Salt River

by Randy Wayne White

  “From the moment he saw those old houses,” she said, “I think he intended to burn us alive. Every night since it happened, I lie in bed and pretend I would’ve fought the son of a bitch. All the details, the smells, come back, and it’s, like, he’s trying to grab me again. And I know . . . I know the truth.” The girl looked at me, then turned away. “That if you hadn’t shown up, Marion, he . . . he would’ve—” Her voice broke.

  I went to the fridge and got two bottles of water. “You can relax, it’s over,” I said. “The feds are going to send that guy away for a long, long time. And you don’t have to worry anymore about the DNA. He’s not your half brother and you know it.”

  Mensal Cryonics had confirmed this via their attorneys with a document provided to the police.

  But the girl was still worried. “What about the guy who called himself Deville? He’s still out there.”

  It was a possibility best not confirmed, so I kept quiet.

  She continued, “Mack and everyone at the marina has been so nice to me, that’s what I really wanted to talk about. They expect us to hold the reunion at the cottages. Probably around Labor Day weekend and that’s less than a month away. Doc?” She sat forward. “I want you to help me talk them out of it. Deville—the guy in the robe—he’s already been there once. What if he shows up again and has a gun or something?”

  I said, “The police have probably already found him by now. If they haven’t, I doubt he’s dumb enough to make an appearance. What about that DNA chat page you and your DNA siblings subscribed to? Any more crazy posts?”

  No. And there had been nothing more about a class action lawsuit.

  “Good,” I said. “It’s not proof that Jayden was behind it all, but it certainly suggests he was. And the reunion—is it really that important? Why not postpone it or just call it off? You and your biological siblings are adults now. And what’s it really matter who—”

  “Half sibs,” Delia corrected. “And it matters more than you or anyone else could ever understand. That man out there”—Tomlinson, she meant—“he’s part of who I am. My parents—my real parents—do you have any idea what it’s like to find out the truth? My god, they paid top dollar. A stud fee. Like from a catalog. And you know what I got out of it?”

  The girl didn’t sound angry, just sad and a little bitter.

  “A good home?” I suggested.

  She managed a smile. “Christ . . . you’re right. I shouldn’t complain. But my whole life, I’ve felt like, I don’t know, an orphan in my own home. I really can’t describe the sense of emptiness? No, of missing something . . . an important piece of who I am . . . like twins separated at birth. And way before I did the DNA thing. Imogen—my half sister? She says she felt the same growing up. You don’t know what it’s like to live a lie.”

  I almost smiled when she said that. “Maybe everyone feels that way.”

  “It’s not the same at all. Face it, Tomlinson’s sweet and funny, but he is not, you know, my idea of the perfect father.”

  “Who is?” I replied.

  “I’m not criticizing. It’s the little things I see in myself that keep me coming back to see him. The way he pulls his hair when he’s nervous. Our handwriting, the shape of our ears. And that goofy laugh of his. Our bio-squad—my bio sibs—they deserve an opportunity to . . . to . . .”

  She began to get emotional again. There was a pause while she sniffed and took a drink of water. “What it comes down to is, we—the sibs—wouldn’t be on this Earth if it wasn’t for him. But Doc?” Her gray-blue eyes caught the light from the window. “I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for you. I don’t know why, but I feel closer to you than just about anyone I’ve met recently. The reunion, wherever we hold it, I’d like you to be there. Please?”

  I got to my feet. “You’re a tough one, Delia. That night in the fish house, you would’ve found a way out.”

  “Liar. I’m a coward,” she said. “So’s he, but in a way that puts other people first.” Tomlinson, again. “I still haven’t gotten up the nerve to tell my parents that we’ve met because . . . Well, that’s obvious. Dad’s sick and he’s not getting any better.”

  I asked about her father’s health—another tough subject.

  She got up to leave. “Will you think about the reunion thing? And my interview tomorrow with the Growers Cooperative—Belle Glade is a two-hour drive. We could talk some more, and I’ll buy lunch on the way.”

  Friday is the traditional party night at the marina. I said, “You’re not sticking around for the cookout? We can talk later.”

