To speak for the dead

21

There are no sharks in Shark Valley. No valley either. Just miles of sawgrass and countless animals living in their natural habitat. Bull alligators rule the Everglades, eating turtles, white-tailed deer, and any birds that venture too close to the reptiles' muddy homes. There are wood storks and egrets and great white herons that would now be extinct if women still wore feathery hats.

But no sharks and no valley. Misnamed though it is, Shark Valley is nature unrestrained. It is a vast flat slough, a slow-moving river of shallow water that has not changed in appearance for centuries. If Philip Corrigan had ever seen the place, he would have licked his chops and dreamed of draining and filling, building on stilts, and calling it "Heron Creek." Of course, then there would be no more herons and no more creek.

Black thunderheads were forming over the Glades, mountainous clouds picking up the moisture from the fifty-mile-wide river. Nearly dusk and the world was gray. It was seven miles down a narrow asphalt road to the observation tower. No cars allowed. I rented a bicycle from the chickee hut run by the Park Service and got a second look from the ranger who warned me about the weather and the closing time. He probably doesn't get many bird watchers wearing blue suits and burgundy ties. I put my suitcoat in the car, peeled off my tie, and felt only half as stupid. I went into the restroom, tossed some cold water on my face, and stared at the mirror. I hadn't gotten any better looking. I practiced my cocky look, worked up a crooked grin, and said to the mirror, "Sure I have the tape, but first I'll take your statement." Behind me, a toilet flushed, the stall door opened, and a middle-aged tourist wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt gave me a sideways look, then backed away, never stopping to wash his hands. I checked my gear-the videotape, the contract, and a portable tape recorder-all safe in a thin briefcase. Then I headed into the open air, hunched over the saddle of my government-issue, dollar-fifty-an-hour bicycle that was the right size for Pee Wee Herman.

The dark clouds were growing nearer and the wind kicking hard from the west as I pedaled south into the Glades, my knees under my chin. Some serious bird watchers were hurrying back on the path, their binoculars swinging, tripods in hand. One white-haired man with knobby knees sticking out of safari shorts was carrying on about having spotted "two crested caracaras, not one, but two…"

Blackish-green alligators slid into the water from the side of the road. Some were babies, two feet in length, looking like rubberized gags from a hotel gift shop. The bulls, ten or twelve feet, launched themselves into the water with powerful haunches. Some dug into the mud, forming gator holes to trap the water and keep cool. Stop to look, they hiss at you, blowing air out their nostrils. Keep going, they watch until you're gone.

One of the big bulls grabbed a tourist last year. A stockbroker from Cleveland had wandered into shallow water to get video footage of a blue heron feeding. Just like an Abbott and Costello movie, the log he stepped on opened its mouth. The alligator dragged him into deeper water, then with powerful jaws, crushed the man's chest and pierced his lungs. Official cause of death: drowning. Like saying the victims of Hiroshima died of sunburn.

It took only twenty minutes to pedal to the observation tower, a sleek concrete structure with a long, elevated ramp leading to a circular deck sixty feet above the sawgrass. Deserted except for the animals. Birds fed along the banks of a pond below, keeping a watch for the gators that dozed nearby. I leaned the bike against a strangler fig, grabbed the briefcase, and slowly walked up the ramp, listening for human sounds.

Bird chirps and little splashes came from the pond below. Nothing more.

At the top, I caught the glint of the sun, hidden by the clouds, preparing to drop into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Naples. A hawk kite flew by, carrying an apple snail. A small unseen animal rustled the sawgrass below. Then a scraping sound from above. A dozen white terns bolted from a Caribbean pine and veered away from the tower.

Another scraping sound.

I was standing on a round concrete slab, maybe thirty feet across. Above me, the roof of the tower was another slab, the same size. I looked up into solid concrete.

A voice, just a whisper, then another.

He swung down from the slab above, landing six feet in front of me, blocking the path down the ramp. Behind me, another one dropped onto the concrete. The one behind me was short, muscular, moustachioed, and mean. Sergio Machado-Alvarez. The one by the ramp was bigger, not as many ripples, but maybe six-two, two-twenty, a gut beginning to give way. He wanted to play baseball. At least he was holding a baseball bat. One of the aluminum models. They make a funny clonk when they hit the ball. I don't know the sound when they crush a skull.

