The Mangrove Coast

14

On the air approach to Cartagena, the parrot-blue of the Caribbean Sea is gradually murked by a long cusp of beach that flattens into a hardpan of mud and mangroves and plum-colored slums. Beyond is a fortress city that looks like something dreamed up by Hollywood, its bastion walls built by the Spaniards in the 1500s to intimidate pirates, its narrow streets clogged with motor scooters and smoking cars and wooden donkey carts.

Fortresses and pirates are still an intricate part of Cartagena today.

I stepped off the plane into the rain forest heat, Loomis travel bag in hand. At immigration, a little man in a blue uniform checked my passport, eyed me carefully, then rewarded me with a huge smile. “Welcome to Colombia!” He seemed surprised that I was there.

No wonder.

U.S. citizens do not visit Colombia much anymore. The lone exception is Bogota which, of late, has been doing a brisk business in the mail-order-bride business.

To be accurate: computer-ordered brides.

I’ve never heard anyone argue the point: Colombia produces the most beautiful women in the Americas. Single U.S. men, perhaps tired of being treated as social villains, have been flying here in ever-growing numbers to find kind and gentle mates to marry.

There is a second, darker attraction: Because of its beautiful women… and its hungry and desperate children… Colombia is also a favorite destination of sexual predators. Unknown to most, impoverished Third World countries have little choice but to turn a blind eye on their own booming sex trade. They need the money. They have come to rely on it. Behavior that is considered felonious back in the U.S. is, in poor countries such as Colombia, not only tolerated, it is accepted.

That is a tragedy…

Contributing to that tragedy is the United States Congress, which has done absolutely nothing to discourage our sexual deviants from crossing the border and preying on poor and desperate children.

But, aside from men seeking women, U.S. tourists seldom visit Colombia anymore. Not even the cruise ships bother to make landfall. Too much bad press. Maybe the little man at immigration took my arrival as a good omen. A North American tourist? Perhaps the world’s attitude toward his country was changing!

My smile told him: Maybe soon but not yet.

Which is unfortunate. Colombia is one of the most beautiful countries in the Americas and its people are among the most gifted, the friendliest and attractive people in the world.

But Colombia is also the world’s chief exporter of cocaine. Each and every drug cartel has its own meagerly equipped small army. When a cartel goes under, its army tends to stay together because there’s so little work available. How do these guerrilla bands survive? Their members have embraced the very profitable vocation of kidnapping and extortion to keep food on the table.

It is estimated that between a hundred and two hundred people are kidnapped and ransomed each month in Colombia. If relatives of the victims do not pay the ransom quickly and in full measure, the victims are executed in cold blood. There is a spoken procedure: Get down on your knees and I will then press the muzzle of this pistol to the back of your head…

The second casualty of poverty is conscience. The first is the local environment, so it is business, nothing more. Kill a hostage promptly and efficiently and you may be sure that relatives of the next victim will be more highly motivated to cooperate.

The irony is that Colombia, in terms of overall violent crime and theft, is no more dangerous than Miami or L.A. Tourists don’t hesitate to visit those places. But mention the name “Colombia” to an unseasoned traveler, and the reaction is predictable: Colombia? Too risky!

Not really. Besides, such statistics mean very little to me when it comes to travel. I love Colombia, have always loved Colombia, so facts and figures about crime carry little weight. Not when the beauty of the country, the kindness and humor of its people, are weighed in the balance.

Which is why I was both chagrined and irritated at myself when I realized how long it had been since I’d treated myself to a return visit. Had I unknowingly become so tangled in the cheerful social web of Sanibel that I was now what I had always dreaded: dependent, addicted to routine, immobile?

When I got home, I’d force myself to take a hard look at my life. Do some reassessing, maybe make some changes.

For now, though, I felt the thoracic glow of being alone again, focused and under way far outside the boundaries, on the road once more.

I worked my way through Cartagena’s small terminal to the street outside, where four or five taxi drivers stood braced against their little cars, dozy in the heat. By old habit, I chose the third cab in line (never take the first or second car in a country where an attacker might anticipate your arrival). It was a punch-drunk Toyota with a parade of dashboard saints. The car might have once been red but was now sun-bleached pink.

Before opening the door, I paused to ask the driver how many marinas there were near the old walled city.

He said two.

I asked him which of those two marinas would be most comfortable for a gringo couple on a sailboat.

