Alligator (31 page)

"Where's Trancas?" asked Rye.

"I was wonderin' that myself," answered Lee. "I told him we'd be leavin' first thing."

Just then Trancas rose out of the bushes like a cobra from a hat, and aimed his rifle at them and yelled, "One move and I'll kill ya!" He shot into the air several times, then stepped out of the bushes and walked toward the men, moving his rifle back and forth between Rye and Lee as if trying to decide which of them to pick off first. "All right," he screamed, "hands up and mouths shut!"

"He's crazy," whispered Rye.

"You just figured that out?"

"I said, hands up!" snarled Trancas. He waved the rifle around wildly, then settled on Rye. "Well, well, well, ain't this a pretty picture. You almost had me fooled there for a while, but no one pulls the wool over Trancas's eyes for long. So you was the law all the time, and now you figure to go back for help. Well, I ain't gonna let you, ya hear me! I'll kill ya first!"

Before Trancas had a chance to react, Lee picked up the boat pole, swung around, and knocked the rifle from his hands.

Rye pulled a gun and trained it on Trancas. "Good work," he said to Lee as they backed toward the skiff. Lee smiled. "Yeah, I saw it in the movies!"

"So did he, I'll bet," Rye said as they jumped into the boat. Lee poled them away from shore while Rye kept his rifle aimed at Trancas.

Trancas waited until they were a good distance away before he ran to the water's edge and yelled, "I knew it all along! It was just like I thought! You are the sheriff's men."

"That's right!" Lee yelled back. "I guess we couldn't fool ya after all!" Rye gave Lee a look that inquired into his sanity. "We'll be back for you," Lee called to Trancas. "You'd better keep up your guard."

"I'll be here," growled Trancas, but there was a smile on his face.

Rye saw the smile and suddenly understood. "That's right!" he screamed. "You're a marked man!"

Trancas watched until the boat was just a tiny dot that disappeared into the green growth. Finally, when he could no longer see it, he went for his rifle, and trained it on the water for several minutes, just to make sure Rye and Lee weren't trying to pull any stunts. When he was satisfied, he backed around the hummock, checking the beer cans and bear traps that comprised his early-warning system. Keeping his rifle cocked, he went over every inch of the hummock to make sure there was no breach in his defenses, secure in the knowledge that he was in danger.

By ten o'clock the sun had burned through the mist and hung like a bright, brassy ball in the sky. Lee took off his shirt and allowed the heat to burn into his muscles.

Rye lay back against the stern, happy to be back out on the water, happy to be alive. He squinted out at the passing scene, then began to talk. Partially speaking to Lee but mostly to himself.

"Lookin' back on my life," he said, "I can see I made the best of what I had. Yes, sir, twenty-five years ago, when I come to Miami, I wasn't nothin' but a bigmouthed kid with twenty-three dollars in my pocket and a shoe box full of swamp muck. Within five years I was worth twenty mill. I once made five mill in just one day. All strictly legal, of course."

"Of course," repeated Lee with a sneer.

"Well, legal, anyway," said Rye. "Maybe not strictly. What a deal that was! I did it all like Zeckendorf's pineapple. That ain't a crop, it's a..." Rye searched around for the proper word.

"Scam?" Lee suggested.

Rye ignored him and went on. "First I bought myself this here building for ninety-nine million. 'Course, I got investors to raise the money. Okay, so then I turned around the next day and sold it for one hundred."

"So you made a million dollars in a day?"

"Chickenfeed," said Rye. "Because then I leased it back from the new owner for seven million a year on a hundred-year lease, which I immediately sublet to other tenants, meanwhile borrowing from a bank against my leasehold, which I turn around, and, get this, Boone, I sell it!" Rye beamed at Lee as if he had just finished describing the Second Coming. "Understand how it works?" he asked, mistaking the look of disgust on Lee's face for confusion."

"No, and I ain't interested, neither."

"Well, maybe you ought to be," snapped Rye. "Unless you plan on spendin' the rest of your life without a pot to piss in."

"I can piss on the ground."

"Very funny, Boone. Most men'd give their left nut for my advice. Let me tell you a little story. Ever hear of a guy called Half-Pint Smith?"

