A smooth beginning: landing on time in Miami, renting a car, meeting Bob Fielding in his dismal office. Bob hadn’t heard Roger was no longer with Thorvald and asked him for a job, but no matter: this was all a play, a fiction designed for the day, if it ever came, when he could swear under oath and prove beyond a reasonable doubt that, yes, he had flown to Miami but, no, not for any illegal, to say nothing of deadly, purposes-only to feel out a former colleague about the possibility of a job, as Bob Fielding would attest. Bob Fielding: long forgotten, but still, a piece on the board, to be rearranged. IQ 181-on a bad day. Roger hurried down to his car and drove north to Delray Beach.
Fucking mosquitoes. They’d moved the highway crew west, onto 441, practically in the Everglades. Clouds of mosquitoes rose up whenever Whitey jabbed at the grass with his steel-tipped pole, whining around his head, tormenting him. Plus the heat and the humidity were too fucking much. He was tired of sweating that clammy sweat every time he moved, of the sun burning down on the back of his neck. And then there was the threat of AIDS. Rey said you couldn’t get AIDS from a mosquito, but why not? Would you bite someone that had AIDS? No. Getting bit by a mosquito that had bitten an AIDS victim was the same thing. Ever seen the blood when you squish a mosquito? he’d asked Rey. Could be anybody’s blood, the blood of some ninety-pound faggot junkie on his deathbed. Whitey swatted at one now, just after it got him right on the face, and examined the palm of his hand: crushed mosquito parts in a red smear. “Fuck,” he called out aloud. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” There was no one to hear, the traffic being light, car windows all rolled up against the heat.
A Lexus went by, then a Benz and a Porsche. Whitey stabbed a scrap of aluminum foil, dropped it in the bright orange plastic bag. “Done much thinking about your future?” the social worker had asked the day before.
“Fuck,” said Whitey. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” He was too busy spearing trash, swatting mosquitoes, and being angry about the future to notice the car pulling to the side of the road behind him. The opening and closing of the door didn’t really register either-what was he trained to do? fuck all; society had completely failed him-and it was only when a voice, a male voice, educated and polite, said, “Excuse me, sir,” that Whitey turned.
Sir? Whitey couldn’t remember ever being called sir before, certainly not by anyone like this: a tall man, almost as tall as Whitey, with dark hair cut in a distinguished way like that black-and-white actor, the name didn’t come to him, smooth skin, an expensive black suit. “Me?” said Whitey.
The man smiled. “Maybe you can help me,” he said, producing a map. “I’m a little lost.”
“Where you headed?” said Whitey as the man came closer, donning rimless glasses, unfolding the map. A banknote fell out, fluttered to the ground, where a sudden breeze caught it, rolled it over, threatened to carry it away. Without thinking, Whitey speared the bill, raised it up on the steel tip. “Dropped something,” he said, and saw what it was: a one-hundred-dollar bill.
The man plucked it off the steel tip with thumb and index finger, said: “How the heck did that get there?”
Whitey thought, Plenty more where that came from. Sharp thinking, because the next second the man was returning the bill to his money clip-a money clip, not a mere wallet, and gold besides-and Whitey saw them, thick and green. Whitey took all that in from the corner of his eye, crafty, unnoticed.
“Thanks,” said the man, tucking the money clip into his right front pocket; Whitey made sure to note the exact location, although he had no idea what he was going to do with the information. “Now, what I’m looking for,” said the man, frowning at the map, “is Abner and Sallie’s Alligator Farm. It’s supposed to be around the junction of..” His voice trailed off.
A rich guy, maybe, but not very bright. Whitey could see the back of the sign for the turnoff to the alligator farm about two hundred yards away; the man had driven right past it. “The alligator farm?” said Whitey. “That’s a bit tricky.”
“I was afraid it would be,” said the man.
Whitey paused, quickly scanning the man’s face again, confirming his first impression: an innocent. “Tell you what,” he said. “How about I just hop in with you, make it easy, like.”
“I couldn’t really ask that,” said the man.
Whitey wasn’t sure what that sentence meant. “Meaning I’ll guide you there,” he said.
The man laughed, a strange barking laugh that Whitey didn’t get and forgot about almost at once. “That’s very good of you,” the man said, “but I couldn’t take you away from your work.”
“Not a problem,” said Whitey, “long as I’m back at five.”
The man checked his watch, a Rolex-Whitey had seen them in Playboy — and said, “I guarantee it. And I’ll pay you for your time…”
“Yeah?”
“… Mr…”
“Whitey”-Christ, maybe having his real name out there wasn’t such a good idea, especially if this guy ended up getting rolled, or something-“Reynoso.” Rey’s last name.
The man held out his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Reynoso. Everyone calls me Roger.”
They shook hands, got in the car. A brown leather jacket, soft and luxurious, lay on the front seat. Whitey lifted it carefully and thought of the leather jacket he’d had long ago, leatherette, actually. “Here’s your jacket.”
“Not mine,” said Roger, starting the car. “Belonged to my assistant-former assistant. Just toss it in the back.”
Whitey tossed it in the back and said, “That way,” and Roger drove back up the highway. A nice car, with sunroof, CD player, cell phone. “Hang a right,” said Whitey, and Roger-a cautious driver, Whitey saw, both hands on the wheel, back straight, eyes on the road-swung onto the turnoff. The road narrowed from two-lane blacktop to one, the blacktop turned to dirt, huge ferns and other growths Whitey didn’t have names for closed in from above, and then they were at
a barbed-wire gate on which hung a sign: WELCOME TO ABNER AND SALLIE’S ALLIGATOR FARM. OBSERVE ALL RULES.
“You certainly know your way around,” said Roger. “Are you from this area, Mr. Reynoso?”
“Hey, call me Whitey,” said Whitey. And: “No.” Giving him that much, but not actually divulging where he was from, playing it close to the vest.
“Where are you from, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“New…” Whitey was going to say New Mexico, then remembered something about the best lie being close to the truth, and thinking what the hell, said, “Hampshire. New Hampshire.”
“No kidding,” said Roger.
“You’re from New Hampshire, too?”
“I have interests there,” said Roger.
Interests-Whitey liked the sound of that, wanted to know more. “Interests?” he said.
But maybe that was too subtle, because Roger said, “And what brought you down here?”
“Well, Florida, you know,” said Whitey.
“The climate?”
“Yeah, the climate,” said Whitey, although he hated it. “And the mosquitoes,” he added, a remark that just popped out.
Roger laughed his strange laugh. “You’ve got a sense of humor, unlike…” He didn’t finish the sentence, but somehow Whitey knew he was talking about the former assistant. The jacket must have been almost new: Whitey could smell the leather. “I like a sense of humor,” Roger said.
“Me, too,” said Whitey. He tried to remember a joke he’d heard about a rabbi, a dildo, and a parrot, but before he had it clear in his mind, an enormous woman with thighlike upper arms poking out of her tent dress came to the other side of the gate. Roger slid down the window.
“You all for the gator show?” she said.
“Yes,” said Roger. Whitey thought for a moment about his job, but as long as he was at his post for the five o’clock pickup he was fine, and it was only three-thirty; besides, he’d never seen a gator show.
“Four bucks apiece, ’stead of five. On account of no rasslin’today.”
“I beg your pardon?” said Roger.
“No gator rasslin’. My husband’s the rassler, and he’s with the lawyer right now.” She leaned on the car; it rocked under her weight. “The environmentalists, they got a court order to stop the rasslin’. For ‘ protecting the
