Half an hour passed. The families ate and left and were replaced by more families and an elderly couple and some college-age boys who were loud even before they ordered Budweisers all around. The man at the counter had managed to disappear without my seeing him leave. My server asked if I wanted to order some food while I could.
“We’ll be closing soon. We close at four o’clock.”
“Why so early?”
“We close when the park closes.”
I tried Fixico’s phone number but got an automated reply. I left a curt message for him to call me. As the restaurant emptied, I could feel the host watching me, willing me to get up and leave the way a cat wills you to feed it. I put down a ten-dollar bill for the water and the trouble.
2
I sat in my rented Hyundai with the air-conditioning cranked and fog inching up the windshield, trying to decide how to proceed. If I left now, I might still catch my flight home. But the hook had been set, and I wasn’t breaking free without a fight.
Why had Fixico brought me all the way out into the Everglades only to stand me up? Why not just tell me over the phone that, upon further reflection, he had nothing to say about Captain Tom Wheelwright?
Because he wanted to have a look at me first.
In the rearview mirror, I noticed the man who’d seated me leaving the restaurant. He paused to tuck his white polo into his pants and put on a pair of wraparound shades before making his way toward a Chevrolet Camaro parked in the thin shade of a palm.
Careful of fire ants, I crossed the sandy lot. “Excuse me, sir!”
The bronze man lurched to a stop. “You’re still here?”
“I have a question for you.”
“OK?”
“When I told you I was meeting someone, you said, ‘He’s not here yet.’ How did you know I was meeting a man?”
“You said you were.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I think you’re confused. Look, I’ve got to pick up my kid.”
I watched the sports car accelerate onto the cracked highway headed back toward Miami. Then I shaded my eyes with the blade of my hand and scanned the endless flatness. I hadn’t seen the man at the counter leave, but I saw him now, not a hundred yards away.
Beyond the restaurant stood a second, smaller building with the same thatched roof—a tribal information center—and beyond that was a dirt lot that bordered a dull canal that might or might not have been the Shark River. The black man I’d noticed inside the restaurant stood on the bank, wearing a panama hat, smoking a cigar, and fishing with a cane pole unlike anything I’d ever seen in Maine.
“Captain Fixico?”
His back stiffened, but he spoke without turning. “I was beginning to have doubts about you as an investigator, Warden Bowditch. You didn’t expect me to be black. Some of us Natives are.”
“Do you want to tell me what that stunt was about?”
He tossed the cigar butt into the greenish water. A small fish came up to snap at it. A bigger fish rose from the depths to swallow the smaller fish whole. There’s always someone bigger, someone hungrier.
When Fixico finally faced me, I saw that he had an indentation in his forehead that spoke of a head injury neither recent nor ancient. His nose was straight, his brow slanting, and his eyes were so heavily lidded he seemed half-asleep.
“I wanted to check you out before we talked,” he said, a little smile playing in the corners of his mouth.
“And you didn’t like my looks?”
“Not particularly. How did you find me?”
“It took a while.”
“That’s not what I meant. How did you find me in the first place? You said Tommy didn’t give you my name as a character witness.”
Witness. I made a mental note of the word choice.
“Maybe I’m a better investigator than I look.”
He laughed at that and gestured toward an SUV that gleamed white across the lot. “Let me get this line in, and we can talk inside my Rogue so you don’t melt any more than you already have, Mr. Snowman. I’ll tell you the truth about the great Tom Wheelwright. The whole truth and nothing but.”
* * *
The interior of the SUV smelled of his Cubanos. I observed a cigar burn in the otherwise pristine leather upholstery. He removed his straw hat and set it on the dash.
Unlike Wheelwright, who was impossibly fit in middle age, Fixico had acquired a belly since his air force days. He wore a guayabera shirt, relaxed-fit jeans, and flip-flops. A medical alert bracelet hung like a bangle from one thin wrist.
“So you’re a detective?” he said. “And your bureau flew you all the way down here to run a background check on a man applying to become a game warden? I never would’ve thought that was an actual thing.”
In fact, investigating applicants to the Maine Warden Service was one of my most important duties. Many people participated in the hiring process—including a psychologist and a polygraph operator—but ultimately, it was my responsibility to prevent an unfit candidate from acquiring a badge and gun.
“Do you mind if I record this?”
Fixico reached for an aluminum tube on the center console, unscrewed the end, and shook out a cigar. “I’d prefer we talk on ‘deep background,’ if you don’t mind.”
“Are you concerned about retribution from the air force?”
He had a laugh that seemed to scrape his vocal cords. “What’re they going to do to me that’s worse than what God dished out? You wouldn’t think it to look at me, but I graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth. I used to be brilliant. The undamaged part of my brain still is. It’s new memories I can’t retain.”
What interested me was the old stuff. “So you and Wheelwright flew EF-111A Ravens in the war?”
“Spark Varks. That’s what we called them. Technically, Tom did the flying, and my job was to fuck with Saddam’s communications, an activity at which I excelled. After I came back from the Gulf, I thought I was headed for a career at a defense contracting firm. Six-figure income, big house outside the Beltway, marry a white woman. The Native American dream.”
He smiled ironically through a cloud of cigar smoke. “None of that has anything to do with Tom Wheelwright. He wasn’t in Las Vegas when my Corvette was T-boned or when I woke from my coma to learn I was being medically retired. Why did Tommy tell you he chose to leave the air force?”
“He said he couldn’t resist the money he was promised to fly Learjets for the 1 Percent.”
“That’s partially true, I suppose. Tom’s always been good at using truthful statements to mislead. Or maybe he’s one of those people who passes polygraphs because they believe their own bullshit.”
“I have all his military records, including his honorable discharge. There’s not a blemish in his file.”
“There wouldn’t be. Pilots are held to different standards. Especially when it comes to reports of inappropriate conduct with the other sex.”
“Why is there no mention of harassment charges?”
“It’s the air force! Where have you been living for the past fifteen years? Tom was encouraged to take early retirement.” Fixico rolled down his window to relieve the fug. “Now you’re thinking, ‘Why should I take the word of a brain-damaged Injun over the United States Air Force?’ Because I can give you names is why. I can point you to the women. But I have a feeling you already believe me.”