Jonathon King - Shadow Men

"OK," he said, the flat wariness gone. "Wheel it over, man. My friends and I will take a look."

Lott and I walked back to my truck and parted in front of his lab.

"No questions asked, and believe me," he said, "these kids know more about the electronics of this shit than any FBI tech I ever met."

When I backed my F-150 into his garage, Ramon explained his work terms. "One hundred in cash and we keep whatever hardware we find. You don't get it for no evidence in some courtroom," he said, then changed the seriousness in his voice and winked. "But you do get to drive around free."

For the next hour I sat in the shade in a cheap lounge chair listening to an odd form of Cuban rap while Ramon and two of his boys crawled in and under my truck with a variety of tools and sensors and voltmeters. I was lost trying to eavesdrop on their conversations, which were carried out in some form of hip Spanglish peppered with street slang. When they were finished, Ramon walked me outside holding two chunks of electronics. One was the size of a cigar box. The other, a single cigarette pack.

"Both of these are tracking devices, Mr. Freeman. Whoever is keeping the leash on you, man, they ain't taking no chances. This one is a real-time vehicle tracking device. They had it plugged into your battery so it could run constantly. It's got a modem so they can access it from a PC and map exactly where you been and for how long. It's long-range and very expensive, man. The local law can't usually afford them, even when they're trying to follow the stolen car shipments to the islands.

"And since the serial numbers are gone," he said, pointing to a rough acid burn on the metal casing, "I'd say it was a private enterprise doing the installation."

He looked in my face for reaction. I didn't give him any and he shrugged it off.

"This other is more run of the mill. Works like a LoJack. Once we unhooked them, they're deactivated and your friends are going to know, claro?"

"Si. Pero es no use por tu?" I answered, bringing a smile to Ramon's serious face.

"We have our uses for them-and a market, my friend."

"I'll bet you do," I said, peeling off five twenty-dollar bills. "No listening bugs?"

"Nada. But that's not so much anymore," Ramon said. "It's hard for the transmitters in a car. Too much noise, and now with cell phones, man, they just use an intercept."

"A cell phone intercept?"

"Yeah, sure. Someone with the money for something like these would probably use a Strikefisher. It's compact enough, they can carry it around. It's got plenty of range. They can pick up your cell frequency and hear everything you're saying, no problem."

I was thinking about the white van, the thirty-five-foot fishing boat on the river near my shack, any place I'd made a call to Billy.

"Thing about these private guys, they don't need no warrants, man. It's all fair game, dude."

"So how do I avoid it?"

Ramon smiled. "Stay off the phone, man. Do business face-to- face," he said, pointing his finger at me and then back at himself. "It's old school. But it's safe."

I shook Ramon's hand and got in the truck.

"Good doing business with you, Mr. Max. And tell Billy Manchester ciao for me, eh?"

"Ciao," I said to Billy, and he gave me one of those quizzical looks that when held long enough by an intelligent man makes you feel stupid enough to ruin your attempt at humor.

"Ramon and his electronics crew down in Forest Hills," I said.

"Ahh. Ramon Esquivil. How is m-my young inventor friend?"

My turn to look quizzical. Billy was pouring a boiling pot of angel hair pasta into a colander at his sink and waiting for the billowing cloud of steam to rise to the ceiling.

"I represented him in a patent c-case. Some b-big electronics company trying to claim the r-rights to a pneumatic bypass switch that Mr. Esquivil had invented in his g-garage."

"And?" said Diane McIntyre, Billy's attorney friend who was standing at the counter sipping chardonnay and watching him cook.

"And w-we were quite successful," he said, shaking the colander and flopping the pasta into a bowl. "And so is Mr. Esquivil, if I r- recall correctly that the c-contracts he eventually signed were worth over seven figures."

I took a long drink of beer and filled Billy in on the discovery of the tracking devices on my truck and Ramon's guess that we were probably dealing with civilians.

"S-So. Your suspicions of the van and the c-call to Ms. Richards?"

"And your attempted buyout."

"That's why our f-folks at PalmCo are very, very n-nervous," Billy said, stirring a saucepan of sauteed bacon, scallions and garlic into the pasta.

"Sounds like you boys have your fingers into something nasty again," McIntyre said, scooping up the bowl and taking it to the table. She was dressed in the conservative suit she'd probably worn in court that day. And as was her habit, she'd kicked off her shoes at the door and was padding about in her stocking feet. She smoothly shrugged out of her jacket, laying it carefully on the back of the sofa, and then sat herself in front of one of the places she'd set.

"Please, gentlemen," she said, her fingers splayed out in invitation. "Sit and tell me all about it. I am freakin' starving."

Between bites and compliments to the chef and several glasses of wine, we hashed through the discovery by young Mr. Mayes of his great-grandfather's letters and their allusion that extraordinary means had been used to keep the laborers on the brutal job in the Glades. Billy had as much luck as Mayes finding death certificates, employment tax records or any public notice of even a pauper's gravesite.

"PalmCo is big, Billy," McIntyre said. "They could stonewall you forever, even if you did file suit."

"At this point we don't have anything t-to file about," he said. "But if we f-find proof that Cyrus Mayes was indeed there, and that he and his s-sons and other workers were trapped out in the Glades by Noren or their representatives, and that they d-died out there eighty years ago and were n-never accounted for, then we've g-got a wrongful death suit, and a possible payday for our young Mr. Mayes."

"And that'll hold up?" I asked. "Even after eighty years?"

"Corporate ties," said McIntyre. "All the advantages and all the liabilities follow."

She raised her half-drunk glass. "Sins of the fathers," she said. Neither Billy nor I looked up from our plates, and McIntyre quickly read the reaction and gathered herself. "But you're saying you haven't got any of those pieces together yet."

"Which begs the question. Why w-would these PalmCo people be tailing and snooping and tossing out b-bribes to cover something no one can p-prove, even if it is t-true?"

"Hedging against the possibility of a multimillion-dollar suit," McIntyre said. "Remember the Rosewood survivors v. the state?"

Billy had schooled me on the case. In 1923 in the northwest part of the state, an entire town had been burned to the ground and many of its black residents killed in a racist attack that was essentially ignored by local and state law enforcement. The shame and bloodletting had been buried by the years and the dream-soaked fears of those who survived. The story had remained untold, whispered only by a handful of the old like a secret nightmare, until a group of historians and journalists revived and proved its truth nearly seventy years later. The state had broken its essential promise to all of its citizens of a lawful protection.

"The state legislature finally paid two million in compensation to the survivors and the heirs of those people who died," McIntyre said. "But the public relations hit was the worst of it. Imagine that happening to a private company. That's why PalmCo wants to nip this thing early. How about a new slogan: 'We built Florida on the bones of our workers.'"