Fever Dream (48 page)

Tiny gazed hungrily at Hayward’s generous breasts. She swallowed painfully and made a move to cover herself with her buttonless
shirt but Tiny shook his head, pushed her hands away, and traced the blade of his knife teasingly along the topline of her
bra. Then—very slowly—he inserted the tip of the blade under the fabric between the cups. With a jerk, he brought the knife
toward him, slitting the bra into two pieces. Hayward’s breasts swung free to a hugely appreciative roar.

Hayward saw Pendergast rise, stumbling. Tiny was too preoccupied to notice.

Pendergast steadied himself, leaning heavily to one side. Then—with a sudden, almost imperceptible movement—he shifted his
weight to the other side. The boat rocked, throwing Tiny and Larry off balance.

“Hey, easy now—”

Hayward saw a blur, a flash of steel; with a groan Larry doubled over, his clenched hand firing the gun blindly downward;
there was a sudden gush of blood into the bottom of the boat.

Tiny twisted around to protect himself, sweeping the TEC-9 through the air, letting loose a long burst of fire, but the agent
moved so fast the spray of bullets missed him. A sinuous arm whipped around Tiny’s fat neck and jerked his head back, a stiletto
at his throat; at the same time Hayward smashed the man’s forearm, jarring the TEC-9 loose.

“Don’t move,” Pendergast said, sinking the knife partway into the man’s neck. With his other hand he neatly extracted his
Les Baer from the man’s waistband.

Tiny roared, twisting his huge bulk, pawing to get at Pendergast; the knife sank deeper, twisted, flashing; there was a small
splatter of blood, and then a fresh stillness.

“Move and die,” said Pendergast.

Hayward stared, horrified, her own exposed condition momentarily forgotten: Pendergast had somehow managed to work the stiletto
into the man’s neck, exposing the jugular; the knife blade had already slipped underneath it, stretching it from the wound.

“Shoot me and it’s cut,” Pendergast said. “I fall, it’s cut. He moves, it’s cut. She’s touched again—it’s cut.”

“What the fuck!” Tiny screamed in terror, his eyes rolling. “What’s he done? Am I bleeding to death?”

A dead silence. All guns were still trained on them.

“Shoot him!” Tiny cried. “Shoot the girl! What are you doing?”

Nobody moved. Hayward stared, transfixed in horror, at the sight of the bulging, pulsing vein, slick over the gleam of the
bloodied blade.

Pendergast nodded toward one of the big side mirrors mounted on the gunwale of the boat. “Captain, fetch that mirror for me,
please.”

Hayward forced herself to move, covering herself as best she could and wrenching the mirror off.

“Hold it up for Tiny’s benefit.”

She complied. Tiny stared into it, at himself, his eyes widening in terror. “What are you doing… Oh, my God, please, don’t…”
His voice trailed off into a quaver, his bloodshot eyes wide, his huge body immobilized with terror.

“All weapons in Mr. Tiny’s boat, there,” said Pendergast quietly, nodding at the empty vessel next to theirs. “Everything.
Now.”

No one moved.

Pendergast pulled the vein away from the bleeding wound with the flat of his knife. “Do what I say or I cut.”

“You heard him!” Tiny said in a kind of terrified, squeaking whisper. “Guns in the boat!
Do what he says!
”

Hayward continued to hold up the mirror. The men, murmuring, began passing their guns forward and tossing them into the boat.
Pretty soon the flat bottom of the boat was filled with an arsenal.

“Knives, Mace, everything.”

More things were tossed in.

Pendergast turned toward the skinny man, Larry, lying in the bottom of the boat. He was bleeding from a knife wound in his
arm and a self-administered gunshot to his foot. “Remove your shirt, please.”

After a brief hesitation, the man did as ordered.

“Pass it over to Captain Hayward.”

Hayward took the damp, odorous garment. Turning away from the surrounding boats as much as was possible, she removed her torn
blouse and ruined bra and shrugged into the bloody shirt.

Pendergast turned toward her. “Captain, would you care to arm yourself?”

“This TEC-9 looks suitable,” Hayward said, picking up the handgun from the pile of weapons. She looked it over, removed the
magazine, examined it, slapped it back in. “Converted to fully automatic. Fifty-round magazine, too. Plenty of rounds left
to smoke everyone right here, right now.”

“An effective, if inelegant, choice,” said Pendergast.

Hayward pointed the TEC-9 at the group. “Who still wants to see the floor show?”

Silence. The only sound was Tiny’s choked sobbing. The tears streamed down his face, but he remained as immobile as a statue.

“I’m afraid,” Pendergast said, “that you folks have made a serious error. This lady is indeed a homicide captain of the NYPD,
and I am truly a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We’re here on a murder investigation that has nothing
to do with you or your town. Whoever told you we were environmentalists lied to you. Now: I’m going to ask a question, just
once, and if I get an answer that isn’t satisfactory, I’m going to cut Tiny’s jugular and my colleague, Captain Hayward, is
going to shoot you down like dogs. Self-defense, of course. Being law enforcement, who’s to contradict us?”

A silence.

“The question is this: Mr. Tiny,
who called you to say we were coming?
”

Tiny couldn’t get the answer out fast enough. “It was Ventura, Mike Ventura, Mike Ventura…” He choked out the words in between
stifled sobs, his voice reduced to a babble.

“And who is Mike Ventura?”

