East is East

They stood there another minute, listening to the sheriff and his men chew socks at one another, and then they were moving again, Turco leading, Abercorn following. “These guys are a bunch of cheesebags,” Turco pronounced, spitting the words over his shoulder. Abercorn couldn’t have agreed more, but wondered where exactly they were going and how it was going to help them capture, prosecute, imprison and deport Hiro Tanaka and get N. Carteret Bluestone off his back. And beyond that, how it was going to get him out of Crackerland and back to the mossy somnolent streets of Savannah and the attentions of girls like Ginger and Brenda who wanted only to sip juleps, eat oysters and fuck athletically on the rug in front of the air conditioner. Turco was leading him back toward the police cordon and the tourist center beyond it.

“Where are we going, Lewis—what’s the plan?”

Turco paused on the steps, for once eye-to-eye with him. “I say we get hold of one of these powerboats and go bust this Saxby clown. He’ll tell you where the Nip is, believe me.”

Abercorn didn’t know if he actually wanted to bust Saxby—what charge were they talking here?—but having a conversation with him sounded like a good idea. And he really didn’t feature hanging around and dealing with the sheriff, who looked about as receptive as a guard dog. He shrugged and followed Turco up the steps and into the tourist facility, where six blondes of varying shades and ages stood expectantly behind a counter, each trying to outgrin the other.

Turco strode directly up to the youngest, a girl with big watery blue eyes and a nameplate that identified her as Darlene. “We need a boat,” he announced, giving her his LURP-from-hell look.

She didn’t seem to notice. “I’m sorry,” she said, and she was just as sweet as rainwater, though her accent was strictly bayou, “but I have orders from Mr. Chivvers and Mr. Dotson to not let any boats out.”

“For all intents and purposes, the park is closed,” the blonde beside her announced. This one looked to be about forty and wore her hair in an elaborate confectionary ball. “We regret the inconvenience,” she said, “but there’s a maniac a-loose in the swamp.”

“An Oriental man,” added another.

“Killed somebody east of here, is what I heard,” said the eldest, who must have been seventy and had the gift of speaking without moving her lips.

“Three grown men and a baby. Strangled them all,” the one with the hair said. All six of them froze their smiles.

This was Abercorn’s opening. He’d been hovering in the background, but now he stepped forward. “Special Agent Detlef Abercorn of the INS,” he said, flashing his identification, “of the district office in Savannah. We’re after that very man.” He tried a smile himself. “That’s why we need a boat.”

“Well,” the first girl, Darlene, wavered behind her official grin, “I don’t know …” She turned to the blonde next to her, a woman of indeterminate age in secretarial glasses and a bright-patterned scarf. “Lu Ann, what you think?”

Just then Roy Dotson stepped through a door at the rear of the office. He was dressed in his park ranger’s uniform and a pair of hip boots. “It’s all right, Darlene, give these men what they want.”

Darlene gazed up at Abercorn. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen and her grin was cavernous. Abercorn had one of those brief and inevitable sexual thoughts, and then the business came back into her voice. “I’ll need to see a driver’s license,” she said, “and a major credit card.”

Roy dotson sat at the helm of the eighteen-foot flat-bottomed boat, running the engine at full speed, which wasn’t much. Turco was crouched in the bow with all his jungle-fighting paraphernalia, his entrenching tools and wire cutters and whatnot dangling from the frame of his pack. In the middle, almost enjoying the ride despite himself, was Detlef Abercorn. He was wearing his waders and he clutched a satchel full of halizone tablets, sun block, 6-12, Off! and calamine lotion as if he were afraid it would sprout wings and fly away. He was also wearing a bright orange life jacket, though he felt a little foolish in it. Roy Dotson had insisted on the life jacket and Abercorn had obliged him for two reasons. The first was purely diplomatic. Turco had informed Dotson, who was after all going out of his way to help them, that he would shove it—the life jacket—up his—Roy Dotson’s—ass if he said another word about it, and so Abercorn, in the spirit of pacification, had meekly slipped into his own. The second reason was more basic: he was scared witless about going out amongst the alligators and snakes and felt he needed all the help he could get. With the waders and life vest, the only place a snake could get him, he figured, was in the face, and he planned to keep that portion of his anatomy high, dry and out of reach.