The Heat Islands: A Doc Ford Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

must play a role. But did people sink who entered the water already dead? Probably. If so, though, the tidal current near the bottom would be different from the surface current, and the body mass would change as body gases contracted at depth, and then expanded with decomposition. And in South Florida, in June heat, decomposition would begin the moment a man's last breath was taken.
    It was a complicated problem; gruesome, too, though that did not bother Ford. But the fact that the problem was composed of factors that could not be calculated did.
    Aw, screw it....
    Closing his notebook, he settled back to watch the guides, Felix Haynes and Nels Langford, begin the evening wash-down, stowing their gear, popping their first beers beneath the giant sea-grape tree beside the office, talking matter-of-factly but not laughing much, and Ford knew they had not won the tarpon tournament.
    It was Friday night, official end of the workweek at marinas all up and down the Florida coast. Saturday and Sunday were the busiest days of the week, but Friday night was still the traditional gathering time for the live-aboards and marina employees. It was the brief quiet time before the weekend rush, when they came together as a community. When they drank and laughed and complained and lied, with no one around to hear, just them, and the marina became a private thing, like a seeret.
    Music already echoed inside Noel Yarbrough's forty-foot Grand Banks. Rhonda Lister and JoAnn Smallwood had hung Japanese lanterns on the stem of their wood-rotted Chris-Craft cruiser, and had changed into sarongs— an unspoken party invitation underlined by the bright pink hibiscus blossoms each woman wore behind her ear. Men in sandals and shorts roamed the docks with women in coral-bright blouses, their hair freshly washed, laughing, with drinks in hand, their elongated reflections like oil on the water, blending with the darker reflections of coco palms, which feathered over the seawall behind them. All the boats floated motionless in their slips—the Makos, Aquasports, the larger cruisers and trawlers and candy-colored fiberglass sailboats—stirring only when someone stepped aboard to fetch bottles of beer from the ice.
    Graeme MacKinley, the New Zealander who managed the marina, came out of the office wearing a long-billed fishing cap and flip-flops, carrying his ring of keys, and began to padlock the bait tanks and the rod-rental closet, closing shop. He looked over toward Ford's stilt house and waved briefly, then held up an invisible glass, meaning cocktail time. Ford had had no alcohol for three months, yet be held up his hand in acquiescence. A cold beer would be good right now. And after his workout with Dewey, he had earned it.
    Stiff, leg-sore, Ford forced himself out of the lounge chair to change clothes, but then saw Tomlinson heading across the bay in his little wooden dinghy. So he sat down to wait, and soon there was Tomlinson wearing a hot pink Hawaiian shirt, blond scraggly hair down to his shoulders, black beard cut short, hopping up onto his dock and grinning: "Dr. Ford, I presume."
    Ford said, "And you're no Stanley. What time's your date?"
    Tomlinson straightened himself, gazing around with that dreamy look, saying, "How you know that, man? Only the seeond date I've had in ... a year? Yeah, like ten months."
    "Seeond time I've seen that shirt. Nice, too." Tomlinson pulled the shirt away from his jeans, as if seeing it for the first time. "Hey, this is pretty, isn't it?" he said. "Imported." He was fingering the material, studying it, his psychedelic eyes softened by experience and years and the objective inspection he now made. "Yep. imported ... I'm pretty sure. I don't think they make shirts like this in America." He looked up. "Colorful, huh? I'm having dinner with a woman."
    "Someone you met today at the Zen lecture?" Tomlinson said. "Not a lecture. An oral sharing," holding up a long, bony finger, the kindly teacher correcting the