But he knew the right thing to do.
It was time to go.
“You braingears gettin’ hot,” Train said in a quiet voice.
“You have guns.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Two rifles. Pistol.”
“How many men?”
Train knew what he meant. “I count eight last time. Maybe more I don’t see.”
Dan turned to face him. “Will you take me?”
“No!” Arden stood up, her eyes wide. “Dan, no! You don’t owe them anything!”
“I owe myself,” he said.
“Listen to me!” She stepped close to him and grasped his arm. “You can still get away! You can find —”
“No,” he interrupted gently, “I can’t. Train, how about it?”
“They’ll kill you!” Arden said, stricken with terror for him.
“Oui,” Train added. “That they’ll try.”
“Maybe Murtaugh and Eisley are already dead.” Dan stared deeply into Arden’s eyes. It was a strange thing, but now he could look at her face and not see the birthmark. “Maybe they’re still alive, but they won’t be for very long. If I don’t go after ’em — if I don’t at least try to get ’em out of there — what good am I? I don’t want to die in prison. But I can’t live in a prison, either. And if I don’t do somethin’, I’ll carry my own prison around with me every hour of every day I’ve got left. I have to do this. Train?” He directed his gaze to the Cajun. “I’m not askin’ you to help me, just to get me close enough. I’ll need to take one of the rifles, the pistol, and some ammo. You got a holster for the pistol?”
“I do.”
“Then you’ll take me?”
Train paused for a moment, thinking it over. He opened the flask again and took a long swig. “You a mighty strange killer, wantin’ to get killed for somebody tryin’ to slam you in prison.” He licked his lips. “Huuuuwheeee! I didn’t know I was gonna get dead today.”
“I can go in alone.”
“Well,” Train said, “it’s like this here: I knew a fella, name of Jack Giradoux. Parish ranger, he was. He come by, we’d have a talk and eat some cat. I don’t tell him about them men ’cause I know what he’ll have to do. I figure not to rock the boat, ay?” He smiled; it was a painful sight. The smile quickly faded. “If he don’t find ’em, I figure, he don’t get killed. He was a good fella. Few days ago fisherman find Jack’s boat on Lake Tambour. That’s a long way from where them men are, but I know they must’ve got hold of him and then towed his boat up there. Find his body, nobody ever will. Now I gotta ask myself, did I done wrong? When they gonna find out I know about ’em and come for me, some night?” He closed the flask and held it down at his side. “Lived forty-five good year. To die in bed, non. Could be we get it done and get out. Could be you my death angel, and maybe I know sooner or later you was gonna swoop down on me. It’s gonna be like puttin’ you hand in a cottonmouth nest. You ready to get bit?”
“I’m ready to do some bitin’,” Dan said.
“Okay, leatherneck. Okay. With you, I reckon. Got Baby to carry us, maybe we get real lucky.”
“Baby?”
“She my girl. You meet her, direct.”
“One more thing,” Dan added. “I want to take Arden where she needs to go first.”
“Non, impossible. Them men five miles southwest, the Bright Girl nine, ten mile southeast, down in the Casse-Tete Islands. We take her first, we gonna be losin’ too much time.”
Dan looked at Arden, who was staring fixedly at the floor. “I’ll leave it up to you. I know how much this means. I never believed it … but maybe I should have. Maybe I was wrong, I don’t know.” Her chin came up, and her eyes found his. “What do you say?”
“I say —” She stopped, and took a deep breath to clear her head. So many things were tangled up inside her: fear and jubilation, pain and hope. She had come so far, with so much at stake. But now she knew what the important thing was. She said, “Help them.”
He gave her a faint smile; he’d known what she was going to decide. “You need to stay here. We’ll be back as soon as —”
“No.” It was said with finality. “If you’re goin’, I am, too.”
“Arden, it might be rougher’n hell out there. You could get yourself killed.”
“I’m goin’. Don’t try to talk me out of it, because you can’t.”
“Clock’s tickin’,” Train said.
“All right, then.” Dan felt the urgency pulling at him. “I’m ready.”
