"One step away from each other, now!" I said, locking on to the big man's eyes. "No fucking way you win, fella. You're the first one to die." I could hear the anger in my own voice, and wondered briefly why I was letting it build.
Both of them were city men. Their clothes were too new. The boots were the type a hiker or a weekend woodsman would wear. The big man's complexion was newly burned from the sun, and his eyes had a hardness that said former cop, or former felon. I put the sight bead on his chest. When he stepped away from the other man, his hand was still empty.
"You ain't no police," said the other one, the driver. In just four words I could tag the country in his voice, and it was familiar. He cocked his head to the side, again like a retriever that didn't understand. "I know all the law round here an' you I ain't never seen," he said. His naivete might have made me chuckle under different circumstances, but I could sense the muscles in the other two tensing. Whatever they might have been thinking was again scrambled by a voice from the side.
"Shut the hell up, Billy Nash," said Brown, and now the heads of all three spun to the right. "You already in this deep, boy. Don't y'all keep diggin', jest listen to what the man tells you."
The young one's eyes went big, just like the kid on Dawkins's dock when he recognized Brown.
"Lord o' Goshen," he whispered. "Nate Brown? Gotdamn, that's Nate Brown," he said in an awe that had little effect on the two men beside him when he looked back to spread his recognition.
Nash looked back at the old Gladesman, bowed his head a bit and slowly turned it back and forth. I could see a grin come to the corners of his mouth.
"Damn, Nate Brown. I shoulda figured. I knew we was trackin' somebody special," Nash said, looking up again at Brown in admiration. "Ain't a man alive could move a outboard through the channels like that. It was too fast and too damn smooth. It was like we was going after a Glades otter or somethin'.
"Didn't I tell you boys," he said, again looking back. But the others were not listening. They had turned their silent attention back to me and the Glock and did not care to know about some old mud-covered fisherman. "When you two jumped to the skiff an' I seen you all the way over to here, I knew somebody was handlin' that thing like the olden days."
Then Nash seemed to realize that no one, not even Brown, was paying any attention to him. He also seemed to realize that he was suddenly on the wrong side of his world.
"An' they didn't tell me it was you, Mr. Brown. Honest. They never said a word that I was supposed to be trackin' a Gladesman. I didn't know, sir. I didn't."
"Shut up, Billy Nash," Brown answered.
Brown had not moved. There was a thick swatch of palm fronds obscuring him from the waist down and he carefully did not show his hands, keeping the other two men from determining whether he was armed or not. I also had not lowered the 9 mm.
"Tell me exactly what they did ask you to do for them," I said to Nash, who stepped away from his old partners and turned to face them. He looked once over at Brown before he spoke.
"They come out to the Rod and Gun askin' for a guide who knew the area. First said they was followin' some migratory bird, but I could tell they weren't no birders. Then when we got out of Chokoloskee this mornin', they kept secret, like checkin' some electronic thing in their bag. Tol' me it was a GPS but hell, I use one them my own self and I knew it was some kinda tracker. Then they got nervous when we found you'd ditched your boat, Mr. Brown, and after that they didn't want to lose sight of y'all.
"And I didn't. Y'all almost slipped me through the Marquez, but I caught ya," he said with a kid's overblown pride in his voice as he looked over shyly at Brown.
"How much they pay you, Billy?" I asked.
"Five hundred."
"And whose name is on the expense account, Jim?" I said turning back to the other two without focusing on either one, so my use of the overheard name would put them off guard.
"Fuck you, Freeman," said the big one. "You're just a hired P.I.- you know we don't give up the name of a client. Besides, nothing illegal has occurred out here unless you consider you pointing that piece at us is worth an aggravated assault charge that we could file against you."
"All right then, boys. What's the name of your licensed agency and I'll be glad to get a hold of you at a later date after I get my equipment scanned and figure out where you planted your directional tracker. You two were the ones watching me have dinner the other night in Fort Lauderdale, yes?"
The other one moved to his left, as if he was starting to sit down on the poisonwood trunk, and I snapped, "Hey!" and bobbled the tip of the gun to keep him on his feet. He was well out of his element. Beads of sweat had formed across his pate and the heat was flushing his face a dull red. But his eyes were as black and hard as marbles when he stared back at me from under the bill of his cap. He reached back and put his right hand on the tree trunk and then turned back to me.
"Hey, fuck you, Freeman. And that hot little cop you're hosing on the side." He was all New Jersey, the accent, the tough guy thing. But like a bad magician, the mouth was supposed to distract me. He made it look like he was sitting down, a motion that shielded his right hand, but I saw the crook in his elbow go high.
I'd like to say it was the disparagement of Richards that got me. I'd like to say I was thinking of Cyrus Mayes and his boys. I'd like to say I could control the bloom of violence that was spreading in my chest at the sound of another street asshole somehow tied to the death of good men. But I couldn't. It was just a guess.
I shot him in the right thigh. The 9 mm jumped slightly. I had been aiming for the knee. Both of the guy's hands went to his leg, like he could cover the new hole there and make it go away. The other one's hand went to his vest and I had the warm muzzle of the Glock in his face before he could get through the unfamiliar zipper.
"No, no, no, Jim," I said. "Bad move, considering that you now know I don't give a shit about your rules, or your standing with the Better Business Bureau, or your lives at this point." I'd used the name right, guessed which one it belonged to. I could see it in his eyes.
"Now, hands on your heads, boys, fingers laced together."
I heard Brown move in the brush beside me. The Nash kid had been frozen again by the second gunshot of the afternoon. The big man put his hands on his head and I went in close and took a.38 from a shoulder holster under his vest. Then I stepped behind him and patted him down, found a cell phone and put it in my pocket. Satisfied, I moved the other one. He'd laced his bloodied fingers together on top of his hat. He was breathing short, whistling breaths through his mouth and his jaw was clenched up with the pain. He'd stumbled back against the tree trunk when I shot him and was now leaning with his good haunch against it. I found the 9 mm Beretta I'd guessed he was reaching for still clipped to his belt in the small of his back.
"All right, let's start with names," I said, moving back in front them. Neither said anything.
"Jim?" I said, pointed the gun at his face again.
"Cummings," he said in a tone void of resignation.
"Jesus Jim, don't…," said the other one through his teeth.
"It's only money, Rick. It isn't worth it," Cummings said.
"Yeah? Since when isn't money worth it to you?"
I switched my aim to Rick's face.
"He's a smart man, Rick. I could shoot the two of you just like you would me and leave you to rot out here in the middle of nowhere and nobody would know-forever and ever," I said, not once considering the irony of what I was saying.
"Rick Derrer," Cummings said, and his partner scowled at him.
"Who hired you?"
Again silence, but this time it felt tighter.
"OK, then," I said to Brown. "Let's go."