The workers wore overalls and T-shirts and sweat-stained ball caps. The mourners were clad in bright clothes with floral patterns and straw hats made from palm leaves. Most of them were elderly, the young ones having fled to Nassau to find work.
Jock and Logan and I stood with the others, all black, all Bahamian, all descendants of the black Seminoles who had found refuge from the slave catchers. They had come in the early nineteenth century as the first and second Seminole Wars pushed the Indians farther into the Everglades. Many of the Indians had accepted transport to the Oklahoma territory, to a reservation that would never be their home. The blacks among them, many carrying Seminole blood, were hounded by white men from Georgia and Alabama who wanted to return them to slavery, a condition many of the blacks had never known. They and their parents and grandparents had been born into the freedom offered by the Indians of Florida, a territory of Spain until 1763.
There was a somberness to the small crowd gathered in honor of one of their patriarchs, a boy who had grown into a man while living among them. He’d left this little village on the northwest coast of Andros Island, seeking a better life than that offered by the meager sponge beds that had survived the great fungal infections of the 1930s. But he always came home, came to visit and teach the young ones the ways of his Seminole forebears. Now he was home for good, buried in the poor soil from which he had sprung eighty years before. We were saying goodbye to Abraham Osceola.
It was the first Friday in May and as hot as a Florida summer in these latitudes southeast of Miami. The village of Red Bays had sustained this remnant of Seminole culture, peopled as it was by the descendants of those who had braved the fickle waters of the Atlantic to paddle their dugouts to freedom.
Abraham had hung on, his great body fighting for life. But it wasn’t to be. Finally, the spirit that propelled him to seek a better life in Florida, to search for his people’s patrimony, to give his life in the cause of his people, flagged and surrendered.
I paid for his body to be shipped home and Jock and Logan flew with me to Andros to bury him. He had no immediate family left, but his cousins had reserved a small plot of ground in the village cemetery next to his parents. And that is where we buried him on a hot day in May when the breeze deserted us and our clothes were soggy with sweat, where old people moaned in anguish and the very young wondered at the cause of such emotion.
We joined the villagers for food and drink at the little Baptist Church that seemed to be the center of activities for the town. We couldn’t stay long. Russ Coit, a friend from Longboat, was waiting for us at the San Andros airport in Nicholls Town. He’d flown us over in his plane, but decided not to join us for the twenty-mile ride to Red Bays. He hadn’t known Abraham and hadn’t been involved in the killings. He wanted to be in Sarasota before the arrival of the afternoon thunderstorms that daily stalked the peninsula of Florida.
I was standing under a clump of pine trees that dotted the dirt yard in front of the sanctuary when the old minister who’d presided over the funeral approached me. He was stooped with age, his face wrinkled by the years of caring for his people, a large nose set off by the high cheekbones of his Indian ancestors, his skin a deep chocolate. He wore a threadbare suit, light gray, a white shirt that had been hand washed rather than laundered, a pale blue tie, and sandals. He was the keeper of the Seminole heritage, the elder who tried, mostly in vain, to impart the remnants of that fading culture to the youngsters in the village.
“You’re Matt Royal,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Abraham told me that he might call on you for help. Did he?”
“He tried, but some bad people got to him before he reached me.”
“Do you know anything about the document he had with him?”
“The protocol to the treaty of 1832. Abraham made sure it got into my hands.”
“Abraham seemed to think it was of great significance,” the old preacher said.
“It might have been, but unfortunately we couldn’t prove its validity in a court of law. I had a chemical analysis done on the ink. That ink didn’t come into existence until many years after the document was supposedly written. It was a forgery. Do you know where Abraham got the document?”
“Oh, yes. It was here in the church. My father was the minister of this congregation and his father before him. I don’t know who first came into possession of the paper, but it has been in my family’s keeping since before my grandfather’s time.”
“Has anybody ever tried to make a claim under it?”
