The Mangrove Coast df-6

by Randy Wayne White

  I said, “It’s plausible. It really is. But think about this finesse: Merlot’s right there with her the whole time she’s being blackmailed. He’s offering her advice, pretending to be her friend when, from the very beginning, he’s the one behind it. It’s his idea, he’s coordinating the whole thing.”

  “That picture of him, man, that picture really got to you, didn’t it? Admit it.”

  “I’ll admit I think the guy’s a user. I already said that. I think it’s possible that he had something to do with Gail’s withdrawing so much money.”

  “Sure… I can see something like that happening. But if he’s behind it all, why didn’t he clean her out completely? He hates the ex-husband, so why not go for the kill?” Tomlinson came up with the answer before I could reply. “Okay, okay, he lets her keep a little money so he’s entirely above suspicion. He not only doesn’t want the cops to catch on, he doesn’t want the woman to doubt him even for a second.”

  I was nodding. “Right, I thought of that. It’s one of the things that really bothers me. If he’s doing this crap for revenge, he’ll ultimately want her and Frank to know that he’s the one who conned them. It’s his final move, the way he wins. As in checkmate. The act isn’t over till he sees the hurt in Gail’s face and he hears the anger in Frank’s voice. So, if he’s taken precautions against Gail finding out, it means he’s not done with her yet. He has other ways he can use her.”

  Tomlinson’s expression was grim. “The word checkmate in chess,” he said, “I hope it’s not appropriate.”

  “What?”

  “ Checkmate, the word: It comes from the Persian phrase Shah mat, which means ‘The king is dead.’ Jesus. That’s just so sick. He takes her money and he still wants to take more.”

  Where did Tomlinson come up with this stuff?

  I said, “Yeah, it’s a bad deal… if we’re right about the blackmail angle. But neither one of us knows for sure if we’re right.”

  I told him there were other possibilities. We talked about them, batting them back and forth. I described two different cons that weren’t much better than blackmail. One, Merlot weasels his way into her confidence. She’s emotionally damaged, very vulnerable. Sleeping with her’s not enough. To get back at the ex-husband, he wants the woman’s money, too. That old saying that you can’t cheat an honest man is baloney. Honest, caring people are the easiest marks in the world and, according to Amanda, her mother was sensitive and caring to a fault.

  “The guy knows she has money,” Tomlinson added. “All he’s got to do is find the right approach.”

  Exactly. I kept going, thinking out loud, trying to put myself in Merlot’s place. With a woman like Gail, my guess was he either played on her sympathy or he leveraged the trust he’d very carefully built in her. One possibility? He goes to her and says he’s sick. Or a friend of his is sick. Or there’s a sick child and the only surgeon who can help has to be paid up front because it’s South America and insurance doesn’t cover it. Merlot’s not sure how much it’s going to cost, but she can start by sending forty grand.

  Tomlinson was following along. “Yeah, I can see how that would get to her. One of the scenarios I came up with had her making these huge payments to keep some Colombian orphanage from being repossessed. Or an old persons’ home. A hospital maybe, it’s the same angle. Any variation would work. The big lie, man, the big lie. Honest people always fall for the big lie.”

  I said, “I know. It’s infuriating, because it speaks so badly about how we’ve progressed as a species. Except for the predators among us. They’ve gotten better. They’ve gotten smoother. The predatory types, they’ve got an instinct. Frank Calloway said that about Merlot. They realize that emotionally troubled people are very pure in their motives. People who’ve been hurt want the hurting to stop. It’s as simple as that. People who are damaged want to be whole again. They tend to be very kind and without device and ready to give anything they have if it will help take the pain away. That’s what’s so damn sad about someone like Gail being nailed by a jerk like Merlot.”

  Tomlinson looked at me for a moment. “You don’t even know the guy. Isn’t that what you told me earlier?”

  “Okay, I hate the way he looks. His picture gives me the creeps. You satisfied?”

  “Now you’re showing an empathetic side, too, man.”

  “I’m just parroting you,” I said.

