Darkrume had indeed done it. All trace of Gail’s correspondence was now gone.
So I’d spent my driving time trying to visualize the letters I’d read. Not easy because my brain kept slipping into a replay of the exchange with Darkrume-It was your ugly daughter! — and I became furious all over again.
Now Tomlinson said, “Maybe if you speed up to like seventy, it’ll bounce something loose in your noggin. Can’t hurt and might help.”
“Know what, Tomlinson? That was one of the cruelest things I’ve ever witnessed. What that guy did to Amanda. Gail Richardson must have extraordinarily bad judgment to get hooked up with someone like that. And to send him videos?”
“We’ve been through all this. Why keep going over it? Women in that situation, especially the nice ones, they’re just too damn vulnerable. Hey-you want me to drive? We can pull over, take a whiz and let me get behind the wheel.”
Tomlinson was a tailgater, a lane-weaver, a terrible driver.
“Nope.”
“I wouldn’t mind getting to Dinkin’s Bay before sunset, man. Brewskies on the dock with the guides. Maybe order in some appetizers. Chicken wings, they’re sounding tasty.”
“I’ll go faster.”
“Man, I wish I had a bottle of beer for every car that’s passed us this trip. Sixty-five, man, that’s Winnebago speed. Zoom zoom zoom the cars just crackin’ past and us tooling along like two catheter cadets in a Caddy.”
He chuckled. The alliteration was unintentional and pleased him.
I started to remind Tomlinson that he’d promised me at least twenty minutes of silence, but I stopped in mid-sentence.
I said softly, “Straightaways.”
“Yeah, man, you go slow, no matter what. Dozens assed us.”
I changed the inflection. “Straight away. Straight away. “
“Uh-huh, which is embarrassing ‘cause a couple of those cars were from Ohio, Indiana, the neck-bender places. No offense.”
“In Merlot’s letter to Gail, what did he write? ‘I was so upset that when I left your house, I drove straight away to the beach.’ Something like that. You remember that?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“That’s more British than American. ‘Straight away,’ used like that. Or a phrase you might hear in the British colonies. Hong Kong, maybe Kuala Lumpur.”
“Sure, it jumped right out at me, man. But then I’m a scholar. Colonial English-Merlot’s sentences had that kind of weird syntax. And honor, the way he spelled things. He spelled it H-O-N-O-U-R like the Brits do.”
Was it true? I couldn’t remember.
I said, “He used British spelling as well? You’re sure?”
“Positive. There was this line where he said that the first thing he wanted to do was take her to the beach, some secluded harbour-he spelled it O-U-R — ” Tomlinson stopped talking and looked at me, a new awareness in his expression.
I finished his sentence for him: “He spelled harbor H-A-R-B-O-U-R. But Merlot didn’t write that.”
“He… shit! You’re right. It was Darkrume, that’s what he wrote to her.”
“Exactly. Darkrume. The same British usage, the same spelling.”
“You’re saying… I’ll be damned. Okay, okay, this is really fucking with my composure, man. You’re telling me that Darkrume and Merlot, they’re the same person.”
I was waving my hand at him, telling him to be quiet. “Give me some time, let me think about this a little bit.” After a couple of minutes I said, “Yeah. Two different screen names, but the same person. Can you have two different names on the Internet?”
“Absolutely. And the dude could have been anywhere, Colombia, Fumback, Egypt, you name it, and sign on with either name.”
“What do you think the chances are of two people in different parts of the country, two American men who don’t even know each other, affecting the same limey style?”
“Zero. Almost zero anyway.”
“Then that’s what happened. Darkrume said he’s the one who refused to meet her. That’s what kept nagging at me. He was furious by the time he said it, which is why it had the ring of truth. But why would an on-line hustler refuse to meet with the woman he’s hustling? He’s seen her videos, he knows she’s beautiful. You’re more familiar with this business than I am, but my impression of this on-line romance stuff is that it attracts the lonely, the desperate and the predatory. Does that seem accurate?”
“Hey now, man, don’t forget I’ve got a couple of cyber mistresses myself.”
As much as I would have liked to, Tomlinson’s oddities were not easy to forget.
I said, “But generally speaking. Give me one other reason why Darkrume would have refused to meet with Gail. She expected to have sex, right? That’s a hustler’s whole objective, yet he chose not to. Why? Because if they met, Gail would know he wasn’t some handsome photographer from California. He was her fat friend, just down the street.”
He was nodding. “Somehow I felt it all along but didn’t know why. Merlot invented Darkrume. He orchestrated the whole thing, which is some serious sick shit, man. Very serious.”
I said, “He plays good cop, bad cop. He sets her up, has her send the videos to some mail-forwarding service with a P.O. box. Maybe in Florida but probably another state. Maybe sends her pictures of some good-looking guy through the same service and says it’s him, Darkrume, this sexy professional photographer. Then he springs the trap, blackmail, and Merlot is right there saying I told you not to trust Darkrume. Let me help you get out of the mess you’re in. He tells her, yeah, the smart thing to do is just pay the guy off. And the whole time, she’s becoming increasingly dependent on Merlot ‘cause only he knows her terrible secret.”
I mulled it over for a minute. “If he sent a blackmail demand by instant message, there’re no handwriting samples to worry about. And no record of it either, right?”
Tomlinson said, “Unless Gail copied it and saved it to a whole separate file, no.”
“Then that’s probably the way he played it.”
“Or maybe he’s got a partner. Some guy and he had him call Gail and play the roll of Darkrume. A guy with a nice voice. Convincing.”
We talked about that. There were several ways to make it work.
I said, “I’m supposed to meet with Frank Calloway tomorrow. He hired an investigator to dig up dirt on Merlot, and he’s going to let me see the file. But I think I’m going to call tonight and make reservations to fly down to Cartagena. You’re right, it seems serious. Leave Friday or Saturday if I can get a flight.”
“The sooner the better.”
“I agree. What I should have done is head down there right away. Now I’m worried. This guy really is a freak.”
When Tomlinson is very serious or concerned, he speaks more softly and becomes more articulate. “I think you need to find this lady, Doc. I really, truly do. Find her and make her believe the truth. Or scare the fat man away. Whatever it takes. He’s making a fool out of that nice woman. He may try to do worse.”
Yes, maybe a lot worse.
I drove in silence for a while, looking at the saw grass and the sky: gold on blue. The saw grass, the way it showed currents of wind, reminded me of elephant grass, the twelve-foot-high grass of the Mekong River and around marshy Tonle Sap Lake, Cambodia.
Once Bobby and I hiked into a bamboo village, drawn by the amplified buzzing of what we thought might be hiving bees.
But no…
It was the sound of flies, fat iridescent green flies. Thousands of flies, millions of flies, a gray haze. All drawn to what had been hung on hooks to die at the center of that village…
Thinking about it, seeing it again but not wanting to see it, I said to Tomlinson, “If Bobby were alive today, and someone like Merlot hurt his wife or child, I think he would probably-” I stopped. Was there any way to exaggerate what Bobby was capable of doing?
No. Just as there was no way to communicate some of the atrocities we’d witnessed in the jungles of Southeast Asia. So why discuss it?
I, on the other hand, was far removed from that place and time, so I would handle it differently.