The Devil's Work

by Linda Ladd

  That wouldn’t stop the killers, but being on a Seminole reservation just might. “So we’re close to the Everglades? There are some dangerous animals out here.”

  “Yes, they told us. Big alligators and snakes, we have seen them. We have them in our jungles and rivers back home.”

  Novak stood up, and his head started hammering. He had a concussion, all right, but not bad enough to kill him. He’d had them before and was still breathing. “Which one of those guys clubbed me?”

  “Jake. He is sorry, though.”

  “I really need to talk to Eldon.”

  “He said he’d talk to you tomorrow. He said to be careful because they will come for you and kill you for helping us. They will take you somewhere and beat you with hammers. Then they will harm your family.”

  “I don’t have a family.” Not anymore, he thought.

  “I am sorry.”

  Yeah, so was he. He’d lost his wife and their young son and daughter on 9/11 when the World Trade Center came crashing to the ground with all of them trapped inside. That was the worst day of his life, and the nightmares he had every single night never let him forget it. He looked into Alcina’s sorrowful face and understood her pain. But he could get her little girl back for her. He would never see his babies again.

  “The cut on your head is deep. You can sleep here until Eldon gets back. He wants to talk to you,”

  She was right. His headache was not going away. Now that he was on his feet, he felt dizzy again. “Okay, show me where I can lie down.”

  Novak stepped down off the chickee and followed the tiny woman around the fire pit. The men they walked past stopped their conversation and watched him. Most of them looked to be in their twenties and thirties, a few older than that. He searched among them for weapons like knives and guns and baseball bats and saw pretty much all of it everywhere. These guys had armed themselves to the hilt; they did not think this place was safe from attack despite what Alcina had been told.

  Feeling slightly more secure with their numbers and firepower around, he followed Alcina Castillo down a dark path that led through a field of knee-high grass. He had a feeling he was about to spend a long night, wide awake with a million or so buzzing and biting insects swarming his sleeping bag, if he was lucky enough to get one. Claire had no idea what she had gotten them into. Truth was, if somebody here had kidnapped a little baby from its mother, Claire would hunt them down if it took her the rest of her life. That was just the way she rolled. That was Novak’s favorite thing about her.

  Chapter 3

  Years in the military had taught Novak that he could sleep anywhere. He could get by on two or three hours of sleep for days at a time. He hadn’t needed that capability of late, but tonight he did. After Alcina had led him to a different chickee, she left him there without another word. This one had a pup tent erected on the raised platform. Novak zipped himself up inside and found a colorful handwoven blanket and pillow left there for him.

  After that he lay awake for several hours and thought about what an unmitigated disaster this case was going to be. The tent was too small for him, and he had to bend his legs. It felt more like being encased in a funeral shroud. The primary thoughts running through his mind were how easy it would be to sneak up on a man caught inside a tiny tent atop an open-air platform. So he listened for footsteps or the racking of firearms. After a while, he got out and looked around. He couldn’t see anything.

  The constant, strident, static of singing insects became tedious fast, although he’d heard it in countless jungle camps all over the world. It was getting on his nerves. So was the idea that a small army might be descending on the camp right now, armed with AR-15s. He just couldn’t shake the idea that they would come after Alcina and Pedro. Alcina felt secure here, and hopefully Eldon Osceola’s men were on guard. Still, underestimating your enemy was asking for trouble. One lucky helicopter sweep across the swamps, one slip of the tongue in some bar, and the Skulls would know exactly where to find them.

  It didn’t help, either, that Novak did not know these guys who could be sleeping like babies in their own pup tents. He didn’t know if he could trust them. He didn’t like being zipped up in a tent where everyone knew where he was. He’d rather make the bad guys search for him when they had murder in mind. Claire’s case had placed him in a hornet’s nest of strangers, and he hoped to hell he was joining up on the right side of this war. He was pretty sure he was, but he’d feel better when he knew more about those guys around that fire. He had never heard of Eldon Osceola, never met him, and wouldn’t know if he could trust him or not. It didn’t sound to him like Alcina really knew him, either.

