I pivoted toward the sound and started swimming.
FOUR
WHEN HARRIS SQUIRES PUSHED THROUGH THE CROWD OF LITTLE
brown people and realized what was happening, he grinned, thinking,
Awesome!
Because of his girlfriend, Frankie, it had been a rotten week. But seeing what he was seeing now made him feel hopeful. Two nights before, while shooting a homemade skin flick, the idiot Mexican girl with them had taken too much Ecstasy and stopped breathing just like that. There was no one around but them, thank God, but it wasn’t until the next morning when Squires finally sobered up that even he had to admit the girl wasn’t going to start breathing again. Meaning she was dead.
That was bad enough, but it got worse. The girl was a prostitute who belonged to a Mexican gangbanger named Laziro Victorino. Victorino was what the illegals called a coyote, meaning that for a price he would lead groups across the border into the States, then find them jobs, too—but for a percentage of their pay, which he collected weekly.
Victorino—V-man, his gangbanger soldiers called him—was a wiry little guy but a serious badass who carried a box cutter on his belt and had a teardrop tattoo beneath his left eye, along with a bunch of other gangbanger tats on his arms and back.
Squires was aware that the V-man had made a few films of his own, him and his boys. Snuff films. Kill a man or woman—or just torture them—and get it all on their iPhone video cameras.
Frankie had chided Squires, saying, “Why you worried about some midget Mexican? You’re twice that greaser’s size. Besides, he’s got some new girl with him every time he comes through here. He probably won’t even notice she’s gone.”
Squires doubted that but didn’t want to piss off Frankie by voicing his opinion. So he told her he’d never played a role in killing anyone before. And he didn’t want to get in the habit of doing it.
That wasn’t exactly true, although Frankie didn’t know it. No one knew, and sometimes even Squires wasn’t convinced it had happened.
Once, only once, alone with a pretty Mexican woman, Squires, naked, had taken the
chula
from behind, lulling her body into a thrashing silence, his hands around her throat, his body finishing and the
chula
’s life ending at a precise, constricting intersection that was euphoric beyond any physical sensation Squires had ever experienced.
He had been too drunk to remember details, though. And by the time he had sobered, the woman’s body was already gone—into the lake near his hunting camp trailer, he guessed later—so it was as if he had imagined the whole damn thing.
But it had happened. The event—that explosive physical rush, a sensation of ultimate power—had rooted itself in Squires’s brain. Occasionally, the memory flooded him with a horrifying guilt, which he mitigated by telling himself that it had only been a dream.
When he was blood-drunk on steroids, though, the roots of that memory propagated in the man’s head. They snaked deeper into his brain, germinating into a fantasy that had become an obsession.
If he ever got the opportunity, if he ever got just the right girl alone, Squires would make that dream happen again.
Frankie had laughed when he had balked. “We’ve got nothing to feel guilty about. The stupid little whore did it to herself. It’s one less stupid
chula
in the world. Good riddance. No one’s gonna miss her and no one’s gonna care. Now, do me a favor, clean up around here ’cause I’ve got that appointment in Orlando tomorrow. Make sure she’s gone by morning—and you’d better never goddamn mention it again.”
Which meant that Frankie was leaving the dirty work to him. That’s just the way the woman was, and Squires had to wonder sometimes if Frankie’s love of crazy, wild-sex kinkiness was really worth all her crazy, wild-bitch meanness.
For the first couple of years, it had been a toss-up. But now Harris was tired of the woman—a little frightened of her, too—and he was looking for a way out.
The reason had to do with something else Squires had been wondering about: How had he gotten himself trapped into a relationship with a woman who reminded him more and more of his abusive, bullying mother?
Like his mother, Frankie had a nasty streak in her, particularly when it came to other women. Because of this, it was sometimes hard to tell if some of the things Frankie did were accidental or intentional. For instance, it wasn’t exactly true that the Mexican girl had overdosed herself. Frankie had done it.
Frankie had dropped extra Ecstasy tablets into the girl’s drink, doubling the dose she usually used when they happened to pick up a Mexican
chula
who was camera-shy and needed some loosening up.
