Lost Man's River (70 page)

Taking cold bottles of beer, they sat on crab pots on the dock, looking out across the tidal river, where the sun falling to the Gulf out to the westward was firing the highest leaves on the mangrove wall. When darkness came, they went up onto the hotel porch, where Andy joined them for a stone crab supper. There was still no word from Rob or Dyer, and in the absence of word about his brother, the talk made Lucius unbearably restless. He said good night and went into the bar, which was almost empty.

Sally Brown lay drunk and half-reclined across a tiny table. She must have heard some rumor about Lucy Summerlin, for she was regaling the barman in her local dialect about “Ol' Colonel” and his “widder woman.”

“Now this here widder woman's friend run and told the widder, says, ‘Guess who I seen only this minute, down to the Jif-Quik Convenience Store! Your ol' schooldays sweetheart Mr. Lucius H. Watson, buyin hisself a six-pack of Ol' Fishhead Beer! He come a-slippin through the vestee-bule as I was leavin!' So that ol' widder jumps into her finery and runs down to the Jif-Quik for a look! Sure enough, there's good ol' Colonel, homin right in on the chunky peanut butter plus the high-grade cat food that's one hundred percent certified safe to eat by senior citizens!

“Well, that smart widder props her hair up, dabs her lips, and comes sailin right on down the aisle, big bosom first, she plows smack into him. Pops her big eyes open wide and hollers, ‘Oh my goodness!' like this Mr. Lucius Watson were some kind of a visitation that the Merciful Lord sent down to that convenience store. She went all soft, fell up against him bosom first, till he had to grab her to keep her from swoonin dead away and bringin down a few
racks of comestibles right along with her. When she come to in his manly arms, she batted her eyes like just the cutest l'il girl and sighed and thanked him ever so sweet for savin her pore life, and when she recovered, which she done real quick, she struck up some of that snappy conversation she is knowed for. Well, poor ol' Mr. Lucius Watson—who might not of talked to nothin but stray dogs for a month of Sundays—poor ol' Lucius never knew what hit him. Next thing he knew, she had him wrapped up like a ham, ready to take home and eat for dinner!”

Hearing Lucius laugh, Sally whirled and glared, embarrassed but too dazed to be apologetic. As he came forward, she sat up straight and crossed her legs and produced a sort of smile but did not ask him to sit down and have a drink with her. “Don't tell Whidden, for Christ's sake,” she said. She lit a cigarette, her crossed leg twitching like the stiff tail of a cat, eyes looking past him toward the door. “You see Mr. House out on the porch? He's waiting for you.” Then Crockett Junior filled the doorway, and she closed her eyes and groaned and said, “Oh boy.” She blew her cigarette smoke from her mouth, watched it disperse.

On his way out, Lucius told Crockett that if Rob Watson failed to show up by tomorrow, he would call the Sheriff and report a kidnapping. “Call him, then,” said the one-armed man and shouldered him aside. He crossed the room and yanked out the other chair at Sally's table, shouting roughly at Lucius that somebody was expecting him at the front door.

The black car had its motor running, and the passenger door swung open when Lucius appeared. They drove in silence down along the riverfront, under the moon. Where the tidal river widened near its mouth, Dyer swerved and stopped with a hard yank, so close to the bulkhead that the large eagle ornament on the front of the car hood stuck out over the water. He did not turn the motor off and he left the car in gear, foot on the clutch. Fists clamped on the top rim of the steering wheel, he confronted the wide portal in the mangroves where the river opened out onto the Bay.

Beyond the portal, a moon-spun silver tide hurried west between pale spoil banks of the channel to Indian Key Pass and the barrier islands on the Gulf horizon. He's looking right at everything and he sees nothing, Lucius thought. This strange brother of his, staring right at it, had never seen that brilliant tide in all his life. And he had to wonder if their father had seen it, either.

“I guess you know that crazy old man tried to shoot me,” Dyer said at last.

“Shoot out your car tires, you mean? How can you be certain it was Rob when so many others seem to have it in for you?”

“Brother Lucius,” Dyer pronounced slowly, still facing straight ahead. In the glare of the old streetlamps, his face was a fungus white. “Brother Lucius knows about my tires. Brother Lucius knows all about that shooting.” Dyer turned to look at him. “You knew Robert Watson was armed and dangerous. You didn't warn me.”

“Old and harmless, you mean.”

“Aiding and abetting in a double murder? No jury in this state is going to call that ‘harmless'!”

So Dyer had seen that packet in Rob's satchel, or had heard about it, probably from Crockett Junior. Lucius said carefully, “Even if Rob happened to be present, whatever occurred took place more than fifty years ago, and nobody can show what preceded it—what caused it.”

“You know what I'm referring to, I see. And probably you also know that there's no statute of limitations on first-degree murder.”

“Nobody was ever charged with murder. That case was never on the books. No hearing, no indictment, and no evidence.”

“You've read the written statement? The confession?”

“Yes,” he lied, feeling all twisted. Perhaps he did not
want
to read Rob's statement (though it had his name on it). Why read the thing? He saw no point in it. Even if Rob had his facts straight about the Tucker case, it might only mean that Papa had lost his senses on that one occasion—temporary insanity or something. One could scarcely dismiss his whole career on the basis of one aberrant episode!

