When you shower in the rain, getting dry is not a pressing consideration. The storm cell had spread itself over Sanibel, diffusing intensity, so the downpour had slowed to a steady drizzle and was finally stopping. Big soft drops, the air much cooler now in the tropical moonlight.
I wrapped a towel around my waist, walked to the front door, then paused. I could see Sally through the window, staring at the fire, mug of tea in hand. Across the water, at the marina, there were Japanese lanterns glowing red, green and orange, a bunch of people out there on the docks listening to music, still having fun despite the passing storm.
I tapped on the window to get Sally’s attention, then held up an index finger- Give me a minute, I’ll be back -then clomped barefooted down the steps to the wooden cistern that is my main fish tank. I switched on the overhead lights.
Every morning of my life, my first few waking minutes are filled with mild dread because, more than once, I’ve lifted the lid of that tank to find a soupy mess of decomposing specimens, the filter fouled, or the raw-water intake plugged. Keeping sea creatures alive is a time consuming, demanding job, and I had yet to check on my collection since returning.
Relief. The system was working just fine. The pumps were sucking in raw water, spilling overflow out. The hundred-gallon upper reservoir, with its subsand filter, was cleaning the water, then spraying it as a mist into the main tank where sea squirts and tunicates continued to filter, which is why the water therein is too clear to slow the human eye.
Through the water lens, I could see small snappers, sea anemones, swaying blades of turtle grass, sea horses, horseshoe crabs, whelk shells, the whole small world alive. There were five immature tarpon stacked beneath the exhaust of the upper reservoir, as motionless as bright bars of chrome. There were immature snook, as well, heads turned into the artificial current, a few sea trout, grunts and cowfish, too-strange little animals that look like something dreamed up at Disney World.
My reef squid were the hardest to find because their chro matophores allow them to blend with the sand bottom. But there they were, the entire miniature sea system healthy and well, indifferent to the world of primates going on above and around them.
As I stood looking into the tank, a voice called from the mangroves, across the water: “In that white dress, you look like some fuckin’ Fiji warrior. Or a guy in one of them old Tarzan movies. Put some clothes on or I ain’t crossing over.”
I’d installed shepherd’s-crook lamps along my boardwalk, and so I turned to see Frank DeAntoni in the distance, standing ashore in a circle of light.
Smiling, I said, “She’s agreed to talk to you, Frank. Come on aboard.”
Sally said to DeAntoni, “Before I answer any of your questions, would you mind answering a couple of mine?”
Frank said, “Sure, absolutely. Ask me anything.”
The three of us were on the porch, DeAntoni sitting close to Sally, giving her his full attention. He’d been watching the woman for a while, but this was the first time they’d met face-to-face. It put an unexpected touch of shyness in his voice; seemed to make him eager to please.
“I was telling Doc that a lot of weird, bad things have been happening to me lately. Maybe you know something about it, maybe you don’t, but I’ve got to ask. How long have you been following me?”
He said, “’Bout two weeks. I guess maybe a little more since the company called. Asked if I’d take the case.”
“Everglades Home and Life?”
“Yes. Your husband’s insurance company.”
“Did you ever break into my house? Someone’s been coming in when I’m gone, going through my personal things.”
DeAntoni’s face demonstrated concern. “It wasn’t me. My right hand on the Bible. I’ve got no reason. You don’t have a security system?”
“Yes. Supposedly, a very good one. So whoever’s breaking in is no amateur. That’s why I’m asking.”
DeAntoni said, “Do they steal stuff?”
Sally said, “No. They leave everything exactly the way they found it.”
“Then how do you know someone’s getting into your house?”
“That’s the same question the police asked me. I’m… I’m not sure. It’s more of a feeling I have. An awareness. Almost like an odor-I can tell that someone’s been going through my things. My files, even my clothing. Plus, all the weird bad luck I’ve been having. It’s being done intentionally.”
She told us it began shortly after her husband vanished. She’d get into her car and the battery would be dead. Or the battery cable loose. Or a tire flat. “A brand-new BMW,” she said. “What are the chances?”
It was always when she was out. Never at home.
“It’s as if someone wanted to make sure I’d be delayed coming back,” she said.
