I said, “Nope, Doug, I’m not. I don’t want any trouble. I really don’t. I live a quiet, private life, and that’s the way I want it to keep it.”
He stood, hunted around in his jacket pocket for a moment and pulled out a tin of Copenhagen snuff. He flapped the can with his thumb, opened it, and pushed a big pinch of tobacco between cheek and gum. “I kinda figured you’d be a tough one to budge. That call I just took-when my cell phone rang a few minutes ago?”
“What about it?”
Waldman walked to the kitchen sink, spit, and flushed it with water. “Our people in D.C. and Virginia have now had”-he checked his watch-“they’ve now had slightly more than four hours to come up with a dossier on you. Know what they found? And I’m talking about the best-equipped, most computer-savvy security agency in the world. Nothing,” he said. “They found nothing interesting at all about you. Zip, zilch. Know what, Ford? From the information we got back, it’s almost like you really don’t exist.”
I began to feel uneasy, but made it a point to take a deep breath, relaxing in my chair. “You’re saying there’s something wrong with not being in some crime computer somewhere?”
“You’re in no computers anywhere. Nothing but the barest stuff, anyway. Harrington was tough to get information on. You’re even worse. Any idea why that is?”
I told him no, hoping he’d drop it, but he didn’t.
He leafed through a couple of sheets of paper and said, “Here’s what we’ve got on you. You’ve got a six-cylinder Chevy more than twenty years old. I’ve got the block number and the registration number right here. Another thing? When you were still in high school, you took the battery of Armed Services Vocational Aptitude tests. Damn near aced them all. Not the highest scores ever recorded, but way, way up there. Then you vanished for seven years. Not a trace. No military record, no nothing. Next thing that shows up is that you’re in California, graduating with a B.S. from San Diego State and then you get a master’s a year later from Stanford. No record of where you lived, no record of credit cards, no student loans or a checking account. Nothing at all that indicates you were actually at those places and attended classes. But the degrees are legitimate. I made our people check. Your doctorate from the University of Florida? Same thing.”
“That’s weird,” I said. “They don’t give degrees unless you attend classes. Maybe it’s because I’ve always been kind of a loner. That, and I’ve always tried to pay with cash. Saves on bookkeeping.”
His smile told me that he knew that I was lying. “I’ve done background checks on grade-school teachers that turned up more data. Oh, by the way-our people did dig out one little interesting tidbit of information hidden away. Came from an old file in Pitkin County, Colorado. Aspen, that’s a town you might know there.”
It seemed to please him that I didn’t react. “Seems that more than a decade ago, a guy by the name of Marion W. Ford was a prime suspect in the abduction and probable murder of a political radical who lived in the mountains out there. A guy who specialized in bombing military installations. The cops detained you-this guy Ford, I’m talking about-but nothing ever came of it. Once again, you just vanished. Marion W. Ford vanished, I mean.”
I stood, not comfortable with the direction the conversation was leading. I said, “I think the computers have me confused with someone else, Doug. That was a long time ago, but I’d certainly remember something like that.”
“I’d think you would, too. Know what the really sad thing is, Ford? Okay, here’s what I think. The sad thing is that you should be given an award for what you did today. Or a bounty. Instead, maybe because you’re nervous about certain things you did or didn’t do in your past, you feel like you have to lie about it. Or maybe you just don’t want to be put into the bureaucratic machine, deal with all the bullshit details.”
I said nothing, waiting.
“There’s something else that pisses me off, too. Something not directly related to you or what went on today, but there’s bound to be a connection. Sooner or later.”
I raised my eyebrows-what?
“It’s those punks you chased off. Bigshot drug people when they have weapons, or political freaks like the ones who came looking for Lindsey Harrington. Sooner or later, if we don’t take them down, respond with lethal force whenever we get the chance, the day will come when they score big. I mean really, really big. They’re going to murder a bunch of us. They’re going to make a great big pile of bodies. Just watch. When it happens, the so-called peace-loving members of this society are going to be outraged all to hell. They don’t like it when their government plays rough. They won’t vote or allocate the money for us to maintain a serious defense, but they’ll sure as hell demand some answers. Why didn’t we stop it from happening?”
