Mangrove Lightning (A Doc Ford Novel, Band 24) - Hardcover

White, Randy Wayne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0399576681 ISBN 13: 9780399576683

Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

The ghosts of a 1925 multiple murder stalk Doc Ford in this electrifying novel in the New York Times–bestselling series.
 
Doc Ford has been involved in many strange cases. This may be one of the strangest. A legendary charter captain and guide named Tootsie Barlow has come to him, muttering about a curse. The members of his extended family have suffered a bizarre series of attacks, and Barlow is convinced it has something to do with a multiple murder in 1925, in which his family had a shameful part.

Ford doesn’t believe in curses, but as he and his friend Tomlinson begin to investigate, following the trail of the attacks from Key Largo to Tallahassee, they, too, suffer a series of near-fatal mishaps. Is it really a curse? Or just a crime spree? The answer lies in solving a near-hundred-year-old murder...and probing the mind of a madman.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

This is Randy Wayne White’s 24th Doc Ford book, after Deep Blue and Cuba Straits. He has also had four collections of his columns for Outside magazine and elsewhere published—and the new Hannah Smith novels Gone, Deceived, Haunted, and Seduced. In 2002, a one-hour documentary film titled The Gift of the Game, about White’s trip to Cuba to find the remnants of the Little League teams founded by Ernest Hemingway in the days before Castro, won the “Best of the Fest” award from the 2002 Woods Hole Film Festival, then was bought by PBS and broadcast station by station in the spring and summer of 2003. A veteran fishing guide who at one time had his own local PBS show, White lives in an old house on an Indian mound in Pineland, Florida.

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1

On the phone, Tomlinson said to Ford, "When the deputy's wife and kids disappeared, moonshiners might've dumped their bodies in the lake-it was during Prohibition. It wouldn't be the first time karma has waited decades to boot justice in the ass."

"Tootsie Barlow told you that story?" Ford, a marine biologist, was referring to a famous fishing guide who ranked with Jimmie Albright, Jack Brothers, Ted Williams, and a few others as fly-casting pioneers in the Florida Keys.

"His family was involved somehow-the Barlows go way, way back in the area. I don't know how yet, but I will. He's in bad shape, so I need to take it slow, but you're the one who told me about the lake-Chino Hole. That's the connection. The access road cuts through Tootsie's property."

"I had no idea. He moved to the Everglades?"

"Smack-dab in the middle. One of those little crossroads villages like Copeland or Carnestown. The property's been in his family for years. I'm driving down this afternoon. Since he quit guiding, it's probably easier for him to wake up and see sawgrass instead of the Gulf Stream. The endgame, dude, for watermen like us, it can be pretty damn sad."

"I've heard the rumor," Ford said. "As far as your story goes, I'm still lost."

"So's Tootsie. How many fishing guides put away money for retirement? He's broke, which is bad enough, but now he's afraid that God has singled out his family for punishment. Like a conspiracy, you know? Not because of something he did, more likely something his father or a relative did. The cops won't listen, his preacher doesn't believe him, so who else is he gonna call but the Right Reverend, yours truly."

Tomlinson, an ordained Rinzai Buddhist priest, seldom employed the honorific "Right Reverend." The title had been bestowed by a Las Vegas divinity mill after cashing his check for fifty bucks.

"Tootsie wants you to put in a good word with God, I get it. I still don't see what this has to do with us . . ."

"He wants someone to convince the cops he's not crazy. And there's another connection. The deputy who disappeared was J. H. Cox. That ring a bell? It should."

"When was this?"

"Nineteen twenty-five. A few years earlier, a woman was murdered by a man named Cox. Same area; near Marco Island. I don't know if it was the same man, but your Hannah Smith is a direct descendant of the woman he killed."

Mentioning the biologist's ex-lover, Hannah, was a calculated risk to catalyze Ford's interest. In the background over the phone, Tomlinson could hear a steel drum band. "Hey, seriously, where are you?"

Ford, who was in the lobby of the Schooner Hotel, Nassau, Bahamas, said, "I'm in Lauderdale. At a convention for aquarium hobbyists. I'll get back to the lab late tomorrow. Hopefully."

