Ten Thousand Islands

by Randy Wayne White

  “Good, good, okay. What about the rainbow stripes down the middle of the road?”

  “I’m afraid that’s the toadstool God pulling one of her little tricks.”

  I said, “Uh-huh, that’s what I thought. I’m starting to understand. It’s like code. I have to unscramble everything. At least my stomach’s feeling better. So maybe that’s not a bad idea, go somewhere and get something to eat.”

  “The munchies, I hear you. See? Now you’re getting into it….”

  • • •

  That night, dizzy, exhausted, passed out on the couch in the Mandalay’s apartment, I was awakened once again by an abrupt tug on my ankle. The fishing line outside, broken by a late-night visitor, popped once, then twice.

  I’d been immersed in a dream so real in terms of awareness and visual details, and so emotionally powerful, that it seemed I had the very real choice of staying in that dreamy world, or of returning to reality.

  Had it not been for the fishing line pulling at my ankle, and what it meant, I would have chosen to remain as long as possible in that place of imagination—for it had to be imaginary, fabricated, no doubt, by the lingering effects of the psilocybin mushrooms circulating in my brain and my heightened susceptibility to Tomlinson’s suggestions.

  In the dream, I was wearing clothing not of these times. It was rough-woven, hand-loomed. There was some kind of weapon strapped to my hip, something heavy. I could feel it thump my left leg as I walked.

  It seemed a comfortable, familiar feeling; a weapon so customary that it did not require inspection or definition.

  I was walking through a stone chamber with a vaulted rock ceiling framed by rough-cut beams. There were windows in the walls without glass. Through the windows were muddy streets where oxen pulled wagons. Beyond were gray moors. There was an oak forest so green it appeared to be black.

  I could smell the mud. Could smell lichen on bare rock.

  It was cool, nearly cold. Half of one wall was a fireplace. Stones dissipated the heat. There was a bough of evergreen, like a good luck charm, tacked above the hearth. I crossed a hallway, then another. I knew the building well. At a set of double oak doors, I stopped and tapped. Heard a woman’s voice say, “My love … ?”

  It was a voice that I had never heard. It was a voice that I’ve known forever.

  Then she was there, dressed in white crinoline that touched the floor, long blond hair hanging to her waist, material clinging to her body, her arms held out to me. Her face was luminous in golden light, a woman so beautiful that seeing her caused me to linger upon detail: lighted portions of chin and cheek, strong nose creating shadow, perceptive eyes unaware and uncaring of her own beauty. Her voice was a kindred chord as she said, “I’ve waited so long for you, my dear. So many, many years. Now, finally, you’ve come back to me….”

  Then we were lying together on a feather bed beneath a canopy of royal blue. Being able to hold her, to touch her, to turn and touch my lips to her pale cheek, seemed to neutralize all that was hurtful in me. Negated a universe of uncertainty, a lifetime of confusion and solitude. I could feel her warm breath; hear the fragile beating of her chest against mine. She was real. My skin was against hers. I was no longer alone.

  Into my ear, she whispered, “I have tracked you through the ages, just as you’ve searched for me. In small ways, through other good people, we’ve touched briefly, briefly. But I know that it’s never been enough, my dear, because it’s never been enough for me. It is why people like us are alone even in a crowded room, even in an intimate bedding place. We are waiting. Forever waiting.

  “But take comfort in this, dearest: I will find you. We are always of one heart, one mind, and I will find you. Love is religion, not emotion. It requires a leap of faith. Remember that. Have faith in me. There are so many destinations, so many way points, but we will arrive on the same small island once more. On that island, we will make ourselves free. Never lose hope.”

  Feeling a delicious sense of well-being and contentment, I turned to her, braced on one elbow, looked into her dazzling blue eyes; eyes that would be forever familiar on the distant rim of memory, and I leaned to kiss her….

  Which is when I felt a violent tug on my ankle. Then a second tug on my ankle, monofilament fishing line cutting skin.

  As sometimes happens in dreams, that strong, physical sensation imposed itself and became part of the dream—a rope being roughly constricted—but now the rope was around my girl’s neck, hurting her, pulling her upward and away from me, as my big hand reached to stop her …

  It was Dorothy’s face, though older. Looking at me were Dorothy’s water-clear eyes.

