“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-C
all me if you need computer help,” Billy said as we shook hands.
“I’ll definitely call you,” I said, and headed for my truck.
CHAPTER
13
It was nearly midnight when I got to the river. A slice of the new moon lay crooked in the field of stars and reflected in flashes of erratic light on the water. I took my time paddling up into the canopy. The air was warm with a southeast breeze, and along with the envelope of darkness in the forest tunnel came a slight change in humidity. After so much time spent here, I could pick up the most subtle differences. When I first moved into the shack, my years in the Philadelphia streets had honed my senses to the noise of the traffic and voices and things metallic, the smells of food aromas and man-made rot and the constant perfume of exhaust and the night sight of ever-present electric light. I’d been as lost as a kid with a canvas bag over his head when I got out here. Now I could taste the slightest change of humidity in my mouth.
I tied my canoe and unloaded supplies onto the dock, then used a small pen flashlight to check for footprints on the stairs. Inside I lit the oil lamp and made a pot of coffee with rainwater from my barrel reservoir. I changed into fresh clothes and then sifted through the printouts of Cyrus Mayes’s letters. His schoolteacher’s old-style prose was leading us in our search for truth for the great-grandson he had never even dreamed about. I’d been hooked by the mission. But I wasn’t confident that there was a string to follow that could take us there. I selected one of his early reports and then sat at the table with my heels up. The dull light painted my oversized shadow onto the pine wall as it read with me:
My Dearest Eleanor,
We are two weeks into our labors and the experience has been both exhausting and unique. You would be so proud of the boys. Steven seems to have become a master of knots and is actually in demand when the crew is at the task of lashing the huge poles together to create a floating platform for our dredge work. The depth of the water and muck here has caught our foremen off guard and we all have had to improvise. Often the company’s machinery sinks into the earth like a quicksand has swallowed it and by pure muscle we all must raise it with lines or it is lost and the demeanor of the engineer becomes blacker.
I recently considered forming a prayer group among the men but held off until I had a sense of them all. They are a rough lot and many have lost their way. One fellow, attracted by our daily prayers before eating, seemed friendly but later developed a rough coughing and a pallor that someone likened to malaria. He was quickly isolated by the foremen and one morning we saw him loaded into a rail cart headed back west, we assumed, to Everglades City. Later, the armed one called Jefferson made it a point to warn us of what he called swamp fever, saying he’d seen it consume an entire town of Florida settlers who “picked up the bug while they was collectin’ the gossip of they neighbors.”
Steven has, I believe, an inordinate fear of this rifleman and has confided that he sees the devils eyes in him. I have dissuaded him of the notion and tried to guide him through prayer. I could not admit that in my own heart, I see a grain of truth in his fear.
Forgive me my darling if I sound suspicious and maudlin. Your son Robert, your dreamer, has found the beauty in our midst. We gain strength from his fascination with the flocks of white birds that move above us at times like huge snow white clouds. His discovery of a vast army of colorful snails on the sawgrass kept him in awe for days. On a day last week when the dredge had been silenced by repair, he was the first to call all our attention to a feeding flock of birds of which none of us had ever seen. These creatures glowed with a pink color that was a fascination to the eye with the incredible contrast of the unbroken acres of brown and green grasses around them. Even the hard-driving foremen could not keep their eyes from the sight. Robert seemed mesmerized watching the flock feeding in an open pool of water, looking from a distance like a soft pile of pink cotton.
He is, as you would imagine, the one whose eyes seem to cloud over in the glory of God’s creation at sunset when the hues of purple, red and orange spread above the horizon. In only three weeks we will be finished with our tour of labor and we shall gather our pay and make our way back to you.
Love from your family men,
Cyrus
I folded the letter and sat in silence. I sipped at the coffee and watched the low flame of the lamp play with the wall shadow. Outside it was dead still until I heard the distinct, guttural “kwock” of a night heron. I thought back to the first time I’d seen one feeding along the river. It was stubbornly territorial but let me paddle within fifteen feet. He then turned his white crown away to show his marked cheek and fix me with one intense, deep-red eye.
I turned down the lamp wick to snuff the flame, and by memory moved through the lightless room. I set my empty cup on the drain board and checked the small propane stove valve to be sure it was off. Then I stripped to my shorts and lay in the bunk with only a sheet pulled over me. Sometime in my sleep, the eye of my heron turned into the eye of Arthur Johnson, whom I had not dreamed of in years, but whose look had been the closest to pure evil I ever wanted to see.
