Alligator (4 page)

There was a story going around that he came back from Nairobi with five heads, one of which belonged to the Minister of External Affairs. They said it cost him a million dollars to hush that one up, but it had never been proved to be true.

It was a hell of a life, he thought happily, the buzz of two martinis in his head. He hadn't been away from his desk in a full year, and he was anxious to get started. Suddenly Rye got an idea, and picked up his Franchi. Pulling the safety, he aimed it over Maurice's head and out the window at the passing countryside.

Maurice heard the click and instinctively dropped to the floor, still clutching the phone.

Outside, the suburban houses had grown fewer and farther apart. The country was beginning. Rye sighted on a tree. For a moment he was a model of absolute concentration, pure energy directed at that one object; then he squeezed. The volley of shots hit the fleshy bark in a series of dull thuds.

"Three outta four. Beat it," challenged Rye.

John smiled and reached into the back for his rifle.

"What the hell is that?" sneered Rye, as he caught sight of the huge gun John was stripping from its case.

"Seventy Winchester, three seventy-five magnum, two and a half scope," said John, realizing instantly that he'd been rooked by the gun dealer.

"Jesus Christ, that'd blow the ass off an elephant," said Rye. He handed his semiautomatic to John with a smirk.

John laughed to hide irritation. He was well aware that Rye knew a lot more about shooting than he did. He also knew that Rye judged him for it. Rye was always judging him for everything, and it killed John to know that Rye always found him lacking. John tried to logic-out the shot. He calculated the speed of the car, the wind velocity, and a whole lot of other things. He figured he ought to be able to use all those years at Duke University to some benefit other than the gold-plated cup he got as second-string All-American halfback and his fancy-pants East Coast wife. But everything became confused in his mind, and finally he had to give up and aim.

Rye watched John concentrating on the shot, the beads of sweat standing out on his forehead from the effort, and wondered why it was that John bugged him so much. Maybe it was those carefully manicured fingernails. Jesus, thought Rye, having hands like that was worse than walking around with your fly open. John was a guy who had been born with every advantage in this world, and he still turned out to be a class A asshole. Maybe that was what bugged Rye. He just didn't know. What he did know was that every time he looked at John, he had an uncontrollable urge to get him.

Rye smiled to himself as a practical joke occurred to him. He waited until John was just about to get off the shot; then he leaned forward and rapped loudly on the glass partition. Rodriguez whipped around in his seat. For a moment the car swerved out of control, and John was thrown around the back seat like a pinball. The rifle went off, spraying the countryside with bullets.

Rye laughed. "You don't stand a chance of getting the gator with shooting like that."

"Damn you, Whitman." John's laugh barely concealed his rage.

Rye was still enjoying the joke when, out of the corner of his eyes, he caught sight of Maurice. He was still talking on the phone, and Rye could tell by the wild, almost caged look in his eyes that he was in trouble and trying to hide it. Nothing was easy, he decided. He gestured for Maurice to hand him the phone.

John seized the opportunity. While Rye's attention was diverted, he quickly emptied the chamber, reloaded, and popped off another round. Half his bullets found their mark in a CAUTION DEER CROSSING sign.

"Well?" John had a triumphant smirk on his face.

"Average," said Rye.

"Rye, we got trouble," interrupted Maurice.

"Odds were on your side," Rye said to John; then he turned on Maurice and said impatiently, "For Christ's sake, give me the phone."

Maurice relinquished the phone gladly. Rye took the receiver in his big hairy hand and, leaning back in his seat, flashed a charm-boy smile. "Daggart?" he boomed into the phone. "Rye Whitman here. How goes it? ... Good, good ... and Sylvia? ... That right? Gall bladder? ... Now ain't that too bad ... So you're bachin' it, eh? Well, you just be sure you don't wear it out 'fore you get to Miami, ya hear. I got one hell of a night planned for us down Bay Street."

Rye listened in silence as Daggart reeled off the double-barreled, Southern-honeyed names of the women who were consoling him during the trial of his wife's operation. Sweetness and light poured from Rye's face; his eyes were all crinkled up and smiling. He didn't believe a word of it.