  “I’d rather be alone, just the two of us,” she countered, then realized how that might be taken. “What I mean is, tomorrow, in my car, it would be quieter. That’s all. My boyfriend—my ex-boyfriend, really—doesn’t want me to do the interview.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause he’s a dick. He says legitimate biologists will blackball me if I go to work for the enemy. What do you think?”

  She meant the Growers Co-op and the sugar cane industry. I said, “It’s complicated, all the politics involved. What’s he do?”

  “Phil? Dr. Phil, as he likes to be called, Phil Knox—he’s a philosophy prof at Windward College in Redington Beach. Big into ecology. We both are, that’s how we met. He’s twenty years older but acts like he’s ten sometimes. Going to work for Big Sugar could ruin me, he thinks.”

  I said, “Why not do the interview and make up your own mind?”

  “You’ll go with?”

  It was tempting. The girl was an interesting mix of certainty and sensitivity. I liked her. Rational people are always at war with their instincts. The most compelling link was Tomlinson. Children born to our friends—whatever the circumstances—become a shared responsibility.

  My little seaplane was back from the shop. Its blue-on-white fuselage floated on pontoons outside, tethered to the mangroves. I said, “How about this? It’ll be faster if we fly.”

  * * *

  —

  You don’t know what it’s like to live a lie.

  Delia had no idea of the irony when she’d said this. I was going over Leo Alomar’s dossier folder while I gave the subject some thought. It was late afternoon. Guys at the marina were amping up for music, beer, and food. A drum rimshot pinged through the mangroves. My block-headed retriever had been returned by Hannah’s nephew, Luke O. Jones. A nice kid. The dog sprawled belly-up on the cool pine floor near my feet.

  My whole life, I’ve felt like an orphan in my own home, Delia had also said. She could never know, but we had more in common than she realized.

  At age nineteen, a clandestine agency—not the CIA—had plucked me out of basic training as a “candidate of special interest.” Good-bye, Navy. Hello a lifetime of obligation and privilege that included college, postgrad, and any specialized school, worldwide, I chose to attend.

  For a kid that age, it was a heady experience. Jungle Operations Training Center in Panama. Combat driving skills—escape and evasion. High-speed pursuit at BSR in West Virginia. Tactical weapons at Glynco. Close quarters combat at Moyock. There was a long list compiled over the years that included esoteric skills beyond my interests, my abilities, and sometimes my intellectual depth.

  I’m not a genius or a gifted athlete. As I discovered later, “candidates of special interest” shared one key asset—our parents were either dead or estranged and we had no close family ties. My parents had died in a boat explosion when I was sixteen—murdered by a man my mother was having an affair with. So I’d lived with a crazed cowboy uncle until graduation, not that he was around much.

  Highly trained and expendable. That was us. And if the worst happened, there were no adoring folks back home to raise a stink or go running to their congressman.

  “We have a franchise in every country,” a friend of mine once said. “And to hell with politicians, they come and
go. They have nothing to do with what we do.”

  My centrist view of politics borders on indifference. It dates back to those years. That has not changed nor have the rules of my employment. On those rare occasions when my expertise is needed, I do the job, come home, and live quietly under the radar. The role of an affable, slightly nerdy marine biologist has served me well. I have often wondered, however, if my clandestine life would end if Hannah, or any woman, said yes to marriage and became the family I’d never had.

  The phone rang. Not the wall phone, the encrypted satellite phone in my bedroom. Pete the dog scrambled to alert and followed. It was Hal Harrington, my agency handler.

  “You got a pencil and paper?” he asked. “I have that information. Not all, but it’ll do for starters.”

  We don’t use pens or personal computers. As he spoke, I wrote Leo Alomar’s current home address on his dossier folder. “How far can I go to solve this problem?” I asked.

  Harrington understood the insinuation. “Don’t even think about. Be clever—I know that’s a lot to ask from someone like you—but set him up, maybe, scare the hell out of the guy. Make him go away. He doesn’t know who he’s dealing with, that’s obvious.”

