Sanibel Flats

by Randy Wayne White

  Ford sat on the dock reading the newspaper. He rarely looked at a newspaper. Didn't understand the nation's habit of clubbing itself each morning with a list of tragedy and doom before trying to go cheerfully into the day. Like arsenic, it had to have a cumulative effect. But he had bought this thick Sunday edition to see if there was more to read about Rafe Hollins. Rafe was there, an obituary: two tiny lines of type and information about the memorial service. And—surprise—Balserio was there, too: second page, international section with a file photo. Balserio, with his thin black mustache and black hair protruding from beneath the general's cap, looked like a Miami coke dealer at a costume party. That's just about the way Ford remembered him. An extremely tall, pompous man, shrewd, brutal, and superstitious, who had nothing but contempt for the people he ruled.

  Ford hadn't liked Balserio. Pilar despised him. She married him when she was twenty-one, abandoning an already brilliant academic career at the Universidad de Costa Rica to fulfill a marriage contract arranged by her father. The wealthy families of Central America still did things like that. When Balserio ascended to the presidency, Pilar found herself in a role familiar to many women in many cultures: She was smarter than her husband, more sympathetic, better at dealing with people and details, yet was relegated to looking pretty at social functions. Instead of becoming bitter, though, Pilar got involved. She kept up on what each branch of the government was doing and gradually made herself indispensable because she was the only one in the Presidential Palace who did know. By Balserio's third year in office, Pilar had the administration working smoothly and with purpose. The generals loved and admired her, so the military remained loyal to her husband. The people of Masagua were enjoying the improved housing and medical care. For the first time in four hundred years, the country was at peace, and Balserio was quick to take the credit.

  But Balserio finally heard the whispers, though long after everyone else in Masagua: He was just a puppet, the rumors said, his wife the puppeteer. He acted at her bidding. There was only one thing the presidente wouldn't and couldn't do for this great lady—which is why she had never conceived, borne a child. Furious, Balserio notified his department heads that they were no longer to discuss matters of state with his wife. She was banished from the government, though she remained in the palace . . . and in Balserio's bedroom, where she still did not conceive. The government began to fall apart; the people began to react to the increasingly brutal treatment they received at the hands of Balserio's men. Balserio answered with more brutality, and the tenuous peace was gone.

  Now this.

  Ford folded the paper and stood. MacKinley came by. "You're looking a bit sleepy today, Doc. Didn't get our eight hours last night, did we now, cobber?" Smile, smile. Ford had heard the same thing from Jeth Nicholes and J. Y. Lavender, one of the local sailing instructors. Sheri Braun-Richards had left an hour after first light, walking down his rickety stilt house dock for all the early risers to see.

  Sunday or not, he made phone calls. He tried an old associate of his in Washington, D.C., Donald Piao Cheng, but didn't get an answer.

  Major Lester Durell of Fort Myers-Sanibel Municipal Police Department was home, though, getting ready to go play golf, he said. Durell had been a senior when Ford was a sophomore, played on the same baseball and football teams. Ford had dropped in at Durell's office once not long after his return to Florida: modern office with blue carpeting, a collection of ceramic pigs in police uniforms on the shelves, framed commendations and a diploma of his bachelor of science degree from Florida State University's School of Criminology on the wall. It wasn't the cop office you see on television. It was the office of an organized executive, competent in his work.

  Ford was counting on that.

  He asked Durell if he was going to attend the memorial service for Rafe. Durell hesitated, as if he hadn't really planned on it, then said, "Sure, M.D. If you're going. You trying to make this into a sort of reunion thing? Get a lot of the guys together to give Rafe a send-off? If you are, I'll warn you right now that most of them are gone, moved away. Either that, or so rich on real estate they're at their summer homes in North Carolina."

  Ford said, "I'm not interested in a reunion, Les. I want a chance to talk to you privately and thought it might be a convenient time."

  "Privately?" Said with a falling inflection that communicated suspicion; the cop defense system was suddenly in place. "About what?"

