After another week or so of hard driving, though, and with the tank still full, Tomlinson began to fret. Maybe his fuel gauge was broken. So he took the car down to Island Amoco.
The gauge checked out just fine.
Amazing.
He drove to Fort Myers Beach, LaBelle, and Estero. He drove to St. Petersburg, Venus, and then to Burnt Store Marina to hang out at the docks and drink at the bar.
The gas needle still pointed to full.
Which was impossible. The Volkswagen was running without burning any gasoline. No logical human being would have accepted that possibility. But Tomlinson, though capable of logical thought, does not embrace a logical view of the world. His beat-up old Volkswagen, he decided, had somehow been vested with spiritual qualities and unworldly abilities.
One night, stoned and very drunk on El Dorado rum, he wobbled up to my house, pounded on my door, and told me, “Doc. I finally figured it out. She’s got a soul in her. My car. I think maybe she’s an old lover of mine from a previous life. It’s a feeling I’ve got. Like, it just came to me, man. That this old lover is now inhabiting my Volkswagen, come back to help me seek enlightenment… or maybe screw with me and spy on me, too. Sabotage new relationships, break down on the open road just when I’m horniest-who knows. I’ve had good women and bad, so it’s a crap shoot when it comes to dealing with the new incarnations of old sweeties.
“But my car, she’s definitely got a soul. Which is why I’m calling her Stella. That’s as good a name as any. I thought about Zeetar, which is one of the hottest monkey-love planets in the galaxy. But how can I explain something like that to spiritual civilians? The point is, my Volkswagen Thing has become a thinking, feeling, sentient being. It’s the only possible explanation for why she refuses to vex me by burning Mother Earth’s fossil fuel.”
I’d replied, “The only explanation, huh?”
When I shared with the guides an edited version of what he’d told me, they decided to change tactics. They continued their late-night assaults on Tomlinson’s Volkswagen. Now, though, instead of putting gas into the tank, they siphoned gas out.
If he drove to Jensen’s Marina on nearby Captiva, he had to stop and get fuel. If he drove a quarter-mile to Timber’s to hang out with Matt Asen, he had to fill up the tank. He’d been working on wood sculpture in Fort Meyers with Terrence Flannery, a brilliant artist. Every time he turned the key, the gas needle pointed to empty, so he had to go straight to the Hess station on Tarpon Bay Road.
Which shut him up. Ended his windy lecturing on the gas-guzzling cars we drove and the outboard engines we used.
But the guides couldn’t trust themselves to be together around him. They’d crack up when Tomlinson came near. They’d cough into their hands, struggle not to squirt beer out their noses, and hurry away.
So it had been a while since I’d heard his anti-SUV monologue. And maybe he was right about me being irritable. Because when he started to belabor the conspiratorial link between the SUV makers of Detroit, the world industrial complex, and Texas oil barons-“The reason’s obvious. There’re bigger profits in cars that guzzle gas!”-I interrupted, saying, “Why don’t you tell Pilar about your Volkswagen? About the amazing mileage it’s been getting. There’s a pretty good example of what you’re talking about.”
Tomlinson’s jaw got tight. “Uh-uh, don’t even mention that backstabbing, four-cylinder slut to me. Besides, our exit’s coming up soon. With all this traffic, I better keep my eyes open.”
The Cacique Restaurant is on West Flagler near Northwest Miami Court, across from the Claude Pepper Federal Building and the old courthouse, a Cuban lunch spot in the heart of a city that has been redefined by expatriated Cubans.
We were more than an hour early, so we put the car in a parking barn and walked to Southwest Second Avenue where Pilar said the Masagua consul general kept a suite of offices. She’d been there a number of times in past years.
Good thing we checked. I don’t know how many countries maintain consulates in Miami. Many dozens from around the world, no doubt, including most of the Caribbean and Latin countries.
The Ingraham Building is one of many Miami diplomatic strongholds. The downstairs directory said that the Bahamas, Bolivia, Jamaica, and Uruguay all had offices there. But not Masagua. Not any longer. The Masaguan consulate, a security guard told us, had recently been moved to downtown Coral Gables, next to the Guatemalan consulate on Sevilla Street.
Coral Gables might be twenty minutes away, it might be fifty, depending on traffic.
Heading back to the Cacique Restaurant, among high-rise canyons dotted with storefront delis, Italian perfumeries, and Levi’s, camera, and passport photo shops, Pilar correctly interpreted my silence.
“You have every right to be furious. It was an easy mistake to make, but I should have checked. I should have confirmed the address. It would have been simple enough to do.”
I said, “In these kinds of situations, it’s almost always the simple mistakes that cause the biggest screw-ups. You can’t afford to let that kind of thing happen. Never again.
“So let’s say we didn’t have time to check out the Ingraham Building first. We talk to whoever’s fronting for the kidnappers, and he tells us to deliver the money within half an hour. Tells us to drop it at some park or fountain, name a place. He’s eye-balled us. He knows we’re clean. Securitywise, that wouldn’t be a bad move on his part. We produce the money or Lake’s dead.
“So we agree, of course-only to find out, ten minutes later, your consulate is in a different city. There’s no way to contact the kidnappers, no way to tell them we’ve made a mistake. We don’t have time to pick up the money. We’re screwed. Disaster.”
Subdued, Tomlinson said, “You’re being a little tough on her, man.”
Pilar was wearing a navy blue skirt, a starched white blouse, and a white bra beneath. She tugged nervously at the collar of her blouse and told him, “No. He’s not. He’s exactly right. It was an inexcusable mistake.”
To me, she said, “It won’t happen again, Marion.”
The guy they sent to meet us was a freak. A muscle freak, and a tattoo freak.
He had a head the size and color of a bleached basketball, skull shaved clean and trapezoid muscles that angled toward his ears so sharply that he was pyramid-shaped.
Plus, there were the tattoos. Tattoos covered his skull, his face and forehead, his arms. He looked like a steroid giant whose skin had been elaborately air-brushed in Easter-egg hues, reds, greens, blues.
We were sitting in the Cacique Restaurant-tile floors, white ceiling fans, bathroom sign in green neon, waitresses in burgundy vests-when the giant strolled in. The place did a busy lunch business, tables full, dishes clattering, but the man was sufficiently sizeable and colorful to cause a momentary lull as people turned to stare.
He wore drawstring sweatpants tied tight around a narrow waist, and a black Everlast muscle T-shirt. His arms looked like overstuffed hams, triceps and latissimus muscles abrading as his arms swung, which gave his walk a restricted, mechanical rhythm.
He had something in his hand-a photo, I soon realized. He stopped in the doorway near the register, looked at the photo, then surveyed the crowded restaurant.
He fixed his dark eyes on Pilar, looked at the photo a second time, then came our way, a big grin on his face.
“Check this out,” Tomlinson said. “He’s got to be close to six-and-a-half feet tall and three hundred pounds. Why would they send someone so easy to remember? That’s weird.”
I was thinking the same thing.
But Tattoo was our contact. He came to our table, took the lone empty chair, and swung it around backward so that he could sit cowboy style.