Sanibel Flats

Sanibel Flats

Randy • Wayne • White

ST. MARTIN S PRESS • NEW YORK

For three friends: Dan Rogan, Lee Wayne, and Allan W. Eckert

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The details of Pedro de Alvarado's conquest of the Maya are historically accurate, as are accounts of the modern-day butchery by Sendero Luminoso, the Shining Path. The Kache and Tlaxclen are fictional peoples and should not be confused with the Quiches and Tzutuhils of fact. In all other respects this novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The exception is Florida, which still exists.

Whether or not we find what we are seeking Is idle, biologically speaking.

—Edna St. Vincent Millay

SANIBEL FLATS

PROLOGUE

CIUDAD DE MASAGUA, CENTRAL AMERICA

JULY

Ford crawled to the mouth of the tunnel that connected the convent to the park outside the Presidential Palace. It was after midnight and he was wearing no pants, but he'd had time to grab his shoes—Nike Air Soles—and now he put them on. Water dripped from the ceiling, down his nose, and the cramped walls scraped at his shoulders. The convent had been built in the late 1500s; the passageway in the 1600s, during the time of the Inquisition, when the nuns of Cloister La Conceptión sometimes broke their vows of solitude to save heretics condemned by the courts to die by fire.

Heretics, Ford decided, were smaller in those days.

A stone disc covered the entrance, and he pushed the stone away, looking through the bushes into the shadows of the park. Beyond the traffic of Avenida Las Americas, the windows of the Presidential Palace formed a citreous checkerboard above lighted statues and fountains. Police were everywhere, running down sidewalks, surrounding the convent. Many wore the white holster tassels of the elite guard. How in hell was he going to get past them?

He lifted himself out of the hole, replaced the stone cover, and stepped out of the bushes to find an old man staring at him. The man was dressed in the traditional clothing of a Maya shiman, embroidered shirt and baggy, mauve-striped pants—not unusual for the Indios who came down from the mountains to trade, for they practiced their own religion. The man had lighted rows of candles in front of a large stone artifact. There was a censer in his hand made from a bean can, and from it came the incense smell of burning copal leaves. Frightened at seeing Ford crawl out of the ground, the old man jumped back, chanting in some guttural language, Tlaxclen Mayan, probably . . . pleading, judging from his vocal inflections, or asking some question. When Ford did not respond, the old man said in Spanish: "Can this be? You do not understand . . . you really do not understand the old tongue?" He looked bewildered and a little disappointed, too.

The elite guard was moving in on the convent; Ford could see the silhouettes of policemen moving through the trees of the park. Standing naked, but speaking formally in Spanish, he said to the old man, "Señor, you have perhaps confused me with another. I am only an American, a turista. To prove it, allow me to buy your pants. As a souvenir."

The old man was staring at the stone artifact, a gray Mayan stela, staring at the candles flickering in the late wind, not listening, saying "How can it be that Quetzalcoatl does not understand the language of his people? I have been kneeling here, praying that he would come to save us—instead, he wants to negotiate for my clothing. Do the gods never tire of their shitty tricks?" He turned to Ford, considering him intently now, adding "Perhaps I am wrong; perhaps you are not Quetzalcoatl. Yes, that is it! I can see that you have been cut ..."

Ford looked where the old man was looking, hoping he wouldn't see blood.

". . . cut in the way of the Hebrews. And you are wearing glasses. And you did not come from the sky as the sun god surely would. No, you cannot be Quetzalcoatl. But your hair is blond and you came at the moment of my prayer. And on this night, near the end of the Calendar Round and the beginning of the Year of Seven Moons—"

Ford interrupted. "I really do like those pants. They would make a very fine present. A nice souvenir. I will give you twenty—no, thirty. Thirty quetzals for your pants!"

The old man stood, wobbling, troubled. He was very drunk, Ford realized. "You came from the earth—" He looked at the bushes in sudden realization. "No . . . that is the place of the old tunnel; the tunnel that connects the palace to the convent and the convent to the park. My people still speak of it, though the knowledge has been lost to others. You did not come from the earth, you came from the convent. Yes, I understand this thing now. A naked man in the convent! A bad omen!"

The police were beginning to search the outside fringe of the park, the beams of their flashlights probing among the trees. Ford ducked as a funnel of light swept past him. "Señor, I will give you fifty quetzals for your pants. Have I mentioned that I am in a hurry?"

Fifty quetzals were worth about thirty-five dollars, and, though it caught the old man's attention, he was skeptical. "And where do you carry this great fortune? Behind your ears?"

Ford's hands went involuntarily to where his pockets should have been. "I can come back tonight and bring you the money." The old man still looked skeptical.

"Or meet you in the morning. That would be better. Mercado Central, at the place where the women weave the mats and sack coffee beans. Fifty-five quetzals, I swear on my honor. " "I should take the word of a man who defiles nuns?" The man was already taking off his pants, resigned.

