izzy
Izzy was in a twenty-one-foot fiberglass Bayliner boat that a disciple had donated to the Ashram, and that Jerry Singh kept at the yacht basin just off U.S. 1 on the Coral Gables Canal, up the waterway from Coconut Grove. He kept the boat there in case he felt like running out and fishing for dolphin, or hitting Miami nightspots by water. It was a good place for that.
Jerry was in a hunting and fishing phase, maybe because of the sporting types he’d been hanging with in the Carcass Bar at Sawgrass.
Carcass Bar-that’s the way Izzy thought of it. All those dead animals that reminded him of roadkill, with their glassy stares. Or maybe Jerry was still trying to impress the Indians. Pointless. But who knew?
It was 10:15 P.M. Izzy was still wearing his dancing shoes and satin jacket. So what he could do if he wanted was run up the bay to the Biscayne Yacht Club-they had reciprocals with Sawgrass-and check out the waitresses, or see if there was maybe a lonely widow or two looking for companionship.
Izzy loved to waltz. Since childhood, waltzes were his favorite.
But no. If Sally Minster really had gone away for the weekend, this was a chance too good to pass up.
She hadn’t answered her phone the five times he’d called during the drive down.
Standing at the console, seeing city lights reflect off a pale moon, Izzy idled the boat west beneath the bridge at Cocoplum Plaza. Lots of fast, Friday-night traffic clattering overhead-it was a weird feeling to be on water beneath moving cars. It gave him an uncomfortable, drowning sensation that was gone the moment he exited from beneath the bridge.
Ironwood, the gated community where Sally and Geoff Minster lived, was the fifth waterway down on the left, just past Sunrise Harbor, its own little island, right on Biscayne Bay.
Izzy watched an Ironwood security patrol car pass over the bridge. He floated there, running lights off, for a full two minutes before he clunked the boat into gear again, and idled out into the bay, then north past the docks of the lighted mansions.
Minster had built an ultramodern castle on the water, all stucco and glass. It had pointed gables and balconies built over a screened infinity pool, and a lawn landscaped in white quarry rock around islands of palms.
Moonlight on the rock reminded Izzy of when he was a kid in New York, looking out the window at night on fresh snow.
He swung the Bayliner into Minster’s dock and shut off the engine. Then he leaned to remove the white cowling of the Johnson outboard-he’d claim to have engine trouble if anyone confronted him.
Izzy paused once more, crouching beneath a traveler’s palm as he watched the lights of the same security patrol car sweep by. Then he stood and walked toward the pool door, taking rubber surgical gloves from his pocket.
Sally, the pretty, religious born-again church lady, still enjoyed her private time alone in the bedroom.
Izzy was in her bedroom now, searching through drawers, seeing that certain items had been moved; presumably used.
He liked her bedroom. It smelled of clean linen and body lotion, everything done in white and yellow, very feminine. Like the big four-poster bed with the overstuffed white comforter, pillows stacked in a way that suggested the lady liked lying on the bed watching the flat-screened television that was recessed into the wall.
He checked a final drawer, and thought, Yep, she’s been at it again. Izzy felt a pleasant fluttering in his abdomen.
Breathing slightly faster, he crossed the room to the electronics control center mounted at eye level behind a plastic cover. It was next to the hallway door.
Beneath the cover, he’d hidden a Mitsubishi 900 MHZ wireless, sub-micro video camera. The camera’s lens was smaller than a dime. The entire unit was smaller than the nine-volt battery that powered each of the two mini-recorders he’d hidden beneath boxes in her closet.
He’d placed a second camera on her bathroom ceiling.
Touch any button on the control center-turn on the lights, dim the lights, adjust the air-conditioning, anything-both cameras were activated.
Izzy went to the closet and removed two mini-cassette tapes. Then, as he fitted the first mini cassette into a standard-sized converter, he found the remote to Sally’s TV and VCR. When everything was ready, he threw himself onto her bed, turned on the television and pressed play. Then he lay back, watching.
Izzy grinned. There she was, Sally Minster, walking into her bedroom, a little wrinkled after dealing with a flat tire, dressed in a peach-colored business suit.
He scooched back, and began to fast-forward, searching for any good parts the camera might have captured. As he searched, he considered going to Minster’s study to make himself a gin and tonic. A big one with lots of ice. Or maybe just a nice cold beer, so he could savor the video in style.
But Izzy was too excited.
He got off the bed only once: Went to Sally’s drawer and selected blue satin bikini underwear before returning to her bed.
It took a lot of fast-forwarding, but he finally found what he was hoping to find. It was on the second tape; the bathroom camera. He turned the sound up so loud that he could hear Sally breathing.
He watched the screen as she came into the bathroom, wearing a white cotton robe. His stomach stirred as she turned to look at herself in the mirror, paused for maybe thirty seconds, thinking about it, before she loosened the robe, opening it, so that she could see herself.
Then Sally stood with the robe loose, bare skin in the mirror, her ribs showing, abdomen showing, blond pubic hair in the shadows, one white breast bared, her nipple pink and elongated, her eyes intense.
Izzy whispered, “Oh my God,” thinking, What a body. Pale skin, firm, heavy-breasted over thin hips. It was better than he’d hoped. No way of knowing she looked like that, the way she dressed, the religious woman always covering herself.
He focused on the TV screen, thinking, Do it… do it… do it, as Sally let the robe slide off her shoulders. Then she stood naked, comfortable with herself, alone in her own bathroom.
He watched her shake her hair free around her shoulders, looking into her own eyes. Then he watched her eyes seem to fog, as if her brain had drifted off to some distant place, and the color of her cheeks began to flush as she touched her stomach with long fingers, nails painted with pink gloss.
Now she was relaxing, getting into it. Her head was tilted back, eyes closed, as her fingers moved over her breasts gently, touching them, then massaging the weight of her breasts with open palms, moaning in a voice that seemed high, experimental or apologetic, nipples squeezed long between her fingers.
Izzy whispered, “Yeah. Go for it,” as Sally, moving faster now, knelt and removed a plastic, candle-sized object from the pocket of her robe.
He was done, now. He’d cleaned the bedroom, put everything back just the way he’d found it. Everything, including the video equipment.
The tape of Sally was so unbelievable, he’d considered removing the cameras, packing up the recorders. But then Izzy thought, What the hell, he’d leave them for one final week. His last week in the States.
There was something about this woman that got to him. More than just her body. It was her face, the way she dressed, the fact that she was a religious priss. Something.
Plus, he’d always detested Geoff Minster. A pompous, rich asshole who tried hard not to play the part. The few times he and Geoff were together, Geoff had looked at him as if he were something unsanitary.
Izzy wanted to see the man’s wife naked again.
So he decided to leave the cameras in place. He’d pick up the cameras and recorders before he split for Nicaragua. One more look. She was worth it. Just on the chance of getting something better.
But, oh my God, it would hard to get anything better than this. He’d made lots of tapes of lots of women, but nothing as good as Sally alone in her bathroom.
Izzy figured he’d give it six months, a year, wait ’til he had everything squared away in Nicaragua, then get a couple of thousand duplicate tapes made. Then he’d go to the Internet, upload a sample and put the tape up for sale. Maybe call it The Merry Widow.
What would he make? Sixty, seventy grand easy. Maybe a lot more if word caught on. Because that’s how porno sold-word of mouth.
He tried to imagine how she’d react when she found out. Sally Minster, the lady saint. Or maybe a male member of her church, being naughty, playing around in cyberspace, would find her. How would her preacher handle that?
That made Izzy chuckle.
His water-into-wine theory again. All religion was bullshit and fakery. Same with the holy goofs who pretended to practice it.
Hypocrites.
Izzy walked downstairs to the pool door, leaving the Minster home the same way he’d entered.
Hurrying.
Maybe hurrying too much because he had so much do tomorrow, Saturday. He had to spend the day making final preparations for the Bhagwan’s big magic trick on Palm Sunday. No simple task, which Jerry Singh was too self-obsessed to realize.
Because the Ashram owned interests in many theme communities, and because each community had its own eighteen-hole golf course, collecting several tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer had not caused Izzy the legal problems it would’ve most people.
The Feds had been nervous about the stuff ever since a U-Haul truck full of ammonium nitrate nearly brought down Oklahoma City. No way anyone could buy it in large quantities now without filling out forms and lots of background checks.
So what Izzy did, over a period of eighteen months, he regularly borrowed fertilizer from the maintenance barns of every golf course in the organization, saying they needed it at Sawgrass. Then he went to the Ashram’s master computer and adjusted the inventory numbers.
Easy.
But now came the shitty part. Tomorrow, he had to dump forty bags of the crap into a cement mixer by hand, then add diesel fuel and mix it until it was the consistency of mayonnaise. Dirty work.
He already had the blasting caps, two dozen six-volt batteries and timers wired, so the only thing left to do after that was transfer the gook to a Sawgrass maintenance truck. He’d had the truck rigged with a four-hundred-gallon skid-mounted tank and a pump that was powered by a Honda generator.
Tomorrow was a full day. So he was hurrying. He wanted to get out and make it to Sawgrass tonight before the bar closed.
Izzy keyed in the security password he’d found in Sally’s on-line computer files. He opened the door and stepped out into the night.
Then he froze.
Shit.
He was standing face-to-face with a seventy-year-old man in a brown security guard’s uniform. The man had a silver badge on his shirt pocket. He was holding a flashlight, not a gun.
“Can I help you, sir?”
A ridiculous question for the guard to ask. The old man, Izzy realized, was as startled as he was. Scared, too.
Izzy relaxed a little. “Just going out for a walk. See you!” He waved as if saying good-bye, but was really using his open palm to mask his face.
“Are you a friend of Mrs. Minster?” The old man was following him. Then the old man said, “Hey, hold it right there, buddy,” and he shined the flashlight directly on Izzy’s face.
Mistake.
Izzy stopped, turned slowly to face the man, and said, “Do you know how fucking dumb that was, mister?”
Izzy got to the guard before he could get the handheld walkie-talkie to his mouth. He held the old man, choking him with his forearm, squeezing harder and harder until the man suddenly quit struggling. Went from being a frightened old man to a rag doll.
Just like that. He quit. Or maybe he’d had a heart attack. It was so unexpected.
It was funny how that went. Some people fought like hell when they knew they were dying. Others just gave up, surrendered, as if to get it over with faster.
Izzy was now doubly glad that the woman’s dog was gone. The animal would follow him around, lick his hands, bring him a slipper or a towel or something like he wanted to play. Which completely ruined the mood.
Right now, for instance, the dog would have been in the pool enclosure, yapping its head off.
So Izzy was glad he’d gotten rid of the dog-though the damn thing tried to bite him the first time he shoved its head under water.
The dog wasn’t like the old man.
The church lady’s dog had fought back. chapter thirteen
Riding in the Freon capsule that was Frank DeAntoni’s Lincoln, looking through glass at sawgrass touching April sky, I listened to Tomlinson say from the backseat, “If an infinite number of drunken rednecks pull shotguns from the rack and shoot an infinite number of road signs, I hate to say it, but, one day those bastards are bound to produce a very good haiku in Braille. What’re the odds, Doc? It’s gotta happen, man.”
DeAntoni didn’t much like Tomlinson. He made it obvious, ignoring him when he could, shaking his head in reply to questions, rolling his eyes when Tomlinson made one of his eccentric observations.
DeAntoni rolled his eyes now, saying, “As if some blind dude is gonna roam around down here feeling for road signs, searching for something to read.” Then after a few more seconds, thinking about it: “Like they could even find the fucking signs way out here in this godforsaken swamp. How stupid can you get, Mac? They’d need a ladder to even reach ’em.”
DeAntoni was not a man whose life was complicated by an overactive imagination.
At a Mobil station, intersection of 951 and Rattlesnake Hammock Road, east of Naples, DeAntoni pulled me aside and whispered, “Jesus Christ, next time that weirdo takes off those John Lennon shades of his, check out the pupils. I think he might have been smoking marijuana. ”
“Really?” I replied. “Using drugs this early in the morning. Hum-m-m-m. I guess it’s possible. ”
“And wearing that crazy Hawaiian dress. I practically had to threaten him to make him change into shorts.”
Actually, Tomlinson had been wearing his black-and-orange sarong, swami-style, like a pair of baggy pants. He knew a couple of dozen ways to tie the things, depending on the occasion. I’d had to issue a threat or two myself. Nothing to do with his sarongs, which I’ve become used to. If he didn’t get rid of Karlita, though, he wasn’t going anywhere with me.
Which is why he informed Karlita that she couldn’t accompany us.
DeAntoni said, “What I don’t understand is, you two guys are pals. But you’re like exact opposites.”
I said, “I know, I know. It’s been worrying me for years.”
I think DeAntoni decided that the best way to keep Tomlinson quiet was to fill the silence by asking me lots of questions.
Speeding east on the Tamiami Trail, the remote two-lane that crosses Florida’s interior, all cypress swamp and grass savanna, I explained to Frank that the sawgrass growing out there, ten feet high, got its name from its three-edged, serrated blades.
“Sawgrass is deceptive,” Tomlinson added. “Looks like Kansas wheat, but it’ll cut you like a razor.”
Referring to the thatched huts along the road, and state road signs that read INDIAN VILLAGE AHEAD, I had to think back to the Florida history I’d learned in high school.
Trouble was, I wasn’t certain the information was still accurate.
I told DeAntoni that ’Glades Indians were derived from mixed bands of Creek and Muskogees, on the run in the late 1700s, who’d sought safe haven in Florida. The earliest group, Mikasuki-speaking Creeks, became known as the Miccosukee, then Trail Miccosukee, as in Tamiami Trail.
Another group, mostly farmers, were called the Cimar rons, which is Spanish slang for runaway or wild people-possibly because of the runaway slaves who sometimes lived among them. Cimarron became Simaloni in the Miccosukee language, then Seminole.
I told him, “I’m not sure if that information’s up to date. Tomlinson’s an expert on indigenous cultures, Native American history. He’s like an encyclopedia-literally. You should be asking him.”
DeAntoni shrugged, ignoring the suggestion, then changed the subject to wrestling.
I could see Tomlinson in the rearview mirror, chuckling, not the least bit offended, enjoying the man, his quirkiness.
We drove past Monroe Station and the dirt road turnoff to Pinecrest, then into the Big Cypress Preserve. At Fifty Mile Bend, in the shadows of tunneling cypress, we approached the cottage that is Clyde Butcher’s photo gallery. Tomlinson said why not stop in, say hello, take a look at some of the great man’s black-and-white masterpieces, Clyde was a hiking buddy of his.
DeAntoni replied sarcastically, “You got a swamp hermit buddy who’s an artsy-fartsy photographer? That’s a hell of a surprise,” and kept driving.
We didn’t slow again until we entered the Miccosukee Indian Reservation east of Forty Mile Bend-beige administrative buildings among pole huts, airboats, brown-on-white Ford Miccosukee Police cars-then the Florida deco tourist attractions, Frog City and Cooperstown.
At the intersection of the Tamiami Trail and 997, DeAntoni got his first look at the Miccosukee Hotel and Casino. It was in the middle of nowhere, elevated above the river of grass, fifteen or twenty stories high.
The casino was a massive stucco geometric on the Everglades plain, abrupt as a volcanic peak, painted beige, blue, Navajo red. It had a parking lot the size of a metropolitan airport. The lot was already half full at a little before noon on this Saturday. Lots of charter buses and pickup trucks.
“GAMING AND ENTERTAINMENT,” DeAntoni said, reading the marquee. “Now, that’s one place I wouldn’t mind stopping. Back in New York, I’d drive to Cornwall-the Mo hawks got a pretty nice casino there. Best one’s in Connecticut, though, a place called Foxwood Resort, run by the Pequots. You think this Miccosukee place is big? This place ain’t nothing compared to Foxwood. It’s the biggest casino in the world. They take in one billion dollars a year.”
Tomlinson whistled, then said, “Far out, man. A billion? You’ve got to be exaggerating.”
“Nope. I read it in the Times and the Post, too.”
“I knew it was big, but not that big.”
“Bigger than anything in Vegas. A clean one billion a year, and they’re proud of it-which I don’t blame ’em for. Man, they got three or four hotels, golf courses, more than twenty restaurants, everything open twenty-four hours a day, and the state doesn’t have a damn thing to do with it. No say at all. Not even taxes, ’cause they’re Indians. They even got their own police department.”
He glanced away from the steering wheel to speak to me. “Why is that? Why do Indians get to open casinos, but regular people can’t? I never checked into it.”
“I’m not sure myself.” I looked over my shoulder. “Let’s ask the expert.”
Still smiling, Tomlinson answered, “I’m allowed to speak? I don’t want to irritate our driver.”
DeAntoni said, “Your weird talk, that’s the only thing that drives me nuts. Gambling and casinos-that’s something I like. If you got something to say.”
Tomlinson told him, “I know something about it. I have lots of Skin friends-that’s what they call themselves. As in Redskins. The AIM people, man, I was really into their act, occupying Wounded Knee and Alcatraz. The American Indian Movement. The best of their warriors are still out there, fighting their asses off. The right to run gaming businesses, casinos, that’s all part of the movement.”
He said, “The Skins call it the New Buffalo-casinos, I mean. Tribes used to depend on the buffalo for survival. Get it? Gaming houses are what they depend on now. It’s become the same thing. A way for the tribes, their families and children, to live, stay healthy.”
I turned and gave Tomlinson a warning look-he tends to ramble and this was not a good time to ramble. But he’s also quick to catch on. So he straightened immediately and gave us the concise version. He explained that Indian reservations are on federal trust land, governed only by federal or tribal laws. States have no jurisdiction over Indian reservations, unless jurisdiction is specifically authorized by Congress.
In this way, reservations are actually sovereign nations. Unless prohibited by federal law, each Indian nation can decide for itself what gaming may be conducted. Gaming, not gambling, which is considered a dirty word by those involved.
