Dark Light

EPILOGUE

By the first week of October, the weather cleared, becoming typical of Florida autumns: tropic blue mornings, cool nights with stars, jasmine beneath a hunter’s moon. Beaches were silver. At night, palms were moon-glazed.

After two weeks without wind, the Gulf of Mexico also began to clear. By October 15th, a Saturday, Jeth, Tomlinson, Arlis Futch, and I decided water visibility had sufficiently improved to make our second dive on the wreck Dark Light. Chestra was still funding the project, taking care of legalities through her uncle’s lawyer. She had agreed that we were entitled to the majority of what we salvaged, minus all personal items that may have belonged to Frederick Roth.

In death, with Chestra standing sentinel, Marlissa Dorn remained faithful to her lover—something she’d been unable to manage in life. Penitence, perhaps, for a beautiful woman’s imperfections.

The storm had blown away all but one of our marker buoys, so we began all over. Dropped a half-dozen new buoys to outline the wreck, then followed the same search plan as before, three divers swimming circles, an orderly pattern by use of a rope.

The visibility was poor. I could see only five or six feet before objects disappeared in the murk. But it was markedly better than before.

We found more interesting objects from a classic American era—a time of torch singers, inventors, immigrants, and industrial aristocrats. A time when common people lived heroic lives and battled epic evils.

We found bottles. Part of an Edison phonograph. A brass-handled walking stick.

We also found a couple of objects so valuable that Jeth howled underwater when he saw what I had dug from the sand: two gold bars. Small, about the size of miniature loaves of bread. Heavy.

Gold does not tarnish in salt water, so they looked as freshly made as the day they were struck with their mint ID:

DEUTSCHE REICHSBANK

1 KILO

FEINGOLD 999.9

The bars were also stamped with a square-winged eagle, its talon clutching a swastika.

Later, we would calculate the value of a kilo of gold at current prices. Each bar was worth more than thirty thousand dollars. As historical objects, it was possible they were worth more. It was something to research.

Jeth and his pregnant wife, my dear friend Janet, were both ecstatic.

If, as Tomlinson said, there were dark spirits lingering among Dark Light’s ruins, they did not bump us. However, I did see a canoe-sized bull shark glide by, then vanish in the gloom. It was a male, easily identified because of the claspers near its anal fin. Bull sharks are responsible for more attacks on divers than great whites, so I called an end to the dive just to be on the safe side. Also, I had dealt with a shark of similar size in my past. Very similar. The resemblance frightened me.

Sharks do not track people over months, over years. Like storms, they are not energized by intent. There is cause but no design. My reaction proved I am not untainted by irrational thoughts and superstitions.

“You’re starting to trust your intuition,” Tomlinson said when I mentioned the shark. “You are opening up; beginning a very far-out, creative, reflective period of your life.”

I told him I hoped not. There was too much work to do around the lab.

My reaction was the same when he offered me a lighted joint on the boat trip back to Dinkin’s Bay. I refused, then told him to never bring the stuff aboard a working vessel that I was aboard.

He smiled, and said, “Lighten up, man. I can see you’re undecided.”

A joke, but I wasn’t undecided. It was something I would not try again. The experience was powerfully linked with Mildred Chestra Engle. It had blurred the evening. Even now, I wasn’t certain what was real, what wasn’t. Like the appearance of a familiar shark, there were implications that frightened me.

One unambiguous reality was a note Chestra mailed to the marina, postmarked Manhattan. It arrived five days after she left.

Doc, dear man, I am embarrassed that I left so quickly, and also by my behavior. At my age, my God! I had more than my usual one chartreuse & soda that night, which is the only way I can explain it, plus there was that magnificent storm! I hope you will forgive me.

Fondly, Chessie

P.S. I shouldn’t ask your forgiveness—I forgot your kind reminder: There are only two things women are never forgiven. Everything else, there’s no need to ask. MCE

O n Tuesday, the eighteenth, we were readying the Viking for our third dive on the wreck when we got a phone call from Arlis saying he couldn’t join us.

