The Buck Stops Here

by Mindy Starns Clark

  “So that leaves Armand,” I whispered. “Or Beth.”

  We pulled into the driveway of Ton Ton’s house, and Tom left the motor running as we got out. Immediately, the dogs at Armand’s started barking, but I could see in the dim porch light that they were tied up safely to a tree.

  I turned my attention to Ton Ton. The woman was dead weight, and even though she was wiry and petite, getting her out of the car wasn’t going to be easy.

  “This poor soul,” I said, struggling to pull her up into a sitting position by her hands. Her long black gloves slipped off, so I set them down and tried again. “I think she needs to find a good AA program. Do you know she has a big old whiskey still in her backyard?”

  Tom opened the other door to try from that side. He put both hands under her arms, and pulled. As he did, I let go of her hands. They flopped down, lifeless, against her simple gray dress, and in the light of the car I couldn’t help thinking how oddly red they were. The palms were inflamed and angry, as if covered in a rash.

  Or contact dermatitis.

  I stood up straight and looked at Tom, my eyes wide. He was holding her up and trying to lift her so that he could carry her.

  All at once I had a disturbing thought. Her hands. The still. What if it wasn’t being used to make alcohol?

  What if it was being used to distill castor beans into ricin?

  Suddenly, we were blinded by the lights of a truck racing into the driveway. As it screeched to a stop, the beams trained directly on us, Ton Ton stood up straight, pulled herself loose from the surprised Tom, and deftly stepped away. Before we knew what had happened, she had reached down toward her ankle and whipped out a knife. She held it up, ready to strike.

  “No, Ton Ton, what are you doing?” Armand said as he climbed from the truck. “Put it away!”

  The dogs went crazy next door, barking wildly, straining against their ropes to get free. My heart pounded. I forced myself to focus.

  “They’re going to ruin everything,” she said to Armand. “Can’t you see that? All your work, all you’ve accomplished—they’re going to take that away from you.”

  Armand looked at us desperately, and in his face I saw clearly fear, then guilt, then something like resignation.

  “I always had a feeling there might come a time…” he began and then stopped and shook his head.

  “What, Armand?” Tom asked.

  “The encryption program. I knew I couldn’t milk it forever. But I thought at least I would be able to finish what I started.”

  Tom shook his head sadly. “Armand, you’re the one?” he asked, sounding genuinely wounded. “You were James’ accomplice? But why?”

  “James needed my piece of the puzzle, so I gave it to him. I didn’t know he was gonna get me on tape incriminating myself. And I sure didn’t know he was gonna turn around and sell the program to terrorists.”

  “What did you think he was going to do with it?” Tom demanded.

  “What I’ve done with it since then,” Armand replied. “Sell it to businesses. Donate it to government institutions. I still have the keys, you see. Everyone thinks their encryption is secure, and it is. Except from me. I can read anything I want to.”

  My mind raced, wondering how I could have read this man so wrong. Unlike the greedy Sparks, money seemed the last thing Armand was interested in. I thought about that, and then suddenly understanding filled my brain.

  “Your work with the swamps,” I said to Armand. “With the legislature. That’s your driving force.”

  “Listen, cher, the only way to fight dirty politics is with something even dirtier. Between the money I make selling company information and the secrets I learn spying on government communications, I’ve been able to do a lot toward protecting my bayou. To me, that’s all that matters.”

  I looked at Ton Ton, who still stood at the ready, the knife glinting in the darkness. I didn’t even have to ask her motivations. I felt sure she was willing to do whatever she could to protect Armand—including using her knowledge of swamp medicine to whip up a deadly poison of ricin and inject it into an inhaler.

  “Do you know that your aunt tried to kill James Sparks?” I said.

  Armand looked at Ton Ton in despair.

  “No,” he said.

  “I told you he couldn’t be trusted,” she said. “I told you the day would come when we would have to use Watts for more than just delivering messages.”

