Seventy-five thousand dollars was much more money than I could understand. Bowling, in a private meeting at the courthouse, said that our friends wanted us to try to come up with the money ourselves because it would look bad if we just handed over that kind of cash. “They’d think you were part of some big organized crime syndicate or something.”
“Organized? Nobody’d ever accuse us of that if they knew these assholes,” I said.
So I called Patience and told her to try to raise money on our property. That was just wishful thinking. It was possible our ten acres were worth that much, but we owed over half that on our mortgage. The house—or rather, the unfinished cabin—was worth maybe ten thousand. Patience called my father.
Dad had come to my rescue when I had my car wreck in Portugal, and now he came through again. He agreed to guarantee my bond by putting up his condominium as security.
Bowling came to see us every day. One day he brought a document the government wanted us to sign, an inventory of the property confiscated on the Namaste. The list was surprising for the things not listed.
“Hey,” John said, “half the stuff we had with us isn’t even on here.”
Bowling shrugged. “They’ll insist it wasn’t there.”
“They can do that?”
“Sure. Who do you think the judge’ll believe? You or them?”
The loran wasn’t listed, which was fine with me. I wished them a long trip in bad weather with that loran. Any of the boat’s stuff was fair game, I figured. But these guys had taken my shoes, my knife, my calculator, my notebook, and my camera, none of which was on the list. “I don’t care about anything they got,” I told Bowling, “except for my notebook and my camera.”
“What’s so special about them?”
“The notebook is important. I was making notes for my books.”
“Yeah?” Bowling said. “You’re a writer?”
“Yeah. When I’m not smuggling, I try writing.”
Bowling laughed. “And the camera?”
“I had that during my whole tour in Vietnam. It’s a good-luck charm. I have to have it back.”
Bowling nodded. “I’ll check on it.”
“And we just ignore that they took all our stuff?” John said.
“That’s right,” Bowling said. “You start making noises about them stealing your personal stuff, and they’ll be all over you like stink on shit. Let it be.”
Let it be. Play the game nicely and maybe they won’t play hardball.
Captain Horatio Hornblower was blasting the living shit out of a native village on some foreign shore with cannon fire from his ship when Porter yelled, “Mason.”
“Yo.” I never said “Yo” to anybody before I became a criminal.
“Cop here to take you to the courthouse.”
John said, “What about Tillerman and Ireland?”
Porter shook his head.
I got up, breathless. Was it possible? Was I actually getting out of here?
Porter waited while I put my clothes back on for the second time and escorted me up to the reception area. The black deputy who had brought us here was waiting for me by the front door.
“Hello, Mason,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “Well, you got a shave, but you still smell like shit.”
I nodded. The deputy got out his handcuffs and cuffed me before we walked out to the car. Just regulations, he reminded me.
We said nothing during the twenty-minute ride to town.
A woman on the elevator at the courthouse glanced at me once on the ride up to the third floor. She quickly looked away. I was a stinking, handcuffed beast.
The elevator door opened and the first person I saw was my father. He stood in the hall smiling widely when he saw me. I couldn’t move my face for fear I would burst into tears and humiliate myself and him. I was in shock. I followed the deputy and just stared at my dad when we walked by him. His face dropped when he saw the grief on mine.
The magistrate said the deputy could take off my cuffs. I sat down while he explained that my dad had put up his apartment for my bail and what that meant. If I broke any of the provisions of my bail, the government would seize my parents’ property. Did I understand?
I nodded.
Would I agree to the restrictions of the bail? No travel outside my county without direct permission from him?
I said yes.
“Okay,” he said. “The police will take you back to the jail so you can be processed out.”
“Back to jail?” I said.
“Yes. To be out-processed.”
“Oh.”
The deputy had to do something else, and while I waited for another cop, they put me in the holding cell down the hall. I paced around the cell for an hour, pissed off. I was technically free—why was I locked up?
Fred, the state cop I had met the night of the bust, came down the hall with a deputy. The deputy unlocked the door and Fred said, “Come on, Mason. I’ll take you back to jail.”
Fred cuffed me, for the sake of the deputy, but took the cuffs off when he stopped at a light a few blocks from the courthouse. “Seems silly to have you cuffed when you’re a free man, don’t you think?”
“Yes. Thanks.” I reached into my shirt pocket and got a cigarette.
“How you feeling?” Fred said.
“Like I’ve been beaten to a pulp.”
“Nobody hit you, did they?”
“No,” I said. “These beatings are strictly self-inflicted.”
I didn’t have to go back to the cell. I just signed out. They gave me my wallet and my watch and my toothbrush. I walked out the glass doors. Nobody even noticed. Law: you are a crook and have to stay inside. Now you are a crook on baiclass="underline" you may leave. The sun was setting. I looked up and saw my dad waving from a cab. I walked over and got in.
“I’ve got to catch a plane back to Fort Lauderdale,” Dad said. “You want to ride along?”
“Sure. I’ll have the cab take me to the bus station,” I said.
We drove to the airport. I chattered like a machine gun, telling Dad about the bust and how Dave had fucked up and on and on with an intensity arising from the relief of release, I guess. Dad nodded, but didn’t say anything. When I saw the airport signs, I said, “Well. I guess this is about the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”
My father looked at me, nodding grimly. “I’ll say.”
When he got out at the airport, I got out with him to say good-bye and to thank him for doing so much for me. I tried to hug him, something that is not done in my family. But he couldn’t. As he walked into the airport, I said, “Thanks, Dad.”
He nodded and smiled and disappeared into the airport lobby.
The cabby took me to the Charleston Greyhound bus stop at six. The clerk said the next bus to Jacksonville was leaving at eleven. I sat in the waiting room for five hours, feeling miserable. I was coming down with something. Maybe the flu. I had a fever, congestion, a cough. I wanted to sleep, but there’s nothing in a Greyhound bus station but chairs.
At three in the morning, I was in Jacksonville waiting for a bus to take me to Gainesville.
At seven, I got off the bus in downtown Gainesville and saw Patience waiting outside the station. Her face lit up when she saw me.
She ran to me and we hugged. “Sorry I’m late,” I said.
CHAPTER 21
I was knocked out of commission for a week with the flu. I believe now that it was my body’s reaction to the stress.