Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 07 - The Swamps of Bayou Teche (9 page)

By the time I reached the office, the heat and humidity had my shirt clinging to my skin. Inside, ignoring my A.A. pledge, I picked up a cold six-pack of
beer to ward off the heat, rented a boat, and checked
my directions to the camp.

“Moise, he still be at the camp,” the old Cajun proprietor said, pointing to an empty slip in the boat
basin. “That be where he dock his boat”

Leaving the office, I met the two swamp rats coming in. I nodded, making only brief eye contact. The
first one ignored me, but the second snarled.

Growing up, I’d seen and known men like them, living back in the swamps, heeding only those rules they
made for themselves. Life deep in the Louisiana
swamps is a whole different world, unaffected by the
pressure and technology of the modern world, nor
governed by its laws.

I frowned when I saw Jack standing by the rental
boats instead of sitting in the air-conditioned car. “I’m
going with you,” he said in a rush.

“I thought you were staying in the air conditioning.”

He glanced at the office. “Did you see those two?”

“Yeah. What about them?”

He gulped, and I would have sworn even more
sweat popped out on his forehead and rolled down his
flushed cheeks. “They stopped and looked at me and
the car. I think one of them was even drooling.” He
shook his head. “No way I’m staying around here with
those two.”

I couldn’t keep from laughing.

Jack glowered. “It isn’t funny. They look like those
retards straight out of that old movie, Deliverance!”

Holding up the six-pack, I laughed again. “All right.
Since you’re going with me, get the ice chest”

Two minutes later, with me in the stern and Jack in
the bow to balance the fourteen-foot jon boat powered
by a ten horsepower Johnson, we headed back into the
swamp, following a twisting bayou. Along the bayou,
I spotted several small canals, oil company excavations for pipelines, which formed a spiderweb of narrow waterways through the low-lying ground. Finally,
we emerged from the cypress swamp into an ocean of
sea cane.

The sun beat down, baking our shoulders. I gulped
my beer in an effort to slake my thirst. The wall of
cane on either side slid by as we left the brown
swamp water behind and skimmed over the clear
green water of the fresh tributaries emptying into the
swamp.

“How much longer?” Jack demanded, looking back
at me, his rotund face beet red from the unrelenting
sun baking our head and shoulders and heating the
skin of the aluminum boat.

“Any time now if I followed the directions right.”
And sure enough, around the next bend, we spotted a
ramshackle row of tottering cabins with adjoining
porches floating on the water in front of the cane. Two
jon boats and a open-bow tri-hull were tied to the
porches.

At the end of the cabins, two men, who could have
been twins of the two back at the bait camp, stood on
the porch, tugging on a rope stretched taut. Water exploded at the end of the rope, and I instantly cut off the
throttle and drifted to a halt twenty or thirty yards out.

We watched as the two hauled in a six-foot alligator. As the twisting, spinning alligator drew near the
porch, one of the men grabbed a lever action rifle and
shot into the churning water. Almost instantly, the water grew calm.

Jack looked around at me in amazement.

I shrugged. “Welcome to Louisiana ‘gator hunting.”

We waited until they dragged the alligator up on the
porch and turned their attention to us.

I held up a hand. “Mr. Deslatte?”

The two looked at each other, then one stuck his
head inside an open door. Moments later, a short man
with a waistline that would match Jack’s, stepped out side. The porch seemed to sink another few inches
into the water. “Yeah? What you want?”

I gestured to the cabins. “Can we come aboard?”

The roly-poly man studied us a moment, then
waved us in.

“Throw me your line,” one of the men yelled. He
grabbed it and quickly wrapped it around a cleat at the
edge of the porch.

Jack remained in the bow of the jon boat as I
climbed out and offered Deslatte my hand and introduced Jack and myself. With a wary glance over my
shoulder at the dead alligator on the porch, I explained
that I was trying to locate John Hardy.

Before I could utter another word, he exclaimed, “That one, he be a lying cheat. He be no good, and I
don’t want to hear that one’s name, you hear?”

