Randy White - Dead of Night

With a Barnum amp; Bailey sweep of his hand, Tomlinson directed my attention to what stood leaning against the railing. “What do you think? You ever seen anything like it?”

I slid past him and gazed at the most beautiful surfboard I’ve ever seen.

It was a custom long board. Had to be over nine feet. No… closer to ten. It was built with an outside skin that was a mosaic of alternating wooden strips-red, onyx, and white-all sealed beneath a protective coating of acrylic. On the nose of the board was an airbrush painting of one of the mackerel sharks: a great white. On the tail was an impressionistic American flag.

Tomlinson asked, “Is this thing exceedingly bitchin’, or what? At Vero Beach, when you had trouble catching waves, you should have blamed that shitty rental board instead of yourself. Just like you to take the heat.”

I cupped my hands around the rails, taking pleasure in the board’s convex lines and its symmetry. It had a ceramic gloss, like sculptured porcelain, and a biconical shape that would not have been out of place if spiked into a bluff on Easter Island. The shape was totemic. It was suggestive of ancient stone idols, blood sacrifices.

I lifted the board-amazingly light.

“Your surfing chariot. Like it?”

I said, “It’s gorgeous. Really… beautiful. What I like most is that it’s not new, right? It’s been refinished. Completely redone.”

“My friend, you have a superb eye for artistry. This is one of the classic old Vector boards, shaped by fellow hipster Dave Hamilton on Melbourne Beach. The inlaid woods are from South America and Africa-caoba, rose, and mahogany. Otherwise, it’s nearly ten feet of full balsa, but chambered for buoyancy. Dave told me he’d built this one with an extra tail rocker, three stringers, and a long panel vee to facilitate rail-to-rail turns-plus, the thinner rails will make it easier for you to keep an edge in the face of a wave. Perfect for a guy your size.”

I said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. It is pretty, though. For someone to put so much time into it, I don’t doubt it rides fine.”

I was noting the O near the nose, just beneath the shark. There was the brand name, Vector, imposed upon a line drawing of a globe. The globe was crosshatched with lines of latitude and longitude. Still admiring the surfboard, I added, “But I can’t accept something like this. It’s so nice, I’d be afraid to take it near the water.”

“Dude, it’s a present. You’ve gotta accept it. And she’s built to ride, not hang on the wall.”

“Why a present? This thing had to cost a mint. What’s the occasion?”

Tomlinson gave a regal wave of dismissal: Don’t be crass by mentioning the cost. “You have a birthday coming up, young man.”

“No… Actually, it’s way past.”

“So I forgot.”

“No, you didn’t forget. You don’t recall the party? The night the fishing guides went skinny-dipping and scared off that group of nice tourist ladies? You gave me a little bag of marijuana. What you did forget is that I don’t smoke, ever.”

Tomlinson had an index finger pressed to his lips, thinking about it. Then he began to nod. “Ahhh, yes. It’s all coming back. A lid of Maui Wowie, the world’s sweetest, mellowest headbanger kef from Hawaii. I presented you with the classic self-serving birthday surprise. Something that the recipient can’t use but the giver loves. I was trying to spare a potential host-you-from disappointing me, the potential visitor. Just in case I happened to stop by and was in the mood for a little pick-me-up.

“Say”-Tomlinson was looking over my shoulder, through the doorway-“I don’t suppose you have a little bit of that herbal Kahuna goody left? Your birthday treat? It’s going on noon, and I wouldn’t mind a couple of medicinal hits. Just a little something to get me through a meeting I have coming up. It’s with your sister, The Iron Butterfly. That woman has really been busting my Tater Tots lately.”

He meant my cousin, Ransom Gatrell. She’d been raised in the Bahamas, but was now living in a little Cracker house just across the bay on Woodring Point. She’s a sharp, tenacious woman who’d been staying very busy these days running the burgeoning enterprises of Tomlinson, the reluctant business tycoon.

He’d become an unwilling capitalist. Thanks to her.

I told him, “Nope. I dumped the marijuana. Threw it out, minus the plastic bag. Sea turtles eat the things.”

Groaning, Tomlinson’s body spasmed as if he’d been stabbed in the belly. “You threw out an entire lid of Maui Wowie? Maui Wowie? Oh dear, dear heaven… the waste… the inhumanity. And I came this close to splitting half a key with you! There really ought to be a law.”

“There is a law. Has to do with drug trafficking. Which is why I dumped the stuff.” I touched my finger to the board’s surface again. “There’s no occasion, no birthday. So what’s the real reason you bought this?”

He shrugged and sniffed as if he had no idea what I was talking about.

“You had your crazy dream again, didn’t you? The nightmare. The last few months, if you do something unusually thoughtful, it’s because you’ve had the dream. I keep telling you, it’s not necessary.”

“It’s my money, Marion. I can do what I want with my money. Just my way of thanking you.”

I said, “It was the dream.”

“How can you be so sure? You won’t let me tell you details.”

“Because I don’t want to hear the details.”

He referred to it as his Death Dream-capital Ds, because of the dramatic way he said it. That’s all I needed to know.

“You’d go off on one of your talking jags. Rattle and prattle on and on about the hidden meaning. No thanks.”

“I don’t rattle, and I almost never prattle,” he said. “I take exception to that. It’s true that I’m prone to expound. But never rattle. If it wasn’t for the dream, I’d of never made that miserable decision to go into business with your sister.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“If I wasn’t sure I was going to die, I wouldn’t have fallen for her trap.”

“Ransom’s trap,”

“You known damn well she conned me. Got me to agree to try and make lots and lots of money. Live like some fat-ass Daddy Warbucks, then blow it on crap that’s useless but establishes social status.”

“I’m aware you decided to change your lifestyle.”

I was expecting him to tell me, once again, that I appeared in the dream. I was the man who used what he described as “a staple gun-looking thing” to shoot him in the heart.

Another reason I didn’t want to hear details.

Tomlinson and I have a convoluted history that goes way, way back. Years ago, before we’d met, a government agency accumulated evidence that a group of underground activists had committed murder. Members of the group were declared a clear and present danger to national security. Agents were sent to track them down.

As Harrington put it, “Our team can do what others can’t.”

I’ve never admitted that I was the agent sent to hunt him, but Tomlinson has hinted that he knows.

It was no surprise I’d appeared in his death dream. He’d been making weird offerings ever since.

I turned toward the house. Swung open the door as he said, “I want to share the wealth, because I have the feeling it’s going to come true. I’m going to die within a few months.”

I looked at him, shaking my head. “No, you’re not.”

“You seem so sure.”

“I am.”

There was subtext in Tomlinson’s inflections. Mine, too.

“Guilt is a patient sword, man. It’s gotta happen.”

“Maybe. But not this year, not the next. Besides”-I paused to look at the board again-“I don’t think you’re guilty. I haven’t for a long time. When the time’s right, we’ll find out for sure.”