Someone had been getting into her computer, too. She’d checked the records of her Internet provider and found that a person had been signing on under her password from an outside computer, and also from her own personal computer. She’d changed passwords several times, but wasn’t certain if her e-mail was still being monitored.
“Something else bad happened to my… to a pet I had. A dog,” she said, her voice beginning to crack. “But I… I don’t want to talk about that now. Maybe later.” She turned to me, regaining her composure. “That’s all I wanted to ask Frank. Should I trust him?”
I said, “Yeah. I think you can.”
Sally told us she couldn’t call the International Church of Ashram Meditation by its official name because she didn’t consider it a church. Pagan idolatry. That’s what the minister at her church called it. The Reverend Wilson.
An example: Bhagwan Shiva taught his followers that, once they were formally accepted, the morality of the outside world no longer applied to them. Everyone on the inside was a chosen person. Everyone on the outside was part of a spiritually dead society, so what outsiders thought-even family members-didn’t matter.
“That’s a guy I need to talk to,” DeAntoni said. “Shiva. I’ve asked his secretary for an appointment a half dozen times. Even did it in writing. So I may have to try walking into their Palm Beach compound, see what happens.”
Sally said, “You won’t get far. My husband used to talk about how good the security is. Family members on the outside are always trying to snatch their loved ones, because that’s the only way to get them deprogrammed. So Shiva has his own little group of enforcers, like guards. Archangels, that’s what he calls them. They dress in black. They’re scary-looking, their whole attitude. Men and women both. The ones I saw, they carry nightsticks, and those little guns that shoot electrical darts. What do you call them-?”
Listening to every word, DeAntoni said,“Tasers.”
“Tasers, yes, I think. And his personal staff, his Archangels, they swagger around like they can’t wait to use them.”
“Talk about one crappy religion. How nice is that? People get in, they can’t get out.”
Sally said, “Once you reach a certain level-they’ve got a hierarchy of secret levels-once you get so high in the organization, yes, I don’t think you can just one day say, hey, I’m out of here. I don’t think they’ll let you leave.”
“How high did Geoff get?”
“About as high as a member can get. Over a period of slightly more than three years, he went to the top. Probably because he had so much personal interaction with Shiva-their business dealings. He was proud of himself, all his church promotions. He was such a goal-oriented person, so obsessive, that he had to excel at everything.”
Frank asked, “Your husband and this religious guy, would you consider them friends?”
“No. I don’t think Shiva has friends. He’s set himself up like a God, so everyone else is beneath him. Besides, Geoff began to realize that Shiva wasn’t all that he pretended to be. I know they had at least a couple of blowups.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because he told me. A few months before Geoff disappeared, he told me he was going to ask Shiva for some kind of resettlement. It had to do with all the money and property we’d given the Ashram. Geoff was about as mad as I’ve ever seen him.”
I asked her, “Did Shiva agree?”
“Yes. My husband said he had no choice. I don’t know what he meant by that.”
It took her a few minutes to explain that she didn’t know all the details, but the resettlement had something to do with a property the Church of Ashram owned on the northeastern edge of the Everglades.
“They’re trying to put in housing, hotels and at least three casinos. The casinos have to be built on Indian land for some reason, but that’s part of the plan because the church’s acreage butts up against reservation property. Even so, I know they were having permitting problems. Geoff told me that.”
I asked her, “Why would Florida Indians allow anyone to build on their land? That makes no sense.”
“Not their property, really. Shiva’s property. He’d sell the Indians his acreage for some ridiculously low price. A dollar, or whatever it takes to be legal. There’s a federal law that says an Indian tribe can incorporate purchased property as part of their tax-free reservation. In return, they’d let Shiva build his development and casinos. He’d pay them a percentage of the gross. That’s what he’s trying to get them to do.”
She added, “But the incorporated tribes-the Seminole Tribe of Florida and the Miccosukee Tribe-weren’t interested. That’s the last I heard. Geoff told me Shiva was going crazy trying to get them to go along with his idea. Money, political pressure, everything. He even started dressing like an Indian, trying to kiss up. It didn’t help. Nothing helped. But, the last time I spoke with Geoff, he said Shiva had an out. A way of making it work.”
