The Mangrove Coast

by Randy Wayne White

  “You like a drink, senor? Cold beer perhaps? Perhaps menus?” The bartender was a tall man, very black, with a heavy Spanish accent. A putty-colored scar, razor-thin, ran from his ear to his neck. First look at the man’s face, I thought: Maybe knife fight. Second look: Undoubtedly a knife fight.

  Improbable adventure movies aside, it is hard to imagine two men drunk enough or crazed enough to fight with knives.

  I told the bartender in Spanish that we would, indeed, like menus plus a couple of bottles of Polar or Aquila. We would try both. Plus glasses with ice, for that is the way beer is sometimes drunk in the tropics. And, by the way, was the owner around? The Australian man. What was his name?

  “Garret,” the bartender said, choosing to continue in broken English. “Are you a friend of his?”

  “I think we have mutual Mends, but I’m not certain.”

  “He go to the Magali Paris for the kitchen.”

  After we’d ordered, Tucker tapped the bar and made a noise of frustration. “I’ll be damn, that’s too bad. The man you wanted to see, he’s off in damn France.”

  I said, “France?”

  “Didn’t you hear the bartender? Gone to Paris. Even back in World War Two, I hated those bastards. The French, I’m talkin’ about. Stinkin’ wine-drinking sons-a-bitches. Down there in the South Pacific when we was fightin’ the Japs so they could have their damn country back. Run around pissin’ in the streets, what’a they care?”

  The Magali Paris is a supermarket chain popular throughout South America. I shook my head slowly; said nothing.

  We were drinking our beers from the tall glasses filled with ice. Tuck gulped his half down, wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve. “You know what we got in common, Duke? The both of us, we’re nothin’ but tramp steamers on two legs. Tropical junkies. In my heart, I feel like I’m about half-beaner. I really do. Can’t count the times I’ve come this close to growing me one of them skinny Ricky Ricardo mustaches. Know what I mean?”

  Get some drinks in him, Tucker loved to talk. When he asked a question, though, it wasn’t because he wanted an answer. He asked questions because they required pauses that added pace and timing to the stories he told. I said, “Yeah, that would fit your whole act. Perfect, pencil-thin mustache.”

  “Exactly the way I see it! ‘Cause that’s the way I feel in my heart, understand? It’s like this craving I get. It’s like a craving for the sea, but, at the same time, it’s for the jungle.” Gave a little shrug: Can’t explain it. “I want them both close enough to step outside and know they’re there when I take a breath. You’re the same, that’s my guess. I bet we ever set down and talked, really talked, we’d have a shit pot full of stuff in common, you and me.”

  I was drinking a Polar. Ten-ouncer in a lime green bottle. Good beer. “Yep, I’m just a chip off the old block.”

  “Now … there’s somethin’ I never told you about my life, ‘cause I didn’t want you to think bad of me. Thing is … as you know, I spent a lot of my time down here in these little banana republics. Me and Joe Egret, we went about everywhere a man can go without needin’ an airboat or a ladder. Know what we was doin’? Pot haulin’. Yep, run a seventy-, eighty-foot crab boat over here, have the colored boys fill’er up with bales of pot, haul ‘er back.”

  When I didn’t react to that, Tuck added, “It’s illegal, you know. Pot-haulin’.”

  I said, “Uh-huh, I think I read somewhere that bringing tons of marijuana into the United States is something that, yeah, they can arrest you for.”

  “But we never got caught. Nope. Trouble was figuring out what to do with all that money we made. Joe and me? What we was scared of was the IRS net-worthing us. A man can’t outrun the multiplication table no matter what kinda horse he’s riding. A calculator can stick your ass in Raiford just as fast as a. 38. At one time we had close to three million in cash between us.”

  Didn’t want to react, but I couldn’t help myself. Three million cash? Or … maybe it was just another one of his lies.

  Tuck said, “Hell, countin’ all that money, we’d get pissed off if we came to a bill smaller than a twenty. I once used a stack of tens to wipe my business after takin’ a good ’un. Just too much damn trouble to bother with, know what I mean?” Tucker glanced at me for a moment, returned his attention to his beer. “Now … a great big chunk of that money I got hidden away. Not in the U.S., that’s all I’m gonna say. When the time’s right and the coast is clear, I’ll go get her. Maybe ask you to go along, ride shotgun. But know what Joe and me did with the rest of it?”

