Dead of Night

12

Sanibel and Captiva are exclusive, amiably reclusive islands with shops, shaded neighborhoods, and seaside mansions, but they’re also a favorite vacation destination. Publicity about a recent hurricane had frightened off one variety of vacationer while attracting more adventurous types who were more interesting, and a lot more fun.

It’d been a busy year. Especially now. This was Christmas, near peak tourist season, so traffic was heavy even on this Monday evening as I approached the Sanibel Causeway. I crawled across the bridge in my old pickup, ignoring the tailgating BMWs, Mustangs, and eager rental cars, peeved because I’d missed yet another sunset cocktail hour with the live-aboards, fishing guides, and other locals who make up the peculiar family of Dinkin’s Bay Marina.

There are reasons I don’t like being away from home at sunset, some personal, most social. On the islands, sunset is ceremonial. It’s the convivial, kicked-back, communal time when even strangers become a little friendlier, and the world shifts collective gears, slowing its orbit in the growing, slow dusk.

But missing sunset wasn’t my biggest upset that Monday night. During the drive, I’d spent twenty minutes on the phone with Dewey. She was still irritable, quick to take offense.

To get her to talk, I had to ask questions. It’s one of her gambits when she’s in a certain kind of mood. Silence is a way of controlling. Her responses terse, she told me, Yes, Iowa was cold. Iowa’s always cold in December. Yes, there was snow. There’s always snow in winter. She’d been stacking her own firewood, shoveling her own path to the barn.

“I guess that’s what I should expect, huh? Because I’m carrying a baby and living alone.”

Same complaint, different conversation.

I’d replied, “Then come home. We’ll live in your Captiva house. I’ll take great care of you. It’s warm here. Get on a plane tomorrow.”

“I am home. Why can’t I get it through your thick head? I’m where I want to be, and you’re where you want to be. Just admit it. Even when you’re here, you’re gone. I’ve seen that look in your eyes. Those times when you disappear and I know you’re down by the river, probably thinking about fish, water, currents.”

She wasn’t being fair. But she also happened to be right, which made me feel like hell.

A bad beginning to a Monday night that was about to get worse.

In the mangrove gloom, sky darkening, I parked my truck outside the marina gate, shouldered my bag-several live guinea worms secured in a jar therein-and walked the wobbly boardwalk that connects my home to shore. I’m a guy of habit. The first thing I do when back from a trip is check the wooden cistern-sized fish tank on the lower deck.

Usually, I’m holding my breath as I approach the thing, expecting the worst. Pumps fail, filters clog. A decomposing soup of carefully selected marine specimens makes for an unpleasant homecoming.

But my son, Laken, had been taking care of the lab. He was on holiday from school in Central America, and enjoyed the work. So I wasn’t surprised to find that this wooden aquarium had been meticulously maintained. The sides of the tank were algae-free, the water so clear that it didn’t slow my vision even in the weak yellow glow of the deck lights that I’d installed at intervals around the railing.

Everything in the tank-immature snook, tarpon, bandit-masked snappers, horseshoe crabs, spider crabs, blooming anemones, and bivalves-looked healthy and active beneath the crystal water lens.

The boy continued to impress.

Because my place is small, the living area minimal, with one bed, Laken had been bunking at the marina in the guest room of Jeth Nicholes’s upstairs apartment. The lights of my laboratory were on, though. On the chance my son might still be up there hanging out at the computer, doing research on the Internet, or writing e-mails to his Latin American pals, I jogged up the steps and pushed open the lab’s screen door.

Odd. He’d left the lights on, but the room was empty.

Not like him.

I stood in the doorway a moment, seeing the rows of aquaria-each glass tank lighted in blue, aerators pumping-and noted that my dissecting instruments, jars of chemicals, test tubes, and flasks were all in their place on or above the stainless steel table and sink. Saw that my microscopes were covered; that the Bunsen burner, my centrifuge, my goggles, and white laboratory smock were at the epoxy workstation as I’d left them.

Yet, something felt different.

What?

It was a sensory impression, instinctual; nothing reasonable about it. Something was amiss.

My instincts were right.

I heard a noise off to my left. It was a stealthy, creaking sound well known to me. It was the sound of a big man trying to move quietly.

