Jonathon King - Shadow Men

I was too anxious to spend another day fishing. I have a vision of truth in my head and it is a smooth, logical, ethical stone that occupies my brain. But the chunk there now was growing more and more jagged despite my chronic grinding, and it was just about to sprout another flawed edge.

I had just gotten off the cell with Billy when I spotted the guys following me. White van, dark lettering on the side. I'd first noticed the van back at the on-ramp in West Palm, and I didn't pay any more attention than I usually did in traffic. I was on my way to Richards's house in Lauderdale to pick her up for a Diana Krall concert and dinner at our favorite Cajun place, just to forget about swamps and fires and the unmarked graves of tired men for a while. When I saw the van take the same off-ramp, I got more interested. I'd just finished filling Billy in on my conversation with Nate Brown, and that I'd planned to meet up with him in two days.

"Does Brown think any of this is feasible?" Billy said.

"He's hard to read."

"Do you think it's possible?"

"I think it's going to take more than old letters and fireside ghost stories," I said.

"That's why I'm record-hunting, Max. We might not even be able to prove the great-grandfather and his sons were even out there."

I punched off with Billy and saw the white van speed up to catch a light with me. Maybe I was paranoid, nervous about leaving the shack. Maybe it wasn't even the same van. God knows how many white vans are on the road-just ask the sniper task force up in D.C. and suburban Virginia. Still I did a figure-eight through the tight blocks of Victoria Park before finally backing into Richards's driveway. I watched both ways for ten minutes and had just reached for the door handle when a sharp rap sounded on the passenger side window and made me jump. Richards opened the door and pushed her head in. Her eyes glowed blue and her hair was down.

"Forget the stakeout, Freeman, the neighbors already know," she said, sliding into the seat.

"Know what?"

"Know the nice policeman's widow next door is seeing some unemployed swamp guy with a pickup truck," she said.

We drove through her quaint neighborhood and into what had over many years comfortably become the downtown area of Fort Lauderdale-small one- and two-story condos and side streets of old, motel-style apartments whose days were now numbered by the rising value of the land they sat on. For the last fifty years the population flood into South Florida had surged west off the beach and into the drained swamp to create suburbia. But somehow a barrier-both political and environmental-had been raised, and the new and supposedly final boundary of the Everglades established. Now, like a wave started at one end of a pan of water, the still- growing number of new arrivals was sloshing back toward the sea. The only place left to go was vertical. Turning west on Las Olas Boulevard, the city's venerable shopping lane, we were soon surrounded by high-rises.

"Are we being followed, Freeman?" Richards suddenly asked.

Her question caught me off guard, but shouldn't have.

"You've been checking the rearview since we left the house," she said. "Bad form for a cop not to let his partner in on the game."

"Sorry," I said. "I thought I picked up somebody on the way down. White van. But I could be wrong."

"The fire starter? Or this other doing you've got going with Billy?" she asked, using the remote control on her own rearview side mirror to take a glance behind.

"Maybe I'm just skittish these days," I said.

"So what kind of car does this park ranger drive?"

"You know, I don't know why I'm not more suspicious of him," I said, stopping for yet another red light. "It's way too easy, him being there, his access to marine fuel, the state trying to roust me. It doesn't feel right."

Richards reached over and put her hand flat on my thigh. "Stop grinding, Max. Let's go out and have a good time."

I leaned over and kissed her, got distracted by the smell of her perfume and the touch of her lips, and the guy behind me popped his horn.

"Green light," she murmured.

We rolled on. But before we got to the old post office parking lot on Second Street, I'd caught her checking her rearview mirror twice. Always a cop. 24/7.

Richards had great seats at the Broward Center. The jazz was superior and the piano riffs were still in my head afterward as we walked down Second Street, holding hands and debating which of Krall's talents was better, the interestingly malleable voice, or the equally eclectic keyboard work. The street was in its late-night lively mode. With restaurants and clubs on either side, the concept of a crosswalk was long forgotten. One of the corner bars had stainless coolers filled with iced beer for sale right out on the sidewalk. Cocktail chatter floated on the warm night air, and somewhere a saxophone wailed. All along the way, patrons stood with one foot in the street and the other up on the curb, as though it were a bar rail.

We crossed to the other side and were a door away from Creolina's when Richards was greeted by a pair of guys with brown beer bottles in hand. I tried to read them, but the signals were mixed. The clear eyes and expectant demeanor said friends. The longer- than-regulation hair and comfort in street clothes said maybe cops, maybe not.

"Hi, Sherry," the tall, better-looking one said.

"Hey," she responded, and stepped forward to give him a kiss on the cheek. "How're you doing?"

I could read a slight hesitation in her voice, and automatically watched the eyes of the other one, who was doing the same to me. I nodded. He nodded back.

"You're not working?" Richards asked, using an innocuous tone in the question like it could have been posed to anyone.

"No, no, I'm sorry. No, we just finished a job over in the isles. Just stopping off," the friendly one said. Richards relaxed.

"Dennis Gavalier, Max Freeman," she said in introduction. I shook his hand.

"The P.I. from the Eddie Baines case? Pleasure. This is Russ Parks, transferred in from robbery last month," Gavalier said, bringing the other guy in. "Sherry Richards from MIU."

The guy smiled one of those twenty-five-year-old "glad to have you meet me" smiles. Richards asked about the job. Gavalier was vague but obviously pleased. The conversation stopped and the four of us shuffled our feet.

"We were just heading in for dinner," Richards finally said.

"Hey, good to see you, enjoy," Gavalier said. "Good to meet you, Max."

I nodded. "You too."

We stepped away in different directions. "Dennis is narcotics, probably one of the best undercover guys in the country," Richards said. "I've never seen him in uniform, and you never know how to say hello to the guy because he might be working something."

"Partner's nice," I said.

She just looked at me, then shook her head.

"What?"

She shook her head again. I opened the door to the restaurant.

"You guys and your alpha-male thing. You all get the same hydrant out there?"

I just smiled. What could I say?

Rosa put us at the corner table, by the front window with the wall at our backs.

"Mr. Max. You out with this fine young lady again? You keep this up, baby, I'm a get jealous you cheatin' on me."

Rosa is a big, joyful, teasingly profane woman. She is a special spice at Creolina's, and you let her have her way.

"Ms. Rosa, I would never take the chance of hurting you and be denied your gumbo," I said.

"Its all right, honey," she stage-whispered to Richards. "All the mens lovvve my gumbo."

Richards laughed with her and ordered the etouffee. I got the jambalaya. We opened a bottle of wine. Richards took a sip and I caught her thinking.

"Guy with Dennis," she said.

"Yeah, Parks?"

"I think he's a friend of McCrary's."