on earth. Sixty-six satellites, evenly spaced four hundred miles high, make it possible. The phone is equipped with a sophisticated scrambler. The same is true of the phones used by the only two people who possess my access number.
Its ring is an unmistakable series of bonging chimes. The sound is suggestive of a clock in a British drawing room at high tea.
When I touched the activate button, I was not surprised to hear the voice of a U.S. State Department intelligence guru named Hal Harrington.
Harrington belonged to a supersecret and highly trained covert-operations team that was known, to a very few, as the Negotiating and Systems Analysis Group-the Negotiators, for short. Because the success of the team relied upon members blending easily into nearly any society, the training agency provided each member with a legitimate and mobile profession.
Harrington was trained as a computer software programmer. He’d made a personal fortune in the software industry by sheer intelligence and foresight. Other members of that elite team included CPAs, a couple of attorneys, an actor, one journalist and at least three physicians.
There was also a marine biologist among them. A man who traveled the world doing research. His specialty was bull sharks, Carcharhinus leucas, an unusual, unpredictable animal that ranges worldwide, in both fresh and salt water.
We probably would have never met; would have willingly lived the rest of our lives without ever exchanging a word. But, a couple of years back, Harrington’s attractive and precocious daughter, Lindsey, got into some trouble. Through coincidence and good luck, I happened to be in a position to help her. Which is how I happened to meet Hal.
By then, he was one of the most powerful and influential staff members at the U.S. State Department, specializing in Latin American affairs. It was Hal who made it clear to me that he and I had more in common than I wanted to admit. He knew certain facts about my past that I hoped no one would ever know. He reminded me of certain events that I preferred to forget.
Unfortunately, once one has participated in a violent, clandestine life, one cannot simply shed it like a skin, or leave it behind like a former job or an old house.
Harrington also made that clear to me. And, because he did know about my past, he had the leverage to guarantee my at least occasional participation in what he referred to as “vital government service.”
When I answered the phone, Hal said, “I gather you’re alone, Commander Ford?”
“I wouldn’t have answered if I wasn’t,” I told him.
“How’s Lindsey?”
We talked about his daughter for a while. Lindsey was twenty-five now. She’d been in and out of drug-rehab facilities. Cocaine had a hold on her and wouldn’t let go. It was especially tragic because Lindsey, lean and blond, had it all: brains, looks and humor. She would have been spectacular at anything she chose to be.
It gave Harrington special motivation when he went after the drug cartel-types. His hatred of them bordered on obsession. So the subject of Lindsey now provided a natural transition.
“That’s one of the reasons I’m calling, Commander. Three weeks ago, my Number Two contacted you with what I considered a perfect assignment. We had good intel that the brother of Edgar Cordero-Giorgio-was going to spend two nights at South Beach, Miami. He’s looking for dependable mules. Apparently, the heroin and cocaine business is good.
“Edgar was one of the most ruthless men in Colombia. As far as I’m concerned, he got exactly what was coming to him. Giorgio’s no better, and he’s taken over the family business. You’ve got a personal grudge to settle with those people, but you refused the assignment. Why?”
I could see Tomlinson swing down off the marina dock, into his dinghy as I said, “Well, Hal, the way I understand it, I’ve been conscripted. Redrafted-however you want to put it, as an active, Special Duty Line Officer, an O-5. Which makes it military. It’s my understanding that the Posse Comitatus Act makes it illegal for me to accept any assignment that requires action within the boundaries of the United States.”
Harrington is not known for his patience. “That’s bullshit, Doc, and you know it. That’s easy to get around; a simple matter of procedural formality. And let’s be honest. It never stopped you before.”
As Tomlinson puttered closer, I could see that he was holding a strand of his sun bleached hair in his fingers, chewing at it-a nervous mannerism.
Something was bothering him.
I listened to Hal add, “Which brings us to another subject. Those paychecks the department’s been sending. Our records show you’ve never cashed them.”
I said, “When I feel like I’ve done something to earn the money, maybe I will. Not until then.”
“Okay, then, here’s your chance. We have hard intelligence that the successor to Sabri al-Banna, head of the ANO, is going to be vacationing in the Leeward Islands in late summer or early fall. Under a false passport, of course. His name is Omar Muhammad. Mr. Muhammad’s got a new hobby. He likes to scuba dive. The house he’s reserved is on St. Martin, the French side. It has a coral reef right off its own little private beach. Out there in the water, that might be an interesting place to introduce yourself, Commander. Find out how well Mr. Muhammad can swim.”
I said, “Omar Muhammad, huh?”
Abul Nidal Organization, or ANO, has carried out terrorist attacks in dozens of countries, killing or injuring thousands of people. Targets have included the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Israel and even moderate Pales tinians. They like bombs. The ANO is responsible for putting a bomb aboard Pan Am Flight 103 that blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland. Other major attacks included the Rome and Vienna airports, the Neve Shalom Synagogue in Istanbul and the hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73.
The terrorist organization’s founder, Abu Nidal, was found dead inside his Baghdad home in August 2002, but the organization continues to spread mindless terror. They have small, secret cells in countries throughout the world.
I felt Tomlinson’s dinghy bump against the pilings of my house as Harrington said, “The snake has a new head. We need to chop it off before the group gets active again. Interested?”
I said, “Know what? Yes. That one’s a real possibility. I wouldn’t mind meeting Mr. Omar,” and meant it, even though I felt a nauseating tension in my stomach, thinking about it. Then I said, “Hal? I’ve got a friend coming up the steps. I’m going to have to call you back.”
“You’ll give it serious consideration?”
I said, “I already am.”
As I locked the phone away, I could hear Tomlinson calling, “Hey, Doc? Doc, it’s me.”
I met Tomlinson at the screen door to the lab. Opened it to let him in, but he just stood there, looking at me with his haunted, haunted eyes.
Immediately, I said, “What’s wrong? Someone’s hurt. Who? ”
Tomlinson doesn’t always need words to communicate, and I’ve known the man a long time.
He said, “Let’s go in the house and sit down.”
I touched my palm to his chest; could feel in my spine the neuron burn of panic. “No, tell me now. Is it Ransom? Did something happen to her? Or Dewey. Who?”
I noticed that Tomlinson’s hands were shaking as he combed them through his hair. “I just came from the marina. Mack had the news on. Someone broke into Sally Carmel’s house last night, or early this morning. Millionaire heiress missing. It’s making the headlines. The house was robbed, and there’s a statewide search.”
He followed me into the lab, and I sat heavily in my old office chair. “Goddamn it! Frank was supposed to be watching her. How could someone get past-”
“That’s the worst of it,” Tomlinson interrupted. “So far, anyway. The cops found Frank in the trunk of his own car. It was parked in Sally’s driveway. Him and someone else, another man. They haven’t released his name yet. They’re both dead. Shot execution-style-the reporter’s words.”
I said, “ Two men? But why would Frank be with-” I stopped talking, thinking about it, my brain slowed by shock.
I remembered Frank calling me at the marina, then talking to him from my home phone. I remembered Frank saying, I’m calling ’cause I need someone I trust. I need a favor.
He suspected that Sally was being followed. Unlike the police, he believed that someone had been breaking into her house. He wanted me to help him set a trap for the guy.
I remembered him saying, I’ve got to have someone who knows how to take care of himself. A guy who can bust a head or two if things get tough.
I was his first choice. His second choice, apparently, hadn’t been a reliable one.
I also remembered him saying that whoever was following Sally was very, very good.
To take down someone of Frank DeAntoni’s caliber, the man or men had to be more than good. They had to be professionals.
I looked at Tomlinson. I felt sick, disgusted and horrified by the possibility that my inaction had contributed to the murder of two men. One of them was a man I’d come to consider a friend in a very short time. I said, “Frank called me on Wednesday and asked me to help him work a surveillance on Sally’s house. I refused. Did the news say anything else about the second man? Was he a Hialeah cop?”
I was clinging to the irrational idea that, if the second dead man was in law enforcement, a trained professional, I was somehow exonerated, and my conscience could be clear.
“Doc, one thing you can’t do is blame yourself for this in any way-”
“Damn it, just answer the question! Did they say anything else about the other guy?”
“No. That’s all. That’s all I heard.”
I stood and began to pace. “We’ve got to do something. I’ve got to do something. I’ve got to go over there. We can take my truck.”
“And do what? Sit outside Sally’s empty house with a bunch of television journalist types? I don’t see the point.”
“I’ve got information that’s pertinent to the case. I need to find out who’s working the case and talk to them. Frank’s dead? Jesus Christ-I can’t believe it. If Sally’s missing, you know what that means, don’t you?”
Tomlinson said, “I can’t bear to let myself think about it. If you’ve got information, you need to call them on the phone. Call them now, Doc.”
I did.
I find it as surprising as I do heartening that law enforcement continues to attract top-quality people despite the daily, predictable critical hammering that law-enforcement professionals take from the media, the public and from special-interest groups of all types.
It took me awhile to find the right agency. The two main ones are the Miami-Dade Police Department and the City of Miami Police. The City of Miami Police was handling all matters relating to the disappearance of Mrs. Sally Minster, and the murder of Frank DeAntoni, licensed private investigator, and seventy-six-year-old Jimmy Marinaro, former carpet salesman and current manager of Pink Palms Apartments, Miami Springs.
I groaned inwardly when I heard that.
The dispatcher put me right through to the Homicide Division when I asked. When I told the on-duty detective why I was calling, she said, “Squad C’s handling that one. You need to talk to Detective Fran Podraza. He’s heading the investigation. I’ll give you his cell-phone number.”
Petty bureaucrats devise unnecessary barriers to delay and frustrate outsiders. They prefer inaction because action requires thought. This woman, though, didn’t hesitate to make a subjective decision. I sounded credible. That was enough for her. It suggested to me that the Miami Police was a top-notch organization.
