by Josh Lanyon
Supposedly the Szabo Alligator Farm had only been around since the early 1900s, but it could have been from the Stone Age. Nathan parked beneath low-hanging trees in the empty parking lot and entered the park through a long white stucco building with a slim, two-story columned portico. The gift shop—offering baby alligators for sale—and ticket booth were closed, but he climbed over the turnstile and walked along the shaded path, crossing a small wooden bridge over a large dank pond filled with sleeping alligators.
According to the sign out front, there was supposed to be over one thousand alligators and crocodiles, some more than two hundred years old, inhabiting over twenty miniature lakes.
He wondered if the alligators ever climbed out of their swimming holes, and if they were able to scale the slopes leading to the deeply shaded pathways. Stepping on one of those three-hundred-pound babies would be an unpleasant surprise for everyone involved. Glancing over the side of the bridge at the slithering tangle of reptiles, he decided they looked pretty tired; it was probably a little cold for them this time of year. Cold for him too. He missed the warmth of North Africa.
Over the murky smells of wet earth and slimy water, he could smell wood smoke. And through the dense foliage of weeping willows, he could see the twinkle of lights: a farmhouse in the back of the park. He picked up his pace, footsteps sounding dully on yet another little wooden bridge.
It was a creepy place, no doubt about it, and it was hard to picture Pearl Jarvis in her high heels and faux furs trotting along these rustic bridges and uneven dirt trails. But she was hiding somewhere and, Nathan had to admit, this was a pretty good hideout. Especially off-season.
He came out of the woods, and there was an old house behind a new and sturdy-looking chain-link fence—probably to keep the alligators and crocodiles from paying a social call. Several yards behind the house was a large empty field. Two men stood beside a pickup truck, and they appeared to be digging a deep hole.
Nathan watched them for a moment, then he reached over the substantial-looking gate, lifted the bar and let himself in. He closed the gate firmly behind him.
He went up the paved path to the house and knocked.
Nothing happened.
He knocked again. After a moment or two, the door swung open and Pearl Jarvis, in dungarees and a man’s sweater, stared back at him. She was holding an old Webley revolver, and it was pointed at his chest.
“You can’t hold me,” Claire Arlen was protesting for the nth time. “I’m an Arlen. I’m Philip Arlen’s wife!”
“Well, you were,” Matt replied. “Now you’re his widow. We’re trying to figure out if that was by accident or design.”
The door opened and Carl Winters was ushered in—none too happily—by Jonesy. Jonesy raised his eyebrows at Matt, and Matt said, “Sorry for the inconvenience, Mr. Winters—”
“This is harassment,” Winters interrupted furiously. “How many times am I to be subjected to police interrogation? I’ve answered all your questions. Again and again! I didn’t kill my brother-in-law, and the fact that you would drag my sister—his widow—out, when she’s ill—”
“It’s all right, Carl,” Claire said, although she’d been saying pretty much the same thing herself since she had arrived.
“I didn’t realize you were ill, Mrs. Arlen,” Matt said. She didn’t look particularly well, but there could be a number of reasons for that—including guilt.
She said coldly, “I’m expecting a baby. And when Benedict Arlen hears the way you’ve treated me, and endangered the life of his grandson—”
There was what might be appropriately called a pregnant pause.
Matt fixed his gaze on Claire Arlen with the sensation of having been sucker-punched. He could feel Jonesy’s eyes, but he didn’t dare look at him. This was a bad oversight on their part. He knew how Jonesy felt, but that couldn’t be helped now.
“Congratulations,” he said. “Did Phil know about the baby?”
“Of course he knew!”
There was something odd about the way she said that. Matt couldn’t put his finger on it. Had Phil known and not been happy about the pregnancy?
But a baby would have improved things with old man Arlen, of that Matt was sure. The first grandkid? The first child of his favorite son? Yeah, that would have softened old Benedict up, probably convinced him to reinstate the black sheep’s allowance—or maybe even increase it.