  “But to kill him?”

  “Armand,” Ton Ton said, “you honored your part of the agreement. James doesn’t understand that what you’re doing is more important than money.”

  “What agreement?” asked Tom.

  Armand hesitated and then exhaled slowly.

  “When James got caught on film by the FBI, selling to the terrorists,” Armand explained, “he was gonna turn me in, but I gave him a better alternative. I told him that if he kept silent about my involvement, I would be able to make things happen on the outside, so that by the time he got out of prison, there would be some money waiting for him. Big money. We set up a numbered bank account overseas, and half of all my profits goes in there for him. He’s worth a couple million dollars by now.”

  “Money he doesn’t deserve,” Ton Ton said. “James was supposed to keep his mouth shut. Then she shows up, and before you know it, he thinks he can dictate to us, thinks he can use her to get more money out of us. It makes me sick. I just did what I had to do. I’m still doing what I have to do.”

  Tom and I looked at each other, eyes wide. My biggest fear was that he might try and do something brave so that I could escape. I had to keep that from happening, had to keep them talking until I could figure a way out of this where no one would get hurt.

  “So when James was in that house in Virginia four years ago,” I asked Armand, “the phone call he needed to make was to you?”

  “Yeah, cher. I had made some modifications to the program. I didn’t know that he would need to use the program himself or I wouldn’t have done it. As it is, once he had that boating accident, everything changed. When he found himself facing sixteen years, he started upping the ante with me.”

  “James is always wanting money, more money, all the time,” Ton Ton added. “He doesn’t understand there are more important things going on here. The swamp is disappearing out from under our feet!”

  “So let me ask you a question, Armand,” I said. “The day we met, outside of Family HEARTS, when I was mugged—”

  “You were mugged?” Tom asked.

  Armand looked embarrassed.

  “Yeah, that was Ton Ton’s idea. I paid some kid twenty bucks to steal your purse and let me catch him. I needed a way to get you to trust me. I had to get close to you, to see what you knew.”

  “She knows plenty,” Ton Ton said. “She’s got to go. So does he.”

  She crouched a bit, focused in on Tom, ready to pounce with the knife. My pulse surged.

  “Ton Ton, you put that kingsnake in my car.”

  “That wasn’t no kingsnake, cher,” she said. “That was a canebrake. If it’d bit you, you’d be dead.”

  “What did you do?” Armand demanded of his aunt.

  “I drove up to the hotel yesterday and put a snake in Callie’s car. I thought she woulda been bitten and killed—and no one would ever have known it wasn’t an accident.”

  I shuddered, realizing that the snake had been in the car with me all the way to Beth’s house and halfway back again before it showed itself.

  “Ton Ton,” Armand said. “Put down the knife.”

  Without waiting for her reply, he walked back to his truck and reached inside. When he reemerged, he was holding a shotgun. I thought he was going to point it at her, but instead he trained it on us.

  “Go ahead, Ton Ton,” he said sadly, still looking at us. “Put your knife down. I don’t want you getting hurt.”

  “Armand?” Tom said, taking a step back. “You’re my friend.”

  Armand shrugged.

&n
bsp; “But she’s family,” he said simply. “And in a way, she’s right. Our fight for the swamp must go on, whatever the cost. Think of it like a war. The two of you will just be casualties of war.”

  Much to my amazement, as we stood there under the barrel of Armand’s gun, he and his aunt debated about the most logical way for Tom and me to die. They even talked about using the ricin, but Ton Ton said that sort of death wasn’t fast enough.

  “They’ve got to disappear,” she said. “Now. Tonight. Just shoot ’em and we’ll sink their bodies out in the swamp.”

  My mind raced to think of some way out.

  “Too risky getting them out there,” he said. “I’ve got a better idea.”

  With the gun he motioned for us to start walking. Quickly, I realized where he was leading us.

  “Not the alligator pit,” I whispered.