“I don’t blame you. I heard what took place. I’d get
mad too if someone fired off a shotgun in my direction
or tried to cheat me,” I replied, referring to the incidents at the turkey blinds. That little tidbit of empathy
seemed to mollify him, at least for the moment.

He shook his head. “That one, he be crazy. Always
has been”

“I know. Did you just meet him at the lodge?”

“On, mais no. Him, I be knowing for-” He
paused, shrugged, “‘bout twelve, thirteen year now,
ever since he come to Bagotville. My company, it
done business with his bank. He give good rates, bet ter than the bank in Maida, but no more. Me, I be
around here all my life. I ain’t never seen a no-good
like that one”

I glanced at his two friends who were standing behind the shorter man, staring at me with eyes devoid
of emotion. “Look, Mr. Deslatte. John Hardy is missing. Early this morning, the Iberville Sheriff’s Department pulled Hardy’s Chevrolet suburban from
Whiskey River.” I paused to give my words time to
sink in, then continued, “I’ve no hard proof, but it
looks like he’s dead”

Deslatte’s eyes grew wide, then narrowed warily.
“You think I kill him?”

“No” I shook my head, figuring now was neither
the time nor place to be absolutely truthful. A man,
any man, can disappear in a heartbeat in Louisiana
swamps. “I’m wondering if you know of any enemies
he might have had or if he said anything to suggest he
had plans other than to go back to work when the hunt
was over.”

For the first time, his two friends laughed.

One elbowed the other. “You hear that, Juju?”

Juju shook his head. “Do the man have enemies?
Do the ‘gators got teeths? That best laugh I got me all
week, Marcel”

Moise Deslatte winked at me. “What do that say to
you?”

I grinned at him. “Will you tell me who they are?”

He hesitated, a frown darkening his rotund face.
“How you be finding me out here?”

My grin grew wider. “Why, I told you, Mr. Deslatte.
I’m a private investigator. I find people.”

He considered my answer a moment, then roared.
“Yeah, but you ain’t found Hardy.”

We all laughed at my expense.

“So, can you help me?”

Amiably he nodded. “Oui. What you want to know?”

“I know Hardy left the lodge early the next morning. How long did you stay?”

“The trip, it be over yesterday. I go by my office
and tell my secretary I be here.”

“What about his enemies? From the way you
laughed, he must have them”

He gave me a crooked grin. “Where do I start? How
about with the ex-wife, Janelle Bourgeois. He dump
her years ago. Last I hear, she be waitin’ tables up in
Mowata”

“Mowata? That’s back west of Branch, isn’t it?” I
asked, trying to place the small Louisiana hamlets.

“That be right. North of Rayne. You know the saying, north of Rayne is Branch, and if that ain’t wet
enough for you, west of Branch is Mowata.”

We all laughed. I glanced at Jack who wore a puzzled expression.

I jotted Janelle Bourgeois’ name on a 3” x 5” card.
“You know what restaurant?”

“Naw. There be only one cafe in Mowata. That be
about the only thing in Mowata,” he added with a
grin.

“What do you know about her? Anything?”

He laughed. “Me, I knows that one all my life. We
was enfants, children down to Maida.” He shook his
head and chuckled. “She always be having the temper, moyen, mean temper, even in the school with the
sisters.”

“Sisters?”

“Oui. The nuns.”

I nodded. “Anyone else?”

Deslatte chewed on his bottom lip. “Let’s see.
There’s the gambler, Jimmy Blue, there in Maida at
the Louisianne Casino. And then there’s the ones who
lost all their money when his first bank went under.”

“When was that?”

He arched an eyebrow. “Let’s see. That be fifteen,
maybe twenty years ago. Big scandal up in Opelousas”

“Scandal? You mean the bank going bust?”

“That, and before. His first partner, let’s see-” He
scratched his bald head. “Rabin, that was his name.
Duclize Babin. He shoot hisself in the head, they say.
Then a few years later, Babin’s wife, she be convicted
of embezzling money from the bank. She go to state
prison. And then, not long after, the bank, it fold up.”
He shook his head regretfully. “I know that woman all
her life. Go figure. You know?”

I nodded thoughtfully. “What was her given name?”

Without hesitation, Deslatte replied. “It be Karen.
Karen Babin.”