  I sat up so violently that I rolled off the couch.

  Waited there, crouched on my knees, listening.

  Had the fishing line really been broken? I found my ankle and gave it an experimental pull.

  Yes, a person was out there.

  Then I heard a metallic sound at the door. A key? No. Some kind of lever, a crowbar perhaps. Someone was trying to break in.

  I studied myself for a moment. Confirmed that I was still dressed. Apparently, I’d passed out in my clothes. I reached and found the sap I’d made, right where I’d left it the night before. Then I stood, my head pounding. I felt like vomiting. I spit onto the carpet, then went out the open glass doors, moving very fast and quiet.

  This time, it couldn’t be Nora. It was someone coming for me, coming for the totem.

  I peeked around one corner, then the next: I saw a big man standing there, something in his hands. Very wide shoulders, a belly. No facial features at all. I realized he was wearing a ski mask.

  No doubting his intent.

  I watched him lever the bar into the doorjamb and lunge. The door popped open. He went in quickly.

  I swung around the corner and stepped in behind him, close enough to smell his sweat and the metallic tobacco stink of him. He must have heard me or sensed my presence because he started to turn. As he did, I sapped him once low on the head, just behind the ear.

  I didn’t hit him hard. It’s not like the movies. Hit a man behind the ear with much force and you will kill him. Or he will spend the rest of his life in a hospital attached to complicated machines.

  The intruder went down hard enough to make the walls shake. He started to roll toward me, and I sapped him again on the left shoulder, this time much harder. He gave a whistle of pain, then lay still at my feet in darkness.

  He almost certainly wasn’t unconscious. It is a predictable reaction: twice clubbed, a man feigns unconsciousness so that he won’t be clubbed a third time.

  I closed the door, hit the light switch and picked up the crowbar he’d used to jimmy the door. A big man with dark, hairy hands, wearing tan coveralls and a green ski mask.

  I nudged him with my foot. He didn’t move. I stepped on his fingers, increasing the pressure until he finally yanked his hand away.

  He was conscious, all right.

  “Take off the ski mask, but stay on your belly.”

  He did.

  It was Frank Rossi.

  21

  You pull this shit on me, pal, you don’t know who you’re dealing with.” Rossi had a voice like his son, only a stronger New Jersey accent. Same mindless vocabulary, too.

  I’d used the duct tape to tape his arms behind him. Now I was taping his legs, but only temporarily.

  “You don’t let me go right now, asshole, I know people. Important people. I’ll have you killed.”

  I said, “Gee, that’s the first time anyone’s ever said that to me. In English, anyway.”

  “That some kind’a joke? A funny boy, real funny. You’ll see. You’ll see what happens to you after you let me go.”

  The color of his face changed slightly when I said, “Frank, I’m not going to let you go. I’m going to kill you. Any advice on how to get a tub like you to sink?”

  I dropped the weight of my knee onto his neck. When his head arched upward, I taped his mouth. As I did, I th
ought of the way he had manipulated Della Copeland, stealing the medallion, then getting her drunk and forcing her into bed.

  I made several more wraps with the tape, intentionally sealing off one side of his nose.

  He began to wiggle, fearing that I was going to suffocate him. I had no intention of doing that. But I wanted him to experience the fear. I wanted him to know what it was like to be overpowered and controlled.

  “Save your breath, Frank. You’ll need it.”

  I went through his pockets. I found a length of woven cord—apparently, he’d planned to tie me up—along with Winstons, car keys bearing a Mercedes’s logo, billfold and a palm-sized Colt Mark IV .380. A nice little weapon. I popped the clip. Fully loaded, too. One round already in the chamber.

  “Frank, how’d you know? It’s exactly what I wanted.”

  I took the car keys and went out the glass doors, swung over the railing and dropped down to the ground. If someone was out on the street, waiting in Rossi’s car for him to return, I didn’t want them to see me coming.

  No, he was alone. I found his car on Marina, pulled off the side of the road. What a dope. That was like advertising, telling the cops he was sneaking around.