  “Look at it this way,” Armand said as we walked. “At least you won’t be eaten alive. Alligators like their food rotted. They’ll just drown you and then pin your body up under a log. In a few days, when you start to decompose, that’s when they’ll finish you off.”

  “Thanks, Armand. That comes as a great comfort to me.”

  I had to act, whether it got me shot or not. As we walked across Armand’s lawn to get to the trail that would lead to the pit, I knew I had one good option. I could only hope that Tom would be fast enough to react. Glancing at the upside-down pirogue on the sawhorses, I thought I could see that a few tools were still scattered across the top as they had been the other day. Without hesitating, I took a chance at what I knew was my only choice. Turning, I ran and dove for those tools, grabbing a hatchet and then hitting the ground and rolling toward the dogs, counting on the fact that he wouldn’t risk shooting toward them. By the time I held the hatchet up over my head and looked up at Armand, he had his arm gripped around Tom’s neck, the rifle pointed awkwardly at Tom’s head.

  “Put it down, Callie,” Armand said. “What do you think you can do, throw it all the way over here?”

  “No,” I said, trying to catch my breath. “I guess not.”

  As hard as I could, I slammed the hatchet toward the ground, cutting the rope that kept the dogs bound to the tree. In a flash, they were free, running to Armand and jumping up against him.

  “Run, Tom!” I screamed. “Run!”

  From the corner of my eye, as I took off myself, I could see Tom also break free and run. We both ran under the house and into the backyard, not even stopping when we reached the water.

  Together, we untied the pirogue that was there at the dock, jumped in, and pushed out. We couldn’t get it to go fast enough, though, and soon we were being peppered with gunfire. A bullet hit the back of the boat, and it quickly began to fill with water.

  “Get out and run,” I said to Tom. “It’s not deep here.”

  We leaped into the water and tried to run, our feet sucked deeply into the mud.

  “Forget running. We’ll have to swim,” Tom cried.

  Together we did what we could, half swimming, half running, until the bottom dropped out and we were in open water.

  “He’s coming,” Tom said, pointing to a light near Armand’s dock.

  I could hear a boat motor quickly advancing toward us.

  “We’ll have to go under,” I whispered. “Stay down as long as you can and don’t let out any bubbles!”

  Without waiting for a reply, I sucked in a deep breath and did a surface dive, cringing as my face eventually touched the mud of the swampy bottom. Though I hated feeling around down there, I was able to dig out a root, which I held on to tightly to keep myself at the bottom. With my other hand, I grabbed at Tom’s arm and pulled it to the root as well, and then I struggled to pin my full skirt against my legs.

  I didn’t want to open my eyes in the filthy water, but I had to look up. As I did, all I could see was a spotlight moving across the surface, about eight feet up. The light swept on ahead, and then the loud motor passed directly over us. The boat was moving slowly, the light sweeping side to side. I was desperately in need of air, and once it was about 20 feet ahead of us, I patted Tom on the shoulder and then let go of the root to shoot toward the surface.

  Careful not to make too much noise, I found myself gasping for air nevertheless. Tom surfaced beside me and did the same.

  “Come on now, Callie,” Armand was saying loudly from the boat, calling out into the darkness. “You know you can’t get outta here alive. You’ll get bit by a snake, eaten by an alligator, no telling what.”

  I looked at Tom, but neither of us could think of what to do next. With Ton Ton standing on the dock, holding onto a gun and shining her own light out on the water, the only choice was to get into the waterway, past Armand.

  “Maybe we can overpower him in the boat,” Tom whispered.

  “He’s got that rifle,” I said.

  “What about the neighbors?”

  I glanced at the other houses on the peninsula, where lights were starting to come on from all the noise.

  “They’re his family,” I said. “Which means they’re probably going to believe whatever he tells them. I think we’re out of luck there.”

