Randy White - The Man Who Ivented Florida

She said, "Part of that area-around Mango, most of the village-is being annexed for a state park project. A sort of add-on to Everglades National Park, and we're doing backgrounds on landowners to see who might be hostile to the project. A kind of survey."

She watched his face to see whether he believed that. He said, "That explains it," though she could tell he didn't buy it at all, something in his tone. Way too passive. So she added, "Of course, that's not the only reason."

Ford was at the throttle, looking back at the nets, checking his watch. He wanted to do a short drag, seven minutes tops. Didn't want to crush any of the unwanted specimens in the accumulation of tidal grass and sea hydroid. Easing back on the throttle, he smiled at the woman and said, "You mean there's more?"

"You've probably heard that three men disappeared in that area within the last few weeks."

Ford said, "I don't think so. Where?"

Walker studied him for a moment, thinking that he might be lying. "Three men in separate boats on separate days," she told him. "You haven't heard anything about it? It was just south of Mango, on the park boundary."

Ford said, "And you suspect Tucker Gatrell?"

"No, not at all. I'm-we are-just trying to assemble a picture of the people in the area, trying to get background. Two of the men had been hired by the state to complete an environmental survey project. A census, they call it. And we're trying to come up with a list of people who might have a reason to… ah, object to the survey." She smiled, watching him. "People think law enforcement is all guns and car chases, but it's not. Not at the FDCL. It's mostly research. Interviews, like I'm doing now."

"Must be a long list."

"Of people to interview? They gave me only thirty names,-maybe that's not all of them. The third man was a fishing celebrity. He had his own television show."

Ford said, "Were they similar? The three boats. That could be a key."

"No. I mean, I'm not sure. Three boats couldn't all be alike. That would be too much of a coincidence." The question had thrown her. He'd been way back on the fringe of the conversation, then suddenly he was at the heart of it. "The key to what? You mean they could have been faulty boats and sunk?"

He said, "But you're just doing the interviews. Someone else is doing the investigation."

"Well… yes and no… but back to the three boats-"

"What did Gatrell tell you?"

"He didn't say anything about the boats."

"About anything else, I mean."

"I know, but-"

"Did you go down there, talk to him in person?"

"No. I talked to him on the phone, a preinterview, trying to set up an appointment. He didn't tell me much."

Ford said, "I never found a way to make Tuck shut up." Already, he was dropping back from the topic. In and out, Walker thought, like a mongoose.

Walker said, "Oh, he talked. But not about what I wanted. He just rambled. He's… kind of charming in an odd sort of way. He talked about himself, the way old people like to do. Perhaps exaggerating a little-not that I minded."

Ford said, "Only a little?"

"He told me he had invented some kind of fishing-stone crabbing?"

Ford said, "That's true. Back in the fifties, he and his partner- an Indian named Joseph Egret-experimented until they found an effective trap. They supplied a Miami restaurant called Stone Crab Joe's."

"He told me that he had discovered shrimp fishing, too."

"At night, that's what he meant. He was one of the first to figure out that shrimp came out of their burrows at night. Shrimpers have fished at night ever since. He wasn't lying there."

Agent Walker was beginning to sense a small rapport growing, built around questions about Tucker Gatrell. She said, "He told me he'd poached those pretty birds, egrets, and alligators. That one night he'd shot and skinned more than three hundred-"

"Only Tuck would brag about that."

"And that he was part of the reason so many Cubans had migrated to Miami. He'd supplied Castro with guns."

Ford said, "He ran guns."

"And rum."

"From Cuba and Nassau. All true. During Prohibition back when he was in his teens."

"And that he'd worked for the man who built the road across the Everglades, but it was a failure because the equipment kept sinking in the mud, and it was his idea to use a-what did he call it?"

"I don't know what he called it, but it was a floating dredge. A dredge on a barge that dug its own canal and floated along behind. The fill created the roadbed. Tuck was a boy, a water boy for a man named Barron Collier, and supposedly he said-"

Walker said, "Yeah, it was something funny-"

"Tuck says a lot of funny things."

The woman finished the story for him. "He said, 'Jesus Christ, Barron, man only makes two things that float, shit and boats. And you can hire yourself another boy if you think I'm walking through shit clear to Miami.' "

Ford said nothing, listening to her. The woman had a nice low laugh; let a little bit of the girl show through, but Ford could see what she was doing, trying to build a working intimacy. Pretty good at it, too.

Behind them, on the slick water, was a roiled trail, like a brown comet's tail, showing the path of the nets. He shut down the engine, cranked the outriggers up, swung the nets over the culling table, and spilled the contents. A whole world of sea life gushed out: filefish, pinfish, sea horses, parrot fish, tunicates, grasses, comb jellies, spider crabs, blue crabs, a calico crab, a couple of horseshoe crabs, and flopping rays. For a moment, sorting the specimens, he forgot that the woman was there, but then she said,

"He told me this other story, too, about how Disney World got started up there in Orlando."

"Tuck's not shy about taking credit-"

"But it wasn't Walt Disney, or anybody like that, it was this other man-"

Ford said, "Dick Pope. That's Tuck's Dick Pope story, about how he was the one who got theme parks started in Florida. Tuck used to take Mr. Pope fishing, the guy who started Cypress Gardens-it was always Beautiful Cypress Gardens in the newsreels, the ones with Esther Williams and the old movie stars-and Tuck says he's the one talked him into it. Then the Disney people came along and a lot of others. Reptile World. Sea World. A lot of them."

Agent Walker said, "Truly an amazing man."

"Tuck always kept moving," Ford said.

"And that he was President Truman's favorite fishing guide, the one who decided they should make the Everglades a park."

"No… well, yeah, but he's stretching it. It's not as big a deal as it sounds. The old-time Florida guides-there weren't many of them, only a handful-took out a lot of people like that, famous. Presidents and athletes and movie people. Forty, fifty years ago, west Florida was still wilderness. Sparsely settled. Tuck was one of only two or three guides in the whole region, so he got his share."

"And Thomas Edison-"

"It was a big wild area with just a few small-town access points-"

"That Edison put him, Mr. Gatrell, in one of the first moving pictures, them fishing for some kind of fish."

Ford said, "That's what he says. But I'm not sure I believe Tuck's Edison stories. Edison died in, what? The early thirties. Tuck was pretty busy running liquor then."

"It sounds like he's done everything."

"Seventy-some years in a young state, it adds up."

"And that he's the last Florida cowboy… only he didn't call it that. It was something else-"

Ford said, "See? The guy exaggerates. There're a lot of cattle people left in Florida. Florida's one of the biggest cattle producers in the country. He's always been like that."

"Being his nephew, you've probably heard a lot of them."

Ford turned from the culling table to look at her. "I've heard my share of Tuck's stories. But why don't we go straight to the questions you want to ask, save us both some time."