by Paul Levine
I had pulled up at the log cabin outside of Silver Springs just after nine. The parking lot was a dirt field covered with wood chips. He appeared out of the darkness, quiet as the night.
After the howdy, he asked, "You Lassiter?"
"Guilty as charged."
Tom Carruthers studied me with a drill instructor's look. "You going into the woods like that?"
"I thought the tie would be useful in an emergency. An unexpected dinner invitation, maybe."
"What the hell do you call those shoes?"
"Actually, except for right and left, I haven't named them."
He didn't crack a grin.
"But they always come when I call them," I said, looking down at my black wingtips and then at his shin-high thick-soled brown boots.
"You're a real city slicker, aincha?"
It didn't sound like a compliment, so I didn't thank him. Now, who did he look like? It still didn't compute.
"I came straight from court, drove six hours," I told him.
"You a lawyer?"
"Guilty to count two."
"I hate lawyers."
"Well, I'm not a very good one."
He pointed toward my shoes. "You can't go into the woods like that."
"I've got basketball high-tops in the car."
He spat into a bush. "Sneakers?"
Overhead, unseen birds sang little jeering songs. A stiff breeze rattled the juniper leaves and filled the air with their tangy fragrance, the violet berries glistening in the fading light. Somebody once told me that juniper was used to flavor gin. I fought off the urge to disclose this treasure of woodsy knowledge.
I had missed dinner, and Tom Carruthers didn't offer me any. Now he stood behind me and stared into the 442's trunk like a cop without a warrant. My trunk is a lot like me. Big and messy. There's enough rust on the floor to let wet windsurfing equipment drain onto the asphalt. There's a gym bag and miscellaneous beach gear crusted with sand. I tossed aside two or three universal joints, a battered sail, and a couple of booms. I found a bruised briefcase full of half-baked pleadings and a lawyer magazine with articles about your Keogh plans, your 401-Ks, and how to double-bill your clients and not get disbarred. Finally I uncovered an old pair of black high-tops with decent enough tread for pickup games on the asphalt.
Carruthers was still looking into the trunk. "No tents allowed," he said, pointing at the pile of junk.
"That's a six-meter sail, not a tent."
"Thought it was one of your new Miami fashions, a purple-and-orange tent for the fancy-pants drug dealers."
"Why would I want a tent for a hike?"
He laughed and spat perilously close to my chariot's fender. "Forty-eight hours in the woods, some folks want to use a tent. But you can't get your survival rating if you sleep in a tent. You gotta-"
"What forty-eight hours?"
"— sleep under the stars or build yourself a hut, a lean-to, a wickiup."
"A wake-me-up?"
"Wickiup. Indian hut made from tree poles covered with brush, bark, what have you."
"I thought this was just a two-hour hike."
He spat again. "Not with me, no candy-ass stroll to watch the birds. I put you in with a bunch from the Pensacola Survival League. A few mercenaries, ex-marines, Klansmen."
"Sounds like the juries I've been getting. If it's all right with you-"
"They're already in the forest. You're late."
"So just give me the mini-version. We walk in, talk, have a beer, walk out."
"You want a little hike in the woods, one of the park rangers can arrange that tomorrow. You want Tom Cat, you go forty-eight hours, minimum. No food, no water, no matches, no compass, no sleeping bags, no tent."
"Tom Cat?"
Finally the hint of a smile. Weathered creases showed at the edge of his mouth. "They've called me that for years. In the woods, I'm a cat. I can walk over a branch of pine needles two feet from your ear, you'd never hear me."
He bent over, put a hand on a knee, and started a slow crouching walk, bringing each foot up high, then coming down gently on the outside ball of the foot, rolling to the inside, and finally, silently bringing down the heel.
"A Seminole taught me how. I added my own refinements. Up here, they call it the Tom Cat Stalk."
"What do you stalk?"
"Everything from squirrel to deer. You ever kill a deer with just your bare hands and a knife?"
"Not that I recall."
