Shadow Men - By Jonathon King Page 0,1

the ragged mouth of the devil himself.

The father looked back once and saw the outline of the rifleman and the tilt of his hat against the stars. He was standing in the bow of the shallow Glades skiff he’d always used for hunting. He had tracked them by water, letting his low angle paint their moving bodies against the sky just as his was now. When he heard the familiar clack of the big Winchester’s lever action, the father wrapped his arms around his boys in a final act of protection, whispering a prayer in their ears and refusing to believe he had seen the eyes of his killer glow red under the brim of his hat.

CHAPTER

1

I was sitting in a chaise longue on the patio of Billy Manchester’s penthouse apartment. The multihued blue of the Atlantic lay out before me. Close to shore its color today was a green-tinted turquoise, then the darker blues at the reef lines and then an almost steel blue out to the horizon. From this height the layers were sharply bordered, and the smell of the salt still carried up on the southeastern breeze.

“This is really eighty years old?”

I should have known better. Never question Billy after he has presented you with something as fact, unless you crave silence from the man.

“I mean, it’s interesting stuff, but isn’t it kind of incredible that no one’s seen it since, what, 1923?” I said, trying to redeem myself.

“Mayes said no one had ever opened his great-grandmother’s hope chest. He said he wasn’t even sure anyone in the family even knew it existed,” Billy answered from inside the apartment, on the other side of the threshold to his sliding glass doors.

In my hand was a computer printout of what Billy called the last letter. Mark Mayes, a college student in Atlanta, had sent it to Billy with an inquiry asking him for representation in a legal action based on a handful of originals. Mayes had found them, yellowed and nearly dried to crumbling in his great-grandmother’s attic in the family home. With great care he had unfolded each letter and read it. When he was done he had a new and profound respect for his long-dead great-grandfather and the two uncles he had rarely heard mentioned. He was also convinced that they had perished in the Everglades in the summer of 1923 while working for a private company trying to build the first highway across the great swamp. It wasn’t a lark. The kid had offered up a small family inheritance to pay Billy’s retainer.

This had all been explained to me during my first two beers from Billy’s refrigerator. I suspected my friend and attorney was loosening me up.

“Another R-Rolling R-Rock?” Billy said, stepping out onto the patio with a sweating green bottle in hand.

“So you went and took a look at the originals,” I started, but caught myself, “and they’re convincing. I mean, there’s no way to fake something like this?” I reached out and accepted the beer, smiling. Billy only raised his eyebrows.

“I stopped at M-Mr. Mayes’s family home while v-visiting an acquaintance in Atlanta,” Billy said. “He’s a difficult young m-man to d-disbelieve, Max. And although I’m n-no expert, if these are f-fakes, he went to a lot of t-trouble preparing them.”

Billy’s stutter flowed through my ears now with only the most subtle recognition. It was something I’d gotten used to. Billy is a stress stutterer. His speech is flawless when he talks to you over the phone or even from the other side of a wall. But face-to-face, even among friends, his words jam up behind his teeth, always left behind and trying to keep up with his brilliant mind.

“The original sc-script is very faded. But the d-dates are compatible. The building of the Tamiami Trail had b-been off and on b-but wasn’t completed until 1926.”

Billy sat down in the chaise next to mine. He was wearing a pair of shorts and a silk shirt of some expensive designer brand. He stretched out his trim legs and crossed his ankles. His chocolate- colored skin was smooth and tight, and his profile was equal to any GQ model or film actor as he looked out onto the horizon.

“Now, whether his c-conjecture about the f-fate of his relatives is correct, will t-take us time to investigate,” he said.

I stopped tipping my bottle just at that point where the first swallow is down your throat and you are breaking the bubble for the next.

“Us?” I said,