Carl licked his lips. “Yeah, but…”
“But what?”
“But they’s gonna be awful mad if they find I brung an outsider to the lagoon.”
“Don’t worry about that.” Jack flipped up the back of his shirt to show Carl the Glock. “I’ll get you back home. I promise. And anyway, if we go in the afternoon, won’t they all be in town, begging?”
“Come to think of it, yeah. Specially this bein Friday.”
“What’s so special about Friday?”
He shrugged. “Lotsa people round here get paid on Thursdays, and on Fridays they’re happy the work week’s over, so they’re looser with their change. Saturday’s pretty much the same. But Sunday’s usually a bust.”
“Spent too much on Saturday night, right?”
“Yeah. Or they just come from church and did some givin there. Monday’s even worse.” He scratched his jaw. “So yeah. We should have the lagoon pretty much to ourselfs this afternoon.”
“Then that’s when we’ll go. A quick trip for a quick look-see. In and out. Easiest thousand you ever made.”
Carl took a breath. “Okay. But since my car ain’t workin, you gotta drive me down to the waterside.” He began picking up his golf balls. “Guess I better get movin. Gotta get home, gotta find us a boat.”
“How’d you get here without a car?”
“Bike. How else?”
More power to you, pal, Jack thought. Maybe the thousand would let Carl repair his junker Honda.
He got directions to Carl’s trailer park—it was the one Jack had seen between the auto body place and the limestone quarry—and continued his jog.
2
Semelee stood with Luke a couple dozen feet from Devil’s gator hole and watched. The big gator lay half sunk in the water at the shady end, his eyes closed. The water around his left flank wound was tinged red. At first she thought he was dead, but then she saw his sides pull in a little as he took a breath.
“He’s still bleeding,” Luke said.
“I know,” she said through her clenched teeth. “I got eyes.”
She felt so on edge this morning she wanted to take a bite out of somebody.
Devil was the biggest gator anybody’d ever seen, so it made sense he’d have the biggest gator hole in the Glades. Like all gators, as the winter dry season began, he’d scrape out all the vegetation from this low spot in the limestone floor and create a big wallowing hole. Fish would work their way into it, turtles and frogs too, and even some birds would come around to see if they could snag a quick meal. Sometimes those birds and turtles became gator snacks.
In the wet summers gators left their holes and spread out through the Glades, but not this year. The dry spell made gator holes more important than ever.
The edges of Devil’s hole were piled high with muck he’d scraped out. This provided rootin soil for things like cattails, swamp lilies, ferns and arrowleaf. Yellow-flowered spatterdock lilies floated on the surface of the blood-tinged water.
Devil lifted his head and let out a hoarse, rumbling bellow, then let it flop back down into the water as if it was too heavy to hold up.
“He’s hurt in, Luke. Hurtin bad.”
Because of me, she thought.
Guilt scalded her. She’d considered Devil indestructible, invincible, almost supernatural. But he wasn’t. He was just a big, misshapen gator who would have been happy spendin his days doin what gators do: lolling in his hole, eatin this and that, waitin for the rains.
But no. Semelee couldn’t let him be. She had to roust him out of his comfy hole and lead him out of the Glades into the outer world where he didn’t belong. The result was he got hurt. Hurt bad.
“He can’t die,” she said. “He just can’t.”
She had this terrible feeling that if Devil died, part of the spirit of the Glades would die with him. And it would be all her fault.
“It was that guy,” Luke said. “That city guy you been takin a shine to. He done this.”
“No, he didn’t. I already told you that. He didn’t have nothin to do with hurt in Devil. It was the old lady. She’s the one. She’s some sorta witch. So’s her dog.”
In a way Semelee was secretly glad that the old witch’s spell, or whatever it was, had kept Devil out of her yard. Because she’d seen her man, the special one, place himself between Devil and his father. She’d’ve had to go through him to get to the old man, and that would’ve meant hurt in him, maybe even killin him, somethin she definitely didn’t want to do. But it had showed her that he was made of good stuff. That was important.
“I say we do all three of them—old lady, father, and son—and have done with it.”
“No. I told you: The son ain’t to be touched.”
Luke grumbled. “All right. We’ll have another go at the old guy, but the lady…what’re you gonna do about her?”
“Don’t know yet. We can’tdo her unless we can get to her. I’ll think of somethin. But it’ll have to wait till the lights is done. I ain’t lettin nothin get between me and the lights.”
“Awright. But what do we do till the lights come? We goin panhandlin as usual?”
“Not durin the lights. We’ll just hang out. Besides, we don’t need to go beggin cause we’ll be gettin a hunk of cash from those dredgin guys when they finish at noon.”
“What if they try to stiff us?”
“They won’t. They ain’t gettin out of the lagoon less’n they pay up.”
But Semelee didn’t want to think about dredgin or money or nothin cept the lights. Anticipation thrummed through her like she was a plucked guitar string. The lights’d start tonight and run for three days. But this year would be like no other. This time they wouldn’t be underwater, which meant they’d be bigger and brighter and better than ever before.
Starting tonight, everything in her life would change. She sensed it, she knew it.
3
Tom had been watching the Weather Channel’s reports on Hurricane Elvis. It continued to move south off Florida’s west coast; although its winds had increased to 90 miles an hour, it was still a Category I. And no threat to Florida at this point.
He was just finishing his cup of coffee when Jack came through the door, dripping with sweat.
“I was wondering where you were.” He’d been a little anxious after awakening to finding the house empty and Jack’s car still parked outside. Obviously he’d been out jogging. “I don’t suppose you’d care for a cup of hot coffee right now.”
“After my shower I’d love one. Never turn down coffee.”
As Jack ducked into the bathroom, Tom rinsed out the French press and began to make another serving. He noticed his hand shaking a little as he spooned the ground coffee. He touched the fresh bandage on his head. The stitches were still a little tender under there. He’d been shocked at the sight of his bruised, black-eyed face in the mirror this morning. He felt so good he’d almost forgotten about the accident.
Now he couldn’t get it out of his head. Someone wanted him dead. Why?
Last week his life had been safe and sane, prosaic, maybe even a little dull. Now…
What was happening? He didn’t live the sort of life where he got on people’s wrong side. Was it a mistake? Had he been mistaken for somebody else? Who on earth would want to kill him?
He pondered those imponderables until Jack returned, in fresh shorts and T-shirt, his wet hair combed straight back.
“Hey, good coffee,” he said after sipping the cup Tom had made for him.
“Colombian. I was thinking of scrambling some eggs. Want some?”
“Sure. And some hash browns and toast, and maybe some grits with extra butter. Oh, and while you’re at it, a side of biscuits and gravy.”
Tom gave him a dour look.
Jack shrugged and smiled. “Hey, we’re in the south so I figured one of their traditional, artery-clogging breakfasts would be in order.”
“What do you know about southern cooking?”
“There’s a place called Down Home a few blocks from where I live. In New York you can eat any style you want.”