Shark River Page 6

  McRae now wore a soft smile. “Then I’ve got to ask you one more time—mind if we take a look at that cut on your arm?”

  “Nope. I unwrap it, it might start bleeding again.”

  “That’s what I figured. One phone call to the right judge, and we can have a deputy bring a court order out and place it in your hands. A piece of paper that says you’ve got no choice. We can make you take that bandage off and show us. Isn’t that right, Officer Walker?”

  As the woman nodded, Tomlinson interrupted, not bothering to disguise his outrage. “Hold on there, Dirty Harry. First you call him a hero, then you threaten him like he’s a criminal? Very uncool, man, very, very uncool. That is a very serious conflict of vibes.”

  McRae looked at him for a moment before he said, “What did you call me?”

  Tomlinson has a longstanding and irrational dislike of people in law enforcement that’s gotten him into trouble more than once. He does not share my belief that most people in the emergency services tend to be better at their jobs than most others.

  I cringed a little as he said, “Dirty Harry. That’s what I called you. As in ‘Dirty Harry, you can kiss my ass on the county fucking square.’ ”

  McRae’s expression changed, became a flat mask. “In my notebook, I’ve got you down as”—he flipped through a few pages—“I’ve got your occupation down as a Zen Buddhist monk and sociologist consultant. That’s pretty foul language for a monk, isn’t it, sir?”

  “Well . . . normally, yes—when I’m on duty, I mean. So . . . consider this like a spiritual coffee break. I’m taking a little time off from being the Buddha incarnate to tell you that you’re coming off like an asshole. Accidental or not, my buddy here just saved two women. Give him a little respect. Catch where I’m coming from? Can you relate?”

  “No, I don’t relate and I don’t want to relate. But here’s some advice: Drop the Dirty Harry references, sir, or maybe Doctor Ford won’t be the only one we check out. Lots of times, you counterculture types have something old and interesting in the files. Outstanding warrants, possession charges from other states.”

  I thought that would make Tomlinson uneasy, but it didn’t. He turned his palms outward, as if amazed. “First the guy threatens you, then he threatens me. Right here in our own private whatcha-call-it, our own private domicile. What’s the use of staying on an exclusive island if it’s not exclusive?”

  I was deciding whether to reply or not when Waldman reentered the room. He said, “You folks mind if I speak to Doctor Ford alone? It’ll take just a few minutes. I’m going to try one more time to convince him that he should cooperate. Tell us what really happened, then let us talk to the U.S. marshals, see what we can do about protection.”

  Tomlinson was still angry. “There he goes, calling you a liar again.”

  Waldman looked at him, no emotion. “A few minutes with Doctor Ford alone. Then I think we’re done here.”

  4

  FBI Special Agent Waldman took one of the kitchen chairs, turned it, straddled it, then folded his arms over the backrest, his face very close to mine. He said, “Okay. It’s just you and me now, Ford. Private, no one else listening. Your very last chance. So tell me what the hell happened out there today. At least give me some interesting version of the truth. Just a little something I can work with.”

  I shook my head. “Waldman, this is really starting to get tiresome. I collect fish for a living. I operate a tiny, one-man business. I’ve got a three-page catalog. I can send it to you. Want a hundred horseshoe crabs? Or a whelk egg case in preservative? I can collect it and sell it to you. Or brittle stars or octopi or unborn sharks with their veins already injected. That’s what I do. That’s what I’m good at. Not dealing with kidnappers or rescuing women.”

  “That’s the way you want to leave it?”

  “The truth’s the truth.”

  He sighed, looking at me with careful appraisal. “You need to understand that, when you leave this island, whoever you screwed over out there on the water this afternoon may come looking for you. The girls say you knocked the hell out of the one guy. Said they heard a loud popping sound, like you maybe even broke his back. Depending on who it was, how bad he’s hurt, who he’s related to, they’re not going to let something like that slide.

