The Best American Mystery Stories 1998

by Otto Penzler

  “Why do people call you Vanilla?” he asked when she returned with his food and a thick milk shake, half in a glass, half remaining in the cold metal container that had fit onto the mixer.

  “I used to be a blonde,” she said simply, then put his lunch on the table and went back into the kitchen.

  Carver had eaten a few bites of the sandwich when he heard the door open and close. He looked in that direction and saw that a uniformed cop had come in, a short, obese, sixtyish man in a neatly pressed blue uniform with a gold badge on his chest.

  He waddled directly to Carver’s table. “I’m Mangrove City Police Chief Jerry Gordon,” the cop said. He was one of those very fat men who breathe hard all the time, even when they speak.

  Carver shook hands with Gordon and invited him to sit down.

  “You’re Fred Carver from Del Moray,” Gordon said, settling his soft and wheezing bulk into the chair across the table from Carver.

  ‘Your job to know,” Carver said, unsurprised. Everyone in town apparently knew his name and where he lived.

  “It is that.” Gordon smiled. ‘You’re the only guest out at the Glades Inn. Only outsider in town, matter of fact. So you’re bound to be noticed. We ain’t exactly Miami here, Mr. Carver.”

  “I guess you were told I’m here for the fishing,” Carver said.

  “Oh, sure. I got a yuk out of that. Most folks’d rather drop a line in water where there’s more likely to be fish than something that’s gonna eat their bait then have them for dessert.”

  “There must be some good fishing. Terry Frist came here a while back. He usually knew where they were biting.” A different lie for Gordon. He’d told I.C. Unit he hadn’t known Frist in Del Moray. Which had been the truth. Or part of the truth. The useful thing about lies was that they were so adaptable.

  Chief Gordon gave Carver a dead-eyed, level look, the kind cops were so good at. “Way I recall it, Terry Frist didn’t catch nothin’ but a big ol’ ’gator. I’d be careful walkin’ in his footsteps.”

  “Are you warning me to be careful in and out of the swamp, Chief?”

  “Cautionin’ you, is the way I think of it.” He put his elbows on the table and leaned toward Carver. “I gotta tell you, there’s some angry people out there, in and around the swamp, all through these parts.”

  “Angry at what?”

  “Ever’thin’ from violence on TV an’ in the movies to supermarket bar codes. You don’t wanna do no verbal joustin’ with ’em. We got folks around here, Mr. Carver, would shoot you dead over violence on TV.”

  “You think that’s what happened to Terry Frist? An argument over politics or the price of something in produce?”

  “I think somebody shoulda warned Terry Frist. I read he was a cop. Maybe he was workin’ undercover, an’ this was no place for him to be.”

  “Maybe he found out about something. Say, a drug-smuggling operation.”

  Chief Gordon grinned. “Why, you’re fishin’ already, Mr. Carver.”

  “Maybe. But Mangrove City’s near enough to the coast that drug shipments from the sea could be brought here by airboat through the swamp, and the law would never be able to figure out the routes or the timing. A cop — as you say, maybe working undercover — was killed here recently. And I met I. C. Unit this morning in Muggy’s and was told he’s part of a set and recently of the Union Correctional Institution over in Raiford. And now here you are . ..”

  “The local cop on the take?” Gordon didn’t seem angry at the suggestion, which made Carver curious. “That’s so preposterous I ain’t even gonna respond to it, Mr. Carver, except to say we got creatures in the swamp more deadly than any ’gator. Maybe one of ’em killed Terry Frist.”

  “And you don’t want to be next, is that it?”

  “Nor do I want you to be, Mr. Carver. I.C. and that Peevy and Magruder, those are bad men. A ’gator grab one of’em an’ it’d spit him right out. I did feel compelled to warn you, an’ now I have.” Chief Gordon shoved back his chair and stood up, tucking in his blue shirt around his bulging stomach.

  Carver felt sorry for him. He was past his prime and dealing with local toughs who had him and the rest of Mangrove City under their collective greasy thumb.

  “Do you think Terry Frist was murdered?” Carver asked.

