Don't Lose Her (18 page)

This time, I could hear the hints of anger and frustration in Billy's voice. He was dealing with the red tape of government. I was not.

“I'll get back to you when I get there, Billy.”

I got off the phone and turned to Nate, who was staring out toward the horizon—his way of giving me privacy while I talked with Billy.

“I need to find out where this is and how to get there,” I said to the old Gladesman, and held out the card with longitude and latitude figures on it.

“Is it out here?”

“It's where they're holding the judge.”

Nate looked at the numbers, nodded his head, and motioned me with a gnarled finger. I followed him into the convenience food store without question.

The place was no different than a million other stop-and-shops or food marts: rows of snack foods, a wall of glass refrigerator doors behind which every soda, flavored water, and beer known to man was stacked. The only things that may have set this place apart were a rack of cheap fishing lures, a prominent display of BullFrog Mosquito Coast insect repellent, and a stack of ball caps with jumping bass emblems on them.

When Nate walked in, the clerk behind the counter recognized the wizened old man and nearly genuflected to him on the spot.

“Mr. Brown, sir. Well, I'll be. Mr. Brown,” said the guy, who might have been in his thirties. He fumbled to speak as he walked behind the counter in step with Nate toward the back of the store.

“Man, my daddy and my granddaddy know you. It's an honor, sir.”

Nate nodded and asked simply, in a way that somehow didn't sound like he was ignoring or just waving the guy off: “Rowdy in?”

“Yes, sir, he is. He'd be right there in the back office, sir. Y'all just go on back.”

Nate never broke stride, as if he intended to do just that whether Rowdy was actually in or not. But the old man did rap on the door marked
OFFICE. EMPLOYEES ONLY
. before entering without waiting for a reply.

A large man with a bald pate, a florid, fleshy face, and an enormous belly bulging out in front of him was already standing up from behind his desk by the time I inched my way in behind Nate. The office was tight with filing cabinets, the desk overloaded with stacks of paper and catalogues, and a wall of bookcases sagged with the same.

As we shuffled our way in, Nate offered his hand and asked his question at the same time: “Rowdy, you got some of them topographic maps of the Glades y'all use for findin' fishin' sites and such?”

Again, Nate's presence seemed to cause mere mortals to discover marbles in their mouths and stars in their eyes.

“Uh, yes, I do, Mr. Brown. I do,” the man called Rowdy said, as he first glanced about his own office and then turned to start rooting through corners and beside cabinets.

“It's a pleasure, sir, uh, Mr. Brown,” he stumbled. “Any particular area, sir?”

“Three-county corner,” Nate answered.

“Uh, yes, yes,” Rowdy continued, as at last he found a tepee of long cardboard tubes standing in a short metal wastebasket. He finally decided on one and then turned and with a few sweeps of a big-pawed hand cleared a space on his desk, seeming to ignore the piles of paperwork that spilled onto the floor.

He slid a rolled map out of the tube and unfurled it on his desk.

“Now, this here is the three corners,” Rowdy was saying when I reached over and offered the business card with the coordinates.

“Max Freeman,” I said to Rowdy as introduction. “This is specifically where we're trying to get to.”

“This here is a friend of mine,” Nate stated.

The big man looked up, met my eyes, and reached out a hand before going back to anchoring the corners of the map with paperweights, a stapler, and a heavy logbook from his desk.

“Any friend of Mr. Brown, sir,” he said, and did not have to finish as he took the business card and set to plotting the numbers. It took less than a minute.

“Right here, Mr. Brown,” he said triumphantly when he'd lined up the intersects.

Nate bent over the desk and studied what was useless to my untrained eye.

“Hell, Rowdy, that ain't but a couple miles from the north park boundary.”

“Yes, sir,” Rowdy agreed, both of them looking closely.

“On the rez.”

“Yes, sir. The reservation boundary is right here,” Rowdy said, moving his finger on the map.

“I believe I used to gig some four hunnert frogs a night outta that piece a few years back,” Nate said.

“Could be, sir.”

“Then the Seminoles built themselves some kinda camp all fancy and such right about there. Brought in the pilings and pounded them down and put up a big ole place.”

