The Emerald Lizard

by Chris Wiltz

  “How's the shrimping?” I asked. I pulled out two nickels, spent a couple of seconds inspecting them while he shrugged in answer to my question, and went back to digging. “The full moon's out,” I commented.

  He shrugged again, but said, “Tide's wrong. It's gotta be falling.”

  The kid took the quarter I offered him. I waited until he finished the game. This time his score was higher so I waited awhile.

  “When will you go back out?” I asked after he finished.

  “Maybe midnight.” He was waiting for more money. I used to wait for someone to pay for a pool game the same way, eyes darting around as if I didn't care one way or another whether I played, but hugging the side of the pool table.

  “Hang on,” I told him. I got five dollars worth of quarters from the bartender.

  That got me a gratified, “Wow!” He started to turn back to his game. I put my hand on his shoulder. “Do you know where Mr. Brevna keeps his shrimp boat?” I asked him.

  The joy drained from his face. He let his fingers hang by their tips from the machine. I don't know why, but somehow my asking him that had made him sad. “No,” he said.

  I gave his shoulder a friendly pat and wished him luck.

  Now here was a funny thing—I finally asked the bartender where I could find Brevna's boat. While the kid had been sad, the bartender was amused.

  “I'm sure I couldn't tell you,” she said. Without bothering to wait until we left, she called out to a fisherman—I think she called him “Boo"—who was straddling an old chrome and vinyl kitchen chair near the TV, his beefy back, from hauling those shrimp nets, to us. He got up, came to the bar and listened as the lady bartender whispered in his ear. His head with its limp, greasy, blondish hair swiveled in my direction.

  Just to finish up that business about Lafitte the pirate, legend has it that he had quite an incredible network of spies. I suppose such a network is useful to any criminal who moves contraband under cover of darkness.

  21

  A Lot in a Name

  I thought Boo might follow us out, but he didn't.

  We drove to the end of Lafitte again, and then started back slowly, taking one last look before giving up. For all I knew, Bubba had returned to his mobile home to wait for the tide to change.

  We were about a quarter of a mile before the turn to get back on the Lafitte LaRose Highway when I spotted the Lincoln. It was pulled up into some trees off the road toward the water. The land between the road and the water here was wider, and the bayou curved out and away, flowing into Turtle Bay.

  The Lincoln was in a small clearing between two groves of oak trees. The road down to the water was just another clearing obviously used by heavy vehicles that had made some deep ruts. Directly ahead of where the double row of ruts ended was a dock. No boat was tied up to it. The T-bird bounced over the ruts as I pulled up into the trees next to the Lincoln. From here the dock wasn't visible.

  To the left there were more oaks, trunks twisted painfully in an effort to get away from the beatings they got from the storms. Behind those was an old rusting corrugated metal garage. To the right was a clearing of maybe twenty-five feet and then a dense thicket and more trees.

  I turned off the motor and sat, waiting, watching.

  “What are you doing?” Diana asked.

  “I'm not sure. I guess I'm trying to figure out why Bubba's out and no one else is. The kid in the bar told me the tide isn't right for shrimping.”

  “Maybe he's fishing for something else.”

  “Maybe, but the money's in the shrimp. Maybe he's out early to get a jump on everyone else. Or he's throwing one of those boat parties Jackie told me about.”

  I reached over Diana, opened the glove compartment, and took out my Smith & Wesson .38 snubnose.

  “What are you doing now?” Diana asked.

  “I'm going to take a walk down to the dock and see if there's anything on the other side of those trees over there.” We both started opening the car doors. “Stay here,” I told her. “It might be muddy.” She closed the door.

  I got out, stuck the gun down in the waistband of my jeans, and leaned back in the car.

  “Move over here, Diana. Keep the doors locked. If anyone tries to bother you, take off. Okay?”

  “What if someone blocks me in?”

  “If anyone drives up, lean on the horn. I won't be far away.”

  She got out and came around to the driver's side. I hit a button and locked her in.

