I told Julie that I appreciated that. Told him I was going to try and convince my boss that Julie was actually a pretty good guy. I moved off through the bushes and had a whispered conversation, South American Spanish, then slow Spanish with a Deep South accent. Returned to Julie's side—his body convulsed at my touch—and said, "Thing is, now my boss wants me to ask you some other questions . . ."
"If I know the answer, you got it!"
Julie didn't realize how much he knew. It took a long, long while to scrape pieces of information out of him. It wasn't that he wasn't willing to talk—"I'll tell you anything I know, man!"—but what he might think was some mundane, unimportant incident might, to me, be a key bit of data.
So I took my time with him. Showed a lot of patience. I became his buddy. Played good cop to my Colombian boss's bad cop. I didn't want Julie so desperate that he would begin inventing information just to please us. I comforted him, I complimented his memory when he reached down deep and brought out a name or some other forgotten fact. Gradually, very gradually, I pieced together the information I wanted.
Julie knew a lot about a lot of things. He told me how the boat-theft ring worked. They trucked the stolen engines to a little house Kemper Waits had back in the palmetto flats. There was a shallow freshwater pond behind the house. They dumped the engines in the pond—no one would ever think to look there—and then waited until it was safe to truck them north to Georgia where Waits had connections with a professional chop shop. The fresh water didn't hurt the engine components, and the chop shop paid off in cash, or in cocaine. Waits preferred cocaine. It was a lot more valuable to him—particularly now, since the local netters were going to have so much more time in their hands. Waits believed the net ban would help open up a whole new market. Give the younger ones enough free cocaine to get them interested, then get them involved in the stolen outboard motor business. Waits didn't like or trust the Sulphur Wells locals, and they didn't like or trust him. For Waits, it was just one more way to even the score.
Julie knew less about the bomb that had killed Jimmy Darroux, but he knew enough. Once again, Waits had played a central role. Julie didn't know for certain, but he thought Waits had built the bomb in a little concrete block shed near his house. Only he had heard that maybe, just maybe, Waits had botched the bomb intentionally as a favor to a friend. "Jimmy Darroux, hell, he was a pretty good buddy of mine," Julie said. "But I think he may'a stepped on the wrong toes, probably over that bitch of a wife he had."
I didn't want to press the issue too hard. I wanted Julie to leave the island with an entirely different impression about why he was being questioned. I nudged the conversation off the topic, then nudged it back again. Then I listened very carefully, as Julie said, "There's this guy used to work for the state. Him an' Kemper, they're pretty tight. Might go into business together. This guy used to come around an' inspect Kemper's boats an' stuff, give him advice about how he could fish better. He's the one says we can't take this net ban bullshit laying down. He told us he didn't recommend breaking any laws, but the only way to get Tallahassee's attention is to do like a white man's riot. You know, like burn baby burn. Hell, those people always get their way. The man's been up there in Tallahassee working; part of it all. So he'd know. I think it was him that give Kemper some book on how to make a bomb. I heard he told Kemper he prob'ly shouldn't do it, but Kemper, he went ahead and did it anyway."
I wondered if Raymond Tullock had also told them they probably shouldn't beat Tomlinson senseless—after confiding that his Tallahassee contacts had confirmed that Tomlinson had been sent to Sulphur Wells as an informant.
Didn't ask. Didn't need to ask. Instead, I got Julie talking about the cocaine trade. I didn't care about it, but I wanted him to think that I did. He kept asking for water—his throat was so dry. I told him he could have all the water when we were done. He tried to ingratiate himself—"Only a coupl'a good ol' boys like you an' me'd understand that!"—and through his abject eagerness to cooperate, he begged for his life.
I grew sick of him. I was sickened by the whole situation. One of the locker room maxims of hydrology is that shit never flows uphill. The maxim applies to human social dynamics as well. When the good ones, the hardworking hill climbers, are displaced for any reason—bad legislation, ghetto diffusion, or political leveraging—social sewage will flood in to fill the void. It was too damn bad. I wondered if the paper Tomlinson had intended to write on Sulphur Wells would have touched on that dynamic. Decided that Tomlinson's paper would have addressed that, along with subtleties that were beyond my power to understand.
