February is tourist season. A few hundred souls on that plane, eager to de-ice in the tropic heat, were about to be disappointed upon landing. The temperature was descending more rapidly than the jet.
I didn’t want to fire up the Franklin stove, but I had guests coming. Two women and a tough, judgmental kid. I could feel wind sieving up through the pine-slat floor, icy off the water. Concession was nipping at my toes.
Tomlinson said, “Looks like Arlis is right on about the weather,” breaking into my thoughts.
“It’s looking that way,” I said. “I guess we’d better warm things up a little.”
“I’ll bring in wood,” Tomlinson replied, still on target.
A few minutes later, he returned, his arms loaded with driftwood, muttering, “It’s so cold that just to take a whiz, I had to goose myself and grab Zamboni when he jumped out. Temperature must have dropped twenty degrees in the last hour.”
I was at the stove again, stirring a pot of milk, ready to add half a stick of butter, pink Caribbean sea salt and crushed pepper, as I replied, “Certain images don’t mix with oyster stew—do you mind? And don’t forget to wash your hands.”
He dropped the wood onto a tarp near the Franklin stove, saying, “Doc, your lack of sensitivity used to worry me. Now I sort of miss the good old days—back when you were about as sensitive as this stove.”
He busted a branch over his knee, pushed it into the fire and clanged the iron door shut.
A few minutes later, he said, “So what’s the verdict? When do we dive the lake?”
He was doing it again. I had been picturing Arlis Futch as he idled away from my dock in his mullet boat. The last thing he had said was, “I’m right about the cold front, and I’m right about Batista’s gold plane, too. Tomorrow’s no good. Monday, either. But it should be warm enough by Tuesday. Have all your gear rigged and ready.”
To Tomlinson, I said, “Maybe we’ll give it a try Tuesday morning. I think the weather will be okay by then.”
“Is that what Arlis said?”
I replied, “He’s not the only one who listens to marine radio.”
Now my mind was on Jeth Nicholes, the fishing guide, who had already told me that he had trips booked solid until the end of February. He needed the money and couldn’t break away on something so risky as hunting for lost treasure. I’d had to admit to Jeth that the chances of finding anything valuable were slim, so that had settled the matter.
I listened to Tomlinson tell me, “Jeth’s booked solid, so no point in even asking. Same with all the fishing guides.” He let me think about that for a few seconds, before saying, “What about Will-Joseph? We’ll need at least four people, and he’s certified.”
It was Tomlinson’s pet name for the troubled teenager. The boy was spending the week in Florida, the guest of a woman I had been seeing, Barbara Hayes. Twice the boy had run away from a halfway house near his Oklahoma reservation. Barbara had finally stepped in and offered to help. Temporarily.
The woman had her reasons for feeling indebted to Will.
I was thinking,
No way in hell is that boy going with us.
I had my reasons, too.
The boy carried a lot of baggage, and, when it comes to travel or diving, I prefer partners who pack light.
Will Chaser had survived
something that would have driven most people to the brink of insanity. Only a few weeks earlier, extortionists had buried him in a box, a copycat crime modeled on the Barbara Jane Mackle kidnapping of the late 1960s. Mackle had survived seventy-two hours in her grave; Will had escaped after less than a day, but only after killing one of his abductors.
Unless one is a sociopath, there is no such thing as guiltless homicide. No matter how good the reason, if you kill a man, he lives with you the remainder of your days. I had never discussed it with the boy, although Tomlinson had been nudging me to do so. Emotional scar tissue, like religion, is a private matter. As I told Tomlinson, from what I’d observed the boy appeared nonplussed by what he’d endured and done.
“Precisely why someone like you should talk to him,” Tomlinson had countered.
The man was probably right, but dealing with young males, at the peak of hormonal flux, can be a gigantic pain in the ass. I wanted nothing to do with it.
“Will’s too young,” I told Tomlinson, as I scanned a list of alternatives, narrowing it down to people I hadn’t yet contacted.
I could hear driftwood crackling. The fire was filling the room with a bouncing, ascending light as Tomlinson replied, “Shallow-up, Doc. Will’s a good kid. Full of testosterone and anger, that’s all. Besides, it’s just a scout dive. If we find anything interesting, we’ll have to replace the boy, anyway. He goes back to Oklahoma on Friday.”
