Everglades df-10

by Randy Wayne White

  Everglades

  ( Doc Ford - 10 )

  Randy Wayne White

  Everglades

  Randy Wayne White

  Hope could not exist if man were created by a random, chemical accident. Pleasure, yes. Desire, yes. But not hope. Selfless hope is contrary to the dynamics of evolution or the necessities of a species.

  - S. E. TOMLINSON “One Fathom Above Sea Level”

  I have always thought there might be a lot of cash in starting a religion.

  - GEORGE ORWELL, 1938

  My letter of yesterday will inform you of the departure of Tecumseh. There can be no doubt his object is to excite the southern Indians to war. [These] include the Seminole of Florida.

  The implicit obedience and respect which the followers of Tecumseh pay is astonishing. He is one of those uncommon geniuses which spring up occasionally to produce revolutions, and overturn the established order of things. If it were not for the vicinity of the United States, he would, perhaps, be the founder of an empire that would rival in glory Mexico or Peru. No difficulties deter him.

  - Governor of the indiana territory, later U.S.President, William Henry Harrison, on the Shawnee leader, Tecumseh, who accurately prophesied the New Madrid, Missouri, earthquakes of 1811

  chapter one

  Izzy

  Izzy Kline said to Shiva, “Today, she hopped in her Beamer and drove across the Everglades to Sanibel Island. She’s got a couple of friends there, so it could be she’s looking for help: a marine biologist named Ford, and someone whose name you might recognize.”

  Shiva was wearing sandals and a Seminole medicine jacket, rag-patched, rainbow reds, greens, yellows, belted around his waist like a bathrobe. Shiva’s hair was cut Shawnee style: a fifty-six-year-old male, born to a Canadian mother in Bombay, India-indifferent to the irony.

  He was standing in a bedroom that was larger than some of the West Palm Beach homes he could see across the Intracoastal canal through the western window of his beach compound.

  In the bedroom was a Buddha-shaped bed with canopy, a gymnasium with sauna, a meditation corner, an office with computers and security monitors. The place was done in white tile and teak, all decorations in gold except for several wooden figurines on the walls. There was a carving of an impressionistic cat, several masks with horrific faces and two rare Seminole totemic masks.

  The carvings had been added within the last two years.

  Shiva said to Izzy, “I haven’t seen or talked to you in a month. So why do you show up now, bothering me with this garbage?”

  “It seemed important. She doesn’t believe her husband’s dead. I already told you.”

  “You’ve been working for me for-what?-ten, twelve years. You know I hate details-as if I have the time. I don’t care about this woman.”

  “Details-Jesus Christ, are you kidding? If she finds out the truth about what happened to Geoff Minster, say good-bye to your casinos and your development. Three tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, explosives grade. Does that ring a bell? It’s my nuts in the wringer.”

  Shiva looked impatiently at the Cartier watch he wore on his left wrist. “You need to leave. I have a massage scheduled in a few minutes. There’s a new girl among the disciples-with a nice body for a change. I don’t want you interrupting.”

  Izzy Kline: Lean, gaunt-cheeked, with a scar below his right eye, dimples and a dimpled chin-a ladies’ man. Ex-Israeli Army, he’d trained with the Mossad, chosen to leave his adopted country rather than face morals charges, returned to America and been hired as security manager by a controversial religious leader, Bhagwan Shiva, founder of the International Church of Ashram Meditation, Inc.

  Strictly business.

  Shiva had established his first church west of Miami Lakes, the palmetto country between Okeechobee Road and Opa Locka, edge of the Everglades. This was back before he’d changed his name from Jerry Singh. He’d started with forty-some disciples, mostly dropouts and runaways who’d craved the discipline, and liked wearing robes and growing their own food.

  When he’d had cash, he’d bought land. He’d bought a lot of it west of Miami. Cheap swampland.

  Eighteen years later, Shiva now had a quarter million followers worldwide, and one hundred twenty Church of Ashram Centers, mostly in the U.S., Great Britain and Europe, though the numbers were declining. In the last five years, his organization had been crippled by lawsuits, IRS investigations and aggressive TV, magazine and newspaper exposes.

