Murder on the Orient Espresso

by Sandra Balzo

  The bed was narrow, but it was there, which was a relief. I’d imagined we were traveling on some sort of elevated trestle like that in the photograph of Flagler’s ill-fated railroad. In actuality, though, our tracks were mere inches above the swamp.

  This was good news because we needn’t fear falling. Bad, because we were within serving distance of whatever creatures were making dinner plans.

  At least, though, I thought as I jumped down after Pavlik, the warm rain had slackened to a steamy sprinkle. ‘Do you have your knife or, even better, your gun?’

  ‘Knife, yes. Gun, no. Why?’

  ‘There are alligators and pythons and, umm … lions.’

  ‘Lions?’ Pavlik looked skeptical.

  ‘I may have that part wrong.’ I was frowning again. ‘But definitely the rest.’

  ‘Well, then, stay close.’ Pavlik was walking along the outside of the sleeping car toward the locomotive. ‘That way, if something drags me away, you can properly identify it for the local authorities.’

  I scurried along behind. ‘Is it my imagination, or is that pitched down?’

  ‘You mean the front of the locomotive? Sure looks like it to me, too.’ He grasped a vertical bar and swung himself up and into the already open door of the engine car.

  ‘You know,’ I called up, ‘there are emergency cords in every car that can stop the train, if they’re pulled. Maybe that’s what happened.’

  ‘I noticed the cords,’ the sheriff’s voice came from inside the cab.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised. The man was aware of everything. And revealed nothing, damn it.

  A hoarse sqwaaak pierced the air and hung there, followed by a series of raspy wok, wok, woks.

  ‘Shit!’ I edged closer to the train. ‘It’s like we’re in a Tarzan movie.’

  ‘Funny you should say that.’ His head appeared. ‘Apparently at least a couple of Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan movies of the thirties and forties were filmed somewhere in Florida. Legend has it that some of the rhesus monkeys used in the movies escaped. Supposedly it’s their descendants that run wild here today.’ Pavlik jumped down from the cab. ‘Cool, huh?’

  Well, I certainly had goose bumps, if that confirmed his opinion.

  The big front headlight of the train illuminated the Everglades in front of us, which was a good way to capture a black hole of nothingness. Oh, I could see water, scrub grass – sawgrass, presumably – and some sort of foliage, but nothing else except low, shapeless shadows as far as the light could pierce the gloom.

  ‘Holy mother of God,’ a male voice said.

  Startled, I saw the figure of a man standing next to the nose of the locomotive. I didn’t remember noticing him earlier.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ I said, sounding like Missy, even to my own ears.

  Pavlik and I strode toward the man. Well, Pavlik strode. I scurried fearfully in his wake.

  ‘Jake Pavlik,’ the sheriff said, sticking out his hand to the other man. ‘I assume you’re the engineer. Nobody onboard seems to be hurt. What happened?’

  The engineer turned. His name was ‘Theodore B. Hertel, Jr,’ according to the embroidery that covered nearly the full width of the pocket on his bib overalls. It probably didn’t improve my first impression of our train pilot that he shared a first name with my ex-husband, but his appearance didn’t fill me with confidence either. The man looked close to eighty, and if the denim overalls had been striped and matched with a hat and red bandana, I’d have said he was in costume for the event. I only hoped he wasn’t as ‘fictitious’ as our bartender/Wagon Lit conductor, Pete. Or whatever his name was.

  ‘Did we derail?’ I asked anxiously. ‘Or someone pull the emergency brake?’

  Hertel shook Pavlik’s hand, but virtually ignored me. ‘Well, sir, I certainly did pull on that brake my own self. Have to say, I’m glad to hear the people inside the train are OK.’

  A shiver crawled up my back. I didn’t like the way the engineer had said that, given that Pavlik and I were standing outside.

  Was that banjo music I heard? In addition, I mean, to the feral monkeys and God knew what else.

  Pavlik seemed unconcerned. ‘Looks like the track is flooded.’

  The nose of the engine was tilted down and the tracks in front of it gone. Or at least submerged under water blacker than a crow’s wing.

  ‘You’re right about that, for sure,’ Hertel said, rubbing his chin. ‘But I’m thinking that might be the least of somebody’s worries.’

