Ten Thousand Islands

by Randy Wayne White

  I was still in my underwear, lying on her bed while she used a washcloth and pan of soapy water to clean out a scatter-gun variety of puncture wounds and abrasions. She’d insisted; had led me by the hand into her bedroom—but not before I’d tied new fishing line and snaked it past the air conditioner, resetting the trip line. When I was back on the couch, I’d attach it to my ankle once again.

  And I would get back to the couch, even though she was being attentive beyond expectations. I have no interest in casual encounters.

  “My God, that bruise on your side looks awful.” She touched her fingers to my rib cage, tenderly, then got up, went out the door and came back with a plastic sack full of ice. She was wearing a gray T-shirt that read Eldridge Softball. Pearl-white panties, too, which turned her long legs nearly black. Now she combed fingers through her rice-bowl hair and used the pillow to brace the ice against my side.

  Ted Bauerstock was right. Through those wire-rimmed glasses, she had extraordinary eyes. As she leaned over me, I could look through the clear corneas into the optic disks. Her irises were a mahogany shade of amber. The amber was three-dimensional with wine traces, flecked with gold. Her pupils were big as a cat’s in the soft light, black and flawless.

  By moving my head slightly, I could also take churlish advantage and see down her T-shirt—the flat muscularity of stomach, flat breasts with dark aureole rings around elongated nipples, a hint of tan line. Not much. She apparently liked to spend time outside.

  “Know what you reminded me of? You know that old Cary Grant movie, the one he goes running around looking for this jaguar that’s escaped? Bringing Up Baby, that’s it.”

  She had the washcloth again, warm water-sopped, and she was moving her fingers through my chest hair, cleaning the scrapes. To get a better angle, she scooched farther onto the bed; had one foot on the mattress, leg bent, so I could see her pearl panties; the swell of pudenda and outlined curl of hair.

  “The reason Cary Grant is chasing the jaguar is, a dog stole this very important dinosaur bone and—how’d it go?—I think they were worried the jaguar ate the dog and, heck, I can’t remember, but it was hilarious.” She stopped rubbing my chest with the cloth for a moment, as if she’d noticed something. Her eyes slowly widened, then she stood up fast. “Marion! You’ve got the wrong idea about this!”

  Hastily, I pulled the blanket over my hips; felt like an idiot. “Nora, I’m very sorry. I had no idea … I mean, I didn’t realize what was happening … don’t think for a moment … I didn’t even touch you.”

  Now she was laughing. “Don’t worry about it. I’m flattered, but no more sponge baths for you, mister.” Her laughter faded; she stood there staring at me in her T-shirt. “Know something, Ford. I thought you were one of the biggest jerks I’d ever met. And a bookworm. I don’t think I’ve ever misread someone so badly in my life. Now it turns out I like you. Something else?” She waited for a few beats, looking at me before she added, “You are a very attractive guy. I didn’t even realize it at first, now I do. But I’m real slow about this sort of thing. Physical contact, I mean. So it’s probably good I’m leaving in the morning.”

  That was the first I’d heard it. “Oh?”

  “Yeah. I’m driving up to Ted’s ranch tomorrow, but I’m not supposed to say anything because he’s had a lot of bad press lately about him and women he’s dated, so he’s trying to play it cool. Keep it private. Not that it’s a date,” she added quickly, “because it isn’t. He wants to talk about the museum, how he can help and the scholarship fund they’re going to set up in Dorothy’s name.”

  “A business trip,” I said.

  “Exactly. To surprise him? I think I’ll take Della along. That way I can interview her on the drive up. No interruptions. But later this week, or maybe next week, give me a call, we’ll get together and do something. Fish, hang out, explore some islands. Whatever you want.”

  I leaned and gave her a kiss on the forehead before walking to the living room. “I’d like that.”

  Early in the morning, with the first gray dust contrails of light filtering through curtains, I awoke to find Nora kneeling beside me. I felt her kiss my cheek, then touch her lips to mine. Heard her say, “Move over, big guy.”

