We rounded a stand of cypress, the hull of Chekika’s Shadow skidding, then catching on its starboard chine. A half-mile or so ahead, I could see the elevated rim of the abandoned limestone quarry.
We were back in karst country. For millions of years, rain and flowing water had created conduits, caverns out of rock; a slow geologic cataclysm that showed in the gray limestone piled high above sawgrass.
In my earphones, I heard Tomlinson yell, “There it is! We’ve got to go faster, man. Can’t you go faster?”
No. Running at sixty miles per hour in an airboat is like turning a boat with a flat hull into a hurricane wind. I’d already come close to wobbling out of control a couple of times. Any faster and I feared we’d hydroplane into the air, then pitch-pole to disaster.
Within the last four minutes, we’d felt the boat rock with two, perhaps three or more tremors. Hard to tell for certain, because these explosions-and that’s undoubtedly what they were-seemed to come from behind us, at opposing spots on the perimeter of the outdoor amphitheater, Cypress Ashram.
Long ago, I’d spent months training with various explosives, and I’d used them, when required, for several years afterwards. Pros with explosives have zero tolerance when it comes to the people whom they teach. You learn, you remember or you get the hell out. So I’d learned.
Izzy Kline had, apparently, bracketed the amphitheater with underground charges. He’d staggered the timers to go off every one or two minutes. With the shock of each tremor, Tomlinson would cry out as if in pain, but I found the pattern of explosions encouraging. If the first explosion occurred at 7:48 P.M., the last explosion would almost certainly occur as predicted by Shiva-at sunset. Maybe a minute or two later, just for better effect.
I checked my watch again: 7:52 P.M.
If I was right, we had five minutes. With luck, we had a little longer.
Against my better judgment, I pushed the accelerator closer to the floor and held it there. I felt my cheeks begin to flutter with wind torque; felt the hull beneath me rise as if elevated by the razor edge of sawgrass.
Standing between us and the limestone quarry was a marsh of swamp maples, cattails and arrow plants. The trees and cattails were coated in golden light, casting black shadows eastward. If there were old lighter pine stumps in there, or hidden cypress knees, and we collided, we were dead. Even so, I kept the accelerator mashed flat, right hand sweaty on the joystick.
Instead of hitting stumps, though, we flushed a hidden populace of wildlife. Two gigantic gators bucked out of our way, one of them hitting the hull so hard with its tail that he nearly flipped us. A cloud of snowy egrets flushed before us, too: white wading birds that angled away, banking, then igniting as a single, flaming pointillism in the burnished light.
In my earphones, I heard Tomlinson say, “Panthers! Two of them!”
There they were: two flaxen-colored animals the size of retrievers, running fast, their long tails swinging like rudders.
I kept my eyes fixed on the rim of the abandoned quarry, and noted that there was something different about the area. It took me a moment to identify the change, and then connect it with what Billie Egret had already told me.
The previous week, the quarry had been on the edge of a shallow marsh. Now the marsh was dry but for a small, crater-shaped lake. The lake was several hundred yards from the quarry, at the terminus of a descending ridge of limestone that was overgrown with scrub grass and small melaleucas. The perimeter of the lake was as round as the rim of a volcano. It held water that mirrored a molten sky.
James Tiger had also told us about it. Lost Lake. The lake that was visible only when the ’Glades were nearly dry. The lake to which, Billie had said, tarpon had returned. She’d wanted me to see it.
Maybe I would. Later.
Still traveling near top speed, I angled the airboat toward the access road that climbed the ridge. Then I turned hard onto the road, banging our way up marl and limestone, the hull shuddering. As we breached the top of the ridge, Tomlinson was already shouting, “It’s there. The truck’s there!”
A medium-sized U-Haul, with a bed that extended over the cab, was backed in tight against the wall of limestone where, a week before, we’d seen the white GMC pickup.
Sliding to a stop, I yelled, “We’ll gut the hull if I try to jump across that rock. Stay here; I’ll run for it.”
But Tomlinson had already bailed while the boat was still moving, throwing his earphones off, sprinting hard down the incline toward the truck.
I looked at my watch: 7:54 P.M.
Three minutes until sunset.
Tomlinson has always been faster than I. Now, though, in the worst shape of my life, he left me far behind as he sprinted the hundred yards or so to the U-Haul.
“Doc, she’s here! She’s in the truck!” He was pulling at the door handle on the driver’s side. It was locked. Still pulling at the door, he banged on the window. “Sally. Are you okay? Sally! ”
He ran around to the other door, saying, “Oh God, I think she’s dead!”
I ran harder, feeling an appalling sense of loss and failure; was also aware that, in three minutes or so-maybe less-the truck was going to blow up. I’d made Tomlinson come with me. I was responsible, and now I was going to get him killed, too.
Still running, I yelled, “Are you sure she’s dead? Get away from there. I’ll try to get her out.”
He was pulling at the passenger door now-it was also locked. I leaned and picked-up a baseball-sized chunk of limestone and was coming around to the driver’s side of the truck as Tomlinson, banging on the opposite window, yelled, “Sally! We’re going to get you out.” After a pause, he then said, “Doc, she’s alive. ”
And there she was, my friend from childhood, lying naked on the seat, her hands and feet tied, her mouth and most of her face covered with duct tape, a purple swelling on her left temple, her jade-blue eyes wide, tears welling-an expression of joyous disbelief-staring back at me.
