Mangrove Lightning Page 8

  “I said closest, not easiest. Damn it, one of Florida’s best-known guides has disappeared, now you’re suddenly all neighborly; want to pop in and make social calls on Brunhilda.” Tomlinson looked over his shoulder, aware his pal was eyeballing the steam boiler that towered up from the weeds.

  “I don’t see any ring of bamboo.” The biologist kicked at a chunk of rock recently pried from the wall. “I don’t see any human bones, either. Last night, tell me honestly, how stoned—” He stopped when he saw Tomlinson aim the can at him.

  “Don’t make me use this.”

  Ford, smiling, said, “It’s empty.”

  Tomlinson got out and slammed the door. “God, you piss me off sometimes. On the other hand, maybe you’re right. Maybe I imagined the whole damn episode and we’ll find Tootsie inside having a beer.”

  8

  When Gracie Barlow, age seventeen, heard the distant thunk of a car door, she made a mewling sound and prepared herself to be suffocated—a terrifying sensation when it had first happened but now only numbing after nine days chained inside a cubicle that smelled of rats.

  It was always this way when the crazy woman got a visitor. The old hag would rush in, cussing, and insert a tube connected to a pump. The leather cowl on Gracie’s face would ratchet tighter as the balloon inside her mouth began to inflate. She would gag, then fight panic, until her nose found a space to breathe air. Beneath the cowl, there was never enough room. A bloody pounding in the girl’s head would drum louder, louder, then fade into weary unconsciousness.

  Nine days. Six car doors. Not a single utterance had she managed, let alone a cry for help. Lately, when the drumming began, she hoped to pass out quickly and not awaken.

  “The gags like you see in movies don’t work,” the woman had explained the first night. “You gotta cut off most of the air, but not too much. That’s where you’re lucky. I know what I’m about. Not like the Bird Man. That ol’ cock ’bout kilt me a dozen times before he got it right. ’Course, back then rubbers was made outta lambskin. If the smell didn’t get you, the things would break and suck ’em right down your windpipe. Think about that, biddy. You got it easy compared to what I went through.”

  Biddy, as in a newly hatched chicken. That’s how the woman referred to her, or sometimes “paint slut” because of her tattoos. But never “Gracie,” or even “girl.”

  The crazy woman was, well, crazy, but could be dealt with. The fear she inspired was diminished by exposure and her incessant talking, unlike the rancid odor of her blond nylon hair.

  It was different with the man who came at feeding time. Gracie feared him more, not less, as the days passed.

  Mr. Bird. That’s what the old woman called the man, always said respectfully, or with dread. Or sometimes, when they were alone, she’d use a different name that could only be whispered. The name resonated like the pain he inflicted.

  Somewhere outside, a metal gate clanked. The girl prepared herself for what came next, which was the sound of a battery-operated pump. It reminded her of the automatic blood pressure cuff her Uncle Tootsie used back when he still gave a damn about his health.

  That sad, stupid old fool.

  Thinking of her uncle provided a disconnect while the balloon swelled inside her mouth. She gagged, couldn’t help it, then coughed, which only allowed the balloon more space to inflate. Pssst-pssst-pssst went the pump while blood pounded in her ears. It didn’t cease until her jaws were hinged open wide, which forced her head back to create a narrow airway.

  Only then could she submit to a slow, woozy silence that amplified sound. From somewhere far away came a polite knock at the door. Gracie struggled to remain conscious while an unfamiliar voice—a man’s voice—said something, all of it garbled except for what might have been her uncle’s name.

  Yes . . . she hadn’t imagined it. “Captain Barlow?” spoken as a question.

  Maybe it was the police.

  Two weeks ago, if someone had told her she’d pray for cops to appear, she’d have laughed in his face. Now the possibility keyed desperation. She began to bang her head against the wall, a brick wall braced with antique mortar and stone.

  She would soon run out of air. Gracie dreaded it; knew her last thoughts would be laden with remorse. It was the same when she tried to sleep. Shameful snippets always associated with her boyfriend, Slaten, and the shitty things she’d helped him do.

