The Heat Islands: A Doc Ford Novel (19 page)

They both waved casually as Ford approached, and when Ford was close enough. Dalbert said, "Too bad about ol' Jeth, huh? You talked to him since he got arrested?"

Ford stopped, hands in pockets. Dalbert. though he advertised himself as a native guide, had spent most of his life working citrus near Orlando before coming to the islands. He was a talker; did more talking on the VHF radio than fishing, according to the other guides, and Ford didn't want to get him started now. He answered, "I talked with Jeth on the phone last night. He's doing okay."

"That's the first thing that popped into my mind when we found Rios, that argument he had with Jeth. I've never seen Jeth that mad." Dalbert hesitated for a moment. "You think MacKinley will be getting in a new guide, with Jeth gone and all?" Obviously interested in the position himself, or trying to find out who the competition would be.

Ford said. "I think that would be premature. I don't think he killed Rios."

"This ol' country boy hopes you're right, but are you i sayin' it because you're wishin' it or because you got some evidence?"

Dalbert was fond of calling himself an old country boy, a persona that excused stupidity while implying an innate shrewdness he did not possess. Ford was looking at Javier, hoping he'd take the hint so they could go off and talk alone. To Dalbert. he said. "I guess the police get paid for finding their own evidence."

"Mister man, that's just what I want them to do. Bui Jeth sure was mad that day. Boy oh boy."

Javier stood, wiping his hands on his jeans: a lean black man, average height, thin lips but a broad African nose and short black hair beneath the wide straw plantation hat he wore. "I must get baited up for the next trip. I see you out there, huh, Dalbert?" Then to Ford, he said. "Can I show you something? A
feesh
you want to know about?" Ford walked with Javier along the docks beside the marina, and when they were far enough from Dalbert,

Javier said in Spanish, "I have been wanting to talk with you. I am happy you have come."

Ford said, "It is because of Jeth, is that correct?" his mind shifting easily into formal Spanish, but listening carefully because Cuban Spanish was a rough and ragged language, filled with colloquialisms and strange accents.

Javier said, "He telephoned me early Monday morning, our friend Jeth."

"The morning he was arrested."

"Yes. The police had come for him, and he told me there was a thing he knew but would not say. To the police, he meant."

"Talk to the police about you? Is that what he meant, Javier?"

"I think that was his meaning. It was very early. I was getting ready to leave for my charter when Jeth made this telephone call. Our friend told me to listen, not talk. He told me that he knew who had killed Mr. Rios, but that I should say nothing. That I should act as if I knew nothing about it, and to have no fear, for he would not argue with the police. If they wanted to believe that he killed Mr. Rios, then it was the will of God."

"Jeth believes that you killed Mr. Rios."

"Our conversation, it was very strange. Yes, perhaps that is what he meant."

"Why would Jeth believe that?"

Javier was standing, looking into his open boat, an old twenty-four-foot Aquasport he had bought used and tried to fix up. He turned and sat on the gunwale, his feet still on the dock. "There is a reason," he said.

Ford waited.

Finally. Javier said, "I will tell you the reason because I trust you. But first I must explain something. And what I tell you must remain between the sea and us."

Ford nodded. The sea and us—it was an old Cuban expression, and it had been years since he had heard it. Javier said, "I have been a fishing guide on this island since Mr. Rios opened this marina, and it has not always been an easy thing. But I did not ask for more because my life has never been an easy one. I was a young man in 1980 when Fidel told all Cubans that if we wanted to go to the United States, we need only sign a paper that gave all our possessions to the state. I happily signed this paper, as did nearly a million other Cubans, for poverty and hard work were my only possessions in that terrible place."

Ford listened, standing in the heat.

"But it was not so easy for my young wife. Ellfreda, who was then pregnant with our son, Felipe. For three weeks, in Mariel Harbor, we lived in a wire cage with a thousand others, praying that we would be put on a boat to the United States. In the sun! With no food! Do you see this thing? My pregnant wife had nothing to cat but a few mangoes and a kind of soup of coconut milk made by the other women. The pain I felt for her. I cannot express." Ford said. "Yes. Mariel Harbor was a very difficult thing." Ford knew about Mariel. He had spent twelve days there during the boat lift, doing surveillance.

