Gator Aide (35 page)

I stood little chance of hitting a target with my .357 as we ripped through mounds of water lilies, with the buzz of an engine churning close behind like an angry hornet out to exact revenge. Gunshots echoed, sounding like the raucous cry of a jay. Whoever was behind us knew the swamp nearly as well as Gonzales did.

Our boat wove down one narrow fingerway after another in an effort to shake our pursuer, as the water around us was peppered with birdshot. A spray of lead pellets ripped through the back of the craft with a metallic ring. Missing the engine by barely an inch, they lodged deep in Gonzales’s thigh. He cried out, the skin on his face drawing tight against the bone, and tears seeping from his eyes. The boat slowed to a near crawl as Gonzales turned his attention to the wound that had begun to spurt blood. I took hold of the rudder, determined to outrun Budwell myself.

“You can’t do any more, Gonzales. Let me take it from here. Just try and direct me as best as you can.”

But Gonzales pushed my hand away, his eyes locked dead ahead. “Don’ you worry none, Miss Porta. Nobody gonna catch us in de swamp. You just hang on tight and don’ let go. Gabriel gonna put wings on us now. We gonna fly like de angels.”

I’d heard of swamp fever, and knew that extreme pain could produce its share of hallucinations. I was afraid this was one of them. Bringing the boat nearly to a halt, Gonzales swung it around and began racing back full throttle into the oncoming gunfire, with all the determination of a kamikaze pilot. His lips pulled back tight in a half-crazed smile, and the long strands of his stringy hair flew behind him like a flag rippling in the wind. The sound of engines and gunfire roared in my ears and Buddy Budwell came into view. Budwell sat openmouthed, holding on to the rudder of his boat, his shotgun at half-mast as he watched our suicidal run. A ball of flames burned a hole in the night where the lodge had once been. Bathed against the blood orange background, Budwell slowly raised the shotgun, steadying it against his shoulder as he took aim at our oncoming boat.

“Gonzales, don’t do it!”

My scream was lost as Gonzales suddenly pulled the rudder sharply to one side, nearly capsizing us. We wheeled back around in the other direction once more, spraying a sheet of water onto Budwell. Gonzales threw back his head, letting loose an unearthly cackle as he floored the engine, and our boat flew across the top of the swamp. A sandbar loomed directly ahead, and he swerved to avoid the stump of an oncoming cypress tree.

“Hold on! Now we fly!”

I took a look behind, to see Budwell’s boat gaining rapidly as he lined us up in his gun sight. Digging my feet into the bottom of the boat to prepare for the impending crash, I felt the nose of the craft rise, as if it had wings, as we flew over the sandbank. We remained suspended for an instant before landing on the opposite side of the swamp with a resounding jolt, water falling around us like rain. I turned to Gonzales and laughed in relief, as if we’d made it through a terrifying ride at an amusement park, until I saw Budwell’s boat approaching the same sandbar at breakneck speed. The laughter died in my throat as I waited to see what would happen.

But Buddy didn’t know the swamp well enough. He turned to scream at his pilot, but there was no time for them to pull back before the nose of their boat rammed deep into the bar. With an earsplitting crack, the two men were thrown clear to the ground.

Tingling with the pins and needles of pleasure that comes only after having pulled off the impossible, I felt almost immortal until I turned back to see the growing pool of blood around Gonzales. With the immediate danger out of the way, the adrenaline rush that had held him together left him just as swiftly.

I pulled my shirttail out of my jeans and, grabbing Gonzales’s knife, ripped the fabric into strips, tying them tightly around his arm and thigh in a poor excuse for tourniquets. Sliding the knife back inside its sheath, I shoved it in my boot and took over the rudder. Gonzales guided me back as best he could, as I kept an eye out for upraised stumps and bayou spirits. Soon, the putt-putt chant of our boat became just one more voice blending into the chorus of the night.

Helping Gonzales into the pickup, I rummaged under the seat for his keys.

“We’ve got to get you to a doctor.”

But Gonzales shook his head in refusal, biting down hard on his lip. “No doctor,
chère
. You take me back to Trentone’s. Miss Dolly fix me up good.”