  “Bullshit. You’re growing as a person, but you’re too damn stubborn to admit it. Hey… you know what we really need to do? To get a handle on this whole thing?”

  Tomlinson said what we needed to do was read Gail Richardson Calloway’s E-mail. If I’d been right when I told him that their affair started through E-mail, then we needed to read the letters, get a feel for how he played her.

  He said, “I guarantee you, if they wrote much, every trick he pulled is right there in black and white. I’ve been involved with E-mail for mucho years, man. People will say shit in E-mail that you seriously would not believe.”

  I told him that Amanda had promised to go to her mom’s house tonight and track down the correspondence if she could. “We can call her cell phone number when we get back to my place, see how it went.”

  The waitress was bringing the food on heavy platters. It looked good. The aroma of baked pompano is meant to mingle with beach air.

  Tomlinson said, “I’m surprised she has her mom’s password, man. People don’t give out their passwords.”

  I had the first stone crab claw off the plate and was tapping it with a spoon, creating fault lines in the heavy shell. The claw was shaped like a boxing glove, orange and white.

  When I’d explained to him about Gail’s password, he told me “Yeah, well… if Merlot had the kind of control over her that we both think, he didn’t let her leave Florida without covering his tracks. You know that as well as I do. He would’ve made her change the password. Or dump the whole account.”

  He had a point. “If the password’s been changed, does that mean we’ve lost all that information?”

  “Nope. Just access. There’ve been whole civilizations lost out there in cyberspace, so the words of two little people don’t amount to a hill of beans. Poof! All gone.”

  What the hell did that mean?

  I looked across the table at Tomlinson. He’d brought his own chopsticks and was using them to pinch off the tentative first chunks of steaming pompano. I said, “You’re the only computer expert I know. If Amanda can’t get into her mom’s files, do you think you could do it?”

  “Try to figure out some random password? I wouldn’t get your hopes up on that one. We’ve got a better chance of finding pearls in those claws you’re eating.” He continued using his chopsticks, but his eyes never wavered from mine. After a time, he said, “But there ARE people who’ve got access to software that can find passwords, track activity, recover just about any file that hasn’t been drowned or gobbled by some badass virus. Get on the horn to one of your old CIA buddies and they’ll know just what we need. They can send the program to my computer or Gail Calloway’s computer as an E-mail attachment; won’t even have to put it on a disk.”

  I poured myself another glass of the Riesling. Why was I drinking wine when I wanted a beer? I connected with his eyes as I sipped the wine. “Some things you just won’t let drop. I’ll tell you again: I never worked for the CIA.”

  His smile was not entirely sympathetic. “Well, if Amanda calls tonight and tells you she can’t access her mom’s account, my advice is get on the phone and contact whatever hot-shit-right-wing-deep-spook agency you DID work for and tell them what you need. If the bastards aren’t too busy fucking around, destroying some small country, I mean. Personally, I’d rather spend my day watching the weather channel and whacking off in a hanky than trying to guess someone’s password.”

  Gail Calloway’s password hadn’t been changed, though. That’s what Amanda told me over the phone when we got back to my stilthouse.

  “But there’s nothing i
n her letter files,” she added. “Not a word. So I guess it’s like one of those good news, bad news things.”

  When I told Tomlinson, he said, “Same difference. If you’re serious about getting all the information you can about this weird love affair, you better seek help from one of your warmonger compatriots. Also, I think we better drive to Lauderdale tomorrow or Thursday. Better use me while you can, man. Musashi arrives Friday. After that, we’re aboard No Mas and out of here.”

  I told him fine, then he needed to give me some privacy.

  I had a couple of calls to make.

  When I heard the outboard on Tomlinson’s little inflatable clatter to life, I picked up the phone and dialed a two-one-two area code, plus a number which, as fewer than a hundred Americans and well-placed Israelis knew, actually rang at a secluded, nondescript but beautifully tended farm on the border of Virginia and West Virginia.