  I moved out of the darkness of the trees and headed for the dock. Luckily there hadn't been much rain lately so the ground wasn't too mucky.

  A fishy smell grew stronger as I approached the dock. It was a wide dock, very sturdy, fairly new-looking. I walked out on it. A large brush with a long handle was lying on one side. Its bristles were wet. The dock, I could see, had been cleaned fairly recently, but even so a fish scale glinted here and there in the moonlight. Other than these tiny flashes of brilliance, the only thing to see was a locked dock box.

  I paused and glanced back toward Diana and the T-bird, but the view was obscured by the trees. Facing the direction of the car, I could also easily see that the thicket and trees now to my left continued unbroken for quite a distance, a good hundred yards, where there was another dock with a small Lafitte skiff tied up to it. Much farther away were several more docks with boats secured to them, easy enough to see because the land jutted out and around. Beyond it was Turtle Bay.

  In the other direction it was much the same. There was a long pier on the other side of the corrugated garage. It was a rickety structure that had taken a great deal of abuse from the weather. A lone flatboat, the one I'd seen next to Bubba's trailer, was tied to it.

  The still damp dock and the flatboat tied to the pier made me think we were not necessarily alone here. I turned around in the direction of the car again, straining to hear or see anything. Everything was still and quiet. I stayed tensed like that for a few minutes before I relaxed enough to give my attention to the dock box.

  It was a good-size box, say four feet by six feet, about two feet high. It was fastened with a very cheap padlock. If Bubba was stashing anything of value, surely it wouldn't be here. A racoon could break into this thing.

  Leave no stone unturned. I lifted my foot and came down hard on the lock. It popped right open, loudly. I laid it on the dock as if it were a bomb, listening hard again. Then I began lifting the top. A godawful stench came up and I almost closed the box at once, but I stifled my gag reflex and kept going.

  Inside was a mass of stiff black netting. There was also a long stick, which was there to prop open the top. I put it in place and stared at the nets. I guess they smelled so bad from being contained. I poked around at them, lifting them at the edges. I could see a couple of trawl boards underneath. And the white bellies of a few small rotting fish. I removed the stick and let the top down.

  I was leaning over to wash off my hands when Diana's voice came to me clear and sharp.

  “What do you think you're doing?” she demanded.

  My head jerked up and I looked toward her, but couldn't see her.

  Then she said loudly, very sternly, “You get away from this car.” She paused a beat. “Do you hear me? Now!”

  I was off before she finished, grabbing my gun out of my waistband, slipping slightly on the dock before my feet got going in a fast sprint toward her. I was bounding over the dried-mud ruts and I could hear someone else bounding into the thicket, branches cracking, leaves making a swishing sound. They were still trembling where he'd entered the thicket when I came around some high shrubbery, but I didn't run into the thicket. I ran into the grove across the way where the car was parked.

  My heart was pounding like mad. If anything had happened to Diana, I'd never forgive myself, but she was standing in front of the car looking toward the last trembling leaf.

  “Who was that?” I asked, out of breath more from the adrenaline rushing around my system than from running.

&nb
sp; “I have no idea.”

  Well, of course she didn't. “What were you doing out of the car?”

  “Looking at the garage.” She pointed at it.

  I was irritated that she hadn't followed my instructions. I motioned for her to get back in the car. She went to the passenger side and had to wait until I released the lock. My door was wide open. I got in the car, one foot still on the ground. The glove compartment was open—he'd been rifling through it. But something else bothered me more than that.

  There was no buzzing sound. The car door was open, but no buzzing. I felt for the keys. They weren't there.

  “Where are the keys?” I held out my hand. Diana just looked at me, eyes wide. “Shit!”

  I put the gun on the console in between us and opened the trunk with the lever inside the glove compartment. I told Diana to get out of the car.

  “You just told me to get in,” she said.

  “And now I'm telling you to get out.”

