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Moe said, “It is good news, but I want to show you,” as he skimmed what Bern had posted next:

Lyle Alzado, L.A. Raiders badass. Sid Gillman. Sid Luck-man. Benny Friedman. Ron Mix, called “the greatest tackle who ever lived.” Mike Rosenthal, star lineman at 6?7? 315 lbs. Hayden Epstein, Lennie Friedman, Sage Rosenfels, defensive end…

Bern said, “Show me what?” glancing at his watch: 6:15 P.M. Where the hell’s Augie with my boat? Then asked, “Why do you have that idiotic smirk on your face?”

Moe said, “This list of football players? I’ve never heard of any of them—”

“They’re great athletes, that’s who they are, you racist asshole! You couldn’t carry their jocks—as if it’s any of your fucking business. What do you want to show me?”

Moe stood, went around the desk, moving faster as he passed his boss, then opened the door. “You don’t have to worry about Javier no more, that’s the good news. Me neither, ’cause what I did is okay. He could’ve had a gun. We didn’t search him. Come on out, you can see it from the docks.”

A fisherman had found Javier Castillo’s body floating in the bay about three hundred yards south of the marina, Moe said.

From the docks, Bern and Moe watched EMTs and an investigator from the medical examiner’s office bag the body. It was an hour before sunset—pretty, beyond the raft of law enforcement boats, where the sky was yellow streaked above mangrove islands. In the shallows, long-legged birds waded, some of them flamingo pink, on this falling tide.

Sounding nervous again, Moe said, “The cops are probably looking for me right now. They’ll want to question me again. Jesus Christ, Bern. I killed a man. But I was afraid he was gonna shoot us, right?”

Bern was smiling for the first time in days. “Yeah.”

31

When we got back to Sanibel, Mack had to call the police to escort Augie off marina property. The sight of Jeth and Tomlinson sitting on the Viking’s flybridge, trying to back the monster into a Dinkin’s Bay slip was too much for him.

“That’s my boat. Indian Harbor’s property. You can’t just take what’s mine!”

We’d gotten a rope on the Viking while she was adrift. First Jeth, then Tomlinson, used the line to pull themselves aboard, then fired the twin Detroit diesels. They swung the vessel off its collision course with Estero Island, toward deeper water, then contacted John MacNeal through the marine operator. From the trawler’s pilothouse radio, we listened to them share the good news.

The boat was their custodial responsibility pending negotiations of a salvage fee, a date to be set sometime after the holidays. Until then, no Indian Harbor personnel were to be allowed aboard.

Augie had his uncle’s mean streak, but he didn’t have his self-control. As we turned into the marina basin, half an hour behind the much faster Viking, Augie was still pacing and fuming. “My personal belongings are on that fucking boat. Trippe’s, too. Our clothes, our wallets. My uncle has a ton of shit on the Viking, man, he loves that boat—which is worth a half million, easy!

“You think he beat the shit out of you before? Wait ’til he hears about this. What you’re doing is stealing!”

I hadn’t said a word to Augie, but now I did. “A friend of mine named Javier’s in the same situation. There ought to be a law, huh?”

J eth had called ahead on the VHF, so there was a crowd of islanders waiting on the dock. It was an hour before sunset, so a lot of them would have been there anyway, but news of the Viking added a celebratory note. Spoils of salvage—it’s a whimsical phrase when used around a marina because it’s usually a pirate fantasy.

Not this time, though. The boat was real, islanders wanted to hear what they expected to be an interesting story, and were eager to have a look at this big-dollar craft with luxury appointments that included a sunken tub in the master stateroom, full kitchen, a wet bar, a sophisticated Bose entertainment system, even a central vacuum station.

Among those on the dock was Jeth’s wife, Janet, who appeared healthy, ripening, and happy from my vantage point on the trawler’s flybridge. Her man was back in business. She wouldn’t have to return to Ohio as one more casualty of the hurricane.

It was a pleasant scene to watch, until Arlis launched into another one of his monologues.

“See there? Jeth can’t get the boat docked because there’s not enough water. I told him that boat draws too much for Dinkin’s Bay. On this tide? You see herons standing on grass flats, that should tell you something!

“Take it to Ferry Boat Landing, down on Lighthouse Point, I said. Or South Seas Plantation. But would he listen to me? Hell, no. I’ve only lived around here seventy-some years. Only driven every kind of vessel except for the space shuttle and a submarine. So why should he listen to an expert when he can make a fool of himself showing how bullheaded he is…”

My impatience with Arlis now bordered on animosity. What had Hannah seen in this undersized man with his oversized ego? If he didn’t have information I wanted, I would’ve kept a boat length between us.

But I still had lots of questions.

I had waited until we were off the beach that fronted Chestra’s family home, Southwind, before asking about the escaped German prisoner of war. Maybe seeing the place would jog the old man’s memory.

In reply, Arlis made a grunting sound of disinterest, and said, “Maybe what I need to do is put all my stories down in a book. If I do, I’ll let you buy the first copy.”

Ask the man to talk, he wouldn’t. Ignore him and he wouldn’t shut up. There seemed to be an old-time horse trader’s dynamic at play: Information that I wanted was valuable. It went against his instincts to give it away. Information I didn’t want, though, was worthless, so he could ramble all he liked.

Frustrating. I considered trying reverse psychology, but that only works when both parties want it to work and both think there’s something to gain. Arlis was too smart. I didn’t have the patience.

So I tried again. Took the straightforward approach. Asked what he meant when he implied that one of the Dorn girls had helped the German POW. There was also a snide inference about a man named Peter Jefferson.

Arlis loosened slightly. “There was no better family on the islands than Oscar Jefferson’s people. They got along fine with everybody. The Dorns and Brusthoffs owned that house right there”—he swung his eyes to the beach, where Southwind was fading from sight off our stern—“but they were still tourists.

“Could be ol’ Peter got sweet on one of those pretty Dorn girls—not a smart thing to do in those times, mess with a white girl, no matter how fine a people the Jeffersons were. Then someone found Peter walking like a zombie down the sand road, skin hanging off him he was burnt so bad. The Kraut did it. Though Peter didn’t live long enough to say it was true.”

If the murderer was a local, he said, the truth would have slipped out as the decades passed.

“The Krauts had been sneaking around the island for a couple of weeks by then. Someone was helping them, giving them food. We found lots of their tracks going back and forth to the house where the Dorn girls lived—”

I interrupted. “Their tracks?”

“How many sets of tracks do you expect two men to make?”

“I thought you said there was only one.”

“No, I told you there was three escaped P-O-Ws from the Belle Glade camp. Not one. Three.” He exhaled noisily. Why did he bother?

“Okay. All three POWs found their way to the islands, and you captured one.”

“I didn’t say that, neither! How the hell am I supposed to know if all three come here? There was tracks from two men, but we only caught the one. Maybe the third one didn’t walk around much. Maybe he wasn’t a Kraut. Or maybe he was a Kraut and went to Key West and opened a perfume store, how would I know? You think I’m a mind reader or something?”

Impossible to keep the man on topic. I said, “You think they got help at the Dorn house, though. Am I clear on that?”