The Heat Islands: A Doc Ford Novel (21 page)

"It's ninety in the shade outside, and you've got me in a steam room." Dewey was moaning and laughing at the same time. "Crazy woman, that's what you are."

"The heat is good! The more heat, the better. Makes the muscle lubricated!"

"Damn quack."

"You will thank me. When you make the finals at Flushing Meadows, you will say it publicly. 'I owe it all to the great Walda!' "

"I keep telling you ... I don't have enough time to get ... ouch! ... in shape for the Open. Hey—isn't thirty seconds up yet? Damn it. Bets, that hurts!"

"Yes. Now we do the arms. Six sets."

"Oh, Jesus. There's no way we're going to be finished in time to meet Doc."

"We'll be done in plenty of tune. We finish here, then we go to the court and do bucket drills, then second serves, then crosscourts and down the line."

"Save the best for last, huh? I hate crosscourts and down the line. Geez."

"Your legs need it. Mine, too. In a few days. I'll be in London tuning up on grass."

"He's taking us fishing at six, after the rain."

"I know. We'll be done. Are you ready?"

Dewey held her arms wide, her back to Bets, feeling her friend's hands cup her triceps, pulling her arms slowly back and up, so that she stood in the room like a diver about to enter the water. Dewey could feel her serratus muscles stretching beneath her skin and the deltoids bunching at her shoulders, her whole upper body beginning to burn as Bets applied pressure.

"Docs your elbow hurt?"

"My entire body hurts from this torture. How can I tell?"

"Does it?"

"No."

Dewey could feel Bets's hand squeezing harder, as if trying to squeeze out an answer. "Why do you lie to me?" Said half playfully but half seriously, too. "I don't he to you."

"I'm not lying. My elbow doesn't hurt."

"There's no difference between lying and not telling."

"As if you tell me everything—hey, not so hard!"

"Name one thing I haven't told you."

"That's a hell of a question to ask. How would I know if you didn't tell me?"

"It's because I tell you nearly everything. Only two things I haven't told you."

Dewey could sense the whole mood changing, getting way. way too serious and personal, and she didn't want that; hated it when Bets wanted to talk personal. "Bullshit," she said. "You know what this is like? This is like the old days when they put people on the rack. Stretched them out and interrogated them. Is that what you did in Romania? Put the prisoners through your stretching routine and made them tell you top secrets?"

"That's one of the things I haven't told you. About Romania."

"You did a six-month public relations tour. You told me."

"There was much more."

"Oh, Christ, let's just drop it."

"We didn't stretch prisoners, we shot them. Shot some of them."

"
What?"

"We shot them. The lucky ones."

Dewey felt Bets's hands relax. She dropped her arms to her sides and turned slowly, staring through the steam into Bets's sad face. "Are you serious?"

"You asked me what we did. I told you."

"The soldiers shot prisoners. That's what you mean." Bets said, "I was a soldier."

The two women, one as tall as the other, stood looking eye to eye, their hair dripping as if they'd just come in from the rain. Bets said. "Do you want to hear it? I'll tell you if you want to hear it."

Quickly, Dewey said, "No."

"But you want to know. You've wondered, but never asked."

Dewey said, "I can feel my muscles getting tight. Let's get out there so I can beat your butt and go fishing." Smiling, trying to lighten the mood, but it was too late.

Bets said, "No, I'm going to tell you. You want to know, so I will."

Dewey said. "Damn it. Bets, we came here to practice—'' But Bets was already telling her.

Bets said. "In the city of Timisoara, where the liberation began, members of the new democracy took me on a tour. The bodies of two dozen rebels were laid out in the mud. Ceausescu's secret police, the Seeuritate, had just left. They had tortured the rebels as an example. Young boys, old men, women, too. Two dozen of them, maybe more. Their faces had been burned off with acid. Their hands had been cut off, their stomachs ripped open then sewn back so they could live and suffer a little longer. Ceausescu's people knew how to make people suffer. There was a girl in the mud, about our age. The Seeuritate had cut the baby out of her stomach and let her hold the fetus while she died. That was on Christmas Eve, the day after I arrived in Romania to lend moral support to my countrymen." Dewey said. "My God. Bets," not even aware that now she was sitting on the wooden bench in the steam room, holding Bets's hand.

