Authors: Jonathon King
“You an’ Captain Dawkins have a talk?” he finally said between his sculpting.
“He work that hard all the time?” I said.
“Yep,” Brown said. “All his life. Ain’t no other way for a man like him to git a two-boat operation like that and keep her goin’.”
If there was a racial implication in the “man like him” statement, I couldn’t hear it.
“His daddy was like that and his granddaddy before that. Handed it down just like the name.”
I asked him about the scars, the scrolled lines of damaged flesh on the captain’s forearm.
“From the trap lines,” he said. “When they start to pullin’ them traps, they got the trap line on that power winch an’ she don’t never slow down. A man got to hook the trap when she comes up from the bottom, snatch out the crab, throw the new bait in, lock it down an’ dump her over agin, just in time to hook the next trap. Got to do it like clockwork, and it goes on for hours.
“You get your glove or your movin’ hands caught in that line, it’ll wrap on you and pull your arm off. Every stone crabber takes that chance.”
I took another deep sip of my coffee and silently chastised myself for whining about sore muscles.
“He wasn’t willing to talk about this Jefferson character Mr. Mayes mentioned in the letter,” I said. “But it sounded like he might have known the family.”
“Oh, everybody knowed of the family,” Brown said, and went quiet, concentrating on his spoon. Across the road a half-dozen pure white ibis worked a low patch of grass. A heron let loose a high “quark” somewhere behind us.
“First time I seen ice cream I was eighteen years old,” Brown said, staring at a new lump on his spoon. “It’s still like a miracle to me.”
Brown kicked the throttle up, heading out through Chokoloskee Pass. The Gulf was green in the late afternoon light, and out to the southwest low clouds were scudding just above the horizon.
“We’ll take her on the outside an’ beat that line a squall,” Brown said, looking out in the same direction. “Course, a bit of rain never hurt. An’ it’ll maybe keep them folks in the helicopter out of the air.”
His words made me look back and scan the sky. It was empty except for a line of pelicans, their crooked wings fanned out as they cruised north over a long lump of mangroves. Brown swung us toward the east and pushed the boat up on plane and we began slapping over the light chop. I stood up next to him, gripping the console, and asked him why he had not told me that he recognized Jefferson’s name when I’d first read him the Mayes letters.
“I was thinkin’ on it,” he said.
The old Gladesman kept his eyes fixed ahead and seemed to squint them down even though the sun was mostly to our backs. He was looking back, and then started putting words to what he remembered.
“He was a small, mean fella. Least that was what folks said, and that’s what they believed. Even my own.
“It wasn’t easy to avoid people out this way back in them days. But my daddy always said he stayed clear of the Jeffersons. Fact was, Mr. Jefferson was about the same age as my daddy, and the talk that gets told is that the two of them was the best shots with rifles that there ever was in these parts.
“Now, I seen my daddy shoot the eye out of a racoon at fifty yards. Seen him drop a squawk on the wing out of the sky at more ’n that. An’ you know how boys are. We’d ask him if Mr. Jefferson could match him, an’ he’d go quiet on us. Never said yep. Never said no.”
Brown looked back over his shoulder and I did the same. The cloud line had darkened and massed up into a curtain that was soon going to shut out the sunset. It was another twelve miles or so to the entrance of Lost Man’s.
“So the rumors just kept on a growin’. Some said Jefferson learnt to shoot as a criminal, others that he’d been a hired gun and come out this way to lay low. Then there was some killin’s. A game warden who watched over the plume hunters was found shot out in the rookery. A state revenue agent workin’ the illegal stills come up missing. Course, we’d hear the men, speculatin’ around the fires at night and Jefferson’s name would come up, him havin’ the talent and all.”
“So no one would have been surprised to hear that this Mr. Jefferson signed on with the road-building crew to be the company sharpshooter to clear the way of alligators or panthers so the men could work?” I said, watching Brown’s face for a reaction. He let the sound of the outboard and the erratic smacking of the hull on water fill the silence.
“To some, like Daddy, it just made sense to put a man with a gun out there. But to others it just hardened up the rumor. They said Jefferson was a hired gun who’d shoot anything for money, an’ that’s just the job the road company hired him for.”
“Captain Dawkins said something about family that Jefferson had. Are there relatives still around?” I asked.
“Long gone,” Brown said. “They lived in a place on the Chatham River an’ left it. His one son was in the war and when he got back he stayed a bit until the old man passed and they sold out. They was a grandson and rumor had it that he moved north up by the lake and become a preacher. That one must have been about the same age as Captain Dawkins, but I ain’t never seen him.”
