Lost Man's River (102 page)

Ad Burdett, upset when his skiff was towed across the river, expressed his sincere disapproval of his old brother consorting with known criminals, and demanded to know what gave these men the right to take him prisoner on these Park lands. Offering him moonshine, Speck cheerfully agreed that they had no right whatever, but pointed out that a caretaker's solemn duties included protecting the place from whirlybirds and vandals. To illustrate, he pointed at the paint job. “If that ain't unlawful vandalism of federal property, I don't know what,” he said, winking at Chicken.

“I traveled a long way to paint this house,” Ad moaned, in an onset of self-pity, “and I spent up all my vacation time and all my savings, so I deserve a better explanation than that one you gave me.”

Fed up, Speck snarled, “Try this one, then. This damn ol' house is goin up in smoke in a few days, and your paint job with it—all your hard work and time and money, and your stupid vacation, and maybe your own self if you're tied up inside, ever think of that?”

This morning Speck had left there before noon, to make his way south by the inland creeks to Lost Man's Key. He had not gotten far when he was apprehended by the helicopter, which he had not heard over the din of his own engine. Circling in the high distance, the machine had picked up the white wake of his boat when he left the Watson Place. From the shrouded sun, tracking his propeller roil across the copper bays, it finally descended in a tree-shattering racket to run him aground against the bank at Onion Key.
There the Park rangers searched his boat and confiscated his tree snails and his orchids. (They were dead anyway, said Speck, who had had no time to tend them.) Finding no gator hides or guns or moonshine, they had let him go.

Lucius said finally, “If you came here to let me know they were all right, then I'm much obliged.”

“That ain't why I come here, and they ain't ‘all right.' ” Speck whistled in amazement. “Are
all
you Watsons crazy? Between Chicken and that Whirlybird—”

“Rob got off to a rough start in life. Addison, too. It's not their fault.”

“Ain't Junior's fault, neither,” Speck said grimly. “But that ain't goin to help him, vet or no vet, not when that last screw lets go and he starts shootin at them fuckin helio-copters!”

“Rob's not going to shoot anybody! He was drunk—”

“I am drunk right here this minute, you stupid bastard, and I ain't shot you yet! In the old days,
you
was drunk most all the time, but you never shot nobody I ever heard about!” His voice rose to a shout. “I mean, goddammit, if you was them wild boys of mine, outside the law, what would
you
make of a man carryin a list like that, and a loaded weapon?” Before Lucius could speak, he said in a hard voice, “You might figure his crazy brother Colonel Watson put him up to it! I mean, it ain't like we're talkin about some poor old alky. It ain't like he never killed before! Killed right here at Lost Man's, for Christ's sake! Killed right here on this key where we are standin on!” Speck raised his hand to block Lucius's protest. “So you're tryin to tell me it weren't him took a shot at Dyer? And if he will shoot at Dyer, why not me?”

Lucius said, “Rob's not a killer. He never wanted to kill anyone. Not ever.” But there was no way to explain why he believed this, and he did not try.

“You can deny it all you want. Chicken don't deny it.” Speck would not explain this. Morose, he was gazing back toward the silhouetted figures at the fire. As suddenly as it had flared, his rage had guttered out, and his voice was quiet. “Anyways, we can't let him loose till we are finished, and even then we got a problem cause he seen too much. We ain't got time to mess with him, is what it is. Junior and them got their own idea how to clean up this damn mess, and you don't come up with a better one pretty damn quick, that's what has to happen.”

“Cold-blooded murder?
That
what they're talking about?”

“They're through talkin, Colonel,” Speck said quietly, folding his arms upon his chest.

Then he said, “Let's say we turn ol' Chicken loose. The law is after him. You was mentionin that nigger cook—”

“Oh hell no! It wasn't him!”

“Well, you know that, and Dyer, too, I reckon. All the same, the law told Dyer they would settle for the nigger. They got all the witnesses they need—all them scared old people who was up all night with heartburn. Them kind will want somebody to pay. And Dyer says it's a nice tight case that will teach them kind of smart-mouth niggers a good lesson.”

Speck's mean chuckle came from down deep in his belly. “I asked him, Do you really want to go after that man, and he says, ‘Hell yes, I'm a law-and-order man, I don't believe in coddlin no criminals.' Respects the hell out of the law and never seen a jail he didn't like. Says, ‘I'm out for justice or my name ain't Watson Dyer.' ” Speck emitted a low, hard bark of derision. “Sure hates to mess with our American justice system, Dyer says. And otherwise he'd feel obliged to testify against ol' Chicken, who don't stand a Chinaman's chance of gettin off. Man out in the parkin lot, he spotted an old white man in a red neckerchief shootin at the victim's car from a hotel window. Seen him plenty good enough to testify that it weren't no black boy in a chef's outfit who got loose some way in a whites-only room on the sixth floor.”

“Rob shot at the car tires. He never shot at Dyer.”

“Pretty hard to sell that to a judge, with Chicken's record.”

“My brother will confess before he lets that black man go to jail for him. That's who he is.”

Speck Daniels snickered. “Specially when all that poor coon ever done was go to cuttin on a white customer with a damn carvin knife!” He heaved around and squinted at Lucius in disbelief. “Chicken was tellin me just yesterday how he wasted maybe half his life in one pen or another, and you're goin to set there and tell me you would let that old feller get locked away for the rest of his natural life? For a crazy nigger?”

Daniels searched Lucius's eyes for doubt and nodded when he found some. “I was warnin Chicken only this mornin how we might have to kill him, and he told me that was fine by him. He meant it, too. Said he had his fill of this shitty life and couldn't tolerate no more hard time in prison, so it was no use wastin time tryin to scare him. He was scared to death of death, all right, but was scared a lot worse by the future.”