"I was not with a nun. What do you take me for?"

"Oh, do not tell me; do not lie. I am an old man who knows the way of people. I myself once lay with a missionary woman, an evangelica. Such a strange woman, but very lively in bed. Her eyelashes, she kept in a box on the table, and she made odd noises in her passion. This woman told me I had been born a second time, yet that year a certain insect came and ate my corn. Yes, most of the problems in my life have been caused by this creature which lives between my legs, so you need not lie to one such as me."

Ford accepted the pants, saying "Now your knife. I must use your knife. Hurry, please."

The old man handed over his bone-handled knife, but reluctantly. "Do not misunderstand. I wish to keep this creature. We have had many adventures and he refuses to grow old. Where is there a man who secretly does not covet such problems?"

"You take me for a murderer, too?"

"You do not have the look, it is true. You have the strange face of one who can be trusted, which makes me all the more suspicious. Who can tell in such a year!"

As Ford cut the legs off the pants, the old man rambled on, explaining, saying this was the end of the Calendar Round, the fifty-two-year cycle, a time of great change in the Mayan calendar. It would bring many omens, many changes—some tragic, perhaps. Long ago in such a year, on a single night, the old man said, madness swept through Guatemala and Masagua. People ran into the streets screaming without reason; old women died of fright. Men bashed their heads against walls, and thousands of people had gone insane at exactly the same time but in different parts of the land. On the very next day, earthquakes destroyed the cities.

"It is because we have lost the old ceremony," the man said. "I was praying to the blond one, Quetzalcoatl, to return and show us the way. But on the summer solstice, for that is the proper time. " He took up a liter bottle of aguardiente, drank, drank again, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Is it possible that I am imagining this? Perhaps this is such a night; perhaps I have gone insane."

The pants were now shorts. Ford put them on and began to run in place, trying to get a sweat going in the cool mountain night. "You have just sold your pantalones for a price twenty times what they are worth. You are not the crazy one."

He left the old man sitting in baggy underwear among the candles and ran out of the park at an easy pace. When the police noticed him, he gave a bland wave and peered at his watch: a runner intent on his training. At every intersection, he checked his watch. He ran right past the Presidential Palace and the elite guard, confirming that, even in Central America, joggers had joined beggars and stray dogs as innocuous creatures of the streets. From a balcony on the third floor of the palace, a woman with waist-length black hair watched him, but turned away when Ford caught her eye. He kept running and did not look back; jogged straight to the American Embassy. Everything he owned was there, in crates, ready to be shipped to the United States. That would be his home, now that he had resigned.

The next morning, Ford paid the old man at Mercado Central, then returned to the embassy to find a box delivered by courier. The box contained twenty thick blocks of U.S. $100 bills and the pants he had left in the palace the night before. There was also a short note. He was not surprised to find the pants; the money and the note were unexpected. The note was signed P.B. for Pilar Santana Fuentes Balserio, the young wife of Don Jorge Balserio, and it said that she would not be joining him, as planned.

Ford rode in the cargo hold of a DC-3 to Miami that afternoon, sitting on the deck, his back braced against crates that held his books and specimens and microscopes; the things he still cared about. By morning he would be in Virgina for a week of debriefing. After that his life as a bureaucrat was done. He could forget about Masagua and try to forget about Pilar. He'd get a place on the water and do the work he'd always wanted to do. A simple life, that's what he wanted. Just a place to do his work and no more women. Not for a while. Not after the president's wife . . .

He brought a Chevrolet pickup truck in D.C.; an old one with a pear-shaped cab, short bed, and new blue-black paint. He left with $1,500 cash in his money belt, receipts for three large separate bank deposits, and everything else he owned in back of the pickup beneath a tarp. He headed for the coast, then drove south, eating when he wanted and stopping at tide pools and estuaries to collect marine specimens. He slept outside when the weather was good; he ran each morning at sunrise. On the Outer Banks of North Carolina and in south Georgia, he found places that would be good to live, but he kept on going, crossing to the Florida Panhandle, stopping at several small towns to inquire about real estate, but ending up in Southwest Florida, as he somehow had known he would. He had grown up on this coast, yet there was no nostalgia involved in his decision—or so he told himself—for he was no less alone upon his return than he was when he had left eighteen years earlier. He wanted to buy a place, but learned of a house built on pilings right in the water— an old fish house inherited by some federal bureaucracy—that might be available on long-term lease to a marine biologist with the proper credentials or the right connections. The fish house was joined to Sanibel Island by a tide-bleached boardwalk, and there was a marina next door that sold fuel, block ice, and beer in quart bottles.

It was not a difficult decision to make.