  "About Rafe. Not just privately, confidentially, too. I know you can't agree to something like that on the spur of the moment, so I thought I'd give you a day's warning."

  "Maybe I can give you an answer right now. I'm an officer of the court in uniform or out of uniform. That's the law. I'm going to have to hear a lot more before I can guarantee confidentiality. By then, Doc, you may have already told me too much. Do you still want to see me tomorrow?"

  "I'll risk it . . . maybe for half an hour or so after the service? Oh, Lester—one more thing. If there was one investigative reporter in the area you would genuinely hate to have after your ass, who would it be?"

  "I've got nothing to hide. None of them bother me." Getting colder, more remote. He and Ford hadn't been close friends. Ford had the impression it wouldn't matter if they had.

  "But if you had done something, and there was one reporter—"

  "What's this all about, M.D.? You got yourself in trouble? Or are you trying to play amateur detective? People watch TV, get the impression they can snatch clues out from under the noses of the pros, solve the puzzle, live happily ever after, which is utter, utter bullshit. It doesn't work that way and, from what I remember of you, you're too smart to think it does."

  "I didn't mean to make you mad, Les."

  "Then don't try to manipulate me."

  "I wasn't manipulating. I want the name of a good investigative reporter. I can get it from you or from someone else."

  "You're thinking Rafe was murdered. That's what this is all about, isn't it?"

  "Yes."

  There was a silence followed by a sigh. "There's a guy on the area paper, Henry Melinski. Henry S. Melinski, that's his byline. Weighs about a hundred forty pounds, but he's got these blue eyes like an assassin. He doesn't scare and the bastard hangs on like a pit bull. If I'd done something wrong—which I haven't—I think I'd move to Pago-Pago or someplace if that bad boy got on my trail."

  "What about the Miami Herald? You know anyone there?"

  Lester Durell said, "Before I do any more volunteering, I think we need to have a talk first, Doc. I'll see you tomorrow." And hung up.

  Ford worked around the lab for a while, then tried Donald Piao Cheng in D.C. again. This time Cheng's wife answered, wanted to know when're you coming by to visit, Doc?; said they always had a spare bed; said you won't believe the change that's come over Donald. "He's outside jumping rope, can you imagine?"

  Ford tried to imagine. Cheng was maybe five eight, weighed two hundred pounds, smoked cigarettes. He worked for the U.S. Customs Department; a Type-A personality who couldn't slow down. Precise, driving; work, work, worry, worry, worry; everything right by the book. Ford couldn't imagine.

  But then Donald got on and said he'd quit smoking, was down to 175 and wasn't going off the diet till he weighed 160. Ford said that was great, and he'd called to ask a favor. Cheng said, "Name it. As I remember, I owe you one very big favor and two or three small ones." With Donald Cheng, it wouldn't have mattered who owed whom because they were friends.

  It took Ford a while to describe exactly what he wanted-When he was done, he added, "I don't want to mislead you, Don. I haven't told you everything."

  "No kidding?" Cheng said dryly. "I was afraid you were being unintentionally inscrutable."

  "It's necessary. I wouldn't do it if it wasn't. "

  "But what's so important about a painting you want me to go clear to Manhattan to bid on it? Not that I'm not happy to help."

  Ford said, "It was painted by a friend of mine. I like it. I'd like to own it."
>
  "My God, if the artist is a friend of yours, why don't you just tell her; buy it from her?"

  "Because that way she'd feel obligated to give it to me. She needs the money."

  "Jeez. Mister white knight on a horse. I try to tell Margie what you're really like, and she says, Oh, he's got such a good face, such nice eyes, you're just jealous of the way he looks, Don, and he's so good with the kids. You quit NSA for six months, now you really are a nice guy? And an art lover, no less."

  From the phone in the lab, Ford could see two paintings on the walls: a stilt house at low tide by Wellington Ward and palm trees on a beach by Ken Turney. He said, "I know what I like," which would have made Jessica roll her eyes. "And I've been gone a year, not six months. You understand, I'd like you to be there for the whole sale. This paintings might come up early, or maybe real late. I want to make sure you're there for the whole thing."

