More seriously, he added, “After what I told you this morning, maybe it’ll help us be friends again.”
Still in my skiff, we headed away from the city, out toward the shipping channels of Tampa Bay. Without mentioning the e-mail from Lake, I’d told Harris that I was looking for an area of land and water in which I might find a specific combination of wildlife.
I’d written the list on a sheet of hotel stationery and handed it to him: reddish egret; monk parrot; monk parrot nest; mature bull gator; a place where toads or frogs might lay eggs.
He read it, squinted, then read it again. The sidelong look he gave me would have been hilarious if the situation wasn’t so serious.
“Please don’t tell me we’re out here because you’re on a freaking snipe hunt or something, Doc. What the hell is this all about?”
I said, “It’s no game. There’s not much else I can say. I’m looking for someone. Finding this person is as important as anything I’ve ever done in my life. I wouldn’t tell you that much if I didn’t trust you. But I can’t ask for your help or anyone else’s beyond a certain point, and I can’t involve law enforcement.” I let that sink in before adding, “I suspect that you’ve been in the same situation.”
He thought for a moment before nodding. “Yeah. So let me look at the list again-” He did. Studied it for a moment, shielding the paper from the wind before saying, “O.K. But what you need to remember is, I’m not the biologist. So you’re going to have to help me out. An alligator? Sure, I can take you to a couple places where we might see a gator or two. But those birds-a red egret? I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. How the hell would I know?”
So I tried to describe the sort of area it might be: a place where brackish water meets freshwater. A place where mangrove fringe transitions into buttonwood, then changes to live oak or piney woods upland. There also had to be a creek or river that connected to a bay.
I told him, “It’s not on the sheet I gave you, but there’s also a reference to tadpoles in the data I have. I didn’t write it down because I don’t understand it. A place where an egret was seen feeding on a mature tadpole, that was the context. But it doesn’t seem to make much sense because all frogs and all toads lay eggs that develop into tadpoles, and you can find frogs and toads all over Florida. Plus, when tadpoles mature, they’re no longer tadpoles. So the reference seems to be from out of left field.”
Harris didn’t want to let it go so quickly, though. He asked, “What’s the difference? I always wondered that. Between a frog and a toad, I mean.”
I said, “A frog spends most of its mature life in water, a toad doesn’t. A frog’s skin is slimy, a toad’s skin is dry. A frog’s designed to jump, most toads hop or walk. Little things like that. A toad has poison glands behind its eyes, frogs don’t. But they all hatch out as tadpoles.”
He said, “So a mature tadpole could be a toad or a frog?” “Uh-huh. That’s the source of some of the confusion. Which is why I think it’s best we concentrate on the elements we do understand.”
But he continued to ponder the subject a little longer before he asked, “The way you got this list. Was it oral, or written, or some other way?”
I reminded myself I was being questioned by a top naval intelligence officer as I said, “It was in an e-mail.”
“The person who sent it, could they give information freely? Or were they trying to stick information between the lines?”
“Surreptitiously. It was a dangerous situation with no room for error.”
“Was the other data good? Accurate, articulate?”
“It was better than good. It was great, really brilliantly done.”
Harris said, “So what you’re telling me is-I’m talking from my own experience here, in these kinds of situations-all the other words in this list have meaning but one. So, to me, it’s a little flag waving. And what I’m wondering is, maybe the person who sent the e-mail tried to jam a little extra meaning into what he was telling you. He or she couldn’t use the exact word they wanted-it would be too obvious-so they shoot for a double meaning.”
The man had something on his mind; a specific angle. What?
I said, “Well… the person I’m discussing was trying to communicate a location. I’m sure of that. And, yes, it’s true that every reference but one seemed to have an intended meaning. So the problem is probably on my end, I agree. Is there something I’m missing here, old pal?”
He ignored the question, still deep in thought. “Doc, what’s the exact line from the e-mail? Are you allowed to tell me?”
We were in the middle of Hillsborough Bay now, riding south in growing swells, beneath a scudding gray sky, my skiff seeming to shrink as the bay widened around us. I thought about it for a moment, trying to recall the sentence exactly, before I said, “The person wrote to me that he saw a reddish egret feeding on a mature tadpole. No, wait”-I paused to correct myself-“the wording was odd. The person wrote that the bird was feeding on the mature tadpole.”
“On the mature tadpole.”
“That’s correct.”
“Any other odd errors like that in the letter?”
“Nope. That was the only one.”
My savvy intelligence officer friend smiled, seemingly pleased with himself. “O.K., then maybe the wording’s not so odd after all. So try this: Replace the word ‘tadpole’ with the word ‘toad.’ And if that doesn’t make any sense, try ‘frog.’” He nodded suddenly, his smile broader. “Yeah. See, that one really works. Better yet, try replacing the word with ‘bullfrog. ’”
I said, “Why? What the hell are you talking about?”
Harris had the chart atop the console. Without looking at it, he tapped his index finger on a section of mainland around the little town of Gibsonton. “You’re looking for a place where saltwater meets fresh. A place that’s got creeks and rivers and gators. The red egret? Like I said, I don’t have a clue. But there’s a little spot here where someone could watch a bird feed on the frog. The person who wrote the e-mail couldn’t come right out and use the word because it would be too obvious.”
He tapped the chart again. “Take a look, Doc. Probably doesn’t mean a thing but what the hell, we’ll give it a shot. And if it’s not this one, there’s another one we could try.”
I lifted the chart closer to my glasses and saw what he meant. Just south of Gibsonton was a winding blue ribbon of water named Bullfrog Creek.
TWENTY-SIX
The narrow mouth of Bullfrog Creek was shaded with mangroves, sable palms, Brazilian pepper. Mounted in the water on a piling was a red-and-white sign that read DANGER.
Probably to relieve my own anxiety, I said, “That seems a touch dramatic, doesn’t it?”
Harris had my skiff in idle, drifting, looking at the sign, the bay, and the skyline of Tampa behind us.
“Depends,” he said. “Not if you do what I do for a living. Almost seems appropriate-especially if you’ve ever tried to run a freighter down that channel we just crossed.”
He’d already told me about the commercial channel north of the creek. It was the waterway into the Alafia River, a narrow, east-west shipping lane that my master pilot pal had described as the “scariest three miles of water in the entire bay.” As a pilot, he often had to make the run to get freighters to the phosphate plant located up the river at Gibsonton.
Now Harris nudged the skiff into forward, and we idled into the creek past the DANGER sign, as he said, “What it probably means is, the creek’s not marked. There’re no channels. Or someone’s trying to keep it private. That kinda fits with what most people think about Gibsonton. They’re not right. But it’s what they think. Do you know anything about the place, Doc?”