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“Your job to know,” Carver said, unsurprised. Everyone in town apparently knew his name and where he lived.

“It is that.” Gordon smiled. “You’re the only guest out at the Glades Inn. Only outsider in town, matter of fact. So you’re bound to be noticed. We ain’t exactly Miami here, Mr. Carver.”

“I guess you were told I’m here for the fishing,” Carver said.

“Oh, sure. I got a yuk out of that. Most folks’d rather drop a line in water where there’s more likely to be fish than something that’s gonna eat their bait then have them for dessert.”

“There must be some good fishing. Terry Frist came here a while back. He usually knew where they were biting.” A different lie for Gordon. He’d told I.C. Unit he hadn’t known Frist in Del Moray. Which had been the truth. Or part of the truth. The useful thing about lies was that they were so adaptable.

Chief Gordon gave Carver a dead-eyed, level look, the kind cops were so good at. “Way I recall it, Terry Frist didn’t catch nothin’ but a big ol’ ’gator. I’d be careful walkin’ in his footsteps.”

“Are you warning me to be careful in and out of the swamp, Chief?”

“Cautionin’ you, is the way I think of it.” He put his elbows on the table and leaned toward Carver. “I gotta tell you, there’s some angry people out there, in and around the swamp, all through these parts.”

“Angry at what?”

“Ever’thin’ from violence on TV an’ in the movies to supermarket bar codes. You don’t wanna do no verbal joustin’ with ’em. We got folks around here, Mr. Carver, would shoot you dead over violence on TV.”

“You think that’s what happened to Terry Frist? An argument over politics or the price of something in produce?”

“I think somebody shoulda warned Terry Frist. I read he was a cop. Maybe he was workin’ undercover, an’ this was no place for him to be.”

“Maybe he found out about something. Say, a drug-smuggling operation.”

Chief Gordon grinned. “Why, you’re fishin’ already, Mr. Carver.”

“Maybe. But Mangrove City’s near enough to the coast that drug shipments from the sea could be brought here by airboat through the swamp, and the law would never be able to figure out the routes or the timing. A cop — as you say, maybe working undercover — was killed here recently. And I met I. C. Unit this morning in Muggy’s and was told he’s part of a set and recently of the Union Correctional Institution over in Raiford. And now here you are…”

“The local cop on the take?” Gordon didn’t seem angry at the suggestion, which made Carver curious. “That’s so preposterous I ain’t even gonna respond to it, Mr. Carver, except to say we got creatures in the swamp more deadly than any ’gator. Maybe one of ’em killed Terry Frist.”

“And you don’t want to be next, is that it?”

“Nor do I want you to be, Mr. Carver. I.C. and that Peevy and Magruder, those are bad men. A ’gator grab one of ’em an’ it’d spit him right out. I did feel compelled to warn you, an’ now I have.” Chief Gordon shoved back his chair and stood up, tucking in his blue shirt around his bulging stomach.

Carver felt sorry for him. He was past his prime and dealing with local toughs who had him and the rest of Mangrove City under their collective greasy thumb.

“Do you think Terry Frist was murdered?” Carver asked.

Again Chief Gordon was impassive. “What all I think publicly, it’s all in my report, Mr. Carver. If you’re really serious about doin’ any fishin’ while you’re here, you oughta see Irv down at his bait shop. He’ll tell you where they’re bitin’ an’ you might not get bit back.” He raised a pudgy forefinger and wagged it at Carver. “You remember I said might.” He turned and waddled out, swinging his elbows wide to clear his holstered revolver and the clutter of gear attached to his belt.

Carver poked his straw into the thick milk shake and took a long sip. It was the best thing he’d encountered since arriving in Mangrove City.

That afternoon, Carver set out from the Glades Inn wearing loose-fitting green rubber boots, old jeans, a black pullover shirt, and half a tube of mosquito repellent. He carried a casting rod and wore a slouch cap with an array of colorful feathered lures hooked into it. He hadn’t been fishing for years and didn’t really know much about it, but he figured if his cover story was fishing, he’d better fish. Maybe he’d even catch something.

Irv of Irv’s Baits seemed to know a lot about fishing and had recommended his night crawlers, explaining to Carver that it took the fattest, juiciest worms to catch the biggest fish. Carver thought that made an elemental kind of sense and bought two dozen of the wriggling monsters squirming around in an old takeout fried chicken bucket half full of rich black loam.

He loaded all of this into the cavernous trunk of the Olds, then drove along the road toward town until he came to a turnoff he’d noticed on his previous trip.

The narrow gravel road soon became even narrower, and the gravel became mud that threatened to bog down the big car’s rear wheels. Carver braked the Olds to a stop and turned off the engine. Silence somehow made deeper by the ceaseless drone of insects closed in. Off to his right, through dense foliage shadowed by overhead tree limbs and draped Spanish moss, he saw the dull green sheen of water.

He climbed out of the Olds, got his rod and reel and bucket of worms from the trunk, then muddied the tip of his cane as he limped from what was left of the road and trudged in his boots toward the water. His motion made sensory waves in the swamp. The humming insect tone varied slightly at his passing. He heard soft and abrupt watery sounds and the quick and startled beat of wings.

When he reached a likely spot, he stopped, placed the bucket on a tree stump, and stood in the shade. He disengaged the barbed hook from the cork handle of his casting rod, used it to impale one of Irv’s ill-fated night crawlers, and moved slightly to the side. Careful not to snag his line on nearby branches, he used the weight of the bait, a small lead sinker, and a red and white plastic float to cast toward a clear circle of water in the shade of an ancient cypress tree. Line whirred out, there was a faint plop! and Carver was ready to reel in a fish.

Irv’s worm must have loafed underwater. Nothing happened for about fifteen minutes. Then the red and white float bobbed, went completely underwater, and Carver reeled in an empty hook.

So what did it matter? He was really here to establish himself as a genuine fisherman, in case anyone might be watching him. He reached into the bucket for another worm.

The fishing got better at the spot Carver had chosen. It took him only about an hour to feed the fish the rest of Irv’s worms. He removed the fishing cork, cut the leader line above the hook and sinker, then selected the feathered and multiple-barbed ‘Oh Buggie!’ lure and unhooked it from his cap. He attached it to the line, cast it to where he’d lost all his worms, and almost immediately a fish took it.

Carver reeled in a tiny carp. Since he didn’t like to clean fish, and this one was too small to keep anyway, he worked the hook from its mouth and tossed it back. Catch and release, he thought, hoping that wouldn’t happen with whoever killed Terry Frist.

He thought nothing the rest of the afternoon. That evening he drove into town and had the family meatloaf special at Vanilla’s, then stopped in at Muggy’s for a beer before driving back to the motel. He saw no sign of I. C. Unit or his two confederates and was pretty much ignored by the townspeople. They saw him yet they didn’t, as if someone had planted in them the posthypnotic suggestion that he didn’t exist, and there was a short-circuit between their eyes and their brains that made him invisible to them.