Dead of Night

15

With a Barnum amp; Bailey sweep of his hand, Tomlinson directed my attention to what stood leaning against the railing. “What do you think? You ever seen anything like it?”

I slid past him and gazed at the most beautiful surfboard I’ve ever seen.

It was a custom long board. Had to be over nine feet. No… closer to ten. It was built with an outside skin that was a mosaic of alternating wooden strips-red, onyx, and white-all sealed beneath a protective coating of acrylic. On the nose of the board was an airbrush painting of one of the mackerel sharks: a great white. On the tail was an impressionistic American flag.

Tomlinson asked, “Is this thing exceedingly bitchin’, or what? At Vero Beach, when you had trouble catching waves, you should have blamed that shitty rental board instead of yourself. Just like you to take the heat.”

I cupped my hands around the rails, taking pleasure in the board’s convex lines and its symmetry. It had a ceramic gloss, like sculptured porcelain, and a biconical shape that would not have been out of place if spiked into a bluff on Easter Island. The shape was totemic. It was suggestive of ancient stone idols, blood sacrifices.

I lifted the board-amazingly light.

“Your surfing chariot. Like it?”

I said, “It’s gorgeous. Really… beautiful. What I like most is that it’s not new, right? It’s been refinished. Completely redone.”

“My friend, you have a superb eye for artistry. This is one of the classic old Vector boards, shaped by fellow hipster Dave Hamilton on Melbourne Beach. The inlaid woods are from South America and Africa-caoba, rose, and mahogany. Otherwise, it’s nearly ten feet of full balsa, but chambered for buoyancy. Dave told me he’d built this one with an extra tail rocker, three stringers, and a long panel vee to facilitate rail-to-rail turns-plus, the thinner rails will make it easier for you to keep an edge in the face of a wave. Perfect for a guy your size.”

I said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. It is pretty, though. For someone to put so much time into it, I don’t doubt it rides fine.”

I was noting the O near the nose, just beneath the shark. There was the brand name, Vector, imposed upon a line drawing of a globe. The globe was crosshatched with lines of latitude and longitude. Still admiring the surfboard, I added, “But I can’t accept something like this. It’s so nice, I’d be afraid to take it near the water.”

“Dude, it’s a present. You’ve gotta accept it. And she’s built to ride, not hang on the wall.”

“Why a present? This thing had to cost a mint. What’s the occasion?”

Tomlinson gave a regal wave of dismissal: Don’t be crass by mentioning the cost. “You have a birthday coming up, young man.”

“No… Actually, it’s way past.”

“So I forgot.”

“No, you didn’t forget. You don’t recall the party? The night the fishing guides went skinny-dipping and scared off that group of nice tourist ladies? You gave me a little bag of marijuana. What you did forget is that I don’t smoke, ever.”

Tomlinson had an index finger pressed to his lips, thinking about it. Then he began to nod. “Ahhh, yes. It’s all coming back. A lid of Maui Wowie, the world’s sweetest, mellowest headbanger kef from Hawaii. I presented you with the classic self-serving birthday surprise. Something that the recipient can’t use but the giver loves. I was trying to spare a potential host-you-from disappointing me, the potential visitor. Just in case I happened to stop by and was in the mood for a little pick-me-up.

“Say”-Tomlinson was looking over my shoulder, through the doorway-“I don’t suppose you have a little bit of that herbal Kahuna goody left? Your birthday treat? It’s going on noon, and I wouldn’t mind a couple of medicinal hits. Just a little something to get me through a meeting I have coming up. It’s with your sister, The Iron Butterfly. That woman has really been busting my Tater Tots lately.”

He meant my cousin, Ransom Gatrell. She’d been raised in the Bahamas, but was now living in a little Cracker house just across the bay on Woodring Point. She’s a sharp, tenacious woman who’d been staying very busy these days running the burgeoning enterprises of Tomlinson, the reluctant business tycoon.

He’d become an unwilling capitalist. Thanks to her.

I told him, “Nope. I dumped the marijuana. Threw it out, minus the plastic bag. Sea turtles eat the things.”

Groaning, Tomlinson’s body spasmed as if he’d been stabbed in the belly. “You threw out an entire lid of Maui Wowie? Maui Wowie? Oh dear, dear heaven… the waste… the inhumanity. And I came this close to splitting half a key with you! There really ought to be a law.”

