Alligator (20 page)

For a moment, Rye felt pulled to the alligator as he had been to the eddying water. He fought against it, summoning all his energy, until he broke loose.

Rye sank back to the bottom. He could still feel the pull of the alligator, but he could begin to think. The alligator hadn't seen him. He was sure of it. Otherwise he would have attacked. Rye knew that made sense. If only he could keep his head, everything would be all right. All he had to do was keep his head. The thing to do was wait him out. If he was careful and didn't move, the alligator would pass over him.

There was a heavy feeling in his chest, and a terrible pressure in his head. He needed air desperately, and it took all his strength to keep himself from struggling to the surface.

The alligator didn't move. Above Rye, the water was swirling black and cold; the pressure of it was enormous. Rye's heart jumped in his chest, flickering like an insect. The back of his throat was convulsing. Still the alligator didn't move. Rye knew he had to get up to the surface for air. He told himself to reach for his knife, but his body didn't respond. His fingers shook limply, and he couldn't bring them up to his sheath. He tried to move his legs. They, too, felt incredibly heavy, almost as though they didn't belong to him. The need to escape was heavy on him, but everything was jammed in his brain. His legs and arms weighed a thousand pounds. They were pulling him farther down. He feared he was going to black out.

Rye tried to concentrate on one thing. One arm—if he could just move his right arm. It started to twitch, then went dead again. Thinking was no longer possible. The cold, the dark, the pressure of the water, the need for air, the crying, screaming pain that spread from his heart and radiated into his limbs, made any kind of logic impossible.

Suddenly he heard a loud crack. It reverberated through his brain, as though he had broken a blood vessel. Slowly he became aware that there was light coming from above him; there were colors in the water. Red, green, brown seemed to flash by and the water was calmer.

His brain began to work again, and he found he could move. Rye fought up toward the surface with a mindless, blind reaching out for air. As he broke water, he opened his mouth and filled his paralyzed chest with air. It burned his lungs; he choked from the pain; still he drew in more, dilating his chest, searing it with the terrible agony, then drawing in again, seeing and sensing nothing but his need for air.

There was another loud crack. This time Rye could see Lee firing at the black shadow, which had moved farther down the canal. The alligator made a loud rumbling, hissing sound, then sank into the water and swam away.

Rye staggered through the water toward shore, falling, pulling himself up, then falling again. The rest of the men had come up the canal and were standing on the banks, watching him. He was aware that John was yelling at him, but couldn't make out the words. The sound of his heart pounding blood through his arteries filled his head and blocked out everything else. Rye struggled closer to the shore.

"Your knife!" yelled John. "Why didn't you use your knife?" There was a smile on his face.

This time Rye heard him.

Lee was making lunch on a hummock, opening two-pound cans of pork and beans, scooping large globs of soapy white lard into a frying pan, boiling coffee grounds in pots of dark tannin-stained water. All along the shore, the other men were setting up their fires. The odor of bacon, coffee, canned stew, fried Spam, and damp boots mixed together into an animal smell.

Lee saw Sam walking toward him and hoped he wouldn't stop. He didn't feel like talking, especially to Sam. Sam was one of the few men in town Lee respected. He thought too much for Lee's taste, and asked too many questions, but he was straight and fair and damned perceptive. He looked under the surface of things, which was why Lee wanted to avoid him. There were too many things in Lee's mind that he didn't want revealed.

Sam slowed up and stopped at the fire. Lee didn't look up from his cooking and hoped he'd pass on. Sam watched Lee for a while, then said, "You certainly got a handful with that group."

Lee nestled the frying pan on the teepee of logs. He could feel Sam's questioning eyes on him, and he tried to avoid them.

Sam knew Lee was avoiding him, but he stuck by nonetheless. It wasn't just idle curiosity that held Sam; he was worried. He sensed the tension between the men on the Saurian. He had seen the sharp looks and had heard the angry barbs. He knew too much about Lee's background to discount them.

Sam had a special feeling for Lee. Ever since the day Lee returned home from Viet Nam, wounded and angry, Sam had been able to see down through the arrogance and into the fear.

