The horror revealed itself slowly. The rowboats were not empty. Lying in their hulls was a ghastly collection of bloodied and mangled corpses. The men had been shot, hacked, cut, and gouged — several were practically decapitated. Whole limbs were missing. Some had been gutted and their entrails ran down their legs.
Several of the men on the gunboat vomited. Most gawked for a moment then turned away. Little was said, and the word “cannibal” was never used.
They managed to capsize the rowboats and watched one sink slowly, then the other. Twenty-three men buried at sea. Twenty-one more safely on deck with no desire to do anything but go home.
The general’s slave-hunting expedition was over. If he wanted more slaves he’d have to pay for them. He turned his gunboat around and retreated to Camino Island.
Mercer was shaking her head. “And where did you find that little gem?”
“Dunleavy lived a long, interesting life and decided to share it by writing his memoirs, which he completed at the age of ninety. He lived eight more years. The book was copyrighted in 1895, and it probably sold about as many copies as Lovely’s. I saw it listed in some obscure bibliography and skimmed it online. When I saw the story about Dark Isle, I perked up.”
“You’re a genius.”
“No, but close.”
“Do you find it odd that Lovely did not mention this story? I mean, it had to be one of the most memorable events in the island’s history. An outright attack, two days of cannon fire, the ambush by armed soldiers and their killings. How was it forgotten?”
“Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe Lovely heard the story a hundred years later and didn’t want to include it. It’s pretty gruesome.”
“It’s also pretty great. The ex-slaves who were thought to have nothing but spears, yet had more guns than the slave traders, and the general thought his men had been cannibalized.”
“So you’ll use it?”
“I don’t know what I’ll use. I can’t get started. I need to spend time with Lovely.”
“When is fall break?”
“Two weeks. I’m thinking of driving down.”
“I’ll be in Australia.”
“I know. I might miss you by then.”
The Tidal Breeze Corporation had been built over fifty years by the Larney family of Miami. Rex Larney got things started in 1970 when he bought at foreclosure a low-end motel in Fort Lauderdale. He was thirty-one years old, selling real estate, and the closing of a couple of nice deals had whetted his desire for money. He wasn’t afraid to borrow money and take chances, and before long he was buying more small lots close to the beaches. His buildings got taller, along with his debts and his ambitions. By 1980 he was one of many high-flying property developers riding the wave of frenetic growth in South Florida.
His son Wilson grew up in the business and happily took over when Rex died of cancer in 1992. He inherited his father’s appetite for risk and serious toys. He bought Thoroughbreds. and racing boats. He loved to gamble at the tracks and shrewdly foresaw the boom in casino gaming. He partnered with the Seminoles and built four splashy resorts around the state. The Feds almost nailed him twice on dodgy deals, but he proved too slick to pin down. His closest friend was his lawyer, J. Dudley Nash, otherwise known simply as Dud, a nickname Wilson stuck him with decades earlier. Dud’s law firm grew almost as fast as Tidal Breeze and became a prominent Miami player in the commercial real estate world.
Tidal Breeze barely survived the Great Recession of 2008. When the dust settled, and the company was still standing, Wilson surveyed the wreckage and rolled up his sleeves. It was time to play the vulture. When the Fed slashed interest rates to almost zero, Tidal Breeze gorged on cheap debt and scooped up shopping centers, hotels, golf courses, and condos by the thousands.
In 2012, Wilson found himself in hot water again with the law after he forced another real estate swinger into bankruptcy. Once again, Dud navigated a deal that required him to pay a fine but nothing else. Wilson got his photo in the newspaper, something he detested. He was fiercely private and never talked to reporters. Tidal Breeze had only one shareholder — himself.
The jewel of his empire was a fifty-story office building in downtown Miami that Rex had snagged from a bankrupt savings-and-loan in 1985 during that crisis. Over the years, Wilson had refinanced it twice to lower rates and squeezed out over $50 million in cash. It was still heavily mortgaged, but then so was everything else the company owned, including its jet.
For Panther Cay, Wilson planned to borrow every dime the banks would loan for the project, though there was the usual concern about rising rates. Wilson never worried about the cost of borrowing. As Rex always said, “The rates go up and the rates come down.”
