The Mangrove Coast

by Randy Wayne White

  I kept fumbling with it, going over and over what details I could remember. Not that there was any alternative. Whatever data Darkrume had uploaded into Gail’s computer had destroyed or garbled the entire program system.

  A call into Bernie Yager had confirmed it. “So you sit there, don’t switch off the machine, and let someone invade you? Doc, the memory bits that were destroyed were in HER computer, you didn’t even have to be on-line at that point. Now you expect me to help? Believe me, if there was anything left to save, I’d do it. But the virus you just described, what’s left after something like that?”

  Nothing, apparently.

  “The piranha programs, I’ve heard you can buy, them from the heavy-duty hackers,” Tomlinson told me. “I’ve come across cyber punks who pretended to have them. Same kind of weird crap shoots across your screen. But this was the first time I ever saw anyone actually do it.”

  Darkrume had indeed done it. All trace of Gail’s correspondence was now gone.

  So I’d spent my driving time trying to visualize the letters I’d read. Not easy because my brain kept slipping into a replay of the exchange with Darkrume—It was your ugly daughter!—and I became furious all over again.

  Now Tomlinson said, “Maybe if you speed up to like seventy, it’ll bounce something loose in your noggin. Can’t hurt and might help.”

  “Know what, Tomlinson? That was one of the cruelest things I’ve ever witnessed. What that guy did to Amanda. Gail Richardson must have extraordinarily bad judgment to get hooked up with someone like that. And to send him videos?”

  “We’ve been through all this. Why keep going over it? Women in that situation, especially the nice ones, they’re just too damn vulnerable. Hey—you want me to drive? We can pull over, take a whiz and let me get behind the wheel.”

  Tomlinson was a tailgater, a lane-weaver, a terrible driver.

  “Nope.”

  “I wouldn’t mind getting to Dinkin’s Bay before sunset, man. Brewskies on the dock with the guides. Maybe order in some appetizers. Chicken wings, they’re sounding tasty.”

  “I’ll go faster.”

  “Man, I wish I had a bottle of beer for every car that’s passed us this trip. Sixty-five, man, that’s Winnebago speed. Zoom zoom zoom the cars just crackin’ past and us tooling along like two catheter cadets in a Caddy.”

  He chuckled. The alliteration was unintentional and pleased him.

  I started to remind Tomlinson that he’d promised me at least twenty minutes of silence, but I stopped in mid-sentence.

  I said softly, “Straightaways.”

  “Yeah, man, you go slow, no matter what. Dozens assed us.”

  I changed the inflection. “Straight away. Straight away.“

  “Uh-huh, which is embarrassing ‘cause a couple of those cars were from Ohio, Indiana, the neck-bender places. No offense.”

  “In Merlot’s letter to Gail, what did he write? ‘I was so upset that when I left your house, I drove straight away to the beach.’ Something like that. You remember that?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “That’s more British than American. ‘Straight away,’ used like that. Or a phrase you might hear in the British colonies. Hong Kong, maybe Kuala Lumpur.”

  “Sure, it jumped right out at me, man. But then I’m a scholar. Colonial English—Merlot’s sentences had that kind of weird syntax. And honor, the way he spelled things. He spelled it H-O-N-O-U-R like the Brits do.”

  Was it true? I couldn’t remember.

  I said, “He used British spelling as well? You’re sure?”

  “Positive. There was this line where he said that the first thing he wanted to do was take her to the beach, some secluded harbour—he spelled it O-U-R—” Tomlinson stopped talking and looked at me, a new awareness in his expression.

  I finished his sentence for him: “He spelled harbor H-A-R-B-O-U-R. But Merlot didn’t write that.”

  “He … shit! You’re right. It was Darkrume, that’s what he wrote to her.”

  “Exactly. Darkrume. The same British usage, the same spelling.”

  “You’re saying … I’ll be damned. Okay, okay, this is really fucking with my composure, man. You’re telling me that Darkrume and Merlot, they’re the same person.”

  I was waving my hand at him, telling him to be quiet. “Give me some time, let me think about this a little bit.” After a couple of minutes I said, “Yeah. Two different screen names, but the same person. Can you have two different names on the Internet?”

