Sal turned the Cadillac at Homestead toward Flamingo, and heading southwest on Florida 9336 he did not say a word to Danny for the next ten minutes. Instead he devoted most of his attention to his meatball sandwich until they passed Long Pine Key. He switched to the dimmers as they approached the park ranger station, but so far they had not seen anything that looked like trouble. From the speakers Tony Bennett crooned something about “Nice work if you can get it” as the Caddy sped past the Pineland Trail turnoff.
Finishing the last of his sandwich Sal stopped at the Pa-Hay-Okee turnstile of the Everglades entrance station and slid a plastic card into the slot without wiping off his thumb print of tomato sauce. The crossing bar raised to allow the car through. Danny did not bother to ask his partner how he had managed to get the card. You just didn’t question Salvatore DiLucca about something like that.
“Past midnight this part of the turnoff’s not meant for anything ‘cept marsh rabbits or Seminole Indians,” Sal finally said. “Guard your cajones, kid. ‘Gators ain’t vegetarians.” Danny did not laugh. He nodded instead and offered a smile that he hoped did not appear weak.
Once the access road turned to dirt the body in the trunk thumped heavily against the Caddy’s hood. It probably would have been easier to haul a Brahma bull into the swamp land, and an hour earlier both Danny and DiLucca had to sit on that hood just to get the damned thing shut. Danny had pumped five bullets into Fat Larry Arnello while the man was still zipping his fly after porking one of Nicky Borelli’s whores.
Arnello had made the huge mistake of shaving off a tidy profit from Borelli’s Miami cocaine connections while jiggling the books he handed to Sal. This put Salvatore DiLucca in a very bad place with the old kingpin. Every piece man in Miami knew that no one ever got the chance to piss on Sal a second time.
Danny pumped three .45 slugs into Fat Larry’s heart and two into his head just as Sal had instructed, but he did not empty the chamber on him. DiLucca had warned, “You never know when you might need that extra slug.” Sal conceded that cutting Arnello’s throat may have been more appropriate but why stink up the Cad’s trunk? The thought had occurred to Danny to slice off the fat man’s pecker and shove it into his mouth just to add a little panache to the job, then figured that might appear a bit hot-blooded for a freshie. It was a clean hit, Danny’s first, and whacking that lard ass proved a lot easier than he had expected. Hell, it even felt good. Nice work if you can get it, just like the man said.
“I’m sure goin’ to miss those Arnello dinners. You ever been? No shit, I’d take his wife’s lasagna over pussy.”
“It’s in the meat sauce,” Danny agreed absently, still thinking about the swamp alligators and his gonads. He forced himself back into the moment. “Lorraine Arnello does something with the oregano. She wouldn’t tell God what’s in it if her tits were on fire.”
DiLucca nodded, then braked so suddenly that Danny pitched forward and swallowed for air. Sal pulled the Caddy to the side of the road, cutting the engine and headlights in the middle of Bennett’s “No, no, they can’t take that away from me …”
The road plunged into darkness. DiLucca looked around and surveying the area seemed satisfied.
“Sorry about the jolt, kid. It’s easy to miss this trail at night.” He reached under the seat, handed Danny one of two high-powered flashlights, and pulled the lever to pop the trunk. Danny followed him to the rear of the car while DiLucca looked under the Caddy’s hood.
The younger man covered his mouth and gagged.
Fat Larry clearly had seen better days. Arnello’s blood had curdled in thick jelly-like pools of fleshy pulp that smeared the plastic shower curtain with which Sal had lined the cargo area. But this had not caused Danny’s stomach to double over on itself. Arnello’s spilled guts he had expected. The stench was another matter entirely.
“Christ, the man is a pig even when he’s a corpse,” Sal said, assessing the damage done to his trunk by Arnello’s posthumous shit. Fat Larry had consumed a truckload of pasta and his sphincter could not hold back the Jonestown Flood his bowels had released. DiLucca covered his nose against the hot stew of spilled guts and turds. “Not exactly a death with dignity, huh, kid? Looks like the plastic caught most of it. Phew! What a stink!”
