Everglades df-10

by Randy Wayne White

  But he hit his target. The 12-gauge cartridge had to have been traveling close to eighty miles an hour when it crashed into the stack of clay birds mounted vertically into the machine. Several of them shattered.

  In the microsecond of silence that followed, I heard two soft plop-plop s as the airborne disks landed in the pond.

  Tomlinson tossed the shotgun on the ground with theatrical contempt. Then he walked toward Shiva. “No more live pigeons for you, Jerry. You’re going to keep your word. Like the big-time religious guru you claim to be. Right?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You cheated. You tricked me.”

  “Nope. I told you if I broke any fewer than two targets with one shell, you win. But I broke five or six. Maybe more. Count ’em if you want. You know what the key is? Mushin. That’s a Japanese word.”

  Shiva’s smugness was gone now. Beneath the beard, his face was turning shades of ruby, his neck muscles spasming. His voice was more of a hiss as he said, “You pompous, meddling son-of-a-bitch. I want you out of here. I want you off my property. Get the fuck away from me!”

  Tomlinson was only an arm’s length away from Shiva now, nose to nose, smiling. “No more pigeons, Jerry. You promised. Or don’t promises mean anything to you?”

  Shiva began to reply, but then he appeared to think of something. The sudden grin on his face was manic. Abruptly, Shiva raised his shotgun, leaned, and fired both barrels.

  The snail kite perched in the maples exploded in a smoking swirl of feathers, blue and gray. The corpse of the bird tumbled like a wingless plane. It made a melon sound when it hit the ground.

  Shiva lowered his shotgun and yelled into Tomlinson’s face, “Okay, smartass! I won’t shoot any more pigeons. But the blood’s on your hands, not mine.”

  For the first time since I’ve known the man, I saw Tomlinson break emotionally. Eyes bulging, he lunged toward Shiva. He got his huge hands around the man’s neck just as I grabbed him from behind. I had to call for DeAntoni to help-Tomlinson had surprising, freakish strength. I’ve never experienced anything like it. It took us both to restrain him.

  I believe-I truly do believe-he would have tried to kill Shiva if we’d let him loose.

  As we dragged Tomlinson away, he was screaming every foul word, all aimed at Shiva, and interspaced with this refrain: “You’re ruined, Jerry. The Everglades won’t allow it! I swear to God almighty, that we will ruin you…”

  I noticed that Izzy, holding the recorder, was relaxed. He seemed very pleased about something.

  It was on our way home, just after sunset and while we were crossing the Sanibel Causeway, that DeAntoni’s cell phone rang. I looked at a sky that was streaked with iridescent clouds, mango gold and conch-shell pink, and listened to his side of the conversation.

  I heard him say, “Hey, Mrs. Minster, good to hear from you. Oh.. . okay, Sally.”

  We were riding over sand islands, Lighthouse Point an elevated darkness off to our left, as I heard: “You’re kiddin’ me. And you knew the guy?”

  After a full minute of silence, DeAntoni spoke again into the phone, saying, “I’ll drop off Doc and Tomlinson and come straight to your place. It’ll take me about three hours. Maybe we can have a late dinner. If it’s not an imposition.”

  He closed his phone, and glanced at me. “Ironwood, the gated community where Sally lives, has a night security guard. A guy named Johnson. He disappeared last night, and they found him floating in the bay this afternoon, dead. Sally said the guy took special care of her. Kept an eye on her house because of the break-ins she’s been having.”

  I said, “How’d he die?”

  “They don’t know yet. Maybe a stroke and he fell off a dock. That’s what the cops are guessing. But Sally doesn’t believe it. She says someone was in her bedroom again last night. They went through her drawers. She thinks maybe Johnson surprised the guy.”

  Sitting sprawled in the backseat, working on his seventh or eighth beer since we’d left Sawgrass and already slurring his words, Tomlinson said, “Evil, man. There’s something evil in the air. There is a very wicked mojo seeping around Sawgrass. The whole scene. Like swamp gas, man. I can feel it.”

  DeAntoni said, “Um-huh. Have another beer.”

  “An excellent idea. I think I will.”

  There was the carbonation sssush of a can being cracked.

