The President's Shadow (26 page)

T
he pilot lets us sleep until almost 8 a.m. The problem is, this is Key West.

“They look closed,” Mina says, cradling her winter coat like a football and already sweating in the Florida sun. As she plows through the parking lot, her ponytail’s back in place, and she’s not slowing down. Neither am I.

Our destination is directly across the street from the Key West airport: a small white modular office that looks more like a snazzed-up mobile home, complete with a canopy awning, a beat-up porch…and a
Closed
sign in the window.

Of course it’s closed. Nothing in the Keys opens before nine. Or ten thirty, according to the sign.

“We should’ve waited in our jet,” she says.

I shoot her a look. “I liked the jet too.”

She grins at that, a blooming, generous grin that completely undoes me.

“Good morning, good morning,” a man’s voice calls out nearly an hour later as we wait on the bench outside the office. On our left, a
n
absurdly tanned middle-aged guy wearing an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt comes rolling on his rusted bicycle through the parking lot. His scraggly gray hair blows behind him, and he’s missing his canine tooth on the left side. “What gloriousness can I bring you today?” he asks.

He goes sidesaddle on the bike, standing on one pedal as he coasts toward the freestanding sign out front:
Key West Seaplane Escapes
.

Devil’s Island is surrounded by water. There’s no runway. The only path in or out is a four-hour boat ride…or the one seaplane company with clearance to fly.

“Please tell me you work here,” Mina says.

“I certainly don’t clean the place,” he says with a pirate’s laugh, pulling a keychain from his pocket. As he opens the front door, a welcome chime plays the song “Kokomo” by the Beach Boys. “Where can we take you to today?”

“Devil’s Island,” I say.

He nods, unsurprised. “They call it the Dry Tortugas now. Better for business,” he explains as he leads us inside and steps behind a white chest-high counter. On every wall are posters with aerial views of Key West and nearby islands. “Problem is, the island—Fort Jefferson—the Park Service closed it since the last hurricane. Structural damage to the bricks—and with budget cuts, this isn’t exactly a priority for federal spending. No planes—or tourists—in or out.”

“We saw. Online,” I say, sliding my backpack off my shoulder. Mac gave me three things for the trip. Here’s the second
. Unzippin
g
the pack, I pull out two stacks of unmarked cash and drop them on the counter. “I have a reservation.”

C
lementine drove them the rest of the way. They arrived in Miami early. From the Amtrak station, Key West was only a few hours.

She had taken this trip before, a decade ago, when she was in her early twenties, during those hard years in Atlanta. At three in the morning, a bad boyfriend with an even worse band drunkenly declared that they should drive straight to the Keys—that if they made good enough time, they’d be there to watch the next day’s sunset.

Clementine had driven then too, windows rolled down, air blowing through her hair, and a blasting Sonic Youth album that preached all the life lessons that seem so unarguable when you’re twenty-two. Back then, Clementin
e
and her boyfriend held hands—held them hard—all the way down the two-lane stretch of U.S. 1. At each bridge—and there were dozens of them—they held them even harder, rolling over the crystal blue water that winked at them as they passed.

Today, with the skinny white cat still in her lap and Marshall in the passenger seat, she knew better than to reach for Marshall’s hand. From the moment they got in the car, he’d barely said a word. At first, sh
e
thought it was leftover awkwardness from the train ride. But the way he was nursing his arm, and his mouth was sagging open… He wasn’t sweating—he didn’t have any beard holes or sweat glands on the sides of his face; they were all burned away—but his coloring was all wrong.

“I’m fine,” he said, before she could ask.

In her lap, the white cat jerked suddenly, his tail wrapping around Clementine’s free wrist. Her old cat used to do tail hugs too, whenever he was anxious or fussy.

“Can you open your window some more?” Marshall added.

“Mouse won’t like it.”

“Mouse?”

“The cat. I gave it a name. It likes cheese,” she explained. “Plus, if I open the window, my wig’ll blow off.”

He went quiet at that, turning away, but blinking too many times. He was definitely in pain.

“Marshall, we need to get you to a—”

“I don’t need a doctor. The wound is fine. It’s clean. Ezra put something on the bullet.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“On the musket ball. Back during the Civil War, Confederate soldiers used to coat their musket balls with poison, then cover them in wax to seal it. So even on a grazing shot, it’d still do damage. Ezra’s rebuilding the Knights. He’s using old Knight tricks.”

“Then we should definitely get you to a—”

“I’m fine,” Marshall warned, his voice rising. “If it was bad, I wouldn’t be able to stand. Whatever was on that musket ball, it just needs to work its way out of my system.”