  Suddenly, the spotlight on the boat started sweeping toward us. Clutching hands, we ducked under the water, staying down until it had swept past. The whine of the boat engine changed, and I realized it was turning around to head back this way again.

  After a quick gasp of air from the surface, we dove back down again, clutching in the mud for the root. I couldn’t find anything to hold on to, but my long gown was now so weighted down, it was almost like wearing a weight belt. I could only hope Tom’s tuxedo and shoes were serving the same purpose.

  As soon as the boat passed by, the shrill roar of the spinning blades overhead, I tugged on Tom’s arm, pulling him forward. I knew that Armand would go up and down this same little channel all night, if need be, to find us. We needed to seize the opportunity to slip away while we could.

  Surfacing carefully for air and to get our bearings, we worked our way up the channel to where it met with a larger waterway. It wouldn’t be long before Armand came out that far and started looking for us there, so I knew we needed to hurry.

  “There’s dry land,” Tom whispered, pointing to a far bank. “We might do better there, on foot.”

  I shook my head.

  “Armand’s a tracker,” I said. “He would find our trail. We’ve got to stay in the water for as long as possible.”

  Once we rounded the bend, at least we were out of the possible line of sight from the peninsula and its channel. We started swimming on top of the water rather than under, though with all of the muck and mire, it was slow going.

  Ahead, I spotted a dark shape in the water. Afraid that it was an alligator, I wanted to give it a wide berth. On the other hand, if it were a log, it might save us. I pointed it out to Tom and he stared hard in the darkness, convinced in the end that it was a log.

  We inched our way closer until we were sure, then we swam to it and grabbed hold. At his insistence I pulled myself onto the log and straddled it, while he stayed in the water and hung onto the end. The balance was tricky, and after a moment I rolled right off.

  We tried different variations of the same, but it was no use.

  “We need two logs,” I said. “Bound together. That would work.”

  Holding on the one log we already had, we paddled and kicked into the darkness, farther and farther from the sounds and lights back near Armand’s. I didn’t even want to think about being hopelessly lost in the swamps—but the unknown elements there were still a safer bet than the gun that waited for us closer to shore.

  We paddled toward a stand of trees out in the water, and I recognized them as the dead trunks Armand had shown me on my tour. Cringing at the thought of snakes or spiders making their homes among the wood, we pressed at each of the trees until Tom identified a slim one that was loose and ready to snap. Hoping it wouldn’t make too much noise, we worked together to p
ull it down. As it fell into the water, it pulled a second tiny tree with it. They hit the water, sank, and then sprang back up and floated there.

  “Do you think he heard that?” I asked.

  “We’ll know in a minute,” Tom replied.

  Luckily, the sound of Armand’s boat motor did not seem to be coming any closer. As quickly as we could, Tom and I lashed the three logs together. We used his cummerbund for the front of the raft, and strips of material torn from my skirt for the middle and back.

  “I bet Veronica’s sister will never loan me a dress again,” I muttered as I ripped off another piece.

  But our miniscule raft worked. We were able to climb aboard and kneel there, me in front and him in back, using sticks to pole ourselves forward. From what I could recall, if we could pass through a narrow, shallow area lined with millet grass nearby, then we would end up in the wide oil passage canal. There wasn’t much current where we were now, but I had a feeling if we could get to that canal, we would be quickly carried out with the tide.

  By the time we finally made it, we could hear several motor boats on the water behind us. Armand must have roused his family members to help in his pursuit. For a brief moment, I hoped that maybe these were cops or NSA agents come to rescue us. But then I could hear the unique patois of Cajun French being shouted back and forth, and I knew we were out of luck.

  Still, they hadn’t seemed to spot us yet. As we poled through the millet, we finally broke free to the other side. Sure enough, we were at the canal.

  We gave it one last big heave and then pulled our sticks out of the water and collapsed into each other, letting the strong current grab hold of us and do its work. I wasn’t sure where we were going to end up, but at least we would get there fast.