Tomlinson said, “Back in the nineteen eighties, when the state of California tried to screw over the Cabazon tribe, that’s what really got the ball rolling. There were less than seventy people left in that little tribe, almost extinct. This little ghost band, out there on the rez, not bothering anybody.
“So what happens? State bureaucrats tell them they can’t play bingo on their own rez. Old ladies sitting around smoking, watching Ping-Pong balls fly up the chute. Their thrill for the week. But then the U.S. Supreme Court said, screw you, California, individual states have no say over Indian land. Which is when the idea for Indian casinos started booming.”
But that wasn’t the end of the controversy, Tomlinson added. Concerned about the Cabazon decision, Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 (IGRA), attempting to balance the interest between the state and tribal sovereignty.
Tomlinson said, “Roughly, what that law says is, Indian tribes have the exclusive right to regulate gaming activity on Indian lands. The state can’t say crap unless all forms of gambling are prohibited statewide. For instance, here in Florida, we’ve got a bunch of state lotteries to generate income because we’ve got no state income tax. So IGRA says it’s hypocritical and illegal for the state to interfere with gambling on sovereign Indian territory.”
I said, “That’s how the ’Glades Indians got into the gambling business. I didn’t know.”
“The Seminoles, man. Yeah, they were the first. Their chief at the time, James Billie, he was a genius. An old Vietnam combat vet, and he didn’t take any shit. But, in Florida, the Skins have always had to fight.”
As an example, Tomlinson told us that, for more than two hundred years, the state and federal government refused to officially recognize the Florida Miccosukee as a tribe.
Every twelve months, Miccosukee leaders filed petitions with the Bureau of Indian Affairs for “tribal confirmation.” Every twelve months, their petition was denied.
In the 1960s, the Miccosukee came up with a brilliant finesse. They sent a tribal delegation to Cuba where Fidel Castro signed documents recognizing the tribe as “a duly constituted government and a sovereign nation.” It assured them of international legal status.
Embarrassed, the U.S. government had no choice but to finally “confirm” the Miccosukee as a tribe.
“Florida hasn’t made it easy for any of them,” Tomlinson told us. “Back in ninety-one, the Seminoles had to sue the state in federal court because Florida refused to abide by IGRA statutes. The state insists it has the right to regulate gaming, so the Skins were all pissed off-Miccosukee and Seminole-and it’s still in the courts.”
Tomlinson tapped the car window, indicating the casino. “So the kind of gambling you can do in there is low-stakes stuff-compared to other casinos, anyway.”
DeAntoni said, “Too bad. Up at Foxwood, the Pequot Indians, they got thirty-some crap tables going day and night. I love to play those double-thunder slots, too. Or get a vodka on the rocks and play baccarat. Man, that’s recreation. ”
Parroting DeAntoni’s earlier sarcasm, Tomlinson replied, “You love to drink hard liquor and gamble, huh? A big-city guy like you. That’s a hell of a surprise.”
At the gatehouse, a guard dressed in tropical whites-including pith helmet-told us that he was sorry, but, unless we were accompanied by an owner, or on a member’s list, or unless we had an appointment with a Sawgrass real estate representative, he couldn’t allow us to enter.
In Florida, most gated communities hire security people who look like retired wallpaper salesmen. Minimum-wage guys killing time between visits from the grandchildren.
This one was different. He looked like he spent his off-hours in the gym. Had that hard cop formality which is a form of controlled hostility.
DeAntoni opened his billfold, showing his badge. “I’m here on business.”
The guard looked at the badge; shrugged like it was invisible. “No, sir, you’re not here on business. Not unless someone from management notifies me.”
“Then call someone in management. It’s about one of your deceased members, Geoff Minster. I’m here representing his wife. I can have her call if you want.”
The guard thought for a moment, then said, “Back up and pull over. I don’t want you blocking the gate if a member needs to drive through.”
The gatehouse was sided by high stone walls and an acre or so of landscaped garden, hibiscus, travelers palms, and a life-sized Indian elephant carved of tropical wood next to a fountain. The elephant stood frozen, trunk down as if watering. In front of the elephant, a carved sign read: SAWGRASS A PRIVATE MEMBERSHIP SPORTING COMMUNITY
There was a much smaller sign on the gatehouse wall: OUR SECURITY STAFF IS AUTHORIZED TO CARRY FIREARMS AND AIR TASERS, AND MAY USE LAWFUL FORCE TO INTERCEPT OR DETAIN TRESPASSERS.
As we waited, a new Mercedes convertible pulled up, two middle-aged men in the front. The guard took the phone from his ear long enough to salute, smile and say, “’Morn ing, Mr. Terwilliger!” then touched a button to open the gate.
“Friendly little place,” DeAntoni said, watching. “The guy in the white jungle beanie-I wouldn’t mind slapping him around some. Him and his asshole attitude. What you think, Ford? He looks like a bleeder to me. The kind who stands in front of the mirror with his weight-lifter muscles, but starts to bawl if he gets smacked a couple of times.”
I said, “You’re not smacking anybody and neither am I. That’s not going to get us inside those gates, and it’s not going to help Sally.”
Tomlinson told him, “Doc’s embraced a policy of total nonviolence, which is a major spiritual breakthrough. We’ve discussed it. He’s trying to grow as a human being.”
Watching the guard walk toward us, DeAntoni said, “Oh yeah? Then explain why my beezer’s the size of a turnip,” touching his swollen nose gingerly.
The guard came out, leaned toward the window and handed DeAntoni a card. “Send a fax to this number, stating exactly who you want to interview-we need specific names to make a request-and your reasons for visiting Sawgrass. The office will get back with you within a week to ten days. You know, on whether we can provide assistance.”
In a flat voice, DeAntoni said, “‘A week to ten days.’”
“That’s right, sir.”
“Look, Mac, all I want to do is go to the restaurant, talk to a few people, maybe find someone who knew the late Geoff Minster. It’s not like we’re gonna filch the fucking silver-ware-”
I put my hand on DeAntoni’s arm, leaning across, and said to the guard, “Thanks. We’re leaving now.”
The guard said, “That’s right, sir. You are. ”
Tomlinson said, “Very, very cool. I don’t just like the idea, I love it.”
He said it in reply to DeAntoni’s suggestion that we park the Lincoln down one of the old logging roads, and sneak onto the property on foot.
DeAntoni said, “Except for Mister Tight-Ass, nobody in there’s gonna know we’re not friends of members, or maybe just scoping out real estate. Rent-a-cops, Mac. They really bust my balls.”
He sounded insulted.
I wasn’t as enthusiastic. I’ve spent a significant portion of my life working in places I was not supposed to be; places where I would have been shot-or worse-if discovered. Breaching security, compromising security systems, is demanding work.
I was once competent. No longer. Techniques change along with technology. You don’t probe a guarded position on impulse. It’s something to be researched and planned. Trespassing, like pyromania, is a word I associate with amateurs.
On the other hand, there wasn’t much risk. If we got caught poking around, asking questions about a dead member-and we almost certainly would get caught if we starting asking questions-what’s the worst they could do? Call the police?
More likely, they’d just tell us to get the hell off the grounds, and that’d be that. In the meantime, we might find a friend or two of the missing man. Having a member agree to talk to us would certainly mitigate matters with local security.
So I told DeAntoni, okay, pull up the road, and we’d work our way back on foot.
It was an instructive decision.
Sawgrass, the exclusive community, was a shaded garden of cypress, bromeliads and swamp maple. The wall that cosseted it was almost always hidden by trees. It followed the roadway for another mile or so before angling back into the shadows of its western boundary.
That’s where the wall ended. It is also where the tree line ended, and a new development project began.
Sally’d told us about it. Bhagwan Shiva’s theme community for gamblers: a self-contained city that adjoined Indian reservation land where he wanted to build casinos. Several thousand housing units plus a city center, restaurants, recreation centers, all designed to attract people from middle-income brackets; people with enough money to gamble, but not wealthy enough to buy property in Sawgrass.
He was having a lot of permitting problems, Sally’d told us.
From the road, though, construction seemed to be well underway, permits or no permits-although destruction seemed a more accurate term. There were several gated, dirt access roads, with modular offices, plastic Porta-Johns, temporary power poles. At each, were signs that read:
FUTURE HOME OF CASINO LAKES, AN EXCLUSIVE PLANNED COMMUNITY. PRECONSTRUCTION PRICES AVAILABLE.
The crews weren’t working on this Saturday morning. Hadn’t been working for several weeks, by the looks of things. The first stage of the operation, however, seemed complete. They’d brought in a fleet of bulldozers and scraped the earth bare. Several hundred acres of black earth were turning gray in the morning sun. Only a few bald cypresses out there were left standing, isolated, sculptured like bonsai trees on a massive desert plain.
The cypress is an interesting, exotic-looking tree, with its connected, tubular base, bulbous knees and leaves as delicate as oriental lace. They grow in distinctive settings: on islands of elevated terrain in sawgrass marshes where, as a community of many hundreds of trees-even thousands of trees-they form a characteristic dome. Green rotundas of shadow out on the sawgrass horizon.
Cypress also grows along floodplains on long, silver strands that can be miles long. South Florida’s interior was once an uninterrupted canopy of cypress domes and strands. Up until the late 1940s, they comprised America’s last virgin stand of bald cypress and pond cypress: trees well over a hundred feet tall and several centuries old.
At the end of World War II, though, the big lumber companies arrived in Florida, motivated by a postwar construction frenzy that was hungry for building material. Dried and milled, cypress is a handsome conifer wood that is insect-and rot-resistant-perfect for houses. Rail lines were built, spur lines added; labor was imported. It took the companies nine years to girdle, bleed and cut an epochal forest that had been the centerpiece of an ecosystem that dated back to the Pleistocene. Many thousands of loaded freight cars; many millions of board feet.
There’re still lots of small cypress trees in the ’Glades. But big cypresses, the old giants are rare. In this area, though, the loggers had missed a few. Now those few trees stood alone on the bulldozed plain, solitary dinosaurs revealed, naked in this new century.
The three of us sat in the car, staring, until Tomlinson finally spoke. “There’s a kind of silence that’s really more like a scream. Listen. ” He’d lowered his window. “Hear it?”
DeAntoni turned to me. “What’s he mean, because they flattened it like a parking lot? There’s gotta be at least two square miles of land out there.”
I said, “Yeah. Maybe more.”
“Permitting problems, my ass, man.”
I told Tomlinson, “What could be happening here-one of the managers at South Seas was telling me about it-is what’s becoming a sophisticated developer’s device. It’s so tough to get permits to build anything, developers know it’s going to take them months, even years before they’ll get the okay on a project. So they’ve figured out they’ll actually save money by going ahead, building anyway, then paying fines later with inflated dollars. There’s a whole generation of bureaucrats out there who behave as if people in the private sector are enemies of the state. Which is just idiotic. So it’s become like a war-and everyone’s losing.”
Tomlinson said to me, “Understand now why I call him a power-zapper? He’s a black hole, man, out there trying to absorb all the light he can. He’s feeding. He’s been feeding right here.”
Bhagwan Shiva.
A little farther down the road was a crossroads general store, Big Cypress Grab Bag. Shell parking, a pair of gas pumps, rusted tin roof, wire mesh over the windows, peeling yellow paint. Coke. Bud Light. Lottery tickets and food stamps accepted. On the other side of the road were two businesses in a single, elongated building built of cement block: Devil’s Garden Feed amp; Supply and Gator Bill’s Bar.
Driving by slow, hitting his turn signal, DeAntoni said, “Pickup trucks and Confederate flags. Now you understand why I tried that chewing tobacco shit?”
“Makes perfect sense now,” I said as I opened the door, then stepped out into the heat and a sawgrass humidity so dense it was like weight.
It was almost noon. Gator Bill’s was a popular lunch place. There were a dozen or so cars and trucks, country music loud from inside, a jukebox, maybe, singing “… blow, blow Seminole wind!”
Through the screen door, in the shadows, I could see men at the bar hunched over drinks, a woman with black hair braided long, muling trays.
DeAntoni said, “We’ll hit this place on the way back. If they won’t let us eat at Sawgrass-one of the hot-shit restaurants they got in there-we’ll come back, grab a stool at the bar. That waitress, she doesn’t look half bad.”
We walked along the road in the heat. There wasn’t much traffic: semis loaded with oranges tunneling the heat at seventy miles per hour; dump trucks and tractors with air-conditioned cabs. Their wind wakes created mini-tornadoes in the grass, whipped at our clothes.
Florida is more than beaches and theme parks. It’s a major agricultural state and, consistently, the second or third leading producer of cattle in the nation. We were at the southernmost boundary, where pasture meets swamp prairie, the first and final edge of tropical wilderness.
At the beginning of Casino Lakes development, we cut down one of the access roads, then across to Sawgrass. DeAntoni and Tomlinson both wanted to climb the wall, take our chances. But I told them why be obvious and give them an excuse to call the police if someone spotted us?
I said, “Let’s try the easy way, first.”
Most gated communities have service entrances-they don’t want the landscape soiled by all those dirty delivery trucks, or to require members to exchange pleasantries with the hired help. Sawgrass’s service entrance was off an asphalt spur at the western boundary: a chain-link fence, double-gated. There was a little guardhouse where an old man sat, feet up on his desk, reading the paper. He looked up from the newspaper as we approached.
To DeAntoni and Tomlinson, I whispered, “Walk like you own the place.” A few paces later, I stopped and called to the old man, “Whoops, sorry. I didn’t realize this was the service entrance. We’ll hike around to the front.”
He’d slid the front window open. “Who you fellas with?”
“The Terwilligers, down here for first time. So we don’t know the area. No big deal, we’ll walk back to the front gate.”
Maybe he knew the middle-aged man in the Mercedes convertible, maybe he didn’t.
As I turned, the old man called, “Oh heck, go right ahead on in. They got too many rules at this place as it is. Hot as it is, you want me to have staff bring you a golf cart?”
I said, “Nope, walking’s a good way to go.”
Waving us along, smiling, the man said, “Ain’t that the truth? These days, ever’body’s in a hurry. You tell Mr. Terwilliger, Freddy says hey.”
A nice old guy.
When we were well away, walking on a brick sidewalk among manicured gardens, through tupelo trees and cypress, DeAntoni said to me, “You’re smooth, Mac. Very smooth.”
I told him, “We’ll see.” chapter fourteen
The bartender said, “Mr. Minster? Of course, I knew Mr. Minster. An interesting man. Such a tragedy. We miss him here at Sawgrass.”
We were in the Panther Bar, which was part of the Big Cypress Restaurant, a place modeled after the old Rod amp; Gun Club in Everglades City. It was white clapboard, three stories high, pecky cypress inside with a wide veranda, ceiling fans, pictures by Audubon, Currier amp; Ives, framed and lighted. There was a formal restaurant-chandeliers and starched tablecloths-a light-fare eatery built on a deck over a cypress hammock, gators basking below in tannin-stained water, plus this ornate bar.
The bar had a granite fireplace, tables of dense wood, walls that were a museum of taxidermy: old skin-mounted tarpon, snook, bass and sailfish. There were alligators twelve to fourteen feet long, green turtles, turkeys, coveys of quail, a bear snarling on hind legs and one spectacularly large feral hog with razor tusks.
“Holy shitski,” Tomlinson said, eyes swiveling as we walked in. “They ought to have a couple of Michiganers tacked up there; human heads just to be fair. Give wildlife equal time. Or a Buckeye or two in travel garb, cameras around their necks. Mount them over there”-he pointed to the largest of the gators-“maybe partially ingested. A leg or two missing, but they’ve still got that Disney World smile on their faces. Tough-ass Ohioans not about to let anything ruin their vacation. A real Florida tableau. Don’t you think that’d up burger sales?”
Shaking his head, DeAntoni said, “Jesus, burgers. That’s exactly what I was going to order, too. Why you got to be so fucking vulgar?” and left us standing as he walked toward the bar.
The busiest of tourist times in Florida is a week or two before Easter. Even so, the lodge wasn’t crowded. At the most expensive clubs, hefty yearly dues ensure lots of personal room, lots of personal attention.
Members and their guests were getting it here. There was a steady luncheon business out on the veranda, a couple more tables occupied inside, but there was only one person at the bar when we sat. A distinguished-looking man with white hair, pleated shirt and slacks. He was peering reflectively into a heavy Scotch glass, but turned long enough to allow us a pleasant nod.
We ordered drinks and lunch; talked among ourselves for a while before DeAntoni attempted to coax conversation out of the bartender. Talked about sports, asked him about the fishing, how was business, how were tips, before he finally mentioned Minster.
The question seemed to surprise the bartender, though he recovered quickly. Bartenders become expert at masking emotion or they don’t last long in what is a tough, tough business. He was as muscular as the guard in the pith helmet, but older: clean-cut, tan face beaming as he towel-dried glasses in his white shirt and black vest, with a name tag that read: KURT-LINCOLN, MASS.
But there was something aloof in Kurt’s dark eyes, as if he were an actor too good for the role he’d been assigned, and knew it. He and the guard possessed a similar, polite facade that implied a well-hidden contempt.
We listened to the bartender tell us how interesting Minster was, what a loss it was to the club, before DeAntoni said, “The three of us are all friends of his wife, Sally. You ever meet her?”
“No, sir. I don’t think I had the pleasure. You’re guests of Mrs. Minster?”
“That’s right. We’re friends of Geoff, too. We were his friends. Crummy luck, huh? Falling off the ass-end of a boat. Geoff was one smart operator. He was the guy behind developing this place, which you probably know. Right here where you’re working. Sawgrass. Him and some weird religious guru, but Geoff was the real brains-”
For just an instant, the mask slipped a little as the bartender interrupted with exaggerated civility. “Excuse me, sir. Bhagwan Shiva is not some weird religious guru. He’s a gifted and enlightened individual. A very great man. Shiva comes here often, and we’re honored that Shiva has chosen Sawgrass as his personal ashram. In fact, he’ll be here this afternoon.”