Before I could whirl to look, I felt a stinging impact on my shoulders as someone grabbed me. I dropped my bag as a big man turned me… swung me out into the roofed breezeway that connects house and lab… then slammed me hard, face first, against the outside wall.

He was a tall guy; hands with the sort of hydraulic strength that’s daunting-and distressing. He’d locked his fingers around my left wrist and managed to leverage my arm up behind my back; had me pinned there in a hammer-lock so painful that I was up on my tippy-toes, trying to reduce pressure on my shoulder.

With his mouth close to my ear, he whispered, “I expected it to be harder than this, Dr. Ford. The way Mr. Harrington talks about you, it’s like you’re some hotshot stud. I can’t wait to get back to headquarters and tell him how easy it was to take you down. Consider this a test… and you failed, dude. He said you’d beat my butt.”

The man had my face smashed so hard against the wall that I couldn’t turn to look, but now I knew who he was. I recognized his voice. It was Parker Jones, the so-called executive assistant of a powerful man by the name of Hal Harrington. In practice, though, he was Harrington’s body-guard and errand boy.

Harrington needs both because he’s a high-level U.S. State Department official and covert intelligence guru. What few know is that he’s also part of an elite deep-cover operations team. To give members legitimate cover while operating in foreign lands, the agency provided its people with legitimate and mobile professions.

Harrington was trained as a computer software programmer, and later founded his own company. He’s now listed among the wealthiest men in the country.

But he’s still with the team. The head of it now.

Other members included five CPAs, a couple of attorneys, an actor, a well-known politician, some journalists, and at least three physicians.

There’s a marine biologist, too. A man who’s traveled the world doing research. Bull sharks, Careharhinus leucas were a specialty.

Me, the much-traveled biologist.

I’d been recruited out of high school. Spent too many revolutions and wars as a covert line officer. Lots of dark nights in jungle hammocks.

Any place in the world leucas is found, I could be found.

But the time came when I felt I’d contributed enough. So I resigned. Moved to Sanibel. End of story.

Or so I thought.

Harrington had spent the last year trying to convince me that I was not allowed to quit. Once a member of the team, always a member.

Sending someone to rough me up, though-I never thought he’d resort to that kind of pressure.

Still on my tiptoes, face smashed flat, I listened to Parker Jones say, “I don’t know what you do for Mr. Harrington, but I’m gonna tell him that, whatever it is, I can do it one hell of a lot better. So why shouldn’t he pay me the extra money? Let you go off and play with your fish.”

Wincing, my breath whistling, I said, “Get your hands off me. Or I will personally close your ugly fucking hole.”

He hooted. “Whoo-eee… now, there’s a nasty word I heard you never use. I heard that’s not your style. Now I can tell Mr. Harrington you’re starting to fall apart upstairs, too, psychologically.”

I said, “I only use it on really nasty little people,” as I stomped back hard, crushing my heel down on the arch of his foot. The sudden pain caused him to recoil, but he managed to keep my arm wedged between my shoulders.

It gave me enough room, though, to turn and somersault my body forward-a tumbling escape called “a Granby”; a wrestling move that a hard-assed old coach named Fries made me practice month after month until I could do it automatically. Jones maintained his grip on my wrist, but he lost his leverage on my arm.

I was already turning when I hit the deck; came up on my feet, still pivoting, and used the heel of my right hand to slam his chin backward. Nailed him so hard that his head snapped back against the laboratory wall.

Stunned, he touched his nose, looked at the blood, and yelled, “Hey, you sonuvabitch, you’re not supposed to hit. This isn’t real; it’s a fuckin’ exercise!”

He had both his big hands up now, palms outward, but I wasn’t done. I grabbed his right arm and pulled him toward me, dropping down on one knee so that he stumbled and fell, folding his body naturally over my left shoulder. A fireman’s carry. My hand still controlling his arm, I stood, lifting the man’s full weight on my shoulder, straining to make it seem effortless. Like picking up a child.

The guy was no child. He had to be six-five, over two-fifty.

“Hey, Ford. Stop it, man. Put me down. Goddamn it-ouch-that hurts!”