  “With the drug cartels, it’s business. A matter of pride. You hurt a member of their family, they’re going to double the hurt on you. With people like the Shining Path, they’re zealots, lunatics. What they enjoy is hacking someone up with a machete as a political statement. Not that you’d be a top priority. If they do check back and ID you, though, you’d be a very easy guy to find. Depends on whether or not you make it under their radar. Personally, I don’t think you ought to risk it.”

  With the two of us alone now, Waldman’s manner was less official, his tone more reasonable. There was a time when the FBI hired only CPAs and attorneys, and he had the bookish, librarian look of a man who enjoyed the clarity of numbers, but who also got out and played golf or tennis on weekends. His hands and fingers told me he’d been married to the same woman for many years, didn’t smoke, didn’t do manual labor, was left-handed, and possibly dipped snuff judging from the orange stain on his thumb and middle finger.

  Probably a good, dependable man. We might have become friends under different circumstances.

  Even so, I wasn’t going to accept his help. Also, I thought it was extremely unlikely that cartel people or an organization like Sendero would waste time and money on an insignificant marine biologist who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. But I also had to admit to myself that Waldman might be right about one thing. Revenge is a compelling motivator. There was a lot of adrenaline and mass combined when I put my shoulder into the shooter’s spine. If he was badly injured, if he did have the right connections, he or his family might send someone after me to even the score.

  It was a possibility.

  The more information I had, the better chance I had of anticipating any move against me, so I decided to ask Waldman a few questions of my own, just in case. I said, “Off the record, you mind telling me why you think they targeted the girl?”

  “We don’t even know who ‘they’ are yet, Doctor Ford.”

  My expression was one of pain and tolerance. “Come on now, Agent Waldman. Wait a minute . . . know what? After nearly two hours together, we should be on a first-name basis, don’t you think? Call me Doc or call me Ford. Okay?”

  He nodded, and waited for a moment before he said, “Sure. You’re Ford and I’m Doug. Just two guys talking, so talk away.”

  “Doug, what I don’t understand is, you dropped the shields there for a little bit. Now, the first time I ask you a question, you raise the shields right back again. It’s pretty obvious you’ve been in your business awhile. What’s your title? Special liaison to the U.S. State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism? You must have an opinion. Like you said, it’s just you and me in here. So why not tell me what you think?”

  “Are you offering me information in exchange?”

  I said, “I think I told you everything, but I might be able to remember a few more details. I’ll try. I really will.”

  “Okay. Why not?” His was a careful, formal smile. “I’ll risk it. Lindsey Harrington’s father is one of those behind-the-scenes diplomats, the kind you never hear about but who apparently has a lot to do with steering U.S. policy. He’s got some very powerful connections. I say ‘apparently’ because the moment the Agency got word Harrington’s daughter was almost taken down, the director ordered . . .” He paused, rethinking it. “Let’s just say that certain people in the director’s office made it very clear that this case is a priority. We’ve got people on the island doing the crime scene, standing guard over the girl, all of us reporting back with updates every hour.”

  I said, “They wanted her for political reasons? I’m not asking for the official position. Just your personal opinion.”

  “Why they tried to kid
nap her? Political, sure, without a doubt. But is it drug cartel politics or political ideology? That’s what I don’t know. But we’ll find out. We’ve got people working on the stolen boats, the rental van, the motel they stayed in at Englewood. They wanted the girl, but they really wanted to leverage Harrington.”

  “The girl’s father, he’s that important?”

  “I’ve never heard his name before tonight. In the three years I’ve been attached to Counterterrorism, I’ve never heard the name Harrington mentioned. His official title is Consulting Ambassador, Latin America—a small-time political appointment. He works out of the U.S. Embassy in San Jose and he’s got some kind of villa or condo outside Cartagena. In international politics, it’s hard to tell who really does what. But Harrington, he’s so far behind the scenes that we had trouble coming up with a fast, full dossier on him.”