That was easy, he said. There was only one marina preferred or used by foreign yachters (sea travelers, he called them). That was the little marina in Manga.

Good news. Very good news.

I explained to the driver that I might need a hotel, but first I wanted him to drive me to this place, the marina called Club Nautico. I told him that I planned to spend an hour or so at the marina, get something to eat and hopefully make contact with the Aussie who owned the place. If he was a good driver, if he didn’t put my life at risk or try to maneuver me to a friend’s shop or a store or a restaurant in hopes of a kickback, I’d hire him for the day.

I hadn’t quite finished explaining what I wanted when a familiar voice interrupted me from behind: “God dang, Duke, I was beginnin’ to think you wasn’t gonna show up a’tall.”

I felt a sickening feeling. How could this have happened?

I was tempted to slide into the cab, shut the door and never look back. In hindsight, that’s precisely what I should have done.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I turned to see Tucker Gatrell.

He wore a stained gray Justin cattleman’s hat tilted jauntily on his head, skinny-hipped Levi’s, a black western shirt with plastic pearl buttons and a white sports coat that a piano-bar hustler might have chosen. On the macadam, braced against his boots, was a large cardboard suitcase. The thing had to be forty years old.

Tucker Gatrell in travel uniform. I was not amused and I wasn’t sympathetic.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Come to lend a hand. What you think?”

“What I think is, you weren’t invited, so my advice is don’t expect a hell of a lot of consideration.”

“Wasn’t asked, my ass. That pretty little girl asked me. Called me on the phone last night. Said you was headed for Colombia and you might need some help.”

“Amanda? You’re telling me she called you after she spoke to me. And told you I’d need help?”

“That’s right, after. She called me back and told me, ‘You make sure you look after Duke.’ That li’l girl likes you. She truly does.”

“Amanda referred to me as Duke.”

“Well… no, she called you by the other name, Doc. But it means the same.”

I looked into his face. Was he lying? The man had the craziest, brightest blue eyes I’d ever seen in my life. It was as if each iris were independently wired and energized with chromium filament. There was madness in there. And a terribly driven… something. But was he lying?

Couldn’t tell. It was always nearly impossible for me to tell if he was lying. Although with Tuck, it was usually safe to assume that he was.

“I’m going to be real honest with you, Tucker. I don’t want your help. I don’t want you near me. And I don’t have time to waste keeping you out of trouble. So do me a favor: Turn around and take the next flight back to Miami. Or anyplace else you want to go.”

He was already loading his suitcase into the trunk of the taxi. “Miami? You drunk, Duke? Hell, boy, I just flew in from Miami. When Amanda-ain’t she the nicest girl? — when that Amanda told me you was takin’ the mornin’ flight, I figured that meant like close to first light, knowin’ you. So I got me a seat on LACSA’s first and best. Been here waitin’ for more than two hours, but I’m still burpin’ red peppers from that breakfast they served.” He was grinning, showing me what a good-natured and all-around cheerful old guy he was. “Goddamn, boy, airplane food, I figure it’s just about the best stuff in the world.”

I used studied, articulate patience to show him just how impatient I was. “I’m not taking you with me. You might as well gather your gear and go home.”

I watched the grin fade from his face. One thing I’ve never doubted about Tuck is his capacity for anger and violence. “You don’t want me?”

“That’s right, I don’t want you.”

“You think I’ll get in the way. Maybe slow you down.” For some reason, now that we were away from Florida, I felt free to tell him exactly what was on my mind. “That’s right, I think you’ll get in the way. Not only that, I think you’d find a way to embarrass me if you stayed. Or get me killed. You’ve got some experience at that, right?” I waited, looking at him. No reaction at all before I continued, “So do us both a favor and take the next flight to Miami. I’ll pay for it. Whatever. Just get the hell out of here because I’ve got work to do.”

He looked at me with those sled-dog eyes and, for a moment, a crazed moment, I think he came close to punching me. In barely a whisper, he said, “Let me tell you somethin’, boy. Don’t fuck with a falcon unless you can fly.” That was supposed to make sense? I said, “O-o-o-kay.”

“There’s never been a day in my life I couldn’t carry my own weight. And I was kickin’ ass in these shithole taco towns back when the big news was that you’d taken a dump that wasn’t in your diapers.”

“Um-huh.”

“I’ve put in the miles. There are worse men to do the river with.”