  “They never do,” I said. “Can you provide support?”

  “We don’t care about your personal problems,” Harrington replied, “and we don’t want to know. Understand?”

  That was a provisional yes.

  “I’ll keep you out of it,” I said, and hung up.

  Leo’s folder went into the floor safe. Pete pestered me while I showered and shaved, then bolted out the door as eager as me to have some fun.

  * * *

  —

  Marina parties at Dinkin’s Bay are interesting. The communal debauchery is spiced by locals who are quirky enough to live side by side on boats yet are convinced they’ve eluded the rat race in favor of seclusion.

  Maybe they have. Water access only, along with a gate, make Dinkin’s a private little enclave in a big, loud, busy world.

  Fishing guides had trucked in a keg of beer. A bushel of oysters roasted over a bed of coals. There was smoked mullet, brats from Minnesota, mangoes from Pine Island, and a steaming cauldron of black beans. They had been made by the Esteban sisters and their mother, immigrants from Cuba whom I’d helped across the Florida Straits.

  When I arrived at the party, a dozen or so liveaboards were on the docks beneath holiday lights, drinks in hand. Around the bonfire, a gaggle of others had cornered Delia. They were unaware of Jayden’s assault, but they knew her connection with Tomlinson. Coupled with the marina’s recent Spit in a test tube craze, I suspected that DNA would be the hot topic.

  I got a beer and eavesdropped. Conversation ebbed and flowed with every few steps. Near the bait tanks, Mack was demonstrating a Māori war dance for Rhonda Lister and JoAnn Smallwood. The two women, over the years, had been business partners, lovers, sworn enemies, scorned wives, mistresses, and lovers again. They lived aboard an old Chris-Craft cruiser, Tiger Lilly. The vessel was one of the marina’s gaudier floating homes.

  Rhonda grimaced at Mack’s antics. “For god sakes, Mack, shut your mouth before you bite off your tongue. That dance is idiotic. You want to hear something really interesting? JoAnn grew up thinking she was half Cherokee. With her big boobs and as short as she is, I believed her until—”

  “Quarter Cherokee on my mamma’s side,” JoAnn interrupted. “I still don’t think that damn test was accurate.”

  “Whatever,” Rhonda said. “Let me get to the interesting part. Turns out that we’re cousins. See, both our grandfathers netted mullet back in the day. Hers fished out of Chokoloskee, mine lived north on Estero—”

  “Third cousins,” JoAnn corrected. “And it’s not like we’re talking incest or . . .” She paused. “What about my boobs? Plenty of Indian women have—”

  Mack hadn’t finished his Māori dance. The wooden totem in his hand suggested he’d been practicing. “Jesus bloody hell,” he cut in, “show a little respect for the Kiwi Nation or—”

  Rhonda hooted, “No incest, my ass,” and stepped toward JoAnn. “Your grandfather screwed his way up and down this coast—same as you’d do, given the chance. That itch between your legs didn’t come in a bottle, sweetie, and you know damn well—”

  JoAnn turned to me with a hurt expression. “Doc, you think my boobs are too big?”

  “Last time I saw them, they were perfect,” I responded. “I’m willing to take a closer look, if it’ll help.”

  Rhonda chastened me with a laughing profanity.

  I moved on to a group of fishing guides. Jeth, Big Alex, and Neville had gathered near the fuel pump. Guides are like ballplayers—they prefer to cloister themselves in privacy, apart from those who don’t know a damn thing about what they do.

  Jeth was talking about Bavaria. For a man who stuttered, Bavaria was a challenging word to pronounce, but not impossible because he was with friends. “Never heard of that country, so I looked it up. No ocean, just mountains. That’s probably why my people left. A real fisherman’s not gonna waste his time hiking uphill for some piddly little trout in a stream.” Then, aloud, he wondered what Bavarian women looked like compared to, say, women in Europe.

  Neville spoke up on behalf of the U.K. with an enthusiasm that Alex did not share.

  “You every eat kippers? That’s what they consider fish over there,” the big man said. “Ireland is where I’d put my money. Redheads and smoked salmon, gentlemen. Without them, why go to war?”

