Fever Tree

by Tim Applegate

  Go figure, Colt moaned, glancing at the bedside clock. I mean it’s only three in the morning, right?

  Gene ignored the jab. In the dream, he said, Dieter’s motives were pure. He was staying in town because he was writing a book about it.

  A book.

  Yeah, a book, about Crooked River. He is a writer you know.

  Was, Colt thought, was a writer.

  The rest of it, Gene spat, is bullshit, Teddy’s paranoia.

  Colt was losing his patience. Before Gene so rudely awakened him he had been dreaming about Anita Ekberg tooling around Rome on the back of a scooter driven by you know who. Flashing cameras, honking car horns, a pack of fans gawking at the famous starlet and her new handsome friend.

  Look, it wasn’t my idea.

  What wasn’t?

  The contract!

  Doesn’t matter, you set it up.

  Colt’s anger, held in check so far, flared. Now hold on. Let’s get this story straight, huh. I mean there wouldn’t even be any contract if you didn’t, you know . . .

  Didn’t what?

  Egg Teddy on. Feed his paranoia.

  Colt imagined the pained expression on the bartender’s face: shock, outrage, despair.

  You’re missing the point.

  Am I?

  Damn right.

  Which is what, Gene? Why don’t you go ahead and tell me the point.

  The point is he’s innocent. Gene waited for this simple revelation to sink in. Got that? Innocent.

  Colt had had enough. Fuck you want me to do about it?

  Call it off.

  I can’t, Colt growled. It’s too late. It’s already over.

  After a long pause Gene’s voice returned, deflated this time. I can’t believe this, man. I can’t believe it.

  Get some sleep, Geno. Stop worrying so much. It’ll all look better to you in the morning.

  And yet sleep, Colt suspected, was no more likely for the troubled bartender tonight than it was for him. In Nicky Meyers’s tiny kitchen—not that she needed a bigger one, not that she ever actually cooked—he sat down at the breakfast table and chugged the rest of his beer. He thought about the bag of coke he had stashed a couple weeks ago in the back of Nicky’s pantry. One of his cardinal rules was to never get high the night before a job, but this was no ordinary run, so the rules, he decided, didn’t apply. He opened a second bottle of Bud, weighing his options. He could chill out with a few cold brews and then try, once more, to go back to sleep, or he could hoover a line or two and get ready—hell, it was already three-thirty, right?—for the big day. Hangovers played hell on his nerves but if he paced himself he would be all right.

  In the living room he settled into one of Nicky’s wing chairs and switched on the TV, even though the images, in the wake of the first explosive line of coke, failed to hold his attention for very long. Unfortunately Gene’s whiny voice came needling its way back into his conscience. Why didn’t the dumb fuck take a sleeping pill and keep his worries to himself? Talk about Teddy’s paranoia. He loved Gene like a brother but prison had taken something out of the man; his edge, his nerve, his chutzpah.

  With a razor blade and a hand mirror, Colt divided a second line, a modest little bump to keep the juices flowing. The key was to space the bumps out more or less evenly and thus control the trajectory of your high. Scrape the line, roll the dollar bill, bend over the hand mirror and say ahhhhh . . . Rapture, ecstasy, bliss.

  Thank God Nicky had driven up to Macon to visit her ailing mother tonight. Because the last thing he needed right now was a bimbo with nothing better to do flitting around the apartment wondering why, as long as he was shacking up in her pad, he didn’t fork over half of the rent. It was almost as if Nicky was hoping that her nagging would make him leave, not realizing that this was precisely what he was planning to do. It was comical, really, the way she kept harassing him about a little rent money right before he hit the jackpot, mere days before his ship sailed in. Everywhere you went these days someone put the squeeze on. Oh well. When he got down to Mexico he’d send the stripper a chipper little note—thanks for the mammaries, babe—just to let her know there were no hard feelings.

