“Not men who’ve lived on this coast long as I have. I’m discussing fact, not faith.”
The old man let that sink in, before adding, “Batista was a thief—just like the Castro brothers. I’ve heard he was an even worse killer. Nastier about it, anyway. When there was a man he particularly hated, I heard he’d march them to the zoo outside Miramar and toss them in a cage at feeding time.”
Arlis was watching my face, disappointed possibly that I didn’t react. So he added, “While the prisoner was still alive, of course.”
“Waste not, want not,” I said.
“You think I’m joking?”
“No. I’m thinking about the flow rate of this pump. I think the impeller’s bad.”
“It could be true,” Arlis said.
“Yeah,” I answered, “the impeller’s usually the first thing to go.”
“No! I’m talking about ol’ Batista. He had a special fondness for that zoo. That’s what some of the marlin fishermen told me, anyway, down there in Cojimar, before the Castros took over. Batista grew up poor. Like a lot of poor kids, he liked bright, fancy things—including circuses. Some of the animals for that zoo, he picked out personally and had them flown back to Cuba. You know—when he was traveling around different parts of the world, a very important man all of a sudden after being nothing but a broke-poor cane cutter.”
As I worked, I let my expression tell him, I’ve never heard that one before.
Arlis responded, “People forget what Batista was like. They forget that a lot of folks hated him.”
“That’s true,” I said.
“He knew he’d lost control of Cuba. He knew the Castro brothers were coming and that he had to leave the island—or maybe they’d cart him down to the zoo, his own self, come feeding time. But Fulgencio Batista was as greedy as he was mean, and he wasn’t about to leave that island empty-handed.”
I knew more than Arlis realized about Cuban history, but I asked, “What did he take?”
“Before he ran, he robbed the fanciest museums in Havana. He robbed the national treasury, too. In December 1958, four cargo planes loaded with art and gold—mostly gold bars and coins—left Cuba for Tampa. Only three planes landed. The heaviest-loaded plane disappeared. That pilot’s last radio transmission is in Coast Guard records, if you know where to look. The pilot called a few Maydays, then he said, ‘We’re goin’ down. We’re goin’ down in the water’—or something close to that—and that’s the last anyone ever heard.”
I crossed the room to the chemical cabinet, listening to him talk.
“For fifty years, the scuba-doo divers and treasure hunters searched for that plane. Some of ’em actual pros, like Mel Fisher’s bunch outta Key West. No one ever found the first trace. Draw a rhumb line ’tween Tampa Bay and Cuba, and men have hunted every yard of that route. In all that time, you’d expect someone to find something, wouldn’t you?”
I thought about it for a few seconds, before I said, “If the plane actually existed—maybe. Maybe not. Three hundred miles of water is a lot bigger than three hundred miles of land.”
The man appeared pleased. “Ab-so-lutely by God right, Doc. Most people, they don’t know the difference between water space and land space ’cause they ain’t lived the difference. That’s one reason I’m here talking to you now. We did okay a year ago, with that little salvage company we started.”
Arlis, Tomlinson and our fishing-guide friend Jeth Nicholes had worked a World War II yacht that lies in seventy feet of water not far from my home on Sanibel Island. Finding the wreck was pure luck. What I’d said about water being more voluminous than land is true.
Salt water is a shield, occasionally a mirror, but seldom a lens—which is why sea bottom is among the last strongholds of human legend. Dreams are more safely housed in regions not despoiled by light.
The wreck we had salvaged was real, but so were the long hours we’d put in working below the surface and above. We’d all made a little money, but the profits were tiny in comparison to the time we had invested.
Arlis asked me, “You got a chart around here? It’d be easier to show you on some kinda map.”
I said patiently, “It wouldn’t mean anything. Point to a spot on a chart, the width of your finger is thirty miles of Gulf water. There’s nothing to learn from that. I’ve got a business to run—this is the last time I’m going to say it.”
The old man zipped his jacket as if slamming a door. “Thirty miles in the Gulf of Mexico, huh?”
“Depends. On a big chart, an inch equals sixty nautical miles. You know that.”
“You just made the same mistake everyone makes who has ever searched for Batista’s plane.”
I let my expression communicate irritation. “Am I missing something?”
“The opportunity of a lifetime, Dr. Ford, that’s what you’re missing—if you don’t start taking me serious. The pilot’s last words were, ‘We’re going down in the water.’ Water, that’s what he said. The man never said nothing about the Gulf of Mexico.”
I asked, “He ditched in the Atlantic?”
“I didn’t say that. Didn’t say the Pacific Ocean or the Arctic Ocean, neither. The weather was bad enough to blow the plane off course a little—probably as cold and windy as it’ll be here in a few hours. She went into the water, but it weren’t the Gulf of Mexico. Let your brain work on that while I go outside, like a good boy, and have myself a chew of tobacco.”
I was picturing the Gulf basin, Cuba to the south, Key West dangling long into the Florida Straits, floating like a compass needle. Florida can be more accurately described as a land mosaic, not a landmass. The state is three hundred miles long, only a hundred miles wide and mostly water.
I thought about it for a moment, before saying, “There’s only one other possible explanation,” as the man pushed the screen door open. “If the plane didn’t crash in the Gulf, it went into a lake. They ditched in a lake somewhere between Key West and Tampa.”
Not looking over his shoulder, Arlis said, “Now, ain’t you the smart one! When you’re done playing with them fish, maybe I’ll tell you how I happened to find that lake. If I’m still in the mood . . . and if I come back.”
Arlis let the door slam behind him.
THREE
AN HOUR AFTER SUNSET, I LISTENED TO MY FRIEND
Tomlinson say, “The frost is hunting for pumpkins, Dr. Ford, but it will have to settle for coconuts. If this wind gets any stiffer, I’m going to make myself a hot toddy instead of having another cold beer. You have any socks I can borrow? Or maybe it’s time to try out our new fireplace.”
I had been trying to share Arlis’s story with him but stopped long enough to say, “Our fireplace? I don’t remember your name on the title to this place.”
“I helped you install the damn thing, didn’t I?”
“No,” I said, “but you drank a six-pack of beer and ate my last pint of Queenie’s vanilla while you watched me do all the work. Besides, it’s a Franklin stove, not a fireplace.”
The week before, I had installed an old wood-burning stove against the north wall, mounted on a platform of brick and sand for insulation. I’d found the thing while jogging the bike lane on nearby Captiva Island. There it was, sitting among junk outside a cottage that would soon be razed, then replaced by yet another oversized mansion—an ego-palace; a concrete grotesquerie as misplaced on that delicate island as a Walmart on the moon.
Among the wealthy, there are inveterate mimics. It is how some people compensate for their numbed instincts regarding style.