  I got the tire iron from the trunk and went around to her side. I put the edge of the tool in the key slot, cursed silently at he damage I was about to do the car, and hit the tool with as much weight as I could. The cylinder popped out. I went back to my side to fool with the wires.

  Diana slipped back into the passenger seat. “Are you hot wiring the car?” she asked.

  I stopped and turned my head toward her. “Do you have any other suggestions?”

  She didn't answer.

  I went back to work. “Did you see him?”

  “It would have been difficult not to. He was as big as the side of a house.”

  Again I stopped. “Yeah? Black beard, long hair, silent?”

  “He didn't say anything if that's what you mean.”

  I was having some trouble seeing the wires in the dim car light. Diana snapped on a flashlight. She had certainly come prepared.

  So Godzilla was on the scene in Lafitte tonight instead of farming out shady ladies. Big break for them. He must have been waiting for Bubba to get back. Nutley the Faithful.

  With a pocket knife, I scraped the covering off the wires. I started laughing. Diana was about to say something, but I put the wires together and she jumped as they sparked and the car started.

  “Calm down, princess. It's only a couple of wires. You just scared off the biggest, baddest guy on the block and didn't flinch.” I mimicked her: “ ‘Get away from this car . . . Now!’ and the giant scampers off into the forest like a scared bunny.”

  It occurred to me that Godzilla might be a brute, but Rodney Nutley was a coward. It made one think there's a lot in a name. That turned out to be an incredibly stupid thing to think.

  22

  Nightly Rituals

  Diana's big work for the evening had been to explore the perimeter of the locked, windowless corrugated garage in Lafitte, and dirty the knees of her expensive slacks when she found a rusted-out section of metal at ground level. She had peered through it and the beam of her sleek gold-tone flashlight had found the large wheels of a truck.

  She told me this as we had drinks at the bar of the Barataria Tavern, a large seafood house on Goose Bayou.

  “But I told you to stay in the car,” I reminded her, “and you promised to do whatever I told you to do, no questions, no complaints—remember?”

  “So?” She dropped the lids over her brown eyes for a couple of seconds. “What are you going to do about it?”

  Far too many drinks later we found our way out to the parking lot where I looked upon the T-bird with extreme fondness and realized I was too drunk to drive. So was Diana.

  Across the lot, situated on the bayou, was a boatel, a strip motel the front of which was a long dock. It angled out perpendicular to the road following the curve of the bayou. On its narrow end facing the road a sign was tacked up that stated simply, NIGHTLY RENTALS, the only name the place had.

  So in answer to Diana's question, what was I going to do about her not doing what I'd told her to do, I was going to do precisely what she wanted. Before the night was over we'd renamed the boatel “Nightly Rituals.”

  I woke up the next morning with a strange sort of hollowness inside me that I couldn't blame entirely on the hangover I had. I was thinking about what was going on between Diana and me, how it had all come about by accident. Hadn't it? Not really. I had reacted to her meanness, and apparently that is what she wanted me to do. This meanness; was it some sort of atavistic anger felt by all women, directed against all men, that Diana was somehow closely in touch with, which directly affected her sexuality?

  Last night she hadn't told me she loved me, she'd told me she loved my scar, that it made me look brutal and dangerous—and mean. This was going beyond her “dangerous glamour,” and it didn't make me feel good. Every time we made love now, she turned the act of love into an act of violence.

  I have a lot of theories about violence, for instance that witnessing an act of it can train your future reactions more precisely than any amount of purposeful training, just as it can also produce fear, alienation, or isolation. Or, if it's bad enough, it can break you. But I had no theories to cover what was going on between Diana and me. All I knew was that there has been and is enough violence in my life that Diana's penchant for it was getting me down. I guess I'm just a romantic guy.

  I looked at Diana sleeping peacefully, her head on my shoulder, her body snug against my side. One of her legs lay across mine; my arm was around her. She looked young and innocent with a strand of her dark hair across her cheek. It reminded me of Nita on the day of Jackie's funeral, her head bent, her hair falling across her cheek.