I yelled to her, “Close your eyes!”
The chunk of limestone broke in my hand when I smashed it against the door’s window, but the glass shattered. It became a pliant, plastic shield. I used the remaining chunk of rock to knock the window open, calling to Tomlinson, “Check the back of the truck. If it’s not locked, I might be able to disconnect the detonator.”
Unconsciously, I’d already assessed the situation; the steps I’d have to take. The truck’s engine was running-there could be only one reason: voltage. If the bed was full of ammonium nitrate, Kline had probably rigged some kind of high-voltage detonator to back up, or assist, a standard, timer-rigged blasting-cap-type detonator.
With the truck’s engine running, there would be a small boom followed by a horrendous explosion. Shut the engine off, the nitrate would still blow, but a markedly smaller portion of it.
Tomlinson yelled, “The back doors are padlocked! I can’t get in.”
Damn it.
I used my hands to rip the sheet of glass away, reached in, found the lock and yanked the door open. Tomlinson was already behind me as I took Sally by the shoulders and pulled her out. He took her gently into his arms as I said, “Try to find some cover. Get her away from here.”
I jumped behind the steering wheel, and reached to shut off the engine-but the key wasn’t in the switch. It took me a long, dull moment to realize why: Kline had broken the key off in the ignition. If the woman managed to get her hands free, he didn’t want her to be able to foil the explosion.
I glanced to the west. The sun was gone; vanished behind a scrim of distant cypress trees. I looked at my watch: 7:56 P.M. Less than a minute remained.
Feeling a sickening sense of unreality, I considered opening the hood and disconnecting the battery. But that would not disable the secondary timer switch. At this distance, any explosion, big or small, would kill all three of us anyway.
That’s when it came to me. What I had to do.
Suddenly, I didn’t feel sickened or frightened anymore.
Tomlinson had Sally cradled in his arms, struggling beneath her weight, trying to get her away from the truck. I called, “Stay here. Get down and cover her with your body.” Then I put the truck in drive, floored the accelerator and began to bounce and jolt my way up the access road.
The back of the truck was loaded to maximum. I could feel the weight in the sluggish, teetering way the truck handled. As I drove, I checked to see if the transmission was in four-wheel drive-it was-then tried to calculate how far I’d have to move the truck so that, when it did explode, Sally and Tomlinson wouldn’t be hurt.
You can’t get far enough in sixty seconds.
That was the inescapable truth. Which is when another idea popped into my brain.
This detonator system is electrical.
It was my only chance. Our only chance.
When I got to the top of the quarry, I turned off the road, onto the ridge, and steered directly toward Lost Lake. It was a couple of hundred yards away. The water color had changed from molten red to molten bronze, and the lake’s surface seesawed before my eyes as the truck’s tires banged over rocks and small trees. Traveling at thirty. .. then forty miles per hour, the steering wheel vibrated and bucked so hard beneath my hands that it was struggle to maintain control.
Seven fifty-seven P.M.
Did I hear an electrical click from behind me?
Still accelerating, I scrunched down in my seat, expecting to feel a blinding white pain that marked the explosion, and the end of my own life. I was still ducked low, accelerator floored, when one of the front right tires blew.
Bang.
Stunned, I released the steering wheel momentarily, and the world tilted crazily as the truck careened sideways, then rolled.
Suddenly, water was pouring through the broken window, gushing like a river, filling the cab. Then I was underwater, in a familiar, slow-motion world.
For a few moments, the escalating speed of the truck’s descent toward the bottom of the lake kept me mashed to the roof of the cab. I reached, found the steering wheel. I pulled myself toward the broken window.
I have wide shoulders. For a terrible, claustrophobic moment, I got stuck in the window, but managed to bull my way through. Then I was ascending toward what appeared as a silver lens, thirty or forty feet above… slowly ascending, exhaling bubbles, right arm extended toward the surface out of old habit.
When I breached the surface, I sucked in air, filling my lungs. Then I paused, sculling, for a reflective moment. If the water hadn’t shorted the electrical system, the nitrate might still explode.
I looked at my watch: I saw 7:59 P.M. become 8 P.M.
Not likely.
I began to do a relaxed breaststroke toward shore-and got another unexpected shock when several big fins cut the surface ahead of me, then disappeared.
Sharks?
I was still spooked from my recent encounter.
Then I smiled.
No. The tarpon, a prehistoric fish, can supplement its oxygen supply by rolling at the surface and gulping surface air.
Billie Egret was right. Tarpon had returned to Lost Lake. Tarpon had come back to the Everglades.
People were screaming.
Why?
The screams we heard were coming from the direction of the outdoor amphitheater. Men and women yelling, falsetto shrieks, their voices echoing through the shadows of cypress trees.
I’d driven the airboat up onto the manicured grass of Sawgrass, as close to the parking area as I could get.
Sally kept telling us, “I’m okay, I’m okay. There’s no need to hurry.”