“Claim? No. I’d read it years ago, but it didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I kept it because it was old and I thought someday some of the young ones might find it an interesting artifact of their Seminole ancestors.”
“How did Abraham come to have it with him?”
“Abraham was one of us. He and I were boys together. He came to Red Bays every year from Key West. He’d bring money for the church and try to interest the young ones in their past. He knew a lot about the Seminoles and had made friends with many of them on their reservation in Florida. One day I showed him the old paper and he got excited. He said he thought the paper had a great significance and asked if he could take it back to Florida with him. I agreed.”
“When was this?” I asked.
“In March. A little more than two months ago.”
“I brought the document with me in case you wanted it back.”
“Yes. We’ll know it’s a forgery, but there is some sentimental value in the keeping of it. It’s part of our past, even if it is a fake.”
I went to the rental car and retrieved a cardboard tube from my luggage. I handed it to the old preacher. He opened the tube and pulled out the document. He unrolled it, looked at it, and put it back in its holder. “To think that this very old forgery caused the death of a good man is almost too sad to contemplate.”
“I think he died doing what he wanted. He was on a quest to ease the hardships of those he loved above all others.”
“He was a good man, Mr. Royal.”
“Yes, sir. He was.”
We said our goodbyes to the cousins and left that small village out of another world and flew home to Longboat Key and all the amenities we take for granted, amenities that most of the world can only dream about. We outran the storms and landed at Sarasota-Bradenton airport at mid-afternoon. Russ suggested that we stop at Tiny’s, have a few beers, and start getting our lives back on the beachbum track.
And so on a warm day in May, my friends and I sat at a high-top table in the dim recesses of Tiny’s and talked of absent friends, of those who had gone to rest, each one leaving an ever diminishing hole in our hearts. We wondered who would be next, who would succumb to the blandishments of the Grim Reaper and follow him into the great unknown. We knew that the one immutable law of the universe is that each of us has his own appointment in Samarra, his own date with death. And that produced an ineffable sadness that gradually diminished in the light of warm memories told of friends who no longer graced our world.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
J.D. was sitting next to me, wearing shorts and a tank top, her bare feet propped on the closed hatch leading to Recess’s small cabin. We were motoring slowly under the Longboat Pass Bridge. To our right, families were enjoying the day on Coquina Beach on the southern end of Anna Maria Island, multicolored umbrellas shielding them from the sun and giving the place the look of snow cones resting on white sand. Picnic baskets and coolers dotted the beach and a trio of teenage boys tossed a football back and forth. Across the pass, the shore of Beer Can Island was hosting the usual Saturday assault of boats, bows on the beach, stern anchors holding them against the current of the outgoing tide. More people enjoying the soft spring weather that would end soon with the first bath of summertime humidity that always fell on us in mid-May. The green water was clear and I could see the featureless sand bottom of the pass as we puttered along at idle speed in what my depth sounder told me was fifteen feet
of water.
The trip to Andros Island the day before had given me a greater appreciation of my home island, of the ease with which we moved through the endless days in the sunshine, of the rhythms that pushed us along like the current of a great river, never ceasing, never slowing, never depriving us of the essentials that graced our lives in such abundance.
When we’d finished our pity party at Tiny’s the day before, I went home and called J.D. “You like boats?” I asked.
“Love ’em. My dad always had a boat and I spent a lot of time on them. Why?”
“I was wondering if you’d like to join me on Recess tomorrow for a run down to Venice for lunch.”
“Love to. What time?’
We’d agreed to meet at my house at ten o’clock. I’d put a cooler onboard filled with beer and white wine, some crackers and cheese. She showed up right on time, and we loosed the lines and shoved off.
I cleared the bridge and was passing the sign indicating the end of the no-wake zone. A party fishing boat out of Cortez was behind me and I knew the captain would be anxious to pour on the juice and get to the fishing grounds before his anglers got restless. I eased the throttles forward and the big Yamahas began to purr, the sound rising as the bow came up and then over to settle onto its cruising plane.
