Shark River df-8

by Randy Wayne White

“Revolution, man. Yeah. There were tens of thousands of committed souls. The energy was so strong it came through the walls like heat.”

  I said, “Uh-huh. So if the FBI didn’t arrest anyone from your little group, how are you so sure the bomb was yours?”

  17

  They didn’t drive to Mango on Sunday, because Tomlinson was too shaky and hungover. Instead, he puttered around the marina with Ransom, the two of them drinking bottled water and sneaking off occasionally to smoke.

  My guess, anyway.

  He had to listen to a lot of jokes about Mark Bryant’s dog, too. Good stories travel fast around the islands and islanders aren’t shy about exaggeration. Sunday morning, Jeth told me that he and Janet had found the runaway retriever a few miles away from the marina only an hour or so after the party ended. Sunday evening, though, the story had grown epically. I ran into Alex Payne at Bailey’s General Store, and he said he’d heard that the dog had assaulted half a dozen poodles on Captiva, then tried to swim across to Demere Key where, apparently, there was a female dog in heat.

  “I heard even that big black cat you’ve got at the marina had to run for his life and still hasn’t come back,” he laughed.

  Nope. Crunch amp; Des was in my lab, sleeping by the window, right where I’d left him.

  Early Monday morning, Tomlinson came puttering up in his little dinghy, borrowed the keys to my pickup truck and took Ransom away with him. I gave him my new cell phone to use. I told him I’d been having some engine problems with the truck and he might need it if they broke down.

  I waited until they were gone, then jumped in my boat and ran straight across the bay to Punta Rassa, where I’d already arranged for a rental car through the big resort and spa there.

  I checked the contract twice to make certain I’d paid for full insurance coverage, no deductible. I checked to make sure it had a good emergency brake, too. Most rentals don’t.

  It was a Japanese car, white, common, indistinguishable from a dozen other similar makes, foreign or domestic.

  Perfect.

  I sat in the car at the boat ramp parking lot, watching traffic come across the bridge from Sanibel. I was waiting to see the cab of my old blue pickup come up over the rise, Tomlinson and Ransom inside, and planned to sneak into traffic behind them.

  Earlier that morning, right on schedule, I’d called Lindsey at her snowy hideaway, which now she was fairly certain was in Colorado, although her dad wouldn’t allow her to describe the little nearby ski resort where her bodyguards-Big Ben and Little Ben, she called them-now took her daily. I called her not just because I’d agreed to call her but because, I realized, I had come to look forward to our talks. Liked hearing her strong laughter. Liked hearing her energized plans for things we were going to do in the future. At one point, she’d told me, “Know what I’d enjoy doing? Coming back to Florida and just the two of us getting on a boat and going somewhere. Some place that’s peaceful and quiet, but wild. Not one of those resort places. A place that’s got some heart to it. After all this crazy crap is over and we know we’ll be safe.”

  Something about the phrase “that’s got some heart to it” brought a specific location to mind. I told her, “If you want wild and remote, there’s an area south of here where the Everglades drains into Florida Bay. Nothing but mangroves and empty beaches and this river that runs clear back up into the sawgrass.”

  “Can we go there and camp? Promise?”

  The last time I’d camped in that area was years ago, just after my parents were killed. I’d gotten in my little skiff and disappeared on my own, alone for more than two weeks.

  I didn’t tell her that. I’d never told anyone that.

  “We’ll get a houseboat,” I said, and talked with her for a little longer before listing my plans for the day-driving alone to Mango-so that she could pass them on to her father, via telephone, as I knew she would.

  It was the first time I’d ever lied to her.

  They were being followed.

  I wasn’t certain at first. With Ransom driving, they came rolling over the high bridge, then east on the six-lane highway with its 7-Elevens and strip malls. I filtered in behind, keeping a car or two between us, but I could see they were so busy talking that there was no danger of them taking notice of me.

  Ransom was an inconsistent driver. She’d speed up, then slow down, drifting back and forth across lanes. She probably didn’t have much experience driving in traffic. Maybe she’d never driven in traffic before. What had she told me? Cat Island had one tiny little section of paved road, that’s all. Everything else was shell or sand.

