EDITOR'S NOTE: Ellen Sugarman is a nationally known investigative reporter. She has given KWTN permission to serialize her new book about environmental terrorism in the Florida Keys. It is a work of fiction. The events and characters portrayed are imaginary. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is coincidental.
Doug and Louie didn't have much to do that Sunday and it was a great day for the water, so they decided to have some fun, do some good. To round out their little group they called up Ricky and told him to meet them at the dock where Louie kept his boat.
The 25-foot Mako was a sweetie, grey with the words "Marine Patrol" in foot-high black letters and the ornate silver--and-black submerged anchor logo. She was trim and fast with twin 225-HP outboard motors and Louie kept her in perfect running order, always fired up to go. The men climbed in and sat, with Louie at the helm, the other two behind. To the casual observer they would have looked like three middle-aged fishermen out for a day's troll. They even had the cooler in the prow, stocked with beer and bottled water. No fishing poles, though.
They were dressed in mufti since none of them was on duty and this was more or less a pleasure cruise. Doug had on jeans and a faded brown tee-shirt, a well-worn ball cap, tennis shoes. Ricky, the scrawniest of the three, wore cut-off shorts and a loud green tee that proclaimed "See the Keys on your Hands and Knees." He had rolled a fuscia colored bandana and tied it around his thin dirty blonde hair for a sweat band. He had a half-smoked cigarette in his mouth and he was reaching for a can of Michelob as Louie turned the key in the ignition and the motor kicked in.
Though he was dressed in khakis, a beige undershirt with a blue cotton shirt over it, loafers without socks, Louie still looked like he was in uniform. That was Louie. It was the way the man stood, the attention in his eyes, the seriousness of his posture, his aviator shades. After they got underway, he reached under a seat, came up with a navy ball cap and put it on. When he bent, you could just make out the bulge of the '38 in its holster. Louie never went anywhere without his gun.
They had decided on their destination back at the pier: Little Knockemdown Key. One of thousands of tiny offshore islands that dotted the Florida Straits, mostly uninhabited, many of them unnamed. They were reached only by boat and then only if you could tell one from the other and knew where you were going.
Since he spent most of his waking hours on the water, patrolling, Louie pretty much knew each and every one of the Keys. Even though he had a phobic fear of snakes and there were snakes on many of them— not poisonous ones, but he hated all slithery reptiles, which put him in mind of crocs and gators, which he didn't like either— Louie had set foot on most of the keys at one time or another. He also knew them from the air, thanks to regular flights in Doug's department plane since this business began.
He set the course, then sat back and scanned the horizon. Yeah, it was another beautiful day in Paradise. Louie had been born and raised here in Monroe County and this was where he planned to die. Not just yet, but sometime. He wouldn't have wanted it any other way. Outside of infrequent trips to Miami, Louie had never been out of the Keys.
Jimmy Nichols and Sue Marten had been camping on Little Knockemdown for years before they finally got enough money together to buy their own little piece of Paradise. They had a pretty primitive operation out here, which was what they wanted. They came here to camp and get away from town. An old RV, a lean-to, rickety cat-walks that had been there from the beginning of time, a collection of plants— including Sue's orchids— and the birds.
The birds swung in a variety of cages from branches and contributed a cheery chatter to the normal sounds of the winds and the grasses and the leaves. Otherwise, it was pretty quiet most of the time. They had a bunch of `No Trespassing' signs ringing their property, but Jimmy and Sue knew it wasn't really necessary. Until just recently, no one ever ventured onto Little Knockemdown except their neighbors, who were all quiet hippies like themselves.
It was the birds that told them someone was around. The birds started up such a chatter it woke Sue, who'd been dozing in a hammock with an open book on her stomach. She sat up and listened, at first hearing nothing. Then she made out a sound. It was footsteps crackling through the thick autumn grasses. And there were voices, too. Men's voices carrying over the wind.
Sue sat up and called, "Jimmy." She waited, then called again, in a low urgent voice. She still couldn't see anyone.
Jimmy emerged from the lean-to where he'd been trying to fix the Swedish cookstove. He had the dim, laid-back attitude of someone on pot. In fact, he had a reefer in his hand. "What?"
"Someone's here. D'you hear `em?"
He listened, lifting his head as though he was smelling the air. Then he nodded and put the cigarette carefully into a pants pocket. Sue and Jimmy locked eyes. He shrugged. He recalled hearing the sound of a motor sometime ago, he didn't exactly remember when. He hadn't heard a boat dock.
