Randy White: The Mangrove Coast

It was Tomlinson who suggested that I write about Panama; that I review on paper what happened and how it happened. He told me, “It might be good for your soul, man. Kind of a purge deal. Your tummy’s upset, you pop a couple of Alka-Seltzers, right? Maybe eat some stewed prunes, get rid of the bad stuff. Same thing. Put it down on paper and it’s gone.”

I was on the deck of my stilthouse at the time, Dinkin’s Bay Marina, Sanibel Island, southwest coast of Florida.

I’d been doing pull-ups.

Lately, I’d been doing lots and lots of pull-ups.

Thinking about Panama brought back specific unrelated images: black rain, banana leaves fauceting water, lunar halos, small precise breasts, a woman’s eyes diminished by uncertainty, wood fires, a mangrove shore…

I told Tomlinson that my soul was doing just fine, thank you very much.

It was a lie.

Three days later, I said to Tomlinson: “Write it all down, huh?”

He was momentarily confused, but then he was right there with me. It is, perhaps, because Tomlinson is always lost that he is also endlessly empathetic. He said, “Just a suggestion. I got to tell you, Doc, you haven’t exactly been yourself. When you look inward, man, your eyes actually change color. What used to be your Gulf Stream stare? Kicked back, friendly, drifting? It is now gray, dude, seriously gray. I mean like boiled beef. Not a pretty sight. Or maybe get some counseling. We catch a virus, we go to the doctor, no big deal. So we get an emotional virus, what’s wrong with getting a little psychiatric help? Christ, I spent a year making wallets and signing my letters, ‘Sincerely as a fucking loon.’ And look how together I am now.”

I said, “Right. Your stability is… well… right out there for anyone to see.” Then I said, “Like a kind of intellectual exercise.” I was still discussing the prospect of writing.

“An exercise, sure. That’s one way of approaching it.”

The difference between patronization and kindness is intent. I was being treated kindly. Still… it struck me as having interesting potential.

The human animal is accurately named. And I am, after all, a biologist.

Here’s what I’d been wrestling with ever since returning from Central America: What quirk of experience or genetic coding compelled certain men to isolate vulnerable women and then to prey upon them?

That kind of behavior certainly did not benefit the species, so why were their devices so commonplace… and so successful?

The problem had bothered me since Panama. How can one protect all good and delicate people, all the children and wounded ladies, who are potential targets?

Perhaps it is more accurate to say that the problem haunted me.

For Tomlinson, I condensed the dilemma: “Not all sexual predators are killers or serial rapists. The most successful of them live well within the boundaries of the law and they’re probably more common than we’d like to believe. See… the problem is identifying the bastards. They are not social anomalies; they are social deviants.”

He said, “I’m with you, man. The difference is subtle but specific.”

I said, “Exactly. So what’s that mean? What it means is, to succeed they must give the appearance of living socially acceptable lives. They must construct a believable facade so that their secret motives go unsuspected. Like camouflage, understand? They live a lie their entire lives… which means they become superb liars and actors.”

Tomlinson was nodding, following along, indulging me. “You’re talking about that guy. Merlot? Jackie Merlot.”

Just hearing the name keyed the gag reflex in me… and something else, too: dread.

I said, “Yeah. Pedophiles, voyeurs, wife beaters, the back-alley freaks. Ted Bundy-he’s another textbook example. But that’s an extreme case. More commonly, only their victims know who these people are and what they really are. No, I’ll amend that. The truly successful predators are probably so adept at manipulation that their victims never realize they’ve been used.”

Tomlinson was listening sympathetically, not analytically. I found that irritating. Did he really believe that I was so adolescent that I needed that kind of friend?

He said, “You’ve got a lot of anger built up. The subject makes you furious. I can see it.”

I winced. “You’re missing the entire damn point. I’m talking about difficulties of assessment. Pathology, not emotion.”

“Sure. I relate entirely! It’s exactly the kind of stuff you need to be writing. Get it out of your system. You know another reason it might be good to get it down on paper? If the feds decide to take up the case again, call you in to testify, you can always refer to your notes. Tell them, hey, this is the way it all went down. I mean, if they decide the guy didn’t exactly disappear on purpose, they might come around again and ask more questions.”

I was nodding; smiling just a little. I said, “Yeah, a written record. I see what you mean. Accurate notes of what went on, plus it might help me deal with losing what I lost.”

But I was thinking: No matter how many questions they ask, they’ll never find out what happened to Jackie Merlot…

Certain odors key the synapse electrodes, and there is no alternative but to return to the precise time and place in memory with which those odors are associated.

Why is the linear memory so much easier to discipline than memories that are sensory?

It’s like one of Tomlinson’s favorite little paradoxes: I have no choice but to believe in free will.

If there is such a thing as free will, how is it that one can have no choice?

What I am avoiding discussing, I guess, is how I happened to return to Panama. What I’m avoiding discussing is how it all began and what happened afterward.

It would make an interesting research paper: “The Olfactory Senses as Conduit to Recall…”

Yes. Odors…

The barrier islands of Florida’s west coast have their own odor, their own feel. It’s a fabric of strata and weight: seawater, sulfur muck, white sand, Gulf Stream allusions and a wind that blows salt-heavy out of the Yucatan and Cuba.

Think about hot coconut oil. Add a few drops of lime, then a drop or two of iodine. Dilute it with icebergs melted by ocean current: even if you’ve never been to Florida, reconstitute that mixture and you will know how the air feels and smells on the mangrove coast. You’ll also know something about a pretty little village there called Boca Grande.

Boca Grande is on the barrier island of Gasparilla. It is one of the isolated, moneyed enclaves south of Tampa, north of Naples-way, way off Florida’s asphalt network of theme parks and tacky roadside attractions.

It’s a place that I associate with quiet dinner parties, Sunday tennis, tarpon fishing and bird-watching… not with violent death.

That’s one of Florida’s charms: Places like Boca Grande still exist. They are always full of surprises.

The first thing I noticed upon entering Frank J. Calloway’s secluded beach house was that there was something disturbing about the composition of the air. Less an odor, really, than an adverse density.

It was as if oxygen molecules had been weighted with water plus unknown organic particles, then compressed and compressed again in the silence of a process so newly completed that something-illness? decay? — had only recently begun.

It was a piscine acidity. It had an oily tinge…

I noticed the odor as I passed through the living room-What’s unusual about the air in this place? — which was just before I stepped into the kitchen and found the body of a man lying belly-down on glazed Mexican tiles.