Night Vision (22 page)

I interrupted, “What’s the license number? And the color?” I was leaning over a notepad, making notes.

There was a pause before Melinski let me know how patient he was trying to be, saying, “Doc, come on, now. You know I’m not allowed to do that. Even if I was allowed, I wouldn’t do it because the last thing we want is some civilian playing detective, upsetting people and probably getting his ass into trouble. Meaning you. Frankly, you’ve got a history of it. No offense.”

I said, “It was just a question, Lee.”

“A few months back, you were the suspect in a murder rap, Doc. So excuse me for being careful. I shouldn’t even be talking to you.”

I said, “I called because I want to help, not get in the way.”

“Please tell me you don’t plan on looking for this guy, Doc. There’s an AMBER Alert on the kid, what more do you want? What can you do that a state full of trained professionals can’t?”

I said, “I know . . . you’re right, but—” then listened to Melinski say, “From what you said, this guy Squires is a bad actor. Driver’s license has him listed at six-six, two forty-five, and he has a concealed weapons permit. No weapons registered to him, but that doesn’t mean diddly-squat. In this state, you can buy freaking grenades if you know who to talk to. Why risk inviting that kind of trouble? What’s this girl to you?”

I was looking at Emily as I told him, “Like you said, the girl has no parents around. No one to act as her advocates. I’ve spent a lot of time in Guatemala. I speak the language and I like the people. So why not? The point is, I don’t give a damn about Squires—arrest him or don’t arrest him, that’s your business. But I care about the girl. If I can help find her by asking around, talking to people in the Guatemalan community, what’s wrong with that?”

Melinski said, “Hang on a second,” sounding impatient. A moment later, he said, “Okay, here it is. The number that sent Tomlinson the text? It’s his phone, Harris Squires’s. As of now, every cop in the state will be looking for that fancy-assed truck of his. And we’ll find him. I can guarantee you that.”

To Tomlinson and Emily I whispered, “It was Squires’s phone,” as Melinski continued, “My next move is to contact our hostage-negotiation guys and ask them how we deal with this. Risk calling Squires and asking him if he’s got the girl? Then try to talk him down, convince him the smartest thing he can do is turn himself in. Or keep everything under the radar until we locate the truck. I’m not the officer in charge of this, but I know who is, and she’ll listen to me.”

I said, “If you have the right kind of person talk to him, someone trained—definitely not the tough-guy type—it could work.”

“But what if it
doesn’t
?” Melinski asked me, sounding angry or frustrated—a man who had been in a tough business for too long. “Jesus Christ! A thirteen-year-old girl a thousand miles from home. No family to look after her, and some steroid freak jerk grabs her. These Latin American kids, man-oh-man, Doc. The undocumented girls, particularly, they’re the easiest targets in the world—you’re right about that one.

“Some of these gangbangers,” he continued, “the Mexican coyote types. To them, snatching female illegals is like a sport. Like hunting rabbits or doves—something soft and harmless that can’t bite back. And the sad thing is, hardly anyone even knows this shit takes place every day. Let alone cares.”

To Melinski I said, “I don’t envy you guys the choices you have to make.”

I meant it.

“Doc,” the detective said, “I’ll give you my cell number, if you want. And I’ll call you the moment we get anything new. But I don’t want you nosing around, asking people questions about that girl. And I don’t want you messing with this Harris Squires dude. Give me your word?”

I replied, “I have no interest in finding Squires. I don’t ever want to see the guy again. I’ll promise you that.”

 

 

A few minutes later,
we were in the lab, discussing ways to help find the girl, which, of course, meant finding Harris Squires. Try as I might, there was no separating the two.

My lab is a wooden room, roofed with crossbeams and tin sheeting. The place smells of ozone and chemicals, creosote and brackish water that I could hear currenting beneath the pine floor as Tomlinson lectured us.

My friend was trying to hurry us along, doing his best to sound rational and reasonable, telling me, “It’s not even ten yet, and it takes less than an hour to drive to Immokalee. Faster, if we knew someone who had a big fancy car. We could be there way before bar closing time. Right on Main Street there’s a good barbecue place, too, that stays open. I wouldn’t suggest it, but they have a salad bar.”

