Shadow Men (5 page)

“Yeah. Make it up,” I said.

I crossed the room back over to the body and knelt down into the deep carpet and turned the officer’s head and looked into the dead face. At first it looked familiar, the low trim of the long sideburns, the oil in the hair, and then the dream turned on me and I could see the face of my father.

I was startled awake by the feeling of falling and struck my heels hard against the plank floor to keep myself from sliding out of the straight-backed chair. The room was dark and thick with humidity, and I could feel the sheen of sweat on my back and under my thighs. The mix of dream and memory had left me shaking. I moved with habit and got a gallon of fresh water from my makeshift cooler and drank for several seconds from the plastic bottle. As I stood in the night, shaking, the first few drops of rain began to ping against the tin roof and patter in the leaves of the canopy outside, and I knew there would be no more sleep before dawn.

CHAPTER

6

I
stopped at a roadside place on the way into town that was popular with truckers and local farmers, and I joined a handful of them with hash browns soaked in gravy, collard greens and strong, black coffee. The middle-aged black waitress looked at me twice, and winked at me when I left her a large tip. It was still before 7:00
A.M.

Once in the city, I parked in the same lot I always used off Clematis Street, near the county courthouse. The old man who ran the lot put me close to a space next to his payment shack and touched the fender of the truck after giving me the ticket.

“I take care of her, Mr. Max.”

“I know you will,” I said, and walked south. The streets of West Palm Beach were busy with cars, but the sidewalks could never match them the way they did in the big northeast cities. People here parked close to their offices, and newer towers were built with parking inside on the first few floors. You rarely found yourself mobbed up at a crosswalk with other pedestrians unless it was lunch hour or after hours on the more popular restaurant and club strips. The early morning rain had wrung out the clouds and the sky had gone clear and blue with the southeast breeze. The walk was worth it—I was disappointed when I got to Billy’s building and had to go inside.

Billy was behind his broad desk with piles of stacked folders and the flat-screen computer monitor holding his attention.

“M-Max,” he said in greeting, without looking up. “You are l-looking w-well.”

I knew not to break his concentration and crossed the room to the floor-to-ceiling windows that formed the southwest corner. From up here you could see the southern parts of the city of Palm Beach to the east, the line of office buildings and condos along Lake Worth to the south, and the horizon in a cloudy fog to the west. Billy and his views.

“A little last-minute cramming for Mayes,” I finally said.

“No. F-For you,” he said, tapping something on the keyboard and getting up.

“County c-codes would restrict you from r-rebuilding any part of the original st-structure of the research station even if it was to b- become uninhabitable due to any cause, n-natural or m-man-made.”

Billy had not dismissed my news of the fire.

“Despite the ninety-nine-year lease?”

“Categorically.”

“Shit.”

“My s-sentiments exactly.”

Billy’s secretary, Allie, came in with coffee and placed the service on a table in front of the couch with a view. She had included two china cups and a large mug. She smiled at me when Billy thanked her.

“So whoever tried to torch the place gets two jumps at once. He either scares me out, or messes the place up enough for the county to close it.”

“You said R-Ranger G-Griggs was right there when it started?”

“Yeah.”

“C-Convenient.”

I took the mug and blew over the rim, rippling the top layer.

“He’s there to m-make sure you’re awake and g-get out safely and t-to make sure the fire doesn’t sp-spread into his forest.”

“Why, Billy, I’m stunned at your lack of belief in the sincerity of your fellow man.”

“Sh-Shit.”

“My sentiments, exactly.”

Allies voice on the intercom stopped our speculations.

“Mr. Mayes is here, Mr. Manchester.”

Billy crossed back to his desk and answered. Allie ushered in a young man, maybe early twenties, dressed uncomfortably in a suit and looking somewhat sheepish in his surroundings.

“Mr. Mayes,” Billy said, grasping the young man’s hand. He held Billy’s eyes with a practiced politeness despite his obvious jitters. “And this is M-Max Freeman, a p-private investigator who w-works with me.”

I took Mayes’s hand. Again the polite eyes. He was good-looking, freshly shaved, with short dark hair that probably had some kind of gel in it recently but not this morning. He was Billy’s height and shape, lean and anxious. I thought of a college student on his first day of a law internship. Billy motioned for us to sit on the couch, and I watched Mayes take the opportunity to sweep the room, taking in the wall of law books, the spotlit oil paintings and pieces of expensive sculptures and artwork that Billy always surrounded himself with. He sat on the edge of the leather couch and glanced at the view through the tall windows either in admiration, or as a means of escape. He accepted the offer of coffee and Billy began.