Finally he interrupted. "Yeah... listen, what's this I hear about you tryin' to pawn off that lousy swamp property of yours for two five?" Rye smiled up at the roof of the car, his face placid and reasonable. "Why, you phony, tryin' to pull a fast one on your ole buddy Rye?" Suddenly he whipped off the good-old-boy mask, and his features turned hard and steely. He hissed into the phone, "Nineteen thousand, Daggart. Take it or leave it."

He slammed down the receiver in Daggart's ear, and glanced out the window at the row of cypresses whizzing past. When he turned back to John and Maurice, there was a big grin on his face. "You want to count or should I?" he said.

Maurice laughed and began counting out loud. He never reached ten; the car phone rang at seven.

It was four thirty when Rye's car turned onto Highway 41. The two-bit diners, motels, and gas stations that lined the road like a cheap necklace were empty, and the world belonged to the animals. Neon lights flashed enticing messages to a group of muskrats that held a convention on the yellow line. A deer investigated the Tastee Freeze men's room, while a family of raccoons picked garbage-can latches with professional ease.

Rye's ten-passenger job was the only car on the road. It broke the stillness, screeching around a corner at ninety-five miles per hour like a chariot from hell.

Rodriguez was rubbing his eyes when he spotted a large brown object on the road. He'd been working since nine in the morning, and he was just about shaking, he was so tired. By the time he figured out that it was a deer, it was too late to do much but watch.

It was like a movie in slow motion. The car plowed into the soft, fleshy deer and hurtled it up into the air. It seemed to hang in midair for a while; then it splattered back against the hood and slid along the front of the car until its antlers got caught in the grille.

The car was swerving all over the road, and Rodriguez could feel his foot pressing full force on the brake pedal.

There was no noise coming from the back of the car, and for a moment it occurred to him that they could be dead back there. Then he remembered that the intercom was off.

By the time he got the car back under control, he could feel blood pulsing warmly from his nose and a large cut over his eye. He glanced into the rear-view mirror and saw Rye gesturing wildly. He too had forgotten about the intercom. Rodriguez smiled. When you're a chauffeur, and an illegal alien to boot, you have to content yourself with small victories.

He jumped out of the car to look at the damage. The cut over his eye was beginning to hurt, and the realization that he was probably out of a job, with a wife and three children back in Havana, wasn't helping much. He felt like he was going to vomit.

The headlights had been knocked walleyed. One threw light up at the night sky, while the other illuminated the shoulder of the road. There was just enough light to see that the damage was considerable.

The deer's antlers were still caught in the grille, and its body was slung across the car like a hunting trophy. There was a dent in the hood the size of a moon crater, and deer blood and matted hair all over everything.

Rodriguez glanced back at the car and saw Rye hanging out the window. He wasn't saying anything, but his silence was expressive enough.

"It was all that limp-donged bastard's fault," Rodriguez muttered to himself. "He was the one who made me drive too fast." He became lost in thought, fantasizing all kinds of exotic ways to get vengeance on Rye. Many of them featured dynamite. Rodriguez had learned something about the magical properties of dynamite back home, and had used this knowledge to great advantage on various sanitary installations along Collins Avenue.

Rye rapped on the car window and brought Rodriguez back to reality. The immediate problem was getting the deer off the car, which wasn't going to be easy, as it was practically woven into it. Rodriguez assessed the situation. Perhaps if he pulled the chrome up with his hands and shoved down on the antlers with his foot, he could work them loose. It seemed a reasonable plan, but the antlers were so sharp they pierced right through the rubber sole of his shoes and into his tender instep. Letting out a terrible howl and rubbing his foot, Rodriguez hopped all over the road, mentally condemning his parents to perform unspeakable sexual perversions for all eternity.

Still muttering to himself, he circled the car again until he came up with another plan. It had slightly less finesse, but, he decided, the direct way was often the most effective. Rodriguez grabbed the deer around the middle and began to pull at the huge carcass. It hardly budged. He stopped to catch his breath, then grabbed the deer and with all his strength gave a tremendous yank. The deer made a great popping sound as it burst open like a balloon and splattered its entrails all over the car, the road, and Rodriguez.