  “Absolutely. And the dude could have been anywhere, Colombia, Fumback, Egypt, you name it, and sign on with either name.”

  “What do you think the chances are of two people in different parts of the country, two American men who don’t even know each other, affecting the same limey style?”

  “Zero. Almost zero anyway.”

  “Then that’s what happened. Darkrume said he’s the one who refused to meet her. That’s what kept nagging at me. He was furious by the time he said it, which is why it had the ring of truth. But why would an on-line hustler refuse to meet with the woman he’s hustling? He’s seen her videos, he knows she’s beautiful. You’re more familiar with this business than I am, but my impression of this on-line romance stuff is that it attracts the lonely, the desperate and the predatory. Does that seem accurate?”

  “Hey now, man, don’t forget I’ve got a couple of cyber mistresses myself.”

  As much as I would have liked to, Tomlinson’s oddities were not easy to forget.

  I said, “But generally speaking. Give me one other reason why Darkrume would have refused to meet with Gail. She expected to have sex, right? That’s a hustler’s whole objective, yet he chose not to. Why? Because if they met, Gail would know he wasn’t some handsome photographer from California. He was her fat friend, just down the street.”

  He was nodding. “Somehow I felt it all along but didn’t know why. Merlot invented Darkrume. He orchestrated the whole thing, which is some serious sick shit, man. Very serious.”

  I said, “He plays good cop, bad cop. He sets her up, has her send the videos to some mail-forwarding service with a P.O. box. Maybe in Florida but probably another state. Maybe sends her pictures of some good-looking guy through the same service and says it’s him, Darkrume, this sexy professional photographer. Then he springs the trap, blackmail, and Merlot is right there saying I told you not to trust Darkrume. Let me help you get out of the mess you’re in. He tells her, yeah, the smart thing to do is just pay the guy off. And the whole time, she’s becoming increasingly dependent on Merlot ‘cause only he knows her terrible secret.”

  I mulled it over for a minute. “If he sent a blackmail demand by instant message, there’re no handwriting samples to worry about. And no record of it either, right?”

  Tomlinson said, “Unless Gail copied it and saved it to a whole separate file, no.”

  “Then that’s probably the way he played it.”

  “Or maybe he’s got a partner. Some guy and he had him call Gail and play the roll of Darkrume. A guy with a nice voice. Convincing.”

  We talked about that. There were several ways to make it work.

  I said, “I’m supposed to meet with Frank Calloway tomorrow. He hired an investigator to dig up dirt on Merlot, and he’s going to let me see the file. But I think I’m going to call tonight and make reservations to fly down to Cartagena. You’re right, it seems serious. Leave Friday or Saturday if I can get a flight.”

  “The sooner the better.”

  “I agree. What I should have done is head down there right away. Now I’m worried. This guy really is a freak.”

  When Tomlinson is very serious or concerned, he speaks more softly and becomes more articulate. “I think you need to find this lady, Doc. I really, truly do. Find her and make her believe the truth. Or scare the fat man away. Whatever it takes. He’s making a fool out of that nice woman. He may try to do worse.”

  Yes, maybe a lot worse.

  I drove
in silence for a while, looking at the saw grass and the sky: gold on blue. The saw grass, the way it showed currents of wind, reminded me of elephant grass, the twelve-foot-high grass of the Mekong River and around marshy Tonle Sap Lake, Cambodia.

  Once Bobby and I hiked into a bamboo village, drawn by the amplified buzzing of what we thought might be hiving bees.

  But no …

  It was the sound of flies, fat iridescent green flies. Thousands of flies, millions of flies, a gray haze. All drawn to what had been hung on hooks to die at the center of that village …

  Thinking about it, seeing it again but not wanting to see it, I said to Tomlinson, “If Bobby were alive today, and someone like Merlot hurt his wife or child, I think he would probably—” I stopped. Was there any way to exaggerate what Bobby was capable of doing?

  No. Just as there was no way to communicate some of the atrocities we’d witnessed in the jungles of Southeast Asia. So why discuss it?