“Did he give you any details?”
“No.”
I sat for a moment, thinking about it before I said, “Your husband. The deal he struck with Shiva. He was to get a piece of the casino development?”
“Yes. A big piece. Enough for him and Shiva to patch up their differences. But then Geoff disappeared.”
DeAntoni told her about the photograph.
Hands folded in her lap, the lady shuddered, staring off toward the mangrove circle that creates Dinkin’s Bay.
A bright night. Jupiter was like an illuminated ice shard in the April dusk. To the northwest was a dome of foggy light floating on a rim of gray: the stadium lights of Sanibel Elementary School. A Little League game was going on there, or maybe one of the beer-bash softball games.
DeAntoni said, “You don’t have to look at it. You already been through a lot. And I’m not the kind’a guy who’d upset a woman for all the fuh… fuh…”
He paused, flustered, trying to edit himself in midsen tence. “For all the, uhhh, freakin’ tea in China. So if you don’t want to see the picture, you want me to drop the subject, you just tell me, and it’s mum’s the word.”
Touched by his deferential manner-this huge, burly man behaving like a respectful adolescent-she smiled, reached and patted the back of his hairy hand. “You’re very thoughtful. If I’d known what kind of man you were, that you were just doing your job, I’d have felt safer, actually.”
Unsettled by the flattery, DeAntoni made a flapping gesture with his free hand. “You kiddin’? If I had some dago ugly as me followin’ me around, I’d’a called the fuckin’ cops myself.”
Sally seemed not to notice that DeAntoni slapped his hand over his own mouth, nor did she react to the profanity.
“If you have a picture of Geoff that proves he’s alive, I’m more than willing to look.”
“Okay. But I got to warn you right now, Mrs. Minster. There’s another woman in the picture. She ain’t naked or nothing, but she’s kind’a naked. Topless, I mean. I don’t want your feelings gettin’ hurt.”
Her voice steady, not giving it much emotion, Sally said, “The picture won’t bother me. My husband was having sex with the Ashram girls from the time he became a member. Little zombies is what they’re like. It’s allowed. Even if he’s still alive, he’ll never be my husband again. So why don’t you call me Sally? Or Ms. Carmel, if you want to keep it formal.”
When DeAntoni grinned, I noticed for the first time that his upper incisors were a bridge. He’d had his teeth knocked out-no surprise there. “Formal? Oh, no way do I want to keep it formal… Sally.”
My old friend smiled at his eager manner. “Then go get the photos, Frank.”
They were digital photos printed on Kodak ink-jet paper, ultra-glossy, of a man lying on a beach chair, his hand on the thigh of a lean, dark woman. She wore a string bikini bottom, no top. Pink cloth no bigger than the standard dinner napkin. The man looked to be naked but for a billed fishing cap. Both of them comfortable, two lovers judging from the relaxed poses, a couple used to intimate contact.
The photos were similar, both taken from the side, so the man’s face was clearly visible. Because her head was turned away from the lens, the woman’s face was not. In the first photo, you could see her body in profile, and that her brown hair was sun-bleached copper and salty, tied back with a crimson scarf that protruded from a straw sun hat. In the second photo, her back was to the camera, so all you could see were her hips and the hat’s brim.
At the bottom of the photos were a digital date and time stamp: Feb. 2, 4:32 P.M. and 4:35 P.M.
Today was Friday, April 11th. Geoff Minster had supposedly fallen overboard the previous year, somewhere near the Gulf Stream, on his way to Bimini, the night of October 27th.
If the dates were accurate, the photos had been taken three months after Minster had supposedly died.
DeAntoni handed the prints to Sally, who looked at them briefly, shaking her head in distaste or disapproval. She then handed them to me.
“It’s like he’s gone insane,” she told me. “Over a period of three years, he went through a complete personality transformation. Now he does something like this. It’s sick. Truly sick.”
I held the photos, saying to DeAntoni, “Isn’t it easy to change the date stamp on a digital camera?”
He nodded, “You go to the menu, change it to anything you want. Question is, why would someone fake the date, unless they knew Minster was gonna disappear? Why would anyone intentionally want to cause that kind of trouble?”
