common to some Floridians when a hurricane is mentioned. 'We're due for a big one. I've been saying it all along.'
Many do say it, usually with a perverse wistfulness. My own dread of hurricanes is compounded by all the dopes who'll say, 'I told you so!' after it does happen. And it will. It most certainly will.
Tomlinson was drinking a bottle of Hatuey in a coolie cup, standing there in his cutoffs and leather sandals, wearing a black silk Hawaiian shirt with a hula girl on the back framed by pink frangipani blossoms. He'd caught a big mangrove snapper the night before and it was now roasting in his little gas oven aboard No Mas. It made a nice aroma when you stood on the dock near his boat.
There was still a silver smear of scales on his shorts.
After breakfast, we'd said goodbye to Nora and Delia; gave them sterile, impersonal kisses on the cheek, each of us keeping our private business private. I went for a long run through the backstreets off A1A, then spent the morning making phone calls from the apartment. Checked with Janet Mueller, whom I'd asked to take care of my fish tanks. My fish were doing fine, except I was running low on food for my sharks. Before I could stop myself, I told her to talk withjeth. He'd cast-net some mullet.
Decided what the hell, maybe it would at least get them back on friendly terms.
I left a message for Detective Parrish and another for Dieter Rasmussen, the big cheerful German at Dinkin's Bay, who was also a retired Munich psychopharmacologist. I wanted to speak with him because I was troubled by a simple realization: everyone liked, admired and trusted Ted Bauerstock except for me. Was it possible that there are people so practiced and devious that they can fool all but a very, very few? Or was it because I found his looks, his wealth and his charisma intimidating? Perhaps I was being unfair and judgmental, the typical alpha male, as Nora had once called me.
Other people I tried to reach were involved with government service. One was Bernie Yager, a computer genius.
Ivan and Ted Bauerstock weren't the only ones who had access to classified files.
Unfortunately, a woman who didn't give her name left a message for me at the bar: Bernie was on vacation, wouldn't be back for three weeks.
Now, this news of the hurricane meant that I couldn't spend much more time on the Keys. Depending on which way Charles went, I might have to get back to Sanibel in two days, maybe three at the most, to button up my stilt house. If it looked like it really was going to get bad, I'd have to release all my fish. Let them fend for themselves-not a pleasant option.
According to the cheerful weather guy, NOAA had sent its 41-C four-engine prop plane into the eye of Charles to measure pressure gradients, wind speed and temperatures at various altitudes. All data was fed into the onboard computer, then transmitted to the weather center in Miami where it would continue to be analyzed, along with high- and low-pressure profiles in all directions, with temperature ridges and wind patterns factored that might alter the storm's path.
A hurricane is not unlike a bead of electricity. It follows the path of least resistance. High-pressure areas, pressure ridges, cold fronts and opposing winds are all objects of resistance.
Over the night, Hurricane Charles had shifted direction. It was now moving west, gobbling water and pockets of low pressure, already blotting out the eastern tip of Cuba as it moved toward the Florida Straits and the Gulf of Mexico, traveling at the speed of a dependable ocean freighter.
Tomlinson said to me, 'You hear it? The waves.'
The wind had continued to freshen; was now blowing a steady fifteen with gusts to twenty. I looked at small white caps breaking over the rock jetty. 'What about the waves?'
'The rhythm, the pattern. It's changed, can't you hear it?'
I shook my head. 'I don't know what you're talking about.'
'It's the way the Calusa knew a thousand years ago. The way they knew their nightmare was coming. On this coast, waves roll ashore about eight every minute. But that thing out there, that storm, it's gaining mass, sucking things up. It's giving the waves big shoulders, making them slower. Hear the difference? Now we're getting five, maybe six waves a minute. The Indians always knew. They were brilliant in their way.'
I told him, 'If it keeps coming, you need to have No Mas hauled. What do you care, you've got the money. Or get the hell out of this shallow water. You don't want to be anywhere near Pennekamp or Key Largo. All this coral.'
He looked at me, his bright blue eyes sober and alive. 'No man. I've been waiting for this for a while. If it happens, if it really happens. Hell! Charles gets near enough, No Mas and me, we're sailing into the eye.'
'Dog-tor Ford! I have a message to call you at this number.' The German accent of Dieter Rasmussen was unmistakable. Still, with all the noise in the bar-the Mandalites were listening to Jimmy Buffett and arguing about water spouts-it was tough to hear.
There was also zero privacy.
Dieter told me he was aboard his Grand Banks trawler, Das Stasi, and I could reach him there.
I jogged up the steps to the apartment. I saw the rumpled sheets on the couch bed and thought of Nora as I picked up the phone.
A nice independent lady. There seem to be fewer and fewer of those. Spirited and smart, too.
'Doctor Ford! It is so surprising to receive the call from you, yah! We don't even have the conversation here at the marina, now we are talking on the phone.' Rasmussen's tone was jocular, but there was a goading edge to it. I didn't blame him. I didn't actually avoid him at Dinkin's Bay, but I'd never gone out of my way to sit down and have a talk with the guy. Everyone liked him. Everyone said he was a lot of fun; generous and brilliant, as well. But what everyone didn't know was that his boat had been named after the small, very select intelligence service that had once operated in Germany. I found that off-putting.
'We're both very busy guys. And Dieter? Call me Marion. Or Doc. Okay?'
'That we are busy, we both know that is not the reason we do not talk.' He was laughing. 'Even so, I am glad to finally have this opportunity to speak with a man who, I suspect, was once so famous in so many private ways.'
There it was. Exactly why I'd dodged one-on-one conversations with the guy. Not that I was surprised. Sanibel is a very popular vacation and retirement island among the intelligence community worldwide.
I said, 'Tell you what, Dieter. When I get back, we'll sit down and exchange stories. Right now, though, I could use your help. You really are a physician and psychiatrist?'
'Oh yah, yah! I was the foremost psychopharmacologist in Munich and am licensed to practice and do research even in this country. You are having emotional problems?'
I smiled at that, then laid it out. I told him about my conversation with Ted Bauerstock, trying to reduce my concerns to the simplest elements. I told him about Dorothy Copeland's grave. I asked about manic fixation; told him about the totem and the gold medallion.
He said, 'You are asking me if it is possible for a very evil man to fool all the very best people? Yah, of course! I can tell you frightening stories, terrible stories, about some of my own patients. But I can do more than this for you. You say this man was institutionalized in North Dakota?'
'I was told he attended a very strict boarding school there. I was never told that he was institutionalized.'
'That is easily enough found out. There is one very, very fine facility there if money is not a problem. It is full-time treatment and behavior modification, and I guess you could call it a boarding school in a way. Some people have spent years there. I will contact my colleagues. They will know my work and will talk to me.'
'You can ask them about Ted Bauerstock?'
'No! That would be a breach of ethics; illegal as well. But I can ask for their case histories on certain manias. Part of my research, understand. If your suspicions are merited, I will find this person as easily as you would pick out his photo. The symptoms are as unmistakable as fingerprints. His name will never be mentioned.'
'He's on the verge of being elected to a political office. So maybe it's about time someone dug into his background. We don't need psychopaths in the state senate.'
Dieter laughed. 'But why not! Psychopaths are the politicians of your country's future-and your recent past.'
I didn't care for his flippant attitude. 'Call me overly patriotic, Dieter, but I find it offensive when foreigners criticize my country while they're drinking our beer, sleeping with our women and getting rich.'
