Tampa Burn (33 page)

Tomlinson hadn't sent the bomb. He hadn't participated in the making of it, nor had he been aware of the plan. But he hadn't tried to stop them or have them stopped, either. He'd been a member of the group. As far as we were concerned, there was blood on his hands.

We didn't know it at the time, but he felt the same. It was more guilty blood for the heir to a fortune soaked in the blood of others.

It was then he began to study Buddhism, and that he secretly created a scholarship fund for the children of the murdered sailor.

It was also then that Tomlinson fell apart. He went insane. He was institutionalized by his family for many months, and given shock treatments, and kept heavily drugged.

I told Ransom, “Being locked away like that saved his life. But not in the way you might think. It saved him because it got him off the street. The group responsible for the bombing had thirteen members. Within two years after the explosion, six of the thirteen had been either killed in freak accidents or badly injured. Two others—
poof
—vanished. No trace ever found.”

The woman understood my meaning. I could read it in her expression—a look of growing, uneasy dismay—as she said, “Like this here cat when it be after a bird. Someone was huntin' them folks down and murderin' them.”

I corrected her. “I don't think you can call it murder. Not if it's sanctioned.”

Now her expression had saddened, seemed to say,
Oh Lord, I don't want to believe you said that.

 

IT seemed wiser to continue talking than to risk a pause that might invite her questions. So I said, “When I came back to Sanibel and found out this stilt house could be leased, I had no idea that Tomlinson sometimes used Dinkin's Bay as an anchorage. Quite a coincidence, huh? I didn't think so at the time.

“When he showed up and I realized who he was, I was suspicious as hell. I figured he had to be suspicious of me, too, though he never showed it. In fact, he came on like the same sweet, brilliant flake he seems to be today. Like maybe the shock therapy had changed his wiring or something. That's what I thought could've happened.

“But I was still on my guard. The group that sent the bomb wasn't the only radical organization Tomlinson had been involved with. I . . .
knew
about him . . . for reasons I might tell you down the road. So I thought maybe someone had sent him after me. Or maybe some government agency had leveraged him and was using him against me.”

Ransom asked carefully, “There's a reason some government might do that to you, my brother?”

I barely nodded twice—
Yes
—before I continued, “I got my chance to test Tomlinson's motives when a pal of mine got into some trouble and I had to go back to Central America. I invited him along. You get a man in the jungle, all the little tricks and gimmicks fall apart after a few days. Once I got him in the jungle, I knew I'd find out the truth.”

I made a grunting sound of derision. “At least I thought I would. So maybe there were some clues I could've picked up on. He knew a lot about the people, the customs. Maybe more than he should've. Another was that he talked about the Maya like a university scholar. So it could be that one of the organizations he belonged to was a thing called Fight-4-Right, and he'd been in Masagua before. Fight-4-Right is an underground radical group that raises money for violent political causes, and works closely with the village populations of Third World countries.”

Ransom said, “The Stork Man, our Tomlinson, he be workin' for some group that preach violence? My brother, he be like the least violent human soul I ever met. The only weapon he ever use is that big dick a his, and that a happy-makin' thing. You know that.”

I said, “It was a different time. People, politics, philosophies, and Tomlinson got caught up in the dynamics of his generation. Me?”—I shrugged—“I've never cared about politics. Never will, and I've never felt a part of any generation. So I never understood the behaviors.”

I'd been pacing as I talked. I stopped now, looked at my watch, and said, “So, see why I had to give you the background? It wouldn't've made sense without it. The point is, Tomlinson may have met Pilar before I met her, or around the same time—only I wasn't aware of it. Because of their past political associations, there may be reasons for both of them to still keep secrets from me. At least, think they should.”

I began pacing again as I added bitterly, “Which means maybe neither of them were the friends I thought they were.”

Ransom said, “That ugly Stork Man, he may be a crazy ganja-smokin' fool, brother, but he always your friend. You know that, too. I think that always safe to say. He almost like your brother.” Her tone of gentle rebuke said I was wrong to doubt him so quickly.

Still angry, I replied, “I'm not accusing him. I'm just saying it's possible, that's all. If he and Pilar were here, I'd be tempted to stick my nose in their faces and ask just what the hell the truth is. But I wouldn't. I can't. There're too many—”

I caught myself. I'd almost said that there were too many security issues involved to confront them. I couldn't. I couldn't even hint that I'd uncovered the information until I was absolutely certain of the identity of Tinman.

So I finished lamely, but still bitter, “I can't ask them because they're holed up in some hotel room in Miami. They won't even answer my calls.”

Shaking her head for some reason, Ransom was suddenly up, getting something from the galley—a piece of paper. “That where you're wrong. I meant to tell you. I come inside the house before you got here, and found this note on the door. It from the Stork Man.”

 

 

TOMLINSON'S penmanship reminds me of the eloquent ink craft that I associate with previous centuries—beautifully formed and slanted loops and swirls.
Spencerianscript,
he calls it, and credits his writing hand to a former life in which, he says, he worked as a shipping clerk, eighteenth-century London, on the Thames River.

The note read:

As I looked up from the note, Ransom asked, “I already read it. What's that last part mean?”

I said, “It's an affectionate way of saying goodbye. Spanish. ‘I give you a hug, my brother.' ”

Ransom told me, “Jes' like I said, your brother. What kinda person gonna say that and not be your friend? And you talking about them like they was shacked up together in some hotel.”

“I don't feel real apologetic right now. Maybe it has to do with finding out I'm maybe not the real father of my son.”