  I looked and saw that she was naked. Felt her bony rib cage as she slid in close; felt the heat of her nipples through my chest hair as I cupped her in my arm; felt her fingers trace my stomach and spread the elastic band of my shorts, searching. She kissed me hard when her fingers found me, and she whispered, “It’s officially later this week.”

  I said, “I told myself I wouldn’t let this happen.”

  She said, “Was that earlier this week or later?”

  “I can’t remember. It’s hard to think because of what you’re doing.”

  “Really? Then break off that damn fishing line.”

  19

  On Monday at noon, the fourth of October, the director of the National Hurricane Center at Miami announced that the third tropical storm of the season had now officially reached hurricane strength, with winds exceeding the required seventy-five miles an hour. Off Jamaica, in fact, one gust was measured at 103 miles per hour by the British Volunteer Observation Fleet, which made it a Category Two hurricane on the Safir-Simpson scale.

  They named it Hurricane Charles. It had a regal sound.

  I was standing at the bar drinking a Diet Coke, watching television with Tomlinson and a dozen others, when the announcement was made. I heard a man and two women sitting at the bar exchange the standard remark common to some Floridians when a hurricane is mentioned. “We’re due for a big one. I’ve been saying it all along.”

  Many do say it, usually with a perverse wistfulness. My own dread of hurricanes is compounded by all the dopes who’ll say, “I told you so!” after it does happen. And it will. It most certainly will.

  Tomlinson was drinking a bottle of Hatuey in a coolie cup, standing there in his cutoffs and leather sandals, wearing a black silk Hawaiian shirt with a hula girl on the back framed by pink frangipani blossoms. He’d caught a big mangrove snapper the night before and it was now roasting in his little gas oven aboard No Más. It made a nice aroma when you stood on the dock near his boat.

  There was still a silver smear of scales on his shorts.

  After breakfast, we’d said goodbye to Nora and Della; gave them sterile, impersonal kisses on the cheek, each of us keeping our private business private. I went for a long run through the backstreets off A1A, then spent the morning making phone calls from the apartment. Checked with Janet Mueller, whom I’d asked to take care of my fish tanks. My fish were doing fine, except I was running low on food for my sharks. Before I could stop myself, I told her to talk with Jeth. He’d cast-net some mullet.

  Decided what the hell, maybe it would at least get them back on friendly terms.

  I left a message for Detective Parrish and another for Dieter Rasmussen, the big cheerful German at Dinkin’s Bay, who was also a retired Munich psychopharmacologist. I wanted to speak with him because I was troubled by a simple realization: everyone liked, admired and trusted Ted Bauerstock except for me. Was it possible that there are people so practiced and devious that they can fool all but a very, very few? Or was it because I found his looks, his wealth and his charisma intimidating? Perhaps I was being unfair and judgmental, the typical alpha male, as Nora had once called me.

  Other people I tried to reach were involved with government service. One was Bernie Yager, a computer genius.

  Ivan and Ted Bauerstock weren’t the only ones who had access to classified files.

  Unfortunately, a woman who didn’t give her name left a message for me at the bar: Bernie was on vacation, wouldn’t be back for three weeks.

  Now, this news of the hurricane meant that I couldn’t spend much more time on the Keys. Depending on which way Charles went, I might have to get back to Sanibel in two days, maybe three at the most, to button up my stilt house. If it looked like it really was going to get bad, I’
d have to release all my fish. Let them fend for themselves—not a pleasant option.

  According to the cheerful weather guy, NOAA had sent its 41-C four-engine prop plane into the eye of Charles to measure pressure gradients, wind speed and temperatures at various altitudes. All data was fed into the onboard computer, then transmitted to the weather center in Miami where it would continue to be analyzed, along with high- and low-pressure profiles in all directions, with temperature ridges and wind patterns factored that might alter the storm’s path.

  A hurricane is not unlike a bead of electricity. It follows the path of least resistance. High-pressure areas, pressure ridges, cold fronts and opposing winds are all objects of resistance.