He took possession of the stilt house in late August, sleeping on the floor while he concentrated on building the lab and office he wanted, stopping only to cook over the propane stove or talk with the marina s fishing guides or to go out collecting. Sometimes, late at night, or out on his new flats boat alone, he would think of Pilar . . . the memory electrodes keyed by an unexpected sound or fragrance, and into his mind would come gauzy images, as if etched by acid: the clean lines of her legs and hips . . . the way her head tilted in thought . . . the way she softened when surprised by his arrival, as if her aloofness was a guard to all but him. These stray remembrances were not unpleasant but he didn't allow them to linger, for they were meaningless now and uninvited. This, Ford realized finally, was the way it must feel to have once been in love.

All marinas are more than a sum total of docks and property, bait wells, ships' stores, and receipts. They are communities; ephemeral colonies with personalities as varied as the individuals who form them. Gradually Ford was accepted into the marina community—Dinkin's Bay Marina, it was called—and, as months passed, he became more than just a member of that small society, he became one of its pillars. If a fisherman had a question about species identification, Ford and his library were available. If a guide had to limp back in after dark with an empty fish box and a broken water pump, there was beer and consoling conversation to be had at Ford's stilt house. In a relatively short time, Ford became the trusted dispenser of first aid, wisdom, reluctant medical diagnoses, and unwilling advice on everything from love to law to broken timing chains—all by saying little but listening much. His rapid climb to position in the community surprised no one more than Ford. He had always been a private person, a man who attracted people and valued his friends yet went his own way. But just as the marina s society had adjusted to him, Ford adjusted to his new role, his new life, doing his work each day and sometimes far into the night, accepting callers with the offer of cold beer and letting down his guard, slowly, slowly, for it was not easy after ten years of being necessarily suspicious and living a life of professional deceit.

And just when it seemed he had finally adapted, Rafe Hollins called.

ONE

SANIBEL ISLAND, FLORIDA

MAY

Ford saw the vultures from a half mile off; noticed them wheeling over the island like leaves in a summer thermal, dozens of black shapes spiraling, and he thought, What in the hell has Rafe gotten himself into?

He stood at the wheel of his skiff, traveling toward an island he hadn't tried to find since high school to meet a friend he'd seen only twice in the last eighteen years. He tapped the throttle and the skiff seemed to gather buoyancy as it gained speed, rising slightly as the bottom came up, a blur of sea grass and bronze sand at forty miles an hour. Ford leaned with the wheel and the skiff banked. There was the tidal rift—a green ribbon of water that crossed the shallows—and he dropped the skiff in, following the deeper water as if on a mountain road. After a quarter mile the rift thinned into a delta of old propeller scars. He touched the power trim and the outboard lifted with the whine of landing gear as he heeled the skiff, running for a time on its starboard chine. Ahead, fish and small stingrays panicked as if trapped beneath a slick of raw Plexiglas. Behind, nubs of turtle grass boiled in a marl cloud.

Then the shoal: a sandbank that encircled the island like an atoll. Ford held tight as the skiff jumped the bank then settled itself on the other side. He looked immediately for the opening in the trees, found it, and turned hard into the shadows of the island, backing quickly on the throttle as the bottom fell away in shafts of amber light and mangrove trees interlocked to form a cavern over the tidal creek that was hardly wider than the eighteen-foot Permit flats skiff that now rolled on its own wake beneath him.

Ford nudged the nose of the skiff onto a shell beach and killed the engine, then sat for a moment listening to the wash of waves, pleased that he had remembered the tricky cuts even though he hadn't made the run for all those years, thinking Maybe the intimacies of water and women are the only two things a man never really forgets. . . .

He thought of Pilar momentarily, but then the vultures brought his attention vectoring. He watched them circle overhead.

The surge of pleasure faded.

Where was Rafe?

Rafe Hollins had called the previous morning; called three times before he finally caught Ford at the marina. Out of all the gin joints in all the world, Hollins had said, trying too hard to keep his tone loose and easy, saying he'd been fine, staying busy, and how'd Ford like living on Sanibel Island again, the old stomping grounds, huh? Boy, they'd had some times, and, yeah, the reason Ford hadn't been able to get in touch was he'd been out of the country and the telephone company disconnected his phone cause he moved around so much since the divorce there just wasn't any reason to pay the bill. "I was living on Sandy Key, but now I'm mostly out of town," Hollins had said. "Traveling's the only kind of life insurance I got, Doc. When I'm travelin', there's no chance of me killing my ex-wife and spending the rest of my life in Raiford. The kind of policy State Farm doesn't offer."

The years had turned Hollins's voice gravelly, muted the Florida piney-woods twang, added something else Ford didn't recognize at first, an edge of desperation. In high school, they had been best friends: Rafe a left-handed passer and pitcher who threw bullets; Ford a mediocre linebacker and better catcher, the two of them cruising buddies. He had seen Hollins only twice after graduation: once while still in graduate school (he'd returned to Florida for a marine science workshop), then again three years ago in Central America, a coincidental meeting in San Jose, Costa Rica, that had shocked them both and should have turned into an all-night beer and talk session, but didn't. Hollins had been oddly distant, in a hurry, had to catch a plane. He never said why; Ford was in no position to ask. Hollins said he was looking for work outside the country. Ford gave him a few names, and that was that.