Oh shit. You were right, Susan. I didn't need this. I didn't need to prove how tough I was. Coming here already proved how smart I was.

"Hola, asshole," Sergio hissed. He showed me his large, gray teeth. A psychopath's smile. "You've got something for me, damelo, gimme."

"Say please." I never learn.

Sergio curled a lip at me. "Hijo de puta, you're going to hurt real good. Orlando…"

Orlando was smacking his palm with the fat end of the Louisville Slugger. If they were trying to scare me, it was working. But I was thinking, too. Orlando looked slow. That was a plus. But strong. That was a minus. Sergio was unarmed. Another plus. But I knew he was no stranger to the dojang, and from what I saw with my dear old car, he wasn't faking it. Another minus. So far I was breaking even but still didn't have a way of getting off the tower with all my parts working.

A humorless smirk twisted Sergio's moustache. He was going to enjoy this. Orlando kept plopping the bat into a bare hand the size of an anvil. I took two steps backward until I was leaning against the railing. Floating below me were five-hundred-pound wallets with teeth.

I held my briefcase in front of me. "Where's Mrs. Corrigan? This is for her."

"Home finger-fucking herself," Sergio leered, taking a step toward me.

"Whoa there," I warned, holding the briefcase over the railing. "One more step and it's in the drink." Now that was some threat. After all, they wanted the tape to destroy it. That fact escaped Sergio, who kept inching toward me.

"Throw it over, you're gator bait, mamalon." He bunched his forehead into little wrinkles and dropped into the straddle-leg stance, feet wide apart facing front, knees slightly bent, hands on hips, an attack position.

My move, but what to do? If your life is circumscribed by the four walls of the courthouse, your conduct is regulated by a myriad of rules. You become, in a word, civilized. You are not accustomed to dealing with those whose only rules are their own. In the swamp there is no court of appeal, no petition for rehearing. You depend either on the mercy of the one wielding the biggest stick, or on your own wits and strength. Of course, if I had any brains, I'd have a gun, not a product liability video, stashed in the briefcase.

The briefcase.

"Take it," I offered, extending the thin case across my body. Sergio relaxed, reached for the handle, and I brought it around, a tight backhand swing with a full follow-through. Three hundred dollars of Schlesinger Brothers leather caught him flush on the nose. He yelped, and a torrent of red spurted over both of us.

Sergio fell back against the railing, stunned, blood streaming over his sleeveless muscle shirt, looking far worse than he probably was. I watched Orlando, waiting for his move. The big guy still blocked the ramp. A concrete pillar came through the center of the deck, supporting the slab above. If he rushed me, he would have to choose one side or the other. I would go around the pillar the other way and down the ramp. But he just stood there, not moving, holding his ground like a defensive end unwilling to be faked out on a misdirection play.

And here was Sergio, swiping at his nose, his eyes teary but just as mean. "Orlando. Fuck up his knees."

My knees were already fucked up. Two cartilage scrapings through the scope, one major-league scar thanks to a ligament tear.

Sergio leaned his head back, trying to stop the flow of blood. His voice was thick. "Fuck him up good, Orlando, then throw his ass to the gators."

Sometimes it is best to turn an apparent weakness into your strength. Here was Br'er Wolf threatening to throw me into the briar patch. I leaned over the railing, stretched high and let go with a hook shot, sliding the briefcase onto the deck above me. Then I hopped over the railing, took a breath, and dropped toward the malevolent swamp.

I don't know how long it takes to plummet sixty feet. Ask Newton or Galileo or one of those guys. But it's long enough to do a lot of thinking. If an alligator wants to have you for dinner, do you smack him in the snout? Or is that a shark? I thought of Susan Corrigan, the lovely tough-talking Susan Corrigan who cared for me and worried about me and now would be left without me. And then I felt the splash.

And went under.

Deep.

Never touched bottom, and a long way up.

Warm and mucky. Brown algae clung to my legs. Leaves stuck in my hair.

I was treading water, kicking off my wing tips, swiveling my head, picking up a thousand sounds, birds fluttering away, a splash on a far bank. Something bumped my leg and I jumped. Jumping is hard to do while treading water, but I popped up like a jack-in-the-box, then fell back against the branch that had impersonated an alligator.

