Gator Aide Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 waterways, 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