There had been no hint of desperation in Rafe's voice then. But it was evident on the phone that morning. Ford had stood at the marina desk looking out at the glittering elliptic of bay, listening while Hollins worked his way into whatever it was that was bothering him, talking about his wife like some cocktail lounge comedian. "She used my charge cards like Monopoly money. The mailman had to think she was having an affair with a guy named J.C. Penney. J.C. was probably the one guy she didn't hump. That woman handled more tallywhackers than an army urologist. And I was so busy traveling around, trying to earn enough to keep her happy, I never found out till later. Silly me."

There was the sound of traffic from Hollins's end, the wind-wake of passing trucks: Hollins was calling from a phone booth. Ford had already decided it was because he needed money, and he tried to gentle him along, saying "If there's anything I can help you with, Rafe ..."

There was a pause, and Hollins said, "Good ol' Doc. Christ, we used to get ourselves into some shit, huh? Goddamn high school and all that stuff seems about a million miles away." The careful thread of control was beginning to unravel, his voice wistful. "Remember after that game in Key West, we marched up to Customs House in our uniforms, and you had everyone stand at attention and salute while we stole the flag? I thought we'd go to jail for that one for sure, but naw, no way, not with you. Told the cops all about flag etiquette, and there shoulda been a spotlight on the damn thing at night, and they ended up apologizing to us for interfering. God, I never met anyone could think on their feet like you, Doc. I used to tell the other chopper pilots in Nam that I had a friend back home could think his way outta any kind of shit, had balls that clanked when he walked."

Ford said, "So this call's about old times, Rafe? If it is, let's meet someplace and get a beer."

"Well, it's more than that."

"I know." Still looking at the bay, Ford's eyes had come to rest on the little house built on stilts thirty yards from shore—his stilt house now. It was a pretty little house with very thick walls (before modern refrigeration, it had been used to store ice and fish), painted gray, with water all around it and a rust-streaked tin roof. Ford said, "If you need money, I've got some."

Hollins, uneasy now, said, "I never could bullshit you, Doc. So, okay, I'm in a jam, but it's not money, not really. It's something else."

"Then let's hear about something else. "

"I need someone I can trust. You believe all the years I lived here, I come up with exactly one name: yours. Plus, you speak Spanish good—"

"Spanish? Ah, Jesus, Rafe—"

"You lived long enough in Central America, that's what you told me that time—"

"This can't be legal—"

"Guatemala, you said, and Costa Rica, too. Come on, Doc, everything's legal down there but peeking up the Pope's skirts and certain kinds of murder. But it's nothing like you think. See, I got involved with some guys, real hard cases, and they owed me a lot of money; money I earned, but they wouldn't pay up. So I took something of theirs to make sure I'd get paid. Like collateral, only without their permission. Now they've taken something of mine, and I have to get it back. "

Ford said, "I knew it wasn't legal."

Hollins's tone changed, taking an edge. "I didn't think it'd bother you so much. After that time I ran into you in Costa Rica, I called the American Embassy in San Jose, trying to get your address. They said you weren't registered. Said you'd never registered. So then I called the embassy in Guatemala City. They said they'd never heard of you either. Alien residents have to register with their embassies, Doc—that's not the kind of thing a guy like you'd overlook . . . unless there was some reason you didn't want them to know you were around. So then I talked to some of the Americans I met. Funny, in those kind of places Americans always know about each other. But I only found one who knew of you—and she said you had a real good reason for not being on the books."

Ford said nothing for a moment. He picked up a pen and began to doodle on a tide chart, drawing tiny sharks and starfish. He said finally: "Okay, I'll listen, Rafe. No guarantees, but first I want you to tell me one thing. I want the truth, too. This problem of yours, does it have anything to do with running drugs? If it does—and I'm not kidding—you can count me out right now. I mean it." Jethro Nicholes, one of the marinas fishing guides, was sitting behind the desk reading Field & Stream. When Ford said "drugs," Nicholes looked up, mildly interested.

From the other end of the phone came a snort of laughter, derisive, self-directed. "It's not drugs. Shit, nothing that simple. "

"Then what?"

Hollins said, "I'd rather tell you about it in person."

"I'd do anything for you but go to jail, Rafe. Tell me now."

"Okay, okay. I guess I owe you that. Let's see ... it started with the divorce. My ex-wife got me over a barrel, man. She went into court wearing braids, looking like some kind of virgin homecoming queen. This young judge took one look at her and the horns started to grow. Sweat on his upper lip and everything, like he wanted to grab her by the hair and drag her off in his Porsche. You never saw her, Doc, but that's what she does to guys; God knows, she did it to me. I mean, she smells like she wants it.