I got a voice mailbox when I dialed Detective Podraza’s number. I left my name, my number, the marina’s number, and added that I was a close friend of the missing woman and had information that might be helpful in the investigation.
Then I began to pace again. I couldn’t sit still; couldn’t seem to concentrate on any single subject for more than a minute or two. I tried to force myself to review what should have been a simple series of connecting data, but my brain continually misfired.
DeAntoni’s voice kept interrupting basic thought patterns, echoing in my skull: I’m calling ’cause I need someone I trust. I need a favor.
There was Sally’s voice, too. Telling me why she’d instinctively come to me when she needed help. Being with you, being in this house, it gives me the same feeling Sanibel gives me. I feel safe.
I felt as if I wanted to run around in circles and bang my head against the wall.
Tomlinson was sitting out on the porch. Sat in one of the deck chairs, but with his palms turned upward as if meditating. I grabbed two bottles of beer from the fridge, went outside and took the chair next to him.
I said, “Do you ever feel like you’re going nuts? Like your head’s going to explode because you just can’t take it anymore?”
My voice seemed to startle him, as if he were in a trance. Then he turned to me with his wise, bloodshot blue eyes, and said, “I passed insane years ago. I’m now on the outer limits of emotional dysfunction. They’ve yet to define whatever it is I have. Simple psychosis would mean I’m on the path to recovery. I sometimes long to hear the voices of animals speaking to me once again.”
I felt like bawling, but Tomlinson got the reaction from me he wanted. I chuckled, feeling the pressure dissipate slightly. “I don’t know what to do,” I said. “I feel utterly helpless.”
He replied, “Have you noticed? In the last year or so, you’ve begun to react to events in an emotional way rather than an analytical way. I know how painful that must be. But I think it’s a good thing for you as a person.”
“Oh yeah? I don’t. I think it’s silly, childish and irrational. What we need to do right now is talk about Sally, not me. And Frank, too.”
In a musing tone, Tomlinson said, “Did you know that the outdoor temperature can be estimated to within a couple of degrees by timing the chirps of a cricket? You count the number of chirps in a fifteen-second period, and add thirty-seven to the total. It doesn’t work in winter. Anytime else, though, the result will be very close to the actual Fahrenheit temperature.”
“If that’s supposed to mean something, you’ve completely lost me.”
“It means you’re right. It’s time to be analytical. Time to start counting the chirps. There has to be some way we can help them now.”
So we drank our beers and discussed it. Tomlinson said perhaps the first thing we should do is contact any family members we could find and offer our assistance.
That made sense.
DeAntoni had told me that he lived alone, not even a cat, but he’d also had an aunt who lived in New Jersey.
I said, “Presumably, she’s already been notified or they wouldn’t have released Frank’s name. When I talk to the detective, I’ll ask for her number. We can call and offer whatever help she needs. A guy like him, he’s got to have a lot of friends. People are going to need to be contacted; a funeral arranged.”
I also knew that Sally had a cousin she was very close to. Belinda Carmel was her maiden name, but she’d married and moved to Big Pine Key.
Tomlinson said, “You find out about the aunt. I’ll go back to the marina and hunt around on the Internet. I should be able to track down the former Belinda Carmel. If someone hasn’t been screwing with my system again.”
At the marina, Mack keeps a little office where the liveaboards can plug in their computers.
I said, “Someone’s been using your iBook?”
“No. I’ve been hacked. Someone got my password. Now I’m getting all this weird right-wing mass e-mail crap. How to build bombs. I’m suddenly on the mailing list of blasting cap manufacturers. Greenpeace and Aryan Nation bullshit.”
A joke, I told him.
He said, “If it is, I don’t find it very funny.”
Detective Fran Podraza called me about an hour later. I was impressed by his professionalism and his attention to detail. After I told him who I was and what I did for a living, he asked for confirmation info-address, Social Security number and mother’s maiden name-before he gave me the phone number for Frank’s New Jersey aunt.
Then he said, “So we’ve got a double homicide and an apparent kidnapping. Right now, we’re working on the premise that it was probably a robbery that went bad. We know that Mr. DeAntoni was a licensed private investigator, contracted by an insurance company. We know that Mr. Marinaro was Mr. DeAntoni’s landlord.”
Which is when he gave me the additional data about Marinaro-a seventy-six-year-old man with no law-enforcement experience.
I felt like throwing the phone across the room.
Podraza continued, “Other than that, we don’t have a lot. So any information you can provide might be helpful.”
I told him everything I knew. Started with how I knew Sally, how I met Frank, about the break-ins she suspected and about Frank calling me on Wednesday, asking for help setting up some kind of trap.
“Why would he call you if he’d only known you for a week?”
“I guess he thought I was the dependable type.”
Podraza said, “Any idea what kind of trap it was he had planned?”
“He talked about doing some kind of long-distance surveillance. But that was if I agreed to help. With a man as old as his landlord, I have no idea how he would have tried to work it. Knowing Frank, though, he wouldn’t have put an older guy in harm’s way. My guess is, Frank would have left Mr. Marinaro in the car while he staked out the house. Maybe inside, maybe outside.”
Podraza told me that made sense, because inside the Lincoln Town Car, on the front seat, they found a. 45 caliber Blackhawk revolver registered in Frank’s name.
“Maybe he left it with Mr. Marinaro so he’d have a little extra protection.”
Podraza had already told me that he was aware that, on three separate occasions, Sally had notified his department that she suspected someone was breaking into her house. He also knew that her dog had drowned in her own pool.
I said, “So why are you working this as a robbery?”
He said, “This early in any investigation, you begin with what is most probable. Statistically, the most likely scenario. Then you begin to eliminate things. I try to work from the general to the specific. We find two bodies in the truck of a car, both men shot a single time behind the right ear, the wallets and watches of both men missing. Someone surprised them. Someone robbed them.
“Inside, the house has been trashed. Drawers ripped out, no jewelry or cash left in the place. And the lady of the house is missing. There are other, more specific indicators that I’m not going to tell you about. But go ahead. Toss out another scenario if you want.”
I liked this man. I liked his precise, methodical thought process. His friendly, easygoing manner was, of course, a device. Perpetrators often contact the police, pretending to have information. In fact, they are trying to find out how the investigation is going.
Podraza was playing good cop; my affable equal trying to solve a crime. In actuality, he was giving me plenty of room to trip myself up; to hang myself if I was involved with the murders.
I said, “Okay. Here’s one possibility. You’ve got a freak. Some kind of sexual pervert, and he’s become fixated on Sally Minster. He figures out her alarm system, and begins to break into her house on an occasional basis. That kind of pathology is well documented. Men like that, they go through underwear drawers; part of the fantasy process. It’s a form of sociopathic behavior that’s not uncommon.”
Podraza said, “You say you’re a marine biologist. Mind if I ask how you happen to know all this?”
“I don’t have a TV. I read a lot. But let me finish-I’m thinking this through as I go along. Okay, so you have a sexual freak who knows the house well. Violence is probably also part of his fantasy component-he’s armed. Check Frank’s background. He was an All-American wrestler. Olympic class. The freak had to surprise him, and he had to already have a gun. There’s no other way he could have gotten Frank taped and into the back of his own car without a gun.”
“A three-time All-American,” Podraza said. “It’s in his bio. He was one very impressive guy.”
“Yeah, I agree. Okay, so the freak surprises Frank and Sally. Or they surprise him. Either way, the freak’s suddenly got witnesses, and he has to get rid of them. He wants to keep the cops off the trail as long as possible, so he makes it look like a robbery.”
Podraza replied, “That’s plausible. I’ll keep it in mind. Like I said, we’re just getting started. Going from the general to the specific. You get a multiple crime like this, it’s usually because someone not very smart to begin with behaves in a really stupid way. Murder is rarely a complicated or well-thought-out crime, Dr. Ford.”
For some reason, that keyed a little light switch in my brain. What if exactly the opposite were true? I don’t believe in conspiracy theories. If I ever meet more than two people who can keep a secret, maybe I’ll begin to give them some consideration. But what if the murders, the disappearances, were all part of some larger objective or pattern?
I said, “Do you mind listening to another possibility?”
“Not at all. You have some interesting ideas for a man who says he’s a biologist.”
His voice had the slightest hint, now, of cynicism. His cop instincts were probably telling him that I knew too much, that I was way too chatty. I didn’t mind.
I said, “Okay. Let’s review a chain of events that may or may not be related. I’d be interested in your reaction. Nearly seven months ago, Sally Minster’s husband, Geoff, disappears-”
“He fell overboard on a trip to the Bahamas,” Podraza said. “There’s nothing mysterious about that. It’s been thoroughly investigated. The court’s ready to declare the guy legally dead.”
“If you want to move from the general to the specific, you sometimes have to take a step or two back to see the broader picture. So let me finish. Minster disappears, yet his wife doesn’t believe he’s dead. At some time after his disappearance, she also becomes convinced someone is breaking into her house, going through her private things. Your people check it out, but don’t find probable cause.”
Podraza said, “Sometimes people in deep grief begin to imagine things. They can get a little paranoid.”
Meaning they thought she was a nut case.
I said, “Okay, but let’s assume she was right. Next, her dog is found dead in her own pool. A retriever. They’re bred to swim. Then the night security guard who’s promised to keep an eye on the lady’s house is also found dead, floating in the bay.”
Podraza said, “He died from a brain aneurysm, but I’m with you. We’re assuming it was actually foul play. Okay. So Mr. DeAntoni sets a trap for the guy or guys who are doing all this-that’s your point, right? But the trap backfires, and they all end up dead or missing. So we’ve got three-four-five individuals dead or missing. Six, if you count the dog. Interesting.”
I asked Podraza if he was aware that Minster had been a member of the Church of Ashram Meditation. He told me he was, and that he was familiar with the organization because the Miami Police had a unit that specialized in cult crimes.
