The Heat Islands: A Doc Ford Novel (15 page)

Now Ford was sitting in a deck chair by the screened-in pool, looking at the night sky. It was late, after two, and still. Summer-still, with inseet noises, and the moon was gone. The darkness was compressed by the hour; the stillness of
2 a.m.
and the fixed stars seemed to resonate, like being deep, deep underwater. Ford sat there looking at the sky, and found himself wondering if Jeth Nicholes was awake. Wondered if Jeth was studying these same stars through a window with bars. Jeth Nicholes the accused murderer, which sounded absurd, but that's the way things stood.

From the open sliding glass doors into the kitchen, Walda called to him. "Why don't you go for a swim? That would clean out your ear. Or get into the hot tub."

"I don't have a suit."

"Such a prude! I don't have a suit, and I'm going for a swim. Dewey and I are both going swimming!"

"Damn right. Doc. Get your puny ass in there!" Dewey's voice.

He could hear them both laughing, probably two or three margaritas gone, and then the pool's underwater lights went on, like a challenge. Ford poked his head into the kitchen. Dewey and Walda were beyond, in the living room, just opening some kind of a scrapbook. Wide living room with hurricane shutters closed tight, as if to shut out the world. Low modem furniture and floor cushions by the fireplace. Professionally decorated with prints of sea oats, herons, and starfish. Cool colors and vacation home sterile. No trophies on the mantelpiece; no reminders of her profession in this big room, which had been the thing that first told Ford she was weary of tennis. An impersonal room in an impersonal house, which had never really been lived in until Dewey's elbow surgery, so it had the feel of an elaborate hotel suite; a place to relax between airports.

Ford said to them, "I either have to boat home now or borrow your car and drive home later. It's late, and I've still got a twenty-minute run."

Dewey looked up from the scrapbook, and he could see that she was a little drunk, the way her eyes didn't quite focus. "So stay here. Einstein. Sleep in the guest room, then we can all go for a run early. On the beach."

Walda said, "As long as you don't snore."

Ford wondered if that meant Walda was also staying in the guest room. Or in Dewey's room. Or maybe the house had a third bedroom; he wasn't sure.

"Then I'm going to go down and check the boat."

"Then you'll swim?"

"Sure. Get my car washed out."

He went out the pool door. Behind him was the gray beach and the open Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf made a breathing noise, the way the water lapped, calm. He crossed SanCap Road, then walked along it in the darkness, beneath the palms and casuarina pines. Even this late, there were a few fishermen on the Blind Pass Bridge, the bridge that connected Sanibel to Captiva. No matter what the weather, pouring rain or wind; no matter what time of day or night, there were always fishermen on that bridge. Same with the Matlacha Bridge on Pine Island. Same with the old Bahia Honda Bridge on the Keys. The really good fishing bridges always had fishermen, and Blind Pass was one of the best.

Dewey's dock was on the bay side, and Ford cut through a yard to his skiff. He checked the lines and dropped an anchor off to hold the boat away from the dock when the tide started out again, then found a diet Coke in the cooler and sat watching the silhouettes of the fishermen up on the bridge. Fifty yards or so down the pass, shielded by mangroves, someone banged around in a boat, and an outboard engine started. More late fishermen out to get a snook, or maybe a tarpon. Ford yawned, enjoying the night.

When he got back to Dewey's house, the pool lights were off, and he could hear the two women splashing around and talking softly. The screen door creaked when he opened it. and they both hooted and moved to the far end of the pool. Yep, they were naked, all right. Not that he could see them. Just two dim shapes glistening, the bodies indistinguishable, so that only Dewey's blonde hair gave her away.

"The water's nice. Doc. We won't look."

Dewey called, "The hell we won't! He watched us." Ford said, "What?"

"You heard me."

"I was down at the boat. I didn't watch anything."

"Hah! I heard you out there walking around. Rooting around in the bushes trying to get a peek. When I turned down the music. I could hear you breathing, for Christ sake."

