The Marauders (20 page)

He was struggling from the floor when he heard a gurgling sound, phlegmy and reptilian, in the room. Lindquist’s heart gave a single hard knock and then quickened. He scrabbled to his feet and turned and saw a hunched kayak-like shape, low to the floor, stepping tentatively toward him.

He told himself he had to be dreaming. There could be no other explanation. But he leapt onto the bed and switched on the lamp and shrieked like a castrato when he saw what he saw.

An alligator. Six feet, maybe seven.

A fucking alligator in his bedroom.

Lindquist cringed against the headboard. The alligator also retreated, crouching near the door with its leathery tail lashing and its snaggled teeth bared.

To make sure he wasn’t dreaming, Lindquist pinched his cheek, hard, but felt only a phantom twinge of pain, dulled from the booze and pills. Otherwise nothing changed. Mud and shit and piss were still smeared on the carpet and the walls. One of the decorative tables was still knocked over and Gwen’s porcelain penguins and pigs were scattered across the floor.

“Get,” Lindquist said. He flapped his hand in an inane shooing gesture. “I said get now.”

The alligator hissed through its candy-corn teeth.

Lindquist opened a nightstand drawer and took out the first thing his fingers clasped. His wife’s dildo, a hideous purple thing with a bulbous end like a plum. He tossed the phallus at the alligator and it bounced off its head and landed nearby in the carpet.

The alligator scrabbled into the corner and turned to watch Lindquist with ravenous yellow-gold eyes.

“Good God,” Lindquist said. He snatched up the night-table phone and dialed with shaking fingers.

“Is this an emergency?” the operator asked.

“Yes, yes,” Lindquist said.

“What’s the emergency?”

“An alligator,” Lindquist said, breath shaking into the phone. “Alligator in my bedroom.”

Lindquist, Wes noticed, had been acting strange all night. Spooked and jittery. One thing, he wasn’t telling any of his corny jokes. And the deeper into the Barataria he piloted the
Jean Lafitte
, the more anxious-seeming he grew, throwing wild glances right and left out the wheelhouse windows, a kind of restless apprehension twitching in his face.

Around midnight Wes finally asked what the matter was and Lindquist told him that somebody put an alligator in his bedroom.

“Say what?” said Wes, figuring it another of Lindquist’s jokes.

“An alligator, in my bedroom,” said Lindquist, his face tight and serious.

Wes was speechless.

“Six or seven feet, this thing. Might as well have been twenty. Nearly scared me to death.”

“You call the cops?”

“Yeah. Two deputies came and shot it in the head and dragged it out.”

They were taking a break from trawling and were down in the boat’s galley, two redfish fillets sputtering in a frying pan on the gas stove. A downpour crackled on the deck above them and thrashed against the little galley window. The distant lights of the nearest boat were a wavery blur. Every so often a prong of brilliant purple lightning speared soundlessly
down far out in the Gulf. Lindquist rose from the table and went to the stove and turned over the filets with a fork. The smell of garlic and onion and cayenne was making Wes’s mouth water. For the past few days, he’d had only canned Vienna sausages and crackers to eat.

Lindquist set plates down on the galley table, one for Wes and one for himself. Pan-seared redfish with a side of dirty rice: Zatarain’s, right out of the box. Wes began scarfing down his food, though it was a bit heavy on the cayenne pepper. His eyes watered and he coughed. Lindquist laughed and asked Wes if the food was spicy enough.

After a while Lindquist said, “I think it was them twins, me. The Toup brothers.”

“Why’d they put an alligator in your room?”

“They’re crazy’s why.”

They kept quiet for a while, Lindquist chewing his food groggily, a slow bovine grinding of his jaws. Every so often his eyes would shut for several seconds and his grip around his fork would loosen like a baby’s. Then he’d open his eyes and settle them hazily on his plate.

Wes assumed it was the pills. Lindquist was always taking out that Pez dispenser and swallowing one or two of whatever was inside.

“They think I’m after their reefer,” Lindquist said.

Wes said nothing because he couldn’t tell if Lindquist was joking.