  “Nope. Don’t have a clue.”

  “Invested it like smart businessmen. Sure did. We opened us a string of seven tanning parlors. This was back before tanning parlors got to be real popular. Like we was pioneering that particular business.”

  “Where?”

  “Panama City.”

  “Panama City, Florida?”

  “Nope. Panama the country. All right downtown, too. Good locations. Couldn’t risk bringin’ the money into the states.”

  I wondered if I should even bother. Yeah, I had to. Couldn’t pass it up. I cleared my throat. “You know, Tucker, Panama’s only, what? a couple of hundred miles off the equator? And Panamanians, a lot of them are pretty dark to begin with. I wouldn’t think tanning parlors would be such a good investment.”

  Tucker was nodding, way ahead of me. “Gawldamn it, when you’re right, you’re right! I wish I’da talked to you first, ‘cause every one of them bastards went bust. Joe and me, we lost us close to a million dollars cash. But you know me, I always try to look on the bright side. You want to talk about a good tan? I had me the best tan you ever seen in your life. No shirt marks or nothin’.”

  Tucker was wagging his fingers at the tall bartender. “Hey there, amigo! We’ll sail again here.” He clumped his glass down on the bar. “Bring me a shot’a that white rum on the side, too.”

  Tucker said, “Since the owner’s not here, what you bet I can get that bartender to talk?”

  He had finished the rum, was still working on his second beer.

  I said, “Talk? Talk about what?”

  “About that guy Amanda hates. Merlot. If Merlot was here with his sailboat, I guarantee you I can get the bartender to tell me. You got those pictures?”

  “Yeah, I have the pictures. But I’ll do the talking. You just sit there and drink your beer.”

  “I don’t think the man’ll talk to you. That scar, a man with a scar like that, you got to figure he knows the price of admission. He’s not gonna go runnin’ off at the mouth just ‘cause you ask.”

  I said, “But he’ll talk to you?”

  “That’s what I’m bettin’.”

  “I guess we’ll just find out, won’t we?”

  I placed the photograph of Merlot and Gail on the bar. Looking at the glossy print—the way the man’s fat thumb strained to touch her breast—irritated me, so I took pains not to allow my eyes to linger. The bartender, however, stared at the picture intently. As he did, I watched his eyes. They focused, then they appeared to refocus from the general to the particular. His expression struggled to remain relaxed, unreadable.

  Yeah, he knew who he was looking at…. I was convinced that the bartender had seen Gail and Merlot before.

  He said, “This woman, she is beautiful, very beautiful, no?” Still speaking English … probably because he didn’t want the rest of the staff to know what we said.

  “Beautiful, yeah, I guess so. I’ve never seen her in person before.”

  “That is verdad? Then why do you carry her photograph?”

  You have to play these things by instinct. The bartender, whose name was Fernando, was smart, savvy and necessarily tricky. Serving drinks to foreigners in a wide-open town like Cartagena required the rare combination of diplomacy and cold-blooded indifference. In any circumstance, the most convincing approach is the one that sticks closest to the truth, particularly with someone used to listening to drunken lies. So that’s
the approach I tried. The truth. “I’m carrying her picture because I’m looking for her.” When Fernando glanced at Tuck—now done with his second beer—I added, “We’re looking for her. My uncle and I. We flew down this morning from Miami to find this woman, because hear ex-husband just died and we have to tell her.”

  Tucker’s head swiveled toward me. “You’re shittin’ me! Her husband, that asshole Frank what’s-his-name, he really is dead?”

  I felt like knocking the old bastard right off his stool.

  I was chuckling. Letting the bartender know it was a big joke. “My uncle knows the man’s dead. My uncle’s a drunk. A troublemaker. He doesn’t know what he’s saying half the time.”

  Fernando had been following along, accepting my story until Tuck interrupted, but now his thin smile told me he didn’t believe a word I was saying. “I wish I could help you,” he said with a shrug. “But I’m afraid I don’t know these people.”

  I had a $20 bill folded in my hand—a week’s salary to restaurant help. I slid the bill under the photograph so that just the comer was showing. “It’s very important. What I told you’s the truth. The woman’s ex-husband is dead. There will be legal complications. We need to find her and take her home.”

