The Alligator Man (2 page)

H
ave I told you how sexy you look when you eat slow?” Susan asked him as the shovel he called his right hand was funneling the puttanesca al something-or-other into his mouth. It took him a moment to swallow it all.

“I am eating slow,” Kevin replied.

“Maybe if you were an anteater. Look, honey, once again we are out at a nice restaurant, all dressed up, and in a moment I’m going to be eating by myself. Is it too much to ask you to give it a rest when we go out to dinner?” They were eating in an upscale Italian restaurant in South Beach called Bella Noche.

“Okay, I’ll slow down,” he said as he reached across the table for a slice of Italian bread.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” she said. Feeling the need to pump him up again, she added, “You look very handsome tonight.” She meant every word of it. He had a soft Roman face, his nose curving gently, his lips slightly thick, and his eyes hidden in their own individual caverns. He was dressed in a short-sleeve blue silk shirt, black slacks, and loafers without socks, his brown hair wavy and somewhat unruly.

“You don’t have to say that.”

“I know. I wanted to. Can’t you just accept a compliment?”

Kevin Wylie and Susan Bishop were semiregulars in South Beach. They knew to arrive early on a Saturday night if they wanted a table with a view of the sidewalk and the street where the fancy cars paraded by. It was always a spectacular show. People of every persuasion, the beautiful and not so beautiful—the fine-figured model who posed for millions and the drunk who walked down the strip pouring leftover drinks in his glass as he made the perfect kamikaze. Some were dressed to the nines, others almost not at all.

“We could live here, you know.”

“Susan, don’t go there,” he replied. “Let me just enjoy the sexy feeling of eating slow. Don’t ruin it.”

“You don’t want to talk about it because it’s about money. You can’t afford it.”

“It’s not about money. I just don’t want to live here.”

“This is the home of the rich and famous. Who would not want to live here?”

“This is the home of the wacky and the wackier. It’s a fun diversion on a Saturday night, but as a daily menu it would make me want to stick pins in my eyeballs.”

“I’m not talking about living on the strip. I’m talking about living on the beach. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

She could be relentless at times. At thirty-two, she was in line to take over her father’s insurance business in a few short years. She wanted a partner who was just as successful.

Kevin had been working for a prominent criminal lawyer named Bernie Stang for the last seven years. He made good money but from Susan’s perspective it was a dead-end job. His seeming complacency irritated her and she was constantly nudging him to move on. The house on the beach was part of the prodding.

“I’ve been looking at office space,” he told her, hoping to get off the subject of residential relocation.

“That’s great,” she said. “When are you going to give Bernie the news?”

“I figure I’ll be ready to leave in six months.”

“Six months! What are you waiting six months for?”

“Well, I have to rent space. I have to buy furniture and computers. I have to establish a client base.”

“Kevin, you can rent space and buy furniture and computers in a day. And how do criminal lawyers establish a client base? Do criminals keep you on retainer?”

“Very funny. But you know we do have regular clients. And people come to us based on Bernie’s reputation.”

“As long as you work for Bernie, they’ll be coming to the office based on Bernie’s reputation. Kevin, in the last five years you have tried as many cases as Bernie. You told me so yourself. Bernie cherry-picks the high-profile cases so only his reputation is enhanced. There is only one way to stop that. There is only one way to establish your own client base.”

“I’m just not ready to walk out the door.”

“When will you be? You’ve been talking about office space for the last year. I think you just mention it to appease me.”

“I need money. You don’t just open the doors without money. You have to have some staying power.”

“Get a letter of credit from the bank.”

“You’ve got all the answers, don’t you?”

“No, honey. I just want you to succeed. I think you are one of the finest criminal lawyers in Miami.” She knew when to quit. “C’mon, let’s join the show.”

They paid their bill, descended the steps of Bella Noche, and blended into the Saturday night crowd.

S
ylvia Johnson was back at the sheriff’s office at 8:00 a.m. on Tuesday waiting for Carlisle to arrive. This time her anxiety was palpable. She was dressed in khaki shorts and a white top, and she wasn’t wearing any jewelry or makeup.

“Have you heard anything?” she asked Carlisle as he approached the door to the A-frame.