I said, “It might be worthwhile to call them in, and have them take a look. One more thing, Detective? There’s a guy who works for Bhagwan Shiva, a guy I think you ought to check out. His name’s Izzy-that’s what they call him. I don’t know his last name. He’s like a personal assistant or something to the head guy. His last name shouldn’t be hard to find. In fact, I might even be able to provide his fingerprints if you need them.”
“Why do you suspect him?”
I paused, my brain scanning around for a cogent response. Finally, I said, “Detective Podraza, when you check me out-and I know you will check me out-you’ll find that I’ve been telling you the truth. I’m a working research biologist. I like to think that most of what I do is logical and objective. But when it comes to this guy, Izzy-and this isn’t easy for me to admit-my suspicions are purely instinctual. I’ve got a gut feeling about him. It’s an emotional reaction to meeting the man. I think he’s dirty. I think he has his own agenda going.”
Then I added, “I know you’re not allowed to confirm it, but I’m going to ask anyway. The gun that was used to kill Frank and his landlord. Was it a twenty-two caliber?”
Very quickly, Podraza said, “Dr. Ford, I think we need to have a face-to-face interview. And just to make sure you don’t decide to leave the area, I’m going to call you back to confirm this phone number. Then I’m going to contact the Sanibel Police to let them know I’m inviting you to Miami for a discussion. Or we can send someone to you.”
I told Podraza to call me anytime he wanted, particularly if he got any new information on Sally. I finished, adding, “I’m glad they have someone like you on this case.” chapter twenty-six
I got a hold of Frank’s Aunt Juliana. By the sound of her voice, she’d been crying. She kept saying, “In my mind, I still see him as a little boy. He was so quiet and shy!”
She gave me phone numbers for three of Frank’s closest friends. I called Harris Washington at the bank where he worked near Trenton. He and DeAntoni had wrestled together in high school, Washington told me. “A hell of a guy,” he added.
I said, “I agree. I wish I could have gotten to know him better.”
Washington told me that he and another one of Frank’s former teammates were taking care of all the details. They were having his body cremated, and the ashes shipped back to New York for the funeral service. Instead of flowers-“Frank hated flowers, man. Something to do with a bad experience he had at the prom”-they were suggesting people send donations to an AAU wrestling program that DeAntoni had been instrumental in starting.
After I hung up, I wrote a check, walked to the marina and mailed it.
I still couldn’t stop moving, stop my mind from racing. I went back to the lab, called information, and got the main number for the Church of Ashram Meditation Center in Palm Beach. When a woman answered, I said, “Let me talk to Izzy, please.”
I had only a vague idea of what I would say to the guy. Maybe mention the weird trap-shooting encounter, tell him that, unlike Tomlinson, Frank and I liked to shoot so how could we join their interesting club?
If he knew the truth about DeAntoni, that he was dead, I’d be able to hear it in his voice.
But the woman refused to put me through, saying, “It’s church policy that we can only take messages for members or staff. It’s their decision to call you back.”
So I took a chance, called the Cypress Restaurant at Sawgrass, and had them transfer me to the Panther Bar. In any organization, the best jobs are awarded in order of rank or seniority. At a place that catered to wealthy sportsmen and big tippers, bartender would be the most coveted of all service jobs.
Kurt, most probably, was a higher-up in Bhagwan Shiva’s organization. He’d have insider information.
The stuffy bartender answered. He told me, no, Mr. Carter McRae wasn’t in. He told me he couldn’t give me Mr. McRae’s home number, and he played dumb when I asked him about Izzy.
But he knew who Izzy was. I could tell by his evasive manner.
Then he surprised me by saying, “The Bhagwan and his staff aren’t here tonight, but they’ll all be here tomorrow for the sunset Easter service. The public’s invited. It’s going to be quite an impressive event.” In his infuriating, superior tone, he added, “You and your friends should come. Perhaps you’ll learn something.”
I’d been invited to the ’Glades by Billie Egret, anyway, to see the inland tarpon. Now, though, I had a more pressing reason to go-to find Izzy.
To Kurt, I said, “I’ll be there. Count on it.”
Then, even though it made no sense, I got in my truck and drove across the Everglades to Coconut Grove. It took me awhile to find the exclusive enclave that is Ironwood. There was a Miami Police squad car at the electronic gate, and two uniformed officers. Only residents were being allowed to enter. When I asked to speak to Detective Podraza, they told me he’d just left.
I gave them my Sanibel Biological Supply business card with a brief note on the back.
Please call immediately with any news about Sally Minster.
That I’d visited the crime scene would assure me of special attention from the detective. Which is exactly what I wanted.
I drove past Vizcaya with its formal gardens, past Mercy Hospital, then headed up the hill into Coconut Grove-clothing boutiques, sidewalk restaurants. On Main Highway, with its tunneling banyan trees, I found a sizable church built of coral rock, then a slightly smaller church, which I guessed to be the church that Sally had described. White clapboard; white steeple. Beside the sidewalk out front was the kind of glass-encased signboard with plastic lettering that can be changed.
In large letters it read: ALL NATIONS CHURCH OF GOD OF PROPHECY.
Below, in letters that were only slightly smaller, someone had recently added, Pray for our Sister Sally!
I teared up when I saw the sign. I slowed, staring at it, until a line of cars behind me began to honk.
Then, for absolutely no rational reason, I drove north to Miami Springs and found the Pink Palm Apartment complex where Frank had lived: four rows of stucco condos with numbered carports, speed bumps, a miniature swimming pool, and a couple of kids riding tricycles outside near trash Dumpsters and a mulched playground.
It seemed important to find DeAntoni’s apartment. I thought it would take me awhile. It didn’t. His was the one with the yellow Crime Scene tape across the door and combination padlock on the doorknob.
I stopped at the door. Peeked through the blinds and saw a vinyl couch, no other furniture, and the kind of double-handled exercise wheel that people use to do abdominal crunches.
A bachelor fitness freak.
I checked my watch. A little before five. I hadn’t eaten breakfast or lunch, but wasn’t hungry. I decided that, if I got in my truck and left now, I could be back at Dinkin’s Bay while there was still enough light left to get out in my skiff.
Then maybe I’d find Tomlinson, and make a few bar stops by water before watching the moon rise.
That night, something inside me snapped. Something within the core region of my brain. It was ignited by a growing, withering pressure without vent. Intellectually, emotionally, I felt the scaffolding that defines me fracture, then break.
The moment of its occurrence was so precise that I felt it move through my nervous system like an electric shock.
I’d gotten back to Sanibel a little after eight. Lights were already on at the marina, but the sky was still bright with sunset afterglow. To the east, cumulous towers were layered in volcanic striations of rust, Arizona purple and peach.
I checked my main fish tank, the aquaria in my lab, fed Crunch amp; Des, then took a quick shower.
By the time I idled out of the marina harbor, the clouds had changed to shades of pewter and pearl. I saw that Tomlinson’s dinghy was tethered off No Mas -he was aboard. I headed toward the sailboat, then decided, no, I didn’t feel like company.
I’d made myself a traveler in an oversized plastic cup: ice, rum, fresh lime. With the big Mercury rumbling, I pushed the boat up onto plane, then throttled way back, traveling at a comfortable 2,600 RPM-“wine speed,” Dewey Nye calls it, because it’s fast enough to get you to dinner, but slow enough so it’s still possible to sip a glass of wine. I ran across the flat past Green Point, then Woodring Point.
My cousin, Ransom Gatrell, was out on Ralph Woodring’s dock, wearing shorts and a pink bikini top, a sunset beverage still in her hand.
I waved. She waved.
Ransom has Tucker Gatrell’s blue eyes, but she’s a caramel-colored woman, a color she calls “Nassau chocolate.” She wears her hair in braids, tells fortunes, believes in Obeah-a variation of voodoo-and is already making a small fortune selling real estate on a part-time basis. During the day, she works behind a cash register at Bailey’s General Store, or at She Sells Sea Shells on Periwinkle.
Ransom tells people that she’s my sister. I no longer bother to correct her or them. We’ve become that close.
Even so, I ignored her beckoning wave- Come talk for a spell! -and turned beneath the power lines, then beneath the Sanibel Causeway, seeing the bright high-rise lights of Fort Myers Beach to the south.
One of my favorite places to eat and drink is a bayside cafe that almost no one knows about, and where only locals go. It’s in the old shrimp yards of Matanza Pass, a funky, quirky outdoor restaurant and bar built beneath the sky bridge that joins Fort Myers Beach with tiny San Carlos Island. It’s called Bonita Bill’s, and it may be the only restaurant in Florida with an unlisted phone number.
Kathy and Barb were working the bar. I sat beneath tiki thatching, drinking rum, staring out at the dark water, seeing the development glare of Fort Myers Beach beyond.
At one point, Kathy said, “You don’t seem real talkative tonight, Doc. Something wrong?”
Yes, there was something wrong. Frank DeAntoni had moved into my head and would not leave. His voice had become a refrain:
I’ve got to have someone who knows how to take care of himself. A guy who can bust a head or two if things get tough.
I told Kathy, “Sorry. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
Around ten, a bunch of the guys from the Fort Myers Beach Coast Guard station came in. They’re a good group. Well trained. Dedicated. I tried to force myself to be jovial, conversational, but my heart wasn’t in it.
I bought one more rum for the road, then idled out toward Bodwitch Point, the Sanibel Lighthouse flashing in the darkness beyond.
My next recollection was of standing in my house, staring into the little mirror that is tacked to the wall near my Transoceanic shortwave radio.
The face in the mirror seemed the face of a stranger, even though it was my own.
The Nicaraguan rum I drink is Flor de Cana -Flower of Sugar Cane. It is a superb rum; hard to find. I held the bottle in my hand and amused myself by drinking from the bottle, my eyes never leaving the mirror.
See the stranger drink. See the stranger swallow. See how ugly the stranger is with his thick glasses, crooked nose and scars. See what an absurd and meaningless little creature the stranger is.