  Boyfriend—such an innocent term for a man who’d claimed he was twenty-two but was actually closer to forty. They’d met in January when his camper broke down on Gracie’s street. She’d had another fight with her mother and was on her way to work when Slaten, a tall, biker-looking guy with tats for sleeves, had flagged her down.

  “You look cute in that uniform,” he’d said. “What are you, a waitress? Or selling Girl Scout cookies?”

  That night, after her shift ended, they’d gotten high smoking what he said was weed but was different from anything she’d ever experienced.

  “Like it?”

  They were in the back of his camper by then, parked east of Lake Okeechobee near Palmdale where Route 27 intersects with 29.

  “They’re awesome,” she’d said. Not referencing the weed but pen-and-ink drawings that covered the walls; another stack near a propane stove and sink. Wild goth sketches of Japanese dragons and warriors; women in leather with huge breasts. Gracie wasn’t pretty—she’d been told often enough—so sometimes fantasized that she was fierce and striking-looking, with a body like theirs. “Is that what you do, sell pictures?”

  “I’m an artist, not a money whore. You’ve got at least one tat. I can see it from here. You don’t know what those sketches are, do you?”

  They were tattoo stencils drawn freehand, not the commercial crap you could own from any ten-buck scribble shop between Atlanta and Key West.

  “I’m a tattooist. A real one,” Slaten had said, and explained the elaborate artwork on his arms before revealing the masterpiece on his chest: a dragon shielded not by scales but by an intricate mosaic of overlapping flames.

  Dizzy, hard to breathe—that’s how she’d felt sitting so close to the man while he removed his shirt and flexed. “The design dates back to hermit monks in China. Those dudes understood that symbols possess powers, especially this one.” He’d puffed out his chest, bragging, not ashamed. “Like magic, you know? It’s true, not bullshit. You’ll never see another tat like this. I created it myself . . . by hand. Do you have any idea what that means?”

  He’d used bamboo splinters to open his skin, not needles on a rotary machine, and natural herbal inks. A week spent bloodying himself, pain off the scale.

  Power. She could feel it radiating from this man.

  “Can I say something that might offend you?”

  Gracie had winced, dreading what came next, but what he’d said was sweet. “Whoever did that dolphin on your ankle didn’t understand what’s in here—your heart. You have a beautiful spirit, kid. Really. And your canvas—Jesus Christ, it’s like damn near pure perfect.”

  Her skin, he’d meant. “And lots of it,” he’d added as a compliment to her size and weight.

  Slaten had brown-black eyes. They glowed through a veil of smoke. “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “The hell you are.”

  “It’s true. My birthday was in April. April seventh. Go ahead, ask me what year was I born.”

  “Save it for the next bartender, I truly don’t give a shit what the law or anybody else says. You ever feel like that? Like fuck the world, you know?”

  Oh, yes, Gracie knew too well.

  “I want to see it.”

  “My other tats?”

  Standing, coming toward her—a huge man, shirtless, in this crowded space—he’d said, “Your canvas. Skin like yours, I want to see it all, every inch.”

  Gracie had never experi
enced intercourse, and this was a mature man, not the pimply boy who’d pawed her bra off after a concert—her only date in high school. The weeks that had followed were still hazy; a sweaty, pounding detachment that had left everything she knew, her home, her mother, and the life she hated, far, far behind.

  Slaten was a different universe. Gracie existed there—god knows, she’d done enough nasty shit to prove her devotion. Until ten days ago, when, after visiting Tootsie, they’d come here and knocked on the door to inquire about an unusual type of bamboo that grew in the yard. A bluish Chinese variety. Rare. Yantra, the ancient tattooing design, required it.

  The sound of oriental wind chimes that hung everywhere inside the building had caused him to knock louder.

  Slaten was into the whole Asiatic spiritual-warrior thing—when he wasn’t stealing or hustling to score drugs. Flakka, a synthetic amphetamine, is what they’d smoked that night. After a week on the road, she’d almost gotten hooked but in time had switched to only weed.

  Not Slaten. He was a junkie and now he was dead. Or so claimed the crazy woman, and there was no reason to doubt her.