This particular girl was unusually cute, with a sleek, sensuous body. When Frankie’s hands were on a girl like that, her face flushed. Her body shook. It was a response that was part passion, part jealousy. It was like she never wanted to let the girl go. So maybe Frankie had decided to keep the
chula
by dropping in those extra tabs.
To Squires, it made what had happened seem less of a crime, the fact that a woman had done it to another woman. But that didn’t stop him from going almost crazy with panic when he finally realized the girl was dead. Maybe he had killed that Mexican girl or maybe it was all a dream, but he’d never had to deal with a dead body before. Not sober, anyway.
They had a corpse on their hands. And they had to get rid of the thing without the Mexican gang leader, or the cops, finding out.
Not they, actually.
Him.
Frankie, who was sixteen years older than Squires, and a lot more experienced, would have nothing to do with getting rid of a dead body.
It wasn’t the first time that something like this had happened while Squires was around, but it was the first time a girl had ended up dead instead of puking her guts out while Squires tended to her.
That’s what really pissed him off when Squires took time to give the subject some thought. When would he learn not to leave Frankie alone with girls that were younger and prettier than her? And even if the stupid
chula
had done it to herself, who was going to believe it?
No one, that’s who. Not with at least one eyewitness, maybe two, who had seen him drag the girl’s body into the lake.
Now, though, Squires’s future seemed to be improving, judging from what he could hear and see, out there on the lake, which was that Fifi had snatched one of the eyewitnesses, old man Carlson, into the water.
Fifi.
That was the name of the twelve-foot gator that he and some buddies had trucked in from his hunting camp, east of Immokalee, way back off County Road 858.
Squires could see it happening and he liked what he saw.
The gator had that nosy little turd in her jaws and now looked like she was swimming him back to some dark hole where she could drown him. That’s what gators like Fifi did. The ol’ girl would probably leave the mouthy asshole underwater to tenderize a bit before finally chowing down.
No way could the cops blame Squires for something an animal did. It was perfect.
Squires wasn’t sure if Carlson had in fact been an eyewitness, but, if he was, Fifi was now providing the solution. It had been a smart thing to move the gator here, where she could harass the Mexicans instead of the hunting dogs they sometimes used at his camp.
Squires’s hunting camp—well, actually, the property belonged to his mother—was a big place, four hundred acres of cypress trees and saw grass that opened into flats of oaks and pines where feral hogs liked to feed. And where sometimes they’d kill deer and an occasional bear, too.
Once, in that same area, Harris had gotten a clear shot at a panther, but he’d missed.
Harris Squires loved that hunting camp as much as he hated tending his mother’s three crappy little RV parks, this one, Red Citrus, being the only one even slightly fun. Red Citrus, at least, had girl tenants who weren’t redneck hags with silver hair, big asses and little old titties shriveled like raisins on a vine. Brown girls, true, but at least they were young.
In Squires’s mind, the younger the girl, the better—not something he would’ve admitted to Frankie, who was now in her forties—like the weird little
chula
who’d been pretending to be a boy and called herself Tulo. What was she, twelve, maybe thirteen years old? He’d been pretty down the last couple of days, but surprising “Tulo” in the bathtub had lifted his spirits.
Until that moment, Squires had been confused about how to handle the situation. Seeing the girl’s body, though, all water slick and smooth, had changed that. It caused his secret fantasy to bloom bright in his mind.
He’d drive her to the hunting camp and show her around. Just him, alone. At the hunting camp, there’d be no one around to hear or see what he did. Not on a Tuesday night. It was a comfortable spot, private, with a big RV braced up on cinder blocks, generators, a cookshack, a shower and a wide-screen TV for video games and porn. A perfect place for a guy like him to make his fantasy come true with a little wettail.
Wettails
, that’s what Squires called them. He and Frankie had entertained a bunch of them out there at the camp, which was really more a second home than a camp. The place was comfortable enough to be fun but still wild enough for an ol’ boy to get away, spread his wings and do just about any crazy thing he wanted without worrying about some cop or asshole ranger cruising by, asking questions.