I put my chin on my fist, listening.
“Want to hear a very likely scenario?”
“Sure. Friends keep telling me I should pay more attention to what’s going on in the outside world.”
“You and a couple hundred million others. I wish to hell everyone in the country would get the pacifiers out of their mouths, grow up a little, and take a look down the road at what’s waiting for us out there. We presented the whole scenario to the Senate a few years ago, and the media didn’t even blink. Hardly a word went out. Okay, here’s the way it goes: A terrorist with the Shining Path or Hezbollah, or Islamic Jihad or Hamas tapes a standard one-hundred-watt lightbulb to the track of a New York City subway station. Minutes later, a passing train crushes the bulb. Contained in the bulb are spores of anthrax, one of the deadliest toxins known to humanity.”
“Very simple,” I said. “Very plausible.”
He answered, “Plausible? It’s inevitable. Or some equally nasty variation-sarin gas, for instance. Within hours, subway ventilation fans circulate the poison throughout the entire system. Then commuters begin dying. By the thousands they start dying, a hundred thousand or more for starters, and horrible deaths at that.
“It would cripple the nation. Bring everything to a stop. You can’t bury anthrax victims. You have to burn their bodies. There would be funeral pyres throughout the city.
“There are millions of fine, patriotic, law-abiding Muslims and politically active Latins in this country, but there are also a handful of very well-financed zealots on the loose who really do believe that we are the Great Satan. They will do absolutely anything to destroy us. People who kill in the name of God or political ideology are, by definition, without conscience. To get those boats from the Mercury Test Center? They threatened to shoot the seventy-five-year-old security guard and his grandson, who just happened to be there, hanging out. Threatened an old man and a kid, and I think they would have done it. You think they’re going to hesitate if they get another chance at you?”
I stood at the door and opened it. “I hope you’re wrong.”
Waldman surprised me by reaching to shake my hand. “Me, too, Ford. Judging from all the computer files that don’t exist on you, I suspect you’ve had an interesting life. I wouldn’t mind hearing about it some day.”
As he turned to go, I hesitated before I said, “Hey, Doug? There’s one other thing.”
“Yeah?”
“The two women, Lindsey Harrington and-”
“The bodyguard’s name is Gale Storm. Honest. After some old Hollywood actress. They both want to stop and thank you, by the way. Tonight, if you don’t mind.”
I looked at my watch and shrugged. It was nearly eleven. “It’s probably already obvious to you, but I want to make sure. Someone had to be charting those women. Their habits. Someone here on the island. Their routine wasn’t hard to nail down because they never varied it. Still, someone had to be on island, watching.”
“We’ve already checked. There was a Colombian maid who didn’t show up for work yesterday or today. She lived in a trailer park on Pine Island, and her trailer’s been cleaned out, too.”
“Same with the Mercury Test Center,” I said. “They stole the two S
carabs right after it closed. Isn’t that what you said?”
“Yeah. They used duct tape. Tied up and gagged the guard and the kid. Jumped the fences, climbed in the boats and off they went. Everyone just figured they were doing some special testing.”
“I think they had to have someone on the inside to have two high-performance boats all fueled and ready. Or maybe they bribed an employee for the testing schedules. It’d probably be pretty easy to do. Claim to be from the competition-Yamaha or OMC-and buy off one of the staff people.”
Waldman was listening, thinking about it. “The false flag gambit, yeah. But why? Those yellow boats don’t run every day?”
“You’d have to live here on the islands to know it’s unusual. Not two Scarabs out at the same time. I’ve seen them running in tandem before, but rarely. Nothing someone could count on. I think they probably had to pay some money to make sure it happened.”
He opened his notebook and scribbled a few words. “That’s useful. We’d have checked it out sooner or later, but now I’ll push it toward the top of the list. Anything else?”
