Джо Горес: Dead Man

If Dain was not dead, only dying, the heat and sun would finish him off. Waiting could only benefit Inverness.

He waited.

Waited until the sun had started its climb down the western sky. Just sat there on the middle seat of his boat, legs drawn up and arms clasped around his knees. From this close he could see Dain sprawled, bloody and lax, across the seat.

Enough.

Inverness suddenly jerked out his .357 Magnum, then once again just sat there with it in his hand, resting the hand on his thigh, the gun pointed at nothing. He yelled.

“Dain!”

No reaction. Man — or body? He raised the gun, aimed with his elbow resting on an upraised knee. Hesitated. Dain was dead, he knew that now, and he was about to shoot the body. Blow its foot off. To see if perhaps the man was only faking it. And if he shot the corpse, wasn’t that somehow an admission that Dain had won, even in death? That even his corpse could spook Keith Inverness so badly that...

With sudden resolve he re-aimed. And fired. A chunk of gunwale six inches from Dain’s boot splintered as the heavy slug passed through it. Dain’s boot did not move.

Inverness lowered the heavy gun with a satisfied look on his face. He’d made his test without having to shoot Dain’s dead body. Dain hadn’t won. Keith Inverness had won. Because nobody had the balls to remain motionless when a bullet missed his foot by six inches that way. Not when he would know the next one could blow his foot right off.

There was still a final act to perform. And even that... worried him. He had to dump Dain’s body into the water so the gators would get it. Did some edge of doubt still linger?

“Goddam you, Dain,” he said earnestly to the corpse, “even dead, you fucker, you... you vex me.”

He laid the gun on the seat beside his thigh, grabbed the oars, gave a couple of strong pulls to send his boat bumping clumsily against Dain’s. The impact knocked Dain’s boot off the gunwale. A cloud of green-bellied flies swarmed angrily up off the bloody mess under Dain’s filth-encrusted shirt.

He picked up his gun again, but it was only reflex. This was obviously a corpse. He used his gun hand to brace himself on Dain’s gunwale so he could, kneeling on the seat, stretch across the sprawled body to feel the carotid artery for a pulse.

He was free at last of that five-year-old shadow across his life. Maybe even the bonds might not be lost to him. Vangie would have to bury her folks, go through a public period of mourning. Which meant she’d have to hang around Cajun country long enough so it would not look odd when she left...

Perhaps she would choose suicide... so easily arranged...

He was so deep in his thoughts as his fingers thrust deep into the side of Dain’s throat after the nonexistent pulse, that he didn’t even see Dain’s good left arm, trailing over the side of the boat, begin to rise.

In the iron grip of his hand was the huge cottonmouth, grasped just behind the head. The snake’s mouth, gaping in rage, showed its dazzling cotton-white lining. Its fangs were raised and ready. As the arm rose and crooked, the massive, foot-thick, five-foot body came writhing up out of the water, flowing, flowing, flowing almost endlessly upward.

Inverness, startled by the pulse he had not expected to find, off balance, was trying to get upright enough to get his weight off the gun hand and shoot. But he was out of time. By then Dain was ramming the huge diamond-shaped head up tight against his straining, corded neck.

The gleaming fangs sank into the flesh, the poison sacks pulsed. Inverness leaped back, shrieking, spraddle-legged in the flatboat, jerking away from the snake so wildly that its entire five-foot length flowed and writhed in air, supported only by its fangs sunk deep into the side of his neck.

His gun went flying so both his hands could find the snake, rip it away. The snake hit the water with a long splash, undulated away as Inverness sank down on the seat, blood running down his neck. Dain sat up in the other boat to watch him with cold interested eyes.

“My God,” said Inverness. “Oh my God.”

“It’s a high-protein venom that literally rots out the blood vessels so internal hemorrhaging begins,” said Dain. “You’re bleeding to death inside even as we speak.”

Inverness put his face in his hands and spoke through his spread fingers. “It hurts. Oh Jesus it hurts.”

“It’s meant to. Your lymph glands are swelling up trying to churn out enough antibodies to save you, but there aren’t that many antibodies in the human body. You’ll start getting excited, your pupils will dilate until the light hurts them...”

Inverness raised a haunted face. Sweat was pouring off him. He croaked, “My lips are numb.”

Now that he was here, watching one of the hitmen actually dying, simple survival wasn’t enough for Dain after all. He wanted at least to know. Who. Where. Maybe if...

“Who hired you to kill me and my family, Inverness?”

“Pu... Pucci... Mario... Pucci...”

“No. The middleman. The other shooter.”

Inverness tried to swallow. Put a hand up to his neck, sweating like a man with motion sickness. His face was ghastly. His voice was querulous.

“The... middleman called me, I flew up from New Orleans. The other hitter had... directions... I had... orders... take out everybody in the place... Didn’t know... woman and kid...”

His head slumped, but Dain reached from boat to boat, grabbed his shoulder, shook him.

“Who, Inverness? Where?”

“He called me again last week... after five... fucking years... told me you were coming after me...” His voice started to fade again. “Hoping... I’d... take you out...”

Inverness was twitching, losing motor control.

“Who? Goddam you, give him to me!”

Inverness coughed rackingly. A little blood came from his mouth. But defiance along with death had entered his eyes. His lips twisted into some semblance of a smile.

“Fuck you, Dain... I’m... giving you... to them... The other shooter is... still around... He’ll blow you... all to shit...” He gave a choking laugh. “The laugh’s... on you...”

He fell silent, folded down on himself, went away from there. Dain looked down at him for a long moment, nothing showing in his face. He finally spoke.

“Is it, Inverness? Hell, you’re dead!”

The sky was pale, sulfur-colored. The water was a mirror. Five minutes later Inverness, stripped of keys, wallet, and money to make identification harder should he ever be found, splashed into the marsh.

Most likely a gator would discover him before dark, thrust him deep into the mud, ripen him up...

But hell, old Inverness would like that, wouldn’t he?

Hadn’t he just loved this old swampland?

Eight days later Dain emerged from his room at the Imperial Motel in Lafayette, his arm in a neat black sling. It was here he and Inverness had stayed the night before going into the swamp after Vangie, and their rooms had been held for them. He crossed to his rental car parked directly in front of the room, tossed his suitcase into the open trunk, went over to the adjoining room and emerged with Inverness’s suitcase. He tossed that in also, slammed the trunk lid, and went off toward the office.

Inside, the clerk looked up from his accounting when Dain put the keys for both rooms on his desk.