Flashback

by Nevada Barr

  "Not everyone registers, licenses or even names their boats for a variety of reasons, not all of them criminal, but yes, I can do that."

  "Ramon Diego," Anna said and waited. The faint clicking of fingers on a keyboard passed the time. Manny evidently was not one to give out progress reports or make small talk.

  "Nothing. Many Diegos. No Ramon Diego."

  "How about boats reported stolen?"

  "No. We ran that automatically. Only one Scarab was reported. It was last year's model and cherry-red in color. I suppose it could have been repainted and the year written down wrong."

  "I'll check into it," Anna said but she wouldn't. She'd pawed through enough smithereens of the blasted boat, she was certain she would have noticed if there'd been a coat of red paint beneath the green.

  She appreciated he'd wasted none of her time with chitchat and thanked him with a degree of genuine sincerity.

  Her investigation had reached a dead end. On her lieu days she could rent a car and drive up to Miami to question the people at Enrico's, but it would be a waste of time. If they weren't telling the coast guard, they certainly weren't going to tell her. With no crime but dying in a boat not your own, she was nowhere near getting a subpoena.

  For a while she sat like a lump, thinking of nothing at all. There were things she could do: check out the boat Patrice had reported, start writing the reports on Bob's injury and the loss of the Bay Ranger. None of the options struck her as entertaining. Sitting in a dim air-conditioned room with the phone to her ear had sapped her of motivation. A nap sounded good.

  Three fifteen. The day was about shot anyway.

  There was another call she could make, Anna realized. It was based on a hunch, but an informed hunch. The pieces she'd collected came together. Mack--William "Mack" Macintyre--and Theresa met in the Cuban neighborhood in Miami where they had grown up.

  Once again she dialed the number of Theresa's aunt.

  "Mrs. Alvarez, it's Anna Pigeon with the National Park Service again." Anna expected the woman to be irritated--as well she had a right to be. It was bad practice to call a source over and over. An officer should have her ducks in their assigned places in the row before making contact. Anna had started out with only a couple ducks and no row.

  Fortunately Mrs. Alvarez was not only cooperative but sounded glad to get a third call. This welcome was fueled, Anna guessed, by the hope that finally the authorities were going to find her wayward niece. Anna suffered a momentary stab of guilt or sadness--the two had become so linked over the years she wasn't sure where one stopped and the other began. Theresa would probably never be found. If she were, it would be washed ashore on some lonely key, her body munched upon by crabs.

  "One last question," Anna promised. "Do you know if Theresa knew a man named Ramon Diego?"

  "He was a neighborhood boy." Mrs. Alvarez answered without hesitation. Anna wondered how many long-established white residents had such a working knowledge of who they lived and raised their children next door to.

  "Does he still live there?"

  "No. Old Mrs. Diego did till she died, but Ramon got a good job and I guess he travel all the time. We didn't see him for long times."

  "Where did he get the job?" Anna asked.

  "Some big boat place. I think he sells boats but I don't know for sure."

  Again Anna thanked her and rang off. A big boat place. The Scarab was originally sold to Enrico's, which Anna had heard was a Cuban-owned and -operated marine supply in Miami. Enrico's had been investigated for harboring and/or employing illegal aliens.

  One more call, Anna promised herself and reached for the phone. She didn't pick it up right away. Given Enrico's checkered past with authority figures, particularly those investigating the whereabouts and origins of Cuban immigrants, honesty would probably not be the most productive policy. The employees might be laboring under a double need for secrecy. Maybe they had something to hide and maybe, where they came from, the police weren't nice people who were trained not to hurt you if you didn't hurt them first.

  She toyed with the idea of affecting a Spanish accent. From her years in Texas she was actually quite good at it. The idea was quickly abandoned. If the accent wasn't believed whoever answered would be put on guard. If it was they'd let loose in rapid-fire Spanish and Anna'd be lost.

  She switched personas, picked up the phone and dialed.

  "Enrico's Marina. Buenos dias." The voice was heavily and unapologetically Hispanic.

  "Hey. This is Anna Putnam. I need to talk to Ramon Diego. Can you get him for me?"

  "I'm sorry we do not know no Ramon Diego."

