Night Moves (28 page)

Something else: the scar I’d noticed on Deano’s forehead was only the first inch of a injury that dented his skull like a walnut. His long hair, molded in place by a ponytail, had hidden it that morning on my dock. Not now as he thrashed around on his knees, flinging himself at anyone who came too close.

Pity. Once again, that dominated my perception—or clouded it. After watching for another minute, though, I was done wondering about it and went to fetch Tomlinson. “Let’s go before he spots us,” I said, putting a hand on his shoulder.

An actress friend once described Tomlinson’s eyes as “pools of lechery and wisdom,” but only his scars were showing when he turned to me and said, “He’s possessed by demons. There’s a decent man in there somewhere, but handcuffs aren’t the way to set him free.”

“Yeah?” I responded, “His partner just tried to knock my head off with this.” I tapped the bamboo shaft in the sand. “The best way to deal with the homicidal crazies, I suppose, is stay out of their way and hope they kill someone else, huh?”

Tomlinson winced, but it was because Arturo was now screaming,
“You’re all fakes, you’re clowns!”
which touched a chord in him, apparently. “Doc,” he said, “I’ve been in that guy’s
shoes
, man. Handcuffs just press the
Crazy
button. Jail and shock treatments don’t help, either.”

When he has downed enough rum and is in an autumnal mood, he sometimes talks about the shock treatments prescribed during his college years to jolt him out of a sustained depression that (I suspect) put him at risk of suicide. This was the first time, though, he had alluded to being handcuffed and the center of a similar demeaning insanity. I wanted to spare us both the details, so I steered him toward the parking lot, saying, “Don’t worry about it. They’ll wait until he calms down, then commit him for seventy-two hours. Couple of days in the psych ward might help him snap out of it. And”—I hesitated, thinking it could wait. But it couldn’t, so I continued—“and one of us needs to phone Cressa. She’d probably rather hear it from you.”

Deano had spotted us and was now lying on his belly, spitting sand, yelling, “Hey! I’m talking to you, Ford! Fuck up my life, then turn your back on me! Hear me, Forrrrrd?”

Tomlinson slowed for a moment, then decided,
Hell with it
, so Arturo had to address the cops and the crowd, yelling, “Those two—they’re both screwing my brother’s wife!
That’s
what this is all about. The hippie, I’ve got video! And the big-shot biologist—I know he’s doing it, too! They’re friends with all the local cops!”

My turn to consider stopping, but Tomlinson kept me moving. “Challenge him and people will think it’s true.”

“We’ve got nothing to worry about,” I countered. “No video of us—not after last night.”

“Who cares if he does? Doc, next time you come up with a peaceful solution, don’t bother because—” We were in the parking lot now, shattered glass on the walkway outside Deano’s room, so Tomlinson paused to look. A cop stood guard inside the sliding door, framed by a jagged hole, so it was like peering into a cave where sunlight touched a tangle of broken furniture, the detritus of a brawl.

I was ready for what came next, so prodded, “Now you’re against nonviolence?”

My pal shook his head to shush me, derailed by something. After a moment, he asked, “Did you hear a cat?”

No, just the diesel rumble of the EMS truck and Deano’s distant howling. “From inside the room?” I asked. “I don’t know the officer, maybe he’ll let us take a look. But, hey, you know it’s a waste of time. Crunch & Des would have bolted when the door broke.”

Tomlinson’s eyes were linking images together: a TV screen that had been ripped off the wall, mattress overturned, minibar bottles scattered . . . the cop’s meaty hand resting on his holstered Glock, aware of us but unconcerned. My guru pal appeared to shudder, said, “Forget it,” then continued walking and soon remembered that he’d been saying, “Next time you come up with a peaceful solution, Doc, do me a favor:
please don’t
. Stick with what you’re good at.”

“Deano can’t kill us from the psych ward,” I reminded him, but was thinking,
I will!

23

THAT AFTERNOON, I WAS ALONE IN MY LAB AWAITING
a telephone update from Lt. Kerry Brett while I also kept an eye on the drug dealer, Kondo Ogbay. With Ogbay were three associates, all voodoo devotees judging from their head nets of red and black, who had loaded themselves into a rental boat—a twenty-foot tri-hull with a sun awning and red plastic upholstery from a marina on the other side of the causeway. When they were seated, the little sumo-shaped man freed the lines, then idled out the channel. Tomlinson’s dinghy was ashore, but his absence didn’t stop the drug dealer from waving at
No Más
and calling a cheery greeting that sounded like: “How you doin’, mon? We gone check’n you maggy drops! Be fun, you joyin’ us!”

