The last photograph on the roll, the only photograph without the finger, was of equal interest to the trooper. He turned to the slug-like security guard and said: "Does the club have a boat I can borrow? A skiff would do fine."
"We keep a twelve-footer tied up at the marina. But I can't letcha take it out by yourself. That'd be 'gainst policy."
Jim Tile folded the contact sheet and slipped it into a brown office envelope, the same envelope Dick Artemus had handed to him at the governor's mansion.
"So, where's the marina?" the trooper asked the security guard.
"You ain't authorized."
"I know. That's why you're coming with me."
It was a shallow-draft johnboat, powered by a fifteen-horse outboard. The guard, whose name was Gale, cranked the engine on the third pull. Over his ill-fitting uniform he buckled a bright orange life vest, and told Jim Tile to do the same.
"Policy," Gale explained.
"Fair enough."
"Kin you swim?"
"Yep," said the trooper.
"No shit? I thought black guys couldn't swim."
"Where you from, Gale?"
"Lake City."
"Lake City, Florida."
"Is they another one?"
"And you never met a black person that could swim?"
"Sure, in the catfish ponds and so forth. But I'm talking about the ocean, man. Saltwater."
"And that's a different deal?"
"Way different," the guard said matter-of-factly. "That's how come the life jackets."
They crossed Card Sound behind a northerly breeze, the johnboat's squared-off hull slapping on the brows of the waves. Gale entered the mouth of Steamboat Creek at full throttle but slowed beneath the low bridge.
He said to the trooper, up in the bow: "How far you need to go?"
"I'll tell you when we get there, Gale."
"Is that a .357 you got?"
"It is."
"I don't got my carry permit yet. But at home I keep a Smith .38 by the bed."
"Good choice," said Jim Tile.
"I b'lieve I'll get somethin' heavier for the streets."
"See the eagle? Up there in the top of that tree." The trooper pointed.
"Cool!" exclaimed Gale the security guard. "Now for that, you need a pump gun, twenty-gauge minimum ... Hey, I gotta stop'n take aleak."
"Then stop," said Jim Tile.
"I drank about a gallon of Sanka this morning and I'm fit to 'splode."
"Anywhere's fine. Gale."
The guard cut the engine and the boat coasted silently in the milky green water. Gale removed the life vest and modestly turned around to urinate off the stern. The featherweight boat swung sidelong in the current, and at that moment an ill-timed gust of wind disrupted Gale's golden outflow, blowing it back on the front of his uniform. He let out a yowl and clumsily zipped himself up.
"Goddammit. That won'twork." He started the engine and idled the nose of the boat into the trees, up against the bank. Stepping out, he snagged one foot on a barnacled root and nearly went down. "Be right back," he told the state trooper.
"Take your time, Gale."
To escape the messy effect of the breeze, the security guard clomped twenty yards into the woods before choosing a spot to unzip. He was midstream – and pissing gloriously, like a stallion – when he heard the chuk-a-chukof the outboard motor. Gale strained to halt his mighty cascade, tucked in his pecker and charged back toward the water's edge. When he got there, the johnboat was gone.
Jim Tile headed down Steamboat Creek at half throttle. A school of finger mullet scattered in silvery streaks ahead of the bow. From behind he heard Gale the security guard bellowing hoarsely in the mangroves. He hoped the young man wouldn't do something completely idiotic, such as attempt to walkout.
As he followed the creek, the trooper closely scanned the shoreline along both sides. He wasn't expecting an obvious sign; a flotilla of searchers had been up and down the waterway and found nothing. Jim Tile knew his friend would be careful not to leave tracks. The trooper shed the life vest and reached inside his shirt, where he'd hidden the brown envelope. He took out the contact sheet and glanced once more at frame 36.
The photo had been snapped with the camera pointed aimlessly downward, as if the shutter had been triggered by mistake. And even though the picture was underlit and out of focus, Jim Tile could make out a patch of water, a three-pronged mangrove sprout and – wedged in the trident-like root – a soda-pop can. Schweppes, it looked like.
A Schweppes ginger ale, of all the unlikely brands.
At least it was something.Jim Tile started scouring the waterline for cans, and he found plenty: Coke, Diet Coke, Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Dr Pepper, Orange Crush, Budweiser, Busch, Colt .45, Michelob – it was sickening. People are such slobs, the trooper thought, trashing such a fine and unspoiled place. Who could be so inexcusably disrespectful of God's creation? Jim Tile had grown up in neighborhoods where there was more broken glass than grass on the ground, but his mother would've knocked him on his scrawny black butt if she'd caught him throwing a soda can anywhere but in a trash bin ...
The trooper had twisted the throttle down so that the johnboat was barely cutting a wake. Back and forth across the creek he tacked, scooping up floating cans where he saw them; easy to spot., Clinting in the bright sun. But no Schweppes. Jim Tile felt foolish for chasing such a weak clue – he knew that weather skidded flotsam all over these creeks. And if the tide rose too high, the trident-shaped mangrove bud would be submerged anyway; invisible. The trooper crumpled the photographic contact sheet and shoved it into his pocket.
Still he kept searching the banks, mechanically collecting other cans and bottles and paper cups. Soon the inside of the johnboat began to look like a Dumpster. He was turning a wide bend in the creek when something caught his attention – not a ginger-ale can or a three-pronged mangrove sprout., but a slash of canary yellow paint. It appeared as a subtle vector across a cluster of tubular stalks, a yard above the waterline, where somebody had dragged something heavy and brightly painted into the trees. Something like a canoe.
Jim Tile tied off the bow and rolled up his trousers and pulled off his shoes. He bird-stepped from the johnboat and gingerly made his way into the snarl of trees. His left foot poked something smooth and metallic: The Schweppes can from the photograph, trapped beneath the surface by its mangrove talon. The trooper moved ahead, excruciatingly, the soles of his feet rasped by roots and shards of broken mollusks. He slipped repeatedly, and twice nearly pitched onto his face. Jim Tile was aware that he sounded like a herd of drunken buffalo, and not for a moment did he entertain the fantasy that he could sneak up on the governor. It would have been impossible, even on dry land.
The trees thinned and the trooper found a bleached rocky ridge that led him to the edge of a shallow tannic-looking lake. He realized he had stumbled into the federal crocodile refuge, a fact that impelled him to sit down, slap the spiders off his ankles and reconsider the practical boundaries of friendship.
Jim Tile was parched, exhausted, well lacerated – and no great fan of carnivorous reptiles. He rose with rictus-grim determination. Rocking on tender feet, he cupped both hands to his mouth.
"HEY!" he yelled out across the lake. "IT'S ME!"
High overhead, a lone osprey piped.
"I'M TOO OLD FOR THIS SHIT!" Jim Tile shouted.
Nothing.
"YOU HEAR ME? GODDAMN CROCODILES – YOU THINK THAT'S FUNNY? I GOT A WIFE, GOVERNOR! I GOT PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITIES!"
The trooper was shouting nearly at the top of his lungs.
"COME ON OUT, MAN, I'M SERIOUS! SERIOUS AS A FUCKING HEART ATTACK! YOU COME OUT!"