  He’d been described as the “wizard of religion” because of elaborate miracles staged before thousands. He’d been called the “rich man’s prophet,” and an incarnate “sex guru.”

  Kline didn’t believe Shiva was an incarnate anything; he knew him too well to fall for his holy man act. Izzy was the only person in the organization who spoke frankly to Shiva. As a result, he was the only man Shiva could be open with, behave naturally around-and who also scared him a little.

  Izzy knew everything.

  Shiva sighed and said, “Okay, okay, so why should we be worried about her two friends on some island? Where’d you say she went?”

  Izzy said, “She sent her cousin an e-mail, said she’s driving to Sanibel today.”

  “An e-mail. You have access to her computer? Or did you break into her house?”

  Izzy had broken into her house. Several times; twice in the last week. He enjoyed going through her drawers. He’d found a couple of fun items hidden away. But he said, “No. I hacked her password. The one friend she’s going to see, I think you’ve probably heard about. Which’s why I’m telling you. A guy named Sighurdhr Tomlinson. Or Sea-guard, I’m not sure how you pronounce it.”

  “Sighurdhr Tomlinson,” Shiva said, considering it, but not giving it his full attention. “The name sounds familiar.”

  “Remember Miami River, the archaeological site where you tried to build the condo complex? That group of protesters who futzed it? Eco-freaks, all the shitty PR they caused. How many millions’d we lose on that one?”

  Shiva was nodding now. “Okay, yes, I know who you mean. He was with the protestors, one of the leaders. I remember one of my advisors telling me- not you-that he was a kook. Like most of them. A heavy drug user. That’s the information I got.”

  Izzy said, “Really? That’s all? There’s more. You know me, I’m a fanatic when it comes to background checks.”

  Shiva said, “I don’t think I’m interested.”

  Izzy said, “I think you should be.”

  “Why? I don’t see the point.”

  “Because what I found out about this guy is kind of interesting. For instance: Fifteen, twenty years ago, he was implicated in a terrorist bombing at a U.S. naval base. Killed a couple of people.”

  That got Shiva’s attention. “ Really. A bombing. Hum-m-m-m.” Thinking about it, how the information could be used.

  “Yeah, but he skated. The feds didn’t nail ’im. I’m not sure why yet. I’m still working on that. There had to be a reason. ”

  “But there’s a record?”

  “Not official, but it’s there if you dig deep enough.”

  “Is there anything for him to find out about Geoff?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know if the guy was being straight with us or not. It’s possible he hid away some papers. Or maybe he had a secret friend. Who knows? What I’m saying is, we’re both screwed if his wife figures out what really happened.”

  Izzy was standing at the bedroom’s east window, looking over the tops of coconut palms, out onto the Atlantic. Seeing jade sea bottom beyond the beach, and a border of purple water way out where a couple of oceangoing freighters moved like long slabs of concrete, floating: the Gulf Stream.

  Beneath Izzy, parked on the blue tile drive, we
re two Rolls-Royces: a 1923 Silver Ghost, and a ’31 Landaulette, painted racing green. Shiva loved them; collected them. Maybe because he was born upper caste, in India, British-made cars seemed to represent something. Izzy wasn’t sure what.

  Less than five years ago, Shiva had owned twenty-three Rollses. But he’d been selling them off-Izzy was one of the few who knew about it-plus some property, some businesses, to augment the organization’s sagging cash flow.

  His church was in trouble, and the guy was desperate. Izzy knew that, too.

  Something else Izzy had realized after all these years with Shiva: All religion was bullshit. Religion was nothing more than legend manipulated by carefully staged illusions.

  It was his personal water-into-wine theory.

  Shiva said, “His wife, the attractive blonde-what’s her name?”

  “Sally. Yeah, she’s a looker.”

  “Has Sally ever met you? Does she know who you are?”

  “No.”

