Lost Man's River(257)

Having heard the report of the abduction from the Naples church hall and the various disreputable adventures since, Speck contemplated his irascible old friend, shaking his head. “Public Enemy Number One!” he said. “Ol’ Chicken-Wing!”

“The same,” Rob Watson said. He accepted a jam jar of Speck’s moonshine and raised his glass to the man under the eaves—“To my long-lost baby brother Ad Burdett, a painting fool out of north Florida!”

While his crew ran another cargo up the river, Speck poured himself more shine, and Chicken, too. “One for the road,” Speck teased him, lifting his glass, and the prisoner cursed him. They sat on the porch in the dead quiet of the river day to think things through. When Whirlybird descended and nagged at Speck to return him to his boat and let him go, the older brother backed him up, declaring that the Watson heirs did not care to be ill-treated in their own ancestral dwelling, especially on their first visit home in a half century. Surely, Rob said, Mr. Daniels owed some consideration to the sons of E. J. Watson, having helped to kill him. Whirlybird stared in disbelief as these two laughed.

However, not knowing what to do with these damned Watsons, Speck was growing irritable. “Ain’t you here to kill me?” he jeered. “How about that weapon and that list?” Unlike his men, Speck doubted very much that Chicken Collins had ever meant to kill him, but whether or not he could keep them from killing Chicken was another matter. He tied Rob up again, gagging his snapping mouth so tight that his bloodshot eyes bugged out. “I always enjoyed the hell out of old Chicken,” Speck told Lucius. “Us two fellers got along real good yesterday evenin, considerin he might wind up gettin shot.”

Ad Burdett, upset when his skiff was towed across the river, expressed his sincere disapproval of his old brother consorting with known criminals, and demanded to know what gave these men the right to take him prisoner on these Park lands. Offering him moonshine, Speck cheerfully agreed that they had no right whatever, but pointed out that a caretaker’s solemn duties included protecting the place from whirlybirds and vandals. To illustrate, he pointed at the paint job. “If that ain’t unlawful vandalism of federal property, I don’t know what,” he said, winking at Chicken.

“I traveled a long way to paint this house,” Ad moaned, in an onset of self-pity, “and I spent up all my vacation time and all my savings, so I deserve a better explanation than that one you gave me.”

Fed up, Speck snarled, “Try this one, then. This damn ol’ house is goin up in smoke in a few days, and your paint job with it—all your hard work and time and money, and your stupid vacation, and maybe your own self if you’re tied up inside, ever think of that?”

This morning Speck had left there before noon, to make his way south by the inland creeks to Lost Man’s Key. He had not gotten far when he was apprehended by the helicopter, which he had not heard over the din of his own engine. Circling in the high distance, the machine had picked up the white wake of his boat when he left the Watson Place. From the shrouded sun, tracking his propeller roil across the copper bays, it finally descended in a tree-shattering racket to run him aground against the bank at Onion Key. There the Park rangers searched his boat and confiscated his tree snails and his orchids. (They were dead anyway, said Speck, who had had no time to tend them.) Finding no gator hides or guns or moonshine, they had let him go.



Lucius said finally, “If you came here to let me know they were all right, then I’m much obliged.”

“That ain’t why I come here, and they ain’t ‘all right.’ ” Speck whistled in amazement. “Are all you Watsons crazy? Between Chicken and that Whirlybird—”

“Rob got off to a rough start in life. Addison, too. It’s not their fault.”

“Ain’t Junior’s fault, neither,” Speck said grimly. “But that ain’t goin to help him, vet or no vet, not when that last screw lets go and he starts shootin at them fuckin helio-copters!”

“Rob’s not going to shoot anybody! He was drunk—”

“I am drunk right here this minute, you stupid bastard, and I ain’t shot you yet! In the old days, you was drunk most all the time, but you never shot nobody I ever heard about!” His voice rose to a shout. “I mean, goddammit, if you was them wild boys of mine, outside the law, what would you make of a man carryin a list like that, and a loaded weapon?” Before Lucius could speak, he said in a hard voice, “You might figure his crazy brother Colonel Watson put him up to it! I mean, it ain’t like we’re talkin about some poor old alky. It ain’t like he never killed before! Killed right here at Lost Man’s, for Christ’s sake! Killed right here on this key where we are standin on!” Speck raised his hand to block Lucius’s protest. “So you’re tryin to tell me it weren’t him took a shot at Dyer? And if he will shoot at Dyer, why not me?”