I heard something. A hiss like the air brakes of a bus. Behind me, not six feet away, were two nostrils exhaling spray and two eyes exuding menace above a flat, broad snout. All that was visible. The flat eyes locked on mine. The hissing grew louder. He didn't like me in his territory. That made two of us.

I started doing the backstroke. Slow, smooth strokes with my head up so I could watch him. More like Esther Williams than Mark Spitz. When I was twenty yards away, I turned over, and did a wild Australian crawl until I got to the bank.

Shouts in Spanish, the sounds of leather on concrete clomping down the ramp.

The bank was muddy and I lost my balance, slipping back into the water, trying to remember to breathe again. As I reached for the stalk of a leather fern, a large, strong hand swallowed mine and dragged me out. Now what?

Wheezing, I looked up into the face of a huge black man who now had me by the arm.

"You the lawyer?" he asked.

"Why, you need one?"

"You must be. She said you make lousy jokes."

She. Another of the widow's henchmen.

Then I recognized him. Two hundred sixty-five pounds of coal jammed into blue jeans, narrow waist rising to shoulders the width of a two-car garage. Stand leeward of him, you'd stay dry in a hurricane. Unlike some football linemen, there was no trace of fat. Six thousand calories a day burned off on the practice field and the weight room. Huge, yet Tyrone Hambone Washington moved with the grace of a dancer. He could bull rush an offensive tackle onto his backside, or with that high arm motion, swim by him. Strength and speed.

The big man wiped his hands on his jeans. "The little lady sportswriter said you might need some help. So here I am. All her good pub got me AFC first team, so I owe her one."

"Susan? Susan Corrigan sent you!"

"She say, you play some defense out here, only you don't know whether they run or they pass. Hambone's good at reading defenses. You just watch."

Sergio was down the ramp first. He stood there with front leg bent, back leg straight, left arm extended with fist up, right arm curled alongside his jaw, a little slab of evil. His nose had stopped bleeding, but his muscle shirt was splattered with red.

Washington looked at him and said, "Shee-it, every little fucker in this town thinks he's Chuck-frigging-Norris. But you, shitface, you look like chuck meat to me."

"Negro hijo de puta-"

Washington's forehead seemed to drop over his eyes like a knight securing his visor before the joust. "Whadid the little Cube say?"

"Something uncomplimentary about your mother," I interpreted helpfully. "Don't think he wants you to marry his sister, either."

"Shee-it. His seester pull the train for every brother in Liberty City. She crazy about USDA government inspected, prime cut, Grade-A African beef."

Sergio had forgotten all about the videotape and about me. Now it was personal. Orlando watched from his perch on the ramp. He was good at watching.

"Singao, I keel you now," Sergio spat at Tyrone, "with my bare hands."

"Anytime, you Cuboid fag, body-building steroid-sucking cornholing midget. And stop pickin' your nose with your elbow, it won't bleed so much."

"Filthy Negro mamalon."

"You gotta choice, Jose. Either git the fuck outa here now, or I'll drop kick your ass back to Havana."

I wanted to tell Sergio not to get excited, that Tyrone Hambone Washington probably says worse things to offensive linemen every week. In some quarters, his banter would be considered good-natured locker room joshing. Apparently Sergio was not well versed in this form of humor. Though his mouth was closed, a guttural noise came gurgling up from deep within him, a garbage disposal trying to digest a kitchen fork.

Seconds ticked by. Behind us, I heard a gator slip back into the water. The sun had dropped beneath the horizon, and a faint orange glow provided our only light. In minutes, we would be enveloped by the blackness of the prehistoric slough.

Sergio tensed his arms, flexed his shoulders. Hambone Washington stood with feet spread, arms loosely at his sides. Finally, the eruption. With a banzai charge, Sergio launched himself into the air, a jumping side kick. As he did so, he yelled, "Tobi yoko-geri!" His right foot was five feet off the ground, aimed at Washington's Adam's apple. A chunky Baryshnikov sailing through the air.

Tyrone Hambone Washington was on the balls of his feet. At the last second, he stepped deftly to one side, a small step, and moved his head to the left, like the young Muhammad Ali dodging a punch. "Tofu Yoko Ono," he said.