Rye leaned over to the front seat and jammed down on the horn. The shrill blast startled Rodriguez. He shrugged his shoulders and pointed at the deer to indicate he needed help. Rye blew the horn again, letting Rodriguez know he was interested in going on, with or without the deer as a passenger.

Rodriguez hesitated; it had become a matter of honor with him. Then again, so was eating. He swallowed hard and, casting a villainous look back at the deer, climbed back into the car.

He gunned the motor and peeled off down the road. At least he didn't get fired, he thought with relief. It never occurred to him that Rye wouldn't be stupid enough to fire him before they got to Everglades.

It was well past dawn when the giant Mercedes turned off 41 and onto the old road. The carcass had worked its way loose, and lay on the road fifteen miles back, but the car was still covered with dried blood.

Rye looked out the tinted-glass window and saw Everglades City spread before him in the hazy morning sun. It stood like a monument to disappointment and ruin. Once prosperous and forward-looking, the seat of Collier County, now all that was left was a motley row of decaying clapboard buildings disintegrating into the earth. All along the dusty palmetto-lined streets, buildings that once had been banks and stores, mansions and churches, were closed in on themselves, doors bolted and nailed shut, windows boarded against the world. It was a panorama of sagging roofs, peeling paint, and rot-splintered porches, as if the years of disuse had eaten into the heart of the town and sucked out all its life.

Bits of track left over from when Everglades had an extensive streetcar system were still embedded in the street, and when the tar melted from the heat, which was almost every day, they glittered silver and rusty red.

Several of the buildings had given up the ghost entirely and collapsed into piles of crumbling wood and sawdust. The remnants hadn't even been carried away.

The rot had even crept into the people's spirit. Everglades had once been a haven for thieves, chiselers, and runaway convicts who flocked there as fast as they could saw off their chains. Everglades had welcomed every two-bit swindler with open arms. It was a town that needed people to run it. With temperatures of well over a hundred degrees in the shade and thick clouds of hungry mosquitoes, it couldn't afford to inquire too closely into anyone's past.

When Rye was a boy and things were just beginning to get bad, he and his friends used to hide under the windows at Albert's. They'd listen enraptured to stories about the heyday of Everglades, when fortunes were made overnight and lost just as quickly, when chicanery was a way of life and murder and rape every-night occurrences. The past seemed so colorful that the boys often wondered among themselves if there could be anything in the future to compare to it.

Rye pressed a button on the panel in front of him and rolled down the window. The damp swamp air flowed into the car and rumpled his hair. He took a deep breath. The air still smelled like rotten fish and old garbage, he thought. It was the swamp rot, all those millions and millions of dead plants and animals fermenting in the heat. The whole town, the whole damn swamp, was resting on a graveyard.

Rye glanced over at Maurice and John, who slept open-mouthed, their heads jerking with the movement of the car. He resented their ability to sleep, and was tempted to wake them up. But he resisted the temptation and stared back out the window. He was glad to be back, though he couldn't imagine why. It was a lousy tinhorn town, and he'd never been happy there.

Up ahead he spotted the Rod and Gun, once the most elegant hotel in town. Now the sprawling two-story wood building with its marina, putting green, and tennis court, its vine-covered porches, its grandiose curved driveway, leaned into the ground, offering itself up to the termites.

Rye pressed the intercom: "Rodriguez?"

"Yes, sir."

"That's the hotel ahead."

"That?"

"You heard me."

"Yes, sir, but it looks deserted."

"It isn't. Give a blast on the car horn."

Leaning on the car horn with one hand, Rodriguez swung the oversized car up the driveway and under the decaying portico. Maurice and John leaped up and looked around, startled. Theirs was the only reaction. The Rod and Gun remained quiet, snoozing in the early-morning sun.

"Anyone at home?" Rye yelled out the window.

Rodriguez gave another long blast on the horn. Finally, a three-hundred-pound redhead, with an American flag in his lapel and a grin that stretched across his face like a wound, rushed out. Archie Marris pulled on his musty blue serge jacket and screamed, "All right, all right, I hear you."