Ford said, "You're serious, aren't you?"

Dewey said, "Wait a minute—that wasn't you? Really? No shit now. Doc."

Ford went into the kitchen, walking fast. "You have a flashlight in here?"

"Hey, hold it. I know what it was. The neighbor's damn dog. That's what it was. Kind of a big mutt, like a shepherd. He scared me the other night like that, came sniffing around. I just figured it was you acting like a pervert. I'll have to shovel more dog crap in the morning."

Walda said to Dewey. "I never did hear anything. You said you could, but I didn't." Floating on her back momentarily, giving Ford a quick look: breasts flattening as her back arched; the dark symmetry of nipples; the grid of stomach muscles veiled in shadow, then gone beneath the water.

Ford felt a physical stirring, like an abdominal cramp— that's how long it had been.

He said, "Flashlight?"

"God, you're stubborn."

"Just a quick look around, that's all. Where is it?"

"There's one plugged into the wall, by the stove. It goes on when the power goes out. But there's no reason—" Ford found the light and followed the wide beam out through the screen door into the backyard—a low-maintenance gravel yard, bordered by sand and casuarina needles, with isolated landscaped islands of date palms and bird-of-paradise plants. A privacy hedge, shoulder-high, had been planted around the pool, and Ford went slowly along the hedge, painting back and forth with the light, looking at the ground. Wood chips, really; some sand.

From inside, he heard Dewey say, "That's where I first heard it. Right where you are now."

Ford dropped down to one knee, looking carefully ... and found a shallow crater of a footprint. Nothing detailed about it; a swale in the sand, but large. A man's footprint. Someone with some weight had stood near the hedge, toes pointing toward the pool. He moved out across the yard, but the gravel would not show prints. Found a pile of dog scat at the edge of the drive, not fresh. The dog had been eating grass and the bones of some kind of fowl. Ford worked his way around the house, twice, making wider and wider circles, then returned to the pool.

"See anything?" Dewey and Walda were back there in the deep end, holding on to the edge.

"Like you said, probably just a dog."

"You'll learn to listen to me."

Ford was stripping off his shirt, folding it, putting it with his glasses. "Your yardmen keep the yard nice. How often do they come?"

"You took so long, we're about ready to get out."

"Did they come today?"

"The guys who do the yard? Nope. Every Wednesday. So you're coming in anyway."

Ford said, "I've got to get that pie out of my ear," and stepped out of his shorts, and received a chorus of hoots before diving, gliding underwater, eyes wide, trying to pick out the outline of Dewey's legs. Found them—or were they Walda's? Unsure, he surfaced, to find Dewey splashing away from him. He grabbed her ankle and pulled her to him ... felt the brief softness of her breasts against his arm before she kicked away, saying, "No touching, buster!" Like she was kidding, but not really kidding. Suddenly tense.

Feeling like a rebuked schoolboy. Ford made no seeond attempt to get close to her. The three of them swam j around. Talked about nonsense. Looked at the sky. Kept ; their distance. Then Dewey showed him to his room—a small room with hurricane shutters closed and a brass bed. As dark as a box with the door closed.

Ford slept.

It was like the dreams he had had in those early months .. . those nights after first losing her....

He could put her out of his mind during the day, even in the first months. He was that disciplined. But at night, the dreams came. Never welcome, but he had no control and he despised himself for that weakness. Hated the depth of emotion that dominated him; hated the sappy juvenility of the love that he had never sought—indeed, had always thought was a songwriter's fiction. Or the invention of bad soap operas. Until he met her.

It was painful. It was privately embarrassing. Worse, it interfered with his work.

Yet the dreams came bubbling up from the unconscious like welts, with an acid clarity—her face, her eyes, her touch—so that, by morning, he was withered with the pain of missing her, but all the more determined that it would never happen to him again.

Pilar
...

Not with Pilar. Not with any woman. Ever, ever.

Gradually, the dreams had dissipated. Then were gone as completely as Pilar herself was gone.