  On TV a woman bearing an unfortunate resemblance to Tammy Faye Baker was attempting to sell insomniacs like Colt bizarre kitchen gadgets they couldn’t possibly have a use for. A salad shooter? What the fuck was a salad shooter? In disgust he grabbed the remote and shut it off. There was a lot on his mind and he didn’t need any more distractions tonight. A lot on his mind . . . like the fact that tomorrow was the most important day of the rest of his life, the fork in the crooked road that would eventually lead to a villa in Mexico overlooking the turquoise sea. He leaned over and inhaled line number three, feeling the blast in the back of his throat and the sockets of his eyes simultaneously. A crooked smile confirmed his growing optimism, the world through coke-colored glasses. In Sarasota, Eddie would cut the batch by a third, upping the ante because that’s the way it was done these days. The buyers wouldn’t expect anything else, and besides, they would step on it too. It was the law of diminishing returns. By the time the stuff hit the streets it would be a little bit of coke and a whole lot of baking powder sailing right up the noses of all those chumps who thought they were buying the real thing. Fuck ‘em—that’s what you got for living in Philadelphia.

  When his heartbeat slowed down to a reasonable stutter he went into the bathroom and turned the shower on high, adjusting Nicky’s massage nozzle until the stinging needles of water were transformed into a warm, pulsing spray. And fifteen minutes later he was ready for the day, showered and shaved and dressed in the kind of nondescript clothing—blue jeans and a plain gray T-shirt—he liked to wear on runs. For a drug mule, anonymity was a must.

  In the parking lot of Nicky’s apartment complex he placed his valise—which contained what was left of the coke, a pint of Wild Turkey, and the .45 he always carried with him on runs—in the trunk of his car alongside the suitcase he had packed the night before. In no particularly hurry, he cruised down Cypress Avenue toward Highway 98 then swung north toward Panama City, where he signed the agreement for the rental, a black Trans Am this time, in the office of the usual lot.

  Adjusting the Trans Am’s mirrors, he circled back south to pick up the goods. For October it was an unseasonably humid day, and at the bottom of shallow concavities in the highway, mirages of water appeared. Orange groves, flat-water rivers, deep piney woods. Colt had always considered this a particularly scenic and unspoiled stretch of road, but he took little pleasure in it today. The trouble was that he was starting to crash, and he hadn’t had anything to eat yet either, a lethal combination. The only answer he could come up with was another bump, so he pulled into a rest stop and parked in the far corner of the lot, in the shade of a gnarled old oak. On the dash he divided a hefty line with the edge of a credit card, snorted the powder with a five-dollar bill, and chased it with a slug of Wild Turkey.

  There, that was better. Just what the doctor ordered. What a morning! As he pulled back onto the highway his spirits soared, and why not? The engine of the Trans Am hummed like a spaceship, the sun shimmered on the Apalachicola River, and that new song by Dire Straits—the one with the kickass riff—was blasting from the box. Best of all, the day of Teddy Mink’s comeuppance had finally arrived. How sweet revenge tasted when you had waited this long.

  With an eye on the speedometer—a speeding ticket at this point was not an option—he gathered his thoughts. Okay, so the timing of the hit had been terrible, and as far as he could determine the contract had been unwarranted. There was little doubt that Dieter, as Gene suggested, was an innocent man. Morally this was reprehensible, a genuine downer. And yet now that Dieter was out of the way Colt’s path back to Maggie looked a lot less cluttered than before. When he saw her today he would offer his condolences, or if the body hadn’t been discovered yet, quietly expla
in that he was going away. Mexico, he would confide, a little village on the west coast. Perhaps in a few weeks she and Hunter could fly over for a visit, at Colt’s expense. No strings attached, he would assure her, just some down time in the sun on Hunter’s Thanksgiving break. All he had to do was plant the seed. In the darkness of her grief the flower would blossom, because even a woman as tough as Maggie craved unconditional love, and with Dieter out of the picture Colt was the only man who could offer her that. The father of her child, the partner she had lived with for the last five years, the man who knew her better than anyone else. Hell, if she played her cards right who knew, he might even marry her!

