“Parson himself stopped playing games when marijuana smuggling switched to cocaine. A lot more money was at stake then. Things got nasty real fast. Contract killings, kidnapping.” Daniel paused for a sip of wine. “Thirteen years go by and suddenly the activity moves into my territory on the Canadian border. Same players. It got dangerous for me. An Internal Affairs investigation was heating up. I wasn't sure how the probe would come out for meâI wasn't involved, but my old contacts were, including Parson. I'd just turned fifty. So I put in for early retirement and left for India to get to know my daughter and assist her in the clinic. I kept quiet about where I was headed, hoping Parson wouldn't attempt to contact me again.”
“But you needed your pension checks, didn't you?”
“Right. I have direct deposit to a bank back in Washington State, a post office box in the Midwest and a forwarding system. Just covering my tracks. It was only a matter of time before the feds would find me. But they were not the problemâaside from Parson.”
“What brought you back to the States?”
“After a year or so with Jamie, I'd gotten word that Parson was dying. I decided to move back to the States since the threat of his interference with my life appeared over. I trained for my captain's license down the coast in StuartâChapman School of Seamanship. Skip probably knows about it.”
“Oh, sure,” I said. “It's quite well-known.”
“I bought my boat to start a guide business. Parson recovered. Next I hear from him, he wants to get back in the game. And wants me to partner with him. I turned him down flat, but Parson has sway with people on both sides, and it looks like he intends to pull in his credit with every one of them.”
Daniel shook his head. “Enforced retirement is age fifty-seven, a bit young for men used to aeronautical acrobats as a regular diet. I've had my own trouble with adrenaline addiction; took it out on working around the clock, helping Jamie at her clinic. Parson didn't have another outlet. He stayed active for several years after his retirement, consulting, but was cut loose when he became ill. His whole life was his career. No family, no kids.”
While Daniel took a sip of his wine, he glanced inside the restaurant. He set his glass down hard. “Son of a bitch.”
My body straightened. “What? What's wrong?”
“Look what that guy's eating.”
“Who?” I followed Daniel's stare through the double doors, toward the bar in the front of the restaurant.
“Stocker. He's got so damn much mayonnaise on that ham-and-cheese sandwich, it's dripping out the sides.”
I was startled. “You watch what he eats?”
“Somebody has to. He sure as hell doesn't.” Daniel glared at Stocker's image reflected in the mirror behind the bar. If somebody looked at me like that while I was eating, I couldn't have swallowed. Stocker just dropped his gaze and continued chewing.
Daniel turned back to me. “I like to run six or seven miles in the morning, but I'd kill the guy if he tried to follow, so I run around the park in stupid circles, so he can sit on a bench and watch me. You know what he did yesterday? Bought an ice-cream bar from the vendor when he peddled past. Sat there eating it while I was running.”
Laughing didn't seem the thing to do, but the desire to do so rose strongly. I covered up my grin by sipping wine.
Daniel watched Stocker take another bite with a grim set to his lips. He sighed. “I've been trying to get him in better shape. Started fast-walking a mile down the road with him, then moved into a short jog, and planned to build from there. Last night I tossed some good running shoes in his open car window when he took a restroom break. Now look at him.”
Daniel uncrossed his legs and positioned his body with his back to Burl Stocker, but before giving up the subject, he said, “He could have ordered soup.”
Our salads were served. Daniel said, “I'm talking too much.”
“No, it's interesting. Tell me more about Parson Fields.”
“Well, Parson was a star pilot and despite the shadow of suspicion around him during the years he turned, he later became a very well-connected administrator working out of Washington, D.C. He's gambling with his life right now, but he seems to figure he has nothing to lose. He's pulling in all his favors and apparently thinks I owe him some.”
“Do you?”
“Not by my mathematics. And though it doesn't whitewash my crimes, I sent every penny I acquired illegally back into Mexican housing projects around Juarez.” Daniel took a couple bites of his salad. Then he added, as if thinking out loud, “Maybe he figures since he succeeded in pulling me in once, while we were both active, it should be easy to pull me in again, now that we're both retired.” He looked up. “So that brings me to why I'm in hiding down here.”