  Florida attracts some of the worst drivers from around the nation and around the world. It had to be a white-knuckle introduction to life on the modern highway.

  But she seemed relaxed, unimpressed. I could see her laughing and chatting away as she tailgated and swerved and cut off cars that she’d passed, indifferent to blaring horns and angry finger-grams flashed her way.

  She and Tomlinson seemed to have more and more in common. They were both horrible drivers.

  Because she was unpredictable, it took me awhile to spot the car that was following them. I noticed a green Ford Taurus with the plain, unadorned look of an inexpensive rental.

  Had I needed to tail someone, it was the kind of car that I would have selected.

  I watched the car pass my blue pickup, then linger until my truck had passed it. Then the Ford fell in behind, but in a different lane. When Ransom slowed unexpectedly to something approaching school-zone speed, the Taurus had to pass once more. When the car gradually reduced speed so that Ransom could again slip by, I knew I was watching a solitary surveillance. Had even one other car been involved, the Taurus would have handed her off and continued at speed.

  Nope, it was a lone tail. And not someone particularly good at what he was doing.

  Mango is about fifty miles southeast of Sanibel, and there are a couple of ways to get there. Like me, Tomlinson tends to stick to the slower back roads and I was pleased when I realized that he was doing the navigating. We went south on U.S. 41-an illustration of crazed manners and automotive chaos. In South Florida, melting pot driving habits are so unpredictable and dangerous that defensive driving is not enough. You must drive tactically. After fighting our way southward, we turned inland on Corkscrew Road, a two-lane asphalt. I dropped back a quarter-mile or so from the Taurus, then pulled up closer when a cement truck slipped out between us, providing me with good cover.

  I drove and watched the scenery change from car dealerships and office condos to orange groves, Brangus cattle, and phosphate pits; vast acreage interrupted by an ever-growing number of gated communities with names like Cross Creek Estates, Eagle Ridge, Jamaica Bay-names founded not in geography but at the desks of advertising agencies. The logos varied but the template was the same: little guardhouses, rolling fairways, stucco and spray-creted houses with red synthetic roofs pressed to look like real Spanish tile, lakes and palms in sodded lots, communal pool and tennis courts, and high, ivied concrete walls built to keep Florida out, thereby preserving inside the careful replication of a Midwestern suburb.

  We turned south, and the land changed again, from fertilized green to dry-season gray, cypress trees standing in sawgrass, limbs bare as winter maples, and black water that glittered on the distant curve of horizon.

  A cement truck turned down a shell access road, leaving just the three of us on this isolated, narrow highway. My blue pickup, the Taurus, and me, all of us separated over a mile of fast asphalt.

  I decided it was time to make my move.

  The driver of the Taurus had Latino features, the black hair and coloring. He was wearing a collared Polo shirt and narrow, wraparound black sunglasses.

  He drove one-handed, forearm draped over the wheel. Cool and very relaxed. He was focused on the pickup, and no doubt figured I was up there ahead of him. He hadn’t done a visual ID, just assumed if the truck was rolling, I was in it. No problem. He’d stay right back
there until it was time to make a move of his own. Or maybe call in for backup; just a messenger boy assigned to keep me in sight.

  I came up behind him gradually, opened the glove box and placed the Sig Sauer on the seat beside me. Then I pulled the ballcap I was wearing down low, punched the accelerator and passed him. I got a pretty good look at the guy from his blind spot before I touched a shielding hand to my face, not wanting to risk him recognizing me. I pulled back into my lane after a safe distance… and then gradually, very gradually, began to slow.

  I wanted to put as much space as possible between the Taurus and the pickup. Wanted to now do to him what, presumably, he had planned to do to me: separate me from traffic, isolate me, then strike.

  He was a tailgater. He came flying up behind me with a road rage flamboyance. I watched in my mirror how he put his bumper up close to mine, his mouth working: What the hell kind of idiot was I to pass him, then slow down?

