design. She was a powerful lady, Hannah Smith.
Like the village she’d once called home, Hannah was gone.
Florida’s most destructive storms have been developmental, not environmental. I’d read about the village’s transformation in the newspaper, heard about it from locals. I hadn’t relished the idea of coming back. I’d done it for Jeth, no other reason. Now I was eager to leave.
Jeth was right. Indian Harbor Marina and Resort had a bad feel.
I’d wrapped the bronze eagle in a towel soaked in salt water. I now did the same with the death’s-head, as I said, “We’ve given Javier enough time. Let’s get out of here. There’s a better way to clean this stuff, anyway. When we get back to Sanibel, I’ll call an archaeologist pal of mine and we can do it in my lab.”
What was left of my lab, anyway.
I glanced toward the bay. “Where’s Tomlinson?”
“Huh?”
I repeated myself as I squatted, placed both towels in the five-gallon bucket, and nodded toward the docks where my boat was tied: a new twenty-one-foot Maverick with a ghost blue hull and a high-powered Yamaha engine on the back. Just looking at it gave me pleasure.
The boat was empty.
“Where’d he go?”
Tomlinson had witnessed our confrontation with Heller and Oswald. I’d told him to go back to my skiff and stay there in case we had to leave in a hurry. But giving an order to Tomlinson was another mistake. Counterculture visionaries have an aversion to authority. Ordering him to do something was a guarantee he’d do the opposite.
Jeth said, “Tomlinson’s about as predictable as a fart in a forest fire. He coulda wandered off anywhere, that bonehead. If it wasn’t for Javier, we shoulda left the moment I realized there was gonna be trouble…” He was looking over my shoulder, his face registering surprise, then tension. “Probably should of…buh-but it’s too late now. Here they come.”
Augie Heller and Oswald. And they had someone with them.
“Jesus, that’s the head guy, the owner,” Jeth said. “That smile of his…He sounds like the nicest Yankee in the world, but he looks at you like a bug he’d squash, give him a chance. I won’t even talk to him, he makes me so nervous. Which tah-tuh-tells you something.”
5
Augie and Oswald were walking fast toward us, an older man leading the way. He was NFL-sized, bald, late forties, with a monk’s dark wreath of hair. He was wearing shorts, TopSiders, a green polo shirt with marina logo. No one was smiling. They were pushing a hard-assed attitude ahead of them like an energy wave, the way they leaned, fists pumping.
Augie: Stocky, short, in his midtwenties, midwestern vowels; big-city volume. He had a swagger that comes with money and inherited power. His buddy Oswald was older by a decade. He was pudgy, with a bubble-shaped butt, but had the same attitude of tough-guy indifference. Another guess: He worked for Augie’s family.
As they got closer, I decided that the older guy
I got a glimpse of the smile Jeth mentioned. Jolly, but fixed in place, worn like a warning. It told you something about the owner. He was a handler; he knew how to deal with people and the smile was part of his technique. He was showing it to me, letting me know that he was nobody’s fool—if I was smart enough to read it.
I fitted the top onto the bucket. I used my eyes to motion toward the marina’s southern boundary, where I’d finally picked out Tomlinson. “There he is. It looks like he’s already irritating the hell out of everyone.”
Tomlinson was on the far side of the property, much of it still flooded, standing by a green boat on a trailer, talking to men who wore hard hats and orange vests. He’d wandered off shirtless, wearing baggy khaki shorts —“Bombay Bloomers,” he called them. Very British, with pleats, pockets, and a fly that buttoned. He’d bought knee-length socks to match. He was wearing them now with Birkenstock sandals—his “hurricane kit,” he called it.
Goggles, too. They were strapped around his neck like an RAF pilot, loose and ready—old-fashioned, with a leather strap and thick green lenses. “Kilner goggles,” Tomlinson had said they were, made in the early 1900s by a London physician. The special lenses, he claimed, revealed human auras and energy fields.
They were among the newest in Tomlinson’s long list of weird interests.
When I’d showed him the bronze eagle, he’d put the goggles to his eyes briefly. Bizarre.
Jeth said, “I don’t see him. Where?”
I pointed, watching as Tomlinson became animated, using his hands to converse with the men wearing hard hats. He gestured toward the green boat, angry for some reason. Why?
Jeth stared toward the parking lot for a moment. “Hey—that’s Javier’s boat. The green Pursuit, with twin Yamahas. What’s Tomlinson doing?”
What it looked like he was doing was climbing onto the boat. Maybe with reason: For the first time, I noticed Javier Castillo in the distance, walking like a man on a mission.
But why was Javier walking away from Tomlinson?
F rom a hundred yards, I watched two of the hard hats reach, grab Tomlinson by the belt, and haul him off the trailer as he tried to swing a lanky leg aboard the boat. One of the men wagged a finger in his face while another held him. A warning.
Three marina employees stood nearby, hands on hips, a classic aggressive posture intended to broaden a man’s shoulders.
I pointed at Javier, who had now reached the marina’s access road. Jeth and I both watched as he vaulted a fence rather than use the main entrance where a security truck was parked next to the gate. A clot of people were gathered outside the gate, no one getting in.
Jeth said, “Geez, the owner of this place really looks pissed off,” now gazing in the direction of the three men striding toward us. “He’s a big’un, huh?”
Yes, he was a big one. Coming to claim what we had taken from little Augie.
I lifted the bucket that contained the artifacts and said, “Time to leave. Go get Tomlinson. He’ll listen to you—put him in a headlock if he doesn’t. I’ll bring the skiff and meet you at that little clearing in the mangroves. Once we’re off marina property, there’s nothing they can do.”
Jeth tried to downplay his surprise. “You want to run?”
“Yes, I want to run.”
“I don’t know, Doc. You know how fishermen gossip. What’ll people say?”
“They’ll say we’re not in jail. Jeth…?” I glanced and saw that the men were closing. “Let’s
He did, grabbing his fishing gear and striding away from me, his eyes fixed, which caused the owner to pause, Augie and Oswald stumbling to a halt behind.
I waved at the three men. Gave the group a smile of my own, and pointed toward Tomlinson, who was still arguing with the hard hats.
Angry little mobs are unsettled by people who respond cheerfully. It added to their confusion.
When I got to my skiff, I set the bucket on the casting deck, then ignored it. I ignored the men, too. I knew they were watching as I waded through the flotsam toward the boat’s console. I got aboard and flicked a toggle switch beneath the wheel. There’s a built-in fiberglass tank astern plumbed to circulate salt water—a well for keeping live fish.
As water hissed into the tank, I behaved as if I’d lost something, it didn’t matter what as long as it bought enough time for Jeth to drag Tomlinson to the mangrove clearing, where I’d meet them.
As I hunted through compartments, I noticed a raft of dead fish floating in the trash line. The fish were bug- eyed from the pressure of internal gases.
I snuck a look at the bucket that contained the artifacts. Glanced again at the fish. Mullet, spadefish, a couple