“Nope, just that I’m glad I don’t have your job. The kidnappers, whoever they are, whatever their cause, you have to give them credit. They seemed to think of everything.”
That brought a wry, ironic smile to his face. “Well, not exactly everything.”
I said, “Oh? What’d they miss?”
There was a knock from outside as he said, “They missed you, Ford, that’s what they missed. They didn’t anticipate someone like you being here,” as he turned and opened the door.
Standing on the porch were the two uniformed officers with the dark Bahamian woman in the middle, her red-beaded cornrows swinging, clacking like miniature dominoes. Tomlinson was in the background, pacing-not reassuring because he’s not the type to pace.
I felt my stomach muscles tense when Deputy Walker said, “Sorry to interrupt, but I thought it might save you some time. This woman says she saw the whole thing. Found us and volunteered herself. Says she was standing right out there at the edge of the mangroves, close enough to see and hear it all. Her name’s… Ransom Ebanks? Is that correct, miss? That’s an unusual name, particularly considering the circumstances.”
The black woman nodded. “May be unusual to you but it ain’t to me. Ransom R. Ebanks, that always been my name.”
“Ms. Ebanks says she came here to do some sightseeing, just over from the islands, and walked right into the middle of the kidnapping. She eyeballed at least three of the perps, saw this guy, too. But that’s all she’d tell us until Doctor Ford was present.”
Ebanks, why was that name familiar? I remembered Tomlinson telling me someone by that name had contacted the office and left a message for me. But why? I’d never met her before in my life, and now here she was. I tried to keep my expression bland and amused as Waldman looked from me to the woman, then back to me. “Is that true, Ms. Ebanks? You witnessed the kidnapping attempt?”
Her soft, articulate accent seemed to add credulity. “Oh, that’s the natural truth alright. I saw the big man there, watched what he did, runnin’ from those men in the masks while they shot their guns.”
Waldman pointed his finger at me. “This is the man you saw?”
She nodded.
“Why wouldn’t you tell Deputy Walker what you saw unless Doctor Ford was present?”
She didn’t answer right away. Instead, Ransom Ebanks locked her eyes into mine, trying to communicate something, but what she was communicating, I wasn’t immediately certain. I expected her eyes to be dark but, in the porch light, they were a glittering, lucent blue. Quite a surprise looking into her African face, seeing those blue eyes. Their focus seemed intense, meaningful.
Was she waiting for me to say something first? Perhaps. Or maybe that’s what I wanted to believe. Even so, I spoke quickly. “Probably because she wanted to make certain I was the guy she saw cut his arm when I fell through the railing and took the two women with me.”
“Hey! That’s enough.” Walker took a step toward me, showing her no-bullshit cop expression. “He’s leading her, telling her what to say.”
The Bahamian woman’s tone was suddenly just as tough. “He ain’t leading nobody, lady. You quiet your mouth for a second, I tell you what happened.”
Waldman said soothingly, “Now, now, let’s stay calm, do this in an orderly fashion. It’s getting late, we’re all a little tired. Ms. Ebanks? Take your time. You say you saw Doctor Ford running while the men shot at him?”
I listened to her say, “Isn’t that what I just tell you? Yes, the big man, the man standing right there with the bandage on his arm. What happened was, he so scared, he went and run away. First, he fall into the water, him and the two pretty girls. When that railing break? Then he jumped into that go-fast boat and man, he gone.”
Waldman didn’t seem convinced. “Really? You say the men were shooting at him while this man… you actually saw this man get away in the boat.”
“That’s right. I saw ’im.”
“Why didn’t you run away, Ms. Ebanks? A man his size was frightened; why weren’t you afraid?”
“’Cause the men with the guns, they didn’t see me. I back in the trees watching.”
Waldman was still suspicious. “In the trees, okay. You just stood there watching while they shot. How many shots were fired? Any idea?”
“Four, maybe five. I don’t know. I was watching with my eyes, not countin’ with my ears.”
“Not counting with your ears. Very amusing. Okay, they began to shoot at him. Then-take us through it step by step-after they started shooting, what happened?”
