Came up twenty yards or so away to hear: "... dumb ass, I told you to wait for me. Let 'im go!"
"The sonuvabitch almost killed me!"
"You want to tell it to the cops? Get your ass outta there!"
From neck-deep water, I watched my visitor walrus up onto the dock, and then he and his buddy went jogging along the boardwalk toward shore. A minute or so later, as I was climbing onto the platform, 1 heard their vehicle start—it sounded like a truck; a manual transmission. Took a quick look at my fish tank. He had ripped out the PVC spray rail, but the pump was still working. Even so, the idea of him trying to futz my aquarium infuriated me. I hustled up the steps, took the keys to my own truck from the hook beside the door, and then drove down the shell drive, hoping to catch them.
At the end of the drive was a four-way stop. Turn left, you'd soon be on Periwinkle, Sanibel's main road and the only route to the mainland causeway. Go straight, along Tarpon Bay Road, and you'd end up at the beach. Turn right, the road led to Blind Pass, across which is the bridge to Captiva Island. The Sanibel Causeway was the only mainland umbilical; there was no highway egress from Captiva, so it seemed unlikely that they would have turned right. Yet a lingering haze of dust told me that they had gone toward Captiva.
I turned, powering through the gears, driving fast. There was no traffic: black two-lane road; black hedge of trees on both sides. There were a couple of fishermen on the Blind Pass Bridge—no matter what time of the night, there were always fishermen—so I stopped long enough to ask one of them if a pickup truck had recently passed. Got a shrug for a response. "Little bit ago. Maybe."
I crossed the bridge, onto Captiva. Pale rind of beach and night sea to my left, winter estates to my right: vacation homes set way back in, cloaked by tree shadow, their driveways marked by driftwood signs. Over on Sulphur Wells, winter residents hung plastic placards from their mailboxes, naming their mobile homes as cleverly as they named their cheap boats: Lay-Z-Daze, Snow Bird, Sea-Ducer. Here on Captiva, though, the names—carved into the driftwood—communicated the power of old money and lofty society: Sea Grape Lodge, Casuarina, Tortuga, White Heron House. Why would two vandals flee to Captiva?
At a resort and marina called 'Tween Waters, I turned into the parking lot. Plenty of rental cars, but no pickup trucks. Headed back onto the beach road, still determined to catch them—at the very least, get their license number. Drove clear to the security gates of a massive resort, South Seas Plantation—as far as you can drive on Captiva Island. Nothing but private tennis courts, condominiums, and a golf course beyond. No sign of a truck anywhere. Didn't pass a single car. So maybe I'd guessed wrong. Maybe they'd turned toward the causeway bridge, not Captiva. Or maybe they had detoured down one of the side roads. Whatever they'd done, I'd lost them.
I turned around and headed back toward Sanibel, driving my normal speed—slow—arm out the window, feeling the sea wind, feeling the anger recede, but still wondering why anyone would want to destroy my fish tank.
It was nearly four a.m. by the time I got to Dinkin's Bay.
Chapter 9
Each Saturday at sunset, the fishing guides and the live-aboards throw money in a pot to finance Dinkin's Bay's weekly Pig Roast and Beer Cotillion. The name is misleading because pigs and cotillions don't play a role. Beer, however, does. Ice is shoveled into Igloos, and the beer is buried deep. Kelly, from the take-out, loads the picnic table over by the sea grape tree with platters of shrimp and fried conch and anything else that happens to be lying around the kitchen. The live-aboards begin socializing on the docks, freshly showered and drinks in hand, at sunset. Which is usually about the time the guides finish washing down their skiffs.
For the first hour or so, it's marina community only. No wandering tourists allowed, no locals looking for a free meal. There is a chain-link gate on the shell road that leads to the marina, and Mack keeps the gate closed. But after all the food has been eaten, and if there's still enough beer, Mack strolls out and opens the gate. After that, the length of the party is commensurate with the endurance of marina residents and outsiders alike.
Saturday morning, I forced myself to get up at a respectable time—seven—and spent the whole day working. First, I replaced the PVC sprayer bar on my fish tank. Then I went to work in my lab. I'd gotten the sea horses I needed, and the dissections and mounting process went pretty well. I also took a look at the snook that I had retrieved from Useppa. Aside from the net-burn scars, I could find nothing unusual. No trauma that might have occurred from an explosion, no metallic discoloration of key internal organs that might indicate death by poisoning. My guess was, someone had netted the fish and allowed it to die slowly on the deck of a boat.
Most of my work was done. So, just before sunset, I showered, changed into jeans and a gray flannel shirt, and ambled through the mangroves to the marina. Found that the mood around Dinkin's Bay did not have its usual screw-it-all-this-is-Saturday-night ebullience. The marina had officially closed for the day, but Mack was still busy serving as line chief to the cleanup operations.
They had floated in a crane mounted on a barge. The crane was fitted with a dinosaur-sized bucket that would swing down onto the charred dock, bite off a chunk, then pivot shoreward to regurgitate the mess into a dump truck. When the dump truck was full, it would rumble away, only to be replaced by another.
A yellow Detroit diesel engine dominated the stern of the barge. The diesel made a deafening roar, exhausted a lot of blue fumes. The live-aboards were locked tight into their boats, probably trying to screen the noise with loud stereos. Or earplugs. Who knew? They certainly weren't out socializing on the dock, so there was no one to ask.
But Kelly was already laying out the platters of fried conch and shrimp on the picnic table. I could see a couple of industrial-sized Igloos that appeared to be straining at the seams. So the Dinkin's Bay Pig Roast and Beer Cotillion—"Perbcot," as it is known locally—would go on as usual.
At the good marinas around Florida, the old and important traditions die hard.
I strolled over close enough to one of the dump trucks so that Mack would see that I was there. He is a compact, muscular man—a native New Zealander—whose laid-back Kiwi qualities have made him a big success on the island. But he wasn't laid-back now. He was having some kind of loud conversation with a man who was wearing a sports coat and carrying a clipboard. Not an argument, just loud, so as to be heard above the din of the diesel. The man with the clipboard was an insurance adjuster, I guessed.
Mack saw me, waved, then held up five fingers after pointing to his watch. Pantomimed a drinking motion and grinned.
Which meant we wouldn't be bothered by the noise much longer.
Beyond what was once a dock, I could see Nelson Esterline. Nels was hammering at the wreckage of his skiff. Trying to remove the jack plate, it appeared. His teal-green Hewes had once been a pretty thing indeed. Teal green, polished bright, with functional lines—the prettiest quality of any boat. Now it looked like a Clorox bottle that had been accidentally left on a hot stove.
I considered walking over to offer him a hand. Sound him out about my two early-morning visitors; see if he knew anything about it; see if he was still mad at me. Decided against it. Men like Nels make up their minds in their own fashion, their own good time. Instead, I put a coin in the slot and read the local newspaper.