  “What about Tomlinson?”

  “Nope.”

  “Okay, they’re old friends. That’s what you said. Sometimes old friends, a man and a woman, they just run off and disappear.”

  Kline knew what Shiva meant by “disappear.” Shiva had paid him bonuses to do it before, and he’d actually kind of enjoyed himself the one time it was a woman. But something about the way Shiva said it now irked him-like it was no big deal; grunt work any idiot could pull off.

  Izzy called Shiva by his real name on those occasions when he wanted to underscore the fact that he didn’t much give a damn about the man’s religious act, or who paid his salary. He used the name now, saying, “Brilliant, Jerry. But she’s going to visit two guys, not just one. So maybe what you can do is perform another one of your miracles. Snap your fingers, make all three of them disappear. How’s that sound?”

  Shiva ignored the sarcasm. “This hippie, even if she does try to get him involved-someone like him? I don’t see the problem. So tell me about the second guy.”

  “He’s a marine biologist named Ford. Marion D. Ford. Lives on Sanibel Island at a place called Dinkin’s Bay Marina. Same place as Tomlinson. Ford sells marine specimens.”

  “Marine specimens.”

  “Um-huh. Like to colleges and labs. For research, that sort of thing.”

  Shiva waited through a few beats of silence, before he said, “That’s it? Your background check didn’t turn up anything else-”

  There was a polite knock at the door. Shiva paused, checked his watch again. Time for his massage. He said, “Leave now. The women are here.”

  Kline said, “Exactly my point. With all the data banks and my resources, that’s all there was: where Ford lives, the name of his company, where he graduated from college, some research papers. They play in some baseball league. Nothing else.

  “The guy’s alive, he exists, but never really lived. He’s like an empty body walking.”

  Shiva smiled, then began to laugh, waving Izzy toward the door, “Baseball. A children’s game. You’re wasting my time for this? If a biologist and some pothead worry you, maybe you’ve been in the business too long. Get out of here. We’ll talk again when I’m through.”

  Izzy was remembering a maxim he’d learned at the Mossad training complex in the suburbs of Tel Aviv- Beware the man without a past -as he considered saying to Bhagwan Shiva, You really don’t get it, do you?

  Not that he was concerned about a man he’d never met, or the woman, or anyone else. It was Shiva’s attitude that bothered him, the indifference. Like he was really beginning to believe the lie he’d been telling followers for years: I am the truth, and the truth is invincible.

  Izzy walked toward the door, thinking, You’re not invincible, asshole. And you’re not taking me down with you…

  chapter two

  In the green, squall-glow of a Friday afternoon, April 11th, I returned home from the Everglades, and a ridiculous search for swamp aliens that my friend Tomlinson had dragged me on, to find another old friend, and one of the world’s bright, independent ladies, Sally Carmel, waiting on my deck.

  The recently widowed Sally Carmel Minster, I would soon learn.

  She met me at the top of the stairs. When she came into my open arms, it was more of a collapse than a friendly hug. I held her close, feeling her breath on my ear. “Did you see him? You walked right past the guy.”

  I said, “Guy, what guy?”

  “The one who’s been following me for the last two weeks. Big guy with a shaved head. Like a pro wrestler. The kind you see on TV.”

  She stopped me when I tried to pull away. “Don’t turn around. He’s in the mangroves. I’ve been pretending like I don’t know he’s there. It’s what I always do when I know he’s following me. He’s right behind you, watching us with binoculars.”

  I held her away from me, hands on shoulders, looking her over from head to toe-not an uncommon thing to do if you have not seen someone in a long, long time. And I had not seen Sally in a very long time.

  It’d been, what, probably five or six years since she’d visited my little stilt house on Dinkin’s Bay. At least three years since our last phone conversation. It was at a time when her marriage was on the rocks again, and she’d nearly accepted my invitation to spend a week on Guava Key, a members-only resort where I’d been hired to do a fish count.