"But we endured," Javier said fiercely, his nostrils widening, taking in air. "We found a boat. But, on the boat trip across the Florida Straits, the gringo captain called for our attention. There were more than a hundred refugees on that boat—a shrimp boat that should have carried no more than twenty! The captain called for our attention and said that he had learned from the radio that the American government was now arresting boat captains for carrying refugees and taking their boats. He said that he could not afford such a loss, and that he must take us back to Cuba. We spoke with this captain. We told him that we had been through too much to ever go back. Fidel would have killed us! The captain and his crew were very frightened because we were many and they were few."

"You took the boat," Ford said.

"Yes," said Javier. "To protect our families. The young must be allowed to survive—the captain would not understand this. On that terrible night, there were those among us who said we must kill the captain and his crew. We had taken them and tied them, and the crew were crying for their lives, but not the captain. He was a brave man. I liked that man! I argued that they must be spared. I argued that it was wrong to enter this new country and our new lives as murderers. Ellfreda says that she was very proud of me that night. I saved the lives of those men! I became the leader that night—me, a young man among many older men."

Ford asked. "How did you get past the Coast Guard at Key West?"

Javier smiled. "We did a simple thing. We did not go to Key West. We spent two more days at sea. When planes flew near, we covered ourselves with tarps. We lowered the net booms as if we were really shrimpers. We sailed east to the Bahamas, Andros Island. The Bahamian government is a sloppy thing, and we went ashore unnoticed in a rural place. We were hungry, like animals. We foraged for turtles and conch. But we conducted ourselves as men. We released the crew unhurt, and they sailed away in their boat. Because my wife was pregnant, the villagers were kind to us. Ellfreda and I found passage to America on a fishing boat that I knew was carrying marijuana, but I did not care. That boat brought us to the Everglades coast, to Everglades City. There we met another woman, a woman who was very kind to us. She took us in, even though she had many children of her own. My son, Filipe, was born in that woman's house."

"Jeth's sister. That was the woman?" Ford knew from Jeth's address book that Jeth had a sister still living in Everglades.

"Your mind is very quick." Javier smiled slightly. "After Filipe was born. I worked as a migrant laborer for a few years. It was easy to blend in. picking fruit and vegetables around Immokalee, but I also loved to fish. I met Jeth. He was as kind as his sister. Jeth helped me get a boat, and he told me about a new marina opening on Sanibel. I could not get a captain's license, of course, because I had entered the country illegally, but Jeth said that Mr. Rios might not ask for it, and he was right—for a time, anyway. Then, about three weeks ago, Mr. Rios did ask for it, and I realized that he had suspected all along that I was an illegal immigrant. Mr. Rios said he would take half my chartering money, and if I would do small jobs for him, he would not notify the authorities."

Ford said, "I see."

"Yes, he did that to me."

"He—"

"Made me his property. Exactly. Or tried to." Javier Castillo checked his watch, swung his legs over into the boat, and began to straighten rods, move buckets, getting ready for his next charter. "Jeth was very angry when I told him this thing. But not so angry as I. I told Jeth that I would kill Mr. Rios before I let him hurt my family in such a way. We have come too far."

"And no one but Jeth and Rios knew. About you, I mean."

"And now you." Javier stood and looked at Ford. "I know what Sutter calls me behind my back. And Dalbert, too. sometimes. And perhaps others. They talk as if I am from the slums of New York and not a man who has worked so hard to live in this country."

"I have never heard it," Ford said.

"They would not say it to you. But most of the guides judge me for what I do. how hard I work, not by my color, and that is the way it should be. But I have little to gain from trust, and much to lose."

"You thought Jeth killed Rios to help you."

"Yes. And because Jeth was so mad. Mr. Rios was an evil man."

"Jeth thinks you killed him."

"I see that for the first time. You have made that clear."

"But you didn't?"

"Kill Mr. Rios? Perhaps I would have, but I did not have the chance. I was trying to think of a way. I even spoke with Jeth about it, but such plans do not come easily to me. Would I let my friend go to jail for something I did?"

