Acts of Nature (17 page)

But as he steered closer, coming in now from the northwest, Buck could see that no cover story was going to be necessary. The hard angles he’d seen from a distance were now forming up to be one single wall, the only one that remained standing. The rest of the place was trashed. The neutron bomb. No survivors.

Buck pulled back the throttle and turned around, catching his assistants playing some kind of preteen thumb-wrestling game and smiling like a couple of idiots out at the forensics unit for the criminally insane at Raiford. I got a real criminal enterprise going here, Buck thought, my own crew of Luca Brasi. “Don Corleone, I come to you on this da day of your daughter’s wedding…”

He thought about the Godfather’s leg man, his eyes popping out of his head with a garrote around his neck. He could squeeze these punks. But then who’s gonna do the heavy lifting? He swung the airboat up to the partial dock and cut the engines, and the cessation of movement gained the attention of the boys, who, it was now obvious, were drunk as skunks. Buck reached between them and snagged the near-empty vodka bottle and flipped it over his shoulder into the water.

“Find what you can find and let’s get out of here,” he said and the boys turned their faces away like eight-year-olds who got caught jerking off. Buck jumped down onto the deck and headed for the smashed outbuildings and leaving the useless pantry and kitchen wall to the boys.

“Fuck him,” said Marcus, only loud enough for Wayne to hear. “Guy could ruin a good wet dream, know what I mean?”

Wayne looked at him with a blank stare.

“No, I guess you wouldn’t, Stumpy,” Marcus said and stepped away quickly, laughing, but also avoiding Wayne’s reach.

“Ain’t nothing worth a shit in this mess anyway, ’less you’re looking for a nice fish trophy,” he said, bending to pick up a fiberglass bonefish that lay crippled with a broken tail on the floor, its long wooden mantel missing.

Wayne poked around in the stuffing and swirl of ripped curtains and cracked debris, kicking at the piles with little interest and stumbling a bit from both the effect of the alcohol and the odd sense of still being on a boat. The missing walls caused the edges of the plank foundation to meld with the water and the open horizon and he was caught by the feeling he might step off the edge of the world if he wasn’t careful. He tried to focus on something close and thought it was way weird that the refrigerator and the kitchen wall were still standing. It was like old lady Morrison’s house when the wrecking crew came to scrape it off the plot where they built the new marina in Chokoloskee. They were kids and watched in fascination as the big-clawed backhoe chewed through the roof and pulled down the walls of a place they’d passed on their bikes a thousand times. No one their age had ever lived there, only the old woman whose husband had died years before. Then one day the ambulance came and they carted Ms. Morrison out on a stretcher and the place stood dark and empty for years. They might have gotten a glimpse inside when they went trick-or- treating or something as children, but when the place was laid bare by the machinery, they watched in fascination as the pink-papered walls and the porcelain sinks and even an old four-poster bed got scraped into a pile and then loaded into a dump truck. When the claw scooped up the toilet all the kids laughed but only for a second, then they rode on, down to the docks where they could fish and skip stones out onto the bay and do the dumbass things you did when you were young without a thought about your own house being scraped off the face of the earth by a storm or by a fucking backhoe.

“Hey, dude! Check this out.”

Wayne stepped over a window frame of shattered glass and then nearly stepped into a hole that had been busted through the floorboards. He joined Marcus and looked down into a pile of rags.

“Blood, man,” Marcus said, pointing down at a crumpled sheet. They’d done enough hunting to recognize the dark, red-brown stain. Wayne picked up a corner, sniffed the copper smell of blood and dropped it.

“Damn, dude. Don’t have to be some bloodhound,” Marcus said, pinching his face in disgust at first and then raising his eyebrows in that stupid grin. “Dawg.”

“Somebody was here, man. And it wasn’t that long ago neither,” Wayne said. “Look at the empty water bottles and stuff.” He pointed at the trash around the sheet and then opened the refrigerator door, found it empty. He bent down, sat on his heels, and with a slat of broken siding began poking at the pile. “You better go tell Buck to come look at this.”