Until now...

Deep in sleep. Ford knew what was happening even before it happened; could feel her standing over his bed in the darkness, and he knew the dream had returned. Could sense her arms reaching out to fold the sheet back even before he felt the coolness on his stomach and legs. Could feel her long fingers on his chest as she slid into the bed beside him, covering his mouth with hers, her tongue flicking, touching, her hands moving, finding him and sliding smoothly up and down the length of him. The warm weight of her breasts on his body, her nipples hard enough to etch designs on his cheeks, his chest, then his abdomen as she moved downward, her lips and tongue tracing a path as her mouth found him.

Pilar
...

Ford lay asleep, knowing he was asleep and dreaming, but aware of the good weight of her, aware of what she was doing... feeling, in this playful gift of hers, the unity of them together; the utter, utter peace of being with her, like coming home.

I
just want to hold you. That's all, just hold you and never let go again....

Speaking to her, finding her head with his hand and touching her soft hair, combing it with his fingers, not wanting to awaken, because to awaken was to lose her again; fighting to remain asleep, yet feeling himself drift upward into consciousness.

Don't
leave ... please don't
leave.
...

Then he was awake, startled by the realization that the woman in bed with him was real.

"Hey—hey ... who are you? Dewey?"

There was a small whoop, a woman's cry of surprise, and Ford was sitting upright in the darkness. Seeing nothing but darkness in this closed room, aware of the chill breeze of air conditioning on his face, aware of a rushing movement. And calling out, straining to see. "Dewey? Is that you?"

The door to his room cracked open; a brief wedge of charcoal light into which moved a long female shape, head down, hurrying, then the door closed again.

Ford swung his arm around, trying to find the reading lamp beside the bed. Knocked into something, and there was a crash. Got out of bed, hands pressed out ahead of him. feeling for the wall. Touched the wall, following it to the door, then to the light switch. Bright overhead light that showed the reading lamp unbroken on the floor along with his glasses.

Ford found his fishing shorts folded on the chair, put them on, and stepped out into the hall.

The hall was illuminated by the light from his room; the entire house was dark. Down the hall were three doors, two closed tight and one open—the bathroom. He looked into the bathroom and switched on the light. Nothing. Went to the end of the hall and pressed his car against one closed door, then the other. No sound. He went down the hall into the main house, switching on lights, hoping to find Dewey or Walda—whoever the hell had been in his bed—sitting there in the darkness, waiting for him. Even slid open the glass door and looked into the pool area.

But no one was up, just him. standing barefoot on the carpet, hearing the ticking of the kitchen clock. It was 4:15 A.M.

Ford retraced his steps, switching off lights. Stopped at the two closed doors once more. Tried one, then the other. Both locked.

Returned to his room; got into bed. But couldn't sleep, shaken by the illusion of being once again with Pilar, and then the surprise of the reality. He lay there trying to reconstruct what he had thought to be a dream, trying to latch upon some detail that would tell him who had come to his bed. There was no tactful way he could ask either Dewey or Walda. for to ask was to risk revealing the strange behavior of one to the other. And for all he knew, his visitor had been sleepwalking—answering the needs of her own private dream.

Ford sat in his room until the first pearl-gray lines of dawn filtered through the window's shutters, then dressed. He left a note on the kitchen counter by the coffee maker. The note ended, "Please keep your doors chained, just in case it wasn't a dog last night."

Then walked to Blind Pass and started his boat.

When the telephone rang at 8:45 a.m.. Ford thought it was Dewey calling to ask him why the hell he hadn't stayed to run. Hoped it would be Dewey, because then, by gauging the tone of her voice, he could tell if she was the one who had slipped into his dreams ... and his bed.

Ford answered the phone, saying, "Sanibel Biological," but it was Terry from Cabbage Key who replied, asking. "So those two amazons got you home safe. I was wondering."

Ford said, "What a night, huh? I'm sorry; I truly am. You think the bankers are going to press charges?"

