Randy White - Shark River

Amazing. The ingredients were easy to find, the bombs easily built. They actually worked.

Boom!

For the novice, activating a weapon gives the illusion of power. They all felt that power and liked it.

The bombs they built became more and more sophisticated. Finally, one night, one of them said it was time to become part of the revolution, which was like a dare, and no one said no, and so they rigged a contact detonator to a six-volt battery, packaged it, and sent it to the Naval Special Warfare base on Coronado Island off San Diego.

It was in early winter when Coronado’s jacarandas are in bloom; whole streets lined with lavender trees from the country club clear to the Hotel Del.

Tomlinson told me, “About a week later, the FBI came calling. Interviewed us all. I don’t know why they didn’t make any arrests. I thought sure we were all going down. Nothing ever came of it, though. The other members, they were like, ‘Hey, man, the pigs just aren’t smart enough to catch us.’ I didn’t send the bomb, help make it, nothing. But I didn’t stand up and tell them not to make that bomb, either. So there was blood on my hands. Blood on my hands just as sure as if I’d killed those three men all by myself. After that, the next year or two, I don’t remember much. The guilt, man, seeing those smoking corpses on TV. I went insane. No other way to put it. My father finally had me institutionalized. Just to keep me safe.”

The other members of the group didn’t fare as well. Within two years after the bombing, six of the thirteen members had either been killed in freak accidents or badly injured. Two others simply vanished.

“I was with one of them when it happened,” Tomlinson told me. “I’d just been released. I wasn’t ready, was still woozy from the shock therapy and all the drugs, but I guess they figured it was time. So I hooked up with this old pal of mine in Aspen, a guy named Jeff. He also happened to be one of the original members of our group. The group that sent the bomb. We were in this bar called The Slope, and I went to take a whiz. Came back, and Jeff was gone. His car keys were still on the table, had a full beer and his cigarette was burning in the ashtray.

“His folks spent a fortune trying to find him, but he was gone, man. Vanished. It was like there was some dark thing out there stalking us. Hunting us down. Taking revenge on us, one by one by one.”

I was holding a can of Diet Coke. As I listened to him, the can began to slowly dent, then collapse in my hand. I told myself to sit back, relax, maintain an expression of indifference.

He sighed, paused, chewed at his hair for a moment, then went to the little fridge, opened the door and knelt to see in. As he did, he said, “That was the end for me. I couldn’t take any more. I borrowed money from my old man and bought a sailboat. Headed out to sea. Offshore, a hundred miles or more out, was the first time in years I’d felt any sense of peace. Or safety, after what we did. It was a kind of spiritual rebirth, man. And a release, too. It’s like I always say: I love being offshore because no one can hear you scream.”

He stood, holding a fresh beer. He told me that after months of cruising, he began to recover. Began to study Buddhism, doing sitting meditation twice a day every day. He also began to research the families of the three murdered sailors, wanting to make restitution, and finally found a way. He pretended to be the administrator of a private organization that provided scholarship money to the children of servicemen killed in action. Every extra cent he made, he funneled into that fund.

“I interviewed all three widows by phone. I got to know them. Nice ladies, but only one of them had children, Cheryl Garvin. I talked to her several times. That’s where I first heard your name, long before we ever met. A guy named Marion Ford, but everyone called him Doc. You were tight with her late husband, Johnny, and already sending her money to help out.”

I sat listening, trying not to react, as he added, “When you showed up on Sanibel, I put the two together right away. I figured you’d come to kill me. I expected that all along. By then, a couple more of us had either died in an accident or disappeared. And look who’s talking-me, the guy who always says there’s no such thing as coincidence. You with your spooky background. Tell me the truth, Doc. If you’d been sent to kill me, I’d be dead, right?”

I nodded as if I had no idea what he was talking about, and, before I could think about it, heard myself say, “If I had that kind of background, yeah. Unless they failed to assign some kind of time frame. An oversight that left it entirely up to me when to do it.”

He smiled for the first time. “I get it, one of your jokes. Like you still might have to pull the trigger. Uh-huh. But no, my point is, for us to end up friends is very powerful karma, man. It told me I was back on the right path. Maybe even forgiven. Two months ago, though. .. early December, it was the anniversary of the bombing, and it all came back for some reason. The guilt. The horror. You know why I pushed so hard for you to go to my retreat on Guava Key? Because I’d already arranged for Cheryl to be there, Johnny Garvin’s widow, and I was going to tell you both the truth. Finally get it off my chest. But she had to cancel at the last minute.”

I nodded and stood, feeling some of the old anger return, fighting it, then compartmentalizing it. I am very, very good at compartmentalizing emotion. I waited until I was under control before I said, “I’m glad she didn’t come. It was a long time ago and why put her through it again? Just to make yourself feel better?”

I watched the words hit him and saw them hurt. I took no pleasure in that. It was true. It had all happened a long, long time ago, and several years back I had made a personal decision to leave it all where it belonged-in the past.

Once a decision has been made, emotion-any emotion-is wasted energy and a poor use of time.

As I opened the door, showing him out, I added, “One thing you maybe overlooked. From what I just heard, anyway.”

“What’s that, man?”

“It was a violent time. There were a lot of subversive groups around. Not just yours.”

“Revolution, man. Yeah. There were tens of thousands of committed souls. The energy was so strong it came through the walls like heat.”

I said, “Uh-huh. So if the FBI didn’t arrest anyone from your little group, how are you so sure the bomb was yours?”

They didn’t drive to Mango on Sunday, because Tomlinson was too shaky and hungover. Instead, he puttered around the marina with Ransom, the two of them drinking bottled water and sneaking off occasionally to smoke.

My guess, anyway.

He had to listen to a lot of jokes about Mark Bryant’s dog, too. Good stories travel fast around the islands and islanders aren’t shy about exaggeration. Sunday morning, Jeth told me that he and Janet had found the runaway retriever a few miles away from the marina only an hour or so after the party ended. Sunday evening, though, the story had grown epically. I ran into Alex Payne at Bailey’s General Store, and he said he’d heard that the dog had assaulted half a dozen poodles on Captiva, then tried to swim across to Demere Key where, apparently, there was a female dog in heat.

“I heard even that big black cat you’ve got at the marina had to run for his life and still hasn’t come back,” he laughed.

Nope. Crunch amp; Des was in my lab, sleeping by the window, right where I’d left him.

Early Monday morning, Tomlinson came puttering up in his little dinghy, borrowed the keys to my pickup truck and took Ransom away with him. I gave him my new cell phone to use. I told him I’d been having some engine problems with the truck and he might need it if they broke down.