“I told them I had no interest. That I was just metal detecting. They took my arm anyway. The good one I had.”

“You know that? For sure?”

Lindquist nodded. “Got no proof, but I’m sure. Somebody told me. Then I told Villanova about it. Course he did nothing.”

Wes let out a loose and breathy whistle of surprise. “Maybe I’d stay away from wherever they want you to stay away from.”

“I can’t. I won’t.”

The rain pinged like BB’s on the galley window glass.

Lindquist clicked down his fork. “I’ve been searching the Barataria my whole life. They got no right to tell me I can’t. And ain’t like I can stop. Not now. Not after this long.”

Wes asked him what he’d do with real money if he ever found some.

“Stop trawlin’, that’s for sure. Move away. Far away. Whole damn place is falling apart. And buy myself a new arm. One that does all kinds of fancy shit.”

Then Lindquist asked Wes the same question. Wes told him he didn’t want to leave the Barataria if he could help it, but with all the oil and the damage to the marsh, it was hard to predict. When he finally finished building his shrimp boat, if he did, he’d start his own business, a kind of shrimp-of-the-day club. “Eliminate the middle man,” he said. “Like they did in the old days.”

“Well, hell,” Lindquist said and shook his head.

Wes asked him what.

“You’re a damn genius, kid.”

“Naw,” Wes chuckled.

“A damn genius.”

Lindquist said he wished his daughter were as frugal and ambitious. When she earned a buck, an hour later she lost two. The goddamnest thing. Wes had no idea what to say and didn’t want to insult Lindquist’s daughter so he kept quiet.

“What you gonna name it?” Lindquist asked. His voice was spitty and slurred.

The rain had slowed and now there was only bayou darkness beyond the water-webbed window. Wes turned away from the window and looked at Lindquist.

“Name it?” Wes said.

“The boat, kid.”

“I don’t know yet.”

“None?”

“I was gonna name it after my mama, but I had second thoughts. My mama’s not a boat, you know?”

Lindquist nodded sleepily.

Wes shrugged and set down his fork. “So, I guess I’ll wait to name it. Don’t want to jinx it.”

Lindquist said nothing but he studied Wes in a way that seemed like he decided something about him right then, though Wes couldn’t tell good or bad.

An hour or so later after the rain they had the trawls lowered in the water when Wes noticed the boat veering off course. They were headed straight to one of the small barrier islands in the mouth of the bay. Wes looked up and saw Lindquist hunched over the boat wheel, head canted to the side, eyes shut. Dead asleep.

“Mr. Lindquist,” Wes shouted.

Nothing.

Wes cupped his hands around his mouth. “Mr. Lindquist.”

Lindquist didn’t stir.

They were about three hundred yards from colliding with the island. Pretty soon the hull would scrape the bayou bottom and the
Jean Lafitte
would be shipwrecked.

Wes scrambled up the ladder two rungs at a time and once in the wheelhouse shook Lindquist’s shoulder. His eyes snapped open and he peered about groggily.

“We’re headed toward an island,” Wes told him.

Lindquist’s eyes went deranged and he grabbed the wheel and turned it sharply to the right. When the boat was back on track he slapped his cheek. Then he looked at Wes. His face was red with embarrassment. “What?” he said.

“You fell asleep.”

“Yeah. So?”

“Wanna go lay down?”

Lindquist paused. “What you mean?”

“Let me take care of it.”

Lindquist looked at Wes darkly. “You saying I’m screwed up?”

“I’m asking if you’re okay.”

“Okay?”

Wes was quiet.

“Are you okay?” Lindquist said in a girlish voice. “Are you okay?” he said again, taunting. His eyes scalded Wes. “I got plenty of that bull from my wife.”

Wes stayed silent.

“
You okay?
She’d ask every five seconds. Giving me that look. Like you’re giving me now.”

“I’ll say it. You take a lot of those pills, Mr. Lindquist.”

“Yeah? So?”

“One friend to another, just thought I’d say it.”

“We’re not friends. I’m your boss, me. You’re my employee. That’s the situation.”

