Captiva

crap and Bible verses. And was too scared to fight back a'tall. So what you gonna do? I made an example out of him. Hell, we had plans to track that hippie down and nail him anyway. So I thumped him pretty good. We dumped him off on the road, and we dropped his girlfriend's truck back where he was livin'. How else you gonna deal with somebody like that?'

I was feeling no pity at all for Julie now. But I said, 'Sounds like the pure damn truth to me.'

'Hell yes, it's the truth. I'll be straight with you guys. I'll work with you.'

I told Julie that I appreciated that. Told him I was going to try and convince my boss that Julie was actually a pretty good guy. I moved off through the bushes and had a whispered conversation, South American Spanish, then slow Spanish with a Deep South accent. Returned to Julie's side—his body convulsed at my touch—and said, 'Thing is, now my boss wants me to ask you some other questions . . .'

'If I know the answer, you got it!'

Julie didn't realize how much he knew. It took a long, long while to scrape pieces of information out of him. It wasn't that he wasn't willing to talk—'I'll tell you anything I know, man!'—but what he might think was some mundane, unimportant incident might, to me, be a key bit of data.

So I took my time with him. Showed a lot of patience. I became his buddy. Played good cop to my Colombian boss's bad cop. I didn't want Julie so desperate that he would begin inventing information just to please us. I comforted him, I complimented his memory when he reached down deep and brought out a name or some other forgotten fact. Gradually, very gradually, I pieced together the information I wanted.

Julie knew a lot about a lot of things. He told me how the boat-theft ring worked. They trucked the stolen engines to a little house Kemper Waits had back in the palmetto flats. There was a shallow freshwater pond behind the house. They dumped the engines in the pond—no one would ever think to look there—and then waited until it was safe to truck them north to Georgia where Waits had connections with a professional chop shop. The fresh water didn't hurt the engine components, and the chop shop paid off in cash, or in cocaine. Waits preferred cocaine. It was a lot more valuable to him—particularly now, since the local netters were going to have so much more time in their hands. Waits believed the net ban would help open up a whole new market. Give the younger ones enough free cocaine to get them interested, then get them involved in the stolen outboard motor business. Waits didn't like or trust the Sulphur Wells locals, and they didn't like or trust him. For Waits, it was just one more way to even the score.

Julie knew less about the bomb that had killed Jimmy Darroux, but he knew enough. Once again, Waits had played a central role. Julie didn't know for certain, but he thought Waits had built the bomb in a little concrete block shed near his house. Only he had heard that maybe, just maybe, Waits had botched the bomb intentionally as a favor to a friend. 'Jimmy Darroux, hell, he was a pretty good buddy of mine,' Julie said. 'But I think he may'a stepped on the wrong toes, probably over that bitch of a wife he had.'

I didn't want to press the issue too hard. I wanted Julie to leave the island with an entirely different impression about why he was being questioned. I nudged the conversation off the topic, then nudged it back again. Then I listened very carefully, as Julie said, 'There's this guy used to work for the state. Him an' Kemper, they're pretty tight. Might go into business together. This guy used to come around an' inspect Kemper's boats an' stuff, give him advice about how he could fish better. He's the one says we can't take this net ban bullshit laying down. He told us he didn't recommend breaking any laws, but the only way to get Tallahassee's attention is to do like a white man's riot. You know, like burn baby burn. Hell, those people always get their way. The man's been up there in Tallahassee working; part of it all. So he'd know. I think it was him that give Kemper some book on how to make a bomb. I heard he told Kemper he prob'ly shouldn't do it, but Kemper, he went ahead and did it anyway.'

I wondered if Raymond Tullock had also told them they probably shouldn't beat Tomlinson senseless— after confiding that his Tallahassee contacts had confirmed that Tomlinson had been sent to Sulphur Wells as an informant.

Didn't ask. Didn't need to ask. Instead, I got Julie talking about the cocaine trade. I didn't care about it, but I wanted him to think that I did. He kept asking for water—his throat was so dry. I told him he could have all the water when we were done. He tried to ingratiate himself—'Only a coupl'a good ol' boys like you an' me'd understand that!'—and through his abject eagerness to cooperate, he begged for his life.