The previous night, someone had torched Indian Harbor Marina, its docks, fuel depot, and office. “It was one hell of a fire, lots of explosions, but nobody hurt,” Arlis told me. Then added, after a pause, “That’s what I heard, anyway.”

Detectives wanted to question him, he said. He would be busy most of the day.

Indian Harbor had become well known to law enforcement types in the last few weeks. Javier had died there. His killer, a marina employee named Matthew “Moe” Klabundee, had been murdered there. Bernard Heller was in jail without hope of a bond because two more bodies had been found on the property. Women who had been packed in drums, then buried. Investigators had found a lot of damning evidence in Heller’s residence that indicated he might be responsible for other crimes around the country.

A vicious little boy lived behind the man’s blue eyes.

When I read about Heller in the newspaper, I reflected on the night I held the struggling man beneath black water. Another few seconds was all I needed. A few seconds: the difference between perfect and imperfect timing.

We couldn’t find a replacement for Arlis, but we made the dive, anyway.

Two more bars of gold. Same markings.

Frederick Roth, and Dark Light, had not been inexpensive.

Maybe there was more. We hoped. We hunted. There wasn’t.

O ctober 19th, a Wednesday, was too windy to dive—fine with me, because there was a decent collecting tide at 2:27 P.M. and that’s how I spent the afternoon. Wading knee-deep water, searching sandbars, throwing the cast net.

By sunset, I was tired but felt great. Finally, a good working day on an island that was getting back to normal after one of the worst hurricanes in its history.

As I made notes in my log, and marked another day off the lab’s calendar, I realized today was the anniversary of another terrible storm—the autumn storm of 1944. It seemed all the more reason to enjoy small, everyday niceties. So when Tomlinson invited me aboard No Mas for a sunset beer, I accepted.

I had not mentioned Chestra for weeks. Nor had I discussed the scar tissue on her right shoulder. Had he seen it, or touched those small, distinctive marks?

It was not an easy decision. We had an unspoken rule about discussing women with whom we have been intimate. The agreement endorsed a code of chivalry that seems romantic—worse, irrational—to some, but I like it, anyway. I like it enough that it’s become part of my personal scaffolding.

So I did not bring up the subject of the lady’s shoulder. It was a relief to me, in a way. I knew that Tomlinson would insist on debating the tired old topic of good and evil—how could I not believe those two forces existed? Or not believe that a beautiful young woman could be forever scarred by the touch of an evil man named Adolf?

Even to discuss such a thing was absurd. It was as absurd, I had to remind myself, as my cannabis-induced fantasy that I had held Marlissa Dorn naked in my arms.

Instead, Tomlinson and I discussed familiar topics and exchanged local gossip. Inanities are fun, profundities are a pain in the butt.

But when he opened the icebox to roll a joint, I told him I was going for a run on the beach.

I did.

It was a night of wind and distant lightning. A waning moon was already over the Gulf by the time I got to the end of Tarpon Bay Road; surf was pumping, creating a waterfall roar. I jogged to the beach, then turned toward the lighthouse.

I had been working out hard of late, running every night, so my pace was strong, the route familiar. It took me past Southwind—nothing wistful or nostalgic involved, I told myself. It was a favorite route; one I had enjoyed for years.

A mild deceit.

I slowed, as usual, as I neared the estate. For the last two weeks, the house had been dark, shutters bolted. On this night, I expected it to be the same. It wasn’t. The balcony doors were wide, curtains dancing, flickering candles bounced giant shadows among bare trees.

I stopped without realizing I had stopped. Stood with hands on hips, staring.

Was that music playing upstairs? It was difficult to hear because of the wind and rolling surf.

The path that led through trees, past the cemetery, to the house was ahead. I approached it cautiously—no reason to be cautious but it’s the way I felt.