Train went into a back room and got the weapons: a Browning automatic rifle with a four-bullet magazine, a Ruger rifle with a hunter’s scope and a five-shell magazine, and in a waist holster a Smith & Wesson 9mm automatic that held an eight-bullet clip. He found extra magazines for the rifles and clips for the automatic and put them in a faded old backpack, which Arden was given charge of. Dan took the Browning and the pistol. Train got a plastic jug of filtered water from the galley, slung the Ruger’s strap around his shoulder, and said, “We go.”
They left the houseboat and Train led them to the vine-covered floating structure next to the pier. He slid open a door. “Here she sets.”
“Jesus,” Dan said, stunned by what he saw.
Sitting inside was Train’s second boat. It was painted navy gray, the paint job relatively fresh except for patches of rust at the waterline. It resembled a smaller version of a commercial tug, but it was leaner and meaner, its squat pilothouse set closer to the prow. The craft was about fifty feet long, and thirteen feet high at its tallest point, a tight squeeze in the oil-smelling, musty boathouse. It had not the gentle charm of an infant, but the armor-plated threat of a brute.
Though the machine-gun mounts and the mortar had been removed and other civilian modifications made to the radar mast, Dan recognized it as a Swift-type river patrol boat, the same kind of vessel Train had crewed aboard on the deadly waterways of Vietnam.
“My baby,” Train said with a sly grin. “Let the good times roll.”
25
Reptilian
THE SUN HAD RISEN on a small aluminum rowboat in the middle of a muddy pond. In that rowboat Flint and Pelvis sat facing each other, linked by the short chain between their cuffed wrists.
At seven o’clock the temperature was approaching eighty-four degrees and the air steamed with humidity. Flint’s shirt and suit jacket had been stripped off him, Clint’s arm drooping lethargically from the pale, sweat-sparkling chest. Beads of moisture glistened on Flint’s hollow-eyed face, his head bowed. Across from him, Pelvis still wore his wig backward, his clothes sweat-drenched, his eyes swollen and forlorn. Dried blood covered the split sausage of his bottom lip, one of his lower teeth gone and another knocked crooked, tendrils of crusty blood stuck to his chin. His breathing was slow and harsh, sweat dripping from the end of his nose into a puddle between his mud-bleached suedes.
Something brushed against the boat’s hull and made the craft lazily turn around its anchor chain. Flint lifted his head to watch a five-foot-long alligator drift past, its snout pushing through the foul brown water. A second alligator, this one maybe three feet in length, cruised past the first. The cat-green eyes and ridged skull of a third had surfaced less than six feet from the rowboat. Two more, each four-footers, lay motionless side by side just beyond the silent watcher. Flint had counted nine alligators at any one time, but there might be others asleep on the bottom. He couldn’t tell one from the other, except for their obvious size differences, so he really didn’t know how many lurked in the sludgy pond. Still, they were quiet monsters. Occasionally two or three would bump together in their back-and-forth loglike driftings and there might be an instant’s outburst of thrashing anger, but then everything would calm down again but for the rocking of the boat and the thudding hearts of the men in it. Flint figured the alligators were prisoners here just as he and Pelvis were.
The pond looked to be sixty-five feet across, from one side of a half-submerged, rusty barbed-wire
fence to the other. Beyond the alligator corral’s heavily bolted gate was a pier where two cigarette speedboats — both of them painted dark, nonreflective green — were secured, along with the larger workboat Flint had seen unloading the reptiles at the Vermilion marina. Eight feet of the pier was built out over the corral, and at its end stood a bolted-down electric winch Flint figured was used to hoist the alligators up onto the workboat’s deck. During the thirty-minute journey to this place in one of the speedboats, Monty had gleefully ripped the jacket and shirt off Flint’s back and taken the derringer’s holster. Then, when they’d reached their destination, Doc and the others had debated for a few minutes what to do with them until “he” — whoever “he” was — woke up. Their current situation had been dreamed up by Doc, who got Mitch to row them in the aluminum skiff through the corral’s gate while Monty had followed in a second rowboat. There had been much hilarity from a group of men watching on the pier as Mitch had thrown a concrete brick anchor over the side and then got into the boat with Monty, leaving Flint and Pelvis at the end of their chain.
