Randy White - Everglades

DeAntoni said, “Money’s the problem? You lost me there.”

“I don’t want it. If I do get the insurance money, I’m giving it to my church. Most of it. I’ll keep just enough to live on. But I can’t if there’s a chance I got it illegally, because it’s dirty money. Or if there’s a chance that the insurance company will demand it back.”

To DeAntoni, I said, “If they write the check, there’s not much chance they’ll do that, is there?”

The big man looked uneasy. “I think the last they want to do is get their name in the papers for that kind’a scandal. The Feds would have to be involved. But for four million-five. Yeah, they’d take their bruises, suck it up. They’d want the money back.”

I asked, “Scandal?”

Sally said to DeAntoni, “I haven’t told Doc the whole story yet. He doesn’t know.”

I said, “What don’t I know?”

DeAntoni told me, “About the insurance company. Minster was one of the founders of Everglades Home and Life. The last bad hurricane, whatever its name was, it flattened a couple of big developments that he built. The insurance companies paid off, but they went bankrupt doing it.”

Sally took over. “Geoff and some other developers around Miami couldn’t get insurance. People who wanted to buy a new house couldn’t get insurance. It was a mess. So Geoff and some of his business associates came up with their own solution. He was brilliant in his way. Driven, but brilliant.”

DeAntoni said, “What he did was pretty smart. His group did the research and calculated that, when a certain area of Florida is hit by a really bad storm, there’s almost always a ten-to-twenty-year gap before it’s likely to get hit again. Statistically. Those’re good odds. How much can you make writing clean insurance over fifteen years? Start in the high millions, then add some nice big numbers at the front.

“So they found investors, formed a company and applied to the Florida Department of Insurance. To push through the kind’a thing they wanted takes a lot of political juice. They had it.

“In June, about three years ago, the state approved them as what they call a foreign property and casualty insurer, and accepted them into the state homeowners’ insurance pool. What that means is, that quick”-DeAntoni snapped his fingers-“they were guaranteed to write policies on over a quarter million private homes and businesses. The insurance racket, man, it’s got its own language. They were granted a bunch of lines of business: Homeowners’ Multi-Peril, Commercial Multi-Peril, Auto, Ocean Marine, Health… and life insurance, too.”

“Geoff had life insurance through his own company,” Sally said.

I asked DeAntoni, “Aside from Sally, were there other beneficiaries?”

“Yeah, and I’ll give you one guess who. The company may have to write out a whole lot bigger check to the International Church of Ashram Meditation. More than four times what they would pay to Sally.”

“That explains it,” I said. Meaning why they’d hired DeAntoni to find out the truth-a small insurance company with a reason to keep things private and quiet, and maybe not have to go bankrupt.

I walked the two of them through mangroves to the marina. I hadn’t eaten since that morning-my camp breakfast in the Everglades. Not a very good breakfast, either, since Tomlinson had loaded his goofy little group with health-food types. We’d had bulgur wheat and a slab of some kind of fibrous-looking substance that was supposed to be a substitute for meat.

DeAntoni said, yeah, he wanted to eat, too, but Sally was reluctant.

“It’s not that I don’t want to see the old marina gang, Mack and Jeth, Rhonda and JoAnn and all the others,” she explained, “but I’ve learned that old friends feel a little uncomfortable when a friend changes.”

Referring to herself.

She certainly had changed. It happens a lot, and all too often to good men and women. It happens through misfortune, random accidents, the tragedy of disease, the realization of personal failure.

It also happens because the detritus of an unsatisfying life can accumulate like a weight, until even a strong person finally breaks, gives in and seeks shelter in one of the many escapes available to us all. Drugs are a common route of escape. Religion can be another.

Something had happened to this good lady. Maybe for better, maybe for worse. I have no illusions about my competence as a judge. I screw up my own life so consistently, disappoint my own vision of self so regularly, that I have become a reluctant critic of other people, other lives. But it was obvious that she was no longer the woman I had held, laughed with and made love to on the moonlit outside deck of my stilt house.

Surprise, surprise. Tomlinson had returned for the party. Karlita, the television psychic, was with him. Her idea, he said. Totally. Because she wanted to see me.

Tomlinson threw his arm around my shoulder, weaving mightily. Drunk, stoned, nearly out of it, slurring, “The lady likes the cut of your jib, compadre. Karlita the Chiquita. She’s looked you over port to starboard, bow and stern.”

“Tomlinson,” I said trying to shush him. “Enough with the sailing metaphors. I have no interest in the woman. I already told you that. How’d you get here? Please tell me you didn’t drive your own car.”

“My car? I’ve never owned a car in my…” He let the sentence trail off, thinking about it. “Wait a minute, I do own a car. I bought a Volkswagen Thing off Bud-O-Bandy. Classic beach transport. It’s like a tent with four slabs of drywall built around an engine. My dream car.”

“Exactly,” I said.

We were standing by the sea grape tree next to the Red Pelican Gift Shop, the docks, the darkening bay behind us, the masts and fly bridges of boats strung with party lights. Tomlinson had a pink sarong knotted around his waist, tarpon and snook hand-painted on silk. Shirtless, he was skin over bone, all sinew and veins, his gaunt cheeks and haunted eyes suspended above his shoulders like a human face perched on the stem of a delicate mushroom.

His hair was longer than ever, scraggly, sun-bleached to straw and silver. He’d isolated two shocks of hair with the kind of spring-loaded combs that little girls use: One shock was a ponytail that hung to the middle of his back. The other sprouted directly from the top of his head, a Samurai effect.

He took a deep breath, eyes wide, trying to calm himself. Then he held up an index finger. “Ah-h-h-h, now it’s all coming back. I didn’t drive. I came with Karlita in her black sports car. A hundred fifteen miles an hour through the Everglades. Sawgrass a blur, rednecks in airboats flipping us the bird, screaming foul oaths while I sent out telepathic warning signals to innocent wildlife. Yes, of course. There’s no mystery here. I returned to Sanibel like any normal working lug. In a Lexus GS 400, my head mashed to the seat like I’d been Velcroed by kidnappers. So… what was your point again, Doc?”

“Karlita,” I said. “She’s the point. I’ve got no interest. I don’t want her in my house. I don’t want her in my lab. I don’t want to spend more than a minute or two listening to her bullshit. As long as we’re clear on that.”

He held up an index finger, asking me to pause so he could ask a question. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m getting a very negative vibe here. You don’t like the lady?”

“No. I don’t like the lady.”

I watched my old friend sigh heavily, eyes drowsy, his whole body drooping as if he were about to fall asleep. Or pass out-a more accurate term.

I hoped it was my imagination, but lately, it seemed, Tomlinson was absolutely smashed after only nine or ten beers-a historically light night for him.