Tampa Burn

TWELVE

Panama Hat was Elmase. White Shoes was Hugo. The men could communicate without speaking. Eye movement, a shift of the shoulders, a re-angling of the jaw. That’s all it took.

They had some history, judging from their easy familiarity. Way more going between each other than with the General. Were probably partners in some intricate way. Maybe family.

Balserio was a mental case, and they seemed to recognize it. Or maybe he was just acting crazy, playing out years of despising me, but taking it beyond the edge.

This was the General who’d imported a sociopath into his own country for political gain. A serial killer who set people on fire. Did they know?

Maybe. I noticed that they distanced themselves from Balserio in subtle ways. One was by demonstrating exaggerated patience.

The General was still on his knees, crawling in the tall scrub where the knife had vanished. There were plant colonies I recognized as giant leather ferns-ancient sporangia coated-and alligator lilies with stalks toothed sharp enough to cut skin.

Balserio had cut himself a couple of times, cursing, then sucking blood off his fingers.

“You don’t have knives? One of you has to have a knife!”

“No, General. We have guns. Why would we need anything else when we have good guns? We can shoot off his cojones, if you wish.”

From the tone, the flat subservience mixed with sarcasm, I got the impression they wouldn’t have admitted carrying knives if they had them.

Balserio was practically frothing. “I’m paying fools like you? Then grab that pig’s arms while I find my knife. Tie him to a tree and strip his pants. I’m going to cut his balls off. I swore I’d make him a sow if I ever got the chance. I’ll do it now. Then we’ll find Pilar.”

Elmase and Hugo looked at me, expressions mild but now interested, a bedrock contempt held in ready. To be terrified was to be debased. Maybe contempt shielded them from the humiliation of other men they’d seen begging. How would I react?

Hugo said, “Then I guess we’ll need some rope. Do we have rope in the car?”

Elmase said slowly, “No, but there’s tape. We could tape his arms and legs to a tree. Tape could work… if you’re sure you want to do this thing.”

Neither sounded enthusiastic. More silent communication was taking place. Their focus on me, though, remained intense. How would this man react when threatened with the ultimate male humiliation?

I was furious. Too enraged to be frightened. Furious that Balserio would not only threaten me, but also threaten to maim my son. He intended to do it. Really wanted to cut me. Tomlinson has written a few things that’ve stuck with me. One is, To make a fool of a tyrant, refuse to submit.

It had a brand of kiss-my-ass wisdom that now flooded through me.

So my reaction was aggressive, and it wasn’t an act.

The bodyguards had put some space between us. White Shoes-Hugo-had slipped the pistol back into his pocket and was relying on the shotgun again.

When he said, “Yes, then I guess you should get the tape. I’ll hold the big man while you do his hands first, then his-” I silenced him, snapping, “ Enough. Stop right there. Not another word.”

Both paused, looking at me, expectant.

I pointed my index finger first at Hugo, then Elmase, before I continued, “Don’t waste your time with the tape. What you need to do is, go ahead and shoot me. I mean it. Do it right now. Because I’m not going to let you lay a finger on me. No one’s tying me to a tree. And that lunatic’s sure as hell not getting near me again with a knife. So go ahead and shoot.”

I jabbed my finger at Hugo for emphasis. “I’ll tell you one thing, though. You’d better aim high and shoot straight. And you’d better hope my hands don’t live any longer than my brain. If they do, you’re gonna die with me.”

Hugo sobered for a moment, his contempt fading as he translated the meaning of that. He and Elmase exchanged facial expressions, then a shrug.

The exchange seemed to go: Is he acting?

No… he’s for real.

Then: Yeah, man. I’d die before letting any man take a knife to my private parts, too.

Hugo looked at me with his wide face and began to chuckle. Then Elmase began to laugh, too.

“If your hands don’t die before your brain,” Hugo said. “Man, that’s a good one. Like in this old movie I saw. This hand go running around on its fingers, choking dudes. Scary. And the way you said it. That was kinda scary, too. Like you could make it happen. ”

We’d locked eyes, my eyes telling his: Yeah, I can make it happen. Still furious, I believed it.