  When a woman’s voice answered, “Malabar Grain and Silo,” I spoke a four-digit identification number and was immediately transferred to a computerized security system which, I knew, was searching its own memory banks, attempting to match a graph of my recently-recorded voice with the vocal prints of men and women who had sufficient security clearance to speak with an actual human being.

  I did not have to wait long. From this fastidious place, this picture-perfect farm with its forest of grain silos (and a forest of complex transglobal listening systems, passive and invasive, housed therein) came a voice on a screechy, scratchy answering machine that told me, “Sorry, neighbor, you’ve reached Malabar Grain and Silo and we’re probably uptown shopping. If you think you got the right place, leave your name and number and we’ll catch you on the comeback!”

  Which meant that the computer had recognized me as a person who had once had full security clearance but who was no longer operative, was no longer considered an asset, was, most likely, a potential liability but who might, just might, have a useful tidbit of information to offer.

  Without hesitating, I spoke a second four-digit identification code and then, after a series of beeps, I said, “Ford, Marion D. Secondary listing: North, Marion D. I’m calling for Bernard Objartel Yager. My telephone number is-” and I gave it.

  Four beeps later, the jolly farmer’s voice told me, “Sorry, neighbor. You mustuh got the wrong number. Nobody here by that name. Have yourself a great day!”

  I hung up the phone and began to futz around the lab, neatening this, straightening that. As always, I was annoyed by the high-tech game-playing and the Hollywood-style trappings that, to me, seemed an adolescent adjunct to a business I had once found as complex as it was dangerous.

  Why couldn’t they have a secretary like everyone else? Someone trained to screen calls? What was so compromising about a real, live human being who could decide to accept or refuse a telephone call?

  But no… they reveled in theatrics and their own little venues of power… and every year it seemed to get sillier. More tricks, more complicated electronic gags that suggested to me that the intelligence-gathering community was becoming a parody of its own excesses, and so probably was neither as powerful nor effective as it had once been.

  I kept reminding myself: Ford, aren’t you glad to be out of this business?

  I continued working in the lab, going over how I was going to ask Bernard Yager, a computer and electronics genius by all accounts, for his help in breaching the security of a housewife’s desktop computer. To even make such a request was embarrassing.

  It was Yager who had single-handedly unscrambled the Soviet/Soviet nuclear sub code progression. It was Yager who had invaded and compromised computer communications between Managua and Havana during the Sandinista wars in Nicaragua.

  His was not a name seen in the newspapers, nor would it ever be seen. Yet the man had been a legend in the business for more than a decade. By now, I suspected that his underlings looked upon him as some kind of wizened old electronics guru.

  About fifteen minutes later, when my phone rang, I answered to hear, “Hey Doc, you old so-and-so! It’s Bernie!”

  I began by saying, “Bernie, is it safe to talk?”

  “On my line? You’re making a joke, right? Such a funny man with the jokes. The president, he should be so confident in his phone security. What? You think I’m such a nebbish that I’ve gotten old and rusty like a certain Viking-sized field hand? Why do you waste our time with such questions?”

  “So I take it my side of the line is also fine.”

  “Marion, Marion, you are trying an old man’s patience. Is my line okay? he asks. Is your line okay? he asks. We’re having this conversation, you hear words coming from my lips, so of course the lines are okay. What else do you need to know already? Why don’t you just come out and ask me, ‘Bernie, my old friend, have you become old and senile and stupid?’ Because that’s what your questions say to me.”

  “Hey, that’s not what I’m saying, Bernie.”

  “To me, that’s exactly what you’re saying. You’re saying that you no longer have confidence in my expertise. This from the man whose ass I personally saved after he’d slept with a certain president’s wife in Masagua. Name another person in the business who could have electronically lifted information from the poor husband’s office and still had the good sense to telephone you in the bedroom of His Excellency’s beautiful wife? So what did you have to spare? Five minutes? Ten minutes, tops. The man’s elite guard hunting you like dogs, but you were warned in time. All thanks to the person you keep asking these offensive questions.”

  I was laughing. Everything he said was true. I said, “Well, I’ve got to risk offending you again.”

