Dark Light

33

I knocked on Chestra’s door. No answer. Placed my ear near the window and heard music, the piano. I tested the knob. Unlocked. Considered sticking my head in and calling her name but decided I didn’t know the woman well enough.

Instead, I took a business card from my billfold, and wrote, “We’re in the salvage business. Back at 9. MDF,” and wedged it at eye level inside the doorjamb.

I’d ridden Tomlinson’s gaudy beach bike, which was now propped against a gumbo-limbo tree. From the basket, I took my foul-weather jacket and walked to the beach.

I’d spent the day on the water, but weather changes quickly in the subtropics and I wanted to have a look at the Gulf. At the lab, I’d listened to NOAA weather while connecting the flask-sized object and the gun-sized object to the electrolytic reduction circuit. The other artifacts—the German coins and the diamond swastika—were already cleaner, more detailed. The cigarette lighter wasn’t much improved—the engraving only slightly more legible. Yes, the first letter was an M.

Marlissa?

As I worked, the computerized voice of NOAA told me that hurricanes near Grand Cayman and Cuba were gaining mass, moving slowly toward the Gulf. The low-pressure system off Nicaragua was spinning eastward toward open ocean.

The hurricane most likely to effect Sanibel had formed a week earlier near the Windward Islands as an unnamed tropical depression. It moved southeast near Grenada, then arched to the west-northwest toward Jamaica with maximum winds of forty m.p.h., vacuuming heat off the Caribbean Sea. The storm was now approaching the western tip of Cuba with sustained winds of more than one hundred m.p.h., and would gain strength once over water.

Only a month after being cross-haired by a category 4 hurricane, Southwest Florida residents were still panicky. The storm that hit us had had steady winds of 145 m.p.h., with gusts of more than 170 m.p.h. This new hurricane was following a similar path, and I knew that lines at supermarkets and gas pumps would be long tonight. By tomorrow afternoon, northbound lanes would be clogged with vehicles evacuating to Georgia and the Carolinas.

Panic triggers herd instincts. Government agencies, fearing post-storm criticism, are quick to overreact. It was a statistical improbability that another hurricane would make landfall near Sanibel. There was no reason to evacuate yet thousands would flee. It was more dangerous, in fact, on the road than to be battened down at home.

The dynamics of wind, heat, and water are indifferent to human thought, irrational or otherwise. But this storm now had a name. It was an entity that evoked fear. The instinct to appease by sacrifice, hording, or flight is ancient.

Traffic was already backed up on the island—which is why I’d come by bicycle. The causeway that connects Sanibel to the mainland had been damaged by the hurricane, so the Department of Transportation was closing it every other hour for repairs. Only emergency vehicles were allowed to cross between midnight and 6 A.M.

Islanders were running in advance.

Not Mildred Engle, though. She was unconcerned, content to play the piano while the world panicked around her.

A woman who loved storms.

I walked to the beach, feeling the thunderous resonance of waves. A tropical cyclone was breathing out there, siphoning heat, and exhaling a water-dense southwest wind.

As I walked, I reviewed details of our dive. What remained among the wreckage of the motor yacht Dark Light? Gold? I’d convinced myself I was imagining things. Gold on a family-owned boat that was being used by Civil Defense for coastal patrols? That was as improbable as…well, as finding a diamond-studded swastika and death’s-head.

Maybe there was gold out there.

Something strange happened that long-ago autumn night, in 1944. What? Key parts of the puzzle were missing.

I stepped into the tree line, sand pliant beneath my jogging shoes, and stopped at the edge of the Southwind estate. The upstairs light was on, balcony doors open. Curtains moved in the wind like shadows dancing. I continued toward the house until I could hear Chestra at the piano. I recognized “In the Still of the Night.”

I turned toward the horizon. The moon was masked by turquoise clouds. The sea was Arctic silver; ice ridges on an oleaginous plain. Inside me, music found tempo in waves as I tried to imagine what had happened the night Dark Light went down. I needed plausible data to assemble workable scenarios.

I thought the whole thing through; tried to keep it orderly.

Supposition: Unaware of an approaching hurricane, two people boarded a thirty-eight-foot Matthews, and ran a 240-degree course off Sanibel Lighthouse. They were investigating a report of suspicious lights sighted offshore, possibly a German U-boat. Coincidentally, there was also one or more boats in the area containing Cuban fishermen—several of their bodies washed ashore the next morning.

Conclusion: If lights were spotted, they belonged to Cuban fishing boats, or an unidentified vessel, a U-boat, or a combination of the three.

Supposition 2: Dark Light sank during the storm.

Observation: The boat went down quickly. Its remains were only a degree or two off the original heading. A vessel floundering in a storm commonly drifts miles before sinking.

Probability: Dark Light sank because of a circumstance or event that was abrupt, not cumulative.