  The woman said this quickly and with the pat disinterest of someone uttering a standard response. Anna doubted it was the truth. Or if it was, it was purely coincidental.

  "Oh pooh," Anna said. "It's his goddaughter. She's been asking for him. This was the only place I knew to call. Shoot. She's only seven, and since the accident . . ." Anna let that hang there, hoping Cuban Hispanics had the same cultural love of family and children she'd noticed in Mexican-American women.

  For a moment the woman said nothing, then she chose for the fictional child. "Give me your number. He comes in, I have him call."

  Anna rattled off a Miami area code and the first seven numbers that came to mind. Nobody would be bothered; Ramon was through making telephone calls for this lifetime.

  The office had grown dark. Living in the strange tunnels of telephone communications, Anna'd not noticed the light going. She glanced at the wall clock expecting to find half a day gone, but it was just after four. She walked to the window at the parade-ground side of the walled-in casemate and raised the blind. The sky was low and fast and dark. The trees, usually so serene in their brick-walled sanctuary, tossed their branches in wild celebration of the storm.

  Anna turned on the office radio. It was already tuned to the weather frequency. Gale warnings. Gusts to fifty knots, seas six to ten feet. The hurricane Anna'd hoped for was not to be. She turned the radio off and sat down without bothering to turn on the lights. Darkness at midday called on the ancient in her bones, filled her with a sense of portents and omens. With the wild race of clouds and the trees in jubilation, the foreboding swelled to a strange expectation--of what, she didn't know.

  Placing both hands palm down on Teddy's desk, she stared out the small window and let her mind race with the wind. Theresa, Ramon Diego, Mack, all from the same neighborhood. Diego and Mack both born in Cuba, both spending their first months on American soil in immigration's custody. Diego employed by Enrico's, a marine supply known for its connection with illegal aliens. Mack scarred at the hands of the Cuban military. Theresa, always supportive "of her people," introduced to Lanny by Mack. Theresa who seemed uninterested in the older man but moved out to Fort Jefferson to live with him. Theresa who fell in love with Lanny later on.

  Her first mistake. Very probably her last.

  Then the go-fast boat exploding twice, once from the haste of the pilot in his desire to avoid law enforcement, the second time because the boat carried fuel. The boat from Enrico's, piloted by a boyhood friend of Mack and Theresa. Theresa who was photographed with a man wearing the tattoo alleged to be the mark of a smuggler's gang.

  Patrice, on the radio, telling Anna she'd seen a red go-fast boat headed east from Loggerhead. The only Scarab reported stolen a red model. Had Anna been paying attention to what was going on around her instead of keeping her ear and brain affixed to the telephone, the obvious anomaly would have stuck her.

  The go-fast was headed east, out to sea. A tropical storm watch had been on the radio since morning. Small craft would have been fleeing for the coast.

  "Jesus Christ," Anna muttered. "Not drugs."

  She headed for the dock.

  22

  Following the quarrel and the removal of Dr. Mudd, Mr. Arnold retired to his cell and closed the door. When I'd done questioning Joel six ways from Sunday and learning nothing more than that the row between Mssrs. Mudd a
nd Arnold had been the latter calling the former a thief and the former accusing the latter of being responsible for his prison woes, I determined to take the matter to Mr. Arnold, closed door or no. My rapping and calling "Mr. Arnold" was made somewhat easier by the fact that the cells at Fort Jefferson may very well end up being a man's home but by no stretch of the imagination can they be considered his castle.

  Mr. Arnold opened the door and bowed ever so slightly but said nothing.

  I told him about Tilly's experience with the union soldiers, how she'd boasted of having proof of Mudd's innocence. Despite Molly's constant reminders about airing our dirty linen in public, I told him that Tilly had been hiding papers or letters from me--or that I believed she had--and that I believed she had carried something away from his cell earlier and hidden it.

  Several times he asked where I thought she might have hidden these supposed papers. Human nature is a peculiar thing. The moment I came to believe the whereabouts of an item or items regarding which he'd not yet confided in me were important to him was the moment I decided not to tell him. This once I was determined to keep my secrets, such as they were, till I found an honest person.

