Dead of Night df-12 Page 14

  Later that evening, Tomlinson told her, he didn’t see any way around it. If she had some ideas about making money, go ahead and get started.

  “Do it now,” he said, “’cause I don’t have much time left.”

  Ransom was like a lion set free.

  There were already Tomlinson-dedicated Web sites-mostly in Europe and Asia, where his small, brilliant book, One Fathom Above Sea Level, had been widely translated and praised.

  One fathom equals approximately six feet, so the title referred to a view of the world through one man’s eyes.

  The customer base was out there waiting, so Ransom decided to start an Internet school of meditation. From Sanibel, they could reach out to the world. In return, she hoped, money would flow in from the world.

  Tomlinson was mortified. Money was the only area where he set strict guidelines: The school had to serve the public good, he said, and she couldn’t charge fees of any kind. Donations could be accepted. But no pressure tactics. If his teachings improved lives, students might send a little gift in gratitude. Expect nothing more.

  “This getting rich business sucks,” he told me privately. “I haven’t made a cent yet, and your sister already has me pissed off about the tax laws. Insurance companies? The insurance racket is nothing but organized crime with a permission slip.”

  As a template, Ransom copied a respected international school of Zen that offered Internet instruction. Founded by a Korean Zen master, it had educational centers worldwide and several hundred thousand followers.

  My cousin charged ahead, working seven days a week. Created a corporation. Filed forms with the IRS seeking a religious nonprofit 501(c)(3) status for the now legally chartered “Sanibel Institute of Zen Meditation amp; Island Karma.”

  “The feds should grant it, no problem. Even if they don’t, we can still operate as an electronic church, and take all the donations them folks want to send us. Either way, everything will be nice and legal.”

  Ransom loved the acronym. SIZMIK, which she pronounced as “seismic.”

  “T-shirt sales alone,” she said. “Think of the cash flow.”

  She put herself through a crash course on building Web pages, and hired one of the state’s best Internet designers. They created an interactive, multipage Web site. A Miami computer bank, or collocutor, became her Web server. As a domain name, they settled on: www.KarmicTomlinson.com.

  “A collocutor’s nothin’ but an office with computers linked to several hard drives. If one drive dies, they can hot swap a new one without shutting down, so we don’t lose a thing.”

  The collocutor would coordinate live telecasts. Point the camera at Tomlinson and it would be sent out across the Internet. Students could interact with him in real time. Two or three live sessions a week. Everything else at the CyberZendo would be shot in advance and edited.

  CyberZendo. Tomlinson’s name.

  Ransom did the video. She recorded Tomlinson’s lectures, his sitting zazen demonstrations, and followed him around during a typical day-a sort of Tomlinson reality show that became popular.

  She also traveled the islands recording soothing scenes of beaches, bays, swaying palms at sunset, and oceanscapes. “Meditative stuff,” she called it.

  Ransom worked her butt off while Tomlinson sat around brooding about his decision to get rich, and fretting about his death dream. She was often furious at him, and for good reason.

  In mid-July, it happened. Ransom’s Internet Zendo Village, featuring Rienzi master Tomlinson, premiered on the World Wide Web. She hosted a party at Dinkin’s Bay to celebrate, though most who attended seemed confused by the occasion.

  Why was there a banner over the bait tanks that read: CONGRATULATIONS SANIBEL INSTITUTE OF ISLAND KARMA? Why was Tomlinson wearing flowing orange monk’s robes instead of his trademark sarong? The video crew-why?

  The night of the premiere, few islanders visited Karmic Tomlinson. com. On the other side of the earth, though, hundreds of eager Asian admirers did. In Europe, Africa, and Indonesia, too. The spiritually minded sat at their computers and, for the first time, interacted with their esteemed teacher, the Roshi, whose writings they loved.

  News of the link spread.

  The first week, Ransom told me, the site recorded two thousand hits. By the fourth week, they were averaging that many a day, and the numbers were growing.

  Donations started as a trickle. Disappointing. Ransom wanted to change the term from “donations” to “Good Karma Offerings,” and pestered Tomlinson until he finally gave in.