  I told him, “Here’s something I may have left out. One of the guys on the dock, he was yelling in Spanish. He had a Colombian accent. They speak a very clean dialect, particularly in and around the cities. Bogotá, maybe, but I’m just guessing.”

  “Finally, you offer me a little scrap of useful information.” He chuckled, but it was a timing device, not laughter. “Colombian accent, huh? To pick out accents, you must be fluent. Spent some time down there in South America, have you Ford?”

  “Several years. Traveled all over.” Interpreting the expression on the agent’s face, I added, “It had nothing to do with the drug trade, trust me. I was studying bull sharks. I’ve been researching them for years. The work took me all over South and Central America. All over the world, really.”

  “Really? Who funded it? Who paid for all that travel and research?”

  “I got some grants. But mostly private corporations that have a financial interest and see a potential for profit in certain sea products.”

  “Fascinating.” His inflection said: Bullshit.

  “You know anything about bull sharks?” I waited for him to respond, but he didn’t. He sat there leafing through his notebook. Finally, I continued, “A bull shark will swim hundreds of miles up freshwater rivers for reasons that we still don’t understand. It may have something to do with ferromagnetic crystals in their nervous system. Directional devices built right in, or perhaps it has something to do with the way their tissues deal with salt. Whatever the reason, they’re a very unusual animal. The Zambezi River shark? The freshwater sharks of Lake Nicaragua? Carcharhinus leucas. The same, aggressive animal. Because of that shark, I spent a lot of time working in the jungle.”

  “That part of the story, I don’t doubt,” he said.

  I wondered what he meant by that, the suggestive tone, but said nothing.

  He said, “Okay, so you picked up on the Colombian accent. About six months ago, Lindsey Harrington’s father—Hal Harrington, that’s his name—attended a summit in Cartagena, along with representatives from several other Latin American countries. The U.S. has given them in excess of a billion dollars a year for the drug war—what they call a war, anyway—and the summit was to outline operational methods and long-term goals. That much is in the dossier. Maybe Harrington did something to piss them off. Maybe he bucked the Colombian establishment—it’s one of the most corrupt countries on earth. Whatever he did, he made someone mad enough to go after his daughter.”

  “That’s it? It’s really all you know?”

  “Yep. Pretty thin so far, but it’s early. You haven’t exactly been a fountain of information yourself. What I should tell you is . . . here, let me point out something that you may not realize, Ford. Something you haven’t thought much about. Right now, you’re safe. So’s Lindsey Harrington. For the next twenty-four hours, two different federal agencies are going to keep this island secured while we finish collecting evidence. We have lots of video to shoot, lots of photos to take. Where you are right now is one of the safest places in the world. But you can’t stay on Guava Key forever. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to get into your boat and go home. So what are you going to do if those punks come calling again? You really feeling that lucky? That’s why I’d like you to cooperate. If they put you on their personal shit list, it’d be nice to grab them when they come to grab you.”

  “Stake me out like a goat, huh?” I shook my head. “Sorry, the timing’s bad. I’m too busy. I’ve got several research projects going on right now.”

  He parroted my words with a flat sarcasm. “Research projects. Like what that’s so damn important?”

  “I’m working on sturgeon, too. Not just bull sharks. I’ve got current projects, old projects—but sturgeon are what I’m doing right now. I’m working with some biologists from a lab not far from here, Mote Marine.” All true. When Waldman didn’t respond, I proceeded to tell more than he wanted to know about our sturgeon project, aware that a good way to deal with interrogation is to bore your interrogator. I informed him there’d once been a booming sturgeon fishery on Florida’s Gulf Coast, all because of the profitable caviar market. I described the fish to him, with its scale cover of primitive bony plates and rows of bony scutes on its body. Told him that the sturgeon is a freshwater species that migrates into saltwater, and is very easily netted—which is why the sturgeon was so quickly decimated north and south of Tampa. I added, “Now you mention sturgeon to a coastal fisherman and he’ll look at you like you’re nuts. No one even remembers that they were here. So we’re working on raising them in captivity, then releasing them into the wild. Problem is, they grow so damn slow.”

