Randy White - The Man Who Ivented Florida

In the jacket, in that heat, Agent Walker was already sweating by the time she got to the marina office and asked the man behind the glass counter where she could find a Mr. Marion Ford.

"You're looking for Doc?" The man behind the counter had an accent, Australian… no, New Zealand. She could tell by the upward lilt when he said, "Just once, it would be nice if a pretty woman came in and asked for me."

Walker said, "You're very kind," and waited.

"Doc lives down the shore there-you can see just the corner of his place through the mangroves. See? The little gray house on piles." The man was leaning, looking out the window. "I'd call for you, but he's been keeping his phone off lately. Rather a private man."

"Yes, I've tried his phone."

"You might walk on down. Just follow the path from the parking lot, and if he's not there, you can leave a message. Or I'll pass a message along-"

The woman said, "Thank you very much. I'll check at his house."

In the parking lot, she let her eyes linger on her new car, finding that some of the delight in it had already faded. She'd had it only two weeks, and the payments were going to be a strain. A Japanese car, at that-they were notorious racists-but it was such a beautiful car, machined like a fine watch, sleek and solid, and she'd fallen in love with the damn thing. She trailed a long brown finger over the fender, noting the patina of dust. From now on, maybe she'd drive one of the pool cars. Save washings, and this salt air couldn't be good for the finish.

"Hello… hello? Anyone home?"

A gray boardwalk wobbled out to the house, and Agent Walker stood with one foot on it, calling. Quiet-looking place with its tin roof and wash hung out on the line. All men's clothes, khaki and whites, nothing feminine about the place at all except a kind of measured neatness.

"Hello?"

She could see movement at the far side of the house, someone on the dock below, and she walked on out, glad she'd worn plain flats, because the spaces in the dock would be a hell of a place to catch a heel. Fall off the dock and she'd go right into the muck, no water at all, like the tide was out.

A man's head poked up over the dock. "Yeah?" Man with wire glasses, hair salt-streaked, blond, his expression none too friendly. But she walked on out anyway, taking her ID from her purse as she went, ducked around some pilings, and stepped down onto the lowest dock, where she could see the man was standing in a funny-looking boat-wide wooden thing with poles and nets. Beside it was tied a sleek fiberglass boat, turquoise green, with a big black engine. Fast, probably cost a lot. She wondered what it would be like to try skiing.

"Are you Marion Ford?"

"That's right."

Walker introduced herself. The man made no effort to shake hands, but he did take her ID wallet. He studied it, his eyes swinging from the laminated photograph to her face. "Florida Department of Criminal Law," he said. "You've had your hair cut shorter."

She gave him her professional, congenial smile. Had to be friendly with them if you wanted them to talk. "Florida is a lot hotter than I thought it would be."

"Not like New York, huh?"

"Well, it can be hot there, too." She stopped talking, her expression puzzled.

The man said, "Your accent."

She replaced the smile. "I keep forgetting-I'm the one who talks funny down here."

The man held the ID wallet for her to take, then turned his attention to the boat, messing with ropes and nets, not looking at her.

"I was wondering if you might have time to answer a few questions."

Instead of saying, "About what?"-that was almost always the first thing they asked-he said, "I'm just getting ready to go out. I have to catch the low tide."

"It wouldn't take long. We're trying to get some background information on a relative of yours. Strictly routine. A man named Tucker Gatrell."

Instead of asking, "Is he in some kind of trouble?"-they almost always asked that if the questions were about a friend or a relative-the man in the boat said, "Then why don't you talk with Tucker Gatrell?"

"I've already spoken with him."

"He suggested you talk with me?"

"No. But for our background files-"

"The tide's waiting, Ms. Walker. I've got to start the engine and get going."

She tried a different approach. "Mr. Ford, I've driven all the way from St. Petersburg. I haven't been with the FDCL long, and they've given me this assignment, more than thirty people to interview, and if you could just give me a few minutes…" Playing on his sympathy, something she hated to do.

The man stooped, pressed a button, and the boat's engine clattered- Pop-apop-POP-POP-POP. She had to talk over the noise. "Maybe I could go out in the boat with you?"

For the first time, he smiled a little. "You'd get your clothes wet. Shoes all messy. I'll be dragging the nets." He had an irritating confidence, sure she would refuse.

"That's all?" Agent Walker swung down onto the boat, not giving him a chance to reply. "It'll be a good place for us to talk, out on the water."

Ford was thinking, Exactly what I deserve, giving her an opening like that. She set me up. He was standing at the wooden ship's wheel, one of the old ones made of fitted mahogany, steering across the shallows of Dinkin's Bay. The woman stood beside him, looking out the windshield, small black purse on the control console between the compass and the throttle lever, not saying much. Long-bodied woman, maybe twenty-four or twenty-five, had the practiced professional aloofness that more and more females were affecting when dealing with men-so determined to deflect any male assumptions about their competence that they also voided any chance of personal interaction, upon which acceptance and judgments of equality were based. Wore perfume. Nails glossed, but not long, and she had the gaunt facial bone structure and coloring Ford associated with people of the western Sahara.

First the sandstorm, now her.

"Is this what you do for a living, net fish?" In the little wheel-house, Walker didn't have to talk as loudly to make herself heard over the engine.

"That isn't on the printout they gave you? My occupation?"

"It said 'Sanibel Biological Supply.' That's all. Well, that you're a marine biologist."

Ford said, "Uh-huh," steering the boat past the fish-house ruins off Green Point, then back into the main channel, past Jack Thomas's house and Esperanza Woodring's place, where chickens scratched beneath palm trees by the dock. He turned west into narrow Tarpon Bay cut, then angled north onto the grass flats before throttling down, stopping the boat. Pine Island Sound spread away northwest to southeast, a gray water field of flux and flow that showed the swirls of rising bars and the contours of grass bottom smooth as a golf course. Low tide, late afternoon, and not many boats were out. But having the woman along neutralized the delight Ford would have felt being alone on a spring low, watching water drain away until the sea bottom showed itself.

He unlashed the net booms and cranked the outriggers down, listening as the woman said, "Maybe I should tell you why I've been assigned this interview." She was still standing by the wheel, trying to stay out of the way.

"Why you're interested in Tuck Gatrell," Ford said.

"He is your uncle."

"He's my uncle."

"But we're not interested just in him. We're interested in everyone who lives in that little village, Mango. And other places along the boundaries of Everglades National Park, too. We're trying to build our files."

Ford eased the boat into gear and threw the nets out, watching to make sure they didn't swing out tangled. He said, "Oh?"

Walker hoped he would say more; hoped his tone would suggest the approach she should take. So far, the man didn't fall into the textbook categories of friendly witness or hostile witness. It was as if he was standing back, watching from the gallery, not even there. She had a sheath of data sheets on all the work-ups-people she was supposed to interview-but Marion Ford's was only two paragraphs on a single page. The biology business, navy, and ten years with the NSA, National Security Agency, which implied all sorts of interesting possibilities, and why she'd jumped onto the boat instead of just setting up a phone interview. See what the guy was like for herself.