  DeAntoni was chuckling. “I got to hand it to you, Tinkerbell. You stuck it right up that weirdo’s cheap seats. The only thing that separates Shiva’s lips from his asshole is a couple of feet of tubing-and you proved it.”

  For the fourth or fifth time, Frank said to me, “The skinny fucker’s got an arm on him. I’ll never question that again.”

  Meaning Tomlinson.

  Sounding miserable, Tomlinson replied, “Wrong, wrong, wrong. Shiva won, man. The way I behaved, it’s against everything I believe and stand for. What happened is, he proved I’m as much a fraud as he is.”

  Tomlinson had been talking that way since we left Sawgrass.

  To DeAntoni, I said, “When you talked to her about the dead guard, did Sally sound frightened?”

  “Yeah. But in control. Not too bad. There’s an ex-cop who works with me sometimes, lives in Hialeah. I’ll call him, ask him to hop over to Ironwood and keep an eye on things ’till I get there.”

  “I think that’s a great idea, Frank. We don’t want anything to happen to her.”

  Showing some emotion, DeAntoni said, “If anybody touches that lady, by the time I’m done, they’ll need a compass to find all the parts they got missing.” Then: “Hey, you know what? She said she’d have dinner with me. Just the two of us alone. That she’d be delighted. ”

  He was sounding pretty delighted himself. chapter twenty-two

  The next afternoon, Sunday, April 13th, at 6 P.M., I was working in my lab when I felt the framework of my stilt house vibrate with what seemed to be a series of three distinct tremors.

  I was standing at my stainless-steel dissecting table when it happened. I immediately looked to my right where, beneath the east windows, and on a similar table, is a row of working, bubbling aquaria-octopi, squid and fish therein. There are more glass aquariums above on shelves.

  In each aquarium, the tremors had created seismic oscillating circles on the surface, and miniature waves.

  Nope. I wasn’t imagining things. And, no, it wasn’t because I’d just built my third drink: the juice of two fresh Key limes mixed with Nicaraguan rum, crushed ice and a splash of seltzer.

  To my left, along the east wall, near the door, there are more tanks, all heavily lidded and locked because they contain stone crabs and calico crabs. Octopi, I’d learned, are master thieves when it comes to their favorite food-thus the locks.

  The water in those tanks was vibrating as well.

  I was working late in the lab because I was running low on supplies. Restocking inventory was long overdue. On a yellow legal pad clamped to a clipboard, I’d written: compartmented petri dishes (pack/20); Tekk measuring pipets (dozen); Pyrex tubes (mm/various/72); ultraviolet aquarium sterilizer; tetracycline tablets (pack/20); methyl-chrome; clarifier; pH test paper.

  The shopping list wasn’t close to being complete. I was leafing through my Carolina Science amp; Math catalog, thinking about adding a neat little portable water tester to the list when the house began to shake.

  At first, I thought to myself, Sonic boom? But then I felt it twice more, and I thought, Construction blasts.

  I walked to the center of the room where I’ve installed a university-style lab workstation. It’s an island of oaken drawers and cupboards beneath a black epoxy resin table, complete with a sink, two faucets, electrical outlets and double gas cocks for attaching Bunsen burners or a butane torch.

  I placed the catalog on the table, pushed open the screen door and walked outside, carrying my drink along with me.

  I wasn’t the only one who’d felt the tremors. The unusual sensation of earth and water shaking had stirred our little liv
eaboard community to action on this quiet Palm Sunday afternoon. Across the water, I could see Rhonda Lister and Joann Smallwood exiting their cabin door onto the stern of their wood-rotted Chris-Craft cruiser, Satin Doll. They were looking at the sky, as if expecting to see fighter jets.

  Jeth Nicholes, the fishing guide, was standing on the balcony of his apartment above the marina office. Janet Mueller, I was surprised to see, was standing beside him-a recent development in what has been an old and complex love affair.

  Dieter Rasmussen, the German psychopharmacologist, and his nubile Jamaican girlfriend, Moffid Seemer, were climbing onto the fly bridge of his classic, forty-six-foot Grand Banks trawler, Das Stasi, heads turning. Dieter was in his underwear, and Moffid, I couldn’t help but notice, was topless. When people are surprised, they react without considering how they are dressed.

  Tomlinson was out, too. Standing on the cabin roof of No Mas, a black sarong knotted around his waist, his head tilted, as if listening.