“A guy who lives over in Itta Bena, but he comes down here a lot, big sportsman, lots of money, spends a lot of time in the
swamp. It was him, he came into my place, told us all you was environmentalists, you was looking to turn the rest of Black
Brake into a refuge, take away all the work from us swampers—”

“Thank you,” said Pendergast, “that’s sufficient. Here’s what’s going to happen. My colleague and I are going to continue
on our way in Mr. Tiny’s excellently equipped and fully loaded bass boat. With all the guns. You all go on home. Understand?”

Nothing.

He tightened the knife beneath the vein. “May I have a response, please?”

Murmurs, nods.

“Excellent. You can see we are now heavily armed. And I can assure you that both of us know how to use these weapons. Captain,
would you care to demonstrate?”

Hayward pointed the TEC-9 at a nearby stand of saplings and opened fire. Three short bursts. The trees toppled slowly into
the water.

Pendergast slipped the knife out from under the vein. “You’re going to need a few stitches, Mr. Tiny.”

The fat man merely blubbered.

“I’d advise you all to discuss it among yourselves and come up with a nice, believable story as to how Mr. Tiny here cut his
neck and how old Larry there shot himself in the foot. Because the captain and I have bigger fish to fry, and we don’t want
any more disruptions. Assuming you don’t annoy us further—and assuming you leave my rather expensive car alone—we don’t see
the need to bring charges or arrest anyone—do we, Captain?”

She shook her head. Funny how Pendergast’s way of doing things began to make sense—out here in the middle of nowhere, without
backup, in front of a crowd who wanted nothing better than to serially rape her and murder them both and sink their bodies
in the swamp.

Pendergast stepped into the bass boat, Hayward following, picking her way among the assorted weaponry. Firing up the engine,
Pendergast eased the boat forward; the surrounding boats unwillingly parted to give him passage. “We’ll see you all again,”
he called out. “I regret to say that when we do, there might be more unpleasantness.”

Then he throttled up and the bass boat headed into the widest inlet at the end of the bayou, heading south into the thick
braid of vegetation under a dying evening light.

Malfourche, Mississippi

M
IKE VENTURA WATCHED FROM HIS PARKED
Escalade, A/C going full blast, as the boats straggled back into the slips beyond Tiny’s. The sun had just set over the water,
the sky a dirty orange. He began to feel uneasy; this did not look like a war party returning from a successful raid. It had
more the sullen, dispirited, bedraggled appearance of a rout. When one of the last boats brought in Tiny—who staggered out
onto the dock with a bloody, wadded handkerchief tied around his neck, blood caking one side of his shirt—he knew for certain
something had gone wrong.

A couple of men supported Tiny, one beneath each meaty arm, as he shuffled into his establishment and disappeared. Meanwhile,
others in the crowd had seen Ventura and were talking and gesturing—and then began moving his way. They did not look happy.

Ventura reached over and pressed the automatic locks on the doors, which shot down with a click. The men circled his car in
silence, their faces red and streaked with sweat.

Ventura cracked the window an inch. “What happened?”

Nobody answered. After a tense moment, a man raised a fist and brought it down on the hood with a loud bang.

“What the hell?” Ventura cried.

“What the hell?” the man screamed.
“What the hell?”

Another fist came down and then, suddenly, they were pummeling the car, kicking the sides, swearing and spitting. Astonished
and horrified, Ventura snugged the window tight and threw the car into reverse, backing up so fast those standing behind had
to throw themselves to one side to avoid being run over.

“Son of a bitch!” the mob screamed with one voice. “Liar!”

“They were feds, asshole!”

“Lying bastard!”

Giving the wheel a frantic twist, Ventura threw the car into drive and gunned the engine, spraying dirt and gravel in a one-hundred-eighty-degree
arc. As he accelerated, a rock smacked the back window with a dull thud, turning it into a spiderweb of cracks.

When he pulled onto the small highway, his cell phone rang. He picked it up: Judson.
Shit.

“I’m almost there,” came Judson’s voice. “How’d it go?”

“Something messed up. And I mean
messed up
.”

By the time Ventura arrived at his neatly kept compound at the edge of the swamp, Esterhazy’s pickup was already there. The
tall man stood next to the bed of the truck, dressed in khaki, unloading guns. Ventura pulled up and got out. Esterhazy turned
toward him, his face dark.

“What happened to your car?” he asked.

“The swampers attacked it. Over in Malfourche.”

“Didn’t they take care of things?”

“No. Tiny came back with a neck wound and nobody had their guns. They wanted to string me up. I’ve got a big problem on my
hands.”

Esterhazy stared at him. “So those two are still heading to Spanish Island?”

“It seems so.”

Esterhazy looked past Ventura’s rambling whitewashed house and wide, billiard-table lawn to the private dock, where Ventura’s
three boats were tied up: a Lafitte skiff, a brand-new bass boat with a hydraulic jack plate and a Humminbird console, and
a powerful airboat. His jaw tightened. He reached into the pickup bed and removed the last gun case. “It would appear,” he
said slowly, “that we’re going to have to handle the problem ourselves.”

“And right away. Because if they reach Spanish Island, it’s
over
.”

“We won’t let it get that far.” Esterhazy squinted toward the sunset. “Depending on how fast they’re moving, they might be
getting close already.”

“They’re moving slowly. They don’t know the swamp.”

Esterhazy looked at the bass boat. “With that two fifty Yamaha, we might just be able to intercept them when they cross that
old logging pullboat canal near Ronquille Island. You know what I’m talking about?”

“Of course,” said Ventura, irritated that Esterhazy might even question his knowledge of the swamp.

“Then put these guns in the boat and let’s get moving,” said Judson. “I’ve got an idea.”