ENCOMIENDA
Chapter 5
Two hours after I had picked up Iris, we arrived in Everglades City. Iris and I had had a serviceable conversation about the Renaissance and Shakespeare (I had been reading Hamlet). When I turned down the road to Everglades City, I stopped the car and insisted that Iris call her mother. Reluctantly she did.
She said, “Hi, Mom. I’m coming home today.”
. . . .
“No, I’m thumbing.”
. . . .
“With a private investigator. Dad’s already talked to him. All right!” She handed me the phone and stared out the window.
I said, “Hello, my name’s Buck Jaspers. I gave your daughter a lift. We’re stopping in Everglades City for lunch.”
“I’m her mother, Ruth Channing. Has she given you any trouble?”
“Not really.”
“She’s very willful.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“But she’s quite intelligent.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Will you bring her home tonight?”
“It’s possible. If not, she’ll call you back.”
“Why wouldn’t it be possible?”
“I’m not on a pleasure trip. I’m here working a case. So, everything depends on the case.”
“Oh. Is it dangerous?”
“I can’t tell at this point.”
We said our goodbyes. Iris said, “Isn’t she pathetic?”
“How pathetic? She sounded like a concerned mother to me.”
She sighed. “Adults!”
I had brought my highlighted map and the pictures of the boys. After I stopped outside the Everglades Inn, a two-story brown brick building with rows of motel rooms facing the parking lot, I took the map and pictures inside with us. The restaurant was a one-story attachment to the motel. Its cypress interior was designed to appeal to hunters and fishers. Stuffed fish and gators and panthers and bobcats and deer adorned the walls. We sat at the counter and ordered ham sandwiches and coffee, which we took to a booth.
In the booth I spread out the map, the pictures and my pens and markers.
I noticed a lanky, mousy-haired waitress glaring at me with big brown eyes; we had probably taken one of her stations. I smiled and waved her over. “Is this your table?”
“Yes,” she said and defiantly folded her arms across each other.
“You can still earn a tip. I’m a private detective looking for some missing boys.” I showed her the pictures of Nano and Paulie. “They ate lunch here about a month ago. Do you remember them?”
She picked up the pictures, gave them a good stare. “A month ago? Could be. I couldn’t tell you for sure. They look like two guys that were here, but I couldn’t swear to it. We get a lot of business this time of year.”
“Let’s say the guys you remember were these two. What did they eat?”
“Well, if it was the two I’m thinking of, they had sandwiches and soft drinks. One of ‘em wanted a beer, but when I asked for ID, he changed his mind, said he left it in the car. That was the little-bit chubby one.”
“Did they talk about anything that you remember?”
“Not really. I mean I wasn’t standing around trying to listen. I had other customers. Besides, they spoke Spanish most of the time.”
“Thanks.” I slid a five-dollar bill to her.
She took it and put it in the pocket of her apron, spun around, stopped, turned back to me and pointed a finger at me. “Hey, I just remembered something else. When I brought their check over, they were arguing about the route. The thin one wanted to go I-75; the plump one, 29.”
“I thought you said they spoke Spanish.”
“Well, the names of the highways would be the same in any language, wouldn’t they?”
I pushed over another five spot. “Thanks. Keep thinking. Maybe you’ll remember something else before I leave.” She grabbed the bill and added it to her stash.
Then I noticed a big, muscular man watching me from the doorway to the storage area. His brown eyes were not friendly; indeed, beastly and menacing. He wore a thick, white apron smeared with blood and entrails from some slaughtered animal. In his bristling right hand, a meat cleaver hung with practiced ease. I smiled and he stepped back inside the doorway, vanished from my sight.
Iris said, “Can I look at the pictures?”
I handed them to her and she perused one after the other. She said, “Cute guys. Do they live in Miami?”
“Yeah.”
“Who hired you?”
“The father.”
“They’re brothers?”
“No, roommates.”
