Tampa Burn

FOURTEEN

As I pulled onto the Tamiami Trail, headed west toward Sanibel, I got the number from information and had the girl at the Miami Radisson’s front desk ring Tomlinson’s room.

No answer.

The first time, I left a message for him saying, “I’ve got a classic Tucker Gatrell story that you’re not going to believe. Actually, you will believe it. It’s so typical. Plus there’s interesting news about the black car.”

I think I sounded upbeat. Not a hint of suspicion in my voice.

How Tucker had ruined the career of Merlin T. Starkey-I told myself that was the reason I tried Tomlinson’s room again ten minutes later, then redialed a third time a few minutes after that. Told myself I was eager to share the wild tale, and also confirm that Pilar and Tomlinson were safe. That seemed reasonable. Hadn’t I told them not to leave the room?

True, Balserio, Hugo, and Elmase had probably already been booked into Collier County jail. But my friend and my former lover weren’t aware of that. They should have been inside the Radisson with the bolts latched.

I checked my watch: 9:30 P.M.

So where were they?

Or… maybe they were in the room, but ignoring the phone. Inside all alone, but having too much fun to answer.

Yeah, that was certainly possible…

I plucked up the cell phone, hit redial again, and told the irritable desk clerk, “This is kind of important. Would you mind trying that room one more time?”

Nothing.

My primary concern was that they were in some kind of trouble. Someone had gotten to them. But I was also aware of an undercurrent of adolescent-grade suspicion.

My behavior, I lied to myself, had nothing to do with Tomlinson and how he behaved with women. I also told myself it wasn’t because of the secret, sexual Pilar that tumbled out under a lot of stress, and after a couple of glasses of wine.

I simply wanted to let them know that it was safe for them to unlock the door and leave Miami. That maybe they should get on the phone and grab the first fast cab back to Sanibel.

I’m not the suspicious type. Too mature, too rational to be jealous, so that’s not why I kept calling.

That’s what I told myself.

I also wasn’t already regretting exchanging my Sig Sauer for Balserio’s freedom, nor did some secret part of me consider that gun a mighty good-luck talisman.

Right.

In the next few minutes, I received two calls. But it wasn’t the missing couple. First time, it was one of Tomlinson’s Zen students, who told me in a rush that she felt the mantra he’d assigned her just wasn’t working because, she now realized, it was similar to the name of an old boyfriend.

“Please tell the respected Daishi it’s becoming a real downer, picturing that asshole’s face every time I work on my sutra. ”

I said I’d pass the information along if and when I ever spoke to the great Daishi again.

The second caller didn’t pause even when I tried to interrupt.

“Hey, man, how’re you doin’? Nothing urgent but my outboard’s about bone dry. Hear what I’m tellin’ ya? We need it at the Marco Island store. I hear a buck fifty a gallon sounds right. So I’ll take two bags. Gallons, I mean. Only if it’s high test, though; got a big race tonight. Catch you at the shack. Same place-and tell your delivery boy not to be late this time.”

As I said “Huh?” he hung up.

At ten till ten, I slowed for the orange blinker and gas station fluorescence that is the turnoff to Everglades City at the intersection of Route 29. Down that rural two-lane was the Rod amp; Gun Club, the classic old fishing lodge where I’d waved a last goodbye to my parents.

Suddenly, I wasn’t thinking about Tomlinson and Pilar anymore.

To the southwest, beyond mangroves, the lights of the village reflected off clouds. Once again, the image of the departing boat, my father, my mother, her eyes and smiling face, appeared. My father’s secret hand signal. Once again, the freshness of detail startled me.

Had that scene ever come into my mind before?

No.

I was certain it hadn’t. Not as an adult, anyway. Yet, how could I have forgotten a moment like that?

It seemed impossible, but I had. Until today.

It was a psychological anomaly that I’d never experienced.

I have little patience for nostalgia; seldom linger in the past. I’ve lived an independent, self-reliant life in which family hasn’t played a role. After so many years on my own, my recall of those long-dead people had faded more completely than the photo I’d found of Ervin Rouse.

Yet on this day, they’d reappeared, alive in memory.

I found that puzzling and remarkable. It also seemed somehow important.

Why?

I couldn’t fathom. What I’d learned about Tucker Gatrell wasn’t a factor. No, it was more personal than that.

I considered making the turn to Everglades City, traveling the four or five miles to the Barron River to stand beneath the old moon-globe streetlights. To stand on the dock once again, where I’d said goodbye a final time. That reconnection might suggest an answer.

I decided against it. It was a little too touchy-feely for comfort. To me, self-exploration has always seemed an excuse for self-absorption. I’m too interested in the world outside to waste time on dramatic introspection.

I kept driving.

Still, the question lingered: Why had I experienced such a vivid recollection-especially after what I’d been through earlier? The leering face of a crazy man, threatening castration with a knife, is not easily displaced.

But it had been displaced. It had been replaced by the forgotten memory of my final few moments with my parents.