  I, on the other hand, was far removed from that place and time, so I would handle it differently.

  Right?

  I would have to handle it differently.

  I listened to Tomlinson say, “I wish I could go with you to Colombia, man. But tomorrow, Musashi gets here with my little girl. I’ve been looking forward to it for months.”

  I told Tomlinson not to worry about it. If Merlot and Gail weren’t out cruising, it probably wouldn’t take me more than a couple of days to locate them. I had photographs. There weren’t that many marinas. And very, very few hugely fat gringos visited the land of cocaine, cartels and kidnappers. So I’d track down the boat, play it by ear. And tomorrow what I might do is ask Frank Calloway to go along with me.

  Tomlinson said, “You serious?”

  Yeah, I told him, but first I had to meet the man, get a feel for how he’d handle himself on the road. A place like Colombia, you didn’t want a whiner tagging along, but I needed someone to vouch that I was on Gail’s side. Not Amanda, though. Not if I could talk her out of it. I’d had bad luck traveling with women in the past.

  But Calloway, that was a different story. He should have a personal interest. Jackie Merlot had taken a lot of the man’s money.

  I made plane reservations that night from the phone in my little stilthouse cabin. I also spent nearly an hour calling old friends and former contacts around the U.S. as well as Nicaragua and Panama, trying to get a line on any mutual friends we might have in Colombia.

  I knew there was a naval amphibious base on Cartagena Bay because I had billeted there years ago. But the people I had dealt with were long gone. So I called old friends and contacts and played the game of Hey, is what’s-his-name still doing this-or-that? And, When was the last time you saw …?

  The more connections these prospective mutual friends had in Cartagena, the better.

  I didn’t come up with a name, but I did come up with a description: an Australian expat who ran a little marina on the island suburb of Manga, which is just across the bridge from the old walled city of Cartagena. The Aussie was the friend of a friend, maybe a former SAS guy, maybe not, the woman I was speaking with didn’t know for sure.

  The name of the marina was Club Nautico, and the Aussie, she said, might be a good source of information.

  “Down there, everyone knows everyone else,” she reminded me.

  She was speaking of the broader community of English-speaking expatriates in Central and South America. She was exaggerating—but not by much.

  Club Nautico: It was a place to start, anyway.

  Something else I did was risk a phone call to my Tampa workout friend, Maggie. Always, always, she’d called me to arrange our meetings. What would I do if her husband answered? I felt ridiculously illicit as I dialed the number. We were just friends; I wasn’t doing anything wrong, so what did I have to feel guilty about?

  Maggie answered. She sounded delighted to hear from me. Her husband was out playing softball, so she could talk as long as I wanted.

  We didn’t talk long. I told her I was going away for a few days. Told her that we’d probably be able to meet in Pass-a-Grille next week.

  “Dinner at the Mermaid,” I told her. “Run five or six, swim maybe for half an hour, then ruin it all with food and lots of beer.”

  She laughed. Maggie had a nice laugh.

  Before we hung up, she told me something that was not a surprise: “Doc? I’m thinking about leaving him.”

  While I was on the phone making reservations, I could look through the window at the porthole lights of Tomlinson’s sailboat throwing yellow tracks across the water.

  Tomlinson over there getting everything shipshape, nice and neat and orderly. His daughter was coming to visit. His young daughter and the mother whom Tomlinson was determined to win back.

  The last time Musashi had visited him (this had been months ago), I had had the misfortune of overhearing one of her attacks on him. Not that I had a choice. Sound carries across water, and Tomlinson’s sailboat is not anchored far from my house. I don’t know what shocked me most: the gutter quality of the woman’s profanity or her venomous assault on Tomlinson. He was a good-for-nothing impiety who clung to an adolescent past, had wasted his life, was a terrible example as a father and who didn’t make enough money to provide his daughter with the eloquent life, the clothes and the private schooling that she deserved.

  It was a painful, disturbing attack to hear.

