"Jakarta?" I guessed.
"You mean, like a city? No, it wasn't Jakarta. A funny name ... it had a weird sound."
The Republic of Indonesia is comprised of many thousands of islands, but I tried again. "Borneo? New Guinea?"
"No. . . ."
"Sumatra?"
She snapped her fingers. "That's it! How'd you know?"
I reminded her that I had once traveled a lot.
She accepted that, but her expression told me she wanted to ask questions—How were the girls over there?—but instead, she said, "I guess that's the main thing in the international seafood business. Having contacts? Like the guy who runs the big Tampa export business, he's got important family connections in the Philippines. Another guy has Hong Kong all locked up. I'm talking about mullet roe now. You ever go to one of those big fish export places?"
I had, but I wanted to hear Hannah tell it.
"It's like the way you would picture the New York stock market," she said. "Computers and fax machines all over. These huge rooms full of people, everyone yelling into telephones. Only you can't understand them because they're speakin' Japanese or French or some other language that I wouldn't recognize if I heard it. Right up there in Tampa. Somebody in Germany needs swordfish? They arrange it; maybe have one of their brokers ship it out from California that day. Tokyo needs stone crab claws? Same thing. They've got these blast freezers the size of a gymnasium. But even if they don't have the fish in stock, they know someone who does, and they take their cut. People don't realize that the international seafood market is like a multibillion-dollar business. We do the catchin', but everybody else makes the real money. We go down, the other countries will just fish that much harder. And of course, they got no regulations at all."
I said, "That's the business Tullock started after he quit his job working as a marine extension agent?"
"Kind'a, but he just rents space from one of the big export companies. His contacts—where we sell to now?—it's all to Sumatra. He calls it a 'niche' market. They're not as rich as the Philippines, but it still works out pretty good. Raymond handles everything, so Arlis sells to him exclusively. Now, instead of selling fish whole, we butcher them ourselves and end up
makin' five times the profit. See what I mean about contacts in Asia bein' important?"
"I bet Raymond does pretty well too."
"Yeah, but he works for his money. Raymond rents freezer space in Tampa till he gets a container full—that's like a semitrailer that fits on an oceangoing freighter. He's already shipped one container, and in a few days, he's gonna get on a plane so he can fly over and meet it." She locked onto me with her eyes before adding, "He wants me to go along . . . and I plan to."
What she was looking for was an expression of jealousy from me, any indication that I would limit her by trying to possess her. I tossed the last of the mullet into the box, and said, "You ought to go. It's a fascinating island, Sumatra."
"You been there?"
"Once."
"What I want to do is learn everything I can about the business so I. . . so I—"
"So you won't need Raymond anymore? Make your own contacts?"
She was taken aback for a moment. . . slowly recovered . . . then spoke in a tone that I had not heard her use. The tone was resolute, uncompromising—yet not severe. She wasn't defending herself, just telling me how it was. Said, "You know how to make it hurt, don't you? Only it doesn't bother me a bit, 'cause it's the same thing you'd do. Aren't you the independent type? Damn right I'll try to steal Raymond's contacts. It's business, and in business, that's part of the game—or so the menfolk tell me." Gave that a homey, ladylike twist before adding: "Raymond's tried plenty of times to use me—hell, using me is about all that poor bastard has on his mind."
"You mean as in—"
"I mean as in fuckin' me. Yeah." Looked hard at me to see how that was accepted. "That's part of it. I haven't given him the first taste, which just makes him crazier for it, but it also makes him easier to handle."
I said, "Maybe the other part is that you know Raymond was never against the net ban. A buddy of mine told me Raymond lobbied for the ban behind your back."
A thin, noncommittal smile. "Maybe."
"But if he makes his money selling mullet roe, why would he—"
"Don't you worry about my business, Ford. I know all about Raymond . . . but Raymond, he doesn't know all about me. That's just the way I want it." She was tromping the last of the net down, getting the boat ready to go. Stopped for a moment and stared toward the southwest. A pale, luminescent cloud marked the night strongholds of the barrier islands: Captiva Island, its lights twinkling; Sanibel, a gray bloom beyond. She put her hand on my shoulder and said, "See that?" She meant the lights. "When I was little, my daddy would fish so close to that island that I could smell the fresh-cut grass. All those big, rich houses, and the golf course—Yankee millionaires, that's what Daddy called everybody who lived there."