"The son-of-a-bitchin' judge gave her everything: froze my assets, even got the bonds I'd been assembling to convert into a trust for my little boy. Then he provisoed my visitation rights on an alimony payment about the size of Great Britain's debt. If I didn't pay, they wouldn't let me see my son."

Ford had already heard most of this from old acquaintances. He said, "And that's when you began to press these other guys for the money they owed you. "

"No, not right off. I still had ways of making money, money on the sly the court couldn't touch, but these guys owed me, damn it; owed me a bunch, and I wanted it. If they paid me, I wouldn't have to worry about alimony and all that shit for a long, long time. But I didn't start pressing till I'd taken something from them to sort of use as a bargaining tool; like I said: collateral. I knew I had to give them a good reason before they'd pay me 'cause they are first-rate dangerous; real bad cattle. After I got the collateral, that's when I began to press. I had to have the money, understand? That's why I pushed so hard. But then . . . then the money didn't matter so much anymore, but I still had the collateral. Hell, I didn't know it was that important to them. I kept it like a sort of insurance. "

"Why'd the guys owe you the money?"

"I was flying for them."

"Not drugs."

"No. No way."

"And what did you steal?"

"A couple of things. It's complicated. "

"I've got an orderly mind. Try me."

"I'll tell you—just not right now, okay? Not on the phone. See, it's not the money. I don't give a damn about their money anymore. That's not why I need your help. It's my little boy." Hollins's voice thickened, the emotion evident, and he paused to clear his throat. "Not being able to see my son was the real killer, Doc; the final straw. He's a really great little boy. Jake, that's his name. Throws lefty and hits from both sides, and he just turned eight. After the divorce, I stayed in touch with the old neighbor lady across the street to kind of see how things were going. She's a nosy old lady and doesn't miss much. Helen—that's my ex-wife—she was sleeping with a different guy about every night, this old lady said. Different car in the drive almost every morning. Said Helen would lay out by the pool in her bikini all day, then go off at night. So I figured she was staying wired most of the time—vodka, dope, coke; she liked it all. And her with an eight-year-old boy at home.

"I called this old lady about two weeks ago, and she was real upset. Said that morning Helen had walked some guy outside to kiss him good-bye, and Jake came wandering out, still in his pajamas. Said she could hear Helen yelling at Jake to go back inside, and Jake started crying so this guy gives my boy a slap and bloodies up his nose. The son of a bitch hit my son, Doc! The old lady called the police, but the guy turns out to be the judge who railroaded me. They're not going to touch a judge, of course, plus I've never been what you'd call A-one popular with all them Yankees on Sandy Key. That did it, Doc. I mean, I went fucking nuts when I heard that.

"I got a plane back to the States that night and waited until Helen left the house. Poor little Jake was there all alone, and he was so damn happy to see me. I didn't exactly know what I was going to do till. I got there. Then I knew. There wasn't any doubt once I saw him."

Ford said, "You took him." He had heard that already, too.

Hollins said, "You're goddamn right I took him." Still angry, but desperate, too. "Jake helped pack his own suitcase, that's how anxious he was. I knew of a secluded spot on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica where no one would bother us and I could rent a place that had enough pasture to make a decent airstrip. Flying's my business and I'd done some work down there off and on over the last three years. But you already know that—hell, you're the one that give me the names and got me started. A buddy flew us cargo commercial to Mexico, then another pilot friend flew us down the rest of the way because I knew we couldn't get into Costa Rica without our names ending up on a computer someplace. There's a nice little village out there on the Pacific coast, and there's a school and nice kids, and I figured Jake and I could just live there, say screw the rest of the world. You can't blame me for that, Doc."

Ford said, "I don't blame you, Rafe. But it's called kidnapping, which is federal. And taking him out of the country is going to make them want to lock you up and melt the key. "

"You think I give a shit about that? I grew up with a drunk for a mother. I wasn't going to let it happen to Jake. But Christ—" This last came out in a rush of pure despair. "—I never thought those Central American bastards would take Jake to get back at me. Hell, it never entered my mind the stuff I had was that important. "

"They took your son? Who?"

"Masaguans. The Indios. You ever deal with those people? Now they've got my little boy."

Ford exhaled, a noise of disgust. "And you think you're going to work out a trade with them?"

Hollins said, "I've got to," his voice charged, near panic. "And it's got to be soon. They've already had him four days, and it's driving me crazy thinking what they might be doing to him. See, I can't go to the feds. What am I gonna tell em: I kidnapped my son, then someone kidnapped him from me? They'd throw me in the pen—which I wouldn't mind if it got Jake back safe. But the feds don't have any pull with those Indios. Up there in those mountains, the way the Indios stick together, they'd never find the men, let alone find Jake. It's got to be me, Doc. I'll give 'em their damn junk back. I'll do anything just so long as they give me Jake. But I need someone to help. If I tried it alone, they could cut my throat, take their stuff, and still keep my boy. See? I need a hole card. I need you."

