‘Same as you,’ he said hoarsely. ‘All these gangland types wandering around in my little corner of paradise.’

  I waited. That was something Red Levine taught me. Have your say and then shut up. Just wait. Let the other guy get uncomfortable with the silence and maybe say something he shouldn’t.

  ‘I know you talked with Etta,’ he said at length, his voice much softer. ‘Did she tell you what she knows?’

  ‘My opinion is that she doesn’t know what she knows,’ I said.

  He could hear the truth of that in my voice.

  ‘Maybe not,’ he went on. ‘But that ain’t what everybody else thinks. Everybody else thinks that she’s got the key to the kingdom and knows where the door is.’

  ‘What kingdom?’

  He nodded. ‘Yeah. That’s a little unclear to me.’

  ‘But the general thought is that she was in a room sometime or other when somebody said something that’s worth all this bustle? And she knows how to use the information?’

  He nodded.

  ‘See,’ I explained, ‘kids don’t think like adults. This is a key mistake that adults make. I remember when I was a kid about Etta’s age, a friend of my father came to the apartment. There was some talk about a little gun hidden in a big box of chocolates. What was my thinking on the subject at the time? “How do I get my hands on a chocolate?” Not: “What’s the deal with the gun?”’

  He nodded again. ‘I see how that could be true. But these hoods, they don’t have the benefit of your experience, both as a child and as a grown man whose job is helping children. See? They think like adults and that’s as far as it goes.’

  ‘Still don’t quite understand what kind of trouble you think you’re in,’ I said to Yudda.

  He closed his eyes. ‘On account of I’m old buddies with Roan, and close enough to Etta that I taught her dog some tricks, these gangland characters think I know something. I don’t. I was hoping to get it out of Etta. See?’

  The good news was that Etta’s life wasn’t in danger. Nobody would ice her if they thought she had this important information locked in her head. The bad news was everything else, but mostly what they’d do to her if they got her. Guys like the Delanys had a limited number of ways to extract information from a person. Most of them involved dental instruments, and all of them were bad.

  So. How to convince the various factions that Etta didn’t really know anything? How to hook the kid up with her father after that so maybe the both of them could scram? Also, how to do all that without getting myself shot up – or worse, if this Mordecai character woke up and got out of the hospital?

  My thinking at that moment, standing there banged up and a little wet, trying to decide how I felt about Yudda, was fairly simple. I thought I should find out what Etta knew, her key to whatever kingdom, and just give it to the bad guys. What the hell did she care, or did I care, for that matter? Like they say, there’s a time to keep secrets and a time to give secrets away. It’s Ecclesiastes. A time for every purpose under heaven. That way the secret’s not a secret any more, and everybody leaves the kid alone so that she can grow up and have a nice life.

  Feeling pretty good about my conclusion, I told Yudda what I thought he should know.

  ‘You should see who’s in your house shooting at people.’ I glanced back in the direction of his boat. ‘I think I’m going to my office to see if I can’t figure how to get the kid out of her legal status with the Lamberts.’

  ‘The who?’ he asked me.

  ‘The couple who adopted Etta. So-called. I need to get her away from them, legit.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ he said. ‘Good idea.’

  He was already headed toward his home. He’d bought my story.

  Which left me feeling comfortable about heading back to the swamp to find John Horse and the kid, get the secret out of her head, and, in general, save the day.

  FIFTEEN

  The Seminole camp was empty when I got there. I’d seen it quiet, I’d seen it sparse, but I’d never seen it deserted. It was spooky.

  The place was abandoned because the people there had been hassled more than usual in the previous couple of days: phony FBI, Delanys, me. But a bunch that had been screwed with as much as these particular Seminoles, they were running toward something, not away from something.

  The camp was really only a couple dozen cinderblock houses and some storage sheds. A few people lived on the outskirts. Philip had a house that was built in a cluster of trees. No kidding: using the trees as the basic support beams, he’d built a house. It was an architectural marvel as far as I was concerned. And one that the rest of the world was unlikely ever to see.