Still holding the bottle, I walked outside and stood on the deck.
It was after midnight. The lights of the marina created conduits of shimmering brass on the water, linking my stilt house with the darkened trawlers, sailboats and houseboats, and to the solitary lives within.
To the east, a bulbous moon, a week past full, was illuminating far mangroves, creating silhouettes and shadows. With the rising of the moon came a freshening northwest wind. It was blowing an uneven fifteen, gusting out of a high-pressure-system blackness domed with stars-the frail, ancient light of distant suns, incalculable solar systems.
Standing there, I felt as if I were staring into a funneling abyss that began within my own dark soul and expanded into the infinite. I took another gulp of rum, unzipped my pants, and pissed into the darkness below, watching the bioluminescent sparks my stream created; sparks that, in shape and brilliance, were not dissimilar to the starscape above.
For some reason, I found the parallel heartbreaking.
The wind gusted, messing my hair, blowing harder now.
That gave me an idea.
I started windsurfing a little less than a year ago. I keep my sails rigged, hung beneath my house so they are always ready when I want them. On other moon-bright nights, I’d considered windsurfing-but always dismissed it as idiotic. Too many oyster bars, crab pots and old pilings out there to hit.
Now, though, windsurfing in moonlight seemed a superb idea.
I tripped going up the steps; nearly tripped again when I banged my shoulder against the wall, entering my lab. I touched the wall switch, and stared at the rows of aquaria; could smell the sweet ozone odor created by the systems of aerators. I was aware that, from within some of the glass tanks, certain animals-octopi and squid-were staring at me just as intently as I stared at them.
A couple of months back, at a party, Tomlinson and I got into one of our complicated debates. It was about the mandates of scientific method. The debate was unusually heated and, at one point, I told him, “It’s the way I’ve been trained. I’d rather be precisely wrong than approximately right about almost anything.”
He found that hilarious. A week later, he’d presented me with a wooden sign with the silly phrase engraved on it. I’d tacked the thing on the north wall of my lab.
Now I looked at the sign, reading it-I’D RATHER BE PRECISELY WRONG THAN APPROXIMATELY RIGHT-and the welling heartbreak I felt earlier was transformed inexplicably into fury. An absolute cold and loathing fury.
That’s when it happened. That’s when I snapped. It was like a flashbulb going off behind my eyes. I took the rum bottle, hurled it hard at the sign, and turned away, hearing an explosion of glass.
In that isolated space between what I was, and what I had become, the stranger within spoke for the first time: You are insane.
I wobbled back down the stairs, strapped a harness around my waist, then rigged my surfboard. I chose my favorite board-an ultrawide Starboard Formula 175. It’s built for big, clumsy people like me. I locked on my largest, fastest sail, a 10.4-meter Neilpryde Streetracer.
It took me lots of fumbling and falling to get the sail up. When I had the boom under control, I tilted the mast forward to gain speed. Then, as I sheeted in, I walked the board beneath the sail, feeling the wind on my face, feeling the board lift itself off the chop as I accelerated onto plane, the elastic up-haul line thumping rhythmically against the mast. Thumping, it seemed, as if my heart were echoing off the far stars, beating fast enough to explode.
With a little kick, I arched my hips and belted myself to the boom. With my bare feet, I searched the board until I found the foot straps. I wiggled my feet in tight.
Board, sail, boom, mast and I were now a single, connected unit. Tomlinson once told me that the wind does not push a sailboat, it pulls it. I could feel the wind’s inexorable pull now as I flew across the water, sailing toward the moon at close to twenty miles per hour.
Then the moon disappeared behind clouds, and I was speeding through mangrove shadow, hearing wind and water in the caverns of my ears. The bioluminescent wake I created was an expanding silver-green crescent. The sensory combination was that of riding a comet across a liquid universe. Off to my right, I saw a mobile galaxy of green streaks: a school of fish. I watched the school explode in a firestream of color; then explode again.
Something big was beneath the fish, feeding.
I turned my board downwind, jibbed, popped the cams to fill the sheet, accelerated quickly and sailed toward the school.
They were mullet-a silver, blunt-headed fish with protuberant eyes. Thousands of them in a tight, panicked herd in waist-deep water. Three or four pounders. As I approached the edge of the school, they began to jump-gray, arching trajectories in the darkness-banging off my board, hitting my legs, landing on the board, then flopping wildly until they were free.
As I sailed through the school, I saw something else. I saw the predator that was feeding on the mullet. It appeared beneath the water as a submarine-shape, outlined in green. It cruised with a slow, reptilian movement as if crawling, tail and head shifting, always at apogee.
It was a shark. In this brackish mangrove lake, it was almost certainly a bull shark judging from its girth. It was the fish that I’d traveled the world studying. It was the fish I often used as an excuse for clandestine work.
The shark was big. Probably nine feet long, three or four hundred pounds. As I passed near it, I watched the shark turn in a whirlpool of light. I saw the shark pause, as if reviewing its options. Then it began to trail me, pushing water in a vectoring, sparkling blaze as it increased speed.
Drunk as I was, I could feel my heart pounding, my knees shaking. A cliche often repeated is that sharks are unpredictable. Seldom true. Like most predators, sharks have a strong pursuit instinct. If something runs from them, they chase it. What this animal was now doing was perfectly predictable: It was tracking me. If I was fleeing, there was a reason. I must be prey.
Watching the fish, my head was turned toward the rear of the board-not a smart thing to do when windsurfing day or night. I could see the shark’s bulk creating a column of water as it swam faster, closing the gap between us. I applied pressure to the board and sheeted in even tighter to get maximum speed-an absurd thing to do, because there was no way that I, a land mammal, a novice surfer, could outrun the muscled culmination of a million years of perfected genetic adaptation.
Then the shark was on me, behind the board, its fin cleaving the water, tacking back and forth with every thrust of its tail. I pulled my back foot out of its strap in an attempt to kick at the thing, and nearly lost control of the boom; almost went flying over the sail.
For several seconds, the shark matched my speed, both of us streaking through darkness, stars above, bioluminescent stars below. Then I felt the board jolt beneath me once… twice… then a third time.
The bull shark was bumping the board with its nose. It was testing, feeling, sensing what I was, interpreting the why of me.
Few know that a shark’s most powerful sensory organ is not its sense of smell, even though the sensory apparatus is located on the animal’s nose. If you ever get a chance, take a close look at shark’s head. You will see that the snout area is covered with tiny black dots. These are, in fact, pores that are filled with a complicated jelly. The jelly accurately detects bioelectric impulses. Quite literally, a shark can sense the precise location of a human heart beating from many hundreds of yards away. It is a remarkable sensory ability, and I know of no other animals that are equipped with it.
By touching its snout to the board, the fish was monitoring my physiology: pounding heart, electrical circuitry on panicked overload, mammalian blood pressure lowered by alcohol then spiked by fear.
I was flesh. I was eatable.
For a micro-instant, I felt a tremendous weight on the back of the board-perhaps the fish had mistakenly bitten the skeg. Then the fish passed beneath the board at twice my speed, its tail-slap creating an unexpected wake.
In the same instant, my big sail was hit by a gust of wind.
I was drunk. My balance isn’t great to begin with. It was enough to catapult me over boom and board. I landed atop the slowly sinking sail, still hooked to the boom.
My hands were shaking as I fixed my glasses back on my face and tried to free myself. Frantically, I looked ahead: The shark, turning, had created a swirling green vortex with an exit streak like an arrow.
The bull shark was returning. Its sensory receptors were attuned. The sound of my pounding heart had to be unmistakable, nearly deafening. It knew exactly where I was, what I was.
Windsurfing sails are made of see-through plastic, a kind of monofilm. I watched the shark cruise toward me, and then beneath me-me atop the thin skein of plastic, it below. I could feel the pony-sized girth of the animal lift both the sail and me briefly; could hear the rasp of its rough skin abrade the boom. I sensed a rolling movement-had it turned to bite?
Then the shark exited from beneath the sail. Confused, it cruised a few meters beyond, and turned toward me again.
I was free of the sail now, standing in waist deep water, trying desperately, pathetically, to right my board and get back atop it. But I was drunk and disoriented. I was too fat, too winded, too slow. I kept slipping, falling off.
That’s when something in my brain ruptured once again. It was the same sensation: a flashbulb exploding behind my eyes.
And, once again, the result was a cold and loathing fury.
“Fuck it!”
I shoved the board away from me, and turned to face the shark. I could see the column of water rising as the animal gained speed, coming at me. I could see the silhouette of its dorsal fin trailing star-bright streamers. In my crazed state, there was a single, stabilizing truth that fueled my rage: Why run? We are both predators.
I began to walk toward the shark. Then I charged it, creating my own wake as the stranger in me screamed aloud, “Come on, you big bastard. Hit me. You’re doing me a favor!”
When the bull shark was three or four body lengths away, I dived hard toward it, both fists extended. I expected to collide with the fish; to feel its jaws crush my arms.
Instead, my fists touched only soft bottom.
I came up, searching the surface through blurry glasses.
I could see that shark’s wake plainly.
It was swimming away at top speed. Spooked.
I took my time sailing back. I’d not only sobered; I felt as if I’d experienced some elemental transformation. What had occurred was powerful beyond any encounter I’d anticipated or imagined.
I thought about it on the long reach home, trying to figure out what had happened, why I felt changed. The lights of the marina glittered in the near distance. The windows of my house and lab were yellow rectangles, uniform and solid. My tin roof appeared waxen.
To live fearlessly, one must first invite death. It’s one of Tomlinson’s favorite maxims. That may have been a tiny part of what I was feeling, for I had certainly accepted the inevitable when I charged the shark. If the shark had rolled and locked, I would have been killed. I would have died quickly or gradually, but I certainly would have died. I would have bled to death.
It was a strange disconnected feeling, as if I were suddenly free of all emotion, fear included.
It was unexplored territory. I felt energized.