  Our friendship dates back to childhood. We both spent early years in the little mangrove village of Mango, south of Naples, Gulf coast of Florida. It was back when I lived with my crazed, manipulative uncle, Tucker Gatrell, and his lifelong partner, Joseph Egret.

  Joseph was an Everglades Indian with an enormous heart. He was one of those rare adults who forged friendships with children naturally, sincerely. In later years, it was Joseph who helped rekindle the friendship between Sally and me during her brief separation. It was a tough time for a good lady. Because she was certain the marriage was over, she and I became more than friends.

  But the marriage wasn’t over.

  Our relationship ended abruptly when Sally returned to her estranged Miami husband, a high-powered, alpha male named Geoff Minster. He was an architect or a developer-something like that-and he’d lured her back by offering her the chance to help him design some big project.

  End of our romance. End of all contact. It is a common, modern phenomenon. Lovers separate, then gradually or abruptly orbit away, trajectories increasingly dissimilar, until one member vanishes, never to reappear. It is a death, of sorts, and it has happened all too often in my life.

  When I’d thought of Sally-and I sometimes did-I assumed that it was unlikely her life would ever again intersect with my own. She’d patched a broken marriage. Presumably, she’d been rewarded with the accoutrements of that union: a stable home life, her own work, her own new circle of friends somewhere in or near the concrete swarm that is Miami. Maybe a houseful of babies, too.

  But now here she was, standing on the open deck of my little house and lab built on stilts in the shallow water of Dinkin’s Bay, Sanibel Island, Florida.

  Looking into her face, her lime-blue eyes, I said, “Why in the world would anyone want to follow you. A stalker, you mean?”

  “No. A private investigator, or whatever they’re called these days. I’ve called the police a couple of times, but it hasn’t done any good. He’s been sneaking around, watching me off and on for the last two weeks. Maybe longer, because that’s when I first spotted him. Following me across the state from Coconut Grove, clear to Sanibel-this, I didn’t expect. It’s getting scary now, and I’m sick of it.”

  I asked again, “But why? ”

  “I think it has to do with Geoff, my husband.”

  “Your husband? Does he think you’re having an affair?”

  Why else would he have her followed?

  “No, it’s not that. I’d never do something like that. My husband. .. Geoff, he disappeared. He’s dead.”

  It took me a few moments before I could find the voice to answer. “ Dead.
Sally, I am so, so sorry. I didn’t hear a thing about it.”

  “I wish I felt the same. But I don’t. Six months ago, October twenty-seventh, on a fishing trip to Bimini, Geoff supposedly fell overboard. It was at night, so no one realized it until the next morning. No witnesses. His body was never found.”

  I said, “‘Supposedly.’”

  “I don’t believe it. I’ve never believed it. I don’t think the insurance company does, either. If the man out there is a private investigator, they probably hired him.”

  I said, “Good God,” surprised by her reappearance, by the situation, by the implicit obligation. Friendship comes with responsibilities-reliability during crisis being among them. If an acquaintance does not behave accordingly and dependably, he or she is not your friend.

  “The insurance company doesn’t want to pay off?”

  Sally was shaking her head. “No, of course they don’t. But they will. They’ll have no choice. Not with all the evidence my attorney’s presented to the circuit court-which she says is standard in any death settlement case where the body hasn’t been found. Otherwise, the state waits five years before issuing a death certificate.

  “My attorney’s really first rate. She knows how the system works. Which means they’re going to have to pay. A big figure with lots of zeros behind it deposited right into a money market account. She expects the court to rule in our favor within a couple of weeks. Two weeks-that’s about the same time I noticed skinhead in his car, following me.”

  “Has he ever said anything? Confronted you?”

  “No.”

  “Have you been getting any hang-up calls?”

  If he was a stalker, not a P.I., hang-up calls would be evi dential.

  She replied, “No. I occasionally get a hang-up, like everyone else, but not enough to worry about.”

  I put my arm over her shoulder, and began to walk her up the wooden steps toward my house, still not risking a glance behind me. “What’d he say when the police questioned him?”