  I drove the car to Shell World’s deserted parking lot, left the keys in the ignition, opened the hood as if it were broken down, wiped off my prints and jogged back to the Mandalay.

  I cut the tape binding Rossi’s legs, got him to his feet and said, “We’ve got about an hour before first light. What you say we go for a boat ride, just you and me?”

  His eyes grew wide and he began to shake his head furiously.

  I added, “You’re right. I almost forgot. I need to take along an extra anchor. A belly like yours, you’re going to be really buoyant.”

  There was less than a quarter moon drifting through clouds above a black, windy sea. Lots of wind and getting worse.

  The moon made me think of the wooden totem, the designs on it. The gold medallion, too, though I’d never seen it.

  Once I’d gotten Rossi into the boat, I taped his legs again. Now he was lying on his back, head at my feet, squeezed in between the console and the gunwale. I had the bow trimmed down, running as smoothly as a small boat can run in a rolling sea. Even so, big waves caused his head to bang on the deck.

  “Kind of rough out here tonight, Frank. Look on the bright side. You don’t have to make the trip back.”

  I ran out the mouth of Rock Harbor, almost due south. Ronrico Key was a dark elevation against a black sky. Out on Hawk’s Channel, I could see the green four-second light off Mosquito Bank and the red flasher off Hen and Chickens Reef. Beautiful place to dive, all those big corals. Hit either reef and you’d kill your boat. Even a skiff that ran as shallow as mine.

  But I wasn’t going nearly that far.

  I ran in darkness, seeing only the reddish glow of my compass. I turned on my VHF radio as I did; switched down to Weather Channel 2, Key West, where I heard a computerized voice say: “… small craft warning is now in effect for Dry Tortugas to Key Largo and Florida Bay. Waves inside the reef, two to four feet; eight to ten feet outside the reef.”

  There was an electronic pause.

  “The latest advisory issued by the National Hurricane Center at Miami places the eye of Hurricane Charles slightly south of Isle of Pines, Cuba, at latitude 17.6 degrees north, longitude 85 degrees west, moving north-westerly at thirteen knots. Winds have been measured at one-hundred-twenty-five knots and gusting stronger, barometric pressure at 27.80 and falling. Charles has been upgraded to a Category Four hurricane on the Safir-Simpson scale. Computer analysis projects that it will follow a low-pressure system through the Yucatan Channel into the Gulf of Mexico where it will be driven eastward by a ridge of high pressure. The Center expects to issue a ‘hurricane watch’ within the next twenty-four hours for the west coast of Florida, Cape Sable to Tarpon Springs. Be advised that a ‘hurricane watch’ is defined as …”

  I punched off the radio.

  It was coming.

  About a quarter mile from Ronrico Key, on the bay side, I dropped down off plain and switched off the engine. I found the duct tape and began to tape my extra anchor to Rossi’s head. As I did, I said, “We need to make this quick. There’s a hurricane out there.”

  His eyes were wide in the moonlight, terrified.

  “Frank, I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is, you’re only a couple hundred feet from land. The bad news is, it’s straight down. But there’s one other option. Maybe you’d rather talk for a while?”

  I only had to thump Rossi twice with the sap before we developed a pattern. I’d ask him a question. When I had the tape recorder going, he would then repeat the question with robot precision, and answer the question fully and honestly.

  My voice would not be on the tape.

  The first time I caught him in a lie, I lifted him by the belt, got him up onto the casting deck as if to throw him in. He began to beg. Then he began to cry, his whole body shuddering.

  Despite what Tomlinson says, I am not without feelings. It is a pathetic thing to hear a mature man cry. But when I began to feel sympathy for Frank Rossi, I reminded myself what he’d done to Della … and then to Dorothy.

  Rossi did not lie to me again.