“If you’re saying you’re not a young man anymore, Tucker, I agree.”

“You ain’t listenin’, ‘cause that ain’t what I’m sayin’.”

“But it’s what I’m saying. So get on a plane and go home. I’m starting to lose my patience.”

I watched him visibly compose himself, but then he was mad again within seconds. “You don’t think I know the story as well as you? Amanda’s mama’s gone off with some lard-assed Yankee that’s diddlin’ her and takin’ her money at the same time. You come down here to fetch her home, but you’re too damn stubborn to admit you might need some help if lard-ass won’t let her go. Goddamn it… quit bein’ so goddamn stubborn!” His face, which was as wrinkled as parchment, had turned a Navaho red. For the first time, I realized something: This really was an old man. What if I kept at it, made him so furious that he had a heart attack right here at the airport? That’s all I needed, dealing with Tuck and mounds of idiotic paperwork at some Colombian hospital.

I said, “Okay, okay, calm down, Tucker. There’s no need to get so upset. People are looking.”

“I don’t give a hoot in hell who’s looking. They can kiss my ass on the county fucking square for all I care! And you, too, Mister-been-all-over-the-world-know-it-all! ‘Cause here’s something you don’t know: When things go bad in a place like Cartagena, the shit comes down so fast, you’d better have wings to stay above it or a shovel to dig your way out. And you’d better by God have someone you can trust watching your back.”

I nearly said, yeah, like I’m supposed to trust you? Would’ve but veins were sticking out in his neck and he’d gotten redder.

“Take a deep breath, just relax.” I was shushing him with my hands. “Get in the cab and we’ll talk about it. No need to get upset.”

“I ain’t exactly inexperienced at this business, you know! I’ve been in plenty of tough spots. Shit” — his voice softened-“I hate to admit it, but I’ve done the worst thing a Christian white man can do. Yes sir, I done killed me a human being. A Mexican. Great big fat one, but he was quick and them bastards ain’t exactly easy targets.” He paused for a moment; let his eyes blur at the horizon. “Duke, that greasy beaner haunts me to this day.”

The man was insane. He hadn’t killed anyone-Tuck’s old partner, Joseph Egret, had told me the truth. One more example that Tucker was the creator of his own sloppy reality.

I opened the door of the cab and slid inside as the old man said, “I won’t get in the way. I promise. And I might help.”

I was shaking my head. Why had Amanda told him my travel plans?

Now he was in the car beside me, hat on his lap because the car was so small. “I hate to admit this, Duke, but I been kinda lowly lately. This ain’t been the best month for me.”

Trying to keep peace, hoping he would calm down, I said, “Amanda told me about Roscoe. I’m sorry. You two had been together a long time.” Tuck and his big appaloosa gelding.

The expression on Tucker’s face demonstrated surprise, then indifference. “Huh? I ain’t talking about my damn horse dying. That worthless bastard? Roscoe, I ain’t… hell, he’d been so damn contrary lately I was half tempted to put a bullet in him myself. Good riddance, that’s what I say. No, what I was talkin’ about, Duke, is my health.”

The man was maddening. I refused to ask.

Didn’t have to.

As the cab sped us west along a rolling seacoast, I listened to him say, “The last four or five weeks, something’s gone wrong with this old body of mine. Hard to believe for as good as I look. I won’t argue that But the problem is… well, shit, I’ll just come out and say it. For more than a month, I’ve had me a permanent case of Whiskey Dick. It’s about to worry me sick. Understand that what I’m saying is just between you, me and the fence post. If Joe ever got wind of it, he wouldn’t let me forget-”

Tucker stopped abruptly. He’d apparently forgotten that his old roundup and poaching partner was dead.

He began again. “What I mean is, if anybody as black-hearted as Joe found out, I’d never hear the end of it. It wouldn’t do me no good with the tourist ladies around Marco and Naples, neither. So I’m hopin’ this little trip to the tropics works me some good. The senoritas, they’ve always liked me just fine, Duke. Just fine.”

I was rubbing my forehead with my fingers. I said, “I’m not going to tell you again, Tucker: Don’t call me Duke.”

Club Nautico was located on Cartagena Bay just a few hundred yards from the Spanish stone garrison that was now an upscale restaurant called Club Pesca… one of the nicer sections of Cartagena.

I recognized the fort from previous trips as well as the postcard that Amanda had received from her mother. One being so close to the other, I interpreted as a good sign. Maybe someone would know something about a fat American on a sailboat.

