Captiva

rest up to him. Everything nice and legal. . . relatively legal. The oudaw netters wouldn't even know that I had been there.

But there was too much wind, too much loud music.

I lay there in the water for more than an hour, hoping they'd shut that damn radio off. They never did. The only time they moved away from the fire—or the bottle—was to wander off into the mangroves. Because this was a two-month base camp, I guessed they'd had the good sense to designate a latrine area.

When I realized that, I realized my plan could still work—but with some tough modifications.

For some reason, that pleased me very much.

I reached into one of the boats and stole a coil of nylon rope. Then crawled out into water deep enough to float me, before swimming log-slow southward from their camp, toward the mangrove fringe. When I was shielded by the trees, I sat up, took off my fins, and wedged them tight into the A.L.I.C.E. pack. Then I put on the night- vision goggles and began to work my way carefully, quietly over the monkey-bar conduit of tree roots. January or not, mosquitoes found me. Cold or not, I was sweating by the time I finally found the little clearing. There was a wooden bench. A roll of toilet paper had been fitted onto a broken limb.

Through instinct and long conditioning, a human being knows that if there is enough light to see, then there is enough light to be seen. That instinct must be ignored while wearing Starlite goggles, particularly if you are hunched down in a swamp, lying stump-still . . . and on the hunt for other humans.

I decided to wait for Julie. I didn't like the bastard anyway, and he, at least, had a motive for attacking Tomlinson. I could picture the wolfish look he had given me while calmly lying to Arlis Futch. And I was still curious about the fragment of sentence I had heard: If you ever tell another living soul what I just said . . .

But Julie apparently had a plumbing system of iron. Or he was too lazy to leave the beach. Over the space of the next hour, four men stumbled through the bushes, did their business, and left. I was close enough to each man to reach out and grab him had I wanted. One of them carried a flashlight, which almost caused me to jump up into sprint position. But I remained frozen . . . closed my eyes as the light panned across the roots within which I lay . . . and he did not notice.

Tomlinson had once told me that too many people see only what they expect to see. It was true.

Finally, I heard the by now familiar rattle of bushes, and Julie came down the path. He was fiddling with his belt, already unzipping his pants. A cigarette hung from his lips. Through the Starlite goggles, the ash of the cigarette glowed like an infrared eye. I watched him drop his pants and take a seat on the bench.

I waited until he was done. Waited until he reached down for his underwear, and then I jumped him. Clapped my hand over his mouth as he went down, jammed my elbow hard into the base of his skull. When he made a meek effort to struggle, I whispered into his ear, 'Make a sound . . . try to fight me . . . I'll cut your throat.' Then I sapped him with my elbow again.

I felt his body go limp beneath me. Maybe he was unconscious, maybe he wasn't. Fear is the most powerful tranquilizer there is. I used electrical tape on him: hands, ankles, eyes, and mouth.

Then I hoisted Julie onto my shoulder, carried him to the water, and swam him out to my boat.

Chapter 16

I didn't remove the tape from Julie's mouth until we were fifteen miles or so away, on a deserted island named Patricio. Patricio had once been home to a couple of hardscrabble, turn-of-the-century farming families. All that remained of those long-gone lives were a couple of shell-mortar water cisterns and contours of high mounds the farmers had once plowed.

In South Florida, jungle is quick to reclaim the transgressions of man.

I'd used the stolen rope to tie Julie by the ankles. Tossed the rope over the thick limb of a ficus tree, then hauled him high, suspending him like a trophy fish. Let him swing helplessly for a few minutes, hands bound behind his back, before I walked over and stripped the tape away.

His voice had a shrill energy. 'Goddamn, this is a joke? This better be a joke! Untie me, take this damn tape off my eyes!'

Listened to him rattle on for a while; recognized the sound of fear in him—an overoxygenated breath- lessness. Finally, in a low voice, I silenced him, saying, 'Nope. No joke.' Gave it a Deep South inflection: Nawp. No-o-o joke.

'Then what? Why? Who the hell are you!'

On the ride to Patricio, I'd decided how I was going to work it. Now I let Julie hear the voice of my imaginary accomplice—cupped my hands around my mouth, turned my back to him, and spoke a few sentences of cold, nasal Spanish.

'You guys Cubans? Jesus, what is this?'

I said, 'I ain't no Cuban. And it ain't none of your business what my boss is. He says he wants you to talk. I was you, I'd start talkin'.'

'About what? Shit! Cut me down. Hell, whatever you want to know, I'll tell you. I can't think like this. Feels like my head's 'bout to explode.'

'We listened to you boys on the beach. That's what he wants to know about.'

'Huh?'

'My boss and me heard you tell that real interestin' story. The guy you beat.'

'The hippie, you mean? That's why—because of what we did to the hippie?'

I thought: Got you, you bastard.

More Spanish. I pretended to translate: 'The hippie don't mean nothin' to my boss, but he says maybe we should hear you tell it again anyway. See if you tell it twice the same way. My boss, I guess he thinks you might try an' lie to us. That wouldn't be good, you lied to us.'

Through the night-vision goggles, Julie's face had begun to resemble an engorged green grape. His breathing had become so rapid that I wondered if he would pass out. Snatch a person out of familiar surroundings, tape him, soak him, then short-circuit his equilibrium, and an existential terror will erase all the familiar groundings of self. I took no joy in his reaction . . . and was relieved that I didn't—only the truly twisted find pleasure in wielding dominance over another human life. Yet neither did I feel much pity.

'He's not gonna . . . kill me, is he?'

He was asking about my boss.

'You talk, probably not. That's up to him.'

'I mean it, I'll tell you anything you boys want to know. Hell, you and me . . . the way you sound, we prob'ly got some of the same friends. You from around here? I know lots'a people from around here. You cut me down, I'll answer all the questions you got. Man, I'll help you.'

I said, 'Nope. The man pays me, so I do what he says. I hear what you're sayin', but these Colombians, they ain't like us, buddy-row.' Listened to a sound of pure anguish escape from Julie— Colombians—before continuing. 'My advice is, you start talkin' straight. My boss, he listens to me sometimes. You help us, I'll try to help you. You give us the information he wants and I don't see no particular need to kill you. I'll tell him that. But if he does give me the order, partner, I promise you this: A coupl'a country boys like you and me, well. . . I'll make it so you won't feel a thing. That's not somethin' I do for ever'body.'

'Oh God . . .'

Julie began to talk. He talked nonstop. What had happened, he said, was Tomlinson had walked right into their camp. Julie, of course, recognized him—'He an' this big dude jumped me a while back'—and there was a rumor being spread around the island that Tomlinson was a spy. To them, it made sense. Some of the other men in the camp knew that Tomlinson had been talking to commercial fishermen on Sulphur Wells, asking lots of questions. What Tomlinson was, said Julie, was an informer sent to snoop around by some government agency. So they had slapped him around a little, trying to make him confess, but Tomlinson wouldn't talk.

'You should've made him talk,' I said encouragingly.

'Man, we tried! But he just kept sayin' weird shit, not at all what we was askin' him. Like this stupid poetry