“I believe you're right, sir.”

“Scared all the damn frogs away.”

“Word is the top Seminoles take their big-time visitors from the casinos out there now, sir. You know, to show 'em the real Everglades,” Rowdy said, staring down at the map and starting to move his finger. “But if you're lookin' for a place to gig frogs, Mr. Brown, I do have another spot you might consider.”

A sudden change in the air set the room to silence as the big man realized his mistake. Nate had looked up into his face.

“Rowdy. Do you think I need a young boy like you to tell me where to find giggin' frogs?” Nate said, again in a way that showed no anger or disrespect. But the big man could not meet his eyes, and an obvious red glow of embarrassment colored his heavy cheeks.

“No, sir, I do not.”

“We ain't huntin' frogs, Rowdy, and I thank you much for the use of your maps,” he said in a tone that indicated that we were done there.

Back outside at the tailgate of Nate's truck, I awaited instruction I knew was coming. This was his world. His knowledge of it would be my ally and maybe Diane's savior.

“I know a man out that way,” Nate said after nearly a minute of full silence. “Name of Mason Jumper. He ain't a tribal member 'cause he's a half-breed. Momma was a Seminole and daddy a Cuban immigrant. He runs a huntin' an' fishin' outfitter out on Snake Road 'bout as close as you're gonna get to that spot on the map.”

“Tell me how to get there, Nate. I appreciate your help.”

“Naw. I'll lead ya. Jumper ain't a fella you can just walk up on without introduction.”

With that, Nate climbed into his truck. I had to skip back to get to the Fury in time to keep up with the old man before he left me in the dust.

We got back on Alligator Alley and headed east in the direction I'd come from. Despite the age of Nate's pickup, the old man rolled it up to 75 mph and never faltered for the next fifteen miles. The sun was now sitting at thirty degrees above the horizon and was full in my eyes. I kept glancing out to the north, where I knew we were ultimately headed, and the sight of pure, flat Glades grass now honey-brown in the full sun told me once again that this was an unforgiving land. The thought of Diane out there, captive, under duress, as Billy had put it, started to conjure nothing but poor scenarios in my head.

I'd heard of airboat men who had broken down only a couple of miles from a main road out in those grasses and thought they could walk out, but ended up dying of heat stroke and dehydration.

I'd been in Florida for only a few months when a DC-9 airliner leaving Miami International lost power after takeoff, went into a dive, and speared itself and the 110 passengers and crew aboard directly into the deep Everglades muck. When rescuers got on-site, the entire plane had seemingly disappeared. All that was left were scraps of baggage and assorted pieces of metal. So deep and consuming was the River of Grass that the bodies of those who perished were impossible to recover. Only a marker stands over what became their last resting place.

Foolishly, I hadn't brought a thing to help me if I had to travel into that milieu. I was still wearing my canvas boat shoes, my black cotton cargo pants, and a stupid button-down long-sleeved oxford shirt. Other than the P226 Navy, I didn't even have a knife or a pair of binoculars to help me. I had my phone and two throwaway cells that hadn't rung in days. And I still had several thousand dollars in cash in the trunk. I hoped Nate's friend the outfitter would be well supplied and a willing businessman.

I was still in my head when my eyes recognized the brake lights on Nate's truck come ablaze in the straight-shot monotony of the interstate. At first, I thought his truck had broken down from the sustained speed, until I picked up an unmarked turnoff in the distance. We slowed and I followed him across the median onto a graveled lane, jumped the westbound lanes, and drove onto a thin asphalt lane that led north. Nate stopped at a chain-link gate entrance that stood ajar and I pulled up beside him. He got out of the truck but stood at his open door with one foot still in the cab, so I did the same.

“This here gate is usually locked up,” he said, looking up the road. There was a sign on the gate that read
OFFICIAL USE ONLY. DO NOT ENTER
.

I knew that such signs were but a minor nuisance to a man who had hunted, fished, and poached this land for generations. Nate was simply stating that someone else had passed this way, an observation he knew might be of interest to me. And he was right. If the so-called big Indian and his troop with Diane in tow had brought the Chrysler 300 through here, we were now on their scent. The knowledge sent a tweak of adrenaline into my blood.