  I put my hand on Pavlik’s sleeve, trying to pull him away from the engineer who even Missy thought was ‘eccentric.’

  ‘What?’ Pavlik glanced over at me. Hertel was watching me, too.

  ‘DoodooDOOdoo—’ I tried shakily.

  ‘Maggy, use your mother tongue, please?’ Pavlik went to shake off my hand.

  ‘Dueling banjos,’ I hissed, hanging on. ‘Ned Beatty. Squeal like a pig?’

  The engineer was eyeing me suspiciously. Hertel had abnormally long earlobes, like he’d been hanging heavy earrings on them for years and years. He pulled at one lobe, a more likely cause of the droop. ‘No, ma’am. That just ain’t right.’

  ‘It’s not?’ I was backing away. Pavlik could fend for himself.

  ‘No, ma’am. It weren’t Dueling Banjos. That was the name of the music. The movie was Deliverance. But I’m scratching my head wondering why you’re trying to sing about anything when we’ve got this mess on our hands.’

  Pavlik cocked his head, probably wondering which of his two companions was crazier. Then he turned to the engineer. ‘I’m a county sheriff up north, but I don’t know a whole lot about trains or the Everglades. I assume from your exclamation that we’re stuck pretty good?’

  ‘My “exclamation”?’

  ‘“Holy mother of God”?’ I was trying to be helpful.

  ‘Oh, that. No, it weren’t the flooded track got me down. I seen worse. It’s that what sort of took me by surprise.’ He pointed.

  Pavlik and I both followed Hertel’s index finger. On the other side of the dip in the tracks and not ten feet away from us was the biggest fucking snake I’d ever seen.

  With a pair of custom-made wingtips protruding from its jaws, the knees and shoes flicking up and down in a primeval two-step.

  SIXTEEN

  ‘Holy mother of God!’ I screamed, echoing the engineer’s sentiments. Except I had more information to add: ‘It’s Potter!’

  Pavlik and Hertel just looked at me.

  ‘Those are Potter’s legs sticking out of that thing.’ Even as I said it, I was backing-pedaling as far and as fast as I could.

  The snakes I was accustomed to sunned themselves in my flower bed. They were maybe two feet long and an inch thick and they scared the bejeebers out of me. This one … this one, it could be a whole different species. Not a snake at all. This monster was big enough to devour—

  The limbs sticking out of the thing did a scissor-kick. ‘Oh-my-god, oh-my-god,’ I said, as my back slammed into the locomotive. ‘He’s still alive!’

  ‘Well, ma’am,’ Hertel said, ‘I suppose that’s possible. I didn’t spot the snake until I climbed down to examine the tracks, but I think we’ve got us some kind of python. They like to squeeze their victims mostly to death and then swallow ’em whole to digest later. Sort of nature’s doggy bag.’

  I think I liked the guy better when I thought he was going to murder us. ‘Enough with the nature lesson!’ I screamed. ‘Do something!’

  Pavlik was already pulling the knife out of his pocket. He flipped out the blade and started forward. Then, over his shoulder, ‘Maggy, go get help from the train.’

  I screamed ‘Help!’ at the top of my lungs and forced myself to move away from the relative protection of the train’s engine. I might be shaking like a leaf, but there was no way I was leaving Pavlik with only Euell Gibbons for back-up.

  ‘Can you tell how deep the water is?’ I asked the sheriff as he waded in, knife in his hand.

 
‘To the bottom? I’m not sure. But I can feel the ties seven or eight inches below the water. I’m standing – and staying – on what’s left of them.’

  ‘I’m coming with you.’ What was I thinking? Clearly, I wasn’t. The words were out of my mouth before I could think.

  ‘I appreciate the offer, but you’re afraid of snakes, remember?’

  I was, but then I used to be scared of spiders and mice too – things that my then-husband dealt with at home when we were married. If divorce has taught me anything, it’s that a person is as brave as she needs to be.

  I puffed out my chest. ‘Not anymore,’ I said, hoping that saying it would make it true. I turned to Hertel. ‘You have anything I can hit this thing with?’

  The engineer pulled a long flashlight from a loop on his belt. ‘This do?’

  I took it, my hand sagging under the unexpected weight. ‘Geez, yeah. This should be good.’ I was imagining hitting the snake with the flashlight and having it bounce off like a rubber mallet on a concrete block. ‘Listen, can you call for help?’

