Fever Dream (47 page)

Parker sat back in his skiff. He took a small sip of Woodford to help him think. It was those two enviros, all right, but
they weren’t anywhere near where they were supposed to be. Everyone was in the west bayous but here they were, far to the
north.

Another sip and he removed his walkie-talkie. “Hey, Tiny. Parker here.”

“Parker?” came Tiny’s voice after a moment. “I thought you weren’t going to join us.”

“I ain’t joined you. I’m at the north end, fishing Lemonhead Bayou. And you know what? I just saw one a your airboats come
on by, them two in it.”

“No way. They’re coming in through the west bayous.”

“The hell they are. I just saw them go by.”

“You see them yourself, or is that the Woodford Reserve seeing them?”

“Look here,” Wooten said, “you don’t want to listen to me, fine. You can wait in the west bayous till they’re skating on Lake
Pontchartrain. I’m telling you they’re going in from the north and what you do with that is your business.”

Wooten snapped off the walkie-talkie with annoyance and shoved it in his gear box. Tiny was getting too big for his own britches,
figuratively and for real. He took a sip from the Woodford, nestled the precious bottle back down in its box, then tore the
plastic
worm from the hook and rigged another, throwing it up-bayou. As he cranked and twitched it in, he felt a certain sudden
heaviness on his line. Slowly, carefully, he kept the line almost slack for a moment, letting the fish swim off with it—and
then, with a sharp but not hard jerk, set the hook. The line tightened, the tip bent double, and Parker Wooten’s annoyance
immediately vanished as he realized he had hooked a really big one.

T
HE CHANNEL TIGHTENED, AND PENDERGAST
shut down the airboat engine. The silence that ensued seemed even louder than the roar of the boat had been.

Hayward glanced over at him. “What now?”

Pendergast removed his suit jacket, draped it over his seat, and slid a pole out of its rack. “Too tight to run the engine—we
wouldn’t want to snag a branch at three thousand RPMs. I’m afraid we have to pole.”

Pendergast took up a position in the stern and began poling the boat forward along an abandoned logging “pull” channel, overhung
with cypress branches and tangled stands of water tupelo. It was late afternoon, but the swamp was already in deep shadow.
Overhead there was no hint of sun, just enveloping blankets of green and brown, layer upon layer. Now the sound of insects
and birds swelled to fill the void left by the engine: strange calls, cries, twitters, drones, and whoops.

“I’ll take over whenever you need a break,” Hayward said.

“Thank you, Captain.” The boat glided forward.

She consulted the two maps, laid out side by side: Tiny’s map and the Google Earth printout. After two hours they had made
it perhaps halfway to Spanish Island, but the densest, most maze-like part of
the swamp lay ahead, past a small stretch of
open water marked on the map as Little Bayou.

“What’s your plan once we’re past the bayou?” Hayward pointed at the printout. “Looks pretty tight in there. And there are
no more logging channels.”

“You’ll take over the poling and I shall navigate.”

“And just how do you intend to navigate?”

“The currents flow east to west, toward the Mississippi River. As long as we keep in the west-flowing current, we’ll never
get dead-ended.”

“I haven’t seen the slightest indication of a current since we began.”

“It’s there.”

Hayward slapped at a whining mosquito. Irritated, she squeezed some more insect repellent into her hands and slathered it
on her neck and face. Ahead now she could see, through the ribbed tree trunks, a glow of sunlight.

“The bayou,” she said.

Pendergast poled the boat forward, and the trees thinned. Suddenly they were out on open water, startling a family of coots
that quickly took off, flapping low on the water. He racked the pole and fired up the engine, the airboat once again skimming
over the mirror-like surface of the bayou, heading for the heavy tangle of green and brown at its western end. Hayward leaned
back, savoring the cooling rush of air, the relative openness after the cloying and claustrophobic swamp.

When the bayou narrowed again—too soon—Pendergast slowed the boat. Minutes later, they stopped at a complicated series of
inlets that seemed to go every which way, obscured by stickweed and water hyacinths.

Hayward peered at the map, then the printout, and then shrugged. “Which one?” she asked.

Pendergast didn’t answer. The engine was still idling. Suddenly he swung the boat a hundred eighty degrees and throttled it
up; at the same time Hayward heard a rumble coming from all around them.

“What the
hell
?” she said.

The airboat leapt forward with a great roar, back in the direction
of the open bayou, but it was too late: a dozen bass boats
with powerful outboards came growling out of the dark swamp from both sides of the narrow channel, blocking their retreat.

Pulling his gun, Pendergast fired at the closest boat; its engine cover flew off. Hayward pulled her own weapon as answering
fire tore into the propeller of their airboat; with a great
whack
the propeller flew apart, shattering the oversize cage; their boat slowed and swung sideways, dead in the water.

Hayward took cover behind a seat, but—as she quickly reconnoitered—she realized the situation was hopeless. They had driven
into an ambush and were now surrounded by bass boats and skiffs, manned by at least thirty people, all armed, all with guns
aimed at them. And there in the lead boat stood Tiny, a TEC-9 in his fat paws.

“Stand up, both of you!” he said. “Hands over your heads, nice and slow!” This was punctuated by a warning spray of gunfire
over their heads.

Hayward glanced at Pendergast, also crouched behind the seat. Blood was trickling from a nasty cut on his forehead. He gave
a curt nod, then rose, hands over his head, his handgun dangling by his thumb. Hayward did the same.