  I was surprised to see him. We’d played baseball earlier in the day at Terry Park, a classic old Grapefruit League anachronism in East Fort Myers. After the game, still in his baseball uniform, he’d invited me to drive with him to Siesta Key Beach and join in the weekly drum circle that is held there at sunset.

  “Is that the sort of thing where a couple of hundred beach hipster-types stand around a fire, banging on drums?” I said.

  Tomlinson replied, “ Exactly. I know, I know, it sounds almost too good to pass up. Tonight, I’ve been asked to serve as the lead Djembe drummer. Quite an honor.”

  So I was surprised he was still aboard his boat… or maybe he was just leaving-yes, that was it. I watched him reach into the cabin of No Mas and lift a massive skin drum from the hold, his eyes still searching the sky.

  Then, as if on cue, everyone looked in the direction of my stilt house, as if seeking an explanation. I held both hands out and shrugged, meaning that I had no idea what’d caused the tremors.

  They all made the same universal gesture: We don’t know, either.

  So I walked to the marina, where Joann, Rhonda and Dieter and I stood around discussing it.

  “What a weird feeling,” Joann said. She’s a short, dark-haired woman with a Rubenesque body and a bawdy sense of the absurd. “It was like I was suddenly standing on jelly. I’ve had the feeling a couple of times, but it was always while I was having good sex. Never when I was brushing my teeth.”

  When I suggested that the tremors were caused by a construction blast, Dieter said, “Daht does not seem reasonable. A construction blast at six P.M. on a Sunday? Even Germans don’t work on Sundays.”

  I told them, “Well, one thing we know it’s not. It wasn’t an earthquake. Florida’s not on a fault line. There’s never been an earthquake in Florida as far as I know.”

  I would soon learn otherwise.

  The next morning I was awakened by a heavy pounding on the door. I swung out of bed, checked the brass alarm clock and thought, Damn. Overslept again.

  It was 8:45 A.M.

  Wearing only khaki shorts, I padded barefooted across the wooden floor, gave Crunch amp; Des a quick scratch in passing and opened the door to find my old friend, Dewey Nye, standing before me. She was wearing Nikes, blue jogging shorts over a red tank suit, blond hair haltered in a ball cap, and she had her fists on her hips-a pose that seemed as aggressive as the expression on her face.

  “Goddamn it, Thoreau, you stood me up again! We agreed to work out early this morning, remember? You were supposed to meet me at Tarpon Bay Beach at seven, run to Tradewinds and back, then swim. So I stood around like a dumbass, waiting, when I should’a known all along that you’d screwed me over again.”

  She made a huffing noise, glaring at me, before she added, “What’s this make? The fifth, sixth time you’ve promised that we’d start working out together? And, every time, you come up with some lame-ass excuse. Or you just don’t show-no call, no nothing. What the hell’s wrong with you, Ford?”

  Yawning, I pushed open the screen door so she could enter. “Dew, I’m sorry. I guess the alarm clock didn’t go off. You know how punctual I usually am-”

  “That’s bullshit. The old Ford, yeah, he was punctual. You could always count on him. But not now. Not you. You’re almost always late, you’ve become undependable as hell, and, as far as I’m concerned, a promise from you doesn’t mean a goddamn thing!”

  I was still holding the door open; could smell the good odor of shampoo, fabric softener and girl sweat as she pushed by me. But, when she finished the sentence, I let the door slam shut. Then I stared at her until her cheeks flushed and her eyes flooded. That quickly, she went from fury to near tears.

  She said, “Now I’ve hurt your feelings. I’m sorry. I don’t really mean it. I do trust, you, Doc. I’ll always trust you. But… damn it”-she had a rolled newspaper in her hand, and she slapped it into her palm for emphasis-“you’ve got to quit standing me up!”

  I motioned her into a chair, and said, “For the second time: Sorry. I mean it. It’s inexcusable.” I walked toward the galley. “Coffee?”

  “Why not? I need something to get my heart going. It’s not like I had anyone to push me on my run this morning. Which was boring as hell, not having anyone to talk to.”

  Another not-so-subtle cut.

