Sanibel Flats

by Randy Wayne White

  "If the government has it."

  "What? I had all the latest data on the screen yesterday, man. Supposedly they keep it in the Presidential Palace, locked up. Like a national treasure, proud enough to show it off, but too ashamed to let anyone translate it. You know something you're not telling me?"

  Ford had hardly touched his evening quart of beer, but now he took a long drink. He knew something, but he wasn't going to risk telling Tomlinson. Not yet. He knew the Kin Qux Cho was no longer in the Presidential Palace. He knew that Pilar Santana Fuentes Balserio had been the graduate student who, eight years before, had discovered the significance of the book. And he knew that it was Pilar, working with an accomplice, who had stolen it.

  It happened the night before he left Masagua. He had been the accomplice.

  NINE

  Harry Bernstein didn't call Monday morning from Masagua, but Ford got a nice surprise from Sally Field: a package, Federal Express, with computer cross-checks on every name he'd given her. She must have gone into the office immediately after he called and worked on her own time. A nice gesture, worth a lot more than just a dinner. Ford took the package inside and sat down with iced tea to read.

  Almost everyone in America over the age of twenty-one is listed in some computer bank somewhere. Check those data centers one by one and they might produce a line or a paragraph. Access the facilities Sally had at her disposal, though, and even an innocuous law-abiding wallpaper salesman would produce half a page. Her sources were the best in the world, the sum of intelligence resources and data centers from around the globe.

  Mario DeArmand was no wallpaper salesman. There were two pages of him, staccato nonsentences and figures. Before he became sheriff of Everglades County, DeArmand had been involved in pyramid schemes. Herbal Foods; Rags-to-Real Estate—two scam corporations disguised as multilevel marketing companies. They bought late-night television time to drum Herbal Food distributorships and their get-rich-quick real estate courses to poor schmucks who never stopped to think: If these people are making so much money selling health food and real estate, why do they want competition from me?

  DeArmand had been investigated for tax fraud, mail fraud, and conspiracy to defraud the public, but had always found a way to buy his way out. When the quack food business got too hot, DeArmand and his partners pooled the rich profits and bought an island in Florida: Sandy Key.

  That brought Ford to a sheaf of papers with information about Sealife Development Corporation. Sally's computer sources had provided a list of stockholders, lien holders, board members, and the board members of Sealife s parent company, Seaboard Marketing Unlimited. Most of the data was useless— but not all of it. It provided him with the link he was looking for, the connection through the maze work.

  The most reassuring information was on Tomlinson. Tomlinson did, indeed, have a doctorate from Harvard—this after graduating summa cum laude, a year at the Sorbonne, and spending two days in the Suffolk County jail for refusing to pay more than a thousand dollars in parking tickets. His family had also had him committed to Cook County Sanitarium for six months—why, it didn't say. More important to Ford, Sally had noted at the bottom of Tomlinson's dossier: Never worked for us or anyone else here.

  If Sally was right it meant Tomlinson had not been sent to Florida to keep an eye on him.

  Ford needed someone smart and clean. But was Sally right?

  When he could wait no longer for Bernstein to call, he got in his pickup truck and headed for Sandy Key and Rafe Hollins's funeral. He drove across the causeway, then turned south onto U.S. 41, a six-lane Cuisinart where bad drivers from all over the nation gathered to tailgate and rush only to wait impatiently at the next light; unhappy travelers as driven as their automobiles. Here was the asphalt essence of everything bad Florida had to offer: a fast highway of Big Macs, furniture warehouses, trailer parks, disco drunk factories, and used car lots with pennants sagging; an unbroken strip of tacky, plasticized commerce stretching two hundred miles from Tampa to Naples, jammed with traffic that slowed only when sirens screamed and ambulances came to strap the broken and bleeding onto stretchers and cart them away.

  Ford hated it.