She was still staring into my eyes, trying to read something from me. Finally, she said, “He bang into the two pretty girls, like I tol’ you, and he so big the railing break and they go splashing in the water. That how he cut his arm. Musta hit the dock or somethin’, I’m guessing.”
Deputy Walker said, “That’s what he just told her to say. He was leading her, like I said.”
Waldman gave her a warning look. Then to Ransom Ebanks: “You saw him cut his arm on the dock? No offense, miss, but how can you be so sure one of the bullets didn’t hit him when the men were shooting? You say you did see them fire shots.”
She was nodding, suddenly very self assured. “ ’Cause I saw just the way it happened, that’s why I’m so sure. He went kinda trippin’ and stumblin’, holding them two women, and they all went crashing through the railing. That’s where I saw him catch that arm on a nail or something-I can’t be sure what it was, but the blood was flying. Then I watched them women run away into the trees while he go flyin’ off in the boat.”
“Was he alone in the boat?”
“That somethin’ I don’t know. But tell me this, Mr. Police-man. This gentleman”-she used her hand to indicate me-“does he look so dumb to you that he just stand around while men’s shooting at him?”
Then she laughed, showing pearl-white teeth, but her eyes were still focused on mine.
It suddenly became clear to me, the meaning of the direct eye contact and her intense expression. While she lied to the cops, she was also speaking nonverbally, looking through the lenses of my eyes, saying, You owe me.
5
T he Bahamian woman said, “You actin’ like it don’t hurt none, man. Like it no big deal. Almost like you used to getting shot, my brother.”
What my ears heard was: Yoo actin’ lie it doan huurt nawn, mon. Lie it no big dill…
An accent that fit her physiology. Look at the cinnamon skin, the bone structure, the braided hair, the gaudy golden ring on her right hand, and you saw twenty generations stylized by coconut palms, coral islands in a remote sea, and the patina of isolated British influence on African rootstock.
She was what? Probably in her mid-to-late thirties, but looked much younger, which is why I’d misjudged her age so badly the first time I saw her. Maybe forty, judging from the fine lines on the backs of her hands and at the corners of her e
yes. A middle-aged woman, but very fit and in control of her body.
The cops were gone. Waldman had listened to her story patiently, asked a few questions, then said, since it was so late, would Ms. Ebanks be willing to give them an official statement in the morning?
She told him, “Yeah, man, but I got no place to sleep out here tonight. Maybe you ask the people at the fancy restaurant, up on the hill, they give me a free dinner and a place to stay, seein’s how I’m agreeing to help you. Get me a nice room with fancy pillows, but I’d like the bed be pointed north, you doan mind. That the only way a person get his directions in a foreign land. Sleep w’his head pointed north.”
She was a negotiator, maybe a manipulator, that much was becoming clear. The island girl wheedling herself some space among the rich Americans, already knowing how to do it, but seemingly unaware of how obvious she was and how naive she came off. Speaking of superstition as if to educate others.
It didn’t seem to bother Tomlinson at all, though. She’d already impressed him-that was easy enough to read. When he’s interested in a woman, his face assumes a concerned, spiritual glaze that attempts, but fails, to camouflage carnal interest.
“Ms. Ebanks,” he said, “you are most welcome to stay in the guest room of my cottage. We’ll point the bed any way you want. And food, well… let’s see, the restaurant’s already closed, but I can fix you a late supper. A nice Camembert with red wine? Or I’ll throw a salad together, spinach, asparagus and tomatoes. Put some music on, pound some alcohol, or-you’re from the islands?-we can burn something herbal, whatever you like.”
The law enforcement people exchanged looks- Can you believe this guy? -but she seemed to like the sound of it and smiled at him. Told Tomlinson to call her Ransom, just the way she said it, running it all together, Ransom Ebanks. She said, “I’ll stay in your house, Mr. Hipster man, but don’t be getting the wrong idea. I’m not going to be a thing for you to be bouncin’ on in your bed.”
“No worries, no worries. Hasn’t been a problem lately,” he replied.
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