The Butterfly Forest

NINETY-ONE

On the way from the hospital to Ponce Marina, I told Dave what Pablo Gonzales said before he hung up on me.

Dave said, “Gonzales’ reprisal is fueled by money and false family justice. He may have his nephew’s body. There was a reading on the GPS tracker for a short time, and then nothing.”

“What was the last location?”

“The body was in the Tampa Bay area, someone moving it constantly. Gonzales could be trying to load it on a freighter, one with a good deep freeze.”

“Maybe the feds closed in before you lost the tracker’s signal.”

“Doubtful.”

“Why?”

“Because they’d want to stake-out wherever it stopped, then send in the vests with guns drawn and hope Gonzales wants a shootout.” Dave stopped at a railroad crossing as the flashing gates were descending, the sound of a train horn in the distance. He adjusted an air conditioning vent to blow cold air toward his flushed face. “Now it’s a vendetta against you, Sean. Some Old World bravado whereby Gonzales won’t rest until he gets his family retribution, and in this case, rendering you a paraplegic.”

The train rumbled across the tracks in front of us, pockets of sunlight flickering through the boxcars resembling bursts of light from flash frames in an old movie reel. Dave watched the train for a moment and then turned to me. “You mentioned Gonzales’ reference to Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. In that novel, the workers at a banana plantation are mowed down under machinegun fire as they attempt to strike. Thousands of bodies are tossed into boxcars, like those in front of us, and the bodies were shipped to the coast where they were dumped in the ocean. Shark feed. You said some of the workers in the pot fields came at you and Billie with machetes drawn.”

“They did.”

Dave nodded. The last boxcar in the train zipped by, and the crossing gates lifted. He put the car in gear. “Maybe somewhere in Gonzales’s operation, somewhere in his sick brain, maybe he’s reenacting imagery from what he considers to be the world’s best book, One Hundred Years of Solitude.”

As Dave pulled into the Ponce Marina lot I said, “So to profile Pablo, all we have to do is read between the lines in Marquez’s novel, and we’ll have an idea what motivates a narcissist killing machine.”

“Or at least what may have influenced him.”

“Look at how the Koran and the Bible have influenced generations.”

“Some biographers also have drawn parallels between the book of Genesis and Marquez’s story.”

I wedged the Glock under my belt as we headed down L dock, glad to be taking in the scent of the sea. Mullet jumped in the tidal waters. A fishing boat loaded with tourists chugged into the Halifax River, making its way to Ponce Inlet and the ocean. A fisherman on M dock cast a line toward the leaping mullet. He wore a baseball cap, watched the charter boat and puffed a cigar as he adjusted the drag on his line.

Dave stopped walking and said, “Your Jeep will be ready tomorrow. Except for the stitches in your shoulder, and the fact a self-absorbed little drug lord wants your head, I’d say things are getting back to normal around here. In no time, we’ll be our regular, old marina community of miscreants, misfits and pirates.”

“There’s no place like home.”

Dave scratched at his salt and pepper stubble on his chin. “What are you going to do about Elizabeth?”

“What do you mean, about?”

“If it wasn’t safe for her earlier, it has to be like living on the absolute edge now.”

“Pablo Gonzales is looking for me. I don’t think Elizabeth has any value to him anymore. Izzy’s dead. But before he died, he didn’t know Elizabeth couldn’t ID him. Neither did Frank Soto and ranger Ed. They killed Luke Palmer to prevent his possible testimony, but now Izzy’s death makes it all moot.”

Dave watched a white pelican sailing over the bay, its snowy feathers reflecting off the water. He said, “Vengeance is a savage but universal motivation, one shared among sociopaths and, unfortunately, many others in our species. Pablo Gonzales, the poster boy of psychopaths, will come for you like Santa Anna crossing the Texas border 150 years later. Elizabeth isn’t safe on your boat.”

“I know.”

Dave leaned up against the dock railing. He scanned the moored boats behind me. I watched the fisherman make a second cast, his detached glance drifting around the marina like the tawny smoke from his cigar.

Dave said, “I made a couple of calls, did a little research. Pablo Gonzales has everything money can buy as a drug lord. Most likely, he has hundreds of corrupt officials in his pocket. He has an arsenal that many small nations would envy. One thing he doesn’t have is a sex life. Pablo suffered a horrid bout with the mumps as a teenager. It settled in his balls and rendered him sterile and impotent. Consequently, no children. He contracted a disease that was eradicated in the states. So Izzy was the son he never had. Perhaps this explains his threats to you, the reference to castration. His raging bull, his non-realized fantasy, may be sexual in nature. A testosterone level extinguished by disease not desire.”

I said nothing.

Dave added, “Maybe the feds will find him. Maybe they won’t. There’s one man I feel sure would help if I asked him. And, as far as I’m concerned, he’s the only man I know that can help you at this point, and Sean… you need help.”

“Who’s this man?”

“You remember Cal Thorpe, of course.

“AKA Eric Hunter. He worked on the case that brought down the FBI breach.”

“At one time, I thought Thorpe was the best field operative our country has ever produced. And then you came along, Sean. You set a trap that caught the breach, and I knew at that point Cal Thorpe could learn something from you.”

“It was a collective effort. I didn't do it alone—”

“My only point in this reference is the fact that you worked with Thorpe at that time, and I believe you could use his skills right now.”

“Does this mean you think that agents Flores, Jenkins, Keyes and the rest of their team can’t prevent Pablo Gonzales from keeping his assassins from me?”

“What do you think?”

“I think one was just here. Casing us.”