I thought about it as I drove.

I was in a wild section of Everglades called the Fakahatchee Strand. Traffic was sparse. I had windows down, peepers and bullfrogs rioting as I burrowed through their darkness at speed. The moon, nearly full, had been up long enough to saturate the flora with incandescent current. The sawgrass was luminous, a plateau of blue. Isolated tree canopies glowed cellularly-a kind of lunar synthesis.

I continued to wrestle with the question: Why? What had caused that buried moment to reveal itself?

I tried to cut through all the emotional, sentimental BS, seeking a rational explanation. I’ve read that internal, emotional anomalies are often catalyzed by external change. My life had changed dramatically in the last few days.

Key elements came to mind, then key words: son… parents… heredity… genetics… blood.

Yes, that seemed a sensible linkage.

It had only been in the last year or so that Lake had accepted me as his father, and I’d come to accept and value him as my son. The man and pretty woman who’d returned in memory with such startling clarity were my son’s grandparents.

I’d never thought of my parents in that context before. In fact, I no longer even thought of myself as having parents, nor of being someone’s son.

Family? I think of the cheerful live-aboards and fishing guides of Dinkin’s Bay Marina as my extended family. But to be a member of an actual family, a blood kinship? With the exception of my cousin and friend, Ransom Gatrell-Tucker’s daughter-having relatives, being part of a family, was something I’d never coveted.

Maybe shock caused by Lake’s dilemma had sparked the forgotten memory. If so, it had also sparked the realization that I was the member of a family.

What was left of one, anyway.

I’d lost my parents years ago. Now I was confronting the possibility of losing their only grandson. As a biologist, the enormity of such a loss hit me for the first time. Two generations, two bridges in a family hereditary chain, wiped out.

As a father, the possibility of losing yet another generational member hit me much harder. Lake was my son. He was a great kid who loved science and baseball, and he was a hell of a lot more than just some genetic bridge.

I don’t use a lot of profanity, but I used a couple of rough words now, banged my hand on the steering wheel, and yelled into the night, “Where are you? Where are you? ”

I’ve never thought of myself as an orphan. Nor will I-too much self-pity in that word. But after a lifetime spent living alone, I had the frailest suspicion of an understanding that it meant something very different to exist alone in the world.

I now faced that possibility.

I had to stay smart and hope for the right breaks. We had to make contact with the kidnappers at the first opportunity.

I had to find my son.

The satellite phone was beside me on the seat. With Balserio and his men put away, I felt there was a window of time in which it would be safe to carry the thing. In a couple of days, maybe three, I’d destroy it. Hadn’t the lady detective told me I’d be notified before they were released from jail?

Yeah.

So the phone remained a tenuous link.

I glanced at the thing now, willing it to ring.

It didn’t, of course.

Why hadn’t they called? Maybe they’d given Pilar the phone only so they could use it to track her. It seemed plausible, but I was desperate enough to hang on to it anyway. They might call.

Tomlinson and Pilar came to mind. I checked the dashboard clock-10:04-as I picked up the cell phone. Maybe they’d returned to the hotel room. Or… maybe something really had happened to them.

I squinted to touch Redial, then stopped myself as my mind transferred data. There’d been another recent, surprising change in my life. There was yet another person who might become a part of that linkage that joined Lake and me.

Those key words again: heredity… genetics… blood.

This much I knew: The well-being of the woman who’d slipped into my mind was a hell of a lot more important than an ex-lover.

Quickly, I dialed Dewey Nye’s home number. She’s the early-to-bed type during the week, so I expected to catch her reading before turning off the light.

I didn’t. She not only didn’t answer, her message machine didn’t intercept. Odd.

So I tried her cell phone. I decided I must have dialed wrong, because a recorded message told me, “The number you have reached is no longer in service.”

I felt a little chill when, after dialing carefully, I got the same message.

Dewey had kept the same cell phone number for years. A dummy number she called it. The last four digits were all sevens. Lucky sevens, she called it that, too. She wouldn’t have canceled her service.

I dialed once again just to be sure, and got the recording.

She had canceled it.

Or did wireless phones, when broken, respond in that way?

I didn’t know.

I’d been driving the speed limit. I’d been considering turning back to Miami. Instead, I pushed the car up to eighty.

Now I had to find Dewey, too.

I reached the four-way stop at Tarpon Bay Road, Sanibel Island, at eleven-thirty. But instead of turning right onto the narrow road that leads to Dinkin’s Bay Marina, I continued on toward Captiva.

I crossed Blind Pass Bridge, noticing that the bar at ’Tween Waters was still open, and the Green Flash, too. At Twin Palms Marina, it looked like the Jensen brothers were having a midweek cookout and party. There were colored lights and a bonfire that glazed boats, docks, people, coconut palms with oscillating gold.

I knew that if I stopped at any one of those places, I’d find friends and a drink, and sympathy, too.

