Night Moves (25 page)

One adds the lime afterward, but I’d let the jet-set assassin figure that out for himself. “Maybe you should ask Cressa if she wants something to eat. She has to be drained after the night she’s had.”

No doubt. The woman had been in a drug-fueled hysteria when I’d telephoned her cell. Diemer was at the beach house with her and moments away from dialing 911—or so he claimed. More likely, though, he’d been weighing the risk of exposure against his opportunity to be alone with a vulnerable woman he had yet to bed. When the Brazilian realized it was me on the phone, he’d had no choice but to join Cressa’s rescuer by pretending to lead the way. Now he was the reluctant nursemaid, but only after Tomlinson had agreed she was stable enough to be left alone with the man.

“I heard Tomlinson go out the door,” I said to him as I wrote
½ cup sifted flour
,
a pinch of sea salt
on a legal pad. “Where’d he go?” I craned to have a look through a south window. “Or is he still on the porch?”

“It was because of your dog,” Diemer replied. “Whenever I moved, he showed his teeth, so your hippie friend led him ashore. Why people tolerate untrained animals, it is something I will never understand.”

“An impressive dog,” I agreed. “Unless you’re talking about Tomlinson.”

The Brazilian hesitated, then decided it was a joke. “Yes . . . very funny. Actually, the hippie appears to be fine. Not totally coherent, but no serious side effects from the drug. Mysterious, no?”

I shook my head—
No—
while I worked on the recipe. “I think the drug dealer underestimated my friend’s experience with hallucinogenics. Cressa only had a couple of puffs and look what happened to her.”

“Why would a person do this intentionally?” Diemer said, maybe interested, maybe not. It was the second time I’d baited him on the subject but still wasn’t convinced he had no knowledge of the Haitian drug-dealing witch doctor. The matter became no clearer when he added, “Smoking marijuana puts women in a more receptive mood, this I understand. A useful tool. But, personally, I think it’s silly—pay money to behave stupidly and laugh at nothing funny?” The man shrugged as he crouched to look over my shoulder and then switched the subject to what he saw on the computer screen. “Ah! Tarpon fishing! Why such ugly little boats?”

In a frozen frame of the video Deano had shot, a dozen high-speed outboards were clustered like bumper cars over a pod of tarpon that had just sounded, the tails of two fish throwing a beaded veil of spray. The hulls of the boats were vacuum-wrapped in neon plastic—yellow, tangerine, pink—then tattooed with advertising logos—Yamaha, Spiderwire, Shimano, Miller Lite—which fit the NASCAR attire of the anglers.

“A tournament,” I told him. “You ever hear of the Silver King Professional Circuit?” I was four ingredients into the fish gravy recipe but looked up to gauge the man’s reaction when I added, “A Florida investment group owns the television rights. Tomlinson found that out this afternoon. This footage was shot by someone who wanted to copy the format, but he also wanted to start a whole new series of tournaments. There’s a lot of money involved. People will do all sorts of crazy things for money—or to eliminate someone who gets in their way.”

Diemer nodded. We were on his home ground now. In fact, it gave me an idea. “Would you mind giving me your opinion on this footage?”

He was an observant man. I was interested in what he had to say about the tarpon footage, but I was more interested in what he knew about the dysfunctional Arturo family who vacationed in Europe and had plenty of money.

20

I HIT THE SPACE BAR WHILE THE BRAZILIAN PULLED
up a chair, both of us cleaning our glasses in prelude to commenting on the action. The footage was raw, without a sound track or voice-over. As we watched, I explained to Diemer that it was shot in Boca Grande Pass during the last hour of the last tournament of the season and three of the boats in the bumper car jumble were tied for first place.

“Grand prize was a quarter million dollars,” I told him, “so tournaments like this have the built-in drama a television series needs—
if
they land fish. That’s the key: catching lots of fish.”

“How do you know this?” he said.

“I was there finishing a project,” I replied, aware that a more obvious question would have been to ask if I’d shot the footage. Had the articulate professional slipped?

If he did, the man recovered seamlessly, saying, “Good. The framing is passable . . . but amateurish. This person’s equipment lacks a stabilizer . . . and his lens is filthy. I should have known it wasn’t you behind the camera.”