“No, I haven’t,” Carlisle calmly replied. “Maybe there’ll be a message from headquarters this morning. However, if they had heard or found out anything they probably would have called me at home.” It was all a ruse. He’d made his report but the department wouldn’t put out a BOLO (Be on the Lookout) until Roy Johnson had been missing for forty-eight hours. Carlisle couldn’t give her that news.

“I haven’t heard a thing from him.” She almost whispered the words.

“Please calm down, ma’am. If your husband has gone somewhere, we’ll find out where. If something has happened to him, and I wouldn’t assume that at this point, we’ll find that out as well. Now do you have somebody who can come and stay with you?” He motioned her to come around the counter and sit in the chair next to his desk.

“Aida, our maid, is at home with me.”

“I’d like to get a little more information if I could. Do you and Mr. Johnson have any children?”

“No, not yet. We’ve only been married for two years. He has grown children from his first marriage.”

“Have you contacted them?”

“No. We don’t speak.”

“I’m going to need their names and addresses.”

“Fine. They don’t know anything. They don’t speak to
him
either.”

“I understand. It’s just routine police procedure,” Carlisle told her. “You mentioned yesterday that the last time you saw your husband he was going out to the garden like he usually does, and you went to bed like you usually do, is that right?”

Carlisle had his pad out again.

“Yes.”

“Is there anything else your husband does at night besides going out into his garden?”

“He sometimes takes a walk on the road.”

“You mean Gladestown Road?”

“Yes. It goes right past our house. He told me he likes to walk on it at night.”

“How late at night are we talking about?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know, eleven, maybe a little earlier or later. I’m not sure.”

“Did your husband drink at all when he went out into his garden or when he took a walk down the road?”

“I don’t know. I’m always in bed.”

“Well, I think you said you’ve seen him walk out into the garden. Was he drinking then?”

“He’d have a little wine maybe.”

“How much wine?”

“He’d usually open a bottle.”

“Did he finish it?”

“I don’t know. Why are you asking these questions?”

“Just trying to cover all possibilities, ma’am.”

“Do you think he could have fallen into the swamp?” she asked. “Do you think the gators could have gotten him?” She was rubbing her left arm up and down with her right hand, probably not realizing she was doing it.

“Your husband grew up in these parts, ma’am. It’s not likely he’d slip and fall in the swamp.”

“You knew my husband?”

“No, ma’am. My father did, though. Many years ago.”

“Will you take a look anyway, just to be sure?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Carlisle was thinking of another scenario not totally unrelated to what Sylvia Johnson had suggested. There was a migrant community that lived farther down Gladestown Road closer to town. They’d been there for years, and the men sometimes got drunk and walked the road. Gators crossed that road all the time. There were stories over the years of men getting snatched from the pavement and pulled into the swamp. It was unusual but it happened. Since the migrants were illegal no police reports were ever made and no investigation ever took place. The men simply vanished into thin air.

“Ma’am, do you recall what your husband was wearing when you saw him last?”

“Yes, he had on a short-sleeve cream-colored silk shirt, black shorts, and sandals.”

“How about identification? Did he have any identification with him?”

“I believe he did. He always carried his wallet with him, and I have been unable to locate it.” She started to cry. “He always put it on the nightstand before coming to bed.”

C
arlisle typed up his report immediately after Sylvia Johnson left the office and faxed it to headquarters. He followed the written report with a telephone call. He was referred to a Sergeant Anderson.

“Sergeant, I know this is a little early to be stirring things up over a missing person, but this is Roy Johnson we’re talking about. His wife doesn’t know where he is.”

“I’ll bring it to the attention of the sheriff,” Sergeant Anderson told him.

After placing the call, Carlisle headed to Rosie’s Café for breakfast.

Rosie’s was a little wooden building situated right on the bay in town. There was an outside porch on the waterside that fit three tables and had a great view. There was no benefit to sitting inside unless you were a tourist and wanted to look at the eight-foot stuffed alligator hanging from the wall, or the mahi mahi, or the grouper, or the fishing nets and hats and countless other pieces of crap that cluttered the place. Rosie, a sixty-year-old widow and a native of Gladestown, had run the place for the last twenty years. Carlisle loved eating there because the food was down-home and plentiful and because he loved Rosie.

“Mornin’, Rosie,” he yelled as he plopped down at a spot on the porch. The place was empty.

