The Swamp Killers

by Sarah M. Chen

  “So do I.” Roland smiled, but she didn’t return it. He supposed she was trying to encourage him to pay his check and move along. He didn’t blame her. He’d get out of here as soon as he could.

  With his view of the alley obstructed, Roland turned his attention to the room. There wasn’t much to the Tooth and Ale. Magenta booths ran along the perimeter, a long wooden bar stretched out against the back wall, tables dotted the floor in between. License plates and crossed fishing rods adorned the walls. He counted six trophy alligator heads on display, presumably the “tooth” in Tooth and Ale.

  When he arrived, the room had been almost empty—just two construction workers drinking after their shifts. Sometimes when the hinges squealed, Roland glanced at the door, but he hadn’t paid much attention to the patrons who came in. He was here to meet a man with a very distinctive and very imposing figure, so when he didn’t see a mountainous man stuffed into the doorway, Roland ignored the patron and went back to his coffee.

  Since the waitress had stolen his view of the alley encampment, he started to pay more attention to the people entering the bar. At this hour, new people turned up every few minutes, and the bar had halfway filled. With the people came a low murmur of conversation, made louder by the sound bouncing off the brick. Out of boredom, Roland watched the door to see when Sheldon Duplass might finally show up for their meeting.

  The door opened. Someone familiar walked in, but not someone Roland expected. The young man wore a white T-shirt and Scotch plaid pants and scanned the room. He seemed disorientated, but more disappointed by the atmosphere. A quarter century younger than Roland, the man had a blond whiffle and freckles across the bridge of his nose. He spotted Roland instantly, and squinted at him in recognition, then confusion. This man didn’t expect to run into Roland either.

  The younger man paced to Roland’s booth. “This seat taken?”

  “It’s yours,” said Roland.

  The man was named El, short for Elliott. They were in the same line of work now. Before they chose this career, they were also in the same line of work. They had known each other for a long time. At one time, El called him Uncle Roland, back when El’s father was still alive. Roland remembered how El’s father bullied his kid. He still felt guilty for not intervening every time he saw the man slap El on the back of the head or pinch his arm hard enough to bruise. He told himself that it might have made things worse for the boy if he had intervened, that the beatings would escalate in private, away from witnesses. In truth, he was just chicken-shit. El packed on muscle and eventually outgrew his old man, but continued to be afraid of his father until he died.

  When they were both cops, Roland mothered the boy. He couldn’t help it. El had the same temper as his father, and it got him into trouble. When El beat a suspect into a coma, he helped the kid rebound after he was kicked out of the department. Roland had already retired by then and got El a job at one of the Duplass prisons. Eventually, they moved up from corrections officers to doing more specialized tasks for the family. From time to time, Sheldon Duplass called Roland personally to put him on a job, and Roland started bringing El into those jobs. Looking back now, the transition from cop to criminal had been so smooth that he never questioned whether this was the right path for either of them.

  “See you have your usual spot, by the exit,” El teased.

  “That’s right.”

  El looked around the room. “If you were scared of being shot, you should have picked a nicer place.” El made a lot of bad jokes.

  Roland asked, “Why are you here?”

  El shrugged. “Meeting someone. You?”

  “Meeting someone.” Roland wondered if they were both here to meet Sheldon Duplass, but he immediately dismissed the thought. El wasn’t high enough in the organization to warrant a meeting with Sheldon.

  “Funny place to meet,” said El.

  “Makes sense to me. If we were at the Omni, we’d run into the rest of us. Lots of tourists in Zenga suits.”

  “You sound paranoid.”

  “That’s what keeps me safe.” Roland changed the subject. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  El scowled. “Afraid I’m going to beat you to the prize?”

  “I’m afraid you’re going to get lost in the crowd.”

  El lowered his chin and gave Roland a predatory stare. “And you’re not.”

  “It’s not a competition.”

  “But that’s exactly what it is,” said El.

