Everglades Assault (18 page)

He made me drive around the bend to the mobile home.

He kept his left hand wrapped around my throat so I couldn't hit the accelerator, duck, and hope for the best.

Back in Flamingo, they had all looked doughy and overweight. But this guy knew how to handle a weapon—and a prisoner.

When we pulled up at the trailer, Mickey Rather's other two men jumped out from either side of the aluminum monstrosity. They both held revolvers. Obviously, they weren't expecting me. So this fourth guy's finding me had been a fluke. Or maybe just a reward for the boss man's vigilance. He had posted a guard—just in case.

The guy in the backseat kicked his door open and slowly climbed out. The revolver didn't waver for a moment. He was proud of his find—like a kid who's just found the prize Easter egg.

“Mickey—hey, Mickey! Look what I've got here. You remember this guy, don't you?”

He jerked me out of the car and shoved me back up against the fender. Mickey Rather came out of the trailer. He wore a white golf shirt that accented the size of his watermelon belly and his hammy biceps. A long black cigar was stuck in the middle of his mouth.

He didn't look any too happy.

He said to the guy who had caught me, “Anybody else with him, Benny?”

“No. No one. Just him, boss. I was keeping an eye on the road like you said. He parked his car a few hundred yards up. I got in the back and waited. The goddamn mosquitoes about ate my butt off.”

“Shut up, Benny.” Mickey Rather had pale piggish blue eyes. He kept them pinned on me as he approached. He had a nervous mannerism—clenching and unclenching his fist. As before, he was slow. I saw the big roundhouse punch coming, and I had plenty of time to catch it in my own right hand. I squeezed just enough to let him know I could break his hand if I wanted, then shoved him away.

Mickey Rather didn't like being made a fool of in front of his men. His face turned crimson, and he clenched the cigar between his teeth.

“That was a stupid move, buster boy.”

“I majored in stupid. But it saves on busted noses.”

He looked at Benny. “If he so much as blinks an eye, shoot him.”

“Glad to, boss.”

So Mickey Rather got his next punch in. And his next. And his next. He was slow—but he hit like a sledgehammer. I had to fight to keep my feet.

“That's just to soften you up, buster boy.” He was wheezing softly with effort. “Now, for openers, just who in the hell are you?”

“Just a good samaritan trying to help a friend.”

His next punch caught me in the short ribs, knocking the wind out of me. “And I've had about enough of your smart-ass answers. I killed that goddamn dog of yours last night, and we killed the Indian boy this morning. I'm not in the waiting line for heaven, so you better not cross me again, buster boy. Now, who are you?”

I have found that in some tight situations the truth is often as good as a lie.

But not in this tight situation.

If I told him I was just some private snoop he would have had my carcass packed in the jeep alongside Billy Cougar's within the hour.

I had to give him something to think about; some reason to worry.

I gave it a few moments, as if struggling with my better judgment. I sighed and said finally, “You'll find out soon enough, Rather. So I guess there's no harm in telling you. I'm part of a federal investigative unit sent down here to check up on you.”

He eyed me closely for a moment, trying to decide if I was telling the truth. I didn't doubt that he would. All crooks pay for their illegal profit with an unrelenting paranoia. They think everyone is after them.

“And just what put them onto an honest businessman like me?”

I shrugged. “What else? The IRS boys got suspicious. They've had their eye on you for a few years now.”

He swore softly. “When I get my hands on that goddamn bookkeeper . . .” His voice trailed off. All three of his men had their revolvers trained on me. He motioned with his head. “Tie him up, gag him, and lock him inside. I'm going to check out his story.”

“You ain't going to let him go, are you, boss?” Benny seemed disappointed someone might steal his prize.

Mickey Rather sneered at me. “Let him go? Don't be silly, Benny. Tonight Billy the Indian is gonna have some company. I just want to do things nice and neat, see. When I'm sure things are square, you'll take buster boy here out to the swamp, put a bullet through that pretty blond head, and feed him to the alligators.”

“Does that mean the scam ain't gonna work, boss?” asked one of the others.

Rather looked at him as if he were an idiot. “Sure, Louie. We're gonna stay right here while every fed in the world comes looking for us. No, you stupid bastard, the scam ain't gonna work. The Indian boy blew it for us. He could've been setting pretty, but instead he had to try getting tough. So now we head for the islands until this thing blows over.” He looked at me meaningfully. “And they can't prove no murder if they can't find no corpses. Tonight this trailer is going to catch on fire. And we're going to disappear in the smoke. . . .”

 

They were no Boy Scouts—so they did a more than thorough job of tying and gagging me. I'd much rather be tied by a knot expert than someone who doesn't know what he's doing. You can't back bad knots—they have to be cut.

So they used about twenty feet of tough hemp rope to bind arms, hands, and legs, taped my mouth, and rolled me into a narrow broom closet.

All I could do was lie there on my belly in a reverse fetal position and hope that Hervey would contact the law when I didn't return rather than come looking by himself.

But I knew better.

April had said it best: “He isn't the type to go whining to the law. . . .”

So he would come by himself. And they would be ready. And that would make three corpses to carry into the swamp that night.

I felt the nausea well up in my stomach. I could see again the crimson hole which had been the remains of Billy Cougar's face.

That was the way Hervey would look if I didn't think of something. And think of something fast. Hervey was one of the rare good ones. He had a wife and a beautiful daughter. He would be missed.

I spent the first hour trying to expand the rope; trying to wiggle free. I just about had my hands loose once—but then the door swung open and Benny stuck his ferret face inside.

He leered at me. “Damn if the boss wasn't right. He said check up on you 'cause you were the type to chew your own arm off if it took that to get away.”

So he kicked me a couple of times in the stomach, then added more rope to arms and legs.

