proved something I suspected.”
My look shot him the question.
“I don’t play by anyone’s rules but my own, and neither do you, Jake.”
“What are you saying, that deep down, we’re blood brothers because we do things our own way? You can’t reduce a man to one character trait.”
“Maybe not, but we’re more alike than you might think.” Florio cranked at his reel. “Just ask Gina.”
I wasn’t going near that one. Florio looked back at the water. “C’mon, now, let’s have some fun. You want to catch some snook?”
“Snook?”
“Yeah, ever hear of them?”
“I don’t have a saltwater license or a snook stamp. Besides, they’re out of season.”
“Ay, Counselor, you don’t listen real well. You don’t need a license. You don’t need a stamp. This is God’s country.”
And the gods make their own rules.
Florio dragged his line across the top of the water and began telling snook stories. Hard to find, much less catch, the fish detects movement on the water with that black lateral line along its body.
A thunderous splash from below jarred me.
The bull gator surfaced, its tail smacking the water, its jaws wide. One of the pink flamingos disappeared into the gator’s huge mouth. One chomp, no more flamingo. The other bird squawked and flew away before it could become the second course.
“Survival of the fittest, Jake, in the wild and in the boardroom. Some animals survive with toughness, some with cunning. With men, it’s best to have both.”
“How about a measure of decency?”
“In small doses, like a dash of sherry in a bowl of conch chowder.” He jiggled his rod. No bait, no snook. “We come up empty, I might get Jim Tiger to help. You’re not opposed to a little gigging and netting, are you?”
I gave him a look.
“Now don’t go and tell me that’s illegal, Jake. Remember, we’re-”
“In Florio country,” I interrupted.
“Right. You’re catching on, partner. C’mon, put some mullet on your line. I pulled out a thirty-pounder last week on eight-pound test line.” He paused to remember the fight. “You ever taste snook, Jake?”
I had. Last summer, Charlie had caught a pair, the daily limit, and asked me to drive over. You can’t get snook in restaurants. Against the law to sell them. A rare, sweet-tasting fish of firm white meat.
“We have any luck,” Florio said, “Jim will cook us up some fillets. Afterward, we’ll see just how much alike we really are.”
Chapter 14
It was nearly dark when a second airboat maneuvered toward the dock. I heard it from inside the house, just as Nicky was showing me where all the mahogany trees from the hammock had gone. Reddish-brown paneling, custom-made furniture, hardwood floors. Windows were open on either end of the house, and what had been a gentle breeze earlier in the day was whipping up into gusts from the west.
The screen door opened, and Rick Gondolier walked in followed by Guillermo Diaz. Gondolier was wearing baggy black pants, black loafers without socks, and a black silk shirt. More South Beach than Tamiami Trail. Diaz wore jeans and sneakers, a blue shirt and a blue nylon jacket. A gun in a shoulder holster protruded from under the jacket.
“Ay, my favorite abogado,” Diaz greeted me.
Gondolier shook hands with me, but not as if it were the highlight of his day.
Jim Tiger grilled the snook over an oak fire. A thirty-incher I caught and a whopper, a twenty-two-pounder, brought in by Florio. Basted with butter, seasoned with a little celery salt and basil, some paprika for color. There was also a salad of cabbage palm, some boiled corn, and a dessert of pumpkin pie sweetened with Everglades sugarcane. We ate at a knotty-pine picnic table on the porch, then sat on rockers drinking whiskey and talking sports and politics and weather and nothing at all.
By nine o’clock, raindrops were tap-dancing across the metal roof and we were back inside. Jim Tiger closed the shutters on the western side to keep out the wind-driven rain, and we sat in straight-backed wicker chairs at a table covered with green felt. A shaded lamp hung directly over the table. I faced Florio with Gondolier to my left and Diaz to my right. I don’t know why I thought of it, but Diaz’s gun hand was on the side away from me. “Seven- card stud?” Florio asked. “Ten-dollar, twenty-dollar?”
“They’re your cards, Nicky,” Gondolier replied.
“Right, and don’t forget it.”
Diaz divided the chips among the four of us, five hundred dollars to a man.
Florio shuffled the deck, which he offered to me. I cut, and he began dealing. ‘Three cards, the first two facedown, the third face up. “Jake, you know anything about the Indians in Florida?”
“Not much.”
Florio showed a king, Gondolier a seven, and Diaz a deuce. I had a ten up and a pair of eights down, a good start. The first three cards are called Third Street, with the high card showing opening the betting. Florio slid a ten-dollar chip into the center of the table, and everyone called him. Jim Tiger delivered a tray of fresh drinks to the table and took a chair behind his boss to watch the game.
“It’s a damn sorry history,” Florio said, as he dealt a card face up to each of us. “First you have the Calusa and the Tequestas. ‘They fought old Ponce de Leon back in the 1500s. That was just the beginning of what turned out to be hundreds of years of bullshit by the whites. Now fast-forward a bit, and there’s Andy Jackson’s soldiers chasing the Creeks south from Alabama and Georgia. White men called them the Seminoles.”
Florio showed a king and a nine, Gondolier a pair of sevens, and Diaz added a king to his deuce. My ten was joined by a three, while my pair of eights grew warmer underneath. Fourth Street. Gondolier opened with ten dollars.
“By now, Jackson becomes president and begins removing Indians from east of the Mississippi to what was called Indian territory. It was a useless desert we now call Oklahoma. Do I have that right, Jim?”
“The Trail of Tears,” Jim Tiger said. “Your government violated the Treaty of Moultrie Creek.”
“Right,” Florio agreed. “Rule number one, Jake. Never trust the government.”
Florio slid a ten-dollar chip into the pot, calling Gondolier, and Diaz folded. “Of course, not all the Indians left for the west. Chief Osceola led a band of under-armed, underfed warriors against the U.S. Army. Eventually, of course, he was overpowered, and his people retreated into the Everglades. The army pursued them, using maps the Spaniards made in the 1500s. The poor bastards had Lake Okeechobee in downtown Miami. What’s the joke about army intelligence, Jake?”
“It’s the classic oxymoron.”
“Right. Hey, you and I make a good team.”
I matched the ten dollars and raised another twenty. Gondolier and Florio called the bet without hesitation. The wind made a whistling sound off the corrugated roof. Jim Tiger stood up and closed some shutters that were banging against the house.
“So there they were,” Florio continued, “a proud, independent people living off the land and water, sleeping in little chickee huts built on hardwood hammocks. They ate the fish and grew corn and cane and had about a hundred uses for alligator hides and meat, and meanwhile the U.S. troops kept dying of malaria or gangrene or an occasional bullet, and the war got so expensive, the government just called it off.”
“Sounds like Vietnam,” I said.
Florio dealt us into Fifth Street, another card face up. I latched on to a third eight and tried not to smile or yell hoo-boy. As far as anyone could see, I had a bunch of scattered cards.
