Lost Man's River(259)
Lucius struggled to remain calm. “You’re the one who’s armed, goddammit!” His voice still trembled in his shock and outrage. “You’re the one talking about eliminating witnesses! How about Addison? He gets shot, too?”
“Shut up and listen.” In the moonlight Speck was squatted on his hunkers, using his knife to draw a quick map in the sand. He spoke quickly, coldly. “Maybe when we get our business finished up tomorrow evenin, we’ll put your brothers aboard Whirlybird’s skiff, point ’em downriver to Mormon Key. Course Junior will blow another gasket. But I’ll remind him there ain’t nowhere they can get to, not before we’re gone.”
“Crockett will do just what you tell him, right?”
“Junior?” Daniels snorted in a surprised response that was not quite affection. “We’re like buck deer in the rut, Junior and me. Every year the old buck stands there just a-shiverin, knowin in every snort and hoof, bristle and tine, that he can still run all the young bucks off his does”—Speck chuckled—“includin this big stupid-lookin one high-steppin towards him right this very minute. Only this time, after the dust clears, he finds himself bad hurt and all alone. He ain’t even allowed in his own herd no more.” Speck scratched his stubble. “Might happen to me the first time Junior gets it in his head that he ain’t takin no more goddamned orders. Might be tomorrow, if he don’t like my plan. And it ain’t goin to be like no damn buck deer, neither. I’ll be lucky if that sonofagun don’t kill me.”
“So you’ll let them go?”
“Depends,” Speck said, ambiguous again. “Can’t promise nothin.”
“You were saying Rob was sick of life—”
“You back on that again?” Speck was enjoying this.
“—and suggesting that his death might be a mercy. Might be preferable. Something like that.” Hating Speck’s knowing grin, he could not go on.
“That’s what I say. That’s what he said. What are you sayin? You don’t want us to let him go?”
“I never said that!”
“Not in them words, no.”
“You say he told you he killed someone here at Lost Man’s?”
“Damn fool had it all wrote down on paper. Had it right there with the list and the revolver. With your name on the packet.” He cocked his head. “You sure you didn’t know?” The moon glint caught his tooth when Daniels grinned. “Dyer now, he was real excited when he heard about it. Told Junior to hold that stuff for him, it might come in handy. In case Watsons didn’t cooperate or something.”
“You’re giving Dyer the gun?”
“I already give it back to Chicken. Without no loads, of course. He told me to bring that ol’ packet to you.”
“What’s in it for you?”
“Well, me ’n’ Chicken—you know. We go back a ways. Gator Hook and all.”
“I thought you worked for Dyer.”
Daniels nodded. “But I never owed him nothin, no more’n he owes me. Once his land claim’s settled, he won’t have no use for me, won’t want to be tied in with me at all. Won’t want nobody around who knows too much, can’t take no chances. And if he’s goin into politics, the way it looks—well, any dealins with the Daniels gang might cost him pretty dear, on down the road.”
Before coming south, Speck had phoned his contact man at Parks headquarters, trying to find out when the Parks meeting at the Bend could be expected. The official told him that Watson Dyer had failed to appear at the court hearing at Homestead, and the judge had suspended the injunction against “the demolition of the Watson premises.” It now appeared likely that demolition would be carried out before another motion for an extension or a new hearing could be filed. Why Dyer had not filed earlier, citing his emergency at Fort Myers, the official did not know. All he knew was, things were moving fast, and a large-scale operation was underway which included the requisition of a helicopter.
His Parks man warned Speck that this operation might be more ambitious than an expedition to burn down a house. A confidential federal report had advised the Park authorities that an armed and dangerous fugitive named Robert Watson might have joined forces with the Daniels gang to engage in felonious activities at a remote location in the Lost Man’s region of the Ten Thousand Islands. Attorney Watson Dyer, the intended victim in a recent episode of attempted murder at Fort Myers in which this Robert Watson was the leading suspect, was quoted as speculating that he had known too much about the fugitive’s participation in a double murder in the Lost Man’s region many years before.