DeAntoni said, “Ashram,” in a blank tone that said he didn’t know what Kurt was talking about.
“An ashram is a place for spiritual retreat. Like a church, only more than that. At Sawgrass, we have an indoor ashram for meditation, religious instruction. We also have a much larger outdoor ashram, which is at the end of the nature trail. Cypress Ashram. It’s an amphitheater beneath a really pretty cypress dome. It’s beautiful; seats nearly a thousand. Some people say they find grace and tranquillity if they just sit there alone for a few minutes. I suggest you visit it.”
It was a subtle cut that DeAntoni missed. He replied, “Yeah, Geoff was into that stuff, too, meditation, religion-” but the bartender had already turned away, ending the conversation, walking off, telling us that he’d go check with the kitchen because our food should be up soon.
When Kurt was gone, the white-haired man cleared his throat, a mild smile on his face, looking at us with eyes that were bleary, seemed a little sad. “Forgive me, but I couldn’t help overhearing that you gentlemen were friends of Geoff. I knew him well. A wonderful guy.” The man had the genial southern accent that I associate with moneyed people from Charleston society or, perhaps, old Atlanta.
DeAntoni said too quickly, “Oh yeah, the best. Geoff was a real peach.”
“Quite a raconteur,” the man said. “Told the funniest stories.”
“Hilarious,” DeAntoni said. “Made your sides ache when he really got going.”
My antennae were up. A lot of little warning bells were going off. I sensed we were being manipulated, even tested, as the white-haired man continued, “So you really did know our old colleague. I’m surprised I didn’t see y’all at the memorial service.”
Tomlinson, typically, had already perceived what I was just beginning to suspect, because he spoke before DeAntoni or I could reply, saying, “My brothers, I think we have badly misjudged our drinking neighbor. Sir”-he turned on his stool to face the older man-“we deceived the bartender. Flat-out lied on purpose. He’s a young spirit, an inexperienced soul. But not you. So the truth is, we didn’t know Mr. Minster. I met him once-and he wasn’t impressed. But we are friends of his wife, Sally. Mind if I ask how you knew we were lying?”
The man was swirling the whiskey in his glass, staring into it. I realized that he was already well on his way to being drunk, only an hour past noon.
He said, “The way I know is, I’ve spent my life starting companies, overseeing corporations, sniffing every kind of man you can imagine. It takes balls the size of pit bulls to be successful in American business-especially these days. So an ol’ boy also has to have a finely developed, built-in bullshit detector.”
His mild smile broadened as he added, “And you, gentlemen, set off my bullshit detector the moment you walked through the door. The moment your large friend opened his New York mouth”-he used his chin to indicate DeAntoni-“I knew he was full of manure. Besides that, Geoff Minster never told a funny story in his life. I don’t think the man knew how to laugh. Although, he was maybe trying to learn toward the end.”
I expected DeAntoni to bristle. Instead, he stood and held out his hand. He waited as the older man thought for a moment, then finally shook it. “You got good judgment, Mac. The kind of guy who says what’s on his mind, which I respect. Truth is, I’m a private investigator trying to help Mrs. Minster. She doesn’t think her husband’s dead. Neither do I. Which is why I’m down here askin’ questions.”
The white-haired man considered that through two delicate sips of his drink. His expression read: Interesting. Finally, he stood, pausing another moment to be certain of his balance. Then he said, “I’m going to find a corner table-away from that little Nazi of a Yankee bartender. Interested in joining me?”
When DeAntoni said yes, the man told him, “Excellent. ’Far as I’m concerned, the only bad thing about drinking alone is that a fine Scotch never gets the time it deserves to breathe.”
“Conversation,” Tomlinson replied agreeably, “can be the secret to getting a whiskey binge off to a good start.”
“‘Conversation’?” the man said. “Son, I don’t waste my time with conversation. No businessman worth a damn talks for pleasure. If I open my mouth, it’s either to take a drink or to negotiate. Sometimes, it’s to barter. Which is what we’re doing now. I’m drinking thirty-four-year-old Blackadder Single Malt. Staff has it flown in special from Ben Nevis at a price that’s obscene. If I’m talking, you’re buying. That’s the agreement. So I hope you brought a walletful of cash.”
The white-haired man, who introduced himself as Carter McRae, said to us, “Before we sit down and get real comfy-like, I’d like to ask you a couple of questions. Does Miz Sally want to find out if Geoff’s dead ’cause she misses him? Or is it ’cause she’s worried about losing the insurance money?”
I answered. “Neither. She wants to give most of the money to her church. Ethically, she can’t do that if her husband’s still alive.”
The older man nodded, apparently pleased. “That there’s the only answer I’d have believed. Okay, so now I’d appreciate it if you’d haul out one of those cell phones ev’body carries these days and dial up the lady. Sally knows me. Not well, but she knows who I am. If you’re such old and good friends, you won’t have to bother lookin’ up her number now, will you?”
We were dealing with one tough, shrewd old guy.
DeAntoni had a phone and the number. After he’d dialed, McRae held his hand out, put the phone to his ear, pushed open the double doors, and walked out onto the veranda. I watched him through the glass. As he spoke into the phone, he maintained the same mild smile, but his sad eyes brightened slightly. Beyond and below him were cypress trees knee-deep in water; Spanish moss draped over limbs like blue mist.
“Something’s wrong with him,” Tomlinson said softly, looking through the window. “Something happened to hurt him recently.”
DeAntoni said, “What makes you think that? The guy’s ballsy. He likes his whiskey, but there’s nothing in the world wrong with a man liking his whiskey.”
“It’s pure pain. I can see it.” Tomlinson started to add something, but stopped because McRae was coming back into the room. As he handed DeAntoni the phone, the older man looked at me, saying, “You’re Ford. Sally says you two’ve been friends since you were kids. Talks about you like you ought to be wearin’ shining armor and a halo”-his eyes narrowed slightly as he finished-“but I’d bet a good pointer dog she’s wrong about that. The halo part. Which is just fine by me. I don’t like saints. Righteousness-that’s for people who don’t have the spine to live like men.”
I told him, “Your dog would be perfectly safe. I’ve known Sally a long time. She’s a good one. A nice person.”
“I couldn’t agree more, son. Which is why you gave the only answer that was gonna keep me sitting here, drinking your whiskey. I met the lady six, seven times and, each time, I liked her better. Gwendie-my wife-she felt the same. Which is why I’ll be happy to talk a spell. You’ve met those couples who just never seemed to fit? Where you think the wife’s got way too much spunk and class and pure built-in funny for the husband? Or just the opposite: The wife’s a dud, and the husband’s got all the star quality?”
“Sure. Too often.”
“Damn right, son, way too often. They got an unhappiness about them that seeps across a room. My point being that I could never picture Sally with Geoff. We ran in the same circles, belonged to the same clubs. To me, what they seemed to be was two strangers who always arrived in the same car. Not like those good couples you meet every now and again. A man and woman who can be at opposite ends of a big party, but’re still right there together. Partners joined at the heart.”
Tomlinson said gently, “Like you and Gwendie.” McRae seemed to look deeper into his Scotch glass before downing it in a gulp. He was about to reply when the bartender reappeared, carrying our food. Kurt was visibly surprised to see the four of us at the same table. When he asked, “Is everything okay here, Mr. McRae?” he was really asking if the older man wanted him to get rid of us.
“Fine, Kurt, just fine. Turns out, these gentlemen and I have some old mutual friends. Hell of a coincidence, runnin’ into ’em here.”
As he walked away, McRae said in a low voice, “One of the choirboys. That’s what I call ’em. The Church of Ashram staffs this place with their own people-which is why he got so pissed off when you made that remark about Jerry.”
DeAntoni said, “Jerry?”
“Jerry Singh, the head guru. Shiva, the big shot who calls himself Bhagwan. The weirdo you were talking about. Only here, we call him by his real name ’cause he found out damn quick that men with enough money to afford membership aren’t going to tolerate all his religious nonsense. So he pretends to be just one of the boys. Actually seems to enjoy it.”
I asked, “Then why do you tolerate his people as staff?”
McRae said, “Why? Because they’re superb, that’s why. Because they’re the best I’ve ever seen at what they do. Remember that recluse a few years back, one of the world’s richest men? He only hired members from this one particularly strict religion. They did everything for him, cooking, all the secretarial stuff, even took charge of his gambling interests out there in Nevada.
“It didn’t make sense to me at the time ’til I spent a few weeks at Sawgrass. Same principle applies here. Jerry’s people-the choirboys, his choirgirls-really believe in what he says. They don’t drink or smoke, and they sure as hell aren’t going to steal. They’re not employees; they’re disciples. To them, he’s a kind’a God, so they treat us the same way, ’cause that’s what he’s commanded. Which means they follow orders, no questions asked. You ever see Jerry on stage? Attend one of his services?”
Tomlinson said, “I’ve read about them.”
McRae said, “You won’t see a better show in Vegas. Who’s the famous magician, the one with the long hair? Lots of smoke and dramatic lighting? Jerry’s shows are just as good or better. The man’s a hell of an actor. He’s got a great sense of dramatic timing. He’s fun to watch, and I think that’s one reason his followers do exactly whatever he tells them to do.”
McRae added, “They work their asses off. They’re always on time, always polite. They keep the grounds just like they keep the kitchen-immaculate. Cleanliness is one of the Ashram’s tenets. So’re obedience and hard work. They’re as efficient as little robots. See Kurt? He’s bringing me another Blackadder right now. The glass’ll be spotless, and it’ll be filled with a good, full pour. Never had to say a word. I never do.”
McRae paused as the bartender served. Waited patiently until he was gone, then continued, “You can ask ’em to do anything you want-literally almost anything -they’ll do it. If I tell Kurt, call security and have you gentlemen escorted out, they’d do it so quick and smooth, people slurping soup out on the veranda would never know there was trouble. I wouldn’t have to tell them why, give them a reason, say another damn word. Once they got you off alone, from what I’ve heard, you three’d never risk coming back again, either.”
He paused, thinking about it, holding his Scotch to the light, seeming to take pleasure in its amber flush. He said, “People like me, men who fought hard to make their fortunes in the world, we like that. Unquestioned obedience. Hell, we demand it, but it’s getting harder ’n’ harder to find with all the damn do-gooders out there, and bullshit laws.” McRae leaned toward me, focusing on me with his sad, old eyes, “There’s only one thing you can’t expect of staff here.”
I said, “What’s that?”
“Trustworthiness. You can’t trust them. Whatever they hear, whatever they see, they’ll take straight to Jerry if they think he should know. Which is why I’m sure he’ll hear that the four of us were talking about Minster. Tonight at the latest, if that lil’ Yankee hasn’t called Jerry already.”
DeAntoni asked, “So what’s wrong with that, Mac? It’s a free country.”
“I know, I know, I’m just warning you. Jerry’s ruthless-you have to be ruthless to run an organization the size of his. He’s not going to be happy about a member talking to outsiders-especially me, ’cause he knows how I feel. First time I heard about it, the way Minster supposedly fell off that sports fisherman at night, I never did believe it. Personally, I’ve always believed Geoff’s still alive.”
Carter McRae told us he’d been suspicious of Minster’s disappearance for a simple reason: He was acquainted with the three men who were with Minster that night. He told us their names. One was a well-known Florida politician, another was an international investment banker, the third a retired State Supreme Court judge. They all lived in the same exclusive little Coconut Grove community, Ironwood.
“Know what else those three had in common?” McRae asked. “They didn’t much like Geoff. Don’t misunderstand me-they didn’t hate him. Just didn’t particularly care for him, which I can understand. Before his religious conversion, Minster was a hard-ass businessman who didn’t give a damn about making friends. After his conversion, he was so touchy-feely-spiritual that a real man wouldn’t want to waste time talking to him.”
According to McRae, he’d spoken with all three after the disappearance. Each of the three men told him that the only reason they’d gone on the fishing trip was because Minster had pushed and pestered until they finally agreed just to fulfill a social obligation they would never have to endure again.
McRae asked us, “Now why would Minster choose three men who didn’t much like him to go on that boat?”
“Witnesses,” Tomlinson said immediately. “Three of the most respected men in the state. He wanted witnesses. The kind no one would ever doubt.”
McRae was nodding, smiling; a man who was at the head of the table no matter where he sat, sober or drunk. “You, sir, have an intellect that is not implied by your physical appearance-unlike your politics. I have a little granddaughter who uses the same kind’a combs in her hair, and that shirt you’re wearing reminds me of Derby Day in Lexington. All the pretty, flowered bonnets.”
Tomlinson took it as a compliment. “Thank you, Mr. McRae. But I can’t take credit for the witness theory. Doc was the first to think of it. Invite three solid citizens, then fake your death by jumping overboard. A second boat’s in the area, lights out, waiting to make the pickup.”
I’d considered the possibility, but didn’t remember mentioning it to Tomlinson.
I listened to McRae say, “I haven’t followed it that closely. Perhaps you gentlemen know more details. Did anyone ever ask the boat’s captain if he had his radar on that night? If there was a second vessel following, or waiting close enough to pick up Minster, the skipper would’ve seen it on the screen.”
DeAntoni said, “I interviewed the captain. So’d the cops. He had radar, yeah, but he told me he didn’t notice. It was such a clear night, plenty calm, that he was running the thing all by himself, no need to use the electronics. Plus, he had no idea what time Minster went overboard. The last person to see him was the retired judge, and that was around nine P.M. They didn’t realize he was gone ’til the next morning, when they woke up in Bimini.”
I asked, “Can you think of any reason why Minster would want to stage his own death?”
McRae said, “There’re only two reasons a man disappears on purpose, and both’re because he feels he has to escape. He’s trying to escape from someone who wants to kill him, or he wants to escape his old life. Too many bills, too much pressure. Leave behind a life he just can’t stomach any longer. Or maybe escape into the arms of a different woman.”
DeAntoni said, “Minster was sick of his old life, his wife told us that. Was he screwing around on her?”
“Sorry, that’s the sort of question a gentleman doesn’t answer. Not that I approve of such behavior. I’ve been married for fifty-two years and was unfaithful to my wife only once. That was a long, long time ago. It was the saddest, sickest thing I’ve ever done, and the only true regret I have in this life.”
After a few moments of reflection, McRae added, “Was Minster screwing around? I will say this. In the Ashram faith, I hear communal sex is allowed. Maybe even encouraged. All I’ll tell you is, the month before he disappeared, Minster lived here in the club’s bachelor quarters. He almost never went home to Sally. I also know he had a special friend, an Indian woman. That’s all I’ll say on the subject.”
“Would you tell us her name if you knew it?”
“No.”
“Is there anything else that suggests to you that he intentionally went missing?”
“As I said, there’re only two reasons a man chooses to disappear: to start a new life, or to get away from someone who was trying to kill him. Could be, both reasons applied to Geoff.”
That was a surprising thing to hear. DeAntoni said, “He was afraid of being killed? By who? ”
“Figure it out for yourselves. Toward the end, he and Jerry weren’t getting along. They sat here one night, screaming at each other. Kurt about soiled his pants, he was so quick to shut the restaurant down. The holy man, Bhagwan Shiva, acting like a drunken bully. We can’t let the faithful see something like that, now, can we?”
“Do you know what the argument was about?”
McRae had begun to weave slightly, his eyes even blur rier. Now, with a slowly marshaled effort, he straightened himself, giving it careful consideration, before he told us, “Gentlemen, I think our little barter session has come to an end. I have reached the point where this very fine Scotch has turned to common whiskey on my palate, and that’s a sin against all that I hold dear. Besides, the subject’s too serious for drunk talk.”
He was pulling his wallet out, from which he produced a business card. “You write your phone numbers on this little piece of paper. Give me some time to think it over. Maybe I’ll call. Maybe I won’t. Let’s just leave it at that.”
As we paid the tab, I noticed that Tomlinson had his hand on McRae’s shoulder, leaning toward him, talking into his ear.
I watched the distinguished man frown, shaking his head. Then McRae closed his eyes, listening… then it appeared as if he were fighting back tears, patting the top of Tomlinson’s hand with his own. He spoke a few words as Tomlinson continued to whisper, and then McRae was nodding, smiling a little.
Outside, I dropped far enough behind DeAntoni to ask Tomlinson, “What were you saying to him back there?”
“Mr. McRae’s wife, Gwendie, was operated on for a cerebral aneurysm six months ago. She’s been in a coma; on life support ever since.”
“How’d you know that?”
“I didn’t. I had a strong sense that he was in pain. He’s a good man, too. Not my kind of man. Not the kind I’d choose for a friend. When he described Shiva as ruthless? He was describing himself just as accurately. I suspect you realize that. But a good man, even so.
“His driver takes him to Naples Community Hospital every night at six, where he sits beside Gwendie for as long as he’s allowed, holding her hand, whispering into her ear. Every morning, he comes here and drinks single malt until he’s drunk enough to go home and get some sleep.”
“What did you say to him?”
“I got his e-mail address. Told him I’d send him a paper I wrote a long time ago. Maybe it’ll give him some comfort.”
I knew exactly what paper he meant-“One Fathom Above Sea Level.” But I said, “What paper’s that?”
“Just a paper. I’d almost forgotten I’d written the thing until strangers starting e-mailing me, asking questions about it. Pretty weird, man. The present meets the past. Unfortunately, the brain cells that did the writing are long, long gone. Oh”-he was walking beside me, twisting his yellow goatee into curls-“something else I told him was that my instincts are pretty good. I told him I was getting strong vibes that Gwendie’s gonna wake up soon. It might take awhile, but she’s going to be okay.”
I said, “Do you think that’s a responsible thing to do-give the man false hopes? You could end up hurting him more.”
“In the paper I mentioned-this is just an example, and I’m paraphrasing. But I wrote something about selfless hope. I said hope is the simplest proof of divine origin. When I told him that, he seemed to appreciate it.”
