I reached for the door, then remembered the squeaky hinges that would telegraph my approach. Instead, I moved the reading chair, then quietly opened the big trapdoor through which the fish merchants had once hoisted crates of fish and blocks of ice. I lowered myself through the floor, grabbed a crossbeam, then hung there suspended above the water, wearing nothing but my glasses and old khaki swim shorts.
My visitor was still hunched over the fish tank.
I grabbed the next crossbeam, and the next, moving hand to hand beneath my house, away from the tank. My house is built of old Florida heart pine. The beams creaked, but not much. It was a noiseless way to move. When I was close enough, I reached out with my legs, got my feet onto the platform, and stood. Turned to make sure the visitor was still on the front deck—he was—then I went belly-down on the dock and slid into the January water. Staying beneath the dock, I sculled my way around the house, then under the main platform. I could hear my visitor above me: the gentle shifting of weight a few inches from my head. I continued onward until I was out from under the platform; then I laced my left arm around a plank in the boardwalk that leads to shore. The water was shallow—only about four feet deep—and I had firm footing on the muck bottom.
I tapped the dock with my knuckles, then snapped my fingers a few times, hoping to get my visitor's attention.
Heard the lid to the fish tank creak closed . . . then silence.
Snapped my fingers twice more. Heard the scuff of shoes on damp wood: my visitor had heard the noise and was coming to investigate.
I stood beneath the dock, knees bent, head back, only my face out of the water, looking up, waiting. Heard a whispered voice say, 'Is that you?'
Thought: Who the hell is he talking to?
Snapped my fingers once more, then heard a dull thud above me—my visitor was getting down on his knees —and then watched the dark shape of a head extend out over the dock, looking for the source of the noise, my visitor's face only a foot from mine. There wasn't enough light to see his expression. ... I knew it would take a moment for his brain to interpret what his eyes were seeing . . . lunged up out of the water before he had time to react, grabbed him by the throat and swung him into the water with me.
My visitor's first terrified instinct was to flee—maybe a gator had grabbed him. He came up spitting water, throwing elbows, struggling to get to shore. But I got my legs threaded through his legs so he couldn't move, still had a good grip on his throat, tilted his head back and said into his ear, 'Hey . . .
He decided to fight. Tried to find my eyes with his fingers; elbowed me hard in the ribs... so I took him under. Took him down to the bottom and waited until his movements became panicked, frenzied before allowing him up to take in air.
'Quit fighting!'
More elbows. Then he lunged backward, ramming me into the dock. So I took him under one more time; waited on the bottom with him until the thudding of my eardrums told me my own lungs were empty, then hoisted him back to the surface . . . only to be clubbed hard above the ear by someone behind me. Stupidly, I turned to look . . . and just had time to get my arms up as a man standing on the dock swung at me with a long plank. Took a glancing blow off forearm and head . . . disentangled my legs from those of my visitor and lunged underwater, swimming hard. I wanted to put some distance between myself and the guy with the board.
Came up twenty yards or so away to hear: '... dumb ass, I told you to wait for me. Let 'im go!'
'The sonuvabitch almost killed me!'
'You want to tell it to the cops? Get your ass outta there!'
From neck-deep water, I watched my visitor walrus up onto the dock, and then he and his buddy went jogging along the boardwalk toward shore. A minute or so later, as I was climbing onto the platform, 1 heard their vehicle start—it sounded like a truck; a manual transmission. Took a quick look at my fish tank. He had ripped out the PVC spray rail, but the pump was still working. Even so, the idea of him trying to futz my aquarium infuriated me. I hustled up the steps, took the keys to my own truck from the hook beside the door, and then drove down the shell drive, hoping to catch them.
