Lost (18 page)

In the glory days more bullshit flowed through the Glade City Hunt Club than in all the saloons of Texas. The days when local fishing guides moonlighted on the wrong side of the law, jacking protected gators, piloting airboats full of forbidden marijuana bales, and then bragging on it to Donny Nyles, the
Hunt Club bartender, Buster’s little brother, and himself a coke-sniffing smuggler and dissembler of some note.

Buster and Donny are both dead now—cancer and self-administered gunshot respectively—but Roy still hates their rotting bones. Hates them for sneering at Pappy, then shining him on, setting him up. Wrecking his pathetic life because they could, and because it amused them. Roy’s is a prideful hatred, a blood hatred, the Whittle family having settled in these parts at about the same time as the Nyles clan, difference being the Whittles, barefoot and willfully ignorant—Pappy bragged he’d never dirtied his mind by reading a newspaper—the Whittles kept to their hidden whiskey stills and their secret gator holes and never ran for office, or secured employment with law enforcement agencies. Therefore never had the leverage to enrich themselves at the public trough, or avoid serving time because they controlled both the jails and the courts.

What Roy would really like to do is take out his uncircumcised member and urinate all over the precious lobby, add a little sheen to the hardwood floors. Instead he tucks in his shirt, straightens out his Caterpillar ball cap, and presents himself at the famous bar.

“Hey, um, Donny,” Roy says, addressing the barkeep by the name pinned to the lapel of his Tommy Bahama shirt.

“Good afternoon, sir.”

“Stick around?”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“Stick Davis. Supposed to meet him here.”

The barkeep eyes the otherwise empty bar, the message being, see for yourself, moron, nobody home.

“Gimme a Bud,” says Roy, taking a stool.

“Corona, Heineken, Harp, and Sapporo on tap,” he recites.

“Bottled beer listed on the board. No Budweiser today. No Budweiser tomorrow.”

“You ain’t from around here.”

The barkeep, a sly, surfer-blond dude about Roy’s age, volunteers that he’s from Orlando. Roy has never been to Orlando. Fact is he’s never been north of Bradenton, and then only once to visit his mother in the hospital.

“Orlando,” he says, rolling the word around on his tongue. “That’s Disney World, right?”

“Yes, sir. Disney World, Sea World, lots of worlds in Orlando.”

“And your name ain’t really Donny, am I right about that, too?”

The barkeep glances warily at his own name tag. “It’s like a tradition, I guess.”

“For Donny Nyles, yeah. This was his bar, back in the day.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah. You know what he did once, Donny Nyles? Got in a fight with some tourist, mighta been from Orlando, come to think, and he hits the guy with one of those little clubs they break ice with, and the guy is so drunk he’s knocked out cold. So Donny decides to wake him up by throwing him off the dock. Guy never woke up. He drowned. They stood there and watched him drown in his sleep. Pretty funny, huh?”

The barkeep shrugs. “If you say so.”

No more “sir,” Roy notes. Apparently the “sir” time is over. He wonders why he’s being ugly to a young man, a stranger that’s never done him any particular harm, and then he remembers why. He hates the Hunt Club and everybody in it including, at the moment, himself.

“Donny Nyles thought it was real amusing,” Roy goes on, unable to stop himself, the dangerous edge in his voice sharpening
like a gutting knife on a grindstone. “Must have told that story a hundred times, about how he drowned a guy trying to wake him up. Most folks, prob’ly they thought it was just a bar story, only it really happened. Donny, the guy whose name you got on that little green tag on your skinny little chest, he thought killing a loser was really funny, like a good fart joke or a rubber crutch.”

The fake Donny is eyeing the intercom, wondering if he’ll have to call in enforcements, when Stick Wilson enters the bar and raises his straw cowboy hat. “Roy the boy!”

“Hey, Stick.”

Stick must be about forty now, and looks it, still skinny everywhere but for his little vodka belly, straining the buttons of his safari shirt. Aviator glasses covering bloodshot eyes the color of a bleeding battle flag. When Roy was just a little tyke, Stick got temporarily famous for putting a DC-3 down on Alligator Alley after both engines flamed out. Deadstick, they called him, then Stick, and it stuck. Almost as legendary was how he persuaded a startled Florida State trooper that he’d been hijacked, dadgum it, Officer, and that the cargo of Jamaican marijuana now burning merrily within the wreckage was not connected to him in any way, shape or form.

