Sitting sprawled in the backseat, working on his seventh or eighth beer since we’d left Sawgrass and already slurring his words, Tomlinson said, “Evil, man. There’s something evil in the air. There is a very wicked mojo seeping around Sawgrass. The whole scene. Like swamp gas, man. I can feel it.”
DeAntoni said, “Um-huh. Have another beer.”
“An excellent idea. I think I will.”
There was the carbonation sssush of a can being cracked.
DeAntoni was chuckling. “I got to hand it to you, Tinkerbell. You stuck it right up that weirdo’s cheap seats. The only thing that separates Shiva’s lips from his asshole is a couple of feet of tubing-and you proved it.”
For the fourth or fifth time, Frank said to me, “The skinny fucker’s got an arm on him. I’ll never question that again.”
Meaning Tomlinson.
Sounding miserable, Tomlinson replied, “Wrong, wrong, wrong. Shiva won, man. The way I behaved, it’s against everything I believe and stand for. What happened is, he proved I’m as much a fraud as he is.”
Tomlinson had been talking that way since we left Sawgrass.
To DeAntoni, I said, “When you talked to her about the dead guard, did Sally sound frightened?”
“Yeah. But in control. Not too bad. There’s an ex-cop who works with me sometimes, lives in Hialeah. I’ll call him, ask him to hop over to Ironwood and keep an eye on things ’till I get there.”
“I think that’s a great idea, Frank. We don’t want anything to happen to her.”
Showing some emotion, DeAntoni said, “If anybody touches that lady, by the time I’m done, they’ll need a compass to find all the parts they got missing.” Then: “Hey, you know what? She said she’d have dinner with me. Just the two of us alone. That she’d be delighted. ”
He was sounding pretty delighted himself. chapter twenty-two
The next afternoon, Sunday, April 13th, at 6 P.M., I was working in my lab when I felt the framework of my stilt house vibrate with what seemed to be a series of three distinct tremors.
I was standing at my stainless-steel dissecting table when it happened. I immediately looked to my right where, beneath the east windows, and on a similar table, is a row of working, bubbling aquaria-octopi, squid and fish therein. There are more glass aquariums above on shelves.
In each aquarium, the tremors had created seismic oscillating circles on the surface, and miniature waves.
Nope. I wasn’t imagining things. And, no, it wasn’t because I’d just built my third drink: the juice of two fresh Key limes mixed with Nicaraguan rum, crushed ice and a splash of seltzer.
To my left, along the east wall, near the door, there are more tanks, all heavily lidded and locked because they contain stone crabs and calico crabs. Octopi, I’d learned, are master thieves when it comes to their favorite food-thus the locks.
The water in those tanks was vibrating as well.
I was working late in the lab because I was running low on supplies. Restocking inventory was long overdue. On a yellow legal pad clamped to a clipboard, I’d written: compartmented petri dishes (pack/20); Tekk measuring pipets (dozen); Pyrex tubes (mm/various/72); ultraviolet aquarium sterilizer; tetracycline tablets (pack/20); methyl-chrome; clarifier; pH test paper.
The shopping list wasn’t close to being complete. I was leafing through my Carolina Science amp; Math catalog, thinking about adding a neat little portable water tester to the list when the house began to shake.
At first, I thought to myself, Sonic boom? But then I felt it twice more, and I thought, Construction blasts.
I walked to the center of the room where I’ve installed a university-style lab workstation. It’s an island of oaken drawers and cupboards beneath a black epoxy resin table, complete with a sink, two faucets, electrical outlets and double gas cocks for attaching Bunsen burners or a butane torch.
I placed the catalog on the table, pushed open the screen door and walked outside, carrying my drink along with me.
I wasn’t the only one who’d felt the tremors. The unusual sensation of earth and water shaking had stirred our little liveaboard community to action on this quiet Palm Sunday afternoon. Across the water, I could see Rhonda Lister and Joann Smallwood exiting their cabin door onto the stern of their wood-rotted Chris-Craft cruiser, Satin Doll. They were looking at the sky, as if expecting to see fighter jets.
Jeth Nicholes, the fishing guide, was standing on the balcony of his apartment above the marina office. Janet Mueller, I was surprised to see, was standing beside him-a recent development in what has been an old and complex love affair.
Dieter Rasmussen, the German psychopharmacologist, and his nubile Jamaican girlfriend, Moffid Seemer, were climbing onto the fly bridge of his classic, forty-six-foot Grand Banks trawler, Das Stasi, heads turning. Dieter was in his underwear, and Moffid, I couldn’t help but notice, was topless. When people are surprised, they react without considering how they are dressed.
Tomlinson was out, too. Standing on the cabin roof of No Mas, a black sarong knotted around his waist, his head tilted, as if listening.
I was surprised to see him. We’d played baseball earlier in the day at Terry Park, a classic old Grapefruit League anachronism in East Fort Myers. After the game, still in his baseball uniform, he’d invited me to drive with him to Siesta Key Beach and join in the weekly drum circle that is held there at sunset.
“Is that the sort of thing where a couple of hundred beach hipster-types stand around a fire, banging on drums?” I said.
Tomlinson replied, “ Exactly. I know, I know, it sounds almost too good to pass up. Tonight, I’ve been asked to serve as the lead Djembe drummer. Quite an honor.”
So I was surprised he was still aboard his boat… or maybe he was just leaving-yes, that was it. I watched him reach into the cabin of No Mas and lift a massive skin drum from the hold, his eyes still searching the sky.
Then, as if on cue, everyone looked in the direction of my stilt house, as if seeking an explanation. I held both hands out and shrugged, meaning that I had no idea what’d caused the tremors.
They all made the same universal gesture: We don’t know, either.
So I walked to the marina, where Joann, Rhonda and Dieter and I stood around discussing it.
“What a weird feeling,” Joann said. She’s a short, dark-haired woman with a Rubenesque body and a bawdy sense of the absurd. “It was like I was suddenly standing on jelly. I’ve had the feeling a couple of times, but it was always while I was having good sex. Never when I was brushing my teeth.”
When I suggested that the tremors were caused by a construction blast, Dieter said, “Daht does not seem reasonable. A construction blast at six P.M. on a Sunday? Even Germans don’t work on Sundays.”
I told them, “Well, one thing we know it’s not. It wasn’t an earthquake. Florida’s not on a fault line. There’s never been an earthquake in Florida as far as I know.”
I would soon learn otherwise.
The next morning I was awakened by a heavy pounding on the door. I swung out of bed, checked the brass alarm clock and thought, Damn. Overslept again.
It was 8:45 A.M.
Wearing only khaki shorts, I padded barefooted across the wooden floor, gave Crunch amp; Des a quick scratch in passing and opened the door to find my old friend, Dewey Nye, standing before me. She was wearing Nikes, blue jogging shorts over a red tank suit, blond hair haltered in a ball cap, and she had her fists on her hips-a pose that seemed as aggressive as the expression on her face.
“Goddamn it, Thoreau, you stood me up again! We agreed to work out early this morning, remember? You were supposed to meet me at Tarpon Bay Beach at seven, run to Tradewinds and back, then swim. So I stood around like a dumbass, waiting, when I should’a known all along that you’d screwed me over again.”
She made a huffing noise, glaring at me, before she added, “What’s this make? The fifth, sixth time you’ve promised that we’d start working out together? And, every time, you come up with some lame-ass excuse. Or you just don’t show-no call, no nothing. What the hell’s wrong with you, Ford?”