“Let's get to it,” I said.

Nate climbed back into his truck, moved forward, and without regard for the resulting scratches on his front bumper, pushed open the gate as he passed through. I followed.

Snake Road had nothing to do with S-curves or rolling, undulating contours. It was a straight shot, albeit in a ditchlike furrow through the saw grass. The sky was visible above the walls of stalks, blue with clumps of passing clouds that seemed as substantial as landmasses themselves. And down here, close to sea level, you could see the ubiquitous water off to either side of the roadway. A skid off the apron and you were in the drink.

As I followed, I had to keep asking myself,
Why? Why out here?
As the old Gladesman had said, you don't come out here if you don't know someone. Who the hell would a kidnapping group of non-Seminole Indians know out here on what to them would be a foreign reservation? I hadn't heard a word from my street-level drug contacts. Not a word from the sleazy attorney who was as plugged in as anyone to the next level of the world of narcotics. And Billy's work with the upper echelon of Colombian insiders had brought nothing. The connection with Escalante was fading.

So who were these people, and what motive did they have to kidnap a sitting federal judge working an extradition trial? Billy had made a fleeting mention of another judge. He hadn't explained, which was like him. Billy didn't speculate. He dug to the bottom of things. He checked out his theories before making sloppy, unprofessional statements of semi-truth. He could never be a politician or a pundit. I admired his stance, even though as his best friend I sometimes resented his close-to-the-vest processes. It was Diane in whom he confided.

But was I so different? Sherry was my sounding board. Everybody needs somebody.

Again, Nate's glowing brake lights alerted me. He slowed, and I saw him drift into the western lane and then take a left onto a dry two-track path that seemed to lead into nothing but saw grass. But within a hundred yards, the track opened up, and a two-story clapboard building with a couple of sheds fronting a marl beach appeared out of what was distinctly nowhere.

Nate pulled up just short of two airboats sitting on the bank of a small lagoon of open water. I parked beside him. When I got out, the heat and humidity seemed to rise out of the ground. Though my river shack was on the edge of the Everglades, a canopy of ancient cypress trees kept my place in constant shade and helped make it tolerable. Out here, everything was at the mercy of the naked sun.

As the two of us walked toward the big building, a man stepped out of one of the sheds and started toward us. He was thin and mocha-skinned and had the distinctive straight black hair of an Indian native. He walked with the square-shouldered, confident gait of a man meeting important clients. But as the gap between us closed, I could see a wide smile grow on his face.

“Mr. Nate Brown, as I live and breathe,” he said before reaching us and extending his hand in greeting.

“Mason Jumper, you grow younger by the year,” Nate said, in what I considered a more intimate response than I have ever seen him give any man.

I stood back and let the friends have their moment. They clasped hands for a long time, smiling into each other's faces. I almost expected an embrace, but it didn't go that far.

Jumper, who appeared to be in his forties, was by this time looking beyond Nate, first to me and then to the cars we had parked.

“Still with the old pickup, eh, Mr. Brown?” he said, though his black eyes were moving from me to the cars to Nate's face.

Nate stood back.

“This is my friend, Max Freeman,” he said. “He only drives a police car. He's not a cop.”

The designation as Nate Brown's friend brought a change in the man's attitude that was like the flip of a light switch.

“Then welcome,” Jumper said, immediately smiling and stepping closer to extend a hand. His skin was dry to the touch, yet stained in its pores and creases with dark lines of oil or machinery grease.

Nate did not waste words. He explained to Jumper that I was tracking a cell phone signal and gave him the coordinates.

“Just plain old Glades out there,” Jumper said. “A mile or two from the Big Cypress National Preserve.”

“I tol' Max that it looks close to that new fish camp the tribe built a couple of years back,” Nate said.

Jumper was nodding before Nate finished.

“They don't use it much. It just sits out there like some kind of showpiece,” he said, looking off to the southwest. “About three miles out. I know the man who takes supplies out there when they're bringing visitors. They call him and tell him when guests are arriving and he takes out food and bait and starts the generator.