The Heat Islands: A Doc Ford Novel (6 page)

"Skipped out alone in his boat last night. Didn't show up this morning. You'd have to ask him why."

Sutter said, "You don't say?" still looking at Jeth's empty slip. "Last night all by himself. You sure?"

"That's what I said."

"What time about?"

"How the hell should we know. Sutter? Late, for Christ's sake."

Sutter said, "And in that storm," noticing that the guy with the glasses, the one who'd been talking to Mack, was standing looking at the tarpon hanging on his boat, but not touching them. Sutter asked, "Hey, who is that guy, anyway?"

Nels said, "Him? That's the guy that lives in the old fish house. Doc Ford."

"Like a real doctor, you mean?"

"Naw, a marine biologist. That kinda doctor, doing research. He's a good guy."

Sutter said. "Oh yeah. I heard Dalbert and the nigger talking about him. The scientist. At least that's what they think he is."

Felix said, "You better never let Jeth hear you talking about Javier like that."

"I know, I know. Jeth and Javier, big buddies. The hick and the spic."

"Knock it off!"

Sutter was still watching Ford. "Well, he is. isn't he? Javier. Cuban nigger. That's all Javier is. The way he talks about you guys, I wouldn't figure you'd be so fussy what I call him."

"And what docs Javier say about us?" Sick of this guy, Felix was showing it.

Sutter shrugged. "The nigger and Dalbert both, telling people you're no longer the hot guides you used to be. Taking your old clients. But if you don't want to hear it..."

Felix said. "Karl, you're so full of crap, how do you still breathe through your nose?"

Putting his beer bottle on a piling. Nels said. "Thing is, Felix ... wait a minute. I'm trying to remember.... Karl may be getting at something."

"Aw, come on."

"No. You know that dentist from Cleveland you fish?

The old guy with the pretty wife. Yeah, the thing is. I saw Dalbert fishing that guy two weeks ago. I meant to tell you. but. hey!" He snapped his fingers. "Come to think of it, Dalbert had some of my old clients out last week, too. That son of a bitch, I never put two and two together."

Sutter held his palms up, a presto gesture. "Dalbert and the nigger, both of 'em. I tried to talk to 'em, but with Marvin in charge, all he cared about was getting the people booked, making the dough. But that shit's going to change now. You got to have ethics in a business like this."

"Ya know, you think you can trust a fellow guide...."

Felix said. "Whoa, can't you see what this guy's trying to do. Nels?"

Nels said. "I know, I know, but it's just that things are starting to add up." draining the rest of his beer.

Sutter was watching the guy with glasses, who was now touching one of the tarpon hanging on his boat. Inspecting it. Studying the fish's eyes. Getting up on his tiptoes, trying to look into the fish's mouth.

Sutter said. "What the hell's that guy doing?" Then he yelled across the docks. "Hey, what the hell you think you're doing? Get away from my fish."

Felix said. "It's not like he's going to steal a dead tarpon, for Christ's sake," but Sutter was already walking down the dock, then walking faster, calling, "You got a hearing problem, man?"

But the guy with glasses, the one called Doc, was still messing with the fish. Not exactly ignoring him, but not paying attention, cither.

Sutter went up to him fast, bumping him a little as he stopped, saying, "That's my private property you've got your hands on there, man."

The guy looked at him through those librarian glasses but made no move to step away from the tarpon—the biggest fish, probably 150 pounds, all gray, not silver now, except where blood had bloated it, and that part was black.

The guy they called Doc said. "Since the taxidermist is just going to dump them anyway, I didn't think you would mind—"

"I do mind. What the taxidermist docs is between me and the taxidermist, okay?"

The guy had his hand on the fish again, turning it around and looking, but saying, "You're right. I should have asked first," and Sutter knew everyone was watching, judging him. every single one of these bastards just waiting for an excuse to dump on him. And this asshole wouldn't take his hands off the fish.

"Okay, then, so get away from my boat."

No notice, no sign that he was moving; this guy was showing complete disrespect.

Sutter said more loudly, "I'm not going to tell you again."

The guy turned to him. "Where did you gaff this fish? I can't find a gaff mark on any of them," turning back to the tarpon, like he was reading those big scales ... talking loud enough for Felix and Nels to hear, and Sutter knew he had to stop it.

Sutter grabbed the guy's arm, trying to pull him away. And the guy said, "Wait—don't do that."

Then, when the guy resisted, Sutter swung him hard toward the edge of the dock, thinking he could knock this guy right in. no problem.

Real cold, the guy said, "That was a mistake."

