The Intriguers

xxii.

We got the boat into the water at a small marina next door to the picturesque and rambling old waterfront lodge at which we'd spent the night. The launching ramp was coated with a mat of the slickest green weeds I've ever encountered. The weather was clear and beautiful. The marina was located on a wide waterway-actually part of the Intracoastal Waterway that follows this western coast of Florida-but there seemed to be estuaries heading off in just about every direction. To the west, through a gap between Robalo Island and the next island north, I could see the open ocean-or, to be strictly accurate-the Gulf of Mexico. Frankly, I'm enough of a landlubber that any piece of water I can't see across is an ocean to me.

The big motor started at the turn of the key. I left it idling, warming up, while I ran the car and trailer back up into the parking lot. When I returned to the dock on foot, Martha had removed her modest pantsuit, revealing herself in an immodest bikini, striped blue and white wherever there was material enough to hold a stripe. Well, she was gaining on it, I reflected sourly. She'd started by seducing me fully clothed, progressed to a semitransparent nightie, and from there to a couple of inadequate strips of striped cloth. Total nudity was just around the corner. I could hardly wait.

"Which way do we go?" I asked. "You did say his place was on the water, didn't you?"

"Yes, of course. It's back down the Waterway a mile or two. You remember, I showed you the gate when we passed it on the road last night." She hesitated. "But maybe it would look less obvious if we took a trip around the island and came at it from the other direction. Besides, it's pretty early. Uncle Hank probably isn't awake yet. If we wait a little, he'll probably be down at his dock working on his boat; that's how he spends most of his time when he isn't making like a politician."

"Uncle Hank," I said. "You didn't tell me he was your uncle."

"He isn't. And Aunt Frances isn't my aunt, either. I just call them that. They're old friends of Daddy's; and we've visited them a lot, particularly since Mommy died."

"Fishing, you said."

"Yes," she said, "Uncle Hank put a special radiotelephone gadget on his boat so Daddy could keep in touch with his office even when he was out on the water."

I'd never thought of Mac as a sportsman, or even, really, as a man with friends outside the office. I discovered that I was jealous in an odd sort of way. It was a disconcerting idea that the cold gray man whose orders I'd been taking for the best part of my adult life had been in the habit of slipping away from Washington to go fishing with an old friend. Come to that, I'd never thought of Mac as a parent, either, even though I'd known he'd managed to produce, or assist in the production of, a female child. He'd always been a voice on the phone or a face in front of a bright window. I wasn't sure I wouldn't rather he'd stayed that way.

"Give me the guided tour around the island," I said. "Robalo. What kind of a name is that?"

"It means snook, a kind of game fish. There are lots of them around, but Daddy prefers tarpon because they're bigger."

I said, "Well, I might as well make sure this little putput is running right, after dragging it all this way It was a pleasant boat ride, but it was a hell of a shallow coast. Bucking a strong flood tide, we ran out through the gap between the islands-she called it a pass, apparently a local term for inlet or channel-and headed straight out for a while. After the Gulf of California, where you can be in a hundred feet of water within spitting distance of the shore, it seemed unnatural to have the land a couple of miles astern and only six or eight feet down, easily visible through the clear, blue-green water. A bunch of playful porpoises escorted us on our way.

Turning south at the buoy Martha indicated, I kept the little boat skipping along at conservative planing speed; there was no need to advertise its hidden virtues. The opening from which we'd come soon merged into the low. green, featureless shoreline; and it occurred to me that finding my way around these waters might present problems, particularly at night. I'm not the world's best pilot and navigator, and here there were no spectacular shoreline cliffs or peaks to head for; no distinctive landmarks such as I'd used in Mexico. Well, Martha had said that when the time came, I'd have a guide. I hoped he knew his business.

"Where is it you figure your dad's hiding out?" I asked the girl presently, raising my voice above the roar of the motor.

She pointed straight ahead. "Farther south a ways. It looks like a solid coastline from out here, but it's actually all broken up into mangrove islands and swamps and channels running every which way. You could hide a battleship in there, if you had a battleship that drew only a couple of feet of water… You can swing back inshore now. That point over there's the one you want. Cut it close; the deep water's right next to shore."

The tidal currents grabbed us, sweeping us inland with a rush as we neared the entrance. We crossed a wide estuary and headed into a twisting channel that was well marked with tall posts that had small wooden arrows, red or green, indicating the safe place for passing. The tangled vegetation grew right down to the water that in here looked like strong and murky tea. Martha indicated that wasn't such a farfetched simile: the coloration was largely due to tannic acid from the mangrove roots. She said the dead fish floating in the channel were due to a visitation of the lethal organism known as Red Tide that had recently afflicted this part of the coast.

"Of course, many of the locals don't really believe in the Red Tide," she said. "They think it's all the government's fault for dumping a lot of poison gas out in the Gulf some years ago. No, you'd better cut inside that little island up ahead. There's a good channel this side of it; you'll see the markers in a minute. Is this as fast as this thing will go?"

"Not really," I said, "but it's as fast as I'll go in water this shallow. I do have a spare propeller somewhere on board, but I don't feel like changing props today."

"I won't put us aground," she said confidently.

I shrugged, and ran the revs up until the nautical speedometer read thirty miles per hour-although why a boat speedometer should read in miles per hour instead of knots still baffled me. The little vessel was by no means fully extended, but the increase of speed seemed to satisfy the girl up forward; and in those narrow, shallow waters thirty was plenty fast enough for me. I was throwing us around the channel markers slalom-fashion as it was, glancing back occasionally to see our big white wake breaking on invisible shoals that we'd missed by only a few yards.

We slowed down a few times for other boats and once for a small village. At last, having come clear around the island, we passed under a high, new bridge I recognized as the one we'd driven over the night before, leaving the mainland. We were back in civilization. You could tell by the private docks and by the neat seawalls protecting the pretty little houses on the pretty little lawns, and by the earth-moving machinery tearing up the mangroves and the marl underneath, to prepare the way for more pretty little houses on more neat little lawns. Beyond this raw, new construction were some larger and older waterfront residences.

"Uncle Hank sold off part of his land to the developers. I'm not sure he doesn't regret it now," Martha said, looking that way. "There he is! The thirty-footer with the outriggers and the tuna tower. The gray-haired man in the cockpit… Can we just stop, or do you have to make like a secret agent and sneak through the bushes or something?"

I grinned. "Sometimes the bold move is the best. Uncle Hank, here we come."