Randy White - Deceived

“From space, it probably would,” I replied.

The man glanced back. “I can usually read sarcasm. Not with you, though.”

Now I actually did smile. “Sorry. I don’t think making fun of people is funny, so don’t worry. What I meant is, the dock was bigger-the way I remember it anyway. So of course it would be smaller from high up.”

Ransler was interested. “ Oh. You saw it back in the days when it was…”

“Operational?” I said, helping him out. “Yeah, I did. My Uncle Jake brought me in here once or twice when I was a little girl. Not because of the dock, we came here to fish, but I saw it.” Then I told the prosecutor what I remembered, which, possibly, had been colored by what I’d heard in later years. Dwight Helms, and others in the pot-smuggling trade, had rigged a shrimp net in the trees like an awning to camouflage the dock from DEA planes passing overhead.

“It was like a gigantic tent,” I said, “covered with tree branches and leaves. I remember thinking it was even bigger than a tent. You know, impressive to a girl only seven or eight years old. My mother didn’t believe me when I described it-she was so sure I was exaggerating, I remember getting mad. My uncle said it was a good lesson for me.”

Ransler looked over his shoulder again. “The lesson being?”

I had to think for a moment. “Something about It’s easier for a stranger to trick us because they’ve yet to be caught in a lie . Or maybe he said to con us , I forget. Loretta-my mother-she would have believed a stranger, that’s what he was telling me.”

“You’ve mentioned him a couple of times. You must have been close.”

“Jake?” I said. “He was a lot more fun than Barbie dolls and dress-up parties. Probably because he treated me like a friend, not his precious little niece.”

Joel hadn’t asked about my father, which was a relief but made me suspicious. He had telephoned Loretta with questions about Rosanna Helms, that much she had already admitted. But had she strayed-or been led-on to other topics? Before her stroke, my mother had avoided embarrassing topics. Now there wasn’t any word or subject too tasteless for her to share with the postman or even with passing strangers while out shopping. Worse, she had begun to confuse me with my late aunts, Hannah Two and Hannah Three, whose bad judgment and love of men had brought both of their lives to a violent end. Trying to avoid my late aunts’ errors was complicated enough without the fear of Loretta telling a stranger that To get Hannah’s panties down, just tap her on the head . I had heard her say those exact words to Christian, our good-looking UPS man, and so now began to wonder if Joel Ransler’s flattery was based on misinformation provided by my addled mother.

No way of knowing because Ransler stuck to the subject of my late uncle.

“Did he help support you two? She told me how hard up for money she was-a single woman raising a little girl. It had to be tough… on both of you.”

The man sounded sympathetic, but I didn’t like the direction the conversation was going. There was no guessing what else Loretta had said about me. One thing I felt sure she hadn’t mentioned while discussing money was her long affair with a married man-something she has never admitted and I’ve never brought up. No reason to embarrass her needlessly, plus it was a secret comfort to have the ammunition ready if Loretta ever pushed me too far. Her lover had been a wealthy man-although the source of his income was a mystery-who she had never brought to the house, but I had heard them talking on the phone often enough to know his name was Arnie-something. Thanks to Arnie, Loretta had had a nice car and money enough for shopping, which she loved. There had been a few hard times financially, but that was after Arnie or Loretta-both, possibly-had found religion, which had ended their affair. Joel’s gentle way of asking questions, however, made me feel obligated to be conversational because there was still water between us and the dock.

“Jake helped out when he could, I suppose, but most of his income went to alimony. Loretta always managed to get by, and I give her full credit for that. I didn’t have to go to work until I was a sophomore in high school, which was late in the game compared to a lot of kids on the islands.”

“You worked in your uncle’s detective agency,” Ransler said. “At least you’re listed as an employee in state records. Hope you don’t mind that I checked.”

“It was better than waiting tables,” I responded. “I wasn’t crazy about being in an office, but I learned how to keep books, and I did the computer searches, too. So, no, checking on me, I understand that it’s part of your job.”

“Office work beats what some of your neighbors did to make a living,” the special prosecutor said, his eyes on the derrick that had hoisted unknown tons of drugs.

His meaning was obvious and his tone had a hint of superiority, which was irritating.

I turned, opened a hatch, and got out the stern line, before saying, “One thing you might not understand is why people here starting running marijuana. Used their mullet boats to meet bigger boats offshore, then off-loaded the bales in places like this because the Marine Patrol and Coast Guard didn’t know the local waters.”

“Money,” he replied. “Isn’t it always about money? Then they’d truck the drugs to Miami, sometimes Atlanta, right? Poor men became millionaires in a few months. Hannah, I have done a fair amount of research on the subject. For a while, the DEA kept active files on more than half the adult population of Sematee County and Sulfur Wells-did you know that?” The man looked at me in an odd way, which put me on the defensive.

“You’re skipping over something important,” I countered. “The state put a lot of commercial fishermen out of business in those days. More and more regulations, then a net ban. Families that had been fishing for five or six generations were suddenly out of work and they didn’t know any other kind of work.” I nodded to indicate the dock we were approaching. “If you had a mortgage to pay and children to feed, do you think you might have chosen pot hauling to losing your home?”

“Maybe,” he said. “But not cocaine and crack hauling, which made some of those same guys even richer. Or, at least, I’d like to believe I wouldn’t.”

Joel had a point, but he’d oversimplified the dilemma fishing families had faced during two decades that had all but eliminated their working heritage. I knew from local gossip that pot hauling had turned ugly when smuggling cocaine became a more lucrative option. It brought professional criminals and crime syndicates into the area. It also got some of the locals and their children hooked on the product. Cocaine was the division line between ethical and unethical behavior in the minds of many fishermen and those who refused to do it were soon forced out of business.

As I explained this, the special prosecutor swung around to face me from the casting platform and was nodding before I’d finished. “I’m not making moral judgments. You want to know why I’m so interested?”

“Let me finish,” I said. “What I’m saying is, sometimes a new law can make criminals out of people who’ve never broken a law in their life. But my Uncle Jake wasn’t among them and I get the feeling you believe he was. Isn’t that why you keep asking about him? Half the population of Sulfur Wells was being investigated, you said. That’s only about a hundred people, not counting kids.”

Ransler shrugged in a way that suggested he was open to all possibilities. “It crossed my mind, but so what? Your uncle’s dead, plus the statute of limitations ran out years ago-on smuggling, at any rate.”