Then something happened; a blurry movement... then a hazy white light flashed in his eyes, like a flashbulb had exploded in his brain. And Sutter tried to refocus, realizing it must be because the guy had hit him, realizing that he was now on his back on the dock.

The guy with glasses was bending over him, had his arm locked around his elbow. Had his fingers jammed up under his jaw, creating so much torque and pain that all

Sutter could make was a squeaking sound when he tried to talk, thinking in a panic.
This man is going to crush my throat....

Knowing this guy could do it, too. No doubt. Could break his arm or ruin his windpipe; looking up into the guy's face, seeing no rage, no hatred, nothing at all but a kind of blank indifference in those blue eyes through thick glass lenses. Like he was looking into a scope with cross hairs.

Sutter made his body go slack, submissive, closing his eyes, no longer struggling, and felt the guy's grip immediately relax a little. He heard Felix's voice say, "I think he's had enough, Doc."

Heard the guy say, "Does he always act like this?'' Kind of perplexed, but interested.

Heard Nels say, "It's not worth getting into trouble over a weird one like him, man."

Then he felt the guy release him. and he stood up.

Sutter opened his eyes and got quickly to his feet, backing away, trying to speak, wanting to say something that would show this asshole he didn't know who he was messing with. But when his mouth opened, all that came out was a raspy sound, no words.

The guy, Doc, said, "You'll be all right in a little bit. Why the hell did you try to hit me like that? I was just looking at your fish." Like he was genuinely surprised.

Sutter was still rubbing his throat, backing away, and stepped into his boat, feeling everyone on the dock looking at him, giving him that buggy look, the men, the women; hearing his mother lecture, "You see the way they are?"

Karl Sutter freed the lines and started his boat, pulling away fast with a big wake that rocked the other boats, looking at the guy Doc, giving him his shitkicker look, trying to let him know.

You're a dead man, motherfucker. You are dead.

Dewey Nye had asked. "You want to go fish nine?" talking to Ford over the phone from her Captiva Island beach house, where the VCR was playing, and Bud Collins was on the television screen, saying, "Even at her age. Martina is capable of playing the running serve and volley, culling off the court, entirely dominating this younger player." Dewey said, "I'm going nuts sitting here in the house watching tapes, getting my butt kicked over and over. I've got to be doing something."

Ford told her, "I thought we were going to work out this afternoon," which was his way of trying to say no. With him, it was always work, work, work. Dewey knew that to have a good time, she practically had to force him.

She told him, "We are going to work out, we are. But why not fish nine right after the storm? What, usually rains about five? So we go after the storm when all the other golfers have been run off. You fish and I'll bring the clubs and hit. Then we run later, when it's cool, and you won't bitch so much."

"A very kind invitation." Being a smart ass, like he had a tendency to be sometimes.

"See? Just thinking of you." Showing him she could be just as smart-assish.

So now they were at the thirteenth fairway of the Osprey

Country Club, having parked along the road in this exclusive development with its piling houses shut tight among the trees, big air conditioners whirring; no one outside. Like a well-kept ghost town because of the heat and the mosquitoes.

Ford took the fly rod from the bed of his Chevy pickup, fitted it together and threaded line through the guides while she got her clubs out. "Hey," she said, "I just saw one roll. There's another, right there."

She had a good eye for fish—he'd told her that more than once, and she took real pleasure in proving him correct.

Ford followed her gaze to the water hazard, a small pond linked to a series of other small ponds and then a cement weir that, when flooded, led to the bay. An expanding circle in the water marked the spot where a small tarpon had just surfaced—one of many that had been trapped in these ponds over the years. Ford said, "No golfers, either. Lightning spooked them."

"Or these goddamn bugs. JEE-zus, why are the no-see-ums so bad right after a rain? You want some Skin So Soft?" She was rubbing the oil on her face and wrists, looking good in worn jeans and a white blouse, her blond hair long. The gnats drifted around her head, luminous as dust particles in the harsh sunset light.

"I'd rather have the bugs. Mineral oil works just as good, you know. Like flypaper on your skin; same concept."

"You already told me, but this smells better. Christ, they can bite."

"You don't actually feel the bite. No-see-ums—sand flics, really—they deposit a microscopic speck of acid. It dissolves the flesh. That's what you feel. Are you going to hit from the tee?"

"Nope. Working on the irons today." As she walked past him, clubs making a marching sound in her pro-size bag, she reached up and gave Ford's neck an affectionate
squeeze, brushing him with her hip, thinking.
Doc's so damn dull sometimes. I believe you'd have to book an appointment. Tell him exactly what you wanted, and when....