  From group to group I roamed, and it was the same. People talked with pleasant intensity, their faces glazed by firelight. They would consult the stars and visualize the forebearers who had guarded them through a risky millennium that lesser souls had not survived.

  DNA, on this evening, became a communal lifeboat. Against all odds, it had delivered each and every person to this small bay, on this small island, at an intersection of space and time, so precisely that there was no way in hell it could have been an accident—or so everyone wanted to believe.

  By then, the keg was nearly empty. Alcohol added a glow of divine certainty. People began to dance. Not as couples, as a group, bonded by Coors Light and destiny.

  Fun? Yes it was. It had been a tough summer because of the red tide. For months, locals had suffered economic loss. The stench of fish and bad PR had lingered beyond reality or reason, and this seemed the first break in a long streak of bad luck. The Cuban kids, Maribel and Sabina, shamed me into a clumsy salsa. When Figgy swept a smiling Delia into the mix, I knew that the limbo stick would soon come out. It was time to leave.

  Tomlinson, who had yet to make an appearance, was in the parking lot dismounting his bike. Pete charged the man, sniffed the bag in his hands, then trotted away.

  “That’s the rudest, most antisocial dog I’ve ever met,” my pal said. “A perfect match, you two.”

  “Or a good judge of character,” I responded. “You’re going to limbo dressed like that?” Instead of a sarong and a tank top, his normal party attire, he wore linen slacks and a yellow surfer’s shirt.

  “No way, man. I’m done with limbo. Delia thinks I’m batshit crazy as is. No more womanizing either. I’ve got to set a good example for that girl.” He stood taller, his head gesticulating like a turkey. “Hey . . . is that Capt. Neville she’s dancing with? Why, that sneaky Buckeye scum . . .”

  “She’s dancing with Figgy,” I said. “What’s in the bag?”

  Tomlinson unveiled a rare bottle of twenty-one-year-old El Dorado Rum. I looked at the bottle while he remained intent on the bonfire where silhouettes danced. “Dear Jesus, Mary,” he muttered. “That Cuban Casanova has the morals of a wild dog. Hey, you’re flying Delia to Belle Glade tomorrow? Explain the facts of life to her, would you? All men are swine.”

  “It would be more convincing coming from you,” I replied. “B
esides, there’s been a change of plans. I’m just dropping her off in Belle Glade. Something about her ex-boyfriend being pissed off. He’s going to meet her there.”

  “Boyfriend?” My pal’s expression communicated a fatherly contempt that I’ve yet to experience. “That’s a disgusting misnomer,” he muttered, “for yet another rutting boar. While you’re at it, would you mind scaring the bejesus out of the pushy asshole adolescent who’s been pestering her?”

  “According to her, the guy’s in his mid-forties,” I said. “He teaches at a small college near St. Pete.”

  “That’s even more disgusting. No violence, just a mild threat or three, and give him that look of yours. Like you’d bite off his nose and stick it under a microscope, given the chance. You know the one . . .” He paused. “Hey, how’s your arm doing? You sure you’re fit to fly?”

  I opened and closed my left fist. “Stop worrying, Daddy-O,” I said. “Delia’s a big girl now.”

  ELEVEN

  Leo Alomar’s home was in a cookie-cutter suburb of Palm Beach County on the Atlantic Coast, thirty miles east of Belle Glade Municipal, where I had dropped Delia.

  I did a slow drive-by. Alomar’s house was a clone of tens of thousands of orange-roofed stuccos I’d viewed from altitude on the flight in. His property, though, showed signs of neglect usually not tolerated by gated communities. The yard was a mess. Out back, weeds had taken over a children’s playhouse and swing set. Among a triad of garbage bins, a pink bicycle was missing a tire.

  That hit me for some reason. I knew the guy had children, but until then they’d been just data specs in a dossier.

  As I passed, the garage door opened. There he was, dressed for a day on the links. I got a glimpse of a golf cart and a motorcycle among stacks of boxes, the big kind people use when moving out.