I drove as carefully as I could over the rutted dirt roads, aware that every bounce was sheer agony for him. We made it as far as Treddell’s front door before being stopped by the barrel of a shotgun pointing in our direction. Shifting the gun so that it was aimed only at me, Dolly’s gaze wavered to Gonzales as I struggled to hold him up, my arm wrapped tightly around his waist. She opened her mouth to speak, then seemed to think better of it. Setting her shotgun against the wall, she helped me to get him inside. The smell of Southern Comfort about her was stronger than ever, mixing in with a sharply pungent odor in the house. Moving Gonzales into the living room, we placed him on a discolored mattress that lay on a floor already stained with dried blood, confirming the stories I’d heard of how Trenton skinned gators at home.

Dolly gathered together bandages, hot water, a stiletto-thin knife, and an open bottle of Southern Comfort with all the assurance of a woman who had done emergency surgery before. Covering her black pantsuit with a well-used apron, Dolly could have passed for a butcher ready to begin her work.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t take him to a doctor? He’s already lost a lot of blood.”

Dolly zeroed in on me with red-rimmed eyes. “Haven’t you done enough for one night? You got a problem, go in the other room. I done this plenty of times before, and no one’s died on me yet. Isn’t that right, Gonzales?”

Gonzales nodded his head in agreement as she handed him the bottle of Southern Comfort, which he eagerly pressed to his lips.

Cutting away the jeans soaked with blood, Dolly sliced into skin, digging at the birdshot lodged in his thigh. Reasonably sure that I wouldn’t be missed, I took Dolly up on her suggestion and fled down the hall. The kitchen was a jumble of pots and pans stacked in a delicate balance, one inside the other on top of her stove. On the table was a half-filled glass of Southern Comfort sitting in a puddle of water, the ice melted to a chip that lazily floated on top. Next to it, the remains of a frozen dinner had coagulated into a hardened generic lump. Continuing on down the hall, I saw holes that had been knocked in walls and doors torn from their hinges, adding weight to the legend of Trenton’s notorious temper.

I glanced into one room where I could see dark, brooding paintings of the bayou. My interest piqued, I stepped inside and turned on the light. Paneled in cheap plywood, the room held a convertible sofa with a pair of dirty sneakers sticking out from beneath its frame. A baseball mitt was tossed in one corner and a poster of rocker Jim Morrison hung on the closet door. But what drew my attention was the photo gallery of family history, tacked to the plywood walls. In one snapshot, Trenton and a young boy stood beside a gator they had killed, while Dolly was posed with the boy in another, both holding fishing poles in their hands. A montage showed the same boy grown older, a rebellious teenager studiously bored, a cigarette dangling from his lips and a young Valerie Vaughn clinging to his arm. I realized this must have been their son Dale’s room, and opened the closet door to peer at a rack of old cotton shirts and worn-out jeans. Going over to a bureau, I gave my curiosity free rein, poking through tee shirts and shorts that still retained their musky scent. I was about to stop when I spied a blue satin box, and knew what I’d stumbled onto before my fingers even opened the lid. A silent ballerina sprang to life, her pink plastic legs pirouetting round and round Valerie’s golden bracelet with its three tiny charms. But something new lay next to it on the bed of satin. I picked up the locket I hadn’t seen before, and flipped open the lid. A portrait of Fifi stared back up at me. Before I could fully comprehend all that it meant, Dolly’s voice boomed down the hall.

“Hey, Porter! I need help in here!”

Holding on to the locket, I slid the box back into place, shutting the drawer behind it, and quickly began to head out of the room. But in my rush to leave, my feet tripped over the dirty sneakers sticking out from under the couch. They flew across the floor as I scrambled after them. I hurriedly tried to put them back in their place, but something beneath the couch blocked my way. Kneeling down to shove them back under, I caught sight of a tripod and video camera concealed beneath the frame. Dolly screamed out for me again, as I froze in place at the implications of what I had found. But the sound of approaching footsteps quickly brought me to my feet. Turning off the light, I walked out and smacked straight into Dolly. Blood was splattered on her apron, and the stiletto knife was still in her hand.

“What the hell were you doing in there, Porter?”

I shoved my hands in my pockets, hiding Dolores’s locket from her view.

“I saw some paintings hanging up and wanted to take a closer look.”

Dolly brushed past me, closing the door to the room. “This ain’t no museum, and I didn’t invite you to snoop through my house.”