The little marina took its security seriously. A bright pink stone wall screened and protected it from the street. At the wrought-iron gate, a man in a blue guayabera shirt stood guard. He did a quick assessment as I paid off the taxi, then nodded a greeting as he swung the gate open. Gringos with money are welcome almost anywhere, anytime.

Club Nautico could have served as the prototype for every expatriate waterfront bar from Hong Kong to Bombay: palm-thatched roof strung with fishnet and seashells, ceiling fans, bamboo framing and supports, red tile floor, L-shaped mahogany bar near a pool table and laundry room, an elevated dining area with white tablecloths, everything outdoors and open to the water except for the wall that sealed off the street.

This was the tropics, right? All you need is shelter from the sun, protection from thunderstorms, plus some ice, rum and a place to sit.

The rafters above the bar were draped with international flags. An atlas of sailors who had made landfall here from far-flung places-Britain, Japan, Cuba, Vietnam, New Zealand, plus a huge green burgee that read “Nostromos.” Tacked to the raw wood pole supports were yacht club pennants from around the world. The rest I knew without having to look: There would be showers and good food and the bulletin board would be layered with uncollected airmail and For Sale notices posted by wanderers trying to scrape together enough money to get home and handwritten notes offering deckhand service for passage to the next port of call by those stranded and desperate for transportation.

Club Nautico was neat, well maintained and protected. Whoever had set up the place knew what he was doing. It was like most small marinas run by expats: it was an adjunct to the country that housed it; a tiny and precise international crossroads that had many of the characteristics and advantages of a foreign embassy, but none of the stuffy drawbacks.

As Tuck and I straddled stools at the bar, I could look through the fronds of palm trees growing up through the decking and see a couple of dozen ocean-going sailboats moored stem-first to the marina’s high wooden docks. They were probably owned by voyagers who’d settled in Cartagena for an extended stay. Beyond the docks in a broad mooring area were a dozen or so more sailboats anchored randomly. Their hull colors-mostly fiberglass white but a few painted red or blue-looked brighter for the marl-blue water. The marina seemed to have a pretty good business going.

Across the bay was a Colombian Navy Amphibian base where I had once billeted for three interesting weeks. I could picture the way it would be beyond the sentry gates: massive grounds, trimmed golf-course, neat barracks and buildings and Quonset huts freshly whitewashed, a military park with ships tied along the cement quay.

“You like a drink, senor? Cold beer perhaps? Perhaps menus?” The bartender was a tall man, very black, with a heavy Spanish accent. A putty-colored scar, razor-thin, ran from his ear to his neck. First look at the man’s face, I thought: Maybe knife fight. Second look: Undoubtedly a knife fight.

Improbable adventure movies aside, it is hard to imagine two men drunk enough or crazed enough to fight with knives.

I told the bartender in Spanish that we would, indeed, like menus plus a couple of bottles of Polar or Aquila. We would try both. Plus glasses with ice, for that is the way beer is sometimes drunk in the tropics. And, by the way, was the owner around? The Australian man. What was his name?

“Garret,” the bartender said, choosing to continue in broken English. “Are you a friend of his?”

“I think we have mutual Mends, but I’m not certain.”

“He go to the Magali Paris for the kitchen.”

After we’d ordered, Tucker tapped the bar and made a noise of frustration. “I’ll be damn, that’s too bad. The man you wanted to see, he’s off in damn France.”

I said, “France?”

“Didn’t you hear the bartender? Gone to Paris. Even back in World War Two, I hated those bastards. The French, I’m talkin’ about. Stinkin’ wine-drinking sons-a-bitches. Down there in the South Pacific when we was fightin’ the Japs so they could have their damn country back. Run around pissin’ in the streets, what’a they care?”

The Magali Paris is a supermarket chain popular throughout South America. I shook my head slowly; said nothing.

We were drinking our beers from the tall glasses filled with ice. Tuck gulped his half down, wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve. “You know what we got in common, Duke? The both of us, we’re nothin’ but tramp steamers on two legs. Tropical junkies. In my heart, I feel like I’m about half-beaner. I really do. Can’t count the times I’ve come this close to growing me one of them skinny Ricky Ricardo mustaches. Know what I mean?”