“Mr. Freeman has f-field experience in law enforcement,” Billy said as a way of introduction. “He has also w-worked before in the d-deep Everglades and w-would know the areas we’re talking about much better than I.”

Mayes looked at me and held my eyes for a moment. The look came off as respectful, but I could tell he was also reading me. He was not just a kid who accepted words on face value.

“You would go out there, to look for them, I mean, their bodies?” he said to me. “I mean, if they’re out there.”

Now I was holding his eyes, clear, intelligent, but with an ache that I had seen before, maybe in my own mirror. The look said he was searching for answers in his past that were connected to his future. In that way he was not unlike the young cop I had once been, trying to judge my steps by the way my family had walked them before me. We held the look a few seconds too long, and broke away at the same time. I felt the flush of embarrassment on my throat and ears. He rubbed at his own neck while turning away.

“Max has had the opportunity to r-read your letters, Mr. Mayes, and he’s as intrigued as I,” Billy interrupted. “But p-perhaps some of the background that w-we have discussed is better coming from you.”

“Uhh, just Mark, please, Mr. Manchester,” Mayes said.

I was trying to read his reaction to Billy’s stutter. Before I came to Florida, I had talked with Billy several times on the phone but never face-to-face. But Mayes was either overwhelmed by his own nervousness or too polite to show that he even noticed the stutter. He turned to me and took a deep breath.

“Well, sir, it started when my mother passed away about eighteen months ago,” he began. “When she died, I was really the last one in the family left in a line going way back.”

While we sat drinking coffee we let Mayes tell his story yet again, its familiarity making him comfortable and our attentiveness bringing out detail. His own grandfather had been the youngest of Cyrus Mayes’s three sons, too young to join the others in their attempt in the early part of the century to find work and earn their family a way out of the poverty of the recovering South. Stories told by his grandmother and subsequently by his own mother depicted homes dominated by women. Little, he recalled, was ever revealed of the habits or working talents of the men of the Mayes clan. Even his own reticent father, the lone male son of the lone male survivor of the Mayes family, had died of a heart attack at the relatively early age of forty-eight.

Mayes repeated Billy’s explanation of his great-grandmother’s hope chest, found in the attic of the family home in Atlanta after she had died. A young man who’d never been told the history of the men in his family now had a handful of history before him—but it was filled with more questions than answers.

“So, you’ve seen the letters, what do you think?” Mayes said. The directness of the question was the boldest statement he’d made since first coming through the door. “What do you think happened? All of a sudden, I’ve got this religious grandfather trying to do right by his family and then what? Did they die out there in the Everglades? By accident? Did they just give up? What can I take away from what the letters say about them, if I don’t know what happened?”

There was desperation in the kid’s voice, and it made both Billy and me hesitate.

“Like I told you, Mr. Manchester, I’m not even sure where to look to find out. I did some library searches up at Emory. I even came down to Tampa and looked at some old microfiche of the newspapers at the time for names or some story of the men who worked on the roadway. Professor Martin up at school was able to get some Florida state records from the Department of Transportation, but this all happened before the state took over the Tamiami Trail project. He said that if I needed to see corporate records from the private companies that worked on the roadway, forget it. That’s why he gave me your name, Mr. Manchester. He said you were the best.”

I watched Billy’s face. Professor Martin had been a client. Billy had helped him through a Florida stock swindle that he said had probably saved the guy’s university tenure. But the compliment had passed completely over his head. He was concentrating on sometiling more important to him.

“Corporate r-responsibility can follow a company around for a l-long time,” Billy finally said. “Even the h-hint that your great- grandfadier’s l-letters seemed to indicate that workers d-died unaccountably or w-were forced like slaves to s-stay on the job would not be something any corporation would l-like to see come back from the p-past.”

Though the words seemed to be rhetorical, I watched the uneasy effect they had on the young Mayes. His eyes had gone off to some point beyond the glass, and I watched his fingers go to a necklace just inside of his collar.