“I guess the family was pretty happy about the news?” he tried.
“I suppose so,” she said stiffly.
Huh.
“Why are we here?” Winters demanded. “I can’t believe that I and my sister are your only suspects! What about organized crime? The mob? What about that reporter, Doyle? He was there that night. Perhaps he’s your kidnapper. Reporters have all kinds of unsavory underworld contacts.”
“What would his motive be, Mr. Winters?”
“Phil must have been—well, how should I know? I’m sure Doyle needs money. He’s been around asking all kinds of strange questions. Why aren’t you questioning him?”
“We have questioned him,” Matt said. “Now we’re questioning you.” He turned to Claire. “Speaking of money, have you had time to remember where you got that five hundred dollars we found in your purse?”
“How is that your business?”
“I gave her that money!” Carl Winters was white with fury. “I put that money in her handbag on Saturday night. You mean that’s why you dragged us down here?”
“If that’s the case, why didn’t you say so?” Matt asked Claire evenly. He was starting to get mad. Why hadn’t this obvious explanation been explored? What the hell kind of background checking had Jonesy and his men done that they hadn’t uncovered Claire Arlen’s pregnancy or the fact that her brother was occasionally financing her household? This was supposed to be Jonesy’s case, and Jonesy had as much or more experience as anyone on the squad. Some bad mistakes had been made with this investigation, obvious things had been overlooked.
“I didn’t know!” Claire was raging. “I never left the house or looked inside my purse until your apes pointed that money out to me.”
“Claire, honey.” Winters patted her shoulder awkwardly. “You mustn’t get so upset. It’s bad for the baby.” He turned to Matt. “I slipped that money inside her purse because they were broke, and Phil wasn’t capable of taking care of her. He couldn’t take care of himself!”
Something wasn’t adding up.
“Why didn’t your husband’s family…if they knew you were going to have a baby?” It was like feeling his way in the dark. All at once he was very much aware of how delicate this situation was, and that his own career might be riding on how he handled the next thirty minutes.
Claire flushed. “They didn’t know about the baby until Sunday night. I told Phil first, of course. I was hoping…I was giving him a little time to adjust to the idea…before I told Dad. But then when they told me he’d been kidnapped—”
“Wait a minute,” Matt said. “Are you telling me the kidnappers didn’t call you?”
“Why would they call me? I don’t have any money. Phil didn’t have any money. They called Dad.”
The kidnappers had known for a fact that Claire Arlen would be unable to meet their ransom demand. Knew the Arlen family’s domestic arrangements so intimately that they had gone straight to the old man right off the bat.
“So you never heard the voice of the woman who called with the ransom demand?”
She shook her head.
The office was silent.
“You think I would have recognized her voice,” she said slowly.
Carl Winters was looking from Matt to Claire bewilderedly.
“Let me ask you something,” Matt said. “Say your husband wasn’t really kidnapped. Say the kidnapping was just an excuse to bump him off. Who would you say had the strongest motive for getting rid of Phil?”
“You can’t ask her to answer a question like that!”
“I am
asking her,” Matt said.
Claire said, “Phil’s brother, Bob. I guess Bob had plenty of reasons to wish Phil was dead.”
Having barely recovered from the last time he was filled full of lead, Nathan was keen not to repeat the experience. And he didn’t trust the way Pearl Jarvis held that Webley. Her hand shook, and she had a wild-eyed look.
He said—not moving his gaze from the dead eye of the revolver aimed at his chest, “And here I was afraid it was you they were burying out back.”
Amazingly, she laughed. Her voice wobbled a little as she replied, “They’re burying Big Al. He was the granddaddy of a lot of these gators. He was two hundred and fifty years old.”
“That’s a good long life.”
“His hide is so tough they can’t use it for anything. But they’re keeping his head. And his claws.”
“Is that so?”
She nodded tightly.
“You found yourself a great little hideout,” Nathan said. “That’s for sure.”