The party had gone on for a while —” Hey, freak! Why don’t you and Elvis get out of that boat and cool yourselves off?” — but the men had drifted away as the sun had come up. Flint understood why; the novelty had faded, and they’d known how hot it was going to get out here. Every so often Mitch, Monty, or some other bastard would stroll out to the pier’s end to take a look and throw a remark at them that included the words “freak” or “motherfuckers,” then they would go away again. Since Pelvis had been smashed in the mouth, he’d not spoken a single word. Flint realized he must be in shock. Monty had taken Mama with him, and the last time the bearded sonofabitch had come out to check on them, the little bulldog wasn’t in his arms.
Flint could smell meat cooking.
Being burned was more like it.
The pier continued on past the boats to a bizarre sight: a large suburban ranch house with cream-colored walls, perched on wooden pilings over the water, the place looked as if it had been lifted up off the mowed green lawn of the perfect American town, helicoptered in, and set down to be the envy of the neighborhood. There was a circular swimming pool with its own redwood deck, one of those “above-ground” pools sold in kits; here the pool was not above ground, but on a platform above swamp. On the pool’s deck was a rack of barbells, a weight bench, and a stationary bicycle. Next to it was another large deck shaded by a blue-and-white-striped canvas awning, and on the far side of the house the platform supported a television satellite dish.
Other walkways went off from the main platform, connecting the house to three other smaller wooden structures. Cables snaked from one of them to the house and the satellite dish, so Flint reasoned it stored the power generator. Though the alligator corral, the pier, and the swimming pool were out under the full sun, most of the house was shaded by moss-draped trees. Around the house and the corral and everything else the swamp still held green dominion. Flint could see a bayou winding into the swamp beyond the farthermost of the three outbuildings, and there were red buoys floating in it to mark deeper passage for the workboat’s hull.
His survey of the area had also found a wooden watchtower, about forty feet high, all but hidden amid the trees at the bayou’s entrance. Up top, under a green-painted cupola, a man sat in a lawn chair reading a magazine, a rifle propped against the railing beside him. Every few minutes he would stand up and scan all directions through a pair of binoculars, then he would sit down again and return to his reading.
“We,” Flint said hoarsely, “are in deep shit.”
Pelvis didn’t speak; he just sat there and kept sweating, his eyes unfocused.
“Eisley? Snap out of it, hear me?”
There was no answer. A little thread of saliva had spooled down over his wounded lip.
“How about sayin’ somethin?” Flint asked.
Pelvis lowered his head and stared at the boat’s bottom.
Flint sniffed the air, catching the smell of burned meat. It struck him that that bastard Monty might be hungry again, and he realized Pelvis was probably thinking the same thing he was: Mama was on the breakfast grill.
“Hey, we’re gonna get out of this,” Flint tried again. He thought it was the most idiotic thing he’d ever said in his life. “You can’t go off and leave me now, hear?”
Pelvis shook his head, and he swallowed with a little dry, clicking noise.
Flint watched another alligator gliding past, so close he could have reached out and poked it in the eye if he cared to lose a hand. Well, that’d be all right; he’d still have two. Hold on, he told himself. Hold on, now. Control yourself. It’s not over yet, they haven’t shoveled the dirt over you. Hold on. “I’ll bet this is all a big mistake,” he said. “I’ll bet when that fella wakes up, he’ll come see us and we’ll tell him the story and he’ll shoot us on out of here.” His throat clenched up. “I mean, scoot us out of here.” Eisley’s silence was scaring the bejesus out of him, making him start to lose his own grip. He’d gotten so used to the man’s prattling, the silence was driving him crazy. “Eisley, listen. We’re not givin’ up. Pelvis? Come on, talk to me.”
No response.
Flint leaned forward, the sun beginning to scorch his back and sweat clinging to his eyebrows. “Cecil,” he said, “I’m gonna slap the crap out of you if you don’t look me in the face and say somethin’.”
But it was no use. Flint closed his eyes and pressed his un-cuffed hand against his forehead. At his chest Clint’s arm suddenly twitched and the hand fluttered, then it fell motionless again.
“What’d you call me?”
Flint opened his eyes and looked into the other man’s face.