  Guilt, retribution.

  In Gracie’s last moments of consciousness, the concept punished her with the truth. She had stolen and lied and conspired against her own family.

  She deserved to die here among broken mortar and bones.

  —

  An iron hatch swung outward. A panel of light floated into consciousness. Gracie refused to open her eyes until the crazy woman said, “I’ll call Mr. Bird, you play possum with me. Gotta prove you ain’t dead yet. Them’s the rules.”

  The girl nodded, as if eager to make amends, and grunted, “Umm . . . umm-okay.”

  The balloon in her mouth, deflated now, still tickled a gag reflex, but she could make sounds through the leather cowling, which had straps and buckles and two tiny eyeholes.

  The old woman, holding a lantern, stood hunchbacked because she was so big and the ceiling was so low.

  “Them was federals at the door. I told you they’d be coming, and you know what that means.”

  More slowly, Gracie nodded her head.

  “They got no right. Never did, never will. Besides, it ain’t ’til next week they’re allowed to set foot on this land. That’s what I told ’em. Ran ’em off, I did, but they’ll be back. And you know what that means.”

  Again, Gracie nodded.

  “One claimed he’s a fish scientist. The other, he’s got the prettiest hair I ever seen on a man—darn near got my hands on him last night. Remember me saying how handsome he was when I was settin’ bamboo? But they’re federals, just the same.”

  “Hate . . . dem,” the girl mumbled.

  “Goddamn it, speak up.” The woman slapped the girl halfheartedly, then ripped the cowling off after fumbling with the straps. “Don’t know why he makes us wear this stinking mask. ’Course, I don’t get much chance, since he got a taste for young biddies. Suppose that makes you special. Well, it don’t.”

  She tossed the mask aside and slapped Gracie harder, skin on skin except for the duct tape that covered her mouth. “The feds was here ’cause of you, asking about that snoopy uncle of yours. If I’d seen him or we’d ever spoke—as if I’d give a Barlow the time of day.” While talking, she inspected Gracie’s thighs for menstrual blood, then her neck for signs of attempted suicide.

  “Let me see your wrists.”

  Galvanized chain made bell notes when the girl raised her hands. A second chain, belted around her waist, angled to a bolt anchored in the wall. It was just long enough to reach a bucket that served as a toilet. Next to it was a length of foam rubber on the floor for sleeping.

  With the mask off, her eyes began to adjust. The room was tiny, no windows. On opposite walls were iron hatches, one that opened into a room where an antique bellows hung from the ceiling. Slaten had guessed the other hatch opened into a furnace.

  “An old metal foundry,” he’d said.

  The walls were charred black and webbed with graffiti, some in English but most in Chinese. Some scribblers had chiseled frames around their words as if staking rights to the only property they would ever own. This was Gracie’s interpretation. A sense of utter worthlessness, they must have felt. She understood.

  “Stop whimpering and spread your darn legs,” the old woman ordered. “I gotta be sure. You know he hates the mess a girl your age can make.”

  Gracie withdrew into herself and focused on the wall. There were dates still legible from the 1920s and ’30s. Several Chinese symbols were similar to the new tattoos that spiraled down her arms. Dancing letters. A capital T with legs. A cross encased in an oblong box. An elaborate 7 with a devil’s tail and fringed with lace.

  Grace. Love. Hate.

  Nothing else existed, Slaten had told her. “There’s no such thing as right and wrong, and the whole legal system is rigged. We choose our own reality. It’s sort of like decorating a room. Your uncle, that senile old bastard, doesn’t care about you. Your mother and the rest of your family, do I even have to say it?”

  The world sucked. Life was bullshit. Slaten, for once, was right.

  The crazy woman produced a box of tampons from her apron. Gracie flinched but reevaluated when she heard, “Let me unlock those cuffs so you can tend to yourself. I ain’t doing your dirty work for you.”

  Only the man who came at feeding time had allowed her the freedom of her hands—for his benefit, of course. This was something new. Maybe even an opportunity.

