Everglades (37 page)

I was ashamed. Ashamed of what I’d done. I’d hidden it from others, which was not just understandable, but a legally binding mandate. However, I’d also attempted to hide the truth from myself.

Alone, beneath stars, buoyant, water light and moving with the wind, the answer to that question seemed to ring like crystal in my innermost being.

It was a transcendent moment. A few minutes before, I’d confronted what is truest in me—
We are both predators.

It was true. I am predatory by nature. I also like to think that I am ethical, kind, selective and generous. But, at the atavistic core, I am a hunter, a killer.

I am a
collector.

It has always been so with me. It will always be so.

In accepting that truth, I felt a delicious sense of freedom.

I steered my surfboard home. I hung the sail, washed the board—a kind of workmanlike penance. The bottom half of the skeg was missing: Ragged fiberglass in a half-moon shape. No surprise.

Then, after a quick glance at my fish tanks, a quicker hello to Crunch & Des, I went to my galley and placed upon the cupboard every bottle of booze I owned. It was an impressive stash. Five unopened bottles of
Flor de Cana
, two unopened bottles of Patron, which is a superb tequila, plus a complete stock of other whiskeys, gins and vodkas.

I also stacked up two and a half cases of beer . . . thought about it for a moment before deciding to keep the beer for Tomlinson’s visits.

I put the bottles in boxes. It took me two trips to carry it all to the marina. It was a little after 2 A.M. Aside from the hiss of the bait tank aerator, and the flapping of sail halyards against masts, all was still. I opened the ice machine and buried fourteen bottles therein.

Finders, keepers. If someone wanted the bottles, there they were for the taking.

I’d brought a flashlight. The marina’s commercial fish scale is out back behind the marina office, next to the cleaning table. It had been more than six months since I’d last weighed myself. I stepped onto the scale, touched my fingers to the poise counterweights, moving them.

It took awhile. Was the damn thing broken?

When the suspension bar was finally balanced, I whispered, “Jesus Christ, this can’t be right.”

I was still wearing my wet T-shirt and shorts. I stepped off the scale, stripped naked, then stepped back onto the scale plate.

After a few more seconds, I whispered, “You fat son-of-a-bitch.”

I walked back to my stilt house.

Every human being should have at least a half-dozen people that he or she can call day or night when they are sleepless, goofy drunk, feeling lonely or in emotional need.

Dewey Nye is on my short list.

When I got back to the house, my rubber wristwatch said it was 2:39 A.M.

Feeling totally sober, now, I dialed the lady’s number. The phone rang twice before I heard her groggy voice answer, “This better be fuckin’ good, Walda.”

She expected it to be her longtime, off again-on again roommate and lover.

I said, “Dew. It’s me.”

I could picture her sitting up a little, focusing. “Doc? What time is it?”

I told her.

“Are you drunk? You’ve got to be drunk.”

I said, “In the morning, seven A.M., I’ll meet you on the beach at the end of Tarpon Bay Road. We run, then swim. Three miles, then swim a half mile. No—make it a mile. You don’t have to swim the whole way.”

I listened to the lady yawn. “Oh, Doc, you
are
drunk. Go to sleep, sweetie. I’ll stop by around noon. We can go for a walk.”

Not raising my voice, I said, “You need to listen to me, Dewey. It’s important. I’m not going to explain it to everyone, but I’m going to tell you because I need your help. Starting tomorrow, we work out at least five days a week. And no more alcohol. Period. Not for me. Twenty, twenty-five pounds from now, maybe I’ll reconsider. Or maybe I won’t. I’m making you that promise. Hold me to it.”

“You’re serious.”

“Yep. It’s time I quit feeling sorry for myself. Seven A.M. on the beach. I’ll see you there.”

“What time’s the sun come up?”

I said, “Seven-oh-one.”

“Our own private sunrise service. I’ll be there.”

I hung up, found a pencil, then walked to my outdoor shower. On the outside wall of my house, I wrote my weight: 247.

Then, in parentheses, beside it, I wrote my minimum objective: 220.

It seemed to formalize the change that had taken place in me. Because I had written it, I now had no choice but to achieve it.