He almost laughed. "You'd remember if you had. Stalking a deer's almost impossible, even for me. You gotta have 'em trapped, nowhere to run. Or you can jump out of a tree, get 'em by the neck. Slice and choke. They'll buck and try to throw you off. You gotta hang on, blood spurting like water from a garden hose, all hot and sticky, covering you, splashing your face, filling your mouth. Squeeze the life out of them, but love them all the while."
I just let that hang there. I didn't have a comparable story to swap. Once I had shooed a land crab out of a lady friend's kitchen, and she had taken me to her bed in gratitude. Still, it didn't have the same flair.
"Never kill an animal for sport," he went on. His voice was flat and unemotional, his eyes hooded under the brim of the canvas hat. "Only for food. The Indians used every last part of the deer. Ate the venison, tanned the hides, boiled the hooves into glue, strung fishing line from tendons, and carved bones into utensils."
"Complete recycling," I said.
He nodded gravely. "I don't expect you to kill a deer…"
"Lucky for Bambi."
"You don't need that much food."
"A bacon cheeseburger would do fine right now."
"Too late for that."
"Even a turkey on rye, if we're watching the cholesterol."
He motioned me toward a path behind the cabin. Behind it lay the blackness of the Ocala National Forest. "There's lots to eat in the woods. Nearly all your furry mammals are edible. Weasels, foxes, bobcats…"
I must have been shaking my head because he kept running down the late-night snack menu. "Rodents too. Voles, mice, lemmings, rats. In a pinch, I've made a stew out of maggots and earthworms. Loaded with protein."
"Come to think of it, I should cut down on the meats."
"No problem. Grasses, cattails, pine needles. You ever drink acorn tea?"
"Does it come in instant?"
He grimaced. "I'll bet you don't even know how to make a fire out of a spindle and bow."
We were wending down a rocky trail in the moonlight when I got around to asking him about it. "They got any women up here?"
He snorted. "Scarcer than hen's teeth."
"Not like in Miami. Boy, we got all kinds."
He didn't bite.
"So what do you do for excitement?" I asked.
He hopped over a fallen log, graceful as a jaguar. "You either make friends with the palm of your hand, or you get the hell out of here. Gainesville's got the coeds, a horny bunch if ever there was.
Orlando's filled with divorcees from the north, all coming down for a fresh start."
"A guy like you must wow them with this buckskin bullshit."
He stopped in his tracks and I nearly bowled him over from behind. I thought I had offended him, and maybe he'd pop me one, but he just put a finger to his lips and cocked an ear toward the darkness.
"Black bear," he whispered. "Season doesn't open till November."
I didn't hear anything and didn't have a license, anyway. A moment later we were moving again, Carruthers doing a brisk version of the Tom Cat Stalk and Lassiter bringing up the rear with a city-slicker shuffle, tripping and cursing over every branch and rock in the darkness.
I got my mind back on track, thinking of the role I had to play. A college drama professor once told me to visualize the character to become him. My mind's eye saw a sweaty-palmed guy in a bar, shirt unbuttoned to the waist, gold chains dangling on his chest. I laid on the sleaze. "Yeah, in Miami, we got your basic panorama of flesh. Every color and shape. We got you
r waitress types, your business and professional types. We're loaded with stewardesses."
My line drifted with the current. Not a nibble.
After a pause I asked, "You get down to wicked Miami at all?"
"Once in a while."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"When?"
"What?"
"I mean, when you get to the city, call me. We'll go stalk the wild stewardesses."
"Too many hang-ups."
"How's that?"
"City women. Too many hang-ups. Too much talk."
"I know what you mean."
He clammed up again and we walked some more. It was growing darker under the canopy of slash pine and red maple trees. We emerged from one thicket into a clearing only to enter the woods again a few hundred yards away. Branches kept swatting me across the kisser, and my feet were still stumbling on the rocky ground. The air was moist with the sour perfume of fermenting flora, and little animals could be heard scurrying in the undergrowth. The brush grew thicker until we reached a stream. He led me across a trail of rocks to the other side. I only got one foot wet with a slip on the moss. Lousy sneakers.
"So how long since you been there?" I asked.
"Where?"
"Miami. My home sweet home."