"Naw, I just talked to them. They're out there laughing about it over eggs and bacon. Talking like they're in love with those two ladies of yours, and I think they really are. That's some impressive pair. The bankers said they'd kick in half for damages, but no more."

Ford said, "That sounds fair. You give us the whole bill last night?"

"You're not going to pay it, are you?"

"I'll chip in with the ladies. I was the one who brought them."

"Then I'll send down the final one. And a request that they not return. Not for a week or two, anyway. But if that's going to keep you away from Monday-night baseball, we'll let it slide. The bankers will be gone by Thursday. Fact. I don't think they'd mind the chance to make it up to the ladies. So forget the suspension; bad idea." Ford said no, it was okay, they probably wouldn't be back for a while, before Terry said. "Oh. and I got the name of that guy you were wondering about. The one with Karl Sutter last night."

There was a pencil on a string beside the phone, and Ford wiped fish slime on his shorts before taking the pencil in his fingers. "Yeah?"

"One of the waitresses recognized him. A heavyweight. A guy named Bob Griffin, a state senator. An old Florida family. He's been in before, which is why he looked familiar, but I couldn't remember."

"Senator Robert Griffin. I've heard of him. But what in the hell was he doing with Sutter?"

"Having dinner. Skipped out right after the fight, probably worried about bad publicity. Best I can tell, they came in separate boats, but I don't watch the docks at night unless it's real busy."

"So he hadn't chartered Sutter."

"Not if they came in separate boats, I wouldn't think. But who knows. I'm just telling you who the guy was. Which doesn't make sense if Sutter is the screwup the other guides say he is."

Ford said, "I'm starting to wonder myself."

Terry said, "Christ, what a night. It belongs in the unofficial bar hall of fame."

"And I was a part of it."

"Your head okay?"

Ford touched his left car, which was swollen. "My head's just fine."

Terry said. "Next time, don't bring women unless they're baseball fans."

When he finished on the phone, Ford selected another album
—Brother Moon.
Latin choral chants, which he loved. He placed it on the turntable and turned the volume up loud enough to hear in the next room, then went across to his lab to finish the necropsies he was doing. The Latin chants moved through the rooms, ancient and stately, lending the mood of medieval stone churches to the wooden piling house, taking the edge off the fresh morning heat of a Florida summer.

On the disseeting table were the mullet and the trout he had taken from the sandbar on Friday, the day the guides found Rios's body. Two of several dead fish he had seen floating that day, which is why he had suspected red tide. But now he knew that red tide had not killed them. He wanted to find out what had.

Ford opened his notebook, wrote in the date, and picked up the mullet in his left hand. It was a common striped mullet, family
Mugilidae.
one of more than a hundred mullet species worldwide. A strange-looking fish, shaped like an old-time soap box derby car, but with bugged eyes and bright silver scales, which now, in death, were gray. Mullet were a staple fish of commercial netters (the roe was prized by Taiwanese buyers) but were valuable only as a bait to sportfishermen because they fed on microscopic animals and detritus, so getting one to take a hook was no easy thing. Ford turned the fish in his hand, studying it, and wrote, "No obvious external injuries. Slight extrusion of the eyes, possibly from bloating. Gills clean, slightly gray, with few parasites. Fins good. Scales intact."

Then he placed the mullet on the disseeting table and, using a micro scissors, opened the fish from anus to lateral fins, then clipped on hemostats to hold the belly open. Using a Mall probe and seeker, he began to survey the viscera. The inside of a mullet always seemed slightly muddy; black mud because of the decomposed mangrove leaves they often fed upon. The intestines, the gizzard, the grit-filled stomach, the fiver all looked good—though he couldn't be sure unless he sent the organs off to a better lab where they had a histologist on staff. But no obvious bacterial infections: no obvious tumors... but something was wrong. What the hell was it?