He turned to give Emily a pointed look, obviously aware that her Jag was parked outside the marina’s gate. But if the lady noticed, she didn’t react. She was going through a file I had started years ago, a file on bull sharks that inhabit a freshwater lake one hundred and twenty-seven miles from the sea in Central America.

We had gotten on the subject of sharks earlier in the evening when I was showing the lady a gadget I was testing that might repel attacking sharks. Laser Energetics of Orlando had sent me the thing, a palm-sized tactical light called a Dazer. Its green laser beam was hundreds of times more powerful than a legal laser pointer and could drop a man to the ground with one blinding blast. A test victim had described the pain as “like a screwdriver in the eye,” which is why a special federal license was required to possess it. If the Dazer affected sharks the same way, it might save sailors, pilots and divers who found themselves in a bad spot.

On the file Emily was holding I had written in ink
Sharks of Lake Nicaragua.

“You have some fascinating stuff here,” Emily told me, looking at a black-and-white photo of a fisherman I had interviewed a few years back. He was missing a scarred-over chunk from his right thigh. Attacks in Lake Nicaragua are not uncommon. Water is murky, private bathing facilities are rare and backwater bull sharks have the feeding instincts of pit bulls. Males of the species,
Carcharinus leucas
, have a higher concentration of testosterone in their blood than any animal on earth.

In the background of the photo, tacked to a wall, were several sets of shark jaws. The largest of them was opened wide enough to cut a man in half.

The fisherman I’d interviewed had lost his thigh as a kid and had dedicated his adult life to getting even. The fact that Japanese buyers paid top dollar for shark fins only made his work sweeter—until he and other fishermen had all but depleted the landlocked shark population. The man was dead broke when I met him but still thirsty for revenge. By then, though, a rum bottle provided his only relief.

I know a quite a bit about Central America and the varieties of sharks that thrive there—finned predators and two-legged predators, too. For several years I had lived in the region, traveling between Nicaragua, Guatemala and Masagua during the endless revolutions. I was in the country doing marine research—a fact that I made public to anyone who asked because I was also working undercover on assignment for a clandestine agency composed of a tiny, select membership.

By day, I did collecting trips, wading the tide pools, and I maintained a fastidious little jungle lab. By night, I shifted gears and did a different type of work. I attended village celebrations and embassy functions. I wore a dinner jacket and went to parties thrown by wealthy landowners. I wore fatigues and trained with a counterinsurgency group, the
Kaibiles
. Less often, I roamed the local countryside on the hunt for gangster “revolutionaries” who, in fact, were little more than paid bullies and assassins.

On those occasions, I carried a weapon for a reason.

I’ve spent my life doing similar work in other Third World countries—Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Africa, Cuba. The study of marine biology has served me well in my travels, both as my primary vocation and as a believable cover. When a stranger inquires about local politics, residents are instantly suspicious, and for good reason. But when a stranger asks about the local fishery—where’s a good place to catch sharks?—he is instantly dismissed as just one more harmless, misguided fisherman.

I’ve never really confided in Tomlinson, but he’s perceptive, so knows more about my background than most. And he probably suspects that I’m still involved in that shadow world of hunter and hunted—which I am. But he doesn’t know the truth and he never will.

No one ever will.

I was looking at Emily, thinking about the complications my sort of life brings to a relationship, as Tomlinson intruded again by saying with exaggerated patience, “I don’t expect your full attention. You both have the same rosy glow, which tells me you’ve had yourselves a really fabulous first date, so congratulations. But have you heard even a single word I’ve said?”

Emily looked up from the folder, her expression empathetic. “I know you’re worried about the girl. I don’t even know her and I’m worried. But I’m going to follow Doc’s lead on this. Something tells me he’s got better instincts than most when it comes to these things.”

She looked at me as she added, “Trust me, I understand what it’s like to have a family member go missing.”

