“McNalley, FBI. Are you okay?” The voice was that of one of the guys from the Duvalier.
“Not even close. What’s going on?”
It was over in moments. McNalley and his partner, a man named Jennings, had been trying to find Flatt — that was his real name, after all — for weeks. Every time they’d gotten close, he’d run off. That accounted for his story about being followed. Poor Flatt — he’d been pursued all over the Quarter, both by Rogers and the people who were trying to help him. The FBI became aware of what was happening early on, but they had no idea who was steering Flatt. When they finally found him at the Duvalier, he was stone cold and in the company of a large jazz cornet player who failed to fit their scenario at all. They decided to set me loose on a short, imperceptible leash. I was bait to get Rogers to admit what he was doing.
As for Gilstrup, Forde, and McLean, they had been recruited by Flatt just as he had drawn in Claire Sturges. Flatt had been rotating between the four homes and the Duvalier while in New Orleans, providing him with several burrows to run down in case he was cornered. The fellows from the FBI had found the pocket notebook on Flatt too, and had already cleared the three covers, leaving only Jackson Rogers as a suspect. They had finished wiring his home for sound only hours before I did his back door a disservice with my pry bar.
“That’s it,” McNalley finished, “I trust you’ll keep this confidential. It would be the safest thing to do.”
I thought it over. My anonymity is important to me. Save for a small circle of friends, a growing concentric circle of clients, and one disgruntled police detective, everyone considers me a simple, if overeducated, bar musician. I like it that way. Jackson Rogers was going away for a long, long time, whether I charged him with the attempted murder or not. Espionage, extortion, murder — it all added up to several life sentences. I declined to press charges.
The doctor at the hospital told me I got my bell rung but good, and ordered me to stay off my feet and out of fights for at least six weeks. I discovered almost immediately that blowing out a scale on the comet nearly put me into a coffin, so I decided to take his advice. Claire Sturges felt guilty for endangering my life and took it upon herself to be my on-call nurse.
She’s sitting across the room now, as the replacement musician downstairs does something magical and iridescent with “What a Wonderful World.”
I told her the entire story, of course, swearing her to secrecy in the name of national security. She was thankful, and has brought me food from local restaurants every night as I’ve slogged through my recovery.
Sometimes, the look in her eyes belies my earlier impression of staid, proper, stable, unapproachable Claire Sturges. And what the heck? She’s really an attractive woman. When I can stand on my own without swaying, and I reach the point where I don’t see three of everything, I might just ask her out.
Yes sir. It’s a wonderful world.
Palmetto Springs
by Jeremy Herbert
Jeremy Herbert is an AV technician and a freelance writer who covers movies and theme parks for websites such as Bloody Disgusting and Crooked Marquee. He says that his lifelong interest in theme parks has brought him to many tourist-trap motels such as the one featured in this story. He is also a filmmaker and has won awards for his short horror films.
Bernie whipped his tail across the sink, scattered the little shampoos like bowling pins, and made Sherm wonder if he should’ve gone with a smaller alligator. Would’ve been easier to haul from his truck to the hotel room. Easier to cram into the shower. A helluva lot lighter, for one thing.
Bernie’s fat snout bumped open the bathroom door and he hissed.
“Quit whinin’ before I give you something to whine about,” said Sherm with an exhausted wheeze. It was an empty threat, and Bernie knew as much. Another bump, another hiss. His ridge-backed tail smacked Sherm’s ribs. He grunted at what felt like butter knives jabbing his side.
No, Bernie was the perfect size for the plan, Sherm thought, through the pain. Any smaller and he’d only nibble. Any bigger and Sherm’s back would’ve given out. Bernie was the perfect size for portability, and the perfect size for murder.
“C’mon, you big bastard,” Sherm spat. Bernie’s deceptively tiny arms slapped against the doorframe. Sherm pushed. Bernie didn’t need to push back; those tiny arms were nothing but muscle. “All right, that’s it.”
Sherm took two steps back and charged. The bathroom door bounced off Bernie’s snout. He hissed like a gas leak. Sherm didn’t stop until they hit the shower curtain and almost fell straight into the stained plastic tub. Bernie saw a chance and took it before Sherm had any say in the matter.
The alligator lunged out of Sherm’s embrace fast enough to leave tracks. Sherm gritted his teeth until the tail caught up with the rest of Bernie and bashed him in the jaw. He crumpled against the bathroom door like a puppet cut from its strings, his weight slamming it shut. Sherm slumped to the cracked tile floor before regaining any relevant motor functions. He opened his eyes for what felt like the first time and stared at the lone fluorescent light overhead, waiting for divine instruction, until his vision sobered up and dimmed it until the dead mosquitoes crept back in around the edges. Then the sound came back. The bad-engine rattle of a pissed-off alligator.
“Oh!” Sherm said. “Oh!” Bernie flailed and fought at the shower curtain until one of his marble eyes peeked over the lip of the tub and into Sherm’s weaker parts. He scrambled to his feet, slipping on the tiles, until he reached the handle and flung the door open.
The last thing Sherm saw as he shut the door was Bernie’s tail slapping the yellowed soap dish carved out of the wall. He could still hear the plastic struggle as he turned to the sink and took stock of himself.
Sherman “Sherm” Fisk’s arms looked like the angry aftermath of a tic-tac-toe tournament nobody won. He shook his head, but didn’t bother testing for pain; after twenty years working whichever alligator farm was too new to Central Florida to know any better, everything below the neck was mostly scar tissue. Sherm stood as straight as his wiry frame allowed and looked at the mirror, looked himself in the eye. What remained above the neck was starting to look an awful lot like scar tissue, too. Sherm rubbed at a pink patch where Bernie had landed his uppercut and gave up just as fast. “Dumb bastard,” he said, looking at his reflection. “Dumb bastard.”
The rooms at The Palm Springs Hotel were only differentiated by disrepair. Most rooms on the ground floor had only jagged screw holes to prove there were ever door locks. Sherm’s was no exception, and even the door to the neighboring room had the guts hammered out of its handle. Only a few TVs were actually stolen because there’s little aftermarket value for a 1990 Zenith, but the survivors had scars unique to each of them. A missing volume-down button here, a stoved-in screen there. The pool was a swamp. The mattresses smelled like strip clubs. The mini-fridges didn’t even plug into anything. The hotel was too far down the Irlo Bronson Memorial Highway to be of much use to tourists making a pilgrimage for a cartoon mouse. But a room at The Palm Springs ran $30 a night and the owner only took cash.
For burnouts, rejects, and the morally dubious like Sherm, it might as well be the Ritz. The hotel earned a nickname among such seedy types, perhaps because of them — Palmetto Springs. Sherm rolled his neck until it protested and walked to the window overlooking the empty side of the hotel. A thick, muddy brown palmetto bug scurried from the broken air conditioner as Sherm rounded the bed. He stopped long enough to watch it disappear under the flowery comforter and shook his head. Only in Florida would they try to make the cockroaches sound tropical too.