Ransom began, “Let me ask you somethin', Marion Ford”—using her serious voice, the one she employs when making a point or assuming a platform of wisdom—“did you feel like the boy's father before you read them letters? Course you did. Then tell me, how can a few words change a man's feelin's for his child? Where's it say you got to have the same blood to be a father? Hell, man, I ain't your
real
sister. But, 'cause of the feelings I got, I am your real
sister
. See what I'm sayin'?”

I was tempted to share the irony with her. It was only in recent hours that I'd had my first insights into the power of blood kinship—the first to which I had ever attached any emotion, anyway—and now those feelings were already being challenged.

I shook my head wearily, made a flapping motion with my hands, and began to undress. “You're right. He's my son. No matter who the real father is, he's still my son.”

“Yeah, that a healthy way to think of it. Now, get them clothes off. You so bone weary, you get you some sleep now. I stay and rub your back maybe. Say—why you not wearing the gris-gris bag I give you? That good luck, man!”

I had my shirt off, so she could see that I wasn't wearing the little leather sack of herbs and who-knows-what-else around my neck. I never did.

I let my fishing shorts drop to the floor, stepped out of them, turned, and walked to the west window, then stopped, looking out, as she said, “Something else you need to make you feel better, I can get some goofer dust. Put a little on you, then pray over it every day for nine days. I got some nice lotion, too—turpentine and rose petals mostly—that make the heart pains go 'way.”

I said, “Do you have any magic dust that'll make Dewey come back? Or at least call.”

I'd told her about that, too.

“Oh yeah, man. The bring-me-lover-home spell, that an easy one. When the moon full? We do it then, and that girl, Dewey, she soon back in your arms.”

I was standing in my underwear, looking out over the mangroves, the marina lights off to my right, a wedge of moon showing over the trees. The moon would soon be setting over the Gulf; setting almost exactly at the same time the sun was rising over the bay. Decided that, as long as I was up, I might as well stay up to see it.

I told my sister, “I'm too tired to sleep. I think I'll jog down Tarpon Bay Road to the beach, do a short run and swim.”

I could picture myself swimming toward the moon on a lane of silver light, the island widening behind me. What a temptation, to just keep swimming toward the moon.

I wondered if Dewey was awake, thinking about me, thinking about us.

Yeah, the mood I was in, that would be better than trying to sleep.

I
saw Tomlinson briefly late that afternoon at the marina. He'd puttered ashore in his little dinghy so he could drive to Bailey's General Store and buy supplies. The encounter was as uncomfortable as it was unexpected.

Unexpected because he makes shopping runs less frequently these days. Too much risk of being recognized. He has a garden variety of phobias, and the newest is the fear of being mobbed by foreign-speaking strangers.

It's happened because of his growing cult status as a Zen teacher. His adoring groupies come to the marina to seek him out, and the attention makes him edgy. Until Mack, who owns and manages the marina, put a stop to it, they'd hang around the docks, hoping for a glimpse of their beloved prophet.

That's the way they think of him, too. It has to do with a religious treatise that he wrote years ago when he was still a university student,
One Fathom Above Sea Level
. A fathom is six feet, so the title refers to the universe as viewed through one man's eyes—Tomlinson's.

The paper was published in Germany, enjoyed a brief European vogue, and then vanished. But a while back, it was rediscovered. It was translated into Japanese, then Chinese, and began to circulate around the world on the Internet. The Internet's great triumph is that it is successfully joining us as one race, even while inviting dependencies that amplify our vulnerability, and that may well destroy us as a modern society.

Anyway, Tomlinson has his faults, but ego isn't among them. Except for an understandable wariness, he's been unchanged by all the attention. The problem is, he says, he can't
remember
writing
One Fathom,
nor what inspired it.

It used to trouble him: not remembering what he'd written, or what had moved him to that level of virtuosity. As he explains it, heavy drink and drugs were involved, so the brain cells that did the actual creating are long since dead.

It bothered him so much, in fact, that around Christmas, he disappeared for a couple of months on what he later described to me as his personal quest to rediscover the source of that lost inspiration. When I asked for details, he demurred, though I noticed that he stopped speaking of
One Fathom
as if it had been written by an unknown person.

And he was forced to change his lifestyle because of the unwelcome fame. Tomlinson has always kept his sun-battered Morgan sailboat moored only a few hundred yards offshore from the docks, and just across the channel from my stilt house. Now, though, he's moved it near the middle of the bay to discourage his followers from attempting to swim out to meet him. It's a considerably longer distance, and one of the reasons he makes fewer trips to the marina.

Which is why I was surprised to run into him that afternoon. I'd seen him ride by earlier that day—probably to pick up his cell phone, which I'd left for him behind the counter in the marina office. With the phone, I'd also left a note that listed the medical supplies we needed, and a brief explanation. I couldn't help adding a postscript reminding him that he had hipster doctor buddies who were happy to sell him sevoflurane gas and laughing gas to sniff for recreational use, so maybe they'd come through with a couple of drugs that were actually intended for medical purposes.

The sevoflurane gas he used was the worst. Smelled exactly like anchovies to me. But Tomlinson loved the stuff, and would walk around giggling for hours, stinking of marijuana and fish.

I'd told him where to find his cell phone in a brief exchange on the VHF radio. Other than that, I saw no need for us to talk.

We had no pressing business.

Pilar had called me from her hotel room early that morning just as I returned from swimming, and I'd already told her about my e-mail exchange with Prax Lourdes. I'd described the bizarre call on the satellite phone. Told her a lie—that he'd demanded my e-mail address, and that he'd written me directly. Explained it all without mentioning that I'd broken into her Internet account, her personal e-mails, and that I'd already read Lourdes' earlier demand that we drive to St. Petersburg.