Night Vision df-18

by Randy Wayne White

  “Have you ridden with this guy yet?” he asked Emily. “Like an old lady, he drives-no offense to old ladies, don’t get me wrong. I love women of all ages. But top speed in that old Chevy of his, it might be sixty. Not that he’s ever pushed it that hard. I keep telling him to buy a new vehicle, but he’s too cheap. In that truck of his, he’s right. It would take us forever.”

  I asked Emily, “Have you ever been there?” meaning Immokalee.

  I got the impression she had, but the lady shrugged, open to fresh information.

  “It’s inland, southeast of Sanibel-saw grass and cattle country. Tomatoes, citrus and peppers, too-all crops picked by hand. It’s only forty-some miles, but you have to take back roads because it’s off the tourist path. The town’s not big, maybe twenty thousand people, and the population is mostly Hispanic.”

  I looked at Tomlinson, expecting him to correct me, as I added, “Back in the nineteen eighties, a Mexican crew chief brought in a truckload of Kanjobal Maya from Guatemala to work in Immokalee’s tomato fields and another place, Indiantown, which is north. That began the connection. Now those two towns have become sort of the Mayan capitals of Florida. That’s where all the Maya head when they’re looking for family. Or if they get into trouble.”

  Tomlinson did correct me, saying, “It was nineteen eighty-two, I’ve got it right here on the screen. Now half the population of Indiantown is Mayan. This article doesn’t say how many Guatemalans live in Immokalee, but the Latin population is almost eighty percent, which means there has to be ten or fifteen thousand Indios in Immokalee-which makes it bigger than most of the cities in Guatemala.

  He continued, “I don’t blame those people for not wanting to be documented. They’re mostly political refugees, on the run from their government because they did something or said something to piss off the big shots in Guatemala City. Their government still uses firing squads, don’t they, Doc?”

  The man said it in an accusatory way as if I were somehow responsible.

  “Up against the wall, asshole,” he added, shaking his head, “which is typical of a bunch of right-wing Nazis.”

  Right wing, left wing, it made no difference in Central America

  … nor anywhere else, for that matter, because the power hungry all gravitate toward the same dangerous interstice on the political wheel.

  Even so, I said nothing as Tomlinson continued paraphrasing from what he was reading on the computer.

  “In the seventies, Guatemalan exiles tried building a little village just across the border in Mexico. But their own army had a bad habit of sneaking across and shooting the Indigena on sight. Finally, Guatemalan military wiped out the whole village.

  “Florida was a whole ocean away, and the really desperate refugees decided this was a safer choice. Now about thirty thousand Maya live in south Florida, which historically makes for a very nice symmetry, when you think about it.”

  I saw that Emily had missed the connection, so I explained, “He’s talking about the original inhabitants of Southwest Florida. It was a major civilization. They were contemporaries of the Maya, a people called the Calusa.”

  I suspected that the woman knew Florida history, but she listened intently as Tomlinson told her, “The Calusa and the Maya had too much in common for it to be accidental-in my opinion, anyway. The Calusa built shell pyramids and courtyards. They were led by ancestral kings, not chiefs-just like the Maya. They were here thousands of years before the Seminole.”

  He studied the woman long enough to confirm she was interested before confiding, “Some nights, I anchor off one of the islands near here-Useppa Island-where the shell mounds look like small mountains. I smoke a doobie or two, and those pyramids come alive, man. People march around the mounds in wooden masks, carrying torches. Cooking fires burn, babies cry-real live vignettes. Teenagers screwing in the bushes, old men taking dumps knee-deep in water-scenes like that. When the wind’s just right, I can hear hard men talking war. It’s a very heavy connection for me. The Calusa are still here, man, when moonlight chimes the right notes.”

  Emily was smiling, charmed by Tomlinson’s childlike sincerity. No surprise there. I had seen that smile on the faces of hundreds of women, maybe thousands, in the last ten years.

  My pal continued, “Archaeologists may call them by a different name, but the Calusa were Maya. They were oceangoing people who got around. It’s sad but kinda funny now that the Mayan people are considered illegal immigrants even though they’ve been on this peninsula five thousand years longer than anyone else.”