Which was nonsensical until I played with the phonetics, replaced a few words, and finally understood. “We’re going to check on your magic crops!” is what the witch doctor had said. It was a reference to mangrove islands with enough high ground to plant seeds and harvest crops. Pot was the money crop, in Tomlinson’s case, and there were several secret spots he tended with a shepherd’s tender care. Now Kondo and friends were on a raiding trip, apparently, and had challenged Tomlinson to interfere with this cryptic taunt.

Watching through the north window, I spoke softly to Kondo, who was a football field away, saying, “Break a leg,” and I wasn’t smiling. One option was to get in my boat and follow. Instead, I called my cousin Ransom, who knows about voodoo and obeah because she was raised in the Bahamas and who might even recognize Kondo if she stepped out on her dock—she’s popular with the wealthy nightclub set from Naples to Sarasota. The channel from Dinkin’s Bay exits at Woodring Point, where Ransom lives—rents among the last of the old Cracker houses—and Kondo’s boat would soon be passing by.

“Why you think I be home on a Thursday ’stead of working?” she asked after answering her cell phone.

When I told her why I hoped she was home, Ransom said, “That not his real name, why you have truck wid that bad man? His real name, it Sylvester—like in the
Rocky
movies his uneducated mama probably loved, but who knows?” After a thoughtful pause, she then asked, “You say Kondo’s in a rental boat? A man wid his money, what the hell he doin’ in a damn rental boat? Think he lives in Kingston, but he got a place in Naples, too. A bad boy like Kondo, he’d have him a fast boat.”

“You’ve met him?” I asked.

My stubborn cousin replied, “Tell me how much Tomlinson owe that midget ’fore I tell you another damn thing.”

“Ransom,” I said patiently, “this might be important.”

She sighed, but gave in. “Even a dumb Haitian know an island woman not put up wid his bullshit, so, no, Kondo, he avoid me. But the money people—at parties, at the clubs, I’m sayin’—they treat him like somethin’ special. You
know
what does. Sells ’em herb, then a Santeria blessing if they pay four, five hundred cash to buy a damn dirty pigeon that Kondo call a dove. Or cast an assault obeah on some business enemy—these smart people, I’m talking about, good-looking, wid cars and houses. I hear them at parties whisperin’, thinkin’ they very cool to have they own Haitian voodoo man can invite for drinks when they in Jamaica, Saint Martin—that boy get around. You know what else he do . . . ?”

As I listened to Ransom talk, I slipped outside to the porch and peeked around a corner at the yacht
Seduci
. The Brazilian was there, sitting with coffee on the flybridge. He, too, was following the progress of the rental boat, but was only vaguely interested. If he had wanted details, there were binoculars next to him.

I retreated behind the corner, asking, “Have you told Tomlinson any of this?”

In her mellow, singsong way of speaking, my cousin replied, “Mary, Mary, you quite contrary today—
Marion
. Why waste time speaking reason to a scarecrow who think wid his dick, not his brain?”

I knew better than to reply,
Because you’re still in love with him?
so postponed more details, saying, “I’ll be away this weekend, but how about dinner next week?”

“Don’t you bring that damn Tomlinson. He better off standin’ in some cornfield. Not speaking wid that particular person never again.”

“Just us,” I assured her. “I’ll leave him behind, and you promise not to bring one of your brownnosing boyfriends.”

For some reason, Ransom thought that was hilarious. “Brownnosing, ho-ho-ho, oh lordy, the words come out your mouth! So quick ’n’ clever, I love you, brudder!”

Not clever at all because the joke was accidental, which I didn’t figure out until watching the Brazilian again, who still hadn’t reached for his binoculars.

Fascinating,
Diemer might have commented because I still couldn’t fit the man into a schematic that made any sense. True, unexplained elements noted within a similar time frame aren’t necessarily related, but I had witnessed, with my own eyes, the Brazilian’s talent for black ops and burglary. His skills were too finely tuned to risk inactivity, plus he thrived on the adrenaline rush—why waste time on anything but a working vacation?

