Captiva df-4

by Randy Wayne White

  "That's your proposition? I find out what I can, help you keep a lid on things?"

  He was nodding. "How many times do cops have a chance to stop trouble before it starts? Yeah, you could help me do that. Little things. You hear something, you give me a call. We get back, I'll give you my cellular number, my beeper. Anytime, day or night." Ron was pleased with how this was going. I could tell. "Up on the Chesapeake," he said, "maybe if some cop had jumped into the middle of things, Terry . . . that friend of mine . . . would have lived beyond the ripe old age of nineteen."

  "There's one thing you've left out."

  "There is?"

  "Yeah. The bomb. Tell me about Darroux's bomb. Why it's got you on the move. Why you don't believe he built it by himself."

  "I never said that."

  "Let's not play games. Darroux was the impulsive type, right? He gets mad, he starts a brawl. His wife tries to lock him out, he smacks her. A guy like him wants revenge, he might steal some engines, or he might dump some gas and light it. My guess is, you read him the same way. But your people found something at the marina, something at the bomb site, that tells you whoever made the bomb had to do a little tinkering first. They had to sit down and think it out. That wasn't Darroux's style." In reply to his quizzical glance, I said, "You know a little bit about fishing. I know a little bit about bombs. Accelerant flare, remember? Point of detonation?"

  "Okay. So, if you were a pissed-off netter and wanted to torch some boats, how would you have done it?"

  "You trying to steer me off the subject?"

  "No. I'm trying to decide if it would make any difference me telling you something I'm not authorized to tell you."

  I thought for a moment before saying, "Do you want casualties, or just structural damage?"

  "That's the scary thing. I don't think the people who built this bomb cared."

  "That simplifies it. Then all you need is an initiator, a power source, and the accelerant. The accelerant is easy—go to a gas station or any hardware store." I touched the cheap Ironman model watch on my wrist. "I've got enough voltage right here to detonate a standard commercial blasting cap. So power source is no problem. But even that's a lot more complicated than it needs to be."

  I described a couple ofbasic explosive devices—booby traps, they were once called.

  When I was done, Jackson gave a soft whistle. "The first two, I've heard about. Lids from a tin can, a clothespin. Sure. Very effective, very easy. But that last one. A Ping-Pong ball and a hypodermic needle? Jesus, that one's spooky. That one really would work?"

  I almost said, "I've seen it work." Instead, I said, "That's what I read. Since the late sixties, the revolutionary types have published black market booklets on the subject." I listed some of the names.

  Jackson knew them. We talked about that. We talked about the lunatic fringe. We talked about the political far right and the political far left being different sides of the same frightening coin. We talked about dangerous times, and maybe Australia would be nice, or New Zealand. Go down there to Auckland, watch the America's Cup races. Finally, as we turned at the shell road into Dinkin's Bay, Jackson began to tell me about the bomb. "What the A.T.F. people found," he said, "was enough to tell us that it was probably too sophisticated for Jimmy Darroux. Like you said, he was the impulsive type. This bomb would have taken some sober thinking and some reading."

  "The A.T.F. is sure about that?"

  "Yeah. What they found were the leg wires from a blasting cap, some bits of wire from the internal workings of an outboard motor, and a chunk of timing switch off a battery charger."

  I said, "So, when they trace the components back, you'll have your bad guys."

  Jackson was shaking his head. "The wire was from a two-hundred-horse Mercury built two years ago in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, sold out of a Bonita Springs marina to a guy we've already interviewed. He reported the motor stolen three months ago. The battery charger was the type fishermen use to keep their trolling motors charged up. Same thing. It was on a boat stolen last month. Listed on the insurance claim sheet along with the other stuff the owner had on the boat. Everything the A.T.F. found was stolen material."

  "The blasting cap?"

  "The leg wires were off a Combie Model 305 L-P, made within the last two years and used commonly by contractors. Build roads, blast rock quarries. That sort of thing. The A.T.F. people haven't been able to trace it that fine yet. They're not sure they'll be able to. A blasting cap always maintains a paper trail—least, it's supposed to—but there are a bunch of them out there."