Wes swallowed, his face burning hot. “All right,” he said. “But we’re friendly.”

“Not right now we’re not.”

Wes climbed back down to the deck and busied himself with the nets. In his head he replayed his conversation with Lindquist over and over again while he muttered curses under his breath. Just another two or three hours, he thought. Then he’d be away from this guy, maybe for good. But what then? Back to work for his father? That would be trading one kind of hell for another.

Before long Lindquist called down from the wheelhouse window. His voice was completely changed, even friendly. “Hey, Wes,” he said, as if nothing had happened.

Wes looked up.

“Knock knock,” Lindquist said.

Wes shook his head and hissed spitefully through his teeth.

“Knock knock,” Lindquist said, louder.

Wes waved Lindquist off and turned his back.

“Well, hell,” Lindquist said. “Fine, if that’s the way you wanna be.”

They didn’t speak again until they’d taken their shrimp to Monsieur Montegut’s and were back in the marina parking lot. As they stood near
their trucks in the tangerine light of dawn, Lindquist gave Wes half the money, not the usual third.

“You made a mistake,” Wes said.

Lindquist squinted against the sun, crow’s feet wrinkling the corners of his eyes. “Severance pay,” he said.

“Look, if this is about the pills, Mr. Lindquist, I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”

“You’re right. It’s not.” Then, maybe because he regretted being so harsh, Lindquist’s voice softened. “It’s not about the pills, kid.”

Wes kept silent.

“I can’t do this anymore,” Lindquist said.

“Do what?”

“Shrimping. I’m done, me. Probably gonna put up booms for those folks. Clean oil. Nurse baby pelicans. Who the hell knows.”

“I won’t mention the pills again, Mr. Lindquist. Just let me work.”

“Kid. It’s got nothing to do with the pills. Look at the water. Watch the news. We’re going out there and working to lose money. We were doing anything else, they’d lock us in a loony bin for acting this way.”

Wes nodded. “This is a lot of money,” he said.

Lindquist swatted his hook.

“Well, thanks,” Wes said. He dug into his pocket and held out Lindquist’s boat keys.

“You can stay another few nights if you want. Until things sort out.”

“I’ll be all right.”

“You goin’ home?”

“Probably,” Wes lied.

“Talk to your pop. Don’t be a moron.”

“All right, Mr. Lindquist.”

Lindquist turned and walked toward his truck, held up his hand. “Take care, kid.”

“Take care, Mr. Lindquist,” Wes said back.

They needed a boat if they were going to find the twins’ island. Provided it existed. They needed a boat but Hanson had no money and Cosgrove refused to squander any of his meager savings on a pipe dream. Hanson told Cosgrove he had something he took from the widow’s house he never told him about.

A ring.

“A ring?” Cosgrove said. “We agreed. Just stuff in the attic.”

“It was in the attic.”

Cosgrove stared at Hanson. A hard look of recrimination.

“Hey, Sasquatch, I’m telling you now, ain’t I?”

They took the diamond ring to a pawnshop just off the highway. Trader John’s.

“Like to see how much this’s worth,” Hanson told the old woman in the Hawaiian shirt standing behind the counter. He reached into his pocket and chinked the ring down on the hand-smeared glass. The woman picked the ring up and turned it around in her gnarled fingers, forehead seaming as she squinted through a jeweler’s loupe.

Cosgrove glanced at the merchandise behind the counter, sun-faded bric-a-brac hung from the walls: banjos, taxidermied animal heads, medical apparatus among Saints paraphernalia and anti-Obama bumper stickers.
Whole damn parish had its life on consignment. Pretty soon people would be hawking their body parts for beer and cigarette money. Kidneys and corneas on layaway at Trader John’s.

“Where you find this?” the woman asked.

Without pause Hanson told the woman that the ring had once belonged to his fiancée. Penelope. Dead.

The clerk let the loupe drop, and the glass swung from the chain around her neck. She shot back her wobbly chin and clucked her tongue.

“Car wreck,” Hanson said, adjusting his rodeo belt buckle. “That wasn’t bad enough, there was a guy with her. Young dude.”