"A lot different than Sulphur Wells," I agreed.
"We lived on Cedar Key then, but yeah, about the same thing. Daddy always said if I was smart, I'd marry one of them. He'd pick out some good-looking man on the golf course, or some guy sweating on the tennis courts, and he'd say, 'There ya go, Hannah. Marry him, you'll never have to worry about another thing all your life.' Being a little girl, I'd always think, yeah, right, some rich man would marry me?
"About the time I turned seventeen, though, those rich men started staring back. Started giving me that little smile—like, hello, young lady. That's when I knew. I knew I could hunt around, play it right, and pick just about any one of them golfers or tennis players I wanted. Let them pay for me while I laid around in a bikini. I'd be one of their pretty ornaments and they'd let me pretend to be their partner." Hannah squeezed my shoulder; gave me a little shake. "You may not believe it, but if I put a dress and stockings on, I could walk into the fanciest restaurant on that island, and no man inside would think I was a mullet fisherman. Even if they thought it, they wouldn't much care." She kissed me on the cheek. "Maybe I'll do that for you sometime. Get all dressed up."
I said, "So why didn't you? Tell me the rest of it."
"Why I didn't snag a rich guy? I coulda. Hell, I thought about it. Have a real nice car, somebody to do the housework. Plan out dinner parties for my husband's clients—" She laughed. "Can't you just see me doin' that?"
"Yes, I can," I said softly. "I think you'd be good at whatever you chose to do."
"Well, what I've chosen is the life I'm meant to have. Tommy says it's my karma. Build my own business, live with my own kind of people. Net ban or not, that's exactly what I'm goin' to do. Whenever I get restless,
whenever I'm on the water alone and the lights of those big houses start winking at me, I just remind myself what happened to Big Six when she messed with outsiders."
It took me a moment to cross-reference that—she was talking about her great-aunt.
Hannah waved off my reply—subject closed—and leaned over the engine well to start the Yamaha. As she jumped the boat onto plane, she yelled above the noise, "You feel it? That's the vibration I'm talking about."
Close to midnight, both of us naked, tangled together on a bare mattress in a dilapidated stilt house near the village of Curlew, some portion of my subconscious kept nagging at me; would yank me back through the film of awareness each time I drifted downward, downward into the gauzy gray world of sleep.
Then, gradually, the subconscious found an unworn brain conduit, and the question that was nagging at me finally burst to the surface. I sat upright in the darkness . . . felt around for Hannah's shoulder and shook her. "Hannah, are you awake? Hey—wake up." She stirred. "What the hell's in your tea?"
Heard her soft murmur of laughter.
"Damn it, there's something strange about it. The way it affects me."
Enough light came through the window that I could see the charcoal shape of her: long panels of flesh tone ... a segment of cheek ... a wedg
e of matted pubic hair . . . one dark eye blinking up at me.
"Go to sleep. You worry too much."
Shook her again. "No, there's something strange about it. Makes me feel about half drunk. The same thing happened at Gumbo Limbo."
Her hand explored around until it found my chest, then patted its way downward along ribs, stomach . . . groin. When she found me, her fingers began to gently massage. "Um-m-m-m," she said lazily. "You don't feel drunk. More like warm wood."
"That's another thing. It's not normal. It's not. . . it's not even human. It won't go away. I could get gangrene"
She rolled over onto me, then used her teeth to pull at my chest hair; her tongue to trace the abdominal expanse. Said, "I'm no doctor, but I do know a little first aid," before ingesting me. I felt the siphoning draw of her lips, her tongue ... lay back momentarily . . . then fought my way upright again. Took her hair in my hands and lifted her head. "No you don't. First tell me what's in the tea."
She hesitated, staring at me in the darkness, then scooched her way up and kissed me on the lips. "Is it real important?"
"Then I'm right?"