The Brazilian might struggle with the subtleties of Yankee humor, but his powers of observation were first-rate. Something else: he knew photography.

“Watch how the boats move,” I said. “You’re a fisherman, so speak up if you see something . . . well, unusual. If you want it played back or stopped, just say.”

“You have never seen this before?”

Shaking my head, I tapped the screen to focus the man’s attention. “Watch . . . the school of tarpon is moving.
See?
Notice that all seven boats take off full speed after them. Now watch what happens when they’re over the school again.”

Diemer was getting into it. “Bizarre,” he said. “An entirely different technique than Captain Hannah uses. Far more aggressive. Why don’t the fish run away?”

I told him the fish we were watching
had
run. Boca Grande is the deepest inlet on the coast, so the fish had fled by sounding. “Picture a limestone basin with crevices,” I added. “The tarpon have dropped down into one of those crevices.”

We watched the boats roar to a stop above the fish . . . watched anglers drop weighted hooks, a plastic worm on each, deep into the invisible crevice. When their lead weights hit bottom, a few anglers cranked reels furiously to retrieve the hooks at high speed. Others held their rods motionless.

“The fishing lures are like none I’ve seen,” Diemer commented. “Heavy sinkers attached directly to the hook. Humm.”

“Four ounces of lead or more,” I replied and hit the space bar, turning to him. “You just nailed an important point. Big weights on hooks that are tied to leaders—but
light
leaders, almost invisible . . . See?” I tapped the magnify key. “Look at the rig near the bottom of the screen”—then zoomed closer—“and not much thicker than the fishing line they’re using.”

“Yes,” Diemer said.
“Unusual.”

I hit
Play
and explained that the technique we were watching worked only in Boca Grande Pass and a few other similar areas worldwide.

For several minutes, the Brazilian stayed close to the screen, studying every move, but then sat straighter and said, “I understand now. In the crevices, the tarpon are trapped. Then, like small bombs, the hooks are dropped into a group of fish. Often the hooks are rapidly retrieved, which makes it more effective. Yes . . . I see what these men are doing.”

“Not trapped,” I corrected him, “the fish are packed tight into a hole that has walls. Limestone walls, mostly, and chunks of archaic coral.”

“Trapped,” Diemer insisted, “unable to react when a fishing line brushes against their gills or the hinge of the mouth. I
know
this technique. The Indios use a similar method in streams in the Amazon . . . in Europe, too—Ireland most especially. I’ve seen it used to catch salmon with very light lines, but only in fast water when the salmon are spawning in groups. There is a term for it—you do not know this term?”

“Floss-fishing,” I replied. “Or snatch-fishing—but there the weight is usually molded onto a treble hook. It’s the same principle, though.”

Nodding, the Brazilian did a quick pantomime of flossing his teeth. “The line slips into a narrow hinge of the mouth or gills. Yes? Then the hook buries itself when the fish attempts to flee.” His eyes returned to the computer screen. “This is called professional fishing in Florida? Forgive me if you disagree, but it’s hardly
fishing
.”

I replied, “It’s for a television series, remember? They call it jig-fishing to make it sound legitimate, but it guarantees they’ll land tarpon even when fish aren’t feeding. Can you imagine investing a quarter million or more in a TV tournament but getting no action footage? That’s why an agency hired me to do a hook placement study.”

“Outrageous,” Diemer said.

The irony caused me to smile. A man who robbed and sometimes killed for a fee was offended by a breach of sporting ethics. It confirmed, though, that he had connected the disparate elements and had quickly figured out what, over decades, Florida’s legislators had failed to understand. A moment later, the Brazilian snapped his fingers to get my attention. “Two boats—they have hooked tarpon!”

I had been in Boca Grande on that summer afternoon and had no interest in watching what happened next. I knew that one fish had been hooked in the eye socket, the other beneath a boney plate outside the mouth. Just before it was landed, the eye-hooked tarpon was then hit so hard by a hammerhead shark it exploded in a cloud of blood and silver scales, scales that glittered like confetti as they spiraled into the depths.