I said, “I wouldn’t mind seeing how you come to that conclusion. Why don’t you send me a copy. I’ll read it.”
That much was true. I hadn’t read it. For some reason, to do so without Tomlinson’s permission had seemed an invasion of his privacy. It was something a stranger could do, but not a friend.
“Know what, Doc? Considering all you’ve been through, I came this close to asking you to read it fifty, sixty times. But it seemed like an imposition. Like you’d have to read it just because we’re pals.” Then he stopped talking and, in a different tone of voice, he said, “Uh-oh. Here comes trouble.”
He meant the golf cart speeding toward us, two men aboard. Pith helmet, the guard from the front gate, was sitting beside a driver who wore a black T-shirt and black cap, SECURITY printed on both in yellow letters.
I remembered Sally telling us about Shiva’s Archangels, the security people who always dressed in black.
DeAntoni saw them, too. He stopped, waiting, when pith helmet said loud enough for us all to hear, “There they are; it’s them. Those’re the ones.” chapter fifteen
The golf cart came at us full speed, then turned in front of DeAntoni so abruptly that it almost hit him. He backed up reflexively a couple of steps as the two men bailed out even before it stopped. Pith helmet was already talking, speaking to us as a group in his cop voice, very officious.
“You individuals are on private property. I warned you. I told you that you weren’t permitted on the grounds, but here you are. So we’re going to detain you until we’ve contacted the sheriff’s department-”
At the same time, DeAntoni was saying, “Whoa, Mac, stop right there. Not another step closer,” because they were coming toward him.
Pith helmet had a leather sap in his hand, and appeared ready to use it. The man in the black cap held what looked to be a cell phone, but the shape didn’t seem quite right. Then I realized what it was: a taser gun. A taser shoots twin, dart-pointed probes that produce a pulsing, high-voltage current when they make contact with human flesh.
Pith helmet was saying, “The smart thing for you people to do is shut your mouths, just come along peacefully. Put your hands behind your heads-” as DeAntoni stopped backing up, his expression was changing; a sort of game-face transformation that I know too well.
“Mac,” he said, not very loud, “you lay a finger on me, you’re going to be shitting little pieces of that sap for the next three weeks.”
Which is when Tomlinson rushed forward, trying to intervene. He was walking fast toward the security guards, his palms held outward- slow down; stay calm -telling them, “It’s okay, it’s okay, we have permission to be here. Call Carter McRae. He knows us. Mr. McRae, or even the bartender, Kurt. He saw us together.”
Black hat had been focused on DeAntoni, but now he turned his attention to Tomlinson, holding the taser in his hand like some kind of space-age revolver. Black hat was taller, leaner than pith helmet; had a look of forced stoicism, as if he were trying hard to behave professionally, but was actually excited, enjoying himself.
“You’re friends of Mr. McRae, huh? Just like you’re good friends of the Terwilligers. I called Mr. Terwilliger and checked. They’ve never heard of you people. Which is why we’re detaining you. So put your hands behind your heads. Now. ”
At the same time, black hat was talking to Tomlinson, telling him, “Stay back, stay back, don’t come any closer-I’m warning you,” as Tomlinson continued to walk fast, trying to position himself between DeAntoni and the two guards.
Then black hat shot Tomlinson in the chest with the taser. I heard a blast of compressed air; saw the probes snake toward him. Tomlinson was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, pink surfboards on purple silk. It was very thin material, and I could hear the sickening thud of the darts impacting upon muscle and bone.
It was a grotesque scene to witness. Tomlinson dropped like a rag doll, landed on his side and rolled to his back, his arms and legs flailing, the muscles of his face spasming as his eyes fluttered back in his head.
DeAntoni and I had begun to sprint toward black hat the instant he aimed the taser, but pith helmet intercepted DeAntoni-or tried to. I heard pith helmet give a shriek of pain, but didn’t see why because I was concentrating on black hat, who held the taser in his left hand like some macabre puppeteer, Tomlinson twitching wildly at the end of two black strings. With his right hand, though, black hat was now un holstering a revolver.
The sign at the gatehouse had warned that the staff here was authorized to carry firearms, but what kind of idiot would draw a weapon under these circumstances? The answer was unnerving: the kind of idiot who was eager for a reason to shoot someone.
Me.
I vaulted over Tomlinson and drove my shoulder into black hat’s chest, pinning his right wrist against his holster as I pushed him backwards, then lifted him high off the ground, his feet kicking. I held him there for a moment before I turned and body-slammed him onto the brick sidewalk. He hit with such force that it knocked the wind out of him: The wide, bulging eyes were symptomatic. It’s a terrifying thing to be unable to breathe, and his expression reflected that terror.
He’d gotten the revolver drawn-a. 38 caliber Smith. I kicked it away, into grass, then rushed to Tomlinson and yanked the probes out of his chest. The muscle spasms ceased almost immediately, but it took a few moments before his glazed eyes could focus.
“Are you okay?”
He made a fluttering noise with his lips, his face illustrating dazed wonderment. “Holy shit! What a… what a rush that was, man. Wow. ”
To my left, I could hear DeAntoni saying, “I knew it, I knew it. Look’a the tears running down tough guy’s cheeks.”
He had the fingers of his left hand wedged between pith helmet’s throat and jaw, holding him against the golf cart, and was slapping him rhythmically with his open right palm. “Guess what I’ve decided, tough guy? I’m not going to let you arrest us today. Nod your head a couple times, just so I know you agree.”
Pith helmet nodded quickly.
Black hat was recovering, getting slowly to his knees, so I scooped up the revolver, popped the cylinder, threw the cartridges into the bushes, then the gun. A walkie-talkie lay nearby, and I tossed that, too.
I told DeAntoni to stop, give me a second, and then I said to pith helmet, “Know what we’d appreciate? We’d really like a ride to the closest gate.”
Pith helmet’s voice was higher-pitched now and raspy. “That’s all we wanted in the first place. To tell you to leave the premises. That’s all we wanted you to do.”
Helping Tomlinson to his feet, I said, “Then you won’t mind if we borrow your golf cart.”
I told DeAntoni I thought it was a bad idea to drive the cart off Sawgrass property. He said, “Screw ’im. You heard the dude. Gave us permission to use it. Screw walkin’ through the field again. I’m driving the damn thing all the way back to that bar. What was the name?”
Gator Bill’s.
He did, too. Drove us past the service gate, where Freddy gave us an uneasy wave, down the road to the little crossroads village of Devil’s Garden.
Tomlinson sat in the front, still dazed but excited, jabbering away. I was in the back, so I had to turn to listen to him say, “My tolerance for high voltage just keeps getting higher and higher, man. I’ve been zapped so many times, I’m starting to enjoy it-which opens a whole new world of exploration.”
He lifted his hair to show DeAntoni, pointing to the tiny lightning-bolt scar on the side of his head. “Mother Nature once zapped me with lightning as a personal favor. Direct strike, man. A very intense experience. Years before that, I also spent a couple of weeks doing a little table dance which my old shrink, a Freud-geek, described as ‘electroshock therapy.’ Didn’t have much choice about that one, either. Same this time. Man, when those two darts hit my chest, it was almost like the time I picked up the electric ray. Remember, Doc?”
I said I did, pleased that he was okay; that he didn’t seem to be suffering any lasting effects from the stun gun.
He said, “When I got hit, it was like a bright blue light flashed on behind my eyes. I could see a wiring schematic for my entire nervous system. Seriously. Like in the cartoons where the mouse electrocutes the cat. Far out, man! In a chemical-electric way, I’m talking about. A really far-out sort of rush.”
When Tomlinson added, “Doc… I want you to think this one over. If I invested in one of those taser guns… if I asked you to give me the occasional shot in the ass-controlled conditions, of course. An interesting social experiment is what I’m describing-”
I told him, “Absolutely not. Drop the subject,” as DeAntoni, shaking his head, said, “A weirdo, man. How’d I end up dealing with this kind of shit? I’m driving a golf cart through a swamp with a hippie who probably gets his jollies sticking his pecker in a light socket. Unbelievable. After this one, I’m thinking of moving the whole damn operation back to civilization.”
When we walked into Gator Bill’s, people eating at tables, men at the bar, the waitress, everyone, looked up, as afternoon sunlight trailed us through the screen door.
There’s the scene in classic Western films where the saloon goes silent when strangers enter. This room didn’t go silent, but it quieted except for the country jukebox. The impression was the same: We were outsiders, and outsiders were neither expected nor welcomed.
At the bar were wobbly, wooden stools. We took the last three at the end. To the woman behind the counter, Tomlinson said, “Maybe you’ll know. I just got shot with a taser gun; some serious voltage. What kind’a beverage would you recommend as a good chaser? Beer’s not going to do it, and wine just doesn’t seem appropriate.”
She was a tall, wide-bodied woman who wore a blouse outside her skirt to mask her shape. An Indian-looking woman. Most of the people in the bar, in fact, looked Native American. Men, mostly; ’Glades Indians dressed like cowboys in jeans, Western shirts and boots. Working guys, cattlemen and truck drivers, probably, on their lunch break.
To Tomlinson, the woman said, “You drunk? I’m not understanding what you mean.”
DeAntoni said, “Just give Mr. Looney a beer,” as Tomlinson told her, “The security guards at Sawgrass nailed me with a taser. One of those electric stun guns? Which was actually kind of interesting, but something about it-maybe the electrical current-left a weird metallic taste in my mouth. Probably had to do with the chemical transformation of ions. So I need the right drink to get rid of the taste.”
The woman’s expression said, Is this a joke? but she told him, “Across the street at the Grab Bag, they sell mouthwash. Maybe try that.”
“Mouthwash, hum… I’ve tried that under different circumstances, but-I don’t want to be indelicate here-mouthwash tends to give my urine an unnatural odor. A little too minty fresh. I’m a traditionalist. Can’t help it. So, what I think I’ll have is”-he held up an index finger to signal his decision-“I think I’ll have a double vodka martini. Stoli, if you have it. And pop in a couple of jalapeno olives. No… bleu cheese olives. That should counteract it. Make me right as rain.”
The woman’s expression said: What the hell are you talking about?
As Tomlinson talked, I’d heard chairs scooching on the floor behind us, and now someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to see three men. One wore a sweat-shaped cowboy hat, a straw roper. The other two had their black hair slicked back. Men of size. Wide-shouldered, wrangler-hipped.
One of them, the man wearing the straw Stetson, said, “Maybe somebody forgot to tell you at Sawgrass, but we don’t appreciate you staff people coming in this bar. Isn’t that right, Jenny?”
The man didn’t sound like a bully; just the opposite. Seemed as if he were uneasy having to confront us, even a little shy about it. Kept tugging at the brim of his hat, which was frayed by a couple of years of sweat and sun.
The big woman said, “That sure is right. Your goons have busted enough people’s heads in here. We don’t want no more fighting, no more trouble. So management up the road said we stay away from your place, you keep out of ours. That’s the deal we made.”
DeAntoni said, “What? You think we work for those pin-heads at Sawgrass. No way. Jeez, Mac, give us some credit.”
The man doing the talking turned toward the window, looking outside. “Then why’re you driving one of their golf carts? It says SAWGRASS SECURITY on the side. Those’re the people we’ve had all the problems with. The ones who dress in black; carry clubs and stun guns, and they don’t hold back usin’ them. Which is why the people who live here don’t want you around no more.”
Tomlinson stood and opened his purple Hawaiian shirt. There were two tiny black burn marks on his chest. “Man, you don’t have to tell us about stun guns. Wasn’t twenty minutes ago they shot me. There I was flopping around in the dirt like a tuna on the gymnasium floor. They’re quick on the draw, those Sawgrass guys.” He waited, people staring at his bony chest. “Hey-think if we went back, they’d shoot me again?”
The man doing the talking seemed to relax a little. He took off his cowboy hat and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Why’d they shoot you?”
“Trespassing. That’s what they said. Only we weren’t-not after we made it to the bar, anyway.”
“How’d you get the golf cart?”
DeAntoni told him, “We borrowed it. But we don’t plan to take it back, so help yourself. If it ends up in a canal, I’m not gonna shed any tears. Enjoy.”
The man looked at his two friends, then the woman bartender, then the waitress-a lean, attractive woman with braided hair and a Plains Indian nose. He’d begun to smile. “Guess we ought to show ’em, huh?”
He and the man to his right unbuttoned their shirts, then pointed to similar twin scars on their chest, spaced as if they’d been struck by the fangs of the same large snake. “It was one of the damnedest feelings I’ve ever had. Your muscles start twitching and there’s nothing you can do. I felt sick for about a week after that.”
As Tomlinson said, “Really? You mean you didn’t like it?” the waitress, who’d moved closer to the window said, “James. James, they’re here. The Sawgrass people. Call the sheriff, Jenny. Call nine-one-one right now or they’re gonna do it to us again.”
I was off my stool, trying to get a look through the door, when the man doing the talking, James, said, “I guess they must’a come looking for their golf cart.”
He meant the white Chevy van outside, doors open, a half-dozen men climbing out, all dressed in black, SECURITY printed in big gold letters on their T-shirts, carrying saps and stun guns. No firearms in the holsters, though-probably paying scrupulous attention to the law because they were anticipating trouble.
Pith helmet hadn’t made the trip. But black hat, the tall, lean one, was among them, although he was markedly smaller than the guards in this new bunch. They could have been a group of linebackers from a small-college football team. Clean-cut-looking bunch, hair squared off at the back, a couple of jock-looking women among them.
Hanging up the phone, Jenny said to the room, “Just like always. The sheriff’s dispatcher said it’d take ’em forty minutes, maybe an hour, to get a deputy here from Homestead.”
Walking toward the door, his friends beside him, James said, “We already talked about this, what we’re gonna do. We’re not going to let them come through this door, no matter what. It’s gotta stop. It’s gonna stop now. ”
DeAntoni continued to impress me. The local men, seven or eight of them, had moved outside, forming a human barrier between the white van and the entrance to Gator Bill’s. There were James and his friends, a couple more Indians and two or three sun-darkened Anglos, Western hats angled back on their heads.
They looked like working cowboys awaiting a rodeo. It would’ve been easy enough for us to stay behind them, let these two bands of locals battle out their problems.
But not DeAntoni. He edged his way through the group, me trailing along, until we were both at the front, standing on gravel in the April heat, facing the security people from Sawgrass. They were standing in a loose V-formation-a tactical grouping that suggested they’d had some training.
Black hat pointed, saying, “There they are, the ones that stole the cart. Those two, plus the hippie in the back. The short, stocky dude, he’s the one who slapped Corey around.” Black hat was now pointing at DeAntoni and me, but not getting too close.
One of them asked, “The one with the shaved head?”
“Yeah, Mr. Clean. The one who looks like the fake wrestlers on TV. He got lucky with Corey. I think he hurt him pretty bad.”
Expressions on the faces of the guards reminded me of cops who’d just heard the call “Officer down!” Pissed off, united.
Not even a little nervous, like he’d been through this many times before, DeAntoni said, “Sonny, did you just call me short?”
“Yeah, so what? You are short. Bald and short. You got a problem with the truth?”
DeAntoni said, “Maybe I’ll seem a little taller once I shove your head up your ass-give you a different perspective” as, from behind, James was telling them, “You men are on private property and we want you to leave. Jenny in there owns the place. Her and Bill-we all want you off this property.”
The guard at the front of the group was not the biggest of the men, but he had an administrative cool that indicated he was in charge. Pointing at us, he said, “These men stole one of our golf carts. Do you want to be a party to that, James? How about you, Bobbie Lee? Grand theft; a felony. Do you really want to help these guys? Maybe spend another couple nights in jail?”
DeAntoni began to walk toward the guards, saying, “They didn’t steal your damn cart; no one stole it. I borrowed it. Which reminds me: I’ve got a complaint for management. The damn thing stops at every bar we come to. I think your golf cart has an alcohol problem.”
Which got a nervous laugh from the locals, but tightened the expression on the faces of the guards.
DeAntoni continued to walk as he talked. Didn’t stop until he was standing toe-to-toe with the head guard, looking up at the taller man, the kind of physical tension spreading among the group that you sense in pack dogs just before they begin to fight. DeAntoni’s voice had gotten softer, more intense, forcing everyone to listen as he said to the man, “Tell me something: Are you the guy in charge of this bunch of candy-ass rent-a-cops?”
The guard was trying to force a professional calm into his voice. “You need to back away, sir. Get back. I’m not going to tell you twice …”
DeAntoni took two tiny steps closer so that he was, for a moment, standing on the tips of the taller man’s shoes. “I’ve got a proposition for you-sonny. Pick out any three of your guys. Let’s fight it out. My pal, the professor, here-”
Without breaking eye contact with the guard, he used his head to indicate me. “-we’ll take on all four of you. Tag team, if you want. No clubs, no tasers, just bare fists. You got the balls?”
The guard laughed nervously. I noticed a crisp trickle of sweat begin to river down his cheek. Behind him, a couple of his men were whispering, Do it, Jason; let’s kick their asses. Have a little fun, but Jason said, “Four of us against two of you? You can’t be that stupid. It wouldn’t be fair.”
DeAntoni edged up onto the man’s toes again, his chin nearly touching the guard’s chin. “You’re right, sonny boy. It wouldn’t be fair. Okay, here’s my last offer. You can have five guys. You and any other four you want. There. Like those odds better?”
From behind me, I heard James say, “That’s the thing about these guys. Without their weapons, they’re cowards.”
From the group of guards, a woman’s voice said, “Fucking drunken Indian better shut his mouth,” but Jason was still in charge, maintaining control, backing away from DeAntoni, telling him, “We’re not on the playground. We don’t negotiate with thieves. You’re gonna have to come with us so we can turn you over to law enforcement.”
DeAntoni told him, “Mac, you’re dreaming. Not a chance,” as I felt Tomlinson trying to push past me. I turned to see him using his fingers to comb his long hair back as he called to the head guard, “Jason? Jason. Arrest me-I took the cart. I mean it.”