Clementine wanted to argue, but in the back corner of her mouth, her tongue felt the rough edges of yet another loose tooth, one of her last original ones. She’d been bleeding for a while now, since before they left the train. For the past few miles, the salty metallic taste of her own blood had been coming faster than ever. She knew what it meant.

Gripping the steering wheel and feeling the cat’s tail wind tighter around her wrist, Clementine eyed the ugly little bridge ahead of her: a gray and uninspired slab of concrete framed by telephone poles whose wires formed parallel smiles that ran along both sides and stretched the length of the bridge. Usuall
y
, she liked bridges. She’d kissed Beecher on a bridge once. So today, sh
e
tried to focus on the beauty of the bridge, to focus on the winking waves on either side of her, even to focus on the fact that she’d soon be seeing her father.

But as the wheels of the car
daduuunk-duunnk-duunnk
ed across the bridge’s concrete seams, it was clear that, even in the morning sun, the waves were no longer winking. They probably never had winked, even a decade ago. Indeed, as Clementine’s car cleared the bridge and rolled past the bright blue, yellow, and orange sign that read
Welcome to Key West
—
Paradise USA
, the only thing she could really focus on was the gnawing, unarguable feeling that her return to Key West would be a one-way trip.

Unbelievably, she realized, she was actually okay with it. Since the moment she was diagnosed, her deepest fear had been of suffering alone. This was the least alone she had felt in a long time.

“Make a left up here,” Marshall said, pointing to a small sign just past the sandal outlet store in front of them. “The seaplane place should be dead ahead.”

S
o just the two of you?” our Hawaiian-shirted friend asks.

“Just us,” I say, staring out the front window of the seaplane company, checking the empty parking lot and the private runway in the distance. I put down even more money so he wouldn’t issue actual tickets. The other half is payable when he flies us home. Anything to keep our names from searchable systems.

“Relax. No one’s coming,” Mina whispers. She puts a hand on my shoulder. It doesn’t help.

“How long did you say until the pilot gets here?” I ask.

“About twenty minutes ago,” Hawaiian Shirt teases. Mina and I both turn around. He flashes his gap-toothed grin. “Whattya think this is, Pan Am? It’s Key West; have a drink. Jamie McDonnell IV—gate agent, flight attendant…
and pilot
—at your service.”

I swear to God, he’s unbuttoned another button on his shirt.

“By the by,” Pilot Jamie adds, “you’re going to an island, so there’s no drinking water out there. If you want, head into our shed out back and grab one of the coolers and some waters. Only a dollar apiece.”

I shoot him a look.

“Fine. Soda and water are free,” he says, tossing me the key. “I gotta charge for alcohol, though. It’s expensive.”

As Jamie finishes whatever he’s doing at the computer, Mina and I head around back, to a prefab vinyl shed that looks like a mini
red barn.

“You think he’ll keep quiet?” I ask.

“You gave him three thousand dollars. The man’s not wearing shoes,” Mina points out. “He’s not saying anything.”

Taking a final look around, I undo the padlock and tug open the shed door.

“Smells like raccoon turds,” Mina says as I nod. Inside, ther
e
are two refrigerators on my left and a few mini-coolers on our right. “I’ll grab the water; you grab the coolers,” she adds.

Following her inside, I take yet another look over my shoulder. If I’m right, I know what’s waiting for me on that island, and it’s not just a file. The last thing I need is having it take a shot at her.

“Mina, I’ve been thinking…”

“I knew this was coming. This is where you tell me you’re worried about my safety.”

“That’s not what I was gonna say.”

“Okay, then what
were
you going to say?”

I stand there, watching her scoop armfuls of bottled water out of the refrigerator. “I want to spend even more time with you, Mina. I want to sit down, and have a nice meal, and take the time to see what an amazing woman you are. You know it’s not safe on that island. If I bring you with me—”

“Let me be ultra clear: The only way you’re keeping me off that island is if you lock me in this shed.”

“I thought about it.”

“You did, didn’t you?”

I don’t answer. She dumps the bottles of water in a faded blue cooler.

“So what stopped you?” she asks. “There’s a padlock on the shed. Why not lock me in?”

“Because if I did, I’d be a dick.”

“And why else?”

“Pardon?”

“This is your father we’re talking about. How he died. Everything you’ve chased for. If it brought you answers and you had to be a dick, you’d be a dick. So. Did we have fun joyriding last night? Yes. Is that the reason? No. Time to be honest with yourself. Why am I still here?”