Ford stood over the fish, looking. He pulled the gooseneck lamp lower, wanting more light. He stood for several seeonds looking dumbly at the fish before he finally realized—and it was so damn obvious! Where the hell was the swim bladder? The mullet had no air bladder layered in among the viscera. All fish had swim bladders; had to, to survive. But this one didn't—at least not that Ford could see.

He took the fine probe and began to move the stomach and intestines away, and there saw the pearly white lip of the missing bladder. It appeared to have been expelled outward, toward the mouth. Ford turned the fish and opened its mouth with the probe and his thumb—and there was the bladder, filling the whole throat cavity. As if the fish had stuck its nose into a vacuum sweeper and had this organ sucked out.

Ford took the sea trout in his hand and pried open its mouth. Same thing. Through the two sharp catch teeth, beyond the golden mouth, the air bladder clogged the entire throat.

This was a strange one. Very strange.

He washed his hands in the sink, then began to wash his disseeting instruments, drying them carefully before returning them to their case. Cleaning up mechanically, his mind scanning for an explanation.

If the fish had been in deep water and had been brought to the surface too quickly, it was possible that the air bladders might expand into their mouths because of the rapid expansion of air as atmospheric pressure decreased. That was a common phenomenon in deep-water fishing: reel up fish from the depths with their eyes bulging and their swim bladders bursting. But the water in the area where Ford had found the fish did not exceed thirty-three feet—and it would take at least that much water to cause a change in atmospheric pressure. Ford stood and checked the chart on the wall just to make sure. The Mud Hole, at its deepest, was twenty-three feet. So maybe someone caught the fish offshore and didn't dump them until they got in. Which seemed reasonable—except that mullet weren't caught on a hook; certainly not on the kind of hooks used by deep-water fishermen.

That left only one alternate explanation.

Ford finished cleaning the disseeting table, then placed each fish in double Ziploc bags, noting on the outside of the bags the date of disseetion and the place where they had been collected. He put them in his fish freezer, then found his address book and thumbed through it while he flipped the
Brother Moon
album. With the music turned low, he called two marine biologists he knew, one with the Florida Department of Natural Resources, the other with Mote Marine Lab in Sarasota. Both confirmed his suspicion by voicing their own: Maybe the fish had been killed in an explosion.

Someone had been out in Pine Island Sound dynamiting fish.

Which suggested to Ford how Karl Sutter had won the tarpon tournament. And maybe how Marvin Rios had really died.

Ford told both biologists he wasn't sure he needed it, but he might, and would they be willing to necropsy the fish and send him their findings?

They said sure, they'd be happy to.

Jeth Nicholes stood in his cell in Glades Detention, a new beige brick building with electronic doors and a big parking lot fenced with razor wire, built so far out in the palmetto scrub that decent people didn't have to pass it on the way to work. So far out nothing but rattlesnakes and feral hogs had roamed here before the bulldozers came in and scraped the acreage clean. But now a small industrial park was growing up just to the west, using the new blacktop road—Nicholes could see the roofs of the corrugated metal buildings poking up among the rank slash pine. Could see their beige shells through the heat if he pressed his face against the bars that protected the tiny Plexiglas window, maybe half a mile down the blacktop where the ditch was littered with pop cans and Big Mac containers.

Man. I could go for about three Big Macs right now. Extra sauce, hold those pickles.

Nicholes, wearing a bright-orange prison jumpsuit, sat heavily on his bunk, thinking unchristian thoughts about his fellow inmates. Across the corridor, a couple of skinny redneck guys sat in their cells, smoking filtered cigarettes, talking through the bars. Evil smiles with those bad teeth, sitting there with tattoos on their arms. Guys who'd probably never known a horny moment until the day their sisters bought running shoes. Nasty-looking fuckers here, but crazed flesh stompers on the outside once they got a bellyful of whiskey. Tooling around in their rusty pickups, sniffing out trouble—Jeth could just picture them.

One of the rednecks noticed Nicholes looking and called over, "You gat you ah probum, boy?"

