Gator Aide

by Jessica Speart

  Terri had made it his business to take me under his wing from the first day I met him. Having bought the building ten years before, he informed me that he was particular about whom he’d rent to. That I had been an actress and came from New York were all the criteria he needed. That I loved Tennessee Williams as much as he did had clinched the deal. Working on Bourbon Street as a transvestite performer, he had saved his money to invest in real estate in the French Quarter. His best advice to me so far had been, “Don’t plan on meeting Prince Charming. A girl has to learn to invest wisely for her old age.” I couldn’t agree with him more. I just didn’t seem to be able to save money.

  Picking up my po’boy sandwich, he shook his head in resignation. My mother would have been appalled at my diet as well.

  “And you call this dinner?”

  “Actually, I call this lunch, dinner, and a late-night snack all rolled up in one.”

  I’d caught Terri’s act a few times. It was good. Tall and slender, he did dead-on impersonations of Barbra Streisand and Marilyn Monroe. His latest addition was Madonna. Among a few intimates, he could be persuaded to perform Tommy Tune, his idol after whom he had rechristened himself. Having danced in a roadshow of My One and Only for a couple of years, Terri soon decided that living out of a trunk and eating fast food was no way to live a long and healthy life, and had set his sights on something more steady—the clubs of Bourbon Street.

  I had never seen Terri without his makeup. He said that if God wanted women to be natural, She would never have invented eyeliner and lipstick. Since leaving New York, I had become rather lax about my own appearance. Terri had set out to change all that, giving me a facial and a makeover the day I had moved in. I had to admit, he looked great. In fact, I might seriously have killed to look that good. Though his own hair was light brown, he preferred to be seen in a blond curly wig. With big blue eyes and dimples, he was the girl I had spent my teenage years trying to be. He was the best friend I had. I knew we would never fight over the same man. I just wished we wore the same size clothes.

  I filled him in on the case over on Ursuline Street. It didn’t surprise me to learn that he had known Valerie, albeit slightly. The people who worked the strip were like a small family. Most had come from other places in the country—small towns where tolerance was a little-known word—and from families that wished they would just go away. They had. They had come to Bourbon Street and found a home. Like a carnival freak show, they performed for people who came to gawk and stare. But they were carnies in spirit only. They didn’t need to travel on. New Orleans had taken them in with open arms and a yearly Mardi Gras. Terri floated the small paper parasols from our drinks on the soapy bubbles of the bathwater.

  “I liked her. She was a nice girl. Though Val had her problems, there was no denying that.” Terri ran his finger around the foam that had encrusted the lip of his glass.

  “What kind of problems?” To me, Valerie Vaughn was still just a body resembling a picture puzzle that had been pieced back together, the tiny lines etching which part fit where.

  “Oh, she bounced around a bit. She used to dance topless over at the Baby Doll, but she couldn’t keep off the powder and started missing shows. Finally the Doll House took her in after she promised to go straight. She still hooked on the side, as far as I know. But I had the feeling she was into some weird shit. Word around the strip was that she had a guy involved in local politics sniffing around her. She was always looking for that Big Daddy. Val was the type of girl who either partied too hard or went into a shell. She had stopped partying lately.”

  “What about the alligator? They found a ten-footer chained to the leg of her bathtub.”

  The dye from the parasols had begun to run, staining the bubbles a drab shade of purple. I found myself thinking of Valerie and the fine slashes that had been carved into her skin. A sliver of flesh edging each pencil-thin wound had been tainted the same dingy hue. Pricking one of the bubbles, I took another sip of my drink as a shiver ran through me.

  “You mean Hook. Yeah, Valerie had a thing for him. She was a local yokel from the bayous. She brought him with her, said it was the only thing she kept to remind her of home. Raised him from a baby. Used to boil chickens and feed him one a day. She said he was a notch above most men—she had gotten him to stop eating raw meat.”

  “Why do you think she was killed?”

  I watched as the parasols slowly began to sink, having fallen through the bubbles into the lukewarm water. I looked up to see Terri watching me with eyes that had witnessed more on the strip than I would ever know.