“She must be out of prison by now.”

Juju tapped Deslatte on the shoulder and whispered
in his ear. The rotund man grunted. “Juju, he say
Babin’s wife killed in car wreck. Burned to crisp.”

Marcel sneered. “That a lot to burn. She big woman,
maybe two hundred pounds, I say. Look like beer keg.
Every time I see her up in Opelousas, her blond hair is
tied up on top of her head” He made the shape of a
bouffant over his head. He snorted. “Bet that woman
don’t have no hair like that in prison.”

“Oui!” Juju sneered. “When her crazy brother, that
Thertule, he hear she be dead, he run off into the
swamps. Ain’t nobody seen him since. He crazy. I always figured she be crazy too, her.”

Deslatte laughed. “At least half crazy. Thertule, he
be a Pellerin, her half brother.”

Juju grew serious. “They say the cauchemar, she
done makes Thertule a loup garou”

I wanted to laugh, but from the earnest concern on
Juju’s face, I knew he was deadly serious. I would get
nowhere tromping on another’s beliefs, regardless
how outrageous. Behind me I heard Jack cough.

Deslatte grinned crookedly. “Me, I don’t know
about that, but it don’t bother me none if the man be
dead. I don’t do it because that one, he ain’t worth it.”

“What’s with him and Jimmy Blue at the casino.
Gambling?”

The smile vanished from Deslatte’s plump face. “I
hear that” His voice grew soft, almost conspiratorial.
“I don’t know for sure, but me, I hear that them two,
they sometimes have business deals.” He shrugged
and held his hands out to his side. “That I hear. Me, I
don’t know nothing for certain.”

Marcel’s shout interrupted us. “Look there. There
be a big one”

Floating just below the surface of the calm water
thirty feet out was another alligator, his eyes and tip of
his snout barely breaking the calm water.

I guessed this one was about eight feet, judging by
the distance from the eyes to the snout, which was
about two feet.

Juju ducked inside and returned with another rope
and a large hook on the end. “Where be the bait?” he
whispered urgently.

Marcel opened a box. “There ain’t none”

Juju cursed. “We need bait. That a big one out there”

Marcel’s eyes lit up. “The cat. We’ll use the cat”
He popped inside the cabin and returned with a white
kitten that couldn’t have been more than six or eight
weeks old.

Just as he handed the kitten to Juju, I laid my hand
on his arm. “Wait”

The two of them looked around at me. From the
chilling expression in their eyes, I had the feeling they
would just as soon use me for bait as the kitten. “Not
the kitten,” I said.

Juju snorted. His brows knit in anger. “It ain’t none
of your business. He ain’t no good. Besides, he’s all
we got left.”

“I’ll pay you for him. Fifty bucks?”

Marcel muttered a curse. “You crazy. That cat ain’t
worth fifty bucks.”

“It is to me.”

Deslatte spoke up. “The ‘gator’s worth more den
fifty dollars.”

“How much? Name it.”

After some haggling, we settled on two hundred.

Any goodwill I had built with Juju and Marcel had
vaporized when I interfered with their alligator fishing.
I paid them, handed the kitten to Jack, and climbed
back in the jon boat.

I glanced at my watch as we pulled away from the
fishing camp. Six-thirty. I rolled my shoulders. It
seemed as if two months had passed since Marty’s
call about the Suburban had jerked me from a sound
sleep at 3:33 that morning.

I was exhausted, and the steady drone of the small
motor and the sun baking my shoulders combined
to lull me into a state of drowsiness. The day had
been long and hard, and as we sped back toward
the bait camp with Jack holding the kitten, I was
looking forward to a hot shower, a good meal, and a
clean bed.

Jack spoke up. “Hey, Tony, that guy talked about one of those loup garous you told me about. Was he
serious?”

I nodded. “There’s still a lot of superstition out here
in the swamps. Nothing to it though.”

Before Jack could reply, the guttural roar of a powerful motor ripped through the still air, and a deep-V
powerboat with two men behind the console burst
through the wall of sea cane, heading directly toward
us with every intention of slicing our small boat into
two pieces.