“There is a law. Has to do with drug trafficking. Which is why I dumped the stuff.” I touched my finger to the board’s surface again. “There’s no occasion, no birthday. So what’s the real reason you bought this?”

He shrugged and sniffed as if he had no idea what I was talking about.

“You had your crazy dream again, didn’t you? The nightmare. The last few months, if you do something unusually thoughtful, it’s because you’ve had the dream. I keep telling you, it’s not necessary.”

“It’s my money, Marion. I can do what I want with my money. Just my way of thanking you.”

I said, “It was the dream.”

“How can you be so sure? You won’t let me tell you details.”

“Because I don’t want to hear the details.”

He referred to it as his Death Dream-capital Ds, because of the dramatic way he said it. That’s all I needed to know.

“You’d go off on one of your talking jags. Rattle and prattle on and on about the hidden meaning. No thanks.”

“I don’t rattle, and I almost never prattle,” he said. “I take exception to that. It’s true that I’m prone to expound. But never rattle. If it wasn’t for the dream, I’d of never made that miserable decision to go into business with your sister.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“If I wasn’t sure I was going to die, I wouldn’t have fallen for her trap.”

“Ransom’s trap,”

“You known damn well she conned me. Got me to agree to try and make lots and lots of money. Live like some fat-ass Daddy Warbucks, then blow it on crap that’s useless but establishes social status.”

“I’m aware you decided to change your lifestyle.”

I was expecting him to tell me, once again, that I appeared in the dream. I was the man who used what he described as “a staple gun-looking thing” to shoot him in the heart.

Another reason I didn’t want to hear details.

Tomlinson and I have a convoluted history that goes way, way back. Years ago, before we’d met, a government agency accumulated evidence that a group of underground activists had committed murder. Members of the group were declared a clear and present danger to national security. Agents were sent to track them down.

As Harrington put it, “Our team can do what others can’t.”

I’ve never admitted that I was the agent sent to hunt him, but Tomlinson has hinted that he knows.

It was no surprise I’d appeared in his death dream. He’d been making weird offerings ever since.

I turned toward the house. Swung open the door as he said, “I want to share the wealth, because I have the feeling it’s going to come true. I’m going to die within a few months.”

I looked at him, shaking my head. “No, you’re not.”

“You seem so sure.”

“I am.”

There was subtext in Tomlinson’s inflections. Mine, too.

“Guilt is a patient sword, man. It’s gotta happen.”

“Maybe. But not this year, not the next. Besides”-I paused to look at the board again-“I don’t think you’re guilty. I haven’t for a long time. When the time’s right, we’ll find out for sure.”

When he started to protest, I interrupted. “Tomlinson? Thanks for the surfboard.”

“Pretty cool, huh?”

“Yep. Very gnarly.”

“Doc?” I stared at him, hoping my pained expression would tell him I was done with it. “The only friend you don’t take good care of is yourself, and the only friend I think you’re capable of hurting. I want you to know I’m aware of that.”

“People can consider themselves as friends?” “Lots do. And you should.”

I remembered a blind carney telling me I’d one day take the life of a friend. Suicide? An unlikely new interpretation.

“Thanks. I think.”

The house phone began to ring. I let the door slam behind me, went inside, and checked caller ID.

It was Frieda Matthews on her cell phone.

I listened to Frieda say, “I’m still in Kissimmee, but Bob called a few minutes ago. Guess what a UPS truck just delivered to our house?”

Bob was her husband.

“Something from your brother?”

“His laptop computer. The one missing from his home. In the note, Jobe said to keep the computer until he asked for it back. That’s all. ‘Dear 6-6-4, please keep my computer.’ ”

I waited a couple of seconds. “No mention of why he sent it?”

“No. I had Bob open the laptop and take a look, but our seven-year-old son knows more about computers than my dear, nonconformist hubby. He even refuses to get cable TV”

I said, “There’s another reason why I like the guy.”

“Uh-huh. But he did find a folder on the desktop labeled Tropicane Sugar-slash-EPOC. As in Environmental Protection and Oversight Conservancy. Both names on the same folder.”

“Same organizations Jobe called the night he died.”