  That was certainly true. I'd used blasting caps to do fish-census work on small bodies of water.

  Jackson said, "So that's what we're faced with. We'll have your standard pissed-off, drunk commercial fishermen out there setting fires, stealing engines—maybe stretching cables. We'll have your standard pissed-off, drunk sportfishermen out there trying to get even. But a guy who will sit down with a book, figure out how to make a bomb, then actually do it— that's a whole different animal."

  I said, "Yeah, but they're novices. There's no doubt about that." In reply to Jackson's upraised eyebrows, I added, "Jimmy Darroux? The guy who carries the bomb isn't supposed to get blown up, right?"

  Chapter 11

  That afternoon, I motored over to Tomlinson's sailboat to get the gear he said he needed. I had no idea what time Hannah would come by to get his stuff. Presumably, she would be out mullet fishing, so it might be dusk or it might be midnight. Some perverse side of me hoped it would be late; the later, the better. I was, perhaps, suffering what the writer Jack London, in his letters, referred to as the urges of "animal-man." It is described less succinctly now: horny . . . pocket-proud . . . three-legged and dumb. All of which were accurate enough, but realizing it made me feel no less insipid.

  Even so, motoring toward Tomlinson's No Mas, I tested out potential scenarios: Invite Hannah in, show her around. Put on some music—see if she liked Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young as much as The Doors. Offer her a drink—that was the sociable thing to do. Someone had left a bottle of wine in my refrigerator, but it had been opened . . . three weeks ago? Maybe longer. Well. . . she might enjoy it anyway. It couldn't be any stronger than that sulfur-water tea of hers. Let her walk around my place, wineglass in hand . . . feel the vibration of her weight through the wooden floor—just like at Gumbo Limbo, where she'd traced the shape of my ear with her fingernail, and told me about watching me take my rain barrel shower.

  Then I caught myself. Was it happening again?

  As I stood at the controls of my boat, I made a conscious effort to shift the subject to other matters. , . .

  No problem. Not at all like the previous Thursday night when, for a short time, I had so clearly demonstrated symptoms of obsession that I still found it surprising ... a little troubling, too.

  I smiled; spoke aloud: "You dumb ass." And thought: If I invite Hannah in, it will only be to gather information for Jackson.

  But, at the same time, my perverse side whispered: A glass of wine . . . music. Remember? No strings attached. . . .

  Once on Tomlinson's boat, I didn't even have to step down into the cabin to realize that no, there was not sufficient ice in the man's ice locker, and yes, the fish fillets had been unhappily decomposing in this happy vegetarian home.

  So, using a plastic bag in lieu of gloves, I dropped the mess overboard. Was tempted to drop the plastic bag and plate overboard too, but enough people were already using the coast as a garbage dump. Finally decided what the ice locker needed was a bucket of Clorox water, a lot of scrubbing, then a good airing out. If it wasn't done now, the stink would seep into the cushions.

  Each time I lifted out some remnant of macrobiotic, vegetarian goo, each time I had to lunge up out of the Clorox fumes to suck a fresh breath of air, I reminded myself that Tomlinson would not have hesitated to perform the same nasty task for me.

  If he wasn't too preoccupied to think about it. . . .

  When I got back t
o my fish house, Janet was just finishing up. By my reckoning, she had notes on four separate hours of tarpon observation, those hours spaced between ten a.m. and five p.m. She looked pretty proud of herself, standing there in baggy jeans and brown sweatshirt. Stood by my side as I went over her field notes on the clipboard; had a nervous habit of licking her lips whenever I paused over an entry or seemed even mildly confused.

  "At this point—" She was pointing to one of the field sheets I had composed. "That's when the man showed up to see you. Uh—"

  "Ron Jackson," I provided.

  "Yeah, but what happened was, I lost my concentration, so I was unsure if I'd seen Green Flag roll first or the Red Threat, so I just—"

  "The Red Threat?" I asked, smiling at her.