Escape was useless—for now, anyway.

So I resigned myself to the situation. My only chance would come that night when they carted me off to the swamp to kill me.

For some reason, dying in a swamp bothered me. I've always wanted to die at sea; just sort of go down and never come back up.

I remembered Panther James and his prediction that I didn't have long to live.

So maybe it would be the swamp after all....

Mickey Rather had gone off for a while to “check out” my story—or so he had said. The walls of the mobile home were beer-can thin, and when he returned I could hear them talking over the generator hum of the air-conditioning.

He said that he had called one of his associates in Washington. They had heard nothing of an investigation. Rather said it didn't matter if I was telling the truth or not. He said the Indian had blown it.

Listening, I began to put it all together. Rather and his boys had operated an illegal gambling ring in Miami and built condominiums with the profit. They were speculators. He would find a choice bit of land, contract out the work, use the cheapest materials available, and then clip the retirees, selling his condominium apartments at extravagant prices.

Billy Cougar had gotten in deep to Mickey Rather at the card table and the racetrack. Rather had somehow learned about the unique land on which Cougar lived—probably from Billy Cougar himself. So Rather had taken Billy's IOUs until the Indian had no choice but to go along with Rather's plan.

I should have put it all together after talking to Graff McKinney. He was the one who had told me why the big-time gamblers were interested in Indian land. There would be no state control. And very little federal control.

For Mickey Rather, taking reign of the Panther James acreage would have been akin to finding the Holy Grail. It was a big-time gambler's dream come true. The plans for the casino he wanted to build there had already been drawn up. He would bulldoze a road through the swamps and add a ritzy hotel and, maybe in the future, add a condominium development.

By the time his opponents got things worked out in court, he would have already made his millions.

Billy Cougar had no choice but to go along with it. Besides, from what I had heard, he liked the idea of being rich anyway.

The only thing that stood in the way was the old man, Panther James. So Billy Cougar had concocted the idea of scaring him off through the materialization of some old Indian legend—the Swamp Ape.

But something had gone wrong. The old man had died. And Billy Cougar, suddenly realizing that he held all the cards, had gotten nasty. He had demanded more of the action. And he had tried to get tough when Rather refused.

So they had blown his face away. And now he rested beneath the tarp in the jeep—right along with Rather's dreams.

But I had to give credit to Mickey Rather. He wasn't one to linger on recent failures. He was already changing gears, planning a new future.

Through the walls, I could hear them talking.

“You don't think they'll send people looking for us, boss?”

“Hell yes, they will. But a man can buy a whole lot of privacy in South America. I've got the cash we were going to use for this project in a Cayman bank. We'll clean out the account, head for Argentina, and lay low for a while. Besides, I've got some connections there. We'll invest in the dope crops, and feed the profits into one of our subsidiary development corporations back here in Florida. As long as the land holds out, there's still plenty of dough to be made.”

Slowly, surely, Mickey Rather broke down their reluctance to leave the country. He painted a picture of South Seas bliss for them. His men would have tropical drinks in the morning and beautiful island girls at night.

And the tone of his voice implied the alternative—death if they didn't follow him.

In the silences I knew they were pouring themselves more courage, drinking to their new future.

I kept hoping they would go into detail about how they would make their escape.

But they never did.

So I lay waiting in the squashed confines of the closet. My legs gradually went numb, and then my arms. I did flexing exercises trying to stay ready. I searched myself for fear of my impending death—and found none. When you have lost everything, there is no fear of that final forfeiture. There was only deep disquiet within me that demanded I try to find a way of going on; some life force that refused to give up as long as there were still good fish to catch, cold beer to drink, and long autumn days to enjoy.

Every hour or so, Benny would come to check on me, tighten the ropes, and add a few kicks. The kicks were for his boss, he would sneer. He had an ugly chuckle. He said that his boss was going to have to have plastic surgery because of my dog. And he wanted me to suffer for it.

It was what you would call one very long afternoon.

They came for me at first dark. Just as they had promised. Benny cut the ropes around my legs, and two of them jerked me to my feet. The muscles were so numb I could barely stand alone.

The hilarity was gone from them. They seemed nervous; anxious to be done with me and get the hell away.

Mickey Rather directed everything. His face looked bloated from drinking. The dog bite on his neck had begun to leak blood through the white gauze. He had them shove me outside. With my hands still bound, I landed face-first in the sand.

“Watch he doesn't try and make a run for it,” Rather warned.

“Hell, boss, he can hardly stand up, let alone run.”

“Just don't take any chances—that's all I'm telling you. Louie, you stay here. Start spreading the gasoline. And don't screw up. When we torch this place I want everything to burn.”

They dragged me to my feet. My brain kept scanning for some clever means of escape—but found none. I couldn't make a deal with them. Mickey Rather had too many options to be interested in a deal.

So I tried to make a run for it. I butted Benny in the stomach with my head, caught Rather between the legs with a well-placed kick, and took off in a numb dash.

But Louie dragged me down from behind, clubbing at my head with the grip of his pistol.

Rather rolled on the ground in pain. His face was pale—as if he was about to vomit.

He looked at Benny. “Get the jeep started!” he hissed.

Purposefully, he got to his feet. He turned a dead eye on me and said, “Kill him, Louie. Right through the head. I'm going to enjoy this. Buster boy, hold that breath you're taking—because it's going to be your last.”

And just before I heard the explosion, as the double-action hammer
click-clicked,
I knew that he was right....

I felt blood splatter hot across my face, and I rolled to the ground wondering why I felt no pain, thinking, strangely: If this is death, it's not so bad after all....

There was another explosion, and someone collapsed beside me. Even with part of his head gone, the sneer was still affixed to Benny's face.