  "In other words, they might try to sell something illegal toward the end of the show, and you don't want me to miss it."

  "That's not the sort of thing you should hear from me."

  Cheng said, "Okay, okay, the whole thing. Manhattan. Kids dye their hair purple there. Walk around with great big radios."

  "Your hair used to be down to your shoulders. Margie showed me the photos. You went to Woodstock and slept with Ivy League girls who felt guilty because you were a downtrodden minority. You told me that. You wanted to return to China and communicate with the bones of your ancestors. "

  "I may; I still may do that!"

  "Hey, Don, there's one more thing."

  "I was sure there would be at least one more thing."

  "I have the chance to invest with this importer who says he's going to buy a lot of Mayan artifacts in Central America, then bring them back and sell them at a huge profit—"

  "That's a transparent lie, and I just want you to know that I know it."

  "I hoped you would. Anyway, I wanted to know what the laws are against that sort of thing. "

  "There are about seventeen years' worth of laws against that sort of thing. Twenty-seven years if we really want to come down hard. There's the National Stolen Properties Law and the National Receiving Stolen Goods Law—U.S. Codes twenty-three fourteen and twenty-three fifteen if you're writing it down. Then there's the smuggling statute, USC five forty-five, Paragraph B—"

  "That tells me what I want to know."

  "No, you're trying to tell me what I should know. Right? Diplomatic language; putting some very odd stuff between the lines, here, Doc, and I want an explanation when I return with your painting."

  "Then you'll do it?"

  "I'll miss my run. I usually run in the evening. I'm getting in shape for Boston. But, yeah, I'll go. And I'll dress very nice, just like you said."

  "There's one more thing, Don—"

  "You've already had your one more thing."

  "Is this going to be considered a big favor or a little favor?"

  "Why is it I get chills just hearing you ask that?"

  "Because you know, even after this, you still owe me a big one."

  Ford leafed through the phone book until he found a number for Melinski, Henry S. It didn't say B.J. after his name: bachelor's degree in journalism. In a few years, it probably would. Journalists were taking themselves awfully seriously these days. He dialed the number and let it ring ten times before hanging up. Well, that was okay. It might be better to wait until Sally Field called him with more information.

  What he was trying to do was get the right organizations in line; to nudge them in the right direction. It was the one hope he had of securing justice for Rafe Hollins. Lester Durell had said stories of the successful amateur detective were utter bullshit, and Ford knew that he was right. The odds were impossible because, on a formal business basis, people didn't deal with people anymore, they dealt with beings Ford thought of as Bionts. In the literature of natural history, a biont was a discrete unit of living matter that had a specific mode of life. In modern America, to Ford's way of thinking, a Biont was a worker or minor official who, joined with other Bionts, established a separate and dominant entity: the Organization. A Biont was different from an employee. Ford was seeing fewer and fewer employees around. The Biont looked to the Organization as a sort of surrogate family; depended on the Organization to care for him in sickness and in health, to provide for his recreational, spiritual, and social needs. The Organization was an organism, much as a coral reef or a beehive could be considered an organism, made up of individual creatures working for the good of the whole. When the Organization prospered, so did the Biont—a sort of professional symbiosis, with loyalty built in. A Biont might grumble about his host in private, but just let an outsider try to sneak in, ask for information, arouse suspicion, or endanger the Organization, and all the unit members would unite like a shield to rebuff the intruder. Ford thought of the way Aztec ants rushed to attack anything that happened to touch their hosting Cocoloba tree. He thought of killer bees.

  There were too many organizations involved: the sheriff's department of Everglades County, the medical examiner's office, Sealife Development Corporation on Sandy Key. An outsider might be able to wrangle a small bit of information from one, but the hope of assembling incriminating data from all three was absurd. What he could do, though, was try to use the organization-organism theory to his advantage. In nature, all organisms filled the dual role of predator and the preyed upon. Big things attacked smaller things. They picked up the scent, stalked, and fed.

  Ford was now assembling bigger predators. He was throwing out the scent.

