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The green boat. Bern was now staring at the green boat.

In his robot voice, the boss was saying, “Drug smugglers, I’ve heard they used to smuggle in marijuana. At this dock, right here where we’re standing. Cocaine. Illegal substances.” Bern was walking toward the green boat now, his movements also mechanical. “If this poor dead girl was involved with those sorts of people…drug smugglers? Pimps, maybe. I hate to say this, but she probably got what she deserved.”

There was someone in the boat, Moe realized. That’s what Bern had noticed. A shadowy figure…a man, just his forehead and eyes showing over the side of the boat, watching what was happening.

Didn’t think he’d been spotted. But now…?

Bern continued talking, probably to cover the sound of his footsteps on gravel. “A real stroke of luck, Moe, you almost dropping that barrel on me. The poor woman. She could’ve been in there for decades, and maybe has family still wondering what happened to her. That’s if her family’s still alive or cares anything about a girl who hung out with drug filth like she must’ve…”

It was the colored guy hiding in the boat. The Cuban who’d gone nuts and got arrested—Javier, who Moe had always enjoyed talking with, sometimes standing on the dock drinking coffee together before the man’s fishing clients arrived.

Javier was standing now, realizing he’d been spotted. He seemed undecided about whether to run or not as Bern continued toward him, walking slower now so as not to scare the man, a sick-looking smile trying to form on Bern’s face. “Javier? Is that you? Javier! How you doin’? It’s okay. No need to be scared. You think you’ve had a bad day? Personally, I’ve had a heck of a day. Climb down out of there and I’ll tell you about Augie taking us out in the Viking—you’ll get a laugh out of this one.”

In his mind, Moe was yelling at the Cuban, telling him: Run! Get the hell out of here, you idiot! You can’t see why he’s being so nice?

Moe wanted to run, too. He wanted to get in his truck, leave the marina, leave Florida, go back to Indiana and get a factory job; dump his fiancee who never stopped badgering him to get a better job, make more money, move up the ladder. Join the Kiwanis? He told her he’d do it, and it still wasn’t enough.

But he couldn’t run. Not now. Not after witnessing what had come out of that barrel.

In Moe’s mind, a question kept cycling over and over: How did Bern Heller know that the bird- looking creature with the human hand was a woman?

Something else: How much would it be worth to Bern if Moe didn’t ask?

25

218 September, Saturday

Sunset 7:27 P.M.

Low tide 7:28 P.M.

Two more tropical cyclones designated; weather deteriorating in Gulf.

At noon, two hours later than planned, we freed the lines of the thirty-two-foot Island Gypsy after Jeth came aboard and told us, “I give up. Javier doesn’t answer his cell phone, and his home phone hasn’t worked since the hurricane. We’ll have to dive the wreck without him.”

We motored out the channel toward Pine Island Sound. Jeth was at the wheel, his mood as glum as the weather. His attitude: Javier’s desperate for money, but the bonehead doesn’t show up for a paying job? Even so, he provided a steady flow of excuses in his pal’s defense.

“Maybe he and his wife got back together—that would explain why he didn’t call. Or maybe one of his daughters got hurt or sick…”

He was irritated. Understandable. He’d wasted most of the morning making phone calls, hailing other skippers on the VHF, trying to track down his buddy. Javier had not only stood us up, he’d made us late—intolerable, in the world of charter boat captains.

“Or maybe Javier fell off the dock with the phone in his pocket, I’ve done that plenty of times…”

Aggravated and protective both. Worried, too. We all were. What we knew about Javier Castillo was this: The man was a professional. To miss a charter and not notify us? Something serious had happened.

Wind had swung from the southwest, fifteen to twenty knots, seas six to eight feet, according to the VHF radio mounted above the Island Gypsy’s stainless wheel, clutch levers to the left, chrome throttles on the right. The vessel had twin Volvo diesels, so it was fast for a trawler—thirteen knots cruising speed, if the weather was right. Her control console was mahogany, gauges mounted flush: fuel, oil pressure, water temp, twin tachometers. Electronics were in Plexiglas cabinets—sonar, GPS, and radar—all screens easy to read without having to look away from the vessel’s huge windshield.

Looking through the windshield now, I could see the foredeck begin to lift and fall, Picnic Island and Punta Rassa in the distance, gray waves bigger as we turned south toward the causeway, already lots of car traffic lined up on this Saturday afternoon—because of storm damage, the bridge was closed every other hour for repairs.

Sanibel Lighthouse lay beyond, and the Gulf of Mexico.

“Last time I was in a boat this big, I was still managing the fish co-op at Gumbo Limbo. Before the Yankee bastards tore the place down and named it Indian Harbor. It was a big ol’ Hatteras, and Hannah Smith was aboard. She’d never seen the Tortugas.”

Arlis Futch was talking, standing next to Tomlinson, who was at the chart table reviewing my dive plan. Tomlinson shot me a quick look when Arlis mentioned Hannah Smith. I’m not sure what my reaction was, but it seemed to amuse him.

As far as I was concerned, Arlis was good news. He’d heard Jeth hailing skippers on the radio and offered to check Javier’s house, see if the man was there.

He wasn’t. Neither was his truck.

Arlis showed up at Dinkin’s Bay in his mullet boat half an hour later and offered to fill in.

The old man liked to talk, but that was okay. Maybe I was a little uncomfortable when he discussed Hannah, but I could endure that for a while, too. We needed another person who was good with boats and who had enough experience on the water that he could be trusted in a tight spot. This was going to be a difficult dive and I was glad he was along. Besides, I had questions to ask Arlis.

He was answering one now, which is why he was on the subject of women.

“Hannah Smith—now, there was a woman. Not beautiful in a flashy way. Not like that actress I told you about. Close my eyes, I can still picture her face, not all the details, of course—what was that, fifty-some years ago? I’m dang glad that she didn’t live to see what happened to her little yellow house on the Indian mound.”

Meaning Hannah, not the actress. He already told me that the name Marlissa Dorn didn’t ring any bells.

“I knowed there was some Dorns that vacationed on the islands. There was another family, too, and they was all part of the same clan by the name of…I can’t remember. You want to talk about beautiful women, though? Those women were all pretty as pictures, every single one. They come from money—of course, most people with mansions do.”

I asked, “Was the other name Engle, or Brusthoff?”

He said, “Maybe.”

A few minutes later, though, he said, “Marlissa…Marlissa. Hmm. Maybe I did hear that name a time or two before. Brusthoff, I know I heard that name.”

He remembered the boat—a good-sized Matthews with a black hull, and lightning fast for the times. It could’ve been the Coast Watch boat that went down the night of 19 October 1944. The name, though, hadn’t stuck with him.

“Dark Light,” he said, thinking about it. I watched him tilt his head upward and his eyes drift to the left. People commonly do that, I’ve noticed, when they’re trying to recall visual images. Numbers and hard facts, though, the reaction’s different. They often look downward or to the right. Arlis was trying to picture the boat.

“The name would make sense with that black hull. Thing is, I was working at the P-O-W camp in Fort Myers by then. So I’d lost touch with all the little details about what was going on on these islands.

“I hadn’t been on Sanibel for eight, ten months until a week or so before that dang storm hit. Talk about bad