Ford said, "I'm certain you would not." He had sat on the dock while Javier told his story, and now he stood. Across the marina basin, Captain Dalbert was getting his boat ready, but Karl Sutter's boat still sat empty, the vinyl console cover buttoned tight. Javier noticed Ford looking, and he said. "He canceled his charter this morning. His people were very angry." Javier allowed himself a smile. "They did not know how lucky they are. He is evil, that one... Sutter. More evil than Mr. Rios, and he catches no fish. He is the one who calls me 'nigger' and thinks I am dumb because of my English, yet he speaks no Spanish at all."

Ford said. "The dumbest fisherman catches the biggest fish." Another old Cuban expression.

Javier said. "I have caught something else. I think."

"Oh?"

"Are you certain that Jeth did not kill Mr. Rios?"

"Yes," Ford said. "I am."

"Then the thing I have caught is one of the marina rental boats. I had a shelling trip yesterday morning, and I found it hidden in the mangroves. Mr. Rios had to be in a boat that night, correct? The night he was killed. I would have reported it, but I did not want them to find further evidence against my friend Jeth."

"Can you take me to this boat?" Ford asked.

"Now? This afternoon? I have my work to do. I cannot. But I can tell you where to find this boat. When I take people on shelling trips, we walk the sandbars by the mangrove islands. When the people begin finding shells, I go into the mangroves and search for driftwood. Beautiful driftwood, and Ellfreda makes pretty things from the wood, which she sells. That is how I found the boat. If I tell you about this island, perhaps you can find it on your own."

Ford said, "I'm sure I can." He was looking across the marina basin again. Captain Dalbert was leaving on his afternoon charter, already talking away to his four clients, who sat blinking back at him. Probably giving his "I'm just an ol' country boy" introductory lecture as he backed out of his slip, beside which sat Karl Sutter's boat.

"There is one more thing. Javier."

"Then I must go. My people are waiting for me."

"You have told me things in confidence. There is something I would like to keep in confidence."

"Between us and the sea."

"Yes. I want to take a quick look at Sutter's boat. I need to board it."

Javier shrugged, untying his own lines. "Dalbert is gone. And I am already not here. Who is there to know?"

Ford was in his lab, bent over a tiny scale taken from one of the small tarpon in his fish tank. On the dissecting table before him were his microscope, two tabs of litmus paper, a prepared slide, and several larger tarpon scales. At the end of the table was a tiny piece of something that looked like yellowish brown plastic rope but was really a Class 1 explosive sold commercially as Primacord. Ford had snipped the piece from a slightly larger length he had located beneath the broken seat of the rental boat. The remainder he left where he had found it.

He had discovered the boat right where Javier had said it was: wedged into a narrow tidal cut and shielded by mangroves. Hidden right there in the mangrove bank near the Mud Hole, the back side of Ding Darling Sanctuary.

Ford tried to picture it. The night Rios was killed, Sutter had probably dragged the rental skiff across the sandbar. It meant that Rios died around midnight, since the tide had to be up. It also meant that they had been in separate boats. Probably took rental boats just in case someone saw them. Rios had died in one of the rental boats, and Sutter had found it, realized that Rios was probably dead, so he stuffed it into the first handy spot. He would have had a flashlight, and there would have been lightning to help.

Even if Sutter had wanted to, he couldn't call the police. What would he have told them—that Rios had disappeared while the two of them were out killing tarpon to cheat in a fishing tournament? That would have meant no prize money. So Sutter had pulled the boat into the mangroves and tried to sink it. Probably tried to beat holes into the hull, then attempted to swamp it, using the bailing bucket, but fiberglass boats are not easy to sink, so he had left it there, hidden in the mangroves—seats broken out, the fiberglass cracked, littered with mangrove leaves, limbs, scales, fish slime, and debris—where no one would ever find it because no one in his right mind would try to walk through those monkey-bar roots tangled into the sulfur muck.

Unless they were looking for old bottles, or driftwood.

Sutter had removed the stick-on registration numbers, and the little hand-crank outboard motor and the portable gas tanks, too—just in case someone did find the boat, they would have no reason to salvage such a wreck.