They spread the plastic curtain on the roadside and placed the body on top of it, wrapping Arnello inside like a huge cannoli. Carrying Fat Larry past the saw-palmetto and strangler figs along the elevated trail was like trying to haul a piano down a sloping mountain. Although it was not a great distance to the river the two men found it difficult to manipulate all that blubber while holding their flashlights steady. The hardwood hammocks served as a marker for Sal who followed the narrowing trail like an Indian scout to the Shark River basin below.
“I know this part of the ‘glades better than most of the ‘gators. But be careful, kid. The next log you step on might bite your ass clean off.”
The two floated the body about a hundred feet into the marsh through the saw grass where the mangroves grew the thickest, leaving Larry Arnello there like a bloated whale that had swum too close to shore. Climbing back to the elevated boardwalk above the basin they watched the corpse lie face down in the hazy moonlight reflecting off the swamp.
“Okay, fellas,” Sal whispered to the dark lumps surrounding Shark River. “Soup’s on. Tonight you eat Italian!”
They searched the basin and the tall barbed sedges for movement, their flashlight beams skimming the water-sodden saucer like two lonely beacons.
Nothing moved.
Danny smacked a mosquito off the back of his neck, already sopping with sweat. Swamp crickets rang in his ears, screeching little cooties that did not chirp so much as shriek. A dismal moon crawled behind a dark cloud and winked out shrouding the river in a blackness so total Danny could feel it inside his bones.
“Christ, Sal. He’s floating like a bar of Ivory Soap. You’d think someone so fucking huge would sink faster than a stone.”
“He’ll go under when he fills up with some of that marsh water. For now it’s better he don’t. ‘Gators feed close to the surface where they can smell what they eat. Ol’ Larry is about to become one meat-and-potatoes feast, don’t you worry ‘bout that.”
Turning to Danny his face caught in the flashlight’s beam. Danny could see his partner was enjoying this. A smiling Salvatore DiLucca resembled one of those ever-grinning alligators.
Down river something went splunk! Sal aimed his flashlight at the smooth water below the walkway. A dark object that looked like a large tree limb drifted into the beam barely noticeable in the black ink of the swamp.
Upriver came another splash as a second one, larger than the first, crawled into the water.
The men’s flashlight beams circled the basin like searchlights. They sliced through the steamy darkness of Shark River while a galaxy of bugs danced in the glare.
From a small beach about a hundred yards away another alligator charged the water in an awkward motion that looked like a crawl but which was much too fast. It belly-flopped into the basin like a clumsy child, vanishing entirely beneath the surface. When it reemerged its awkwardness disappeared as it slid silently toward the body. Only its twin periscope eyes and the upper portion of its back broke the water’s surface.
“Come on, guys … That’s it … that’s it … There’s plenty to go around,” Sal whispered. “… just a little midnight snack before callin’ it a night, hey?”
Danny gasped, aiming the beam at a fourth alligator drifting toward Arnello even closer than the other three. “Jesus! I didn’t even hear that one go into the water.”
This alligator, larger than the others, probably had entered the river just below the walkway where they stood. Aware of its element of surprise it glided toward its prey faster by keeping mostly underwater.
Four alligators circled the body like a shadowy committee deciding some sort of reptilian pecking order. The large one moved first and fell on Arnello so hard that he disappeared completely beneath the surface. The moment he reemerged the others went for him. There was no rhythm nor pattern to their attack, just the crunch of bone and a constant cycle of tugging and chewing at whatever flesh they could wrench from the body. The attack became a blood-soaked taffy pull as alligators crawled over Arnello and each other, disappearing beneath him, pushing him under the water then pushing him back up only to pull him down again. Arnello’s arms flailed wildly like a convulsing rag doll and in the wild thrashing it was impossible to tell if the man was a living or a dead thing.
