Hard to believe at the time, but it was turning out to be true. No, I wasn’t surprised that my ship of a house was standing.
M y kitchen, appropriately, is the size of a ship’s galley. There’s a two-burner propane stove, and copper-bottomed pots and stainless pans hanging from the ceiling. My office desk is across the room near the reading chair, and the wooden RCA shortwave radio I sometimes use. I went to the desk now and rummaged through it until I found an unused notebook. In pencil, I labeled the notebook, NAZI ARTIFACTS, and returned to my lab.
Through the north window, storm clouds leaned westward toward a harsh and angular light. The sunlight fired distant mangroves, transforming gray trees to silver, dark limbs to copper. I could see a pod of bottlenose dolphins cruising along the oyster bar that edges the channel. Their skin was luminous as sealskin.
I watched them for a while—fluke tails slapping; herding mullet into the shallows—before returning to work. I placed the new notebook beside the tray of sodium hydroxide, and snapped on fresh rubber gloves.
Beside the tray was a smaller basin that contained a ten percent solution of nitric acid. I’d already dipped the artifacts in the acid bath, and rinsed with freshwater. All but the cigarette lighter were cleaning up nicely.
I was wearing rubber gloves because the artifacts, I decided, were too delicate to risk tongs. So I was using my hands—taking all the precautions, because archaeological restoration is not my field.
I’m a biologist. That’s my business: collecting, and selling, marine specimens. Vertebrates, invertebrates, sharks, rays, sea urchins, mollusks, and plants. I sell them live, mounted, or preserved to schools and labs around the country. Sanibel Biological Supply, Inc. I also do consulting work, which pays most of the bills, as well as my own research—a passion.
These artifacts were becoming another passion.
The silver death’s-head now lay on the bottom of the tray, diamond eyes focused upward through the lens of sodium hydroxide. I couldn’t keep my own eyes off it. Each time I came near the thing, I paused to stare. Couldn’t quite define why.
The cigarette lighter drew my interest, too. It had been engraved with a person’s initials, which added a sense of intimacy. Some long-gone man or woman had carried it, held it, leaned their face to it in darkness. I wouldn’t know what the initials were until the barnacle scars were removed, but the etching was unmistakable. A portion of an N showing? Or an M. Possibly a V, or a K.
The lighter was personal.
I paused to look at the lighter now. Tried to project what the initials might be. Stopped, though, when I heard the engine of Tomlinson’s dinghy start in the distance. Checked my watch: an hour or so before sunset. That’s when he usually came ashore.
I returned to the window and there he was: yellow shirt adorned with bright hibiscus flowers, his hair stuffed under a Boston Red Sox cap. On the bow of the red dinghy was a ditty bag—he always carried it when he planned to shower at my place. A long, warm-water shower instead of a sponge bath aboard No Mas. Ladies, he told me, appreciated the extra effort.
Which meant that he was stopping by the lab for a beer, a shower, and then to stroll the docks until after dark. After that, he’d vanish. Him on his bicycle, sometimes for hours. Occasionally, most of the night. Presumably, he was with his new love interest. Washed and fresh for the woman he seldom mentioned and we’d yet to meet. Tomlinson’s “mystery woman,” the guides called her.
I’d never met her, but I knew where his mystery woman lived.
A week or so after the hurricane, I’d gone for a late jog. The moon was full, it was impossible to sleep, so I’d run toward the Gulf along Tarpon Bay Road to the beach. Continued running on a ridge of firm sand when I happened to notice Tomlinson’s bike in the moonlight. It was chained to a boardwalk that led into bare trees.
Unmistakable, Tomlinson’s bike: a fat tire cruiser, peace signs painted on the fenders, and a plastic basket on the handlebars that reads: FAUSTO’S KEY WEST.
On my way back, the bike was still there, and I heard music coming through the trees. A piano played elegantly. I recognized the melody but couldn’t name it. Something from the 1930s or ’40s, not big band. Torchy, with smoky subtleties.
I stopped to enjoy the music, my shadow huge on the white sand. Among the trees was a two-story house I hadn’t known existed, the foliage had once been so dense along that stretch of beach. The storm had taken most of the trees, though, so the house was now exposed, a Cape Cod–sized place with gables and an upstairs balcony. It appeared solitary on its own grounds, a moneyed estate that had once been hidden—an indignity to be endured.
I felt like a voyeur. Which is what I was, in fact. The music stopped a couple of minutes after I did, yet I stood looking at the house, oddly pleased that I’d never suspected the house was there.
Something else that pleased me was that I could also see the rhythmic flare of Sanibel Lighthouse, far, far down the beach. The lighthouse had been built in the 1880s during the era of train barons: a tower of steel rails, one hundred feet high, and capped with a crystal lens.
Until the storm, it hadn’t been visible from this section of beach.
As the music was ending, Tomlinson appeared on the balcony. He wore a white linen jacket, and slacks he’d bought at the consignment store on Palm Ridge Road, his favorites. There was a last alto flourish on the piano, and then a woman appeared, her hair silver in the moonlight.
His mystery woman. Finally.
The woman was thin as a reed in her sequined gown. She moved elegantly, like her music. Elegantly…but with a measured slowness that I associate with injury, or old age. It was incongruous with the way the gown hung on her body, the sleek contours, and also incongruous with what happened next: the woman stopped, held her hands up, palms outward—an invitation to Tomlinson. There was no music, but she wanted to dance.
For a few seconds longer, I watched as they joined and began to sway, dancing to the cadence of storm waves and a pulsing lighthouse beacon.
Their shadows were a single vertical stripe on the house’s gray shingles, elongated by moonlight.
I crossed the lab to get a rack of test tubes. Returned to the artifacts, and, once again, found myself staring at the death’s-head.
Why?
I thought about it for a moment, trying to pinpoint the allure. It seemed important that the attraction be defined—another compunction not easily understood.
Part of the fascination was the historical linkage: days that would live in infamy; boogie-woogie bugle boys who battled their way to the gates of gas chamber horrors.
There was an underlying component, though. A more intimate association.
What?
I leaned to focus, letting the nearby cigarette lighter, and bronze eagle blur. I’m not a fanciful person. I had to consciously will my imagination to wander.
Was it the design?
Yes. The medal’s design had something to do with it. The skull had a hint of smile showing above the diamond swastika. Smiling as it screamed. It was a design that celebrated the killing of one’s enemies. It seemed to encourage the action while depersonalizing the act. It hinted that, to participate, was to be part of a joyous brotherhood.
There was a wink in the death’s-head’s smile. A secret shared by few.
That secret; the brotherhood—I know both. Knew them better than I could admit. I am a marine biologist. But I’ve done other work in my life, too. Clandestine work in South America, Indonesia, Southeast Asia. In the world’s most dangerous places, a man who studies fish does not invite suspicion.