I looked at Julie hanging there. He looked lifeless and mummified, like a mounted fish. Allowed myself to picture, for a moment, this big, loose-limbed goon pounding Tomlinson's face . . . quickly forced the image out of my mind because I didn't know if I could tolerate the cold and calculating rage that filled me.
I said, "Tuck your chin up against your chest," and I cut him down. The shock of the landing knocked the wind out of him. I rolled him over onto his belly, and as I sliced through the tape on his wrists, I said, "My boss says I can let you live, but there're a couple of conditions—Get your damn hands away from that tape on your eyes!"
Julie dropped his hands immediately. "Anything, man. Name it." He was sitting up, rubbing his wrists, massaging his cheeks.
"My boss's got what you might call an import-export business of his own. Only it's no piddly-shit operation like you're used to. He was thinkin' about usin' that guy Kemper Waits to expand into the area, only, after what you told us, Waits sounds like some dumb ass hick."
"He is! Kemper . . . Kemper, he's about half crazy."
"My boss is thinkin' maybe you might be a better choice. Set you up here, let you work into it slow. Rules are simple: We supply the product, you find your own distributors. Screw up and we kill you."
I could see Julie shiver at the thought of that. "I'd ... I'd get paid, right?"
"Make more money'n you ever made in your life. Move down here full-time, Julius. Buy yourself a nice place—that's right, we know who ya are, where you're from. First thing we got to do, though, is knock Kemper Waits away from the trough."
"You want me to kill—"
"I want you to keep your damn mouth shut till I'm done. The way were gonna work it is, we got a man on our payroll in the area. A local cop by the name'a Jackson. Now, Julius, you ever so much as hint to Jackson or anybody else that you know he's on our payroll, you're gonna be one of those ones I told you about. The ones I'm not always so nice to?" I waited for Julie to nod his head eagerly before continuing. "We're gonna have Jackson come down hard on Waits. You're gonna cooperate. Tell him everything you know. Might even have him arrest you on some piddly-ass little thing just to make it look good. Don't worry about it. Jackson'll be told you're one of us when the time's right. When Kemper Waits is out of the way, that's when you'll take over."
I patted him on the head; felt him flinch. Said, "It'll be light in another hour or so. You flag yourself down a ride. Wait for us to get in touch. You handled yourself pretty good tonight, Julius. Most times, they bawl like babies. That's how we know you'll fit right in. My boss, he's pretty impressed."
Julie wasn't sure he was allowed to speak. "You mean this was like a sort of. . . test?"
I was already walking away, making enough noise for two people. "My boss runs a class operation. Can't just let any shit-stomper in."
I was almost to the water when I heard Julie call through the trees, "Hey—fellas? FELLAS? You boys . . . you boys made the right decision. Thanks!"
As I took my time running back to Dinkin's Bay, the first smear of daylight hung foglike over Sulphur Wells. . . then expanded out of the Pine Island tree line: a stratum of gray membrane that, gradually, was streaked with conch pink and violet. Somewhere—over Bimini, maybe; someplace in the Bahamas chain—the sun was wheeling hard around the rim of earth, moving incrementally across the Gulf Stream toward Florida.
I was thinking
about Raymond Tullock. I had seen him only twice, yet the image of him was picture-sharp in my brain: Not as tall as Hannah, but still a big man. Six feet, six one maybe. Tight muscularity. Hundred and eighty pounds, maybe one-ninety. The kind who worked out, stayed fit. Probably had a NordicTrack at home or a weight machine. Maybe a membership to a good health and tennis club. Early to mid thirties, and very careful about his appearance. The night he had surprised Hannah and me, he had arrived wild-eyed but well groomed. Dusty blond hair styled neatly. Wearing the carefully pressed travel-adventure khakis of a kind favored by the affluent armchair traveler. The Banana Republic style of outfit that is worn to make a statement. Tullock had a bony, angular face of a type that I associated with country club tennis players: athletic but articulate. With his face and hair, he resembled one of the doctors on the television show M*A*S*H. Hawkeye's second sidekick? Yeah, that was the one.