But she wasn’t okay. She was faint from dehydration, already starting to cramp. She had a swelling subdural hematoma on her temple, and she was probably in shock, too.
And she kept repeating, “The Lord was with me. I was never afraid. All the things that creep tried to do to me; all the things he said. I was never afraid. The Lord put His hand in mine and never let go.”
It was like a dream, she said, opening her eyes and seeing us. For a moment, she thought she was in heaven.
All good boat captains keep a little bag stowed aboard, well stocked for emergencies. Billy Tiger was a good skipper, and I found his emergency bag in the forward hatch. Along with packages of freeze-dried food, a first-aid kit, candles and bug repellent, I found two half gallons of bottled water, and a military-issue blanket.
Tomlinson tended to Sally, wrapping her in the blanket, helping her hold the half-gallon bottle so she could gulp the water down.
I ran the boat. Our return to Sawgrass was not nearly as fast as our trip out, but I didn’t tarry. We needed to get Sally to the hospital. And I was eager to confront Jerry Singh.
Sally’s physical description of the man who assaulted her, and who also murdered Frank and his landlord, left no doubt that it was Izzy Kline-Bhagwan Shiva’s personal assistant. So I wanted to find Kline. I wanted to find him tonight. I wanted to get to him, snatch him, take him to some lonely spot, then eliminate him.
It was irrational. I knew that. Contemplating revenge is always irrational. Besides that, anyone smart enough to simulate an earthquake is smart enough to run far and fast after committing at least two murders and attempting a third.
The bartender said he’d heard Kline was going to Europe-probably a red herring. But I didn’t doubt that Kline was leaving for somewhere.
The last time she’d seen him, Sally told us, was late that morning. She said he’d smiled at her and said, “Give my regards to St. Peter,” and slammed the truck door, timers set, engine running.
So he was probably out of the state. Maybe already out of the country.
If anyone knew Kline’s whereabouts, though, it would be the man Tomlinson called the Non-Bhagwan.
I was eager to look into Shiva’s face and make him talk. So I steered a rhumb line toward Sawgrass, running at speed.
I watched the sunset sky fade to bronze, then pearl, as the far horizon absorbed light. To the east, the vanished sun still illuminated the peaks of towering cumulous clouds. A commercial airliner, banking away from Miami International, became an isolated reflector, mirror-bright, connected to a silver contrail. Below, white birds became gray as they glided toward shadowed cypress heads to roost.
Tomlinson was in the seat below me, holding Sally. Every now and then, he’d stroke her blond hair. Her hand would find his, and squeeze.
Now, back at Sawgrass, I switched off the engine of Chekika’s Shadow, swung down out of my seat and helped Tomlinson get a wobbly Sally Carmel on solid ground.
“We’ve got to find something better than this blanket,” she told us. “I can’t let anyone else see me naked.”
After what she’d been through, her modesty was touching.
That’s when all three of us grew silent, our brains trying to translate and identify the strange, distant sounds coming to us through cypress trees.
Terror has a tone; an unmistakable pitch. We were hearing the screams of terrified people.
I said, “It sounds like there’s a riot going on over there.”
Tomlinson waited for a few moments, head cocked, listening, before he replied, “Something’s happened. Something powerful. I can feel it, man.”
We could also hear the wail of distant sirens.
As we walked out of the trees, we could see people running. Men and women in their bright robes; some in regular clothes, too. Some seemed to be running aimlessly, as if panicked or crazed. Most, though, were running toward the parking lot where a line of cars had bottlenecked at the exit. Horns blaring, some drivers were cutting cross-country to escape the line and get back to the main road.
One thing was clear-people were fleeing the area out of fear.
Holding Sally between us, we walked against the flow of people toward the amphitheater. We headed that way partly out of curiosity-what was happening?-but mostly because we wanted to find Billie or James. They both had cell phones, and I wanted to notify law enforcement just as soon as possible. Klein might be at an airport right now, waiting to fly out.
I also wanted to call an EMS chopper for Sally. I’d checked her eyes. Her pupils weren’t dilated or fixed, but that didn’t guarantee that she hadn’t suffered a concussion.
As we approached, we could see that the amphitheater had emptied. To the right, though, off in the cluster of trees where I’d first found Tomlinson, the Egret Seminoles had gathered, their colorful shirts and blouses dulled by the fading light. Karlita was with them.
She walked toward us, saying, “I’m sorry, Tomlinson. I know you don’t approve, but we had no choice.”
Behind her, in a somber tone, Billie Egret said to us, “He’s gone. The Everglades took him. It had to be. If you give bad, you get bad in return. If you take, you have to give-and Shiva, he took souls. ”
None of which made any sense to me until I looked where Billie was now pointing. The amphitheater’s concentric levels of seating remained. But where the stage and acoustic dome had once stood, there was now…
I had to stare to be sure, brain scanning for explanation… where the stage and acoustic dome had once stood, there was now a circular lake, water roiled and murky, lots of trash and flotsam on the surface.
Billie told us, “When the first tremors started, the Ashram followers were so excited. I thought they’d won. I thought Shiva had won. But then, after the third tremor, chunks of the dome began to fall. Then the whole stage collapsed and fell, like going down a waterfall. The earth collapsed beneath it. A sinkhole.”