What I felt was more than just the absence of fear. I’d spent the last year or so reacting to past mistakes, punishing myself-or so my inner voice claimed. After my shark encounter, though, self-flagellation seemed an absurd justification for allowing the circumstances of my life to control me. We’ve got to be suspicious of that little voice. Our innermost voice sometimes lies to us. It is a necessary revelation if a man or woman is to take the occasional leap of faith and invite the courage necessary to live an aggressive, creative and satisfying life.
I’d known that before. How had I lost the thread?
Maybe it happens to us all, sooner or later. Maybe we all stray off the path, driven by incremental events, great or small. Or maybe it’s just a secret laziness that seeks an excuse to escape the daily discipline, bravery, endurance and plain hard work that it takes to live up to our own idealized image of self.
I’d certainly strayed from the path.
I despised what I’d become. I didn’t like the way I looked, didn’t like the way I felt. There had been growing in me a bedrock unhappiness and discontent that I could never quite define.
Now, though, I was struck by what seemed to be a rational explanation: For the last many years, I have been at odds with my own past. In my previous work, in what I think of as my former life, I’d been required to demonstrate what I prefer to define as extreme behavior.
I was ashamed. Ashamed of what I’d done. I’d hidden it from others, which was not just understandable, but a legally binding mandate. However, I’d also attempted to hide the truth from myself.
Why? What did I have to be ashamed of?
Alone, beneath stars, buoyant, water light and moving with the wind, the answer to that question seemed to ring like crystal in my innermost being.
Nothing. You have absolutely no reason to be ashamed.
It was a transcendent moment. A few minutes before, I’d confronted what is truest in me- We are both predators.
It was true. I am predatory by nature. I also like to think that I am ethical, kind, selective and generous. But, at the atavistic core, I am a hunter, a killer.
I am a collector.
It has always been so with me. It will always be so.
In accepting that truth, I felt a delicious sense of freedom.
I steered my surfboard home. I hung the sail, washed the board-a kind of workmanlike penance. The bottom half of the skeg was missing: Ragged fiberglass in a half-moon shape. No surprise.
Then, after a quick glance at my fish tanks, a quicker hello to Crunch amp; Des, I went to my galley and placed upon the cupboard every bottle of booze I owned. It was an impressive stash. Five unopened bottles of Flor de Cana, two unopened bottles of Patron, which is a superb tequila, plus a complete stock of other whiskeys, gins and vodkas.
I also stacked up two and a half cases of beer… thought about it for a moment before deciding to keep the beer for Tomlinson’s visits.
I put the bottles in boxes. It took me two trips to carry it all to the marina. It was a little after 2 A.M. Aside from the hiss of the bait tank aerator, and the flapping of sail halyards against masts, all was still. I opened the ice machine and buried fourteen bottles therein.
Finders, keepers. If someone wanted the bottles, there they were for the taking.
I’d brought a flashlight. The marina’s commercial fish scale is out back behind the marina office, next to the cleaning table. It had been more than six months since I’d last weighed myself. I stepped onto the scale, touched my fingers to the poise counterweights, moving them.
It took awhile. Was the damn thing broken?
When the suspension bar was finally balanced, I whispered, “Jesus Christ, this can’t be right.”
I was still wearing my wet T-shirt and shorts. I stepped off the scale, stripped naked, then stepped back onto the scale plate.
After a few more seconds, I whispered, “You fat son-of-a-bitch.”
I walked back to my stilt house.
Every human being should have at least a half-dozen people that he or she can call day or night when they are sleepless, goofy drunk, feeling lonely or in emotional need.
Dewey Nye is on my short list.
When I got back to the house, my rubber wristwatch said it was 2:39 A.M.
Feeling totally sober, now, I dialed the lady’s number. The phone rang twice before I heard her groggy voice answer, “This better be fuckin’ good, Walda.”
She expected it to be her longtime, off again-on again roommate and lover.
I said, “Dew. It’s me.”
I could picture her sitting up a little, focusing. “Doc? What time is it?”
I told her.
“Are you drunk? You’ve got to be drunk.”
I said, “In the morning, seven A.M., I’ll meet you on the beach at the end of Tarpon Bay Road. We run, then swim. Three miles, then swim a half mile. No-make it a mile. You don’t have to swim the whole way.”
I listened to the lady yawn. “Oh, Doc, you are drunk. Go to sleep, sweetie. I’ll stop by around noon. We can go for a walk.”
Not raising my voice, I said, “You need to listen to me, Dewey. It’s important. I’m not going to explain it to everyone, but I’m going to tell you because I need your help. Starting tomorrow, we work out at least five days a week. And no more alcohol. Period. Not for me. Twenty, twenty-five pounds from now, maybe I’ll reconsider. Or maybe I won’t. I’m making you that promise. Hold me to it.”
“You’re serious.”
“Yep. It’s time I quit feeling sorry for myself. Seven A.M. on the beach. I’ll see you there.”
“What time’s the sun come up?”
I said, “Seven-oh-one.”
“Our own private sunrise service. I’ll be there.”
I hung up, found a pencil, then walked to my outdoor shower. On the outside wall of my house, I wrote my weight: 247.
Then, in parentheses, beside it, I wrote my minimum objective: 220.
It seemed to formalize the change that had taken place in me. Because I had written it, I now had no choice but to achieve it.
I showered, walked into the lab and looked at the stranger in the mirror for a long moment before I said, “You’re done.”
Then I went to bed.
For months, I’d been plagued by nightmares or dreams of frustrating inabilities. On this night, though, I dreamed of the face of a child whose photo I kept in a moon-shaped locket. Then, in my dream, the child’s face became the face of an old, old love.
She was a woman with waist-length blond hair, dressed in white crinoline. Her face was luminous and comforting, a woman so beautiful that seeing her caused me to linger upon detail: lighted portions of chin and cheek, strong nose creating shadow, perceptive eyes unaware and uncaring of her own beauty.
Her voice was a kindred chord as she said, “I have waited so long for you, my dear. So many, many years. Now, once again, you’ve come back to me…” chapter twenty-seven
Tomlinson said, “The way these people are behaving, it’s more like a rock concert for fascists. Or a magic show. I’d say a kind of Grateful Dead deal, but that’d be an insult to Jerry. They’re giving me the creeps, man.”
He meant the several hundred Church of Ashram members who were moving along the boardwalk, filing toward the outdoor amphitheater, Cypress Ashram, on this Easter Sunday late afternoon. They were men and women of various ages, but there did seem to be a strange, almost mechanical, similarity in the way they moved, the way they behaved.
Many wore robes: orange or white or green. There were far fewer orange robes than green, and fewer green than white, so the colors were suggestive of rank. Others were dressed in neatly pressed slacks or skirts, hair trimmed short. They traveled in tight groups, sometimes creating human chains by holding on to each other’s waists-slow conga lines-or walking in step, calling odd phrases back and forth as if in some cheerful competition:
“We’re running Thetan Three over here.”
“We’re running Thetan Four over here!”
“Bhagwan Shiva’s version of Scientology,” Tomlinson told me when I asked. “Don’t worry about it.”
Frisbees were popular, too. The church must have designed its own. Each plastic disc was a black-and-white yin-yang symbol stamped with CAMI, the church’s initials. The air was filled with their slow, arching ascents. Prayer wheels, I heard one person call them.
The Archangels were maintaining high visibility. Shiva’s security people, dressed in black, weight-lifter types, male and female, were cruising in their golf carts, letting their authority be seen.
So far, I hadn’t seen any guards that I recognized.
Not that I would have minded.
I was in that kind of mood.
I’d talked to Detective Podraza twice during the day. They’d found no sign of Sally, no witnesses, no clue to where she might be, despite press conferences and expanding media coverage. They were, however, accumulating some crime-scene evidence. He’d also told me that he’d spoken to the Sanibel police. They’d vouched for me, so his manner, though still professional, was slightly friendlier.
“The security camera at the front gate shows Frank and Sally’s cars leaving, then both cars coming back,” he said.
I said, “They came by boat. Whoever shot Frank and the old guy, they were smart enough to come by water. Unless you’ve got something else on the security cameras.”
Podraza said, “That’s a possibility we’re considering.”
I didn’t expect him to provide any other details, and he didn’t.
I added, “I’m no expert, but I’ve read that a kidnap victim’s first twenty-four hours are critical.”
“I’ll tell you the same thing I told Mrs. Minster’s cousin, Belinda. If the lady was our own sister, mother-name it-we couldn’t be working this case any harder. A double homicide and a kidnapping. That’s about as bad as it gets. And you’re right-the longer she’s gone, the less chance of finding her alive.”
When I said that, if she was already dead, her body was probably out in Biscayne Bay, Podraza replied, “We have boats looking. And you’re right again. In an abduction-murder, getting rid of the body is always the biggest problem, because it’s evidence found on the body that usually nails them.”
What he wanted to know was why I’d guessed that both victims had been shot with a. 22 caliber.
I told him the truth: Like my suspicions about Izzy, it was a hunch. Something about the way the guy looked, the way he handled himself. Israeli intelligence, the Mossad, uses the. 22 Beretta as its signature weapon of assassination. Only a sociopath would put two innocent men in the trunk of a car and execute them, and the Mossad signature was the sort of touch a sociopath might try to imitate.
Podraza said, “I’ll be honest. The first time we talked, I got the impression you might be a kind of kook. But the Sanibel police chief told me that if you had some suggestions, I’d be smart to listen. So I did try to find out about the guy.
“I contacted the church’s main office. But cult religions, law enforcement, we don’t get along. Family members are always asking us to help get their sons and daughters out. I didn’t expect the church to be cooperative, and they weren’t. There’s no way I can check the guy out if I don’t even have his last name.”
I told Podraza, “Izzy’s last name. I can come up with that. I’ll call you tonight.”