Supposition 3: Aboard Dark Light were Marlissa Dorn and Frederick Roth, secret lovers. They also had at least minor business dealings. Dorn loaned Roth money to buy real estate. Both emigrated from Nazi Germany, so may have come into possession of Nazi medals that were: 1) awards for government service, or 2) acquired independently, perhaps because of their monetary value.

Probabilities: 1) Dorn and/or Roth were awarded, or acquired, the medals found at the wreck site. 2) The medals were placed on board by someone else. 3) Another person or persons came aboard Dark Light that night.

Supposition 4: The body of Marlissa Dorn washed ashore the day after the storm. Roth’s body was never found.

Conclusion: Dorn died during the storm. Roth may or may not have died during the storm. If he did not die, he wasn’t aboard Dark Light when it sank, or he found refuge aboard a vessel capable of surviving 140 m.p.h. winds in open sea.

Probability: A submarine.

Valid so far?

No.

The data was flawed; at least one of the conclusions implausible.

I stretched, and looked toward the house. Chestra was now playing the poignant melody that I recognized but still couldn’t match with a title. I reminded myself to ask again. I also had a more important question: Was she sure her godmother’s body was found on the beach near Lighthouse Point?

It had been bothering me on a subconscious level for a while. I now understood why.

Five hours earlier, when Augie and Oswald had been set adrift, they had been precisely where Dark Light had spent her last minutes afloat. By the time we’d found the two men, half an hour later, they had drifted more than a mile away from Sanibel Island, not toward it. If allowed to drift all night, I’d calculated they would’ve come ashore near Naples—forty miles to the south—or, more likely, they would have been swept out to sea, into the Gulf Stream.

Currents in the Gulf of Mexico are complex but tend to flow either northward or southward, interrupted by circular eddies that rotate like slow, underwater tornadoes.

Even driven by dissimilar weather conditions, the body of a dead woman would not have drifted directly east. She would not have come ashore near Sanibel Lighthouse.

If Marlissa Dorn’s body had washed up on the beach on the morning of 20 October 1944, she’d either gone overboard when the thirty-eight-foot Matthews was only a mile or two off Sanibel—long before it sank—or she’d entered the water from land.

That presented a very different, and darker, scenario.

If Marlissa had fallen overboard, would her lover have continued his westward course?

No. Not if he wanted her to live.

Do rational people walk the beach, or swim, during a hurricane and risk being swept away?

No. Not if they value their lives.

Conclusion: Marlissa Dorn had either been murdered, or she’d died of misadventure that may have been storm-borne and accidental, or may have been invited by her own recklessness—a form of suicide.

I pictured Chestra energized by storm wind, indifferent to lightning strikes.

The music was still playing.

I turned toward the house and followed the path of silver sand.

C hestra was singing lyrics unfamiliar to me; lyrics that she’d written.

…the sun is on the sea

In my mind, waves wash over me

We’ll never know

All that we possess

’Til the end of time

We can only guess

I stood near the piano, listening, the photograph of Marlissa Dorn on the table nearby. Chestra had yet to reply to the first of my pointed questions, but I couldn’t bring myself to interrupt. She had a remarkable alto voice. Her interpretation was soulful, smoky, but understated; her lyrics, articulate. Tomlinson had described her music accurately: The effect was more than auditory, it was chemical.

Once again, I wondered: How could someone with her talent have slipped through life unknown?

Down a haunted highway

Wind in my hair

And the night is laced

With moonlight everywhere

Then I heard you whisper

Right in my ear

You have come this far

You can go from here

She tried to keep the last chord alive, her foot on the sustain pedal.

“Do you mind, Doc, if I play just one more? Music—I get carried away. It’s my favorite mode of travel.”

I said, “For now, let’s stay where we are, okay? I’d like to talk.” As she sighed, registering disappointment, I added, “Later, I’d enjoy hearing you play. It’s still early”—I checked my watch—“not even nine-thirty. I thought you’d want to talk. That you’d be more excited we found your wreck.”

“I’m thrilled. It seems too good to be true. I guess I’m still in shock.”

She didn’t act thrilled when I told her. She looked troubled. Something had changed in the last twenty-four hours, that was my impression. Something else: She became flustered when I said I’d heard a rumor about the Dorn family and a German POW.

“All families have their skeletons.” She’d laughed, making light of it. But she escaped immediately to the piano after adding, “Guilt. It’s the gift that never stops giving. Some legacy, huh, kiddo?”

When I said, “Then it’s true?”, she began to play, her furtive shrug saying: It’s a long story.

Obviously, she hadn’t told me everything.

She’d played a medley of her own work—impressive. But I was determined to get answers. “Chessie, tell me what you know about the night the boat went down. Everything.” I held Marlissa’s photograph up as if it might freshen her memory. “It was so long ago, no one cares anymore. What do you think we’ll find on that wreck? You’re investing thousands of dollars. Why? There’s no need to edit your story.”