“Hideout? You make me sound like a criminal!” Her eyes narrowed. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Well, I know you didn’t kill Phil,” Nathan said, “because you’re frightened to death of whoever did. You’ve been running scared since it happened.”
The gun wavered, and he reached out and gently redirected her aim away from himself. After a moment she lowered her arm, finally taking a step back, letting Nathan into the house. “You’re that reporter, Doyle. Sid told me about you. He said you were trying to find me. You followed me to Little Fawn Lodge.”
“And Sid’s boys followed me.”
Her gaze slid away from his. “Sid’s just trying to look out for me.”
“Who’s he trying to protect you from?”
She swallowed hard. “Want a drink?”
“Sure.” He followed her into an old-fashioned parlor, pausing for a moment on the room’s threshold. There were lamps made from alligator feet, stools and chairs upholstered in alligator and crocodile skin, and a mounted alligator head on the wall.
Reading his expression correctly, Pearl said, “Yeah, and you should hear them bellowing at night. The alligators, I mean, not Sid’s folks. B flat, I think.” She dropped the revolver on the wine cart with a clatter that did nothing for Nathan’s nerves and poured two thimblefuls of sherry from a small decanter. She offered a fragile amber glass to Nathan and made a face. “It’s all they have here. Funny Sid coming from a family like this!” She swallowed the sherry in a gulp.
Nathan took a mouthful of sweet sherry and controlled a shudder. “You know,” he said, “the safest thing for you to do is tell me exactly what you know. Once you’ve spilled your story there’s no incentive for anyone to hurt you.”
“You don’t think so? You think that wife of his wouldn’t like me to pay for stealing Phil from her?”
“Is that what happened?”
She nodded, tears filling her eyes. “We were going away together. We were going to Buenos Aires.”
“After Phil’s dad paid the ransom.”
She stared at him, and Nathan almost laughed.
“Well, nobody can find any trace of these kidnappers before or since Phil was nabbed. You and Phil set it all up, didn’t you? So you’d have money to run away together?”
She nodded.
“What happened?”
She gnawed her lip. “Everything went fine. Phil picked up the money at the Observatory. They must have followed our instructions just like we’d planned. He was supposed to meet me in the back of the park. I was waiting in the car. He came hurrying along the path holding a bag, and I remember I turned the engine on, turned the headlights on so he could see. It was so dark and muddy. But a few feet away he stopped and turned around like he heard someone following him. Like someone called his name. And a man came running up the path behind him, and Phil stood there, and he shot him.” She stopped and covered her face. “Just like that. Shot him dead.”
“What did the man look like?”
She looked up out of her hands, and her face was horror-stricken. “I couldn’t tell. Tall, thin. He was wearing a black raincoat and a black hat pulled low. I didn’t recognize him, his face was just a pale blur. He fired at me—at the car—and I threw it into reverse and drove away. I should have run him over! But I panicked and I drove away.”
Personally, Nathan thought retreat had been Pearl’s best bet. Phil’s killer had been cold and steady as steel. “You’re sure you didn’t recognize this man?”
“I didn’t get a clear look at him. First Phil was standing between us, and then—” she gulped, “—all I saw was the gun.”
Chapter Nine
When he heard Nathan’s voice on the phone, Matt felt a warm rush. He’d been wanting to hear Nathan’s voice, missing him, wanting to know that he was okay, wanting to tell him about the problems in the Arlen case. His men had made some serious mistakes in the investigation. Jonesy had let him down. Matt’s career might be on the line. He wanted to talk to someone he could trust. He wanted to talk to Nathan.
But in the very next instant, that warm rush gave way to chilled alarm. Didn’t Nathan understand? Was he that lost to common sense? They hadn’t been starting something—those two days at Little Fawn Lodge were all there could be between them, thinking anything else was crazy. Dangerous. They were neither of them the kind of men who wanted to go that route. They had careers, families, responsibilities; they weren’t the kind of guys who gave in to that kind of thing. Where was the future in it? There wasn’t any future in it.