“Mornin’, Sheriff Buchanan,” Rosie replied as she exited the kitchen and came to take his order. She was a bit of a thing with short black hair, constantly in motion. Rosie wasn’t kidding about the title either. In her mind Carlisle was the sheriff of Gladestown. “The other guy don’t care about us,” she’d tell him, referring to the real sheriff. “We won’t see him again until the next election when he’ll blow through for about five minutes. You’re it, Carlisle. And I for one wouldn’t want anybody else at the helm.”

Rosie meant every word, but she didn’t make the statement too often. She knew it embarrassed Carlisle.

“I’ll have the corned beef hash, Rosie, with three eggs and some grits.”

It was a slow morning so Rosie delivered Carlisle’s meal and sat down for a chat.

“So what’s new with Gladestown’s finest?” she asked. When he was younger, Rosie would reach over and tousle his thick blond hair. He was too big for that now, although she was still tempted.

Carlisle had already decided before he entered Rosie’s that he was going to tell her about Roy Johnson. If there was scuttlebutt about Roy stepping out on his wife or something of that nature, Rosie was the person to talk to.

“Roy Johnson is missing. He hasn’t come home for two nights. His wife is frantic.”

“I’d be frantic if I were her too,” Rosie replied. “Nobody wants to lose their golden goose.”

“Now, Rosie, be nice. I know she’s a lot younger than him and he’s got a lot of money, but she seems genuinely concerned. She cries all the time.”

“That’s you, Carlisle. You see the best in everybody and that’s why I love you. That woman could probably cry at the drop of a hat if she needed to.”

“Have you heard anything?” Carlisle asked, ignoring the compliment.

“No. This is the first I heard of it. You got any ideas?”

“Well, she said he was walking down Gladestown Road late at night and he was drinking.”

“Do you really give credence to the stories about gators snatching those migrants off of Gladestown Road?”

“Absolutely. I’m sure they’re true,” Carlisle replied.

“Well, you have more knowledge about the subject than anybody.”

“Gators don’t usually mess with people,” Carlisle told her. “A dog maybe or a little kid, but not a full-grown man. Anything is possible after this drought, though. They’re starving and it’s mating season so they’re very aggressive as well.”

“But snatching people off the road? I could understand it if he fell in.”

“A couple of years ago there was a drought like this one, and three people in Florida were killed in a week. One woman, a jogger, was snatched off the road. And those incidents are documented. You know, more people are killed by alligators in Florida than by sharks.”

When it came to the water, the animals, and the delicate ecosystems of the Everglades, Carlisle was a human encyclopedia.

“Well, I’ll be,” Rosie replied. “So what are you going to do about this other than report it to those people down the road who never come here?”

“I think I’ll take the airboat out and look around. I promised her I would.”

“You promised her you would? You watch out for that woman, Carlisle. I wouldn’t trust her as far as I could throw her.”

“Come on, Rosie. Give her a break. She’s worried about her husband.”

Carlisle lived with his mother in the family home on the water. It was like most houses in Gladestown (other than Roy Johnson’s), a small two-bedroom wooden structure with a tin roof and a large screened-in porch. Carlisle pulled up in the driveway and headed straight for the dock behind the house to ready the airboat for his trip. He checked the gas and the equipment before stopping in to see his mother. Then he was off.

There were two boats in the dock, a thirty-two-foot-long Grady-White that Carlisle used to fish on the open water and the airboat. He’d inherited both from his father. The airboat was made for the shallow swamps. A regular motorboat with its propeller dipping below the surface could not operate in the Everglades where the water barely covered the surface in many places and sometimes not at all when there was a drought. The powerful airboat engine was situated atop the boat and above the water with a huge fan five feet or more in diameter. The velocity of the fan against the air allowed the boat to move over very shallow water or even dry land, although it was a very loud process and required the operator and any passengers to wear ear guards to muffle the sound.

Carlisle had one more thing to deal with before he started the airboat and headed out into the swamp. There was a great blue heron standing in the water right in front of the canal that Carlisle needed to pass through.

“Mornin’, Scotch,” he said to the bird, a daily ritual. “I’ve got to go out and do some police work this morning. I’ll try and bring you back some food if I get a chance. Now, I need you to let me by.”

He started up the engine and the magnificent bird immediately started flapping its wings, tucked its skinny, sticklike legs under its body, and flew off.