  When I told him what I needed, he feigned indignation. “Any teenage hack can do what you’re asking me to do. Such a waste of time and talent!”

  “It’s what I need, Bernie. I don’t think you ever met Bobby Richardson, but his wife is the lady in question.”

  “I’ve heard of Commander Richardson, so I don’t need to meet him. He’s a friend of yours, so he’s a friend of mine. The man was part of the old guard. One of the rare good men. So what else do I need to know?”

  “What you need to know is that Bobby and I went through some very heavy business together. You know the kind of stuff I’m talking about. I owe the man. He’s been dead a long time, but I still owe the man. His girl is in trouble and so is his daughter. I’m going to do whatever I can to help out.”

  “Okay, okay, so maybe I owe you a favor or two myself. You ask, it’ll be done. What you need to do is tell the daughter to switch on her mother’s machine and modem. It’s a PC or a Mac? Of course, someone like you wouldn’t know. Doesn’t matter. I’ll have my equipment invade the poor little thing and install the software you’ll need in a program called… I think I’ll label the folder Pilar. “He had a curiously high-pitched giggle. “Will you be able to remember that? If remembering is such a problem, I’ll have everything on her screen changed to red, but the folder-the folder, I’ll make green. Or maybe interesting colors. Just so you can find it.”

  “You’re a bastard, Bernie Yager.”

  “A bastard I am not. And neither do I ever forget. When my poor sister, rest her soul, got herself in trouble in Boulder, you were the one, the only one, who went there and spoke with her and helped bring her home. Eve liked you, Doc, she really did. And she trusted you. You may have been the only person in her life that she truly trusted. I don’t know why she went back to the streets, but she did. God rest her soul and the souls of all who loved her. Her going back, that I will never make sense of.”

  I said, “She was a good woman, Bernie. And thanks a lot for your help.”

  “There isn’t something else you want to tell me, Doc?”

  I said, “No… I don’t think so.”

  Bernie Yager, the tough electronics guru, said, “The number, I need her mother’s phone number. And her E-mail address. I need to be able to access the machine if I’m going to upload software. What, I’ve got to take your hand a
nd lead you through this?”

  10

  The Calloway family home was in the Lauderdale suburb of Coral Ridge south of Oakland Park and north of Plantation. Probably one of the original gated communities on the Intracoastal Waterway, built back in the fifties when dolphin-finned Cadillacs and pink stucco defined the sunrise coast.

  There were banyan vines and shadows on streets that never took the full heat of summer because of moss and filtered light. The brick gatehouse was unattended, but the neighborhood still had the solid look of corporate money, good benefits and upwardly mobile executives. Not old-time wealth, but high-salaried position players with plenty left over for pension plans and toys.

  Tomlinson was talcing it all in. “The people who first lived in these houses, I bet they voted for Eisenhower and bitched about Elvis back when they were built. Caddys, yeah. Can’t you picture great big land yachts sitting in the driveways?”

  We were in my Chevy pickup, windows down, driving through the shade of ficus trees. We’d crossed the saw-grass flats of Alligator Alley to I-595, then north on U.S. 1 past Freddy’s Anchor Inn, tattoo parlors and Comfort Suites, then through the Kinney Tunnel into a gray corridor of furniture stores, Burger Kings, Porsche and Ferrari dealerships, Chinese restaurants.

  Now we were looking at houses that were set back behind thick brick fences, the yards hedged with sea grape. Dominant colors were conch pink and Bermuda white. Not many Cadillacs in the driveways, though. Mostly sport utility vehicles in earth colors, but a few BMWs and Lexuses hitched up close to large ranch houses with red tile roofs showing through the trees.

  “Can you smell it?” Tomlinson said. “The Atlantic Coast, man. It… smells different. Big ocean, big seas, lots of wind out there beyond the condos, even if you can’t feel it.”

  I was cruising at maybe ten miles per hour and the truck cab was filtering odors.

  I said, “Yeah, nice air. Not as dense.” Meaning not as heavy as the air on Sanibel Island.