I grabbed his arm, “I’m not going to let them dart you again, if that’s what you’re hoping.”
“They won’t touch me,” he said, trying to pull free. “You’ve never taken me seriously, but I’ve told you that I’m a master of t’ai chi-a completely passive, defensive martial art. Give me a chance.”
Looking toward us, DeAntoni said, “Stay where you are, Tinkerbell.” Then, turning back to Jason, he said, “So what about it, sonny boy? You candy-ass rent-a-cops take a hike right now-leave with the golf cart. Or let’s you and me roll around on the ground awhile. Unless maybe you want to go crying to the guru geek who pays all you little robots.”
That did it.
Three or four of the largest security staff came pushing forward. They’d apparently been talking among themselves; had already decided what they were going to do. They walked toward DeAntoni as a group. As they did, they unbuckled their tactical belts, to which were affixed handcuffs, saps, taser guns and empty holsters.
They handed the belts carefully to their friends, as the largest of them-a huge, black-haired man with winglike trapezoid muscles connecting shoulders and neck-said in a heavy German accent, “Bare fists, yah! Just like you said. Before I am done, you will be saying the name of His Holiness, Bhagwan Shiva, with respect. You will be begging me to let you say his name.”
DeAntoni was backing away, giving himself some room, causing a small human ring to form around him. He looked at me, and said, “If they double-team me, I expect you to bust a couple of heads.”
Staring at Jason, I lifted my hand and pointed as if my thumb and index finger were a gun. Speaking loud enough, I said, “I’ll start with him.”
I expected it to degenerate into a small riot. It didn’t-but only because DeAntoni immediately took command.
The German came out with his big fists held high, dancing and pawing at Frank, doing what appeared to be a clumsy imitation of a professional prizefighter. The other guards yelled encouragement- “Knock him on his ass, Yan!” -while the locals stood focused, not saying much, not yet willing to risk an alliance with losers, but interested.
Beside me, Tomlinson said, “Keep an eye on the muscle-bound guard. The guy with the biceps. He’s trying to sneak around behind us.”
He was, too: broad-shouldered man in his late twenties, black hat turned backward, biceps stretching the sleeves of his T-shirt. I watched him move slowly around the back of the little crowd, nonchalant, trying not to draw attention to himself.
Watching him from the corner of my eye, I began to move in his direction, still watching DeAntoni, too.
The German began to throw a fusillade of punches, swinging from the hips. DeAntoni got his arms up over his ears to absorb the first few blows, but, suddenly, he was no longer there to be hit. He ducked under the big man’s elbow, then used his open palms to clap the man’s ears, cymbal-like-a seemingly harmless slap that, in fact, was excruciating because both eardrums ruptured, judging from the blood that began to trickle down the man’s neck.
The German gave a throaty woof of pain and tried to turn, but couldn’t. From behind, DeAntoni had already laced an arm around the man’s throat, another up between his crotch. He lifted the German off the ground, and then dropped him-not hard-spine-first across his knee, and held him there, immobile, in one of the most dangerous of all submission holds.
To myself, I thought, They’re going to rush him now.
But the guards didn’t.
They wanted to. Adrenaline had taken over. But DeAntoni stopped them in their tracks, saying in a loud voice, “If you assholes take another step, I’ll snap his neck. You’ll take him home in a wheelchair. Kapeesh?”
After a micro-moment of silence, the guards still thinking about it, DeAntoni added, “Ask your big buddy what he wants you to do.”
The German, feeling the pressure on his spine, helpless, called to them, “Yah! Yah! No closer. We are done. We are done fighting! We take the golf cart and go, yah!”
I thought that was it. The end of it.
It wasn’t.
I’d lost track of the guard with the biceps. But he hadn’t lost track of me. I felt movement close to me; heard Tomlinson yell, “Doc! He’s behind you!” and I then felt a sickening blow just above my right ear. chapter sixteen
Biceps had hit me on the side of the head with a sap. It could have knocked me out, or killed me.
Instead, it sent me jackknifing to the ground, the backs of my eyes strobing with firework colors, cascading reds, greens, golds, my brain deafened by the boom of leather on bone. For an instant, I teetered on the brink of unconsciousness.
There is an ancient mammalian instinct which my forebrain inspected, then rejected: When overpowered by someone or something unknown, play dead. Remain motionless. Maybe it’ll go away. Opossums are more strongly coded, but that survival instinct remains within most vertebrates.
As if through a tube, I could hear Tomlinson’s voice saying, “Doc
… Doc… are you okay?” And to biceps: “You idiot! Why’d you hit him so damn hard!”
Then I was on my knees, eyes open, watching biceps swing the sap at Tomlinson who, to my surprise, parried the blow with a delicate, dancelike movement of his hands. I watched him deflect a second, then a third attack, using biceps’ own momentum to turn him away.
I remembered Tomlinson saying something about being a master of t’ai chi-but he was not sufficiently masterful, because biceps finally caught him with a solid blow to the shoulder that sent Tomlinson backpedaling into the little group of onlookers.
James, the cowboy local, caught him, and stepped toward biceps, fists up, ready to fight. But I was already in full stride, driving hard toward the man, making an odd guttural noise that did not seem to originate within me.
It was then that I experienced an internal transformation that I’ve experienced before. I’ve come to despise the transformation… and to fear it.
In the human brain is a tiny region called the amygdala, a section of cerebral matter so ancient that some scientists refer to it as our “lizard brain.” Its purpose is to ensure survival, and all the complicated emotions and behaviors that survival implies. It is here that our basest of instincts thrive: sex, fury, flight-the earliest markers of more than a hundred million years of adaptation and survival. It is here that our atavistic dread of snakes is passed from generation to generation. In this small, dark place lives the killer that is in us all.
The modern portion of our brain has built up around that lizard brain, like a walnut cloaking a seed. However, when sufficiently stimulated, there can be an electrical transfer of behavioral control from the modern, rational brain to the cave-dwelling primate that hides within.
That’s what happened to me now.
I felt a gathering, energized chill move through my body; my objective became so pure, so focused, that the progression of events unfolded before my eyes as if in slow motion. I could have been looking through a rifle scope-I could see nothing but the big-shouldered man with the biceps, yet I was aware of everything around me… everything but sound.
It was as if my auditory canal had been severed from my brain. There was no external volume. None. In lucid detail, I could see the people I shoved to the side, their mouths moving, but no words escaping, as I pursued biceps in a silence created by a surflike roaring in my own head. Nor was there any color. The world had been drained of pigment, leaving a portrait of blacks and grays.
Many animals, as we know, cannot distinguish color.
Yet my vision was acute, even with my glasses now hanging by fishing line around my neck. I could see biceps’ eyes squenched in surprise as I caught him from behind, then pivoted him toward me.
I could see his expression with such feral clarity that I knew what he was feeling without having to process my own patterns of induction and thought. He was surprised I was back on my feet… he was confident that I was hurt badly enough that he could put me down again without much effort. Then, as I grabbed him, controlling his hands, at first, then his arms, then his entire body, he began to feel consternation, then fear and panic… then he began to feel terror.
When the tissue around a man’s eyes stretches abnormally wide, it is a sort of ocular scream. Perhaps the brain is attempting to broaden peripheral vision, anticipating rescuers… or seeking an escape route to safe haven.
As I wrestled with him, everything I needed to know was available to me instantly; an instinct born within; an instinct exercised often enough throughout my life that it triggered reflex behavior that caused my body to act automatically, with a single objective.
I grabbed biceps by the ears, pulling him toward me as I lunged toward him. I head-butted him once, then twice. It knocked the hat off his head, and mashed his nose flat.
Then I was behind him, my hands and forearms creating a figure-four around his neck and chin, holding him there, waiting patiently, like a boa constrictor, for the perfect arm position that would give me maximum leverage. It’s a kind of dance, my body reading the movements of his body, and counteracting immediately, as my hands tightened their control with every small error he made.
His body was unpracticed. It made several mistakes in sequence. He tried to kick me. Missed. He began to thrash. I closed his windpipe until he was out of air and relented. The man was helpless… and he knew it.
That’s when I began to tighten the figure-four that my hands and arms had created around his throat and skull. Slowly, slowly, I began to transfer my body weight onto the man’s neck, applying most of the pressure to his delicate cervical vertebra, which is the stem of bone and fluid between a man’s skull and shoulders.
Now I was pivoting, muscles flexed, gradually increasing the weight and the pressure… hearing sound for the first time in many minutes as biceps began a meaningless, guttural bleating.
But I also heard a deeper, familiar voice calling into my ear: “Doc. Marion! Please, please… please. You’re going to kill him!”
It was Tomlinson’s voice, pleading.
There was another decipherable voice, too: DeAntoni talking to me, trying to pierce the shell of my fury, counsel ing me to back off, relax, it was over now.
I heard him say, “Let him go, Ford. Let him go. It’s not worth jail. You’re taking it too far.”
Then I could feel DeAntoni’s hands on me, prying my fingers away from the man’s neck-but delicately, as if he were making a request.. . or dealing with a child.
“Easy. Nice and easy. He’s had enough. It’s over. ”
It was like being awakened from a nightmare. The tunnel that I’d inhabited broadened into a horizon beneath sky. In the same instant, color returned to the world; sound, as well, as I released biceps. Gave him a little push as I stepped away, feeling oddly groggy-sickened, perhaps, by too much adrenaline dumped into my system, way too fast.
I was aware of my own heavy breathing, and of biceps scrambling away from me, out of my reach, touching fingers to his ruined nose and bruised neck as the cowboy locals, and the Archangels, too, looked at me with troubled, anxious expressions. People who suffer seizures, I suspect, are familiar with the stares I received. Violent criminals, too.
DeAntoni had me by the arm now, leading me away, asking me how my head was, did I need a doctor? Then, in a lower voice, he said, “I want to give you some advice, Ford. No offense. You need to learn to control that temper of yours. If I hadn’t gotten to you when I did, you’d’ve killed that muscle-bound sonuvabitch. I really believe you would’ve.”
I stopped, turned toward DeAntoni; looked at the guards loading themselves onto the golf cart, getting into the van. Biceps was bleeding into a soggy, crimson towel that was pressed to his face, all of them apparently in a rush to return to the safety of Sawgrass.
Then I looked into Tomlinson’s sad, old eyes. He was shaking his head, staring at me-no disapproval there, just an expression of helplessness, hurt, worry. Then I turned back toward the door of Gator Bill’s bar.
I said to DeAntoni, “I need a drink.”
The names of some of the locals inside Gator Bill’s seemed oddly familiar.
It wouldn’t be long before I understood why.
James was James Tiger, the son of Josie Tiger, he told us. The attractive waitress with the Aztec face was his sister, Naomi Bloom. Behind the bar was Jenny Egret.
Egret?
That was definitely a surname familiar to Tomlinson and me.
Commonality of last names among ’Glades Indians isn’t unusual. Among the Seminole and Miccosukee, names such as Osceola, Johns, Tiger, Storm, Billie and Cypress are the equivalent of Smith, Jones, Johnson and Brown in the wider world.
But Egret? It was a name that I associated with only one man.
Tomlinson wasn’t shy about asking. To Jenny, the big woman, he said, “I don’t suppose you’re related to Joseph Egret. Used to be partners with this far-out old redneck cowhunter named Gatrell? He lived west of here, south of Naples, this little ranch on Mango Bay.”
Meaning my late uncle, Tucker Gatrell, and using the old-time Florida term, cowhunter for cowboy. Which Tucker and Joseph Egret certainly were. Cowhunters, poachers, whiskey-makers, womanizers, Everglades guides and, in later years, I’m fairly certain, they smuggled their share of marijuana, too. They boated it across the Gulf of Mexico from Colombia and Panama into southwest Florida, the remote Ten Thousand Islands, where not even a helicopter could follow them through the mangrove tunnels and swamp tributaries.
Joe and Tuck were born in the mangroves; grew up in the ’Glades. They knew the wild country better than any outsider could ever know it.
The three of us were sitting at the bar again. Bloodletting during battle usually creates galvanizing bonds, but our second reception at Gator Bill’s was only slightly warmer than the first. These were a reserved people, isolated not only geographically, but socially. With the exception of a few, there was racial isolation, too. The fact that we’d beaten off the Sawgrass security team proved that we, at least, had a common enemy. But it didn’t mean we were friends-or that we could be trusted.
So our conversation with them was polite, generic. It became slightly more comfortable after a pair of sheriff’s deputies arrived, asked us a few questions, then departed. But then Tomlinson mentioned Joseph Egret; asked the tall woman if she were related, and all the Indians in the room seemed to withdraw into a cocoon of their own creation. It was as if we, as strangers, had once again walked through the door for the first time. That’s the variety of hush that dominated.
Jenny made eye contact with James, then Naomi-an entire conversation going on among them in that brief silence-before she said to Tomlinson, “I’ve heard the name Joseph Egret. Ev’body in the ’Glades has. A great big man. Story goes, one time his horse took a stingray spine in the pad of his hoof. Joseph loved that horse so much, he put the animal over his shoulders and carried the horse back to the barn where he had the tools and the medicine. That’s how big’a man he was. Only he’s dead now.”
They way she said it-speaking by rote, slightly theatrical-she might have been talking about some long-gone legend. Daniel Boone. Paul Bunyan. Like she didn’t know the man at all, just making conversation. But then, in a different tone, she said, “Why’d you ask about those two? Joe Egret and Cap’n Gatrell?”
Embarrassed by the scene I’d created, the degrading loss of emotional control, I’d gone to the rest room, washed the blood off my face, my gray fishing shirt, and then sat quietly at the far end of the bar. Sat there with my head throbbing, letting DeAntoni and Tomlinson do all the talking, as I finished two quick rums with soda and lime.
Now, though, Tomlinson included me by pointing, telling them my name-an awkward gesture, because he was holding a bag of ice on the ugly red welt swelling just above his bicep. He said, “I’m asking because he’s Tucker’s nephew. They practically raised him as a kid, Joseph and Tuck both. They were like his father. That’s how I met them-through Doc.”
The woman, Jenny, turned to me. “You’re kin to Cap’n Gatrell, Dr. Ford?”
“Yes.”
“You’re Marion Ford.”
“That’s right. As a kid, I lived with Tuck for a while. Joseph and I were close. I considered him… a friend. A good man. One of the finest men I’ve known.”
Jenny had her own approach to the detection of bullshit. She began to ask me seemingly innocuous questions: “I was at Cap’n Gatrell’s ranch once, but that’s back when I was a little girl. Was there a horse barn there?”
Gradually, though, the questions became more obvious, then pointed. What was the name of Joseph Egret’s favorite horse? (Buster) On which Caribbean island did he and Tucker run a cattle ranch? (Cuba) Finally: Where did Joseph Egret die?
I told her, “The bad curve on the way into the village of Mango. I was there. He and his horse were hit by this idiot in a van. I was beside Joseph at the end. It wasn’t a pretty thing to see, and it’s not the way I choose to remember the man. So no more questions, okay? I stopped taking tests years ago.”
Jenny’s expression softened, broadened. Suddenly, I was no longer a stranger. She told me, “I thought I recognized you.”
She looked at Tomlinson. “Him, too-him with his hippy hair and his bony, bird legs. But there had to be three or four hundred ’Glades people the day of Joseph’s funeral, whites and Indians. Some famous rich people from up north came, too-his old hunting clients. And lots of women, all of them bawling. The day they buried Joseph.”
I said, “You were at the funeral? I’m sorry, I don’t remember.”
“Yep. I was at Cap’n Gatrell’s place, the Big Sky Ranch, back there on the Indian mound. Watched them lower the body down in the old traditional way.” She pointed to Naomi, the waitress, and then to James Tiger. “Their daddy’s Josie Tiger, and their granddaddy’s James Tiger. James started the Famous Reptile Show and Airboat Rides right near Forty Mile Bend. Ev’body knows those big yellow signs with the gator on them. Old James, he played the wind drum at Joseph’s funeral. I bet you remember that. ”
I nodded. Yes, I remembered. Which is why, I finally realized, their names were familiar.
For the first time, I heard Naomi speak. “I went with Daddy to hear him play the drum. The day Joseph died, on his way back to Mango-Joe, I’m talking about-he stopped at our camp. He was on that big horse of his. My sister, Maria, gave him a red handkerchief to wear in his hair, like an old-time warrior. And he gave her-”
She stopped; looked at her brother, James, smiling. Then she walked behind the bar, where she took an old, black beaver-skin cowboy hat from a hook and placed it on her head. “-he gave her his roper’s hat, which she gave to me for Christmas. I’ll never forget it. He looked so handsome sitting up there on his horse. Even for his age, Joseph was such a good-looking man. I wear his hat nearly every day.”
DeAntoni was saying, “See? I told you it was smart to bring you Florida boys along,” as Jenny told me, “Joseph had that magic with women. Didn’t matter what age, they all loved him, the way he looked, and his great big heart. My mama was the same. She was Rilla Mae Osceola. She and Joseph never married, but I still took Daddy’s name.”
I touched my hand to the back on my head-quite a lump swelling there. It took me a long moment to realize what she was saying. “You’re Joseph Egret’s daughter? I didn’t know he had any children.”
“You didn’t know Joseph fathered children?”
That got a laugh from the room. chapter seventeen
Naomi told me, “There was twenty-five, maybe thirty women we know of had children by Joseph. So now, one way or another, we’re all kin to him. Joseph Egret could’a populated a whole village with the sons and daughters he sired.”
James Tiger said, “Or a tribe. That’s the way we think of ourselves now. Pretty soon, it’s gonna be official. Egret Seminoles, that’s the name we voted to take. Only Joseph wouldn’t’a liked that, ’cause he always knew he weren’t really no Seminole.”
Tomlinson had been following along, nodding, understanding the implications of it all more quickly than I, because he said, astonished, “My God, I understand, now. Your own tribe. You’re filing to become designated as a tribe. Joseph’s offspring; his extended biological family. The Egret Seminoles. You really are petitioning the government?”
