12
Two hours before midnight, the president said, “I didn’t anticipate our friend Tomlinson disappearing. So I’ve got to confide in you. We have to be in Central America in three days. By the afternoon of November fifth.”
Tomlinson hadn’t disappeared. As I had explained to Wilson, we were in Key West. The man was out having fun, not hiding.
Even so, we were walking the streets, searching.
I said, “By ‘Central America,’ you mean Panama? Or Nicaragua?” He didn’t reply for several seconds, so I made another guess. “You’re going there to kill the person who murdered your wife.”
He walked half a block before saying, “No. You’re going to kill him.” His voice low. “If you have moral reservations, tell me now.”
I turned my attention to the tangled limbs of a ficus tree, where bats dragged a fluttering light into shadows. “November’s nice in Central America. Rainy season’s ending, but tarpon are still in the rivers.”
“Is that an answer?”
I looked at the man long enough for him to know it was.
“Then we don’t have time to waste. Why the hell would he do something so crazy?”
“There’s nothing crazy about Tomlinson disappearing in Key West,” I said again. “The only reason he doesn’t live here is because he knows it would kill him.”
We’d anchored off Christmas Island, Key West Bight, at 5:30 p.m. An hour later, Tomlinson vanished into the sunset carnival of Mallory Square while I chatted with my friend Ray Jason, who juggles chain saws when he’s not captaining boats.
It was Ray who reminded me that Fantasy Fest had just ended, a weeklong celebration of weirdness. A dangerous time to lose Tomlinson on the island because the party’s wounded and demented were still roaming the streets.
Tomlinson was visible one moment, laughing with a couple of bikers and a woman dressed as a Conehead. Next moment, all four were gone. I didn’t see him all evening, and he wasn’t aboard No Mas when I returned at 8:30 to ferry the president ashore.
Wilson thought it would be safe to spend an hour after dark reacquainting himself with Key West. He was peeved that he had to spend the time searching.
“Is he still mad about dumping his computer?”
“Giving him orders on his own boat? Sure, and I don’t blame him. But he’s too good-natured to be spiteful, and he’s too much of a sailor to miss a tide.”
Wilson had told us to be up and ready to leave at 6 a.m. Water turned early in Northwest Channel.
We were walking Caroline Street, blue-water fishing boats to our right, lights reflecting off docks, showing masts of wooden ships. People roaming, tourists, bikers, Buckeyes, hip rockers and old hempsters, their faces cured like hams, browned by sun, salt, nicotine.
“He might be around here. These are his people.”
Wilson stopped. “I hope you’re right. We only have”-he squinted at his wrist-“a little more than seven hours.”
“Unless there’s something I don’t know,” I told him, “leaving an hour or two later won’t make any difference. Channels here are a lot more forgiving than Sanibel.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know,” he answered.
We were back at Key West Bight after making the big loop around the island in cab and on foot. The president was wearing a Hemingway fishing cap, a goatee, and a camera hung around his neck. That was my idea-in a tourist town, a camera’s the perfect mask. He could shield his face anytime he wanted.
Even so, he’d waited outside in the shadows while I hit Tomlinson’s favorite bars: the Bottle Cap, the Green Parrot, La Concha, the VFW, Louie’s. Tomlinson spent so much time in Key West, locals considered him family, so bartenders may have been protecting him when they said he hadn’t been around.
The good news was, the bars had televisions, and networks weren’t abuzz with news of a missing president.
At Margaret Street, we stopped in a circle of streetlight. The doors of Caroline Music were open: grand pianos glistening in sea air; guitars, horns, harps suspended from the ceiling as if buoyed by some composer’s helium-laced fantasy. We crossed to the Turtle Kraals where dinghies were tied like ponies, ours among them. I said, “I’ll run you out to No Mas, then come back for Tomlinson. But let’s talk first.”
“You sound worried. Having a change of heart?”
“Maybe.”
“Because what we’re doing is dangerous?”
“Yes.”
“Crazy?”
“ Yes. ‘Crazy’ is what the press is going to call you if we get caught. Is it worth it? Think of what you’re risking. Your legacy. The prestige of the office.”
Wilson’s eyes caught mine as we walked onto the dock. They were measuring. I’d hit his most vulnerable spot with accuracy-the man’s reverence for the presidency.
“You’re sharp. The office is bigger than all the men who’ve ever held it combined. But there’s more at stake than you know.”
“You told me getting even was for amateurs. You wanted revenge.”
“Yes, but I’ll say it one more time: There’s more at stake than you know.”
He was talking about the Panama Canal. I felt sure now but didn’t ask. With Wilson, every bit of data was a bargaining chip.
“If we sail in the morning, there are people I need to contact before we leave. Discreetly. People I trust.”
“By telephone?”
I said, “Yes,” I said, lying because I was embarrassed. All my contact information had been stored in the cell phone I’d left behind. Worse, I’d even forgotten the numbers of people I call regularly because of one-touch speed dialing.
Operator assistance was no help-most people rely on cell phones and the numbers aren’t listed. Not entirely a bad thing. I would’ve been tempted to call Marlissa Engle-if I could’ve found a pay phone that worked. Which I couldn’t.
“I need to get to an Internet cafe,” I told Wilson. “But first, you have to trust me with details.”
“Impossible. I’ve already told you too much. The more you know, the more danger you’re in. To paraphrase Andrew Jackson, ‘If I’m shot at, I don’t want another man in the way of the bullet.’ ”
I said, “Here’s a quote that might change your mind: ‘I not only use all the brains I have, but all the brains I can borrow.’ Woodrow Wilson, twenty-eighth president. I’m offering you a loan.”
He chuckled, then sobered. “There are historians who say if my brilliant relative had confronted Germany in 1914, instead of signing a Declaration of Neutrality, there would’ve been no war.”
I said, “What do you think?”
“I’ll answer that with another Wilson quote: ‘Politicians use history to rationalize confrontation, religion to explain restraint, and academia to justify cowardice.’”
Because Woodrow Wilson was an academic, I asked, “Why would he say something like that?”
“He didn’t. I did-after Wray was killed. I’m no academic.” He looked at me. “Andrew Jackson did something no other American president had before or since. Any ideas?”
“No.”
“He killed a man, face-to-face. Called the guy out, slapped him, and challenged him to a duel. The guy accepted, and Jackson shot him dead-a man who insulted his wife.”
“Old West justice. Part of our history.”
Wilson replied, “Being part of history is easy. Changing history-that’s risky. Woodrow Wilson signed the Declaration of Neutrality after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Ferdinand’s murder-one bullet-started the war.”
“Could he have stopped it?”
The president said, “Maybe. With a second bullet.” Even through the tinted glasses, I could feel the intensity of his eyes.
“Ferdinand was an Austrian blueblood. The Serb who killed him was a bumbling kid. Nobodies. But, because of legally binding pacts, world powers were obligated to mobilize their armies. They depended on the legal machinery of the time as protection. Instead, it led them off a cliff, one country linked to another. Like blind horses.”
“But the second bullet-used how?”
“Events don’t change history, Dr. Ford. Only events that become symbols change history. After a first bullet is fired, how is the second bullet best spent? Appeasement-leave it in the chamber? Or retaliate blindly? Both guarantee war. Pick the right target, though. .. use the second bullet like a scalpel. Who knows?” His tone softened; he yawned. “I’m working on it. But I’m not going to come up with an answer tonight.”