"I'll show you, but I want you to remember somethin'—you didn't have a drop before the first time. Tonight at your place, I mean. That's what I want you to remember. It was just you and me, both of us feelin' the way we felt. My tea didn't have a thing to do with it."
I was thinking: Jesus, the woman has drugged me. But said agreeably, "Nothing's going to change that. Just the two of us. Our own free will. Exactly."
"We're lovers?" She seemed worried; vulnerable for the first time, which I found touching.
Kissed her on the forehead, then on the lips. "Yep, lovers."
She got to her feet; moved around carefully in the darkness. "I'd like that. You and me; neither of us the marrying kind. I'll have my house at Gumbo Limbo, you'll be over on Sanibel, and when either one of us gets the urge to be together ..." There was the flare of a kitchen match, a sulfur stink. I watched Hannah's face, bathed in gold, as she lit an oil lamp. ". . . you call me, or I'll call you. We can have our own lives, but we can have each other, too. We'll be like . . . secret partners."
I stood behind her, put my hands on her shoulders. "You don't need to get me drunk to have that."
"You sure? I'm gonna tell you, but I want to be sure."
Turned her to me and kissed her. "I'm sure. Now tell me what's in the tea."
She smiled, moved away—naked; comfortable with it—and began to lift away boards from what I thought was a solid wall. "This is Arlis's old hidey-hole. For a time there, he never trusted banks, so he built this himself way back in the thirties. When he was young." From the wall, she carefully removed a black duffel and held it open to me. Inside were a dozen or so small brown bottles, a nub of white candle, a leather-bound book, and an opaque sphere made of green glass. I remembered seeing similar glass balls on the mantel over her fireplace.
She took out one of the bottles and the glass ball. Held up the glass ball and said, "This one's a powder made from the bark of an African tree. It's called yohimbe. It's supposed to grow hair, but it's also supposed to be about the only aphrodisiac that really works." She looked down at me. "By golly, it seems to!" Was still laughing at that as she indicated the bottle. "In here, I've got a combination of what they call blue stone from Haiti and oil from a leaf they call iron tree. Mix the two, plus a drop of turpentine, and you've got a love potion. That's what I put in the tea."
I took the glass ball from her and held it up to the lamp. It appeared to be hand-blown glass, very old, with air bubbles frozen within. It had an ingenious fluted stopper.
Hannah said, "Pretty, isn't it? It used to be my great-aunt's. Hannah's? This one and a couple of more, that's all I've got of hers."
I handed the ball back. "You sure you didn't put something else in the tea?"
"If I wanted to lie to you, I wouldn't've shown you this much."
I was relieved. No amphetamines or amphetamine-tranquilizer mix. Even so, it made me angry. Why pull such a stunt? I said, "No more potions, okay? Ever. You really believe in that stuff? Voodoo?"
She seemed suddenly uneasy. "I can't tell you about it. Sorry, I can't."
I sat her down and made her tell me. It took a while. She had once taken an oath—back when she was in Louisiana—and I had to take an oath in turn. Hannah was very serious about it. I pretended I was, too. When she was convinced I would never share her secret—I was honest about that, at least—she told me that Jimmy Darroux's mother had indoctrinated her. The reason was, the mother so distrusted her own son that she didn't want to see Hannah get hurt. Jimmy's mother was certain that he had fed Hannah a "love potion." To prove it, the mother had demonstrated exactly what Jimmy used to make it. Hannah had such a natural fervor for folk medicines that the mother spent the next several days instructing her. "She wouldn't let me write anything down," Hannah told me. We were on the mattress again, lying naked, my arms around her. "There were some things she wouldn't tell me—some of the real important religious stuff. But it explained why I got so hot for Jimmy so quick."
I said, "Yeah, but why do it to me? You just happened to have the stuff there waiting, and I show up—"
"I recognized you at the door, that's why, I knew we'd be lovers"—she made a sound of self-deprecation—"but you, you took some convincing. You showed up at the door, and I just thought. . . looked in the 'frigerator and all the Cokes were gone, so I just did it. I didn't make the tea planning on you coming. But I knew we would meet someday."
