Several months ago innocent blood had been spilled on the river. An old and revered ranger and his young assistant were killed. Some of it had been on my hands. I believed it, and I could not blame others if they shared that belief. I climbed into my truck and pulled out of the parking lot, the white shell surface crunching and popping under my tires.
Twenty minutes later I was climbing the entrance ramp to I-95 and, as always, dreading the traffic and the stench of exhaust in the urban world. Billy had asked me to meet him in his office just south of downtown. I dutifully stayed in my proper lanes, cruising south at the acceptable ten miles an hour over the speed limit, and slipped off the packed interstate onto an equally busy avenue. In downtown West Palm Beach I maneuvered through the one-way streets to a commercial block of high-rises that carried the names of banks and financial institutions on the facades. The buildings were all done in the same sandstone texture with the same contemporary block design. It was like a cookie-cutter Levittown gone vertical.
When I got to Billy's building I took the side entrance to the parking garage and stopped at the booth.
"Visitors spots right there to the left," the attendant said after checking my name on a clipboard. He'd given me a pleasant enough smile in response when I'd given Billy's name, but like a trained street cop he'd also let his eyes roam my face and I could almost feel him reciting hair color, eyes, collared shirt and no tie. In my rearview I saw him taking down my tag number. It was a careful building.