Her fingers were long, and as elegant as her legs. They moved with a surgical certainty on the piano keys, independent of her body. As if reading my mind, she said, “I don’t tell stories, my hands do. Fairy tales. Tragedies. I’m always a little surprised by their confidence.” She lifted her eyes to mine without moving her head. “Does that seem strange?”

“I don’t know. My hands aren’t skilled.”

“I’m astonished. Maybe you haven’t found the right instrument yet. The truth”—chords she played transitioned to the melody I thought I knew but couldn’t name—“you say that word like it’s something final. Truth. It’s the same when you ask questions. You’re…so definite. So straightforward.”

I replied, “The truth often is.”

“I’m not so certain. I don’t have anything against people who say they’re searching for the truth. It’s the ones who claim they’ve found it, I don’t trust. There are people who go around trying to neaten up a disorderly world. Are you one of those men?”

“No. I’m one of those men who bumbles less when I know the facts.”

She dipped her head toward the piano’s music stand, where there was no sheet music. “Just the facts, ma’am. Okay. Musical notes are facts—professional piano tuners adjust each note mathematically, did you know that? You don’t believe facts lie?” She smiled. “Then we haven’t been riding in the same elevators. And you’ve never heard karaoke.”

It was impossible not to like the woman. It was also impossible to pressure her.

I said, “The title of the song you’re playing. I’ve asked before, what’s the name—” But she interrupted my question with a lyrical flurry, an introduction. As she sang, I listened attentively, expecting the lyrics to jog my memory.

They didn’t.

Morning is breaking in New York

Silver horns and a golden sky

I see you, I need you

Don’t you ever say good-bye

You’re so tender and you’re mine

So I’ll draw the dusty blind

You are mercy

And holy to me…

Roof by roof

Through corridor and street

Room by room

The chain of memory

Make another face

Another joke

Another scheme

’Til we are gone forever

And free…

When she’d finished, I didn’t speak for many seconds. “That’s lovely.”

“Thank you.”

“You wrote it?” I was contemplating the lines: “You are mercy/And holy to me.” Pained but adoring. At one time in her life, Chestra had been in love with an extraordinary man.

She surprised me, replying, “Yes. I wrote that many, many years ago. It’s about my first love—Manhattan.” Her fingers found the keys again, softly. “I enjoy the anonymity of crowds, the sanctuary of strangers. Like a lot of people, I cling to the silly notion I’m having a love affair with that great big wonderful city because I wake up with it most mornings. One of us is a harlot, and that’s all I’m going to tell you.” Laughter.

“The song was never recorded?”

“No. I write for myself. And a few others.”

“I was sure I’d heard it. That I knew the title but couldn’t remember.” I didn’t add that it was more mystifying because the melody didn’t resemble any well-known song.

“My uncle Clarence Brusthoff—he was the grandson of Victor Dorn, who built this house—my uncle Clarence liked to quote Thomas Edison about strange things like that. Knowing a person you’ve never met before. Recognizing a tune you’ve never heard.”

I looked at the wall of photographs as she continued. “Edison and Henry Ford were both closet mystics. They believed the air was full of microscopic bits of knowledge. ‘Entities,’ they called them. Or ‘little people,’ left over from previous lives; other worlds.

“‘Ideas are in the air,’ Mr. Edison told one of my uncles. Everything already exists; every idea, every event. It’s all available to us if we’re persistent, and allow it to happen. My uncle had asked Mr. Edison how he happened to invent both the phonograph and moving pictures. No human being had even contemplated such marvels.”

It was a conversation that Tomlinson would enjoy.

I tried to get her back on the subject. “I don’t know much about the entertainment business, but someone had to offer you contracts. Anyone who’s ever heard you perform has to wonder why your name, your music, aren’t well known.”

She laughed again, swaying as her fingers pulled her along the keyboard. “I had a few offers, sure. Records, films. I wasn’t a bad-looking gal, and I used my looks like a proper New York woman—which means I never exposed my breasts unintentionally. Recording my music, though, would have been like walking down Broadway naked. Same with Hollywood. No thanks.” She laughed again. “Especially at this stage of life.”

“Marlissa Dorn would’ve envied you.” My eyes were moving from Dorn’s photograph to Chestra’s face, gauging the size of the earlobes, the nose, the full and swollen lips. “You turned them down. Marlissa never got her chance to accept.”

The woman was thoughtful for a moment. Her music slowed, then stopped. She stood, closed the keyboard lid, and came around the piano, her hand out. She’d made a highball for me, a chartreuse and soda for herself. I put the drink in her hand.

“You’re right, Doc.”

“About Marlissa envying you?”

“No. About me leveling. There are parts of the story you don’t know. It’s time I came clean.”