Walda Bzantovski said, "Romanians demanded democracy, so Ceausescu gave them bodies in a field. They asked for freedom, and Ceausescu cut off their hands. If that was the way the Communists were going to treat my people, I knew that I had to do more than make speeches and sign autographs. Romania is the land of my family, but I left because it had become a prison. When I returned and saw what I saw, I felt ashamed that I had not stayed and endured the struggle. For what! Money? My own selfish freedom? For tennis? That's what I learned there, looking at those people in the mud. Tennis—it is a silly, silly little thing. It is putting on a mask and dancing around onstage. It is so... easy. And you won't understand that. So damn easy!"

Dewey was holding Bets now, patting her back, saying, "Bets, Bets, Bets..."

Bets said. "I shot three men and one woman that I know of for certain. I stood over them and looked into their eyes as they died. Because I was famous, even Ceausescu's officers and informants welcomed me into their homes, and that is where I killed them. I shot them in the chest because I'd only had three days' training with a pistol. I shot them in the chest, then I stood over them and shot them in the head.''

Dewey whispered, "Jesus Christ," and began to cry. Bets squeezed Dewey close. "I'm sorry. You asked me. You are the only one I'd ever trust to tell."

Dewey was whispering into Bets's ear, "It's okay, it's okay. It was something your leaders made you do." Gently Bets pulled away from Dewey and held her, trying to lock with Dewey's eyes, but Dewey would not look. "Dewey," Bets said, "Dewey! I
was
a leader."

With Dewey and Walda beside him. Ford skimmed his flats skiff through the tidal chop off Sanibel lighthouse.

cutting so close to the beach that he could smell suntan lotion, a cloying Coppertone stink that rode with them around Lighthouse Point and along the white sand rind with its feathered border of sea oats and casuarinas.

Beside him, Walda and Dewey seemed subdued; hadn't said much since they'd met him at his stilt house. Maybe they were still hung over from Monday night. Maybe they were squabbling about tennis again. Though she had never come right out and admitted it, Dewey didn't want to play tennis anymore. Ford could see that; Walda refused to see it. So the two women bickered and fenced and tested the edges of what clearly was, to them both, an important friendship. So important that it was out of bounds to a third party, and Ford would not involve himself.

So he rode along with his face in the wind, enjoying the look of the beach, picking out children to watch as they played in the weak surf. Ford admired children and he liked to watch them when he could. The beach people he could see anytime because they were always there.

The beach people came in shifts; moved to and from the houses, hotels, and condos as methodically as a sundial. First came the solitary ones, joggers and fishermen and strollers; early-morning poets out to commune with sunrise. By 10 a.m., suntan freaks had replaced them; the Hawaiian Tropic aficionados basting away, broiling like corn belt hams until the damaged melanin of their skin cells turned black or fiery red from actinic-ray poisoning. By 2
p.m.,
one shift of sunbathers was replaced with another; a rowdier bunch with radios and Frisbees and coolers.

Now, only an hour before sunset, Ford could see that the late shift was beginning to retreat. Men lugged lounge chairs up the beach while women in bikinis too daring to wear back home in Steubenville or Buffalo folded towels and gathered kids so they could return to their hotel rooms and shower for dinner. The sunbathers were already being replaced by shell hunters. Sanibel and Captiva islands were famous for shelling, and the low tide had drawn them out. men and women in L. L. Bean shorts and floppy hats, shelling bags in hand. A whole wandering line of people looking for whelks and crown conchs and rare junonias. There was no mistaking a sheller. Even in a crowd, they were isolated by their concentration, touching the sand expertly with their bare toes, walking a strange hunched walk as if they were myopics who had strayed from their honeymoon suite and were desperately trying to track their way back.

Over the roar of the engine. Ford said to Dewey, "Good low tide tonight, they ought to find some shells."

Dewey smiled briefly, a forced smile. "It's like they're nuts, shellers. I've gone with some. It could be three
a.m.,
it doesn't matter, as long as the tide's out."

"What's your favorite?"

"What?"

"Your favorite shell—what kind?" Trying to make conversation; snap them out of their funk and share some of his good mood.