  But I had the suspicion that his house was empty too.

  The camp seemed to have a life of its own. It wasn’t just the leftover smells, cook fires, swamp herbs and tobacco. It was like an eerie echo was still reverberating around the concrete walls. Like old conversations were still hanging in the air. Like ghosts were wandering free.

  And just when that thought occurred to me, of course, I saw the old woman again, the one with the antler and bone knife. Philip’s grandmother. The one who’d been dead for ten years.

  Clear as day, at the edge of the camp, she was making a racket with the bones and mouthing something to me. Didn’t seem like the same thing as before. Before it was alarming. This time it was more instructive, like she was trying to explain something to me.

  Then, closer to me, a white ibis landed on John Horse’s roof. Biggest one I ever saw. Size of a pterodactyl, swear to God.

  And when I looked back, the woman was gone. Or maybe I’d just imagined her.

  Still, I looked up at the bird.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said to it. ‘I was just about to get a telegram from the spirit world. Then you had to show up.’

  The ibis made a little creaky noise, opened up its wings, and looked south. Then, very slowly, it lifted off from the roof and headed in that direction.

  I actually thought, believe it or not, that the bird might be the telegram. That I was supposed to follow the bird. Which I did. I know it sounds crazy, but in the first place you get kind of loopy in a deserted camp in the middle of a swamp, and in the second place you had to follow the signs – even if they weren’t signs – because John Horse was involved.

  It wasn’t hard. The bird was flying lazily and there was a pretty wide path going south. And it didn’t take long. Ten minutes into it, I heard distant voices. Another five minutes and there was singing, closer to hand. The swamp all around me was humid and green, all plants and clear water, the occasional small bird or red lizard. The sky was clear, and the day was bright. No idea what time it was.

  And just as I rounded a turn in the path, there they were: just about everybody from the camp. They were gathered in a huge flat circle of land, a couple acres of it, surrounded by tall standing stones. In the middle of the swamp. Like some big industrial company had come in, cleared the land, tamped down a foundation, and then gone away. And the standing stones weren’t anything like rocks you’d find in the swamp, or anywhere in Florida as far as I knew.

  John Horse was sitting on a blanket singing, with a cup of something in his hand. When he saw me, he started laughing, and several others turned around to look at me. I’m pretty sure I looked like an idiot: sharp suit, good shoes, baffled expression.

  John Horse got up and ambled my way. Conversation and singing continued. I couldn’t make out the song at first, but it wasn’t Seminole or remotely ceremonial.

  ‘I’m glad you got my message,’ he called out over the other sounds.

  It was the kind of thing he’d say ordinarily just to get my brain thinking that a sound in the swamp or a gleam of sunlight had been his message. Only in this case it was a ghost and a giant bird. Harder to dismiss.

  ‘The big white bird was a nice touch,’ I said, mostly to see how he’d react.

  He didn’t.

  ‘That little girl, Etta, is not normal,’ he told me.

  I came closer to him. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘There’s an extra spirit in her brain.’

  ‘An extra spirit,’ I repeated. ‘No idea what that means.’

  ‘She’s a child of eleven and an ancient woman. Both.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Where is she?’

  John Horse turned around to face the group, scanned, then pointed.

  ‘Over there beside the well.’

  Sure enough, the kid was sitting on a pile of stones, dog by her side, staring out into space.

  ‘What is this place?’ I asked him, looking around.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ John Horse said, joining me in my survey of the place. ‘The story is that it’s thousands of years old. But it’s possible that Humble Oil was going to build something here when they thought he might get the oil rights to our land.’

  I stared at his profile. ‘You’re talking about what happened with the Bear Island Field.’

  He nodded once.

  Oil had been discovered in Bear Island in 1972, and production started a year later. And even though it had become a part of the Big Cypress National Preserve almost immediately after that, in 1974, Humble was still taking oil out of it.

  Still, it was some kind of mind trick he was trying to pull off, saying the place might be more than a thousand years old or less than a thousand days. Maybe he meant to distract me, but I wasn’t interested.