By the time the men cleared the horizon, Sue and Jimmy were standing close together, staring in their direction. They didn't recognize the threesome, which was worrisome in itself. You did not get much drop-in traffic out here in the middle of nowhere. And when you did it wasn't generally good news.
The second thing that put them off was something about the men themselves: they had an uptight unpleasant aura. Something in their eyes made them appear, well, unfriendly. Their expressions weren't hospitable, even when one of them, the heavy set fellow in levis, lifted an arm and described a broad arc in the air. Their faces didn't make Sue and Jimmy wave back.
It had suddenly grown still and, as Sue later remembered it, she thought it got dark, like a cloud had partially obscured the sun. She checked out the sun, where it was in the sky, so she knew it was about two o'clock. Why this interested her when it normally wouldn't she could not have said. It just seemed like a good idea to get her bearings.
The men just kept walking straight up to them. They were kind of menacing. They stopped about five feet away and each of them began to look around, as though they were surveying the camp.
For a moment, Sue thought they were going to rob them. One of them, the skinny one with the bandana, took a few steps on the catwalk, then stood there like a statue staring out at the ocean. He was this scrawny little banty rooster of a guy. The other two were a heavy set kind of pockmarked white guy with grey hair who looked like he might be a conch— meaning a local. And the younger one, a good looking Cuban.
It was the Cuban who spoke. "So, you live out here?"
Jimmy shook his head.
"It's just a camp. We stay out here sometimes," Sue said. She usually did the talking for the two of them. She felt compelled to back up the statement. "We have a place in Key West, on Southard."
"What's your name?" asked the scrawny one. Something about the look in his eyes that made Sue suddenly clam up. "I said, what's your name. Missus." Then he smiled, a thin unconvincing smile and held out both hands, palms up, to indicate that he was waiting on her.
Sue shrugged and told them.
"And him? He your husband?"
"He's Jimmy. Jimmy Nichols."
"You own this here property?" asked the scrawny one.
"Who wants to know?" Jimmy spoke up suddenly. It wasn't as though anyone had bothered to identify himself, even though they were acting all official like.
That was when, Sue testified later, the Cuban slowly moved his hand to his belt and unsnapped his holster, which had been obscured by the shirt. Louie told them he did. Then they asked him did he mind if they looked around some? Jimmy shrugged.
At the hearing, Louie said he had been worried about wild dogs. That was why he unsnapped the holster, he thought he heard some dogs out there. Sue and Jimmy said there are no dogs on the island.
Sue also said that when Louie unsnapped the holster like that, it made them feel threatened, out there in the middle of nowhere with three strangers, one with a gun. So of course they let them look around. Inside and outside.
And they also toured the other six properties on the Key, without permission. They were out on the island about two hours, all in all.
A few days later, all seven property owners received Code Enforcement citations. Telling them to tear down all the unpermitted structures on the island— even though those structures had been there long enough to be grandfathered into any County ordinance— which at least one of the men who had visited Knockemdown Key, Ricky Pindar, head of Code Enforcement, would have known had he bothered to check the aerial maps in the Code Enforcement office.
It turned out the other two were also officials. Doug Barnes was an off-duty sheriff's deputy and Louis Sanchez was an officer with the Marine Patrol. Although, that Sunday, none of the men was in uniform or on duty. So none of them was officially there.
To be continued next week.
Ellen Sugarman's writing has appeared in publications such as Newsweek, Time, Vogue, Ms., Penthouse, New York Times Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Sun Times, the Washington Times Insight Magazine and the Miami Herald's Tropic Magazine.
As a freelance television producer, she has worked with ABC, Fox News, A&E and the BBC. Several years ago, she produced a special on environmental terrorism in the Florida Keys for ABC's 20/20. Although scheduled to run several times, the show was ultimately killed, reportedly because of pressure from the Nature Conservancy.
The program did air in the Keys, however, after activist Peter Anderson was able to obtain a videotape of the show and paid for time to run it on local cable television.
Among a number of shocking revelations, the program documents that State Attorney Kirk Zuelch, while a member of the local Nature Conservancy board, offered to drop charges against property owners accused of environmental crimes if they would sell or give their land to the Nature Conservancy. Zuelch quickly resigned from the Nature Conservancy board after he was interviewed by 20/20.
Anderson encouraged viewers to tape the show when it ran on local TV. If you want to see this show, KWTN has a couple of loaner copies. Info: 292-2108.