Tampa Burn df-11 Page 10

  I interrupted. “Thanks for sparing us the details. What might be nice for a change is to hear some silence. Or maybe we could just listen to the radio.”

  Still talking to Pilar, he said, “Mister Grumpy. It’s because of the driving stress. You can drop this guy into any jungle or island on earth, and he’s right at home. Put him on a freeway, though, and his knuckles turn white.”

  “I’m trying to concentrate,” I said. “Something wrong with that? All these lunatic drivers… my God-did you see the stunt the idiot in that Explorer just pulled? And besides, you’re supposed to be helping me look for, what is it, the Second Street exit?”

  “Northeast Second Avenue. That’s our exit. But first we jump on the I-Three-ninety-five. So we’ve got a little time.”

  Pilar said to me, “I enjoy listening to Tomlinson. He’s very sweet, and he’s made me laugh for the first time since it happened. I don’t see why you should object to the two of us talking.”

  I thought: Perfect. Now she’s bonding with my best friend.

  I concentrated on driving, yet couldn’t help but listen as Tomlinson launched into his monologue about the evils of gas-guzzling SUVs such as the crazed Explorer, muscle cars, pickup trucks-a shot at me, there-and the petroleum industry’s scheme to control the world economy.

  I find it amazing that someone of his intelligence and insight is a predictable dupe for every left-wing conspiracy theory that comes along. But an individual’s politics, like religion, I have learned, is not a reliable or fair gauge of intellect or humanitarian intent. I know intelligent people who embrace equally ridiculous right-wing absurdities. So I try to judge people individually, which is what reasonable people do.

  Not that he didn’t have a good point about squandering the Earth’s fossil fuels. It is a commodity of finite measure, and a consistent agent of hypocrisy: Many Americans abhor the prospect of drilling for oil in our own boundary lands and oceans, yet we all live eager, modern, petroleum-based lives. I can certainly be counted among the hypocrites.

  But at Dinkin’s Bay Marina, we’d become so tired of hearing Tomlinson’s anti-SUV lecturing, his save-the-Earth posturing, that Mack, Jeth, Felix, and a couple of the other fishing guides came up with an idea. A way to play a joke on Tomlinson.

  Tomlinson’s Volkswagen is several decades old and looks like a German staff car. It’s a rusted antique with an 8-gallon fuel tank and a tiny engine that gets thirty-plus miles per gallon-a fact that he’s also hammered us over the head with.

  So a couple months back, the guides began to slip into the parking lot at night and funnel gas into his car’s tank, topping it off each and every time Tomlinson used the vehicle.

  Every day he got in to use the Volkswagen, he found that the tank was full.

  He drove twenty-five miles to Terry Park in Fort Myers to play Roy Hobbs baseball. He drove a hundred miles to Siesta Key Beach to lead the Sunday night drum circle. He drove across the state to visit his boat bum pals at Bahia Mar Marina in Lauderdale. He drove to Stan’s Chickee Bar in Goodland and did the Buzzard Lope. He drove to Placida and took the ferry across to Palm Island to teach meditation and lead seminars on Tomlinsonism-his own brand of Buddhism that has so grown in popularity that the man now bundles his hair under a fedora and wears Hollywood sunglasses when he leaves the marina.

  I hadn’t exaggerated when I told Pilar that, thanks to the Internet, his followers seek him out from around the world.

  Our reluctant prophet put hundreds of miles on the Volkswagen, and his gas tank remained full.

  At first, he bragged piously about his car. While we drove around in our oil suckers, destroying a fragile planet, he was meeting all transportation needs while leaving only the tiniest of environmental footprints.

  “Real men don’t have to drive a big car,” he told us. “It’s like the bumper stickers you see. Ask yourselves this: What kinda car would Jesus have driven?”

  While Mack wondered aloud, “Hummm… something amphibious?” Jeth, the stuttering fishing guide, replied,

  “There’s a NASCAR driver named Hay-zus. If that’s the one you mean, he runs a 340 big block Dodge V-8, 750 horsepower. But if you’re talkin’ about gas mileage, I wouldn’t think ol’ Jesus’ car would be a smart choice.”

  After another week or so of hard driving, though, and with the tank still full, Tomlinson began to fret. Maybe his fuel gauge was broken. So he took the car down to Island Amoco.

