Hot as it was outside, he could feel even more heat radiating from the house. An old Hispanic woman in a housedress stood, peering at him in curiosity.
“Buenos días,” Smithback said. He explained, in halting Spanish, that he was a student, working on a research project. Then he pulled out the enlarged and sharpened photo of the tattoo.
“¿Ha visto esto antes?” he asked.
The woman squinted in the semidarkness of the front hall, putting her face close to the image.
“¿Qué es esto?” Smithback asked.
Suddenly, the old woman’s eyes widened. The curiosity was replaced with suspicion. “¡Vaya!” she spat at him, abruptly slamming the door in his face.
Smithback rapped again, then again, but there was no response. Finally, he shoved his card under the door, went back to the curb, and looked around. A few houses down, he saw a short, wiry man of about sixty mowing his lawn. Smithback walked toward him.
At his approach, the man cut the motor. He was smoking a small, foul-smelling cheroot and wore a filthy T-shirt emblazoned with the logo of a landscaping company.
Smithback nodded at him, and the man nodded back. Encouraged by the logo, the reporter launched into his explanation, in English this time. After a minute, the man interrupted him. “No hablo inglés.”
Smithback showed him the picture. “¿Qué significa eso?”
The man looked at the image—barely a glance, really—then shook his head. His face was a studied blank.
“¿Lo ha visto antes?” Smithback pressed.
The man shrugged. “No hablo inglés.”
Christ, it wasn’t even English. But the man just stood there, shaking his head and shrugging, and eventually Smithback gave him his card anyway, thanked him, and turned away. Immediately, the man fired up his old mower and went back to work.
He glanced around again. A little farther down the block, another woman—slightly younger, slightly better dressed—was approaching the front door of a two-story apartment building, arms full of grocery bags. Instinctively, Smithback trotted forward in time to hold the door open for her.
“Gracias,” she said with a smile.
“De nada.” He dug out the picture of the tattoo. “Por favor—qué es esto?”
The woman looked at the photo. Almost immediately he saw, despite her initial friendliness, the same look the old lady had given him—a combination of suspicion and dread. As she turned to enter the building, Smithback stopped her one more time. “Por favor, por favor. ¿Quién lo lleva?”
From the shelter of the doorway, the woman glanced around nervously. Then she jerked her head westward, indicating a spot farther down the block. And before Smithback could give her his card or say anything more, she scurried into the apartment lobby, shutting the door behind her.
Slowly, Smithback walked back to his car. Christ, it was hot. So far he hadn’t learned anything concrete. Nevertheless, the very silence and agitation of the people spoke volumes. Starting the engine, he pulled away from the curb and began heading down the block, looking for whatever or whoever the woman with the groceries might have been indicating.
He found it at the next intersection. A dilapidated social club stood on the corner, front door open, what sounded like narco-rap filtering out from within. Three young men were lounging outside the door, dressed in T-shirts and old jeans. One sported several tattoos on his arms; the others appeared unmarked. Their expensive sneakers and gold chains looked out of place with the rest of their ratty attire.
Smithback pulled over. He had good street instincts, and at this moment they told him to keep his engine running.
He rolled down the passenger window and gestured to the youths. “¡Hola!” He had to say it again before one of the three pushed himself away from the wall and sauntered over.
Smithback showed him the picture of the tattoo. “¿Qué es esto?”
The youth looked at it for a minute, then turned to the others and muttered something Smithback couldn’t understand. Now they, too, approached the car window. Smithback’s sense of danger spiked dramatically.
“¿Quién lo usa?” he asked as calmly as possible.
Abruptly, one of the three tried to snatch the picture away. Smithback pulled it back just in time, crumpling it and throwing it in the backseat. At the same time, he put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb.
“¡Vaya de aquí!” said the tattooed one. “¡Hijo de puta!”
“¡Pendejo!” yelled another, spitting in the direction of the passenger door.
Smithback drove away, glancing frequently in his rearview mirror. None of the youths followed him, but it was clear they were watching him as closely as he was watching them. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. McGregor Boulevard wasn’t far away, and from there it was half an hour’s drive back to the place he’d rented on Sanibel.
Had he made progress? Very likely.
Had he nearly shit his pants just now? Absolutely.
18
IN THE NEXT scheduled meeting, Chief P. B. Perelman contemplated Commander Baugh with fresh interest. The man had taken a cutter down to Cuba—a gutsy thing to do—and returned having provoked a minor diplomatic incident but with nothing tangible to show for his effort. Yet the man at the front of the briefing room didn’t look chastened. Instead, he was just as self-assured as ever, just as determined, every inch the confident commander. Perelman wondered if that wasn’t the very quality that had allowed him to advance so far.
Since the incident, however, the commander had shifted focus, dropping the Cuban prison idea and working instead from the hypothesis that the feet had been dumped at sea from a ship.
Perelman glanced at the back of the room, where Pendergast was standing in his usual spot, arms crossed, his expression obscured by the Panama hat that had been pulled down over his features.
Baugh cleared his throat, his gravelly voice filling the briefing room. “I would like to introduce Dr. Bob Kendry, who is a specialist in ocean currents, to explain the new line of inquiry. Dr. Kendry?”
A strikingly tall man took the podium. Bald and sixtyish, he had a lean, fit frame and wore a tailored blue suit. There was almost something of the movie star about him, and when he spoke, it was with a voice to match—deep, smooth, and calm.
“Thank you, Commander Baugh.” He removed some notes from his pocket and placed them on the lectern. “Over the course of three days, one hundred and twelve feet washed up on Captiva Island—or I should say, mostly on Captiva. Two drifted into Sanibel, and two more washed up on North Captiva, one on Cayo Costa, and one on Gasparilla Island. The investigative problem can be simply stated. Can we backtrack twenty-eight, thirty days to where these feet came from? The answer is: we can.”
The lights dimmed and he launched into a discussion of currents, winds, tides, and wave action, with several charts projected on the screen, along with a crude animation of how an array of floating objects the size and buoyancy of the feet would have traveled, ending on Captiva Island. After ten minutes of this, Perelman turned to Morris, who was sitting next to him. “‘Confusion now hath made his masterpiece.’”
Morris rolled his eyes. “I got lost a while ago myself.”