Jonathon King - Shadow Men

Billy arrived exactly at eight. He was dressed in an off-white linen suit and oxblood loafers, and I distinctly saw three women of two different generations turn to watch him as he passed by. Arturo greeted him with a flourish and before he was settled in his chair enough to cross his legs there was a stylish flute of champagne placed in front of him.

"M-Max, you are l-looking well."

It was his standard greeting and had almost become a joke between us. Billy sat back, took a sweep of the crowd and a lungful of air.

"To subtropical evenings and g-good friends," he said, raising his glass. I touched the lip of my bottle to his fine glassware.

"Long as you're not up to your subtropical ass in mosquito- infested muck," I said, smiling.

"T-Tell me about your t-trip, Max."

While we dined on Cuban-style yellowtail snapper and black beans and rice, I described the unknowns who may have stolen the Noren photo off the wall of the Frontier Hotel, the boat ride to Everglades City, and our helicopter escort. Billy nodded at the appropriate times without comment. He would be filing the info away, sliding it into a spot in his revolving carousel of fact and possibilities, building in his head a legal slide-show that might eventually be flashed before a judge.

But I could see a different level of interest in his face when I described Capt. Johnny Dawkins III and tried to convey his story. Billy leaned in and did not take a drink during my retelling of the captain's tale. I finished and he sat back. The waiter saw his head turn and was immediately at his elbow. While he ordered more wine and a beer for me, I scrolled the street again. No one had occupied the same spot across the way for more than a couple of minutes. No white van had dared compete with the Mercedes, BMWs or shined- up low-ride toy cars parked near us. Any sight lines from the high buildings across from us were obscured by the decorative white lights strung through the trees, and in the swirl of street noise and conversation on the sidewalk, it would be difficult for a directional microphone to cut through. Maybe I was taking this whole P.I. thing too seriously. When my beer came I took a long drink.

"I've b-been running as much of a computer record ch-check as I can but there's so m-much missing," Billy said. "At the state and l- local historical archives, we've got some genuine material on the early Tamiami Trail, mostly p-progress of the road building through old newspaper stories on m-microfilm.

"I was also able to f-find a copy of a rough history of the p- project written just after the road was finished in 1928. N-No names of workers, but an extraordinary admission that an unknown n-number of men lost their lives."

"Why extraordinary?"

"Because b-by the end, the State of Florida's road board was in on the construction. M-Money from a Collier County b-bond issue was being used. And men were still dying."

Billy stopped and looked down the boulevard, seeing something that was focusing only inside his own head.

"Does that mean there's state liability?" I asked, trying to make a lawyer's logic work.

"Possibly."

"Does our client know about this?"

It was Billy's turn to take a long drink of his wine.

"Our young Mr. Mayes seems to b-be the rare client who d- doesn't care about the monetary gain.

"He honestly s-seems to be motivated only b-by the question of what happened to his g-great-grandfather."

"All the more reason," I said, gaining my partner's eyes, "to find him some answers."

While we finished I told Billy of the vague recollections of the man named Jefferson in the letters. His past was as loose and improvable as anything else in the Glades. A possible grandson in the state who may or may not be a minister. Not much, but it was something.

"We can t-track the birth records, if they b-bothered," Billy said. "There are clergy listings that are fairly c-comprehensive because of the tax-exempt r-regulations for churches. We could narrow it b-by staying south of, say, Orlando to b-begin with.

"If we st-start with the assumption of a B-Baptist connection, which was p-popular in that area, we could g-get lucky, though Jefferson is not exactly a unique n-name."

Billy was getting cranked, his head moving hard with research possibilities. It was contagious.

"Your home office clear tomorrow?" I asked.

"I've g-got to see clients."

"I'll come in from the river about ten. You can guide me on the searches from your office." He didn't even try to dissuade me from going home to the shack anymore.

Arturo escorted us to the sidewalk and Billy was generous with his praise and his tip. I let a tourist couple pass and caught their double take of the handsome black man in the thousand-dollar suit.

"C-Call me if you need computer help," Billy said as we shook hands.

"I'll definitely call you," I said, and headed for my truck.

It was nearly midnight when I got to the river. A slice of the new moon lay crooked in the field of stars and reflected in flashes of erratic light on the water. I took my time paddling up into the canopy. The air was warm with a southeast breeze, and along with the envelope of darkness in the forest tunnel came a slight change in humidity. After so much time spent here, I could pick up the most subtle differences. When I first moved into the shack, my years in the Philadelphia streets had honed my senses to the noise of the traffic and voices and things metallic, the smells of food aromas and man-made rot and the constant perfume of exhaust and the night sight of ever-present electric light. I'd been as lost as a kid with a canvas bag over his head when I got out here. Now I could taste the slightest change of humidity in my mouth.

I tied my canoe and unloaded supplies onto the dock, then used a small pen flashlight to check for footprints on the stairs. Inside I lit the oil lamp and made a pot of coffee with rainwater from my barrel reservoir. I changed into fresh clothes and then sifted through the printouts of Cyrus Mayes's letters. His schoolteacher's old-style prose was leading us in our search for truth for the great-grandson he had never even dreamed about. I'd been hooked by the mission. But I wasn't confident that there was a string to follow that could take us there. I selected one of his early reports and then sat at the table with my heels up. The dull light painted my oversized shadow onto the pine wall as it read with me: My Dearest Eleanor,

We are two weeks into our labors and the experience has been both exhausting and unique. You would be so proud of the boys. Steven seems to have become a master of knots and is actually in demand when the crew is at the task of lashing the huge poles together to create a floating platform for our dredge work. The depth of the water and muck here has caught our foremen off guard and we all have had to improvise. Often the company's machinery sinks into the earth like a quicksand has swallowed it and by pure muscle we all must raise it with lines or it is lost and the demeanor of the engineer becomes blacker.

I recently considered forming a prayer group among the men but held off until I had a sense of them all. They are a rough lot and many have lost their way. One fellow, attracted by our daily prayers before eating, seemed friendly but later developed a rough coughing and a pallor that someone likened to malaria. He was quickly isolated by the foremen and one morning we saw him loaded into a rail cart headed back west, we assumed, to Everglades City. Later, the armed one called Jefferson made it a point to warn us of what he called swamp fever, saying he'd seen it consume an entire town of Florida settlers who "picked up the bug while they was collectin' the gossip of they neighbors."

Steven has, I believe, an inordinate fear of this rifleman and has confided that he sees the devils eyes in him. I have dissuaded him of the notion and tried to guide him through prayer. I could not admit that in my own heart, I see a grain of truth in his fear.