The Man Who Ivented Florida (12 page)

"And that he'd worked for the man who built the road across the Everglades, but it was a failure because the equipment kept sinking in the mud, and it was his idea to use a—what did he call it?"

"I don't know what he called it, but it was a floating dredge. A dredge on a barge that dug its own canal and floated along behind. The fill created the roadbed. Tuck was a boy, a water boy for a man named Barron Collier, and supposedly he said—"

Walker said, "Yeah, it was something funny—"

"Tuck says a lot of funny things."

The woman finished the story for him. "He said, 'Jesus Christ, Barron, man only makes two things that float, shit and boats. And you can hire yourself another boy if you think I'm walking through shit clear to Miami.' "

Ford said nothing, listening to her. The woman had a nice low laugh; let a little bit of the girl show through, but Ford could see what she was doing, trying to build a working intimacy. Pretty good at it, too.

Behind them, on the slick water, was a roiled trail, like a brown comet's tail, showing the path of the nets. He shut down the engine, cranked the outriggers up, swung the nets over the culling table, and spilled the contents. A whole world of sea life gushed out: filefish, pinfish, sea horses, parrot fish, tunicates, grasses, comb jellies, spider crabs, blue crabs, a calico crab, a couple of horseshoe crabs, and flopping rays. For a moment, sorting the specimens, he forgot that the woman was there, but then she said,

"He told me this other story, too, about how Disney World got started up there in Orlando."

"Tuck's not shy about taking credit—"

"But it wasn't Walt Disney, or anybody like that, it was this other man—"

Ford said, "Dick Pope. That's Tuck's Dick Pope story, about how he was the one who got theme parks started in Florida. Tuck used to take Mr. Pope fishing, the guy who started Cypress Gardens—it was always Beautiful Cypress Gardens in the newsreels, the ones with Esther Williams and the old movie stars—and Tuck says he's the one talked him into it. Then the Disney people came along and a lot of others. Reptile World. Sea World. A lot of them."

Agent Walker said, "Truly an amazing man."

"Tuck always kept moving," Ford said.

"And that he was President Truman's favorite fishing guide, the one who decided they should make the Everglades a park."

"No ... well, yeah, but he's stretching it. It's not as big a deal as it sounds. The old-time Florida guides—there weren't many of them, only a handful—took out a lot of people like that, famous. Presidents and athletes and movie people. Forty, fifty years ago, west Florida was still wilderness. Sparsely settled. Tuck was one of only two or three guides in the whole region, so he got his share."

"And Thomas Edison—"

"It was a big wild area with just a few small-town access points—"

"That Edison put him, Mr. Gatrell, in one of the first moving pictures, them fishing for some kind of fish."

Ford said, "That's what he says. But I'm not sure I believe Tuck's Edison stories. Edison died in, what? The early thirties. Tuck was pretty busy running liquor then."

"It sounds like he's done everything."

"Seventy-some years in a young state, it adds up."

"And that he's the last Florida cowboy . . . only he didn't call it that. It was something else—"

Ford said, "See? The guy exaggerates. There're a lot of cattle people left in Florida. Florida's one of the biggest cattle producers in the country. He's always been like that."

"Being his nephew, you've probably heard a lot of them."

Ford turned from the culling table to look at her. "I've heard my

share of Tuck's stories. But why don't we go straight to the questions you want to ask, save us both some time."

Walker thought, Just when I thought he was softening up. . . . She said, "There're no set questions, just background stuff. I'm trying to—"

Ford cut her off. "You're trying to establish who in the area has a history of violence. You have a profile built, and you want me to supply a few pieces of Tuck, see if they fit. Who would kidnap or kill three men? Who knows those islands well enough to get away with it? I imagine the county law-enforcement people did air searches until they got frustrated, then called you in. Your department. And if you had suspects, you'd be talking to them, not doing deep background."

Walker had been looking at all the flopping, crawling, oozing creatures on the table, watching the man sort it so quickly, putting most of the mess back in the water. She was thinking, I'll never go swimming in the ocean again. She said, "That's right." She looked at Ford, who was shaking the nets out, getting ready to head back. "You know him. Is he prone to violence?"

"You've checked his priors. You know he is. But not in that way."

