wizened old electronics guru.
About fifteen minutes later, when my phone rang, I answered to hear, “Hey Doc, you old so-and-so! It’s Bernie!”
I began by saying, “Bernie, is it safe to talk?”
“On my line? You’re making a joke, right? Such a funny man with the jokes. The president, he should be so confident in his phone security. What? You think I’m such a nebbish that I’ve gotten old and rusty like a certain Viking-sized field hand? Why do you waste our time with such questions?”
“So I take it my side of the line is also fine.”
“Marion, Marion, you are trying an old man’s patience. Is my line okay? he asks. Is your line okay? he asks. We’re having this conversation, you hear words coming from my lips, so of course the lines are okay. What else do you need to know already? Why don’t you just come out and ask me, ‘Bernie, my old friend, have you become old and senile and stupid?’ Because that’s what your questions say to me.”
“Hey, that’s not what I’m saying, Bernie.”
“To me, that’s exactly what you’re saying. You’re saying that you no longer have confidence in my expertise. This from the man whose ass I personally saved after he’d slept with a certain president’s wife in Masagua. Name another person in the business who could have electronically lifted information from the poor husband’s office and still had the good sense to telephone you in the bedroom of His Excellency’s beautiful wife? So what did you have to spare? Five minutes? Ten minutes, tops. The man’s elite guard hunting you like dogs, but you were warned in time. All thanks to the person you keep asking these offensive questions.”
I was laughing. Everything he said was true. I said, “Well, I’ve got to risk offending you again.”
When I told him what I needed, he feigned indignation. “Any teenage hack can do what you’re asking me to do. Such a waste of time and talent!”
“It’s what I need, Bernie. I don’t think you ever met Bobby Richardson, but his wife is the lady in question.”
“I’ve heard of Commander Richardson, so I don’t need to meet him. He’s a friend of yours, so he’s a friend of mine. The man was part of the old guard. One of the rare good men. So what else do I need to know?”
“What you need to know is that Bobby and I went through some very heavy business together. You know the kind of stuff I’m talking about. I owe the man. He’s been dead a long time, but I still owe the man. His girl is in trouble and so is his daughter. I’m going to do whatever I can to help out.”
“Okay, okay, so maybe I owe you a favor or two myself. You ask, it’ll be done. What you need to do is tell the daughter to switch on her mother’s machine and modem. It’s a PC or a Mac? Of course, someone like you wouldn’t know. Doesn’t matter. I’ll have my equipment invade the poor little thing and install the software you’ll need in a program called… I think I’ll label the folder Pilar. “He had a curiously high-pitched giggle. “Will you be able to remember that? If remembering is such a problem, I’ll have everything on her screen changed to red, but the folder-the folder, I’ll make green. Or maybe interesting colors. Just so you can find it.”
“You’re a bastard, Bernie Yager.”
“A bastard I am not. And neither do I ever forget. When my poor sister, rest her soul, got herself in trouble in Boulder, you were the one, the only one, who went there and spoke with her and helped bring her home. Eve liked you, Doc, she really did. And she trusted you. You may have been the only person in her life that she truly trusted. I don’t know why she went back to the streets, but she did. God rest her soul and the souls of all who loved her. Her going back, that I will never make sense of.”
I said, “She was a good woman, Bernie. And thanks a lot for your help.”
“There isn’t something else you want to tell me, Doc?”
I said, “No… I don’t think so.”
Bernie Yager, the tough electronics guru, said, “The number, I need her mother’s phone number. And her E-mail address. I need to be able to access the machine if I’m going to upload software. What, I’ve got to take your hand and lead you through this?”
10
The Calloway family home was in the Lauderdale suburb of Coral Ridge south of Oakland Park and north of Plantation. Probably one of the original gated communities on the Intracoastal Waterway, built back in the fifties when dolphin-finned Cadillacs and pink stucco defined the sunrise coast.
There were banyan vines and shadows on streets that never took the full heat of summer because of moss and filtered light. The brick gatehouse was unattended, but the neighborhood still had the solid look of corporate money, good benefits and upwardly mobile executives. Not old-time wealth, but high-salaried position players with plenty left over for pension plans and toys.
Tomlinson was talcing it all in. “The people who first lived in these houses, I bet they voted for Eisenhower and bitched about Elvis back when they were built. Caddys, yeah. Can’t you picture great big land yachts sitting in the driveways?”
We were in my Chevy pickup, windows down, driving through the shade of ficus trees. We’d crossed the saw-grass flats of Alligator Alley to I-595, then north on U.S. 1 past Freddy’s Anchor Inn, tattoo parlors and Comfort Suites, then through the Kinney Tunnel into a gray corridor of furniture stores, Burger Kings, Porsche and Ferrari dealerships, Chinese restaurants.
Now we were looking at houses that were set back behind thick brick fences, the yards hedged with sea grape. Dominant colors were conch pink and Bermuda white. Not many Cadillacs in the driveways, though. Mostly sport utility vehicles in earth colors, but a few BMWs and Lexuses hitched up close to large ranch houses with red tile roofs showing through the trees.
“Can you smell it?” Tomlinson said. “The Atlantic Coast, man. It… smells different. Big ocean, big seas, lots of wind out there beyond the condos, even if you can’t feel it.”
I was cruising at maybe ten miles per hour and the truck cab was filtering odors.
I said, “Yeah, nice air. Not as dense.” Meaning not as heavy as the air on Sanibel Island.
No matter where I’ve been in my life, I can get within ten miles of an ocean and feel it. Can sense the implied weight of the sea even if the horizon is blocked, fogged in, you name it. Thatch-roofed huts or trees or mountains or high rises, it didn’t matter what stood between us. The convexity of sky is always different. Brighter? No, but there is a distinctive sheen to it, as if rarefied by lightning or chemical reaction: saltwater, oxygen, wind, isolation. I always, always know if the sea is near.
The Calloway house was several blocks from U.S. 1, just off Bayview at the corner of 8th Street and Middle River Drive, not far from Bayview Elementary and the Coral Ridge Yacht Club. Very solid-looking brick one-story painted key lime yellow with vines that trailed up the walls and framed the bay windows. Pie-shaped quarter-acre corner lot, old tropical vegetation, the weathervaned masts of sailboats showing above the roofs of neighboring homes.
A yachting community. Each house with its own dock out back.
I noticed a frayed rope hanging from an oak tree in the side lawn. Presumably it had once held a swing. I noticed the plywood remnants of a tree house in said oak and thought about Amanda with her tomboy attitude. Sometimes you can look at a house and read what’s gone on there. This had once been a child’s place; a family place. A little girl had once lived here with her mother and stepfather. Not now, though. The property had the sterile look of weekly yard maintenance and vacant bedrooms.
You take one look at such a place and you guess that someone’s dream came unraveled here.
The front door of the house was cracked open, though, as if to let stale air escape.
Amanda’s little car was in the drive.
“Jesus Christ, what happened to my mom’s computer?” Amanda, wearing gold wire-rimmed glasses, sat at a desk in a study just off the master bedroom, her face illuminated by the monitor screen.
No T-shirt for her now. She was wearing pantyhose, a pale gray pleated cotton skirt, white blouse with pearl buttons and a navy blue blazer. The way she dressed, it not only changed the way she looked, it changed the way she handled herself. An athletic-looking redhead with some lanky size, maybe handsome but not pretty. Interesting face, with her mom’s great cheekbones but her dad’s tough-guy nose. Not a person to take lightly. She moved and