“Hiding?” I stilled my fork. “But, my God, they've found you.”
Daniel smiled. “No, they haven't found me. These guys, like I told you, they're just watching to be sure I'm really out of the game, now that Parson is active again. Nobody ever had anything on me, other than my close relationship to Parson. I've done what I can in restitution. It's the Mennonites and their cartel that I'm in hiding from.”
“The who?”
“Anglo-Mexicans, the Mennonites.”
“Like the religious group?”
“One and the same.”
“You can't mean. . . .”
“Back in the nineteen twenties, the Mexican president offered land to the Canadian Mennonites, because Canada was pressing them to join their army and conform to public schooling.”
The waiter brought raw zucchini sticks and a tarragon dip, along with an apology for a delay with our lunches. I set my salad aside and tried the dip while Daniel gave a brief history of the Mennonites in Mexico. He said the Mennonites accepted the invitation to resettle in Mexico so they could continue to school their own children and stay out of the army. They farmed the land given to them, crafted the furniture they were known for in the Old Colony and followed their religious traditions. Eventually they farmed marijuana, then cocaine, and smuggled it across the border in their handcrafted furniture.
“Damn nice furniture, too,” Daniel said. “Mission style. Quite the rage in Texas and New Mexico.”
“But
Mennonites
?” I was picturing the darkly dressed men and the women with their bonnets and long skirts. “Mexican drug smugglers?”
“It's the strangest thing to see. They're white-skinned, blond and blue-eyed. Speak fluent Spanish as their first language, but teach their kids English in order to do business in the U.S.â”
“Their kids do business?”
“They bring along the whole blond, blue-eyed bunchâparents, grandparents, kids and babies. Load up their pickups and trailers with their handmade furniture, packed with drugs, cross the border, unload, collect their cash, get the kids ice cream and go home. Now they're working the Canadian border and even recruiting smugglers in Manitoba from the Old Colony, where some still have relatives.”
During the story, the waiter had brought a basket of warm rolls covered with a napkin and another apology. I was getting hungry, wishing we'd ordered a sandwich dripping with mayonnaise like Burl Stocker. I reached into the basket for a roll. I said, “But Parson Fields is retired, so are you, and yet these officers are hanging around.” I swung one palm out toward the water and then over to Burl Stocker at the bar, his back to us with his eyes watching us in the mirror, sandwich eaten, now sipping an iced drink. “You're in hiding, but not from them.”
I waited until Daniel finished a bite of salad. I asked, “How are you in hiding, exactly?”
“Daniel is not my name.”
I could tell that I looked stricken with this betrayal. I tried to smooth out my face. What difference did it make what his real name was? I'd known this guy for . . . well, clearly, I didn't know one thing about this guy.
We sat quietly as the waiter, at last, set plates of mahi vera before us, removed our salad plates, poured more wine into each of our glasses, wished us enjoyment, then left.
Daniel smiled softly. “I'm sorry, Annie Teague.”
The use of a name that hadn't been mine legally for decades, and for which I had not corrected Daniel's use of, put the situation in perspective for me. I shrugged.
Daniel took a bite of his mahi, then acted as if he'd just had a bright idea.
“Go out with me some evening and I'll tell you my real name.”
“I know your real name.” His fork halted midway from his mouth to his plate for a half second. I said, “Rumpelstiltskin.”
He laughed.
“And no more talk like that. I'll leave.” I took a bite and added, “After I finish this.”
Daniel said, “It's great, isn't it?”
“It's divine.” The spectacular flavors of the mahi vera burst through even in the face of my fascination with this story of Daniel's . . . or whatever his name was. Each flavor stood out distinctly while somehow the background of cumin pulled it all together.
After a couple of bites, I invited Daniel to continue. I said, “The Mennonites are who you're hiding from.”