As I carried Jones through the breezeway, I made sure to slam his head into the wall a couple of times, accidental-like. Then, avoiding my shark pen, I continued to the railing that edges the outer deck.

“Can you swim, Jones?”

“Hell, yes, I can swi-Hey, I mean, NO. No, I can’t swim. Did you hear me? I… can… not… swim!”

I said, “Then it’s about time you learn,” and dumped him over the railing.

The rail is about twelve feet above the water. Jones filled the interval of his descent with a satisfying shriek. It had a falsetto quality, not unlike the sound of an adolescent girl.

When he’d surfaced, and I was sure that he could make it to shore on his own, I called to him, “When you’re finished with your swim, I’ll be in my lab. That’s if you still want to talk. And Parker? Try not to get my deck all wet, okay?”

To Parker Jones, I said, “Don’t be tricky. You don’t think I know you’re wired? Harrington isn’t going to let some flunky talk to me unless it’s recorded, just in case I get sloppy or pissed off and break one of his golden rules. So go ahead and take the thing off before you get shocked.”

He was wearing expensive slacks and a blue shirt beneath a navy blue blazer with gold buttons. His blond hair had been pulled back in a ponytail. With his hair now loose and wet, clothes dripping, the man looked like some unfortunate yachtsman who’d taken a spill off the dock.

He was using a big paw to wobble his jaw back and forth, testing to see if it was broken. “There was no need to hit me. I was playin’ the game, man. The surprise takedown is part of the security business, keeps us on our toes. A fuckin’ tradition. That’s what Harrington told me, anyway. But maybe you missed that lesson, or it’s just not hip with your tight-assed generation.”

We were back in the breezeway between my house and lab; dogtrots, they were once called, for reasons I’ve forgotten. I’d carried my bag to the lab, placed the jar containing African parasites in a safe place, then gathered a couple of towels.

I lobbed one to him now, saying, “I think my generation must’ve left me off the mailing list.”

“Well, you sure didn’t follow the rules. Pain’s okay, but you don’t break nothin’.”

“Yeah? My rules are simpler. You can say any asshole thing you want, that’s okay. But put your hands on me, or hurt a friend, then someone’s going to the floor. No discussion. Win or lose. It’s one of my personality quirks.”

“‘There you go, man. Playing the hard-ass again. What was I supposed to do when you smacked me? Fight back? Yeah, sure, I pop you a few times, and then Mr. Harrington would probably fire me.”

He was trying to rescue his scuffed dignity by playing an old, old role: I coulda beat you if I’d wanted. But his bullying, smart-assed attitude irked me. So I tossed him another towel, but threw it a few feet over his head. Automatically, Parker thrust both hands up to catch it. As he did, I took a long step, mashed my left foot down on his right foot, then pushed him in the chest.

He couldn’t backpedal, so it didn’t take much of a push. His arms circling for balance, the man fell butt-hard on the deck, and the back of his head slammed the wall again. Instantly, I was kneeling beside him, my nose close to his ear.

“We don’t want Harrington to fire you. So consider this your free pass, mister. Your chance to pop me. Take your best shot. Harrington will never hear about it, not from me. What your doctors tell him afterward, that’s up to them.”

Jones had had enough. He was waving his hands. “No, uh-uh, I’m done. Another shot to the head like that last one, I might go out permanent. I feel like I’m gonna puke.”

I know what it’s like to be humiliated, so I helped him to his feet, and put some warmth in my voice. “Okay, no harm done. Now take off that wire you’re wearing. We’ll talk.”

From the pocket of his sport coat, he removed an expensive-looking ballpoint pen and held it up. “This thing’s digital; records up to six hours. Probably ruined now ‘cause of the water.” He handed it to me. “How’d you know?”

“Oh… just a wild guess. I’ve worked with Harrington a long time. By the way, he set you up. He knew how I’d react if you pulled some boot camp takedown routine.”

Jones showed surprised. “Why? Like it was a test for both of us, maybe?”

I slid the digital recorder into my pocket. “It’s exactly the sort of thing he’d do, suggesting you take a shot at me.”

“Gezzus,” Jones said, “if that’s the truth, I feel kinda stupid.”

I told him, “When I deal with Hal Harrington, that’s the way I usually feel, too.”