Ford said, "Jesus, Rafe. Of all places—"

"Come on, Doc, come on. This is serious. I need help, man."

"That's the one place I can't go back to."

"What, they got a warrant out?"

"No, it just wouldn't be smart for me to go back. Not now."

"You're saying you won't help. I'm trying to get my son back, and that's what you're telling me?"

In the abrupt silence, Ford thought Hollins was about to hang up. He said quickly, "Okay, okay. Where do you want to meet?"

"You mean it?"

"But you're going to have to tell me everything. Understand? I'll help, but I need to know everything. Then maybe I can find a better way. We can figure something out."

Hollins said, "Christ, this has all gotten so crazy I can't even think anymore. It's like I'm losing my mind, the way everything's just gone all to hell at once."

"Sometimes it can seem like that."

"You got some time tomorrow?"

"I've got time today."

"Naw, tomorrow. Meet me on Tequesta Bank."

"The island? Couldn't we just meet at a restaurant or something?"

"I got people looking for me, remember?"

"Okay."

"Say . . . late afternoon, about six? I've got an appointment with some a my old buddies from Sandy Key; got to make a little money to finance this thing. Meet me at six, and I'll tell you about it. Everything."

"Tequesta Bank. Up on the mounds."

"Right. Just like old times. I've been kinda camping out there, keeping a low profile."

"The FBI's already after you?"

"Someone's after me, but it's not the FBI I'm worried about."

"Then who?"

Hollins said, "Doc, I've got more enemies than a Dallas whore with herpes. So it's hard to say."

Ford stepped out of the skiff, dropped the anchor in the bushes. He could see a boat hidden in the mangroves down the creek. The wedge of bow suggested a small trihull, a piece of junk Rafe Hollins would never have owned by choice.

The path leading into the island was overgrown, no wider than a rabbit trail. It twisted through mangroves and up a steep shell hill. Jungle crowded in beside him, above him, and there was the smell of heat and vegetation like wood ash and warm lime peelings, an odor that was pure Florida. For just a moment, the smell of the island brought it all back; made it seem as if he had never been away, back when he and Rafe were teenagers and had adopted the island as a sort of second home. Rafe's mother was a drunk, his father a commercial fisherman. Ford had lived with his uncle, an ex-triple-A pitcher who picked up the bottle the day his contract was dropped. Rafe and he had pretty much come and gone as they pleased.

They chose Tequesta Bank because of the Indian mounds and because it was uninhabited and no one was likely to bother them. They'd built a cabin on the highest mound and they had had beer parties and brought girls and sometimes just sat looking at the stars, the two of them, talking on the high mound by a campfire which flickered in a wind that blew straight out of Cuba.

Ford ducked under a spider the size of his fist. He stopped and watched the spider longer than he normally would, impatient with the charge of nostalgia, wanting it to fade. He noted that the spider was rebuilding its web, the upper half first, and that it was a golden-silk spider, a female that had recently made a kill. Probably some kind of butterfly judging from the orange dust clinging to the hair on her legs. What was butterfly dust called? Prismatic-something . . . prismatic scales, right. He stood looking at the spider; stood in the silence of his own heartbeat, his own breathing, the whine of cicadas; stood wondering why Rafe had yet to yell some greeting; realized that something really might be wrong. Eighteen years ago it could have been the prelude to a practical joke: a surprise party with a keg of beer and half the football team stashed in the bushes. But not now. Not after the urgency in Hollins's voice. Rafe was here and he was alone and he had yet to make the first sound.

Why?

Down the mound, the path disappeared into shadows.

Ford leaned and picked up a chunk of old conch shell, discarded it, then picked up a broken limb about the size of a baseball bat. Carrying the club, he moved quietly through the brush and up the highest mound, his heart pounding.

When he got to the top, he stopped again. To the west was the bay. He could see the domino shapes of condominiums on the barrier island that fronted the Gulf of Mexico three miles away: Sandy Key, the island where Rafe said he had lived. Back in high school, Sandy Key had been an undeveloped spit of land just beyond the county line, a good place for parties because it was outside the jurisdiction of the local sheriff's department. Now there was a causeway and the steady thunk-a-thunk of heavy construction. To the east was the grove of avocado and gumbo limbo trees where they had built the cabin. Ford stepped into the shadows of the grove, surprised to see the rotted walls of the cabin still standing and at how small it seemed; surprised that someone had thrown fresh palmetto limbs over the top . . . and then he saw what he knew must be Rafe Hollins and nothing could have surprised him more than that.

The Rafe Hollins Ford remembered best was still eighteen, long, lean, with a Kirk Douglas chin on a hell-raiser's face and hands that could palm a basketball. This Rafe Hollins was not a man but a thing, a bloated creature with a huge gray head and a shrunken distended body turning slowly in the late-afternoon shadows, his arms slack, his eyes dull slits, hanging from the limb of an avocado tree with a rope around his neck.

