Repairman Jack [07]-Gateways (29 page)

“All right then,” Jack said, “take me there.”

Carl backed away a step, holding up his hand. “Nuh-uh. No way. I left there years ago and I ain’t goin’ back.”

“Well, if it’s not on a map, and you can’t tell me how to get there, and you won’t take me there, how am I supposed to find it?”

“You ain’t. That’s the whole point.”

As if to say he was through talking, Carl bent over his putter and lined up a shot. He tapped the ball and it went wide.

“I’ve good reason to believe they caused my father’s accident and were setting him up to be eaten by an alligator when the police interrupted them.”

Carl straightened and looked at him. “Alligator? That woulda meant your daddy’d go the same way as the others, killed by a swamp critter.”

“Well, this wasn’t no ordinary swamp critter.” Jeez, Jack thought. A couple of conversations with this guy and I’m starting to talk like him. “This gator was huge, with what looked like horns sticking out of its head.”

Carl visibly shuddered. “Devil. That could only be Devil.”

“Who’s Devil?”

“Big freaky bull gator that hangs around the lagoon. But how on earth did they get him out of the swamp?”

“Couldn’t say. But it seems Devil gets around. He visited Gateways last night.”

“No way!”

“Way.”

Jack gave him a Reader’s Digest version of the attack, leaving out Oyv’s amazing feat and the gator’s inability to cross into Anya’s yard. He remembered what his father had said about Carl being the community gossip.

“I want to get a look at this lagoon, Carl. I’ve already met the people, now I want to see where they live.”

“You met them?”

“In town yesterday. Met that woman, too. The one with the white hair.”

“Semelee.”

“Right. What do you know about her? Is she as spooky as she looks?”

“Can’t rightly say. I left the clan about—”

“Whoa! Are we talking Kluxers here?”

“Naw. That’s just what we call ourselfs. We’re all kinda related in a way.”

“Yeah? How?”

Carl’s good eye shifted away again. “Not by blood or anything like that. More like we was all in the same situation. Anyway, it was just us guys, maybe twenty of us, when she showed up a couple years ago. I’d been kinda plannin’ on leavin’ anyway, but when she showed up I took it as a sign and skeedaddled outta there.”

“A sign of what?”

“That things in the clan was gonna head south real soon. I mean, you got eighteen-twenty guys and one woman, that’s trouble.”

“They seemed pretty tight when I saw them in town yesterday.”

“Yeah, well, maybe. I seen ’em from a distance a couple times. We always done some panhandlin’, but now they’s become like professionals. I stay away from ’em cause we ain’t exactly on good terms.”

“Why not?”

“They was kinda pissed I left. Luke—he was sorta kinda like the leader—he called me a traitor and all sortsa stuff like that. But that don’t matter to me. I’m glad I got out. I didn’t wanta live like them no more. Y’know, like gypsies. They live on the boats or in what’s left of a bunch of old Indian huts on the shore. No runnin’ water, no lectricity, no TV.” He shook his head. “Man, I sure do love TV. Anyways, I wanted my own place where I didn’t have to sleep next to nobody cept myself.”

“A room of one’s own,” Jack murmured. He knew the feeling.

Carl grinned. “Hell, I got more than just a room, I got me a whole trailer.”

“But do you have any money in the bank?” Jack said as an idea hit him.

“Naw. Pretty much everthing gets spent just for livin’.”

“Okay, then. What say I pay you a thousand bucks to take me to this lagoon?”

“A thousand?” Carl laughed. “You’re shittin’ me, right?”

“Nope. Five hundred when we leave, and another five when we get back. That sound fair to you?”

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 hurtin’, 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 hurtin’ 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 hurtin’ 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’t
do
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.”

“Right now,” Tom said, “I don’t feel like eating at all. Hard to be hungry when there’s someone out to get you. If I knew who or why, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. I’d still be scared, but…”

“Maybe I can help there,” Jack said softly.

“You? How?”

The phone rang. It was the front gate, wanting to know if he was expecting any packages.

“Not that I know of. Wait.” He turned to Jack. “Are you expecting a delivery of some sort?”

“Yeah!” He grinned. “It’s here already? Great. Good old Abe.”

Tom told the gate to send the truck through, then turned back to Jack.

“You were saying something…?”

Jack cleared his throat. “I checked out the medical records on Borger, Leo, and Neusner last night and—”

“How on earth did you do that?”

“I got in through one of the clinic’s windows.”

“What?”

“No biggee. I popped the lock on one and crawled through. Don’t worry. You’d have to look pretty close to the underside of the sash to even suspect someone was there.”