I showered, walked into the lab and looked at the stranger in the mirror for a long moment before I said, “You’re done.”

Then I went to bed.

For months, I’d been plagued by nightmares or dreams of frustrating inabilities. On this night, though, I dreamed of the face of a child whose photo I kept in a moon-shaped locket. Then, in my dream, the child’s face became the face of an old, old love.

She was a woman with waist-length blond hair, dressed in white crinoline. Her face was luminous and comforting, a woman so beautiful that seeing her caused me to linger upon detail: lighted portions of chin and cheek, strong nose creating shadow, perceptive eyes unaware and uncaring of her own beauty.

Her voice was a kindred chord as she said, “I have waited so long for you, my dear. So many, many years. Now, once again, you’ve come back to me. . . .”

chapter twenty-seven

Tomlinson
said, “The way these people are behaving, it’s more like a rock concert for fascists. Or a magic show. I’d say a kind of Grateful Dead deal, but that’d be an insult to Jerry. They’re giving me the creeps, man.”

He meant the several hundred Church of Ashram members who were moving along the boardwalk, filing toward the outdoor amphitheater, Cypress Ashram, on this Easter Sunday late afternoon. They were men and women of various ages, but there did seem to be a strange, almost mechanical, similarity in the way they moved, the way they behaved.

Many wore robes: orange or white or green. There were far fewer orange robes than green, and fewer green than white, so the colors were suggestive of rank. Others were dressed in neatly pressed slacks or skirts, hair trimmed short. They traveled in tight groups, sometimes creating human chains by holding on to each other’s waists—slow conga lines—or walking in step, calling odd phrases back and forth as if in some cheerful competition:

“We’re running Thetan Three over here.”

“We’re running Thetan
Four
over here!”

“Bhagwan Shiva’s version of Scientology,” Tomlinson told me when I asked. “Don’t worry about it.”

Frisbees were popular, too. The church must have designed its own. Each plastic disc was a black-and-white yin-yang symbol stamped with
CAMI,
the church’s initials. The air was filled with their slow, arching ascents. Prayer wheels, I heard one person call them.

The Archangels were maintaining high visibility. Shiva’s security people, dressed in black, weight-lifter types, male and female, were cruising in their golf carts, letting their authority be seen.

So far, I hadn’t seen any guards that I recognized.

Not that I would have minded.

I was in that kind of mood.

I’d talked to Detective Podraza twice during the day. They’d found no sign of Sally, no witnesses, no clue to where she might be, despite press conferences and expanding media coverage. They were, however, accumulating some crime-scene evidence. He’d also told me that he’d spoken to the Sanibel police. They’d vouched for me, so his manner, though still professional, was slightly friendlier.

“The security camera at the front gate shows Frank and Sally’s cars leaving, then both cars coming back,” he said.

I said, “They came by boat. Whoever shot Frank and the old guy, they were smart enough to come by water. Unless you’ve got something else on the security cameras.”

Podraza said, “That’s a possibility we’re considering.”

I didn’t expect him to provide any other details, and he didn’t.

I added, “I’m no expert, but I’ve read that a kidnap victim’s first twenty-four hours are critical.”

“I’ll tell you the same thing I told Mrs. Minster’s cousin, Belinda. If the lady was our own sister, mother—name it—we couldn’t be working this case any harder. A double homicide and a kidnapping. That’s about as bad as it gets. And you’re right—the longer she’s gone, the less chance of finding her alive.”

When I said that, if she was already dead, her body was probably out in Biscayne Bay, Podraza replied, “We have boats looking. And you’re right again. In an abduction-murder, getting rid of the body is always the biggest problem, because it’s evidence found on the body that usually nails them.”

What he
wanted
to know was why I’d guessed that both victims had been shot with a .22 caliber.

I told him the truth: Like my suspicions about Izzy, it was a hunch. Something about the way the guy looked, the way he handled himself. Israeli intelligence, the Mossad, uses the .22 Beretta as its signature weapon of assassination. Only a sociopath would put two innocent men in the trunk of a car and execute them, and the Mossad signature was the sort of touch a sociopath might try to imitate.

