Read Online Shadow Men by Jonathon King - Free Book Online

we’d better go over some of these n-names and resources you’ve already got,” he said, heading over to his computer. “And the entities you’ve already c-contacted.”
    “Uh, yes, sir,” the kid said, standing.
    I stood, shook the young man’s hand and took the opportunity to check the necklace. Hanging high on a silver chain was a simple religious cross that had settled into the shallow indent of flesh where his collar bones met.
    “M-Max,” Billy said. “S-Shall I c-call you later?”
    I just nodded and started out. It was not a question.
    I went home and spent the next two mornings fishing, working the edges of the mangroves in the open, slightly salty middle river, trying to entice a tarpon or snook to hit just for the thrill of the fight. There were rarely more than a few boats on the water during the week. Most of them were small boaters who lingered along the edges, occasionally waving as though we were club members, a brotherhood of fishermen. One of them passed and asked about the fly I was using. On both days a thirty-two-foot cabin cruiser with twin inboard screws hung in the middle channel downriver. I could make out at least two men working poles, but it was a poor place to anchor. It was unusual for a boat that size to stay put. Downstream the river opened onto an inlet to the ocean, and most of the bigger boats moved out to sea to take on the wider challenge of true saltwater fishing. I shrugged it off. Money and boats, I thought. Sometimes people just had it to have it so they could show it.
    I spent both afternoons sitting out on my top landing—where the hot sun kept some of the mosquitoes at bay—reading and rereading books that Billy had given me. I tried not to stray far from the shack, wondering when I had become so protective of the place. On the second night, the moon was near full, and I took advantage and paddled my canoe hard upstream late into the darkness, working up a full sweat in the humid air and feeling the burn of oxygen-depleted muscle in my shoulders and arms. In an hour I reached the small man-made dam and had to get out and yank the canoe over the concrete abutment and refloat it on the upper river. The water was black and the sound it made as it plunged over the four-foot drop seemed far too loud as it ripped and then boiled into the reflected moonlight and spun quickly away. This upper section went south for another two miles, fed by the accumulation of rainwater in hundreds of acres of low-lying slough in the Everglades. It was a section of the river where I had physically punished myself for many months after I had arrived here, letting the face of a dead boy chase me. I climbed back into the canoe, set myself and judged the curve of the river by the dull silver reflection of moonlight, and began again, paddling and grinding. I had talked with Billy by cell phone earlier in the day. He had gone over the contacts that Mark Mayes had made and had double-checked some of his requests for information. I could tell by his voice that he’d been impressed by the boy’s resourcefulness but was pissed that his name had been dropped without his knowledge or permission.
    “But our Mr. Mayes may be correct about one of those companies,” Billy said. “PalmCo has a long development history in the state, and we’ve already tracked corporate officers and previous owners all the way back to the 1930s. Before that it gets difficult because of the crash of 1929, when a lot of businesses went under, including most of South Florida’s development speculators. When they came back, it was under different names, even though the people and the source of the money were the same.”
    Billy and I had already talked about the coincidence of Cyrus Mayes’s reference to the name Noren and the photo of the road workers on the wall of the bar in the Frontier. I’d wondered if the name was that of the dredge manufacturer or the construction company. Billy had already done an Internet search and