"Couple of weeks. I give an outdoors class at the YMCA every month."
The timing could have been right for Mary Rosedahl. I thought of her sprawled on the floor of her tiny house. Serving coffee, tea, and smiles at thirty thousand feet, hungering over the keyboard in the eternal search for Fantasy Man, a kind, sensitive, knowing gent who can fix a leaky faucet and share his innermost thoughts. Searching for love and intimacy and commitment and all the other words that have been Cosmo' ed into them. And maybe she found the deerslayer, a fantasy with a nightmare ending.
We stopped in a clearing and sat down, cross-legged, like Indians in a Western. It was a cloudless night, and I could see his tanned face clearly in the moonlight.
"Okay," he said, "what's your best choice for shelter?"
"The Holiday Inn on Route 200-"
"This land's sloped. Figure the angles, so if it rains, you don't have a stream through your bed."
"— preferably with room service."
"Start by finding some good, strong branches for your ridgepoles. There's plenty of brush, tree boughs, and bark for the roof. Get some leaves to make a bed."
I hadn't seen him remove the knife from a sheath on his leg, but now there it was, gleaming in the moonlight. A row of sawteeth on one edge, a smooth bevel on the other, it looked big as a machete.
"You don't seem to be into this, Mr. Lassiter."
"It just takes me a while."
He scraped the blade of the knife against a rock. Some people are afraid of snakes. With some, it's guns. With me, it's a foot-long blade of stainless steel. I hate a knife.
"That's some blade," I said, forcing a smile.
"Combination Bowie and Rambo. Can chop down a tree or field-dress a deer. You wouldn't believe how it can open a rib cage."
I believed it. I took a breath and said, "Bet you could slice out a kidney with that."
"What?"
"A guy who guts animals probably has a pretty good idea about anatomy."
"I know the intestines from the liver, if that's what you mean."
"Catch me if you can, Mr. Lusk."
"Huh?"
His face was blank, showing neither malice nor curiosity.
"Tom, would you agree that 'woman is the lesser man'?"
"The fuck you talking…?"
"Never mind," I said.
He brought the blade of the knife across a rock, harder this time, and the metallic grating sent a shiver up my spine. "Flint and steel," he said. "All you need for a fire. Bring me some dried leaves, little twigs for tinder."
I unwound my stiff legs and, like a good scout, gathered a pile of forest flotsam, which I dropped at his feet. He didn't look up. "We get all types up here," he said. "Doctors, company presidents, retired folks. Even had a couple fairies from Lauderdale a few weeks back."
"Imagine that."
"Not too many lawyers."
"Be thankful for small blessings."
Little sparks shot from the blade into the kindling. He leaned close to the ground and gently blew into the pile. I could see his face, half-shadowed, half-lighted in the orange glow of the small fire.
"Most guys," he said, "when they come up here, they want to know about the trees and the animals and the dewpoint. You want to talk about women in Miami."
"Just a red-blooded all-American guy, what can I tell you?"
"There was somebody up here a few days ago, a Miami cop. I told him to fuck off."
"Well put."
"I hate cops."
"And lawyers," I agreed.
"Cop wanted to know the last time I was in Miami. And if I saw women down there. Then a guy in shiny shoes drives two hundred fifty miles to take a walk in the woods, asks the same questions. What would you think?"
"Life is full of coincidences. Sixty-five million years ago, when the dinosaurs bought the farm, all the plankton in the ocean died, too. What do you think of that?"
He stood up without using his hands or breaking a twig. "I think you're a cop-lawyer or a lawyer-cop, and I think you'd better find your way home by yourself, mate."
In his silent half crouch, it took only a few seconds for Tom Cat to creep into the darkness of the forest.
Then it hit me. Mate. Crocodile Dundee, but without the charm.