Ford did feel good. He had spent two hours with Detective Fuller; had made a convincing show of being unable to find the rental boat from Two Parrot Bight. Finally ran in close enough to the mangroves to allow Fuller to spot it himself, a patch of white fiberglass among the red roots. After wading in. Fuller had lingered over the wreckage, surveying all there was to see before pulling on a single rubber glove. From beneath the broken stem seat, he retrieved sunglasses, then a hat, then fished a soggy business card out of the bilge.

Fuller had held the card up, showing Ford. The card read:

CAPT. KARL
SUTTER

FISH OR SHELL WITH THE BEST

PORTA POTTY-EQUIPPED

Fuller had said, "This is a hell of a thing for a murderer to leave behind."

And Ford had replied, "Sure is," wondering if Fuller suspected that he had planted the card, hat, and sunglasses.

But on their way back to radio for a crime-scene team. Fuller had put his worries to rest, saying. "If this all checks out, your buddy Nicholes should be released by tomorrow afternoon, maybe Friday morning. I never really trusted Sutter from the first time he contacted us."

That's how easy it was to tamper with evidence.

Now, beside Ford. Dewey was saying. "Favorite shell, hum." Because he was sandwiched between the two women, she leaned across him and said to Walda, "Hey, Bets, didn't you find a junonia when you were staying at that hotel?"

Walda, who seemed more relaxed than Dewey, grinned. "One of the hotel guys took me right to it. But I heard the hotels do that, plant junonias. Do they. Doc?"

Ford shrugged.

Dewey said, "That's my favorite, the junonia. A real pretty cone." She leaned her weight against his shoulder, as if she was tired.

Ford thought.
No more Cabbage Key for these two.

He steered the little boat straight offshore. A brief 4 p.m. thundershower had smothered the afternoon wind, and the open Gulf was slick and smooth, a pale green fairway that ended where the sky ended, far out beneath the sun. In the boat's wake, people on the beach grew smaller and smaller until only casuarina trees and the Sanibel lighthouse floated on the sea behind them.

Finally. Ford dropped the boat off plane, looking over his shoulder to use the old lighthouse as a range. He judged they were about five miles out, probably in about twenty-five feet of water, and it was good tarpon country.

"What we do now," he said, "is look." He was standing at the wheel, steering south. Fort Myers Beach was ahead and off to his left, Bonita Beach a shimmering anomaly in the far distance: its white condominiums, illuminated by harsh late sunlight, looked like the gigantic sails of a sinking ship.

"Look for what?" Walda was using her hand as a visor, her head turned toward Ford, who was back-dropped by the sun.

"Splashes in the distance. You look for a flash of silver. Tarpon rolling. A tail sticking out of the water. Anything unusual."

"There!" Dewey was pointing. "A splash. I saw it."

Ford waited until he saw where she was pointing, then he said, "That was a pelican crashing bait. See, he's flying off."

"Ah, crap."

"Keep looking, we'll see them."

Ford idled along and the women, now standing, moved their heads back and forth, back and forth, searching. They idled on for a quarter of an hour. Ford stopped the boat once when he saw a brief flash beneath the water—a school of big permit, large spade-shaped fish traveling in a tight scintillate of golden light. A few minutes later, Dewey grabbed his arm. "Did you see that?"

"What?"

"There it is again!"

Walda said, "I saw it; right, right."

Half a mile away, the flat sea was being pocked by random explosions, as if the sea gulls wheeling above were dropping small bombs.

Ford said, "Hang on." and pushed the throttle forward, running way out around the bubbled craters, then angled back so as not to spook the fish. Then he slowed and shut off the engine, drifting.

Before them, spread out over an acre of water, tarpon were cruising just below the surface. Moving slow, slow, the tips of their great tails punched through the sea membrane, growing ever larger until whole backs of individual fish could be seen before sinking again beneath the water plain. It was like watching plants mature through time-lapse photography, the way their tails breached the surface, growing randomly from this great green field, lifting, tilting.

"There must be a thousand of them. Like they're asleep or something." Dewey spoke in a churchy whisper, focused on the fish.

Ford was watching a ghostly shape, seven feet long, slide beneath the boat. He nudged Walda and pointed. The size of the tarpon and the nearness of it startled her. She jumped. The fish spooked. The panicked fish caused other fish to spook. Inexplicably, suddenly, there was a massive silver form hanging in the air above their heads: huge dark eyes guiding a panel of silver light that arced over the boat and crashed back into the water.