  Tomlinson looked up from the computer screen, done with his monologue, and glanced at his watch, eager to get going, a familiar stoned smile on his face. It had been fifteen minutes since I had told Detective Leroy Melinski that I would not search for Harris Squires, but now we were planning to do just that.

  But then something unexpected happened. I watched my pal focus on Emily, studying her face, and then the smile faded as he looked at something that had just appeared on the computer screen. Whatever it was troubled him.

  After a moment, the man motioned toward me as he said to Emily, “You’re serious about this guy, aren’t you.”

  It was a statement, not a question.

  Confused, then amused, Emily replied, “What a strange thing to say. I’m not in the habit of picking up strangers at alligator necropsies. Maybe the average girl does, but not me. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t interested.”

  Tomlinson’s expression changed, a look that was all too familiar. I call it his Sorcerer’s face. His eyelids drooped, his eyes appeared glazed by what he was seeing, the details he was absorbing, his attention focused laserlike on Emily Marston.

  “What I’m saying is, you’ve been interested in Doc for a while. In your head… in your brain, there’s a whole little room devoted to Dr. Marion Ford, isn’t there? That is unusual.”

  Emily’s smile hardened, a defensive posture, but she continued listening.

  Tomlinson’s eyes were almost closed now as he said, “You’ve done a lot of thinking about this guy. I can sense the vibes, it’s becoming very clear. But it took you a while to find a way to meet him. A proper way to meet him, I mean. Someone told you about Doc a long time ago, maybe. Someone who was… who was important to you.”

  He took a breath, his eyes open now as he asked, “Am I right?”

  Emily turned to me. “Does he guess weights and birthdays, too?” She laughed the words, but her discomfort was visible.

  I understood why. After we had made love for the second time, I had taken her out in my flats skiff, a twenty-one-foot boat. We had drifted from Woodring Point almost to the marina, lying on the deck, looking up the late-sunset sky. I’d learned a lot about the woman by the time we’d returned to my stilt house an hour later and made love yet again.

  As I knew, Emily was uncomfortable because what Tomlinson had just said was all too close to the truth. She had heard about me a couple of years before from her own father, whom she adored.

  Had Emily told me her maiden name, I would have made the connection much earlier.

  The highly regarded amateur ornithologist who could afford to travel to Third World places had mentioned my name several times to his daughter-usually when she was dating some guy her father didn’t deem worthy.

  I could admit to Emily that I knew that man, but that was as far as I could go. She willingly shared her secret, I could not.

  I became even more uncomfortable when she told me that her father had disappeared thirteen months ago. I had met the man only twice-under circumstances that are still classified-so I knew without doubt that bird-watching was to him what marine biology is to me. It was an effective cover story for the dangerous intelligence work he did.

  From past experience, I also suspected that Emily’s father was dead. If I ever disappear from Dinkin’s Bay, the same will be true of me.

  It was a strange situation to be in. In a way, I knew things about Emily’s father that she would never know.
She described him as “sweet, sensitive and generous.”

  I didn’t doubt that was true, but I also knew the guy had to have a dark side or he would not have survived as long as he had in the business. I covered my discomfort with a silence that communicated an interest in the woman’s past. My interest was genuine.

  Now Tomlinson had pried into our private conversation with yet another of his uncanny guesses. What irritates me is that he always does it in a way that gives the impression he possesses supernatural powers, which, of course, he does not.

  It took me a couple of years, but I finally figured out how he does what he does, although I may never understand how he does it so well. Tomlinson is extraordinarily perceptive. He has a genius for reading nuances of speech, body language and facial expressions. He then ties all those tiny bits of datum together to make plausible and often accurate projections.

  It requires an intellect of the first magnitude, yet it is still a magician’s trick.

  I said, “Knock it off, Tomlinson. She has to work tomorrow. We can take my truck or your VW. Either way, we’ve got a long drive. If we’re going, let’s go.”