  The gauge checked out just fine.

  Amazing.

  He drove to Fort Myers Beach, LaBelle, and Estero. He drove to St. Petersburg, Venus, and then to Burnt Store Marina to hang out at the docks and drink at the bar.

  The gas needle still pointed to full.

  Which was impossible. The Volkswagen was running without burning any gasoline. No logical human being would have accepted that possibility. But Tomlinson, though capable of logical thought, does not embrace a logical view of the world. His beat-up old Volkswagen, he decided, had somehow been vested with spiritual qualities and unworldly abilities.

  One night, stoned and very drunk on El Dorado rum, he wobbled up to my house, pounded on my door, and told me, “Doc. I finally figured it out. She’s got a soul in her. My car. I think maybe she’s an old lover of mine from a previous life. It’s a feeling I’ve got. Like, it just came to me, man. That this old lover is now inhabiting my Volkswagen, come back to help me seek enlightenment… or maybe screw with me and spy on me, too. Sabotage new relationships, break down on the open road just when I’m horniest-who knows. I’ve had good women and bad, so it’s a crap shoot when it comes to dealing with the new incarnations of old sweeties.

  “But my car, she’s definitely got a soul. Which is why I’m calling her Stella. That’s as good a name as any. I thought about Zeetar, which is one of the hottest monkey-love planets in the galaxy. But how can I explain something like that to spiritual civilians? The point is, my Volkswagen Thing has become a thinking, feeling, sentient being. It’s the only possible explanation for why she refuses to vex me by burning Mother Earth’s fossil fuel.”

  I’d replied, “The only explanation, huh?”

  When I shared with the guides an edited version of what he’d told me, they decided to change tactics. They continued their late-night assaults on Tomlinson’s Volkswagen. Now, though, instead of putting gas into the tank, they siphoned gas out.

  If he drove to Jensen’s Marina on nearby Captiva, he had to stop and get fuel. If he drove a quarter-mile to Timber’s to hang out with Matt Asen, he had to fill up the tank. He’d been working on wood sculpture in Fort Meyers with Terrence Flannery, a brilliant artist. Every time he turned the key, the gas needle pointed to empty, so he had to go straight to the Hess station on Tarpon Bay Road.

  Which shut him up. Ended his windy lecturing on the gas-guzzling cars we drove and the outboard engines we used.

  But the guides couldn’t trust themselves to be together around him. They’d crack up when Tomlinson came near. They’d cough into their hands, struggle not to squirt beer out their noses, and hurry away.

  So it had been a while since I’d heard his anti-SUV monologue. And maybe he was right about me being irritable. Because when he started to belabor the conspiratorial link between the SUV makers of Detroit, the world industrial complex, and Texas oil barons-“The reason’s obvious. There’re bigger profits in cars that guzzle gas!”-I interrupted, saying, “Why don’t you tell Pilar about your Volkswagen? About the amazing mileage it’s been getting. There’s a pretty good example of what you’re talking about.”

  Tomlinson’s jaw got tight. “Uh-uh, don’t even mention that backstabbing, four-cylinder slut to me. Besides, our exit’s coming up soon. With all this traffic, I better keep my eyes open.”

  The Cacique Restaurant is on West Flagler near Northwest Miami Court, across from the Claude Pepper Federal Building and the old courthouse, a Cuban lunch spot in the heart of a city that has been redefined by expatriated Cubans.

  We were more
than an hour early, so we put the car in a parking barn and walked to Southwest Second Avenue where Pilar said the Masagua consul general kept a suite of offices. She’d been there a number of times in past years.

  Good thing we checked. I don’t know how many countries maintain consulates in Miami. Many dozens from around the world, no doubt, including most of the Caribbean and Latin countries.

  The Ingraham Building is one of many Miami diplomatic strongholds. The downstairs directory said that the Bahamas, Bolivia, Jamaica, and Uruguay all had offices there. But not Masagua. Not any longer. The Masaguan consulate, a security guard told us, had recently been moved to downtown Coral Gables, next to the Guatemalan consulate on Sevilla Street.

  Coral Gables might be twenty minutes away, it might be fifty, depending on traffic.