  ‘OK,’ I told him. ‘I’m going to talk to the kid now.’

  He shrugged, and I was off.

  Etta saw me coming and smiled. Den was more enthusiastic. He barked, he wagged, and then he met me halfway, walked me to the well.

  ‘Hi,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she told me right away.

  I sat beside her on the stones. ‘About what it is that’s in your brain that everyone wants a look at?’

  ‘Right.’ She was staring into the well.

  The well was very clear, and probably fresh. It was maybe ten feet wide and looked deep. No gunk or growth on the well stones.

  ‘And?’ I asked.

  She looked up at me. ‘I want to see my dad.’

  Her face clouded up and her eyes got a little red. She wasn’t the tough kid in a disco hat any more. She was a little girl who wanted her father and probably missed her mother.

  And that, after all, was what I’d promised to do: find her and put her next to her dad.

  ‘Yeah,’ I told her. ‘The thing is, I want to keep you safe, so you’ve really got to stay here for now.’

  ‘Safe.’ She nodded. ‘But you could bring my dad here, right?’

  I wasn’t really in the mood to tell her that her dad had taken shots at me very recently. Because what if I was wrong and it hadn’t been her dad in Yudda’s house? Although, who else would have been staying there? Roan and Yudda were friends from way back. Which was also messing with me.

  Suddenly I was kind of mixed up. What was I doing? Who could I trust? And why the hell were there so many people out to get Etta Roan?

  Next thing I knew, John Horse was sitting next to Etta on the stones and patting Den on the head. That’s all. He just sat there.

  Then, over his shoulder, I saw an ibis standing in the water outside the circle of stones. It was just standing there.

  For a second, everything around me was still, not moving, not making a sound. I felt like I was in the perfect center of everything. Everything.

  It didn’t last. Den started wagging his tail; someone sniffed; the ibis went for a fish in the water at its feet. The world turned.

  ‘I saw that,’ John Horse said after a moment.

  I tilted my head in his direction.

  He went on. ‘I saw something happen. Don’t know what, and you probably don’t know either. But whatever it was, it was the answer.’

  I shook my head. ‘I know you’re always trying to get me to buy into your “wise man” hooey, and sometimes it actually works on me. But all that happened just now was that I was tired, and I had a blank moment. Used to happen to me a lot in Brooklyn. I’d be sitting on a stoop or standing in the street, and it was like I blacked out for a second, only it wasn’t black – it was blank. When I told my ma about it, she took me to see a doctor. He said it might be a touch of epilepsy. What they call a petit mal seizure. He told my mother that I had lost awareness of my surroundings for a couple of seconds. But I knew that wasn’t right. I didn’t lose awareness: I was hyper aware. Personally, I like when it happens. It’s a little moment of calm in the storm.’

  ‘What storm?’

  ‘You know.’ I glanced at Etta.

  He nodded.

  ‘You said it happened a lot in Brooklyn,’ he went on. ‘Not so much here in Florida?’

  ‘Not so much.’ I glanced down at Etta. ‘By the way, the FBI guys who were following you around town in that black Caddy? Fake. Not sure who they are, but they’re not Feds.’

  ‘Huh.’ John Horse stuck out his lower lip. ‘You have epilepsy and I guessed wrong. This is certainly a strange day for something.’

  ‘I don’t have epilepsy,’ I began.

  ‘I like it here,’ Etta interrupted. ‘I like John Horse, and so does Den. But I gotta get to my dad. He needs me.’

  ‘He does?’ I asked her.

  ‘Yes. He’s been very sad since Mom died.’

  ‘And you haven’t?’ I went on.

  ‘Sure. But I’m a kid. We get over things faster. Adults take too long to do everything. Plus, my dad was in jail, so that’s not a good environment for getting over somebody dying.’

  ‘Have to agree with you there,’ I said.

  ‘Come on then,’ she nagged. ‘Take me to my dad. Please?’