Harris Squires hated nosy people. Do-gooders. If he and Frankie wanted to have some fun with a few young wettails, what harm were they doing? But try explaining that to a goddamn do-gooder.
Carlson was a prime example. Now Carlson was getting exactly what the little turd deserved.
Squires nudged a couple of short people out of the way as he edged closer to the lake. He could hear what was happening—Carlson screaming his lungs out, begging for help. It wasn’t easy to make out details, though, because the mangrove pond was on the other side of the fence, in shadows cast by palm trees beyond the haze of security lights.
It made him wish he had his night vision binoculars. Those bad boys would’ve made everything bright as day, but they were behind the seat of his Ford Roush pickup, along with some other gear he usually carried: duct tape, an ax handle, handcuffs, condoms and sometimes a .357 Ruger Blackhawk when he wasn’t carrying the gun in the glove box.
The handcuffs was something he carried for Frankie. The woman was crazy for bondage.
Squires turned toward the trailers, seeing kids’ bicycles and rusting trucks, now seeing Tula push open her trailer door, then running toward him, carrying something in her hand. Squires squinted to see a ... bottle of liquor?
What the hell?
Yep, she was carrying a damn bottle of tequila. Well, no one ever claimed that Mexicans were smart. But then he also saw that she was carrying a flashlight, which was exactly what he needed, so he yelled to her, “Over here! Bring me that damn light so we can see what’s going on!”
The girl looked in his direction but ignored him. Because of that, Squires was about to yell something else, but that’s when a big white guy came dodging through the crowd, speaking in Spanish, saying something that might have been,
“Excuse me, sorry. Let me pass.”
Definitely being polite, as the guy hurried to the lake’s edge, kicking off shoes, shirt, then tossing his wallet and cell phone onto the ground before he jumped into the water. A second later, another white guy appeared. He was a skinny scarecrow of a hippie who was doing the same thing, stripping to go in the water.
What the hell were these two white dudes doing at Red Citrus?
Squires yelled to the hippie, “Hey ... you! What the hell you think you’re doing?” but the hippie was busy pulling off his shirt and talking into his cell phone at the same time, before he dropped the phone on the ground, next to his wallet, and then he went into the water, too, but on his belly.
Using his cell phone? The asshole had probably just called 911.
Shit!
This was all Squires needed. Fifi was in the process of solving a serious problem, but now here were a couple of solid-looking white citizens messing in his business.
Squires spat, “Goddamn do-gooders!” as he headed after the flashlight Tula was holding, pushing people out of the way.
A moment later,
speaking into the hippie’s cell phone, Squires was telling the 911 operator, “That’s right, cancel the emergency, ma’am. We made a mistake here on our end. I know, I know ... it’s not the first time.”
He’d checked PREVIOUS CALLS. When he’d seen 911, he knew he had to do something to stop the cops from showing up.
But then Squires had to whisper “Damn it” as he covered the phone so the operator wouldn’t hear Carlson screaming across the water to the big white guy, yelling, “Help me! Take my hand!”
“Sir?”
the operator said, raising her voice, “Who’s yelling in the background?”
“Ma’am,” Squires told her, being sweet, “I understand what you’re asking. And at first we thought someone was in trouble. But, turns out, it’s just a bunch of Mexican kids playing games. You know how girls squeal when they’re running round, playing games at night?”
The woman asked, “Did you place the call? Is your name Tomlinson?”
Squires hesitated, aware that it was sometimes a mistake to lie to the cops before thinking it over. “Yep, that’s my name,” he said finally.
The operator told him, “We’ve already dispatched units to that address. Dispatched it to . . . to a Red Citrus RV Park, Guava Street, just off San Carlos Boulevard. That’s near Fort Myers Beach, correct?”
Squires was getting nervous and impatient. He covered the phone and yanked the flashlight out of the weird little Bible freak’s hand because she kept turning the beam toward the water, where there was now a lot of splashing and swearing going on.