  “You got it wrong, Rach. The question isn’t why—but why not?”

  Three

  Driving across the bridge over Lake Pontchartrain had become almost a religious experience for me. It was the demarcation line between my two different lives. In New Orleans, I was the street-wise city girl, laughing at scams others fell for. Once out in the sticks, I was a goner, a mark for wily poachers and fat, corrupt DAs.

  Driving down the Boulevard in Slidell, I passed Wendy’s and Taco Bell but stopped at McDonald’s for a power breakfast in a white paper bag. A midsize town, Slidell is known more for its industrial attractions than its scenic charm. The main strip could be Anywhere, U.S.A., with its proliferation of fast-food joints and discount stores. Pulling into the back lot of the brick building that housed a bank, an insurance company, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife office, I spotted the run-down, white Pontiac Bonneville. With one taillight cracked and red rust eating its way up over the fender, the car’s dented license plate boasted the state’s official motto: Sportsman’s Paradise. No matter how I tried, I could never beat Charlie Hickok into work. He seemed to live in the place. Enid, his receptionist from the turn of the century, hadn’t arrived yet. Neither had the other workers who droned on from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon, under fluorescent lights in rooms with no windows. That was the best part of being an agent: I never had to punch a clock. But I was expected to work on my own, morning through night, without having to report in. Requiring a special breed of loner, it suited me just fine.

  I heard Charlie before I even entered his office. Hacking and wheezing, he was puttering about, easing into his daily routine. I poked my head in the door as he lowered his body down into his chair and started to scratch.

  “Damn chiggers.”

  Charlie’s room was a work of art. Free-form, thrown together, but a balancing act that was not to be believed. Books were piled on top of his desk at angles that defied gravity. Perched on top of that were videotapes of past busts in all their glory. Papers were strewn sky-high in piles that were known only to him and nobody dared touch. A Confederate flag hung limply on its pole in a far corner of the room.

  The only personal touch to be found was a collection of framed photographs that hung on the walls and occupied most of the spare space on Charlie’s desk. They were all of a woman blessed with long blond hair, a heart-shaped face, and large eyes that a doe would have envied. Rumor had it that she had been Charlie’s wife. A strict Baptist, she had tried her best to keep Charlie in line, forbidding him to smoke, drink, or curse. Charlie abided by her rules as best he could, while still maintaining his normal workload of twenty-four hours, seven days a week—his schedule being the one area to which rules did not apply. Office scuttlebutt maintained that, tired of living alone, his wife packed up one day and disappeared. So did most of their furniture. Charlie simply told people that she had died. Whatever the case, the photos added a tantalizing sense of mystery, giving his office the air of a shrine.

  Charlie sat behind his desk, dressed in a short-sleeve pale blue shirt and a pair of blue-and-white-striped seersucker pants. His appearance was topped off by a railroad cap that covered a head going bald. It was Charlie’s way of refusing to acknowledge the fact. His neck was blotched with bright red marks where his fingers kept scratching. A nose that looked like a rose in bloom was testament to his fondness for Old Grand-Dad, and a network of small
craters pitting his face proved that his attachment to candy bars had started at a tender age.

  Word had it that he had been a powerhouse in his younger days. A one-man vigilante team who had taken on poachers and syndicates alike and won. The failure of his marriage, and a broken heart, had only made him all the more driven and focused where his work was concerned. The roadblock he had finally run up against had been jealousy within his own agency. That, and an abiding weakness for rubbing people’s noses in his triumphs.

  Charlie liked to brag that he was a direct descendant of Wild Bill Hickok. If so, he had certainly inherited Wild Bill’s flair for showmanship. He had known how to publicize every sting he had ever done. The Audubon TV special was evidence of that. It led some to call him a living legend in his own mind. When higher-ups finally decided they could take no more, Charlie had been hog-tied by a promotion to a desk job. It was either that or leave the Service. He’d have sooner given up his life.

