“Parks ain’t tested it so far, and they know I’m on there.” Speck cocked his head with another sly smile. “Course I was on there anyway, takin care of my own business, so ever’thin worked out purty nice.”
The Miami lawyer had a big reputation, big connections. He was a crony of politicians and a “fixer.” Lucius must know him, Daniels said, because he’d been born on Chatham Bend, Ed Watson’s namesake.
Affecting indifference, Lucius shrugged, but he resented this, as Daniels knew he would. Why would Watson Dyer pay a moonshiner and gator poacher to protect that house before getting in touch with the Watson family? To hell with that, he thought, I’ll go myself. I’m going home. They can’t burn down the Watson house with a Watson standing in the door!
“First time he called, it seemed to me I knew the voice, but some way I couldn’t place it,” Speck was saying. “The man was complainin how he never could catch up with the Watson boys. I told him, Well, the oldest boy ain’t never been heard from since the turn of the century, and the next one, Eddie, don’t want nothin to do with that old place. Course Colonel might be interested, I says, but you’ll have trouble comin up with Colonel, cause he moves real quiet and makes hisself real scarce and always did.” Speck Daniels laughed, but his green eyes weren’t laughing. “Ain’t goin to tell me what you’re lookin for out here?”
The more Lucius thought about going home, the more excited he became, though he tried not to show it. “So what does Dyer want? With Chatham Bend, I mean.”
“Might want a ronday-voo for his pet politicians, wouldn’t surprise me—booze-and-girlie club, y’know. I been thinkin I might join up to be a member.” But there was no mirth in Daniels’s wink, and he got right back to business. “All I know is what I picked up on the phone. But he must be up to somethin big. Went to a lot of trouble to find out that Crockett Senior Daniels knew the Watson Place and might be just the feller he was lookin for.”
Asked what he had been doing on the Bend before he took up caretaking, Daniels lit a cigarette and squinted through the smoke. “That ain’t your business.” He winked to show he was only joking, which he wasn’t. “Maybe I been study in up to get me a good job as a Park Ranger, on account of I done more rangin in their Park than all them stupid greenhorns put together.”
Sipping the white lightning, Lucius said “You make this stuff at Chatham Bend? When you’re not out caretaking, I mean?”
Daniels measured him. “You ain’t obliged to drink it, Colonel. You ain’t obliged to drink with me at all.”
Asked about the airboat and the new black truck, Speck remained silent, but Lucius persisted. “Run this stuff up here at night by airboat? Lost Man’s Slough? Broad River? Gator hides, too?”
“That airboat’s his’n, and the truck.” Daniels jerked his chin toward Crockett Junior. Asked next if he owned the Gator Hook Bar and if this place was an outlet for his product, Speck gave up trying to be genial. “Still askin them stupid questions, ain’t you, Colonel? You ain’t changed much, boy, and I ain’t neither, as you are goin to find out if you keep tryin me. It’s like your daddy said that day, ‘I ain’t huntin for no trouble, boys, but if trouble comes a-huntin me, I will take care of it.’ ”
“He never said anything that stupid in his life!”
Daniels grinned at him. “Is that a fact?” He reached to refill Lucius’s cup, to smooth things over. “Course I weren’t nothin but a boy, but I knew your dad, y’know, to say hello to.”
“Knew him to say good-bye to, might be more like it. One of the last to see Watson alive, one of the first to see him dead—whichever.”
In a gravelly voice, Speck Daniels growled, “I asked you real polite what you was up to, out this way.” He rapped his glass down. “Asked you twice.”
Lucius set his own glass on the bar, pushed it away from him, trying hard to focus. He was sick of talking. “I’m out here looking for a man named Collins.”
“No you ain’t.” Speck shook his head. He looked over the crowd, then announced loudly, “You are a damn liar.” They watched Crockett Junior push himself clear of the wall and move toward them. “I ain’t seen you in maybe twenty years and all of a sudden, you show up out here, way to hell and gone off of your territory. You think I’m some kind of a fuckin idjit?” Still watching his son, Speck persisted in a low flat tone, “Think I don’t know why you’re snoopin around where you don’t belong?”