I ate slowly and looked over the map. The waitress’s tiny bit of data was important. I knew for certain now that the boys had planned to head north after lunch, which I would do also. There were two routes to I-75. They could’ve turned left and continued across the Trail, which would get them to an access area just below Naples, or they could’ve gone up State Highway 29 to Alligator Alley and then turned left. Either way was fairly direct with few stops or distractions along the way. Since both routes would get them to I-75 eventually and Paulie wanted to go 29, they probably did go 29. But if that were the case, why weren’t they arguing about Highway 41 versus Highway 29? That was the next junction and the most logical point to argue. Did Paulie want to go up quite a bit of 29? Was he looking for some local color as opposed to the monotony of the Interstate?
Who had been driving? If Nano drove from Miami to Everglades City, maybe Paulie took over after lunch. If Paulie were driving, he could make the decision. In fact, he could’ve made the decision to go all the way up 29 and then left on Highway 80 to Fort Myers, which would get them to I-75 much farther north.
The reason I didn’t like their going up I-75 was that it was so well traveled and patrolled that if they’d had any trouble, they would have been rescued or at least noticed. Besides, they had a cell phone. They could’ve called for help. On I-75, the only reason they couldn’t have called for help was that they were too badly injured or dead, in which case the police would’ve notified the parents.
The fact that their credit cards and cell phones had not been used after December 7 meant that they had been swallowed into a dark hole. I speculated that they drove up Highway 29 and then something happened. Between the hunting-fishing lodges of Everglades City and the burgeoning city of Fort Myers, something happened.
When we had both finished eating, I gathered my stuff and headed for the door. The waitress loped after me. “Mister, wait a minute, I remembered something else.”
I turned to face her.
She said, “They were driving a red and white car – that little Japanese SUV.”
“Sorry. I already knew that.”
She frowned and crossed her arms and gave me a disappointed look.
Before I got into my car, I called Caridad and told her to find out what the weather had been like in Collier County on December 7 of last year. Iris got into the car and waited for me.
As I returned my cell phone to its case, I sensed the presence of someone else near me and turned to see the brute butcher standing behind me. I smiled at him, as if I could tame a beast with my expression. I said, “Good morning.”
He huffed like a boar and said, “Why’re you flirtin’ wid Norma?”
“Excuse me?”
“You otta leave her ‘lone.”
“Is Norma the waitress? I wasn’t flirting, just asking questions.”
“I saw you givin’ her money. What you want fer the money?”
“I already got what I wanted.” As soon as I said that, I knew I had said it the wrong way because he could infer whatever he feared.
He raised the hairy paw with the cleaver in it. I knew I had to act fast. I whipped my right foot around, knocking his left ankle into his right ankle and followed through, so he went down like a hoofless swine. He hit the pavement hard and the cleaver flew away from his hand into some groundcover plants. The breath went out of him in a hapless squeal. He rolled over, groaned and covered his head and rubbed where his skull had connected with the planet. I stepped on his left knee, planting him solidly against the asphalt.
I said, “Listen, dude. I wanted information. I got information. That’s all I wanted. That’s all I got. You need to lighten up a little. Not everyone else wants your piece of meat.” I stepped away and left him groaning and rubbing his head.
I got into the blue Z3 and headed north on Highway 29.
Iris said, “Wow! That was da bomb! Where’d you learn that?”
“Don’t get too excited.”
For some reason, the incident made me think of Cyndi Katz, my former girlfriend and a profiler with whom I have worked. I guess I would protect and defend Cyndi with the same zeal as the butcher if I thought she were in danger. So many people think that what they have everyone else wants. Of course, I no longer had Cyndi in any practical sense of the word; I had her only in my memory.
Iris said, “That was so cool!” I ignored her.
When I came to the junction with Highway 41, I didn’t turn left; on my educated guess, I drove straight up Highway 29 . . . very slowly. In fact, I drove so slowly that every few miles a truck or a camper or a small car would catch me, honk and rumble past. I was looking for anything unusual on or next to the road.
Iris said, “What are you looking for?”
“A crash site.”