  It worked. Money orders and traveler’s checks began arriving in large numbers at the post office on Tarpon Bay Road. Ransom rented a second commercial-sized box to handle the flow.

  “I’d hoped for an even bigger buzz,” she admitted. “I want to get rich. Wild rich. We aren’t, but it’s okay. Having a nice bank account will have to do.”

  Tomlinson, though, was distraught. By now he was too afraid of Ransom to risk a direct confrontation, so he retaliated by imploring his students not to send offerings.

  “If the Good Samaritan wasn’t rich, nobody would remember the dude. Keep your money!” he told them in his live telecasts.

  Reverse psychology sometimes works when it’s unintentional.

  His followers sent more money, not less.

  That called for another variety of celebration.

  On the Monday before Thanksgiving, Ransom drove Tomlinson’s venerable Volkswagen Thing into nearby Fort Myers, traded it in on a luxury van, then had it painted like one of the old hipster microbuses: flowers, peace signs, and rainbows.

  For herself, she bought a Lexus LS 430, the big luxury sedan.

  Over the next several months, things got stranger. Tomlinson began to change. He withdrew emotionally for a period. When he reemerged, he was the same scatterbrained, brilliant flake, but with an unexpected edge.

  Something else we noticed: My old friend began buying toys for himself. Friends, too. Spending lots of money. The only really smart thing he did was buy majority interest in a funky little restaurant near the wildlife sanctuary and rename it Dinkin’s Bay Raw Bar amp; Deja Brew.

  He stopped battling Ransom. Even tried to help her when he could.

  I watched Tomlinson smack himself on the forehead again, finish his drink, then wobble toward the galley to make another. He turned toward me, exasperated. “That’s the problem. I don’t know if I want to go back to being my old self.”

  “What?”

  “I kinda like some of the things I’ve bought. The dinghy’s an example. It’s nice not to get soaked when the bay’s choppy. And the Harley. Man, what a rush to rumble down the middle of Periwinkle, cars on both sides, when traffic’s backed up. Free.

  “Then there’s the clothes. Some say I look very, very hip in a white silk suit. A whole new fashion experience. And did you know Rance’s going to bring out a line of sarongs? My own private label. Finest quality.”

  He said all this in a rush, enthusiastic, but with a confessional undertone.

  I said, “I see. That’s the problem. You enjoy having money.”

  He looked at the floor. Nodded.

  “Just like Ransom predicted.”

  He nodded quickly, his face blotching as if he might cry.

  “Give yourself a break. You’re human. It’s normal to like money. She was right about that, too.”

  “Man, I don’t like money. I love it,” he said miserably. “Slapping down the Gold Card for anything I want? It’s got me jonesing worse than a smack freak on Super Bowl Sunday. My God, Doc, I almost put earnest money on a Cape Coral condo yesterday. A place that’s got cable. The guard wears a uniform. Hear what I’m saying? I’m out of control!”

  Tomlinson put his palms together, then touched index fingers to his lips-usually a religious posture that now signaled the depth of his distress.

  “You’re right,” I said. “That’s going too far.”

  “You’ve got to help me. I’m thinking of buying a shock collar
. Give myself a little zap every time I reach for the ol’ billfold. Negative reinforcement.”

  “Not for you. For you, it would be recreational. How about this: I tell Ransom to keep the money, don’t give you a cut.”

  He winced. “Cold turkey, man. I don’t know. Do you think she would?”

  “My cousin? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  I thought of something else. “I’m working on a job-a sort of contract deal. It has to do with the parasites I mentioned, and maybe some of the noxious exotics you told me about.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It may be related. I could use some help. A researcher.”

  “Then I should find that Rolling Stone article for you.”

  I considered Harrington’s reaction-he’d be furious-before I said, “That’s exactly the sort of help I need. A project as important as this, it might shift your priorities. The organization can pay, but nothing like you’re used to.”

  “A private organization, or government?”

  “Government. Definitely government. But one of the lesser-known agencies.”