“He's better off dead than going to prison? That what you're saying?”

“That's what
he's
saying.” He held Lucius's eye for a long time, nodding minutely. “What do
you
say, Lucius?”

“He's my
brother
, for Christ's sake!”

Heart jumping, sick and dizzy, he reeled to his feet. Driven by urgent pressure
of the bladder, he staggered off toward the sea grape. But he had scarcely opened up his fly when he was punched between the shoulder blades by what turned out to be the muzzle of a hand gun. “Let's see them hands before you turn around.”

Startled, hurting, and incensed, Lucius took time to finish and get things straightened out, ignoring the emphysemic hacking close behind him and the steel prod nudging his bruised back. Finally he stuck his hands out to the side. “Kind of jumpy, aren't you?” he said then, with as much contempt as his shaken voice could muster.

“Kind of jumpy, yessir, I sure am. Which is why I'm still doin pretty good after thirty years in my same line of business.” For the second time in a fortnight, Daniels frisked him. “I have growed a nose for a certain kind of a cock-eyed sonofabitch that you give 'em any room at all, it's goin to cost you.” He spun Lucius around harder than necessary, slapping at his chest and front pockets with the back of his free hand. “Next time, do your pissin out where I can see you.”

Lucius struggled to remain calm. “You're the one who's armed, goddammit!” His voice still trembled in his shock and outrage. “You're the one talking about eliminating witnesses! How about Addison? He gets shot, too?”

“Shut up and listen.” In the moonlight Speck was squatted on his hunkers, using his knife to draw a quick map in the sand. He spoke quickly, coldly. “Maybe when we get our business finished up tomorrow evenin, we'll put your brothers aboard Whirlybird's skiff, point 'em downriver to Mormon Key. Course Junior will blow another gasket. But I'll remind him there ain't nowhere they can get to, not before we're gone.”

“Crockett will do just what you tell him, right?”

“Junior?” Daniels snorted in a surprised response that was not quite affection. “We're like buck deer in the rut, Junior and me. Every year the old buck stands there just a-shiverin, knowin in every snort and hoof, bristle and tine, that he can still run all the young bucks off his does”—Speck chuckled—“includin this big stupid-lookin one high-steppin towards him right this very minute. Only this time, after the dust clears, he finds himself bad hurt and all alone. He ain't even allowed in his own herd no more.” Speck scratched his stubble. “Might happen to me the first time Junior gets it in his head that he ain't takin no more goddamned orders. Might be tomorrow, if he don't like my plan. And it ain't goin to be like no damn buck deer, neither. I'll be lucky if that sonofagun don't kill me.”

“So you'll let them go?”

“Depends,” Speck said, ambiguous again. “Can't promise nothin.”

“You were saying Rob was sick of life—”

“You back on that again?” Speck was enjoying this.

“—and suggesting that his death might be a mercy. Might be preferable. Something like that.” Hating Speck's knowing grin, he could not go on.

“That's what
I
say. That's what
he
said. What are
you
sayin? You don't want us to let him go?”

“I never said that!”

“Not in them words, no.”

“You say he
told
you he killed someone here at Lost Man's?”

“Damn fool had it all wrote down on paper. Had it right there with the list and the revolver. With your name on the packet.” He cocked his head. “You sure you didn't know?” The moon glint caught his tooth when Daniels grinned. “Dyer now, he was real excited when he heard about it. Told Junior to hold that stuff for him, it might come in handy. In case Watsons didn't cooperate or something.”

“You're giving Dyer the gun?”

“I already give it back to Chicken. Without no loads, of course. He told me to bring that ol' packet to you.”

“What's in it for you?”

“Well, me 'n' Chicken—you know. We go back a ways. Gator Hook and all.”

“I thought you worked for Dyer.”

Daniels nodded. “But I never owed him nothin, no more'n he owes me. Once his land claim's settled, he won't have no use for me, won't want to be tied in with me at all. Won't want nobody around who knows too much, can't take no chances. And if he's goin into politics, the way it looks—well, any dealins with the Daniels gang might cost him pretty dear, on down the road.”

Before coming south, Speck had phoned his contact man at Parks headquarters, trying to find out when the Parks meeting at the Bend could be expected. The official told him that Watson Dyer had failed to appear at the court hearing at Homestead, and the judge had suspended the injunction against “the demolition of the Watson premises.” It now appeared likely that demolition would be carried out before another motion for an extension or a new hearing could be filed. Why Dyer had not filed earlier, citing his emergency at Fort Myers, the official did not know. All he knew was, things were moving fast, and a large-scale operation was underway which included the requisition of a helicopter.

His Parks man warned Speck that this operation might be more ambitious than an expedition to burn down a house. A confidential federal report
had advised the Park authorities that an armed and dangerous fugitive named Robert Watson might have joined forces with the Daniels gang to engage in felonious activities at a remote location in the Lost Man's region of the Ten Thousand Islands. Attorney Watson Dyer, the intended victim in a recent episode of attempted murder at Fort Myers in which this Robert Watson was the leading suspect, was quoted as speculating that he had known too much about the fugitive's participation in a double murder in the Lost Man's region many years before.

Daniels seemed flattered that the federal agencies were using a U.S. military “helio-copter” to come after him. “Joint federal secret big-ass operation! Goin to cost us poor ol' taxpayers maybe a million dollars, and we ain't even going to know one thing about it! Anyone questions it, them bureaucrats will paper 'em to death, spread the responsibility all over Washington, D.C. Bureaucrats can't pour piss out of a boot without the instructions wrote onto the heel, but when it comes to coverin their butts, you just can't beat 'em!”