  After too much cat's play, each of us batting at the crumpled bit of honesty we'd allowed ourselves, Mr. Arnold told me the following.

  The mail had come several days before. Both he and Dr. Mudd had received letters and packages.

  This much I know to be true--Tilly collected our mail then, from the guardroom where we asked to be brought to Joel that day; she'd taken the conspirators' mail to them. From here on I cannot say whether Mr. Arnold was telling me the truth or not. I expect he was but only so much as he wanted me to know.

  Mr. Arnold went on to say that he had received an important communique regarding personal business. He'd left the document--he wouldn't trust me even to know if it were letter, deed, last will and testament or an old bar bill--in what he believed to be safekeeping. In his straightened circumstances this would be beneath the moss-filled mattress and the ropes of the beds they were recently provided with.

  Tilly had come, ignored Joel, given Mr. Arnold cold looks, and spent her visit in whispered consultation with Samuel Mudd. Shortly thereafter Mr. Arnold had discovered his "document" was missing. He confronted Dr. Mudd. The doctor denied it. Arnold searched. There was a fight. Nothing was found.

  He did give me one bit of useful information. Tilly had been to the cell half a dozen times by herself--the soldier escort remaining outside to smoke, undoubtedly. Each time she spent less time with Joel and more with Dr. Mudd, speaking earnestly in tones too low to make out the conversation.

  In leaving, going most gratefully back out into the sunlight and ocean breezes, it occurred to me that the passing back and forth of secret notes--whether they be summons, sonnets or, as Tilly would have it, "proof"--might not be the whole of it; might not be the least of it.

  Since Dr. Mudd was seen with John Wilkes Booth by a number of credible witnesses before the assassination, I doubt there can be any real proof that he did not know the man, as he claimed at trial. Given this, and accepting that Dr. Mudd is admittedly an intelligent man and has shown no other signs of being irrational, it does not follow that he is using our sister to keep, save or transmit this hypothetical truth.

  Romance was my second thought, but you know how it is with the very young, Peggy. If Tilly were in love she wouldn't be able to hide it for an instant.

  All that remains that one might use a sixteen-year-old girl for is a means to escape. I believe Dr. Mudd intends to try to escape from Garden Key and means for our sister to help him.

  This is truly a dangerous game and one I cannot tell Joseph of. Not yet. Not until I know how deeply involved Tilly has become.

  These thoughts stinging behind my eyes and in my throat, I hurried back to our quarters with every intention of confronting Tilly, getting the truth out of the little beast if I had to hold her head in the washtub till she told me or drowned.

  I believe I would have--and would have been successful as well. Tilly was not the only one of us girls to inherit grandmother's legendary stubbornness--but our quarters were as tense and bitter and loud as the prison cells I had just quitted.

  Apparently Sergeant Sinapp had run to Joseph with the tale of Tilly's misbehavior. Tilly's. Joseph was in a rage. Neither the white silent nor the red and shouting to which I've grown accustomed. This was unlike any I've seen. Joseph would not listen to my side. He would not listen to Tilly. Indeed he had reduced her to a gray-faced ghost curled in my rocking chair. He would not allow us to speak. "Not a word. Not one damn word," he shouted every time I dared to so much as draw breath.

  Joseph has always listened to my side when it comes to the behavior of a soldier. Not (as I once thought) out of respect for me, but out of a need to discipline, guide and improve the men given into his care.

  This lack of parity was not the only thing that showed him so changed. Joseph's rages are much like those of the sea, full of wind and crashing with a clean sense of righteous wrath. This was different: hulking somehow, small and sneaking. I cannot put my finger on the difference but I felt it was so.

  Tilly was confined to her room for an unspecified sentence. Both Tilly and I were forbidden any intercourse with Joel Lane, Samuel Arnold, Dr. Mudd or any other confederate prisoners residing at the fort. Joseph forbade me to speak with our sister then, knowing the ban would not stick, chose to keep me under his eye for the rest of the day.

  While he worked at his desk between Tilly's room and ours, I was ordered to "work on my infernal correspondence" and so, of course, I am writing to you. Though Joseph's new and sulking ways alarm me, I must say that I find myself relieved at the edict that we are to stay away from the casemates over the guardhouse and that, to this end, the soldiers under Joseph's command have been ordered not to take us to the conspirators' cells or give us the key to go by ourselves.