  I cleared off the chair on the other side of his desk and sat down, plunking my breakfast on the only patch of open space that had so far escaped the growing fungus. Charlie joined me, pulling out his own start to the day—a Baby Ruth bar.

  “Have a good time last night, Bronx?”

  “Yeah. It was great. I actually got to see something that didn’t have feathers on it.”

  That brought a smile to his face, and I felt safe in continuing. I told him about Valerie and how she had ended up looking like a demo for Etch-A-Sketch. Filling him in on the gator brought me around to mentioning that I’d heard Val was a local girl from down south in the bayou.

  Charlie reached for the Hershey bar beckoning to him from his desk drawer. “Sheeet! I’ll bet the tail on a horse’s ass that she was Marie Vaughn Tuttle’s niece. Pretty little coonass. She left the swamp to become a star. Never got any further than Bourbon Street, discovered her main talent was in twirling her titties. Last I heard, she was hooked on smack.”

  The first time I’d heard the expression “coonass” my Northern guilt had reared its ugly head, sure that it was a racist Southern expression for blacks. It was only later that I learned it was a term of affection for the local Cajuns. Especially coming out of Charlie Hickok’s mouth. If he had been given three wishes, one of them would have been to be born Cajun.

  “Who’s Marie Tuttle?”

  Charlie was a walking bible on the people of the bayou, and I had learned to pump him for information whenever I could. I was quickly picking up on the fact that the only way to get anything done was by befriending the folks in the swamp. Without their help, I might as well pack up my bags and start heading out once more for dog-food commercials back in New York. I was in luck this morning. Charlie was in one of his more talkative moods.

  “She’s a little Cajun coonass lives just outside Morgan City. Valerie was her sister’s kid. When her mama died, Marie took her in. I think Valerie moved up to Bourbon Street mainly to get the hell away from Marie and gator skins. You can smell that woman from a mile away. She traffics in buying hot skins from the local outlaws and selling ’em at cut-rate prices to some of our local business scum.”

  Charlie scratched a raised armpit and hunkered down farther in his chair, letting the memory of former glory days wash over him.

  “I busted her once, but she was out again before you could swallow your stew. A little bitty thing, but she’s as mean as they come. If she were a man, someone woulda killed her by now. Lord knows, she’d as soon shoot you as look at you.”

  Whether or not he had put the bait out on purpose, I didn’t know. But I was hooked.

  “I’d like to go see her. Maybe dig around a bit and see what I can find out.”

  I didn’t know what Charlie’s reaction would be, but he’d opened the door with his call to me last night. It was a Fish and Wildlife case now, as well as N.O.P.D.’s. Still, if I were to pursue the investigation further than just writing up a report on a dead gator, I needed Charlie’s permission. To my surprise, he not only gave me the bait, but pulled the hook tight so it caught in my mouth.

  “Sure thing, Bronx. Have a good time.”

  I decided to push my luck. “Charlie, there’s something that’s bothering me about that alligator. I can’t see how those bullets could have penetrated the skull. I’d like to have an autopsy done.” Before I even finished I sensed that I had gone too far, forgetting my bounds as a rookie agent.

  Leaning forward, Charlie slammed his elbows on top of a pile of papers that shifted slightly to the left. The movement was enough to set off a chain reaction reminiscent of the flicking of a domino. A delicately balanced videotape tumbled from its perch, hitting the edge of one of the photos on Hickok’s desk, which tottered ominously for a moment before tipping backwards into a free fall.

  Charlie moved with a speed I hadn’t imagined him capable of. Jumping up from his seat, he dived across the floor and grabbed the frame right before it hit the ground. He carefully straightened the picture inside, then wiped off the glass with a tissue before reverently setting it back in its place on his desk. After a moment, he continued as if there had never been a break in the conversation.

  “Well, hot damn. Not only have I got me an experienced agent, but one of those smart-ass forensic scientists as well.” He tugged on his cap. A bad sign.