  She whacked me on the sleeve and said, "You spend four or five hours watching a bunch of fish, I'd like to hear the names you'd give them! You know, from history class? The red threat?" As if I were being dumb. "I'm a teacher, for God's sake. You think they only let us teach one subject at a school with only four hundred kids? But what I was telling you about was that entry—"

  "The other fish is Green Flag? Is that like Greenpeace or—"

  "As in the green flag Moslems? In Egypt, but after the decline? Geez, Ford, you must read nothing but journals."

  Now I really was beginning to feel dumb.

  "Okay, okay, they are very . . . well thought-out names."

  Janet lowered the clipboard. Had a nice little energy in her laugh. "You think it's silly, don't you? Naming the fish. Honest now, all the time you spend with them, you've never gave them names?"

  I had never even named my boats. "Let me think here—"

  "Because to me, they seem to have individual. . . It's like they behave differently, one not like the other. The Red Threat, he's the mobile type. He doesn't wait for the others to act, he just does it. Swoops around in there when he's in the mood, and the others follow." She paused, looking at me. She was serious. "You never have favorites?"

  "Well. . ."

  "But don't think it influenced any of my observations," she added quickly; she'd realized what I might have been thinking and wanted to put my mind at ease. "Everything's there on the field sheets, just how I saw it."

  I took the clipboard from her, leafed through the sheets. "You know what you've done here? When Breder and Shlaifer did their work back in the forties, they observed their tarpon for one hour a day over a period of twenty-two consecutive days. Today alone, you've broadened the standards."

  On the field sheets were entry columns for: "Time; Water Temperature; Rises per Fish Hour; Greatest Time Between Rises; Percent of Minutes with No Rises." Each column was neatly filled with her penciled entries. Four pages—one for every hour of observation. I said, "I don't expect you to spend every day sitting with those fish. . . . What I'm saying is, you've already done four days of work here." I glanced at the clipboard again. "Looks like very good work, too."

  She was pleased. Made self-deprecating remarks about how she had been a little sloppy here, could have done a little better there. I put my hand on her shoulder; felt her pull away instinctively, then relax enough to lean briefly against me. "It's all fine. Hell . . . it's great."

  "I can keep working on the project?"

  I told her, "Lady, it is now our project. If I get around to publishing something on it, instead of saying Breder-Shlaifer it'll say Mueller-Ford."

  "Nope—you've got to at least take top billing."

  "If I ever get to know the fish on a first-name basis, then we'll discuss it."

  We stood there talking about the project. We shouldn't be surprised, I told her, if our results differed from Breder-Shlaifer, because we were doing the procedure in January. They had done it in June, when the water was much warmer. Then we talked about the possibility that at least some tarpon behavior was social behavior . . . and of course, mature fish might behave differently than immature fish . . . and Janet said it might be interesting to see what happened if a glass plate was suspended at the water's surface so that the fish could not roll.

  "That procedure's been done," I told her. "Even in water that was heavily oxygenated, the fish died. Might be interesting to duplicate that one, too, try to find out why—"

  "Oh, no-way," she said with feeling. She glanced toward the tank: the Red Threat, Green Flag, and the others were in there. "I couldn't be a part of that."

  I dropped the subject. Mostly what I did was wrestle with my own conscience. It was getting late. The sky had taken on the slate-gray and raspberry hues peculiar to the Gulf Coast in January. High, high up in corridors traveled only by tourist jets and the combat jockeys, wispy cirrus clouds showed the pathway of global winds. But down in Dinkin's Bay it was balmy, warm. ... It was also dinnertime. I owed Janet a dinner . . . owed her a lot more than that for all her work. But I also knew that if I left, I risked missing Hannah. Why hadn't Tomlinson offered a time? Why hadn't I asked? Or he could have had Hannah call me on the VHF . . .

  Caught myself and thought: You're a dumb ass, Ford. A familiar charge from a familiar source.

  I looked at Janet standing there: solid, pudgy, plain face, short mousy hair, good eyes. Saw that a little light had come back into them after her day with the tarpon.

  "You want to go get something to eat?" I was saying it before I had even decided to speak.