  Again Chief Gordon was impassive. “What all I think publicly, it’s all in my report, Mr. Carver. If you’re really serious about doin’ any fishin’ while you’re here, you oughta see Irv down at his bait shop. He’ll tell you where they’re bitin’ an’ you might not get bit back.” He raised a pudgy forefinger and wagged it at Carver. “You remember I said might.” He turned and waddled out, swinging his elbows wide to clear his holstered revolver and the clutter of gear attached to his belt.

  Carver poked his straw into the thick milk shake and took a long sip. It was the best thing he’d encountered since arriving in Mangrove City.

  That afternoon, Carver set out from the Glades Inn wearing loose-fitting green rubber boots, old jeans, a black pullover shirt, and half a tube of mosquito repellent. He carried a casting rod and wore a slouch cap with an array of colorful feathered lures hooked into it. He hadn’t been fishing for years and didn’t really know much about it, but he figured if his cover story was fishing, he’d better fish. Maybe he’d even catch something.

  Irv of Irv’s Baits seemed to know a lot about fishing and had recommended his night crawlers, explaining to Carver that it took the fattest, juiciest worms to catch the biggest fish. Carver thought that made an elemental kind of sense and bought two dozen of the wriggling monsters squirming around in an old takeout fried chicken bucket half full of rich black loam.

  He loaded all of this into the cavernous trunk of the Olds, then drove along the road toward town until he came to a turnoff he’d noticed on his previous trip.

  The narrow gravel road soon became even narrower, and the gravel became mud that threatened to bog down the big car’s rear wheels. Carver braked the Olds to a stop and turned off the engine. Silence somehow made deeper by the ceaseless drone of insects closed in. Off to his right, through dense foliage shadowed by overhead tree limbs and draped Spanish moss, he saw the dull green sheen of water.

  He climbed out of the Olds, got his rod and reel and bucket of worms from the trunk, then muddied the tip of his cane as he limped from what was left of the road and trudged in his boots toward the water. His motion made sensory waves in the swamp. The humming insect tone varied slightly at his passing. He heard soft and abrupt watery sounds and the quick and startled beat of wings.

  When he reached a likely spot, he stopped, placed the bucket on a tree stump, and stood in the shade. He disengaged the barbed hook from the cork handle of his casting rod, used it to impale one of Irv’s ill-fated night crawlers, and moved slightly to the side. Careful not to snag his line on nearby branches, he used the weight of the bait, a small lead sinker, and a red and white plastic float to cast toward a clear circle of water in the shade of an ancient cypress tree. Line whirred out, there was a faint plop! and Carver was ready to reel in a fish.

  Irv’s worm must have loafed underwater. Nothing happened for about fifteen minutes. Then the red and white float bobbed, went completely underwater, and Carver reeled in an empty hook.

  So what did it matter? He was really here to establish himself as a genuine fisherman, in case anyone might be watching him. He reached into the bucket for another worm.

  The fishing got better at the spot Carver had chosen. It took him only about an hour to feed the fish the rest of Irv’s worms. He removed the fishing cork, cut the leader line above the hook and sinker, then selected the feathered and multiple-barbed Oh Bug-gie! lure and unhooked it from his cap. He attached it to the line, cast it to where he’d lost all his worms, and almost immediately a fish took it.

  Carver reeled in a tiny carp. Since he didn’t like to clean fish, and this one was too small to keep anyway, he worked the hook from its mouth and tossed it back. Catch and release,
he thought, hoping that wouldn’t happen with whoever killed Terry Frist.

  He thought nothing the rest of the afternoon. That evening he drove into town and had the family meatloaf special at Vanilla’s, then stopped in at Muggy’s for a beer before driving back to the motel. He saw no sign of I. C. Unit or his two confederates and was pretty much ignored by the townspeople. They saw him yet they didn’t, as if someone had planted in them the posthypnotic suggestion that he didn’t exist, and there was a short-circuit between their eyes and their brains that made him invisible to them.

  That night Carver awoke in his bed in the Glades Inn to an odd, snarling sound outside in the dark. He lay on his back in total blackness, his fingers laced behind his head, and realized he was listening to the sound of an airboat deep in the swamp. Maybe one of Ray Orb’s boats. But according to I. G. Unit, Orb didn’t operate in this part of the swamp because it was too dense and dangerous. And how could you not believe I.G.?

  Carver fell back asleep listening to the faraway sound of the airboat and dreamed that it was a gigantic insect droning in the swamp. In the dawn and the halfway country between waking and sleep, he thought maybe his dream was possible.