  ‘Happy to, though it’ll likely just be coming from the train. Cell communication’s down.’

  Lovely. I had started to follow Pavlik, wondering what the hell we were going to do once we got there, when I heard Hertel again. ‘They say to stay away from the pointy end.’ He chuckled. ‘I hear tell these big fellers don’t like to be disturbed during supper.’

  I’d been noticing that the snake wasn’t moving much, other than sort of gulping. And keeping a wary eye on Pavlik and me.

  The good news for us, if not for Potter, was that there really wasn’t a ‘pointy end.’ The snake’s mouth was full – stretched impossibly like the thing had dislocated its jaw not only into two parts, top and bottom, but into four quarters in the effort to swallow a human being.

  ‘I’ve got this friend who brags he can eat a steak as big as his empty head, but these critters are the only things I’ve ever seen that are actually capable of doing it.’ Hertel was just chock-jolly-full of culinary lore.

  My foot had found the first wooden crosspiece under water and I stepped unsteadily out onto it. ‘Could you please get help from the train? Let them know that it’s Lar … Laurence Potter.’ The least I could do was to call the man by the name he preferred, given the indignity of his current circumstances.

  ‘Hey, isn’t that the big-shot reviewer we had onboard?’

  I forced myself to look more at the wingtips than the snake. It wasn’t much of an improvement. ‘We think so.’

  ‘Now how in the hell do you figure he got out here?’

  ‘That is a very good question,’ Pavlik said, not looking around. His tone indicated that messing with him would be even worse than messing with the snake at this point. ‘One we’ll try to answer once we get him out of that.’

  He hiked his thumb at the snake and, as if on cue, I swear the monster burped.

  Potter’s leg slid in to the ankle.

  I gagged.

  ‘One down,’ I heard Hertel say. ‘One—’

  Ignoring the rest of it, I waded anxiously over to Pavlik. ‘Can you cut him out of there?’

  ‘I think so. With so much of Potter inside of this thing, I’m betting it can’t constrict anything else.’ A glance my way. ‘Like me or you.’

  He looked at my flashlight. ‘Any part of that snake gets near you, wallop it hard with the business end and run.’

  ‘Gotcha.’ Now that I was closer, I realized what I had imagined was Potter’s movement was the snake’s mouth and head absorbing the actually still body. Almost like a curtain being worked onto a rod – the snake the curtain and Potter as rod. ‘Please, God, he can’t be alive in there, can he?’

  ‘Don’t know, but I’m sure not leaving even a corpse inside that thing’s digestive system.’ Pavlik was not eighteen inches from the snake, stepping up on the wooden crosspieces that looked like the rungs of a macabre ladder with one end submerged in the water.

  The snake did a kind of shimmy, assuming the shimmier was the length and girth of an I-beam. I splashed back into the water. ‘Be careful!’ I called to Pavlik, who was trying to circle behind the snake as best he could, given the narrowness of the railroad bed.

  Hertel began talking again. ‘I hear tell that these fellers tire easy. Or at least the Burmese do, though this beauty looks to be one of those bigger devils.’

  ‘You mean an African rock python?’ I was trying to steady my nerves, though conversing with the engineer might not be the best way to do it.

  Pavlik gave a backwards glance at my question, probably wondering how I’d know anything about snake species in the Everglades.

  ‘The very ones,’ Hertel said. ‘Surprised you’ve even heard of them, cuz we ain’t seen many around here yet. But to my eye, this queen bitch looks pregnant, so I have a hunch that’s going to change.’

  Wonderful. If the snake in front of us wasn’t, in itself, a super hybrid between the Burmese and Rock pythons, we were messing with the mother ship.

  ‘Don’t touch it!’ I yelled at Pavlik, panic rising. ‘Did you hear what he said? If you cut the thing open they’ll all come crawling out.’

  ‘No, no, no.’ Hertel was practically chortling, like he’d been yanked back to his days of reading The Hardy Boys and Tom Swift. ‘This ain’t no Aliens movie, you know. Snakes lay eggs. All you gonna find inside that one is what looks like the floor of a hen house.’

  ‘Chicken eggs,’ I managed in a squeaky voice.

  Pavlik turned around and put a hand down to help me. His words, though, were more for my psyche than physical well-being. ‘Steady, girl.’

