Tampa Burn (41 page)

I said, “It's no game. There's not much else I can say. I'm looking for someone. Finding this person is as important as anything I've ever done in my life. I wouldn't tell you that much if I didn't trust you. But I can't ask for your help or anyone else's beyond a certain point, and I can't involve law enforcement.” I let that sink in before adding, “I suspect that you've been in the same situation.”

He thought for a moment before nodding. “Yeah. So let me look at the list again—” He did. Studied it for a moment, shielding the paper from the wind before saying, “O.K. But what you need to remember is, I'm not the biologist. So you're going to have to help me out. An alligator? Sure, I can take you to a couple places where we might see a gator or two. But those birds—a red egret? I don't think I've ever seen one. How the hell would I know?”

So I tried to describe the sort of area it might be: a place where brackish water meets freshwater. A place where mangrove fringe transitions into buttonwood, then changes to live oak or piney woods upland. There also had to be a creek or river that connected to a bay.

I told him, “It's not on the sheet I gave you, but there's also a reference to tadpoles in the data I have. I didn't write it down because I don't understand it. A place where an egret was seen feeding on a mature tadpole, that was the context. But it doesn't seem to make much sense because all frogs and all toads lay eggs that develop into tadpoles, and you can find frogs and toads all over Florida. Plus, when tadpoles mature, they're no longer tadpoles. So the reference seems to be from out of left field.”

Harris didn't want to let it go so quickly, though. He asked, “What's the difference? I always wondered that. Between a frog and a toad, I mean.”

I said, “A frog spends most of its mature life in water, a toad doesn't. A frog's skin is slimy, a toad's skin is dry. A frog's designed to jump, most toads hop or walk. Little things like that. A toad has poison glands behind its eyes, frogs don't. But they all hatch out as tadpoles.”

He said, “So a mature tadpole could be a toad
or
a frog?” “Uh-huh. That's the source of some of the confusion. Which is why I think it's best we concentrate on the elements we do understand.”

But he continued to ponder the subject a little longer before he asked, “The way you got this list. Was it oral, or written, or some other way?”

I reminded myself I was being questioned by a top naval intelligence officer as I said, “It was in an e-mail.”

“The person who sent it, could they give information freely? Or were they trying to stick information between the lines?”

“Surreptitiously. It was a dangerous situation with no room for error.”

“Was the other data good? Accurate, articulate?”

“It was better than good. It was great, really brilliantly done.”

Harris said, “So what you're telling me is—I'm talking from my own experience here, in these kinds of situations—all the other words in this list have meaning but one. So, to me, it's a little flag waving. And what I'm wondering is, maybe the person who sent the e-mail tried to jam a little extra meaning into what he was telling you. He or she couldn't use the exact word they wanted—it would be too obvious—so they shoot for a double meaning.”

The man had something on his mind; a specific angle. What?

I said, “Well . . . the person I'm discussing was trying to communicate a location. I'm sure of that. And, yes, it's true that every reference but one seemed to have an intended meaning. So the problem is probably on my end, I agree. Is there something I'm missing here, old pal?”

He ignored the question, still deep in thought. “Doc, what's the
exact
line from the e-mail? Are you allowed to tell me?”

We were in the middle of Hillsborough Bay now, riding south in growing swells, beneath a scudding gray sky, my skiff seeming to shrink as the bay widened around us. I thought about it for a moment, trying to recall the sentence exactly, before I said, “The person wrote to me that he saw a reddish egret feeding on a mature tadpole. No, wait”—I paused to correct myself—“the wording was odd. The person wrote that the bird was feeding on
the
mature tadpole.”

“On the mature tadpole.”

“That's correct.”

“Any other odd errors like that in the letter?”

“Nope. That was the only one.”

My savvy intelligence officer friend smiled, seemingly pleased with himself. “O.K., then maybe the wording's not so odd after all. So try this: Replace the word ‘tadpole' with the word ‘toad.' And if that doesn't make any sense, try ‘frog.'” He nodded suddenly, his smile broader. “Yeah. See, that one really works. Better yet, try replacing the word with ‘bullfrog. '”

I said, “Why? What the hell are you talking about?”

Harris had the chart atop the console. Without looking at it, he tapped his index finger on a section of mainland around the little town of Gibsonton. “You're looking for a place where saltwater meets fresh. A place that's got creeks and rivers and gators. The red egret? Like I said, I don't have a clue. But there's a little spot here where someone could watch a bird feed on
the
frog. The person who wrote the e-mail couldn't come right out and use the word because it would be too obvious.”

He tapped the chart again. “Take a look, Doc. Probably doesn't mean a thing but what the hell, we'll give it a shot. And if it's not this one, there's another one we could try.”

I lifted the chart closer to my glasses and saw what he meant. Just south of Gibsonton was a winding blue ribbon of water named Bullfrog Creek.

THE
narrow mouth of Bullfrog Creek was shaded with mangroves, sable palms, Brazilian pepper. Mounted in the water on a piling was a red-and-white sign that read DANGER.

Probably to relieve my own anxiety, I said, “That seems a touch dramatic, doesn't it?”

Harris had my skiff in idle, drifting, looking at the sign, the bay, and the skyline of Tampa behind us.

“Depends,” he said. “Not if you do what I do for a living. Almost seems appropriate—especially if you've ever tried to run a freighter down that channel we just crossed.”

He'd already told me about the commercial channel north of the creek. It was the waterway into the Alafia River, a narrow, east-west shipping lane that my master pilot pal had described as the “scariest three miles of water in the entire bay.” As a pilot, he often had to make the run to get freighters to the phosphate plant located up the river at Gibsonton.