  Over the night, Hurricane Charles had shifted direction. It was now moving west, gobbling water and pockets of low pressure, already blotting out the eastern tip of Cuba as it moved toward the Florida Straits and the Gulf of Mexico, traveling at the speed of a dependable ocean freighter.

  Tomlinson said to me, “You hear it? The waves.”

  The wind had continued to freshen; was now blowing a steady fifteen with gusts to twenty. I looked at small white caps breaking over the rock jetty. “What about the waves?”

  “The rhythm, the pattern. It’s changed, can’t you hear it?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “It’s the way the Calusa knew a thousand years ago. The way they knew their nightmare was coming. On this coast, waves roll ashore about eight every minute. But that thing out there, that storm, it’s gaining mass, sucking things up. It’s giving the waves big shoulders, making them slower. Hear the difference? Now we’re getting five, maybe six waves a minute. The Indians always knew. They were brilliant in their way.”

  I told him, “If it keeps coming, you need to have No Más hauled. What do you care, you’ve got the money. Or get the hell out of this shallow water. You don’t want to be anywhere near Pennekamp or Key Largo. All this coral.”

  He looked at me, his bright blue eyes sober and alive. “No man. I’ve been waiting for this for a while. If it happens, if it really happens. Hell! Charles gets near enough, No Más and me, we’re sailing into the eye.”

  “Dog-tor Ford! I have a message to call you at this number.” The German accent of Dieter Rasmussen was unmistakable. Still, with all the noise in the bar—the Mandalites were listening to Jimmy Buffett and arguing about water spouts—it was tough to hear.

  There was also zero privacy.

  Dieter told me he was aboard his Grand Banks trawler, Das Stasi, and I could reach him there.

  I jogged up the steps to the apartment. I saw the rumpled sheets on the couch bed and thought of Nora as I picked up the phone.

  A nice independent lady. There seem to be fewer and fewer of those. Spirited and smart, too.

  “Doctor Ford! It is so surprising to receive the call from you, yah! We don’t even have the conversation here at the marina, now we are talking on the phone.” Rasmussen’s tone was jocular, but there was a goading edge to it. I didn’t blame him. I didn’t actually avoid him at Dinkin’s Bay, but I’d never gone out of my way to sit down and have a talk with the guy. Everyone liked him. Everyone said he was a lot of fun; generous and brilliant, as well. But what everyone didn’t know was that his boat had been named after the small, very select intelligence service that had once operated in Germany. I found that off-putting.

  “We’re both very busy guys. And Dieter? Call me Marion. Or Doc. Okay?”

  “That we are busy, we both know that is not the reason we do not talk.” He was laughing. “Even so, I am glad to finally have this opportunity to speak with a man who, I suspect, was once so famous in so many private ways.”

  There it was. Exactly why I’d dodged one-on-one conversations with the guy. Not that I was surprised. Sanibel is a very popular vacation and retirement island among the intelligence community worldwide.

  I said, “Tell you what, Dieter. When I get back, we’ll sit down and exchange stories. Right now, though, I could use your help. You really are a physician and psychiatrist?”

  “Oh yah, yah! I was the foremost psychopharmacologist in Munich and am licensed to practice and do research even in this country. You are having emotional problems?”

  I smiled at that, then laid it out. I told him about my conversation with Ted Bauerstock, trying to reduce my concerns to the simplest elements. I told him about Dorothy Copeland’s grave. I asked about manic fixation; told him about the totem and the gold medallion.

  He said, “You are asking me if it is possible for a very evil man to fool all the very best people? Yah, of course! I can tell you frightening stories, terrible stories, about some of my own patients. But I can do more than this for you. You say this man was institutionalized in North Dakota?”

  “I was told he attended a very strict boarding school there. I was never told that he was institutionalized.”

  “That is easily enough found out. There is one very, very fine facility there if money is not a problem. It is full-time treatment and behavior modification, and I guess you could call it a boarding school in a way. Some people have spent years there. I will contact my colleagues. They will know my work and will talk to me.”

  “You can ask them about Ted Bauerstock?”