  Fernando, I could tell, wasn’t going to budge. “At the Club Nautico, señor, a man’s business is his own. We do our jobs. We give the good service, the good food, and that is all. If you have other questions, you maybe ask Mr. Garret. But I warn you as a humble person” —he eyed the $20-“I would not use your money in such a way with Mr. Garret. He is the owner of this place and not a man to insult.”

  Fernando wheeled away, reappearing a few moments later with our food: platters of fried snapper and black beans with wedges of lime.

  “Damn almighty, Fernando! That smells even better than the grub I had on the plane and, by God, that’s sayin’ something!” As an aside to me, Tuck added softly, “That son-of-a-bitch really is dead?”

  “Yeah, and thanks for handling it so well.”

  He missed the sarcasm. “How?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll call Amanda tonight and maybe find out something. As it is, you just screwed up any chance I have of getting information out of the bartender.”

  “I already told you, he’ll talk to me.”

  I took a bite of the fish. Why even answer?

  “Talk about touchy! You want me to get the information out of him now, or you mind if I eat first?” Throwing it up in the air like he didn’t much care one way or the other, letting me decide.

  I said, “We’ll wait for the owner. Just drop it.”

  “So you don’t think he’ll talk to me?”

  “No.”

  Tucker pushed half a fillet of snapper into his mouth, a chunk of bread and said something—no way of knowing, his mouth was so full. He may have said: “Watch me.” Which is what I did.

  I watched Tucker corner Fernando by the entrance to the kitchen, near the telephone and a sign on the wall that said in Spanish and English: Log all calls.

  I watched Fernando’s scarred face glaze into a mask of indifference … then surprise … then enthusiasm and pleasure. I watched the two men shake hands and—this was unbelievable—I watched them hug slightly and whisper something into each other’s ear … or so it appeared.

  I wasn’t eating. I couldn’t eat. I felt as if I were witnessing some bizarre theater. Tucker Gatrell, an Everglades gangster and unrepentant racist, was suddenly bosom buddies with Fernando, the onyx black Latino who had experience with knives but was too ethical to accept bribes.

  I watched them talk. I watched them laugh. Translation seemed to be a problem. When Fernando didn’t understand Tuck’s English, Tuck simply—and idiotically—spoke louder not slower. He used hand language, too, like some bad actor conversing with Indians in an old Western film.

  Finally, they shook hands again, hugged again, and Tuck returned to the bar, walking his gunfighter walk. He straddled the stool and began to eat. Didn’t say a word.

  I waited….

  I waited….

  Jesus, he was going to make me ask. Finally, I did: “Okay, okay, you and Fernando are suddenly best friends. I apologize. He told you something, what?”

  Tuck had a mouth full of beans. “Told me everything. Just like I knew he would.”

  “I don’t get it. I didn’t lie to him, didn’t try to trick him, I even offered him money. You knew he’d talk to you— how?”

  “‘Cause he’s a Freemason. We’re both Freemasons.”

  “Freemasons? I don’t understand … like a club? You’re both Freemasons, so that means—”

  “I’m a thirty-second degree Master Mason, Scottish Rite and Knight Templar. Not a club, it’s a what-you-call-it, an exalted brotherhood. Tropical Lodge Fifty-six, which is one of the oldest in Florida. Fernando there, he’s just out of Blue Lodge, only a third degree Master and he wants to be a Shriner. If we get some time, I told him we’d sneak off alone and work on it. I’d help him along.”

  I tried to picture Fernando, with his murderer’s scar, wearing a burgundy fez, driving one of those little clown cars at parades. “A Shriner? He gives you information for free just because you belong to, what is it, the same lodge or something? You’re fraternity-brothers, that’s what you’re telling me.”

  This was lunacy.

  “Shows how much you know. Freemasonry is a … hell, you won’t understand. Nobody’s not a Mason can understand. What Freemasonry is is an ancient and honorable union that dates back to the time of the pyramids. The vows a man takes when he gets married? They ain’t close to bein’ as sacred as the vows a Mason takes. You doubt how serious bein’ a Mason is, check the back of a Yankee dollar. The Eye of God on the pyramid, that’s a Masonic symbol put right there by my fellow Freemasons who started the U-S-of-A.”