“Well, sir, I already wrote to a couple of them,” he said. “After I met with you and you seemed, you know, to believe me. I was just asking, you know, if there were any employee records from the time.”

“And?” Billy said.

“They sent sort of a form letter back, saying it was private information and I’d have to contact their legal department.”

“And?” Billy said again. I could tell this was new information, and not exactly welcomed.

“I, uh, told them we’d get back to them.”

“We?”

“Uh, you, sir. You.”

Billy stood and stepped across to the window, his profile stark against the bright light of the sky. Mayes looked at me and I tried to keep my face neutral. He still had his hand unconsciously at his throat, the same kind of gesture I’d long tried to break after the Philadelphia bullet had left its scar on me. Finally Billy turned.

“Mark. M-Maybe we’d better go over some of these n-names and resources you’ve already got,” he said, heading over to his computer. “And the entities you’ve already c-contacted.”

“Uh, yes, sir,” the kid said, standing.

I stood, shook the young man’s hand and took the opportunity to check the necklace. Hanging high on a silver chain was a simple religious cross that had settled into the shallow indent of flesh where his collar bones met.

“M-Max,” Billy said. “S-Shall I c-call you later?”

I just nodded and started out. It was not a question.

I went home and spent the next two mornings fishing, working the edges of the mangroves in the open, slightly salty middle river, trying to entice a tarpon or snook to hit just for the thrill of the fight. There were rarely more than a few boats on the water during the week. Most of them were small boaters who lingered along the edges, occasionally waving as though we were club members, a brotherhood of fishermen. One of them passed and asked about the fly I was using. On both days a thirty-two-foot cabin cruiser with twin inboard screws hung in the middle channel downriver. I could make out at least two men working poles, but it was a poor place to anchor. It was unusual for a boat that size to stay put. Downstream the river opened onto an inlet to the ocean, and most of the bigger boats moved out to sea to take on the wider challenge of true saltwater fishing. I shrugged it off. Money and boats, I thought. Sometimes people just had it to have it so they could show it.

I spent both afternoons sitting out on my top landing—where the hot sun kept some of the mosquitoes at bay—reading and rereading books that Billy had given me. I tried not to stray far from the shack, wondering when I had become so protective of the place. On the second night, the moon was near full, and I took advantage and paddled my canoe hard upstream late into the darkness, working up a full sweat in the humid air and feeling the burn of oxygen-depleted muscle in my shoulders and arms. In an hour I reached the small man-made dam and had to get out and yank the canoe over the concrete abutment and refloat it on the upper river. The water was black and the sound it made as it plunged over the four-foot drop seemed far too loud as it ripped and then boiled into the reflected moonlight and spun quickly away. This upper section went south for another two miles, fed by the accumulation of rainwater in hundreds of acres of low-lying slough in the Everglades. It was a section of the river where I had physically punished myself for many months after I had arrived here, letting the face of a dead boy chase me. I climbed back into the canoe, set myself and judged the curve of the river by the dull silver reflection of moonlight, and began again, paddling and grinding. I had talked with Billy by cell phone earlier in the day. He had gone over the contacts that Mark Mayes had made and had double-checked some of his requests for information. I could tell by his voice that he’d been impressed by the boy’s resourcefulness but was pissed that his name had been dropped without his knowledge or permission.

“But our Mr. Mayes may be correct about one of those companies,” Billy said. “PalmCo has a long development history in the state, and we’ve already tracked corporate officers and previous owners all the way back to the 1930s. Before that it gets difficult because of the crash of 1929, when a lot of businesses went under, including most of South Florida’s development speculators. When they came back, it was under different names, even though the people and the source of the money were the same.”

Billy and I had already talked about the coincidence of Cyrus Mayes’s reference to the name Noren and the photo of the road workers on the wall of the bar in the Frontier. I’d wondered if the name was that of the dredge manufacturer or the construction company. Billy had already done an Internet search and had not found any dredge manufacturers by that name in the twenties or thirties, and he was moving on the assumption that the contractor’s name had been affixed to the dredge boom. “That’s the one I’m working on, but the name might be buried in old archives,” Billy said. I was always impressed by his abilities to paper-chase. It was a skill for which I had little talent and less patience. Still, I had to hand it to Mayes. Even if it had been unintentional, he’d pushed Billy’s buttons, got him on a chase I could tell he wasn’t going to give up on easily.