Karlita added, “People were terrified. They panicked. It was frightening to watch.”
His voice subdued, perhaps in awe, Tomlinson asked, “When it happened, was he alone? Was Shiva the only one on stage?”
“Yes. He was alone. I wish you had been here to witness the… power of it.”
We would witness it. Worldwide, anyone with a TV could witness what happened that Easter Sunday over and over because Shiva’s film crew had captured it on video. The segment became standard fare for reality-based disaster shows: Jerry Singh-Bhagwan Shiva-in his purple robes, still leading his followers in that metonymic chant.
We will…
Boom!
Move the earth.
Boom!
I will…
Boom!
Make the earth move!
Then there is a close-up of Singh grinning triumphantly as the camera lens begins to vibrate with one… two… three earth tremors… his followers cheering but still chanting; chanting faster now:
We will…
Boom!
Move the earth.
The close-up continues as Shiva’s expression changes from joy to a kind of stunned surprise as chunks of stucco begin to fall on him from the acoustic dome. He’d been sitting in full lotus position, but he gets quickly to his feet, perplexed.
Then all color drains from his face-an illustration of fear, then horror, as the rear of the stage collapses. The initial collapse created a momentary, marble incline, water already boiling up to take it.
The last shot shows Shiva clawing desperately, trying to keep from sliding into the pit below. He’s screaming something, but there’s so much peripheral noise, his words are indecipherable.
Above him, the laser hologram of the solar system continues to orbit, unaffected.
Then he is gone; the stage, dome, the prophet of Ashram, all swallowed up by a flooding darkness.
Three days later, The Miami Herald reported that a charter captain, his boat loaded with tourist scuba divers, found Shiva’s body floating off Marathon and Molasses Reef, more than a hundred miles south of Sawgrass.
Geologists from the University of Florida provided an explanation. The sinkhole created by the series of explosions had collapsed into an underground river-the Long Key Formation. The river had swept Shiva’s body along beneath sawgrass, swamp, mangrove fringe and all of Florida Bay, before jettisoning him into open sea.
Billie Egret had a more succinct explanation for me: “Reciprocity.” chapter thirty-one
Eleven days later, on Thursday, the first day of May, two FBI agents came to the marina, asking for Tomlinson. They had a warrant to search No Mas, and they impounded his computer.
Aboard his sailboat, in the icebox, they found a sandwich bag filled with what appeared to be cannabis.
The agents used the discovery as leverage. They told Tomlinson that they were investigating what may have been an eco-terrorist bombing at Sawgrass in the Everglades. They said they had cause to believe that he might have been a participant. If he cooperated, talked freely, they’d forget they found the marijuana. If he didn’t, he was going to jail now.
He requested a few minutes alone with me before he decided.
“What’ll happen if they arrest me?”
“Ask a lawyer, not me.”
“But I am asking you.”
I said, “If they arrest you, you’ll be taken to the jail in downtown Fort Myers. Tomorrow, you’ll have your first court appearance, where the judge will consider bail-which you won’t get. Not if they have you pegged as an eco-terrorist. Then you’ll go back to jail until your hearing, where you’ll be formally charged. After that, you’ll go back to jail until your trial’s over, which will be a very long time. Call an attorney.”
He said, “I think I’ll talk with them. They’ve got to know it was all Izzy Kline.”
I told him, “Call an attorney! That’s exactly what you should do.”
He thought about that for a moment, twisting a lock of hair with his long, nervous fingers. “I don’t know. Jail might be kind of peaceful. It’s getting worse and worse, you know.”
He meant the number of daily visitors the marina now received; devotees of Tomlinsonism.
Long before the events of Easter Sunday, unknown to any of us, several of Shiva’s own followers-now former followers-had been deeply touched by Tomlinson’s paper. It was they who were now spreading the word, via the Internet, that Tomlinson had been in attendance at the Cypress Ashram that amazing night. That he had personally exposed Bhagwan Shiva for the fraud he was.
It was also Tomlinson’s powerful aura, they suggested, that had catalyzed Shiva’s doom. So, ironically, Tomlinson had won the devotion of a growing number of people who had once followed the only man that I feel he genuinely despised.
“Get a lawyer,” I repeated.
But Tomlinson was shaking his head. “Nope. I’m going to sit down and tell them the truth. Frankly, I’m pulling for some jail time.”
He didn’t get it. Two weeks later, one of the agents phoned him, said that he was no longer considered a suspect, and he was free to travel anywhere he wanted.
The next day, Tomlinson slipped his mooring before sunrise, and sailed for Key West.
I’d been carrying on an investigation of my own. Quietly. Privately.
By FedEx, I’d sent the shotgun shell that, hopefully, carried Klein’s fingerprints, to Hal Harrington. No one had more varied intelligence assets available than Hal-not even the FBI.
I enclosed a six-word note: “Find him before the Feds do.”
The FBI was looking for Kline. I knew that from my own intelligence assets. Working with Interpol. They’d lost his trail in Paris, but they were pretty sure he was still somewhere in Europe.