What really impressed the good old boys in Glade City, who had financed the venture, was that Stick, barely twenty years of age, an outsider hailing from Mobile, Alabama, had the good sense to torch the aircraft, thereby eradicating not only the evidence but any possible connection to their august selves. What really impressed five-year-old Roy was that the famous pilot actually seemed to like Roy’s father, treating Pappy like an equal and wanting to know about cool and interesting things like running jars of whiskey to the Indians, and did bull gators really mate with their dead prey.

Near as Roy’s been able to determine in the intervening years, Stick wasn’t one of those involved in betraying the old man. One of the very few. Which is precisely why he’s decided to go out on a limb and trust Stick, despite his reputation as a major league juicehead and plane-wrecker, the old DC-3 being the first of many.

They take their drinks, a beer for Roy and two tall triple-vodka tonics for his guest, and retire to the far frontier of the veranda. Few couples having dinner, seated in high-back wicker chairs, around white-clothed tables overlooking the canal. Very civilized. Very Hunt Club, the sleepy afternoon, flooded with dappled sunlight version.

“Yawl still lookin’ out for your brother?” Stick wants to know.

“Dug? Yeah, I guess.”

“That’s a fine thang, takin’ care of family.”

Stick looks around the old club, never raising his shades, a faint smile twitching on his thin chapped lips.

“Same place, different people,” he drawls. “Less puke, too. Old days, somebody’d be whoopin’ over the rail by now, messin’ up their Top-Siders.”

“Yeah,” says Roy. “The good old days.”

Stick smiling with his teeth and drinking gulps of chilled vodka like ice water, waiting for young Roy Whittle to make his move, say his piece.

Roy puts down his empty glass.

“What if I was to help you put your hands on a pretty little thing worth a whole lot of money?” Roy asks, trying to see through the dark glasses, into those bloodshot eyes.

Stick sits up straighter in his high-back wicker chair, caressing his hard little belly. “Pretty little thang? What kind of pretty little thang?”

6. Get This Party Started

Back in civilization, the concrete, steel and palm tree variety, we’re scheduled to meet with a local FBI guy, who is supposed to bring us up to speed. I assume we’ll go to the office, like they do on the TV shows, all those nicely dressed, unfailingly polite agents focused on making us safe, on getting our children back. But Shane directs me to a drowsy shopping mall in a Miami neighborhood called Miramar, where Special Agent Sean Healy eventually finds us staking out a table at a Denny’s. It seems the field office is nearby, but since we’re not on board in an official capacity it’s better we don’t make ourselves known—the way Agent Healy puts it, we’re off the books. Plus he’s dying for a spicy buffalo chicken melt and a side of seasoned fries, and this, he says pointedly, won’t take long.

After the waitress takes his order he goes, “So. You’re Randall Shane, huh? Heard of you,” he adds, without any particular enthusiasm. “You took early retirement, whatever that is.” “Yup,” Shane says, nodding. “That I did.” “Obviously you’ve still got friends in high places.” “What makes you say that?” Shane asks, all innocent. Healy is a good-looking guy in his late-thirties, kind of a hunk, actually, if you think for instance that Josh Hartnett is a hunk. You know, rangy and slim and masculine but somehow boyish, with good bones and really nice hair and plump, kissable lips. Except Healy looks vaguely pissed off, and that makes him unattractive in a faintly disturbing way. Something to do with the fact that his default expression seems to be a sneer, and the sly way he’s clocking my boobs, it makes me form a negative impression of the man inside the body.
Nice to look at but definitely a don’t-touch, because the more you see the less you’ll like.

“What makes me say you got pull?” Healy responds, snorting. “Reality makes me say that. Reality is, we got more than two hundred agents actively working cases from here to Key West, and we never work a case without opening a file, not ever, and along comes this former agent, and suddenly we got six people, more you count support, six agents and who knows how many staff gathering information regarding a certain individual, even though no file as been opened and officially we’re not looking at the individual, if you know what I mean.”

Shane says, “I know what you mean.”

“That was a figure of speech. What they call a rhetorical question.”

“Uh-huh. Is this where I’m supposed to apologize for putting you out?” Shane asks, ever so sweetly.

“That would be nice,” says Healy, sipping a tall glass of ice water and eyeing the kitchen door, where his spicy chicken melty thing has yet to emerge.

