Randy White - Everglades

Shiva’s smugness was gone now. Beneath the beard, his face was turning shades of ruby, his neck muscles spasming. His voice was more of a hiss as he said, “You pompous, meddling son-of-a-bitch. I want you out of here. I want you off my property. Get the fuck away from me!”

Tomlinson was only an arm’s length away from Shiva now, nose to nose, smiling. “No more pigeons, Jerry. You promised. Or don’t promises mean anything to you?”

Shiva began to reply, but then he appeared to think of something. The sudden grin on his face was manic. Abruptly, Shiva raised his shotgun, leaned, and fired both barrels.

The snail kite perched in the maples exploded in a smoking swirl of feathers, blue and gray. The corpse of the bird tumbled like a wingless plane. It made a melon sound when it hit the ground.

Shiva lowered his shotgun and yelled into Tomlinson’s face, “Okay, smartass! I won’t shoot any more pigeons. But the blood’s on your hands, not mine.”

For the first time since I’ve known the man, I saw Tomlinson break emotionally. Eyes bulging, he lunged toward Shiva. He got his huge hands around the man’s neck just as I grabbed him from behind. I had to call for DeAntoni to help-Tomlinson had surprising, freakish strength. I’ve never experienced anything like it. It took us both to restrain him.

I believe-I truly do believe-he would have tried to kill Shiva if we’d let him loose.

As we dragged Tomlinson away, he was screaming every foul word, all aimed at Shiva, and interspaced with this refrain: “You’re ruined, Jerry. The Everglades won’t allow it! I swear to God almighty, that we will ruin you…”

I noticed that Izzy, holding the recorder, was relaxed. He seemed very pleased about something.

It was on our way home, just after sunset and while we were crossing the Sanibel Causeway, that DeAntoni’s cell phone rang. I looked at a sky that was streaked with iridescent clouds, mango gold and conch-shell pink, and listened to his side of the conversation.

I heard him say, “Hey, Mrs. Minster, good to hear from you. Oh.. . okay, Sally.”

We were riding over sand islands, Lighthouse Point an elevated darkness off to our left, as I heard: “You’re kiddin’ me. And you knew the guy?”

After a full minute of silence, DeAntoni spoke again into the phone, saying, “I’ll drop off Doc and Tomlinson and come straight to your place. It’ll take me about three hours. Maybe we can have a late dinner. If it’s not an imposition.”

He closed his phone, and glanced at me. “Ironwood, the gated community where Sally lives, has a night security guard. A guy named Johnson. He disappeared last night, and they found him floating in the bay this afternoon, dead. Sally said the guy took special care of her. Kept an eye on her house because of the break-ins she’s been having.”

I said, “How’d he die?”

“They don’t know yet. Maybe a stroke and he fell off a dock. That’s what the cops are guessing. But Sally doesn’t believe it. She says someone was in her bedroom again last night. They went through her drawers. She thinks maybe Johnson surprised the guy.”

Sitting sprawled in the backseat, working on his seventh or eighth beer since we’d left Sawgrass and already slurring his words, Tomlinson said, “Evil, man. There’s something evil in the air. There is a very wicked mojo seeping around Sawgrass. The whole scene. Like swamp gas, man. I can feel it.”

DeAntoni said, “Um-huh. Have another beer.”

“An excellent idea. I think I will.”

There was the carbonation sssush of a can being cracked.

DeAntoni was chuckling. “I got to hand it to you, Tinkerbell. You stuck it right up that weirdo’s cheap seats. The only thing that separates Shiva’s lips from his asshole is a couple of feet of tubing-and you proved it.”

For the fourth or fifth time, Frank said to me, “The skinny fucker’s got an arm on him. I’ll never question that again.”

Meaning Tomlinson.

Sounding miserable, Tomlinson replied, “Wrong, wrong, wrong. Shiva won, man. The way I behaved, it’s against everything I believe and stand for. What happened is, he proved I’m as much a fraud as he is.”

Tomlinson had been talking that way since we left Sawgrass.

To DeAntoni, I said, “When you talked to her about the dead guard, did Sally sound frightened?”

“Yeah. But in control. Not too bad. There’s an ex-cop who works with me sometimes, lives in Hialeah. I’ll call him, ask him to hop over to Ironwood and keep an eye on things ’till I get there.”

“I think that’s a great idea, Frank. We don’t want anything to happen to her.”

Showing some emotion, DeAntoni said, “If anybody touches that lady, by the time I’m done, they’ll need a compass to find all the parts they got missing.” Then: “Hey, you know what? She said she’d have dinner with me. Just the two of us alone. That she’d be delighted. ”

He was sounding pretty delighted himself. chapter twenty-two

The next afternoon, Sunday, April 13th, at 6 P.M., I was working in my lab when I felt the framework of my stilt house vibrate with what seemed to be a series of three distinct tremors.

I was standing at my stainless-steel dissecting table when it happened. I immediately looked to my right where, beneath the east windows, and on a similar table, is a row of working, bubbling aquaria-octopi, squid and fish therein. There are more glass aquariums above on shelves.

In each aquarium, the tremors had created seismic oscillating circles on the surface, and miniature waves.

Nope. I wasn’t imagining things. And, no, it wasn’t because I’d just built my third drink: the juice of two fresh Key limes mixed with Nicaraguan rum, crushed ice and a splash of seltzer.

To my left, along the east wall, near the door, there are more tanks, all heavily lidded and locked because they contain stone crabs and calico crabs. Octopi, I’d learned, are master thieves when it comes to their favorite food-thus the locks.

The water in those tanks was vibrating as well.

I was working late in the lab because I was running low on supplies. Restocking inventory was long overdue. On a yellow legal pad clamped to a clipboard, I’d written: compartmented petri dishes (pack/20); Tekk measuring pipets (dozen); Pyrex tubes (mm/various/72); ultraviolet aquarium sterilizer; tetracycline tablets (pack/20); methyl-chrome; clarifier; pH test paper.

The shopping list wasn’t close to being complete. I was leafing through my Carolina Science amp; Math catalog, thinking about adding a neat little portable water tester to the list when the house began to shake.

At first, I thought to myself, Sonic boom? But then I felt it twice more, and I thought, Construction blasts.

I walked to the center of the room where I’ve installed a university-style lab workstation. It’s an island of oaken drawers and cupboards beneath a black epoxy resin table, complete with a sink, two faucets, electrical outlets and double gas cocks for attaching Bunsen burners or a butane torch.

I placed the catalog on the table, pushed open the screen door and walked outside, carrying my drink along with me.

I wasn’t the only one who’d felt the tremors. The unusual sensation of earth and water shaking had stirred our little liveaboard community to action on this quiet Palm Sunday afternoon. Across the water, I could see Rhonda Lister and Joann Smallwood exiting their cabin door onto the stern of their wood-rotted Chris-Craft cruiser, Satin Doll. They were looking at the sky, as if expecting to see fighter jets.

Jeth Nicholes, the fishing guide, was standing on the balcony of his apartment above the marina office. Janet Mueller, I was surprised to see, was standing beside him-a recent development in what has been an old and complex love affair.