After Marcus turned away Wayne reached down and hooked the corner of a Velcro strap he’d spotted and pulled out a blue fanny pack, the kind runners and maybe a few fishermen might use on a flats boat. He’d waited for Marcus to go so he’d have a chance to scope it out for himself. He zipped open the pouch and inside rummaged through a wad of soggy tissue paper, a tube of lip balm, and a pair of slim sunglasses. He raised the open pack to his nose and drew in its odor. A woman’s. He liked the smell, and even the faintest aroma of perfume or body lotion, the thought of where it had been, aroused him. He breathed it again and opened his eyes and saw the glimmer of gold deep in the corner of the pouch. He reached in with his left hand and pinched it between his fingers and came out with the necklace. Even the dull sunlight picked up a facet in the stones and his eye picked up the spark. He untangled the gold chain and then draped the jewelry over his other hand, like he’d once seen a clerk in a store in Miami do. The two jewels, an opal and a diamond, lay against his palm, one reflecting, the other glowing, next to the folded skin flap where his thumb used to be. Wayne did not notice the juxtaposition of beauty and scar. He was caught instead by the thought of where those stones had last been lying, against white, smooth skin, perhaps nestled in a perfect cleavage. When he heard the steps of the others, he quickly palmed the necklace and shoved the fanny pack back under some debris.

“We were just going through stuff and found it laying there and figured, you know, you ought to see it,” Marcus was saying.

Buck leaned down and took up the bloodied sheet in his hand, unfolded it and held it by two corners, examining one rough edge. He too brought it to his nose and breathed.

“You’re right,” he said to Marcus, who nodded as if it was a foregone conclusion. “Somebody probably out here in the storm and got injured. Looks like they sopped up some blood and then went and tore some strips off this, maybe for a bandage.” He looked out on the site with a new eye.

“I found some gas cans under some other shit in the outbuilding. It’s high-test, which means airboat fuel.”

“How do you know it ain’t just regular boat motor gas?” Marcus said. “Or generator fuel.”

Buck gave him that “you ain’t been there” eye and said: “There’s a difference in the smell, boy.”

Wayne didn’t say anything, thinking only about the scent of a woman that was now in his hand.

“They must have packed up and took off for the city as soon as the ’cane stopped blowin’. They sure as hell ain’t comin’ back this way soon,” Buck said, again looking out on the horizon.

“Well, there isn’t anything worth a damn here anyway,” Marcus said. “Let’s go.”

It was supposed to come across as a confident, half-in- charge kind of statement but Wayne looked at his friend when he caught that uncertain quiver in his voice. They’d been on dozens of these escapades and Wayne could always tell when Marcus was getting nervous.

Buck had them help dig out the gas cans he found in what was once the generator shack of the camp. It took all three of them to lift the collapsed wall and kick away some broken studs to make enough room to remove them. Buck stepped into the space they’d made and passed out the cans to Marcus, who then ferried them over to Wayne in the boat. There were six cans in all and one had been punctured, half of its contents having leaked out onto the wood plank floor. Buck again thought of the lighter in his pocket but just whispered, “Fuck it.”

Over at the airboat Marcus handed up the last can.

“We find any more gas we could stay out here for a week,” Wayne said, digging at Marcus’s show of being nervous and tired of their expedition.

“Yeah, well, the master criminal there has only one location left on the GPS list so unless
he can smell it,
there’s only one camp left and we can go the hell home.”

Wayne just bent to lash the final can in, a grin on his face. Marcus was missing the way Buck had identified the gas and Wayne was getting a tiny dash of joy out of it. Marcus may have been hefting the cans across the decking, but Wayne was the one handling them and tying them in place. He had seen the waterproof marker on the bottom edge of each red plastic can that labeled each one: AB. That had to stand for AirBoat. Buck didn’t need a nose to tell that. But he sure as hell was good at puttin’ Marcus in his place.

“Fuck you grinnin’ at, Stumpy? You want to stay out here all week too?”

Wayne ignored him and when they were finally set, both of them climbed up into the seat behind Buck who was again checking the GPS and the list.

“OK, fellas, let’s make this next one a jackpot,” he said and turned the ignition, and the engine erupted with that sonic frapping sound. Wayne leaned forward to feel for another bottle under the seat, and when he straightened back up Marcus was staring at him with some kind of incredulous look on his face.

“What?” Wayne mouthed.