“Did you call me Cecil?” Pelvis had lifted his head. His split lip had broken open again, a little bloody fluid oozing.
“Yeah, I guess I did.” A rush of relief surged through him. “Well, thank God you’re back! Now’s not the time to crack up, lemme tell you! We’ve got to hang tough! Like I said, when that fella wakes up and we tell him what a big mistake all this is —”
“Cecil,” Pelvis whispered, and a wan smile played across his crusty mouth. Then it passed. His eyes were very dark. “I think … they’re cookin’ Mama,” he said.
“No, they’re not!” Hold on to him! Flint thought in desperation. Don’t let him slide away again! “That fella was just pullin’ your chain! Listen now, get your mind off that. We’ve got other things to think about.”
“Like what? Which one of us they’re gonna kill first?” He squinted up at the sun. “I don’t care. We ain’t gettin’ out of this.”
“See? That’s why you never would’ve made a good bounty hunter. Never. Because you’re a quitter. By God, I’m not a quitter!” Flint felt the blood pounding in his face. He had to calm down before he had a heatstroke. “I said I was gonna get Lambert, and I got him, didn’t I?”
“Yes sir, you did. I don’t think neither one of us is gonna be spendin’ much of that reward money, though.”
“You just watch,” Flint said. “You’ll find out.” He was aware of his own wheels starting to slip. Control! he thought. Control was the most important thing. He had to settle himself down before the pressure of this situation broke him. He enfolded Clint’s clammy hand in his own, and he could feel their common pulse. “Self-discipline is what a bounty hunter needs. I’ve always had it. Ever since I was a little boy. I had to have it to keep Clint from jumpin’ around when I didn’t want him to. Jumpin’ around and makin’ everybody look at me like I was a freak. Self-discipline is what you need, and a whole lot of it.”
“Mr. Murtaugh?” Pelvis said in a soft and agonized voice that had very little of Elvis in it. “We’re gonna die today. Would you please shut up?”
Flint’s brain was smoking. He was burning up. His pallid skin cringed from the raw sunlight, and there was water, water everywhere, but not enough to cool himself in. He licked his lips and tasted sweat. An alligator nudged alongside the boat, a
long, scraping noise that made the flesh of Flint’s spine ripple. He needed to get his mind fixed on something else — anything else. “You’d be worth a damn,” he said, “if you had a manager.” Pelvis stared at him, and slowly blinked. “What?” “A manager. Like that fella said. You need a manager. Somebody to teach you self-discipline, get you off that damn junk food. Get you to stop tryin’ to play Elvis and be Cecil. I heard what he said, I was standin’ right there.”
“Are you … sayin’ what I think you’re sayin?” “Maybe I am. Maybe I’m not.” Flint reached up, his fingers trembling, and wiped the beads of sweat from his eyebrows. “I’m just sayin’ you’ve got a little talent to beat the piano, and a good manager could help you. A good businessman. Somebody to make sure you got paid when you were supposed to. You wouldn’t have to be a headliner, you could be in somebody else’s band, or play backup on records or whatever. There’s money to be made in that line of work, isn’t there?”
“Are you crazy, Mr. Murtaugh?” Pelvis asked. “Or am I?” “Hell, we both are!” Flint had almost shouted it. Control, he thought. Control. God, the sun was getting fierce. A pungent, acidic reek — the smell of swamp mud and ’gator droppings — was steaming up off the water. “When we get out of here — which we will, after we talk to whoever’s in charge around here — there’s gonna be tomorrow to think about. You’re not cut out to be a bounty hunter … and I’ve been lookin’ for a way to quit it for a long time. I’m sick of the ugliness of it, and I was never gettin’ anywhere. I was just goin’ around and around, like … like a three-armed monkey in a cage,” he said. “Now, it might not work. Probably won’t. But it would be a new start, wouldn’t —”
“Gettin’ awful hot out here, ain’t it?”
The voice caused both of them to jump. Monty was walking along the pier, splotches of sweat on his shirt. He was holding a plate of food, and he was chewing on some stringy meat attached to a small bone. “Ya’ll ain’t gone swimmin’ yet?”
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