"Yes, sir," Sam said, drawing closer to Lee, "I can smell trouble coming off those men. Especially after this morning. Did you notice John's face when Rye got out of the water? He'd got the better of Rye, and they both knew it."

"What do you mean?" asked Lee, though he already knew the answer.

"Rye ran from the alligator. He knew it, and John knew it."

"You ask me, that was the smart thing to do."

"Sure it was. It wasn't just the smart thing to do—it was the only thing to do. But not to them. Haven't you asked yourself why the hell he went in there in the first place?"

"It ain't none of my business."

"Isn't it?" Sam touched Lee's arm, hoping to make contact with him. Lee looked up at Sam, met his inquiring eyes for a moment, then turned back to the fire. He threw another can of pork and beans into the hot frying pan. It hissed and popped violently in the sizzling lard. Sam shook his head and walked away; he knew he couldn't push Lee any further.

The rich, pungent cooking odors were so intense, John could smell them even out on the water, where he was fishing. He looked back at the long string of campfires on shore and wished Lee would hurry up. He was getting hungry.

John reeled in and cast toward a log. Flicking his wrists, he worked the popper back to him, rhythmically and skillfully, jerking it, then allowing it to ride the water again.

His rod was something of a wonder. It was a Hardy Brothers he had picked up in London, and was so light and responsive that he could feel everything through it. The slightest ripple in the water, the first tentative nibble of a fish, would run all the way along the shaft up to his fingers and into his arm.

He and Rye had avoided each other since the alligator den. He could see Rye on shore, talking to Maurice, probably cooking up a plot against him. It didn't even bother him. They could plot all they liked; it wouldn't change things. He had gotten Rye, and they both knew it. That was only the beginning of it, too. Once a man ran scared, he didn't stop.

There had been a time when he had loved Rye, but that time seemed very far away to John now.

When Rye had hired John away from one of his competitors, John knew he had made it. Rye's wasn't the largest development company at that time, but it was the fastest-growing one, and everyone in Miami knew that Rye was the foxiest ball-buster in the South.

The first five years there wasn't a day that went by when he didn't see Rye; he never even took a vacation. He'd loved it. He and Rye and sometimes Maurice would work twelve hours a day. Rye was a dynamo. He built more pyramids in just one year than there were in all of Egypt. He'd come out with a pile of money; then he'd roll it all on a piece of swamp, and he always won. During those years, John had worshipped Rye; he'd practically believed he was invincible. Then one day he saw Rye's weakness. He caught him like'a kid at the jam pot, his eyes all big and scared. It had rankled John ever since; in a way, he felt Rye had betrayed him.

John pulled in his line and cast farther out, thinking about that night over five years ago when he had first really seen through Rye Whitman.

Rye and John had worked hard all that day and long into the night, and hadn't even been able to think about eating until long past ten o'clock. Neither of them felt like going home; they were still all worked up, and tense as bow strings. Rye suggested going to his country club for dinner. It was fifteen miles out, but the ride would do them good.

Rye had opened a bottle on the way. He sucked at it in that way he had, driving with one eye on the road and one hand on the wheel. John had felt good and boozy and as if all the other people on the road knew that he and Rye Whitman were friends.

The country-club dining room was already closed when they got there, but Rye made them open it up and cook especially for them. They ate conch chowder with big pieces of saltback and potatoes floating in it, and T-bones the size of dinner plates. There were big platters of deviled crab and corn pudding, biscuits so hot they burned your fingers, topped off with huge spoonfuls of tart guava jelly. After that, there were wedges of shimmering Key lime pie, rich bitter coffee, Havanas that smelled yeasty, and snifters of Remy Martin.

John had noticed the girl when they first came in. She was sitting on a stool in the kitchen, watching as the help cleaned up for the night. She must have been waiting for someone. She wore cutoff bluejeans that made her incredibly long legs look even longer, and a white T-shirt that gathered ever so slightly around her tiny breasts. Her long sun-streaked hair hung below her waist and covered most of her face. That was why it was such a surprise when she threw back her head and laughed, and he saw her puffy red mouth and cheeks that looked as though they had been slapped. She couldn't have been more than twelve. As he felt himself grow hard, he laughed at himself. She wasn't much older than his daughter.