  Emily stood, neatening papers to return to my Sharks of Lake Nicaragua file. “We’ll take my car,” she said. “He’s right, my Jaguar’s fast. As in, scary fast. I’ll call my office in the morning. I can take a personal day if we don’t make it back tonight. Is there a hotel near this place we’re going?”

  I said, “Yes. Sort of,” remembering a Bates Motel-looking place at the edge of town called Sawgrass Motor Court. I felt like I should offer her another chance to beg off but didn’t want to risk it. Instead I said, “Immokalee’s only an hour, maybe forty minutes, in a decent vehicle. Don’t worry about it, we’ll be back here before one-thirty in the morning. Probably earlier.”

  “Or we could stay at my cottage,” she offered. “It’s not Sanibel-but what is? You’ll like it, though. It’s an old Florida Cracker house”-she was looking around my lab-“sort of like this. All yellow pine. Wood so hard, you can still smell the turpentine sap when you drill. I have two bedrooms, and it’s close to the Interstate-on the river, near Alva.”

  Tomlinson was standing at the printer now, waiting for something to finish. His eagerness to get on the road, all as his nervous energy, was suddenly gone.

  He handed me several printouts. One was a map of Immokalee, churches and restaurants marked. Another was a Google Earth satellite photo. It took me a moment to realize it was the four hundred acres that Melinski had mentioned. According to tax records, it was owned by Harris Squires’s mother.

  I was using a magnifying glass on the satellite shot, seeing what might have been an RV hidden in the trees, as Tomlinson said, “Doc, can I talk to you for a minute? Alone.”

  I replied, “If it has something to do with Emily, go ahead and say it.” Then I had to wonder why my normally talkative pal suddenly went very quiet.

  It took several seconds before Tomlinson finally said to Emily, “I don’t want to upset you, but I get premonitions sometimes. That’s why I was asking you about Doc. I wanted to see if your karmas are connected.”

  Emily said, “Our karmas?” as if she didn’t understand but was willing to listen.

  “I’m a psychic sensitive,” Tomlinson told her, pouring himself another shot of Patron. “An empathetic, too. In fact-and this is something I don’t share this with many people-I was employed by our own damn government as an expert on what they called remote viewing. I’d have never done it if I’d known who was paying me. Ask the good doctor if you don’t believe me.”

  I nodded a confirmation. While still in college, Tomlinson had worked for the CIA during a time in history when the Soviets and the U.S. had recruited people who, after completing a very bizarre military test, were believed to have paranormal powers. The CIA called the project Operation Stargate. Stargate was fully funded by Congress until 1995, when wiser heads prevailed.

  Tomlinson was looking at the woman, his voice soft, as he continued, “I just found something that gives me a very bad feeling about Emily making this trip. For Doc and me, it doesn’t matter. We’ve lived and died a dozen times. But you… you’re fresh, you’re new. I’ve got a feeling something bad’s going to happen tonight if you go to Immokalee. It’s because of your karmic linkage with Doc and me.”

  “Are you stoned?” Emily asked him, serious.

  “I was,” he replied, giving it some thought. “ Cannabis interruptus -the girl’s disappearance has completely screwed up my schedule. On a lunar scale, I’d say I’m closer to the Sea of Crises than the Sea of Tranquillity. We can share a spliff if you want-but later. Right now, I’d like you to take a look at this.”

  Emily’s expression asked me Is he for real? as she reached for a photo he was handing her, something he’d just printed from the Internet. I intercepted the thing and took a look. It was a pen-andink drawing from the time of the Spanish Inquisition. A Mayan pyramid in the background. In the foreground, a woman, tied to a ladder, was being tilted toward a roaring fire by Conquistadors.

  I passed the drawing to Emily as I asked, “What does this have to do with her, for Christ’s sake? You’re getting her upset for no reason.”

  “Look at the face,” Tomlinson replied, voice calm now but concerned. “I don’t know why it caught my eye, but it did. There’s a connection. I’m not sure what, but I don’t think Emily should go with us.”

  “You think this woman looks like me?” Emily asked. “I’m flattered, I guess. We’re both dressed in white, is that what you’re saying? If it wasn’t for the gown, she could be a nice-looking boy.”