  The older man tried to recall when El had developed defiance, when he had grown from a child into, well, whatever this was. He wished he could explain to El that he had almost declined this assignment himself. When Sheldon had contacted him, Roland initially refused. Accepting an assignment like this was risky enough without other assassins in the mix. Now it felt like he was on a boar hunt. Most of the contestants coming down to Jacksonville would be drawn in by the price tag. It was a handsome reward, no doubt about it. He didn’t blame El for wanting the prize. But Roland hadn’t come for the money. One simply didn’t say no to Sheldon Duplass, especially when he asked you to do a job. Especially when the prospect of future assignments depended on the completion of this one.

  El waved at the waitress, and she came over with a pitcher of coffee. She didn’t bother masking her contempt. “You here to drink, or just having coffee?”

  El met her Florida twang with an exaggerated Atlanta drawl. “It’s a bar, darling. I’m here to drink. What do you have that’s local?”

  “Bog Brew.”

  “I’ll take two to save you the second trip. I’m hungry too. You have food?”

  The waitress warmed up some, charmed by the young man’s lopsided grin. “We got some. Want to see a menu, sweetheart?”

  El wised off. “Got any gator?”

  She played along. “Nope, but try the fried chicken. Tastes like gator.” She winked.

  “How about key lime pie?”

  “That we can do,” she said.

  “Give me two slices,” El said. “One for my friend.” The waitress smiled brightly at El. Despite telling himself that he didn’t care what the waitress thought of him, Roland was irritated that El had earned a smile.

  When she returned to the bar, El pinched a gap in the window blinds. “Did you see all the homeless out there? If I wanted to see that, I’d stay in Atlanta.”

  “If you don’t like it here, you can always go back,” Roland suggested.

  The younger man shifted in his seat, letting out air in a great deflation, so that his body sagged a bit on his elbows. Roland wished that the defeated whistle out of his nose meant that El was considering an honorable retreat to Atlanta, but he knew the tone. As usual, El was putting up with the old man, and his tolerance was approaching its limit.

  The front door squealed again. Roland wanted to see Sheldon, just so he could end this conversation, but it was an athletic couple dressed in dark clothes. They sat at a table and scanned the laminated drink menu, her chin perched in his shoulder. El didn’t bother to look, and kept his eyes trained on Roland.

  “El, this isn’t a normal assignment. There’s a critical mass of professionals who have descended on this town. You can feel the electricity in the air, can’t you?”

  El said, “I have people at home who need feeding.”

  “Take the next job,” Roland implored. “Nothing good is coming out of this.”

  El mimicked Roland’s slower, deeper voice. “You think I might get hurt?”

  “I do.”

  Somewhere out there, Sheldon was making his way here, thought Roland. He had to keep reminding himself why he was there. Sheldon Duplass. He couldn’t no-show to a meeting with Sheldon Duplass. While he would never articulate this thought, Roland considered it an honor that Sheldon would want a meeting with him. Perhaps Sheldon would share some critical piece of intel with Roland. After the number of discreet assignments he had completed for the Duplass family, he understood why Sheldon
would want to confide in Roland. He valued his experience, Roland thought. Sheldon knew that, for an assignment this delicate, he could trust Roland to keep it clean. Any of the assassins visiting Jacksonville had the capacity to dispatch Timmy. But there was Melody to consider. Olivia didn’t want her daughter hurt, and neither did Sheldon. By entrusting the task to a former police officer, Sheldon would ensure that the hit would be clean, meaning only Timmy would be killed. He couldn’t be certain the others would respect this sensitivity. Roland wasn’t even sure that El would respect it. The young man had a temper, and in the heat of things he could be unpredictable. With a myopic view of that pot of gold waiting for him, El might make things messy.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” said El. “That I’m going to bungle it if I get the chance.”

  Roland didn’t deny it. “It needs to be clean. The family is watching this one. Real close.”

