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TAMPA BURN

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

Chapter One

I heard a woman's voice calling in Spanish, "Marion? Marion! I thoughtyou were expecting me."

She sounded irritated. Demanding. Which didn't fit with my image ofwho Pilar is, or was in terms of her normal behavior, but I let it go.

She'd telephoned from Central America. So, yes, I'd been expecting her.Even so, I was unprepared for the thumping heart and twittering, nervousjolt I got when I saw her. Nervous, because I believed her to be my long-lostlove.

I like interesting-looking women, and women who are interesting. Ihave zero interest in the Hollywood concept of beauty unless humor,character, and intellect are added to the mix. Those are the sexiest of qualities.I try to maintain those standards, all the while understanding that Iam not the most attractive of men at first glance. Maybe not even at thirdor fourth glance.

I like women as people. That is a grounding common denominator.

Pilar undoubtedly has all the feminine qualities that attract males ofour species. Her body is so achingly, obviously female that the first time Isaw her, I felt an actual sensation of physical pain. At the time, she wasmarried. I suspect I felt pain because I believed that I had no chance ofwinning her as a lover.

Wrong.

Later, after we became lovers, I felt the same radiating ache at thethought of losing her. I thought I never would.

Wrong again.

Now, seeing her for the first time in years, my reaction was familiarthough unexpected, and so was the powerful lancet of pain.

I had my right hand clamped on the tarpon's lower jaw, the fish's bodycradled in my left arm. Tomlinson was in the water with me. Tomlinson,my storklike friend with his blond and gray hippie hair braided into samuraishocks. He was shirtless and had one of his old sarongs tied Gandhi-stylebetween his legs, like baggy shorts or diapers.

Wearing his hair like a samurai was his new thing. He'd taken to wearingsamurai robes on his boat, too, and around my house when he visited.Something to do with his decision to re-enter this life as "a spiritual warrior."

Whatever that meant.

That was the kind of question I asked only when I had a lot of time-anda lot of his favorite rum on stock, which is El Dorado, a superb but little-knownrum from Guyana. Tomlinson had found El Dorado on a recentSouth American "rum quest" and was never without the stuff.

He was holding a clear plastic water-gun. In the squirt gun, I'd dilutedseveral milligrams of metomidate. Metomidate is a potent, effective tranquilizer.Tomlinson's job was to squirt the mixture through the tarpon'smouth very, very slowly irrigating its gills until the fish began to showsigns of light sedation.

After that, I would steer the tarpon back to my lab and into the big galvanizedholding tank I'd stationed there just for this project.

Working with biologists from the University of Florida, we were tryingto be the first to spawn and hatch tarpon in captivity. Interesting work.

To get an idea of what a tarpon looks like, imagine a giant, prehistoricherring. With its chromium scales and massive tail, it's one of the world'sgreat game fish. For Florida, the tarpon is a swimming, breathing preciousmetals industry-pure silver. Same with much of the Caribbean.

Sportsmen travel from around the world just for the chance of a hook-up.The fish brings millions of tourism dollars annually into the state.

Yet, few seem to appreciate the animal's economic worth.

Over the last few decades, loss of habitat and deteriorating water qualityhave impacted the tarpon population. Fishing guides from the islands,Key West to Cedar Key, have been saying for years what we biologistshave been slow to prove: Each year, there are fewer fish.

So this was a worthwhile project, entirely the idea of the first-rate scientistsat the U-of-F, and I was delighted to play a small role.

When Pilar called to us, Tomlinson looked up briefly, then lookedagain. He whistled softly, and said to me in a low voice, "Wowie-zowie, shehasn't changed, amigo. She's still easy on the eyes. Even from this distance,I can tell."

He'd met Pilar years ago in Central America. It was not long after thelady had ended our love affair, and before I knew that she was pregnantwith our child. I'd been badly wounded when Tomlinson and I werethere; nearly killed. The two of them had spent some time together in amakeshift hospital, nursing me.

Or so I heard later-I was delirious most of the time.

Tomlinson took another quick glance. "That sort of woman, you don'toften see. It's almost like her body puts off an odor. Pure sex mixedwith ... something, man, something. She's different from most peopleyou meet."

His tone had an unusual quality. Did he want me to pursue the subject?

But then he returned his attention to the fish, saying, "We don't wantthis guy to go through any more trauma than we have to. Can Pilar giveus a few minutes? She's in a hurry, I can tell. Ask her if she can wait untilwe have him in the pen."

I smiled, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, Tomlinson, the unrepentanthipster, was telling me-me, the supposedly competent biologist-the proper way to deal with this fish. Another reason was because Ifind my various frailties and stupidities just so damn funny.

Which means I have no shortage of things to smile about.

Here I was, a grown man, reacting with all the emotional and intellectualmaturity of some love-besotted adolescent. My heart was pounding,my thighs actually felt watery-that's how nervous I was at the prospectof seeing Pilar again face to face.

I didn't want to worry about the tarpon. What I wanted was to dumpthe fish, run to shore, and take the lady into my arms. I wanted to sit herdown and listen to her voice. I wanted to hear why she'd traveled fromMasagua to Sanibel Island, Florida, to meet privately with me. What wasso important? Why all the secrecy on the phone?

I have been madly, passionately, irresponsibly in love with only onewoman in my life. Now here she was.

So that's why I was wearing the wry, silly smile. It was because I knewthat I was reacting like a simple, silly-ass teenager. Even when I was ateenager, I wasn't the emotional teenage type. Which is why, on a deeperlevel of awareness, the way I was feeling also tickled at my intellectual gagreflex.

Knock it off, Ford. She's keying a chemical response in the lower region of thebrain. Never confuse love with the effects of serotonin.

In a rational world, emotion is an indulgence. Usually, it is an untidy one.

So, as I walked with the tarpon, I tried to establish a different kind ofgrounding by stepping back and reminding myself what had happened,and how it had happened.

WHEN we'd had our affair, Pilar was married to a political aristocratand egomaniacal thug named Balserio. I'd been in Masagua working as abiologist under the auspices of the American embassy. Actually, I wasdoing deep-cover intelligence assignments, working with an Aussie SASpartner. He was a crazed surfer/oceanographer named Thackery.

Thackery had infiltrated some ultra-left-wing environmental groupthat was helping to finance the rebels. It was through him that I met Pilarin a remote...