  After a moment, she added, “Our cheekbones, I guess, are similar, and… she has a sort of plain face, like mine. But don’t most women have plain faces? And the hair’s completely different.”

  The image of the adolescent girl, Tula Choimha, came into my mind. I wondered why Tomlinson didn’t make the association, it was so obvious. But why lend credence to a preposterous assertion by asking a pointless question?

  Emily handed the drawing back to me as she said to Tomlinson, “It’s sweet of you, but, come on, be serious. I don’t believe in this sort of thing. If you don’t want me tagging along, just say so. All of that pseudoscience nonsense-precognition, astrology, clairvoyance, numerology. Sorry, I’ve never been able to take that sort of thing seriously.”

  The woman put her hand on my shoulder. “Doc, talk some sense into him, would you?”

  Tomlinson replied, “It’s called tempting fate when we ignore our own instincts.”

  He turned to me. “I really don’t think she should go, man. Something bad’s going to happen. I can feel it. If you want, stay here with her, I’ll go to Immokalee on my own. It has something to do with fire, I think.”

  He took the drawing from my hands, giving it serious thought. “That’s what came into my mind when I saw this. Fire… and pain. Something terrible. Why risk it?”

  I felt ridiculous, caught in the middle. Emily was waiting for me to agree with her-we were both scientists, after all. Tomlinson, my pal, was asking me to respect his instincts.

  To me, it was more than that. Intellectually, I knew there could be no rational linkage between a random drawing and what might or might not happen to Emily on this very real Wednesday night in March.

  Logically, it was absurd. Emotionally, though, I couldn’t let go of the fact-and it is a fact-that Tomlinson’s intuition, although often wrong, is also more than occasionally right.

  As I took the drawing from Tomlinson’s hands, saying, “Let me see that again,” Emily gave me an incredulous look that said You can’t be serious?

  I looked at the thing, paying no attention to the details because I was carrying on an argument in my head. Debating Tomlinson in the comfort of the lab, or sitting over beers aboard his sailboat, is one thing. But human certitude is an indulgence that can be enjoyed only in a cozy and safe environment.

  It irritated me to have to admit it to myself, but, wrong or r
ight, Tomlinson had asked a reasonable question: Why risk it?

  As I placed the drawing on the dissecting table, Emily said to Tomlinson, “We’re not being fair to Doc. I can almost see his mind working. Choose between his best friend or agree with a woman he’s just met? That’s not something he’d do to us, so I’ll make it simple. I withdraw. I’ll see you guys tomorrow evening for drinks, if you want. You can fill me in.”

  I thought I noted some mild sarcasm until the woman slipped her hand beneath my arm and gave a squeeze. I thanked her by placing a hand on her hip and pulling her closer. Truth was, she had a point. Would I back a lady I’d just met? Or remain loyal to an old friend?

  I backed Tomlinson, of course. Sort of.

  “Here’s what I think,” I said, looking at Tomlinson. “Three gringos driving an expensive car will attract too much attention in Immokalee. In a place that small? Especially at this hour. My Spanish is better than yours, and I speak a little Quiche. Emily’s not dressed for barhopping. And frankly, Tomlinson, you wouldn’t be an asset, either. There are some cowboy types down there in Immokalee who aren’t real fond of hippies.”

  I felt a perverse jolt of pleasure at the surprise on the man’s face. I interrupted as he tried to protest, telling him, “You say Emily is in danger tonight? It’s not rational, but I’m not going to argue. Which means she should stay here. Either that or you should follow her home just to make sure she gets back safely. I’m going to Immokalee by myself.”

  Tomlinson appeared nonplussed, his expression asking me Is this some sort of test?

  In reply, I smiled and said, “If I can’t trust my best friend to look after a lady in danger, then who can I trust?” To emphasize my point, I stood and squeezed his scarecrow shoulder almost hard enough to make him wince.

  “But I have to go!” he said. “I’m worried sick about that little girl.”

  “Then drive your VW back to Red Citrus and have another look around,” I told him. “Splitting up makes more sense, anyway. We can stay in touch by cell phone. But after Emily is safely home. If I hear something, I’ll call. You do the same.”