I followed the markers through the shoals that hugged the channel and broke clear at the sea buoy. I turned southwest angling seaward, planning to run south to Venice while staying about a mile offshore. I wanted to be far enough out in the Gulf that I didn’t have to worry about the shoals that had crept out from New Pass and Big Sarasota Pass.
The water was dotted with boats, some sitting stationary while those aboard fished, some moving at slow speed, lines out, trolling for their catch, a few go-fast boats running flat-out, their unmuffled engines roaring. To the north of us a boat towing a parachute from which a tourist dangled turned slowly in wide circles. A sailboat far out on the horizon beat slowly north. The sea around us was flat, not a ripple on the surface, a perfect day to set the autopilot, put my feet on the dash, and let the boat take us toward the Venice Inlet.
In less than an hour, I began to angle shoreward, heading to the pass that would take us back inside the barrier islands. The inlet at Venice is bordered by two rock jetties jutting several hundred yards into the open Gulf. Walkways ran along the top of the jetties and people were fishing from them. I slowed as we entered the jetty area, coming off plane, the boat settling in the water. I idled just inside the pass and used my radio to hail the dockmaster at the Crow’s Nest Restaurant. He gave me a slip assignment and I backed Recess into it. J.D. handled the lines like a pro. I cut the engines, helped her off the boat, and we walked across the parking lot and upstairs to the dining room.
On the run down, I’d told her about our trip to Andros, and what I’d found out about the forged document from the old preacher. We made small talk over lunch, enjoying the view and each other. We had a table by the large windows overlooking the pass. A small uninhabited island sat in the middle, its beach full of families and their boats, the children wading in the water. The small-boat traffic in and out of the inlet was heavy. A police boat sat quietly at the edge of the pass, the officer making sure the speed limits were obeyed and that the boats didn’t endanger the people swimming near the little island.
You had to admire the police department’s taste in boats. She was a thirty-four-foot center-console, sporting triple three-hundred-horsepower Mercury outboards. She’d top seventy miles per hour at full throttle. Not many boats would outrun the cops in these waters.
J.D. and I finished our meal, dawdled over one more drink, and headed back to the boat. I cranked the engines while J.D. stood on the dock to untie the lines. I signaled that I was ready to cast off, and she tossed the lines into the boat and jumped down from the dock. I eased out of the slip as she coiled the lines and stowed them in their locker.
I idled toward the jetties and waved at the cop in his go-fast boat. On Recess the helm seats are raised and you have to take two steps down to the cockpit. J.D. was standing in the stern watching the parade of boats coming in from the Gulf. I was fiddling with my chart plotter, dialing in the GPS coordinates for the Longboat Pass outer marker. I looked up in time to see a jet ski coming too fast toward me. I jerked the helm to starboard to miss him and was just coming back on course when the left windshield, the one in front of the passenger seat, exploded. I looked up quickly, saw a rifleman standing midway along the jetty to the left of us. He was raising the rifle to fire again. People on the jetty were scurrying out of his way. I called a warning to J.D., but she had already thrown herself to the deck. I ducked below the dash just as the windshield in front of the helm seat burst with the impact of another bullet. If I hadn’t made that quick adjustment in course to dodge the jet ski, the first shot would have come through my windshield and probably my head.
I looked around the helm seat into the cockpit. J.D. had rolled up against the left side of the boat, flattened out on the cockpit floor, making as small a target as possible. I doubted that the shooter could even see her.
I had to get out of harm’s way, but if I raised my head to see where I was going, I would be a dead man. I could see the chart plotter screen from where I crouched. If everything was working like it should, I could follow the icon on the plotter that represented my boat and stay in the middle of the channel until I got through the jetties. If I didn’t plow into another boat, or a jet ski. I thought the radar would warn me of another boat, but I wasn’t sure about something as small as a jet ski.
