No previous governor had dared to disrupt the business of paving Florida. For seventy glorious years, the state had shriveled safely in the grip of those most efficient at looting its resources. Suddenly this reckless young upstart was inciting folks like a damn communist. Save the rivers. Save the coasts. Save the Big Cypress. Where would it end? Time magazine put him on the cover. David Brinkley called him a New Populist. The National Audubon Society gave him a frigging medal….
One night, in a curtained booth of a restaurant called the/Silver Slipper, a pact was made to stop the madman. His heroics in Southeast Asia made him immune to customary smear tactics, so the only safe alternative was to neutralize him politically. It was a straightforward plan: No matter what the new governor wanted, the legislature and cabinet would do the opposite-a voting pattern to be ensured by magnanimous contributions from bankers, contractors, real estate brokers, hoteliers,farm conglomerates and other special-interest groups that were experiencing philosophical differences with Clinton Tyree.
The strategy succeeded. Even the governor’s fellow Democrats felt sufficiently threatened by his reforms to abandon him without compunction. Once it became clear to Glint Tyree that the freeze was on, he slowly began to come apart. Each defeat in the legislature hit him like a sledge. His public appearances were marked by bilious oratory and dark mutterings. He lost weight and let his hair grow. During one cryptic press conference, he chose not to wear a shirt. He wrote acidulous letters on official stationery, and gave interviews in which he quoted at length from Carl Jung, Henry Thoreau and David Crosby. One night the state trooper assigned to guard the governor found him creeping through a graveyard; Clinton Tyree explained his intention was to dig up the remains of the late Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, the governor who had first schemed to drain the Everglades. Tyree’s idea was to distribute Governor Broward’s bones as souvenirs to visitors in the capitol rotunda.
Meanwhile the ravaging of Florida continued unabated, as did the incoming stampede. A thousand fortune-seekers took up residence in the state every day, and there was nothing Glint Tyree could do about it.
So he quit, fled Tallahassee on a melancholy morning in the back of a state limousine, and melted into the tangled wilderness. In the history of Florida, no governor had ever before resigned; in fact, no elected officeholder had made such an abrupt or eccentric exit from public life. Journalists and authors hunted the missing Clinton
Tyree but never caught up with him. He moved by night, fed off the road, and adopted the solitary existence of a swamp rattler. Those who encountered him knew him by the name of Skink, or simply “captain,” a solemn hermitage interrupted by the occasional righteous arson, aggravated battery or highway sniping.
Only one man held the runaway governor’s complete trust-the Highway Patrol trooper who had been assigned to guard him during the gubernatorial campaign and later had come to work at the governor’s mansion; the same trooper who was driving the limousine on the day Clinton Tyree disappeared. It was he alone who knew the man’s whereabouts, kept in touch and followed his movements; who was there to help when Clinton Tyree went around the bend, which he sometimes did. The trooper had been there soon after his friend lost an eye in a vicious beating; again after he shot up some rental cars in a roadside spree; again after he burned down an amusement park.
Some years were quieter than others.
“But he’s been waiting for this hurricane,” Jim Tile said, twirling a spoonful of spaghetti. “There’s cause to be concerned.”
Augustine said: “I’ve heard of this guy.”
“Then you understand why I need to talk to Mrs Lamb.”
“Mrs Lamb,” Bonnie said, caustically, “can’t believe what she’s hearing. You think this lunatic’s got Max?”
“An old lady in the neighborhood saw a man fitting the governor’s description carrying a man fitting your husband’s description. Over his shoulder. Buck naked.” Jim Tile paused to allow Mrs Lamb to form a mental picture of the scene. He said, “I don’t know about the lady’s eyesight, but it’s worth checking out. You mentioned a tape you made-the kidnapper’s voice.”