Jenny said, “Uh-huh. We got every reason in the world to do it, too. And the right. My father had different blood than most of the ’Glades Indians. He passed that blood on to a bunch of us. After more than two years trying to get it done, the federal government’s only a month or two from making it official.”
Tomlinson said, “Congratulations. That had to take a lot of time, a lot of work,” showing her that he knew something about the process.
“When you’re dealing with the government, nothing’s easy. Especially if you’re Indian. In the last three, four years, other Florida tribes, like the Tribe of East Creeks, the Okle waha Band of Seminoles, the United Tuscola, they’ve all been denied-but they keep right on pushing, filing their petitions. Their clans have been together for hundreds of years. They got their customs, their tribal leaders, but the federal government says they don’t exist, so they don’t. Not legally.
“But the Egret Seminoles, ours is almost a done deal. That’s what our attorneys tell us, and the people in Washington, the folks at the BIA’s Branch of Acknowledgment and Recognition. They say it like they’re doing us a favor. But they got no choice because we proved it.”
Tomlinson said, “You proved it using Joseph’s DNA.”
James was nodding, not looking at us, his right hand tugging at the brim of his hat. “The DNA didn’t prove it outright. But it sure helped. Maybe you can tell us something about that. We heard rumors that you and Dr. Ford are the ones who did the testing. Yanked out hair from Joe’s head and took it to some laboratory up north.”
Then he added quickly, as if to reassure us: “It’s not something we talk about with outsiders. We don’t use people’s private names ’less they says it’s all right.”
I told him, “Tomlinson’s the one who did the DNA stuff. He tested Joseph’s hair, not me. He’s the expert.”
Tomlinson said, “I’m no expert, but a friend of mine is. I took the samples to Mass-Labs, near Boston. They have a Preliminary Chain Reaction processor there; a complete computerized system for testing DNA. Later, if you want, I can tell you the details. What surprises me is that you knew.”
“So you are the ones?”
“We’re the ones,” Tomlinson said. “Joseph and Tucker were in trouble. We wanted to help.”
Jenny considered that for a moment before she said, “Oh, we knew. From the rumors, yes, but that’s not the only way we found out. Nearly three years ago, a man showed up here with some papers. They were copies of the DNA report. His lawyers found them in some file up in Tallahassee, and he was all excited. He said there were certain genetic markers that proved Daddy wasn’t Seminole or Miccosukee. He said, legally, they were strong evidence that Daddy came from the old Florida Indians, the ones here when Ponce de Leon came sailing in. The ones who built the shell mounds up and down this coast that Miami, St. Pete, Lauderdale-a lot of big towns-are built on.”
Naomi asked, “Do you know about them? The old ones?”
Smiling at her, Tomlinson said, “Tell us.”
“They called them the Calusa,” she said. “The scientists say the Calusa are extinct now. But they’re wrong.”
She added, “The Calusa lived here a thousand years before the Seminoles showed up. They didn’t have chiefs. They had kings, like the Maya. Only, all the archaeologists, like I said, think they’re extinct, killed off by disease. But they aren’t all dead. Joseph had the blood. Now we’ve proved that we got the Calusa blood, too. A bunch of us sent pieces of our hair off in little plastic tubes, and paid for the same kind’a test. We all had the same genetic markers. DNA.”
Tomlinson asked, “The man who brought the papers from Tallahassee, was it the same one who developed Sawgrass?”
Jenny was nodding. “Um-huh. This was more than three years back. Before they even broke ground. He told us Sawgrass was going to be a great thing for the area. Some joke.”
“The man’s name was Geoff Minster.”
Once again, James, Naomi and Jenny exchanged a long, communal look, before James answered, “Oh, we know Minster. He wasn’t too bad. Didn’t lie to us no more than most men who want to see this part of the ’Glades developed. Could be, some of us liked Mr. Minster okay. We heard he died. Fell off a boat one night.”
DeAntoni said, “If you have the time, I wouldn’t mind asking you a few more questions about Minster,” but James ignored him, listening as Tomlinson pressed, “If it wasn’t Minster, the man who approached you had to be Shiva. The man who claims to be a religious teacher. Or maybe he called himself Jerry Singh. He controls Sawgrass now.”
Jenny said, “Yeah, it was Shiva. Came driving up in some kind of big blue car-”
“A Rolls-Royce,” Naomi said.
“Yeah, that was the kind of car it was. A tall man wearing robes. Told us God had sent him. That he’s a meditator, a mystic, and he said he had a way we’d never have to worry about money again.”
James said quickly, “We don’t want to talk too much about that now, do we?”
Jenny used a mild undertone to snap at him. “You ever hear me say more than I’m supposed to?” Then she continued, “Shiva was the one who came to us with those papers, saying that, legally, we had a right to form our own tribe. Like it was his idea, but it wasn’t. He didn’t tell us anything we hadn’t already thought of before. But it takes lawyers to file all those forms, to keep pushing the government, and lots of money.”
“Shiva promised to provide the money?”
Jenny addressed the implication: “His church has already provided the money. Lots of it, too. Four lawyers, one in Florida, two in D.C., and one out in Oklahoma tryin’ to prove there’s no Seminoles out there with the same blood as us. But don’t think we’re stupid. Shiva isn’t the first to try and take advantage of us getting tribal status. We know why he’s doing what he’s doing.”
Tomlinson said, “He wants to build a casino.”
“It’s more than that. When we get confirmed, we’ll be our own nation. On our land, if you open a restaurant, a hotel- name it-you don’t have to worry about state inspectors, getting permits, state codes, all that red tape. No unions, no Social Security business. Plus no taxes. Or almost no taxes, depending on the kind’a deal you work out with the government.”
“But a casino, that’s where he’d make his money back.”
Jenny was becoming animated, opening up some to Tomlinson, building a rapport. “A little Las Vegas, that’s what the man wants to build. A whole city with tall buildings and bright lights out here in the ’Glades. Only he never told us that. We found out slow, from other people. Geoff Minster-he was honest, at least, about what was going on.”
“You trusted him?”
Jenny shrugged. “Not much. I liked him better than Shiva. Minster, at first, was just another money man, a developer. No matter what he told us, we knew what he really wanted-profit. But then he began to get interested in us, Joseph’s history, some of the ’Glades religions. I believe that about him. He was trying to open up his heart.”
She said, “Shiva, though, is different. Even when he’s telling you the truth, he’s lying, because he wants something more. Something deeper.” She thought for a moment, touching fingers to a blemish on her cheek-a touching vanity from a woman her size and shape. “That man, it’s like he wants to reach his hand inside you and pull something out of your chest. Something to steal away for himself.”
DeAntoni said, “If he’s investing money, you can’t blame the guy for expecting to make some dough. What else would he want?”
Jenny said, “A lot. Things we’re not sure about. He wants our tribal council to make him a member of the Egret Seminoles-which we can do. Legally. It’s up to individual tribes now, who’s an Indian or not. The Bureau of Indian Affairs changed the law ’cause it was so much trouble for them, proving what they call quantum blood. How much native blood does it take to make a person an Indian?”
“Why would you go along with something like that?”
James said, “I’m on the council, and I wouldn’t. No way. But our tribal chairman, that’s who Shiva’s working hard to convince. The chairman and five elders-old-time ’Glades people set in their ways. Our chairman’s a… well, our chairman’s a mystic… a real spiritual person… and got a lot of power.”
When Tomlinson asked, “Who’s your tribal chairman?” Jenny began to move around behind the sink, putting away glasses, cleaning ashtrays. Was she getting ready to close so early?
After a few moments, looking at the interested faces around the room, James said, “This is probably a subject we shouldn’t be talkin’ about in a bar.”
Jenny told him, “Plus, you need to be gettin’ back to work. If these fellas want, maybe they’d be interested in seeing that new airboat you bought.”
She turned to me, a familiar expression on her face-I was being tested again-as she added, “If you don’t have the time to follow James, that’s fine, too. Come back another day. Or a month from now. Maybe we can talk some more. Or not. Makes no difference, it’s up to you.”
We were inside DeAntoni’s Lincoln, following James Tiger’s red Dodge Ram with the high-water tires, the towing package and stainless-steel lockbox in the bed.
We were headed west on the Tamiami Trail, returning to the shade of cypress domes, vultures heavy on hoary limbs, dragonflies and swallow-tailed kites spiraling weightless, riding sawgrass thermals through cumulous vents.
The vultures roosted motionless as gargoyles, their scale-headed cowlings black, like Egyptian priests. Waiting… waiting for the first blue-fly vapor of carrion scent. At night, when the swamp air cools, reptiles and mammals are drawn to the sun-soaked asphalt. The fast highway becomes a killing field. Along the Tamiami Trail, vultures never have long to wait.
To our right, the two-lane was bordered by a canal dredged years ago to create the roadbed. The water conduit was a floating garden of yellow pond lilies, Florida violets, pink swamp roses and flag root. Marsh hens-purple gallinules-walked spring-footed on the lilies while alligators sunned themselves on cattail banks, or floated nearby.
Both hands on the wheel, seeing nothing but the road, DeAntoni said, “I wish this guy talked as fast as he drives. Why’s it so damn hard getting information out of these people? I ask a couple of questions, they looked right through me. Like I wasn’t even there.”
Right on both counts.
James was a fast driver. This quiet member of the Egret Seminole council drove like a NASCAR fanatic. The only time he slowed was to tailgate the occasional Winnebago, or await the chance to leapfrog a citrus convoy.
He liked outspoken bumper stickers, too.
If DeAntoni stayed heavy on the gas, we could get close enough to the rear of James Tiger’s truck to read his bumper:
BIA: BETRAYING INDIAN ASSETS SINCE 1924 CUSTER WORE ARROW SHIRTS YOU CAN TRUST THE GOVERNMENT. ASK AN INDIAN! WHERE WAS THE I.N.S. IN 1492 WHEN WE NEEDED THEM? FLORIDA SEMINOLES UNDEFEATED! (FOOTBALL? WHAT’S THAT?)
Tomlinson told DeAntoni, “The Skins-Indians, I’m saying-they don’t feel comfortable coming right out and answering questions from strangers. It’s a cultural thing. Ask a question, don’t expect a direct answer, because you’re not going to get it. So being pushy, taking the fast approach, is usually a mistake. In some tribes, it’s even considered rude.”
DeAntoni said, “Jesus Christ. Now Tinkerbell’s an expert on manners, too. If I want information on Minster, what the hell am I supposed to do? Send up a fucking smoke signal?”
Tomlinson said, “No, the way to do it is to just let it happen, man. Like the universe unfolding. You want information? What I’d do is
… Let me ask you a question. You were a New York cop.”
“Twelve years. I already told you.”
“Okay, when you were off-duty, where’d you socialize with other cops?”
“We used to hang out at some of the Irish pubs- real Irish pubs, where the Guinness’s freighted in fresh every day. Not like the bullshit places around here. Most the time, I’d have a few at the Barrow Pub on the corner of Hudson. Good pool tables, plus they show the Yanks and the Mets. McSorley’s in the East Village. On Seventh Street? What’s your point?”
Tomlinson said, “Imagine James Tiger walking into the Barrow Pub, sitting down beside you, and asking a lot of questions about someone you knew, who disappeared and was probably dead.”
DeAntoni thought about that, cypress trees flickering by the windshield in a blur. Finally, he said, “Okay, okay. I see what you mean. A guy like that, with a hick accent, comes nosing around, we’d have run him outside into the street. Like, fuck you, pal. Hit the bricks.”
Tomlinson said, “There you go. The difference is, at least James is giving us a chance to get to know him a little. If it wasn’t for Doc being related to Tucker Gatrell and us knowing Joseph Egret, guess where we’d be right now?”
DeAntoni said, “Hittin’ the bricks.”
Tomlinson told him, “Exactly.”
After a few moments, DeAntoni said, “Know what, Tinkerbell? Sometimes, you actually make a little bit of sense.” Then, several seconds later: “The big Indian, the dead one you keep talking about. Why’s he so special?”
Tomlinson told DeAntoni that Joseph Egret and my uncle, Tucker Gatrell, were lifelong friends and partners.
Tomlinson said, “I never understood why Joseph stuck by that old redneck. Tuck was one of the biggest racists I’ve ever met.” Looking at me with his luminous blue eyes, Tomlinson added, “Sorry. No offense.”
I said, “Are you kidding?”
Then Tomlinson told DeAntoni that, several years back-goaded by my uncle-we had reason to attempt to prove that Joseph had a historical and genetic right to live (and be buried) on the pre-Columbian Indian mounds that were on my uncle’s property.
The state of Florida, Tomlinson explained, attempted to annex Tuck’s land by exercising its right of eminent domain. Proving that Joseph was among the last of an Indian tribe long thought to be extinct was the only way to keep the state from booting the two men off the ranch.
They’d spent most their lives there, living on Mango Bay, rousting cattle on horseback, fishing, drinking, plotting, spitting tobacco juice off the front porch. Men that age shouldn’t be bullied, and that’s exactly what the state bureaucrats were trying to do.
“I got bone marrow samples from the Florida Museum of Natural History. Of the Calusa-bones more than a thousand years old, excavated from the mounds on Gatrell’s property. Then took samples of Joseph’s hair, and flew them up to a friend of mine who runs a lab outside Boston.”
Tomlinson told DeAntoni that they found repetitive genetic markers in the DNA of both marrow and hair that suggested that Joseph was a direct descendant of Florida’s mound builders. Those markers, he explained, didn’t turn up uniformly in all members of an ethnic group, which is why modern Indians are against using DNA to prove anything.
“But the bone marrow from that old Calusa, and Joseph-the markers were right there to read,” he added. “The Calusa were an amazing people. Physically-for that time period, back in the sixteen hundreds-they were huge. The Spaniards described them as giants. You see how big Jenny is? Six one, six two, and she’s small compared to Joseph. They had a civilization on the west coast of Florida that rivaled the Maya. The entire southern part of the state was their kingdom. They kept slaves, performed human sacrifices. And they scared the hell out of the Spaniards.
“The Calusa refused to convert to Christianity, and literally pissed on anyone who tried to change them. Seriously. As in they made the Jesuit priests kneel down and whizzed on them-which the priests wrote about in their journals. Like, to show the kind of savages they were dealing with.”
DeAntoni told him, “Cool.” He’d personally arrested a few priests himself that he wouldn’t mind pissing on. Tomlinson continued, “But back to the DNA-we found a double T, double A, double C-G-T sequence in the hair and the bone marrow.
“We were focusing on the mitochondrion D-loop. There was also a unique sequencing in the HLA genes-and that’s where we found the genetic flags. The state of Florida couldn’t argue that. No way. So they let Tucker Gatrell keep his ranch, and they let us bury Joseph in the back pasture, on the mounds where he belonged.”
DeAntoni eyes were glazing, getting bored-all this scientific talk. But he was still following closely enough to ask, “So if they were so tough, these Calusa, what happened to them? Why was the old dead Indian, your pal, the last one?”
“Disease,” Tomlinson said. “Within two hundred years after contact with the Spanish, the Calusa were almost finished. They went from being kings of the world, to living like animals on the run. When the Calusa started getting sick, losing power, the tribes they used for slaves got their revenge.
“When the United States bought Florida from Spain and settlers started farming the islands, the Maskoki started moving south-Doc was wrong when he told you Creeks. That’s a common misconception, still taught in schools. The Seminole and the Miccosukee aren’t Creeks. They’re Maskoki.
“Anyway, that was the end of the Calusa as a people. Except for sixty or so who went to live in Cuba. But none were left in the States. Except for Joseph and maybe a few others.”
DeAntoni said, “But Joseph had a bunch of sons and daughters. This old tribe is not extinct. So why should anybody even give a damn?”
I was watching Billy Tiger’s truck slow, red brake lights aglow, left blinker flashing, as it approached a yellow billboard: a massive alligator, jaws wide. JAMES TIGER’S FAMOUS
REPTILE SHOW AND AIRBOAT RIDES.
On the south side of the road was an island-sized settlement of pole houses, thatched palmetto roofs, airboats angled bow-high on the banks of the canal, a parking lot of white coral filled with cars bearing out-of-state license plates-Michigan, Illinois, New Jersey.
A tourist stop. Another Florida roadside attraction.
As DeAntoni slowed to turn, Tomlinson said, “Are you kidding? If Billy Tiger or any of Joseph’s heirs can prove the Calusa aren’t extinct, that the tribe still exists, they can claim ownership of the whole southern tip of Florida. Everything, West Palm to Tampa, and south to Key West. Because, rightfully, they do own it. They really do. ”
DeAntoni was shaking his head, smiling. “No court’s gonna have the balls to order something like that. Give half the state back to a couple of dozen Indians? Yeah, right, I can see it-kick everybody out of Miami, South Beach and Lauderdale. The Cubans would be piling up sandbags, locking ’n’ loading, the old Jewish ladies right beside them. It’s just not gonna happen.”
Tomlinson said, “Personally, I think it could happen. Legally, anyway, and then the state would be forced to make some kind of gigantic financial settlement. But just the threat is a powerful leverage tool. Does the state want to risk the issue going to the Supreme Court-maybe lose a couple of million acres of state land, or a few billion dollars? Or, is it better to say, Screw it, award the Egret Seminoles a smaller chunk of land. In return, the state lets them build their houses, shopping centers, whatever they want.”
DeAntoni said, “Okay, I’m with you. Shopping centers-or casinos. That’s where the big money is.”
Tomlinson said, “Precisely.” chapter eighteen
Tomlinson took me aside and said, in a voice too low for anyone to hear, “He’s keeping us here for a reason. As packed as this place is with tourists, he wouldn’t be wasting his time.”
Meaning James Tiger, who had his back to us-barefooted now, still wearing his Stetson-standing with DeAntoni near the canal where there were lily pads and white moonflowers blooming. The two men were on the boat ramp next to a chickee built on poles, and a commercial-sized airboat that was beached near four portable toilets.
