Shadow Men by Jonathon King Page A

lease?”
    “Categorically.”
    “Shit.”
    “My s-sentiments exactly.”
    Billy’s secretary, Allie, came in with coffee and placed the service on a table in front of the couch with a view. She had included two china cups and a large mug. She smiled at me when Billy thanked her.
    “So whoever tried to torch the place gets two jumps at once. He either scares me out, or messes the place up enough for the county to close it.”
    “You said R-Ranger G-Griggs was right there when it started?”
    “Yeah.”
    “C-Convenient.”
    I took the mug and blew over the rim, rippling the top layer.
    “He’s there to m-make sure you’re awake and g-get out safely and t-to make sure the fire doesn’t sp-spread into his forest.”
    “Why, Billy, I’m stunned at your lack of belief in the sincerity of your fellow man.”
    “Sh-Shit.”
    “My sentiments, exactly.”
    Allies voice on the intercom stopped our speculations.
    “Mr. Mayes is here, Mr. Manchester.”
    Billy crossed back to his desk and answered. Allie ushered in a young man, maybe early twenties, dressed uncomfortably in a suit and looking somewhat sheepish in his surroundings.
    “Mr. Mayes,” Billy said, grasping the young man’s hand. He held Billy’s eyes with a practiced politeness despite his obvious jitters. “And this is M-Max Freeman, a p-private investigator who w-works with me.”
    I took Mayes’s hand. Again the polite eyes. He was good-looking, freshly shaved, with short dark hair that probably had some kind of gel in it recently but not this morning. He was Billy’s height and shape, lean and anxious. I thought of a college student on his first day of a law internship. Billy motioned for us to sit on the couch, and I watched Mayes take the opportunity to sweep the room, taking in the wall of law books, the spotlit oil paintings and pieces of expensive sculptures and artwork that Billy always surrounded himself with. He sat on the edge of the leather couch and glanced at the view through the tall windows either in admiration, or as a means of escape. He accepted the offer of coffee and Billy began.
    “Mr. Freeman has f-field experience in law enforcement,” Billy said as a way of introduction. “He has also w-worked before in the d-deep Everglades and w-would know the areas we’re talking about much better than I.”
    Mayes looked at me and held my eyes for a moment. The look came off as respectful, but I could tell he was also reading me. He was not just a kid who accepted words on face value.
    “You would go out there, to look for them, I mean, their bodies?” he said to me. “I mean, if they’re out there.”
    Now I was holding his eyes, clear, intelligent, but with an ache that I had seen before, maybe in my own mirror. The look said he was searching for answers in his past that were connected to his future. In that way he was not unlike the young cop I had once been, trying to judge my steps by the way my family had walked them before me. We held the look a few seconds too long, and broke away at the same time. I felt the flush of embarrassment on my throat and ears. He rubbed at his own neck while turning away.
    “Max has had the opportunity to r-read your letters, Mr. Mayes, and he’s as intrigued as I,” Billy interrupted. “But p-perhaps some of the background that w-we have discussed is better coming from you.”
    “Uhh, just Mark, please, Mr. Manchester,” Mayes said.
    I was trying to read his reaction to Billy’s stutter. Before I came to Florida, I had talked with Billy several times on the phone but never face-to-face. But Mayes was either overwhelmed by his own nervousness or too polite to show that he even noticed the stutter. He turned to me and took a deep breath.
    “Well, sir, it started when my mother passed away about eighteen months ago,” he began. “When she died, I was really the last one in the family left in a line going way back.”
    While we sat drinking coffee we let Mayes tell his story yet again, its