Randy White - Night Vision

He turned to give Emily a pointed look, obviously aware that her Jag was parked outside the marina’s gate. But if the lady noticed, she didn’t react. She was going through a file I had started years ago, a file on bull sharks that inhabit a freshwater lake one hundred and twenty-seven miles from the sea in Central America.

We had gotten on the subject of sharks earlier in the evening when I was showing the lady a gadget I was testing that might repel attacking sharks. Laser Energetics of Orlando had sent me the thing, a palm-sized tactical light called a Dazer. Its green laser beam was hundreds of times more powerful than a legal laser pointer and could drop a man to the ground with one blinding blast. A test victim had described the pain as “like a screwdriver in the eye,” which is why a special federal license was required to possess it. If the Dazer affected sharks the same way, it might save sailors, pilots and divers who found themselves in a bad spot.

On the file Emily was holding I had written in ink Sharks of Lake Nicaragua.

“You have some fascinating stuff here,” Emily told me, looking at a black-and-white photo of a fisherman I had interviewed a few years back. He was missing a scarred-over chunk from his right thigh. Attacks in Lake Nicaragua are not uncommon. Water is murky, private bathing facilities are rare and backwater bull sharks have the feeding instincts of pit bulls. Males of the species, Carcharinus leucas, have a higher concentration of testosterone in their blood than any animal on earth.

In the background of the photo, tacked to a wall, were several sets of shark jaws. The largest of them was opened wide enough to cut a man in half.

The fisherman I’d interviewed had lost his thigh as a kid and had dedicated his adult life to getting even. The fact that Japanese buyers paid top dollar for shark fins only made his work sweeter-until he and other fishermen had all but depleted the landlocked shark population. The man was dead broke when I met him but still thirsty for revenge. By then, though, a rum bottle provided his only relief.

I know a quite a bit about Central America and the varieties of sharks that thrive there-finned predators and two-legged predators, too. For several years I had lived in the region, traveling between Nicaragua, Guatemala and Masagua during the endless revolutions. I was in the country doing marine research-a fact that I made public to anyone who asked because I was also working undercover on assignment for a clandestine agency composed of a tiny, select membership.

By day, I did collecting trips, wading the tide pools, and I maintained a fastidious little jungle lab. By night, I shifted gears and did a different type of work. I attended village celebrations and embassy functions. I wore a dinner jacket and went to parties thrown by wealthy landowners. I wore fatigues and trained with a counterinsurgency group, the Kaibiles. Less often, I roamed the local countryside on the hunt for gangster “revolutionaries” who, in fact, were little more than paid bullies and assassins.

On those occasions, I carried a weapon for a reason.

I’ve spent my life doing similar work in other Third World countries-Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Africa, Cuba. The study of marine biology has served me well in my travels, both as my primary vocation and as a believable cover. When a stranger inquires about local politics, residents are instantly suspicious, and for good reason. But when a stranger asks about the local fishery-where’s a good place to catch sharks?-he is instantly dismissed as just one more harmless, misguided fisherman.

I’ve never really confided in Tomlinson, but he’s perceptive, so knows more about my background than most. And he probably suspects that I’m still involved in that shadow world of hunter and hunted-which I am. But he doesn’t know the truth and he never will.

No one ever will.

I was looking at Emily, thinking about the complications my sort of life brings to a relationship, as Tomlinson intruded again by saying with exaggerated patience, “I don’t expect your full attention. You both have the same rosy glow, which tells me you’ve had yourselves a really fabulous first date, so congratulations. But have you heard even a single word I’ve said?”

Emily looked up from the folder, her expression empathetic. “I know you’re worried about the girl. I don’t even know her and I’m worried. But I’m going to follow Doc’s lead on this. Something tells me he’s got better instincts than most when it comes to these things.”

She looked at me as she added, “Trust me, I understand what it’s like to have a family member go missing.”

Tomlinson gave her a curious, questioning look, as if trying to decipher the implications. Then he got back to business, saying, “Okay, I agree with Doc. If every cop in Florida is looking for Tula, what good can we possibly do? It’s a valid point. But here’s another fact that’s valid: Cops aren’t welcome in immigrant communities. How many times have we talked about this? Why not at least go to Immokalee and have a look around? An hour in a car together-a four-beer drive, depending on traffic, and traffic shouldn’t be bad on a Wednesday night that far inland. Hell, it could be fun.”

Emily was studying my face, her expression now asking me What do you think?

She had dressed, but looked less formal in her white slacks, copper blouse, because her jacket was still hanging in my bedroom closet. I hoped it would stay there for the rest of the night-along with the woman-if we could manage to get rid of Tomlinson.

The trouble was, Tomlinson was right. Guatemalans would probably talk to us, but they would vanish the moment police appeared. If Squires had indeed taken Tula to Immokalee, someone would have noticed a big gringo with an Indio child. Why he would risk doing something so stupid, I had no idea. But if he had, the locals might trust us with the truth, which we could then pass along to police.

I said to Tomlinson, “It’s been a while since I’ve been to Immokalee, but I remember it being farther than an hour.”

Tomlinson was sitting at my desk computer. He’d been doing a lot of typing and printing as I showed the lady around the lab, enjoying her reaction to rows of aquaria that contained sea anemones, snappers, filefish, sea horses, scallops with iridescent blue eyes and dozens of other brackish-water creatures that I had collected from the grass flats around Dinkin’s Bay.

“Immokalee seems like a long way to you because your truck’s so slow,” Tomlinson replied, not looking up from the keyboard.

“Have you ridden with this guy yet?” he asked Emily. “Like an old lady, he drives-no offense to old ladies, don’t get me wrong. I love women of all ages. But top speed in that old Chevy of his, it might be sixty. Not that he’s ever pushed it that hard. I keep telling him to buy a new vehicle, but he’s too cheap. In that truck of his, he’s right. It would take us forever.”

I asked Emily, “Have you ever been there?” meaning Immokalee.

I got the impression she had, but the lady shrugged, open to fresh information.

“It’s inland, southeast of Sanibel-saw grass and cattle country. Tomatoes, citrus and peppers, too-all crops picked by hand. It’s only forty-some miles, but you have to take back roads because it’s off the tourist path. The town’s not big, maybe twenty thousand people, and the population is mostly Hispanic.”

I looked at Tomlinson, expecting him to correct me, as I added, “Back in the nineteen eighties, a Mexican crew chief brought in a truckload of Kanjobal Maya from Guatemala to work in Immokalee’s tomato fields and another place, Indiantown, which is north. That began the connection. Now those two towns have become sort of the Mayan capitals of Florida. That’s where all the Maya head when they’re looking for family. Or if they get into trouble.”