Harrington replied via e-mail with a six-word note of his own: “Will try. But quid pro quo.”
I knew what he meant by that.
Mostly, I worked hard at becoming the individual I’d once been, but had somehow allowed to slip into physical and emotional decline. It had happened slowly; taken nearly a year, and it was frustrating that recovery seemed doubly slow.
I cleaned and rearranged everything in my house and lab, and updated all my files. I was meticulous. I took great joy in obsessive attention to detail.
I worked out every day, seven days a week. Hard.
Dewey Nye, and my cousin, Ransom Gatrell, became my tag-team partners. Every weekday at noon, Ransom and I would ride our bikes, pumping furiously, always keeping the pedal revolutions between seventy-five to a hundred a minute according to our little handlebar computers. Twice a week, we rode to the gate at South Sea’s Plantation and back-27 miles. Three times a week, we rode to Lighthouse Point and back-10.5 miles.
In the afternoons, Dewey and I would alternate between running, lifting and swimming. Years ago, we’d started an informal group we called the Teaser Pony Swim Club. Now, we revived it, and did a long offshore swim every Sunday.
Saturdays, I worked out alone. Those became the hardest, most dreaded workouts, because that is when I punished myself for past indulgences. In the morning, I’d swim toward the horizon for twenty minutes. I would then turn and fight to beat my time coming back.
Memories of my encounter with the bull shark were always with me. He was still out there, on a feed.
Ignoring the fear, forcing myself to stroke and kick in rhythm, was a kind of penance.
Once ashore, after chugging a quart of water, I’d run on the beach until it felt as if my heart were going to explode.
I ate protein. Mostly oysters, scallops and fish I’d caught myself. I threw the cast net a lot. I ate a lot of broiled mullet.
I also ate a steady diet of grouper, sheepshead and snap-per. I used mask, fins and speargun. When it comes to those three species, if you know where the random, rocky places are, it’s like going to the grocery store.
I drank nothing but water. I didn’t allow myself food after 10 P.M. Once a week, I weighed in and noted the weight and date in pencil on the wall.
By the last week of June, I was down to two twenty-three-close to my goal. But I decided to keep working, keep driving and see just how far I could push the physical envelope.
I hoped soon to rendezvous with Izzy Kline. He’d somehow managed to overpower a far better man than I-Frank DeAntoni.
I wanted to be in top shape for the meeting.
Because she visited Tomlinson regularly, I got to know Karlita better, and actually came to enjoy her company. She really did have extrasensory powers, Tomlinson told me. In truth, she was the leader of the Cassadaga group, but didn’t want anyone to know.
“A television psychic,” he explained. “Can you think of a more brilliant cover for someone who actually does have the gift?”
I didn’t believe that she had extrasensory powers, of course, but now that I knew she was part of the Cassadaga group, she didn’t behave like such a pompous flake. Not surprisingly, that made her more physically attractive: long legged, lean, with glossy Irish-black hair and good cheekbones. We had some nice talks.
Karlita stopped by the lab so often that Dewey, I think, began to get a little jealous. I found that surprising.
Dewey and I have had a strange relationship. We’ve been lovers, and we’ve been friends. In the end, friendship seemed to be winning out. I’d never felt closer to her. On our long runs, we’d discuss every subject imaginable.
Once, I caught her staring at me. When I asked why her expression was so intense, she’d replied shyly, “I was having impure thoughts about you. Thinking maybe the two of us should hop in the shower and suds up.”
I thought she was kidding. So I’d laughed, and reminded her that I was still occasionally dating Grace Walker, the busty, mahogany-dark realtor from Tampa. We had an exclu sivity agreement, so I’d have to tell her first. I did not care to invite that woman’s wrath.
At least once a week, I drove to Coconut Grove and spent time with Sally. She seemed undamaged by what had happened; was doing lots of charity work for her church, spreading her money around. She’d accepted the insurance check for her husband’s death, and he was dead. Izzy Kline had told her that.
“How that creep knew about Geoff,” Sally said, “I have no idea. But the way he said it, I believe it’s true.”
On the way back from Coconut Grove, I fell into the habit of stopping to visit with the Egret Seminoles. I got to know Billie Egret much better; felt a familial closeness to her. In July, she and her people received formal notice from the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Branch of Acknowledgment and Recognition, that they were now confirmed as a legal, independent tribe-with all the rights, privileges and obligations that went along with it.
“My only regret,” she told me, “is that my father isn’t here to see what he created.”
Some people live in a way that they are forever missed. Joseph Egret was one of those people.
Billie showed her business savvy, as well as her dedication to the Everglades, by forming a fast alliance with the new chairman of Sawgrass’s board of directors-Carter McRae. He’d gotten the board to agree to sell the tribe the massive acreage on which Shiva had planned to put his casinos, and also to help them plant and restore the land.
“Mr. McRae’s a nice man,” she said. “I’d always heard what a tough businessman he is, but I’ve never met anyone so generous. I think it’s because his wife’s out of the hospital. He’s happy, so maybe there’s no reason to be tough anymore.”