I said, “Well, one possibility comes to mind. Not a pleasant one.”
“What’s that?”
I said, “If someone planned to murder Minster, they might change the date, take the photograph. Kill the man, but make people like yourself keep looking, thinking he’s still alive. If authorities continue to search for him, they’re not going to waste time searching for the murderers.”
As DeAntoni said, “I hadn’t thought of that one,” Sally murmured, “What an awful idea. It never crossed my mind someone would want Geoff dead.”
I asked DeAntoni, “Are these your only copies?”
“No. I got two more prints made. One’s at my office. One’s with Everglades Home and Life. That’s the insurance company that may have to pay Mrs. Minster-Sally here-four million-five. Did she tell you that it seems pretty certain that the court’s going to rule in her attorney’s favor? Once that happens, the Department of Vital Statistics will issue a death certificate, and then the company will have to pay.”
I nodded as he added, “So I kind’a feel bad asking you to help me. I’m the one trying to prove you shouldn’t get the money.”
I raised my eyebrows, looking into Sally’s handsome face, seeing the dullness of her eyes enliven slightly, as she said, “Before I found my church, before my life changed, wealth and possessions-all that stuff-social status? They meant something. Now, though, I couldn’t care less about the money. So that’s the problem. Money. It’s one of the reasons I came to see you, Doc. And why I’m happy to help you find Geoff if he really is still alive.”
DeAntoni said, “Money’s the problem? You lost me there.”
“I don’t want it. If I do get the insurance money, I’m giving it to my church. Most of it. I’ll keep just enough to live on. But I can’t if there’s a chance I got it illegally, because it’s dirty money. Or if there’s a chance that the insurance company will demand it back.”
To DeAntoni, I said, “If they write the check, there’s not much chance they’ll do that, is there?”
The big man looked uneasy. “I think the last they want to do is get their name in the papers for that kind’a scandal. The Feds would have to be involved. But for four million-five. Yeah, they’d take their bruises, suck it up. They’d want the money back.”
I asked, “Scandal?”
Sally said to DeAntoni, “I haven’t told Doc the whole story yet. He doesn’t know.”
I said, “What don’t I know?”
DeAntoni told me, “About the insurance company. Minster was one of the founders of Everglades Home and Life. The last bad hurricane, whatever its name was, it flattened a couple of big developments that he built. The insurance companies paid off, but they went bankrupt doing it.”
Sally took over. “Geoff and some other developers around Miami couldn’t get insurance. People who wanted to buy a new house couldn’t get insurance. It was a mess. So Geoff and some of his business associates came up with their own solution. He was brilliant in his way. Driven, but brilliant.”
DeAntoni said, “What he did was pretty smart. His group did the research and calculated that, when a certain area of Florida is hit by a really bad storm, there’s almost always a ten-to-twenty-year gap before it’s likely to get hit again. Statistically. Those’re good odds. How much can you make writing clean insurance over fifteen years? Start in the high millions, then add some nice big numbers at the front.
“So they found investors, formed a company and applied to the Florida Department of Insurance. To push through the kind’a thing they wanted takes a lot of political juice. They had it.
“In June, about three years ago, the state approved them as what they call a foreign property and casualty insurer, and accepted them into the state homeowners’ insurance pool. What that means is, that quick”-DeAntoni snapped his fingers-“they were guaranteed to write policies on over a quarter million private homes and businesses. The insurance racket, man, it’s got its own language. They were granted a bunch of lines of business: Homeowners’ Multi-Peril, Commercial Multi-Peril, Auto, Ocean Marine, Health… and life insurance, too.”
“Geoff had life insurance through his own company,” Sally said.
I asked DeAntoni, “Aside from Sally, were there other beneficiaries?”
“Yeah, and I’ll give you one guess who. The company may have to write out a whole lot bigger check to the International Church of Ashram Meditation. More than four times what they would pay to Sally.”
“That explains it,” I said. Meaning why they’d hired DeAntoni to find out the truth-a small insurance company with a reason to keep things private and quiet, and maybe not have to go bankrupt.