Ford stood motionless for a time taking it all in but still not making any sense of it, thinking Come on, Rafe, come on, say something because this is one poor excuse for a joke....

The vultures not in the air were perched, looking heavy as bowling balls in the sagging trees. A black vulture with a cowl like an Egyptian priest dropped down onto Rafe's shoulder, and the rope creaked as the bird's head rotated to feed.

"Hey . . . get away!"

The vulture lifted away unconcerned as Ford ran toward it. Two more birds landed on the ground behind him, their gray heads as high as Rafe's knees. Ford whirled and threw the club just to scare them. Threw it above them, but one of the vultures tried to fly at precisely the wrong time and the club caught it across the chest. The bird spun to the ground with a guttural scream that set off the other vultures and they all flushed from the trees at once, making a noise in the leaves that sounded like rain but, Ford realized, was excrement.

He covered his head for a moment, then didn't even bother because it was useless to try. The injured bird continued to thrash, making it impossible to think about anything else, so he chased the vulture down, penned it with his foot, fought the beak and the six-foot wingspan, and snapped its neck, trying to make it quick and painless. Then he stared at the fresh gouge on his hand, thinking I survive two revolutions and a hemorrhoid operation so I can come back to Florida and die of infection from a vulture bite. Boy.

He slung the bird back into the bushes, wiped his hands on his pants, looked up. Rafe Hollins turned in the breeze to face him then turned away again, his expression like something Ford had once seen in Amazonia, Peru, a shrunken head with its lips sewn shut, that same look of humiliation, of total submission. He stared at the corpse, which had once been his best friend, wondering why he felt no grief, none, only a sense of loss like seeing something useful wasted, nothing more. Only a few weeks ago an artist friend of his, Jessica McClure, had said, You've got a cold, cold eye, Ford—her talking in that analytical, dreamy way, half prophet, half Ph.D. The way you study all the data trying to make it fit because you won't abide anything that can't be weighed or measured. Trouble is, some things don't fit, never will fit, but you still go plunking along collecting pieces, weighing the evidence, trying to neaten up a world that seems way too emotional and untidy. . . .

Half of which was probably pure invention, but the part about the cold eye Ford now wondered about. All through high school he and Rafe had been family, done everything together. They'd had one of those closer-than-brother relationships in which they were continually plotting against each other, trying to gain advantage, laughing like hell at making life into such a game. Rafe, it seemed to Ford, usually got the better of it; not that it mattered because they were like Hope and Crosby on the road, best friends trying to catch each other out. But now the lean handsome one, Rafe, had taken a really big fall, and Ford didn't feel anything inside even close to tears, just that sense of waste.

Maybe his eyes had grown cold; maybe he'd always been cold. Or maybe four years in West Africa, a year in South America, and five years in Central America had leached away most of the emotional niceties. But Ford didn't believe that, not really. After all, before yesterday, he and Rafe hadn't exchanged a word or a letter in more than eighteen years, aside from those two brief talks, so it was almost as if a stranger had gone and gotten himself killed.

Or killed himself. . . .

Suicide?

It was the first time suicide had crossed Ford's mind. At first he had just thought dead, Rafe's dead, then he thought murder, as if maybe the Indios had gotten to him. But now the thought of suicide flashed. He didn't like the idea; couldn't reconcile it with the Rafe he had talked with the previous morning, but here it was. Ford took a few steps closer, his hands at his sides like someone in an art gallery. He began to study the body with clinical interest.

First things first: Could he be positive it was Rafe?

Not much was left of the face or ears; the eyes were gone. But what was there seemed to match—the heavy jaw, the high cheeks and broad forehead beneath a plucked mange-patch of black hair. The clothes seemed about right, too. The corpse wore khaki slacks, not the cheap kind but expensive ones with cargo pockets, and a black knit shirt with a tiny tarpon over the breast. Rafe had always liked nice clothes. There was a bulge in the rear pants pocket, and Ford removed a leather billfold. Inside was an out-of-date Visa card, a photo of a seventeen-year-old Rafe Hollins in full football gear throwing a jump pass, a photo of an older Rafe Hollins holding a tiny, wide-eyed infant, and four dollars in cash. That was all. Ford used the tail of his shirt, first to wipe the billfold clean, then as a glove as he placed the billfold back into the rear pocket.

Ford stood thinking for a moment, considering the scene before him. Was it murder, or was it suicide?

