Tucker’s head swiveled toward me. “You’re shittin’ me! Her husband, that asshole Frank what’s-his-name, he really is dead?”
I felt like knocking the old bastard right off his stool.
I was chuckling. Letting the bartender know it was a big joke. “My uncle knows the man’s dead. My uncle’s a drunk. A troublemaker. He doesn’t know what he’s saying half the time.”
Fernando had been following along, accepting my story until Tuck interrupted, but now his thin smile told me he didn’t believe a word I was saying. “I wish I could help you,” he said with a shrug. “But I’m afraid I don’t know these people.”
I had a $20 bill folded in my hand-a week’s salary to restaurant help. I slid the bill under the photograph so that just the comer was showing. “It’s very important. What I told you’s the truth. The woman’s ex-husband is dead. There will be legal complications. We need to find her and take her home.”
Fernando, I could tell, wasn’t going to budge. “At the Club Nautico, senor, a man’s business is his own. We do our jobs. We give the good service, the good food, and that is all. If you have other questions, you maybe ask Mr. Garret. But I warn you as a humble person” — he eyed the $20-“I would not use your money in such a way with Mr. Garret. He is the owner of this place and not a man to insult.”
Fernando wheeled away, reappearing a few moments later with our food: platters of fried snapper and black beans with wedges of lime.
“Damn almighty, Fernando! That smells even better than the grub I had on the plane and, by God, that’s sayin’ something!” As an aside to me, Tuck added softly, “That son-of-a-bitch really is dead?”
“Yeah, and thanks for handling it so well.”
He missed the sarcasm. “How?”
“I don’t know. I’ll call Amanda tonight and maybe find out something. As it is, you just screwed up any chance I have of getting information out of the bartender.”
“I already told you, he’ll talk to me.”
I took a bite of the fish. Why even answer?
“Talk about touchy! You want me to get the information out of him now, or you mind if I eat first?” Throwing it up in the air like he didn’t much care one way or the other, letting me decide.
I said, “We’ll wait for the owner. Just drop it.”
“So you don’t think he’ll talk to me?”
“No.”
Tucker pushed half a fillet of snapper into his mouth, a chunk of bread and said something-no way of knowing, his mouth was so full. He may have said: “Watch me.” Which is what I did.
I watched Tucker corner Fernando by the entrance to the kitchen, near the telephone and a sign on the wall that said in Spanish and English: Log all calls.
I watched Fernando’s scarred face glaze into a mask of indifference… then surprise… then enthusiasm and pleasure. I watched the two men shake hands and-this was unbelievable-I watched them hug slightly and whisper something into each other’s ear… or so it appeared.
I wasn’t eating. I couldn’t eat. I felt as if I were witnessing some bizarre theater. Tucker Gatrell, an Everglades gangster and unrepentant racist, was suddenly bosom buddies with Fernando, the onyx black Latino who had experience with knives but was too ethical to accept bribes.
I watched them talk. I watched them laugh. Translation seemed to be a problem. When Fernando didn’t understand Tuck’s English, Tuck simply-and idiotically-spoke louder not slower. He used hand language, too, like some bad actor conversing with Indians in an old Western film.
Finally, they shook hands again, hugged again, and Tuck returned to the bar, walking his gunfighter walk. He straddled the stool and began to eat. Didn’t say a word.
I waited…
I waited…
Jesus, he was going to make me ask. Finally, I did: “Okay, okay, you and Fernando are suddenly best friends. I apologize. He told you something, what?”
Tuck had a mouth full of beans. “Told me everything. Just like I knew he would.”
“I don’t get it. I didn’t lie to him, didn’t try to trick him, I even offered him money. You knew he’d talk to you- how?”
“‘Cause he’s a Freemason. We’re both Freemasons.”
“Freemasons? I don’t understand… like a club? You’re both Freemasons, so that means-”
“I’m a thirty-second degree Master Mason, Scottish Rite and Knight Templar. Not a club, it’s a what-you-call-it, an exalted brotherhood. Tropical Lodge Fifty-six, which is one of the oldest in Florida. Fernando there, he’s just out of Blue Lodge, only a third degree Master and he wants to be a Shriner. If we get some time, I told him we’d sneak off alone and work on it. I’d help him along.”
I tried to picture Fernando, with his murderer’s scar, wearing a burgundy fez, driving one of those little clown cars at parades. “A Shriner? He gives you information for free just because you belong to, what is it, the same lodge or something? You’re fraternity-brothers, that’s what you’re telling me.”
This was lunacy.
“Shows how much you know. Freemasonry is a… hell, you won’t understand. Nobody’s not a Mason can understand. What Freemasonry is is an ancient and honorable union that dates back to the time of the pyramids. The vows a man takes when he gets married? They ain’t close to bein’ as sacred as the vows a Mason takes. You doubt how serious bein’ a Mason is, check the back of a Yankee dollar. The Eye of God on the pyramid, that’s a Masonic symbol put right there by my fellow Freemasons who started the U-S-of-A.”
He was serious about it, maybe telling the truth for a change, too.
“I got brothers all over the world, mister man. Joe Egret? He was a Mason. Dumb as that Injun was, he put the time in and learned what he had to learn. Why… Joe actually worked so hard at it, he got to know his stuff better than me. I ate and drank with some brothers down on Cat Island-the Bahamas, I’m talkin’ about-who were the head voodoo chiefs… only they called it something else. Talk about black? Those brothers down there make Fernando here look like an albino-fucking-Swede. Nothing they wouldn’t do for me ‘long as they can put their family and their work first. Me same with them. You didn’t see Fernando’s ring? That’s why I knew he’d talk to me. Has to. Masonic Code. ‘Cause he can trust me and he knows it. Doesn’t matter he’s a beaner or not. Once a Mason, always a Mason.”
“Did he tell you anything about Gail?”
“Yep. Seen ‘em both. The fat man had a boat here till the owner, the Austrian guy, kicked ‘em out.”
“Australian. The owner’s not Austrian, he’s Australian.”
“The one who took off for France?”
I ignored that. “Where did Fernando say they went?” Tuck made a slow-down motion with his open palm. “You’ll find out. In good time, you’ll learn it all. What Fernando suggests we do now is stroll out to the end of the dock-see that great big rusting three-master out there? Big enough to carry a small herd of cattle and old enough to sink like a damn tire iron. He says we need to go out there and ask for a man they call the Turk. But we’re going to have to kill some time around here, wait for the man to wake up. He sleeps most the day, stays awake all night. Fernando says we should ask the Turk about real estate, make him think we want to buy something. That way, nobody at the marina will have to tell you where to find the fat man and the lady, ‘cause the Turk’ll let it slip just discussing real estate.”
“We say we want to buy real estate?”
“Isn’t that what I said? Merlot, what Amanda told me was, that Merlot was involved in real estate, so it makes sense.”
“Fernando wouldn’t tell you the rest of it. Where they went?”
Tucker smacked his lips. More fish, more beans. “Didn’t say that. Fernando told me exactly where they are. Told me everything he knew. But I’m not allowed to tell you. Part of the Masonic Code.”
“That’s absurd. If you know, why bother with the charade of — ?” I was shaking my head, frustrated, irritated. “What kind of code are we discussing here?”
Tucker finished his beer and signaled a smiling and eager Fernando for another round. He said, “Sorry. Can’t tell you that either,” before he called, “Brother Fernando? We’ll sail again here, amigo!”