Lee shook his head blandly, trying to communicate a lack of interest. He was beginning to regret that he hadn't finished Rye off while he had the chance.

Rye continued undaunted. "Half-Pint Smith come from Coral Gables. Poor guy didn't have no legs. They was severed at the hip, and he'd have to go around on this oak plank that had four casters attached. They say he could really make that thing move, though. Now, Half-Pint was a counterfeiter. And he wasn't all that good at it, neither. He must have been hauled into court twenty times; half the time they caught him so red-handed, the bills were still wet from the ink. But Half-Pint wasn't never convicted. Fuckin' guy'd come before the jury on his lawyer's shoulders—now you tell me how a jury's gonna convict him. Hell, the whole damned courtroom would stand up cheerin', while Half-Pint would mount that wood plank of his, go speedin' up the aisle and out the door. There was a guy who didn't sit around, pissin' and moanin'; he made the best of the hand life dealt him. He had a pretty good time of it, too. Even had a woman, name of Darby."

Lee sneered. "And that's what you figure it's all about, havin' a good time of it?"

"I see you ain't got my point," said Rye. "I see you ain't got my point at all. Look around. When I was a boy, just about all of Florida looked like this. Muddy water, watery mud, mosquitoes so thick they hunted in packs. You've been to Miami, haven't you? Well, it's really something, all right. Since I've been there, I've seen most of the hotels go up. Hell, I built half of 'em myself. It ain't easy buildin' in Miami; it's all sand at the base. Now, you take New York. Under all those buildings is rocks, makes it much cheaper and easier to build. But Miami is sand. Nonetheless, all of us, we come down there and built on it."

Lee interrupted. "You happen to notice any of them piles of concrete out here?"

"Yeah, I was wondering what the hell they was."

"Well, there's one over there," said Lee. "When we pass, take a good look at it." He poled the skiff closer to shore.

Knifing through the sawgrass, coming from nowhere and leading to nowhere, was a concrete sidewalk almost completely hidden by the dense growth. Several strangler figs had wound themselves around the stones and buckled them.

As they drew closer, Lee said, "At one time, they planned to build whole towns down here, with shops and factories. Look, you can even see the fire hydrants. Dream towns, they called them. Look at 'em now. It's like building on sand."

Rye watched in amazement as they passed the sidewalks, once built for men, now under the ownership of ants and gator bugs. Finally, he said, "Maybe you're right. But that ain't what's important. What's important is they were built at all."

"And it don't matter what happens to them later?"

"It matters," said Rye. "But you still got to try."

"Even though you know you're gonna lose?" Lee asked.

"That's right," answered Rye. "Even though you know you're gonna lose."

Lee could feel his anger evaporating. Rye was a son of a bitch, but Lee had to admit he wasn't without a kind of charm. "You're a strange man," he said.

Rye chuckled. "I ain't never said I wasn't."

Lee wiped the sweat from his face and gave an involuntary sigh. The combination of hot sun and hard poling was taking its toll, and he was tired. Then he felt something pull against the boat pole. Without a word of acknowledgment, Rye took the pole from Lee's hands, shoved his way into the stern, and began pushing them through the muddy swamp water, as though he had been taking turns with Lee all along.

It only took them an hour to reach Cashman's Swamp, and another hour to go over it inch by inch. Still there was no alligator. Finally Lee suggested they continue on from there in the same direction they had been headed. Since Rye had no better suggestions, Lee took back the pole and began pushing them through the series of large open-water areas connected by small natural canals.

At two o'clock, Lee pulled out of the open water and turned down a long, narrow slough. It was like crossing to the windward side of a mountain. The green thick vegetation disappeared abruptly, leaving only an occasional strangler fig or scrub willow to break the incredible desolation. Otherwise, all they could see was a blanket of the sawgrass, brown, razor-sharp, growing thicker and denser than ever before.

As the slough snaked around, it grew increasingly narrow, until the banks were practically touching one another. The thick sawgrass choked off what little water there was, making it difficult to tell where the land ended and the water began.

The channel was becoming narrower and shallower with every stroke. In places it was so shallow that the thick, ragged sawgrass dragged along the bottom of the boat.