I passed through the hamlets of Copeland and Jerome. Once I came upon some skid marks that started on my side of the road, swerved across the yellow line, swerved back and finally swerved across the road into a ditch. I stopped the car, got out and ran across the road. The ditch was shallow, so the vehicle had been hauled away. What remained were the sprinkle of shattered windshield and a few rusting bits of metal that had been originally a metallic green. I felt both relieved and disappointed that the wreck hadn’t been the boys’.
Iris said, “That wasn’t it, huh?”
“No.”
“What color is the car again. I’ll help.”
“Red and white.”
When I reached Alligator Alley, I paused, then gunned the car across the intersection, up Highway 29, based on my hunch that the adventurous Paulie would take that less familiar route. I settled into second gear, so I was moving no more than twenty miles an hour. I grew excited because running alongside the right-hand side of the road was a wide, deep canal – black water with banks overgrown with brush and a waist-high rail to keep vehicles out of the water. And a few hundred yards from the intersection the rail had been split. I braked, stopped. I stared at the break in the rail, but then I realized that the frayed ends of the broken rail were thoroughly rusted and that the brush around the crash site couldn’t have recovered so much in a month. This was a much older accident.
I drove on, braking at each skid mark or bent and smashed rail. But each time the signs weren’t right. I passed through Sunniland.
About fives miles north of Sunniland, I saw a slight dent in the railing and the top of the rail folded over like a pouting lip toward the deep, black water. I pulled over, stopped the car and got out. There were no skid marks, but there was a gouge in the earth before the railing as if some large beast had clawed into the dirt before leaping the barrier. And the brush had been scythed away and some remnants hung limp and drying from the railing in the light breeze. This was fresh enough.
I heard the passenger door open and said, “Iris, stay in the car.”
“Is this it . . . what you’re looking for?”
“Maybe.”
I went to the bent railing. I stood and gaped at smears of red and white paint on the silvery rail. On the top of the rail. I leaned over and looked into the water. The sun glinted off the black surface. How deep was it? Thirty or forty feet? It was three times that wide. I slid over the railing. If they hadn’t been able to get out of their seat belts, then they would be down there in the black depths on an eternal ride. I looked around for a sign. There were discarded drink bottles floating near the bank and a Nike tennis shoe, one of those hundred dollar shoes with air pockets and night-lights. I broke off a withered branch and fished out the shoe. Of course it was soaked, but it looked new; the sole wasn’t worn down, and it was just the thing a well-off college kid would buy. I tossed it up near my car, and looked some more.
Farther up the canal, I noticed a piece of paper snagged on some brush near the edge of the water. I worked my way over, twice slipping and getting my right foot wet. Holding onto the brush with my left hand, I leaned over and picked the soggy paper gently off the twigs it was snagged on. I took it up the bank over the railing and laid it on the hood of my car. The print was badly faded, but I could see the outlines of a familiar map, but with more detail than the one I remembered. In the center of the map was a star faded to pink and the faded letters announcing Dolores Street. I held the paper and walked away from the car.
I walked back to the car. Iris was standing in front of it. She said, “This is it, isn’t it? You found it! Definitely cool.”
I reached inside my car and pulled out the cell phone. I dialed information and was rerouted to the local sheriff’s office. I reported the accident and waited, drinking from an Evian bottle. I was not looking forward to telling Señor Concepción that his son was dead, probably drowned in a canal murky with muck and pesticides.
Iris said, “Can I have some water, too?”
I pulled out an unopened bottle of Evian and handed it to her. She opened it and took a long swig. I watched her drink. She looked Native American because of the long, straight black hair, the brown eyes and her high cheekbones, although her skin was pale.
I said, “You look like you have some Indian in you. Do you know?”
“Dad’s grandfather was supposedly a Cherokee. Do you have children?”
“No, never been married.”
“You don’t have to be married to have children.”
“I know how it works, but I’m kind of traditional when it comes to having children. I’d want to make sure I was with the right person and we had the right situation to bring a child into.”
“You can use my testimony – ping-ponging between coasts to see each of my parents is crazy.”
END of Chapter 5
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