  I waited until he swerved out to pass me, then I slammed the accelerator down.

  Neither vehicle had much horsepower. But the little Toyota had enough to keep him from getting around me. A lone semi coming from the other direction forced him in behind me again. Once again, I slowed, watching his reaction in the mirror.

  Now he was furious. Tomlinson and Ransom were out of sight, and there was a real possibility I’d just ruined his surveillance. Some idiotic tourist in a little white car. He laid on the horn, shot me his middle finger, and swerved out to pass again.

  We were on a long section of straightaway. The road had been built with fill dug by a floating dredge-typical of roads in the Everglades. There was a canal running along the eastern edge of the road, sawgrass and cypress domes beyond.

  When he swerved, I swerved with him, forcing him off onto the shoulder, then accelerated, driving down the middle of the road so he couldn’t pass again. I watched him charge up hard once more, until we were bumper to bumper, his expression contorted… and then I saw him lean and come up with something in his right hand.

  A handgun.

  That’s what I was waiting for. I put as much distance as I could between our two cars. I was doing close to eighty and about three car lengths ahead of him when I mashed the Toyota’s emergency brake to the floor. I felt the wheels lock, rubber screaming, and I turned the steering wheel a gentle quarter revolution to the right, which effectively pivoted the car 180 degrees-a “boot turn” in the language of combat drivers, taken from the days when bootleggers had to outrun the feds.

  The driver of the Taurus did the only thing he possibly could to avoid hitting me-yanked the wheel of his car instinctively to the left, and I saw just the flash of his rear window and bumper as he went bouncing off the road and airborne through the guard rail, then into the canal, plowing a ton of water.

  I stopped and backed until I was even with the Ford. It was floating trunk-high. I got out, using my car as a shield, then braced my right arm on the roof, the Sig Sauer pointed at the driver as he climbed out through the window.

  He was shaken, his color not good. In Spanish, I yelled, “Show me your hands! Palms out!” Then: “Swim to this side. Now!”

  He came climbing out on the bank with a water spaniel meekness. He was bigger than I’d expected. Younger, too. He had his hands over his head, trying not to slip in his soaked pants and leather shoes; he shook his head at me when I yelled, “Who sent you? Cordero?” thinking that if Cordero had sent him, I should shoot him, shoot him dead and leave him… then wondered if I could. Did I still have that dark and clinical little place in me that facilitated such extreme behavior?

  But the man surprised me by saying in English, “No. Not Cordero. I don’t know who hired me. I swear!” Then his expression became perplexed. “Wait, you’re… you’re him. The man I was supposed to be following. How… how… why aren’t you in the truck?”

  “I am. You’re just having a bad dream, that’s all.”

  “I didn’t even see you back there.”

  “That’s what you can expect to see when I’m tailing you.”

  His voice was shaking now. “I don’t get it!”

  “You’re about to. In the kneecap. Every time you refuse to answer a question, bang, I shoot you in the kneecap. First question: Why the hell are you following me?”

  He reached for his back pocket, and I leaned toward him, weapon extended, glancing quickly to the left and right: no cars coming.

  “ Don’t. Don’t shoot me. Please. What they told me was, if I somehow screwed up, if you figured out what I was doing, I’m supposed to give you this.” He had his billfold out, and was taking a white note card from it.

  “Who’s they? Who’re you working for?”

  “My name’s Romano.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “Okay, okay. I’m a private investigator from Lauderdale. Sometimes I do contractual work. For the government, for corporations, I’m not even sure who it was who hired me. It was all set up by phone. Here, maybe this will explain. I don’t even know what it says.”

  I took the paper and saw that it was an envelope. I opened the envelope and read: Doctor Ford, In the event that you realize you’re under surveillance and turn the tables, please don’t hurt Mr. Romano or his coworkers. They are not in your league. I’ve hired him to provide me with information and to protect you if necessary. Friend or foe-remember that exercise?

  The typewritten note was signed HH.