It wasn’t logical thinking, it was just Matt’s instinctive response to the pleasure he felt at hearing Nathan’s voice—because he felt too much pleasure, he knew that much. So he said crisply, “What did you need, Doyle?”
There was a too-long pause, and then Nathan said deliberately, “I’m trying to tell you. I found the Jarvis girl.”
Matt’s face flamed. He’d been so busy panicking that he hadn’t heard a word Nathan had said, and he could hear in Nathan’s voice that he knew it.
He didn’t know how to back away from his mistake, so he just said, “Where?”
And Nathan told him where, crisply and concisely. “I wouldn’t take too long getting here. She thinks she’s being tracked by whoever killed the Arlen kid. She’s liable to pull another flit.”
“We’re on our way,” Matt said. And then, awkwardly, “Will you be there?”
He wasn’t even sure why he’d asked it, but Nathan said, “No. She’s got a couple of brawny gamekeepers here to keep her safe, and I’ve got a story to file.”
“Right. Thanks for the tip.” He should have hung up, but for some reason he couldn’t. He wanted to correct the mistake he’d made when he’d first picked up the phone. He’d realized how stupid he was to think that he and Nathan couldn’t be friends, couldn’t work together as much as the press and police could work together. As long as they both understood that it couldn’t go any further than that, he wanted to be friends with Nathan. In fact there was only one thing he wanted more. So he said tentatively, “See you around.”
And Nathan said shortly, “I’m not leaving town,” and hung up.
Several hours later, sometime after midnight, Matt followed Nathan and his newest swain—a big bruiser in a khaki uniform—down the steps of the Biltmore hotel, watched them run across the street and disappear into the jungle of Pershing Square. Matt followed silently, cursing himself—and Nathan—every step of the way.
Who was the unhealthy, neurotic one here? Himself or Nathan? Nathan was at least—assumingly—getting what he wanted out of this. What the hell was Matt getting? Other than ill with jealousy and anger and something too close to despair.
He was the one who’d told Nathan that any kind of relationship between them was impossible. That the risk was too great. The incredible thing to him now was that he had expected—believed—that Nathan would understand that the risk to himself was too great, as well. That he would belatedly exercise wis
dom. That he would make the same sacrifice Matt was having to make.
Why not admit it? He had believed that what they had shared was so special that Nathan wouldn’t cheapen himself by settling for something else, something less.
But here Nathan was, not even waiting one goddamned night before he was back in the jungle with the other animals.
None of which explained what the hell Matt was doing down here again. And if he hadn’t seen Nathan, hadn’t tracked him like radar illuminating a target, would he have been trying to find someone of his own to spend a few hours with?
He didn’t know.
He was afraid to consider it too closely.
He crept through the grass and brush until he heard them, the harsh panting, crackle of dead leaves and twigs, and he pushed aside the branches and found them—found Nathan down on the ground fighting for his life while his erstwhile lover tried to brain him with a short and solid tree branch.
As Matt watched, the man kicked Nathan, and Nathan cried out and stopped fighting, lying there stunned. The man bent over him. Matt took his gun out, stepped through the branches and hit the guy hard with the butt of his revolver across the back of his head. The man slumped over Nathan’s supine body. Matt dragged him off.
He knelt beside Nathan, dragging his boxers up, pushing his flaccid dick inside, possessive and angry about that soft warmth, Nathan unaroused but asking for it—he had asked for it and he had got it—and Matt wanted to kill the other guy. And he wanted to kill Nathan.
“Come on, get up,” he told Nathan, locking hands on him, drawing him up, and Nathan staggered to his feet, peered at him and then looked ready to fall again when he saw who his rescuer was.
“Christ, pull yourself together,” Matt hissed, and then tried to soften it. “Nathan, come on. We’ve got to get out of here.” He was trying with all his might not to let his anger through because Nathan had been hurt enough for one night. And as angry as he was with Nathan, he was also frightened for him.