  “I can be as clean as they come,” he said. “Can I show you something?” Without further prompting, El pulled something out of his pocket, and slid the sugar dispenser halfway between them on the table. His device looked like two rings, and when he inserted a finger in each, El pulled it apart to reveal a small strip of metal with serrated teeth. Between the rings, the saw expanded and retracted like measuring tape. El demonstrated on the sugar dispenser, deftly wrapping the toothed wire around the glass and shifting his arms to show how the steel strip might cut into its intended victim. “One…two…three. Straight to the bone. Can’t even hear ’em scream.” El seemed pleased with himself.

  Roland shook his head. “Flashing that around in a public place. Just stupid.”

  El laughed with a searing cruelty, and Roland wondered why he even bothered with him. Maybe he clung to the memory of El as a child. Maybe it was because they had both been cops, and they shared the unspoken and lonely shame of trading a noble profession for a career of unpleasant duties. They had once been protectors of the public, and now they were janitors for the mob. Not many people understood how that kind of fall forever deformed a person.

  A group of five men in corporate suits walked in. They came from office jobs for after-work drinks. Lagging behind them was an outlier, definitely not part of the group. The sixth man wore a tight polo shirt buttoned up to the neck, with tattoos running down his arms and a zigzag across his cheek where his beard refused to grow. Roland knew this man. His name was Levin Colland. Back in Atlanta, Levin had lost his right ear during a gang war, and Roland immediately recognized the stump. He had worked that case. That one ear cost the other side sixteen men, wiped out in sequence at various homes, clubs, and restaurants. The murder spree earned Levin a reputation, and now, some twenty years later, he was one of the most sought-after assassins in the South.

  Back when Roland was still a detective, he had apprehended Levin Colland and questioned him, but the case never made it to trial.

  El caught Roland staring. “Who is it?”

  “No one,” said Roland, his tongue suddenly dry.

  El looked over his shoulder at Levin Colland. “He one of us?” Roland stared at his coffee, which answered the question for El. “Real watering hole, isn’t it?”

  Roland didn’t want to confess his misgivings, but El was the closest thing to a confidant. “This is strange, isn’t it?”

  El nodded. “Weird a place as I’d pick for a meetup.”

  “Why are you here again?”

  “Meeting someone.”

  “Who?” Roland asked.

  “Can’t tell you that.” El scanned the room again, then peeked through the blinds to look into the alleyway encampment.

  “Can you tell me when you’re supposed to meet?”

  “Hopefully soon,” El said. “Tell you what? If you’re still here when they show up, you can find out.”

  The door opened and another man entered the Tooth and Ale, this one in his late fifties, starved thin wearing an unbuttoned flannel over a tank top, wrinkles creating rifts around his muzzle. He took a stool at the bar and looked around for the bartender. Roland spotted the bulge where the man’s shirt tail concealed a firearm.

  “You know him?” asked El.

  “Not that one. But he’s one of us.”

  Within the next few minutes, several more patrons wandered into the bar. Some were well groomed, more suits and dresses. Others were men who bore the familiar scars and hygienic disregard of those in Roland’s vocation. One man came in with shoulder-length dreadlocks, another with one side of his head shaved, another with a constellation of face piercings. Each one bore something that marked him as dangerous, like the carnival colors of rainforest frogs, the ones where one lick would kill you. Roland listened to the bourgeoning clamor, now loud enough that he had to strain to talk to El. In a short time, the bar had filled up with both civilians and murderers.

  “This is starting to feel like prom,” El said. “What do you think this is all about?”

  “No idea. Don’t like it, though.” Roland felt for his weapon under his sport coat, making sure there was enough give in the holster to draw quickly. The waitress swooped down and deposited El’s beers and pie slices before leaving in a hurry, a blur of frayed hair. As El took inventory of the room, he swigged his bottle, then cautiously took up the fork and sunk it into the soft green tip of the pie.

  “The other one’s yours,” said El, pushing the second pie plate at him.

  “I’m fine,” Roland said.

  “Don’t let it go to waste.”