  So he lay down outside the tent with the blanket over his head and chest to ward off the swarm of mosquitoes that were feasting on him. Maybe the tent wasn’t such a bad idea, after all. When he finally did get to sleep, he woke next to find a weird cloud of gray mist drifting around him like ghosts in the breeze. He lay there for a few minutes and stared at the palmetto fronds forming the roof above him. Birds were waking up: cheerful and chirping and irritating. It had been a while since he had spent the night in an unfamiliar swamp. His house had the luxury of modern electricity and plumbing, but nothing like that out here, not that he’d seen. These people knew how to rough it.

  The surrounding fields were covered with that same damp ground-hugging fog, so he couldn’t see much that didn’t look like he was wading through a cloudbank. The night before, Alcina had disappeared without a word, presumably heading back to her own tent. Everybody else was either gone or asleep or dead. He hoped it wasn’t that last, but he wouldn’t be surprised. He dropped his face into his hands and rubbed his eyes.

  Novak was uneasy but tried to shake it off. He had no real reason to doubt these people or to fear them. Still, if they had all gone off during the night and left him out in the middle of nowhere, he was not going to enjoy a good day. Stepping down into swirls of gray, he headed off in the direction he thought he’d come from the night before. The sun was trying to come up. The fog started to lift as if on cue. Within minutes, Novak made out a large building on the far side of a grassy field. It was built with dark wood and a galvanized red metal roof. It was several feet off the ground like the chickees. He started walking toward it.

  The farther he got, the more he could see. It was a little settlement. What did Alcina call it? Pa-hay-Okee Safari. That’s what it looked like: the jungle area at Disney World, maybe. It looked clean, interesting, unthreatening. There were a dozen more chickees built along a central road. Most of them had tents pitched on top. There was a body of water down close to the major building. There was a good-sized covered dock down there, too, and he could see four large airboats and about ten aluminum canoes and kayaks where they were neatly stacked on boat racks along the bank. This was a place of business catering to tourists, all right.

  Novak felt better because the girl’s story panned out. Roads covered in small white shells led up to smaller buildings. None of them looked like private residences. He had a feeling this might be a replica of a historic Seminole village that also offered boat rentals and guided tours. If he had to guess, the water would eventually wind around and empty into the Everglades’ immense grasslands. There were similar offshoots in the bayous with businesses that catered to tourists. He could see now that there were booths, still shuttered, but where they likely sold handmade arts and crafts. That meant they weren’t out in the middle of nowhere, but fairly close to a highway. Breathing easier, he turned and headed for the big building, hoping to find Alcina and Pedro.

  Then he saw the guy. He was squatting down beside a cook fire not too far away, and the come-hither aroma of frying bacon wafted enticingly to Novak. His stomach reacted, got hysterical, in fact, so he hastily changed course. He hadn’t eaten since lunch the day before. He wanted some of that bacon.

  About thirty feet from the fire, the man glanced up and saw Novak.
He was a Seminole, Novak knew that at once. He was tall and slender, with black eyes and even blacker hair. Even from a distance, he had a presence about him that made Novak feel he would be someone important. In the 1800s, he might have been a chief. Maybe he was now, too. He looked mid-forties, maybe in his fifties, but it was hard to tell. He was muscular but in a hard, lean way. He had on faded denim jeans and a beige canvas shirt and New Balance black tennis shoes. He said nothing to Novak but kept an eye on him as he approached. Novak broke the ice. “Good morning.”

  “You think so?” the man said, looking up at him.

  “So far. Maybe not for long, all things considered. You tell me. I’m new around here.” Novak shifted his gaze to the meat sizzling in the skillet, and his stomach made embarrassing sounds. “Can I buy some breakfast off you?”

  That brought a smile. “Considering you’re wearing no shirt and have mosquito bites all over you, I suspect you don’t have any money with you. But go ahead, sit yourself down. Everybody around here is just damn lazy.” He flipped a piece of bacon. “Kids today only think about their cellphones and stupid stuff like Twitter. All that social media crap won’t do them a lick of good in the long run. Waste of good time where they could be learnin’ something. Go ahead, help yourself to the coffee, if you have a liking for it. You look like you might need all you can get. Got you in the head last night, did they?”

