“But you’d have to know her password, right? Or some kind of entrance code?” Tomlinson had become obsessed with his little briefcase-sized portable. I’d picked up a little bit of information just hearing him talk about it.
“I already know her password. Mom, her memory’s so bad, she uses the same PIN number for all her cards, her message service, the electronic security system at home, everything. She uses the same three numbers as her password to get on-line. It’s simple: two-seven-two. A-R-C on the phone dial, which stands for Amanda Richardson Calloway. My name. One day she’d forgotten something-to pick up her laundry, I think-and she was laughing about how absentminded she was, and that’s when she told me. She said it was her way of honoring me.”
Amanda’s voice cracked again just a little when she added the last sentence. A daughter worried about her mother; trying to keep the emotions in check.
“Then check her computer, see what you can find. Is the phone still on at her house? The phone needs to be on, right?”
“It’s on temporary disconnect. I’ll have the phone company switch it on as soon as I can. Probably late this afternoon, if I get pushy about it. You want me to try to find letters that Merlot sent to her.”
“Anything that has to do with him and your mom. Maybe there’ll be some hint about where they are.”
“Then I should forward what I find to your computer. So I’ll need to know your E-mail address.”
I reminded her that I didn’t have a computer but I did have a telephone. If she found something, she could call me and read it to me.
“I keep forgetting, you’re maybe one of the three or four people I know who doesn’t have a computer.”
I said, “A regular dinosaur, that’s me. And, Amanda? Something else you need to do is call whoever you talked to at the Broward County Sheriff’s Department. The FBI, too. Tell them you want to send them copies of the bank statements, it might get them interested. Tell them what you think: that your mother is being robbed. They’re a lot better-equipped to handle stuff like this than we are. And don’t forget to call Frank, tell him about the money.”
“You think it’ll make a difference?”
“With the cops? No. Not right away. But at least it will keep your mom’s file open in case there really is something wrong.”
Talking about Merlot, all that missing money, had upset her, so I tried to swing the conversation around before I said good-bye; give her a chance to calm down. Sat there with the phone wedged against my ear, looking out at the water, at small boats fishing the mangrove hedge, while I listened to her ask more questions about her father.
There was something oddly forlorn and touching in her tone. She was frightened for her mother’s safety and deeply missed the father she had never met. She had no conscious recollection of ever seeing the man, of being held by him, but she was inexorably connected; seemed to know and understand him on a bone-marrow level. One thing I did not doubt: Amanda was the daughter of my old friend Bobby Richardson.
I answered her questions as best I could. Then she changed the subject on her own: told me she’d spoken with Tucker Gatrell a couple of times since she’d gotten home.
I said, “You mean he’s been calling you?”
“No, I called him. I like him. He makes me laugh. And I think he’s honestly worried about what’s happened to my mom. So I told him I’d keep him updated on how it was going, what we were doing. He seems to know a lot about Central America. He was asking me all kinds of questions.”
I said, “Central America. Yeah, he used to be in the import-export business down there. Just ask him, he’s a real expert.”
I’d never risked inquiring, but there wasn’t much doubt that, along with dealing cattle from Managua to Colon, Tucker had dabbled in drug running during the wide-open, early years of dope smuggling. A Florida cowboy who’d somehow found his way to the jungle. He liked the women, the lawlessness of the place. Probably liked the way that a man with money could live like royalty. Something else I never asked was how he’d managed to piss all that easy money away.
Amanda said, “He wants to help. I told him that’d be fine with me.”
I said, “Oh?”
“Why not? What could it hurt?”
All my life I’ve been baffled at how someone as transparently self-serving as my uncle can so quickly and completely earn the confidence and loyalty of otherwise-intelligent strangers. Tucker was a rare, rare being in that you had to know him well before you could distrust and dislike him.
I said, “Just don’t loan him any money. And don’t let him get you alone in a room.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. An old man like that?”
“Look, I know what I’m talking about. You don’t… okay, let me tell you a story. I listened to a TV reporter interview him; this attractive woman not much older than you. This was a couple of years ago. Tuck was trying to get rich selling swamp water, saying it was from the Fountain of Youth. The way you just laughed, you don’t think I’m serious, but I am. That’s exactly the con he was trying to pull.
“So this woman’s interviewing him, talking to him like he’s the Old Man of the Everglades, which is a role he loves to play. And she asks him, ‘Mr. Gatrell, at what age does a man stop thinking about his own needs and start thinking about more spiritual things?’ Tuck didn’t miss a beat. He said, ‘Sweetheart, if you’re talking about sex, you’re gonna have to ask someone a hell of a lot older than me. You want, I’ll prove my point.’”
Amanda was laughing. “But he was joking.”
“No. No, he wasn’t joking. It was one of the few honest things I’ve ever heard him say.”
“Hey, come on, Doc, it isn’t my place to tell you, but… okay, you seem like the nicest guy, a very reasonable man until you start talking about your uncle. Why? It doesn’t make any sense.”
I told Amanda, “Believe me, it makes sense. I know him. You don’t.”
“Is it the way he acts? He likes to be the center of attention, there’s no doubt about that. Or was it something he did?”
I said, “It’s both. But mostly it was something he did.”
We talked for a while longer after I’d said, yeah, maybe someday I’d tell her about it.
So, slightly after noon, when I was finished with my morning’s work in the lab, I wandered over to the marina to see if Amanda’s package had arrived. Stopped on the dock and talked to Mack for a little bit. Mack is stocky and rumpled, smokes expensive cigars and wears cheap flipflops. Mack’s a displaced Kiwi who came to the U.S. where, as he is fond of saying, “Free enterprise is just a little free-er.” He owns Dinkin’s Bay Marina. Most of it, at least. And he is the marina’s devoted advocate, peacemaker, judge, host of Friday-night beer bashes, boat trader, wheeler-dealer, fish cleaner and collector of clowns, both real and clowns painted on canvas. Mack normally maintains an attitude of predatory amusement that he shields with a professional coolness not uncommon among those who must deal day-in, day-out with the marina-going public. But on this hot April afternoon, Mack was anything but cool. He was, in fact, in a fiery mood.
“The goddamn bureaucrats,” he told me. “The goddamn bureau RATS… there, that’s more like it. They were snooping around the marina this morning, acting like they owned the place, telling me how to run things. They were telling me I had to do this, I had to fix that or they’d shut me down, and you know what? Those tight-assed little bastards don’t have a clue what it’s like to run a business. They’ve never made a payroll in their life. They’ve never gambled their own savings on a business of any kind, let alone a ballbuster like a marina. And they’ve never lain awake all night worrying that they wouldn’t take in enough cash the next day to make a mortgage payment that’s due by four P.M. And they’re judging me? They’re telling me how to run MY business?”
I said, “One of the inspectors find a snake in the restaurant again?”
A year or so before, that’s exactly what had happened. While looking behind one of the refrigerators, a woman from some esoteric state agency had come eyeball to eyeball with a very large and very territorial rat snake. How long the snake had lived there, Joyce, the fry cook, could not guess, but the woman’s reaction had coupled hysteria with a mobile incontinence that darkened a fast trail between the restaurant and the parking lot.