Fever Dream (45 page)

“We got a problem,” he said. He let that sink in for a few seconds, then went on. “A problem in the shape of two people. Environmentalists.
They’re coming down here
undercover
to take a gander at this end of Black Brake. Looking to expand that wilderness area over the rest of Black Brake
and
the Lake End.”

He glared around at the crowd. There were murmurs, hisses, inarticulate shouts of disapproval. “The Lake End?” someone shouted,
“the hell with that!”

“That’s right. No more bass fishing. No more hunting. Nothing. Just a wilderness area so those Wilderness Society sons of
bitches can come down here with their
kayaks
looking at the
birds
.” He spat the words out.

A loud chorus of boos and catcalls, and Ventura held up his hand for silence. “First they took the logging. Then they took
half the Brake. Now they’re talking about taking the rest, along with the lake. There won’t be
nothing
left. You remember last time, when we did things their way? We went to the hearings, we protested, we wrote letters? Remember
all that? What happened?”

Another clamor of disapproval.

“That’s right. They bent us over and
you know what
!”

A roar. People were up off their stools. Ventura held up his hands again. “Now, listen up. They’re gonna be here tomorrow.
Not sure when, but probably early. A tall, skinny fellow in a black suit—and a woman. They’re going into the swamp on a reconnaissance.”

“Reconnay-sance?” somebody echoed.

“A look-see. Real scientific-like. Just the two of them. But they’re coming undercover—those cowardly sons of bitches know
they don’t dare show their real faces around here.”

This time there was an ugly silence.

“That’s right. I don’t know about you folks, but I’m done writing
letters. I’m done going to hearings. I’m
done
listening to those Yankee peckerwoods tell me what to do with my own fish and timber and land.”

A sudden, fresh crescendo of shouts. They could see where he was going. Ventura dipped into his back pocket, pulled out a
wad of money, and shook it. “I don’t never expect nobody to work for free.” He slapped the wad on a greasy table. “Here’s
a down payment, and there’ll be more where that came from. Y’all know the saying: what sinks in the swamp never rises. I want
y’all to
solve
this problem. Do it for yourselves. Because if you don’t, nobody else will, and you might as well kiss what’s left of Malfourche
good-bye, sell your guns, give your houses away, pack your Chevys, and move in with the faggots in Boston and San Francisco.
Is that what you want?”

A roar of disapproval, more people lurching to their feet. A table crashed to the floor.

“You be ready for those environmentalists, hear? You take care of them. Take care of them good.
What sinks in the swamp never rises.
” He glared around, then held up a hand, bowing his head. “Thank you, my friends, and good night.”

The place erupted in a fury, just as Ventura knew it would. He ignored it, striding to the door, banging through it, and walking
out into the humid night onto the dock. He could hear the pandemonium inside, the angry voices, the cursing, the sound of
the music coming back up. He knew that, by the time those two arrived, at least some of the boys would have sobered up enough
to do what needed doing. Tiny would see to it.

He flipped open his cell phone and dialed. “Judson? I just solved our little problem.”

H
AYWARD EMERGED INTO THE BRIGHT SUN
and stepped onto the motel balcony to see Pendergast below in the courtyard, loading his suitcase into the trunk of the Rolls.
It was unreasonably hot for the beginning of March, the sun like a heat lamp on the back of her neck, and Hayward wondered
if all those years living in the North had made her soft. She lugged her overnight bag down the concrete steps and threw it
into the trunk beside Pendergast’s.

The interior of the Rolls was cool and fresh, the creamy leather chilly. Malfourche lay ten more miles down the road, but
there were no motels left in the dying town; this had been the closest one.

“I’ve done some research into the Black Brake swamp,” Pendergast said as he pulled out onto the narrow highway. “It’s one
of the largest and wildest swamps in the South. It covers almost seventy thousand acres, and is bounded by a lake to the east
known as Lake End and a series of bayous and channels to the west.”

Hayward found it hard to pay attention. She already knew more about the swamp than she wanted to, and the horrors of the previous
evening clouded her mind.

“Our destination, Malfourche, lies on the eastern side on a small peninsula.
Malfourche
means ‘Bad Fork’ in French, after the bayou it
sits on: a dead-end slackwater branch-lake that to early French settlers looked
like the mouth of a river. The swamp once contained one of the largest cypress forests in the country. About sixty percent
of it was timbered before 1975, when the western half of the swamp was declared a wildlife refuge and, later, a wilderness
area, in which no motorized boats are allowed.”

“Where did you pick up all this?” Hayward asked.

“I find it remarkable that even the worst motels have Wi-Fi these days.”

“I see.”
Doesn’t he ever sleep?

“Malfourche is a dying town,” he went on. “The loss of the timbering industry hit it hard, and the creation of the wilderness
area cut deeply into the hunting and fishing businesses. They’re hanging on by the skin of their teeth.”

“Then perhaps arriving by Rolls-Royce might not be the best idea—if we want to encourage people to talk.”

“On the contrary,” murmured Pendergast.

There was no sign at a crossroads and they had to stop and ask for directions. Soon after, they passed a few dilapidated wooden
houses, roofs sagging, yards full of old cars and junk. A whitewashed church flashed by, followed by more shacks, and then
the road opened into a ramshackle main street, drenched in sunlight, running down to a set of docks on a weedy lake. Virtually
all the storefronts were shuttered, the flyspecked glass windows covered with paper or whitewashed, faded
FOR RENT
signs in many of them.

“Pendergast,” she said suddenly, “there’s something I just don’t understand.”

“What’s that?”

“This whole thing is crazy. I mean, shooting Vinnie, trying to shoot me. Killing Blackletter and Blast and the Lord only knows
who else. I’ve been a cop for a long time, and I know—I
know
—there are easier ways to do this. This is just too extreme. The whole thing is a dozen years old. By trying to kill cops,
they’re bringing more attention to themselves—not less.”

