Robert Alter - Carny kill

What if they kept real snakes in there?

They didn't. I was damn well certain they didn't; but you get into a place like that at night and you get something like snakes in your mind and you just can't shake 'em out.

A mossy trunk-stump shook itself out of the gray mist like a shaggy black dog coming out of the water, and the flash hit it squarely and knocked orange glints out of the wet moss. It seemed to me the damn thing had a twisted mouth and that the mouth was grinning at me. I went around it like it was a Frankenstein's monster in damp wood.

I kept going, sticking as close to the edge of the waterway as I could. I wanted to find that little setback where I'd fished Cochrane out of the shallows.

The setback reared itself out of the swampy shadows as if startled at the approach of light. I played the flash over the water and the bank but there really wasn't anything there I wanted to see. It was that finger of high-ground behind the setback that interested me. I started walking over it.

There were a lot of tropical ferns and flowers and saw palmettos, and in about ten-twelve seconds I came out on the opposite bank and found myself standing on the edge of the manmade lake. The distance between the lake and the waterway was about one hundred feet.

That made one thing quite clear-the manner in which the murderer had moved the body from the tearoom into the Swamp Ride without too much strain and without being observed.

He-if it was a he-hauled the body from the tearoom to the Admiral Benbow dock, put it into one of the rowboats, rowed it across the lake in the dark and landed about where I was now standing. Then he or she or they lugged the body over the rib of land and dumped it into the setback. Neat.

But could a woman do it? Lug a heavy dead weight like Cochrane that far? None of the females I'd ever known could. Certainly not May.

I retraced my path with the flash, looking for footprints or heel-grouts in the earth. I didn't find anything except some of my own prints. Some detective.

I stopped. That old sensation of eyes on the back of my neck had come to me again. I straightened up slowly. The silence was like one of those transparent jeffies you see in delicatessen windows. It seemed to hold me like the jelly holds the cooked partridge or the pheasant it is poured over.

I spun around and the flash sliced through the tropical growth. It made a white splotch on Bill Duff's face. He was about twelve feet away and was half concealed in the palmettos.

"Peekaboo at you too, Bill," I said.

He put up a spread hand to block the light.

"Turn that damn thing off, will you? You want to blind me?"

"Let's take a look at your other hand first, Bill. I'd hate to find out in the dark you had one of May's knives in it."

"That's real funny," Bill said. "About as funny as what you told Ferris about me."

He showed me his other hand. Empty.

I cut the light. I said, "Don't be nasty, Bill. It just makes us even. You've been hustling around telling everyone but Dummy Dan the Deaf Piano Player that Ferris wants to tab me with the murder."

"And it ain't as crazy as you want to make it sound," Bill said.

"Says who?"

"Says Ferris. He hinted as much the last time he hauled me over the stones."

"Which was the time when you told him about why May divorced me."

He grunted in the dark. "Why not? Do I owe you anything besides a broken tooth?"

"What are you doing out here, Bill? Returning to the scene of the crime?"

"Yeah, just like you. No-I saw a light out here when I was passing the Swamp Ride dock. I got curious."

It was a good answer, but it was still a lie. He hadn't seen any light. Not from the dock. Not in that fog with two acres of jungle in between. He had either followed me in there or he had already been there when I showed up.

"My turn," he said. "You on a treasure hunt or what?"

"Clues. I've turned P.I. It's a hell of a lot of fun."

"Tell me, so I can chuckle too."

"I had an idea that maybe the law overlooked. Ferris was getting all sweaty because he couldn't figure how somebody- maybe you-got the stiff all the way in here without using one of those swamp boats and without being seen."

"And you've doped it all out for him."

"I think so. Correct me if I'm wrong. You put it in one of the rowboats and scampered it across the lake and carted it over this hunk of land to the Swamp Ride."

He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "You really are cute, Thax. Now do tell us why I did all this?"

"I don't know, Bill. But I can make a good guess."

"I just can't wait to hear it. I really can't."

"Well, somewhere along the line May dumped you just like she dumped me. Then a couple of years ago when you're down and out you read in Variety or one of the trade papers that May has become Mrs. Cochrane Enterprises. So you hustle down here and get a job off her old man. But May won't give you a second tumble and you're POed. So you knife the old gent and hang a frame on the body with May's name on it. Something like that."

Duff made a noise-a sort of mucus snort.

"I don't want to unhinge you or anything like that, Thax, but that same little theory also fits you like a snug overcoat."

"Yeah, I know. Ferris has already outlined it for me."

I could sense Duff grinning in the dark.

"I figured he had, Thax old buddy boy. That's why you're so goddam energetically trying to bird-dog it on to me."

I grinned in the dark too.

"Well, it doesn't really matter, does it, Bill? As long as we're still the best of buddies?"

"That's right, Thax. As long as we stay even." He started to slouch off to the right, adding, "That's all I care about."

His left came out of the dark and went off in my face like a cherry bomb. I never saw it coming and I sure as hell wasn't set for it. I went right on over backwards and cradled my head in a palmetto.

When I stumbled to my feet Bill was gone.

First thing I did was test my eyeteeth. They still seemed fairly solid in my gum. Good old bastardly Bill. He had been saving up that punch for me for five years.

I don't really mind an occasional belt in the mouth. The thing that frosted me was he had caught me off guard at my own game. He'd distracted my attention by making like he was walking off. I'd been wide open for his left jab.

I found the flashlight and followed the lakeshore around to the Admiral Benbow Tearoom.

Neverland was three-fourths nightblinded now and I didn't see a soul. Across the inky lake the rakish Hispaniola was snuggled against the black mass of Treasure Island. The stern lights were blazing festively in the schooner and I could hear the faint throb of music coming across the water.

My lips and teeth ached like hell. When Bill was able to land one, he had a lot of heft behind it. I needed a drink. I didn't especially want to row over to the island but I didn't know where to find Gabby and his Scotch at that time of night. Anyhow, he'd probably killed it by now.

I climbed into one of the rowboats and shoved off.

The fog was dissipating and the moon was climbing the black back fence of the night like a great cat-goddess. Its image was in the water and it was cracked into a million pieces and tossed about carelessly by my oarblades, its light all loosened and rippling wild.

Ransome had another semi-longhair piece going on his hi-fi and it pulsed a moody sensation through the moony night. Duff's punch must have addled my brainbox more than I had realized because for an absurd moment I half expected Mike Ransome to come dashing out on the schooner's deck, waving, gesturing, posturing, to stand unnaturally tall in that eerie light, facing the curtain of the stars and moon like some actor, some tragedian of the universe, addressing a great diatribe to the night.