I got up and walked to the file cabinet. “Keep watching. Then you might want to read the conclusion of the report I did.”

My back to the screen, I took my time locating copies of the study. Not until I heard Diemer exclaim, “My god! You must see what just happened!” did I return, a copy in hand. “A shark,” he said, “a shark just ate a tarpon . . . I
think
, but the camera work is so poor . . .” The man added something in Portuguese to vent his frustration, then asked, “Who is responsible for this camera work?”

When I did a quick replay, I saw that the Germanic Brazilian was being too harsh on the shooter—presumably, Dean Arturo. Arturo’s camera had been blocked from the shark attack by the tournament’s own camera boat, which was no surprise. As I watched, though, I was startled when the lens panned the flotilla and then suddenly stopped when it found me and two assistants aboard my new boat: a twenty-six-foot Zodiac with a T-top, radar, a weather console, twin Mercs, and
Sanibel Biological Supply
stenciled on the side. The shot was out of focus, at first, but then zoomed until the frame was tight, just me holding a clipboard. For the first time, I heard the cameraman speak. But he spoke to himself, not for an audience, or possibly to a friend, because he muttered, “That’s him . . . the asshole biologist, it’s gotta be.” The shot zoomed out of focus, then sharpened again. “Yeah . . . the one who wants to screw our chances before I even get started.”

The shot tightened on my face, which made what came next more personal. “Marion Ford . . . you fuck. Stick a spear through your neck and wait for the sharks. Put
that
in your research paper.”

No fake Boston accent, but I recognized the voice. I’d heard it the morning I’d witnessed the stingray giving birth—Dean Arturo had posed as Luke Smith. I didn’t know why Cressa’s photo hadn’t matched, but I didn’t care. I had proof. Proof enough even if I never again met the man face-to-face.

—

T
HE
SHARK
FOOTAGE
ENDED,
and the next shot was of the winning boat dragging a tarpon toward the weigh station. The sling that awaited the fish resembled a body bag, which added implicitly to the tarpon’s humiliation.

Diemer was confused by what he’d just heard Dean Arturo say but interested. “This person, the cameraman, is he not your associate?” Then added a smile to his voice and confided, “Sounds rather dangerous to me. Why . . . that man just threatened your life!”

Seldom does the solution to a problem flash into my head without the plodding logic most solutions require. It did now. The catalyst was the way the Brazilian had said “rather dangerous.” It was a warning, but he was also having fun with it. Diemer relished the potential those words offered—a hunter who got an adrenaline kick from projecting how
he
would deal with such a matter.

Two peas in a pod,
I had joked.

Maybe Diemer would have his chance. Which is why I decided to tell him the truth and explained, “A few days ago, he did try to kill me. So it’s not surprising.”

“How?”

I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“But you do
know
him?”

“If it’s the same voice—and I think it is—I only met the guy once. Three days ago, Sunday morning. He offered me ten thousand dollars to come along on our search for Flight 19 and film it. Obviously, he has some personal issues, but that’s not why I said no. And the tarpon footage was shot months
before
he made his offer.”

The man’s posture changed subtly, no longer interested in sportfishing or anything else. “Then you
have
found the planes.”

I touched the space bar to stop the video . . . thought about it for a few seconds . . . then decided to take a bigger risk. “You mind telling me something . . . Vargas? Are you really here on vacation? If it’s business, I know better than to ask details.”

The man remained unruffled, but neither was he amused. “Why did you deny checking my identity?”

I said, “Just being careful.”

“Humble,” he replied, staring at me. “And you have the resources to check on a stranger from Brazil.” He smiled. “A Swissair pilot. Why would you care?”

“I have an idea,” I said, “if you’re willing to listen—but let me make sure what we say stays private.”

I went out the door, across the breezeway to my living quarters. A singsong garble of voices told me that Tomlinson and Cressa Arturo were in the bedroom talking. The dog, sleeping in the middle of the floor, told me the chaos was over—for now. I returned to the lab with two cold beers, turned a chair backward, and said to Diemer, “Your business is your business, but I think maybe we can help each other. We have things in common, like you said. For instance, I have a lot of contacts in Central and South America—Cuba as well. I suspect you know that’s true.”