"Hal, they'll be wasting their time. I don't own a typewriter."
"Just the same, try to cooperate."
"But, Hal—"
"You may go now," said Harold Keefe, in his best high-school principal's voice, "and try to stay out of trouble until this is over. Don't talk to any more reporters ... or private eyes, for that matter."
Garcia leaned over and loudly planted his knuckles on the desk. "Hal," he said, "you're too dumb to see it, but this whole thing's gonna blow up in your fat Irish face."
Brian Keyes drove west at a furious speed, slowing at every intersection, scouting each tacky shopping plaza. Finally he spotted a peeling sign that said "Canoe Rentals" and screeched off the highway.
The name of the place was Mel's Bait and Tackle, and Mel himself was very busy dipping live shiners from the bait well. He told Keyes to take a seat near the soda machine and he'd get around to him in a little bit. Keyes politely mentioned that he was in a slight hurry, but he might as well have told it to the stuffed buck on the wall.
After fifteen minutes or so, Mel finally turned around, bolstered his dip net, and asked Keyes what exactly he could do for him.
"I'd like to rent a canoe."
"I'll need a deposit," said Mel, eyeing him. "And I'll need to know how'n hail you gonna get that canoe on toppa yore car."
Mel had a point. The canoe was four feet longer than the MG.
"I'll need to borrow some rope."
"No sir, you'll be need'n to buysome."
"I see," Keyes said. "And the boat racks?"
"Those I'll rent ya."
By the time the negotiations ended, Keyes was out thirty-seven dollars and his American Express card, which Mel confiscated as a security deposit.
Keyes made a courageous solo attempt to tie the aluminum canoe on the MG, but the boat flopped off the roof and landed with a crash on the macadam. The noise brought Mel shuffling out of the tackle shop, cursing heatedly. He was an older fellow—late fifties, paunchy, tired-looking—but he proved to be one strong son of a bitch when it came to canoes. He told Keyes to go sit inside and read some magazines, and in five minutes the job was neatly done.
"Lemme ask you sumpthin', if you don't mind," Mel said. "I don't see no fishing rods and I don't see no shotguns and I don't see no bow and arrow. So just where'n hail you goin' with this canoe, and what you gonna do when you get there?"
Keyes plucked the binocular case from the car and held it up for Mel to see. "I'm a birdwatcher," he said brightly.
Mel nodded, but he looked skeptical. "Well," he said after a pause, "good luck with your snipes or woodpeckers or whatever the hail yore after. But don't put no more scratches on my damn boat!"
The canoe was lashed so tightly to the MG that the ropes sang on the highway. Back on the dike, Keyes had a hell of a time unraveling Mel's knots. Finally he was able to drag the canoe off the MG and slide it down the bank into the water. He climbed in tentatively, the oar tucked under one arm. He lowered himself to his knees and gingerly rocked the canoe, testing its stability. It seemed steady.
Keyes centered himself and began to paddle down the dike canal toward Wiley's cabin.
It was an adventurous feeling, gliding so low and alone through the Everglades. Keyes was swept away by the lushness of the scenery, a welcome distraction from his anxiety. He was no great outdoorsman but his discomfort was born of unfamiliarity, not fear. Keyes had been raised in the relentlessly civilized environs of Washington, D.C., and the only wild animals he'd ever confronted were the brazen gray squirrels of Rock Creek Park. Except for one miserable summer at a snotty boys' camp in northern Virginia, Keyes had spent almost no time out of the city. Since moving to Florida he'd heard the hoary tales of panthers, poisonous snakes, and killer alligators, and though he dismissed most of it as cracker mythology, Keyes did not savor the idea of a chance encounter. Wiley, if indeed he was out here, would be beast enough.
Keyes found a steady rhythm for the oar, and his confidence grew with each stroke. Even against the wind he made good time down the canal. By now it was an hour past noon and the gray clouds had dissipated; the sun quickly burned off the last of the morning's chill. The wetlands stirred under the heat. The cicadas and grasshoppers brassily came to life in the sawgrass, and once an old mossback terrapin clambered off the dike like a rolling helmet, plopping into the water three feet from the canoe. High overhead Keyes spotted a line of turkey vultures gliding in the thermals, scouting for carrion.
Somehow the dike sealed the Glades from the clamor of suburban Broward County; though Keyes was only a solid four-iron away from civilization, he could neither see it nor hear it. He felt himself distant, and growing tranquil.
After more than an hour he located the cabin. Keyes paddled faster, the bow of the canoe swishing through the ragged grass and pickerel weed. At fifty yards he slowed and let the canoe glide while he raised the binoculars one last time.
The western boots still lay beneath the outhouse, and the cabin still looked empty.
Brian Keyes didn't notice that the snowy egrets had flown away.
As he tied up to a rotted piling, a green chameleon scampered off the porch to munch a palmetto bug in the shadows. Keyes climbed lightly from the canoe, but the planks still shuddered under his weight. He took each step as if walking on ice, thinking: There's no way Skip Wiley could be hiding here, not the way he bangs around.
Keyes tested the padlock with a hard yank, and the rusty hasp gave way with a snap. He opened the cabin door with the toe of his sneaker and peered inside.
It looked like a dungeon for Boy Scouts.
Spiderwebs streeled from the ceiling, and a crisp snakeskin fluttered from the pine beam where it had long ago been shed. A shaky card table, once used for dining, buckled under unopened tins of Spam and sausage, the labels faded and curled. In the rear of the cabin was a bunk bed with two plastic air mattresses, each flattened and stained by mildew. In a corner two sleeping bags were rolled up tight, flecked with papery dead moths. A stack of heat-puckered magazines lay nearby; the most recent was a Playboyfrom December 1978.
In the kitchen area he found a sixty-gallon Igloo cooler; inside was a six-pack of flat Budweisers and three plastic jugs of drinking water. Keyes was about to open one of the jugs when he noticed a sediment of dubious origin suspended near the bottom. The water, he decided without tasting, had also been there a very long time.
The cabin was no larger than fifteen by thirty feet, but Keyes found plenty of crannies to explore. He was actually enjoying himself, poking through drawers and dusty cupboards, looking for signs of Wiley. He felt a little like an archaeologist over a new dig.
What finally persuaded him to retreat was the killer leaf.
Keyes had been using a whippy length of cane to clear out the spider nests, and he flicked it casually at a wrinkled gray-veined leaf beneath the card table. Suddenly the leaf sprang off the floor and, teeth bared, whistled past Keyes's ear. He stumbled out the door, shouting and brandishing the cane stick impotently. The angry bat followed him, diving in tight arcs, breaking off the attack only when hit by sunlight.
Keyes was not sure where the creature went, but he warily scanned the stratosphere from a protective crouch. He decided the bat was welcome to the solitude of the cabin; he'd wait outside for Skip Wiley or whoever owned those cowboy boots.
The afternoon passed slowly through the binoculars. Keyes didn't lay eyes on another human being, and he found himself living up to his lie, watching the birds of the Everglades: cormorants, ospreys, grackles, red-shouldered hawks, even a pair of roseate spoonbills. Finding the birds was an amusing challenge but, once spotted, they did not exactly put on a breathtaking show. The fact was, most of the birds seemed to be watching him.
Keyes finally was forced to avail himself of the outhouse—an act of sheer courage—and he stopped on the way out to study the mysterious cowboy boots. They were Tony Lamas, size eleven, with no name inside. Keyes was careful not to move them.