  Roland didn’t want to talk about the pie. With the energy in the room, he was shocked El could eat at all. An acute sense of danger twisted his organs. He offered, “If you go home, I’ll split the take with you.”

  “If I go home,” El said with a bite in his mouth.

  “I give you my word.”

  “That’s assuming you’ll beat out the competition.”

  “I’m trying to look out for you. You don’t want to be here.”

  “I need to feed my kids, Roland.”

  “That’s exactly why you shouldn’t be here, Elliott.”

  El lowered his fork and gave Roland a lingering look of scorn. Roland’s stomach sank. El leaned into the booth close enough to speak softly, even amid the growing racket at the Tooth and Ale. “Roland, I need to tell you something, and I don’t want you to take it personally.” El paused. Perhaps he wondered if he should continue. “You don’t have to look out for me. It doesn’t matter if you knew my father. It doesn’t matter if we were both cops. That was a long time ago. Right now, we’re both here, in the shit, in Jacksonville, Florida. I have a family, Roland. I have a wife and two children who need me. You’re not part of that family.”

  Roland didn’t react. He wasn’t sure why the boy was saying all this, but let him get it all out.

  El took a deep breath, and with apparent regret, continued.

  “I know you’re broke. I know you’re a drunk. That jacket you’re wearing? I remember when you bought it. I can see it’s threadbare now. Your coffee? I can smell the hooch you spiked it with. You didn’t buy a drink here because you can’t afford one, so you brought your own. You can barely afford rent. You’ve bounced from place to place so often, Jess calls me up now and then to get your address. You haven’t talked to your own daughter in more than a year. You’re not a mentor to me, Roland. You’re a cautionary tale.”

  Roland blanched with shame. But then Roland remembered other outbursts from El he’d heard over the years, maybe not as scathing but just as petulant. He reminded himself that the job of elders was to be patient with the young. So instead of firing back an insult, Roland shrugged. “Good luck, then.”

  El rubbed his temples and let out a groan, likely frustrated that he hadn’t elicited the intended response from Roland. “I’m going to the boy’s room.” El paced down to the rear exit and disappeared through a door marked with an alligator in a cowboy hat.

  Alone at the booth, Roland ate a forkful of pie. It wasn’t bad
, just a little sour. He hadn’t eaten today and was so hungry that he engulfed the rest of the slice in a few bites. He checked his phone, but Sheldon hadn’t messaged him. He was tempted to text Sheldon, but he found it best not to bother the man. Maybe the meeting here was with a select group of assassins, not just him. He didn’t like that, but it was Sheldon’s prerogative. He decided to wait and see.

  Trying to catch a glimpse of Sheldon outside, Roland peeked through the blinds again. Night had arrived and only because of the security lights could he make out the contours of the tents in the alley and the shapes of the men and women who lived in them. These people stirred something in him. This could be him in another few years if the money ran out, or if he couldn’t keep himself dry. Roland already slept in his car from time to time when he got kicked out of apartments. Maybe El was right. Maybe he was unfit to give El advice when his own life barely held together.

  He thought about paying the check and leaving. He didn’t exactly have money, but he still had two credit cards, and it might be worth dipping further into debt just to show El that he could pay a tab. Maybe he didn’t need to be part of this meeting. He might hunt for Timmy on his own and surprise Sheldon Duplass with his initiative. Maybe he should go back to Atlanta and leave the boar hunt to the boy.

  Lost in his view of the alley, Roland felt a vibration at his table, the way a spider might feel the pluck of silk. Levin Colland was leaning over him.

  “We know each other, don’t we?” Levin asked.

  Levin had already drawn his weapon and nuzzled the barrel into Roland’s shoulder, angling his body to hide the pistol from the rest of the bar.

  Roland didn’t see the point in lying. “I arrested you once.”

  Levin grinned, revealing two silver teeth among the crooked yellow. “Atlanta.”

  Roland nodded. “Couldn’t make anything stick.”

  Levin raised an eyebrow. “You a long way from Atlanta.”