  He endured the rush for about six miles, then turned east onto a back road. Then for thirty miles it was pastureland, phosphate heaps, and cypress heads rising cool in the distance. Crossbred Brahman cattle stood swatting themselves in the heat while vultures hunched on wires above, awaiting road kill. This was backcountry Florida: sun-bleached sawgrass and sulfur swamps, citrus groves and oak hammocks; land of stars and bars, country music and four-wheel-drive cowboys. Ford drove along at a pleasant 55, arm out the window, waving at anyone who seemed friendly, drawing his arm in when dumpsters screamed past leaving their haze of phosphate dust. Then he turned west again, crossed Highway 41 with its smell of hot asphalt and hamburgers, and for twenty miles it was trailer parks or stucco apartments and fields of smoldering slash pine where the bulldozers had come in and scraped the land bare, making room for more apartments, more development.

  Years ago, he had traveled this road many times, but now he recognized nothing. He was not surprised. Florida wasn't just growing, it was exploding. People were moving into the state at a rate of about a thousand a day, seven thousand new residents a week, packing their lives into U-Hauls, turning their backs on the dying industries of the Midwest and heading sunward. The gush of transplants was making a few developers happy, making a bunch of investors and lawyers wealthy, but making fools out of just about everyone else. The love of money kept people in the development trade yammering for more zoning changes, and the fear of money inspired local commissioners to grant the changes. Never mind that the demand on Florida's already waning water supply was increasing by about a half-million gallons a week. Never mind the number of cars on the already jammed highways was increasing by about twenty thousand a month. And never mind how out-of-control growth was affecting schools or impacting on the environment because, hell, all growth was good; growth meant money—just ask the elected officials struggling to make their towns into carbon copies of Miami. Too few public servants had the foresight, or the courage, to say what was really true: that allowing growth to be self-limiting was the very worst form of carrion-feeder economics. It was a get-it-quick-before-it-rots philosophy that promised long-term disaster even more surely than short-term profits. Only three things limited growth naturally: crime, decay, and overpopulation. Most politicians didn't have the courage to say it, and too many voters didn't give a damn because Florida wasn't their state anyway, not really. Wasn't anything their grandkids were going to be stuck with. They were really New Yorkers or Hoosiers or Buckeyes; just happened to be living here for a while, that's all. Besides, Florida was just an old whore who was going to be picked clean no matter what, so why not get in line, make some quick money?

  Above the distant palms, Ford saw the horizon change. Noticed the swollen, tumid blue of the sky, and he knew the sea was there; would have known even if he had not traveled this road before. Then he came to the bridge . . . not the old swing bridge he remembered, but a new, arching concrete monster that carried traffic high over the bay and down onto Sandy Key. From the top of the bridge, Ford could see the whole island: a long cusp of beach with casuarina midlands that had been chopped into a gridwork of canals and then smothered with a stalagmite jumble of condominiums and the bleak geometries of planned housing. A sign at the base of the bridge told him this was the handiwork of Sealife Development Corporation.

  Ford wasn't impressed. He remembered Sandy Key from high school—a few fish shacks and a lot of empty beach—but that's not why he didn't like what he now saw. It had nothing to do with nostalgia. Ford seldom thought of high school or the years he had lived on Sanibel; never longed for what too many people remembered as those carefree teenage days. He much preferred adulthood, living in the present, and had little patience with the nostalgia freaks, people who escaped the obligations of Now by living in the rosy Then of their imagin
ations. The only reason he had returned to Florida was because of the bull sharks and the chance to open Sanibel Biological Supply. He had expected change. The west coast of Florida was attractive and people naturally gravitated to attractive areas. But Sandy Key hadn't just changed, it had been chopped up, reconstituted, and stamped from a mold. This wasn't change, it was greed; unimaginative greed, at that.

  Ford drove through the sterile downtown area, immune to the tacky Polynesian fa9ades and cutesy boutiques. He took the address from his sports coat pocket and found Sandy Key Funeral Home: a beige stucco box on a sodded lot with palm trees.

  There were a few cars in the parking lot, and Ford stepped out into the heat.

  Some place for Rafe Hollins to end up.

