I was tempted to start running again, make him suffer just for lying to me. If my legs hadn't been so noodle-weak, I might have. Instead, I said, "So maybe we ought to drop the subject. Usually—what I do when I run?—I take time out to enjoy the birds."
He said, "What?"
"Birds. When I run, I like to look at the birds."
He made a groaning noise. "Jesus."
"Have you noticed all the pretty flowers we have on Sanibel? Too much talking ruins the scenery."
He said, "Okay, okay. Enough."
I said, "It can't be all give and no take."
"I see that. So I tried, okay?"
"I doubt I can help you anyway."
"What'll it take for you to give it a try?"
"Simple. Tell me what I'm getting into. And why. That's all. You tell me that, we'll talk. You can't tell me . . ."I shrugged, letting the sentence trail off.
We walked along while he mulled it over. Finally, he said, "Where I grew up, up on the Chesapeake, my grandfather and his grandfather were oyster-men. My dad, he got seasick, so he went into the state troopers. So it was my job to help Grandpa. I'm telling you why I'm interested. Understand?"
I said, "The Chesapeake. Nice area."
"We did a little striped bass fishing, but mostly oysters. I saw what happened to our fishery—hell, they nearly netted it clean—but I still had mixed feelings about the regulations, and then the bans, because I was one of them. One of the fishermen, see? It was like, who the hell are these outsiders coming in telling us what we can and can't do? So I can understand that a little bit. It was pretty nasty. Seeing it happen, you know? What happened to the people."
I said, "Oysterman, huh?"
He held out his arms and smiled. "I didn't get these forearms in a weight room. Tonging oysters; a forty-five-pound rake. My grandfather'd drop a galvanized chain off the stern of the boat. He could tell when we were on oysters by holding the chain, feeling the vibrations. Made a pretty fair living, too. I bought myself my first car with tonging money. But it wasn't the environmentalists who finally put us out ofbusiness. It was the way the water quality went to hell when all the new people started flooding in."
I said, "So you do know a little bit about it."
He was nodding. "About the kind of people involved. I imagine they're about the same. Most of them are pretty good people. Solid. Don't ask for anything, stay out of trouble. In D.C., the kids couldn't wait until they were old enough to qualify for welfare. First of the month, some of the lines were four blocks long. On the Chesapeake, a lot of those men and women, the government couldn't force them to take it. Welfare? Not them—they had too much self-respect. Personally, Ford, I admire that. I don't know much about the situation here. Maybe it was smart to ban the nets, maybe it's all a bunch of crap. I do know it's a shitty situation. And I know . . . well, there was this thing that happened when I was a kid." He made an effort to continue, then: "Ah, hell—"
I tried to goad him along. "You mean with the commercial fishermen."
Jackson thought for a moment, not sure he wanted to go into it. Finally, he said, "Let's just say I saw what can happen when people are pushed into a corner. I was like, seventeen, and this kid I knew got burned really bad. For what? Some idiotic demonstration. Trying to get even because his dad had to sell out, look for new work. It's not a nice thing to see."
"No, I imagine not," I said.
"Five thousand people get laid ofFby General Motors, it's no big deal, right? But somehow, it's different when it happens to people who . . . just do what they do, on their own. No unions to back them up, just them, just people. Know what I mean? So what I'm saying is, I'd like to get in there, if I can, and stop some of it before it starts. Yeah, I'd love to nail the whole Jimmy Darroux business shut. But I'd also like to get the right people under my thumb before anyone else gets hurt." He looked at me. "To do that, to stop anything, I need information."
Which I had already guessed. I said, "You think because Tomlinson is involved with Hannah Darroux, I can pry information out of him, then feed it to you."
"Maybe. She's an important woman on that island. People wouldn't tell me much, but I learned that. She's an insider, and I'd be willing to bet she knows a hell of a lot more than she told me or the A.T.F. guys. But no—" He was making his gesture of impatience again. Apparently, we were getting off track. "Where you could help is, the people I talked to on Sulphur Wells, the people I've talked to around here. Your name kept popping up."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. That surprise you?" Jackson had a crafty, troublemaker's smile. "Maybe you were with the National Security Agency so long you're not used to that. Where you were a ... a paper shuffler, right?"
Who the hell had he been talking to? "What I am," I said, "is a biologist."
His expression said: Sure, buddy, sure. He shrugged. "Okay. We leave it at that. What I'm saying is, you're the only guy who seems to be accepted by both communities. The sportfishing guys are your buddies, right?"
"I know quite a few of them, yeah."
"This guy on Sulphur Wells—Tootsie Cribbs?—he told me you were about the only so-called sportfishing guy who came down on the side of the netters. He said you spoke for them a couple times at meetings."
I'd known Tootsie since high school. He ran a little fish wholesale place in Curlew. "I did that. Yeah."
"People on both sides of the line know you, they respect you. That's the way I read it. Couple of people on Sulphur Wells mentioned you. Said you come over there sometimes and buy fish and stuff for your lab. Know what they said?" He looked very smug—I was the guy he'd lured into a schoolyard footrace. "What they said was, they think you're fair."
I said, "Spare me the flattery."
"No, I'm serious. Fair. That's the word."
"They think that? Good. But what you're saying is, you think I can act as an intermediary. My question is: What's left to mediate?"
"For one thing, I know some of the sportfishing guys are going around with guns. That's bullshit. They catch someone stealing their outboard, what they gonna do, blow them away? Kill somebody over a motor? You can start there. Talk it around among your friends. Reason with them. They ever shoot anybody before? They have any idea what it's like?"
I got the impression that Ron Jackson had . . . and did.
"And on Sulphur Wells . . . some of the other commercial places, too. I've heard—not from a very good source—but I've heard they have some real nasty stuff planned. Most of it's probably talk. People, you get them loaded up on whiskey . . . hell, you know the type. They like to talk big, but very few are actually stupid enough to do the big deed. That report about somebody stretching a cable across some markers—" He gave me a nudge: See? Your name again! "That report tells me we've got a couple of legitimate bandits. Sure, if you can get some information out of Hannah Darroux . . . love to have it. Through your buddy Tomlinson, I don't care how. Go over there and buy some more fish, ask around. Don't get the wrong idea. I'm not deputizing you or anything. If I thought you were the type to go out and strut around, bang your chest, we wouldn't be having this conversation. This isn't official. I'm asking a favor. Keep it low-key, nothing obvious." The crafty, troublemaker smile again. "But there I go telling you your business."
"That's your proposition? I find out what I can, help you keep a lid on things?"
He was nodding. "How many times do cops have a chance to stop trouble before it starts? Yeah, you could help me do that. Little things. You hear something, you give me a call. We get back, I'll give you my cellular number, my beeper. Anytime, day or night." Ron was pleased with how this was going. I could tell. "Up on the Chesapeake," he said, "maybe if some cop had jumped into the middle of things, Terry . . . that friend of mine . . . would have lived beyond the ripe old age of nineteen."