  John Horse stared me down. ‘You really shouldn’t do that. She’s safe here. She won’t be if you take her into Fry’s Bay.’

  ‘I don’t want to be safe,’ Etta complained. ‘I want to be with my dad! And he wants to be with me!’

  I had to agree. ‘Well, that is why he paid me a visit in the middle of the night.’

  ‘Yes,’ she snapped. ‘Exactly. So, which way is your car?’

  John Horse closed his eyes. ‘OK. But I’m coming with you.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked him.

  He looked down at her little face. ‘Because you have an important spirit. And because I want to know what your secret is.’

  ‘My secret?’

  ‘The thing you know that everyone is so interested in finding out,’ he told her. ‘I’m curious.’

  ‘Yeah, but I don’t know what my secret is,’ she said.

  He smiled. ‘That’s why it’s such a great secret.’

  I knew it was wrong to take the kid back into Fry’s Bay. I knew she was safe where she was, and she wouldn’t be safe back in town. It was against every instinct I had, but you could actually feel the longing, like a strange heat, coming off the kid. She had to be with her father. It was too much for me. Not to mention that seeing her father might help her figure out what her secret was. And I also knew that I had a better chance of finding out her secret if John Horse worked on it with me.

  All in all, it added up to taking the kid back to Fry’s Bay, over to Yudda’s houseboat.

  ‘I think I do know where your father is,’ I said. ‘And my car is that way.’

  I glanced down the path, the dog stood up, and off we went: the strangest quartet in all of Florida. If I’d known what was about to happen, I probably would have just jumped in the well instead.

  SIXTEEN

  Back in town, I stood on the docks watching the boats bob up and down on the bay. John Horse was sitting down with his eyes closed. Etta was throwing stones into the water. The dog was considering chasing seagulls.

  And Yudda was closing up his restaurant. Not sure what time it was. I always hated watches. But it was too early for him to close up, and he wasn’t happy with me. The sun was low, I could see that. But in Florida that never told me anything. In Brooklyn you knew what time it was, more or less, when the sun went down behind the buildings. In Florida there was all that ocean to deal with.

  Yudda waddled my way at last, cursing under his breath in his dirty apron and his flip-flops.

  ‘There was nobody in the joint when we showed up,’ I said, just as he was about to tell me what he thought of my plan.

  ‘I live by the walk-in trade,’ he told me.

  ‘You live by the weed trade,’ I reminded him. ‘You enjoy a little walk-in business, every once in a while, to your fine dining establishment.’

  He started to protest, but then he shrugged. ‘Yeah, all right.’

  ‘So, that’s Roan in your house, right?’ I asked him.

  ‘Yeah.’

  We’d already determined that it was Roan who’d been shooting at me from Yudda’s houseboat. Roan was, Yudda told me, near-sighted. He had no idea it was me in the rocks. He thought I was some crook or cop, one of the many after him.

  All this had been determined while Etta sat in the back booth sipping what Yudda called a ‘cherry smash’, which was just Coca-Cola with mushed maraschinos in it. I didn’t want the kid to get all excited about seeing her father if anything went south.

  To prevent further gunplay, I’d convinced Yudda to lead the way, just in case. But he wasn’t happy about it. And there was a strange attitude in the air. For instance, I couldn’t figure out why John Horse was so silent.

  ‘Come on,’ I said to everyone, ‘let’s go to Yudda’s house.’

  Etta looked my way. ‘I’m not stupid, you know. If that’s where my father is, why don’t you just tell me that?’

  I smiled. ‘I don’t think you’re stupid, I just don’t want you getting your hopes up in case something is wrong.’

  ‘Such as?’ she asked.

  No point avoiding the issue, because Etta was right: she wasn’t stupid.

  ‘All those people after you are after him too,’ I said. ‘What if your dad had to leave in a hurry because of all that?’

  ‘But he was there,’ she said, with a kind of heartbreaking hope in her voice.

  ‘He was,’ Yudda confirmed.

  Etta dropped all the pebbles in her hands and marched toward me. ‘Then let’s go.’

 

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