Tampa Burn by Randy Wayne White

wouldn’t impose on a child with a question like that. You wouldn’t either.”
    â€œThen my advice, Doc? After you release the fish, take her aside and ask her. Get it out on the table. What you’ve got to deal with now is too important to have any problems communicating. Which is why I’m going to leave you two alone.”
    He was already slogging away when I called, “How about a beer later?”
    Over his shoulder, he replied, “You betcha. After you talk to her, raise me on the VHF. Or my brand-new cellular phone. I can’t wait to hear how my pal screwed up this time.”
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    PILAR was visibly uneasy now that Tomlinson was gone, the two of us alone near the big wooden fish tank on the lowest deck of my stilt house. Though she was within arm’s reach, her uneasiness created a distance that seemed an insular vacuum. It made a wall of those few feet.
    Communication is as rare as conversation is routine. She manufactured conversation to make the wall between us less evident. For a wall to exist, we had to have once been intimate. That was something she seemed unwilling to acknowledge.
    Tomlinson was apparently a comfortable subject. She spoke of how unusual it was for her to like and trust a man so quickly. She’d liked him immediately when she met him in Masagua. She liked him even more now, she said.
    When she asked, “Does he have family?” I got the impression that she was actually asking if he had a wife or lover.
    Maybe that’s why I replied with several harsh truths that I seldom share. “He has a daughter, Nichola, who refuses to see him. He has a brother who’s a heroin addict—Rangoon, if he’s still alive. His father’s gone native somewhere in the Amazon basin. He was a paleontologist. A brilliant one before he disappeared.”
    That jolted her. “So strange. So tragic.”
    I nodded. “A century or so back, his family accumulated a fortune on a couple of patents. Something to do with a synchronizing device that allowed airplanes to fire machine guns through spinning propellers. It made the killing ratios huge. The First World War alone, it had to account for thousands of dead. Some fortunes, I guess it’s heirs that pay the price.”
    â€œI’m surprised a man like Tomlinson would accept blood money.”
    For some reason, her elevated opinion of my friend, even though accurate, continued to irk me. I am often asked how Tomlinson makes a living. I always evade. It’s something never discussed around the marina. This time, though, I answered with another harsh truth.
    â€œHe doesn’t accept family money. Hasn’t since he was a teenager and found out the source. By then, though, he’d spent a bundle, so he still feels like he’s stained for life. When he told you about the crop he was growing on the islands? That’s how he’s made his living ever since. Smuggling dope. Selling drugs. Sails to the Yucatán, sails back. Or sometimes as far south as Guyana. He’s gone into the rum business, too. Something legal, finally.”
    I paused, startled by the perverse pleasure I took in telling her that. Yet it didn’t trouble her. Even though the illegal drug trade has made chaos of Latin America’s economy, she seemed to approve. I could see it in her expression, just as I could also see that I’d been diminished in her eyes by my small betrayal.
    That’s exactly what I’d done, too—betrayed the confidence of my best friend.
    In an idiotic effort to redeem myself, I added quickly, “Not that he needs to do that anymore. It’s a long story, but he also has a huge following as a Zen teacher—people who’re devoted. He could probably double his great-grandfather’s fortune within a few years, they’re so many. If he pushed the money thing. Which he’d never do. The man’s motives are pure. No one doubts that.”
    Talking