  Nine people showed up for the memorial service, all men. Knowing Rafe, Ford would have been less surprised by a room full of women. He had hoped for a chance to see Rafe's ex-wife, not that he thought she could or would tell him anything. Just wanted to see her; see the woman Rafe had chosen only to end up hating. He recognized most of the men. Former high school teammates, counter-culture Sixties' expatriates who had weathered the Age of Aquarius, the Drug Culture, and Beatlemania without noticeable scars, probably because they hadn't paid any of it much attention. They looked like businessmen or commercial fishermen, but their faces still had the weird beach boys light: good-timers who had joined the establishment without being ingested by it. They didn't look too happy now, though. Just uncomfortable.

  Major Lester Durell of Fort Myers-Sanibel Municipal Police Department was there. Ford nodded and got a curt nod in return; the defenses still up. Someone touched him on the back, and Ford turned to see Harvey Hollins. Harvey was five years older than Rafe, just as tall and much wider, but without Rafe's grace and good looks. Harvey had always been the plodder. Bright, but slow in speech and deed. He had a thick pug nose, the Hollins cleft chin, and dark, dark eyes set beneath a heavy brow, and Ford could see that his eyes were red. He was taking Rafe's death hard, looking like a big, sad child in the black suit a size too small for him.

  Harvey said, "He woulda sure wanted you here, Doc," taking Ford's hand in his, shaking it warmly. "Boy, you two were a pair. Never saw one without the other, and those jokes you used to play made me so damn mad. Like when you melted down that Ex-Lax and slipped it into my candy bar. Man, I coulda killed you two—" And caught himself, realizing what he was saying.

  Ford said, "It's okay, Harv; I know. I'm sorry we had to meet like this. You need any help? I'll take over if you want."

  "You already helped, Doc. That bitch of a funeral director cornered me when I first came in. Wanted to know where my friends got off questioning her ethics. I didn't even have to ask what friend; knew it was you right away. You and your double measure of gall. Too much, I used to think. But I figure your questioning her ethics cut four maybe five hundred off the bill, which will go to little Jake when we find him.

  Ford said nothing, just stood there looking into the big man's red eyes.

  "Rafe didn't kill himself, Doc."

  "I know, Harv."

  "There's only one reason my brother woulda killed himself. That's if he'd let something happen to Jake."

  "I'm sure Jake's fine. Like you said, Rafe wouldn't let anything happen to his own son. He'll show up."

  "He loved that boy more than anything. We didn't talk that much after I moved. People move, grow apart . . . even brothers. I've been asking myself why in the hell I didn't call him more. When we did talk, it was young Jake this, young Jake that. I have two daughters, so I know how a man feels about his children. Rafe wouldn't have killed himself. I'd bet my last dollar on it.

  "I think you're right, Harvey."

  "Do you, Doc? Do you really?" His expression was so filled with gratitude that Ford had to glance away. Harvey said, "I told all the other guys that, and they just sort of stared at me, feeling bad but not believing it. I told Les Durell and he acted like he didn't even care. And we played ball together."

  Ford said, "Durell has to act like that. He's a professional with a conflict of interest: You guys are friends. He can't show favoritism, even if he's interested. He's got to be tough on himself and doubly sure of his facts. He heard what you said, though, you can be sure of it."

  "You really think so?"

  "You knew him better than I did. What do you think?"

  "Well . . . Les was always smart. And not too easy to read. Mostly I asked him to help find Jake. Rafe's dead; there's no bringing him back. But we've got to find that little boy. You know what Les said? He said he'd make sure all the proper authorities had been contacted. The proper authorities. Even when I told him I'd offer a five-thousand-dollar reward, my whole savings, that's all he would say."

  Ford said, "I'm sure everything possible's being done," feeling like a jerk for not being able to say any more.

  Harvey didn't even seem to hear him. "Just the thought of it, Doc. . . . The idea of a Hollins child out there all alone, no one to look after him, not even knowing his daddy's dead, maybe waiting for his daddy to come back—" Harvey turned suddenly, looking at the wall until he regained control. He cleared his throat and said thickly, "We better get in there. The service is about to start."