  Waldman stared at me, bored, not letting the details register. “You’re not going to tell me a damn thing, are you?”

  I said, “Nope, Doug, I’m not. I don’t want any trouble. I really don’t. I live a quiet, private life, and that’s the way I want it to keep it.”

  He stood, hunted around in his jacket pocket for a moment and pulled out a tin of Copenhagen snuff. He flapped the can with his thumb, opened it, and pushed a big pinch of tobacco between cheek and gum. “I kinda figured you’d be a tough one to budge. That call I just took—when my cell phone rang a few minutes ago?”

  “What about it?”

  Waldman walked to the kitchen sink, spit, and flushed it with water. “Our people in D.C. and Virginia have now had”—he checked his watch—“they’ve now had slightly more than four hours to come up with a dossier on you. Know what they found? And I’m talking about the best-equipped, most computer-savvy security agency in the world. Nothing,” he said. “They found nothing interesting at all about you. Zip, zilch. Know what, Ford? From the information we got back, it’s almost like you really don’t exist.”

  I began to feel uneasy, but made it a point to take a deep breath, relaxing in my chair. “You’re saying there’s something wrong with not being in some crime computer somewhere?”

  “You’re in no computers anywhere. Nothing but the barest stuff, anyway. Harrington was tough to get information on. You’re even worse. Any idea why that is?”

  I told him no, hoping he’d drop it, but he didn’t.

  He leafed through a couple of sheets of paper and said, “Here’s what we’ve got on you. You’ve got a six-cylinder Chevy more than twenty years old. I’ve got the block number and the registration number right here. Another thing? When you were still in high school, you took the battery of Armed Services Vocational Aptitude tests. Damn near aced them all. Not the highest scores ever recorded, but way, way up there. Then you vanished for seven years. Not a trace. No military record, no nothing. Next thing that shows up is that you’re in California, graduating with a B.S. from San Diego State and then you get a master’s a year later from Stanford. No record of where you lived, no record of credit cards, no student loans or a checking account. Nothing at all that indicates you were actually at those places and attended classes. But the degrees are legitimate. I made our people check. Your doctorate from the University of Florida? Same thing.”

  “That’s weird,” I said. “They don’t give degrees unless you attend classes. Mayb
e it’s because I’ve always been kind of a loner. That, and I’ve always tried to pay with cash. Saves on bookkeeping.”

  His smile told me that he knew that I was lying. “I’ve done background checks on grade-school teachers that turned up more data. Oh, by the way—our people did dig out one little interesting tidbit of information hidden away. Came from an old file in Pitkin County, Colorado. Aspen, that’s a town you might know there.”

  It seemed to please him that I didn’t react. “Seems that more than a decade ago, a guy by the name of Marion W. Ford was a prime suspect in the abduction and probable murder of a political radical who lived in the mountains out there. A guy who specialized in bombing military installations. The cops detained you—this guy Ford, I’m talking about—but nothing ever came of it. Once again, you just vanished. Marion W. Ford vanished, I mean.”

  I stood, not comfortable with the direction the conversation was leading. I said, “I think the computers have me confused with someone else, Doug. That was a long time ago, but I’d certainly remember something like that.”

  “I’d think you would, too. Know what the really sad thing is, Ford? Okay, here’s what I think. The sad thing is that you should be given an award for what you did today. Or a bounty. Instead, maybe because you’re nervous about certain things you did or didn’t do in your past, you feel like you have to lie about it. Or maybe you just don’t want to be put into the bureaucratic machine, deal with all the bullshit details.”

  I said nothing, waiting.

  “There’s something else that pisses me off, too. Something not directly related to you or what went on today, but there’s bound to be a connection. Sooner or later.”