Marcus reached out toward Wayne’s neck but got his hand slapped away in response.

“What the fuck is that?” Marcus mouthed, his words wiped out by the sound of the engine.

Wayne’s hand went without hesitation to the opal and diamond necklace that he had affixed around his own throat. The chain was a little small for him so the stones hung high and exposed above his T-shirt collar when he’d bent over. He looked directly into Marcus’s eyes with a seriousness that his friend recognized as a mood you did not cross with Wayne. “It’s mine.”

Marcus didn’t need to hear the words. He just showed his palms, rubbed them together and showed them again, just like the blackjack dealer does after shuffling the cards to prove to the players he has nothing up his sleeve.

“Whatever,” he mouthed back into those eyes.

TWENTY

With stale air tumbling down on me, I pushed the hatch door up and heard it clank on its hinges like a submarine portal. I aimed the flashlight up into blackness and could only see the white circle of my beam on a plain ceiling. I had to reach up and put the light over the edge and then do a pull-up on the hatchway until my face cleared the opening. The scene made me think of that famous World War II and Korean War cartoon with the eyes and big floppy nose just visible above a bullet-pocked wall. “Kilroy was here.”

From this vantage point my flashlight was now drawing a circle around some kind of metal cabinet or panel with knobs showing in shadowed relief. I hoisted myself the rest of the way up, swung my hips onto the ledge, and sat there with my legs hanging through the porthole, pant legs and shoes dripping a patter of droplets into the glades below. I moved the light beam in a slow sweep, illuminating unblinking eyes of yellow and blue and red all around me. The single room was an electronic bat cave. Monitor lights, all dead from the lack of electricity, were in rows on the fronts of panels that had to house computers, sensors, calibrators of a kind I would not be familiar with. I thought of Billy, the lawyer and brains of our partnership, who would be able to make at least a knowledgeable guess at what I’d found. I could hear him saying: “My, my, Max. What do we have here out in the middle of godforsaken swampland and what the hell is it out here for?”

I had the same question, but more immediate problems. First I climbed up out of the hole and started working the walls. The stacks of electronics seemed to bunch on the western side, rising to just above eye level and shining in a metallic sheen like brushed steel. On the northern wall stood a low desk and countertop, two roll-away chairs, and room for spreading out paperwork or diagrams or something. In one corner was some kind of a printer but it was loaded with graph paper and had one of those wire styluses you’d see on old lie detectors. I was thinking seismic sensors, the kind that measure Richter scales. But earthquakes don’t happen in Florida. I was thinking measurements in the earth under the Glades, but to what purpose? I was thinking too damn much. The eastern wall was empty but for the door that led to the rest of the cabin and a punch-code lock that matched the one on the other side.

On the south wall was what I took to be the generator, housed in a floor-to-ceiling booth with air vents at top and bottom and a power lever that was pulled down in the
OFF
position. There was a keyed handle to the cabinet door that gave access to the inside. When I inspected the sides near the floor I could see the cable—the same color as the one feeding the refrigerator in the other room—running from the generator down into a hole in the floorboards. I was thinking of the crowbar, if it might be sufficient to pry the cabinet open, get some electricity flowing, toss a wet towel in the fridge, chill it and then wrap Sherry’s head, bring down the fever, do something to help her.

I swept next along a table on the wall. Three-plug jacks for some kind of electronics and three corresponding connectors for phones or Internet. And near the end, an empty power recharge plug for three handheld mobile phones. On the end of the table was a Bose five-disc CD changer with the speakers built in. A real home-away-from-home for some trio of computer nerd hackers or pirate radio stoners or who the hell knows what, and I realized I was getting increasingly pissed at the uselessness of it all until my light caught the red cross of another first aid kit on the wall and the twin of the other refrigerator in the corner.

First I checked the kit and saw that the plastic tie that acted as a seal was unbroken, which meant it must be full. Then I crouched to the refrigerator door and as I went to pull the handle my hand was stopped by the growing sound of an airboat engine. The noise was coming up through the open hatch, the only way it seemed to be able to penetrate the walls, and I scrambled over to listen and make sure I wasn’t just delirious. No, the thrumming sound revved and then cut back, the throttle of the engine in someone’s hand. Rescue. Civilization had arrived.