“I’ll have to work on it,” Shane says. “Get my apology all spiffy. Until then, what can you tell us about Edwin Manning and any connections he may have, financial or otherwise, to this area?”

Healy glances at me. My actual face, not my chest. “Maybe I’d share with you, Mr. Former Agent, but I’m not sharing with a civilian. No way. Not without an official investigation, a file open, on the books.”

Shane has been sort of going along with Healy, feeding the banter, but that changes in an instant. There’s a sudden chill in the air and it’s not the AC at Denny’s. “Mrs. Garner is not a civilian,” he reminds Healy. “She’s the mother of a
missing child. She’s the reason I’m here. She’s the reason you’re here. Show some respect.”

Give Healy credit, he recognizes the change in Randall Shane’s attitude and right away he backs off. Probably pretty much the way a lion tamer backs off when the lion makes a certain kind of noise in its great big throat. Like, careful or I’ll get all snarly and have you for breakfast, and we don’t want that, do we?

Healy glances at me, nods. “Right, no disrespect intended. Just for the record, this violates every procedure but what the heck, this is between friends, right?”

“Absolutely,” says Shane.

“Totally,” I say.

“Okay then. Here goes.” Healy produces a small notebook, flips it open. “Item number one. Follow the money. We checked and there have been no recent large transfers of funds from any of Edwin Manning’s private accounts. At least not those we have been able to identify. Whether or not something has been fiddled on the other end, the business end, our forensic accountants can’t make that determination. Lots of money flows in and out of Merrill Manning Capital Fund. Many, many millions. Brokers and bankers buying and selling every day, it will take a while to sort that out, and as you know, former-agent Shane, private investment funds don’t have the same disclosure obligations as publicly traded funds. So, to sum it up, we’ve got nothing showing on the money front, but we can’t be certain nothing is happening.”

“It was a long shot. Thanks for trying.”

Healy flips a page. “Item two, Manning’s interests in South Florida. Substantial. Public record makes him the owner of a brand-new four-million-dollar condo on Brickell Avenue. That’s the financial district, not the beach, by the way. Penthouse
with a helo pad, although he doesn’t presently own or lease a helicopter. Also, Merrill Manning Capital Fund is the primary investor in the new Nakosha gaming and casino complex. Can’t be certain the exact dollar figure, but the accountants say the fund has, at minimum, a hundred mil directly invested, and another three hundred leveraged offshore.”

“Indian casino?”

“Native American,” he says, correcting Shane. “Other than gaming rooms at racetracks, all the freestanding casinos in Florida are owned and operated by Native Americans.”

“How come I’ve never heard of the Nakosha?”

Healy shrugs, his handsome eyes slightly hooded. “Because they didn’t get full tribal status until about ten years ago? Because compared to the Seminoles and the Miccosukee they’re a small tribe? I can’t speak to what you don’t know. But what you really do need to know—and take this to the bank—is that the Nakosha have official legal status as a sovereign, domestic dependent nation, and no, repeat, no treaty arrangements with federal enforcement agencies. None whatsoever.”

“You’re serious,” Shane says, looking concerned.

“Deadly,” says Healy. “And since you seem so keen on that bit of information, I might tell you we have enforcement arrangements in place with the Seminole and the Miccosukee, but not the Nakosha. Legally they’re obliged to enforce federal statutes, but as a practical matter the enforcement has been, shall we say, problematic. Bottom line, they run their own show. We do not step over that line—that is, we do not set foot in Indian country—absent a directive from the AG. Who is not, as far as I know, a personal pal of yours.”

“Never met him,” Shane admits.

“So you need to forget the casino connection, stay away from the tribe.”

“I’ll be sure to do that.”

“Do I detect sarcasm?” Healy says, flipping a page in his notebook. “Here’s the good part. My boss had me write it down and instructed me to read it to you, word for word. Ready? Is everybody attentive?”

“We’re listening,” says Shane.

Some guys, the calmer they get, the more you pay attention. Randall Shane is one of those guys. Healy knows it but he can’t help himself, he keeps pushing.

“Here we go.” The agent makes a show of clearing his throat, starts reading. “‘Agents of the FBI and the Justice Department, whether active or retired, have no independent authority on Nakosha tribal lands, and if they do violate Nakosha tribal lands or interfere in Nakosha tribal business, may be found in violation of federal statute and subject to arrest.’” Healy pauses, gives Shane a triumphant smile. “Would you like me to repeat that?”