  I wanted to make love to Diana with no show of force, no act of violence, but an act of romance. I put my hand on her breast and caressed it. Her leg moved down over mine a bit. My hand drifted along her skin, into the hollow of her waist, up over the rise of her hip, along her thigh. It went to the inside of her thigh, coming back up, but the moment I touched her pubic hair she made a small sound of irritation and turned away from me.

  Well, so much for romance.

  23

  Winkler's Alibi

  The sun shone so brilliantly off Goose Bayou that I stumbled like a blind man toward the car to get the sunglasses that were folded up in the visor. A soft breeze ruffled the surface of the water, and Lafitte skiffs and other fishing boats were tied up to the docks, picturesque as a post card. Barataria that November morning was a Caribbean paradise where there was never any winter.

  I left Diana sleeping at the boatel, a note on my pillow that I'd gone back to Lafitte to check out the garage.

  Bubba's car was still pulled up under the oaks, but this time I didn't park near it. I found a place down the road and walked back, checking behind each bush for a lurking hulk.

  There was a clearing in front of the garage for the big double doors to open out into, and a rutted driveway, part mud, part shells, that was lined by oak trees, the kind of oak-lined drive you see in front of antebellum homes along the river. The garage itself was padlocked with a lock about as sturdy as the one on the dock box. All it took was one blow with a rock that fit in the palm of my hand. Either Lafitte was populated with the most trustworthy people in the world, or Bubba's network of spies was extensive. I'd put my bet on the latter.

  I opened the door enough to get in and closed it again. Inside the garage, with the help of Diana's flashlight, I could see plenty enough space for two trucks. At present only one was there, though I could see marks on the dirt floor of the garage where another had been.

  It was an insulated refrigerated truck, the container part about twelve feet long. Its sliding back door was propped open. A slanting metal ramp led to a dark interior where I could see the dim outlines of a lot of boxes. I went up the ramp. The boxes, collapsible wooden crates reinforced with wire, were for transporting seafood. I poked around a bit, but there was nothing else except a fish smell that kept my nose wrinkled. It wasn't a bad smell really, because everything was clean and being aired properly, but it wasn'
t a place to spend a lot of time either. I went down the ramp and outside, glad to be breathing fresh bayou air again.

  Larry Silva had told me Bubba made a lot of money fishing and indeed he must have to be able to afford even one of those refrigerated trucks. But in this part of the world plenty of fishermen with large boats made good money and had refrigerated trucks. I could see nothing particularly unusual about this part of Bubba's setup, but I reminded myself that Bubba's illegitimate activities could easily have paid for the trucks.

  When I got back to the boatel Diana was dressed and wanted to get back to town. She had a command performance society ordeal to attend that evening and needed the afternoon to get ready for it.

  We didn't talk much. I figured she was thinking about what to wear while I wondered if she was going with the lawyer Wiley St. Cyr. She needed both of us, I was telling myself—not without a twinge of jealousy—because I could never be part of her high society life, so it surprised me considerably when we pulled up in front of her apartment and she invited me to her parents’ annual soiree to kick off the holiday season the following Saturday night.

  Diana, it turned out, was getting ready to make a statement. And a proposal.

  Maurice and Nita seemed to have vanished. No one was at home, and Maurice wasn't at the office. I went back to the Euclid, shaved, showered, changed, and tried again. When I still couldn't get them, I called Aubrey Wohl. He told me to meet him at his boat around four o'clock. That gave me time to go see a guy I knew in the Channel who put the key cylinder back into the steering column of the Thunderbird.

  Aubrey kept his shrimp boat at Happy Jack, which is on the road to Venice, Louisiana—the very last town before the mouth of the Mississippi.

  Aubrey had a sprightly looking Lafitte skiff about twenty-five feet long, rigged with wing nets and electrical winches to move them. When I got to Happy Jack, nothing but a small fishing village, I spotted the boat right away, because Aubrey was standing on the fan tail coiling a heavy yellow line. He had on the regulation white boots.