She had a strange sense of elation but she felt it couldn’t last. She didn’t know what or why. She had that fragile feeling of her life existing on a knife’s edge, as if the universe itself were a razor-sharp blade that could slip at any moment and slice right through her happiness.
Murder at the Grand Hotel
by Winston Groom
Point Clear
Gordon V. Pumps whacked at the bamboo in the canebrake as if he were possessed. He saw in each whack of the gleaming machete a death stroke against his nemesis, Horace P. Dumpler, head of the Alabama Department of Revenue, who was trying to put him out of business — or so he was convinced.
Gordon V. Pumps gathered the cane in his arms and threw it into the back of his truck, then headed to his house in Point Clear, not far from the Grand Hotel. The hotel had been a fixture on its great spot of land since 1842, and was considered a queen of Southern resorts.
Gordon had unctuously befriended a desk clerk, knowing firsthand that Dumpler visited the hotel for a week every spring to play golf, at which he was basically no good since he was a hunchback, although he excelled at putting. He played in a foursome with several of his revenue agents. That’s how Gordon had encountered him, a year earlier.
For three decades Gordon had offered the public sightseeing trips into the exotic Mobile-Tensaw River Delta, which was the second largest of its kind in the country, and luxuriated in a diverse plethora of flora and fauna. Gordon had fished and hunted the Delta since he was a boy and knew as much, if not more, about it and its various features as anyone. He had a pleasant, folksy manner of speech and some people went on his trips just to hear him talk. He had a few years back taken courses and received a degree in what amounted to swampololgy from a local university, and he considered what he did more than mere sightseeing — it was educational.
That was where the rub with Dumpler came in. The previous year, while visiting the Grand Hotel, Dumpler had read a piece in the local newspaper on Gordon and his boat, and on a whim had booked a trip. The price was eighty dollars per passenger, and Dumpler had graciously included his revenue agents — cum — golf foursome in the retinue.
Everyone seemed fascinated as Gordon pointed out eagles’ nests, eagles, cormorants, mergansers, herons, pelicans, snipes, wood ducks, ibis, alligators, nutria, wildcats, deer, feral hogs, possums, raccoons, various types of snakes, poisonous and otherwise, and turtles that sunned themselves on logs in the early spring.
The revenue agents asked questions about all this, but Dumpler’s mind seemed to be elsewhere. Then, when Gordon cut off the engine to drift up on a flock of white pelicans, Dumpler broke the silence by proclaiming in a stentorian voice, “You must make a good living doing this.”
The pelicans, of course, flew off.
Gordon was somewhat taken aback. “Not bad,” he replied. “When the weather’s good.”
“Well, let’s see,” said Dumpler, “today with us you’re making $320. If you have an afternoon trip, that’s $640 — I’d say that’s better than just not bad.”
“Like I said, there’s a lot of days when I’m down because of weather.”
Since the pelicans had taken off Gordon cranked up the engine. They’d been out a good two hours so he headed back to the dock. Everybody left seemingly satisfied and Gordon thought no more about these men until Monday morning, bright and early — at seven a.m. in fact — when a woman, wearing a purple pantsuit and a man’s felt hat, showed up at the dock as he was preparing the boat for an eight o’clock trip. She said, “My name is Lucille Bratt and I’m from the Alabama Department of Revenue.”
Gordon smiled politely and replied, “Pleased to meet you.”
Lucille Bratt got right to the point: “Are you paying your Alabama State entertainment tax?”
“The what?”
“The entertainment tax. It was passed by the state legislature six years ago.”
“Never heard of it,” Gordon said.
“Ten percent of every dollar you take in,” said Lucille Bratt.
“Ten percent? What for?”
“You are entertaining people and they are paying for it. It’s taxable.”
“Well, my business is more educational,” Gordon told her. “There are 346 different birds in this Delta, and I can spot every one of them. From time to time.”
“Doesn’t make any difference,” the woman said. “People with these duck-boat tours, and those folks down at the gulf who have the parasailing concession — everybody’s got to pay it.”
“Well,” Gordon said, flustered, “I never heard of it. I’ve never heard any of the fishing guides mention it.”
“They got themselves exempted.”
Gordon stood there flabbergasted. Finally he said, “How did you come to be here telling me all this today?”
“My boss brought it up.”
“And who would that be?”
“Mr. Horace P. Dumpler, commissioner of revenue for the state of Alabama.”
“Dumpler? You mean the guy I took out last Friday?”
“I guess so,” Lucille Bratt responded. “He was the one who told me about you. Said to tell you he had a nice time.” She fumbled in her large handbag. “I’ve got these forms for you to fill out and sign. You’ll have to pay the tax this year and back taxes for every year from the date the act was made into law.”
“I’ve what?” Gordon exclaimed.
“It’s the law,” Lucille muttered resignedly.
On the back steps Gordon had taken out his $400 eight-inch Shun Hiro Honesuki butcher knife and was splitting the cane four ways from the top. He had already cut it into a dozen sixteen-inch pieces. He thought of Dumpler and sneered. When he had gone back six years to when the Alabama Entertainment Act was passed, he’d calculated that it would have amounted to approximately $28,000 in back taxes. Cash. That was on top of his federal income tax, his regular state income tax, sales taxes, boat taxes, car taxes, etc., etc.
He didn’t have it. He would have to sell his boat. It would be the end of his business. He’d hired a lawyer but nothing could be done. The unfairness of the exemption for the fishing guides rankled him as well. He was providing an educational service. He was seventy-four years old, and he was dispensing all the wealth of knowledge he had accumulated up in this Delta since he was a boy of eight and his father had taken him duck hunting.
All his life he’d tried to be a good citizen — well, maybe in his drinking days he’d strayed from the narrow path, but those were long behind him. He’d always paid his taxes, he’d served honorably in the army in Vietnam, in combat. Served his country and now in his twilight years it was treating him thusly!
A murderous scowl twisted Gordon’s face. That low-life Dumpler! he thought. Comes on my trip, accepts my hospitality, then turns on me like a snake. Now Gordon was sitting on the back steps of his house trailer carefully shaving one end of each of the bamboo pieces. It was large, heavy bamboo, similar to the kind they had encountered in Vietnam. That was what had given him the idea — a punji stake trap for that scumbag Dumpler.
On the golf course no less. It was an intricate plot but rewarding in Gordon’s mind. He’d seen a number of punji pits in Vietnam — about three feet square and three feet deep, camouflaged. He could dig that in a night. He would do it about twenty yards from the eleventh hole on the Lakewood course, one of two eighteen-hole courses that the hotel maintained.