An airboat is a weird-looking craft common to the Everglades, though I have seen them in Australia, and in Africa, too. It is a pan-flat boat, stern-driven, powered by an airplane propeller, and can fly over water, grass, even rock. This airboat looked like a red metal sled, bench seats in the middle, a captain’s chair bolted atop a massive engine, a Cessna type propeller mounted aft inside a circular cage.
There were two airboats of similar design tied at a dock. One was off-loading passengers via a short boarding bridge; the other was loading. The boats looked like they could handle nine, maybe ten, people at a time. There had to be fifty, sixty or more people waiting in line, their bodies attached to angular black shadows that moved beside them on the white coral parking lot. There were kids running around, bored, parents shifting from leg to leg.
I said, “I’m not waiting much longer. I need to get back to Sanibel and check my fish tanks. Plus, I’ve got an order for two hundred horseshoe crabs. This time of year, finding that many crabs is not going to be easy.”
Tomlinson said, “Your head’s hurting, isn’t it? You should get an X ray, as hard as that jerk hit you. We can stop at Naples Community Hospital on the way back.”
“Sure, sure, we can both check into the ER. You get your shoulder X-rayed, and they can do my skull while they’re at it.”
A safe offer to make, because Tomlinson despises hospitals.
Reacting to my impatience, he said, once again, that James would not have led us to his village without good reason, then added, “I think it has something to do with Jenny, the bartender. Joseph’s daughter. She’s a power woman. Understand what I’m saying? A buffalo woman-very centered, a leader. James might have been doing most of the talking, but she was doing most of the thinking. Maybe she’s supposed to call and check on us. Or contact someone else. Who knows, man? What I’m telling you is, the Egret Seminoles have invited us to the outer edge of their inner circle for inspection. We’ve got old Joe and Tuck to thank for that. Let’s not pull the plug now.”
I was watching DeAntoni motioning to us, signaling us to join him. Walking toward the canal, I told Tomlinson that I’d give it another half hour, no more, then listened to DeAntoni say, “You guys ever ride in an airboat? I’ve seen ’em on TV-the bastards scoot.”
For the first time, I got a sense of the kind of child he’d been-there was that sort of excitement in his voice. Probably a big, quiet boy; a secret little circus going on inside, but shy for a street kid. He was enjoying himself now; showing it.
Then he said to James, “James, tell ’em about your boat. You guys aren’t gonna believe how damn cool this thing is. What’d you say-it can go sixty, seventy, miles an hour?”
Frank DeAntoni, the carburetor-head, talking with his new Indian buddy, who had also gone through a personality change. James, the stoic cowhunter, had now become the racecar speed freak we’d suspected, and was suddenly an enthusiastic talker. We listened to him tell us about his new boat: twenty-one feet long, eight-foot beam, with a big-block aircraft engine, 430 horsepower with a 2:1 reduction system and a seventy-two-inch wooden composite Sensenich propeller.
The hull, he said, was laid upon yellow pine stringers, built up in Cross City by Freedom Craft, modeled after one of the original hulls built by O. B. Osceola, back in the 1930s. The twin aft rudder flaps were foam-filled aluminum, and they’d been custom-airbrushed, green on gold, with the head of a giant snapping gator.
The boat’s name, Chekika’s Shadow, was written upon each in red script.
“It’s similar to the newer Kennedy hulls,” James told us. “She’s a sweet one. The transom’s high enough, she doesn’t suck in backwash if you lay off the throttle too fast and hit the drag brake. She doesn’t porpoise, either, and there’s not a hint of hook in her bottom. She’s a clean boat. Solid.”
He paused, his eyes moving over the vessel, very proud. Then he looked from Tomlinson to me. “You want to go for a ride? I’ll run you out in the ’Glades, show you around.”
I turned toward the line of tourists standing in the April heat, waiting their turn.
Using my head to motion, I said, “What about them?”
James seemed perplexed by the question. He said, “Why should those people care? It’s not their boat.”
Riding in an airboat, when an accelerant G-force begins to roll your eyes back, causing facial flesh to flutter, your first sensory impression is that you are on a saucer, sliding out of control and destined for disaster.
That’s the way it felt when James first hit the throttle. Out of control. Iffy.
And not without reason. In a traditional boat, water is a built-in governor because you have to displace water to move. In a land vehicle, you roll along comfortably, reassured by the limitations of friction. But riding in an airboat is like being vaulted onto a plain of ice, an overpowered airplane propeller strapped to your butt.
It’s that kind of wild sensation.
But James Tiger knew how to drive an airboat. That became evident quickly. Had he not possessed great expertise, we’d have died within seconds-simple as that.
After handing us headphones and battery packs-portable communications systems-he took the captain’s chair above the engine, then directed Tomlinson and DeAntoni into the two seats in front of, and beneath him.
I had no choice but to sit on one of the bench seats toward the bow-which was fine with me.
I pulled my headphones on, pushed the wire microphone away from my chin-I had no expectations of talking-and listened to DeAntoni and Tomlinson chatter away while James started the engine.
Deafening. It may have been a conventional aircraft engine, but it was as loud as any jet I’ve ever heard-and one of the key reasons I don’t like airboats. I’ve never liked airboats. The noise spooks wildlife while negating solitude gained by the isolated places to which airboats provide transport.
Even jet skis aren’t as obnoxious-and jet skis (personal watercraft, they’re now called) were once the untreated offal of noise pollution until manufacturers began to quiet them down.
Gatrell built airboats, raced airboats, sold airboats and, for all I know, stole airboats-it wouldn’t have been a surprise. I grew up around the things; drove them when I had too, worked on their engines when it was required. Mostly, though, I avoided them.
Which is why I already regretted my decision to ride along. In fact, I was giving serious consideration to raising my hand, stopping James Tiger at the dock, and telling him I’d changed my mind. To go ahead without me. That I preferred to walk along the Tamiami Trail; do a little bird-watching and see what kind of fish cruised the surface of the canal.
I never got the chance.
The moment he freed the lines, James swung the airboat a gut-wrenching 380 degrees at full throttle, and then seemed to accomplish the impossible: He used the turn to generate momentum, running his new airboat up the grassy edge of a ramp as if it were a ski jump… vaulted about fifteen yards of coral parking lot… landed on another patch of grass, gaining even more speed. Then he used the bank of the canal as a second ramp that launched us over two lanes of asphalt-the Tamiami Trail-which would have been sufficiently scary, even if there had not been a truck coming.
But there was a truck coming: an eighteen-wheeler loaded with what, later, I would guess to be watermelons.
I could see the box-shaped cab speeding toward us as we careened airborne… could hear the diesel scream of the air horn as the driver first reacted… could see the driver’s eyes widen as he swerved toward the shoulder… could see a patina of bugs smushed on the truck’s chromium grill as James Tiger performed magic with the rudder flaps, turning us so that the cab passed at eye level… and then we landed in a controlled skid that pivoted us into sawgrass higher than our heads… and, then, the truck and civilization were abruptly behind us, as if neither had ever existed.
In my earphones, I heard DeAntoni, his voice strained, say, “Was that a Mack Truck that almost clipped us… or was it a Peterbilt?”
Calm, unconcerned- no big deal -I heard James Tiger reply, “Peterbilt. You didn’t see the big red oval on the grill? A Mack Truck, they got the silver bulldog on the hood. That’s how you tell.”
I listened to Tomlinson say, “Did you somehow make us turn sideways? Far out. Man, it was like, suddenly, I had this amazing unworldly conversion. I knew in my heart what it’s like to be a butterfly, man, bopping down a busy highway. The whole random beauty of it. One moment, I’m feather-light. Next moment, I’m part of a shipment of watermelons, bonded with Detroit, headed for Miami.”
James said, “Detroit? If you’re talking about the truck, Peterbilt’s made out in Iowa someplace, I think. Moline? Is that Iowa?”
Furious because we’d had such a close call so unnecessarily, I moved the microphone wire to my mouth, and said, “Why didn’t we stay on the south side of the road, like your other tour boats? Or maybe that’s not exciting enough?”
If Tiger caught the sarcasm, he didn’t let on. “On the south side of the trail, we got all the tourist stuff. We keep a little village out there on one of the oak islands where we pay our teenagers to wear traditional clothes, pretend like they’re cooking. Understand what I’m saying? Entertainment. Then the boats stop and watch one of my cousins wrestle a couple of gators we keep penned. But if you’re interested in the tourist stuff, I can give you my little speech if you want. Just sit back and listen. I got it memorized; said it so often I don’t even have to think anymore.”
Tomlinson said, “Then why are you taking us north? Your tribal chairman-is that the reason? Are you taking us to see him?”
James Tiger had a little smile in his voice when he answered. “Could be we’re heading that direction. Yeah, we’ll see how it goes. Maybe you will get a chance to meet him. ”
The way he said it, I knew what I’m sure Tomlinson immediately knew, and maybe DeAntoni, too: The tribal chairman of the Egret Seminole wasn’t a him. The chairman was a woman.
James was serious about giving the tour speech he’d memorized. I listened to him recite by rote. Some of it was interesting. He talked about the cast of oddballs, eccentrics, profiteers, predators and zealots who’d lived in the area. Because Florida attracts wanderers and dreamers, Florida’s history is as remarkable as it is idiosyncratic.
As we planed westward, running parallel to the Tamiami Trail, he told us about Devil’s Garden, that it was named during the Seminole Wars for a famous Indian, Sam Jones, who retreated there after battling U.S. troops, and was never caught.
“The soldiers called him Devil Sam because he just seemed to disappear into a place so beautiful, all the cypress and moss and orchids. After that, white men came and farmed on the same high slough ground that Indians had been farmin’ for hundreds of years.
“The strangest folks who ever lived in Devil’s Garden, though-this is fact-was a group of people from up north, and they was nudist. They come to the Garden to live in a commune. They bragged to the local folks that they were all so intelligent, they were such perfect specimens of people, the men were going to breed with the women, and start their own super-race-this was back just before the time of the Nazis. Because of the mosquitoes, this is a rough place to go naked. They lasted less than six months.”
Through the earphones, I could hear DeAntoni laughing.
Then Tiger told us about other characters who’d spent their lives in the ’Glades near the two-lane highway.
There was a woman he called Mama Hokie, wife of Sam Hokie. The two of them made a meager living selling drinks and bait to passing fishermen-which explained the cryptic sign
outside their shack: BEER WORMS FOR SALE.
Her Seminole neighbors called Mama “Alligator Lady,” and for good reason. One morning, back in the 1990s, when she went to the canal to dip water for her adopted stray cats, a gator lunged from the bottom, and bit off her right arm. Mama Hokie made her own tourniquet, watered her cats, and went on not only to survive, but to adopt a lot more cats-which she watered every morning from the same canal.
There was Al Seely, a northern artist with an alcohol addiction so severe that, in desperation, he loaded his car with pots and clothes and food, and made his wife abandon him on an island so remote that he couldn’t possibly escape to find booze. He lived in a shack in that brackish ’Glades wa tershed for years, painting striking primitives, and getting roaring drunk on the rare occasions when a passing stranger offered him a ride into Goodland, the nearest town.
There was Buffalo Tiger, first chairman of the Miccosukee, and an Everglades legend who, by flying to Cuba and shaking Castro’s hand, guaranteed the sovereignty of his tribe.
There was A. C. Hancock, who was born on Sand Fly Pass, just off Everglades City. He was a master boatbuilder, guide and, for a time, sheriff’s deputy, who scrambled to a complaint of “foreigners with machine guns” running a military camp in the ’Glades. He arrived to confront Anglo men in sunglasses: They were CIA officers training Cuban officers for the Bay of Pigs invasion.
“The Everglades is known for its strong women,” James’s voice said through my earphones-not talking to us, just playing his role as guide, reciting his speech.
I listened to him tell us about the legendary Smith sisters, Sarah and Hannah. Just hearing the name Hannah Smith squeezed at my heart, and caused a familiar sense of loss. I could feel Tomlinson’s eyes on my back as Tiger continued to tell us about the namesakes and relatives of a woman I’d known: a strong, good woman whom I had loved and lost.
Sarah was known as the Ox Woman, because she was the first person-male or female-ever to drive an ox cart across the Everglades. Hannah, who cut firewood and drove cattle for a living, was known as Big Six, because like her sister, she was a couple of inches over six feet tall. The tough men of the Everglades not only respected the sisters; they feared them.
Big women. It made me think of Jenny Egret. It also made me think of my lost girl, a tall woman, legs as long as mine, with eyes that could penetrate a man’s head, or his heart.
I was pleased when he moved on to other subjects. He told about Jim Sheely, who so devoutly believed in the Swamp Ape that he set out food for the beast, and about Mrs. Jimmie Robinson, wife of an island crabber, who rallied the men of Florida’s fishing community, went personally to Tallahassee and founded the Organized Fishermen of Florida.
It was only when James moved onto other famous ’Glades pioneers-Ervin T. Rouse, composer of the “Orange Blossom Special,” Totch Brown, Joseph Egret and Capt. Tucker Gatrell-that I interrupted, saying, “Jimmy. Jimmy. ”
Getting him to stop in midspeech was like trying to awaken him from a trance.
“Are you talkin’ to me, Dr. Ford?”
I told him, “Joseph and Tucker-we already know about them. You don’t need to tell us. Ervin Rouse and Totch were friends, too. You can skip that part of the talk.”
Tiger smiled, embarrassed. “Sorry. Once I get going, I can’t hardly stop, or I have to start from the beginning again.”
I slid the earphones back on my head, tuning him out as he fumbled for his place, listening to him say, “… uhhh, another interesting aspect of the Florida Everglades is what scientists call the flora and fauna…”
We were traveling on a trail of sawgrass that leaned as if a tornado had carved a pathway through it. I concentrated on the scenery. There was plenty to see.
As we flew along, the noise of the boat flushed clouds of white ibis, bright as flower petals above the gray grass. We flushed sandhill cranes, a couple of black feral hogs and a herd of a dozen or so white-tailed deer, spotted fawns in tow.
In literature about the Everglades, the point is often made that the region is more of a cerebral pleasure than a visual wonder. This theme, in a stroke, seems to recognize the delicate balance of water and life, while apologizing for the absence of mountains.
There are no mountains, true, but the region is made up of more than just grass and water. The Everglades is a massive biological unit of varied landscapes that once included nearly half the state. It begins just south of Orlando, where Florida settles slate-flat on a porous, limestone base that tilts just enough to keep water flowing toward the Keys.
Once you get south of Lake Okeechobee, beyond cane fields, the land empties. It is veined with creeks, shaded with tear-shaped tree islands and pocked with holes ragged as a moonscape. The Everglades is honeycombed with subterranean rivers and caverns.
South Florida’s largest underground river is known as the Long Key Formation.
The Long Key River runs for several hundred miles beneath highways and homes, cities and wild places, mostly through limestone. It begins near Lake Wales, northwest of Lake Okeechobee, and currents southward toward the Everglades.
The river flows beneath State Route 80, Alligator Alley and the Tamiami Trail-the region’s only east-west highways. The underground river flows beneath sawgrass, swamp, mangrove fringe and Florida Bay.
The Long Key River then rises to within about 35 feet of the earth’s surface at Flamingo, and abruptly descends deep underground as it flows beneath Florida Bay-a freshwater column traveling an isolated course beneath salt water. By the time the river gets to Marathon and Long Key, its limestone conduit is 158 feet beneath the sea bottom.
Limestone can accurately be called a skeletal structure by virtue of having been formed by the calcium remains of long-dead sea creatures. The limestone skeleton upon which modern Florida exists is porous, delicate, unpredictable. Craters in the limestone can and do appear suddenly. They are formed when the limestone scaffolding gives way, and implodes. Sinkholes, they are called. In South Florida, sinkholes occur commonly. They have swallowed houses, whole business districts and portions of highway.
Sinkholes are an incisive reminder of how fragile our peninsula really is.
We were approaching what appeared to be a sinkhole now-a crater-sized lake surrounded by cypress. As we neared it, I could feel the temperature drop, as if the dome of cypress was absorbing sunlight. Within the dome, the crater was a pool of black water that was carpeted with fire flags and lily pads, white and yellow flowers blooming.
In my earphones, I heard James say, “See the marsh way to the north?”
I looked to see a broad expanse of swamp plain near what appeared to be an abandoned limestone pit.
He said, “We call that Lost Lake. The reason is, there’s another sinkhole out there, a lake without no bottom. But you can’t see the shape of the lake unless water in the swamp gets real low. Used to be, tarpon would show up there about this time every year. But it hasn’t happened for a while.”
A tarpon is a saltwater game fish: a chromium-scaled pack animal that migrates into the Florida littoral each spring. All my life, I’d heard rumors that there were certain inland lakes where tarpon would appear as abruptly as they disappeared-the implication being that the lakes were connected by underground tunnels with the open sea. Some were well known: Rock Lake, Tarpon Lake, Deep Lake and Lake Sampson. I’d visited a couple of them.
We were headed for a tree island now. As James banked toward it, I heard Tomlinson say, “This is starting to look familiar. Man, I think I know where we are. We’re getting close to Sawgrass, aren’t we?”
James told him, “If you cut straight across the prairie, it’s only a mile or so to the back boundary.” Then he said what sounded like, “Up ahead is Chekika’s Hammock.”
Tomlinson repeated the name phonetically, “Che-kii-ka’s Hammock.”
“Uh-huh. Back in eighteen forty, it’s where the white soldiers caught Chekika, an Indian. They said he murdered Dr. Perrine and six or seven other people down on the Florida Keys. Chekika, he was a big man. A Calusa, like Joseph. When the soldiers caught him, they hanged him. Ask her to show you the tree. It’s still there.”
DeAntoni said, “Ask who to show us the tree?”
Tomlinson answered for James: “Billie Egret. This is where she lives.”