Podraza said, “I’ll be honest. The first time we talked, I got the impression you might be a kind of kook. But the Sanibel police chief told me that if you had some suggestions, I’d be smart to listen. So I did try to find out about the guy.

“I contacted the church’s main office. But cult religions, law enforcement, we don’t get along. Family members are always asking us to help get their sons and daughters out. I didn’t expect the church to be cooperative, and they weren’t. There’s no way I can check the guy out if I don’t even have his last name.”

I told Podraza, “Izzy’s last name. I can come up with that. I’ll call you tonight.”

I’d looked out the window of my lab, and saw that Tomlinson’s dinghy was tethered to the stern of
No Mas.
I got on the VHF radio, hailed him, and we switched channels. He’d told me earlier that he was going to Sawgrass to view what he called “Shiva’s Easter sunset carnival show.”

He sounded shocked when I said I wanted to go along.

“I thought we were going separately because all you wanted to do is see the tarpon. That you were going way earlier.”

I replied, “My interests have broadened.”

On the drive down, he told me that Billie Egret, Ginny Egret, James Tiger, her aunts and uncles were also attending the Cypress Ashram, all as Shiva’s special guests. Them, plus some members from Tomlinson’s secret group of Cassadaga psychics, who weren’t invited but were going anyway. He said they would be sprinkled among the crowd.

“We have no choice. Something big’s going on, so we’ve decided to do another spiritual intervention. The Non-Bhagwan has Billie’s people conned. They’re almost convinced they should go into partnership with him. All of them except Billie. She’s still standing strong, but she needs our help. She’ll be really glad you’re there.”

I had a different kind of help in mind.

That morning, during my run with Dewey, I’d nearly collapsed from exhaustion. But I’d completed the three miles—and at her brutal pace. The swim didn’t go much better. I stopped twice to vomit salt water.

But I finished the swim, too.

I was tired; still had a trace of hangover shakes. For the first time in months, though, I felt focused, energized by purpose.

So now it was 6:30 P.M. The parking lot adjoining Sawgrass’s outdoor amphitheater was jammed, and we were being swept along by the crowd. Tomlinson had come for his reasons. I’d come for my own. I was going to find Izzy.

Once I found him, if I got the slightest whiff of suspicion that he was involved with Frank’s death and Sally’s disappearance, I would devise a way to separate him from the group, isolate him, and I would then do whatever was required to make him talk.

It was something I was good at.

Why had it taken me so many years to admit it?

As we walked along, Tomlinson said, “We’re plenty early. Billie told me the main show’s supposed to start a little before sunset. That’s at eight, right?”

He knew that, every morning of my life, I check the tide tables.

I said, “Around eight, yeah. Seven-fifty-seven, to be precise.”

 

 

Actually, the show had already started. The Cypress Ashram had become a mini-stadium. The stepped levels of seating were already half full, and more people were rivering in, trying to get as close as they could to the stage.

The stage was attached to an acoustic dome that looked like a giant clamshell. The first time I’d seen it, the theater had seemed to consist of nothing more than tile, wood and stucco, built at the edge of a cypress pond. What was not readily evident was that the structure was a technological marvel, loaded with computers, lights and sophisticated electronic equipment.

I remembered Carter McRae telling us that Shiva’s show was better than anything we’d find in Vegas. I now got the first inkling of a confirmation.

The stage was bare, yet it was not bare. Standing, facing the growing audience, were three translucent men, twice normal height. They had glittering skin and flowing, brightly colored robes. Yet, you could look through them and see the wall beyond. One was Jesus—the standard image you see in children’s Bibles. The other was of a smiling, then laughing, Buddha. Standing between them was an equally happy Bhagwan Shiva.

The men were animated. Walking. Hugging. Spreading their arms wide as if to embrace the audience.

Orbiting above the three was a perfect miniature solar system; nine planets revolving around a smoldering sun, the earth a brilliant, lucent blue-green. The planets orbited to the slow wash-and-draw sound of waves on a beach. The sound seemed to come from every direction—behind us, from the stage, from the tops of the cypress tress as well, even from the ground below.