I was still with the Center City Detective Squad, not yet officially assigned and traveling on thin ice after strongly disagreeing with the arrest of a feeble-minded city maintenance worker for a woman jogger’s murder along Boathouse Row. I was still just a probationer and the lesson that case clearance was placed above all else was still a concept that tasted like ash in my mouth. But my family history kept me on the administrations track and my own ability to take a figurative or literal shot in the mouth and not have it bother me much kept me from really giving a damn. I was working a late shift when we caught a DOA in the subway between the Speedline stop and City Hall. It was one of the cold months, January or February. But down below the streets on the subway platform at Locust Street, you couldn’t see the steam of your breath like you could on the sidewalk. I was teamed with a veteran named Edgerton, and he bent over the dropoff to the tracks and looked up the tunnel leading north.
“How far?” he asked the transit cop who had called it in.
“Fifty, sixty yards. Up in a maintenance alcove,” he said, shaking his head and bunching his shoulders as though the thought of it made him colder. “Nasty.”
Edgerton looked down at his loafers.
“Shit,” he said, and the expletive led to me.
“Go on down there and take a look, Freeman. I’ll get the particulars from the sergeant here and the PATCO types. My guess is it ain’t gonna be much different than the others.”
I borrowed a flashlight from the transit sergeant and climbed down to the tracks on a ladder at the end of the platform. Cold grease and black dirt coated every surface. At least I was smart enough to still be wearing the same polished combat boots I’d been known for on the street patrol. I’d purposely bought my pleated Dockers an inch too long and with the cuffs settled down on the glossed leather of the boots, the brass never noticed. I waved the flashlight beam down the tunnel and a smaller version waved back at me.
Fifty yards into the darkness a transit worker bundled in a winter jacket kept his hands in his pockets. “Yo. How you doin’?” he asked, like he didn’t know my answer.
“Cold,” I said.
The guy pulled out one hand and trained his beam on a recessed rectangle in the wall and the three metal rungs that led up to it. I pulled on a standard-issue pair of surgical gloves and started climbing. When my head cleared the floor of the platform, the stench hit me and I turned to inhale better air before going on. I flipped on my flashlight. The odor of garbage, urine and death was packed into a four-foot-by-four-foot space that was barely more than six feet tall, and when I stood I had to keep my head bent. A locked metal door took up the rear wall. Bunched on the floor was a pile of dark rags and musty wool that had no doubt covered a body. I squatted down and directed the beam onto one end and peeled back a coat flap. The light fell on a mat of dull, brittle hair, and I had to reach in and find a jawbone to
grip before I could turn the head and confirm what Edgerton had already guessed. Two blackened holes looked up at me, the blood around them and the torn gristle deep in the sockets as dark as the skin of bruised plum. I felt the bile rise in my throat but dropped my circle of light quickly to the victims chin. I pulled the rigor-rusted jaw up enough to expose the crescent-shaped gash across the throat. As if the missing eyes weren’t confirmation enough.
I was doing a cursory check for any identification, when the transit worker said, “Jesus Christ.” The guy was still on the tracks, staring pointedly down the tunnel. “Those assholes,” he said, and started waving his flashlight beam to the north. Then I could hear it, the rumble of heavy metal on metal, and it was growing. I leaned out and could see the shine of light against a curved wall down the track, and then picked up a familiar clacking sound. The transit guy was still waving, but he had already taken two long steps toward the ladder.
“They was supposed to shut down traffic while we was down here,” he said, fumbling for his radio under the back of his jacket. The clacking rhythm continued to grow.
“Fourteen to control. Fourteen to control,” he barked into the mouthpiece. Now he had a hand on one rung, his eyes catching the trains brightening light.
“Asleep at the fuckin’ wheel,” he said, stepping up as the roar built exponentially.
I reached out and got a fistful of his jacket sleeve and yanked him up and in. We backed to the door and stood shoulder to shoulder and foot to corpse. I could feel the pressure in my ears change as the train pushed the air in front of it. I had to close my eyes as the litter and dust swirled into the cubicle, and I did not open them to watch the blur of train windows and the skin of the cars flash by. In several seconds the roar passed. The final car rushed by and the vacuum following it sucked the air and stench of death out of the recess, leaving a dull silence. The flashlight beams were already bouncing toward us when we climbed down. The sergeant was well ahead of Edgerton, and I thought of my partner’s loafers.
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