"Then why did you make it?"
"I . . . keep it in the house for Arlis."
"For Arlis? For Arlis . . . and you?"
"That's right. Arlis and me."
I fought off the twinge ofjealousy I felt; said in a tone of manufactured indifference: "I knew you were close."
She rolled over so that we were face-to-face. "That don't bother you?"
"Why should it?"
Hannah snuggled up close to me, very pleased. "That's what I think! Arlis, he's an old man. He's sweet as he can be, and . . . he's one of us. One of the old Cracker people. Like, him and me are part of the same tribe."
I guessed that she was parroting some past remark by Tomlinson, but did not comment.
"Arlis, his wife died more than two years ago. There's no other women on the island he gives a damn about, so . . . sometimes, when he's in a wanting mood, I help him feel like a man again. At his age, he needs the tea to help him. I don't do it out of pity. I care about the old bastard, and he cares about me. It's . . . private . . . and it's real sweet."
"That's why Arlis was glad when Jimmy died."
"Arlis hated Jimmy; he'd tell you the same himself. Arlis was so mad at me when I married him that he wouldn't even talk to me for a week. But he came around when he realized it was just me bein' . . . bein' me. I'm . . . kind'a a different sort of woman. I told you that before."
I kissed her cheek, then her lips; told her I was finally beginning to believe that. Then I asked, "Did Arlis hate Jimmy enough to kill him?"
She got up on one elbow, chin braced in hand. "The bomb, you mean?" She shook her head. "Arlis was glad about it. Real glad. But no, Arlis didn't have nothing to do with it." She paused for a moment, looking into my eyes, then said, "I'm the one that fixed it. I'm the one that killed Jimmy."
She said it so matter-of-factly that it took a moment for it to register. "You what?"
"About three weeks ago, he broke in the house and he hit me again. I told him what I was gonna do, and I did it."
"But how? Jimmy was alone. He brought the bomb to my marina—"
"I'll show you how," she said. Reached over and dragged the black duffel within reach, and took out the leather-bound book. "Jimmy's mama sent this to me just before she died. She was a good woman, but sometimes . . ." Hannah had the book open; was leafing through it. "Sometimes good women produce assholes for sons. I guess she knew that and thought maybe I needed protection. So she wanted me to have th
is."
The book was very old; had the nutty, musty smell of autumn leaves. It was written in French, a language I cannot read.
"What this is, it's the lost books of the Bible," Hannah said. "The eighth, ninth, and tenth books of Moses. You can't find it anywhere anymore—I checked around after I got it. Some people don't even believe that the books exist, but here they are." She had found what she was looking for and showed me. An entire page had been crossed out with black tape. "I used this to put what they call an 'assault obeah' on Jimmy. This and a ceremony his mama had told me about. Wrote his name on Chipman paper, then burned it with a candle. The thing with Chipman paper is, it'll burn, but the writing on it won't. The writing shows right through the ashes. I called Jimmy up to the house three days before he died and showed him this Bible, showed him the ashes. He acted like it didn't scare him a bit, but it did. His face went sort of funny; kind of twitchin'."
"That's all you did?" I suspected she could hear the relief in my voice. "You didn't have anything to do with the bomb?"
She said, "Nope, you can relax about that," and closed the book. "Whether you believe in this stuff or not—Jimmy, he believed. Maybe he was carryin' that bomb and got jumpy, knowing he didn't have long to live no matter what. Probably hit the wrong switch—drunk as usual. Or maybe nobody explained exactly how it worked. When he told Tommy to 'take care of Hannah'? The asshole meant take care of me. Like Jimmy was always gonna 'take care' of so-and-so; that's the way he always said it. You know— beat the hell out of them."
I didn't want to press her, but I had to. "Who didn't explain to Jimmy how the bomb worked? You need to tell me, Hannah. Who built the bomb?"
She stared at me a moment, then returned the book to the duffel bag and pushed it away. "I don't know who did it and I don't want to know."
"But you have some ideas."
"That's right, I've got some ideas. If I told you, would it be the same as telling the cops?"
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