  Bearing south, he went over the blueprint again. After picking up the shipment at the airstrip he would stop by Maggie’s cabin for a quick goodbye. Then he’d head down the coast. Concluding that Pam Morgan was no longer reliable, Teddy had switched the safe house from Everglades City to some old cracker shack at the end of a deserted lane near Clearwater Beach, and at first Colt had been thrown for a loop by this change in his itinerary. Then he’d realized that the proximity of the new safe house would buy him a little more time. Even with a late start he could make it to Clearwater by early evening. And the following morning, after a good night’s rest, he could cruise on down to Sarasota, meet the buyers, and board a red eye to Puerto Vallarta that very same night.

  The plan was ingenious, foolproof, a template of righteous revenge. At last Teddy Mink would pay for his sins, for humiliating him in front of Nicky Meyers, and for trotting out the dead father, proving that he was the biggest prick of all. Colt’s only regret was that he wouldn’t be there to see the bewildered expression on the kingpin’s face when he realized what his lowly mule had just done.

  To celebrate his good fortune, he swung off the highway onto an old logging road that wound back through a tunnel of trees. There wasn’t much to look at—a murky pond, some abandoned bee boxes, and a glimpse, here and there, of a patch of blue sky—but the view didn’t matter. He pulled into a clearing in the woods to divide two more lines on the dashboard. Glancing in the rear view mirror, he hoovered both lines, chasing each one with a generous gulp of Wild Turkey. Soon the bottle was empty, and so was the bag, but that didn’t matter either, for Colt was oblivious now. His eyes were closed. His mind was at rest. He was dreaming about Mexico.

  32

  At dawn Dieter woke in the crushed weeds, somehow still breathing. Cocking open one eye he observed on the bed of wet leaves which had cushioned his fall a stain darker than the rain, a ribbon of blood, his. Then he drifted off, and when he woke again the bizarre notion that somehow at point blank range Raul had missed him flickered through his mind. Randomly he began to mutter the lyrics of a song he’d recently heard on the radio—something by Joni Mitchell—a man in shock or on the verge of delirium astonished to discover that he was still there. Or was he? Had he woken in the real world or were these the final earthly visions of someone who had already died? Was he lying in the clearing with a bullet in his brain? If so, he would enter the land of the dead now, purged, purified, saved.

  Shivering in the damp and cold, he recalled the first step of that purification, how he had floated up out of his body to gaze back down at the nightmare tableau the instant Raul fired his gun. But wait. How could a dead man remember the sound of the gunshot that killed him? And how could Raul, a marksman, miss his target at point blank range? No, neither of those scenarios was even remotely plausible. In a panic, Raul must have fired out over the river or up into the trees. At the penultimate moment, the assassin’s nerves had presumably failed. Lashing out at his own inadequacy, he must have then cold-cocked his victim with the barrel of the pistol, which would explain both the blackout Dieter was now rousing from, as well as the painful gash in the back of his head.

  Later he woke to another dream; birdsong in the branches and the steady flow of the River Styx, his final passage. And yet that wasn’t plausible either, because no boatman waited at the ferry and Dieter, against odds, was still alive. With great care he pressed his palms against the bloody leaves, trying to lift his upper body, until a jolt of electricity hammered him back to the ground. Delicately, he probed the head wound and his fingers came away sticky. Swallowing the bile in his throat, he braced himself for what he had to do. The knowledge that he was still losing blood deepened his resolve, and by pressing his hands against the ground again and ignoring what felt like a drill boring into the back of his skull he was finally able to struggle to his feet, woozy as a newborn colt. He stared in wonder at the river, as if seeing water for the very first time.

  As the light broke through the boughs of the catalpas and streamed across the clearing, he staggered over to his truck. Inside the cab he found keys in the ignition and his wallet on the front seat. Cash, credit cards, driver’s license, photograph of Jen; nothing, it appeared, was missing.

  Once more his tentative fingers probed, through matted hair, the open wound. Determined to staunch the flow of blood, he slipped off his T-shirt and tore it into rags and with one of the strips bound the gash in a headband. Catching sight of himself in the driver’s window, he thought about the young soldier in The Red Badge of Courage wrapping his own head wound in a similar fashion. Like Raul, the boy soldier had fled, horrified by what he had been commanded to do.

