destroying lives, living a completely selfish existence. You'll read this, too, so I might as well tell you: I spent my teenage years in a privately run cloister, fighting to overcome the emotional damage my father did when I was young. This was in North Dakota. Can you imagine a Florida kid being sent there? But
I made it. I came out with my sanity and the conviction to live a constructive life.'
When I offered no expression of empathy, the indignation faded. 'You're not interested in my personal history, nor my politics. I knew that the first moment I laid eyes on you. But you're a rational man, so let me give you a condensed version of why we need strong people in political office with good motives. Shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely a hundred people, and here are the ratios. There would be fifty-seven Asians, twenty-one Europeans, seven South Americans, nine Africans and eight from the U.S. Seventy of those people would be non- Christian, eighty would live below the poverty level and half the world's wealth would be in the hands of only six people, all citizens of the United States. And only two of those hundred people would own a computer.'
I said, 'Meaning there are dark days coming for a pampered nation.'
'Unless we get very tough, quick. Yes.' He held his hand out to me. I didn't want to take it. It is a common social quandary. Finally, I shook his hand as he said, 'I'll tell Dad you're counseling Delia on what to do with the totem. I suspect he'll go easier on you if she decides to sell. I made her an offer. She'll speak to you about it.'
As he walked away, I told him, 'Breaking the lease on my house, I can see why you'd do that. But this's got nothing to do with Mote Marine. They're doing great things for this state.'
Over his shoulder, Bauerstock said, 'You think my father gives a damn?'
Eighteen
Tomlinson was talking. 'Know what I think I'll do? I think I'll cut my hair, buy some decent clothes, trim my nails and move to Pittsburgh. I hear it's a lovely city. They have a surprisingly good baseball team and a great manager. Watching the Pirates at Three Rivers. That would become my hobby. I'll send my sweet little daughter postcards and knickknacks.'
I said, 'Oh?'
It was nearly midnight. The wind had freshened, gusting hot, then cool, followed by long moments of calm. Somewhere in the darkness, far out to sea, hot-air thermals were ricocheting skyward, absorbing tons of water vapor and beginning a slow, counterclockwise momentum.
I was sitting in my skiff, wrapping tape onto a length of electrical conduit I'd found. Tomlinson was standing near me on the seawall. I'd loaned him my stout Loomis bait-casting rod with a fine old ABU reel that is loaded with twenty-pound test. I carry it for stopping big-shouldered fish around docks and mangroves. My fly rods are for sport. This bruiser was for putting food on the table.
Tomlinson had tied on a very large lure called a Bomber. It was studded with gang hooks, all very sharp. When it hit the water, it sounded heavy as a brick. He was casting out onto the black water, then reeling it back slowly, very slowly.
Behind us, there were still a few people on stools inside the tiki bar, but the music had stopped. Beside the bar was a flat-roofed, two-story stucco building rimmed with a balcony. It was an upstairs-and-downstairs rental duplex. In the lemon lights of the marina, the building's green paint had turned gray, and the sliding glass doors of the upstairs apartment were illuminated. Nora was still awake up there, her silhouette moving across the scrim of living room light, maybe talking on the phone.
The woman spent a lot of time on the phone.
'When I get to Pittsburgh, I think I'll buy a two-bedroom house in the suburbs-never know when a babe might want to sleep over. Yes, and get a nice desk job. County government, perhaps, something secure. Good money, good benefits. A meat-and-potatoes kind of job. I'll buy life insurance. I'll file my taxes quarterly. Perhaps marry a God-fearing Christian with multipersonalities. That way I could come home to a different woman every night. Whoops. Holy shit!'
I heard a tremendous thrashing out on the water, then a whistling noise as the Bomber came zooming past my ear and landed in the coral rock by a coconut palm.
I'd thrown my hands up-way too late-and now I sighed and returned to my wrapping. 'You get a tarpon on like that, Tomlinson, you've got to bow when it jumps or it'll throw the plug back at warp speed. You're going to get one of us killed. That thing only missed me by a couple of feet.'
'Sorry, sorry.' He was stripping out the tangle, retrieving the lure. 'Big bastards out there in the dark. Absolutely lucking ferocious. If tarpon grew teeth, I wouldn't go anywhere near the water. What I want is a nice snapper. Something tasty for lunch. Perhaps invite Delia. They ought to be hitting on this falling barometer.' He began to cast again. 'Where was I?'
'Pittsburgh.'
'Ah, exactly. I've come to regret this pirate's life of ours, Marion. A life of excess and immorality. A man can only take so much sunshine and water, plus the constant party-party-party that Florida requires. I fear that chemicals are starting to take their toll. Reptiles have been visiting me in my dreams. I need to steel myself or rent a U-Haul.'
'Um-huh. Tomlinson? Are you sleeping with Delia?'
He stopped reeling for a moment. 'Of course I'm sleeping with Delia. The poor woman needed comforting. I'm just what the doctor ordered.'
'Then you know that Ted Bauerstock made her an offer on the totem.'
The totem was still in the black bag, beside me on the boat.
'I know, she told me. More money than she makes in two years. I told her to keep the totem for a while. Absorb some of its goodness, some of its power, then sell. But Ted wants it right away. She's thinking it over.' He was silent for a moment, then: 'You had a long, private talk with the man.'
'Yeah.'
Tomlinson's laughter was oddly nervous. I'd never heard him make such a sound of discomfort before. 'Know what he said to me? He said his father read somewhere, some deep government file someplace, that I was involved with a left-wing terrorist organization that killed nine people. His father warned him about me. This was like twenty years ago. The killings, I mean.'
'An obvious attempt to leverage you. A ridiculous charge.'
Tomlinson looked at me for a moment, then began to cast again. 'That's what I told him. Exacdy my reaction. I like Ted. I like him a lot. I think his father is one evil son-of-a-bitch, but Ted's trying to make up for it. You don't like him, though, do you, Doc?'
'Nope. I'm not sure why. He says all the right things in just the right way. Politically, he's got great radar. This afternoon, he told me exacdy what he knew I wanted to hear. But it's like… he sees everyone else as a stage prop for his own life. Objects to be manipulated. That's the impression I get.
He's too careful; had way too much practice at being smooth. No, I don't like him. I don't like Ted Bauerstock.'
He sighed. 'You're wrong. Trust me on this one, amigo. Trust my instincts. I think Ted's a good man.'
I'd finished taping the length of electrical conduit. Now it was an effective sap, and I smacked it into my hand. It made a satisfying thwap.
I said, 'Really? I agree that he's very charming, but when he talks about his father? I think he might be describing himself.'
I awoke in a freezing sweat on the couch of the upstairs apartment, dreaming that I'd stepped into some slow-motion booby trap in a faraway jungle, and that a rope was pulling me up into the trees …
I sat upright, groggy at first, then all senses at alert.
Something had yanked at my ankle. Now it yanked again.
It was fishing line.
There were fifteen metal steps leading to our apartment, the only conventional entrance. I'd taken the weak, six-pound test line I'd bought at Kmart and tied it shin-high across the first step and one of the middle steps. From those lines, I ran a single piece up the wall, through a space between the window air conditioner and the window seal, then across the carpet to the couch.