  "Are you sure you have the time? There's not something else you'd rather—"

  I took her by the elbow and steered her toward the boardwalk. "Mueller, just give me time to grab a shower and change. Twenty minutes?"

  Nice smile; a touch of irony in it. "Make it twenty-five, Ford. I'm the one who's been working. Remember?"

  We chose the Lazy Flamingo, near Blind Pass. One of the few restaurants on Sanibel or Captiva that had a kicked-back, shorts-and-thongs, out-island quality to it. Since they'd closed Timmy's Nook, anyway. Heavy raw wood furniture, ceiling fans whirling, some palm thatching for effect. Go to the bar and place your own order, then sit in your booth while the waitress brings beer that is served from buckets of ice.

  I chose the raw conch salad, lots of onion and lime juice. Also ordered the grilled grouper sandwich, plus a large Caesar salad—heavy on the anchovies—an order of fries . . . and garlic bread.

  Janet said, "Is that for both of us, or just you?"—her tone pleasantly sarcastic.

  I told her that a day spent on a chair watching fish was slothful compared to the day I had had. She ordered the grilled grouper . . . canceled it, just asked for the Caesar—the extra weight she carried was probably on her mind—then we found an open booth by the window. She sat there looking around; I guessed she was wondering what to talk about— there's a limit to how much can be said about fish. So, when I felt the silence become strained, I told her about the Ford-Jackson hell run. Which got her laughing. She said she could just picture us out there, two huge kids lumbering along, both of us too stubborn to quit. I told her about Tomlinson's icebox. She made the appropriate grimace of disgust, but had to add: "Have you ever looked into his eyes? Tomlinson has the most wonderful eyes. I know he's . . . unusual. Where I'm from? He'd be considered some kind of eccentric up home."

  I said, "I've yet to find a place that wouldn't consider him eccentric. That's on his quiet days."

  "I know, but... he has the most. . . gentle way about him. Don't you think? You meet him, you feel as if you've always known him. He . . . empathizes with people. No, that's not the word." She puzzled over it for a moment before saying, "He feels for people, that's what he does. Not just empathizes, but gives you the impression he actually feels what you are feeling. I don't know how he does it. Telepathy? I'm not sure I believe in that. But somehow he does it, and he seems like . . . such a nice and gentle man."

  I took a sip of my beer; should have considered it longer before speaking, but I asked the question anyway: "Is that why he's the only one you told why you left Ohio?" Saw the reaction in her face—a nervous, stricken look—and instantly regretted my w
ords. Reached out, patted her hand. Said, "I'm sorry. It's none of my business. I had no right to ask."

  She sat there for a moment—at least she hadn't pulled her hand away—head down, staring at the table. Finally, she lifted her face to me— the cloudy expression of shell shock had returned—then asked in a small, small voice, "Tomlinson told you?" as if she had been betrayed.

  There have been times in my life—too many times, I'm sad to admit— I have spoken or acted so unthinkingly that I do not doubt that civilized people would be better off if I simply returned to the jungles where I spent so many of my years. Build myself a bamboo hut. Hang a sign over the door: Beware the Big Dumb Shit. Use a stick to bang a hollowed-out log if I absolutely have to communicate.

  I took her hand in both of mine, and squeezed. "No, Tomlinson wouldn't do that. All he told me . . . the only thing he told me was that you and he had had some long conversations. Because I know Tomlinson, I assumed the rest. It's one of my eccentricities—prying into other people's business just to remind myself how rude I really am. Which is a nicer way of saying that I'm way too nosy. I'm sorry. Please believe me, Janet."

  It was a while before she spoke. I sat there feeling helplessly big and clumsy. Finally . . . finally, she patted my hand . . . looked at me with cool, remote eyes and said, "Of course I believe you. I'd . . . like to tell you about it. But it's not easy for me. It's taken a long time to—"

  "Forget it," I interrupted. "When you're in the mood, I'm ready to listen. A couple of weeks from now ... or after we finish the tarpon procedure. Or not—you decide." I glanced around at the busy waitresses. "Jesus, where is that food?"