I stare up at her. “For the same reason you got on the plane,” I tell her.

Grabbing the cooler under one arm and her hand in the other, I pull her into a run back to the main office.

“You won’t regret this,” she promises as the shed door slams behind us with a burst.

A
lby had traded a week’s worth of latrine cleanup. It was worth it.

“Just keep an eye out,” Timothy said at the far end of the corridor, flashlight clamped by his armpit.

Alby nodded, wiping his forehead. He was sweating hard—more than usual—even though the night wasn’t a terrible one. He wasn’t stupid. Every week, D
r
. Moorcraft gave the Plankholders new shots and new medicine.

Rechecking the dark hallway, Alby shooed away a mosquito that wasn’t even there. It was well past two in the morning; most of the Plankholders were exhausted and asleep.

Timothy was down on one knee, jabbing an unbent paper clip into the lock on the wooden door. Alby had learned of Timothy’s skills during their first week on the island, when he caught Timothy using a similar technique to swipe a box of peanut M&M’s from the cafeteria’s locked food closet.

“And as the great Houdini used to say…
I just opened the stupid thing
,” Timothy announced, twisting the knob and shoving the door open.

“Don’t forget—you promised you’d keep lookout,” Alby said as Timothy got up to leave.

“You’re joking, right?”

“This concerns you too. You should—”

“Alby, whatever you’re about to say, I don’t care. You know I don’t like you. And I don’t want to help you. But I don’t like cleaning diarrhea even more.”

The pain in Alby’s neck knotted tighter than ever. He wanted to hit Timothy…wanted to jam his thumbs in his Adam’s apple and press down as hard as he could. Instead, Alb
y
stood there. “Five minutes,” he pleaded. “Just give me that.”

“Five. That’s it,” Timothy warned, rolling his eyes.

“If someone comes, knock.” Grabbing the flashlight, Alby darted into the narrow brick room, which smelled like an old bookstore. Wasn’t hard to see why. The back wall was covered with new metal shelves that were stacked with textbooks, all of them medicine-related:
Cobb’s Anatomy
.
Developmental Biology
.
Abnormal Psychology
.
Criminal Psychology
.
The Science of Human Behavior
.

Another wall had metal lockers that were filled with old faded boxes marked
Survival Supplies Furnished by Office of Civil Defense
. Nuclear war leftovers from the late sixties. But all Alby was focused on was the brick wall on his right, which held a military-issue metal desk that sat between two gray file cabinets.

Dr. Moorcraft’s private office. Racing for the top drawer, Alby yanked it open as the flashlight sprayed shadows across the room.

To Alby’s surprise, th
e
first…second…all three drawers were empty. Tucking the flashlight under his opposite arm, he ran to the other cabinet. Jackpot. A long row of hanging files swayed forward and back, each one marked with a typewritten label. He immediately started fingerwalking through them:

Bendis, Brian
…
DeConnick, Matthew
…the file for Julian Marlin was missing, but the others were there:
Hadrian, Nicholas
…
Lusk, Timothy
…and at the very back:
White, Albert
.

Alby reached for his file, but before he could grab it, he spotted another file folder just behind it.
Flight 808
, the label read.

808
? That was Alby’s flight, the flight that had crashed.
Why would they
—
?

Without even thinking, Alb
y
plucked the file, flipping it open and spreading it on the nearby desk. Inside were copies of airline tickets. Dozens of them, an inch thick, bound by a binder clip. All Flight 808.

Just behind that were fifty or so separate sheets of paper, each with names, addresses, and personal details, along with a square passport photo stapled in the corner. Alby flipped through the photos. He didn’t recognize anyone, not until—

Her.
He knew her. The woman with the pointy face and equally pointy breasts. She was the gate agent who’d given them the upgrade. According to the file, her name was Rachel Dagen. From Holland, Michigan. Alby flipped through the next few pages.

He saw the elderly woman who’d sat diagonally behind them. And the elderly man. The woman was from Chicago. The man from Manalapan, New Jersey. Under
Marital Status
, both were listed as
Single
.

A bead of sweat hit free fall as it left Alby’s nose and splattered, slowly sinking into the page. The knot tightened in the back of his neck. It didn’t make sense. Alby closed his eyes, still picturing the crash of the plane…the elderly woman clutching her husband’s shoulders. She had ice blue eyes and bone-colored skin. No question, they were wearing wedding bands.

More confused than ever, Alby scanned the top of the page. It was the same on all of them: three words in a delicate, swirly cursive:

Alby pointed the flashlight closer, just to make sure he was reading it right.
Talent agency? Why would the army need actors?