I’d looked out the window of my lab, and saw that Tomlinson’s dinghy was tethered to the stern of No Mas. I got on the VHF radio, hailed him, and we switched channels. He’d told me earlier that he was going to Sawgrass to view what he called “Shiva’s Easter sunset carnival show.”
He sounded shocked when I said I wanted to go along.
“I thought we were going separately because all you wanted to do is see the tarpon. That you were going way earlier.”
I replied, “My interests have broadened.”
On the drive down, he told me that Billie Egret, Ginny Egret, James Tiger, her aunts and uncles were also attending the Cypress Ashram, all as Shiva’s special guests. Them, plus some members from Tomlinson’s secret group of Cassadaga psychics, who weren’t invited but were going anyway. He said they would be sprinkled among the crowd.
“We have no choice. Something big’s going on, so we’ve decided to do another spiritual intervention. The Non-Bhagwan has Billie’s people conned. They’re almost convinced they should go into partnership with him. All of them except Billie. She’s still standing strong, but she needs our help. She’ll be really glad you’re there.”
I had a different kind of help in mind.
That morning, during my run with Dewey, I’d nearly collapsed from exhaustion. But I’d completed the three miles-and at her brutal pace. The swim didn’t go much better. I stopped twice to vomit salt water.
But I finished the swim, too.
I was tired; still had a trace of hangover shakes. For the first time in months, though, I felt focused, energized by purpose.
So now it was 6:30 P.M. The parking lot adjoining Sawgrass’s outdoor amphitheater was jammed, and we were being swept along by the crowd. Tomlinson had come for his reasons. I’d come for my own. I was going to find Izzy.
Once I found him, if I got the slightest whiff of suspicion that he was involved with Frank’s death and Sally’s disappearance, I would devise a way to separate him from the group, isolate him, and I would then do whatever was required to make him talk.
It was something I was good at.
Why had it taken me so many years to admit it?
As we walked along, Tomlinson said, “We’re plenty early. Billie told me the main show’s supposed to start a little before sunset. That’s at eight, right?”
He knew that, every morning of my life, I check the tide tables.
I said, “Around eight, yeah. Seven-fifty-seven, to be precise.”
Actually, the show had already started. The Cypress Ashram had become a mini-stadium. The stepped levels of seating were already half full, and more people were rivering in, trying to get as close as they could to the stage.
The stage was attached to an acoustic dome that looked like a giant clamshell. The first time I’d seen it, the theater had seemed to consist of nothing more than tile, wood and stucco, built at the edge of a cypress pond. What was not readily evident was that the structure was a technological marvel, loaded with computers, lights and sophisticated electronic equipment.
I remembered Carter McRae telling us that Shiva’s show was better than anything we’d find in Vegas. I now got the first inkling of a confirmation.
The stage was bare, yet it was not bare. Standing, facing the growing audience, were three translucent men, twice normal height. They had glittering skin and flowing, brightly colored robes. Yet, you could look through them and see the wall beyond. One was Jesus-the standard image you see in children’s Bibles. The other was of a smiling, then laughing, Buddha. Standing between them was an equally happy Bhagwan Shiva.
The men were animated. Walking. Hugging. Spreading their arms wide as if to embrace the audience.
Orbiting above the three was a perfect miniature solar system; nine planets revolving around a smoldering sun, the earth a brilliant, lucent blue-green. The planets orbited to the slow wash-and-draw sound of waves on a beach. The sound seemed to come from every direction-behind us, from the stage, from the tops of the cypress tress as well, even from the ground below.
As I stopped, trying to comprehend what it was I was seeing, what I was hearing, Tomlinson said, “They’re holograms, man. Animated laser photos. And they got this whole place wired for sound. Disney World in the Everglades. Amazing.”
We were standing at the top of the bowl of seats, near the life-sized bronze statue of Shiva. The sound of the waves was hypnotic. If I allowed my mind to drift even for a moment, the pace of my own breathing began to match the rhythm of the waves.
I noticed that men and women in the stands were all sitting quietly, hands folded with palms upward in their laps, as if eager to join the rhythm, to give themselves over.
We stood and watched for a couple of minutes. As we did, a recording of Shiva’s deep voice joined the sound of the waves. I listened to his voice say, “A hologram is a three-dimensional photograph created by lasers. Like all things, it possesses a spiritual lesson to be learned. To create a hologram, an object is first bathed in the light of a laser. Then a second laser beam is bounced off the reflected light of the first before a third beam is added.
“Three-dimensionality is not their only remarkable characteristic. If the hologram of an apple is cut in half and then illuminated by a laser, each half will still be found to contain the entire image of the apple. Every part of a hologram contains all the information possessed by the whole.
“The nature of a hologram provides us with a new way of viewing the nature of existence. Western science and religion have always labored under the bias that the best way to understand the physical world, whether a frog or an atom, is to dissect it and study it. Like our faith, our brotherhood, the hologram proves that separateness is an illusion…”
As the recording continued, I said to Tomlinson, “He sounds like you.”
Tomlinson replied, “Yeah, but do you know what the difference is? I live it. He uses it.”
Apparently, even the wealthy residents of Sawgrass were attending Shiva’s show. Or maybe they just went home; locked themselves away from the devoted.
The Big Cypress Restaurant had a few tables seated for dinner, but the Panther Bar, with its granite fireplace and walls adorned with skin-mounted fish, was nearly empty. Four men were sitting at a table, bottles of beer and a basket of nachos between them.
I was hoping to find Kurt behind the bar. On the phone, he’d evaded my questions about Izzy. In person, I’d be more persuasive.
I’d left Tomlinson back at the outdoor theater, next to Shiva’s statue, where he was to meet Billie, Ginny Egret, James and the other board members of the Egret Seminoles. I told him I was going to visit the bar and later, if we couldn’t find each other in the crowd, I’d meet him back at the truck.
As I walked away, he’d said, “Have a rum for me.”
I didn’t smile. “Nope. I’ve had enough.”
So I was alone. Which is exactly what I wanted. But Kurt wasn’t working. Instead, there was a haggard-looking woman in her early thirties-maybe younger-wearing an apron and sleeveless blouse, a butterfly tattoo visible on her right shoulder.
She didn’t have the manicured look that I’d come to associate with Shiva’s followers.
When I sat at the bar, she said, “What can I get for you, hon?”
I told her iced tea would be just fine, then I said, “Where’s Kurt?”
Walking away, she said, “Give me just a second, hon.” A moment later, when she returned with a pitcher of tea, she said, “Kurt’s off tonight. The whole staff, they’re all off because they got some big whoop-de-doo going on. It’s like this religious thing they belong to. So we’re all temps. We work through a Naples agency. The restaurant’s only doing a limited seating, and they told me to close the bar at nine. Easter Sunday, the place should be packed, but look at it.”
She shrugged in a way that passive-aggressive people do. “But I guess they don’t want the business. And what do I care? It all pays the same to me. Accept for the tips. I’m not gonna make crap for tips.”
I said, “You’ve got to wonder how some places stay in business.”
“Can you believe it? A holiday weekend, they close the bar early.”
I sipped my tea. “Too bad. This guy I met-his name’s Izzy something-he told me to stop in, say hello to Kurt. We’re both from the Boston area.”
Kurt’s name tag had read: Lincoln, Mass.
I added, “I don’t suppose you’ve got a staff list back there. I could give him a call, say hello.”
“They gave me a list just in case there’s trouble, but it’s not going to do you any good. They already told us. In staff housing, they don’t got phones. So you can’t call ’im.”
I had my billfold out. I decided a twenty would make her suspicious, so I put a ten on the counter. “Can I have a look at the list? I’ll walk over and surprise him.”
Kurt’s name was on the list. He was in Cell B, Apartment 103.
Izzy’s name wasn’t.
Sawgrass staff housing consisted of a circular village of small, modular apartments positioned in three clusters, at the center of which was a swimming pool and barbecue area.
The place looked deserted. I worried that I was too late; that Kurt Thompson was among those already taking seats at the outdoor theater. From the direction of the Cypress Ashram, I could hear a muffled heartlike pounding, as if hundreds of people were beating drums in unison.
The sun floated above the canopy of cypress trees. I checked my watch. It was 7:05 P.M.
The middle cluster of apartments was labeled B. I found 103 and touched the doorbell.
I waited through a long moment of silence before I heard a rustling within. I stepped back to let the door open, then I quickly stepped forward, blocking the doorway so that the door could not be closed.
Yep, Kurt was one of the higher-ups; a senior member in this strange church. He wore an orange toga with a ruby sash. His hair was brushed to a sheen, tan face glistening, and he held a towel in his hands, as if he’d just finished shaving.
When he saw me, realized who I was, his expression changed briefly from indifference to surprise, but he recovered quickly.
“Yes? May I help you?”
He said it in his infuriating, superior tone.
“Remember me, Kurt? On the phone, I told you I’d be here.” I smiled broadly. “So here I am!”
“Is that supposed to be funny, sir? Just because I told you about the service doesn’t mean I invited you. What I suggest is that you go to the restaurant and ask anyone. They can tell you how to get to the Cypress Ashram. Perhaps I’ll see you there.”
He tried to close the door, but I blocked it with my shoulder.
I said, “Naw, Kurt. I’m looking forward to going with you. We can have a little talk on the way. I’m really interested in the church. I’ve got lots of questions.”
He’d heard about our fight with the Archangels. I could see it in his face, a mottled paling of skin: fear. “Mister, I’m not going to ask you again. Please leave immediately, or I’ll call security. I’m late. I don’t have time for this kind of silliness.”
Once again, he tried to pull the door closed. When I blocked it again, he tried to push my shoulder away. I lunged forward and hit him so hard in the chest that he backpedaled across the room and fell backward over the couch.
I stepped into the miniature living room, closed the door behind me and locked it with the deadbolt.
“Why are you doing this?”