Normally, the idea would have been appealing. Not now. During times of personal calamity, even the most familiar of safe harbors can seem as foreign as a far planet. Emotional chaos has its own trajectory. Until the energy of that path dissipates, and we arc back into the customary orbit of our normal lives, nothing feels or appears quite as it should be.

Until I found Dewey-knew that she was safe and that we were on good terms again-my life, and these familiar islands, would not be the same.

Off Mango Court, I turned down the sand drive to her home. I felt even more pressured than on my last visit, but I drove slowly, watching for local pets, driving along the high ficus hedges, headlights glaring off security signs, and then I swung into her drive hoping once again to see the Lexus parked beneath the carport.

Once again, it wasn’t.

There was activity at the house, though. The front door was open, lights on. A Dodge Ram pickup was parked out front, some kind of white compact, too, plus a smaller red pickup-all the vehicles seemed familiar-and there were people inside the house, moving across the lighted windows.

My first impression was that Dewey was having a little party of her own, and maybe her car was gone because she had had to run to the store to fetch more ice or mixer.

But then I recognized the bumper stickers on the Dodge. Knew it was Jeth Nichols, one of our marina fishing guides, and so I instantly knew the owners of the other cars, too.

This was no party, and the Lexus wasn’t gone because Dewey was on a quick trip to the store.

I got out of the rental Ford in a rush and jogged toward the house, thinking, Don’t let them be here because she’s sick, or hurt, or because someone broke in…

Those weren’t the reasons.

As I got to the porch, I surprised Jeth, who was backing out the door carrying one end of Dewey’s king-sized mattress. Lugging the other end was Javier Castillo, a fishing guide from Two Parrot Bight Marina, and one of Jeth’s best friends.

When I saw the mattress, I knew. I knew why they were here. I also understood why Dewey’s phones weren’t working. This close to midnight, men load beds into pickups for only one reason. Not only that, but the back of the truck was nearly full of my girl’s furniture.

But I asked anyway.

“ Jeth. What are you guys doing here so late? Where’s Dewey?”

Jeth looks like an all-state linebacker who never stopped taking good care of himself, a great-looking guy with the truest of hearts. His mild stutter is an endearing quirk, although it is seldom heard these days-unless he’s upset or nervous.

The man was nervous now.

“Goddang, dah-dah-dah-Doc! You ’bout scared me to death sneakin’ up-p-p-p like that.” He’d dropped the mattress and was holding a big hand to his chest. I got the feeling, though, I hadn’t scared him that badly. He was trying to buy a little time; needed space to figure out what to say to me.

I said, “Javier-where is she? What’s going on here?”

Javier is a lean black man, average height, thin lips but a broad African nose and short black hair. He floated over from Cuba years ago in an inner tube, worked sixteen-hour days to get a foothold. He now has a gorgeous family, the community’s respect, and an equal amount of pride. But when I spoke to him, trying to hold his eyes, he just shook his head and looked away.

“Jeth, damn it, answer me. Where’s Dewey? I’m not going to ask you a third time. Is she all right?”

I realized that my tone was threatening. Dominant and demanding-it was that, too. I instantly regretted the way I’d spoken to him.

So did Jeth. His voice sounded as pained as the expression on his face as he replied, “Oh, Dewey’s fine, she’s just fine, don’t you worry about that. We’re takin’ some of her personal stuff to a storage place off-island ’cause… well, ’cause that’s what she asked one of us to do. But I don’t want to be the one ta have ta tah-tah-tell you about it, man. Dang it, Doc, why’d you have to show up here now?”

Jeth and I are close friends. Old friends. I didn’t know the details of why he and Javier were helping Dewey move, but I resented that the two of us had been put in this situation. Friends should not be drawn into the middle of romantic troubles. Because of this, it would be a while before Jeth and I felt comfortable around each other again.

From inside, I heard a woman’s voice call to them, “You guys quit gabbing, and get that mattress loaded. It’s already late, and we’re not even close to being done. Get going!”

It was a familiar voice, with a Midwestern civility built into her inflections, and so her bossiness seemed intentionally exaggerated, as if she were joking.

She wasn’t.

As I made room for them to pass, Jeth said, “I’m sorry, Doc. I truly am.”

I said, “No, no, I’m the one who should apologize. I shouldn’t’ve come on so hard.”

“Oh hell.” His tone said, Forget it. But there was also a little chill there. I’d offended him. “We’ll grab us some beers.” Now Jeth was stepping up into the back of his truck, making it look easy. “Maybe tomorrow night if you got some time.”

I knew it’d be a lot longer than that, but said, “Sure. Tomorrow should be good.”

As they drove away, Javier smiled and called to me in Spanish, “In Cuba, we had a saying: If it wasn’t for a woman’s love, a man could go his entire life without hearing of his faults or being punished for them.”

I smiled and nodded. My friendship with Javier, at least, was unaffected.

He’d reminded me of an even more cynical Latin maxim: The real magic of love is that, for a short period of time, it blinds two people to the pain it will surely cause.