Jonathon King - Shadow Men

"Can I get cha?" she said. She may have been the same woman from my last visit, but her hair color had been changed to a hue of red not known to nature. She was wearing a tight cotton pullover that formfitted her breasts and didn't make it down to the waistband of her jeans. Her other nod to contemporary fashion was a silver belly button ring, through which was looped a matching chain that circled her waist. The rolled skin of her flabby stomach was too soft and too pale for the look.

"Nate Brown," I said in answer to her question.

She narrowed her eyes and tilted her head just so.

"Thought I recognized you," she said. "You was in here just the other day. Gave them Brooker boys a ass-whippin'."

While she talked she reached down into the stainless cooler of ice, pulled out a longneck bottle of beer and opened it.

"Mr. Brown said you was all right."

"It was a couple of years ago," I said.

"Yeah?" she said, putting the cold bottle in front of me.

The two men at the end of the bar had turned their attention to us. I met their eyes and they both carefully, almost imperceptibly, nodded their respect, maybe to a man who Mr. Brown had said was all right or maybe to someone who could ass-whip the Brooker boys. They returned to their cards. I took a drink from the bottle.

"Have you seen Mr. Brown lately?" I asked the bartender. "I'm trying to get a message to him."

She straightened her look this time, being careful.

"Maybe," she said. "The other day."

Nate Brown had some kind of native status in the Glades. His ancestors were some of the first white people to settle here. No one seemed to know how old he was, but a logical guess put him in his mid-eighties. Still, I had personally been pole-ferried by him in a Glades skiff over a dozen miles or more of canals and water routes into the heart of the swamp. I had seen him appear from nowhere and then disappear into the emptiness of four thousand acres of sawgrass without so much as a compass.

"If I leave you a phone number, could you get it to Mr. Brown along with a message that Max Freeman needs to see him?" I said to the woman.

"Maybe," she said, glancing down to the cribbage players.

I took a bar napkin off a stack, used my own pen to write down my cell number and handed it to her.

"I appreciate it," I said, finishing the beer and putting a twenty- dollar bill next to it. As I turned to leave I gave the eleven-foot gator skin mounted on one wall a cursory look, but below it I noticed a pair of framed black-and-white photographs. I bent closer and could make out a group shot of a dozen men, standing stiff and posed before the raised iron neck of an ancient dredge that had the word NOREN painted on one side. The photo paper was dulled with age, but I could make out the thin figures of the men, dressed in dungarees and long-sleeved shirts. Some sported thick, handlebar mustaches; some showed dark hair pasted across their foreheads. There were old ink scratchings at the bottom of the picture, but the letters were indecipherable.

"Are these the old road builders?" I said.

"Don't know," the bartender said. "Them pictures been up there before that gator probably."

"Anybody out here have family in the photos?"

She looked at me oddly.

"They's just a bunch of old-timers," she said. "Nobody knows 'em."

I kicked up the AC and was on the trail back to the city when my cell phone rang.

"Freeman," I said.

"Aloha? What the hell is Aloha?"

"Hey, I don't know, a guy tries to be humorous, sometimes it doesn't work."

"You're not a funny guy, Max-face it."

"You're right, Detective, I'm not."

"So don't try."

"All right then, seriously. Can I see you tonight?"

"Depends."

"On?"

"On whether I can get this case paperwork done on time and whether seeing means we can go see a movie or you just want to sleep with me."

"Oh, your turn to be funny," I said.

"I'm not laughing."

"In that case, how about I pick you up in the parking lot at seven? It'll give you more desk time. We'll eat at Canyons, then walk around to the movies at eight fifteen."

"What? No sleeping?"

"We'll have to see how the evening goes."

"You're a true man of mystery, Max."

"True," I said, "See you at seven."

Jesus, I thought, and clicked off the cell.

Richards and I had met during an investigation of a series of child abductions that brought her task force to my river. I'd tried to avoid her. I had once been married to a cop. The romance had been short-lived. Richards had also been in a police marriage. Her husband was killed in the line of duty by a kid who wasn't old enough to grasp the true difference between pulling a real trigger versus the one in an arcade game. The kid was still in a Florida prison, a real one, doing a man's life sentence. My ex was still in Philly, and I had not talked with her since before I left.

Despite some effort to keep our distance, Richards and I had been seeing each other more and more often. The emotional distance was closing, but we were both carrying a lot of baggage. We were working at it, letting it come if it was going to.

In a few minutes my 7:00 P.M. promise was being broken. The only time traffic on I-95 isn't running ten miles over the speed limit is when it's locked up at five miles per hour and the bumper-to- bumper wall of commuters makes it physically impossible. It is a time when South Floridians collectively curse railroad baron Henry Flagler for bringing civilization to the subtropics in the first place and his friend Henry Ford for engineering cars that were cheap enough to let just about anyone pack up and drive on down.

The only advantage to a South Florida traffic jam during the evening rush hour was the chance to see the sunset. Because the state is as flat as a pool table and the interstate overpasses are often higher than the one-story buildings, you often get treated to a spectacular swirl of purple, orange and soft lavenders in a stubborn cobalt blue sky that hangs on to the late light. I thought of the Tamiami Trail workers eighty years ago who must have seen a similar sight lose its grandeur in their desperate daily labor. By the time I reached the Broward Boulevard exit to downtown Fort Lauderdale, the sun was bloodred, and from the top of the interchange I could see a necklace of bright, starlike lights strung out in its glow. They were the landing lights of airliners stacked up in their approaches to the international airport. More tourists and a returning business class flowing into paradise.

Three blocks off the interstate, I pulled into the sheriff's parking lot, fifteen minutes late but lucky enough to arrive during a shift change. I found a space near the front entrance and backed in. I watched the employees coming and going, mostly civilians with an occasional uniform of dark green trousers and a white, short-sleeved shirt. The men tended toward the thick-armed variety, their sleeves tight around the tops of their biceps and their chests expanded by the bulletproof vests under their shirts. Most of them looked young to me.

While I watched, my fingers unconsciously went to the side of my neck and found the small soft spot of scar tissue that the bullet had left after passing through skin and muscle and then smacking into the brick wall of a Philadelphia dry cleaner. My eyes were unfocused until I picked up the familiar movement of Richards's long- legged gait. She was halfway across the broad courtyard. Her hair was pinned up in the way of a good professional and she was dressed in a pair of slacks done in some light fabric, with a jacket to match. There was a bounce to her step, an unmistakable athleticism in the slight swing of narrow hips and the squared stillness of wide shoulders. I liked the look.