CHAPTER 16
Duck Soup
The Prosecutors. Earnest young men and women clip-clopping along the corridors of the Justice Building, barging from courtroom to courtroom, slinging a cargo of files. Always hustling. Always grim. An atmosphere of perpetual motion, of jobs undone, of calendars clogged. Nolle prosequi, refile, plead 'em out, nolo contendere. Bring in new batch. Waive the jury, face the judge, try 'em, minimum mandatory. Carrying concealed firearm, probation violation, back again sucker, revoke probation, bus 'em to Raiford. Jury trial, six honest baffled souls, reasonable doubt, let 'em go, catch you later. Stack 'em up and move 'em through.
The Accused. In the corridors, accompanied by uniformed county-jail guards, filing in from the holding cells. The funnel of law enforcement pours out its refuse here. Some bewildered first-timers, shackled at the feet, shuffling into court, eyes darting toward the gallery for a friendly face. Then the hard guys, still swaggering despite the chains, putting on that street-wise cool as a shell against the world.
The Civil Servants. Drab halls jammed with the faceless players in the game of crime and punishment. An army of workers from a dozen state agencies scooting through the building, feeding the monster. Social workers, probation officers, drug counselors, victim advocates, all committed to the impossible task of imposing order on the bedlam of the American city. In cramped offices overhead, an invisible legion of administrators, secretaries, and file clerks push the paper, stuff the files, and record every twist and turn of the swirling universe called the criminal justice system. Your Tax Dollars at Work.
I squished along the corridor, my wet high-tops leaving a perfect trail of tread on tile. Nick Fox's receptionist gave me a look reserved for unshaven men in soggy clothes who interrupt the boss's breakfast before the nine a.m. staff meeting. I didn't wait for an invitation to join the great man in his inner office.
He had company.
"You know Commissioner Caycedo's new Lincoln?" Fox asked. He sat at his desk, a linen napkin jammed into his already tight collar, protecting his white-on-white shirt and burgundy power tie. In front of him was a serving tray with a plate of eggs Benedict, a glass of orange juice, and a pitcher of steaming coffee.
Alex Rodriguez sprawled in an upholstered client's chair, reading the sports section of the Journal. "Yeah. That blue-black number about a block long with tinted windows like he's el presi-dente. "
Fox poured coffee for himself and did his best
to ignore me. He was good at it. "See, he's got the car, maybe two weeks, doesn't even have pecker tracks on the velour. Every antitheft device known to Detroit, the kill switch, the remote alarm, the fuel-line switch, the cane hook, the portable motion sensor, the telephone-activated alarm, the window beeper."
"I think I see this coming," Rodriguez said, still reading the box scores.
Fox sliced into a poached egg and a dollop of yolk squirted out.
"But all that electronic shit doesn't do any good if you just double-park in front of Manny Diaz's restaurant-"
"El Pollo Loco."
"— and leave the car running, door open."
"Uh-oh. I picture it now," Rodriguez said, cracking a grin.
"So the commissioner waddles into the kitchen to collect the week's bolita receipts. He still would have been okay, but then he stops for a media noche on the way out with a side of frijoles negros and a little flan for dessert."
"Bad for his heart, if he had any."
"So he's wiping the grease off his chin just in time to see some jackrabbit hop into the Lincoln and tear down Calle Ocho." Fox paused, sipped the coffee, and continued, "Now the fat fuck's busting my chops."
Rodriguez nodded solicitously. "What's he expect you to do, call out the National Guard?"
"A major crusade against grand theft auto. It'll be his theme for the next election. He's got the figures. Thirty-six thousand stolen cars a year in Dade alone, a hundred a day. In the course of a year, one out of every fifty cars in the county is snatched. He figures every voter either is a victim or knows someone who is."
Rodriguez smiled with appreciation. "Caycedo might be fat, ugly, and crooked, pero el no es estupido."
"Plus he wants his car back."
"Lots of luck." Rodriguez laughed. "It's probably on a boat to the Dominican Republic."
Fox took a swallow of his orange juice. "Nah, we found it last night. Fished a local doper out of a canal and the divers came across the Lincoln by accident. Radio and tape player ripped off, nothing else missing, car in twelve feet of muck."
Rodriguez shook his head. "Your crack addicts got no respect for value."
Fox looked up, well fed and delighted with himself. "Yo, Jakie. You look like shit. What's that, mistletoe in your hair?"