I said, “I doubt if he’s even done an open-water dive. It’s a bad idea.”
Tomlinson was chuckling. “You know better than that. Why do you think Barbara took him to Key Largo before coming here?”
It was true, I knew it, but I said, “He didn’t mention anything to me about
liking
it.”
“That’s because you and the boy haven’t said two words to each other since he got here. Or maybe you didn’t notice that, either.”
Yes, I had noticed. It had created tension between Barbara and me—not entirely Will’s fault, because our relationship, I suspected, was coming to an end, anyway.
I said it again. “He’s too young, and not enough experience. Truth is, we don’t really need a fourth diver. You, me and Arlis. That’s enough.”
When he gets serious, Tomlinson has a way of lowering his voice to ensure attention. “As a personal favor, let the kid come along, okay? I’ll take full responsibility. What could be safer than a freshwater pond in the middle of Florida? A nice, safe, shallow-water dive. The kid’s a rodeo rider, for God’s sake. He’ll be fine, Doc.”
I was thinking of an obvious objection, as Tomlinson added, “As long as that monster gator’s not around, of course.”
FOUR
TWO DAYS LATER, A MONDAY, I FINISHED CHECKING
and packing enough dive gear for an expedition instead of what I had expected to be a pleasant one-day trip, then tiptoed to my bedroom. I wanted to check on a Saturday dinner guest who had left with the others, but then returned in the cold wee hours of the morning, saying, “I pictured you sleeping up here all alone and wondered if you might need a little extra heat.”
It wasn’t Barbara Hayes. She had left in a huff because of some imagined slight. My bedroom guest was Marlissa Kay Engle, my workout pal and surprising new lover. She was spending Monday night at my place, too.
Marlissa is a beautiful woman, all curves and flowing hair, and I stood in the doorway until I had confirmed that she was safe and asleep. Startled by something—a dream, perhaps—Marlissa stirred. Her rhythmic snoring was interrupted by a low moan.
I closed the curtains and went outside, through the shadows of mangroves, toward the marina. As I walked past the marina office, I could hear a television babbling from the upstairs apartment, a newscaster saying something about multiple homicides near Winter Haven.
I stopped long enough to listen. Five people had been murdered by two or more robbers at a secluded property north of Winter Haven, not far from Haines City. The owner of the house, his maid and her three children had all been killed. Shot or stabbed or both. Yesterday, cops had spotted the maid’s car on I-75, heading toward Atlanta. Three suspects had been arrested, all illegals from Haiti.
Even Dinkin’s Bay can’t insulate itself from the outrages of the outside world.
I turned right at the bait tank, onto the docks, walking past the dozing cruisers and trawlers—
Tiger Lilly, Das Stasi, Playmaker
—and was about to knock to see if my friend Mike Westhoff was aboard when I noticed a lone figure in the shadows by the boat ramp dragging a canoe out of the water. I watched for a second, then called out a name, because there was no mistaking the jeans, the western shirt and the headband.
It was Will Chaser.
As I helped Will drain the canoe,
then flip it onto the rental rack, I asked him, “Were you fishing? Or visiting Tomlinson?”
No Más,
moored a hundred yards from the yacht basin, blended with mangrove shadows, its mast a frail exclamation point that was tipped with stars. The portholes were dark, but there was a bead of yellow light strobing on the stern—a candle. The candle told me that Tomlinson was meditating—it was his morning and nightly ritual—but maybe the boy had just left. It was a risky combination: two delinquents with more than enough common interests to bridge the age gap.
“He was telling me about that lake you’re diving,” Will replied, “but he wouldn’t say why. Why a lake instead of the Gulf, I mean?”
I was tempted to ask the boy if he had Barbara’s permission to be out paddling a canoe so late, but it would have only put him on the defensive.
I asked, “How’d you get here? Rental bike?”
“Yeah, but I usually walk. It’s only a mile to our beach condo, and I like this side of the island better. When I was paddling back from the creek, Tomlinson saw me, so I pulled alongside for a few minutes. He gets nervous around me. I think it’s because he’s stopped smoking weed until I leave the island.”
