Randy White: Everglades

Beneath Izzy, parked on the blue tile drive, were two Rolls-Royces: a 1923 Silver Ghost, and a ’31 Landaulette, painted racing green. Shiva loved them; collected them. Maybe because he was born upper caste, in India, British-made cars seemed to represent something. Izzy wasn’t sure what.

Less than five years ago, Shiva had owned twenty-three Rollses. But he’d been selling them off-Izzy was one of the few who knew about it-plus some property, some businesses, to augment the organization’s sagging cash flow.

His church was in trouble, and the guy was desperate. Izzy knew that, too.

Something else Izzy had realized after all these years with Shiva: All religion was bullshit. Religion was nothing more than legend manipulated by carefully staged illusions.

It was his personal water-into-wine theory.

Shiva said, “His wife, the attractive blonde-what’s her name?”

“Sally. Yeah, she’s a looker.”

“Has Sally ever met you? Does she know who you are?”

“No.”

“What about Tomlinson?”

“Nope.”

“Okay, they’re old friends. That’s what you said. Sometimes old friends, a man and a woman, they just run off and disappear.”

Kline knew what Shiva meant by “disappear.” Shiva had paid him bonuses to do it before, and he’d actually kind of enjoyed himself the one time it was a woman. But something about the way Shiva said it now irked him-like it was no big deal; grunt work any idiot could pull off.

Izzy called Shiva by his real name on those occasions when he wanted to underscore the fact that he didn’t much give a damn about the man’s religious act, or who paid his salary. He used the name now, saying, “Brilliant, Jerry. But she’s going to visit two guys, not just one. So maybe what you can do is perform another one of your miracles. Snap your fingers, make all three of them disappear. How’s that sound?”

Shiva ignored the sarcasm. “This hippie, even if she does try to get him involved-someone like him? I don’t see the problem. So tell me about the second guy.”

“He’s a marine biologist named Ford. Marion D. Ford. Lives on Sanibel Island at a place called Dinkin’s Bay Marina. Same place as Tomlinson. Ford sells marine specimens.”

“Marine specimens.”

“Um-huh. Like to colleges and labs. For research, that sort of thing.”

Shiva waited through a few beats of silence, before he said, “That’s it? Your background check didn’t turn up anything else-”

There was a polite knock at the door. Shiva paused, checked his watch again. Time for his massage. He said, “Leave now. The women are here.”

Kline said, “Exactly my point. With all the data banks and my resources, that’s all there was: where Ford lives, the name of his company, where he graduated from college, some research papers. They play in some baseball league. Nothing else.

“The guy’s alive, he exists, but never really lived. He’s like an empty body walking.”

Shiva smiled, then began to laugh, waving Izzy toward the door, “Baseball. A children’s game. You’re wasting my time for this? If a biologist and some pothead worry you, maybe you’ve been in the business too long. Get out of here. We’ll talk again when I’m through.”

Izzy was remembering a maxim he’d learned at the Mossad training complex in the suburbs of Tel Aviv- Beware the man without a past -as he considered saying to Bhagwan Shiva, You really don’t get it, do you?

Not that he was concerned about a man he’d never met, or the woman, or anyone else. It was Shiva’s attitude that bothered him, the indifference. Like he was really beginning to believe the lie he’d been telling followers for years: I am the truth, and the truth is invincible.

Izzy walked toward the door, thinking, You’re not invincible, asshole. And you’re not taking me down with you…

In the green, squall-glow of a Friday afternoon, April 11th, I returned home from the Everglades, and a ridiculous search for swamp aliens that my friend Tomlinson had dragged me on, to find another old friend, and one of the world’s bright, independent ladies, Sally Carmel, waiting on my deck.

The recently widowed Sally Carmel Minster, I would soon learn.

She met me at the top of the stairs. When she came into my open arms, it was more of a collapse than a friendly hug. I held her close, feeling her breath on my ear. “Did you see him? You walked right past the guy.”

I said, “Guy, what guy?”

“The one who’s been following me for the last two weeks. Big guy with a shaved head. Like a pro wrestler. The kind you see on TV.”

She stopped me when I tried to pull away. “Don’t turn around. He’s in the mangroves. I’ve been pretending like I don’t know he’s there. It’s what I always do when I know he’s following me. He’s right behind you, watching us with binoculars.”

I held her away from me, hands on shoulders, looking her over from head to toe-not an uncommon thing to do if you have not seen someone in a long, long time. And I had not seen Sally in a very long time.

It’d been, what, probably five or six years since she’d visited my little stilt house on Dinkin’s Bay. At least three years since our last phone conversation. It was at a time when her marriage was on the rocks again, and she’d nearly accepted my invitation to spend a week on Guava Key, a members-only resort where I’d been hired to do a fish count.

Our friendship dates back to childhood. We both spent early years in the little mangrove village of Mango, south of Naples, Gulf coast of Florida. It was back when I lived with my crazed, manipulative uncle, Tucker Gatrell, and his lifelong partner, Joseph Egret.

Joseph was an Everglades Indian with an enormous heart. He was one of those rare adults who forged friendships with children naturally, sincerely. In later years, it was Joseph who helped rekindle the friendship between Sally and me during her brief separation. It was a tough time for a good lady. Because she was certain the marriage was over, she and I became more than friends.

But the marriage wasn’t over.

Our relationship ended abruptly when Sally returned to her estranged Miami husband, a high-powered, alpha male named Geoff Minster. He was an architect or a developer-something like that-and he’d lured her back by offering her the chance to help him design some big project.

End of our romance. End of all contact. It is a common, modern phenomenon. Lovers separate, then gradually or abruptly orbit away, trajectories increasingly dissimilar, until one member vanishes, never to reappear. It is a death, of sorts, and it has happened all too often in my life.

When I’d thought of Sally-and I sometimes did-I assumed that it was unlikely her life would ever again intersect with my own. She’d patched a broken marriage. Presumably, she’d been rewarded with the accoutrements of that union: a stable home life, her own work, her own new circle of friends somewhere in or near the concrete swarm that is Miami. Maybe a houseful of babies, too.

But now here she was, standing on the open deck of my little house and lab built on stilts in the shallow water of Dinkin’s Bay, Sanibel Island, Florida.

Looking into her face, her lime-blue eyes, I said, “Why in the world would anyone want to follow you. A stalker, you mean?”

“No. A private investigator, or whatever they’re called these days. I’ve called the police a couple of times, but it hasn’t done any good. He’s been sneaking around, watching me off and on for the last two weeks. Maybe longer, because that’s when I first spotted him. Following me across the state from Coconut Grove, clear to Sanibel-this, I didn’t expect. It’s getting scary now, and I’m sick of it.”