Dyer's bloodless hands clenched the top rim of the steering wheel, as if, at any moment, he might release the clutch and let the car lurch off the bulkhead into the channel. He was relating in his courtroom tone that the police had found a cartridge casing “consistent with” the slugs taken from Dyer's tires. That evidence cast strong suspicion on Robert Watson, but probably insufficient to convict, without the weapon. “There's other evidence, of course. The suspect's brother Lucius had pointed the finger at Robert Watson at a public meeting in Naples before a hundred witnesses. It's on the record. However,” Dyer added coolly, turning to Lucius, “we might not use your … testimony? … unless we had to, since drawing attention to the Tucker case could be counterproductive in our effort to rehabilitate your father.”

“Our father, you mean.”

“There you go again.” Watt Dyer's eyes closed in his slow tortoise blink. Otherwise his face showed no expression, only that queer shivering of skin above his lip. Slowly he looked back along the riverfront toward the hotel, then gazed fixedly again at the night river. There was no one in the street, and only Crockett Junior, Lucius realized with a start, knew where he'd
gone. But for the moment, Lucius was much more concerned about the purring motor, still in gear—he shifted a little in his seat, opened his door a little.

Dyer noted this. He said, “At any rate, we now have the revolver. If Robert Watson is turned over to the law, he returns to prison automatically as an escaped felon. If I turn the weapon over to the police, the ballistics tests will show that Robert Watson was guilty of attempted murder. He will be sentenced with due consideration of his prior record and will finish out his life in federal prison.”

He drew a power-of-attorney form out of his briefcase. “On the other hand, if you people cooperate, the gun will be returned. That eliminates the ballistics evidence, without which there can be no case, even if I press charges, which I won't.”

“And the so-called confession?”

“You can have that, too.”

“How can I be certain you will keep your word? What if I refused to sign until this so-called evidence was returned?”

“In that case, you will certainly delay—and jeopardize—the Watson Claim. Meanwhile you will endanger your brother and ensure my ill will, which as your attorney I do not recommend.” Dyer almost smiled. “You might as well cooperate, since you have no choice.”

“And if I do sign, then you will release him?”

“I haven't got him. But if the men who have him know you are cooperating—”

Lucius took the form, scribbled a signature, and sat back, strangely out of breath.

Dyer snapped on the car light and put the document into his briefcase. He withdrew a clipping and read aloud from a newspaper feature about “Emperor Watson's” frontier house on a “lost” Indian mound in a remote region of the Park where “most authorities agreed” that the legendary Fountain of Youth had been located, where Ponce de León had been slain by the Calusa, where the giant Chief Chekaika (who massacred the whites at Indian Key back in 1842 and was later caught and hanged on a Glades hammock by the noted Indian fighter General William Harney) had made his hideout—“This is all nonsense!” Lucius protested—and where the pioneer planter E. J. Watson had first developed the fine strain of Cuban sugarcane that seeded the vast agricultural empire at Okeechobee which helped put the sovereign state of Florida where it was today.

Dyer thrust the clipping at him and he scanned it quickly. Quoted throughout was the well-known Miami attorney Watson Dyer, who had lately obtained a temporary injunction against the proposed burning of the
house, citing the unextinguished land claim of the Watson heirs. According to the article, the Park was contesting the injunction on the grounds that any land claim E. J. Watson might have made was no longer valid, and that the historic traditions being ascribed to this site were “unproven or demonstrably untrue.” Nevertheless, attorney Dyer had expressed full confidence in the claim, which was supported by an
amici curiae
motion from several esteemed colleagues of the presiding judge. Leading businessmen and political figures in the state had interested themselves in the case and stood ready to endorse the Watson claim, attorney Dyer asserted.

Unless the taxpayers protested the senseless burning of the Watson Place, the article concluded, what Mr. Dyer termed “the only tourist attraction in the whole Park” would be destroyed by the same technocratic lack of vision that was already obliterating the wildlife of the Everglades and the world-famous marine fisheries in surrounding waters. In that event, the journalist suggested, it was time to recommend that this tragically degraded region should be taken away from a remote and foolish federal bureaucracy and restored to the people of Florida before its utter destruction was complete.

“How's that?” Dyer grinned with satisfaction. Nevertheless, he had wanted to make sure that the Watson Claim was unassailable, that it would be sustained by the court in perpetuity. A preexisting building helped the claim, he said, because without the house, there was no historic monument. Since any man-made structure within Park boundaries could never be repaired or replaced, and because Park land could not be used for private purposes, the loss of the house might weaken the whole claim by making it appear frivolous, in fact pointless.

“With your endorsement of the claim”—he tapped his briefcase—“we should win an indefinite extension of the court injunction against burning. Meanwhile, your biography will establish Watson's prominence in our state history and provide good cause to make the house a monument. With public opinion in our favor, it becomes unlikely that the Park will continue to contest our claim. We'll have these family affidavits, we'll have your petitions from the local families, and we'll have favorable publicity from the newspapers which will save face for our farsighted Park officials by giving them all the credit. I'm even arranging the requisition of a new military helicopter to junket them across the Glades in a few days for our official meeting at the Bend!”

Dyer put his clipping away, and still they sat there on the moonlit river with the car still running. Beside himself, Lucius burst out, “Goddammit, what about Rob? How can I be certain they'll release him?”