  With me holding the small tape recorder near him and out of the wind, I listened to him say, “Did I dig up the grave of Dorothy Copeland? The answer to that is yes. I didn’t see the harm, she’s dead, right? I had one of my men drop the backhoe near the cemetery. We had some sewage pipes in the area to replace anyway—I’d been awarded the city bid on it—so I decided to get to it a little earlier, that’s all. I was aware that my primary employer was interested in purchasing a wooden carving that was buried with the girl. I mean, who’s it gonna hurt? The carving wasn’t doing her no good. If the cops hadn’t come, I’d a buried her back, no problem. It’s not like I was being disrespectful. The thing about breaking into the gal’s trailer, I didn’t do that. It was probably the big colored guy, the football player, or one of his other flunkies. Oh, something I forgot … Ivan Bauerstock, he’s my primary employer.”

  I listened to Rossi say, “Did I steal the gold Indian medallion? Did I rape Della Copeland? Well … look, those are really strong words. Now, I did con her out of the medallion, I admit that. You grow up the way I grew up and, hey, it’s a tough world, pal. People dumb enough to get conned deserve it in my book. So the woman’s not real bright. Who you gonna blame for that? Me?

  “About the other thing, the rape thing, definitely no. I wouldn’t say what I did can be called rape. Yeah, I got a bottle of wine down her. Maybe I put some grain alcohol in it, I really can’t remember for sure, but who hasn’t done that, pal? It’s true she kept telling me no when I tried to get her dress off. Kept saying she didn’t want to. But lots of times I’ve had women say no, but then they end up saying yes. How’s a guy supposed to know?”

  I found his nervous, locker room laughter nauseating.

  A few moments later, I listened to him say, “No, I don’t have the medallion. I sold it to my primary employer, Mr. Ivan Bauerstock.” Then: “Look, pal, I can’t talk about that. I really can’t. Believe me, you don’t want to know the truth, ’cause they’ll come looking for you. Seriously. You talk about political juice, pal? Fucker’s got tons of it.”

  I had to get Rossi up on the casting deck and nearly rolled him into the water before I taped him saying, “How did I become involved with my primary employer, Mr. Ivan Bauerstock? Just for the record, in case the wrong person hears this, I got the whole story written down at my attorney’s office, and he’s been instructed to mail my sworn statement to the DA’s office if anything weird ever happens to me. Like if I just disappear. Keep that in mind.”

  I had to thump him a third time before he said, “Okay, okay, the way I got involved with the family is, I like to collect Indian artifacts. Bauerstock, he’s the same, only I didn’t know that at the time. This was like fifteen years ago. The
Bauerstock family, they got a lot of property on Marco and back in the ’glades, Indian mounds all over the place. The estate on Marco—it’s called Indian Hill—I’d go up there and dig. Not with permission, understand. I’d climb the fence. If they’d seen me, they’d of called the cops. It was no skin off their nose, but property owners, they’re bastards like that.

  “This one afternoon, it was about the same time of year, October, I climbed the fence like I always did, and I was digging and sifting on the highest mound when I heard a girl’s voice out of nowhere say, ‘You won’t find anything there, mister.’ Turned and here’s this teenage girl standing there looking at me. Kind of a pretty girl with blond hair. She’s dressed up like she’s going to church. Yellow dress, white gloves. In fact, that’s what I figured ’cause it was a Sunday. She says, ‘You’re digging in the wrong place.’ Something like that, and I figure she’s being a smart-ass, so I tell her to fuck off, get the hell away from me. So what’s she do? She smiles at me and drops this beautiful little Spanish chevron bead into my hands—had to be four hundred years old and worth a hundred bucks even then. She says, ‘I hope this makes you happier,’ or words kind’a close. Then she walks away.”

  I listened carefully, trying to remain relaxed and in control as Rossi continued, “Next time I see her, it’s like half an hour later. I’d walked to the top of the highest mound, and I was looking down through the gumbo trees and there she is again. Only this time, Bauerstock is with her. He was doing something to her. It looked like he was hugging her, but from behind. I couldn’t figure it out, so I kept watching. There was something weird about it, almost like they were dancing, kind of swaying back and forth. Then I realized, the girl was tied to a rope. It was tied around her neck, and Bauerstock was holding her arms down, using his weight. What he was doing was killing her. And he did. He murdered the teenage girl, then he started to play with her a little bit. Reminded me of a cat. But then his old man come along and stopped him. I watched for a while, then I left.”