Pilar was aboard No Mas with Tomlinson, but I said, “I have no idea where she is. I wouldn’t tell you, anyway. You know that. So just give the message to me. I’ll pass it along.”
The two of them had a short visual exchange before Hugo shrugged. “You’re O.K., dude. We kinda like you. And Balserio, hey, he’s a crazy fuck. So here it is. The crazy dude who kidnapped your son, he’s double-crossed the General. The Man-Burner-that’s what we call him in Nicaragua-he was supposed to kidnap the kid, but then make it easy for the General to rescue the kid back. Make the General look like a big hero. You know? Help make him be more popular and win the Revolution.
“Instead,” Hugo said, “the Man-Burner stole eighty grand or so of the General’s money and took off with the kid. He’s somewhere in Florida, we think. He had fake passports, all the papers. We found the pilot who flew them to Havana. He says he thinks they maybe hopped a freighter. Which the General says is probably what happened, because Lourdes-that’s the crazy dude’s real name-Lourdes got a thing about traveling on ships. The guy can just up and vanish sometimes-” Hugo snapped his fingers for emphasis. “The General’s people think maybe it’s because he sometimes works the maritime ships. Or at least travels that way because, with a face like his, he don’t want to be seen.”
“Have you ever seen his face? Or a photo?”
“Nobody sees the dude’s face and lives,” Elmase replied softly. “They say he’s the devil. They say if you see his face, you gonna burn in hell, man.”
I said to him, “I’ll let you know about that,” before asking Hugo, “Do you have any idea where they might be in Florida? Or where they would have come in?”
Hugo said, “That’s why we were following you, man. We thought you’d lead us to him. Trouble was, the General lost his cool when he figured out who you are. But he’s back under control; still wants to help. ’Cause if Lourdes kills the boy, Balserio’ll never see the inside of the presidential palace again. People down there are gonna hate him, man, and he knows it.”
I said, “Balserio’s not planning on coming back to Florida, is he? I sure as hell don’t want to see him if he does. His kind of help, we don’t need.”
Hugo said, “No, he’s not allowed to come back. But if he gets information, he wants to be able to get it to you. He wants to help you, man. Or if you find out where Lourdes is, the General says he’ll pay Elmase and me to…” The stocky man shrugged and smiled. “He’ll pay us to take care of the problem. Make sure the Man-Burner never burns nobody again.”
I had taken two business cards from my billfold and was adding the phone number of my hotel on each. As I did, I said, “Does this mean you’re going to stop tailing me?”
“You got that right,” Hugo said. “Last thing we want, dude, is to end up in jail again. First night we was in the cage, a coupla big brothers said something about Elmase’s pink shirt. He’s touchy about that, you know. We ended up fightin’ four or five guys, just the two of us.”
Taking my card, looking at it, Elmase said, “They just like you, man. They don’t got no taste when it comes to dressing very cool.”
At a little after eleven A.M., I pulled my old blue pickup truck into the circular drive of the Renaissance Vinoy Resort Hotel, downtown St. Pete. It was a blustery, salt-heavy morning, and I stepped out into a southwest wind that smelled of ocean squalls and waterspouts.
Gray days are unusual for St. Pete. The city still claims to hold the world record for most consecutive sunny days: 764. In fact, for many years, the St. Petersburg Times, a great newspaper, was given away for free if the day started out cloudy.
The Times business office, on this day, would have made no profit on paper sales.
Looking at the Vinoy, though, with its Moorish gables and stucco columns, a four-story palace painted beach pink, trimmed in green, with its four hundred rooms quartered on lush grounds of gardens and pools, the day radiated a vivid tropical ambiance.
Florida still has a stock of classic hotels that have carried the atmosphere of previous eras into this new century. The Vinoy is one. It and resorts of similar distinction were designed for the peers of Roosevelt, Vanderbilt, Gable, Kennedy, Capone, and Dillinger, and the elegance of that era has been preserved. Places like the Vinoy seem to have absorbed enough sunshine and Caribbean heat over the years so that even on cloudy days, the land and water around them seem brightened via conduction. The Vinoy-era hotels are preserves of the tropics on their own private tropical preserve.
I’ve spent enough of my life hunkered down in jungle camps and Third World flophouses so that, when I have occasion to stay in a hotel, I splurge on good ones. I’d chosen the hotel for that reason, plus a couple of others. It has its own little marina, with instant access to Tampa Bay. I could keep my Maverick flats boat there in a wet slip. Could walk out the hotel’s ornate tile and marble lobby, across Fifth Street to the floating docks, step aboard, and be gone in a minute.
Another reason was that Tomlinson and Pilar were sailing up from Dinkin’s Bay, planned on arriving sometime early the next morning, and the marina basin had electric, water, and all the other modern umbilicals that most un-Tomlinson-like yachtsmen require.
It was Pilar’s decision to travel with Tomlinson. I was neither surprised nor upset.
The main reason I’d chosen the hotel, though, was that I’m a fan of downtown St. Pete, and nearby downtown Tampa, and their outlying barrier islands. The area is among Florida’s great, unheralded metropolitan treasures, and the two cities have much in common. I appreciate their eclectic architecture: bootlegger 1930s meets the twenty-first century; Little Havana meets Manhattan; Southern Californian beach Deco joins Steubenville-by-the-Sea.
I like the copper and earth-tone colors of space-age skyscrapers standing girder-to-dormer with churches built of stone and handmade brick. I like the funky backwater canals with rusting shrimp boats that lead to elegant waterfront neighborhoods, plus all the great restaurants, cigar factories, museums, galleries, beaches, and bars.
Tampa and St. Pete have all those things. And St. Pete’s downtown baseball park, Al Lang Field, is one of the great ball yards of the world. I used to love playing there at night, under the lights, so close to Tampa Bay that the smell of chalk and rosin and Bermuda grass would sometimes mix with the smell of a prevailing Gulf Stream breeze and warm, ballooning gusts of air that drifted northward out of Cuba.
So I’d chosen the Vinoy.
I’d already launched my skiff at the city boat ramp, idled to the marina, then jogged back for my truck-the logistics of trailering a boat always requires similar pain-in-the-butt maneuverings.
So now I handed my keys to the valet. Listened to him say about my old Chevy pickup, “I bet you’re into fixing up antique cars. Is that right, sir?” before I went to the front desk, checked in, and got a receipt for the briefcase that I had them put in the hotel safe.
I had a second, bigger briefcase, as well. On the drive to St. Pete, I’d stopped at a photography supply and bought a shockproof case big enough to hold the medicine, as I’d been directed.
I checked that at the front desk and got a receipt for it, as well.
I then proceeded to order something that I thought I’d never order in my life: a cellular telephone.
I told the concierge to get me a rental phone and to set up a temporary account. Because I didn’t know where I was going to be using it, or under what conditions, I told him I wanted all the little cellular phone options I wouldn’t have considered in my normal life: micro headphone set for hands-free use, caller I.D., and call waiting.
I told the concierge he didn’t have to explain it all to me, I’d figure it out as I went.
The reason I wanted the phone was simple: I wanted a way for Dewey to get in touch with me. I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to talk with her, and this was the only way.