  “No! That would be a breach of ethics; illegal as well. But I can ask for their case histories on certain manias. Part of my research, understand. If your suspicions are merited, I will find this person as easily as you would pick out his photo. The symptoms are as unmistakable as fingerprints. His name will never be mentioned.”

  “He’s on the verge of being elected to a political office. So maybe it’s about time someone dug into his background. We don’t need psychopaths in the state senate.”

  Dieter laughed. “But why not! Psychopaths are the politicians of your country’s future—and your recent past.”

  I didn’t care for his flippant attitude. “Call me overly patriotic, Dieter, but I find it offensive when foreigners criticize my country while they’re drinking our beer, sleeping with our women and getting rich.”

  “It is not a criticism! My dear Ford, at a time when our most personal behavior can be scrutinized instantaneously, only those who lie automatically and without remorse will rise in the political ranks. Why? Because only they have nothing to fear!” He chuckled at my discomfort. “I will get the information for you. A day, maybe two. That’s all it will take. Do you have a fax number? An e-mail address?”

  I gave Rasmussen the Mandalay’s fax number, but when I started to thank him, he interrupted. “Wait! I want something in return.”

  “If you’re talking about billing, I can pay you. That’s not a problem.”

  “Not money. I have plenty of money. It is something else. An explanation.”

  I waited, feeling increasingly uneasy.

  Listened to him say, “Nearly fifteen years ago, a member of the Communist organization, Students for a Democratic Society, disappeared from a bar in Aspen, Colorado. The night he disappeared, there were members of U.S. Naval Intelligence in that same bar. With them was a member of SEAL Team One, along with a representative from Studies and Operations Group, your top secret organization. The name of the bar was The Slope. That man’s body was never found. Another SDS member was also targeted to be killed. This was in retribution for the bombing of a Naval facility in San Diego.”

  I said softly, “I’m familiar with this story, Dieter.”

  “I know that you are! I skied in Aspen last winter. The name of that bar has changed, but the picture is still on the wall of you and your SEAL colleagues. You were there that night because one of the men killed in that bombing was your close friend. I have two questions: Were you with Naval Intelligence? That is unclear. Or were you the SOG member?”

  I spoke carefully. “I was never in the military, Dieter.”

  “Yah, I knew it! The SOG member in the bar that evening, he was very gifted. Very famous in the craft, a, h
ow do you say, der Attentaeter. He was a man who sometimes went by the name of North. Did much work in Cuba. So my second question is this: Why haven’t you? Why haven’t you extinguished him?”

  “Who?”

  “You know him. Him.”

  I said, “I am completely lost. Is any of this supposed to make sense?”

  “Of course you don’t understand me. But please, answer.”

  “Did you sail all the way to Dinkin’s Bay just to ask me strange questions?”

  He thought this was hilarious. I listened to him roar. “Yah! It was a consideration! I knew it must be an interesting place, the two of you at one small marina. But your answer! Why was this second Communist subversive not extinguished?”

  Looking through the apartment’s sliding doors, out onto the boat basin, I could see Tomlinson aboard No Más, sitting cross-legged on the cockpit locker. He was eating fish; had a glass of red wine balanced on the stern coaming. He appeared to be talking to the glass. Talking to his wine? Yes, no doubt about it. He looked like a stork with dreadlocks. He seemed to be really enjoying the fish.

  He’d baked the entire snapper, yet hadn’t invited me to dinner? I’d loaned him my fine Loomis rod to catch the damn thing. Come to think of it, he hadn’t even thanked me.

  I said, “Dieter, I have no idea what you’re talking about. But, if I did, I’d say the party in question, the Communist? If he doesn’t start being a little more thoughtful, his days may be numbered.”

  It was nearly sunset. Because he knew I was still expecting more calls, Jack, the owner, told me I was welcome to carry around the restaurant’s portable phone. “If you’re down here to help Della, we want to take care of you any way we can,” he told me. “This place may be kind of strange and funky, but we’re family.”

  Trouble is, they couldn’t find the portable phone. Then Salina remembered that Tomlinson had carried it out to his boat and never brought it back.

  I asked her, “Where is Tomlinson?”