The western sky had turned a pearl gray by the time we made the river entrance and we headed north onto a winding path. As the light continued to fade, I watched as hundreds of white egrets came in and thickened the sky like a noisy cloud and began their nightly spinning and dancing above the tall mangroves. The squawking rose to a crescendo as the birds picked out a roosting spot for the night, and within minutes they had settled in the branches. Brown cut back on the throttle to match their noises and we watched the last of the day’s light get caught in the globs of white feather and the trees take on the look of tall cotton rows in a darkening field. To my city-bred eyes it was an unreal display. But even the old Gladesman seemed momentarily transfixed. We slid on through the growing shadows and did not share another word for some time. After an hour or so, Brown shut down the motor and the boat glided into a patch of cattails. From inside the console, he reached down and came out with a flashlight. He flipped on the beam and pointed it out ahead. I was surprised to see it reflect off something chrome.
“Yonder is your truck, Mr. Freeman. ’Bout twenty yard or so,” he said, handing me the light.
Again I eased myself over the gunwale and into the thigh-deep water.
“How do I get in touch with you?” I said.
“When you’re ready, son, y’all let the girl at the hotel know. They’ll get me the word.”
I never heard him crank the motor back to life, and by the time I got to my truck a light rain was falling. I used the flashlight to find the door lock, and it wasn’t until the interior lights came on and I slid in behind the wheel that I noticed the bullet hole.
A single shot had been fired into the windshield, face high on the driver’s side. A spray of spidery cracks webbed out from the hole. I stared through the opening and my fingers went involuntarily to the scar on my neck and stayed there.
I
t was nearly ten when I got back to Lauderdale. There had been no other damage to the truck and I had not bothered to report the incident to the local police. It would have been written off to rural vandalism, the sort visited on stop signs, or even a hunter’s stray round. And it could have been just that, but I didn’t believe it.
I pulled over for gas and made a call to Richards from a pay phone. Maybe she could hear the exhaustion in my voice. Maybe she was intrigued by the short description of my day.
“I’ll start some coffee and a hot bath, Freeman,” she said before I could gracefully invite myself.
When I arrived she was able to keep any look of disgust out of her face but directed me to the outside shower by the pool. Under a steady spray I peeled off the salt-caked clothes and waterlogged boots and washed some of the Glades stink off my skin. I was standing naked on the pool deck when she came back out with a steaming mug of coffee.
“Shall I just burn these, nature boy?” she said, picking at the pile of wet clothes with her toe. I was too tired to think of anything clever.
“OK. Into the bath then, Freeman.”
After an hour of soaking in water as hot as I could stand it, I finally got out and dressed in a pair of canvas shorts and a T-shirt I’d left on a previous visit. Richards had cooked up a plate of scrambled eggs with ranchero sauce. She poured more coffee and we sat at the kitchen table. I ate and talked and she listened until I was through.
“Your truck has been bugged and shot. You’ve been followed by vans and a helicopter. You’ve been warned off and Billy’s been offered a bribe. And you still don’t have anything more to go on but a few old letters and a bunch of old Everglades campfìre stories,” she said, trying to rake it together.
“I’d offer some advice, Max. But imagine spilling out that missing-person’s case onto a detective squad’s table: ‘Well, sir. We think we’ve got an eighty-year-old murder case going here in which a multibillion-dollar development corporation is trying to cover up the forced labor and assassination of its own reluctant workers. All we need to do is find the remains of one of these bodies somewhere along the sixty miles of road that cuts through the middle of the Glades and hope he’s got a pay stub in his pocket and a detailed note identifying his killer.”’
“It might still be premature to call in any official inquiry,” I said.
My legs and arms were rubbery from fatigue. My head was equally spent. I’d like to say I remembered getting up and making it to her bed. I’d like to say I remember lying with her, curled up like spoons under a single sheet in the soft breeze of the ceiling fan. I’d like to say I was aroused by the smell and touch of her warm skin. But I fell asleep, stone asleep, and did not wake until nearly noon the next day, by which time she had long ago left for work. She’d left me a note saying she’d call a detective friend in Collier County on the west coast where the other side of the Tamiami Trail first enters the great swamp. She described him as an “old-timer who might have collected some rumors of his own.” I dressed and went outside. The sun was already warm in the trees and when I opened the truck cab the huff and odor of sweat and salt and tracked muck spilled out. In the daylight I could see the sprinkle of glass on my front seat and without too much trouble I found the flattened slug that had passed through the windshield and probably ricocheted off the back cab wall and ended up on the floor behind my seat. It was misshapen, and I had to guess that the caliber was anything from a .38 to a .45. Not hunting rifle material. I picked it up with a paper towel and put it into a plastic Baggie from my glove box and stored it away. I then drove over to Federal Highway with the windows rolled down to make a call to Billy on a pay phone. I no longer trusted the cell and refused to use Richards’s home phone again. Inside a convenience store I got Billy at his office and told him I would stop at his apartment and then meet him for dinner at Arturo’s on Atlantic about eight. He said I might be getting too paranoid, and I might have believed him, but out of the store’s plate-glass window I watched a squad car pull up behind my truck and stop, blocking my way out.
