The Mangrove Coast

by Randy Wayne White

  Once her cell phone rang and I listened to her say, “Steve, I’m going to make this short and sweet. I don’t want you calling anymore. I don’t want you leaving any more messages. I’m sorry, but I don’t feel that way about you and there’s nothing you can do about it. No … no more of your idiotic lines from Casablanca. We never crossed the Broward County line, so don’t even fucking talk to me about Paris.”

  After that, she stomped off toward the study and came out a few minutes later, exhaling smoke.

  Behind her, I heard Tomlinson say, “Pretty good shit, huh?”

  I said, “Dope fiends, I’m surrounded by dope fiends. Jesus.” And I watched her smile at me.

  She had removed her blazer. Through the white blouse I could see that she wore a gauzy-half bra. It showed her washboard body like a relief map. I pretended that I didn’t notice. It was an old buddy’s daughter, for Christ sake. Which was probably why she was going out of her way to show me that she was now an adult woman making adult decisions.

  Mostly we sat around and waited.

  I used her cell phone to make a couple of calls. She gave me the number and the name and I reached Deputy Melissa Grendle at the general investigations desk, Broward County Sheriff’s Department. Amanda had already told Grendle about the money that had been withdrawn from her mother’s accounts, but I decided to give it a try myself. Grendle was still uninterested, unimpressed. Polite indifference is a common buffer mechanism and she used it.

  I hung up disappointed, but not surprised. Law enforcement may be the most demanding yet thankless job in America. Cops are underpaid, overworked and held up to public inspection and public ridicule to a degree that no other profession would tolerate. Which may be why the demarcation between outstanding cop and incompetent cop is becoming increasingly wide. The good ones, the really good ones, do it because they love it and they are intelligent enough to accept the job’s drawbacks philosophically. The bad ones do it because it answers some tough-guy film fiction they have chosen to portray, and they are too stupid or lazy to actually do it well.

  Officer Grendle was one of the lazy ones. Perhaps one of the stupid ones, too, although I didn’t speak with her long enough to pass judgment.

  When I clicked off, Amanda gave me a look like: See? I told you.

  FBI agent Mitchell Wilson, however, was neither stupid nor lazy. “It’s like I told the daughter, Mr. Ford, we’ve got a copy of a written report, the local sheriff’s department, saying the woman stated that she planned to leave the country willingly. That’s not kidnapping, no matter what the daughter thinks. Now, okay, this other business, the money, all those withdrawals, yeah, I agree, it has an odor to it. Maybe it stinks. I want you to keep me informed about it because you sound like a reasonable guy and, like I said, what’s going on has an odor. A little bit of a smell; something may not be right. But we don’t know enough yet to warrant an investigation. Understand what I’m saying?”

  I understood.

  The last call I made was to Frank Calloway’s Lauderdale office where the hardworking Betty Marsh confirmed that Mr. Calloway hoped to meet with me tomorrow afternoon in Boca Grande, but that, yes, he would call me personally to confirm.

  “Thursday,” she said, as if double-checking an appointment book. “In the late afternoon. He said something about you coming by boat?”

  I said, “Yep. But have him call me early, just in case the weather’s bad and I decide to drive.”

  I gave her Amanda’s cell phone number as well as my home number.

  A couple of minutes later, I heard an electronic voice say: “Welcome. You’ve got mail!” And then Tomlinson was calling us: “Hey! Looky, looky, looky at all the letters this lady got. Your mother, I’m talking about. Lots of letters. They were all deleted, but I got ‘em back.”

  Shouting because he’d cracked the code.

  There were a couple of hundred letters, counting the junk mail ads for porno shows and moneymaking schemes. Maybe three hundred letters. A bunch.

  I said to Tomlinson, “So this is the great educational network you’ve been telling me about. Finally, I get to see what I’ve been missing.”

  The cursor was highlighting one of the letters. It was titled Betty Bell and Her Twin liberty Bells. Free Sex Show!