It was true, I had insisted upon it, but it surprised me that Will knew. I said, “Uhh . . . are you saying you think Tomlinson smokes marijuana?”
“Unless he uses a bong for asthma, that would be my guess. Have you ever been on his boat?” The teenager lifted his head and sniffed. “Hell, I can smell the stuff from here. But I’ve got a better nose than most.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Illegal drugs, that’s a pretty silly risk for a man his age to take. You could be wrong.”
There was a sarcastic pause, and I pictured the boy rolling his eyes before he ignored the lie, saying, “Mostly, though, I was canoeing. I paddled way back in the sanctuary.”
I asked, “See anything interesting?”
The boy shrugged.
“Next time, I can loan you a flashlight.”
Will had racked the two paddles and was now trying to force the rusty latch on the lifejacket locker. “Got one,” he said.
“I have a bunch of really good small LEDs. It’s sort of a hobby of mine. I could loan you one to try.”
From his pocket, he took out a cheap rubber-coated flashlight to show me. “That’s okay. I use my own stuff.”
I said, “Ah,” and became even more determined to have a conversation. “Did you see any alligators? You’ve got to watch yourself in the mangroves, even in a canoe. There are some big ones.”
He replied, “Yeah,” then punctuated the long silence by kicking the latch with the heel of his shoe—he wasn’t wearing cowboy boots, I noticed. He usually did. Will kicked the latch twice more, hissing, “You stubborn son of a bitch,” before the thing finally opened.
It was an aggressive display that had as much to do with my presence as the rusted locker. A full minute later, though, the boy sounded almost friendly when he added, “The same’s true of coyotes out west.”
I replied, “Huh?”
“Coyotes are dangerous when they’re in a pack. People think animals act the way they see them on TV or in the zoo. Not me. Animals are always on a feed—the ones in the wild, anyway.”
I was taken aback. The kid suddenly sounded well grounded and reasonable. And he wasn’t done talking.
“I saw five gators tonight. Their eyes glowed kind of a dull red when I hit them with the light. On the way back, though, I saw one that had eyes more orange than red. It went under before I got a good look. Do some gators have orange eyes?”
I said, “Orange? You’re sure?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”
“Then you saw a saltwater crocodile.”
The boy was impressed. “No kidding? I’ve seen them on television—shows on Australia and Africa. I didn’t know crocs lived around here.”
“They’re a different species,” I said, “but similar animals. There’s at least one big female that hangs out in the sanctuary. It could have been her. How big?”
“Not that big, but definitely orange eyes.”
The kid closed the locker and began walking toward the parking lot, where I could see a bike leaning against the ficus tree next to the Red Pelican Gift Shop. I fell in beside him, inexplicably pleased that he considered me worthy of conversation.
Will asked me, “Are they exotics?”
In my mind, the kid’s stock was rising. “Nope, crocs are native. Florida’s home to about every form of exotic animal you can imagine. But saltwater crocs were here long before people arrived.”
“Like the electric eels in your lab.” He offered it as an example of a feral species.
“That’s right. Plus a hundred thousand boa constrictors and pythons, between Orlando and Key West, all gone wild. Monitor lizards, iguanas, Amazon parrots and monkeys, too—you name it.”
“That’s kind of cool,” Will said, but his tone was cooling. “Is that why you’re diving a lake instead of the Gulf? To check it out and see if there are any exotics?”
I shrugged, a perverse streak in me wanting the boy to know what it was like to be answered with silence.
“You’re not going to tell me why you’re diving the lake, either, huh?”
I said, “It’s not my trip. A friend of ours planned it. Any questions, he’d have to answer.”
“Do I know the guy?”
“His name’s Arlis Futch. Captain Futch. He’ll be here in the morning.”
“Tomlinson said there was a chance you might let me go.”
“That’s up to Captain Futch, too.”
The windows of the Red Pelican produced enough light for me to read the boy’s reaction. He didn’t believe me.
“What’re you going to tell the guy when he asks about me?”
I said, “Knowing Arlis, he won’t. But he might ask you about your first open-water dive. How’d you like Key Largo?”