She was waiting for them in the parking lot, leaning against Rye's car, aimlessly kicking at one of the tires with the back of her foot.

"It's awfully late for you to be out, isn't it?" John realized how predictable a remark that was, and felt embarrassed.

"You're from Miami," she said. "I've been to Miami. Once. I liked it a lot. I stayed in one of those big hotels by the ocean." She had a chatty, grown-up way of speaking that was slightly ridiculous and very sexy. John found it unnerving.

"That was Miami Beach," John said, and gestured for her to move away from the car.

"Big deal." She kicked at the tire angrily.

"Hey, stop that!" Rye yelled.

The little girl looked up at John and Rye and smiled. The smile was pure whore.

Rye went first, and John walked off into the woods to give them some privacy. Every once in a while, he glanced back at the car. For a while, he saw the outline of their heads in the back seat; then they disappeared. It was turning out to be a hell of an evening, he thought as he finished up his cigar and sprinkled it over the eighteenth hole.

The scream was terrifying, almost like the shriek of an animal. John ran toward the car, more afraid of what he'd find there than of any danger he might be in. He was almost up to the car when he realized that what he had heard wasn't a scream at all. It was a laugh. He heard her say, "Send me a wire when you get it up."

John saw Rye through the steamed-up window. He would never forget the look on Rye's face, or the fact that he was crying. John ran back into the woods before Rye saw him and came out a few minutes later as if nothing had happened.

John went next, only because he couldn't think of a way to get out of it, but it had been mechanical. He couldn't get that picture of Rye out of his head; he still couldn't. Even today, the memory filled him with disgust.

Neither Rye nor John said much during lunch, and Lee never talked anyway, so Maurice filled the gap with nervous chatter. Maurice knew Rye was thinking about what had happened that morning; he was brooding on it. It would be a private pain; Rye would never speak of the incident to anybody.

It wasn't until John had finished his lunch and joined the men at the next campfire for a game of cards that Rye relaxed. He shoved a huge glob of pork and beans into his mouth and chewed it hungrily. Then he turned to Lee and asked, "When do you think the gator'll be back?"

"Never," Lee answered.

"What do you mean, never?"

Maurice could see that Rye was becoming upset, and he figured that Lee knew it too. Lee didn't answer. He put a forkful of food in his mouth and chewed slowly, obviously enjoying making Rye wait.

It was a full minute before Lee turned to Rye and said, "He knows we're waitin' for him. He ain't gonna come back here. Anyway, not for a long time."

"You're talking like that gator can think."

"He does," answered Lee.

"Horseshit!" Rye chewed for a moment, then swallowed his pride with the pork and beans. "You really figure he won't be back?"

"That's right." It was clear that Lee wasn't going to give Rye any information unless he begged for it. Rye could tell it, too. He winked at Maurice to make light of it.

"That certainly makes things more difficult," he said. Lee didn't even bother to hide his anger. He turned to Rye and snapped, "You should have thought of that before you went down there after him."

"What's done is done," said Maurice, anxious to make peace. "The problem is, what do we do now?"

"We follow his tracks, if we can," Lee answered. He shot another angry look over at Rye, but Rye pretended not to notice.

"What do we do if we can't follow him?" asked Maurice. He felt trapped in the middle.

Lee shrugged. "Let's just hope that we can. Otherwise, we'll have to give up."

Rye flared up. "We aren't gonna do that, though, are we, Boone? The gator has to be somewhere around."

"Sure he is," said Lee; he was playing Rye like a fish. "All we gotta do is search thirty-six million acres to find him."

"The gator ain't gonna go just any place," said Rye. "He'll go to a place he knows, maybe some secret spot from his childhood."

"Probably. But since he hasn't left us no diary, we won't know where that spot is. No, we better hope he leaves a trail—" Lee broke off. Something had been bothering him ever since the morning, something that didn't hold together, or at least the way it did was close to impossible. Lee didn't even want to mention it; he knew Rye and his lackey Maurice would only laugh. Yet if it was true, he didn't have the right not to tell them. Well, let them laugh, he decided. If he was right, they wouldn't be laughing for long.