  On the bank of the river he washed his face and his chest with a cup of two hands. Loosening the headband, he rinsed this in the river also, and when the rag was wrung dry, or at least damp, retied it. His mind wandered back and forth through time, disengaged. In Quintana Roo, Parrish wore his bandanna as a sweatband, just as he had in Vietnam; because the Mekong Delta, even in Mexico, was never far away. Every jungle, he told Dieter one night, is the same. The only difference here is that the bullets are imaginary, at least so far.

  He climbed into the pickup and turned the key in the ignition and crawled down the weedy drive. Now that the initial elation of survival had begun to wear off, he took stock of his situation. Yes, he was alive, all right, but someone was trying to kill him and he couldn’t fathom why. If the motive was robbery, why was his wallet still there? And if it wasn’t robbery, what other reason could there be? He dismissed the possibility that the plan had originated with Raul. Based on the hit man’s startled expression when his target pulled into the outpost, it seemed likely that he hadn’t even been told the identity of the man he was supposed to kill. He wracked his brain for possible enemies, and came up blank. Since he had arrived in Crooked River he had made only friends: Maggie, Frank Paterson, the deckhands, Lureen, Consuela, Mr. Gold. With every one of them he had behaved like the gentleman he considered himself to be.

  And then an altogether different face flashed through his mind, and all at once he knew, without a doubt, who had ordered the killing.

  On Pheasant Hill Road he pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store with an Open sign shining in its murky window. Inside, a teenaged girl with straight brown hair parted down the middle stood behind the counter tracking the disheveled stranger now climbing, gingerly, out of his truck. Narrowing her eyes, she watched him hesitate in the doorway.

  Morning.

  Morning, she squeaked. Can I help you?

  Grimacing—the least movement was still agony—he shook his head. No, he lied, I’m fine. I’m just fine.

  Considering what he must look like to her—a bare-chested madman with a bloody rag wrapped around his head—Dieter was hardly surprised by the glint of fear in the girl’s eyes, but there was nothing he could do about that. Determined to get in and out of the store as quickly as possible, he worked his way down one of the garish aisles, baffled by the sheer volume of junk food—candy, cookies, chips—dominating the entire row. He imagined a rabble of children swarming through the store after school grabbing this package and that. Halfway down the aisle these random, disconnected thoughts caused him to pause, suddenly disoriented, suddenly off task, unable to remember why he was there. />
  The clerk was watching his every move. He was a handsome guy but who came to a convenience store on a Friday morning without a shirt on? And what about the headband? Was that red stain seeping out of it blood? The man frightened her, and yet when he turned back to the counter he looked so confused and forlorn she felt a stab of pity, too.

  Band-aids? Dieter lifted his hands in a gesture of helplessness. Bandages?

  She pointed a shaky finger. Right behind you.

  Of course, he cried. Another grimace: his voice was too loud, too demonstrative. He had to tone it down before she called the cops, triggered an alarm, dashed out of the store. Mouthing thanks, he filled his arms with a box of bandages, a bottle of peroxide, and a vial of Tylenol, and carried them over to the counter.

  The clerk rang up his purchases and stuffed them into a plastic bag. Then a cloud drifted across the room . . . and Dieter was lost again. As Raul pressed the barrel of the pistol against the back of his head he heard the cry of a hawk in the mist above the river. A night hawk? A kestrel? Jen would have known. She would have pointed to the appropriate panel in Petersen’s Guide. Meanwhile a sudden flurry of rain spattered the tannic river.

  You all right, mister? A flurry of rain spattered the river while Raul, already in mourning, recited a passage of prayer. Mister?

  Yeah?

  You okay?

  That all depends, he thought, on how you define okay. He pursed his lips. He wanted to ease the clerk’s anxiety but he didn’t know how to accomplish that. She thought he was crazy, and maybe she was right. Maybe the episode in the clearing had unhinged his mind. What, he wondered, would madness look like? A clearing in the woods? A river in the rain?

  Well are you?

  Am I what?

  Okay?

  Without warning, her innocent question unleashed a flood of emotions and tears glistened in his eyes and he had to grab on to the edge of the counter for balance.