“I’ll see you at eight, or call you from jail,” I said to Billy, and before he could ask, I hung up. I bought a large coffee and a box of plain doughnuts and went outside.
Both officers were out of the car. One was leaning his rump against the trunk, while the other was checking the contents of my truck through the driver’s-side window. I walked up and unlocked the passenger side and leaned in, making eye contact with the younger one through the glass. I was smiling. He was not.
“You Mr. Freeman?” he asked. I slid back out and we reestablished the sight line over the hood. His right hand was now on the butt of his holstered 9 mm.
“Yes,” I said. “How you doin’?” I set the doughnuts on the hood, halfway across. He stared at them for a couple of beats and his face got grumpy.
“You the owner of this vehicle, Mr. Freeman?”
“Sure. Isn’t that what the tag check came back with?”
The other cop, the older one, was now on his feet. He had a black enameled riot stick in a metal loop on his belt. I’d recognized him even before he took off his sunglasses. It was the patrol cop who’d confronted Richards in the parking lot, the one I knew was slapping Richards’s friend around, even if she hadn’t admitted it yet.
“Can I see your license and registration, Mr. Freeman?” the young one asked. I fished out the paperwork and put it on top of the doughnut box.
“This windshield damage,” he said, looking at the license and deliberately not finishing his question, expecting me to take it up and be defensive. I stayed quiet and he finally looked up, his eyebrows raised. I raised my own.
“Do you know what caused it?”
“Hunting accident,” I said.
The wife-beater had taken up another position on my side, leaning against the truck bed, but his feet were planted firm on the parking lot macadam.
“Anybody hurt?” said the younger one.
“Not that I know of.”
The kid had had enough of my attitude. I probably would have, too.
“Well, Mr. Freeman. It’s a violation to be driving this vehicle in this condition,” he said, taking out his ticket book. “I could write you a summons and have the truck impounded, if that’s…”
He stopped when he realized I wasn’t paying any attention to him. I was looking at the partner, who was wearing one of those smirks we used to snap off the faces of the football players who used to walk into O’Hara’s Gym in South Philly. Most of them had never seen a professional jab thrown by someone who knew what they were doing. This guy hadn’t either, I was willing to bet.
“Mr. Freeman knows it’s a violation, Jimmy,” the older one said, not willing to be stared down. “Mr. Freeman was a cop up north. One of the Philly brotherhood, right Mr. Freeman?”
Again I stayed silent and held his eyes. It’s the one thing a true street cop can’t stand, some asshole trying to lock on to his face, cut his attention off from what was going on around him. But this guy’s macho was overriding even that.
“Hell, Mr. Freeman was probably on his way to get this fixed, and we don’t give out tickets to our fellow officers, do we, Jimmy? Even former officers.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jimmy put his book away. I lowered my voice: “You following me, McCrary?”
The truck cab was now between us and the partner, a bad move on the kid’s part.
“Why would I be following you, Freeman? What you do is none of my business,” McCrary said, matching my volume. “And what I do is none of yours.”
The statement made me think too long and McCrary turned on his heel, giving his partner a jerk of his head and giving me his back as they both moved back to the squad car. I watched them pull away, and the emblem and motto emblazoned on the door just below McCrary’s profile stuck in my head:
TO PROTECT AND SERVE
.
On Atlantic Boulevard they were just beginning to come out. The young women were dressed in the kind of casual clothes that at a glance seemed simple and comfortable from thirty feet. But close up you could see the tightness across the ass of the jeans, the waistband designed to sling so low that one would surely have to shave to stay within the limits of obscene. The cotton tops were at least a size too small and stretched over cinched up breasts to accent the curves. There wasn’t a heelless shoe on the sidewalk, and even accounting for the Florida sun, nearly every woman, regardless of age, had streaked her hair, and a good minority of the young men had matched them.