I didn’t look away until Hugo had turned to Elmase, who was saying, “Yeah, but the Yankee is so right. Take the bullet, man. Before I even let some dude put his hands on my balls, I’d take the bullet. Shit, I’d grab the gun and do it myself. ”

Behind us, Balserio was on his knees still searching for the knife, frustrated now, and yelling, “Didn’t you hear me? I told you to take him and tie him to a tree. That’s an order. ”

Hugo made a waving motion with his hand, not dismissing the man but evading. “That’s what we’re doing, General. But first… I think, we need to check out this dude’s car. Who knows? Maybe your wife’s hiding in there. Or that giant dude with the tattoos-if he’s around, he’s so big, we’d have to shoot him ten, twelve times to bring him down. Like those rhinos you see on TV. Be cool, General. Be cool. We know our jobs.”

Spanish profanity can only seldom be translated literally into English. Try, and it sounds silly. That’s because it relies on so many simple, inoffensive words that, when used with subtle or sinister emphasis, become offensive. The words cork, rope, papaya, and bug, for example, can also be graphically profane.

Balserio knew all the words and subtleties, and he pelted me with them as Hugo and Elmase steered me at gunpoint toward the rental Ford. He used the foulest, sickest phrases. Translated, though, he was telling me that I was a billy goat who slept with young billy goats on rusty mattress springs in my mother’s house.

Something perverse in me found that funny-or maybe I was just crashing emotionally after being threatened and assaulted-and as my anger dissipated, I began to laugh. Really laugh.

I was a cabron? A billy goat? The man who might soon be president of Masagua was calling me animal names.

Hilarious.

Hugo and Elmase seemed surprised, then puzzled. I might not be tied to a tree, awaiting the Crazy Machete, but they still had me captive at gunpoint.

But then Elmase stopped walking, head tilted because he heard what I’d already heard: the raceway sound of cars revving too fast around a curve.

“What’s that noise, man?”

“Shit! Cars coming, hide your gun!”

Then we could see them, white cars heading our way, seeming to flatten themselves at speed over the gravel road: county sheriff ’s vehicles, green on white, no sirens or lights, which is procedure when a person calling 911 says he thinks he’ll be killed if the bad guys hear help coming.

To Hugo and Elmase, I now said, “You’d better throw your weapons down. Quick.”

When they didn’t react immediately, I added, “When the police jump out, see you two guys dressed like pimps, holding automatic weapons-down here in the Everglades? They might think you’re dangerous.”

Convinced, they swung their guns into the bushes as I added, “But you’re going to jail anyway. I know you helped me out with that crazy asshole, but it’s still gotta be jail.”

Elmase seemed not to hear that, replying, “Pimps? Dressed like pimps? That’s not a very nice thing to say. These clothes got style, man.”

Standing there in his white Panama hat and metallic shirt, neon pink and blue, offended. About to be arrested, but his expression still telling me: You hurt my feelings, man.

Dial 911 and tell them you’re a respectable Sanibel Island resident crossing the Everglades in a car being pursued at high speed by strangers who are shooting guns, and the dispatcher will send out the cavalry.

The cavalry had assembled: sheriff’s deputies, state troopers, and plainclothes detectives in unmarked cars, all vehicles jumbled in a line, the Loop Road blocked shut, emergency lights strobing high in the shadowed domes of cypress trees on this late South Florida afternoon.

Sunset was at a little after eight P.M. Probably less than an hour away. No way for me to know for certain, because I was handcuffed. Couldn’t see my watch.

Back on Sanibel and Captiva, the ceremonial cocktail crowds would already be gathering at South Seas Plantation, the Mucky Duck, Casa Ybel, among others, and at our little Dinkin’s Bay Marina. Same would be true up and down the Gulf Coast of Florida, Key West to Pensacola Bay.

