"Eighty years old?" McIntyre said, not bothering to hide her skepticism.
"Yeah. The bones, teeth, skeletal remains. Hell, even the bullets themselves could still be there. And now we may have the treasure map."
I'd already written down the coordinates from the ledger. Billy could lay them out on a relief map of the Glades in the morning while I made a call to the Loop Road hotel and got a message to Nate Brown. If John William had borrowed the technology of the road surveyors and was meticulous with his markings, we had a chance.
"I also h-have to get this to our d-documents expert for a t-time analysis," Billy said. "Is that going to b-be a problem with your reverend Jefferson?"
"I don't think he even knows it exists," I said. "I doubt he ever even opened the crate. Maybe his father had, but it was like a Pandora's heirloom that they didn't want to destroy but didn't want to acknowledge, either. It was like they were waiting for someone to take it out of their hands."
The statement left us all quiet. Billy had long ago shed his jacket and tie but somehow still looked as sharp as a razor crease. McIntyre was barefooted again and in her concentration had dragged her fingers through her thick dark hair enough times that it left her looking rumpled.
"Tomorrow," Billy finally said, as his hand subtly went to McIntyre's neck and they rose together. He started to turn but stopped. The Winchester Takedown was still on his dining table. No one had even looked at it after we'd started concentrating on the book. Billy's aversion was not political or liberal; it was personal. His past was not without its own flashes of violence and what always comes with it.
"I'll take it down and lock it in my truck," I said quickly.
"OK, M-Max. T-Tomorrow we can put it in p-proper storage. And I'd l-like to get our f-friend Mr. Lott to take a l-look.
They retired to Billy's room. I closed up the crate and went and closed the patio doors. I then snagged two bottles of beer, picked up the crate and carried it down to my truck. I draped a rain jacket over it in the back behind the seats and took out my emergency sleeping bag, then locked up and walked out to the beach.
The wind had died some but the surf was still kicked up. The lights from the shorefront buildings caught the white foam of the breakers and illuminated them as they rolled and tumbled and eventually died on the sand. I walked up into the breeze. I could feel the moisture of the salt air on my arms and hands. When I found a swatch of dark beach where the building light was blocked by a partial dune, I sat in the sand and wrapped the sleeping bag around my legs and opened the first beer. I took a sip and stared out at the eastern horizon, thought of what John William may have left behind, and waited for the glow of sunrise.
The next day I showered and shaved upstairs while Billy made one of his gourmet breakfasts. The weak nor'easter had blown itself out overnight. The ocean had begun to flatten out and the partial cloud cover had been replaced by a hot clear sky that was difficult to look up into for too long without hurting one's eyes.
When I came back up well after seven, Billy and McIntyre were on the patio drinking coffee and absorbing sections of The Wall Street Journal. By the time I'd cleaned up, Diane had gone off to court.
"The girl's a workaholic," I said to Billy as I sat down with coffee in the patio chair she had abandoned. He was still in the kitchen, on the other side of the threshold.
"She's seriously considering a run for a judgeship in next year's elections. I think she's testing her stamina," he said, the physical barrier removing his stutter.
"She's tough enough, and sure as hell smart enough," I said.
"Yes," he said, coming out to place plates of hard scrambled eggs with scallions and diced red peppers and sides of homemade salsa on the table.
"So, is there a concern?" I said, reading the tone of his voice.
"It's an elected p-position. Which m-means it's political by nature."
"Yeah?"
"I'm n-not sure the South left in South Florida will accept a woman c-candidate who is carrying on a long-term, interracial relationship."
It was not an area that Billy brought into conversation often. He had been able to overwhelm any overt racism in his own life by the strength of his intelligence and ability to command a great respect for his services. His business sense and knowledge of the markets had also made him wealthy, and the economic world of dollars and cents was truly color-blind. He did not give a damn about racism directed toward him. If confronted, he turned his back on it; the loss wouldn't be his. But when it showed against others less powerful, he seethed because he knew it was not just about him.
"Don't tell me she's deciding between you and the judgeship," I said.
"N-No. She says fuck them," he answered, and the curse word sounded alien coming from his mouth.
"So what's the problem?"
He waited, squinting out into the sun and taking a long sip of hot coffee without wincing.
"I m-may ask her to m-marry me, Max."
CHAPTER
17
I followed Billy to his downtown office, where we locked John William's rifle away in a vault where he kept a variety of items for his clients cases. Billy alone knew the combination, and it kept his anxieties in check. The next day I would take it down to Lott's forensics lab and let the expert take a look.
We then went to work on printing out a topographical map of the Everglades corridor along the Tamiami Trail and a two-mile border on either side. The satellite imagery that was used to create the map was detailed enough to show the curve of Loop Road. It showed the Everglades National Park visitors' center at Big Bend and the Gulf Coast visitors' center just outside Everglades City. Without too much map-reading expertise, you could make out the larger groups of hardwood hammocks and cypress stands. When Billy used the longitude and latitude notations from John William's crudely sketched book, the corresponding points were stunning. The groups of X's he had recorded under a pen squib of trees came up in three groupings of existing trees found by the satellite. All were less than a mile as the crow flies south of the existing roadway. By simple choice of elimination, I focused on the spot with the three X's. If a father and two sons were buried there, the chance of finding some sign of them had been enhanced dramatically. But we were still talking about hundreds of square feet, and then only if the figures were exact.
While Billy checked more calculations, I used one of his office lines to call the Frontier Hotel.
"Bar, can I get cha?" said the woman's voice after eight rings.
"Josie. This is Max Freeman, the tall guy who was in the other day meeting with Nate Brown?"
"Yeah. I know who you are-always pullin' trouble behind you."
"Yeah, well, I need to get a message to Mr. Brown, and he said you'd be able to contact him."
There was silence on the other end.
"If he comes in, I'll contact him," she finally said.
Right, I thought. Maybe next month. But what was I going to do?
"OK, fair enough. If you contact him, can you give him this cell phone number and tell him to call me as soon as possible?" I read the number off to her, going slowly, pronouncing clearly, not knowing if she was even bothering to write it down.
"OK?" I said.
"OK. I got it. But I don't think Mr. Brown ever used a phone in his life. He usually finds folks when he wants to find them."
"Yeah, I know. But these were his instructions, to call you, Josie, OK?"
"He said me? By name?"
"That's right."
"OK, then. I'll get it to him," she said, and might have let some point of pride slip into her voice.
"Thanks very much, Josie. I owe you," I said, but hung up before she could ask me how much.
I went back to the map. Billy had marked off mileage amounts along the roadway, and distances from recreation turnouts to the X's.
"It's g-going to b-be very inaccurate," he said, maybe not knowing, since he had never been in the Glades himself, how obvious the statement was.