An alligator tugged at his leg gnawing it into meaty tatters at the knee. It allowed the limb to drift off favoring another strike at the man’s fleshier torso. Another one took a run directly at Arnello’s face and managed to remove everything above his nose but an ear that hung ridiculously from a denuded skull. Much of the frenzied attack became lost behind the constant spray of swamp water, and each time Fat Larry reemerged the twin flashlight beams revealed less of him.
Danny coughed up a taste of his dinner but he chose not to share that information with DiLucca. He snapped off his flashlight and turned away from the scene’s bloody denouement.
“In fifteen minutes there won’t be enough left of Arnello to spread on a saltine,” Sal said, shutting off his flashlight. The sky was swallowed by the thick tangle of slash pines and dwarf cypress making the darkness complete.
“Are you okay, kid?”
“I’ll be okay once we get out of here.”
An awkward silence followed. It lingered in the darkness forcing Danny to focus on the damp reek of the swamp.
“You haven’t seen the second act yet,” Sal finally added. His voice, emptied of emotion, seemed measured and rehearsed. Danny could barely make out DiLucca’s outline silhouetted against the night sky although the man stood close to him. In the darkness he somehow sounded distant.
“Second act?”
Danny snapped his flashlight back on, washing the walkway in light. His partner stood directly in front of him. He held a gun aimed directly at Danny’s heart.
“Sal? What the—?”
“Three words for you, Danny. Just three words.” He turned on his own flashlight and placed it in front of him to keep a bead on his target.
“Sal, I don’t know what you’re–”
“You fucked up.”
“Sal, What in Christ are you—?”
Danny shut himself up. It was pointless to protest further. Still he could think of nothing else to do. DiLucca cut him off before he could utter another word.
“— fucked up big time. ‘Till tonight I wasn’t sure if Arnello wasn’t just tryin’ to blow smoke up my ass by fingerin’ you as his partner. But when you mentioned Lorraine Arnello’s oregano that sealed it. That ass-wipe wasn’t in the habit of invitin’ the freshies over to break bread at his wife’s table ‘less he planned to talk shop over coffee and cigars.”
He stepped closer to Danny, the smile melting from his face like a wax candle. Salvatore DiLucca now was all business.
“Fat Larry pocketed Nick Borelli’s profits with an accomplice, Danny, someone the traffickers didn’t know. I’d hoped Arnello was just tryin’ to save his own sorry ass by namin’ names. You broke my heart tonight, kid.”
A thought formed so quickly in Danny’s brain that he acted on it before it had fully taken shape. Talking Sal out of this was not in the equation. He had understood that much the moment he saw the gun.
You never know when you might need that extra slug, kid …
Sal had been so right.
He flashed the high powered beacon directly into DiLucca’s eyes, blinding him long enough to lunge forward and kick the other flashlight off the elevated walkway into the basin below. A bullet tore into his right leg causing a lightning bolt of pain to flash through the limb. Danny fell to his knees. Going down he tossed his own flashlight over his shoulder throwing the two men into a darkness devoid even of shadows.
Having no better choice than desperation Danny rolled off the walkway in an excruciating head-over-heals journey down the embankment to the river’s edge. He crawled through a cluster of strangler figs, dragging his shattered leg behind him like a useless pine log.
“I got one bullet left, Sal! Just like you taught me!”
DiLucca fired at the voice coming at him from the darkness below the walkway. The bullet whizzed past Danny’s shoulder.
Stupid! Stupid!
Dragging himself into a clump of hammocks in the shallows he clenched his teeth and waded through the cold water of the marsh as far as his agony would allow.
Sal fired again and Danny heard the slug go plink! in the swamp water in front of him.
“I got a whole lot more bullets, kid! A whole lot more!”
DiLucca received no answer. Danny would not be stupid a second time.
“Come on, kid! Take your best shot!”
Still no answer.
A thousand darning needles embedded themselves into Danny’s knee. Sal’s .45 must have shattered his kneecap and he could not pull himself to his feet without a land mine going off inside his leg. He let the water absorb his weight, and biting his fist he tried to muffle the agony he wanted to scream out. Hearing DiLucca step off the walkway, he pushed his way through the hammocks. Maybe Sal was searching for the tossed flashlight. Maybe he was searching for him.