"He knows the region. I mean, there are thousands of islands, like a jungle—"

"He guided in the Everglades, I already confirmed that. Tuck grew up in the islands. He knows them."

"Considering all he's done in his life, he's certainly shrewd enough. Maybe even brilliant."

Ford said, "I wouldn't say that."

Walker said, "Do you think he fits the profile? I'm only asking for his own good."

"How would I know anything about the profile of a kidnapper or killer?" Ford started the boat, smiling at her. "I'm a biologist. Isn't that what it says on the data sheet they gave you?"

"Yes . . . from what they gave me—"

Ford kept talking. "Tucker Gatrell can be irritating as hell, and he has a temper, but he's not the guy you're after. He's an old man, for God's sake. He should probably be in a home or something."

Agent Walker said, "I'd love to meet him. Maybe I'll drive down there tomorrow," using her tone to tell Ford she'd be the judge.

Ford said, "You do that. See for yourself."

*  *  *

Ford
sorted the specimens, putting sea horses and horseshoe crabs into the big saltwater tank on the deck, watching the sea horses right themselves in the aerator stream of raw water, finding tailholds on blades of turtle grass, while the horseshoe crabs plowed along the bottom. Ford's eyes lingered there, the cool haven of salt water, then looked to see whether Agent Walker's car was gone from the parking lot. It was. No strange cars, anyway. Jeth's four-by-four—he'd left it there while he was traveling—and MacKinley's Lincoln, Ford's own old blue Chevy pickup, then the cars that belonged to the live-aboards.

He checked his lab to make sure everything was orderly, the stainless-steel dissecting table sponged clean, all the specimen and chemical jars in their places. Then he stripped naked and stood beneath the rainwater cistern, showering the sweat away before changing into fresh shorts and a blue stone-washed cham-bray shirt off the clothesline.

It was sunset, the pearly after time, and the sky over Sanibel Island was wind-streaked with cantaloupe orange, purple swirls of cloud. Beyond the docks, mangroves settled charcoal black, blurring into smoky hedges as light drained from the bay. The lights of the marina bloomed on, and out of the closing darkness came the squawk of night herons hunting crabs on the mud flats and the mountain stream sound of tidal current dragging past the pilings of Ford's house.

He stepped out onto the porch and looked at Tomlinson's sailboat. It was a dark buoy on the copper-glazed water, and he could see Tomlinson's silhouette, lean as a bird, straggly-haired, sitting on the bow of the boat. Meditation time. The man was out there every dawn, every dusk, even in storms, as if the sun might drift off station if not for his shepherding. Communing with nature, or maybe talking with God. No telling with Tomlinson. Or maybe thinking about his baby daughter, Nichola, with her mother up there in Boston, where Tomlinson had flown at least once every two weeks since the baby had been born—until recently, suggesting to Ford that things weren't going too well between Tomlinson and the child's mother.

Even mystics have their problems. . . .

Ford hated to interrupt him, but he didn't relish the idea of driving to Mango and seeing Tuck one-on-one. Tomlinson would be just the right buffer. Give the crazy old fool someone to hound while Ford stayed on the periphery and tried to decipher just what kind of scheme he was cooking up now.

Three men missing . . . well, he'd wondered about it since the first time he saw it in the paper. Christ . . . Tuck couldn't be involved. . . . But then Ford thought, The hell he couldn't.

He stepped down to the dock and started his flats boat—a skiff with low freeboard and a poling platform over the outboard motor—and idled toward the west side of the bay. At the channel opening to the marina, he heard a hoot and looked over, to see JoAnn Smallwood and Rhonda Lister sitting on the stern of their old Chris-Craft, waving to him. Holding something in their hands for him to see—margaritas, probably, inviting him over for social hour. Maybe they'd broken up with their boyfriends. Or maybe their boyfriends were out of town. Two good-looking working women—one tall with short hair, one small with a body—who lived aboard at the marina, so Ford had not allowed himself to get physically involved. Didn't want to risk emotional discord in the small marina community. But now, knowing he had to go see Tuck, he found them more tempting than ever.

No wonder I don't have any social life. . . .

At the sailboat, Tomlinson said, "Hey, you bet man. Love to meet the old dude, your uncle. But maybe I should change clothes."

