Randy White - Hunter's moon

Years ago, I’d had to pass the FCC’s Novice and Technician tests so I could legally use shortwave transmitters in countries that had reciprocal operating agreements with the United States. It meant learning to send and receive Morse code at five words per minute-not nearly as fast as the president was drumming out messages.

I’d lost the skill, but I still recognized some common shortwave abbreviations. C:- -. – -. (Yes, you are correct.) R: – -. (Received as transmitted.) TMW: – - – - – -. – - – -. (Contact you tomorrow.)

Transmission concluded.

The president removed the headphones and slid the circuit board toward me. “Something else I learned in Boy Scouts. Made it myself.” He sounded proud. “It’s a simple continuous-wave transmitter with a crystal oscillator, runs on twelve volts. With this antenna”-he’d strung a copper wire to the forward bulkhead-“I can skip signals a thousand miles or more.”

“You don’t think the NSA can track that?”

“Sure they can. But they won’t. I’m using a straight key on a thirty-meter band-primitive compared to the kind of communications they’re set up to monitor. Even if someone stumbled onto it, they’d think I’m some kid. Drumbeats.” He touched the telegraph key. “That’s what this would sound like.”

No Mas lifted and rocked in the Gulf night as I took a closer look-an old telegraph key with copper contacts, springs, and a steel shorting bar.

I knew better than to ask who he’d contacted, so I asked, “Everything okay back home?”

“So far, so good. My Secret Service guys are getting antsy, but they still believe I’m locked away in my cabin, meditating.” He sounded relieved.

When I returned to the fuel docks, I was carrying two Styrofoam cups filled with ice and Tuborg beer. I knew the president wanted to be back aboard by midnight so he could make his nightly shortwave contact.

We found a bench facing the harbor. No Mas ’s anchor light was a white star among many clustered off Christmas Island.

“That smell… heat and rain”-Wilson sniffed as if tasting-“it hasn’t changed.”

At night, a bubble of Caribbean darkness envelopes Key West insulating the island from the mainland. Air molecules are dense, weighted with jasmine, asphalt, the musk of shaded houses. Rain on coral; heat, too.

“When I was in the Navy, we were stationed here for six weeks. The air base off Garrison Bight-I’d just completed amphibian training in San Diego, and we were still flying the Grummans. I didn’t want to leave. When I finished my hitch, I wanted to come back and run a charter boat. Maybe buy a seaplane and fly tourists to the Tortugas and Bahamas.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“It was Wray. She had a higher calling. The woman was born with a need to serve. We couldn’t have children, and I’m not the religious type. So we went into politics.”

“Not religious?” His month in a monastery, the interest in Zen-then both were precedents for severing contact with security people.

“Unofficially? No. My wife, though, was religious in the best sense of the word.”

He took a drink, shaking his head. “I hope I don’t sound like some maudlin old geezer when I talk about her. One of the perks of being president is that when I bore people, they think it’s their fault.”

No, it wasn’t tiresome. He’d mentioned his wife a few times while sailing. Stories that provided fresh insight. Wray Wilson’s public persona was that of the solid, supportive First Lady who had overcome handicaps. According to Wilson, though, “She was the brains, I was the mouthpiece, and we shared the balls.”

A tough, driven soul, was the impression. He loved her. He was also in awe. She compensated for her deafness, and slight speech impediment, by working harder, studying harder, than her contemporaries. The woman had a sophisticated understanding of the world, he said, that could only have been assembled in silence.

“I didn’t go into politics because I wanted to be president,” Wilson told us. “Hell, I didn’t even want to be a congressman. Live in D.C. after some of the places I’d been stationed? I went into politics because I wanted to live up to Wray’s expectations. At first, that was the only reason. Then it kinda swallowed me up.”

He focus was inward. The Navy pilot chuckled. “I was more comfortable as a hero than a president. I’m right at home leading a charge. But I have no interest in assigning tents afterward. If it wasn’t for Wray, I never could’ve pulled it off.”

It was touching. I told him that as we sat looking at the harbor, sipping our beers, adding, “I prefer boredom to surprises. That’s why I’m offering to help. I’m not an adrenaline junkie, Sam. Thrills are for amateurs.”

The problem, I explained, was time. We didn’t have enough.

“We have to be in Central America in three days? If the weather holds, it’ll take us three days to sail to Mexico. After that, what? Nicaragua, where Mrs. Wilson was killed? That’s two or three hundred miles overland. Panama is a couple hundred more.”

I leaned forward for emphasis, because I was now whispering. “For me to eyeball an individual, to chart his habits, his schedule, it takes a week. And I have to know the area well enough to select a.. . a spot.”

As I continued talking, listing the difficulties, Wilson sat looking at the harbor as if I wasn’t there. When I’d finished, he nodded. “Useful information. But I told you from the beginning-don’t worry about details.”

“But we don’t have time-”

He turned to face me. “When people say they don’t have time, it really means they’re not sufficiently motivated. That’s why I’m going to give you another piece of information. I didn’t plan on sharing it until later. You know more about aviation than most.”

“Flying basics, sure.”

“You can land and take off?”

“I can take off, sure. Landing? It depends.”

“Then think about this: Wray’s plane caught fire after it landed. A grass runway in the rain forests of Nicaragua. Do you perceive some significance?”

I said, “You’ve mentioned it twice, both times like it should mean something. It doesn’t. Sorry. Something to do with the rainy season?”

“No.”

“Was the plane low on fuel?” Fire was less likely if a plane was in a rain-sodden forest and low on fuel.

Wilson said, “You’re getting closer, but that’s not it.” He thought for a moment, then stood and began walking.

I caught up with him at Flagler Station, where he turned left. The doors of Caroline Music were still open, ceiling fans fluttering. Music came from inside, the elegant refrain of one of the classics we all know but I couldn’t immediately name.

I looked inside, still walking, then did a double take: a familiar scarecrow figure sat at the grand piano. The president was about to say something when I interrupted. “There he is. Tomlinson.”

He followed my gaze. “Liberace lives.”

“I should’ve stopped here first.” The guy who owned the place was one of Tomlinson’s buddies, but a music shop? An hour before midnight?

Wilson said, “That was one of our favorite pieces. He plays… beautifully. I didn’t know he was a musician.”

My brain had matched melody with a name-“Moonlight Sonata”-as I told him, “I didn’t, either.”

When Tomlinson disappeared, he was wearing British walking shorts, tank top, hair braided. Now, though, he was dressed formally: black slacks, white dinner jacket, hair brushed smooth to his shoulders, sun-bleached, with streaks of gray. He was hunched over the piano, fingers spread, face close to the keys, like a nearsighted novelist at a typewriter.