I followed her out to where Gonzales lay fully bandaged, with an empty bottle of bourbon by his side. Dolly wiped her hands and the knife on an old kitchen towel, mixing fresh blood in with brown gravy stains.

“Help me take him into another room.”

Between the two of us, we carried Gonzales into a small bedroom, where a large wooden crucifix of Jesus gazed down compassionately on the mattress below. Gonzales lay awake, his flesh the color of chalk against the sheets, his eyes glazed from liquor and pain as they watched me closely. Turning toward Dolly, I began to guess who Valerie’s conspirator in blackmail had been.

“I have to head back out to the swamp to get my car. If it’s all right with Gonzales, I’ll take his truck. Somebody can swing by tomorrow and pick it up.”

Dolly stared at me a moment before pinning her hair back in place, the dark roots exposed at the base of her neck. “Leave the truck here. I’ll take you myself.”

Gonzales reached out a hand toward me. “
Chère
, you gonna go look for Trentone an’ Charlie?”

I wondered the same thing myself. “I want to. I’m just not sure where to begin.”

Taking hold of my hand, Gonzales turned my palm faceup, and traced two pathways along the lines in my skin.

“You see dese two lines, de way dey branch off? We took dis one. Now you try dis one. It lead you to Charlie an’ Trentone. You trust Gonzales.”

My heart sank as I tried to follow his directions along the wrinkles in my hand.

“I’ll do my best, Gonzales.”

“I know you will,
chère
.
Lache pas la patate
.”

My rudimentary knowledge of French roughly translated this into “Don’t let go of the potato.” It made no sense, and I didn’t want to stop to ask what he meant. My mind was still reeling from the discovery I had made in the room at the end of the hall.

I settled into Dolly’s pink Cadillac as she popped in a Waylon Jennings tape and cranked up the sound. Any suspicions about what I might have found in Dale’s room were masked behind a stone-cold face as we took off down the dirt road. I wondered how much Trenton knew about his wife’s extracurricular activities. And now, I had yet another suspect who might have set Dolores up. Dolly remained silent as the music blared loud, jarring the silence of night. Trying to start a dialogue with her was like playing a game of Russian roulette—short and foolish—but I decided to give it a try.

“Would you let Charlie and Trenton know that I headed home in case I miss them? I’ll fill them in on what happened when I catch up with them in the morning.”

Her eyes stayed dead ahead, but the muscles tightened around her mouth, the ebb and flow of moonlight creating heavy shadows on the planes of her face.

“You think I’m your personal messenger service, princess?”

I reached over and lowered the volume a few notches. “You don’t like me very much, do you, Dolly?”

“You got that right. There’s some bad shit going on in these bayous. Always has been. But Trenton and me were doing just fine the way we were. Trenton had his fun playing games with Charlie Hickok, and everybody knew the rules. We kept the lid on trouble. Till you came along—you’ve changed all that, princess.”

Her headlights locked onto a nutria scampering in front of our path, and she swerved the wheel to try and hit it.

“You’ve opened a real can of worms, and you don’t even know it. Should I be thanking you for that?”

I braced my hand against the dashboard as her car swerved back to the left. “Was that why your son died, Dolly? Because he played by the rules? Was that keeping the lid on trouble?”

Dolly was silent for a moment. “Dale was a bunch of damn heartache. But he was my boy, and I loved him. Nothing can ever change that, just like nothing can ever change the fact that he’s dead.”

She turned to stare at me, slamming on her brakes. “You got any kids?”

“No.”

“Then you got no idea what the hell I’m talking about.”

Jamming her foot back down on the accelerator, she sent the Cadillac jerking forward again. Dolly turned the volume all the way back up, so that Waylon roared as we hit the blacktop. I found myself screaming above the music in order to be heard.

“You know, I’m not the one who talked Trenton into getting involved in this. He seems to have his own reasons for wanting to nail Hillard Williams.”

“Yeah. And you just want to find out who killed some fucking gator, isn’t that right? Don’t try to sucker me, princess. You’ll use whoever you can. You’re out to prove yourself the hotshot on the block. Well, let me tell you that if you think you’re going to end the drug trade in the bayous, you’re in for one hell of a surprise. You’ll just be the latest in a long line of fish bait, which is all right with me. I already lost my son, and now Valerie. You just better hope you don’t take my husband down with you.”