Get some drinks in him, Tucker loved to talk. When he asked a question, though, it wasn’t because he wanted an answer. He asked questions because they required pauses that added pace and timing to the stories he told. I said, “Yeah, that would fit your whole act. Perfect, pencil-thin mustache.”

“Exactly the way I see it! ‘Cause that’s the way I feel in my heart, understand? It’s like this craving I get. It’s like a craving for the sea, but, at the same time, it’s for the jungle.” Gave a little shrug: Can’t explain it. “I want them both close enough to step outside and know they’re there when I take a breath. You’re the same, that’s my guess. I bet we ever set down and talked, really talked, we’d have a shit pot full of stuff in common, you and me.”

I was drinking a Polar. Ten-ouncer in a lime green bottle. Good beer. “Yep, I’m just a chip off the old block.”

“Now… there’s somethin’ I never told you about my life, ‘cause I didn’t want you to think bad of me. Thing is… as you know, I spent a lot of my time down here in these little banana republics. Me and Joe Egret, we went about everywhere a man can go without needin’ an airboat or a ladder. Know what we was doin’? Pot haulin’. Yep, run a seventy-, eighty-foot crab boat over here, have the colored boys fill’er up with bales of pot, haul ‘er back.”

When I didn’t react to that, Tuck added, “It’s illegal, you know. Pot-haulin’.”

I said, “Uh-huh, I think I read somewhere that bringing tons of marijuana into the United States is something that, yeah, they can arrest you for.”

“But we never got caught. Nope. Trouble was figuring out what to do with all that money we made. Joe and me? What we was scared of was the IRS net-worthing us. A man can’t outrun the multiplication table no matter what kinda horse he’s riding. A calculator can stick your ass in Raiford just as fast as a. 38. At one time we had close to three million in cash between us.”

Didn’t want to react, but I couldn’t help myself. Three million cash? Or… maybe it was just another one of his lies.

Tuck said, “Hell, countin’ all that money, we’d get pissed off if we came to a bill smaller than a twenty. I once used a stack of tens to wipe my business after takin’ a good ’un. Just too much damn trouble to bother with, know what I mean?” Tucker glanced at me for a moment, returned his attention to his beer. “Now… a great big chunk of that money I got hidden away. Not in the U.S., that’s all I’m gonna say. When the time’s right and the coast is clear, I’ll go get her. Maybe ask you to go along, ride shotgun. But know what Joe and me did with the rest of it?”

“Nope. Don’t have a clue.”

“Invested it like smart businessmen. Sure did. We opened us a string of seven tanning parlors. This was back before tanning parlors got to be real popular. Like we was pioneering that particular business.”

“Where?”

“Panama City.”

“Panama City, Florida?”

“Nope. Panama the country. All right downtown, too. Good locations. Couldn’t risk bringin’ the money into the states.”

I wondered if I should even bother. Yeah, I had to. Couldn’t pass it up. I cleared my throat. “You know, Tucker, Panama’s only, what? a couple of hundred miles off the equator? And Panamanians, a lot of them are pretty dark to begin with. I wouldn’t think tanning parlors would be such a good investment.”

Tucker was nodding, way ahead of me. “Gawldamn it, when you’re right, you’re right! I wish I’da talked to you first, ‘cause every one of them bastards went bust. Joe and me, we lost us close to a million dollars cash. But you know me, I always try to look on the bright side. You want to talk about a good tan? I had me the best tan you ever seen in your life. No shirt marks or nothin’.”

Tucker was wagging his fingers at the tall bartender. “Hey there, amigo! We’ll sail again here.” He clumped his glass down on the bar. “Bring me a shot’a that white rum on the side, too.”

Tucker said, “Since the owner’s not here, what you bet I can get that bartender to talk?”

He had finished the rum, was still working on his second beer.

I said, “Talk? Talk about what?”

“About that guy Amanda hates. Merlot. If Merlot was here with his sailboat, I guarantee you I can get the bartender to tell me. You got those pictures?”

“Yeah, I have the pictures. But I’ll do the talking. You just sit there and drink your beer.”

“I don’t think the man’ll talk to you. That scar, a man with a scar like that, you got to figure he knows the price of admission. He’s not gonna go runnin’ off at the mouth just ‘cause you ask.”

I said, “But he’ll talk to you?”

“That’s what I’m bettin’.”

“I guess we’ll just find out, won’t we?”