  “I met up with a baseball bat, but the kid says he’s really sorry he hit me so hard and both times, too. I’ll take as much coffee as you can spare.”

  “Good, that means he shows some manners.”

  Novak found some metal mugs sitting on a camp table alongside paper plates and plastic forks and a roll of paper towels. He took a cup, squatted down, and lifted the percolator. Now the guy was ignoring him, so Novak took the hint. This guy wasn’t chatty; neither was Novak. He sat down in a camp chair and watched the cook prepare breakfast. It was just past dawn. Ten thousand birds seemed ecstatic to see the sunrise.

  Up close, Novak realized the man might be older than he’d first thought. Now he looked to be in his sixties, maybe. Pure white streaked his black hair just above his temples, but his hair was trimmed short, almost to the scalp, so it wasn’t noticeable at first. His face was the color of aged bronze and looked newly sunburned. The corners of his eyes were creased with deep lines, but his cheeks were smooth with a few creases but no wrinkles. His eyes were keen as shards from a black window. Novak had never seen him before. He knew that because this was the kind of man Novak wouldn’t forget. He wanted to talk to him because he was certain he could fill in the cracks in Alcina’s story.

  “My name is Will Novak. Your young friends and the Guatemalan woman brought me out here last night, right after they clubbed those big knots on my head.”

  The man grinned. “Yeah, I taught ’em how to do that. Saves a lot of bloody knuckles and broken fingers. Just take the big ones out first and quick before they lay hands on you.” Then his amusement faded, and he sat back and considered Novak. “I reckon one of us is gonna pay the price for what happened on that beach last night. Probably you, if I had to hazard a guess. Afraid you won’t get off so easy with those guys. Just don’t know who or how many of ’em are going to come at you or when it’s gonna go down.”

  “You’re Eldon Osceola, I presume.”

  “That’s right. My kids and I run this place. You’re safe here at the moment, but I reckon both of us will be knee deep in shit before this week is done.”

  Another flash of levity lit up those intense black eyes, but it was fleeting. Osceola turned over another strip of bacon. “I heard tell you can hold your own in a fight. Put down three or four of those stupid boys all by yourself.”

  “Can’t take much credit. Those guys last night were young and stupid, but they were armed and they like to hurt people. I’ve faced worse.”

  “You were in the military.”

  It wasn’t a question but a statement. “Yeah, out now, though. Army first, then later I joined up with a SEAL team. You were a soldier, too.” Novak knew it as sure as the man had known it about him.

  “Marines. Twenty years and out. Most of my sons have served stints, too. I’m real proud of my boys.”

  Novak nodded. Now he felt better about falling in with these people. One Marine was better than ten gangsters any day of the week.

  Eldon looked at him. “Alcina told me how you saved her and her brother. She said you put down a couple of her attackers, despite their weapons. That ain’t easy to do, even with those kids. They’re young and strong but don’t know how to fight except with a gang backing ’em up.”

  “Most of them are little boys dressed up to be tough. I suspect you know that as well as I do. They’re not the kind of enemy we face on a battlefield.”

  “No, but they will smile while they beat you to death with a crowbar. They’ve done it.”

  “Yeah, I found that out when I pissed them off. I would’ve got a bullet in the back of my head if your boys hadn’t shown up when they did. I appreciate that. Your son, Jake? He’s not too bad with a Louisville slugger. Can’t say I like this concussion he gave me, but it’s not as bad as it usually is.”

  Osceola said nothing and went back to cooking. The sun was peeking over the trees in the distance now, flooding the fields around them with bright sunlight and turning the sky a clear, brilliant blue. The fierce glitter-glare attacked Novak’s headache, and it quickly intensified. He needed sunglasses. He needed painkillers. Hell, he needed some clothes to put on. He glanced at the tents along the road. Nobody showed. Nothing moved. Maybe nobody else had spent the night. Maybe all the Osceola kids had homes in town. Maybe they were up earlier than Novak and off on assignment. Novak hoped somebody was on guard duty at the road. Apparently, Eldon Osceola felt safe enough.