  “You see, Amanda?” Tomlinson said. “You see how cynical he can be? At least admit that this one’s patriotic. Man … we’ve got a lot of reading to do, huh? Your mom had plenty of spare time on her hands.”

  A middle-aged divorced woman, yeah, with enough money. Nothing to do but sit at the computer.

  We started going through the letters at random, concentrating on the ones written by people whose screen names reappeared over and over. Merl was one of the two most common screen names. The other was Darkrume. There were dozens of letters from each and dozens of replies.

  “Merl,” Tomlinson reasoned. “Pretty safe bet that’s Jackie Merlot. One of those friendly sounding screen names. Harmless. Trying hard to sound harmless anyway. The other one … what? Someone who likes fantasy novels? Darkrume …”

  Yeah, Merl was Jackie Merlot. According to the status bar, the first E-mail that Gail received from him was dated just less than a year before. The three of us scanned the first couple of letters. He wrote long, windy sentences. They seemed stuffy-formal. Had a pseudo-intellectual tone that masked a false sincerity impossible to miss.

  Well, not impossible. The lady had apparently been fooled….

  “Dear Gail, It has been a long time since we talked. I heard it thru the executive grapevine that you and that salesman you married, Frank something, are divorced. So here I am to say that he has to be a very unstable person to let go of someone as beautiful as you. You may remember from the past that I loved doing volunteer social work. I love helping people. I want you to know that I am volunteering to help you any way that I can. My business is so big now and demands so much time but I don’t care. It is an international company and I am C-E-O and C-F-O. I cannot live in the United States because it would be an unwise move due to tax obligations. It does not matter. Fifteen years ago I was there for you and I am still your loyal servant if you require assistance.”

  “My God,” Amanda said. “I can’t believe she even bothered writing the guy back. What a jerk. I’ve got all kinds of E-mail friends but none that illiterate. This noble-knight-on-a-steed stuff tells you how lonely she really was. The fact that she would write him back, I mean.”

  The next letter was dated two days later. Yeah, Gail had replied, so Merlot repeated his offer to help. He wrote: “I would love to be the shoulder you need to rest your head on. I am a man of honour. You never judged me by the way I looked but how I looked in my heart. These small people who are losers and quick to judge make me sick. That is because you are smart enough to see me for the real person I am. Anytime you need my shoulder, write me. I’m thinking about renting a place in Lauderdale for a few months to take care of some business….”

  She said, “It was like he could sniff the wind and smell how lonely she was. Thinking about renting a place in Lauderdale, my ass. He was tracking her.”

  “It does indeed seem that way.”

  “He sounds like he dropped out of school in the tenth grade.”

  “Let’s skip ahead twenty-five or thirty letters just to see where it takes us.”

  I was in the chair now and I used the mouse to scan down. Most of the letters from Merl were labeled NO SUBJECT. But there was one from Darkrume that was labeled HOW YOU MAKE ME FEEL, and that’s the file I opened.

  Amanda was apparently a faster reader than I. I was only a couple of sentences into the letter when she grasped my shoulder and said, “Oh … God. I’m not up for this.”

  She had a strong grip; I could feel her nails digging in.

  She said, “This is just … just sick. I can’t read this crap. Anybody who’d write that kind of trash to my mom is … and I thought Jackie Merlot was an asshole.” Then she turned quickly and left the room.


  I returned my attention to the letter as Tomlinson said, “Know what? I don’t blame her.”

  The letter wasn’t just sexual, it was detailed, graphic, aggressive. It combined the language that I assume is in porno novels with terms of endearment that I associate with people who feel genuine affection for one another. Gail was “My dearest darling.” She was “My soul mate, the kindest, funniest, sexiest woman of all time.” She was the woman who “writes like an angel and thinks like a whore.”

  The first several paragraphs of Darkrume’s letter described in detail what he wanted to do to her, what he wanted to use on her body and inside her body to help bring her to the brink of “ecstasy.” The second part of the letter described what Darkrume wanted Gail to do to him.