“Exactly. I walked Bob through how to use a mouse to double-click on an icon. There was only one document that he could open and read. It was a copy of a contract sent to Jobe as an Acrobat file. Tropicane and EPOC had hired him jointly to collect and test water samples over a two-year period in areas where Tropicane diverts water into the Everglades. If I remember right, diverting water to keep their fields dry is a common practice in the sugar industry.”

I said, “They all do it. Fields would be flooded half the year if they didn’t. But why would a big sugar company hook up with an environmental watchdog group to hire your brother? Organizations like those two, they’re usually at each other’s throats. Unless… unless the sugar company voluntarily invited EPOC to participate. They’d only do that if they were confident test results would be favorable.”

Frieda said, “That’s what I was thinking. We both know the ecobusiness. Corporate America doesn’t invite independent oversight unless the news is sure to be good.

“Bob read me some of the contract details. Jobe was making decent cash. Basically, his job was to collect water from various areas, test it, then deliver the results independently to both organizations. Contractually, the data sheets were due every Monday morning.

“For better or worse,” she said, “each side wanted original data. No chance of doctoring the results, or trying to hide the truth between the lines. So, yeah, Tropicane had to be darn confident that the water they’re pumping into the ’Glades is clean.”

I was standing, phone to my ear, near my Celestron telescope, and the desk that holds my Transoceanic shortwave radio. As I listened to Frieda, I could also hear Tomlinson in the galley, rummaging through the refrigerator and cupboards.

I get nervous when the man’s alone in a kitchen. He once used mushrooms as garnish for a snapper he’d baked. I didn’t know the mushrooms were psychedelic until I’d eaten nearly half the damn things. They were psilocybin “ ’shrooms,” as they are known, personally handpicked by him in some Central Florida cattle pasture. We happened to be down on the Florida Keys at the time. My memory still generates brief, strobing colors when I hear someone say, “Key Largo.”

I interrupted Frieda, saying, “Excuse me a second, okay?” then covered the phone with my palm before calling to Tomlinson, “It’s too early if you’re making lunch. Unless I’m in there watching.”

Slighted, Tomlinson called back, “Relax, Admiral Paranoia. What I’m trying to do is find some olives for my martini. I have one of those big beakers from the lab filled with Stoli and ice, but I need olives, man. That would seem totally, like, normal to most folks. But you have a way of making whatever I’m doing sound peculiar.”

I told him that a fresh jar of olives was in the food locker next to the fridge, then returned my attention to the lady. “How long had your brother been under contract?”

“Nearly eighteen months. He was almost done. Only six months left.”

“What day did he send the laptop?”

“The UPS slip said Saturday.”

The day before he died.

“Then his weekly report was due yesterday, so the report’s probably still on the laptop. A portion of it, anyway. That might tell us something.”

Frieda was ahead of me. “I know, I know, I had Bob open files related to the project. But he couldn’t read them because there was nothing to read. No words, anyway. Only numbers. Every document. Like the computer drawings we found upstairs in my brother’s house? Instead of the water symbol, page after page of numbers.”

“Numbers?”

“Jobe could remember numbers. Words gave him trouble.”

I thought about that for a moment, hearing the sound of ice cubes rattling in glass. “Did your husband notice if any of the numbers were larger than twenty-six? Or mention punctuation marks?”

“Twenty-six…? Oh, you’re thinking it’s some kind of code. Twenty-six numbers, twenty-six letters in the alphabet. Talk about feeling dumb. I didn’t ask.”

We discussed other explanations. Frieda told me she’d e-mail the Tropicane-EPOC folder to me once she got her hands on the laptop, which would be soon. Her husband and son were arriving in Kissimmee tomorrow, Wednesday, for the funeral, which was to be Thursday morning.

“It’s going to be a small service, Doc. Jobe didn’t have friends. But do yourself a favor, do us a favor. Stay home. Get some work done. You’ve invested enough time and emotion. I completely understand.”

Inwardly relieved, I told the lady I’d use the time to do some research on the Florida sugar industry for both of us. Refresh my memory on a few things.

I said, “You’re going to want to check into the kind of work your brother was doing, who he was working with.”

Her voice steely, Frieda said, “Oh, you can bet that I will.”