It was around then that I read a satirical piece by a Tampa Tribune columnist that supposedly explained the sudden absence of Swamp Ape sightings. It was hilarious. But when I told Tomlinson about it, he said, “That’s not the reason. In your heart, I think you know the reason.”
By late August, Dewey and I were running at a pace that was consistently under seven-minute miles, and I was bench-pressing a hundred pounds more than my own weight-which was now down to two-oh-five.
It was the least I’d weighed since a couple of years after high school.
So I was fit and ready when, one day, I checked my e-mail to find a two-word message from Harrington: Granada, Nicaragua.
Three days later, I flew American Eagle to Miami, and then COPA to Managua. chapter thirty-two izzy
Izzy knew Ford was in Granada the day after he arrived, the big, nerdy biologist who’d behaved like such a smartass know-it-all on the skeet range.
That’s one of the reasons Izzy loved Nicaragua. If you had money, you could buy anything, including security.
Izzy had the money, so he had spies everywhere. Had his own efficient intelligence network that kept him informed. If anyone new came into town, anyone suspicious, Izzy got the word pronto.
He hadn’t eyeballed Ford personally. But one of his staff-the kid who did his legwork in town-had sneaked a digitized photo of the man sitting at the pool bar of the Colony Hotel, right next to the park in the old part of the city.
It was Ford, all right. He looked thinner, almost gaunt in the photo, but not sick-looking. Just different.
At first, it had shocked the hell out of Izzy. Those first few seconds looking at the photo, he’d thought, I’m out of here.
But then he told himself to hold on, slow down. Think about it. He’d been living peacefully on his little island for more than three months under the name of Craig Skaar, not a hint of trouble. The way Izzy had worked it, covering his trail every step of the way, not even the FBI could have found him. So what were the chances of some dopey biologist accomplishing what the FBI couldn’t?
Nil.
So Izzy had one of his people, Giorgio, talk to a couple of the staff at the Colony. Turned out, it was a total coincidence. The nerd was in Granada to study some kind of weird freshwater shark that lived in the lake.
“What the hell’s a bull shark?” Izzy said when Giorgio told him.
He’d been swimming off his beach in the lake every day, and hated the idea of sharks being out there.
Smiling, Giorgio had clacked his teeth together, and said in Spanish, “The kind that bites, Chief.”
So Izzy had nothing to fear. Not from Ford, anyway. But his being in Granada was a big pain in the ass for two reasons: One, living on an island, Izzy had learned, was boring as hell. And, two, Granada really was a fun town.
Izzy enjoyed walking the streets and open markets, looking for young girls. He liked the Spanish architecture, everything painted in Caribbean pastel blues, corals and greens. He liked the feel of the old mansions, the way they were built around a central park that had a bandstand where marimba groups played almost every night.
Izzy liked eating and drinking at the Mediterraneo and Dona Conchi’s, where the American adventurer William Walker had supposedly dodged a firing squad. He especially like a quirky little bar outside town, Restaurante Aeropuerto 79, that served excellent and unusual food, such as crab-and-iguana-tail soup.
When he got bored with Granada, he’d hop in the Land Rover he’d bought and drive to Masaya, a little village famous for its two massive markets-that was always interesting. There were lots of bars there; plenty of women.
Nicaragua was also famous for its volcanoes. There were dozens of them; maybe hundreds. At night, from his island, he could see them glowing in the distance.
Once, Izzy decided to have a look at a volcano just to see what it was like. Masaya supposedly had one of the largest, so he’d driven miles up the mountain road, got out and stared into the mouth of the volcano for which the village was named.
Mah-SIGH-uh -that’s the way the locals pronounced it.
The crater was huge, smoky. It smelled of heat and sulfur. If he really leaned over and looked, he could see orange lava way down there, nearly a thousand feet below.
No more volcanoes after seeing Masaya, Izzy decided. If there really was a hell, that’s the way it’d look. Plus, there were plenty of other things to do around Granada.
But not with Ford around. Ford being in town was a pain in the ass because it made it impossible for Izzy to leave his island. Granada was not a large town, and he couldn’t risk being seen.
Which meant he’d just have to wait patiently until the nerd got on a plane and left. Which he almost certainly would. Soon.
As an extra precaution, though, Izzy had his people spread the word: Let him know immediately if the biologist rented a boat, a canoe, anything that floated. If he was on the water, Izzy wanted to know where.
Otherwise, he was safe, and hidden away. After all, Izzy’s island was more than a mile offshore. What was the guy going to do? Swim?
Ford arrived in town on a Tuesday. Now, five days later, Izzy was going stir-crazy. Every night, he had his staff bring out a different woman; two, sometimes three at a time-so it wasn’t too bad. But today was Sunday, and nobody in the whole country worked on Sunday, not even the hookers.
Fucking Catholics.
It was the only day of the week when Izzy was alone on the island, so he’d come to despise Sundays.
So what he did was work on his Internet stuff. He had to keep the generator running outside to do it. The massive casa he was building wasn’t done; he hadn’t yet gotten the electric cable laid from Granada, so the wood-and-tile house in which he now lived was primitive but comfortable.