  At least, I assumed that Darkrume was a him. From the way he described himself, there was nothing left to the imagination and little doubt. The letter was picturesque, playful, and left me with the impression that this was a game that he and Gail enjoyed playing and it wasn’t the first time.

  I was struck by a line in the letter: “When we finally do meet, I want to photograph you. Maybe find a secluded beach near a harbour I know. On the Pacific, of course. A woman as beautiful as you deserves to be photographed by an artist. I am an artist….”

  Tomlinson was apparently reading the same passage, because he said, “Ah-h-h, a photographer.”

  The screen name, yeah. Darkroom. That explained it.

  Another line from the letter that caught my eye: “I love the videos you have sent. I watch them alone almost every night. But I can’t get past the dream of touching you in person. My God, you are truly gorgeous!”

  I thought about it for a moment before I said, “Is he making this up? Or did she really send him videos?”

  “I … I think she really did send this dude videos. A very heavy gig going on here, man. And she hadn’t even met the guy. Unusual.”

  “But why? This is a nice woman. An intelligent woman.”

  Tomlinson echoed what I was already thinking: “Her husband tells her she’s fat, rotten in bed and then he shacks up with a much younger woman. Isn’t that the way Amanda explained it? So she needs reassurance and she needs it quick ‘cause she’s at about rock bottom. Maybe headed for a nervous breakdown. Yeah, she is a nice lady and she’s smart. Smart enough to know that it’s dangerous these days to get out there on the dating scene. Plus, she doesn’t know any men. So she lets herself get involved in a hot cyber-screw. You know, an on-line affair. No muss, no fuss. No blood tests required, no need to hose down the decks afterward. Oral sex. Real oral sex, because it’s nothing but words. A mind-fuck pure and simple. That much makes sense.”

  “Does it?” I said. The tone I used told Tomlinson that I thought it was idiotic.

  He was unruffled as always. “It’s like weed, man. Don’t knock it unless you’ve tried it. Right now, I’ve got three cyber affairs going. All with happily married ladies. Or so they say. Honestly? I think one of them’s a guy. You never know on-line. Hell, you can say you’re anything, how you gonna check? Him I only write out of a sense of fair play. Nothing against the flute-tooters—they’ve got to be born that way, right?—but I just don’t see the charm.”

  “But why? Why would you do something like that?”

  “Because they’re lonely, man. And I understand what it’s like to be lonely. You know me, I’ll do anything to help another human being to get over the hump. It can be one painful bitch of a life, so why not cooperate when someone asks. Hey, don’t look at me like that”—he was smiling—“I can’t whack off and type at the same time. I’ve tried it, it just doesn’t work. So it’s more like a … a public health service I’m offering. If the ladies want to type sexy notes back and forth with a man they’ve never met, who’s it hurt? These two women, my cyber mistresses, they got kids and professions and happy husbands. But we screw like crazy through E-mail and instant messages.”

  “You don’t even have a telephone on your boat.”

  “I plug the modem into the connecting block outside the gift shop. You didn’t wonder why I was spending so much time at the marina? A couple of nights ago, I had sex with one of my cyber girls while we were hidden by a curtain in a crowded restaurant. No panties and she pulled her dress right up over her head. Her idea, man, not mine, although I loved it. She says that the things we do, I’ve saved her marriage.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “And it’s all imaginary. You’ve never really met her.”

  “Don’t even know her name. Not for sure, anyway. She calls herself Phaedra. And yeah, she definitely has a couple of kids and her husband’s a big successful honcho. That much I’d bet on. We met in a chat room and we’ve been having sex for two, maybe three months. An on-line affair, it always starts with little hints about horniness, then escalates pretty fast. The first few letters, I’m talking about. We follow Darkrume’s letters back, I’d bet that’s what we’d find. Little hints about this and that, just joking around, but mostly writing about what nice, thoughtful, honorable people they are, before one night they decide to let it happen. Sending videos, though, that’s above and beyond the call of loneliness.”