Tomlinson gave her a curious, questioning look, as if trying to decipher the implications. Then he got back to business, saying, “Okay, I agree with Doc. If every cop in Florida is looking for Tula, what good can we possibly do? It’s a valid point. But here’s another fact that’s valid: Cops aren’t welcome in immigrant communities. How many times have we talked about this? Why not at least go to Immokalee and have a look around? An hour in a car together—a four-beer drive, depending on traffic, and traffic shouldn’t be bad on a Wednesday night that far inland. Hell, it could be fun.”

Emily was studying my face, her expression now asking me
What do you think?

She had dressed, but looked less formal in her white slacks, copper blouse, because her jacket was still hanging in my bedroom closet. I hoped it would stay there for the rest of the night—along with the woman—if we could manage to get rid of Tomlinson.

The trouble was, Tomlinson was right. Guatemalans would probably talk to us, but they would vanish the moment police appeared. If Squires had indeed taken Tula to Immokalee, someone would have noticed a big
gringo
with an
Indio
child. Why he would risk doing something so stupid, I had no idea. But if he had, the locals might trust us with the truth, which we could then pass along to police.

I said to Tomlinson, “It’s been a while since I’ve been to Immokalee, but I remember it being farther than an hour.”

Tomlinson was sitting at my desk computer. He’d been doing a lot of typing and printing as I showed the lady around the lab, enjoying her reaction to rows of aquaria that contained sea anemones, snappers, filefish, sea horses, scallops with iridescent blue eyes and dozens of other brackish-water creatures that I had collected from the grass flats around Dinkin’s Bay.

“Immokalee seems like a long way to you because your truck’s so slow,” Tomlinson replied, not looking up from the keyboard.

“Have you ridden with this guy yet?” he asked Emily. “Like an old lady, he drives—no offense to old ladies, don’t get me wrong. I love women of all ages. But top speed in that old Chevy of his, it might be sixty. Not that he’s ever pushed it that hard. I keep telling him to buy a new vehicle, but he’s too cheap. In that truck of his, he’s right. It would take us forever.”

I asked Emily, “Have you ever been there?” meaning Immokalee.

I got the impression she had, but the lady shrugged, open to fresh information.

“It’s inland, southeast of Sanibel—saw grass and cattle country. Tomatoes, citrus and peppers, too—all crops picked by hand. It’s only forty-some miles, but you have to take back roads because it’s off the tourist path. The town’s not big, maybe twenty thousand people, and the population is mostly Hispanic.”

I looked at Tomlinson, expecting him to correct me, as I added, “Back in the nineteen eighties, a Mexican crew chief brought in a truckload of Kanjobal Maya from Guatemala to work in Immokalee’s tomato fields and another place, Indiantown, which is north. That began the connection. Now those two towns have become sort of the Mayan capitals of Florida. That’s where all the Maya head when they’re looking for family. Or if they get into trouble.”

Tomlinson did correct me, saying, “It was nineteen eighty-two, I’ve got it right here on the screen. Now half the population of Indiantown is Mayan. This article doesn’t say how many Guatemalans live in Immokalee, but the Latin population is almost eighty percent, which means there has to be ten or fifteen thousand
Indios
in Immokalee—which makes it bigger than most of the cities in Guatemala.

He continued, “I don’t blame those people for not wanting to be documented. They’re mostly political refugees, on the run from their government because they did something or said something to piss off the big shots in Guatemala City. Their government still uses firing squads, don’t they, Doc?”

The man said it in an accusatory way as if I were somehow responsible.

“Up against the wall, asshole,” he added, shaking his head, “which is typical of a bunch of right-wing Nazis.”

Right wing, left wing, it made no difference in Central America ... nor anywhere else, for that matter, because the power hungry all gravitate toward the same dangerous interstice on the political wheel.

Even so, I said nothing as Tomlinson continued paraphrasing from what he was reading on the computer.

“In the seventies, Guatemalan exiles tried building a little village just across the border in Mexico. But their own army had a bad habit of sneaking across and shooting the
Indígena
on sight. Finally, Guatemalan military wiped out the whole village.

“Florida was a whole ocean away, and the really desperate refugees decided this was a safer choice. Now about thirty thousand Maya live in south Florida, which historically makes for a very nice symmetry, when you think about it.”