I placed the photograph of Merlot and Gail on the bar. Looking at the glossy print-the way the man’s fat thumb strained to touch her breast-irritated me, so I took pains not to allow my eyes to linger. The bartender, however, stared at the picture intently. As he did, I watched his eyes. They focused, then they appeared to refocus from the general to the particular. His expression struggled to remain relaxed, unreadable.

Yeah, he knew who he was looking at… I was convinced that the bartender had seen Gail and Merlot before.

He said, “This woman, she is beautiful, very beautiful, no?” Still speaking English… probably because he didn’t want the rest of the staff to know what we said.

“Beautiful, yeah, I guess so. I’ve never seen her in person before.”

“That is verdad? Then why do you carry her photograph?”

You have to play these things by instinct. The bartender, whose name was Fernando, was smart, savvy and necessarily tricky. Serving drinks to foreigners in a wide-open town like Cartagena required the rare combination of diplomacy and cold-blooded indifference. In any circumstance, the most convincing approach is the one that sticks closest to the truth, particularly with someone used to listening to drunken lies. So that’s the approach I tried. The truth. “I’m carrying her picture because I’m looking for her.” When Fernando glanced at Tuck-now done with his second beer-I added, “ We’re looking for her. My uncle and I. We flew down this morning from Miami to find this woman, because hear ex-husband just died and we have to tell her.”

Tucker’s head swiveled toward me. “You’re shittin’ me! Her husband, that asshole Frank what’s-his-name, he really is dead?”

I felt like knocking the old bastard right off his stool.

I was chuckling. Letting the bartender know it was a big joke. “My uncle knows the man’s dead. My uncle’s a drunk. A troublemaker. He doesn’t know what he’s saying half the time.”

Fernando had been following along, accepting my story until Tuck interrupted, but now his thin smile told me he didn’t believe a word I was saying. “I wish I could help you,” he said with a shrug. “But I’m afraid I don’t know these people.”

I had a $20 bill folded in my hand-a week’s salary to restaurant help. I slid the bill under the photograph so that just the comer was showing. “It’s very important. What I told you’s the truth. The woman’s ex-husband is dead. There will be legal complications. We need to find her and take her home.”

Fernando, I could tell, wasn’t going to budge. “At the Club Nautico, senor, a man’s business is his own. We do our jobs. We give the good service, the good food, and that is all. If you have other questions, you maybe ask Mr. Garret. But I warn you as a humble person” — he eyed the $20-“I would not use your money in such a way with Mr. Garret. He is the owner of this place and not a man to insult.”

Fernando wheeled away, reappearing a few moments later with our food: platters of fried snapper and black beans with wedges of lime.

“Damn almighty, Fernando! That smells even better than the grub I had on the plane and, by God, that’s sayin’ something!” As an aside to me, Tuck added softly, “That son-of-a-bitch really is dead?”

“Yeah, and thanks for handling it so well.”

He missed the sarcasm. “How?”

“I don’t know. I’ll call Amanda tonight and maybe find out something. As it is, you just screwed up any chance I have of getting information out of the bartender.”

“I already told you, he’ll talk to me.”

I took a bite of the fish. Why even answer?

“Talk about touchy! You want me to get the information out of him now, or you mind if I eat first?” Throwing it up in the air like he didn’t much care one way or the other, letting me decide.

I said, “We’ll wait for the owner. Just drop it.”

“So you don’t think he’ll talk to me?”

“No.”

Tucker pushed half a fillet of snapper into his mouth, a chunk of bread and said something-no way of knowing, his mouth was so full. He may have said: “Watch me.” Which is what I did.

I watched Tucker corner Fernando by the entrance to the kitchen, near the telephone and a sign on the wall that said in Spanish and English: Log all calls.

I watched Fernando’s scarred face glaze into a mask of indifference… then surprise… then enthusiasm and pleasure. I watched the two men shake hands and-this was unbelievable-I watched them hug slightly and whisper something into each other’s ear… or so it appeared.

I wasn’t eating. I couldn’t eat. I felt as if I were witnessing some bizarre theater. Tucker Gatrell, an Everglades gangster and unrepentant racist, was suddenly bosom buddies with Fernando, the onyx black Latino who had experience with knives but was too ethical to accept bribes.

I watched them talk. I watched them laugh. Translation seemed to be a problem. When Fernando didn’t understand Tuck’s English, Tuck simply-and idiotically-spoke louder not slower. He used hand language, too, like some bad actor conversing with Indians in an old Western film.

