A hurricane leaves residual odors: bloating fish and trash fires. The scent attracts vultures, human variety. Bloated prices. Con men.
Greed has an odor, too.
WEEK THREE
Greed…
Tomlinson says a hurricane is like a beam of light. It exposes decay, and reveals unexpected strengths. Celestial light—his phrase. Cleansing.
He was stoned, as usual. Behavior even more bizarre. Irritable, too—as if he’s been injecting testosterone. Hormones
Winds transformed sea bottom, exposing some structures, covering others. Off Key Largo, in 130 feet of water, a sunken Naval vessel, the
Yesterday, Jeth Nichols found an unfamiliar wreck—40 feet of water, 240 degrees off Lighthouse Point. He’s been fishing out of another marina where damage was minor. One of those gated condo places, Indian Harbor Resort.
The hurricane that hit us was the third of the season; more forming in the Caribbean basin. Storms of closed circulation are tropical cyclones. When winds exceed 38 MPH, they are termed “tropical storms” and assigned a name—grating, because a name implies human qualities, intent or malice.
A storm is a mobile dynamic, not a being. Homo sapiens is a mobile being, not a process. The principles of physics and man are diminished by anthropomorphic baloney.
Go to the beach and name waves. Name a lightning bolt. It makes as much sense.
Autumn in subtropics: Heat. Jittery wind. Hint of storm darkness even in daylight.
Moon waning; fireflies in mangrove shadow.
Still no phone.
3
Four tropical cyclones developing in Caribbean, one a tropical storm, another hurricane force, winds over 74 mph.
I told Jeth, “Your pal, Augie Heller, makes me regret emptying my shark pen before the hurricane hit.”
Jeth Nichols stutters when he’s nervous or mad. He was stuttering now. “I know, Doc, I know. Sorry. I was stuh-stupid to ever leave Dinkin’s Bay and work for another marina. Javier warned me. I shoulda listened.”
Javier Castillo—a Sanibel fishing guide until he moved his family across the bay. Jeth had followed because he was desperate for cash after the hurricane.
I was bending over a tray of salt water, my back turned so it was difficult for Jeth to observe. My left hand was submerged, holding a brooch-sized object encrusted with barnacles. With a surgical probe, I’d removed enough to see that a portion of the object was studded with clear stones.
With the object cupped, I looked away from the tray. “You said Javier would meet us here.”
“That’s what he told me. He said he was gonna get his boat this afternoon. He was sure of it.”
I pictured a lean man with muscles, a broad African nose. Javier was a good father, a good fisherman. Years ago, he’d floated over from Cuba in an inner tube, which tells you all you need to know about Javier Castillo—he crossed the Florida Straits in a tire.
As if reading my mind, Jeth said, “I wish he’d show up. It’d be nice to see a friendly face.”
True. This place was decidedly unfriendly.
Jeth, Tomlinson, and I were off by ourselves, strangers on strange turf—what had once been a fishing village I’d known well but no longer. Developers had transformed it into an overpriced marina community, on the island of Sulphur Wells, twenty-five minutes by boat from our home base, Sanibel Island, Gulf coast of Florida.
Its name was the Indian Harbor Marina and Resort Community, a mall-sized project built by out-of-state investors, with acres of metal buildings, duplexes, condo sites and dockage, most of the new construction intact after the storm.
There was some damage, though. I saw bulldozers and a crane over there bucking twisted metal where the storage barn had collapsed; security guards stopping cars at the marina entrance. Boats that had survived had been dragged to the parking lot, several dozen of them listing on their keels. They were spaced incrementally like cemetery headstones. A hundred or more.
I said, “If Javier doesn’t show in the next ten minutes, I think we should stow your gear in my skiff and leave. I can’t tolerate much more of this place, or of your pal Augie.”
I was using the surgical probe, along with a magnifying glass and forceps, to clean one of several metallic objects Jeth had snagged while fishing a wreck he’d discovered a few days before. That morning, he’d reeled up a section of cable, a couple of pounds of marine growth attached, man-made objects embedded, most he couldn’t identify.
There was a U.S. silver dollar, some brass screws, and what now looked to be a diamond brooch. A dozen or so other objects were also attached but too heavily covered with barnacles and goop to make a guess.
A few hours ago, Jeth had called me on VHF radio, asking me to meet him here and have a look.
I hadn’t expected to find anything of consequence.
Surprise.
Jeth said now, “Augie isn’t my pal, I already told you. I’ve just got a business arrangement with him and the other guy. They have a boat, I don’t. They don’t know how to fish, I do. We been catching grouper offshore, sellin’ it for top dollar. There’s hardly any boats out since the hurricane. But we ain’t friends.”
Yes, he’d told me. Augie Heller and Oswald, the men who’d offered him a share of the profits to run this marina’s forty-three-foot Viking sport diesel. Jeth needed money, so he’d taken the job even though he didn’t like the duo and didn’t trust them.
My impression exactly. And now Jeth had stumbled onto something important. Valuable, too, depending on the identity of the vessel he’d discovered and what remained on the seafloor.
I hadn’t told Jeth that, not yet. I’d seen no reason to risk sharing the information with the two jerks who’d just stomped off to get reinforcements.
I knew they’d be back soon.
I returned my attention to the brooch. The metal filigree was black as gunpowder, scarred with barnacles and worm shell. Silver converts to silver sulfide when immersed in salt water. This object
