Anyway, Tomlinson has his faults, but ego isn’t among them. Except for an understandable wariness, he’s been unchanged by all the attention. The problem is, he says, he can’t remember writing One Fathom, nor what inspired it.
It used to trouble him: not remembering what he’d written, or what had moved him to that level of virtuosity. As he explains it, heavy drink and drugs were involved, so the brain cells that did the actual creating are long since dead.
It bothered him so much, in fact, that around Christmas, he disappeared for a couple of months on what he later described to me as his personal quest to rediscover the source of that lost inspiration. When I asked for details, he demurred, though I noticed that he stopped speaking of One Fathom as if it had been written by an unknown person.
And he was forced to change his lifestyle because of the unwelcome fame. Tomlinson has always kept his sun-battered Morgan sailboat moored only a few hundred yards offshore from the docks, and just across the channel from my stilt house. Now, though, he’s moved it near the middle of the bay to discourage his followers from attempting to swim out to meet him. It’s a considerably longer distance, and one of the reasons he makes fewer trips to the marina.
Which is why I was surprised to run into him that afternoon. I’d seen him ride by earlier that day-probably to pick up his cell phone, which I’d left for him behind the counter in the marina office. With the phone, I’d also left a note that listed the medical supplies we needed, and a brief explanation. I couldn’t help adding a postscript reminding him that he had hipster doctor buddies who were happy to sell him sevoflurane gas and laughing gas to sniff for recreational use, so maybe they’d come through with a couple of drugs that were actually intended for medical purposes.
The sevoflurane gas he used was the worst. Smelled exactly like anchovies to me. But Tomlinson loved the stuff, and would walk around giggling for hours, stinking of marijuana and fish.
I’d told him where to find his cell phone in a brief exchange on the VHF radio. Other than that, I saw no need for us to talk.
We had no pressing business.
Pilar had called me from her hotel room early that morning just as I returned from swimming, and I’d already told her about my e-mail exchange with Prax Lourdes. I’d described the bizarre call on the satellite phone. Told her a lie-that he’d demanded my e-mail address, and that he’d written me directly. Explained it all without mentioning that I’d broken into her Internet account, her personal e-mails, and that I’d already read Lourdes’ earlier demand that we drive to St. Petersburg.
I’d let her find that letter for herself, then act surprised when she told me.
Behaving as if I were surprised-after all the experience I’d gotten in the last few hours, that’d be no problem.
I’d slept off and on during the day, Ransom keeping me company. She works at Tarpon Bay Marina, managing the little store there, and also at the Sanibel Rum Bar amp; Grille. She said things had been so slow, taking a day off was no big deal.
That indicated to me the degree of her concern.
It was showing. The turmoil, all the stress, were getting to me, or she wouldn’t have taken a day away from work.
I found myself worrying about Dewey-Where was she? Why hadn’t I heard from her? And Lake-Would they let him write me? And when?
I thought about Tinman. Who the hell was he?
I knew a man who might be able to tell me…
I have a satellite phone of my own. Seldom need it; keep it packed away because I can use it to contact only one man: a guy named Hal Harrington.
Hal’s with the U.S. State Department. He’s also a member of a covert operations team that is known, to a very few, as the Negotiating and System Analysis Group-the Negotiators, for short.
Because the success of the team requires that members blend easily into most societies worldwide, each man was provided with a legitimate and mobile profession when he joined. Harrington became a computer software wizard.
Another of the group’s members became a marine biologist.
The trouble with becoming a Negotiator was that, once you were in, there was no getting out. You could never be free again.
Whenever I talked with Hal, he reminded me of that.
“Quid pro quo,” he would say, granting most technical favors I asked, but always giving me an assignment in return.
I hadn’t talked with him in a while.
I decided not to talk to him now. But I did send him an e-mail, asking for information on Thackery. Did the crazed surfer ever go by the alias “Tinman”?
I knew that, ultimately, it would mean another assignment from Hal.
After that, I paced; checked my AOL account over and over for e-mails. I paced; glared at the phone, willing it to ring, hoping that I would hear Dewey’s voice on the other end.
I telephoned Janet Mueller twice, pressing her to contact the woman, each time stressing how important it was that I speak with her. When I picked up the phone a third time, I stopped and had to vow to myself I wouldn’t pester Janet again.
There was something else I was obsessing about, too: Tomlinson.
Except for his quick trip into the marina, he’d spent the day out there all alone aboard No Mas. From the windows of my lab, I could see the vessel’s old white hull at anchor, pointing like a slow weather vane against the tide. With all that was going on in my life, I had to ask myself, under normal circumstances, wouldn’t I have sought out his opinions and advice? Wouldn’t I have hopped in my skiff and gone a-calling? Or invited him in for an early beer?
The answer was an unqualified yes. He would have been the first person I would have turned to for help. Ransom was correct. The man had come to seem like a brother to me.
That had changed, though. For now, anyway. Maybe for all time.
Which is probably why, that afternoon when I nearly collided with Tomlinson as I exited the Red Pelican Gift Shop, I tried way too hard to mask my uneasiness-which, of course, just made my uneasiness more obvious.
The most startling thing, though, was that Tomlinson’s manner was just as stilted.
“Whoops, sorry… oh. Hello, Tomlinson.”
“Doc? Hey, great to see you, compadre. Just really… great.”
“In for supplies?”
“Oh yeah, man. Beans and beer.”
“Food and beer, well… you need those.”
“Absolutely. Food, yeah… even for me, eating is, like… mandatory.”
“Yeah, sure. Food. Um. Did you… did you get the note I left about the medical supplies?”
“Oh yeah. My doctor buddies are already working on the list.”
“Good. Good. Well… nice seeing you.”
“Right back at you, amigo!”
Walking away from him, I could feel sweat beading on my back, and I knew that my face had to be flushed. I was already dreading our next meeting, when from behind me I heard him call after me, “Doc. Hey, Doc? Hold it just a sec, would you?”
I turned to look. I was standing in the parking lot. He’d stopped just outside the marina office, next to the doorway that led up the steps to Jeth’s upstairs apartment. He was conservatively dressed for him: shirtless, khaki British walking shorts belted with a rope, and a knitted Rastafarian cap, red, black, and green, holding his hair in a bun.
I said, “Something wrong?”
I couldn’t remember ever seeing him looking so melancholy. “Yeah, Doc. Your aura, man. It’s impossible for me not to notice. You don’t even have to tell me, and I already know.”
“Know what?”
“I know something’s happened.”
I said, “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“What I’m talking about is you. That something very heavy has gone down. It’s like- ouch -iceberg country. A solid cold wall has dropped. That’s the vibe I’m getting. Emotional cataclysm; bridges burning.” He seemed to be thinking it through as he spoke, feeling the words. “An event has taken place that has changed the entire social interactive structure. You’ve… discovered something. A real mind-bender. Is any of this making sense?”