I wondered what motivated the guy. It was not surprising that he had become obsessive about Hannah Smith. A case could be made that I was also guilty of that. Nor was it surprising that he and others were working behind the scenes, plotting ways to turn the net ban into a personal windfall. Tullock was an ex—state employee, so he knew the ins and outs of the bureaucracy. It was not unusual that he and his cohorts would use that knowledge to their own advantage. What was unusual was that Tullock didn't hesitate to cross dangerous lines. He had told desperate commercial fishermen that they had to riot to get Tallahassee's attention. He had provided Kemper Waits—an unstable man, by all accounts—with a book on how to build a bomb. And it was Tullock, I was certain, who had seeded the rumor that Tomlinson was an informant. But the man was shrewd. Each time, he had tacked on just the right addendum to absolve himself of responsibility. I could hear him giving a deposition, telling some assistant district attorney that the only advice he remembered ever giving anybody was not to riot, not to burn, and not to retaliate. Could also picture the commercial fishermen that he had manipulated sitting there, handcuffed, admitting, yeah, Tullock had told them they shouldn't.
I wondered how that would play with Ron Jackson. I didn't know enough about the law to guess. Suspected that Tullock was operating in the gray fringe areas, and it depended on just how hard the DA's office wanted to go after him—if they went after him. What hard evidence was there, after all? Some black market book on terrorism? If Tullock was shrewd enough to remain safely in the background, pulling all the little puppet strings, then he was shrewd enough to buy a book in a way that was difficult to trace.
I was certain of one thing: Raymond Tullock had some dangerous kinks in his brain. He was fixated on having Hannah. The expression on his face the night he found us together had been grotesque. I could hear Hannah saying that in Tullock's mind, she and the land had become one. Tullock was determined to have them both, and somehow, that determination had grown into an obsession; an irrational craving that had nudged him toward the edge. It would be difficult to prove—perhaps impossible to prove—but I was convinced that Jimmy Darroux had been killed because of that craving . . . and perhaps Tomlinson, too.
When I was off Captiva Pass, I had to begin angling eastward into unprotected water. There was not so much wind now, but it was still gusting briskly out of the northwest. The wind had a bite to it; an Arctic Sea edge. My clothes had the leaden feel of dried salt and dampness. But the sweater and the good S.A.S. field pants were both made of wool, and I had also gotten my foul-weather jacket out of the stern locker and zipped it on. So I was soggy but warm. Surfed along with a following sea, thinking about Tullock, trying to determine the best way to smoke him out. No way was I going to let the bastard remain aloof from all the damage he had done . . . and would continue to do through surrogates. He was one of the behind-the-scenes guys; one of the cool manipulators. Well... I had some experience in that arena myself.
I was his next logical target, of course. Quite literally, he had caught Hannah and me with our pants down. For Tomlinson, Tullock had only required suspicion to act. The question was, how would he come after me?
Tullock wasn't the one-on-one type—he'd had his opportunity that night at the Curlew fish house. And after I told Ron Jackson what I knew, neither the Copper Rim netters nor Kemper Waits would be in a position to do Tullock's dirty work.
That left Tullock powerless against me ... for a while anyway. At least until he found another stooge.
I took some pleasure in that. I'd already stuck Tullock pretty good— the man didn't even know it. Then Hannah would stick him again when she broke the news about her fish farm. But I wanted to nail him in a way that hurt, really hurt, and I needed some time to do that. Time was something I would have. Tullock might be obsessive, but his each and every act was, at least, logical. Again, that was to my advantage. Logic dictated that he wait a good safe period before risking an attack on me. Too many dead men in too short a period and the full mass of state law enforcement would come snooping around his litde island.
I took pleasure in that, too; the pure reasonableness of it.
I was still musing over ways to trap Tullock as I ran through the old Mail Boat Channel—a couple of markers made of broken limbs and Clorox botdes—and happened to notice a fast mullet skiff angling down on me. It was a green plywood boat slapping along, throwing high spray. One person aboard dressed in a full yellow rain suit. Watched the boat jump a sandbar, coming closer. . . saw the driver morion for me to stop. . . and realized it was Hannah.