With a growl, Tiny brought his boat up alongside, a skinny man in its bow holding a big handgun. Tiny hopped out onto their
boat, the airboat yawing with his weight. He reached up and took the guns from their hands. Examining Pendergast’s Les Baer,
he grunted in approval and shoved it in his belt. He took Hayward’s Glock and tossed it onto the floor of his boat.

“Well, well.” He grinned, deposited a stream of tobacco juice into the water. “I didn’t know you enviros believed in guns.”

Hayward stared at him. “You’re making a serious mistake,” she said evenly. “I’m a captain of homicide with the New York Police
Department. And I am going to ask you to put down your weapon or face the consequences.”

An oleaginous smile bloomed on Tiny’s face. “That so?”

“I’m going to lower one hand to show you my identification,” said Hayward.

Tiny took a step forward. “No, I think I’ll find it myself.” Holding the TEC-9 to her head, he groped in her shirt pockets,
first one,
then the other, helping himself to a couple of generous feels in the process.

“Tits are real,” he said, to a burst of raucous laughter. “Fucking monsters, too.”

He moved down to her pant pocket, fishing about, at last removing her shield wallet. He flipped it open. “Well, lookee here!”

He held it up, showing it around. Then he examined it himself, pursing his wet lips. “Captain L. Hayward, says here. Homicide
division. And there’s even a picture! You send away for this from the back of a comic book?”

Hayward stared back. Could he really be so stupid? It made her afraid.

Tiny closed the wallet, reached behind himself, made a wiping motion over his enormous derriere, and tossed it into the water
with a splash. “That’s what I think of your badge,” he said. “Larry, get up here and search this one.”

The lean man climbed onto the airboat and approached Pendergast.

“Any bullshit and I let loose with this here,” he said, gesturing with the gun. “Simple as that.”

The man began searching Pendergast. He removed a second gun, some tools, papers, and his shield.

“Lemme see that,” Tiny said.

The man named Larry handed it over. Tiny examined it, spat tobacco juice on it, shut it, and tossed it in the water. “More
comic-book tin. You folks are something else, you know that?”

Hayward felt the barrel of the gun digging into her side.

“You really are,” Tiny said, his voice getting louder. “You come down here, feed us a bunch of birder bullshit, and then you
think some fake badges are gonna save your sorry asses. Is that what they told you to do in case of emergency? Let me tell
you something: we know who you are and why you’re here. You ain’t gonna take one more inch of our swamp away from us. This
is our land, how we make a living. This is how my granddaddy fed my daddy, and it’s how I’m feeding my kids. It ain’t some
Disneyland for jackoff Yankee kayakers. It’s
our
swamp.”

Approving sounds rose up from the surrounding boats.

“Excuse me for interrupting your little speech,” said Hayward,
“but I am in fact a police officer and he’s an FBI agent, and
for your information you are all under arrest.
All
of you.”

“Oooooh!” said Tiny, shoving his fat face into hers. “I’m
soooo
scared.” The smell of whiskey and rotting onions washed over Hayward.

He looked around. “Hey! Maybe we should have ourselves a little striptease here, what say?” Tiny hooked a thumb under one
of his own immense man-boobs and gave it a jiggle.

A roar of approval, catcalls, hoots.

“Let’s see some
real
hooters!”

Hayward looked at Pendergast. His face was completely unreadable. The skinny man named Larry was holding a gun to his head,
and two dozen other weapons were pointed in their direction.

Tiny reached out and grabbed the collar of Hayward’s blouse, giving it a jerk and trying to rip it open; she twisted away,
buttons popping off.

“Feisty!” said Tiny, then hauled off and smacked her hard across the face, sending her sprawling in the bottom of the boat.

“Get up,” he said, to the sound of laughter. Tiny wasn’t laughing. She rose, face burning, and he jammed the gun in her ear.
“All right, bitch. Take off your own shirt. For the boys.”

“Go to hell,” Hayward said.

“Do it,” Tiny murmured, pushing the muzzle into her ear. She felt the blood begin to well up. Her blouse was already halfway
ripped open.

“Do it!”

She placed a shaking hand on a button, began to undo it.

“Yeah!” came the yells. “Oh,
yeah
!”

Another sideways glance at Pendergast. He remained motionless, expressionless. What was going through his head?

“Unbutton and give ’em air!” screamed Tiny, jabbing with the gun.

She undid the button to another roar, started on the next.

S
UDDENLY PENDERGAST SPOKE. “THIS IS NO WAY
to treat a lady.”

Tiny swiveled toward him. “No way to treat a lady? I think it’s a fucking
great
way!”

A chorus of agreement. Hayward looked at the sea of red, sweating, eager faces.

“Would you care to know what I think?” Pendergast said. “I think you are an embonpoint swine.”

Tiny blinked. “Huh?”

“A fat pig,” said Pendergast.

Tiny drew back a meaty fist and smacked Pendergast in the solar plexus. The agent gasped and bent forward. Tiny hit him again
in the same spot and Pendergast sank to his knees, the wind knocked out of him.

Tiny looked down at Pendergast and spat on him disdainfully. “This is taking
way
too long,” he said. Then he grasped Hayward’s shirt and—with a powerful tug—tore the remaining buttons away.

There was a roar of approval from the surrounding boats. Pulling a huge skinning knife from a pocket of his overalls, Tiny
opened it, then pulled Hayward’s ruined shirt aside with its blade, exposing her brassiere.

“Holy
shit
!” somebody said.