  Heading back to the Cacique Restaurant, among high-rise canyons dotted with storefront delis, Italian perfumeries, and Levi’s, camera, and passport photo shops, Pilar correctly interpreted my silence.

  “You have every right to be furious. It was an easy mistake to make, but I should have checked. I should have confirmed the address. It would have been simple enough to do.”

  I said, “In these kinds of situations, it’s almost always the simple mistakes that cause the biggest screw-ups. You can’t afford to let that kind of thing happen. Never again.

  “So let’s say we didn’t have time to check out the Ingraham Building first. We talk to whoever’s fronting for the kidnappers, and he tells us to deliver the money within half an hour. Tells us to drop it at some park or fountain, name a place. He’s eye-balled us. He knows we’re clean. Securitywise, that wouldn’t be a bad move on his part. We produce the money or Lake’s dead.

  “So we agree, of course-only to find out, ten minutes later, your consulate is in a different city. There’s no way to contact the kidnappers, no way to tell them we’ve made a mistake. We don’t have time to pick up the money. We’re screwed. Disaster.”

  Subdued, Tomlinson said, “You’re being a little tough on her, man.”

  Pilar was wearing a navy blue skirt, a starched white blouse, and a white bra beneath. She tugged nervously at the collar of her blouse and told him, “No. He’s not. He’s exactly right. It was an inexcusable mistake.”

  To me, she said, “It won’t happen again, Marion.”

  The guy they sent to meet us was a freak. A muscle freak, and a tattoo freak.

  He had a head the size and color of a bleached basketball, skull shaved clean and trapezoid muscles that angled toward his ears so sharply that he was pyramid-shaped.

  Plus, there were the tattoos. Tattoos covered his skull, his face and forehead, his arms. He looked like a steroid giant whose skin had been elaborately air-brushed in Easter-egg hues, reds, greens, blues.

  We were sitting in the Cacique Restaurant-tile floors, white ceiling fans, bathroom sign in green neon, waitresses in burgundy vests-when the giant strolled in. The place did a busy lunch business, tables full, dishes clattering, but the man was sufficiently sizeable and colorful to cause a momentary lull as people turned to stare.

  He wore drawstring sweatpants tied tight around a narrow waist, and a black Everlast muscle T-shirt. His arms looked like overstuffed hams, triceps and latissimus muscles abrading as his arms swung, which gave his walk a restricted, mechanical rhythm.

  He had something in his hand-a photo, I soon realized. He stopped in the doorway near the register, looked at the photo, then surveyed the crowded restaurant.

  He fixed his dark eyes on Pilar, looked at the photo a second time, then came our way, a big grin on his face.

  “Check this out,” Tomlinson said. “He’s got to be close to six-and-a-half feet tall and three hundred pounds. Why would they send someone so easy to remember? That’s weird.”

  I was thinking the same thing.

  But Tattoo was our contact. He came to our table, took the lone empty chair, and swung it around backward so that he could sit cowboy style.

  His accent was proud hick, pure palmetto Florida country boy-a surprising redneck linkage in what appeared to be the politically motivated kidnapping of a Central American boy.

  Tattoo whistled as if in pain, and said, “Now, look at this fine-lookin’ Latin beauty. You’re just as pretty as your picture says you’d be.” The man checked the photo once more before shoving it into his pocket. “The name I was told you go by is Pilar Foo-went-tays. That the way you say it?”

  The lady nodded. “ Fuentes. You’re close enough.”

  “Well, it sure is a pleasure to make the acquaintance, and I hope you’re enjoyin’ that fine-smelling food.”

  Without looking at Tomlinson, the man reached across the table, took a chunk of his fried yellowtail snapper, and stuffed it into his mouth.

  “Humm. Not too bad for wetback cookin’. Not too bad at all.”

  Now he reached, took a piece of bread from my plate, dipped it in a bowl of black beans, saying, “Trouble is, I can’t enjoy eating, ’cause my day’s already been partway spoiled. Know why? Because I was told you was gonna be alone, Miz Pilar. Told you had to be alone or I wasn’t supposed to say boo to you. But now I show up, and here you are with this hippie who probably ain’t washed his hair in a year. And Mr. Coke-glasses who looks like he sells encyclopedias for a living. So what am I supposed to tell the people paying me to help y’all close this deal?”