  I was looking at Darkrume’s words on the screen—something else troubled me about the letter. It wasn’t the content. It was a word or a term or phrase … something that was out of place. What?

  Tomlinson said, “I know why you’re shaking your head. It’s because none of this makes sense to you. The first time we met, Doc, I took one look at your face and I thought: This man is living a chronological nightmare. That face of yours, I’ve seen it in photos by Matthew Brady. John Ford’s films, same lost expression. It’s like the karmic mailman stuck you in the wrong slot.”

  I said, “What?”

  Tomlinson said, “You, Doctor Ford, were not made for these times. That’s all I’m saying. Know who’s got exactly the same problem? Your uncle. Yeah, Tucker Gatrell. Both you guys got sent to Earth a couple of generations too late.”

  Tomlinson and Tuck: Each assumed he was an expert on the other.

  He said, “This whole Internet business has got to be like fingernails on a blackboard to you. Or like teenagers arguing.”

  After two joints and three hours looking at a computer screen, this is what I had a right to expect from Tomlinson.

  Time to change the subject.

  I said, “What I want to do is read all these letters in order. All of Darkrume’s first. He and Gail had this weird relationship going and I don’t like the business about her sending him videos. We need to check around the house, see if she really does own a camera.”

  “She does. I was snooping in one of the closets while I was waiting for you to get out of the head. She’s got a video camera on a tripod. Perfect for taking self-portraits. No cassette in it, though. I checked that, too.”

  “Then I don’t like it. Some guy wins her trust, she sends him self-made videos and he uses them to blackmail her. I can see that happening. How long were they E-mailing each other?”

  Tomlinson reached over my shoulder and took the mouse. He clicked it, clicked again. “Darkrume started writing her about two weeks before Merlot did. The letter we just read was sent in late August, so they’d had a couple of months together. Plenty of time to get a hot and heavy cybersex deal going. It’s scary how easy and fast you can win someone’s trust if you’re writing every day.”

  I started to tell Tomlinson that something about the letters still troubled me. Was it a word? Yeah, maybe … maybe a word. So what I wanted to do was spend the next few hours and read each and every letter. Use the laser printer beside the computer to get them all on paper. That way, maybe put everything in perspective and figure out the detail, the nagging little detail, that continued to bother me. One by one, read Darkrume’s letter, read Gail’s reply. Read Merlot’s letter, read Gail’s reply. Go back and forth. Keep it orderly.

  I said, “We’ve both seen her photograph. A woman this classy, it’s tough to imagine he
r writing graphic sex scenes to some stranger.”

  “Not a stranger, he was her E-mail lover. There’s a big difference. This is America, man. For the last forty years, we’ve learned that our dreams can come true on a television screen. A TV screen is exactly what we’re looking at now. We trust this screen, man, it’s part of our family. What better place to find romance? You don’t believe she’d do it? Let’s check the lady’s letters and see.”

  We checked and, yes, she’d replied to Darkrume. Replied with enthusiasm, too. Ooohhh, it was okay to do that and that and that to her, but what she really wanted was for him to do this and this and this….

  The description went on for many paragraphs.

  After reading the letter, Tomlinson said, “Far out! Now I can understand why your buddy was in love with this lady. Match the photo I saw with these words, and this is one of the great bedroom women I’ve ever had the honor to be associated with.”

  Feeling an irrational animus, I flipped his hand away from the mouse and closed the file. He gave me a look like, Whoa, buddy, lighten up!

  But enough. I’d read enough.

  I said, “Just for the hell of it, let’s see what Merlot was writing at the same time. These letters are listed chronologically, right?”

  I opened another file and surprise, surprise. Merlot was also concerned about Gail’s involvement with her Internet lover. A couple of lines written during the same week in August: “My beautiful friend. When I left your house tonight I was so worried about you I drove straightaway to the beach. Even with all my investors hounding me for details, all I could think about was you and the mistake you might be making in trusting Darkrume too much….”

  And: “… you don’t know this person. If he cares so much for you, why does he refuse to write to me, your closest friend?”