At the end of the drive was a four-way stop. Turn left, you'd soon be on Periwinkle, Sanibel's main road and the only route to the mainland causeway. Go straight, along Tarpon Bay Road, and you'd end up at the beach. Turn right, the road led to Blind Pass, across which is the bridge to Captiva Island. The Sanibel Causeway was the only mainland umbilical; there was no highway egress from Captiva, so it seemed unlikely that they would have turned right. Yet a lingering haze of dust told me that they had gone toward Captiva.
I turned, powering through the gears, driving fast. There was no traffic: black two-lane road; black hedge of trees on both sides. There were a couple of fishermen on the Blind Pass Bridge—no matter what time of the night, there were always fishermen—so I stopped long enough to ask one of them if a pickup truck had recently passed. Got a shrug for a response. 'Little bit ago. Maybe.'
I crossed the bridge, onto Captiva. Pale rind of beach and night sea to my left, winter estates to my right: vacation homes set way back in, cloaked by tree shadow, their driveways marked by driftwood signs. Over on Sulphur Wells, winter residents hung plastic placards from their mailboxes, naming their mobile homes as cleverly as they named their cheap boats: Lay-Z-Daze, Snow Bird, Sea-Ducer. Here on Captiva, though, the names—carved into the driftwood—communicated the power of old money and lofty society: Sea Grape Lodge, Casuarina, Tortuga, White Heron House. Why would two vandals flee to Captiva?
At a resort and marina called 'Tween Waters, I turned into the parking lot. Plenty of rental cars, but no pickup trucks. Headed back onto the beach road, still determined to catch them—at the very least, get their license number. Drove clear to the security gates of a massive resort, South Seas Plantation—as far as you can drive on Captiva Island. Nothing but private tennis courts, condominiums, and a golf course beyond. No sign of a truck anywhere. Didn't pass a single car. So maybe I'd guessed wrong. Maybe they'd turned toward the causeway bridge, not Captiva. Or maybe they had detoured down one of the side roads. Whatever they'd done, I'd lost them.
I turned around and headed back toward Sanibel, driving my normal speed—slow—arm out the window, feeling the sea wind, feeling the anger recede, but still wondering why anyone would want to destroy my fish tank.
It was nearly four a.m. by the time I got to Dinkin's Bay.
Chapter 9
Each Saturday at sunset, the fishing guides and the live-aboards throw money in a pot to finance Dinkin's Bay's weekly Pig Roast and Beer Cotillion. The name is misleading because pigs and cotillions don't play a role. Beer, however, does. Ice is shoveled into Igloos, and the beer is buried deep. Kelly, from the take-out, loads the picnic table over by the sea grape tree with platters of shrimp and fried conch and anything else that happens to be lying around the kitchen. The live-aboards begin socializing on the docks, freshly showered and drinks in hand, at sunset. Which is usually about the time the guides finish washing down their skiffs.
For the first hour or so, it's marina community only. No wandering tourists allowed, no locals looking for a free meal. There is a chain-link gate on the shell road that leads to the marina, and Mack keeps the gate closed. But after all the food has been eaten, and if there's still enough beer, Mack strolls out and opens the gate. After that, the length of the party is commensurate with the endurance of marina residents and outsiders alike.
Saturday morning, I forced myself to get up at a respectable time—seven—and spent the whole day working. First, I replaced the PVC sprayer bar on my fish tank. Then I went to work in my lab. I'd gotten the sea horses I needed, and the dissections and mounting process went pretty well. I also took a look at the snook that I had retrieved from Useppa. Aside from the net-burn scars, I could find nothing unusual. No trauma that might have occurred from an explosion, no metallic discoloration of key internal organs that might indicate death by poisoning. My guess was, someone had netted the fish and allowed it to die slowly on the deck of a boat.
Most of my work was done. So, just before sunset, I showered, changed into jeans and a gray flannel shirt, and ambled through the mangroves to the marina. Found that the mood around Dinkin's Bay did not have its usual screw-it-all-this-is-Saturday-night ebullience. The marina had officially closed for the day, but Mack was still busy serving as line chief to the cleanup operations.