  ‘You know what you might say?’ Hertel went on. And on. ‘You might say this snake’s done bitten off more’n she can chew.’

  Honest to God, if I were within batting distance of the man, I’d have beaten him to death him with his own flashlight.

  Hertel laughed at his own sick joke and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘Last year, I spent some time with guys that went out on that python hunt. Which is how come I know so much, case you’ve been wondering.’

  Slowly the snake stretched and then seemed to coil back on itself, the one leg and both multicolored shoes still protruding. I had a flash of my Uncle Gus after a huge Thanksgiving dinner, sucking on a festive toothpick.

  And contemplating dessert.

  Pavlik jumped back.

  Hertel said, ‘If I was you, I wouldn’t be practicing my dance steps on that—’

  ‘If you know something that will help, tell us!’ I screamed at Hertel. ‘Otherwise, just … shut … up!’

  Instead of being hurt or incensed, the engineer seemed gratified, even complimented. ‘Well, Sheriff, appears to me you’ve got yourself a feisty one there. But yes, ma’am. I guess I will leave you to it. Though they do tell me that these snakes – well, the Burmese, at least, and like I said, I don’t know if this one—’

  ‘Now!’

  Honest to God, it was like I was talking dirty to Hertel in bed. The nastier I got, the more he seemed to like it.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ Now he was smiling widely. ‘Well, like I said, these snakes get tired out easy. In fact, the trappers treadmill ’em.’

  ‘“Treadmill”?’ Pavlik asked, coincidentally saving my sanity.

  ‘Yup, they hold the tail of the snake and run their hands up along, under its belly. Makes the python think it’s the one moving – escaping – so it tuckers itself out trying. Once that snake’s exhausted, you can grab ’em by the base of the head and dump them in a pillow case.’

  I looked at the snake. ‘Would have to be a big pillowcase.’

  ‘I don’t intend to capture this one, so I wouldn’t worry.’ Pavlik had positioned himself behind the snake once more. Or, more precisely, behind the snake’s head. If he was fully behind the snake he’d be standing another twenty feet down the railroad track. ‘Maggy, try and get his attention.’

  I wondered if snakes could smell fear. If so, I figured I already had
the python’s undivided attention.

  Heart thudding, my legs like jelly, I tried to get a grip of myself and moved to the front of the serpent’s head, but as far away as I could get without stepping back into the water and inadvertently becoming some other critter’s quarry. You know, like the goofball who steps into the street to evade a pickpocket only to be mown down by a truck.

  ‘Oh, and the other thing I found real interesting.’ Hertel kept spewing his grisly little bon mots. ‘Snakes go dormant when they’re digesting.’

  Pavlik was watching me. ‘Ready, Maggy?’

  I met his gaze and nodded. Since one eye was on each side of the creature’s head, I had to pick left or right. Choosing the former, I waved at it. The snake turned the other way and looked at Pavlik, as if to say, Is this broad serious?

  Meanwhile, Hertel was still compulsively sharing. ‘Feller told me if you scare ’em right after a big meal, they—’

  ‘Try making noise,’ Pavlik said out of the corner of his mouth. He was stone still, the knife unwavering in his hand.

  ‘Hey!’ I yelled, jumping up and down. ‘Anaconda. Over here!’

  The snake reared its head like the cobra in Kipling’s Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. Even though my brain told me this wasn’t a venomous snake, my feet didn’t believe it.

  In fact, they had recovered impressively from their previous jelly-like state and were now backpedaling rapidly into the water, demanding to know why we believed Hertel’s claim that this was a python at all. After all, we’d just met the man, and—

  ‘Blaaaaaaaah!’ An explosion in front of me.

  A full lower-third of Potter was now hanging out of the snake’s mouth.

  ‘Holy shit,’ I said, taking another half-step back. ‘What’s—’

  ‘Blaaaaah!’

  Now I could see Potter’s belt.

  ‘Kill it, kill it!’ I screamed in horror as I fell backwards onto the bank. ‘It’s spitting out Larry Potter so it can eat me!’

  ‘Blaaaaah-blaaaaah.’ The snake’s eyes were huge and it looked … well, concerned?

  ‘Like I was saying,’ Hertel had come from behind to help me up, ‘I hear tell you scare one of these things after a big meal and—’