Sergio flew by him with perfect form and landed in the muddy sawgrass. I didn't have time to watch the rest. As Sergio drew an eight-inch stiletto from the waistband of his pants, Orlando came at me with the baseball bat. I stood there, sopping wet and barefoot, watching the pinch hitter, and not possessed of any particularly bright ideas. When Orlando was thirty feet away, I stooped at the base of a coconut palm and grabbed a yellow coconut, still in its husk, big as a volleyball and lots harder.

I heaved the coconut at Orlando. He swung and caught a piece of it. Foul ball. Strike one.

He kept advancing, triceps flexing with each warm-up swing, belly jiggling. Unlike Sergio, he was expressionless. Cold, black eyes that were all business. The mud smacked under his leather boots as he advanced. I backed up slowly, letting him close a little of the distance. Twenty feet away I flung a high, hard one with another coconut. He ducked. High and away. Count even at one and one.

This time he stayed put and I had time to scoop up a smooth round one that St nicely in my hand. Made a motion as if to throw, held up, then came at him with a submarine pitch, an upward trajectory that caught him right in the shin. A satisfying crack, but he didn't drop the bat. He leaned on it like a crutch, and I came at him. Four giant steps, then, out of a crouch, shoulders square, legs driving, I made the tackle. Picture perfect. Head up, arms wrapping him, running through him, my shoulder catching the point of his chin. He went down and lost three yards.

I turned around in time to see Tyrone tossing Sergio's knife into the pond. I hadn't seen how Tyrone had disarmed him, but Sergio's right arm was hanging at an unusual angle. Then Tyrone scooped up the smaller man by the seat of his pants and dragged him across the path.

Sergio was moaning, but Tyrone was short on sympathy. "Shee-it, just a little shoulder separation. When it happens to me, they jam it back into place, tape me up, and I don't miss but one series."

Sergio did not seem to be NFL material. As he hobbled away, he turned to me and said weakly, "I owe you one, hombre."

"And I know you're good for it." I started up the ramp to retrieve my briefcase.

"Now git!" Tyrone ordered, and the two men took off, wobbling, limping, and cursing until they disappeared into the darkness.

Charlie Riggs was tending a fire and scalding peanut oil in an iron skillet when I pulled up at his fishing cabin just off Tamiami Trail a few miles east of Shark Valley. The old upholstery in the 442 was smeared with mud, and I made squishing sounds as I eased out and walked barefoot into the campsite.

"Jacob, where you been?" Charlie Riggs didn't sound alarmed. "Either I'm seeing things or you've got a water lily in your ear."

"Been up to my ass in alligators, Charlie."

"I do believe there's a story in this. You'll find a bucket, a towel, and some shorts on the porch. Then tell me."

I cleaned up and told him. As I did, Charlie fixed dinner. He bent over a slab of pine with a nail stuck through it. He jammed a Glades bullfrog onto the nail, piercing its belly, then made a quick incision with a knife, and with a pair of pliers, he pulled off the pants of the frog.

"You like frog legs?"

"Like eating them better than watching them prepared."

Charlie shrugged. "Thirty years in the ME's office, I don't get queasy about much."

He heated some fresh tomatoes in the skillet, poured milk over the frogs' legs, dragged them through seasoned flour, then sauteed the whole mess in a sauce fragrant with butter and garlic.

"Love that country cooking," I said.

"Country nothin'. This is cuisse de grenouilles provenqale."

We ate and I talked, Charlie listening silently. Finally I asked him what to do.

"I suggest we visit Susan at once," he said. "This has taken on a whole new dimension. Those two thugs might have killed you. They were certainly going to hurt you."

"What's this have to do with Susan?"

"They must know she gave you the tape. For whatever reason, they seem to place great importance on getting it. Frankly, I don't know why."

"That's easy, Charlie. First, it's embarrassing to the widow, prancing around with three men. Second, it contradicts her sworn deposition. She denied having an affair with Roger."

Charlie licked his fingers, sticky with garlic butter. "You may be right, but I get the feeling there's something more to the videotape than that. Regardless, the widow apparently will do anything to get it. Maybe harm anyone who's seen it. Shall we leave?"

We shall, I said. Not really believing Susan was in danger. But making a mental note to watch the videotape again, to look for something. Something Melanie Corrigan didn't want us to see, something other than her swiveling bottom.