Izzy was careful about the way he used the Internet. He knew that it was one of the few ways he could be tracked. An individual’s Internet habits have a signature, so he varied what he did, the sites he accessed; kept a low profile.
He hadn’t put the video of the Merry Widow on line yet. Same with the two dozen porno tapes he’d made since he’d arrived in Nicaragua. He kept all the tapes in his office, neatly cataloged on wooden bookshelves.
No. He was taking it slow, getting his new identity established, playing it cool. He’d begin to market the tapes soon, very soon. And the money would start rolling in.
At dusk, Izzy went for a walk; walked the entire perimeter of his island, looking at similar islands to the south, then the red tile roofs of Granada to the northeast. He did the walk nearly every afternoon, partly for exercise, but also for security reasons.
No boats out there anywhere.
Then he stopped at the boathouse and checked the lines of his new twenty-six-foot Mako. Same thing. Habit. He did it every night.
As he returned to the house, there was a silver, crescent moon, he noticed, floating above a horizon of volcanic peaks.
Izzy was still sitting at his computer at a little after 10 P.M. when the computer, the lights, everything went out.
Shit.
Because it wasn’t unusual for the generator to run out of diesel fuel, he had glass oil lamps all over the house. He lighted one now.
Goddamn Pablo didn’t fill the tank before he left like I told him to do.
Pissed off, bored, Izzy carried the lamp to the back door, opened it… and dropped the lamp, he was so shocked to see who was standing there.
The glass shattered, spilling kerosene across the tile floor. The room was immediately bathed in the eerie light of spreading flames.
A deep, articulate voice said, “Hello, Izzy. Hey-you need to be more careful. Or maybe you never learned not to play with fire.”
Izzy took a step back.
Jesus Christ, it was the fucking nerd biologist, standing there in a black sweater and black shorts, his face painted green, a watch cap pulled down to his ears, water dripping from him. He was smiling. It was like he was an old friend or something, happy to see him.
Not in his eyes, though. What he saw in Ford’s eyes was scary.
Izzy turned to find water, a blanket, something to stop the fire, as the biologist said, “Hold it right there. I’m a little cold after my swim. So let’s just let ’er burn. Okay?”
“Fuck you, mister!” Izzy was still walking away. Where he was really headed was his desk to get the Beretta. After that, he’d worry about the fire. “You just don’t show up without an invitation, come into a man’s house and start giving orders.”
Which is when he felt the man’s big hands grab him from behind. Just as he’d been trained in martial arts, Izzy swung back hard with his left elbow, already pivoting to slam the palm of his hand into Ford’s nose-but Ford had somehow managed to remain behind him.
Christ, it was like fighting the Italian all over again.
Izzy had the same kind of feeling-overpowered, helpless-as Ford took him to the ground.
“You’ve got no reason to do this to me. Why are you doing this?”
Ford said, “I want to have a chat, Izzy. A little come-to-God meeting you might call it.”
As he talked, with not much effort at all, he got Izzy’s right arm behind him, then his left.
Izzy heard a ripping sound.
Fuck! He’s taping my hands.
“I want to talk about Geoff Minster, and what you did to his wife, Sally. And I want to talk about Frank DeAntoni. The guy you put in the trunk and shot execution-style. Remember?”
Izzy grunted at the terrible pressure the man was now putting on the back of his neck.
“Remember?”
Barely able to speak through the pain, Izzy said, “I’ll pay you. Anything you want. I’ll tell you anything, give you money. Just let me go.”
“The only thing I want you to tell me right now is where you keep the key to your boat.”
Izzy pictured the Beretta, thinking, I’ll pretend it’s in the drawer, and said, “Let me go. Let me stand up. I’ll get the keys for you. I promise.”
Ford stood over him. The room was bright now, flames moving up the wall, crackling, the wood catching fast.
Izzy listened to him say, “The boat keys, Izzy. Or I’ll tape your legs and leave you here. Burning to death. Personally, I think that would be the second worst way to go.”
Second worst. What did he mean by that?
Izzy told him where to find the key.
Now Izzy was in the trunk of a rental car, his legs taped, his mouth taped, and he was thinking, The son-of-a-bitch is going to do the same thing to me I did to the wop and the old man.
He’d never felt such fear. He was trembling, heart pounding, panting through his nose. When the biologist beached the boat in what appeared to be jungle, opened the trunk of the car he’d hidden there, and lifted him in, Izzy had lost control of his bladder-that’s how scared he was.
They’d been driving now for nearly an hour. Lots of curves and bumpy roads. Lots of long, uphill climbing.
Izzy wanted the car to stop, but dreaded stopping because he felt certain that he knew what Ford had planned.
But Ford still hadn’t asked the questions he said he wanted to ask. And that was good, right? Right?
If he takes the tape off my mouth, I can talk my way out of it. I can talk my way out of anything. Anything! Please, God, let him take the tape off and give me a chance to talk.
It had been true all of Izzy’s life. So that’s what he decided to do. Stay calm, use his brain, tell Ford anything he wanted to hear. Think.
But when the car stopped, and Izzy saw where they were, he thought, Dear God, no. Please dear God, no, please.
Izzy lost control of his bladder again.