Jeth stiffened, not about to take any shit from these prison sheep humpers. He stood. "How'd you like to go home and tell your mama some
boy
just kicked your butt so hard you could cat firewood through your asshole?"

"Okay, okay. Lighten up, man."

Jeth returned to his bunk.

Down the corridor, all the colored guys were hooting about something, talking all at once so it was kind of like one high moan, going,
Muhfuckah
this and
muhfuckah
that, like they only knew about ten words and had to space out the noise with something just to prove they were alive. Jumping around, reaching for spears but finding only their dicks to grab. Not like the black guys he'd played ball with. Those were decent guys. Hell, some of them had even gone on to college on scholarship. Doing good out there in the world. Or like Captain Javier. No better guy in the world than Javier. Took care of those pretty little kids of his, two girls and an older boy, always standing on their tiptoes and grinning when they saw their daddy coming. And the way Javier worked his ass off and didn't bitch even when Marvin Rios started demanding half his charter money or he'd turn him in to the feds as an illegal alien. Deport the whole family. Which is probably what had driven Javier to finally killing the dwarf bastard—if Javier had killed him—and good riddance.

But these guys, Christ.

Brain-dead spades and wormy rednecks. Be another two, maybe three thousand years before this spawn could rightly be called human. Probably never eaten a fish in their lives that didn't have whiskers—but right at home here where food was served on plastic trays and eaten with spoons.

Correctional institution.

That was a laugh. Like it was a place to cure these egg suckers. A place for them to get a rest, more like it. Got more attention here than at a Holiday Inn, plus there was a basketball court and everything was free. A little pause in the rapes, murders, and dope snorting for this bunch. The Sin Pen, that's what the place ought to be called.

Sitting on his bunk, Jeth Nicholes imagined a neon sign outside Glades Detention:
sin pen
in soft green and flamingo pink. That was a good one. He'd tell that to Mack or Doc, maybe write it to them in a letter.

Sheep humpers!

And what pissed him off the most was. these guys were all probably healthy as horses and didn't have to lift a finger to be that way. Dancing all around death while getting more and more life forced down their throats.

Like he'd told that woman attorney just an hour ago. after the judge looked down from the bench and told him he'd appoint a public defender "Miz Harper, my folks are both dead. I got three sisters, all busy with their husbands and kids, so they don't count on me for nothing. I got no wife, no children, so I might just as well go to the electric chair without a fight. Instead of trying to save me, why'n't you do us all a favor and get some of these other yahoos zapped while we're at it?"

That had seemed the best thing to say, and the best thing to do. Hell, Javier had kids depending on him. Javier had something to lose. He didn't.

Like Tomlinson had told him, "All the way to heaven was heaven." Whatever the hell that meant.

But it meant something, and that was exactly the sort of thing he needed to start figuring out. He needed to start understanding a few things. Needed to start coming to terms. After twenty-eight years of being dumb, it was time to get smart. Being cheerful and dumb had left him in a hell of a spot, 'cause now he had to hurry; figure out the whys and the wherefores and be damn quick about it.

Maybe get back to Jesus. Maybe that was the answer.

Nicholes imagined himself at one of the outdoor revivals, like the ones his daddy and mama used to take him to. Sitting on folding chairs out there in the hot night beneath the tent; the whole thing set up at some supermarket parking lot or in a palmetto field so there was plenty of convenient parking for all the sinners and their kids.

No fun being a kid at those things. The way the preacher pranced around yelling and swinging his arms, sweating through his black suit, talking about the Devil waiting for them right outside. Then breaking down in tears—a grown man—crying about how bad they all were, and how they were going to bum in hell, letting his eyes go wild, singing out in the divine tongues.

"OHH-H-H-aalee-OHH-H-H-delah ... rebah-rebah ... JESUS!"

Man, he'd hated that divine-tongue business; all the adults going loony like that. Scary as hell for a little kid. But even worse when he got in his teens. Like those times his mama asked the preacher to heal his stutter.