Kurt was on one knee, getting to his feet. He held his hands up, palms out, as I walked toward him. I grabbed his left wrist with my right hand, yanked him to his feet, spinning him at the same time so that I was behind him. I had his left arm levered up between his shoulder blades, applying pressure, but not much.
“You’re hurting me, goddamn you!”
Into his ear, I said, “Language, Kurt. Pretty rough language for a man dressed in a robe.”
I was walking him across the room, moving slowly, in control, and then I pinned him against the wall.
“I want you to answer some questions. If you answer my questions, I won’t hurt you, Kurt. If you don’t answer, or if you lie to me, I am going to hurt you. I’m going to hurt you bad.” For emphasis, I took his left pinkie finger and twisted it.
“Stop. Please stop! You’re going to break my fucking hand!”
I said, “That’s right. One finger at a time. I’m going to break your hand.”
Kurt, the aloof and superior bartender, suddenly became an eager, nonstop talker. Most people are strangers to violence, and so behave unpredictably, often oddly, when subjected to it.
He wanted to be my friend. He wanted to understand why I was interested in Izzy. When I told him, “He may have had something to do with a friend of mine who disappeared,” Kurt’s sympathetic expression said, No wonder you’re upset.
Truth is, he was terrified.
He sat across from me in a chair and told me about Izzy Kline. For a time, Izzy had been in charge of organizing church security. Then he became Shiva’s special assistant-Kurt wasn’t certain why.
“I’ve been with the church for six years,” Kurt said, “and Izzy has always been kind of a mysterious figure in the brotherhood. We almost never see him at the Ashrams or services. He’s not a believer and doesn’t pretend to be. He spends a lot of time away. What he does, I don’t know. But he’s close to the Teacher-our Bhagwan.”
I said, “I’ve heard rumors that if someone pisses off Shiva, he finds ways to get even. Maybe that he’s even had some people killed. Would that be part of Izzy’s role?”
Kurt began to move uncomfortably in his chair. He’d been maintaining a kind of fraternity-boy eye contact. No longer. “Our Teacher is a man of peace. He’s one of history’s greatest prophets. I’ve heard those same rumors-and there is Ashram scripture that tells us that the souls of many are worth the lives of a few. But I don’t believe our Teacher would resort to violence. I’ve never believed it and never will.”
“But if he did, would that be part of Izzy’s job?”
After a long moment, Kurt said, “Yes. That would definitely be something that Izzy would do.”
“Where’s he now?”
“I saw Izzy this morning. I was surprised because I didn’t see him here last night. He was driving a big U-Haul truck.”
I said, “A U-Haul? Why?”
“I can’t say for certain, but it’s almost impossible-we’re all very close-to keep a secret from the brotherhood. I heard that Izzy resigned his position. That he was leaving for Europe. So maybe he had some personal possessions here and he was moving them.”
“When’s he supposed to leave?”
Still eager to please, Kurt said he didn’t know, adding, “If I knew, I’d tell you. I really would. ” chapter twenty-eight
I was right about the drums.
Several dozen men and women, wearing green or white robes, formed a semicircle on the highest steps of the amphitheater. They held skin drums between their knees, and used their hands to pound them in a slow, deliberate rhythm. About one beat every three or four seconds.
The rhythm reminded me of night markers flashing on the intracoastal waterway. A similar space of time.
The percussion of the drums vibrated through the ground, through the speaker system, through the tops of cypress trees and into a bronze-bright late-afternoon sky.
As I got closer, I could see that there wasn’t an empty seat in the theater. Had to be more than a thousand people.
Shiva’s people were recording the event, too. There were no fewer than four videographers moving among the crowd, holding small, digitized cameras to their eyes.
Despite the crowd, the little Seminole contingent was easy for me to pick out: four or five men and women in traditional dress, seated on the aisle in the front row, their rainbow-colored shirts and blouses much brighter than the robes worn by the people around them.
I didn’t see Tomlinson, though. And it didn’t look as if Billie Egret was among them, either.
A minute or so later, I realized why. On the outskirts of the arena was a grassy area landscaped with cypress and oak. It had a good view of the stage. There they both stood among trees, several people nearby.
Karlita. She was with them, too-and looking reasonably normal in jeans and a white blouse, her long black hair braided like a rope down her back.
The three of them, I noticed, were holding hands, joined in a chain with six or seven others.
Billie was the first to notice me approaching. She nodded at me, her eyes intense, then nodded toward the amphitheater.
Shiva was on center stage. He wore an elaborate purple robe with orange, green and white bands on the sleeves. His turban was golden, and he sat in full lotus position on a red cushion the size of a mattress. Behind him, in a semicircle, were several dozen men and women, all in orange robes, carrying candles and what appeared to be bundles of red sticks, walking in slow step to the pace of the beating drums. One of them, I noted, was the attractive blond teenager named Kirsten.
She and the others were filing off the stage. They were leaving Shiva alone.
The laser hologram of the solar system was still being projected. It was eerily beautiful. It now revolved above Shiva and around him.
On a small platform in front of the stage, another videog rapher had a much larger camera mounted on a tripod. It was fixed on Shiva. Perhaps they were broadcasting the event. Maybe some kind of in-house cable production.
As the drums pounded, and the orange robes marched down the steps of the amphitheater, Shiva’s amplified voice spoke to his audience live for the first time since I’d arrived. In the momentary silence between drumbeats, he said, We will…
In the next silence, more than a thousand voices replied: Move the earth…
Boom!
We will…
Boom!
Move the earth.
Boom!
I will…
Boom!
Make the earth move!
Billie Egret caught my eye again and motioned with her head. Come closer.
She was standing between Tomlinson and Karlita, both of whom, I could now see, stood with eyes closed, their breathing shallow, as if they, too, were in trances. Billie then joined their hands, stepped away from the little chain of people and walked to meet me
“Why don’t you come and join us?” she whispered. “We’re trying to fight him. His power. It won’t be long until sunset.”
I shook my head: No, but in a way that also apologized. I whispered back, “What’s supposed to happen at sunset?”
“He’s told my aunts and uncles that he can do it again. Make the earth move. Like last Sunday, the earthquake. They’re ready to join him now. He’s almost got them convinced.”
I said, “ Earthquake? You’re… you’re not serious. The idea that he had anything to do with that little tremor we had is absurd. Plus, why would they care?”
The woman took my arm in hers-Tomlinson was right. Because of my relationship with her father, Joseph, her acceptance of me was instant and seemed unconditional. She said, “It’s because of something that no outsider would know about. Or understand. Have you ever heard of Tecumseh?”
I said, “Yes. The Indian leader. Most people have.”
She was holding my arm tight.
“In eighteen eleven, he tried to organize all the southern tribes to help fight the whites. On November sixteenth, in central Alabama, he told our people that, one moon cycle later, he would stomp his foot, and the earth would move. It would be a sign to join him.”
Still keeping her voice low, she added, “That prophecy spread across the country, village to village. It’s well recorded. It happened. Exactly twenty-eight days later, the New Madrid earthquakes began. The worst in American history. He was also a genius, a prophet. He was a Shawnee; an Ohio tribe. What almost no one knows is that Tecumseh’s mother was core Maskoki-some called us Creek. She was what they’d call a Seminole. So it’s part of Seminole legend. To my aunts and uncles, an earthquake is a tremendously powerful sign.”
From the amphitheater, the chant continued:
We will…
Boom!
Move the earth.
Boom!
I will…
Boom!
Make the earth move!
I said, “Then you’ve got nothing to worry about. Because there’s no way a human being can cause an earthquake. Shiva, the Bhagwan, whatever you want to call him, that fraud can sit down there and meditate, chant, whatever he wants to do, all night long. The ground’s not going to shake just because he promises that he can-”
I stopped, feeling a sudden, dizzying sense of suspicion, then of realization. I said, “Wait-when did Shiva make his prediction about the earthquake. Was it prior to Sunday?”
“Long before that,” she replied. “Remember me telling you about the meeting he had with us? About the wooden masks he told us he’d seen in a dream, and carved himself? That’s when he said that he’d also dreamed he would one day make the Everglades tremble. As a sign; a sign that we should join together. He pretended that he didn’t know anything about Tecumseh or our connection with him. Which I never believed.”
Now I was shaking. My mouth was dry. I felt a flooding sense of panic and urgency. I was walking toward Tomlinson, my brain connecting what had seemed to be random events, meaningless sentence fragments:
A man Izzy’s size standing beside a maintenance truck in an abandoned limestone quarry, leaving behind an empty bag of ammonium nitrate, and a couple of blobs of goo that smelled of fuel oil.
Me asking Billie if someone was blasting in the area. I’d asked because there is a commercial explosive jelly called Thermex. It consists of little more than ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel.
I remembered Izzy tape-recording a furious Tomlinson. Remembered Tomlinson telling me that he was getting e-mail from manufacturers of blasting caps and explosives, and from eco-terrorist organizations. Remembered Tomlinson saying that, if it was a joke, he didn’t think it was very funny.
I remembered Detective Podraza telling me that, in an abduction-murder, getting rid of the body is always the biggest problem. How can you destroy the evidence? Remembered Kurt, the bartender, telling me that he’d seen Izzy that morning, driving a U-Haul.
Walking faster now, I said to Billie, “Shiva’s prophecy. What time is it supposed to happen? The earthquake.”
“At sunset. That’s just a few minutes from now.
I checked my watch. Seven-forty P.M. We had seventeen minutes until sunset.
From the amphitheater, the chanting seemed louder.
We will…
Boom!
Move the earth.
Boom!
I will…
Boom!
Make the earth move!
“Billie. I’ve got to get back to that rock quarry. The place where we saw the white truck. Did James come in his airboat?”
She’d stopped following me. “Marion? What’s wrong with you? Why’re you acting so strange?”
“Did he come in his airboat!” I said it so loud that she jumped.
“ Yes. It’s right over there. At the edge of the cypress head.”