It would soon be social hour in the dawdling May heat. The pearly time when friends meet with cold drinks in small, local places to watch the sun orbit into the Gulf and spark its universal blaze.

I wanted to get back to Dinkin’s Bay for sunset. Wanted to share some stories and laughs with Mack, Jeth, JoAnn, Rhonda, all the fishing guides, the live-aboards, and the rest of the marina community. That’s exactly what I needed to neutralize the image of Balserio coming at me, knife in hand, with that leering grin on his face.

It had been too close. Too ugly.

I wanted faces of friends to replace his in my memory, before the image seared itself.

But there wasn’t much chance I’d make it back in time.

Despite the handcuffs, and out of habit, I tried to check my watch anyway. I flinched to move my arms from behind me and sneak a glance. Impossible. Not sitting alone in the back seat of a Collier County Sheriff’s deputy’s vehicle.

I’d been placed there by a uniformed deputy with the briefest of explanations-“Relax. We’ll get back to you.”-and so had been waiting and watching a small army of law enforcement people move in busy silence outside my air-conditioned space.

I was thirsty. I also had to pee.

They’d treated Hugo, Elmase, Balserio, and me all the same.

When the first three squad cars came skidding toward us, the officers bailed with weapons drawn and pointed, screaming, “Get down! Show us your hands! Get down! Get down!”

So much for my theory that I’d be singled out as an innocent local and given special treatment.

We were approached cautiously, asked the whereabouts of weaponry, then handcuffed, frisked, I.D. s taken, then separated.

Because firearms were involved, they explained, and because there was a report of shots fired, everyone had to be constrained until officers figured out who was who and what had happened.

It took a while.

Finally, a woman in a starched deputy’s uniform opened the door and asked, “You’re the gentleman who called nine-one-one?”

Then she asked, “Do you mind answering a few questions?”

Sitting in the back of the squad car, I repeated my story separately to two different uniformed deputies. They were both articulate, professional.

After the first interview, I was told I had to remain in the back seat, but the handcuffs were removed, my driver’s license was returned, and I was allowed to take a whiz.

As I returned to the car, I noted that Elmase, Hugo, and the sadistic General were in separate vehicles, all getting lots of close attention from people both in uniform and out. They were still handcuffed, too, judging from their posture.

I was pleased.

After telling my story a second time, I was asked politely if I wouldn’t mind sticking around long enough to tell it again to a couple of officers from the Major Crimes Division who’d soon arrive.

It sounded like a request, though it wasn’t. I pretended to be magnanimous and cooperative.

In my account, I doctored the truth in several places. I didn’t mention that Tomlinson and Pilar had been with me, nor that my son had been kidnapped. I told them that while I was being pursued, someone had shot at my car on two different occasions from the Chevy.

Because I knew it was possible that Balserio had used a fake passport to enter the country, and because I didn’t want to risk being linked to press accounts about a Masaguan politico being arrested, I didn’t volunteer his last name.

“It was the tall guy,” I said. “The one who fired the shots is the same one who came at me with the knife. I could see him in the rearview mirror, shooting. I’ll swear to it.”

The knife idiocy was enough to put him in jail, but I had to include the shooting incidents. I’d already told the dispatcher it was happening when I dialed 911.

Aware that it’s the rare citizen who ever hears a weapon fired with lethal intent, I stammered and rambled to seem sufficiently upset, but managed to tell the officer precisely where Balserio had popped off the rounds: the curve where Ervin Rouse’s house had once stood-easy to describe-and then again on the straight-away.

I knew they’d go looking, and I knew they’d find the spent brass casings. Three rounds at each place, near the ditch, on the passenger’s side of the road.

I also knew they’d search the Chevy and find the weapon that had fired those rounds: my Sig Sauer. I’d slid it beneath the car’s passenger seat.

Finally, at ten till eight-when I would have much preferred to be roaming the marina docks of Dinkin’s Bay, cold beer in hand-two plainclothes detectives from the department’s Major Crimes Division tapped on the window, then opened the door and introduced themselves.