  Dinkin’s Bay is a quiet place, even serene in a goofy, bawdy, fraternity house way. Yes, there is the occasional fistfight on the dock and more than the occasional drunken beer bash, but the marina community is peaceful, very peaceful, perhaps because individual members are allowed to embrace the private lives of our own choosing. Respect is implicit in such acceptance.

  Musashi’s attack on Tomlinson, however, seemed designed to destroy the delicate scaffolding of his personal dignity.

  The next day, when Tomlinson boated into the marina, I could see him searching the faces of the other liveaboards: Had they heard? Were they embarrassed for him? In our long friendship, it was the only time I’d ever seen him unnerved by that old and eternal debate: Should I be ashamed of what I am? Of who I am?

  This was the woman he had invited back to his boat. This was the woman he had asked to go cruising with him to the Tortugas.

  There is no explaining or understanding the intricacies of the human male-female relationship and, in such a circumstance of obvious abuse, all a friend can do is stand back and pretend not to see or hear.

  I could, however, agree with Rhonda Lister, who told me, “Jesus Christ, what a poisonous bitch that Oriental twat is. Every woman on the islands over the age of twenty-one is wild about Tomlinson, but he’s wasting his time getting beat up by her.”

  It was a mystery.

  I booked one of the Avianca flights out of Miami, a direct to Cartagena. The Friday-morning lunch flight and the food on that fine Colombian airline is almost always good. I asked the lady in reservations, tell me honest now, were there plenty of seats available? Told her I needed to know, because I was thinking about taking a friend, but wasn’t sure the friend could make it. I didn’t mind risking the money, but why bother if there would be seats available?

  The nice lady chuckled and, in Spanish, told me, on Fridays the flight from Miami to Cartagena had plenty of open seats but the flight back would be full. The Sunday-night flight was just the opposite. Full going to Cartagena, plenty of seats coming back.

  “On weekends,” she explained, “the Marimba people like to come to the States and party.”

  By the Marimba people, she meant the happy people; people who’d made enough money in the drug trade to do whatever they wanted.

  So I booked only one seat. A bulkhead seat, aisle.

  The next day, among the strangest of the strange thoughts that went flittering through my brain was: Glad I didn’t book a second seat.

  This was upon discovering Frank Calloway, my potential traveling companion, lying dead on cold Me
xican tiles in his home on Gasparilla Island, village of Boca Grande, on a sun-dappled afternoon in April, a Thursday.

  12

  Calloway had been expecting me, right?

  Right.

  So why couldn’t I find the file on Jackie Merlot?

  I went through the whole house room by room, no luck. The more carefully I searched, the more frustrated I became.

  The file had to be there. The reason I’d boated from Dinkin’s Bay to Boca Grande was not just to meet and speak with Calloway, but because he’d said the information he had on Merlot was too delicate to risk allowing it to circulate outside his personal control.

  Well … he hadn’t said too delicate, but that was the implication.

  Read between the lines: Long ago, Calloway had been Jackie Merlot’s psychologist. Merlot wasn’t being treated for some simple emotional difficulty, there had been pathology involved. Why else would Calloway have observed aloud to Amanda that he was surprised Merlot hadn’t yet been institutionalized? Ethically, Calloway could not go to his ex-wife and tell her about Merlot’s psychological problems. But he could and apparently did tell a private investigator where to find the information he wanted to share with Gail. Probably directed him to specific places: schools or military offices or police records. And maybe, just maybe, Calloway had told the investigator where his old files were stored and maybe just maybe there’d been a recent break-in.

  It depended on how far Calloway was willing to go to circumvent the ethical demands of his former profession and how badly he wanted to get specific information to his ex-wife.

  So the file should have been handy, right? Maybe not out in the open, but at least in an accessible place. Didn’t matter that Calloway had decided to take a swim before our meeting, the file had to be nearby.

  Right? Right.

  So why couldn’t I find the thing?

  Calloway’s study: Heavy wood and leather, chromium steel and thick champagne-colored carpeting. Plaques, diplomas and framed photographs beneath a white ceiling fan.

  Frank’s face dominated most of the photographs. Dark eyes, fixed smile. The man owned suits. Lots of suits.