None of this mattered. All Danny needed was one clear shot.
“You’re forgetting something, Danny!” DiLucca called out. “You know what it is, don’t you? You know what else is out there in that saw grass!”
Danny had not forgotten, but he was a man who had his priorities. Now DiLucca was playing with him, trying to goose him out of the water into the open, trying to get him to say just one word. Sal sloshed through a sea of sedges toward the wounded man concealed by the tall grass in the shallows.
“The alligators, Danny! Hundreds of ‘em! They’re out there in the dark and you have only one bullet. What you goin’ to do, kid? What you goin’ to do?”
Danny shoved his knuckles hard into his mouth and bit down on them trying not to scream. He could not move farther if he wanted to. He would not have moved if he could.
“Remember that quiet ‘gator, Danny? The big one you couldn’t hear go into the water? Remember what he did to Fat Larry? Maybe that sneaky fucker is crawling through the saw grass toward you right now lookin’ for some dessert! Can you draw that picture in your mind, Danny? Can you hear him comin’ for you?”
Danny could. He held the gun out in front of him with both hands marine-style, wildly searching to his left, then to his right.
Down river Sal shouted out something that sounded as if he had gargled his words, but Danny could not make it out. DiLucca fired another shot, then two more in rapid succession. If he had emptied his chamber he would have to reload right there in the swamp water, much too risky a move for a man who did not hold all the cards. This was not Salvatore DiLucca’s style. Unless …
…Unless he was firing at something else!
For several minutes Danny heard thrashing in the water. Then nothing. The stillness surrounding him was worse than anything Sal had screamed out. Danny crouched low in the steamy saw grass waiting for a sound, for something, for anything. His head ached with the riotous chorus of the swamp crickets while a thousand demons did a mad dance inside his brain. In the murky stillness of the Shark River swamp one demon spoke louder than the others.
Why had Sal stopped calling for him?
The saw grass in front of him rustled like crunched paper.
It was crazy to speak, to utter even one word that might give his position away. But the demons would not let him remain silent.
“Sal?”
There was no answer.
“Listen, Sal. We can work this thing out!”
Nothing.
The tall grass rustled again. Whatever was there, it was moving closer.
Holding the .45 straight out, Danny aimed it toward the sound of crunching sedges and sloshing water. He waited for the grass curtain to part, knowing that in the next moment either a ravenous ‘gator or a man with a gun would emerge. He was ready for either. He could do this.
One shot. Just one shot. If he could keep his eyes on the target right in front of him he could pick it off with one bullet.
“A walk in the park,” he whispered to himself. “Just like a goddamned walk in–”
The thick saw grass in front of him separated. He held the revolver firm in his grip, one hand steadying the other.
He heard another papery sound, this time from the grass behind him.
… something behind him …
… and in front of him …
Danny stared at his hand that held the .45, then slowly dropped his arm to his side. He turned to watch one alligator splash through the grass into the shallows, then two others. They moved in the swamp water in a crawling swim as they circled, watching him, waiting. The grass separated again and two more appeared.
Sal was right. The big one had found him, all right … and he had brought his friends.
Danny dug one foot into the soft mud while the other floated uselessly in the stinging cold water. One bullet. One shot. A walk in the park. He could do it.
He could do it.
He placed the barrel of the revolver into his mouth and squeezed the trigger.
####
[bctt tweet=”OCTOBER TERROR 2018 Short Story Award – Entry #4 ‘Fat Larry’s Night With The Alligators’ by Ken Goldman – Enjoy all this terrific, disturbing material you have in your hands, lots of horror stories at your disposal for your dark delight and vote!” username=”theboldmom”]
On October 23rd we’ll close submissions and open a poll for the readers to choose their favourite one! You’ll have a week to make your choice and on October 31st we’ll announce the winner!!!