I got to Arturo’s a half hour early, and when I asked for Billy’s reservation, Arturo himself came out and seated me at a sidewalk table that I knew was one of the most sought after on a Saturday night. I asked for my usual, and the waiter brought me two bottles of Rolling Rock stuck in an ice-filled champagne bucket. I leaned back, sipped the cold beer and listened to a burst of female laughter across the avenue, the voice of some miked-up emcee down the block that rose and fell on the breeze, the sharp wolf whistle of a kid hawking girls from the window of his car, and the bubbles of different brands of music that floated out the doors of the nearby clubs and burst out into the street.
Billy arrived exactly at eight. He was dressed in an off-white linen suit and oxblood loafers, and I distinctly saw three women of two different generations turn to watch him as he passed by. Arturo greeted him with a flourish and before he was settled in his chair enough to cross his legs there was a stylish flute of champagne placed in front of him.
“M-Max, you are l-looking well.”
It was his standard greeting and had almost become a joke between us. Billy sat back, took a sweep of the crowd and a lungful of air.
“To subtropical evenings and g-good friends,” he said, raising his glass. I touched the lip of my bottle to his fine glassware.
“Long as you’re not up to your subtropical ass in mosquito- infested muck,” I said, smiling.
“T-Tell me about your t-trip, Max.”
While we dined on Cuban-style yellowtail snapper and black beans and rice, I described the unknowns who may have stolen the Noren photo off the wall of the Frontier Hotel, the boat ride to Everglades City, and our helicopter escort. Billy nodded at the appropriate times without comment. He would be filing the info away, sliding it into a spot in his revolving carousel of fact and possibilities, building in his head a legal slide-show that might eventually be flashed before a judge.
But I could see a different level of interest in his face when I described Capt. Johnny Dawkins III and tried to convey his story. Billy leaned in and did not take a drink during my retelling of the captain’s tale. I finished and he sat back. The waiter saw his head turn and was immediately at his elbow. While he ordered more wine and a beer for me, I scrolled the street again. No one had occupied the same spot across the way for more than a couple of minutes. No white van had dared compete with the Mercedes, BMWs or shined- up low-ride toy cars parked near us. Any sight lines from the high buildings across from us were obscured by the decorative white lights strung through the trees, and in the swirl of street noise and conversation on the sidewalk, it would be difficult for a directional microphone to cut through. Maybe I was taking this whole P.I. thing too seriously. When my beer came I took a long drink.
“I’ve b-been running as much of a computer record ch-check as I can but there’s so m-much missing,” Billy said. “At the state and l- local historical archives, we’ve got some genuine material on the early Tamiami Trail, mostly p-progress of the road building through old newspaper stories on m-microfilm.
“I was also able to f-find a copy of a rough history of the p- project written just after the road was finished in 1928. N-No names of workers, but an extraordinary admission that an unknown n-number of men lost their lives.”
“Why extraordinary?”
“Because b-by the end, the State of Florida’s road board was in on the construction. M-Money from a Collier County b-bond issue was being used. And men were still dying.”
Billy stopped and looked down the boulevard, seeing something that was focusing only inside his own head.
“Does that mean there’s state liability?” I asked, trying to make a lawyer’s logic work.
“Possibly.”
“Does our client know about this?”
It was Billy’s turn to take a long drink of his wine.
“Our young Mr. Mayes seems to b-be the rare client who d- doesn’t care about the monetary gain.
“He honestly s-seems to be motivated only b-by the question of what happened to his g-great-grandfather.”
“All the more reason,” I said, gaining my partner’s eyes, “to find him some answers.”
While we finished I told Billy of the vague recollections of the man named Jefferson in the letters. His past was as loose and improvable as anything else in the Glades. A possible grandson in the state who may or may not be a minister. Not much, but it was something.
“We can t-track the birth records, if they b-bothered,” Billy said. “There are clergy listings that are fairly c-comprehensive because of the tax-exempt r-regulations for churches. We could narrow it b-by staying south of, say, Orlando to b-begin with.
“If we st-start with the assumption of a B-Baptist connection, which was p-popular in that area, we could g-get lucky, though Jefferson is not exactly a unique n-name.”
Billy was getting cranked, his head moving hard with research possibilities. It was contagious.
“Your home office clear tomorrow?” I asked.
“I’ve g-got to see clients.”
“I’ll come in from the river about ten. You can guide me on the searches from your office.” He didn’t even try to dissuade me from going home to the shack anymore.
Arturo escorted us to the sidewalk and Billy was generous with his praise and his tip. I let a tourist couple pass and caught their double take of the handsome black man in the thousand-dollar suit.
“C-Call me if you need computer help,” Billy said as we shook hands.