  “Anybody else out here with us?” Novak inquired. “Or just me and you?”

  “Some of my sons stayed here last night to guard you and those Castillo kids. They like to sleep in, like I said. They’re lazier than their coon dogs, but they were up late saving your ass, so I’ll cut them some slack this morning.”

  Okay, so that’s how it was gonna be. Novak had to grin. This old man was right. Still, they had brought him out there without his permission, and he wanted to know more before he got Claire and himself too deeply involved. “So, what about Alcina? Is she really safe out here? They’re targets now, witnesses to their own attempted murders. That’s going to make the Skulls nervous. They’re going to try to put them down, and fast.”

  “Try is the operative word. We’re protecting her. Don’t worry about that. My boys know what they’re doing. I taught them myself. Taught my daughters, too.”

  “They got here legally, right? Why don’t you have them go to the police about that attempt on their lives? Get those guys locked up?”

  “I don’t trust some of the police around here. Some officers are paid off. I’m just not sure which ones. Only takes one bad apple to murder somebody in their custody and make it look like an accident.”

  “Has that happened before?”

  “Yeah.”

  Osceola seemed to like to converse in spurts. Maybe he liked to think things through before putting them out there. By now, he had fried up enough bacon to feed thirty men. Novak’s stomach appreciated his skill, if not his haste. He watched Osceola pour off most of the bacon grease and then crack a good two dozen eggs into the skillet. He started scrambling them with a fork. No milk added but plenty of salt and pepper.

  “Where exactly are we?” Novak asked him.

  “Big Cypress on one side; Everglades on the other. See that water over there? It’ll take you straight down into the swampland and then out through the open corridors in the grasses.”

  “Business good out here?”

  “Good but seasonal. We do other things in the off-season.” He looked up. “Are you nervous around swam
ps?”

  Novak shook his head. “I live in the Louisiana bayou, so I know where the dangers lie. I’ve been out in the Everglades a few times but wouldn’t know my way around it. Had to come out here on a case once a few years back.”

  “Eggs are done. Eat ’em while they’re hot. Help yourself.”

  Novak thought he’d never ask. The sun was already hot on their heads. Novak wished he had a shirt to put on. The humidity was heavy, and his head was sweating under the bandage. He needed to get rid of it. The bleeding had stopped. He wished the headache would. Osceola took a Styrofoam plate, the big white kind divided into sections, and handed it to him. Novak filled his plate with good-sized portions and sat back down with it, glad to get something inside his empty stomach. He felt a little sick from the pain, which was gradually advancing up into the agony level. His companion dropped a couple of pieces of grilled bread on Novak’s plate and took a camp chair across from him. He started eating without comment. Novak followed his lead. Concentrating on his food was fine with him. He already felt better.

  After a while, Novak attempted conversation. “Alcina said you’re a member of the Seminole tribe. You guys have got several reservations around here, right? She said this is the Miccosukee. You live out here?”

  “I live in town with my wife and some of my kids. Alcina’s confused about the tribe. Actually, we’re members of the Miccosukee tribe. We used to be part of the Seminole nation until we split in the 1960s, but we still live and work closely with them. My wife was born a Seminole, and some of her relatives work out here with us. We’re members in good standing all around. They let us do our business with a cut going to the res. Both my daughters work up there in the museum. There’s a snack bar in there, by the way, that sells T-shirts. You might want to get a couple of those. Put it on my tab and you can settle up later.”

  “I’ll do that. Thanks.”

  “I knew the boys would be hungry, so I came out early and fixed them breakfast. You kept them up past their bedtime, and I doubt if they trust you any more than you trust them.” He took a big bite, chewed it, swallowed, and then said, “Truth is, my children like to sleep. It goes against my grain the way they do that, but they stay up all night and sleep way past sunup. It’s not a good habit to get into. Good to see a man who’s up with the sun and ready to go to work.”