  I said, “We’re not cops, that’s what you tell them. No association with any law enforcement agencies. We’re the lady’s friends. She sent an e-mail, they’ve been informed. We’re just along to make sure that she stays safe. Which, if your people had any brains at all, they’d appreciate-considering what the deal is. Tell your people that.”

  Tattoo’s brown eyes went round in what seemed to be mock innocence. “Whoa there, hoss. I don’t give a tinker’s damn if you’re a cop or not. I don’t know what kinda deal you people got goin’ and I don’t care to know. That’s your business. What I’m bein’ paid to do is just make introductions, do some middle-man work. The Mediator, that’s what certain people call me.”

  He said it with a smile, Mediator, like it deserved a capital M.

  “A place like South Florida, an ol’ boy like me stays busy by playin’ Mediator for anybody who comes along. I keep it real simple, no bullshit, everything step by step. There ain’t nothin’ in the world illegal about doin’ what I do.”

  He had one of those jowly, globular faces that are quick to show fat as they age. He leaned his face close to mine now as he added, “So I don’t care if you’re a cop. If you’re carryin’ a gun, or you’re wired. But maybe the people payin’ me do. So you wait right here like a good boy while I go check.”

  His chair shrieked on the tile as he stood. “Maybe I’ll be back. Maybe I won’t.”

  He was at the restaurant door a few minutes later, pumping his finger at us, telling us to follow him.

  I paid the check and we stepped out into the incandescence of a Miami afternoon, heat radiating from sidewalks and asphalt like volcanic vents, a heat so intense that it exerted an acidic, prickling pressure on exposed skin and through the soles of shoes.

  In Florida during the hottest months, I don’t dress to stay cool. It’s impossible. I dress to dry quickly. So I wore feather-weight cargo slacks, a short-sleeved shirt of soft Egyptian cotton, tie-on canvas boating shoes, and a blue ball cap with the marina logo embroidered thereon: a tarpon.

  Within minutes, my shirt was wet.

  Same with Tattoo. His shirt was soaked, sticking to his back as we followed him along Flagler past the courthouse built of gray, fossilized coral.

  The back of his bald head, I noted, was tattooed with a jade-blue butterfly, a bright wing opening toward each ear, its lower abdomen expanding into what appeared to be a spiraling Confederate flag that disappeared within his wet shirt.

  We followed him across the street to a Starbucks, where we took seats at an outdoor table, the green umbrella baking hot above us.

  He sa
id, “I talked to my guys, and they’re playin’ it careful. So careful I’m almost tempted to ask for a hint what it is you dudes got yourselves into. You don’t got the look of snort or herb about ya”-he barely glanced at Tomlinson-“except for the old acid freak here. Which leaves a couple other interesting possibilities. But, like I said, this ol’ boy just does his job. I don’t want to know. So now my orders are, I got to make sure you ain’t the law, and that you ain’t carryin’ nothin’ fancy on you.”

  I said, “O.K. But aren’t you worried someone maybe might get suspicious, call the cops, if you pat us down right here?”

  I was rewarded with a theatrical grin. “You got a kinda smart-ass mouth on you for a booky-looking squirt. I’m surprised you ain’t scarred up more. Instead of pattin’ you down, I could grab you by your ankles, turn you upside down, and bang your head on the street just to see what falls out. But that wouldn’t be professional. So I got a better way.”

  Pilar said, “Just tell us what they want us to do. We’ll do it.”

  Tattoo said, “That’s a better attitude,” then looked from me to Tomlinson. “Either one of you boys carrying a passport?”

  We shook our heads. “There wasn’t any reason to bring one.”

  I was surprised when he said, “Good. Saves having to dump them in your car.”

  Then to Pilar, he said, “What about you?”

  “Yes, of course. I’m not a U.S. citizen, so I need to keep mine with me. But we can lock it in the car, if you like.”

  Tattoo was standing. “Nope, this is workin’ out just fine. You folks follow me. We’re gonna let our own U.S. government do my security work. And I’ll tell you boys right now: If you’re carryin’ some kinda pop gun and you’re a cop, it’ll be right there for me to see. If you’re carryin’ and not a cop, you’ll be going to jail.

  “After that, when I’m sure everything’s nice ’n’ clean, I’ll contact my people again. They’ll tell me what they want us to do next.”