Moody leaned forward to get a better look, taking a pair of reading glasses from the counter and putting them on. The fishermen strained to look, without moving in closer.
“’At’s Lelun,” Moody said. “He’s crazy as a rat in a milk pail.”
“Tickerlay’s his name,” a young fisherman said, nodding. “Some call him Tickle.”
“You wouldn’t want him to catch you calling him Tickle,” another fisherman added. “He ain’t got a sense of humor. He’s a lot like his daddy was in that respect. A sorrier sample of a man than that Jacklon never drew breath.”
“He sure shit never drew a sober one,” Moody said, chuckling.
The older fisherman nodded in agreement.
“’At’s a pure-dee fact,” Moody agreed. “His redbone second wife, Alice Fay, killed him.”
“Red Bone?” Alexa asked.
“That’s an Indian and nigger mix,” the younger fisherman translated.
The older fisherman elbowed his younger buddy, who frowned, realizing he’d made a social faux pas. “I certainly didn’t mean to insult you by that, miss,” he mumbled.
“You get on Lelun’s bad side and you can go missing. Like some done recently,” the older fisherman said.
“What do you mean?” Alexa asked.
“Game warden name of Parnell was asking about Lelun a few days back, ’cause he was thinking Lelun bought that new boat he’s been riding around in with alligator hide profits. Wanted to know where he stayed at,” Moody said. “Now they’re looking for Parnell and a lady warden that was with him yesterday. I wouldn’t be surprised if they never found a trace of them.”
“That Parnell’s a pure-dee bastard,” the older fisherman declared. “He probably checks his own licenses hoping he can write his own self a citation ticket.”
The fishermen and Moody laughed. The sound was that of a donkey fighting with seals.
Manseur showed them the picture of the young man standing with Dorothy Fugate. “What about this one?”
“The woman, or him?” Moody asked.
“Him. Have you seen him before? Maybe with Ticholet?”
“Never seen anybody with Lelun. Well, this one time a few days back a man was with him, but I didn’t get close enough for a look. Figured he was taking him fishing or something. You could ask Grub. He’s right nosy.”
“Grub?” Alexa asked.
“What’d Lee do this time?” one of the fishermen asked.
“He stole that boat,” the store owner announced. “I knew he don’t have that kind of money sitting around. That boat cost thirty thousand if it cost a nickel. He was driving a beat-to-shit aluminum fourteen flat-bottom with an old smoke-belching Johnson on it one day, the next he’s in that new one, riding around like the king of the bayous.”
“What did he say about the new boat?” Manseur asked.
“I asked him about it and he said it was payment for some jobs he was doing for a somebody, who he didn’t name. I figured he was fulla shit and stole it somewhere. Maybe knocked some poor bastard in the head for it. I wouldn’t want him taking a fancy to anything I had.”
“When did you last see him?”
“Late last night he come by and fueled up.”
“You think he done in them wardens?” the older fisherman asked.
“Was he alone?” Alexa asked.
“Have to ask Grub. He was around. He always is.”
“Where is this Grub?” Alexa asked.
“He’s the retard works outside,” the younger fisherman said. “Wormy-lookin’ kid.”
Alexa decided she could talk to this Grub later.
“Any of y’all know where Leland’s camp is?” Manseur asked.
The men fell silent, blinking at him like owls.
“Okay. We’ll find it.”
“You do and you might wish you hadn’t,” Allen Moody said, with certainty.
79
In the morning breeze, naked but for a pair of tattered cotton shorts, Leland Ticholet flipped the last of the nutria onto its back on the dock, lodged its spine between two thick planks. Opening its belly with his skinning knife, he scooped out the entrails with his gore-caked hand and tossed them off into the water for the crabs. He began to skin the four-pound animal expertly, using the wide blade with the precision of a scalpel. Few things felt as right to Leland as skinning swamp rats.
That morning before sunrise he had gone out to check his catfish lines. The gator hooks he’d baited the day before hadn’t attracted anything, but he knew they would when the meat turned. He’d checked his nutria traps and found four of them caught up. He’d popped the nutria between the eyes with his. 22 before removing their limp bodies from the traps. Once upon a time he had just clubbed them to death, but he’d been bitten by one and almost lost a finger to the snapping rascal. Bullets were cheap when you measured them against fingers.
He was glad his business with Doc was all over. His only problem now was getting up enough gator skins for Moody to keep gas in his boat and buy the supplies he needed to get by. He looked into the boat and frowned at the thick brown bloodstain on the rear seat and on the floor just in front of the seat, where Doc had leaked out. He’d clean it up later.
He was enjoying the steady breeze and the overcast when he heard the unmistakable sound of a boat, a good distance off yet, but definitely coming in his direction. It wouldn’t be a fisherman or trapper passing by, because the only channel into the area ended not far from Leland’s cut-through, and most everybody knew to stay out of his territory.
As the boat drew closer, the sound of the motors grew louder. A flock of disturbed blackbirds rose into the sky approximately where the channel formed a Y, the left fork heading for the mouth of his inlet. Any boat coming in would effectively block him in. Leland went into his cabin in order to prepare a proper welcome if that boat happened to contain trespassers.
80
Alexa thought the swamp both surreal and eerily beautiful. Above them, pelicans, egrets, cranes, and other birds of unknown denominations flew north below the clouds. Deputy Kip Boudreaux explained that the birds felt the drop in pressure and knew that their normal habitat was going to be inhospitable in a few hours, and they were leaving. He commented that it was too bad the people living around here weren’t a tenth as smart as birds.
Alexa sat beside Manseur on the bench in front of the console where Boudreaux, a pleasant young man wearing aviator sunglasses and a baseball cap, stood piloting the boat. Manseur had his windbreaker positioned like a photographer’s hood, shielding the laptop’s screen from the daylight so he could see it. As he pointed to the position of the blinking dot, Boudreaux translated the direction into turns.
It seemed to Alexa they had traveled miles into the maze of narrow waterways. Tall reeds, bushes, small trees, weeds, and grasses lined the banks. Often the channel they were using would open into a large body of water, usually with several possible channel exits to choose from. She saw cranes with their skinny legs in the water, turtles sliding off logs, and alligators slipping from the banks into the water, spooked by the intruding vessel.
Before they’d left the launch, Boudreaux told her that he had heard stories about Leland Ticholet and his moonshiner daddy for years, but he wasn’t sure exactly where the Ticholet fishing camp was located, or even if it was still standing. The swamp, he explained, tended to lay claim to any building left uninhabited for long.
They passed by several small cabins built on poles, on floats, or constructed on barges. The deeper into the swamp they went, the fewer they saw, but more of the ones they did see were abandoned and in some progressive state of ruin.
Alexa wasn’t accustomed to speedboats. The fast turns and tight banks made her feel like the boat would keep sliding sideways and end up on dry land, but she did her best to lean against the turns and tried not to close her eyes when she became alarmed. She had no choice but to trust that Deputy Boudreaux knew the limits of his craft, and would not lose control of it or slam it into a submerged log. Although the confident deputy seemed to know the lanes, Alexa couldn’t imagine how anyone could differentiate one of the waterways from another.