  It was more possible, he decided when fully awake, that the late-night droning from the swamp was indeed an airboat’s engine, and the cargo was illegal narcotics.

  Carver established a routine over the next five days, not doing much other than fishing with rod and reel and Oh Buggie!, going to secluded fishing spots in the evenings and staying late, tossing his infrequent catches back into the water. Carrying his fishing gear, he explored the swamp around Mangrove City. Though he came across tracks in the mud once, he never saw an alligator. And he didn’t again hear the snarl of an airboat engine in the night.

  Until the sixth night, when he was standing ankle-deep in water near the gnarled roots of a mangrove and heard the sudden roar of an engine, as if a boat that had been drifting nearby had abruptly started up. A light flashed, the swinging beam of a searchlight illuminating the swamp, and for an instant through the trees he saw the shimmering whir of an airboat’s rear-mounted propeller spinning in its protective cage as it powered the flat-bottomed boat over the water. Judging by the size of the prop and cage, it was a large boat. Carver heard voices, then a single shouted word: “Cuidado.r A man yelling in Spanish to whoever was steering the boat to be careful, probably of some looming obstacle the light had revealed.

  Carver stood motionless until the snarling engine had faded to silence. He could still hear water lapping in the boat’s wake, even see ripples that had found their way to the moonlit patch of algae and floating debris where he was pretending to fish.

  He reeled in Oh Buggie! and a tangle of weed, then returned to where the Olds was parked and drove back to the motel.

  Maybe tonight he’d finally caught something.

  After showering away mosquito repellent and swamp mud, he put on a fresh pair of boxer shorts, made sure the room’s air conditioner was on high, then went to the alcove closet. He reached up on the shelf and found the half-dollar-size bronze Aztec calendar again and stood staring at it. No one knew for sure that the ancient circular Aztec design actually was a calendar. It was only a theory.

  Carver stared at the trinket, then placed it back on the shelf. Now he had a theory, and one he believed in. Tomorrow he’d do something about it.

  He sat on the edge of the sagging mattress, flicked the wall switch off with his cane, and dropped back on the bed in the warm darkness. With so much resolved, and with a clear course of action before him, he dozed off immediately and slept deeply.

  He sensed it was toward morning when he dreamed again of the giant insect droning in the swamp. Only this time he was surprised to hear it buzz his name.

  Abruptly he realized someone was in the room speaking to him. Without moving any other part of his body, he opened his eyes.

  I. C. Unit was standing at the foot of the bed. He was holding a shotgun casually so that it was pointed at Carver.

  “Carver. Carver. You best wake up. You’re gonna go fishin’ early this mornin’. Gonna get yourself an early start well afore sunrise. Ain’t no need for you to worry about bringin’ any bait.”

  Carver knew why. He was going to fobait. And not for fish.

  At I.C.’s direction, he climbed out of bed and dressed in jeans and a pullover shirt, then put on his green rubber boots. His fishing outfit.

  “Don’t forget your rod and reel,” I.C. said. “Gotta make this look realistic. Hell, maybe we’ll even let you catch a fish.”

  When they went outside, Carver met Peevy and Magruder. There were no introductions and none were necessary. Peevy was a short man with a beer gut and a pug face. He was tattooed, like I.C., with the crude blue ink imagery of the amateur prison artist without adequate equipment. Magruder was tall and thin, with a droopy moustache and tragic dark eyes. Each man was armed with a semiautomatic twelve-gauge shotgun like I.C.’s. Their shells were probably loaded with heavy lead slugs rather than pellets, the rounds used by poachers to kill large and dangerous alligators. Awesome weapons at close range.

  “He don’t look like much,” Magruder said in a southern drawl that sounded more like Tennessee than Georgia.

  “Gonna look like less soon,” Peevy said in the same flat drawl. He dug the barrel of his shotgun into the small of Carver’s back, prodding him toward the parked Olds.

  I.C. laughed. “Shucks, that’s ’cause there’s gonna foless of him.”