  What started out as an act of Christian charity--caring for poor Private Lane--has become perverted. I feel the influence Dr. Mudd has over Tilly is unhealthy for her spirit as well as making her a target for those at the fort who are still reeling from the assassination of Mr. Lincoln.

  She is not the only one changed since the arrival of the Lincoln conspirators. If I am remembering correctly, Joseph's alteration commenced at about the same time. Or, rather, I should say I began noticing it then. Our lives here were cheerful and productive before they came--if one can say that of a life led on a prison island. Now it feels the very sunlight has soured and strikes like a fist and not its customary wet welcome, like the tongue of a large and gleeful dog.

  I've not yet decided whether or not to tell Joseph of Tilly's fleeing to the powder room with her "proof." As long as it is buried under a ton of cast iron it is safe from Tilly and she from it. Perhaps for the time being it is best to let sleeping secrets lie.

  I'm hoping this will all be a moot point after I get your next letter. What I am asking is that you take Tilly for a while if you can. Her life here has become entangled with forces from which I can't protect her.

  Oh dear. I must go now. Joseph just put his head into the room to inform me he requires my presence. I expect he wishes to leave our quarters and knows the instant he's gone I will go and talk to his pathetic prisoner down the hall and undermine her corrective punishment. Joseph is a great believer in the restorative powers of solitary confinement. I should know. He has discovered ways to isolate me even when in the company of others. Forgive me the self-pity. It has been a trying day. I will finish this tomorrow. A boat with the mail is expected and I can send this off to you.

  Tilly is gone.

  Joseph kept me with him for the remainder of the day yesterday but, before bed, I crept down the hall to wish Tilly good night. She was in her room then and told me to sleep well as she always does. This morning she was gone. Her bed was mussed as if she had slept there, and all that was missing were her shoes and the clothes she had worn the day before.

  At
first I thought she'd defied Joseph and was walking about the fort, possibly just enjoying the breeze on the moat wall after so long cooped up in her room. I searched the island and the fort, hoping to find her before Joseph did. There was an unsettling sameness to my seeking her as before, and it lured me back to the powder magazine, but this time she wasn't there.

  Finally I grew afraid for her--not of Joseph's wrath, but for her very person. I told my husband, and a search was begun in earnest. With everyone engaged, soldier, prisoner and even the work crews, it was but a half to three-quarters of an hour before every nook and cranny of this small key had been looked at.

  It was discovered that Joel Lane was gone from his cell and Sergeant Sinapp was missing the small sailing skiff the Merry Cay he uses to go fishing and turtleing.

  Everyone thinks Joel and Tilly have run off together and it must be so. Joseph has sent soldiers out to all the keys within half a day's sailing from the fort to see if the two runaways have landed. A handful of the men keep small pleasure boats, most just big enough for two or three passengers. As far as I know Joel has no skill as a sailor and, till she came here, Tilly had never been on anything but the canoe in the pond behind our old house.

  Forced inactivity has worn me down to tears more than once today. Joseph blames me for Tilly's running away and the escape of Private Lane. He has condemned me to sit out the search when it would be a relief to me to be with one of the sailing parties. I cannot speak to Mr. Arnold, Mudd or anyone else with the exception of Luanne.

  That chafes more than restricting my movements. As Sam Arnold and the doctor live in such close quarters with Joel, it is my hope that they might have heard or seen something that would help us. Joseph will, of course, speak with them, but I hold to the belief that they--or at least Mr. Arnold--would tell me things they might not tell one of the soldiers. There is also the possibility that Dr. Mudd had a hand in this. Should he have other "proofs" of his innocence that he felt he could not trust to the hands of Mr. Lincoln's army, I do not now think he would hesitate to use an innocent girl as the vessel for getting them to his supporters. What keeps me from really believing this to be the case is, though he might risk an innocent's life, surely he would not risk his precious documents. He must know as well as I the near impossibility of two unskilled sailors surviving a sixty-mile sail in a tiny skiff.