What the hell was she doing out here?
I levered the throttle back; waited.
Hannah was idling toward me, her skiff rolling and bucking as waves slid beneath the hull. She had to holler to make herself heard. Couldn't understand her, at first. Then: "Ford! Have you been home yet? Don't go home!"
I began to reply, but did not. There was something strange about the look of her face. . . .
"I've been trying to find you all night! I called and kept calling!"
She had the rain hood up. I was squinting, trying to see her clearly. My damn contact lenses. . . .
"They told me at the hospital you didn't come back last night. So then I decided . . . Ford? Ford! Are you hearing me okay?"
She was close enough now. What I was hoping would turn out to be only a shadow or a grease mark was not a shadow or a grease mark. Her left eye was swollen nearly shut, her cheek a blush of eggplant purple.
I whispered a groaning sound before I yelled, "What happened to your face?"
Her boat was alongside mine now; we had to jockey our engines to keep the boats from slamming into each other. She touched her fingers experimentally to her cheek. It was as if she had forgotten that she was injured ... or as if she had not had time to look in the mirror. Said, "It don't even hurt. It's somethin' we don't need to worry about right now—"
"Did somebody hit you?"
"Would you listen for a second—"
"Who hit you?" I shouted. "Was it Raymond? Goddamn it, I warned you about that guy—"
"That's what I'm tryin' to tell you!" There was a frenetic quality to her tone that demanded I shut up and let her speak. I did. She called, "Yesterday I started thinking about Raymond. Went down and talked to Arlis. He agreed. What you said about Raymond started makin' sense once we fit all the little pieces together. Then last night, after I got back from the hospital, it was pretty late and Raymond, he just opened the door and walked right into my house. It made me so mad that I... I probably shouldn't have, but I asked him about it. About what happened to Tommy . . . and Jimmy. Then I told him about my fish farm, too."
I looked at her; could see in her expression—her poor face—that she knew how foolish that had been. I said, "I don't care what you said, he had no right to hit you—"
"That's not why he hit me. He hit me 'cause I refused to stop seeing you. Then he hit me again because I wouldn't take off to Asia with him. He had my ticket, all the papers, everything all set to go. The midnight flight to Los Angeles. It was like he'd gone crazy. Started rummaging around my h
ouse, taking photographs of me, stuff off the mantlepiece, jamming it all into a briefcase. Like he was stealin' little pieces of me to take along. But that's not what I'm talking about, Ford."
"You called the police. Tell me you called the police."
"Yeah, but I called them because I was worried. Listen to what I'm telling you! I think Raymond musta knocked me out or something. I woke up on the floor and I had this terrible ... I don't know . . .feeling. It had to do with the last thing I remember him sayin' to me. What he said was something about 'after your boyfriend gets home . . .' Or, 'Don't expect your boyfriend to call after he gets home.' Something like that."
I nodded agreeably. Hannah didn't seem to be tracking well. Tullock had probably given her a slight concussion. Why was that happening lately to all the people I cared about? I wished the wind weren't rolling our boats around so badly. I wanted to take her into my arms and hold her . . . wanted to apologize to her for my suspicions, for my coldness. I wanted to make her believe that not all angry men used their fists.
"Don't you see what I'm saying? By then it was almost three in the morning. I called your house and kept callin'. Called the hospital, and then I finally called the Sanibel police. They didn't want to listen to some hicky-voiced girl like me, but I made one of them drive to your place and have a look. It took him about forever to call back. All he said was your house was fine, and your truck was there, but your boat was gone."
"My place—that's where we're going right now. I'm going to put you in bed and have a doctor buddy of mine—"
"No!" Her tone said: Why are you being so slow? "Listen to me! 'After your boyfriend gets home.' That's what Raymond said. Don't you get it? How did he know you weren't home, Ford?"
I thought about that. For a moment, it threw a chilly little shadow over the shiny-bright chain of logic that I had constructed to predict Raymond Tullock's next move. But it didn't make sense. Moving so quickly against me just wasn't reasonable.
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