He walked along the edge of the pond until he saw another tarpon carousel at the surface. He tied on a tiny silver and white streamer fly, then began to strip line off his reel, letting it fall in a pile at his feet in the fairway grass. He shook the rod. goading the first thirty feet of line through the guides, and then began to false cast. Because the front seetion of line was slightly thicker and heavier, the rod fulcrumed the line easily, fore cast and back cast; a nine-weight Loomis graphite rod with a cork grip that moved as rhythmically in his big hand as a conductor's baton.

Checking over his shoulder on his back cast—he didn't want to hook Dewey—he could see that she had thrown golf balls at random around the fairway and had selected three irons, two of which lay on the ground behind her. She was studying her first shot, lining it up, as she pulled on the Easton batting glove she wore for golf, and Ford noticed again that her right wrist and forearm were huge from so much tennis. Much bigger than her left. And he could see the tiny white welt where she had had recent elbow surgery.

Another fish surfaced, twisting as it dove, and Ford shot line toward it, trying to get the fly in front of the fish and a little beyond. Behind him, he heard Dewey's club cutting the still air and then the green-twig crack of metal against golf ball, then silence, then the distant skip and splash of the ball landing in water.

"Shit!"

Looking at the spot where the ball had hit, Dewey thought.
Why is it my first few golf shots suck and it's just the opposite in tennis?

It made no sense to her—because she enjoyed golf so much more. Not that she had played that much of it, hell no. With her parents, it had always been tennis, tennis, tennis. There was a color photograph her mother had kept on the mantelpiece for years: of her in pigtails, swinging a pro-size tennis racket, age four.

That's the way her life had gone.

Her father was a tennis fanatic—no other way to describe him. He'd wanted desperately to play pro tennis during the days of Pancho Gonzales, Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, and Stan Smith, but he'd never had the talent— not that he would admit that, no. In his mind, coaching was all he'd lacked, so he made damn sure that she had all the coaching she could bear, and then some.

Because her father had made a bundle of money at insurance and could afford it, she had been one of the youngest players ever accepted into the Nick Bolliteri Tennis Academy. Which meant that, all through adolescence, she lived in a dormitory, not at home. Which was hell at first, but then she grew to know the other girls so well that they were more of a family than her real family. After that, it wasn't so bad. In fact, it was pretty good.

She'd spent some time at the Harry Hopman Auzzie Camp, too, and played all the USTA tournaments, and won her seetional at fourteen, which was considered a hell of a thing to do in those days, and then she won her age group in nationals, two years running, so going pro was the next logical step.

Only it had never crossed her father's mind that she would someday grow tired of tennis. Tired of
him
first, really, and tennis seeond. But she had, sure enough. So weary of both of them that she could hardly bear to think of it. So she only talked to her father about once a month by phone. And, since the elbow operation, she only worked at tennis when her best friend from NBTA, Bets, who was Romanian, chided her into it.

Otherwise, she played golf. Which she loved—except for the first few shots, in which she really sucked.

Goddamn it!

Smiling, Ford let the fly sink through the murk and began to strip it back slowly, his concentration vectoring on that unseen point where his lure and the fish should interseet... but they did not. This time, anyway. He made several more casts, listening to Dewey's running commentary behind him, talking to herself as if no one was there to hear.

"Oh Christ, look at this divot—I want the mineral rights on this one.... That's right, Nye, hit
another
one in the water. Russian judge gives that about a six. Good height, bad entry.... Military golf, that's what Miss Nye is playing today, folks: left, right, left, right."

Ford reeled his line in, watching her. "Having fun?" he asked.

She looked up, jaw set, eyes intense. "Hold it." She stood over her last ball, brought the club up slowly, then swung down through it. Ford watched the ball start low, rising on a line, then hit once on the distant green before kicking back toward the flag.

"Finally," she said, gathering her clubs. "Two to the left, five just off to the right, and one on the dance floor."

"How far is that?"

"Hundred sixty yards, maybe one seventy."

"My gosh."

"You want to try?"

"Naw."

"Why not?"

"I already told you, I played golf once. It was like tennis. I spent the whole time apologizing."

Dewey said, "Hit just one, and maybe a little later I'll try to catch a fish. I can give you some tips."

Ford said, "Okay, just one," and laid his rod carefully in the grass, taking the club the woman offered, and stood over the ball as he had seen golfers on television do.

Dewey was saying, "Don't try to hit it hard, just hit it solid. Keep the club face square; don't let your body get out in front."

Ford said, "Right, uh-huh, okay," then hit the ball like a rocket toward the green, but it sliced way right, where it disappeared toward the line of trees and houses.

Dewey had been squatting down, watching, and now she stood, taking the club from Ford. "You're right," she said.

"Huh?"