  EIGHT

  He had work of his own to do.

  He still needed more sharks for that order from Minneapolis Public Schools, and he wanted to check the salinity and oxygen content of his fish tank.

  Sharks, first.

  He put rods and cast net in his skiff, then decided to take his fly rod, too. On the grass flats at the mouth of Dinkin's Bay, just across from Jessica's house, he threw the cast net and put a couple dozen pinfish—small bait fish—into his live wells. While he was catching bait, Jessica came out onto the dock and waved. Ford could see that she wanted him to stop, but he did not. Instead, he ran out onto Pine Island Sound, then cut southward toward the causeway that connected Sanibel to the mainland. When the water shoaled to five feet, he began to drift. Using a light spinning rod, he caught six small blacktip sharks, enjoying the way they jumped: dark projectiles on a pale sea. Then a school of ladyfish moved in, feeding in such a frenzy that he lost several baits without a shark strike.

  He put the blacktips on ice, then ran north toward St. James City on Pine Island where, in 1885, W. H. Wood stayed. Wood was the New Yorker who, fishing in Tarpon Bay, caught the first tarpon ever taken on rod and reel. Ford landed three more blacktips and, drifting all alone on a vitreous glaze of sea and sky, sweat dripping down his nose, released several spotted seatrout.

  Then he noticed something in the distance—something glittering, energized, rolling across the calm like a boat wake: a school of tarpon coming toward him; a dozen or more fish moving in a tight pod. Their big tails were throwing water; their chromium scales threw sunlight. Ford picked up his fly rod, stripped out line to cast, and stood on the bow of his skiff waiting, his pulse thudding, his mind stilling, concentrating, as he gauged the path of the tarpon and the point where his fly might intersect with them. They were big fish: six feet long, most of them, rolling and diving in a frenzied carousel, gulping surface air before ascending, blowing bubbles, their huge horse-eyes vivid with life but devoid of emotion; primeval fish that were wild with purpose but as mindless as rays of light.

  Ford stood watching, loving it.

  Then they were close enough. On the surface, the tarpon were silver with dark backs that paled in gradations of blue. As they dove, their bodies became golden beneath the tannin-stained water. Ford released the hook he was holding, catapulting the blue-and-white streamer fly forward. He hauled with his left hand and shot out thirty
feet of line on the back cast. Then he released the line on the fore cast, and the streamer fly seemed to carom off the sky. Then it slapped into the side of the boat . . . because he was standing on the line coiled upon the deck.

  Boy, oh hoy . . . Calling himself names as he tried to untangle himself. So much for grace under pressure.

  He straightened the line with a roll cast, then went through the ceremonies of false casting, trying to pick out another fish. This time he casted cleanly, but the adrenaline was in him and he casted way too far: eighty feet, and the plastic line smacked the belly of the rod as if it could have gone another fifty. Ford began to strip in quickly so that the streamer might still intersect with his chosen tarpon. But then an unseen fish materialized through the murk: a flash of gold like refracted light; a momentary vision of a gigantic scimitar turning by his lure. His line jolted, then tightened. Ford lifted the rod, feeling a great weight like a snag, his eyes focused on the triangulation point of rod and line and bay. There was a microsecond of calm; an oleaginous swirl. Then the water erupted into an incandescent whirlpool as the tarpon broke through the film of water, its mouth wide, eyes wild, shaking its head: a huge, animated form that froze for a moment in midair, silver on blue, then tumbled into the water with the percussion of a refrigerator falling from the sky.

  Ford was soaked . . . the fish was running, taking line . . . his reel strained with the whine of precision machinery that was being pushed beyond the limits of lubrication, as if the damn thing might overheat and disintegrate in his face.

  The fish jumped a second time, way, way in the distance, the siiction-clatter of impact reaching Ford's ears a moment after it had already reentered the water. Then the tarpon was running again, but not as fast. Ford touched the reel's spool, applying pressure, and the bow of the skiff swung slowly around, as if drawn to the tarpon: the inanimate in pursuit of the inexorable.