Ford said, "Well, yeah ... I don't think a sarong's the thing to wear." He could smell incense burning in the cabin below, sandalwood or rosewood, something musky.

Tomlinson said, "Sarongs are nice and cool, though. Perfectly sensible when you think about it. But we're slaves to fashion in this country. You ought to see the looks I get when I wear this thing to town. And it's the best, top of the line, pure silk I bought in Jakarta. The Pierre Cardin of Indonesia, but people just don't appreciate that kind of quality here."

Ford said, "I think I'll run my boat back. I'll wait in the truck for you."

"Hell, I ought to give you a sarong for your birthday, Doc. 'Bout time you wore something that didn't come from Cabelia's catalog. Just the thing for you, out there wading the flats. Except you get kinda weird tan lines."

Ford started the boat. "You could wear a shirt, too. People are old-fashioned down there in Mango."

They drove across the causeway off the island, then turned south onto Highyway 41, the coastal highway that linked Tampa and Naples before crossing the Everglades to Miami—the road that pioneered South Florida's development. Built with a floating dredge, it was also known as the Tamiami Trail.

The Tamiami Trail had become the region's trunk line of growth, a stoplight artery of shopping malls, 7-Elevens, Kentucky Frieds, and shoe outlets, with access roads that led to planned country club communities with their guarded security gates, Bermuda grass vistas, and dredged lakes. Spring Meadow, Royal Hawaiian, Coral Reef—names invented by advertising agencies that had no linkage to reality, to the makeup of the land, but the logos looked great, and sanctuary from the crush of Florida-bound humanity sold big. They scraped the land bare, trucked in the sod, the prefab house frames, the PVC, and plasterboard. Then they built the boundary walls high.

Ford drove along at a steady fifty-five, windows down, taking in the night scenery and smells, listening to Tomlinson, slowing through Estero and Bonita Springs, then took the Naples bypass south and almost missed the narrow road that angled west into Mango. It had been so long, perhaps fifteen years, that he didn't recognize it. But he remembered the twisting mud-flat route well enough. The tide came right up to the road and crossed it in some places. Then the road curved sharply beneath palm trees. Mango Bay rose out of the mangroves to the right and the village was on the left: moon-globe streetlamps and a few old houses on a low ridge of Indian mounds that looked over the water. Tuck's ranch was at the end of the road on the highest mound, a low gray shack with a tin roof and a sand yard cloaked by trees. Lights from the windows glimmered through the leaves.

Tomlinson said, "Does it look smaller? When you go home, the place is supposed to look smaller."

Ford said, "It never seemed that big to begin with."

He turned down the drive and parked beneath a tree beside Tuck's pickup, saying, "Tuck's usually got at least one or two mean dogs around. He always did. So watch your step."

He stepped out into high weeds, walked to the porch, and rapped on the door. No answer. He could hear cattle behind the house, the occasional bawl, as he peeked through the window. Dishes were piled in the sink. Some kind of grease had slopped down the stove, coagulating in midstream. Beer cans and spit cups marched across the kitchen table like figures in some crazy chess game. The house was just as Ford remembered it: comfortable chaos beneath a layer of dirt. Just seeing it irritated him. The mess. The disorderliness of Tuck, his life, the whole damn backwoods Florida lifestyle.

Then he turned a little, not wanting to look, but he looked, anyway. There was Tucker's junk pile out beyond the barn. The rusting, rotting spore of a long and sloppy life. All the random shapes smothered over with vines, and there was the cloaked shape of an old boat's fly bridge, as if the boat were growing out of the ground.

Within him, Ford felt a fluttering hollowness, a bone-deep sense of loss. The fly bridge might have been a tombstone, hunched there in the weeds. Then Ford felt anger.

That pathetic old son of a bitch . . .

Tomlinson broke into his thoughts, saying, "He couldn't have gone far. His truck's here."

Ford cleared his throat and kicked at a shell. "He's got a horse, so the truck doesn't mean anything. He could be anywhere— Marco Island, Miami. When the mood's on him, he just saddles up and goes."

"You want to wait?"

"No. But I will. I've got to talk to him."

Tomlinson was fanning his hands in front of his face, smacking at his bare legs. "Geeze—mosquitoes! I'm getting eaten up. No wonder this place hasn't been developed yet."