Tomlinson was still standing, eyes closed, holding Karlita’s hand. I grabbed him roughly and turned him around. I said, “Let’s go. I need you.”
“Doc? Why? I can’t go. Not now”
Karlita had turned her head; was staring at me. “It’s you. I want to go. We belong. ”
I told her, “Not a chance,” as I took Tomlinson by the shoulders and shook him. “Damn it, I need your help. I think I know where Sally is!”
I couldn’t figure out how to get the airboat started.
Tomlinson and I had sprinted far ahead of Billie; found the big twenty-one-foot airboat banked at the edge of the sawgrass. On the boat’s twin aft rudders, its name, Chekika’s Shadow, glowed a metallic crimson in the late sunlight.
We were both aboard, Tomlinson in a lower seat, me standing at the stainless-steel control panel where there was an ignition key tied to an oversized float, and three rows of unmarked toggle switches.
When I turned the key, nothing happened.
There were twin automotive batteries beneath the captain’s chair. I checked to see if there was a cutoff switch. There was. I twisted the dial to “On” and tried the key again.
Nothing.
“ Goddamn it!”
I looked my watch. Saw that my hands were still shaking: 7:46 P.M.
Tomlinson said, “Maybe I should run back and ask Billie. Or try to find James.”
I’d refused Billie’s help, and her offer to fetch James because, if I was right, and I allowed them to come with me, I might well be responsible for their deaths.
I answered, “We don’t have time.”
I took a deep breath, told myself to stay calm and to think. All those years with Tucker Gatrell, I’d learned more than most about airboats. Some were powered by standard car engines, others by aircraft engines.
Then I realized: That’s the problem.
All the toggle switches were flipped down-the off position.
I flipped each switch momentarily, experimentally, until I heard the steady hum of what I guessed to be an electronic fuel pump.
At least two of the toggles had to be magneto switches.
They have to be.
I flipped them until I found the right combination, turned the key, and the huge engine fired like a mini-explosion.
I swung myself up into the captain’s chair, pulled on the headphones. Tomlinson had done the same, his scraggly hair sticking out. I said into the transmitter, “Hold on tight. It’s been awhile.”
I heard him reply, “Let ’er roll, brother!”
I touched my foot to the accelerator pedal, pushed the control stick forward, and the boat pivoted to the right in a fast, tight circle. When we were bow-out, the boat straightened itself as I gradually backed off the stick, accelerating like a dragster as I pressed the pedal toward the deck.
I had to keep reminding myself: To turn right, stick forward. To turn left, stick back. At sixty-plus miles per hour, we went sledding through sawgrass, southward.
To the west, only a few degrees above the horizon, the sun was the smoky orange of a hunter’s moon. Because it was precisely bisected by a band of purple stratus clouds, there was a ringed effect-as if Saturn were ablaze and spinning on a collision course toward Earth. The harsh light flattened itself across the prairie, horizon to horizon, turning feathered sawgrass to gold, turning the mushroom shapes of distant cypress heads to silver.
I checked my watch once again: 7:48 P.M.
I’d just returned my attention to the trail ahead when I felt the first tremor rock the boat-an explosion so close the hull was bounced by the seismic shock. It lifted us up, then slammed us hard to earth.
In my earphones, I heard Tomlinson cry, “What the hell was that?” Then: “Oh, dear God, that was it. We’re too late. If you’re right, if you’re right, that’s it, we’re done.”
I said, “Maybe. But I’m not stopping now.”
I steered the airboat toward the abandoned limestone quarry, into the heart of the Everglades. chapter twenty-nine izzy
Izzy finished dialing the number he had saved months ago on his Palm Pilot, then checked his watch: 7:49 P.M.
It was Charles Carter’s private cell number, the wealthy banker who’d dedicated his life-and his money-to the Church of Ashram.
What a moron.
Miami International Airport is built in the shape of a horseshoe, Dolphin and Flamingo parking barns in the middle. Izzy was in Terminal H, the Crown Room, sitting in one of the secluded cubicles provided for members who want to use the Internet or make phone calls.
His membership was under the name of Michael Mollen, same as the name on the passport he was using. Once he got to Paris, after he’d spent a week or two relaxing, letting things cool down, he’d fly to London, then to Managua with a different passport, Craig Skaar.
He liked that name.
Izzy had his Dell laptop plugged in, signed onto the Web page of Bank Austria, Georgetown, Grand Cayman Island. He’d already checked his e-mails, and updated himself on the
local Miami news: HEIRESS WIDOW STILL MISSING.
Not exactly. But soon. Very soon.
That made him smile.
He had a Bloody Mary on the desk to his left-one of the reasons he preferred Delta and loved the Crown Room. Free drinks, all you wanted, and bar snacks that weren’t too bad. Even on this Easter Sunday, it wasn’t crowded.
As he finished dialing, he placed his hands on the keyboard of his laptop, and used his shoulder to cradle the phone against his ear.
Carter answered immediately; knew who it was going to be.
Into the phone, Izzy said, “Has the service started yet?”
Used the code word: Service.
Hearing drumming in the background, and impassioned chanting, Izzy listened to Carter exclaim, “Two of them so far. Unbelievable! Magnificent!”
Izzy said, “Well, you have four more to go, and the last one’s a biggie.” Then he added, “Carter-I didn’t call to chat.”
As Izzy listened, he typed an account number into a blank rectangle provided by the Bank Austria Web page. Then he typed in the password that Carter gave him. The password was Tecumseh.
Hilarious.
But there it was. The account opened right up: Isidore T. Kline, who, as of that instant, had access to more money than he’d ever had in his life.
Now hearing what sounded like thunder in the background, then something else-screams?-Izzy said to Carter, “Hey, just for the record, I always thought you were a fucking idiot.”
He hung up the phone, immediately changed the password, then he closed the laptop.
His flight to Paris was already boarding.
Standing in line, waiting to hand his first-class ticket to the attendant, Izzy couldn’t make himself relax. He’d had a couple of beers with lunch at Cheers in the main terminal, then three Bloody Marys at the Crown Room.
They didn’t even dent the tension in him. Until he was in the plane, off the ground, some cop or Fed could come up any second, tap him on the shoulder and say, “We need to ask you a few questions.”
As long as he was still in Miami, still in U.S. airspace, it was all right there with him.
That fucking Italian!
The Italian, surprising him the way he did, had nearly screwed up all those months of planning. Izzy was a perfectionist. Had always been a perfectionist. He hated improvising last-minute changes. But he’d had to do it. And until just now, when he’d successfully received the account number and password from Carter, nothing had gone the way he’d wanted.
On Friday night, getting the two men taped and loaded into the truck of the pimpmobile was a nightmare. He’d been scared shitless that some security cop, or some neighbor, was going to come snooping around.
So how should he do it? Drive them to some secluded place, and pop them? Or risk the noise and do it ghetto-style, like someone high on crack who really didn’t give a damn who they killed or how, just as long as they found money for drugs?
Even with his mouth taped, the old man was bawling like a baby when Izzy touched the Beretta to the back of his head.
But not the big guinea. With those black eyes of his, the guinea had looked at Izzy like he would have ripped him apart and eaten him if he could have gotten his hands free. One scary son-of-a-bitch.
No fear, either. Not a whimper. Even as Izzy put the barrel behind his ear, and said, “I’m gonna count to three real slow, then your fucking head’s coming off.”
The guinea had shrugged, like he didn’t much care.
It took the pleasure out of it; the power-feeling it normally gave Izzy.
Same with the Merry Widow. She’d been the biggest disappointment. Turned out she wasn’t so merry. Like the wop, she wasn’t afraid, either. Not after she got herself under control, anyway.
For most of Saturday, he’d kept her in the back of the U-Haul, tied and gagged. He had so much work to do! But, every now and then, he’d pull into some secluded spot, remove the gag, and try to have a little fun.
She wouldn’t cooperate. Even after he’d slapped her a few times, she’d steady herself on her knees, eyes turned skyward, repeating over and over, “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He restoreth my soul…”
Which sure as hell ruined the mood.
Plus, she wasn’t afraid. Nothing he did, nothing he threatened, frightened her.
Cold bitch.
So, as far as enjoying himself, the whole deal had been a bust. But that was okay. He had Nicaragua to look forward to. His own tropical island paradise, and plenty of money now to enjoy it.
When the attendant took his ticket, and passed it through the scanner, Izzy felt his heart rate increase-he’d been worried they’d cull him out into the security line. Not that he had anything on him to hide. It was the delay he dreaded.
Now, though, he grinned at the attendant, shouldered his briefcase, and walked down the ramp, feeling a little spring in his step.
One Bloody Mary later, Izzy was lounging in his first-class seat, looking out the starboard window as the plane lifted off, ascending and banking. He was looking west into a blazing aftermath of a sunset sky. He could see domino rows of houses that thinned, then ended abruptly on a demarcation of unbroken light that he knew was the edge of the Everglades. It was a golden void connected to a golden sky, prairie and sky linked by a thin black tether of horizon.
He checked his watch.
Eight-twenty P.M.
He’d left the Merry Widow, Sally Minster, with her hands and legs tied, mouth taped, in the front seat of the U-Haul, doors locked, engine running so to produce the necessary voltage to detonate the barrels of ammonium nitrate loaded into the rear.
Hey-if she’d been more cooperative, he’d have gone easier on her.
So much for the evidence.
The Feds, though, would be all over it. The underground stuff would be harder to find. But chunks of a U-Haul lying around?
Too bad for the supercilious hippie. Too bad for Jerry Singh.
Izzy had grown to despise the man.
Now he held up one finger to get the attention of the lean, redheaded flight attendant-service was always so much better in first class. He smiled his lady’s-man smile, dimples showing, as he said, “When you get some time, how about another Bloody Mary?”
Then Izzy Kline sat back and released a long, slow breath, the tension flowing out of him, replaced by a feeling of liberation so powerful that it seemed a mix of serenity and deliverance.