Sucker bet - James Swain [64]
“The apple didn’t fall far from the tree, did it,” Gladys said.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” his son said.
Valentine again looked at the list of Blackhorn’s things. The second-to-last item was a bottle of Bayer aspirin, and in parentheses it said Expired. He said, “Did anyone look inside the aspirin bottle?”
Gladys shook her head. “I didn’t think—”
“Was it plastic or see-through?”
“Plastic. Should I call the tribal police and ask them?”
“You bet.”
She called on her cell phone. It took five minutes for the captain on duty to get the items out of storage, find the aspirin bottle, and unscrew the childproof lid.
“Huh,” Gladys said. “The chief found a tiny square of paper. He says it’s no bigger than a quarter.”
“Ask him if it’s sandpaper.”
She did. “He wants to know how you knew that.”
Valentine felt the burn of calling it right. One piece of the puzzle had been solved. “Practice,” he said.
29
Billy Tiger had given airboat tours in the Everglades since he was a teenager, and had met no resistance when he’d asked the man who managed the marina to lend him a boat for the afternoon.
The man had tried to give him a powerboat with a fan engine, thinking Tiger wanted to raise hell for a few hours, but Tiger had taken a johnboat instead. The fan boats could be heard for miles, while the electric johnboats were not heard at all.
The Micanopys had inhabited Florida for three hundred years, but only since the early 1900s had the tribe lived in the Everglades. This shift had been caused by a pair of ruthless robber barons named J. P. Morgan and Henry Flagler, who had descended upon the state and laid claim to the Micanopy tribal lands—all of it beachfront—then hired soldiers and policemen to drive the Micanopys out.
Tiger piloted the johnboat down a brackish waterway choked by mangroves and rotting willows. His ancestors had done a smart thing coming here. There was so much swamp—over five thousand square miles—that a man could get lost whenever he chose, and stay lost for as long as it suited him.
A small body of land loomed ahead. It was bright green and covered in dahoon holly. Tiger slowed the engine, and the johnboat bumped the ragged shoreline. He splashed his hand in the water to dispel any water moccasins, then cautiously stepped out of the vessel.
His feet began to sink. He was standing on a tree island. The Everglades were home to hundreds of such islands. He heard a sarcastic quacking and glanced at a flock of roseate spoonbills nesting in a tree, their pink plumage and clownish faces a sharp contrast to the swamp’s greens and browns. Pollution from sugar plantations had nearly wiped out the spoonbills, and only recently had politicians attempted to correct the problem.
He took Harry Smooth Stone’s instructions from his pocket and read them again. Then he checked the time. Four o’clock.
To kill time, he counted the spoonbills. A dozen filled the trees, half of them babies. A few years ago, there had been less than five hundred in all of Florida. Seeing such a big family made Tiger happy in a way that he could not put into words.
He sprayed himself with Cutter. It was the strongest insect repellent on the market, yet he was still getting chewed alive. Finally he got in the johnboat and pushed himself away from the shore. With swamp people, there was no accounting for missed appointments. Sometimes they showed up, and sometimes they didn’t.
He headed back the way he’d come. Flies hopscotched across the water, only to disappear beneath the surface. He considered dropping a line, then imagined Smooth Stone sitting in his cell, wondering what the hell had happened to him.
A two-foot bass sprang out of the water. Forgive me, Harry, Tiger thought. Killing the engine, he removed a fishing line from his slicker, then looked over the