“What?”
“About Turkey Point, this operation. There’s something you’re hiding.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Oh, yes, you do.”
Frank was quiet for a moment, considering, then said, “You’re good.”
She stayed in the doorway, a hazy moonglow behind her in the tall pines that bordered his property.
“What it is, I’ve got a guy. An informant. I didn’t recruit him. He called me. He’s gotten involved with these people, the ELF group. There was something bothering him about it all.”
“What was bothering him?” She wasn’t angry. Sounding neutral, patient.
Frank was relieved. “Nothing specific. He called last week. I haven’t heard from him again.”
“Which guy is it?”
Frank was silent, thinking. Taking too long.
“You don’t trust me, Frank.” Half statement, half question.
“Can we talk about this tomorrow? I’ll lay it all out, everything, okay?”
“Sure. I understand. You don’t want to spoil the afterglow. Don’t want to mix business with pleasure. Sure.”
“Now you’re pissed.”
“Not at all. Get some sleep. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Then she backed out the door and was gone.
* * *
No one spoke to Thorn. Flynn kept his distance. At suppertime Flynn walked off and sat by the obstacle course with his Subway sandwich. Wally tagged along and planted himself a few yards away.
Thorn got the last sandwich in the ice chest, turkey with Swiss, so soggy he could’ve eaten it with a spoon. He sat by himself on the rocky soil on the western side of the island. A small gap in the mangroves with a sunset view over the mainland. His minder, Pauly, stood ten yards away watching him eat.
After darkness settled, a solid wave of mosquitoes moved in, a mass so thick even Thorn was driven inside the tent. On a cot across the way, Flynn was immersed in a paperback novel. Wally was at his laptop, tapping the keys in staccato bursts. Cameron did some biceps curls with fifty pounds in each hand, while Leslie lay on her cot and stared up at the fabric of the tent. At the mesh window, Pauly stood and gazed out into the darkness.
One by one they got beneath their sheets. Cameron turned off the single lightbulb hanging from a crossbeam. There was no talk, no good-nights, no camaraderie. Just darkness, except for the blue glow of Wally’s computer as he continued to click the keys in rapid bursts.
Hours later when Thorn came awake in the middle of the night, Wally’s computer was shut down. The electric fan churned and men were snoring, one louder than the others with a wet catch in his throat, and damp, fluttering lips.
Thorn turned his head to the side.
Sitting on the edge of the adjacent cot was Pauly Chee. Pauly’s naked chest gleamed with sweat and moonlight; his eyes were black sapphires glowing from deep within. They were fixed on Thorn.
Pauly was chewing something slowly, something thick and gummy that flexed his jaws. Watching Thorn without pause. Draped across his shoulders, a python glimmered like black jelly as it oozed between his arms and wrapped its slippery, undulating length around his torso, once, twice. Pauly uncoiled the snake and guided it onto the floor, and the python slid away into the darkness.
Thorn lay still and listened to the man’s soft chewing like a dog working deliberately through his rawhide treat. On the sweetening breeze he smelled the scent of tarnished copper rising from the mangroves, and he could sense the swelling barometric pressure of an approaching storm and hear its faint cannon fire from out at sea.
He glanced over at his son sleeping peacefully two cots away, then lay back and shut his eyes, and as he drifted down a long slope back into sleep, he had a dreamy vision of Pauly’s python cruising out of the tent and into the tall grasses—that giant snake heading off to track the last of the island’s raccoons and mice and nesting birds, then Thorn was watching the knobby back of a monster croc sink beneath a black satin sea, sink and sink into the cold depths that were darker than any grave.
NINETEEN
AT SUNRISE FRANK ROLLED OUT of bed, pulled on his gym shorts, laced up his Brooks running shoes, stretched for a few minutes to get his blood moving, watching the morning TV news.
All the anchors were hyped about the tropical storms lined up, five of them starting off the coast of Africa and stretching into the Gulf, where Ivan was growing into a Category 4 hurricane. Juanita was next in line. Miami was in her cone, and all the storm guys were revving up their 3-D maps. Kurt was next, then two others farther out that hadn’t earned names yet.
Sheffield switched off the TV. He got much better hurricane info from Matthew White’s e-mail updates. Matt farmed lychee nuts down in Homestead, and as a hobby he forecast hurricanes. Though he had no formal training, Matt’s tracking predictions had a much higher success rate than did those of the TV guys with all their degrees and cool devices, plus Matt did it without a bit of hype.