Night Moves (Doc Ford) - By RandyWayne White Page 0,8

math. The Avengers had taken off at 2:10 p.m. They’d gotten lost. At 6:20 p.m., when the flight instructor’s last transmission was intercepted, the planes should have had almost two hours of fuel left. At 160 mph, even one hour in the air was a substantial amount of time. Where the hell had those fourteen fliers ended up?

There was another fact that Futch found perplexing.

“Three weeks after the Avengers went missing, the brother of one of the crewmen received this. You figure it out.”

Futch had placed a photo of a yellowed Western Union telegram in front on me. The typeface was faded but legible:

Jacksonville Flo Dec 26 10:15 am

Cpl Joseph Paonessa

Marine Barracks 6th and Eye St. Southeast

YOU HAVE BEEN MISINFORMED ABOUT ME. AM VERY MUCH ALIVE. GEORGIE

Before I could ask, Futch explained. “George Paonessa was a radioman aboard one of the lost Avengers. His brother, Joe, was stationed at Jacksonville Marine Base the day that telegram arrived. That’s a verified fact, by the way, not fantasy. Something else: only the family called George ‘Georgie.’ And Paonessa’s father and mother both said that no one knew that nickname outside the family. Some say until the day she died Mrs. Paonessa was convinced that George sent that telegram.”

If Futch expected me to be mystified, he was bound for disappointment. I’d told him, “When a disappearance makes headlines, the kooks and cranks come out of the woodwork. The telegram’s a hoax or a cruel joke. Georgie is the common, familiar form of the name, so someone made an obvious guess.” Looking through the north window, I paused. Puttering toward my stilthouse was Tomlinson in an inflatable dinghy, his sailboat, No Más, floating pale gray at anchor just beyond. He was shirtless, a bottle of beer in his free hand, and wearing a monkish-looking hat he’d woven from palm fronds.

“A very sick joke,” Futch agreed. “It hits home, though, because I’ve been checking the source code. You’re going to like it.” His tone became confidential as he tapped the paper in front of me. “There’s a chance this telegram was sent from here. Not Sanibel, but just across the bridge. The old telegraph office is still there, even after they built the condos. You know the place—that little yellow shed off to the left when you leave the island? It was one of the few Western Union stations between Key West and Tampa. No wireless in those days. Everything had to be hardwired.”

He was talking about tiny Punta Rassa, just across the bay. Today the spot is adjoined to the Sanibel Causeway, plus a cluster of high-rises and a resort hotel. For two centuries, the village had been the primary cattle port between Cuba and Florida. When the battleship Maine was sunk in Havana Harbor, the first distress message was sent to Punta Rassa, not Key West or Miami. Now Punta Rassa isn’t even shown on most maps.

I told Futch, “There’s someone coming who’ll appreciate this telegram a lot more than me.”

A few minutes later, Tomlinson was drinking my last beer while he listened to Futch retell his story. It was no surprise that he—a devotee of the paranormal—loved the connection between a local one-room telegraph station and Flight 19. So the three of us had spent the afternoon discussing details, probabilities and possibilities. Before leaving, Futch loaned us his dog-eared copy of They Flew Into Oblivion, assuring us it was the most carefully researched book on the subject.

“You’ve got the salvage gear and the experience. I know planes,” Futch told us. “If you’re interested, it’s something we can work on independently. You know, get together when there’s a reason. Start by talking to fishing buddies, the ones willing to trust us with their private GPS numbers. Chart the unidentified pieces of structure out there and match the locations with Army Air Corps logs. In the meantime, when the water clears up, we’ll dive the place where my nephew found this.” Futch tapped the briefcase where he’d stowed the throttle mechanism.

Finally, I asked the obvious question, but in the most general of ways. “I assume he found it in the Gulf, not the Atlantic. But was it north of here or south?”

My shotgun tactfulness amused Futch. “If I didn’t trust you, I wouldn’t be here. My nephew found the throttle in a mangrove creek south of Marco Island. Hawksbill Creek, it’s called on the charts. There’re a couple of Indian mounds way back in. And something else I’m going to trust you with—is that