At an elevation of more that two thousand feet, Masaya is Nicaragua’s most unusual and isolated active volcano. It is rough rimmed, like a gigantic barnacle, with steep-sided walls that are home to a rare subspecies of parrot. Masaya has been frequently active since the time of the Spanish conquistadores.
The volcano’s northwest basin is filled by more than a dozen rocky vents that smoke constantly and erupt occasionally. On its opposite side, though, where the walls are steepest, it is a straight drop into molten lava more than a thousand feet below.
It is on the southeastern side of the volcano that Nicaraguan seismologists maintain a gatelike structure built of galvanized metal, a fifteen-foot steel arm connected to a turnstyle with heavy hinges. It is cemented into the ground. On it are fixed a variety of instruments that record heat, sulfur emissions, seismic activity.
Swing the gate out, the instruments are suspended above the lava a thousand feet below. Swing the gate back, and the instruments can be read.
It is checked monthly.
As Ford tied Izzy to the gate, Izzy was thinking: This can’t be happening.
But it was happening.
Ford had him tied to the galvanized arm of the gate, legs and hands, back to the ground, so that he hung helplessly, like a pig on a spit. Ford had used some kind of complicated knots that Izzy didn’t recognize. Some kind of quick-release knots. The way it looked, the biologist could pop all the knots by simply yanking on the end of the line that he held in his hand.
Izzy was panting, heart banging in his temples, as Ford said, “Izzy. It’s time for us to have that talk.”
He ripped the tape off Izzy’s mouth.
Still holding the end of the rope, Ford then pushed Izzy as if he were on a merry-go-round. The gate swung out over the abyss.
OhhhHHHHH God!
Izzy began to cry; felt as if he might vomit, as Ford said, “Let’s make this quick. It can’t be pleasant, hanging out there, so save us both some time and stick to the truth. For starters, what happened to Geoff Minster?”
Shaking, his teeth chattering, Izzy said, “Please tell me you’re not going to pull that rope. Please don’t let me fall. I’ll do anything. I promise. I swear. ”
“Answer the question.”
“Okay, okay, okay!” Izzy was talking fast, not even having to think about it because he was telling the truth. “I stole a hundred grand from the church. I did it through the computers. I’m good with computers. I set it up to look like Minster stole it.
“Jerry Singh-an asshole-he told me to kill Minster. The two of them hated each other by then. Plus, we suspected Minster had found out about our plans to fake earthquakes. We weren’t sure, but Shiva couldn’t risk it.
“So I went to Minster and cut a private deal. Minster paid me ten grand, and he set it up to look like he’d fallen off a fishing boat. I was supposed to be behind him in my boat. Minster carried a waterproof light to signal me when he was going over the side.
“Once he’d disappeared, I was supposed to go to the cops, agree to be wired, and get Jerry on tape telling me what a good job I’d done, killing Geoff. Jerry’d go to prison. That way, Minster figured he’d get all his money, his property back.”
Izzy said, “Minster also figured he could lie low for a couple of weeks; have some fun. I think he had a thing for some Indian woman down in the ’Glades. A big, ugly woman. A guy with his money, it was weird.”
Izzy paused for a moment, before he added, “Hey-don’t tug the rope like that. You’re scaring me.”
After a longer pause, Ford said, “He went overboard, but you didn’t pick him up. You’d already misdated a digital photo of him in case someone suspected you, and they started to get close. A way of buying time.”
Izzy was sobbing now; weeping as if from his soul. “I’m so ashamed of some of the things I’ve done. I mean it. I really am. That’s one of the reasons I came to Nicaragua. There are so many poor kids here-I want to help them. I want to make amends for some of my terrible acts.”
“Did Shiva often ask you to commit murder?”
“Four times. I regret every one. I’m going to church now. Confession. I’ve been talking to a priest, trying to get my life in order. I deserve to be in hell. But I want to do some good before I leave this earth.”
“You murdered Frank and Jimmy Marinaro. Shot them in the back of the head. And you tied up Sally, locked her in the truck with your homemade bomb.”
“Dr. Ford, I feel so much guilt, I can’t tell you. I’d do anything to bring them back. I’d give my life for theirs in a second. One thing I can tell you about Mrs. Minster, though. I never laid a hand on her. I made sure she went peacefully. She was a nice lady. So classy. I’m surprised you know about that.”
Ford thought about it for a moment before he said, “Do you want to know what a smart cop recently told me? In any abduction-murder case, getting rid of the body is always the biggest problem. That’s because it’s evidence found on the body that usually nails the killer.”
Hanging from the galvanized pipe, Izzy said, “I’m not sure what you mean by that, but I know this: My life is in your hands. The guilt I feel’s going to haunt me forever. I’ve got to live with it. But you don’t. You’re too good a man to do the kind of things I’ve done. You’re too good a person to do what you’re thinking about doing now. I can tell. It’s an instinct I’ve got. First time we met, I knew you were a stand-up guy. There’s something about you. Solid.”
Marion Ford replied, “Izzy, we have both badly misjudged my character and my conscience.”
Then he pulled the rope’s bitter end, springing all four knots.
The biologist didn’t linger. He turned away from Izzy Kline’s descending, echoing scream…