  The funeral director—out of spite, probably—had put Rafe into a green glass vase. The kind for long-stemmed roses, but with a lid on it. They'd put the vase on a rostrum between two candles, and Ford sat in the back row, wondering what a really cheap urn looked like. Organ music was being piped into the room, seemed to be seeping in through the walls with the smell of refrigerated flowers and thick drapes. There was a man in a dark suit sitting beside the rostrum. Ford hoped it wasn't a minister, but it was. The Reverend Somebody from the Sandy Key Baptist Church. He looked like a television evangelist with his chubby face and sprayed hair. The minister kept glancing at Harvey and smiling, as if to reassure.

  Rafe had been raised as a Baptist, Ford remembered, but hated church and organized religion by the time they met in high school. It seemed unlikely that he had changed during the intervening years, so it seemed just as unlikely that the Reverend Somebody had known Rafe at all, let alone well enough to memorialize him. Just so long as he didn't give a sermon. But he did.

  Ford settled into his seat, ready to tune out the slick, shallow performance to come. But, surprise, surprise, the sermon was neither slick nor shallow. The Reverend Somebody turned out to be a thoughtful man and an honest speaker. No, he hadn't known Rafe. But he knew about pain, and he knew about loss, and he spoke about the things he knew with sincerity, a clarity, and a sense of humor that had every man there sitting up, listening. By the time he was done, Ford felt better about Rafe and better about funerals, but foolish for having stereotyped the minister so glibly. Presupposition was a disease of the lazy or terminally oblivious, and he had been showing symptoms of both lately.

  When the minister finished, the men milled around talking, pretending to be unaware that no one seemed to know exactly what to do next. Harvey stood in the corner, staring at the urn: a what now? expression on his face. Ford touched him on the elbow and said, "I have a boat back on Sanibel. You're welcome to use it. Maybe spread the ashes around Pine Island Sound. Rafe would like that."

  "Yeah, well . . . that would be nice, only my plane home leaves Naples at four. I can't afford to take any more time off work, and it's a pretty long drive back to Sanibel." Harvey looked at him. "You could take them, Doc. You were his best friend."

  "I will if you want."

  "Or, I was thinking, with all these guys here, it might be nice to take care of it right now. While they're still around. They all played ball with him, they knew him better than anybody else."

  Ford said, "The beach is only about three blocks from here—"

  "I was thinking maybe North Cut. That's only a mile or two, and the tide rips through; carry him right out to sea. One night, when we were kids, Rafe caught a thirty-pound snook there using a white bucktail tipped with shrimp. Man, was he happy.
"

  "I'll tell the guys to follow us."

  "Doc? There's something else you can do ... if you don't mind too much."

  "Name it, Harvey."

  Harvey was looking at the floor, uneasy. "Could you carry that . . . that vase with you? My nerves are all messed up today, and I just know I'll drop the damn thing and break it."

  "I could drive you both."

  "Naw, I feel like being alone for a little bit. If you don't mind."

  "We'll meet you at North Cut," Ford said. "I'll take care of everything here. Take your time.'

  He told the other men where to meet, then found the funeral director. On the phone, she had sounded as if she was in her fifties with blue hair and a sour, pinched face. She was actually in her late thirties, had the hair of a Woodstock groupie, and a sour, pinched face. Ford said, "I'd like to take care of the bill now," taking cash from his pocket.

  The woman was standing behind a plastic desk and her expression told Ford that she recognized his voice. "The deceased's brother has already made arrangements for that," she said primly.

  "He's made arrangements to pay, or to make payments?"

  "Mr. . . . Ford was it? I really don't see—"

  He said, "Dr. Ford," cringing at the childishness of demanding the prefix, but dealing with a woman like this seemed to require it.

  "I really don't see that it's any of your business, Dr. Ford."

  "Let's pretend you don't have any say in the matter."

  "He's already signed the papers. Arrangements have already been made—"

  Ford leaned over the desk a little. "He's made arrangements to pay off the bill in monthly installments at—what?—twenty percent interest? But now I'm going to give you cash, and you're going to mark the bill paid and you're going to give me a receipt. You have to accept cash, lady, for any outstanding debt. It's the law. Even if it means missing all that nice interest."