Tomlinson, my intuitive friend. chapter nineteen
Billie Egret, tribal chair of the Egret Seminoles, had inherited Joseph Egret’s height, his elongated wedge of a nose and his eyes. She had liquid eyes; black, intense eyes that seemed to add weight to the air when she stared at you.
She was staring at me now, as she said, “My father once told me he considered you more like a son than just some cracker boy. So I guess that could make the two of us brother and sister in a way. He also told me you kept your brain where your heart should be. True?”
There are rare people who exude sufficient confidence that they can direct outrageous questions at strangers, yet make the question sound reasonable, even flattering. She was one of those few.
I said, “Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with that.”
I watched her smile for the second time since our arrival. “Guess he was right, huh?”
We were standing in a clearing between four pole houses-chickees-that were built around a central fire pit. The chickees consisted of a sapling floor built a couple of feet off the ground beneath a roof of palm thatching. The cooking chickee was open on all sides. There was a pump for water, a wood-burning stove and a porcelain sink that drained onto the ground.
We’d already seen the tree where, according to the woman, Chekika had been hanged a hundred-and-fifty-some years earlier. The “Hanging Tree,” she called it, her inflection making it a proper noun.
It was a massive Madeira mahogany, long dead. Put three or four men at the base, and they might be able to circle their arms around it. Most of the upper limbs were broken off; woodpeckers had riddled it with striated holes, but it was still solid. Perched on the highest knob was one of the rarest birds in the Everglades, a snail kite. The snail kite sat one hundred feet above, indifferent to us, a large, hawkish looking male, cobalt blue.
“When we were kids,” Billie told us, “Joseph used to talk about Chekika, because Chekika was his great-grandfather. Which means he’s my great-great-grandfather. He was what the old people, the elders, called a Spanish Indian.
“It’s because the government sent the last band of Calusas to live in Cuba. They had to learn Spanish. They gave them a spot on a hill just west of old Havana, but it wasn’t their home; it wasn’t Florida. So they paddled back. More than a hundred miles of open water in dugouts.
“Chekika was different. Like my father. Now like us.”
We listened to the woman talk about it. She said if the American military had attacked Indians down on the Keys, it would have been called an engagement. But because it was Chekika who initiated the attack, history referred to it as a massacre.
There is a predictable variety of bitterness associated with the cliche thinking that every conquest-minded European was evil, and all indigenous peoples were noble. But there was no hint of that in her voice.
She told us that there are five hundred and fifty federally recognized tribes in the United States. The largest, the Cherokee and the Navajo, have close to a million members. Some of the smallest tribes have fewer than a dozen men and women left; are on the verge of extinction.
“For the enemies of Native Americans,” she said, “extinction has always been the favorite option.”
She told us that her band, the Egret Seminoles, were just one unrecognized tribe out of two-hundred-and-forty-some groups petitioning, trying to get the federal government to verify all the research that had been done, to grant confirmation, and make it official.
She spoke matter-of-factly, like an interested historian. She looked the part, standing there in her park ranger khaki shorts and man’s rainbow-banded Seminole shirt, strings of traditional glass beads around her neck. An interesting-looking woman: a little over six feet tall, narrow-hipped, flat-chested with good shoulders, high cheekbones beneath velvet cocoa skin, her hair cut short. Plus those eyes. Star tlingly intense eyes.
I liked her frankness; her no-nonsense manner.
When Tomlinson placed both his hands on the tree, closed his eyes for a moment, saying, “There’s a powerful spirit in this creature; it’s still strong and alive-” she cut him off abruptly, saying, “If you’re doing that for my benefit, please stop.”
As Tomlinson turned to her, smiling, she added, “Sorry. It’s just that I don’t have much patience with the whole Indian stereotype business. We don’t worship nature-never did. We don’t all have fuzzy animal names. We’ve never had shamans-that’s a Russian word-and the only people who give any credence to that ridiculous book, Black Elk Speaks, are New Age whites who have more money than brains. Turquoise Indians, I call them, because they wear turquoise like it’s supposed to mean something.”
Still smiling, Tomlinson said something heavy and guttural that surprised the woman, then made her laugh. It also seemed to cut through the awkwardness of strangers meeting. Seemed to put her at ease. She answered Tomlinson in the same singsong language, before adding, “I’m impressed. That’s a Maskoki maxim I haven’t heard since my grand-mother died. Very appropriate, too.”
Now she didn’t seem to mind at all when Tomlinson placed his hands on the Hanging Tree again, eyes closed, and asked, “How often is she struck by lightning?”
Billie Egret answered, “A lot,” walking away.
She’d already put DeAntoni in his place, too. The first thing he’d asked her after stepping off the airboat was, “Did you know a Geoff Minster?” To which she replied, “You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. And you’re not going to stay here long unless you agree to talk about it on my terms.”
Her terms, it seemed, included getting to know us better before she volunteered information. “She’s getting the feel of us,” Tomlinson whispered to me as we followed her back to the main camp.
Now she took a seat at a table beneath one of the chickees, and spoke generally, telling us about herself, what she was doing. She owned a condo in Coral Gables-she was working on her doctorate in political history at the University of Miami-but she lived here much of the time with two older aunts and three much older uncles. The six of them, along with Ginny Egret and James Tiger, made up the voting board of the Tribe of Egret Seminoles, Inc., a trademarked corporation formed to ensure that the tribe-once formally recognized-had both a business and political infrastructure in place.
“Under the corporation, we also created the Egret Seminole Land Development Enterprise,” she said. “We did it to explore how we can best use the little bit of land we own jointly, and the possibility of purchasing-or annexing-property that adjoins ours.
“That’s how I met Geoff. He came to me as the front man for Jerry Singh. They had a business offer. Singh wanted to sell us thirteen hundred acres of adjoining land on a long-term deferred loan, and at a price next to nothing. In return, we’d allow him to build and manage a casino resort.”
DeAntoni said, “He wanted to sell you church property.”
“Yes, and he still does. Singh bought the land cheap when he was first starting out. Back when it cost next to nothing because it’s mostly swamp. A little later, if you don’t mind getting your feet wet, I’ll walk you to where the property lines meet.”
Billie told us she felt the casino idea was plausible and the potential for profit was huge. But, as she explained to Minster, even if she did get the tribe to go along with the idea, it wouldn’t be easy. There was a lot of red tape involved; several government agencies to deal with. First and foremost, though, the Egret Seminoles had to successfully petition the Department of Interior’s branch of Acknowledgment and Recognition.
So she and Minster had spent a lot of time together, trying to work out the details.
She said, “The main problem is that the U.S. government is constantly… daily… perpetually devising ways they can erode Indian sovereignty. The gaming industry is their favorite target. Have you ever heard of James Billy?”
“I was talking about him on the way here,” Tomlinson told her. “A tough old ’Nam vet who really got the tribe on its feet.”
“That’s him. When I’d go on a rant about protecting tribal sovereignty, he’d tell me, ‘Hell, honey, sovereignty ain’t nothin’ but who’s got the biggest gun!’ In the final analysis, he was absolutely correct.
“So now we’re working on getting our guns together. Back in the nineteen fifties, when James was growing up, less than a half-dozen Seminoles had even graduated from high school. Today, we dress our warriors up in three-piece suits and pay them to fire off injunctions instead of bullets. So that’s how I got to know Geoff.”
There was an odd modulation when she said his name, Geoff. Was I imagining a hint of tenderness?
No.
Because she then added, “I hope you’re right about him still being alive. I don’t believe it, but I hope you’re right.”
The way she said it was like she cared about the guy. Cared about him a lot.
Why was there a Sawgrass maintenance truck backed into what looked to be a long-abandoned limestone quarry?
That’s what Billie wanted to know.
It was a white, ton-and-a-half GMC, double tires in the back with a skid-mounted tank in the bed and Sawgrass decals on the doors. A dark-haired man in coveralls was standing at the rear of the truck, doing something with a wrench.
It was the quarry I’d seen on the way in.
“That’s odd; he’s on our property,” she said. “He’s got no business being in here. What I don’t understand is, Why would he want to be there?” Meaning a shallow, marl-looking pit fifty yards or so wide, with an access road that was overgrown with brush. The road ended abruptly where the truck was parked, backed up to the wall of the quarry as if it were a bunker.
I thought, Dumping garbage, but said nothing. A man alone, not dozing, not eating. It was the only explanation that made sense.
We’d walked a mile or so north. Had waded through a couple of sections of sawgrass and water, which DeAntoni didn’t like. Wild animals, he said, made him jumpy.
“All the snakes and crap Florida’s got. Alligators. We’ve already seen enough big gators, sister. So no more, okay? Then you got your black widows, scorpions, plus that hurricane business with a wind that comes blowing down and puts the snatch on people.”
Billie chuckled when he added, “Hell, you Indians can have the freaking place, far as I’m concerned.”
Most of our walk was on high ground. Dry, too, after one of the driest winters in the state’s history, but starting to green now that we were entering the rainy season.
We’d followed the woman through pinelands and grass prairie, through stands of young cypress where she pointed out ghost orchids growing wild, swamp lilies and leather ferns. She knew the names of all the birds, too: wood storks, hawks and great egrets with their reptilian eyes.
Once, she stopped, knelt and touched a finger to a paw print that was bigger than my hand. “Black bear,” she said. “A big one. Big and healthy.”
She said she often found panther tracks in the area, too.
When I inquired, she told me she’d noticed a significant increase in the amount of wildlife in the ’Glades since her childhood, particularly gators and wading birds. “But that doesn’t mean the Everglades is back to the way it was when Chekika and Osceola were alive. And there may be a lot more damage to come.”
Her reasoning surprised me. She said she felt the biggest threat to the region now came from the state and federal governments, and a mega-billion-dollar project called the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan.
“But that’s a good thing,” Tomlinson argued. “The scientists, most of them, anyway, say we need to make the ’Glades a free-flowing water system again. Restore the Kissimmee and increase the amount of wetlands by a couple of hundred thousand acres.”
That, Billie told him, is exactly what scared her.
In explanation, she first listed a string of environmental disasters masterminded by government scientists and engineers. Back in 1912, they used biplanes to seed the Everglades with a paper-barked, Australian tree called the melaleuca. The exotic tree reproduced like wildfire and displaced whole regions of natural habitat. Then they did the same with casuarinas, or Australian pines. “Environmentally safe windbreaks,” state biologists called the tree at the time.
It was government “experts” who transformed the Kissimmee from a hundred miles of pristine river into a fifty-six-mile ditch, renaming it C-38 Canal. The results were ruinous.
Then, in 1957, at the southern base of mainland Florida, government engineers dug the Buttonwood Canal to drain the area north of Flamingo and provide easy boat access to the mangrove backcountry. For the first time in history, the canal allowed fresh water, laden with decaying sediments, to flow directly into Florida Bay.
Again, the results were disastrous. It all but destroyed the fishery in Florida Bay, yet state biologists balked at admitting the truth, or taking responsibility. It wasn’t until 1982 that the canal was finally plugged.
“I don’t trust them,” Billie said. “Government scientists use Florida like a lab rat. They say they want to return the natural flow of water? The Everglades used to include nearly all the land south of Orlando. It’s less than half that size now. When they started draining the sawgrass, tree islands like Chekika’s Hammock got bigger. The bigger islands provided more habitat for wildlife that’d been forced inland by development.
“So what’s going to happen when they cover half the original land mass with the whole, original amount of flowing water? They’re going to flood us out, that’s what. When water reduces the amount of uplands habitat, where’re the bear, the deer, the people-where’re we supposed to go. Miami?
“This has been one of the driest winters ever, but the water’s already come up so much here that some of the trees are getting root rot. Our island’s shrinking.”
She added, “This place is delicate. The ’Glades has spent the last hundred years adapting to change, evolving, surviving. Now they want the area to go through the whole process again, but in reverse.” Sounding emotional for the first time, she added, “Anything as beautiful as the Everglades has to be fragile. Like a butterfly.”
Tomlinson was listening to her, not agreeing but not disagreeing, either. In a soft voice, he said, “Everglades. Yes, this place is the real Magic Kingdom.”
The man driving the white pickup truck with the skid tank in back didn’t want us to see his face.
My interpretation. Something about the way he behaved when Billie called out to him, “Hey, mister! Mind if I ask what’re you doing down there?”
She startled him. Made him jump. He didn’t expect anyone to come walking up out of the sawgrass the way we did. Ninety-nine percent of the people, they’ll look around when surprised.
Not this guy.
He was about fifty yards away and slightly below us. He stiffened at the sound of her voice. Paused as if thinking about what to do. Then he turned away from us, his face partially hidden by an open hand as he waved, maybe trying to appear friendly, but maybe trying to shield himself, too.
Still waving, he called back a gruff, “Howdy!”
My second assessment: He was trying to disguise his voice.
I watched the man duck slightly, keeping the truck between us and himself. He didn’t rush, kept it calm, but he didn’t waste any time opening the driver’s-side door and getting in.
Billie was walking fast toward the access road. Then she began to trot as the truck pulled away. I jogged along with her, for no other reason than the man’s behavior did not seem appropriate for the situation.
She was motioning at the driver, calling for him to stop. But he didn’t. When he passed within fifteen yards or so of us, he waved again, palm open-shielding his face once more.
“Asshole,” Billie said. She was looking at the truck as it bounced away. “And wouldn’t you know: There’s mud on his license plate.”
A few minutes later, the four of us were going over the area where the truck had been parked.
Yes, it was an abandoned limestone quarry, or “barrow pit”; limestone dredged to built roads. The pit was rocky, honeycombed with holes.
I know enough about Florida geology to recognize that this area would be described as a karst formation. A karst is a limestone area that consists of sinkholes and abrupt ridges-some as high as fifteen or twenty feet above sea level.
For millions of years, naturally acidic rain and groundwater flowed through these limestone karsts, dissolving conduits and caverns out of rock. Some plates of limestone fell, some rose. Thus the unusual elevation.
This quarry had been dug into the side of a high ridge. Searching around at the bottom of it, we found a couple of daubs of white goo that smelled like fuel oil-insecticide, DeAntoni suggested. Nothing more until Billie held up a large, empty fertilizer bag, and said, “Look at this. He must be one of the golf course maintenance guys. Probably came out here to get away from his supervisor, sneaking in a nap.”
She told us her primary worry was that the guy had been dumping trash. She said the Sawgrass staff did that a lot-dumped their junk on Indian property. Old refrigerators, air conditioners, broken bedding and wallboard-anything too bulky or heavy to drive to the county dump.
She said she’d complained to Jerry Singh, but got a sense of indifference behind his promise to speak with his staff. Plus, it didn’t stop. They kept right on dumping.
She told us she thought Singh was secretly encouraging the dumping for the same reason he was encouraging his staff to bully the local Indians. If the Egret Seminoles agreed to Shiva’s terms, the Seminole corporate board would have the power to hire and fire. It would be a way for the Indians to rid the area of the Ashram’s thugs.
Tomlinson asked, “Then why would you want to go into the casino business with someone like Shiva? I’ve got to be right up front with you. I think the guy’s a slime.”
She answered. “I don’t want to go into the casino business with him. With Geoff involved, it might’ve been a different story. I doubt it, but at least there was a possibility. Now there’s not a chance-as far as I’m concerned, anyway.”
“Then why deal with him?”
She thought for a moment, perhaps calculating how honest she should be. Finally, she said, “I’m dealing with him for a real simple reason. We want his land. I want his land. Not for a housing development or anything like that. I want to replant it. Make it part of our home again. But just because I was elected tribal chair, that doesn’t mean I make the final decision.”
She explained that the Egret Seminoles as a tribe were still considering the casino proposal because Shiva had, in her opinion, conned her five older aunts and uncles. Billie said that, as chairman, she could vote only in the event of a tie. So Shiva had effectively captured the interests of a majority of corporate members on a voting board of eight.
She told us, “A year back, Singh sent a limo and drove us all to his Palm Beach Ashram. He gave us the red-carpet treatment; anything we wanted. What impressed my aunts and uncles, though, was his office. On his office walls, he’s got these carvings of pre-Columbian masks and totems. They were copies of Calusa masks. Masks that almost no one knows about.
“Singh acted surprised when my uncle identified them. It was like Jerry had no idea what they were. He claimed to have carved the masks himself because the images kept coming to him night after night in his dreams. Jerry told us he was a mystic, and sometimes received messages that he didn’t always understand right away. Then he told my aunts and uncles that maybe the masks-the fact that he saw them in his dreams-were a positive sign about the casino. ”
DeAntoni said, “Did they believe him?”
“I think they’d like to believe him. I love my relatives, but they grew up in poverty. I think they’d like a reason to justify voting for the casinos, and have some money for once. So, they’re still waiting to decide.”
“Waiting for what?”
“Shiva promised them another sign. A more powerful sign. Maybe someday I’ll tell you what he promised them he’d do-it’s actually kind of funny. It’ll never happen, of course. So what I’ve got to do is figure out how to get Shiva’s land without agreeing to let him build casinos.”
As she said that, she handed the bag she’d found to Tomlinson, and he held it up for me to see. It was the industrial variety; triple-thick brown paper. Printing on the outside said that it had contained fifty pounds of ammonium nitrate commercial-grade fertilizer, manufactured by Chem-A-World Products, Bucyrus, Ohio.
As I looked at the bag, I said, “Is anyone doing any blasting around here?”
She said, “No. In the Everglades? They’d never allow it. They used to back when they were digging barrow pits, but not now.”
As I asked Billie if ammonium nitrate was a fertilizer commonly used by golf courses, DeAntoni’s cell phone began to ring.
She shrugged- I don’t know -as Frank put the phone to his ear and, after listening a moment, said, “Speak of the devil.”
A minute later, he closed the phone, putting it away, and said, “That was our Scotch-drinking pal, Eugene McRae. Jerry Singh already contacted him and asked about our little visit. He’s there right now. The Bhagwan, I mean. Mr. McRae said that Singh would be happy to answer any questions we had about Geoff Minster.”