I followed them to their unmarked car and sat in the back.

They’d been assigned the case, they told me. What they didn’t say was that all the other cops I’d spoken to that day no longer mattered. These were the people I had to convince.

There was a woman with a name that sounded like Gartone. She was early thirties, maybe Cuban American, with shoulder-length black hair and a stylish pantsuit. It had a tailored look, expensive. Same with the makeup and jewelry. Tasteful. She could have been on her way to a country club function.

I got the clear impression that her clothing had been selected as carefully as the weapon she carried in a shoulder holster beneath her jacket. Dressing the way she did, she automatically had a psychological advantage over anyone she dealt with. The lowlifes would confide in her, eager for the approval of someone they considered a superior. The upper-class types would connect as equals and cooperate just as eagerly, hoping for unspoken perks from a peer.

As she slid into the seat beside me, I thought to myself, Watch your step with this one.

The other detective was an old guy. Retirement age. Or maybe he was one of those senior citizen volunteers you sometimes see riding with cops.

I was undecided until she introduced him as Detective Merlin T. Starkey.

He could have been in his late sixties or seventies. Moved slow and creaky, like he’d taken some hard shots in his day. Silver hair, balding. Dressed like a cattle rancher, with Red Wing boots, pearl button shirt, green suspenders, string bowtie, and a Stetson hat. The hat looked like it had spent some real time on real trails.

“Starkey” is a common name everywhere, but especially in South Florida. Early settlers named Starkey were a tough, fertile, and hearty folk.

“Call me Merlin, son,” he said in a slow nasal accent that was pure mangrove and sawgrass. He sat in the front seat, without a notebook.

Merlin, I decided, would not be sympathetic to foreigners riding around the Everglades with illegal weapons, assaulting solid citizens such as myself.

But it was Detective Gartone’s case. Starkey was just along for company. That seemed obvious.

She asked all the questions, taping the interview on a digital recorder the size of a cigarette lighter. For more than half an hour, we sat in the back of the car, sharing that small space, talking. That’s the way she made it seem: as if we were having a conversation. She had that easy kind of manner.

I felt as if we were building rapport. She seemed to believe me. Seemed to be empathetic. I had to keep reminding myself that she was also one very smart cop, and it could be an act.

When she asked me to describe again, step by step, how I’d disarmed Balserio, she gave me a concerned shake of the head, muttered, “You’re very lucky,” then asked permission to use a digital camera to photograph the scratches on my face and hands.

A question that she lingered on was the identity of the man who’d fired the shots from the car. I’d told the uniformed deputies that I was willing to swear that it was Balserio. But a little alarm went off in my head, keyed by the way she asked- a subtle change in her tone that seemed to coach me-and I modified my answer.

I said I thought it was the man I knew as Jorge.

“You think it was him,” she said.

“I was scared. Everything happened so fast, it was kind of blurry. But I’m pretty sure.”

“You’re willing to swear shots were fired, but not who the shooter was.”

“I guess that’s the most honest way to put it.”

For some reason, that seemed to raise my stock. Brought her fully on my side.

In the front seat, Merlin T. Starkey stirred and cleared his throat, as if he’d been dozing.

Now I noticed something new in Detective Gartone’s manner when she said, “You also allege that, during the knife attack, the assailant accused you of having an affair with his wife. Were there grounds for the accusation?”

What I noticed was, she added an extra curtain of professional reserve, as if to further insulate herself from the subject. To me, though, it suggested that she found the topic uncomfortable, which, in turn, suggested a sexual awareness. In that instant, I became conscious of her as a woman-her legs, the intensity of her reserve, eyes boring in, the shape of her. I wondered if, in the same abbreviated space of time, she’d become conscious of me as a man.