Finally, they shook hands again, hugged again, and Tuck returned to the bar, walking his gunfighter walk. He straddled the stool and began to eat. Didn’t say a word.

I waited…

I waited…

Jesus, he was going to make me ask. Finally, I did: “Okay, okay, you and Fernando are suddenly best friends. I apologize. He told you something, what?”

Tuck had a mouth full of beans. “Told me everything. Just like I knew he would.”

“I don’t get it. I didn’t lie to him, didn’t try to trick him, I even offered him money. You knew he’d talk to you- how?”

“‘Cause he’s a Freemason. We’re both Freemasons.”

“Freemasons? I don’t understand… like a club? You’re both Freemasons, so that means-”

“I’m a thirty-second degree Master Mason, Scottish Rite and Knight Templar. Not a club, it’s a what-you-call-it, an exalted brotherhood. Tropical Lodge Fifty-six, which is one of the oldest in Florida. Fernando there, he’s just out of Blue Lodge, only a third degree Master and he wants to be a Shriner. If we get some time, I told him we’d sneak off alone and work on it. I’d help him along.”

I tried to picture Fernando, with his murderer’s scar, wearing a burgundy fez, driving one of those little clown cars at parades. “A Shriner? He gives you information for free just because you belong to, what is it, the same lodge or something? You’re fraternity-brothers, that’s what you’re telling me.”

This was lunacy.

“Shows how much you know. Freemasonry is a… hell, you won’t understand. Nobody’s not a Mason can understand. What Freemasonry is is an ancient and honorable union that dates back to the time of the pyramids. The vows a man takes when he gets married? They ain’t close to bein’ as sacred as the vows a Mason takes. You doubt how serious bein’ a Mason is, check the back of a Yankee dollar. The Eye of God on the pyramid, that’s a Masonic symbol put right there by my fellow Freemasons who started the U-S-of-A.”

He was serious about it, maybe telling the truth for a change, too.

“I got brothers all over the world, mister man. Joe Egret? He was a Mason. Dumb as that Injun was, he put the time in and learned what he had to learn. Why… Joe actually worked so hard at it, he got to know his stuff better than me. I ate and drank with some brothers down on Cat Island-the Bahamas, I’m talkin’ about-who were the head voodoo chiefs… only they called it something else. Talk about black? Those brothers down there make Fernando here look like an albino-fucking-Swede. Nothing they wouldn’t do for me ‘long as they can put their family and their work first. Me same with them. You didn’t see Fernando’s ring? That’s why I knew he’d talk to me. Has to. Masonic Code. ‘Cause he can trust me and he knows it. Doesn’t matter he’s a beaner or not. Once a Mason, always a Mason.”

“Did he tell you anything about Gail?”

“Yep. Seen ‘em both. The fat man had a boat here till the owner, the Austrian guy, kicked ‘em out.”

“Australian. The owner’s not Austrian, he’s Australian.”

“The one who took off for France?”

I ignored that. “Where did Fernando say they went?” Tuck made a slow-down motion with his open palm. “You’ll find out. In good time, you’ll learn it all. What Fernando suggests we do now is stroll out to the end of the dock-see that great big rusting three-master out there? Big enough to carry a small herd of cattle and old enough to sink like a damn tire iron. He says we need to go out there and ask for a man they call the Turk. But we’re going to have to kill some time around here, wait for the man to wake up. He sleeps most the day, stays awake all night. Fernando says we should ask the Turk about real estate, make him think we want to buy something. That way, nobody at the marina will have to tell you where to find the fat man and the lady, ‘cause the Turk’ll let it slip just discussing real estate.”

“We say we want to buy real estate?”

“Isn’t that what I said? Merlot, what Amanda told me was, that Merlot was involved in real estate, so it makes sense.”

“Fernando wouldn’t tell you the rest of it. Where they went?”

Tucker smacked his lips. More fish, more beans. “Didn’t say that. Fernando told me exactly where they are. Told me everything he knew. But I’m not allowed to tell you. Part of the Masonic Code.”

“That’s absurd. If you know, why bother with the charade of — ?” I was shaking my head, frustrated, irritated. “What kind of code are we discussing here?”

Tucker finished his beer and signaled a smiling and eager Fernando for another round. He said, “Sorry. Can’t tell you that either,” before he called, “Brother Fernando? We’ll sail again here, amigo!”