Lee had to squint against the sun as he looked ahead at the thin, murky, algae-clogged byway that sliced through the sawgrass. He felt that something was wrong, but he couldn't put his finger on just what it was. Perhaps it was just that he was tired, he thought. Shoving the pole deep into the muck, he continued to inch them forward, trying to dismiss the feeling from his mind.

Rye watched him poling, then looked back out at the grassy water. He had been growing increasingly upset. They had lost the trail. He didn't know what they should be doing, but he felt they should be doing something.

He turned on Lee angrily and snapped, "We passed Cashman's Swamp two hours ago," he said. "You ask me, we ain't never going to find him."

"We don't have to," answered Lee. "He's found us." Lee pointed to a fork in the tributary. Cutting across the grass was a thick swath of destruction; it looked like a bulldozer had rolled through. "That's him," said Lee. "That couldn't have been made by anything else. See that patch over there? That's where he stopped; he was deciding which way to go. Then see how it goes in that direction? He chose the narrowest channel, which is strange."

Rye tried to read the trail as Lee had, but it just looked like matted grass to him. "How can you be sure which way he's goin'? Maybe he's heading where we came from."

"Look at the way the grass is bent."

Rye suddenly became animated. He sat up straight in the skiff, feeling a surge of energy. "Well, sir, now that's good news. So it wasn't so hard to find him after all." He looked over at Lee, and was surprised by the look of concern on his face.

"No," said Lee, "it wasn't hard at all. As a matter of fact, it was simple, maybe too simple. He ain't hidin' his trail. It's almost like he wants us to know where he is."

Rye shot a sardonic grin at Lee. "Don't tell me you figure that animal's layin' false tracks, because you ain't gonna get me to believe that."

"I wish that was it," said Lee. "No, I think he's suckin' us in. Making us go deeper and deeper into the swamps, till the wind and the rain has chewed us down to size. Look, common sense said the alligator didn't have a chance against that huntin' party we went out with. Odds were someone would be able to kill him. It left the alligator with two choices. He could head off and hide out till we all gave up, or he could make the swamp his ally."

"You know, Boone, you get spookier by the day."

"You don't believe me?" asked Lee, though Rye's face told him that he did.

"Let's say I do." Rye prepared himself for Lee's inevitable argument for heading back. "What do we do now?"

"We ain't got much choice but to follow."

Rye was taken aback. When he glanced over at Lee, he discovered a faint smile. He answered it with one of his own. "You know," Rye said, as he leaned back against the boat, "I get the feelin' you're beginning to want that gator as much as me."

Lee didn't answer, but he knew that it was true. He kept his eyes on the water ahead. The tributary was winding in upon itself like an intestine. It would meander forward a few feet, then curve off until it cut back on itself and continued on, looping like a serpent in aimless spirals. The water was so shallow that in some places only four inches of brown, sluggish water covered the slimy bottom, while the sawgrass was even thicker than before. There was a loud, scratching sound as the grass dragged and scraped against the bottom of the boat, fighting Lee's pole, resisting any attempt to penetrate it. Finally the skiff caught in a bed of weeds. Lee pushed against the pole for a full minute, but it wouldn't move at all.

"I guess we'll have to pull her through," said Rye.

"Sshh!" whispered Lee urgently.

Lee had his head cocked, listening to something. Rye tried to hear it too, but could distinguish nothing out of the ordinary, until slowly he became aware of a rumble, almost like distant thunder. Suddenly a flock of birds shocked the air and swung, screaming, into the sun. When Rye located which direction the sound was coming from, he noticed a faint black line stretching across the sky at the edge of the horizon.

"What the hell is it?" Rye was trying to hide the fear he felt creeping over him.

"Muck fire," answered Lee.

"Can't be," said Rye. "It ain't the season for fires."

"It's always the season out here. They burn underground. We'd better head back on foot," said Lee, beginning to gather up the supplies.

"And leave the boat here?" Rye recoiled in terror. Leaving the boat was even more terrifying than fire. Without a boat, they would be exposed and vulnerable; without it, they would be little better off than the alligator.

"It'll slow us up too much," said Lee. He tried to sound reassuring, but he didn't like being out there on foot either.

"No!" screamed Rye.

"We haven't got time to pull her through."

"I think we should try." Rye jumped out of the skiff and tried to push it from the weeds.