I grew sick of him. I was sickened by the whole situation. One of the locker room maxims of hydrology is that shit never flows uphill. The maxim applies to human social dynamics as well. When the good ones, the hardworking hill climbers, are displaced for any reason—bad legislation, ghetto diffusion, or political leveraging—social sewage will flood in to fill the void. It was too damn bad. I wondered if the paper Tomlinson had intended to write on Sulphur Wells would have touched on that dynamic. Decided that Tomlinson's paper would have addressed that, along with subtleties that were beyond my power to understand.

I looked at Julie hanging there. He looked lifeless and mummified, like a mounted fish. Allowed myself to picture, for a moment, this big, loose-limbed goon pounding Tomlinson's face . . . quickly forced the image out of my mind because I didn't know if I could tolerate the cold and calculating rage that filled me.

I said, 'Tuck your chin up against your chest,' and I cut him down. The shock of the landing knocked the wind out of him. I rolled him over onto his belly, and as I sliced through the tape on his wrists, I said, 'My boss says I can let you live, but there're a couple of conditions—Get your damn hands away from that tape on your eyes!'

Julie dropped his hands immediately. 'Anything, man. Name it.' He was sitting up, rubbing his wrists, massaging his cheeks.

'My boss's got what you might call an import-export business of his own. Only it's no piddly-shit operation like you're used to. He was thinkin' about usin' that guy Kemper Waits to expand into the area, only, after what you told us, Waits sounds like some dumb ass hick.'

'He is! Kemper . . . Kemper, he's about half crazy.'

'My boss is thinkin' maybe you might be a better choice. Set you up here, let you work into it slow. Rules are simple: We supply the product, you find your own distributors. Screw up and we kill you.'

I could see Julie shiver at the thought of that. 'I'd ... I'd get paid, right?'

'Make more money'n you ever made in your life. Move down here full-time, Julius. Buy yourself a nice place —that's right, we know who ya are, where you're from. First thing we got to do, though, is knock Kemper Waits away from the trough.'

'You want me to kill—'

'I want you to keep your damn mouth shut till I'm done. The way were gonna work it is, we got a man on our payroll in the area. A local cop by the name'a Jackson. Now, Julius, you ever so much as hint to Jackson or anybody else that you know he's on our payroll, you're gonna be one of those ones I told you about. The ones I'm not always so nice to?' I waited for Julie to nod his head eagerly before continuing. 'We're gonna have Jackson come down hard on Waits. You're gonna cooperate. Tell him everything you know. Might even have him arrest you on some piddly-ass little thing just to make it look good. Don't worry about it. Jackson'll be told you're one of us when the time's right. When Kemper Waits is out of the way, that's when you'll take over.'

I patted him on the head; felt him flinch. Said, 'It'll be light in another hour or so. You flag yourself down a ride. Wait for us to get in touch. You handled yourself pretty good tonight, Julius. Most times, they bawl like babies. That's how we know you'll fit right in. My boss, he's pretty impressed.'

Julie wasn't sure he was allowed to speak. 'You mean this was like a sort of. . . test?'

I was already walking away, making enough noise for two people. 'My boss runs a class operation. Can't just let any shit-stomper in.'

I was almost to the water when I heard Julie call through the trees, 'Hey—fellas? FELLAS? You boys . . . you boys made the right decision. Thanks!'

As I took my time running back to Dinkin's Bay, the first smear of daylight hung foglike over Sulphur Wells. . . then expanded out of the Pine Island tree line: a stratum of gray membrane that, gradually, was streaked with conch pink and violet. Somewhere—over Bimini, maybe; someplace in the Bahamas chain—the sun was wheeling hard around the rim of earth, moving incrementally across the Gulf Stream toward Florida.

I was thinking about Raymond Tullock. I had seen him only twice, yet the image of him was picture-sharp in my brain: Not as tall as Hannah, but still a big man. Six feet, six one maybe. Tight muscularity. Hundred and eighty pounds, maybe one-ninety. The kind who worked out, stayed fit. Probably had a NordicTrack at home or a weight machine. Maybe a membership to a good health and tennis club. Early to mid thirties, and very careful about his