If the GPS system was just a few feet off today, if the satellites that tracked my signal went off-line for even a second or two, I’d pile into a jetty. No choice. I stayed down and added juice to the throttles, picking up speed, trying to get out of range of the rifleman. As I came abreast of him, I could see him pointing the weapon at me. Either he couldn’t see me hunched down behind the dash or he thought I was dead. I was sure he couldn’t see J.D. His angle of view wasn’t right.
I saw him bring his rifle back toward his shoulder. He was going to fire again. I was afraid he had seen me and I didn’t think he’d miss this time. I stood up quickly, pushed the throttles all the way forward. I was near the right side of the channel, just where I should have been. I turned the wheel hard to the left, shot toward a slow moving boat coming in. I swung back to the right, hard, got past the incoming boat and swung back to my left. I was near the end of the jetties, the open sea my safe harbor. I made a sharp turn to the right and ran parallel to the beach.
I couldn’t tell if the rifleman had fired again. I thought maybe the surprise burst of speed and the zigzags had confused his aim. J.D. stood, gripping the handhold on the back of the passenger seat. “You okay?” she asked.
“Yeah. You might want to stay down there. The wind’s tough up here.” The shattered windshield gave no protection from the wind churned by our speed. I was running flat-out, throttles all the way to the firewall, my GPS telling me I was approaching fifty miles per hour.
“I’ll hang on back here. Where are we going?”
I turned gradually toward the open Gulf, away from the beach. “We’ll get back to Sarasota.” I picked up the microphone on my radio. I called the Coast Guard, reported the shooting from the jetty. Told them we were okay and were headed for Sarasota. The Coast Guard radioman told me he’d alert Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office and have a deputy meet us at the Marine Max facility just inside at New Pass. He said he had a helicopter patrolling in the area.
I looked back at J.D. and saw a go-fast approaching from astern. He was faster than I was and would be on us in a few minutes. “Get down,” I said. “There’s another boat coming up fast behind us.”
I turned back forward and saw another go-fast coming my way, a bone in his teeth. He was running at high speed, his bow wave throwing water from the point where the boat sliced through the surface. He was closer than the one astern. I couldn’t outrun him, I couldn’t turn ba
ck, and if I ran for the beach, he’d be on me before I made it.
The sea had picked up a little, small swells that would make a highspeed run uncomfortable, but not too difficult. The boat in front was headed for me at an angle, coming in from offshore. He was about a hundred yards away when I saw a flash from the front of his boat. Gunfire. The distance and the boat bouncing on the swells made too unsteady a platform to get a clear shot at us.
I did a quick calculation in my head. If he was traveling at seventy miles per hour and I was going fifty straight at him, we’d have a closing speed of about one hundred twenty miles per hour, or one hundred seventy-six feet per second. If I turned onto a heading that would take me directly at his bow, he’d be about one hundred yards, or three hundred feet, away. At that closing speed we’d collide in a little under two seconds. Bowon, I’d be a much smaller target.
I turned the helm forty-five degrees to port and lined up on his bow. He would not have expected this maneuver, because no sane captain would think of doing it. He’d have almost no reaction time. I was betting that he’d turn sharply one way or the other. If he didn’t, we’d collide and that’d be the end. On the other hand, if I stayed on the same course along the beach, he’d quickly get close enough to kill us. I didn’t know where the boat behind me was. My mind had taken a microsecond to make a decision. I didn’t have time to turn and see what the other boat was doing. I’d worry about him later.
The man at the helm of the go-fast reacted quickly to my change of course. He swung out to his right, a sharp turn that pointed him out to sea. I saw the rifleman in the bow. The quick maneuver threw him off balance. As soon as I saw the oncoming boat start his turn, I turned the other way. We missed each other by feet. His wake washed under us, causing Recess to almost go airborne. She came down hard on the other side of the wake. I turned again, trying to line up with the middle of the wake where the water was calmer.
Bitter Legacy: A Matt Royal Mystery (Matt Royal Mysteries) Page 30