  I like big, tomboy women, which is why Dewey remains one of my favorites. She’s a little under six feet tall, 145 pounds or so, blue-blue eyes, blond hair cut boyishly short, and she has the vocabulary of a sailor. She once also had one of the most beautiful faces I’d ever seen: one of those California-beach-girl faces, all cheekbones and chin with deep-set eyes.

  Her face is different now-and for heartrending reasons-but she’s still a striking woman. Because Dewey’s had a long and volatile love affair with an internationally known woman tennis star, sex-or the prospect of sex-is no longer a component in our relationship. That it has made us even closer friends is a phenomenon I do not find surprising. The quickest and most common way to end a male-female friendship is to take the friendship into the bedroom.

  So she sat in the breakfast booth, reading the paper while I made coffee. The sink was still piled with dishes; the counter was still a greasy mess. Added to the mess was now a single red 12-gauge shell I’d sealed in a plastic Baggie.

  There was something about Shiva’s assistant, Izzy, that troubled me on a subliminal level. Watching him, I felt a sense of subconscious threat, but also recognition-of what, I couldn’t say.

  But it’d bothered me enough to want to keep something that might carry his fingerprints. Which is why I’d stolen the shell.

  I put the shell in a drawer. I switched on the coffeemaker as I listened to Dewey make small talk, seemingly trying to reestablish a comfortable mood, which was a sure sign that she had something more serious on her mind

  Finally, she said, “There’s something I need to talk to you about. I’ve been putting it off. But no longer.”

  “Is it about Walda? If she’s still jealous of you and me, I can call her if you want. Explain how it is between us. It might help.”

  Dewey said, “Yeah, well, that, too. She is such a constant pain in the ass. But that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about you.”

  “Okay. What about me?”

  “I don’t want to offend you, and I don’t want to hurt your feelings again. We’ve been through a lot together. I love you as one of my best friends.”

  I said to her, “I’m fond of you, too. So why do I get the feeling this is preface to some more criticism?”

  She rattled the newspaper. “It’s not criticism. What I’m going to tell you is the truth. But you’ve got to remember that sometimes the truth hurts.”

  I turned away from the stove. “Then go ahead. I’ve got big shoulders. Fire away.”

  Dewey said, “The truth is, Doc… you look like hell. If you had a decent-sized mirror in this place, perhaps you’d know. You’ve gained at least fifteen or twenty pounds si
nce we used to be workout partners. But it’s not even the weight. You’re starting to look soft. Puffy. And look at those circles under your eyes! Plus this weird crap about going from one of the most rock-solid men on earth to being undependable as some goofy teenager.”

  She stood and held me by both arms, looking into my eyes. “The point is, pal, I’m worried about your health. Maybe something’s wrong with you. Maybe you need to see a doctor; get a physical. Something. Or start working out with me again. Probably both. And you need to do it soon, because it’s getting harder and harder to be your friend. ”

  I said, “That sounds like an ultimatum.”

  “In a way, it is. I care too much. I’ve got too much respect for you to watch you go down the shitter. If you’re dead set on doing it to yourself, don’t expect the people who love you to stand around and watch. It’s too painful.”

  I turned and poured coffee into a brace of Navy-issue mugs, then sat across from her in the booth. I felt tired and empty and disgusted with myself. I said, “Read the paper. Tell me if there’s anything interesting going on out there in the real world. After that, let’s jog down Tarpon Bay Road to the beach and go for a swim.”

  She sighed, momentarily relieved, her blue eyes brim ming again. “If there’s anything you want to tell me, you can. What’s wrong with you?”

  “A short run and a short swim,” I said. “That’s enough for starters.”

  Dewey said, “It’s in the paper this morning about the earthquake. I heard the checkout clerk talking about it at Bailey’s when I stopped to get a banana and yogurt.”

  She turned the newspaper’s local section toward me so I could read the small headline: EARTHQUAKE? SCIENTISTS INVESTIGATING.

  “The clerk said that on Sanibel and Captiva, the only ones who felt it live on the beach. Or on boats. What about you?”

  “I felt something. So’d Joann, Rhonda and the rest of the liveaboards. In that way, it makes sense. Water’s a better conductor than air.”

  “Well, at my house, I didn’t feel a damn thing-but then, I was on the phone fighting with Walda around six, so pissed off I wouldn’t’a felt it if the ceiling caved in.”