Captiva

one's spooky. That one really would work?'

I almost said, 'I've seen it work.' Instead, I said, 'That's what I read. Since the late sixties, the revolutionary types have published black market booklets on the subject.' I listed some of the names.

Jackson knew them. We talked about that. We talked about the lunatic fringe. We talked about the political far right and the political far left being different sides of the same frightening coin. We talked about dangerous times, and maybe Australia would be nice, or New Zealand. Go down there to Auckland, watch the America's Cup races. Finally, as we turned at the shell road into Dinkin's Bay, Jackson began to tell me about the bomb. 'What the A.T.F. people found,' he said, 'was enough to tell us that it was probably too sophisticated for Jimmy Darroux. Like you said, he was the impulsive type. This bomb would have taken some sober thinking and some reading.'

'The A.T.F. is sure about that?'

'Yeah. What they found were the leg wires from a blasting cap, some bits of wire from the internal workings of an outboard motor, and a chunk of timing switch off a battery charger.'

I said, 'So, when they trace the components back, you'll have your bad guys.'

Jackson was shaking his head. 'The wire was from a two-hundred-horse Mercury built two years ago in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, sold out of a Bonita Springs marina to a guy we've already interviewed. He reported the motor stolen three months ago. The battery charger was the type fishermen use to keep their trolling motors charged up. Same thing. It was on a boat stolen last month. Listed on the insurance claim sheet along with the other stuff the owner had on the boat. Everything the A.T.F. found was stolen material.'

'The blasting cap?'

'The leg wires were off a Combie Model 305 L-P, made within the last two years and used commonly by contractors. Build roads, blast rock quarries. That sort of thing. The A.T.F. people haven't been able to trace it that fine yet. They're not sure they'll be able to. A blasting cap always maintains a paper trail—least, it's supposed to— but there are a bunch of them out there.'

That was certainly true. I'd used blasting caps to do fish-census work on small bodies of water.

Jackson said, 'So that's what we're faced with. We'll have your standard pissed-off, drunk commercial fishermen out there setting fires, stealing engines—maybe stretching cables. We'll have your standard pissed-off, drunk sportfishermen out there trying to get even. But a guy who will sit down with a book, figure out how to make a bomb, then actually do it— that's a whole different animal.'

I said, 'Yeah, but they're novices. There's no doubt about that.' In reply to Jackson's upraised eyebrows, I added, 'Jimmy Darroux? The guy who carries the bomb isn't supposed to get blown up, right?'

Chapter 11

That afternoon, I motored over to Tomlinson's sailboat to get the gear he said he needed. I had no idea what time Hannah would come by to get his stuff. Presumably, she would be out mullet fishing, so it might be dusk or it might be midnight. Some perverse side of me hoped it would be late; the later, the better. I was, perhaps, suffering what the writer Jack London, in his letters, referred to as the urges of 'animal-man.' It is described less succinctly now: horny . . . pocket-proud . . . three-legged and dumb. All of which were accurate enough, but realizing it made me feel no less insipid.

Even so, motoring toward Tomlinson's No Mas, I tested out potential scenarios: Invite Hannah in, show her around. Put on some music—see if she liked Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young as much as The Doors. Offer her a drink—that was the sociable thing to do. Someone had left a bottle of wine in my refrigerator, but it had been opened . . . three weeks ago? Maybe longer. Well. . . she might enjoy it anyway. It couldn't be any stronger than that sulfur-water tea of hers. Let her walk around my place, wineglass in hand . . . feel the vibration of her weight through the wooden floor—just like at Gumbo Limbo, where she'd traced the shape of my ear with her fingernail, and told me about watching me take my rain barrel shower.

Then I caught myself. Was it happening again?

As I stood at the controls of my boat, I made a conscious effort to shift the subject to other matters. , . .

No problem. Not at all like the previous Thursday night when, for a short time, I had so clearly demonstrated symptoms of obsession that I still found it surprising ... a little troubling, too.

I smiled; spoke aloud: 'You dumb ass.' And thought: If I invite Hannah in, it will only be to gather information for Jackson.

But, at the same time, my perverse side whispered: A glass of wine . . . music. Remember? No strings attached. . . .

Once on Tomlinson's boat, I didn't even have to step down into the cabin to realize that no, there was not sufficient ice in the man's ice locker, and yes, the fish fillets had been unhappily decomposing in this happy vegetarian home.

So, using a plastic bag in lieu of gloves, I dropped the mess overboard. Was tempted to drop the plastic bag and plate overboard too, but enough people were already using the coast as a garbage dump. Finally decided what the ice locker needed was a bucket of Clorox water, a lot of scrubbing, then a good airing out. If it wasn't done now, the stink would seep into the cushions.

Each time I lifted out some remnant of macrobiotic, vegetarian goo, each time I had to lunge up out of the Clorox fumes to suck a fresh breath of air, I reminded myself that Tomlinson would not have hesitated to perform the same nasty task for me.

If he wasn't too preoccupied to think about it. . . .

When I got back to my fish house, Janet was just finishing up. By my reckoning, she had notes on four separate hours of tarpon observation, those hours spaced between ten a.m. and five p.m. She looked pretty proud of herself, standing there in baggy jeans and brown sweatshirt. Stood by my side as I went over her field notes on the clipboard; had a nervous habit of licking her lips whenever I paused over an entry or seemed even mildly confused.

'At this point—' She was pointing to one of the field sheets I had composed. 'That's when the man showed up to see you. Uh—'

'Ron Jackson,' I provided.

'Yeah, but what happened was, I lost my concentration, so I was unsure if I'd seen Green Flag roll first or the Red Threat, so I just—'

'The Red Threat?' I asked, smiling at her.

She whacked me on the sleeve and said, 'You spend four or five hours watching a bunch of fish, I'd like to hear the names you'd give them! You know, from history class? The red threat?' As if I were being dumb. 'I'm a teacher, for God's sake. You think they only let us teach one subject at a school with only four hundred kids? But what I was telling you about was that entry—'

'The other fish is Green Flag? Is that like Greenpeace or—'

'As in the green flag Moslems? In Egypt, but after the decline? Geez, Ford, you must read nothing but journals.'

Now I really was beginning to feel dumb.

'Okay, okay, they are very . . . well thought-out names.'

Janet lowered the clipboard. Had a nice little energy in her laugh. 'You think it's silly, don't you? Naming the fish. Honest now, all the time you spend with them, you've never gave them names?'

I had never even named my boats. 'Let me think here—'

'Because to me, they seem to have individual. . . It's like they behave differently, one not like the other. The Red Threat, he's the mobile type. He doesn't wait for the others to act, he just does it. Swoops around in there when he's in the mood, and the others follow.' She paused, looking at me. She was serious. 'You never have favorites?'

'Well. . .'

'But don't think it influenced any of my observations,' she added quickly; she'd realized what I might have been thinking and wanted to put my mind at ease. 'Everything's there on the field sheets, just how I saw it.'