The Man Who Ivented Florida

SEVENTEEN

Ford was thinking, What the hell are you trying to pull, old man? He was looking into Tucker Gatrell's wild blue eyes. Stood there a minute or two listening to Tuck patronize him before finally cutting him off, saying, "The only thing I need to hear from you is the truth. Do you really want to keep your land, or are you trying to leverage the state into paying double what it's worth?"

Ford didn't respond to Tuck's indignant reaction, but he almost smiled a little when Tuck said, "Your brain sure does come up with some strange ideas sometimes! Must get it from your daddy's side of the family."

Ford said, "I need an answer."

"Hell, it ain't even my land anymore. Most of it, anyway. Just a measly twenty-five acres. What leverage I got?"

He sensed the slyness in the old man's voice; pointedly ignored the irritation it generated in him. Ford said, "I got the tests back you wanted me to do. The results can help you, or they can ruin you. That's why I'm asking. It all depends on what you want-"

"Ruin me!" Tuck was laughing now. "Hell, boy, I been ruined 'bout a hundred times over. I'm an expert at ruin, which means I'm damn near fearless. So I hope you're not trying to scare me-"

"I'm trying to get you to answer a simple question."

Tuck patted Ford on the shoulder; took a look around. The waterfront was rimmed with people, some standing, others sitting on makeshift benches, all facing the table at which members of the Park Acquisition Board were now seating themselves. Tuck said, "Meeting's getting ready to start," and held an index finger to his lips.

"You're not going to level with me, are you?"

Tuck was silent for a moment, then turned to Ford. "I'll tell you this, boy. I'd rather fall down dead than see those shitheels take land that's always been mine." Tucker winked at him. "That right there is straighter'n I shoot."

When Angela Walker spotted Ford standing off from the crowd's perimeter, listening to the Park Acquisition's staff introduce themselves, she thought, He's part of this? She watched him for a moment, standing there in his wrinkled khaki slacks and gray shirt, looking as if he'd just gotten off a boat. Maybe he had. Maybe he'd driven that fast jade-colored boat of his down all the way from Sanibel, then just stepped off onto the mud beach. Nice way to travel. No traffic, no stoplights. Just drive along looking at the birds and the dolphins until you got to where you were going. Easy, if you were good with boats and knew what you were doing. Scary if you didn't.

Walker knew about that now.

Each of the last three mornings, she'd rented a skiff from Barron Creek Marina, then headed out alone, going from island to island, looking for some sign of the missing men. Her plan was to follow the unlikely routes to the boundary of Everglades National Park. Start at the channel that led out from Barron Creek (Sandfly Channel, it said on the map), then head south. Trouble was, there weren't that many unlikely routes because a labyrinth of mangroves and shoals fingered out from the mainland, east to west, with no cut-through spots. Not that the map showed, anyway. To get around them, you had to drive a boat almost eight miles toward the Gulf, then turn left. Worse, it all looked so different when she was actually out there. Her boat, which had seemed sizable at the marina, shrunk down to almost nothing when the few channel markers ended, leaving her alone with all that water and sky and all those mangrove islands crowding in. There was something creepy about the look of mangrove trees. Their roots hunched up out of the muck like an old man's fingers, with a tangle of trees balanced on top. As if whole islands could crawl around if they wanted; could get up on those root fingers and walk. Like giant crabs.

The second day, though, she had started to feel a little more comfortable about it. And yesterday, the third day, she'd actually enjoyed herself. She'd run aground a couple of times, but she still liked the feeling of driving a boat, being able to go anywhere she wanted. But she hadn't found a sign of the three men or the three missing boats. Not a thing. There was just too much area to cover, and too few routes to the park boundry.

Plus, she kept reminding herself, almost all of it had already been searched. By boat or by air, most of the thousands of acres below Sandfly Channel.

Which was when Walker remembered something Ford had said to her earlier, some innocent-sounding phrase that kept banging around in the back of her brain until, last night, lying in bed, she had finally isolated it. It had sat her straight upright, legs swinging out from beneath the covers, running to find the map. That quick, she knew where she would search; would have been out in the rental boat right now if Tucker Gatrell hadn't called her, saying, "You want a big boost for your career, show up in Mango for the hearing."

