When Tomlinson realized it was Dewey, he’d given me a double thumbs-up and left me alone in the lab. Even so, I walked to the wall of aquaria so that my voice would be muted by the sound of bubbling aerators before I said, “Where are you? I’ll fly to where you are, or I’ll meet you halfway. Or I can-”
I stopped in midsentence. Realized that I couldn’t go anywhere to meet her. I was heading to Tampa in the morning.
She interrupted as if reading my mind, “The thing you need to concentrate on is finding your son. I know that this must be a terrible time for you. He comes first. There’s nothing more important. So maybe the timing’s exactly right for this, you and me taking some time apart. Is there any news?”
I gave her a condensed version of the progress we’d made in narrowing down the search for Lake, ending, “The truth is, the timing couldn’t be worse. I need you here. I miss you, I miss our friendship. I realize how much now. I also realize that the things you overheard me saying to Pilar the other night-they were absolute bullshit. It was ridiculous. It was fantasy. I didn’t mean any of it.”
“Doc, I don’t want to go back over that. It hurts too much. But what I’ve got to wonder is, would you be apologizing to me now if the lady had said yes to you instead of no. It hurts like hell coming in second in the Marion-Ford-picks-a-lifetime-love contest.”
I said, “Give me a chance to prove you wrong. Come home, I’ll show you.” And because I could think of no delicate way into the subject, I added, “We have lots of important things to discuss. Like the pregnancy test. What were the results? I think I have a right to know.”
It was the wrong thing to say.
“ Right? Don’t talk to me about rights, pal. Not after the hell I’ve been through in the last two days. Besides, I told you I wasn’t going to take the test, so what makes you so sure I did?”
My stumbling silence seemed to infuriate her even more. “Stop assuming things about me, Ford, O.K.? Because that really pisses me off! I’ll call you again when I feel like it. That’s my right.”
The phone went dead.
Shit.
I don’t have caller I.D., but I knew that our local service had a feature that makes it possible to dial Star 57 and retrieve the number of the previous caller. I pressed the three digits, got a recording that said I would be charged for the service, then listened to an automated voice tell me that the caller’s number had been blocked.
Shit!
I walked out of the lab and let the screen door slam behind me. Tomlinson was on the lower deck, standing in moonlight near the big wooden fish tank with Jeth Nichols and Captain Alex. The outdoor porch light was on, so he could apparently see my expression, because when I stopped on the deck above them, he said, “Are you O.K.? You don’t look so good, my amigo. Why don’t I trot inside right quick and grab you a beer?”
I said, “I’m fine,” snapping at him without intending to. Then to Jeth, I said, “Are you guys still having problems with that runabout?”
Captain Alex said, “If you and Tomlinson have the time, we need help real bad. We got the stove loaded on Jeth’s old Suncoast, Jacks or Better, but the stove was too much weight, and now his old boat’s out there taking on water, she’s about to go under. The only thing keeping her on the surface is, we’ve got her rafted to the police boat, and you couldn’t sink that son-of-a-bitch with dynamite.”
Jeth put in miserably, “Come the morning, the cops is gonna find my bah-bah-boat tied to theirs. I just know it, I just know it. Find their boat all chopped full of holes, my fingerprints all over the place, and some of my blood, too. I’m gonna get arrested again, and they still hang people for doing this kind of idiotic shit. And it’s all Mack’s fault!”
Sounding serious, but loving it, Tomlinson said to me, “I don’t see how we can refuse. Not if there’s a chance Jeth may be executed.”
Before I changed back into my wet clothes, I told Tomlinson, “We’re not done with our talk yet.”
He told me, “I know.”
TWENTY-FOUR
The next morning, Friday, I walked through my lab, going over the things-to-do list I was leaving for Janet Mueller, who’d be watching the place for me, and checked my big fish tank a final time.
Then, carrying my canvas duffel and a briefcase containing a half-million dollars in cash, I walked the creaky boardwalk through the mangroves to where my blue Chevy pickup sat, Maverick flats boat already racked on its galvanized trailer astern… and I stopped, frozen.
Leaning against my boat were the twin Nicaraguan hoods, Elmase and Hugo, the two stocky butcher-block thugs, beards heavier around their mustaches, still dressed in the same gaudy clothes.
The black Chevy was parked next to my pickup, the GPS locator right there on the dash, color screen aglow. Pilar’s satellite phone, I remembered, was locked inside my pickup, along with Tomlinson’s borrowed laptop.
So why was I surprised?
Judging from the beards and the wrinkled clothes, it looked like the Nicaraguans hadn’t been out of the Collier County jail for long. I hadn’t checked my phone messages, and so, presumably, had missed Tamara Gartone’s notification call.
Maybe Merlin Starkey’s call, too-if he hadn’t already fulfilled his threat and been reassigned to temporary duty by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. In which case, he might already be in line behind these two, following me around.
Grinning at me, showing a golden tooth, wearing his black guayabera and shiny white shoes, Hugo said in Spanish, “Well, well, well, we been waiting for you. Waiting for the big gringo with glasses. Senor ‘If your hands don’t die before your brain’-I still think that such a funny thing to say, dude.”
Elmase was not smiling. Maybe that fresh black eye and swollen lip had something to do with his foul humor. He stood there with thick fists on thick hips, looking grim, his white straw Panama hat pulled low, his neon pink shirt torn in places. “Yeah, man, but callin’ us pimps, man, that not such a funny thing. Why you go and say something so mean like that? A pimp, man, he hangs out with whores, man. Hugo and me, we don’t got to pay the women we hang with. Hardly never.”
I would have chuckled if I hadn’t been so edgy. If these guys charged me both at once, I didn’t have much of a chance. They’d take the money, no problem.
I said, “You know what, Elmase? You’re right. That was a damn thoughtless thing for me to say. So please accept my apologies.” I touched my gray shorts, my blue chambray work shirt. “As if I know anything about clothes.”
Elmase looked at Hugo out of his swollen eye, placated, his expression saying, At least he admits it. He don’t know nothing about style.
As I stood there, I was trying to decide my best out if they came at me. I was gauging the distance to the boardwalk, estimating my chances of making it down the walkway and jumping into deep water before one of them caught me. If I got one or both of them into the water, the odds were instantly changed. The advantage was mine.
They’d come to finish the job for Balserio-why else would they be there?
So I was surprised, and momentarily relieved, to hear Hugo say, “The reason we come to find you is, we got a message for you from the General. Hey- relax, dude. It ain’t nothing bad. It’s our one last job for that crazy fool.”
I didn’t relax, but I swung my duffel into the back of the pickup, pretending as if I had. “Oh really? What’s the message?”
Elmase said to Hugo, “We supposed to give it to the woman, man. The General’s wife. Not just this dude.” Then to me, he said, “Where is Pilar Fuentes, man? We give you both the message, we’re outta here, I promise. All I want to do, man, is get back to Miami and change clothes. Like, we’re in a hurry. ”