“Right. They owned me once; it would take very little for them to own me again. But I knew they wouldn't find meâunless they got some help, which my old mentor is lately willing to supply. On their own, there is no real reason for the cartel or its enforcers to look for me. They have other pilots who are willing to turn. That doesn't mean I'm out of danger with them.”
“Why a boat? Why down here?”
“Adventure, challenge, learning new skills. It's beautiful down here. And far from troubleâor so I had thought.” He scoffed, “Retired. I'm fifty-two years old. An interdiction pilot, used to high stakes, risk, combatâthose were the daily components of my life. None of that leads toward the rocking chair, and the guys who think it does, like Parson, get themselves sick or in trouble.” He took a sip of his wine and I continued to eat, happy that I just had to ask the questions, not slow my lunch by answering them.
In the background Jimmy Buffet's song “A Pirate Looks at Forty” played through speakers mounted over the deck. I thought, looking at Daniel, that this could be his theme song. “The cannons don't thunder, there's nothing to plunder.” Daniel seemed to feel out of time and place.
“When a lone guy with a boat hangs around the water much, word gets out and he's invited to do a little job here and there. If he's interested.”
I was relaxed, relishing the tastes in my mouth. Then I sat up straight. “Daniel, you're not working with them?” I set my hands on either side of my chair, ready to push back and clear out.
“No, of course not. The damage to humanity is fierce.” He was quick to reassure me. “But I was approached. I reported that to friends I'd made in the coast guard, while I trained at Chapman.”
He took a bite. “That's how I learned the Mennonites have begun moving their product into the States through Florida. That explained the surveillance and Parson's approach. But now”âhe opened his palmsâ“I'm on hold. Can't move in any direction. Need to stay put to convince the feds I'm straight, while sitting like a duck in water for Parson and his contacts to implicate me. Jeter and I just hang loose.” He reached his hand down to his dog, lying between us on the floor, and rubbed his ears.
We were quiet for a moment. Burl Stocker, at the bar inside, was lifting a hip to pull out his wallet and pay his check.
Daniel's eyes cast out toward the go-fast boat. “Got to wait this out, but I'm getting restless.”
Overhead Jimmy Buffet was winding down: “Mother, mother ocean . . . An occupational hazard being . . . no occupation around.”
“You aren't guiding now?”
“Bit awkward taking out clients with an entourage following. I have only one client right now, a lawyer friend, who loves to fish and knows what's going on. He advises me.”
Our plates were removed. We passed on dessert, and Daniel asked for the bill.
“That's my story, Annie Teague.”
“So what now?”
“Like I said, I hang out, prove to these guys watching me that they don't need to watch me any longer. I'm clean and staying that way. And hope that Parson and the Mennonites leave me alone.”
“And if they don't, then what?”
“Then I'll need to relocate again. And the need could come up rather suddenly.” He tossed some bills on the small tray the waiter had left with the check.
Daniel drained his glass of wine. He nodded to the cell phones lying on the table. “Which one's yours?”
I flipped them both open. Different wallpaper. “This one.”
Daniel said, “Same, same. That's what they say in India.”
I took a final drink of ice water, and Daniel rose from his chair and waited as I scooted out of mine. “I watched a little boy come into Jamie's clinic with spots all over his arms and legs. He pointed to each one, trying to communicate with Jamie, saying, âSame, same.' ”
We headed for the steps down to the pier. “Your daughter sounds pretty special.”
“She is. I admire the hell out of her.”
Daniel waved to Stocker, who waited for us while propped against a piling on the pier.
Daniel continued. “I never lived with her and her mother, but the kid turned out to be this bighearted young woman, calm, sweet-natured. Doesn't seem to distinguish good from badâand I don't mean the way I once didn't distinguish good from bad.” He laughed and I joined him.
“Jamie makes no judgments. She doctors everyoneâmonks in their clean orange robes, beggars in their dirty tatters, tourists in their L. L. Bean travel wear, donkeys, dogs.” He shook his head in admiration. “I watched her tenderly care for a woman beaten by her husbandâbroken arm and nose, bruises from being kickedâand just as tenderly care for the husband, who'd had his eye scratched in the battle.”