  “Listen, Bronx. The goddamn gator is dead. Where I come from, five slugs to the head will do it everytime. I don’t need no fancy-pants JFK-type conspiracy theories, and I gotta tell ya that I don’t give a rat’s ass about your woman’s intuition. I’ll take a quick look-see for myself, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s a done deal. This case is N.O.P.D.’s problem. You wanna go see Tuttle and snoop around for a day or two, I’ll write it off to some R&R. But then I want your rear end back out in that swamp. If I were you, I’d catch me some duck poachers real quick.”

  The drive down to Morgan City couldn’t have been better. For once, the rain held off, and the sky was as endless as the Gulf of Mexico. Another scorcher of a day, even the hot breeze felt good against my face as I sped along.

  Thick fields of sugar cane stood tall and green, their sweetness wafting on air usually filled with the black smoke of old, dingy factories whose stacks spewed a rank brew of toxic gumbo. Weathered shacks with corrugated tin roofs lined each side of the road, flaring rays of sunlight into my eyes with all the brightness of mini-nuclear explosions. The poverty was reminiscent of a backroad in a third-world country.

  But this was southern Louisiana, where each shanty contained a family bursting at the seams. Dogs lazed in the middle of the road, rarely bothering to look up as I beeped my horn, finally swerving into the fields to go around them. Chickens pecked in the dirt, squawking their disapproval as I crept by. Children came out to stare as they heard me approach, as though it was an event not to be missed, their scantily clad bodies running alongside my car until they dropped off one by one. I beeped the horn in farewell as each figure disappeared from sight in a cloud of red dust.

  Live oaks, heavy with Spanish moss, stood in front of run-down mansions that had seen better days. Bullet-riddled signs announced each small town I passed through, the holes adding a new twist of flavor to their names.

  A chain gang of men worked alongside the road, spilling hot tar, their skin glistening with sweat so that their bodies blended in with the liquid they were pouring. One man gave me a smile, his body shimmering in and out of focus in the curling waves of heat, as the other men joked with each other to break up the monotony of one more muggy day in a long line of them. Looking away from the road for a moment, I came nerve-wrackingly close to driving into a ditch, providing cheap entertainment for the men, who whooped with laughter and then broke into a cheer as I quickly veered away from danger.

  Stopping in the town of Houma long enough to grab a burger and a Coke, I cooled off in an air-conditioned luncheonette. Local customers unused to strangers stared at me, wondering why I would bother to stop in a town that most others were trying to leave. Laced with water
ways, Houma had once been called the Venice of the Bayous. It was now a ghost town, a casualty of the oil bust which had left the area reeling and as polluted as its sister city in Italy.

  Hard times could also be blamed on the declining fur trade. Trapping had always been an accepted way of life for Cajun men, and wealthy women with a hankering for skins had unknowingly helped to keep local families fed. But with furs no longer in vogue, Houma had begun a painful economic descent, its oil wealth turned to red-clay poverty.

  A fifties feel hung over the place. A number of stores were closed, with their windows boarded up, the victims of recession. Even the movie theaters had felt the sting, their marquees dilapidated as if from the heartache of having been deserted for too long. I could have been passing through a time warp of plywood storefronts at an MGM back lot. But I was in the heart of Cajun country in Terrebonne Parish.

  This was the pulse point of alligator country in Louisiana. It was also a hotbed for poachers, past and present, since alligator skins had boomed into fashion in the 1920s. Enterprising poachers in the bayou had been more than happy to fill the growing demand, and by the 1930s, more than half of Louisiana’s alligator population had been decimated in the name of fashion. By the forties, the state’s population of the reptiles had crashed, and by 1964 the hunting of gators was banned in the state. But nobody had bothered telling that to the poachers, who continued killing whatever they could drag out of the swamp.

  Charlie Hickok had made a stab at putting a stop to the slaughter for a while. With his inherited showman antics, he mounted one sting operation after another, knocking out the dealers. It hadn’t done much to make him popular, with either the outlaws or the power elite. Cajuns were of the belief that it was their God-given right to hunt whatever wildlife they wanted, and no damn upstart federal agent was about to tell them otherwise. Charlie had.