  He was serious about it, maybe telling the truth for a change, too.

  “I got brothers all over the world, mister man. Joe Egret? He was a Mason. Dumb as that Injun was, he put the time in and learned what he had to learn. Why … Joe actually worked so hard at it, he got to know his stuff better than me. I ate and drank with some brothers down on Cat Island—the Bahamas, I’m talkin’ about—who were the head voodoo chiefs … only they called it something else. Talk about black? Those brothers down there make Fernando here look like an albino-fucking-Swede. Nothing they wouldn’t do for me ‘long as they can put their family and their work first. Me same with them. You didn’t see Fernando’s ring? That’s why I knew he’d talk to me. Has to. Masonic Code. ‘Cause he can trust me and he knows it. Doesn’t matter he’s a beaner or not. Once a Mason, always a Mason.”

  “Did he tell you anything about Gail?”

  “Yep. Seen ‘em both. The fat man had a boat here till the owner, the Austrian guy, kicked ‘em out.”

  “Australian. The owner’s not Austrian, he’s Australian.”

  “The one who took off for France?”

  I ignored that. “Where did Fernando say they went?” Tuck made a slow-down motion with his open palm. “You’ll find out. In good time, you’ll learn it all. What Fernando suggests we do now is stroll out to the end of the dock—see that great big rusting three-master out there? Big enough to carry a small herd of cattle and old enough to sink like a damn tire iron. He says we need to go out there and ask for a man they call the Turk. But we’re going to have to kill some time around here, wait for the man to wake up. He sleeps most the day, stays awake all night. Fernando says we should ask the Turk about real estate, make him think we want to buy something. That way, nobody at the marina will have to tell you where to find the fat man and the lady, ‘cause the Turk’ll let it slip just discussing real estate.”

  “We say we want to buy real estate?”

  “Isn’t that what I said? Merlot, what Amanda told me was, that Merlot was involved in real estate, so it makes sense.”

  “Fernando wouldn’t tell you the rest of it. Where they went?”

  Tucker smacked his l
ips. More fish, more beans. “Didn’t say that. Fernando told me exactly where they are. Told me everything he knew. But I’m not allowed to tell you. Part of the Masonic Code.”

  “That’s absurd. If you know, why bother with the charade of —?” I was shaking my head, frustrated, irritated. “What kind of code are we discussing here?”

  Tucker finished his beer and signaled a smiling and eager Fernando for another round. He said, “Sorry. Can’t tell you that either,” before he called, “Brother Fernando? We’ll sail again here, amigo!”

  15

  The Turk’s name was Jamael Hasakah. Lean man in his mid thirties, six feet tall, black hair, very thick eyebrows, facial features that were delicate, waxen, feminine. The white cotton pullover and drawstring pants he wore made his skin even darker, almost black. He had wide full lips, an Egyptian nose and remarkably long, thin fingers like splints of brown bamboo that he moved constantly, almost experimentally, as he talked. He might have been playing an imaginary accordion.

  The Turk was talking now: “You gentlemen are truly interested in our new community? Our very special real estate opportunity? Then, by all means, come aboard. Come aboard my home! I am the only authorized representative in Cartagena. It is true!”

  His home was an oceangoing motor-sailer over 150 feet long; had to displace 250 maybe 300 tons. Looked as if it might have been built to ship bananas during the days of United Fruit, back in the thirties. Or maybe dates and casks of olive oil through the Suez. The hull was a rust-streaked enamel-white hulk that was made to appear delicate and geometric by a labyrinth of hawser lines and rigging that angled skyward to towering masts. The deck area was massive, with elaborate skylights, an elevated wheelhouse and an open gallery astern: a big-time, old-time, sailing freighter that had seen better days, much better days.

  On its rounded stem, I’d noted the name:

  MOON OF KIZ KULESI ISTANBUL

  “Follow me, follow me!” The Turk continued to wave us along, apparently excited to have company. The deck was a maze of crates lashed as if for shipping. There were bicycles, motor scooters, potted plants, exercise equipment, a couple of sea kayaks. There was a whole row of waste-high bushes growing in plastic boxes. The leaves of the bushes were saw-edge, five-leafed.