Well, he was trying to use her,- she knew it. But she figured, give Gatrell enough rope, he'd hang himself. Not that she wanted that-strangely, she didn't. Still, the law was the law, and it was fascinating to play give-and-take with the old man, trying to guess just what he was up to, and why. And now to see Ford here…

She stood looking at Ford; noted how miserable the park staff appeared beyond him, one man and four women at the table, all of them fanning at the peppered haze of mosquitoes that had formed around their faces. The man, who introduced himself as Alex Lon-decker, had thus far done all the talking, but he kept interrupting himself to slap at the bugs, so his sentences had a staccato rhythm, ruining whatever authority over the meeting he wanted to establish.

Walker stood watching for a few minutes, then walked to her car and returned with a map of the Ten Thousand Islands folded in her hand. She tapped Ford on the shoulder, smiling at his expression of surprise as she said, "Somehow, I don't see you as the kind of involved citizen who attends public hearings."

Ford smiled a little in return,-actually seemed kind of pleased to see her. "I'll let you know in a minute if I'll be sticking around." But what he was thinking was, All the dogs are closing on Tuck at once.

"You're trying to help your uncle. That's why you're here?"

"I'm not sure it's possible to help him."

"But you'd like to. I mean, you're related. You'd like to help him if you could?" Ford was so hard to talk to!

Ford listened to Londecker laying out the rules of the meeting, saying that citizens who were pro-park would speak first; the people against, second. Listened to Londecker say, "I'd like to stress again that wild claims about the beneficial qualities of… [slap]… water found on the land in question are a… [slap]… nonissue unless the speaker has legitimate scientific evidence to back up the claims." Then Ford turned to look at Walker and said to her, "You've met Gatrell. He's not an easy man to help."

"I've got one way." She was unfolding the map.

"A way to help you, you mean. Find the three men."

"I know he's involved. You know it, too." She could see Tucker Gatrell over near the table, standing beside a white-haired man who, in his dark suit, looked like an old-time preacher.

Ford said, "No, you're wrong. I don't know that." He was thinking, But I assumed it from the beginning.

"Look at this." She handed him the map. "There was something you said to me a week or so ago. It was the way you said it, talking about the missing boaters. 'Why would they turn north to go south? Maybe you should look at a map.' Something like that. It kept bothering me."

Ford had taken the chart; was unfolding it to see the familiar swirls and hedgerows of beige-green on blue. All those islands. "Oh?" he said.

"The thing that bothered me was, you grew up here. Or so your uncle told me. Why would you need a map?"

"Some people live here ten years, they still need a chart."

"Not someone like you. So I just kept going over it in my mind. Why would someone turn north to go south? Last night, I figured it out." She touched a ginger-colored index finger to the chart. "See here? About a mile out of Sandfly Channel, you turn north… curve in and out through these little islands. What's that, about five miles? Almost due north. Then turn back east about two miles until you come to this tiny little cut-through here."

Ford considered the woman's nails as she tapped the chart: trimmed short, carefully clear-glossed; a fastidious woman who used her hands for more than decoration.

She said, "That cut, it's not much wider than a pin on the map. That's what I'm still not sure about. Could a boat fit through?"

Ford knew the place,-he didn't need to look at the chart. His uncle had always called it the Auger Hole.

He was still looking at the woman's hands. "Judging from this," he said, "it's maybe ten, fifteen feet wide. So sure. Plenty of room for a small boat. What you're saying is-"

"I'm saying they could have passed through that cut, then followed it to this series of creeks and bays south, clear to Everglades City and the national park boundaries." She slapped the chart for emphasis. "It's probably a little shorter, plus maybe faster, too, because they wouldn't have to drive clear to the Gulf first. They went north, not south! Only no one would think of that, even looking at the map, so no one bothered to search north of Sandfly Channel."

Ford smiled. He had turned his attention to Londecker once more. "So get a boat, Agent Walker. Go find your men."

"That's what I'm talking to you about. Did you drive your boat down here? You know the water-"

"I came by land. My truck, the blue one parked up there."

Londecker was saying, "Even though this is an informal hearing, all speakers must first introduce themselves, because Ms. [slap] Cullum or Ms. Ibach will be making notes, and this will all become part of official public record…"

"Then maybe we could rent a boat. It's not far to Barron Creek Marina. You help me now, Dr. Ford, I'll promise you that it'll reflect favorably on your uncle-"

"If he was involved."

"Yes. If he was involved."

Ford had folded the chart and now handed it back to Angela Walker. "Maybe. I'll think about it-but after the meeting."

"So you are staying."

"I just decided, yeah. Just this second."