Now Harris nudged the skiff into forward, and we idled into the creek past the DANGER sign, as he said, “What it probably means is, the creek's not marked. There're no channels. Or someone's trying to keep it private. That kinda fits with what most people think about Gibsonton. They're not right. But it's what they think. Do you know anything about the place, Doc?”

I knew about Gibsonton. Knew more than most, anyway, because Tomlinson had a fondness for it. He'd told me his daughter had been conceived in what may be the quirkiest little town in a state that's known for quirkiness. Conceived there in some 1950s-retro motor court with his renegade Japanese feminist girlfriend who now despised him, and who'd had numerous restraining orders served on him.

Even so, I sat back and listened to Harris tell me about the oddball little town of Gibsonton as we motored up the creek, my skiff's bow transecting then shattering the mirror reflections of overhanging trees that crowded in around us as we wound our way inland.

Since the 1920s, Gibsonton—or Gib'town—has been the favorite winter home of circus, carnival, and sideshow people, both performers and support staff. What attracted them was the weather, the good fishing on the Alafia River, and also a population of locals who didn't seem to have the usual prejudices against carnies or sideshow attractions such as giants, monkey-faced women, human pincushions, dwarfs, and other curiosities. Instead of staring, the locals accepted them for the good and decent people they happened to be.

In time, county officials made Gib'town even more attractive to that small nomadic society by granting the village “show business” zoning, which meant residents could keep Ferris wheels, trapeze gear, or even caged lions on their property. The post office installed a special mailbox for the ever-increasing population of midgets.

The arrival of the Ringling Brothers' circus train each November to unload performers and performing animals, who were winter residents, became a notable event on the Gulf Coast of Florida.

“Several years back,” Harris said, “Gibsonton got a lot of bad publicity because of the Lobster Boy murder. Did you hear about that? Lobster Boy had some kind of disease that made his hands and legs look like flippers, and he'd been exhibiting in sideshows since he was seven. His wife said he was a mean drunk, an abuser, and she paid some teenager to shoot him.

“Other than that,” he said, “you never hear anything bad about Gib'town. They're good people. They have their own tight little society. I've heard they even have their own kind of language. Different words that outsiders can't understand. So the carney folks, the circus people, they're different. But they're O.K. I've known 'em most of my life. There are a lot of stories about foreign tankers being moored up the river waiting to be loaded with phosphate, and the crews sneaking into town to party with the show people. You know, dwarfs and bearded ladies and things. The Gib'town phosphate docks are so isolated, security has never been real tight—just one cop on the docks so the crew can't go marching down the gangplank.”

I asked him, “How's security now?”

“For all of Tampa, if you're an inbound foreign commercial ship, it's tighter than it used to be. If a skipper's smart, and willing to risk it, he can still slip in just about anything he wants. And Gibsonton, it's still the same—a single cop on the dock when a foreign ship's in town.”

“How about security for outward-bound foreign vessels?”

I was thinking about how Lourdes might travel if and when he decided to return to Central America. And about where a man with a disfigured face might blend in easily.

“It's a lot easier. You've got to clear customs, but they don't really look for anything
leaving
the country. They never have.”

Abruptly, he pointed toward shore. “There you go. There's an example of what this town's about. Welcome to Gib'town.”

We'd rounded a bend, and the mangrove fringe opened to reveal a small trailer park on the south bank and a camper-trailer park on the north. The park to the south looked like it dated back to the days of black-and-white television. There were rows of old mobile homes, bread-loaf shapes with peeling aluminum, some with TV antennas sticking up, the wire corroded by years of heat and
I Love Lucy
reruns.

Along the border of the trailer park were wobbly finger docks and a few inexpensive boats, aluminum mostly.

Lourdes had used a rental boat in Miami. What looked to be a 20-footer or so.

There was nothing like that moored here. But there was a cement ramp. Instead of someone offloading a boat, though, a shirtless man with the biggest handlebar mustache I've ever seen was hosing down a young Indian elephant, allowing it to wade in the shallows of the river.

Ashore, parked along the narrow streets of the mobile-home park, I could also see a cage built on a flatbed trailer, its wooden façade painted neon orange and green, with a banner advertising the spectacular Parnell Monkey Act. Nearby, there was another canvas banner draped from a tree, as if recently painted, that read:

A tattooed giant?

That got my attention.

Turning, I watched a snowy egret, standing one-legged on a low limb, stab its yellow beak into the water and skewer a wiggling, silver minnow.

Except for its white feathers, the bird looked very much like its relative, the reddish egret.

Overhead, I heard a wild screeching, squabbling, and I lifted my eyes to see a flock of parrotlike birds seem to tumble past, then crash, bounce, and cling to the high boughs of a pine, still squawking.

They were bright green birds with dark heads—monk parakeets.

I leaned, scooped a handful of water and tasted it: fresh, tannin-sweet.

Gator country.

I had been in this situation many times in my life—closing in on some unsuspecting target of choice—but I had never felt so charged with purpose, or so focused.

My son was here. He was somewhere nearby. I was convinced of it. Could feel that it was so with an atavistic certainty that held no currency or rationale in the frontal lobe of my brain.

When I looked from mobile home to mobile home, window to window, my vision now had a searchlight intensity, and my eyes moved with the same tunneling focus.

In one of the trailers, I noticed curtains move . . .

In a patch of front lawn of another, a woman in a baggy dress and wearing a huge straw hat seemed to watch us peripherally as she swept her sidewalk . . .

In the distance, silhouetted in the shade of trees, a large man stood facing us, his face unseen . . .

Near him was a modern circus wagon with a huge marquee painted in red and blue that proclaimed THE WORLD OF WONDERS awaited inside, including the Half Girl, Half-Snake; the Bear with Three Eyes; and Dezi, the Talking Wonder Dog.