She was not the sort to permit even a subtle sign, despite the fact that she wore no wedding ring. Too professional. And I had more than enough going on in my life now, struggling not to lose Dewey. Still… when you meet the rare independent ones, the strong professionals with uncompromised standards, you note their existence and file the details away. On lonely nights, it’s a good thing to go through those files and remember that good women are out there.

She rephrased the question. “I’m trying to establish a motive here, Dr. Ford. You say that the man accused you of having an affair with his wife.”

I said, “That’s correct. The taller of the three, Jorge.”

“Yet, you say you don’t know Jorge’s last name.”

“I know her last name. I’m not certain they share that name, and I see no reason to risk revealing the identity of an innocent third party.”

I could see that the detective approved of that.

“Then you were having an affair with your alleged attacker’s wife.”

Her eyes continue to bore in as I replied, “The marriage was annulled long ago. It’s my understanding that, in the Catholic religion, an annulment doesn’t end a marriage. It decrees that the marriage never existed. They were never husband and wife, so there’s really no way to respond to your question.”

She said, “For the first time, I think you’re being evasive.”

“The lunatic who tried to cut me up with the knife, what did he tell you?”

Gartone started to reply, caught herself, then closed the notebook in which she’d been jotting shorthand. She held the recorder to her lips, saying, “This concludes the interview with Dr. Marion Ford on the date as stated,” and turned to face me. “All three men deny they attacked you. Not with a knife, not with a gun. They say you made up the entire story.”

“Really.”

“Does that surprise you?”

Trying to sound fretful and a little naive, I said, “No-o-o-o. I guess not. I suppose that’s what criminals do, huh? Lie about breaking the law. But you had to find their guns in the bushes. That should tell you something. People aren’t allowed to carry around guns like that, are they?”

“We found a fully automatic assault pistol and a shotgun lying in the bushes in the Everglades. Even if they acknowledged ownership-which they didn’t-it’s not a big deal. Tobacco Firearms might get around to it in a month or so.

“The man you call Jorge had no identification, no passport, and refused to give us his name. The other two, all they had were Nicaraguan driver’s licenses.”

She shrugged. “Even if all three are in the country illegally, that’s no longer a big deal, either. Our borders are so wide open, the Department of Immigration doesn’t want to hear a peep from us unless we catch a busload.” Sounding stern, she added, “I’m trying to tell you something here, Dr. Ford.”

“You’re telling me that I shouldn’t be evasive. That you’re trying to help.”

“We don’t want men with knives who try to… mutilate people running around loose. Let’s put it that way.”

I said, “So, I guess it’s my word against theirs… unless.. . well, you find some evidence that supports my story. When they shot at my car-can’t you tell if a gun’s been fired? It’d be missing bullets, right?”

Detective Gartone’s laughter was like mid-low notes on a piano. “You really are an academic. Yes, we can tell if a weapon’s been fired. That’s why you and I are having what amounts to a private conversation.”

Talking now as if the old detective in the front seat wasn’t there.

Then, opening the car door, unfolding long legs as she exited, she added, “The two places on the road you say they fired at you? We found shell casings that match a weapon that was hidden in their vehicle. Backs up your story.”

I said, “Shell casings? You’re kidding. Jeez, I was beginning to worry you’d think I was hallucinating or something. It was a hell of a scary experience.”

“If it’s any consolation, I don’t think many men would have handled themselves as well as you. For an amateur, I mean.”

Maybe the detective lady was giving me a little signal. And maybe, under other circumstances, I would have given her a signal in return.

Gartone wasn’t pretty in any conventional way, but her face had an interesting complexity in this late, sunset light. It was a face that became more appealing when her mask of formality vanished into a smile.

She smiled now for just a moment before telling me that we were nearly done. She had to put me under oath, I had to sign some papers. After that, I was free to drive the Ford back to Sanibel, where, she suggested, I put iodine on my scratches, then get some sleep. I could rest easy, she said, because my assailants wouldn’t be released from jail until I was notified.

Handing me her card, dark eyes showing no emotion, she said, “In fact, I’ll call you personally. It’s my job.”