  He seemed interested. “Screw the cash. I’ll do it to show goodwill-that’s more valuable than cash.” The old Tomlinson was still in there, talking.

  I told him, “Sometimes, a lot more valuable.”

  17

  Serpiente

  Dr. Desmond Stokes-Mr. Sweet.

  Dasha liked replaying the name; it gave her a warm feeling because it brought Solaris into her head.

  Mr. Sweet had told Dasha, “What I’ve been doing is only a hobby. It’s not my life’s work. But the… satisfaction of the last fourteen months. Manipulating germs, disease vectors-relocating soldier-animals to help Earth retaliate. Thinning the human population of ‘primasites.’ I’m contributing. Which is why we can’t allow that little retard, Applebee, to stop us.”

  He invented words to remind people he was a genius. Primasites were human parasites. Soldier-animals-things with stingers and teeth.

  Helping Earth fight back-he had a bunch of speeches on the subject. Maybe even believed it at one time. But Dasha had been working for him long enough to know it was a lie. All the rich man cared about was scamming more money, more control. Ways to demonstrate his superiority-that’s what it was about.

  Revenge, too. Mostly revenge.

  She’d discovered that on her own. Went through the man’s files when she got the opportunity. The ones on his personal computer, the files in his office.

  Head of security. Her job had its advantages.

  A couple of years after Stokes had gotten out of medical school, he’d gone before a state review board and lost his license. Something to do with a therapy he’d been working on, injecting people with cells from the placentas of sheep.

  Around the same time, the government shut down his fledgling vitamin company. He’d been illegally mining petrified coral somewhere around Key Largo, then processing it into calcium tablets.

  Purest form of calcium. Holistic. Expensive. Buyers fell for it.

  The state of Florida nailed him both times, and the feds got some licks in, too.

  Revenge was a major motivator.

  Power. That’s what he preached to leaders of the militant Greenie Weenie groups who visited the island. Over the last year, there’d been dozens of them. From the States, Britain, France, Canada. Everywhere. They were rallying behind some idiot article in an American music magazine. Smuggling dangerous exotics across the border was the newest kind of guerrilla warfare.

  Mr. Earl had sent out many thousands of copies of the article over the Internet, Dasha had also discovered, inviting Greenie Weenies to the Bahamas for help and advice.

  The surest way of displacing primasites, Dr. Stokes told them, was to create panic, disrupt the local economy, then be ready with organizational funds to buy properties cheap when they came on the market. Dump a thousand piranha into lakes in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, then sit back and wait. The West Nile virus outbreak on Cape Cod-same technique, different tools.

  “The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it,” he told them. “Abbie Hoffman.”

  They always applauded that line. Idiots.

  “The best way to save the land is to buy from the fools who are destroying it.”

  The Greenie Weenies saw it as a righteous war. For Mr. Sweet, it was a way to get even.

  Dasha knew. Took note of what made the rich man tick. Began researching him, putting together a secret dossier.

  The only people he actually associated with? Respected? There were a handful, all billionaire power brokers. Sugarcane. A couple of Texas oil barons. A guy who ran one of the largest mining and lumber companies in the world. Private jets, private conversations, secret deals.

  The idiot Greenie Weenies had no idea what Mr. Sweet was all about.

  How would they? Go to the public records, do a computer search, and the name Dr. Desmond Stokes would not appear as owner of several thousand acres of agricultural property, Central Florida, or as an officer of Tropicane-even though he controlled much of the stock. Maybe a majority.

  The name of his personal assistant was on the record, though. Mr. Earl. Same with a long list of companies: OffShore Gulf amp; Caribbean Petroleum, Coralway Pharmaceuticals, Ragged Isle Shipping, and others that Dasha traced to Stokes through the name of Luther T. Earl.

  The man owned sugar, a couple of phosphate mines, four oil tankers his company leased to a Hong Kong-based group named Evergreen, stock in steel mills in Sweden and Germany, a rubber plantation in Sumatra. Plus pharmaceuticals. That’s where the real money was. Paid investors eight times the return per hundred thousand dollars invested.

