Night Moves (Doc Ford) - By RandyWayne White Page 0,109
damage me, a man he considered to be a competitor in a strange business?
In the space of three days, the Brazilian and I had been partners in a burglary and a murder—crimes that typically divide but can also bond. On a gut level, I trusted the guy, but I wasn’t going to risk incriminating myself by muling his luggage to Lostman’s River.
I waited until I was four miles offshore, back on a southeasterly heading, before locking the Zodiac’s autopilot, then unzipping the bag.
“Holy shit,” I whispered when I opened another bag and saw the blocks of oversized euro bills—hundreds and five hundreds. Twenty blocks, give or take—a half million U.S. dollars, by my quick estimate.
In a separate bag was something else: two framed photos, but different shots of the same gawky teenage blonde I’d seen aboard Seduci. In one photo, the girl was leering at the camera, hamming it up, fingers inches from her lips as if blowing a kiss. I flipped it over and saw that it was inscribed and dated in Portuguese: Tu Sr. Vargas mio Tio con amor en todos, Greta.
“To my Uncle Vargas with total love, Greta.”
Diemer’s niece. Dated two years ago almost to the day. She had somehow been victimized by the Haitian drug dealer, that was apparent. Perhaps Diemer’s brother had, too—in a village that produced twin siblings, it was unlikely a sister would own an expensive racing boat like the Stiletto.
Or was I wrong about the connection?
There was a girl on Saint Martin, Diemer had said to Kondo just before shooting him, She was French but part Brazilian. Diemer had been in perfect English mode. The phraseology but part Brazilian had the flavor of secrecy, as if he was revealing something not commonly known. Or was I suspicious because there was so little up front and obvious about Vargas Diemer? Any attempt to assess offered no . . . clarity.
The girl was dead, that was my read. Or had been institutionalized for addiction—or brain damage, perhaps, thanks to a party gift from the smiling Haitian. In the future, depending on how it went, I might be able to ask questions. But not now—probably never.
I returned everything as I’d found it, stored the bag inside the locker, then stood at the helm and punched throttles forward until the twin Mercs were synced at 4700 rpm.
Fifty-three minutes later, I was running the switchbacks of Lostman’s River, flushing white birds and a couple of gators, only a few miles from the entrance to Hawksbill Creek and the silence of an ancient, ancient place.
—
THE NEXT MORNING, before noon, the seaplane buzzed me. Tomlinson, Dan Futch, and Diemer—Alberto, I had to keep reminding myself—plenty of room for all of them in the Zodiac, plus gear, when I ferried them to the edge of the Bone Field.
We made camp, got out the machetes, a metal detector, string for laying grids, and we went to work. Worked fast, but with the respect and care such a place demanded: four disparate men who shared the curse of obsessive genetics, and all highly motivated because of something Dan had arranged: Candice Sampedro had agreed to let us meet with her grandfather late tomorrow, Sunday, around seven p.m. It would give us a twenty-minute window, she’d told Dan, before the nurse replaced the old Avenger pilot’s IV with a bag that contained his bedtime meds.
31
WHEN TOMLINSON AND I TIED UP AT TIN CITY MARINA, downtown Naples, Dan Futch and the Brazilian were waiting with the taxi they’d hired, a Mercedes Sprinter van that, the driver said, usually only shuttled between hotels and Southwest Regional, so it was up to us or his Garmin to find Faith Village Hospice.
“Never heard of the place,” he said.
“Only ten minutes from here,” Dan assured us, then we sat in the back, talking in low voices, while the driver turned left onto Fifth Avenue and took us north, past all the pretty shops, then turned right onto Goodlette, a faster six-lane, the sky behind us mixing winter gray with sunset rust—6:25 p.m. Just in time to catch Mr. Angel Sampedro, ninety-one years old, before modern medicine funneled him one night closer toward his everlasting sleep.
Or maybe not from the subdued moods of the two pilots among us.
“Candice is worried because of the way Mr. Sampedro reacted,” Dan said. “We haven’t seen him, of course, but the monitors he’s hooked up to, I guess the nurses came running because they thought he was having a heart attack.”