On the corpse's left foot was a pale leather boat shoe, no sock. His right foot was bare, the matching shoe on the ground four feet in front of him and to the left—his feet weren't tied and he had done some kicking. A man intent on hanging himself wouldn't tie his own legs, and that was a vote for suicide. His hands weren't tied either, hanging limp beside the distended belly, and that made it look even more like suicide. Rafe had been six two, two twenty-five, maybe; a big man. There was no way he could have been forced into a noose and up onto the chunk of log that lay nearby if his hands were free, unless he was already unconscious. But if he was unconscious, could he have kicked a shoe off? Ford didn't know. Besides, the shoe might have been placed—weren't some murderers supposed to be clever?

Ford stood on his toes and studied the face more closely. The vultures had made it impossible to tell if his friend had been beaten. Ford touched the bloated right hand for a moment, turned it and looked for rope burns on the underside of the wrist. There were none. On the left wrist was a Seiko dive watch, the lens shattered and green hands stopped at 2:18. A.M. or P.M.? Probably P.M. the previous day, judging from the condition of the body. Only a few hours after Ford spoke with him on the phone. The heat and the vultures had had plenty of time to do their work.

Ford lifted the watch bracelet and studied the pale wrist skin beneath, then moved around to the back of the body and considered the noose. The knot attached to the tree limb was one of those overtied messes that formed a kind of loop so the running end could pass over the limb and through. The noose was formed by the same kind of bad slipknot, and it had cut into the corpse's neck, judging from the dried blood. These weren't Rafe's kind of knots, no way. He'd spent too many days on the water, working boats. The bad knots were a strong vote for murder; to Ford, in fact, they seemed conclusive. Rafe had made it clear he believed someone was after him.

Ford walked quickly away, took a breath. He looked back for a moment, used his shirt to clean his glasses, then began a slow search of the area. He didn't know what he was looking for—footprints maybe—but the ground was like mulch and didn't hold any. He poked his head into the cabin and waited for his eyes to adjust. The cabin was a mess, as if it had been ransacked. There were canned goods scattered, some clothes in a heap, a half bottle of Southern Comfort right in the doorway, six cans of Copenhagen snuff torn out of a cellophane tube, a snapshot of a little brown-haired boy with the words Jake Age 5 written on the back. Ford almost picked up the photograph, then caught himself. He wrapped his right hand in a towel and held the photograph to the light. The child had Rafe's cleft chin, the same high cheeks, and dark, dark eyes: a bright, innocent face, open to the world. He considered putting the photograph back as he had found it, but stuck it in his pocket instead. Still using the towel, he opened the Southern Comfort and poured a quarter of the bottle over the vulture bite, letting the alcohol sting.

Outside, he stared at the dark doorway for a time, then remembered one more place he might look. When he and Rafe built the cabin, they had found need of a place they could hide things they didn't want stolen, or didn't want to leave in plain view of their guests—high school girls, mostly. It took him a while to find it, a huge old gumbo limbo tree halfway down the back side of the mound with a hole near the base of the trunk. Ford got down on his knees, fished around inside, and pulled out a package of something—a cellophane mess, black with eighteen years of humidity, TROJAN CONDOMS barely legible on the cover. Ford threw the package into the bushes, then reached in again. This time he touched something geometric, metallic, and retrieved a small fireproof box. He snapped the latches and flipped open the lid. Inside was a blue spiral-bound address book, two one-hundred-dollar bills, a large empty plastic sack, and something in a cloth bag. Ford pulled the drawstrings and dumped the contents out of the bag. He sat, staring. There were several pieces of intricately carved jade, tiny parrots and pre-Columbian god figures with bleak, drilled eyes. There were also two bright-green gemstones among the jade. The stones were large, each about the size of a robin's egg, roughly cut, multifaceted, pulsing with light in the dusty sun rays that filtered through the tree canopy.

Emeralds.

As he returned the stones and the notebook to the box, the plastic sack caught his attention. It wasn't completely empty. Gathered in one corner were small beige flakes of something; something that looked like dried leaves. Ford dipped his finger in, aware of a familiar smell; a smell similiar to that of old leather. He stood quietly for a time, thinking, then put everything back into the metal box, latched it, and carried it slowly back up the mound.

The wind had turned the body so that it now faced the cabin. The vultures were back at work, and it was when Ford averted his eyes that he noticed the note for the first time: a piece of paper tacked to the avocado tree, hanging there like some kind of public notice. Ford stood looking at the note without touching it. Finally he took a few steps closer, reading: It is nobodys fault. I just can't take it no more. Rafe Hollins

Ford rocked back and forth on his heels, back and forth, staring. Finally he ripped the note away, carried it out into the sunlight, and read it again. Then he folded it carefully and put it in his pocket.

Damn.

He stood on the high mound looking at the bay. The bay glittered in a grid of harsh afternoon light. It would be dark within two hours, and it was a forty-five-minute boat trip back to Sanibel Island. Ford stood thinking hard, hating his own indecision, then turned suddenly.

In the boat he found old three-strand nylon rope. He carried the rope back up the mound and used it to tie the bloated hands and legs. Finally he forced the shoe back onto the corpse's swollen foot.