  “Thank . . . you,” the girl said through the duct tape, then waited passively. The cuffs came off. The old woman turned her back, still within reach. Hit her . . . Strangle her. Gracie’s mind screamed for action, yet her body wouldn’t respond. The woman was old but massive, with a head twice the size of a normal person’s. She was over six feet tall with shoulders that her baggy dress could not hide. Close to three hundred pounds.

  The opportunity came and went. “Why ain’t you opened that darn box yet?” the woman snapped when she looked back. “I ain’t gonna nursemaid you. If you think I want to watch that filth, you’re nuttier than Mr. Bird.”

  Gracie took a breath through her nose and shrugged as if apologizing. “Turn around,” she mumbled while using a free hand to make a spinning motion.

  The woman did it. Waddled in a discreet half circle . . . then suddenly stepped out of reach when she heard a distant banging at the door. Not a polite knock-knock-knock as before.

  “Damn federals again,” she glared in an accusing way. “You best have your toiletry done when I get back.”

  Gracie watched the old hag duck through the opening and waited until the iron hatch slammed closed before marveling at her good fortune. She’d never been left alone unmasked with her hands free. Her first instinct was to rip off the duct tape and spit out that damn balloon, but she couldn’t. Not yet—too risky. Instead, she hurried to the eyebolt that anchored her and ten feet of chain to the wall. The bolt was huge, made of iron; a fixture so old, the floor beneath was stained with rust. But solid. Impervious to anything but a saw.

  The girl had tried another way. Using her fingernails and splinters of bone, she’d spent every safe moment digging at the mortar around the bolt. Hours ago, or a day ago—it was impossible to know—it had finally broken free. Well, not free, but loose enough to move if she applied her full weight.

  She did so now. Faced the wall and climbed the chain hand over hand, and used her feet like a logger going up a tree. When the bolt was at eye level, she planted her feet, knees bent, then gave a mighty yank.

  The bolt came free; mortar showered down when she landed hard on the floor. So hard, it was possible she’d been knocked unconscious and was dreaming when the crazy woman screamed, “What the hell . . . he’ll burn you for this.”

  It wasn’t a dream.

  Glaring in at her was the old woman.

/>   Gracie gathered the chain and ran to the opposite wall, where there was a smaller iron hatch.

  Slaten had been right. It opened into a furnace.

  9

  When Tomlinson returned to the truck, he said, “That old woman gives me the willies. There’s someone else inside that building. Someone in trouble, man. Maybe Tootsie, I don’t know, but the vibe grabbed me by the throat. That’s why I had to go back.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Nada. Just motioned me away, but not until she did a kind of hoochie-coochie thing before she got to the door. Then slid this under it.” With two fingers, he held up a note as if it were soiled laundry. “That’s what took me so long. She’s slow with the pencil. But that’s all she’s slow with, I’m guessing.”

  “Hoochie-what?”

  “You know, provocative. Like a dance. Whatever happened to subtle feminine wiles? Cripes, she’s the size of a rhino and crazy as ten loons. Have a look.”

  Ford accepted a note penciled in a child-like scribble. Com back to nite, it read.

  Tomlinson waited before saying, “Isn’t this where you smirk and crack wise about my new sweetheart?”

  “I think you ought to call the police.”

  “Yeah, right. Ask them if they’ve got Prince Albert in a can while you laugh your ass off.” Tomlinson smiled at that until he saw the look on Ford’s face. “You’re serious.”

  “Not a nine-one-one call. It has to be a cop who knows we’re not crackpots. You said she’s stunted mentally? From her note, you could be right.”

  Ford held the paper to the windshield, then sniffed it, careful not to leave additional prints. “Put this somewhere safe.” He started the truck.

  Tomlinson, staring, said, “You mean you actually believe me for once?”

  It wasn’t that. “While you were charming the lady, I took a look at that old steam engine boiler. On my way back, I found this.” He searched among his pockets, then gave up because he had to shift into four-wheel drive. They were entering cypress lowlands, the van not yet in sight. “It’s a receipt for groceries and stuff. Out here, people haul their own trash, and I found it near the gate with a glob of other stuff. Trash that had spilled. It came from inside the building. How old do you think that woman is?”