  Friend or foe referred to a common instructional exercise used by state department and Secret Service types. On any important security assignment, where one or more people may be targeted for assassination, friendly surveillance is assigned without the knowledge of the potential target. It may unknowingly be assigned by more than one agency, so the trick is to figure out who the good guys are and who the killers are.

  I said to Romano, “So tell me what you’ve seen. Have you noticed any other people watching me? Following me?”

  He nodded his head, eager to please. “Yesterday, for sure. Three men in a white Chrysler that was rented out of Miami International. I checked it out.”

  “I was on the water most of the day yesterday.”

  “I know. I saw them watching you through binoculars.”

  “White or black? What color were they?”

  “Two white, one a very light-colored black.”

  I crumpled the note and stuck it in my pocket. Touched the auto-uncock lever of the Sig, turned and walked back toward my rental.

  “You’re not going to go off and leave me, are you? My cell phone’s in there ruined, my billfold, all my clothes. What’m I going to do about my car?”

  I said, “You’re asking my advice? Okay. Get in there and start bailing. And watch out for gators. You’re entering the food chain, pal, and not exactly on the top rung.”

  I got back in my little white Toyota and drove away.

  18

  Tomlinson said, “I thought you had to work in the lab, now here you are driving a rental car. You have some weird little crevices in that brain of yours, my friend. You make some odd behavioral choices.” Then: “The old town’s changed, hasn’t it?”

  Yep. Mango, what was left of the original, had certainly changed. Mango had once been a tiny clearing in a massive plain of marl and swamp. It was a collection of houses and docks on a weak curvature of mud flat that created a harbor, and the harbor curved away toward the charcoal gloom of Ten Thousand Islands, mangrove keys all in a maze, joined by water and shadow. They separated Florida’s mainland from the Gulf of Mexico. Florida Bay was to the south, Key West seventy miles beyond, and nothing, neither house nor road, between.

  Before these obvious changes, it wasn’t a town, really. Not even a village. Mango used to be what was once known as a fish camp. It was a mangrove outpost: a row of peeling houses with rusted tin roofs built haphazardly, their impermanence uncontested, as if it were just a matter of time before a hurricane came and swept them away, or until roots and vines grew up through the floors, o
ut the windows, and covered them.

  Drive the winding mudflat road through seven or eight miles of swamp where the tide comes right up and floods across, then around a curve beneath coconut palms. Mango Bay rises out of the mangroves to the right. The village is on the left: streetlamps and houses on a low ridge of Indian mounds that face the water. The houses sit on squat pilings, the shell road separating them from the bay. There were also five houses built in the shallows, joined by individual boardwalks leading to the shore. They reminded me of my place on Sanibel.

  Tucker had owned all those stilthouses at one time-fish shacks, he called them, but they were in much better shape now. In fact, all of Mango looked to be in better shape… modernized, anyway. The houses had been rebuilt, remodeled, repaired, and all of them had been painted or sided with aluminum, in Caribbean pastel colors, conch pink and coral and blue. Even the little store had been reopened, Homer’s Sundries-only now it was a Circle K with a big plastic sign, cars parked in the shell lot, cars moving up and down the street. There looked to be a half-dozen new duplexes, too, all waterfront; a lot of money was being invested, with more being built down the shoreline, judging from the crane and cement trucks, all the construction noise in the distance. A busy place. Modern Florida had finally found Mango.

  To Tomlinson, I said, “Yep. It certainly has changed. Except for this place.”

  Meaning Tuck’s ranch house, the last house at the end of the road, built on the highest mound-a low gray shack with a tin roof and a sand yard cloaked by trees and Spanish moss. A fallen-down barn out back: hay and a couple of stalls; a little room with a cot and a hot plate-Joseph Egret’s room, Tuck had called it.

  I’d found Ransom and Tomlinson on the porch, waiting for the caretaker to come unlock the place.

  Tomlinson was standing, looking out at the new houses, at the convenience store and a passing cement truck while Ransom moved from window to window, looking in. “The contrast,” he said. “Tupperware America and mudflat Florida. Obscene, man. Gives me the heebie-jeebies. You should never let them change this place. Ever.”