“You’re right,” Pendergast said. “It is extreme. Vincent made a similar point about the lion. It implies a great deal. And
I find it rather suggestive… don’t you?”

He parked in a small lot up the street from the docks. They
stepped out into the ferocious sun and looked about. A group of
slovenly dressed men were hanging out down by the boat slips, and all had turned and were now staring at them hard. Hayward
felt acutely aware of the Rolls-Royce and once again questioned Pendergast’s insistence on driving such a car for his investigations.
Still, it had made no sense to drive two cars here, and she’d left her rental at the hospital.

Pendergast buttoned his black suit and looked about, cool as ever. “Shall we stroll down to the boat slips and chat up those
gentlemen?”

Hayward shrugged. “They don’t exactly look talkative.”

“Talkative, no. Communicative, possibly.” Pendergast headed down the street, his tall frame moving easily. The men watched
their approach with narrowed eyes.

“Good day, gentlemen,” said Pendergast, in his most honeyed, upper-class New Orleans accent, giving them a slight bow.

Silence. Hayward’s apprehension increased. This seemed like the worst possible way to go about getting information. The hostility
was so thick you could cut it with a knife.

“My associate and I are here for a little sightseeing. We are birders.”

“Birders,” said a man. He turned and said it again to the group.
“Birders.”

The crowd laughed.

Hayward winced. This was going to be a total loss. She saw movement out of the corner of her eye and glanced over. Another
group of people was filing silently out of a barn-like building on creosote pilings adjacent to the docks. A hand-painted
sign identified it as
TINY’S BAIT ’N’ BAR
.

An enormously fat man was the last to exit. His bullet-shaped head was shaved and he wore a tank top stretched to the limit
by a huge belly, his arms hanging down like smoked hams, and—thanks to the sun—about the same color. He muscled through the
crowd and came striding down the dock, clearly the authority figure of the group, pulling to a halt in front of Pendergast.

“To whom do I have the pleasure?” Pendergast asked.

“Name’s Tiny,” he said, looking Pendergast and Hayward up and down with piss-hole eyes. He didn’t offer his hand.

Tiny
, thought Hayward.
It figures
.

“My name is Pendergast, and this is my associate Hayward. Now,
Tiny, as I was saying to these gentlemen here, we wish to go
birding. We’re looking for the rare Botolph’s Red-bellied Fisher to round out our life lists. We understand it can be found
deep in the swamp.”

“That so?”

“And we were hoping to speak to someone who knows the swamp and might be able to advise us.”

Tiny stepped forward, leaned over, and deposited a stream of tobacco juice at Pendergast’s feet, so close that some of it
splattered on Pendergast’s wingtips.

“Oh, dear, I believe you’ve soiled my shoes,” said Pendergast.

Hayward wanted to cringe. Any idiot could see they’d already lost the crowd, that they would get nothing of value from them.
And now there might be a confrontation.

“Looks that way,” drawled Tiny.

“Perhaps you, Mr. Tiny, can help us?”

“Nope,” came the response. He leaned over, puckered his thick lips, and deposited another stream of tobacco, this time directly
on Pendergast’s shoes.

“I believe you did that on purpose,” Pendergast said, his voice high and cracking in ineffectual protest.

“You believe right.”

“Well,” he said, turning to Hayward, “I get the distinct feeling we’re not wanted here. I think we should take our business
elsewhere.” To her utter astonishment, he hurried off down the street toward the Rolls, and she had to jog to catch up. Raucous
laughter echoed behind him.

“You’re going to walk off like that?” she asked.

Pendergast paused at the car. Someone had keyed a message in the paint of the hood:
FUCK ENVIROS
. He got in the car with an enigmatic smile.

Hayward opened the driver’s-side door but didn’t get in. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? We haven’t even begun to
get the information we need!”

“On the contrary, they were most eloquent.”

“They vandalized your car, spat on your shoes!”

“Get in,” he said firmly.

She slid in. Pendergast turned and screeched off in a cloud of dust, and they started out of town.

“That’s it? We’re running?”

“My dear Captain, have you ever known me to run?”

She shut up. Soon the Rolls slowed and, to her surprise, swung into the driveway of the church they had passed earlier. Pendergast
parked in front of the house beside the church and stepped out. Wiping his shoe on the grass, he glided onto the porch and
rang the bell. A man soon opened the door. He was tall and rail-thin, with heavy features, a white beard, and no mustache.
He reminded Hayward a bit of Abraham Lincoln.

“Pastor Gregg?” said Pendergast, seizing his hand. “I’m Al Pendergast, pastor of the Hemhoibshun Parish Southern Baptist Church.
Delighted to make your acquaintance!” He shook the bewildered minister’s hand with great enthusiasm. “And this is my sister
Laura. May we speak with you?”

“Well, I… certainly,” said Gregg, slowly recovering from his surprise. “Come in.”

They entered the cool confines of a tidy house.

“Please, sit down.” Gregg still seemed rather bewildered; Pendergast, on the other hand, ensconced himself in the most comfortable
chair and threw one leg over the other, looking completely at home.

“Laura and I are not here on church business,” he said, removing a steno pad and a pen from his suit. “But I had heard of
your church and your reputation for hospitality, and so here we are.”

“I see,” said Gregg, obviously not seeing at all.

“Pastor Gregg, in my spare time from my pastoral duties, I have an avocation: I am an amateur historian, a collector of myths
and legends, a rummager in the dusty corners of forgotten southern history. In fact I’m writing a book.
Myths and Legends of the Southern Swamps
. And that is why I am here.” Pendergast said this last triumphantly, then sat back.

“How interesting,” Gregg replied.