  Mr. Sweet had a bundle in the big ones. Pfizer, Great Britain Ltd, plus his own: Coralway Pharmaceuticals Ltd.

  The man known publicly for manufacturing holistic vitamins and championing environmental causes was actually an international industrialist.

  Dr. Desmond Stokes had discovered that the most satisfying way of looking down on people was from atop a mountain of money.

  Mr. Sweet was right-screwing with the Greenie Weenies was small time. Only a hobby. But the man loved it.

  Stokes’s pet idea: Spread flesh-eating parasites around Disney World, into the Everglades. New strains of malaria, same delivery method. Cripple Florida’s tourist industry while also devaluing massive hectares of real estate.

  “We’ll scare away the primasites and make more room for wildlife,” he told them.

  Also, more room for Mr. Sweet to slip in and buy, buy, buy.

  That’s what caused Dasha to start guessing. Didn’t know if Stokes wanted a bigger piece of the sugar industry, or had something else planned. The weird little nerd, Applebee, was involved somehow.

  She figured that out right away.

  The nerd and the rich man had a special deal going. The genius doctor helped the nerd, if the nerd did what the genius doctor told him to do.

  “I’m doing research… procedures. In Africa, there’s a parasitic worm. I’m not good with… with words. A cure-yes. A cure, that’s what I’m looking for.”

  Applebee had said that to her more than a year ago. He was a shy little man, never made eye contact, always covered his mouth with his hands as he spoke. Hiding. That was the impression.

  Find a cure…

  A cure for an African parasite. Why bother?

  Dasha had gone over and over it in her mind. Did the research, and came up with something surprising. There were prescription drugs on the market for malaria. Preventative drugs for all kinds of parasitic disease, as well as drugs that mitigated their symptoms. But for guinea worm disease? Zero. No pharmaceutical relief available.

  It was one of the few easily contracted diseases in the world for which there was no cure, or help.

  Interesting.

  How much money would a company make if it had a drug licensed, tested, and waiting when Florida suffered an unprecedented guinea worm epidemic? There was no profit in finding cures f
or diseased people in West Africa. Poor folks couldn’t pay, so why bother? But visitors to Disney World?

  Talk about taking revenge on Florida!

  Dasha was guessing, already figuring ways to turn it to her advantage if she was right.

  Brilliant.

  The rich man’s interest had nothing to do with saving the Everglades.

  Whenever she had the opportunity, she paid special attention to Applebee. The way his skin flushed as he ducked behind his hand, she guessed he had a crush on her.

  But did he care enough to double-cross Dr. Stokes?

  Applebee. A sore subject for the rich man.

  Standing in the doctor’s office now, she listened to Desmond Stokes tell her, “Finding that computer is a priority. We’ve got to find out what he copied from my files. That’s an absolute must. But there’s another reason, too. Something you don’t know.”

  Dasha tried to react with the appropriate expression: interested but confused. As if she had no idea what the man was talking about.

  “What I haven’t mentioned is that I commissioned Applebee to do a special study. Had to do with the guinea parasites. If we don’t recover his computer, all the data he accumulated will be lost.”

  “What kind of study?”

  “Don’t worry about the specifics. You’ve been asking why we haven’t used the crop sprayers yet? That’s why. Until I see and understand the data that Applebee developed, we can’t move ahead on

  … on a larger scale.”

  Early on, Mr. Sweet had tasked her with a problem: Find the most effective way to spread an illegal waterborne agent over a landmass.

  Dasha’s solution: radio-controlled helicopters, commercial-sized crop sprayers. Almost unknown in the U.S., but gaining popularity in Asia and Australia.

  Mr. Sweet had been enthusiastic… until the trouble started with Applebee.

  “Goddamn it, I want that computer. I paid for the fucking research. The results belong to me.”

  Stokes said it again: “The damn retard!”

  Dasha was thinking: The little man outsmarted you, outsmarted Aleski. Even outsmarted me. And he’s the retard?