"About golf. You suck."

Ford was still looking where his ball had gone, and Dewey said, "Hope some kid's dog wasn't over there playing or something. Well... if it was, it's dead, and there's nothing you can do about it now. Or maybe an old lady out watering her flowers."

"Fine golf coach you'd make."

"Wait till I try to teach you tennis."

"After my next golf lesson. You're so encouraging." She cupped her hand around the back of his neck. "Aw, I
am
too tough on you, aren't I. Doc? I guess that's why you never ask me out. Is that the reason? It's always me that asks you." Joking with her voice, but not joking with her eyes, looking at him.

"You mean, like a date?"

"You do catch on quick, buster." Smiling a question with her expression, then answering it herself. "I'm too abrasive, huh? Maybe too young for you—you said that once."

"I don't remember ever saying—"

"Well, maybe you didn't. Just an idea, that's all."

"And you just called it quits with your guy Doug. On the rebound—isn't that what they call it?"

"Mr. Have Porsche Will Babble? More like on the short hop from him. No romance; strictly buddies, and then that wasn't enough for him. Dougie reminds me too much of that guy on the reruns... Alan Alda? Talk, talk, talk, like he was imitating Groucho Marx all the time, but not funny." Dewey was shouldering her bag, ready to move to the next hole. "Besides, you're the only guy I've ever hung around with where I actually learned something. And the only one who didn't try to give me advice on my ground stroke. Talking about bugs and fish and stuff. I like that. I always was sort of a nature buff."

"Your what stroke?"

"See?" Grinning, she gave him another one of those squeezes, communicating on a whole different level as she brushed past him, saying. "Don't forget your rod, dearie." On the next hole. Ford made a steady series of casts without a strike, while Dewey hit irons, talking about tennis more, it seemed to Ford, to put distance between the talk of dating than to actually discuss the sport. She said, "The thing with tennis, you absolutely work your butt off to qualify for the Grand Prix Circuit and. or.ee you qualify, you still have to work like a maniac to maintain your ranking. Mucho pressure. There's a major tournament someplace every week of the year, except Christmas, so that means you better by God be there on the court, ready, or you begin to slide in the ratings. You live in hotels and planes. Really sucks after a while. More than once I woke up and had to find the telephone book just to remember where I was."

She was hitting balls, nearly every shot straight now, relaxed and enjoying herself, but introspective, too. Ford hadn't seen this side of her.

"The way it works is, the whole thing's computerized. Computer figures the weight of the tournament—that's how many seeded players—then figures in the purse, gives a bonus if you beat a seeded player, and that all works out to a single number. You're better off making the semis in two big tournaments than winning two small ones. Complicated."

He said, "I see that."

"Miss a few tournaments, your number slips. Last year, playing full time. I was ranked nineteenth in the world. This year, with the injury and all the time off. sixty-fourth. Three years ago, my best year, I was thirteenth. Lucky thirteen. You can make a lot of money just beating seeded players, not even winning, but I made a lot more on exhibitions, endorsements. But that's changed now. Even the big manufacturers aren't giving long-term contracts anymore. Strictly year by year, and all incentive-type stuff, unless you're Graf or Martina."

Ford said, "Yeah?" wondering where she was going with this.

Dewey said. "You know what bothers me the most?"

"What's that?"

She hit another long iron, the ball's trajectory creating a brief laser streak, catching the remnant pink flare of sunset. "I've been playing tennis nearly every day of my life since age five...." She began to put her clubs away, done now, her face sweaty and standing close enough so that he could smell the woman mixture of sweat and body lotion. "I've been on the circuit nearly eight years now ... and the thing that bothers me is that I wasn't born for it. Not born just for that. Tennis. I mean."

"Oh?"

"No."

Ford waited, thinking she would explain, but when she didn't, he said, "What, then?"

She started to say something, stopped. Something serious. but then she made a joke of it, explaining, "Here's what I was really born for—golf. Born for the LPGA."

Ford said. "For a seeond, I thought you were going to tell me you were retiring."

Dewey thought,
Jesus God, he's scary sometimes....

But she said. "Well... maybe transfer, but never quit. Skip the French Open and maybe surface in the spring at Augusta. Take the summer off tennis, then make my bid as a links star. That would shock the shit outta the sports-writers, wouldn't it?"

She was moving closer, making too much of the joke, and Ford knew that she really had almost told him—told him that she was thinking of quitting. He lifted his arm, and she slid under it, and he could feel her ribs beneath his fingers, warm inside the damp blouse.

For Dewey, it was like being alone together for the first time.

Ford said. "You want to get something to eat?"

"Bullshit, we run first. Then eat."