"Bahia Mar, Lauderdale?"

"Close enough. Look . . . I've got a talk to give and I'm still working on my notes." As he spoke, the child-porn dealer he'd been tailing stepped to the registration desk. Ford covered the phone and moved as if getting into line.

When he rejoined the conversation, his boat bum hipster pal Tomlinson was saying, ". . . Tootsie's story is historical fact. I've got the old newspaper stories to prove it. In August 1925, Deputy Cox, his wife, and two kids all disappeared the night before a bunch of bootleggers went on trial. Marco Island or somewhere at the edge of the Everglades-get it?-all within a few miles of Chino Hole."

"Moonshiners would need fresh water," Ford reasoned while he watched the clerk encode the porn dealer's room key.

"That's who the newspapers blamed, but there was other nasty crap going on at the time, which I'm just starting to research. You ever hear of the Marco Island war?"

"Come on, you're making this up."

"It happened, man. Same time period. A bunch of heavy hitters had their fingers in the regional pie-Al Capone, probably Joe Kennedy, too, but they weren't the worst. The elite rich were stealing homesteads, and smuggling in Chinese illegals to boot." Tomlinson sniffed, and added, "Lauderdale, huh? Dude, the satellite must'a stopped over Nassau, 'cause I swear can I smell jerked chicken."

Ford replied, "Call you back," and hung up as the clerk addressed the porn dealer by name for the third time-standard, in the hospitality business-then handed over a key in a sleeve with the number 803 written on it and circled.

"I'll be checking out in about an hour," Ford told the clerk when it was his turn.

There were ceiling fans in the lobby and panoramic windows, beyond which sunbaked tourists lounged by the pool. A brunette in a red handkerchief two-piece was sufficiently lush and languid to spark a yearning in the biologist-an abdominal pang he recognized as discontent.

Focus, he told himself, and returned to his encrypted notes. It became easier when the brunette stood and buttoned up her beach wrap. Every set of poolside eyes followed her to the door.

An hour later, the porn dealer reappeared in the lobby, wearing shorts and flip-flops, and exited toward the tiki bar.

Ford shouldered his computer bag, and crossed the lobby to the elevators.

From the eighth floor, Montagu Bay was a turquoise basin encrusted with slums and ox cart traffic on the eastern fringe. Spaced along the waterfront were resort compounds; postcard enclaves that were separated from Nassau's realities by armed guards and tastefully disguised concertina wire.

The biologist no longer wondered why tourists came to places like this. People seldom traveled. Not really. Travel was too damn unpredictable. Instead, they contrived daydreams. They chose template fictions that matched, or came close enough to, the vacation they wanted to describe to their friends back home.

Near the elevator was a house phone. He dialed housekeeping, and told the woman, "I'm a dope. Can you please send someone up with a key to eight-oh-three? I locked myself out."

"Your name, sir?"

"James Lutz." That was the name the porn dealer was using.

"When security arrives," the woman added, "show them your passport, Mr. Lutz."

"Have him bring a bucket of ice, too," the biologist replied.

He was palming a twenty-euro bill when a kid wearing a name badge appeared, used a passkey, and bowed him into the room. "Hang on, I've got something for you." Inside the closet, as anticipated, was a wall safe, which he fiddled with before giving up. "Damn . . . must have punched in the number wrong. What's the default code? I need my wallet."

The kid opened the safe, and stepped back in deference to this solid-looking American who exuded confidence, but in a friendly way that suggested he was also generous.

"Thank you, Mr. Lutz," the kid said, accepting the twenty. No eye contact; he backed out of the room.

"You're supposed to see this." The fake passport earned only a dutiful glance.

He has no future in the security trade, Ford rationalized when the kid was gone. I did him a favor.

On the other hand, probably not. Child pornography was a billion-dollar international industry. Nassau was the ancillary stronghold for a Russian network that branched into Haiti, Indonesia, and the Middle East, particularly Muslim regions where daughters were treated as chattel. Children provided a steady income to jihadists who enjoyed beheading infidels. When...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0399576681
• ISBN 13: 9780399576683
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 352
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar