"Mr. Brown says meet him at Dawkins's dock at eight tomorrow mornin'. You know that's over on Chokoloskee? Right?"

"Yeah, I know. And thanks."

"How much do y'all owe me now, Mr. Freeman?" she said with humor in her voice.

"I'll talk to you soon," I said, disappointed that she now had my cell number. I wasn't sure which I was concerned about more, the guys from PalmCo tracking my calls or the Loop Road barmaid getting friendly.

There was no trace yet of dawn in my rearview the next morning as I drove west. This time I used Alligator Alley, a straight concrete shot from the suburbs of far west Fort Lauderdale to their identical twins in Naples on the other side of the state. The Alley was the second gouge across the gut of the Everglades. It was constructed in the 1960s with better machinery, better technology, and supposedly better working conditions. It was the thirty-year span of intermittent carnage that gave the alley its reputation. Originally two lanes with nothing to break the hypnotic monotony of endless acres of sawgra.s.s, head-on collisions were frequent and almost always fatal out here, where the sound of wrenching metal and screaming pa.s.sengers was quickly lost in the silence. In the 1990s the state expanded the road. They doubled and separated the lanes, and acquiesced to the environmentalists by tunneling under the roadway to allow water and animals to pa.s.s through. Imagine the bonanza for the predators that would quickly figure out the migration flow of untold numbers of species forced to funnel through a ten-foot-wide pa.s.sageway.

I kept myself on a constant flow of caffeine from my oversized thermos, and went over the search possibilities or impossibilities that I was asking Brown to undertake. I'd gone to an army/navy supply store two days ago. In the back of the truck I had a high-end metal detector similar to the kind used by anthropological investigators and emergency rescue teams; a new generation handheld GPS; an expandable trenching tool with a knife-sharp spade and a chisel-head pickax. I also brought a variety of evidence bags- optimistic-as well as Billy's digital camera and a new satellite cell phone with a different number and carrier from any of the others.

By the time I hit Route 29 I had to flip my mirror up to keep the rising sun from blinding me. The top few feet of the sawgra.s.s had gone a fiery orange in the early rays, and for a mile I watched a trio of swallow-tailed kites swooping down into the gra.s.s. The sharp forks of their black tails and pointed wings showed hard against the clear sky, and one came up with a wriggling snake in its beak, the ribbon of flesh outlined against the birds pure-white belly. I made the exit and turned south and rode along a ca.n.a.l that drained the water and gave high ground to the tiny communities of Jerome and Copeland. I pa.s.sed the old road prison where convicts were held after long days of clearing the roadsides of overgrowth with their bush-axes and machetes while guards stood by with their rifles at port arms. Would even a desperate man try to run out here?

Farther south the road hit a blinking-light intersection at the Tamiami Trail and then continued all the way into Chokoloskee. When I pulled into the sh.e.l.l-lot of Dawkins's dock, both of his boats were gone. Nate Brown was sitting out on the end of the wood- plank dock. I knew he was dangling a hand-line into the water, just as I knew he had heard me and marked my arrival. I parked out of the way of the forklift's worn path and walked out to meet him.

"Anything biting?"

"They's always somethin' bitin', Mr. Freeman."

He looked up at me and then back into the water, waiting. The early sun was dancing off the surface, the southeast wind rippling up the surface. I sat down next to the old Gladesman and unfolded one of Billy's computer-generated maps.

"This is what we figure, or what we think is possible so far," I started. Brown first looked down at the map and then up at me.

"Anythin' is possible, son."

I nodded and began.

"Let's a.s.sume that Mayes and his sons go to work for Noren somewhere about here," I said, putting my finger on the map. "The letter indicates they're some distance out of Everglades City. It's early summer and you know the heat and mosquitoes are just starting to get unbearable, making the crew more miserable by the day.

"We know through some reports and writings in local newspapers that the dredge is making about two miles of road a month when things are going well. We figure these X's here coincide with Mayes's letter of June third, when the two workers slipped out at night to make their way back and his son heard the gunshots."

Brown touched the spot with the rough tips of his fingers. It was a delicate gesture that made me pause and look up at the side of his face, wondering what he was dunking.

"These trees here an' the elevation mark means they's high ground, right?" he said.

"Yeah."

"Curlew Hammock," he said. "An' then this one here's got to be Marquez Ridge."

His fingers slid over to the spot where the three X's were marked.

"Where'd y'all get this here map?"

Now he was looking directly into my face but his own was blank.

"William Jefferson," I said. "John William's grandson."

He did not let any recognition or surprise show, but he did not take his eyes eyes off mine, waiting, expecting more. I told him about using his information on the grandson's cleric possibilities to run down a list and then about the discovery and evasiveness of the reverend up in Placid City. I told him William Jefferson's recounting of his grandfather, his strange silence and the perception at least by the reverend, and obviously his own mother, that John William had an evil aura about him. off mine, waiting, expecting more. I told him about using his information on the grandson's cleric possibilities to run down a list and then about the discovery and evasiveness of the reverend up in Placid City. I told him William Jefferson's recounting of his grandfather, his strange silence and the perception at least by the reverend, and obviously his own mother, that John William had an evil aura about him.

"They ain't nothin' you're tellin' that don't fit," Brown finally said. "I recall the boy being awful close to his religion. The girl brought him to that and a lot of folks thought of it as savin' him from what his grandfather done."

Nate waited again, not saying more, just looking out on the water, maybe remembering a small boy running a bit too scared into the trees of the island, talking a little less than any other kid, and turning away when adults and then other children began whispering his grandfather's name.

"So that's where you got these here coordinates and such?" he said.

I told him about the crate and its contents. His face only changed when I mentioned the rifle, the infamous gun that outshot his own father and gave the community a solid tiling to tie all the rumors to.

"You think John William Jefferson was capable of killing these men for three hundred dollars?" I finally asked him.

"Men out here in them days done a lot of things for that kind of money," Brown said, and I knew that included him. In my encounter with the old Gladesman three years ago, Billy had run what background there was on him and found that he had done time in prison on a manslaughter charge. In the late sixties an Everglades National Park ranger had been chasing Brown through the islands, trying to arrest him for poaching gators. Snaking his boat through the dizzying waterways just as he had done with the helicopter, Brown had led the pursuing ranger into a submerged sandbar. The government boat slammed into the unforgiving sand. The ranger pitched forward out of the the c.o.c.kpit and broke his neck. Brown turned himself in three days later when word spread that he was being sought for killing the man. c.o.c.kpit and broke his neck. Brown turned himself in three days later when word spread that he was being sought for killing the man.

"I s'pose I know why ya'll asked me to help you, Mr. Freeman. If you're askin' if these here X's are the graves of them boys and their father, they is only one way to know," he said, standing up and rewinding the fishing line around his palm. "So let's go."'

Brown's boat was cleated at the dock and this time he had his homemade Glades skiff tied off on the back. I loaded my supplies and then locked up my truck. Within minutes we were moving north, the skiff slapping behind us on the end of a line. We headed into the sun, its early brightness burning white-hot. Brown pulled his billed cap low, shading his eyes so they were difficult to read, and I thought of the similar description of John William. They were men who worked and lived in water-reflected sunlight all their lives. They chose to exist in a desolate place where sociability was not a part of their everyday existence. The reasons they came may have been different, but why they stayed was not: they didn't like anyone else's rules or some other leader's vision or expectation. Eighty years of that independent blood had not yet been washed out by the generations.

"Yonder is where my daddy run a still in the twenties," Brown said, interrupting the drone of the motor and the slap of water against the hull. "Him and a half-dozen others had their fixin's on the smaller sh.e.l.l mounds. First they was in by Loop Road. Then the law started crackin' 'em an' they had to come further out. Daddy and them weren't too acceptin' of others comin' into their territory."

I'd learned to let Brown talk on the few occasions that he cared to. He was making his own point, under his own logic.

"Same thing happened to the gator hunters. You could take a dozen gators in a three-night trip. Sell the hides for a dollar fifty apiece for the six- to eight-footers.

"Then in '47, Harry Truman hisself come down and they drew up the boundaries for the Park and one day the best gator-huntin' spots was now illegal, and to h.e.l.l with you if you and your daddy before you been livin' off that for forty years."

While he talked I unfolded Billy's map and tried to gauge our progress. But even with the detailed, satellite-aided photos, the myriad water trails and green islands were an impossible puzzle. I was lost when we suddenly came around a bend onto open water that was Chevalier Bay.

"They call it progress, Nate," I said, my tone flat and nonjudgmental.

"I know what they call it, son," he said. "That don't mean I got to like it."

The morning heat was building. A high sheet of cirrus cloud was not going to offer any respite from the blurred sun. The air was beginning to thicken with that warm, moist layer that rises up from the Glades like an invisible steam. It was as if the earth herself was sweating, and it carried the not unpleasant odor of both wet and drying plants and soil and living things. As we approached the northern boundary of the bay, I checked the map again and saw no obvious place to go. But Brown kept a steady course to a spot in the mangrove wall that only he could see. It wasn't until we were thirty feet from the green barrier that he pulled back on the throttle and I picked up the eight-foot-wide opening that he'd been heading for all along. We slid through the tunnel of mangroves for thirty minutes, the motor tilted up, the propellers burbling through the dark water. When we got to a broad opening to the outside again, Brown stopped the boat before moving out into the sun. I was checking the coordinates with the handheld GPS. If I was matching them up correctly, we were not too far, maybe two miles, south of the point where John William had marked the three X's on his crude map. Brown cut the engine and stood upright and silent, listening. He seemed to be holding his breath. I could hear nothing.

"Airboat," he said, not looking back me. "This ain't no place airboats usually come."

I waited for an explanation, which also didn't come.

"Check that skiff line if you would, Mr. Freeman. We gon' try to put some speed to 'er."

I went back and tightened down the cleated line; then Brown restarted the motor, moved out onto the wide channel and inched up the throttles. Each second he seemed to get a better feel for the depth and the rhythm of the curves and put more gas to it. I stood up and tried to check above the gra.s.s line, looking for the distinctive rounded cage of an airboat engine and the usually high-riding driver. The contraptions are designed to let the operator sit above the sawgra.s.s so he can watch the landscape and curves of the ca.n.a.ls instead of just guessing and navigating by pure instinct as Brown was doing. It also makes them more visible. I could see nothing behind and only another dark hammock of trees ahead in the distance. We were carving through the water trail now like a slalom skier, and Brown backed off the throttles only on the tightest turns-the skiff behind us was swinging on the rope and actually fishtailed into the gra.s.s several times. A small gator, maybe a four- footer, raised its head in the middle of the ca.n.a.l as we came roaring up. Brown never flinched or slowed and the gator flicked its tail and dived deep just before the bow clipped him. Our destination was clearly the hammock, so I concentrated on the horizon behind us. After a few minutes I turned and was surprised at how fast we'd moved up on it.

"Git your stuff, Freeman, 'cause we gon' grab up the skiff and hightail it north as soon as she stops. Hear?" Brown steered one long curve around a jutting piece of semi-land and then plowed headlong into the greenness, pulling the same slide and crash he'd done when the helicopter had followed us.

This time I was prepared and rode the lurch. I was out into the knee-deep water as soon as he cut the motor. I s.n.a.t.c.hed up the skiff line and then he was beside me, both of us dragging the flat-bottom boat across the shallows. We were deep in the cover of tree shadow when I finally picked up the sound of a burring airplane engine, the noise growing from the direction we'd come. We stayed shoulder to shoulder. It was easier moving through the dense undergrowth this time. We were following a low path, almost like a riverbed with only inches of water in it. Maybe when the rains fell, the path actually ran like a river, because it seemed to cut directly south to north across the elongated hammock.

"Them boys cain't bring that airboat through here an' it's gon' take 'em plenty of time to go all the way round to git to the other side," Brown said, his breathing under control despite the exertion of pulling the skiff and stomping through the roots and muck of the path.

"How do you know they're following us?" I said, dodging a dripping curtain of air-plant roots that hung gray and mossy like the wet hair of an old woman.

"'Cause they ain't no reason they should be. I heard 'em forty- some minutes back there, keepin' enough distance to stay back, not fast enough to catch us. They're just trackin'."

We were both watching the route ahead. The canopy above was much less dense than on my river and light sliced through in sheets and created oddly s.p.a.ced planes of shadow. It was difficult to see where the end of the path might be. Brown kept pulling, and each time I thought of slacking I reminded myself that the guy was at least twice my age, and the embarra.s.sment of it pushed me on. At times the skiff would hang up on a slab of drier ground or get hooked on a stump and the load would yank at our arms and Brown would look back, judge the angle, and lean his meager weight into it. I would copy him until we freed it. After a half hour without slowing, I picked up the glow of open sunlight walling up a hundred yards to the north. Brown stopped and I thought he'd heard something, because he was staring to one side of the trail. But his eyes were focused into the trees. I tried to match his angle but could see only an odd stand of ancient gnarled pine, with one limb that seemed to have been broken crossing through the crotch of another. The knot where they met looked like it had grown together over the years.

"What?" I said, but the sound of my voice seemed only to snap him out of his trance. He shook me off and kept moving. Soon the creek bed began to fill with deeper water, and after several more minutes we were at the edge of open water again. The old man looked east and west. Nothing. Farther to the north another hammock sprouted up a quarter-mile away.

"You want to find out how bad they want you?" Brown said to me, his head c.o.c.ked slightly to the side. I could tell he was listening both for the airboat engine and for my answer.

After a few seconds I said, "I want to know who they are."

He tightened up the slack on the line and moved out into the sunlight.

"Let's push on over to Curlew Hammock yonder then, and take 'er easy gettin' there," he said, nodding to the patch of green to the north.

When we got into enough water to float the skiff, both of us stepped up and in. Brown took up the long pole and pushed off, working the wooden staff hand over hand, shoving off the muck bottom and then efficiently recovering the length of the pole. Even on the gra.s.s-covered shallows he seemed to slide the boat gracefully over thirty yards of water with a single stroke. I kept cutting my eyes east to west, waiting to spot the airboat coming around either side of the hammock we were leaving behind. Brown kept his attention forward.

When we came within fifty yards of the smaller lump of trees that he'd called Curlew Hammock, Brown stopped poling and for the first time checked behind us. We were still out in the open.

"Need 'em to see us so's they'll follow us in," he said.

"You want them to know where we are?"

"They know where we are, son. They always knowed."

CHAPTER 19.

Brown was looking west when he narrowed his eyes. I caught the bobbing figure in the distance an instant later. Above the gra.s.s the dark shape seemed to rise and fall erratically, like a black bird at first. As we watched, it grew in size and the jerking turned into a more fluid movement. A man's torso soon took shape against the backdrop of the sky and then the gridwork of the circle-shaped engine cage became visible. I could barely hear the low, harmonic burring of the machine, but it too was growing. Brown waited a full five minutes and then started poling again toward the small hammock. He pushed us at a slower speed than before. When we were finally up against the edge of the hammock, Brown shipped the pole and jumped out.

"Got to hope they'll follow us in," Brown said. "Bring in your supplies so's they'll figure we're workin' it."

I shouldered one pack and Brown took the satchel with the metal detector and we worked our way through the low gra.s.s and muck to the tree line of the hammock and stood in the shade of a clump of cabbage palms and looked back. Now I could see the body of the driver, sitting up on the raised driver's seat. Below him I could make out the heads of two other men who must have been crouched on the deck, down a bit out of the wind, their billed caps pulled hard on their brows.

"They seen us," Brown said. "Let's go."

The old man seemed to have a destination in mind. He moved efficiently in under the trees and about forty yards later stopped and surveyed the layout.

"Hold up there, son," he said, and I watched him walk off to the north, stepping into a pile of brush and shuffling his feet around, then moving off to a downed poisonwood trunk and stopping to deliberately sc.r.a.pe his boot sole against the mottled bark. He moved on another twenty feet and took off the satchel I'd given him and laid it carefully at the base of a tall pine in full view. Then he returned.

"If they is half-dumb, they'll move that way an' you can take a look at 'em from back here," Brown said to me. I turned in a circle, not seeing a way to hide.

"Down there in the gator hole," Brown said, pointing to a low, half-exposed depression filled with mud and standing pools of water. He stepped down into the pit and showed me how the gators had burrowed down below the roots of the trees and swept out a shallow cave. It was dark in the shadows and I could not see the back wall.

"They ain't in there now, son. Water's high enough for 'em out on the plain. They use this here one when it's the only wet place left for 'em. I hunted it plenty of times. Took three or four six-footers outta here in '63."

I was still looking down at him, trying to work out the logistics. If we tucked ourselves down in the gator hole and the airboaters moved past us to the spot where Brown had baited them with the satchel, I might get a look at them. One more piece to work with. A visible threat is always better than one you've never seen.

The sound of the airboat engine put off my grinding. The rough mechanical noise echoed into the hammock even after the motor was suddenly shut down, until the shadows and greenness swallowed it and the place fell silent.

I slipped down into the gator hole with Brown and we both crouched below the cover of leaves and ferns and listened. My knees and the toes of my boots pushed six inches down into the mud, and the water began to soak the back of my jeans. Brown was also getting soaked but he didn't move a single muscle, save for his almost imperceptible breathing. His eyes were focused. I shifted my hips uncomfortably, but he didn't react. After several silent minutes, at some unseen or heard signal, Brown turned and motioned me deeper into the gator hole. He went to his hands and knees and slid himself down under the rough lip of the root line and into the darkness. I followed. The muck squeezed up between my fingers and the dripping root tendrils dragged across the back of my neck. The hole smelled of wet, rotted wood and decayed leaves and an odor I could not identify. My imagination placed it as the cold, fetid breath of some reptile, lying in the back, his mouth starting to salivate with this sudden home-delivery of a fleshy meal.

I had to go lower as the cave narrowed. It was pitch-black now and I was on my elbows and knees when I felt my hip b.u.mp against something that b.u.mped back. "Got to listen for their voices," Brown whispered. I could feel his breath on my cheek when he spoke and then the touch of air disappeared. Outside I heard the rustle of vegetation. A branch snapped under the pressure of something heavy. I closed my eyes and envisioned the three men moving along the same path we had, looking down at our tracks and then several yards ahead. One of them spoke, the words indistinguishable. The slap of hands against palm fronds and the soft sucking sound of a boot being pulled out of the muck were audible. They had to be just above the gator hole opening. More movement and then silence. They had gathered at one spot, and I could tell it was the same plot of land where I had stood watching Brown plant the satchel. I could hear more mumbling, too low to make out, but then one of them raised his voice: "They didn't just leave it behind for no G.o.dd.a.m.n reason!" The man got shushed by another. "Oh, f.u.c.k you, Jim. That's probably the d.a.m.n spot right there and they went off to scout a way out. s.h.i.t, I'm gettin' tired of this f.u.c.king boar hunt."

"Let's go get a reading on it and then get the h.e.l.l out of here," said another voice.

"h.e.l.l, let's get a reading and then cap these two f.u.c.ks and put a real lid on it," said the first voice.

The water was up to my hips now and had gone cold. Loose dirt from the root system above crumbled and fell across my face. Still we did not move, but we heard them begin to. Footfalls vibrated through the ground, and the voice of yet another response was muted and farther off in the distance. I heard the sound of a dull, solid thump on wood and in my head saw the downed poisonwood trunk. Brown moved and started to slurry out toward the light and we both got back to our positions just below the leaves and ferns and looked out at the backs of the three men.

Two of them were next to the satchel. One, the smaller, was twenty feet away, next to the poisonwood trunk, inspecting Brown's scuff marks and then looking up to sweep the area left to right but not behind. He was in blue jeans and high rubber boots and an off- white, long-sleeved shirt. The driver, I thought. The others were bigger, in black cargo jeans and vests with pockets like they were on safari or on some photo shoot for an outdoor clothing magazine. They were older men, both thick in the shoulders and waist. One was taller and I could see the silver in his hair. I'd heard one name used, "Jim," and put it on the taller one.

I didn't like the look and could feel the adrenaline moving hot into my ears. I slipped my hand down into my mud-covered pack. I was feeling for the Glock and my fingers found an unfamiliar shape, a metallic box the size of a cigarette pack. I flashed back to Ramon the bug man and the cheap tracking device he'd removed from my truck They'd gotten it into my bag without my knowing. I'd brought them right to us. It p.i.s.sed me off even more. I found the handle of my gun and pulled it out. Brown looked at the weapon, looked into my face, and like the old infantryman he once was, mouthed the words "I'll flank 'em" and started to move silently off to the left.

I gave him time to get into position, watching the closer man who was now rubbing the chafed bark of the downed tree and again swinging his head from side to side, tilting his head up like a bird dog trying to catch a whiff of game in the air. The others appeared to come to some agreement and walked back to the driver, and when all three began moving in my direction, I came up out of the gator hole, the gun in both hands in a combat position and yelled, "Police! Don't f.u.c.king move, boys! Just freeze it and don't...f.u.c.king...move!"

I probably didn't have to swear, or tell them to freeze. The sight of me, a tall, lanky man covered head to foot in slimy black muck coming up out of the ground with a 9 mm pointed and ready to fire was enough to shock their nervous systems into a temporary lockup. They didn't move until I did. When I took a few steps forward I saw the bigger man's arm start to move behind his partner to use its cover for whatever he was thinking, and I fired. The barrel of the 9 mm jumped and the round struck the poisonwood trunk with a whack, spitting up splinters of wood and jerking all three of their heads to the left. The sound of the gun echoed through the trees and was quickly swallowed up.

"One step away from each other, now!" now!" I said, locking on to the big man's eyes. "No f.u.c.king way you win, fella. You're the first one to die." I could hear the anger in my own voice, and wondered briefly why I was letting it build. I said, locking on to the big man's eyes. "No f.u.c.king way you win, fella. You're the first one to die." I could hear the anger in my own voice, and wondered briefly why I was letting it build.

Both of them were city men. Their clothes were too new. The boots were the type a hiker or a weekend woodsman would wear. The big man's complexion was newly burned from the sun, and his eyes had a hardness that said former cop, or former felon. I put the sight bead on his chest. When he stepped away from the other man, his hand was still empty.

"You ain't no police," said the other one, the driver. In just four words I could tag the country in his voice, and it was familiar. He c.o.c.ked his head to the side, again like a retriever that didn't understand. "I know all the law round here an' you I ain't never seen," he said. His naivete might have made me chuckle under different circ.u.mstances, but I could sense the muscles in the other two tensing. Whatever they might have been thinking was again scrambled by a voice from the side.

"Shut the h.e.l.l up, Billy Nash," said Brown, and now the heads of all three spun to the right. "You already in this deep, boy. Don't y'all keep diggin', jest listen to what the man tells you."

The young one's eyes went big, just like the kid on Dawkins's dock when he recognized Brown.

"Lord o' Goshen," he whispered. "Nate Brown? Gotd.a.m.n, that's Nate Brown," he said in an awe that had little effect on the two men beside him when he looked back to spread his recognition.

Nash looked back at the old Gladesman, bowed his head a bit and slowly turned it back and forth. I could see a grin come to the corners of his mouth.

"d.a.m.n, Nate Brown. I shoulda figured. I knew we was trackin' somebody special," Nash said, looking up again at Brown in admiration. "Ain't a man alive could move a outboard through the channels like that. It was too fast and too d.a.m.n smooth. It was like we was going after a Glades otter or somethin'.

"Didn't I tell you boys," he said, again looking back. But the others were not listening. They had turned their silent attention back to me and the Glock and did not care to know about some old mud-covered fisherman. "When you two jumped to the skiff an' I seen you all the way over to here, I knew somebody was handlin' that thing like the olden days."

Then Nash seemed to realize that no one, not even Brown, was paying any attention to him. He also seemed to realize that he was suddenly on the wrong side of his world.

"An' they didn't tell me it was you, Mr. Brown. Honest. They never said a word that I was supposed to be trackin' a Gladesman. I didn't know, sir. I didn't."

"Shut up, Billy Nash," Brown answered.

Brown had not moved. There was a thick swatch of palm fronds obscuring him from the waist down and he carefully did not show his hands, keeping the other two men from determining whether he was armed or not. I also had not lowered the 9 mm.