Was Chestra inside? It had to be Chestra.

Downstairs, I saw a flash of angular light, then darkness. Someone had exited through the sliding doors. Once again, I stopped. I waited, eager to see.

It was a woman, dressed in white. A lean, elegant figure, ghostly as she moved through shadows, hurrying along the path toward the beach, her perfume a vague intimacy dispersed by wind—vanilla and musk. Familiar. She passed without noticing me. The Gulf of Mexico was her focus…the surf line where waves sailed, then collapsed beneath their thunderous weight.

I took a few steps after her…then stopped. Took a few more, then called her name. She didn’t hear. I called again. Chestra!

The woman was at the tidemark, where beach tilted downhill. I watched her strip off her robe, fold it over her arm, and walk mechanically toward the water.

Chestra swimming? On a night like this? The surf was booming. It was craziness—as crazy as her obsession with storms.

A question she had asked came into my mind. A question about the epitaph on Marlissa Dorn’s crypt: WHOM THE SEA GIVES UP, GOD EMBRACES.

Did I believe it was true?

Of course not. But someone like Chestra might…

I called her name again. Then ran after her, still calling. Finally, the woman heard me. She turned.

“Hey, mister, what’s the problem?”

The voice was eerily similar: a dense, smoky alto, but it wasn’t Chestra. It was a young woman, lean, wearing a dark, one-piece swimsuit. The moon was not bright; the lighthouse was far down the beach. Even so, I could see she was remarkably fit. Painfully fit, Tomlinson might say.

“Mister? Is there something wrong?” The woman shifted her weight from one foot to another, communicating impatience.

I felt ridiculous. “No, I…I thought you were someone else. You looked familiar. I’m sorry.”

Overhead, clouds moved. Moonlight brightened. I could see her in more detail: the symmetry of cheeks, pale hair piled up, eyes peering out from two shadowed caverns. I was facing the moon. It was easier for her to see me, I realized.

“The name you called me, what was it?”

I said, “Chestra. It’s…an unusual name.”

The woman’s voice warmed slightly. “You don’t have to tell me. That’s my great-aunt’s name. Do you know Chessie?”

It took me a moment to answer. “Yes. We were…we are…friends.”

“Friends, with Aunt Chessie, huh? Really.”

The challenging inflection was familiar. Really. The woman’s voice, even the way she stood, nose to nose, comfortable inside herself, at ease with her body in the one-piece swimsuit, her attitude saying: Show me. Prove it.

Intimidating. I felt as if I was being inspected and judged at the same time.

I said, “That’s right. I enjoyed listening to her play the piano. She was working on a song when she was here. I liked it a lot. She wrote the song for—”

I stopped. That would have been going too far, saying she’d written the song for me. Indelicate.

As the woman patted at the pockets of her robe, she laughed—a purring sound, aloof as a cat. “My crazy old aunt Chess, yeah, I know the song you’re talking about. Chessie left the sheet music here. I was upstairs practicing, but I needed a break. I love the stuff she writes, but she won’t let me record anything. She’s so damn private, I’ve never figured out why.”

I had a guess but kept it to myself.

I said, “You’re a musician?”

“An actress, but I sing, too. I know the song well enough, I could play it—”

It was her turn to stop; realized that she should complete her inspection before inviting a stranger upstairs.

The woman stared at me for a moment, eyes invisible in their two smoldering caverns, an implicit intensity. She said, “You were running. You’re in pretty good shape—”

I didn’t think she would say it but she did.

“—for a guy your age.”

I said, “Thanks. I swim, too. There’s a pool at the school, but I like the Gulf better.”

That won her approval. The woman said, “Me, too. The ocean, it’s real. I love to work out, swimming especially. Which will mean no more of these”—she leaned toward her cupped hands, lit a cigarette, but left the lighter burning so I could see her face as she lifted her eyes to mine—“I’ll be here most the winter…if you need a partner?”