  Peevy drove the Olds, and I.C. sat in back with his shotgun aimed at Carver, who sat in front and wondered if he could incapacitate Peevy with a jab of his cane, then deal with I.C. and the shotgun. But he knew the answer to that one and didn’t like it. Magruder followed, driving a dented black pickup truck with a camper shell mounted on its bed. As they pulled out of the Glades Inn parking lot, Carver was sure he saw a light in the office go out.

  “You weren’t smuggling drugs,” Carver said, as they bumped over the rutted road. “You were bringing in illegal aliens from Mexico.”

  “From there and all over Central America,” I.C. said. Now that Carver knew, he was bragging. Nothing to lose. “Boat from Mexico transfers ’em to airboats on the coast, and we know the swamp well enough to boat ’em in here. The Glades Inn is the next stop, where they pay the rest of what they owe and then are moved by car and truck on north.” ,

  “And if they can’t pay?”

  I.C. laughed hard and Carver felt spittle and warm breath on the back of his neck. “That’s the same question that poor Terry Frist asked. Answer is, if they can’t pay, they don’t go no farther north.”

  “Nor any other direction,” Peevy added, wrestling with the steering wheel as they negotiated a series of ruts.

  “And Terry Frist?” Carver asked.

  “’Gator got him, all right,” was all I.C. said.

  Peevy smiled as he drove.

  They wound through the night along roads so narrow that foliage brushed the Olds’s sides. Finally they reached the most desolate of Carver’s fishing spots, a pool of still water glistening black in the moonlight, its edges overgrown with tall reeds and sawgrass.

  As soon as they’d stopped, I.C. prodded the back of Carver’s neck as an instruction to get out of the car. Carver climbed out slowly, feeling the hot, humid night envelop him, listening to the desperate screams of nocturnal insects. Magruder parked the pickup behind the Olds, then climbed out and walked forward to join them. The only illumination was from the parking lights on the Olds.

  While I.C. held his shotgun to Carver’s head, Magruder looped a steel chain around the ankle of Carver’s right boot and fastened it in place with a padlock. Then he shoved him toward the center of the shallow pool of water. Carver noticed a thick cedar post protruding from the water.

  When they reached the knee-deep center of the pool, Magruder strung the chain through a hole in the post, wrapped it tight around the thick wood, then used another padlock to secure it. He clipped
his key ring back onto one of his belt loops, then stepped back. Peevy was standing nearby, his shotgun aimed at Carter.

  I.C. handed Carver the casting rod. “You hold onto your prop here,” he said, then snatched Carver’s cane away and effortlessly snapped the hard walnut over his knee. He let both ends of the splintered cane drop into the water.

  “The desk clerk at the Glades Inn knows you left with me,” Carver said. “He’s probably already called Chief Gordon.”

  “He knows ever’thin’,” I.C. said. “So’s Chief Gordon know, though he don’t like to let on, even to his own self.”

  Both men backed away from Carver, leaving him standing alone and unable to move more than a foot or so in any direction.

  “You wanna pass the time fishin’,” I.C. said, “you go right ahead. Now us, we gotta drive back into town and do some minor mischief, establish an alibi. Magruder’11 stay here an’ keep you company till you don’t need no company. He ain’t afraid of the dark, and he likes to watch.”

  “Watch what?”

  “This here’s a special part of the swamp, Carver. It ain’t at all far from where that Terry Frist fella got hisself tore all to hell by a ’gator. This here area is crawlin’ with ’gators. They figured out some way in their mean little brains that there’s plenty to eat here from time to time.”

  I.C. and Peevy sloshed through the dark water and onto damp but solid ground. “We gonna be back to pick up Magruder later,”

  I.C. said without bothering to look at Carver. He and Peevy climbed into the cab of the battered black pickup and the engine kicked over.

  When the old truck had rattled its way out of sight, Magruder sat himself down on a stump about fifty feet away from Carver and settled his shotgun across his knees.

  “Now then,” he said, “you go ahead and fish if you want. You an’ me’s jus’ gonna wait a while an’ see who catches who.”

  Carver stood leaning against the post driven into the earth beneath the water. He knew it was firm, driven deep or maybe even set in concrete, and the locks and chain were unbreakable. He stared into the dark swamp around him, listening to the drone of insects, the gentle deadly sounds of things stirring in the night. Though he told himself to be calm, his heart was hammering. He glanced over at Magruder, who had a lighted cigarette stuck in his mouth now, and smiled at him.