He wouldn’t. Yet, a Caribbean dope dealer would be of no concern to Diemer or his wealthy clients. Neither I nor Tomlinson were his targets, I was convinced. And it was unlikely a man of his experience would’ve risked burgling Cressa’s home in advance of executing someone who could be linked to the place. So why the hell was the Brazilian in Dinkin’s Bay?

I stepped out from behind the corner and picked up the dog’s water bucket. Diemer failed to notice, so I emptied the bucket over the railing just to see how he reacted. As I did it, he looked up, focused, and then acknowledged me with a slight bow—a European touch that I returned via a friendly salute.

Maybe he won’t be such a bad partner after all,
I was thinking.

—

D
IEMER
HAD
BEEN
RIGHT
about the burglary—so far. I had no idea what he’d stolen in that shoulder pack, and was still disturbed by his treatment of a woman he wanted to seduce, but I couldn’t fault his expertise. Cressa Arturo, according to Tomlinson, had been actress enough to feign surprise when told that Deano had been arrested and his partner had fled, but she showed nothing close to the agitation of a woman who’s discovered her house has been robbed.

Months go by, and they never look,
Diemer had told me about the wall safe. Theft for personal gain is gutter behavior, but the guilt I should have felt was blurred by the victim’s own twisted conduct. Cressa had damn near gotten us killed, she’d lied to us, insulted my running partner, and she had finagled information from Tomlinson about the Avenger wreckage and then passed the details along to Deano, who, I was convinced, had booby-trapped our plane. If my assessment was right, and if Bambi was to be believed, she had also used Tomlinson either to sabotage her marriage or to end an affair with her own father-in-law—maybe Deano, too—and had then tried to seduce me, a “dangerous man,” to protect her from the fallout.

The woman was poisonous even from a distance. I was done with the married mistress, which is why I focused on matters at hand as I carried the bucket to the lower deck and filled it with fresh water.

Pull the trigger and you can never stop the bullet,
Diemer had told me, which now applied to the deal we’d made. But even if working with him turned out to be a pain in the ass, I could accept that, because some good had already come from it. Along with eliminating Deano and his spear-happy partner from the scene, the Brazilian playboy had canceled his fishing trips with Hannah. Good news, particularly because it had been Diemer’s idea to cancel, not mine. He would be meeting Tomlinson, Dan, and me off Lostman’s River on Saturday morning, so had to get his boat ready for the trip. Hannah hadn’t returned my calls, but if the subject came up, I looked forward to explaining that aside from telling Diemer he should pay for the canceled trips I was innocent of all involvement.

It was pleasant to linger on how our conversation would go—me saying something like, “All you’ve got to sell is your time, so of course you should be paid.” Then Hannah saying,
You’re such a thoughtful man!
Or,
I owe you dinner, Doc. Maybe after swimming the
No Wake
buoys off Blind Pass?
Back on friendly terms again, which would be nice.

Which is why I was in a cheery mood when the retriever appeared, already dry after swimming the afternoon away, and grunted his request to visit the mangroves. I still hadn’t heard the dog bark and was picturing how a snakebite, or constriction, might damage canine vocal cords as I filled his bowl with Eukanuba, then flipped the recliner pad where he slept. I’d replied to the pair of inquiries regarding my lost-and-found ads so might soon have to explain the injury to the dog’s rightful owner. That’s when my landline phone rang, so I hurried inside to answer. Lt. Kerry Brett calling.

First, my cop pal gave me some unsurprising news: Deano had been committed and would be transferred from county jail to a hospital once his family had been notified. Two bottles of generic Vicodin, plus pot, assorted pills, powders, and a cube of hash, found in the man’s backpack would add to his legal difficulties. Deano’s partner, whose name actually was Luke Smith, had been stopped and questioned in the Hertz lot at Southwest Regional but released because, as I’d already told Kerry, I didn’t want to press charges. I just wanted the guy gone from my life.

Then, phone to my ear, Kerry told me something so totally unexpected I replied, “If this is a joke, people here won’t find it funny.”

“Come see for yourself,” he replied, and I went out the door again in search of Tomlinson. At a jog, I crossed the boardwalk, through the mangroves, then picked up speed as I approached the marina, fighting the absurd urge to call out what I’d just heard like some horseless Paul Revere. Mack, who’d stepped out to light a cigar, gave me a lunatic look as I ran past and asked, “Where’s Tomlinson?” The man pointed and said something, but I didn’t hear.