Randy White - Night Vision

Tomlinson did correct me, saying, “It was nineteen eighty-two, I’ve got it right here on the screen. Now half the population of Indiantown is Mayan. This article doesn’t say how many Guatemalans live in Immokalee, but the Latin population is almost eighty percent, which means there has to be ten or fifteen thousand Indios in Immokalee-which makes it bigger than most of the cities in Guatemala.

He continued, “I don’t blame those people for not wanting to be documented. They’re mostly political refugees, on the run from their government because they did something or said something to piss off the big shots in Guatemala City. Their government still uses firing squads, don’t they, Doc?”

The man said it in an accusatory way as if I were somehow responsible.

“Up against the wall, asshole,” he added, shaking his head, “which is typical of a bunch of right-wing Nazis.”

Right wing, left wing, it made no difference in Central America

… nor anywhere else, for that matter, because the power hungry all gravitate toward the same dangerous interstice on the political wheel.

Even so, I said nothing as Tomlinson continued paraphrasing from what he was reading on the computer.

“In the seventies, Guatemalan exiles tried building a little village just across the border in Mexico. But their own army had a bad habit of sneaking across and shooting the Indigena on sight. Finally, Guatemalan military wiped out the whole village.

“Florida was a whole ocean away, and the really desperate refugees decided this was a safer choice. Now about thirty thousand Maya live in south Florida, which historically makes for a very nice symmetry, when you think about it.”

I saw that Emily had missed the connection, so I explained, “He’s talking about the original inhabitants of Southwest Florida. It was a major civilization. They were contemporaries of the Maya, a people called the Calusa.”

I suspected that the woman knew Florida history, but she listened intently as Tomlinson told her, “The Calusa and the Maya had too much in common for it to be accidental-in my opinion, anyway. The Calusa built shell pyramids and courtyards. They were led by ancestral kings, not chiefs-just like the Maya. They were here thousands of years before the Seminole.”

He studied the woman long enough to confirm she was interested before confiding, “Some nights, I anchor off one of the islands near here-Useppa Island-where the shell mounds look like small mountains. I smoke a doobie or two, and those pyramids come alive, man. People march around the mounds in wooden masks, carrying torches. Cooking fires burn, babies cry-real live vignettes. Teenagers screwing in the bushes, old men taking dumps knee-deep in water-scenes like that. When the wind’s just right, I can hear hard men talking war. It’s a very heavy connection for me. The Calusa are still here, man, when moonlight chimes the right notes.”

Emily was smiling, charmed by Tomlinson’s childlike sincerity. No surprise there. I had seen that smile on the faces of hundreds of women, maybe thousands, in the last ten years.

My pal continued, “Archaeologists may call them by a different name, but the Calusa were Maya. They were oceangoing people who got around. It’s sad but kinda funny now that the Mayan people are considered illegal immigrants even though they’ve been on this peninsula five thousand years longer than anyone else.”

Tomlinson looked up from the computer screen, done with his monologue, and glanced at his watch, eager to get going, a familiar stoned smile on his face. It had been fifteen minutes since I had told Detective Leroy Melinski that I would not search for Harris Squires, but now we were planning to do just that.

But then something unexpected happened. I watched my pal focus on Emily, studying her face, and then the smile faded as he looked at something that had just appeared on the computer screen. Whatever it was troubled him.

After a moment, the man motioned toward me as he said to Emily, “You’re serious about this guy, aren’t you.”

It was a statement, not a question.

Confused, then amused, Emily replied, “What a strange thing to say. I’m not in the habit of picking up strangers at alligator necropsies. Maybe the average girl does, but not me. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t interested.”

Tomlinson’s expression changed, a look that was all too familiar. I call it his Sorcerer’s face. His eyelids drooped, his eyes appeared glazed by what he was seeing, the details he was absorbing, his attention focused laserlike on Emily Marston.

“What I’m saying is, you’ve been interested in Doc for a while. In your head… in your brain, there’s a whole little room devoted to Dr. Marion Ford, isn’t there? That is unusual.”

Emily’s smile hardened, a defensive posture, but she continued listening.

Tomlinson’s eyes were almost closed now as he said, “You’ve done a lot of thinking about this guy. I can sense the vibes, it’s becoming very clear. But it took you a while to find a way to meet him. A proper way to meet him, I mean. Someone told you about Doc a long time ago, maybe. Someone who was… who was important to you.”

He took a breath, his eyes open now as he asked, “Am I right?”

Emily turned to me. “Does he guess weights and birthdays, too?” She laughed the words, but her discomfort was visible.

I understood why. After we had made love for the second time, I had taken her out in my flats skiff, a twenty-one-foot boat. We had drifted from Woodring Point almost to the marina, lying on the deck, looking up the late-sunset sky. I’d learned a lot about the woman by the time we’d returned to my stilt house an hour later and made love yet again.

As I knew, Emily was uncomfortable because what Tomlinson had just said was all too close to the truth. She had heard about me a couple of years before from her own father, whom she adored.

Had Emily told me her maiden name, I would have made the connection much earlier.

The highly regarded amateur ornithologist who could afford to travel to Third World places had mentioned my name several times to his daughter-usually when she was dating some guy her father didn’t deem worthy.

I could admit to Emily that I knew that man, but that was as far as I could go. She willingly shared her secret, I could not.

I became even more uncomfortable when she told me that her father had disappeared thirteen months ago. I had met the man only twice-under circumstances that are still classified-so I knew without doubt that bird-watching was to him what marine biology is to me. It was an effective cover story for the dangerous intelligence work he did.

From past experience, I also suspected that Emily’s father was dead. If I ever disappear from Dinkin’s Bay, the same will be true of me.

It was a strange situation to be in. In a way, I knew things about Emily’s father that she would never know. She described him as “sweet, sensitive and generous.”

I didn’t doubt that was true, but I also knew the guy had to have a dark side or he would not have survived as long as he had in the business. I covered my discomfort with a silence that communicated an interest in the woman’s past. My interest was genuine.

Now Tomlinson had pried into our private conversation with yet another of his uncanny guesses. What irritates me is that he always does it in a way that gives the impression he possesses supernatural powers, which, of course, he does not.

It took me a couple of years, but I finally figured out how he does what he does, although I may never understand how he does it so well. Tomlinson is extraordinarily perceptive. He has a genius for reading nuances of speech, body language and facial expressions. He then ties all those tiny bits of datum together to make plausible and often accurate projections.