The Second Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 20 More Classic Mystery Stories

The Ultimate Prey

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, December 1974.

You’ll understand why I can’t pinpoint the location of the Island. It’s one of those hundreds of pieces broken from the mainland mass along the perimeter of the Gulf of Mexico from eastern Texas around to western Florida.

Countless such islands remain as they were created, semitropical mangrove jungles swarming with poisonous life, separated from the throes of civilization by narrow bays, sounds, bayous. These islands run to a type and therefore have much in common.

Developers have swarmed onto countless other Gulf Coast islands, bulldozing the jungle, pumping, dredging, filling, spreading lawns and domestic palms, laying out streets, marinas, golf courses, sites for homes, schools, and expensive condominiums. Dedicated to the Beautiful Life, these islands also have much in common.

The one I’m talking about, however, is used for a purpose that makes it unique among all islands.

I first viewed the Island from a low-flying helicopter on a hot, sultry day. It looked so peaceful and inviting, swimming toward us on a blue-green, sparkling Gulf. In shape, it was a finger lying on the serene sea, four or five miles long and a couple of miles wide.

The northern end had been plushly prepared for people. Amid acres of lawn and tropical gardens, a modernistic home of glass and redwood threw its three large, adjacent wings into the sunshine. The lawn sloped to a snowy white beach and marina where a seaworthy cruiser and a small schooner with furled sails bobbed.

South of the house were spread the huge kidney-shaped swimming pool, doubles tennis courts, a landing strip with parked Cessna, and, tucked to one side, a couple of small cement-block buildings that I guessed housed the pumps, generators and other necessities to keep the estate going.

The man-made paradise occupied only the northern quarter of the Island. Less than a mile south of the house the jungle crouched, a thick green tangle creating its own twilight; timeless and self-renewing, it seemed to brood with endless patience, awaiting the time when it would reclaim the small part that people had carved from it. LaFarge, the sheriff, was flying the chopper, and so far he’d merely grunted every time I asked him where he was taking me and why.

Conscious of the weight of the handcuffs about my wrists, I studied his swarthy, big-boned, cruel profile. A flicker in his dark, heavy-browed eyes and gathering of muscle tension in his bullish body warned me that the Island was our destination.

LaFarge’s town, Ogathalla, was an unimportant dot on the map, a crossroads cluster of weathered buildings in piney woods country, little more than a posted speed limit and main street traffic light to halt the big Kawasaki I was riding cross-country.

Before the light changed, a dusty red-and-white cruiser with constabulary markings and blue-flashing blinker quartered in front of the cycle. The big, indistinct image behind the steering wheel leaned in my direction and thumbed me toward the curb.

Obediently, I walked the wheels over, straddling the seat. The man I was to know as LaFarge got out of the cruiser and padded toward me. He studied me closely, my rather skinny face and denim-clothed frame, the curl of sandy hair below the crash helmet, the eyes behind light amber glasses, the leather-strap sandals on dusty bare feet, the blanket roll secured behind the cycle’s seat. “What’s your name, jimbo?”

“Rogers, Officer.”

“Where you headed?”

“Down the coast.”

“Where down the coast, jimbo?”

“Tampa, maybe. Sarasota. Fort Myers. Just someplace to work and spend the winter in the sun.”

“Where you from?”

“El Paso,” I said.

“Before that?”

“Phoenix. L.A. Vegas.”

“You got people?” he asked, his dark, intent eyes making the question important

“People?”

“Kinfolk,” he snapped. “Someone who can vouch for you.”

I slipped off the riding glasses and looked at him, frowning. “Why do I need someone to vouch for me?”

“The welcome mat ain’t out for motorcycle bums in Ogathalla, jimbo.”

“I’m not exactly a motorcycle bum, Officer. I’ve got money. I pay my way.”

He kicked the front tire almost gently with his toe. “Just rambling around, seeing the country, enjoying your freedom, working when you have to?”

“Something like that.” But it went deeper. It went back to hard questions that crystallized in my mind about the time I was one of the last of the soldier boys debarking from Vietnam. Simply framed questions without ready answers... who I am... where is truth among the falsehoods... what this business of living is all about... what to do with my life...

I was trying to settle a lot of things in my mind, but I doubted that the thug in uniform would understand, even if he were interested So I said, “You’ve summed it up exactly, Officer.”

“We’ll see. We’ll sure look into you.” He moved with a short side step. “Now get off the wheels, jimbo. Our local pokey is just a short walk down the street”

I stood in dumb surprise. The look on my face gave him a short laugh. “Busting the speed limit as you rolled into town will do for a starter,” he said. “You want to add a charge of resisting arrest?” The urge flared in me to flatten him and kick the Kawa to life. He read it in my eyes and dropped his hand to his gun. “Do it,” he invited softly. “I step on your kind, with my heel. Do it — and I’ll take you before the others even have a chance.”

His reference to the others made no more sense than the rest of the situation, but I sensed clearly his sadism, and I hadn’t survived to this point in time to give a prehistoric sheriff quick excuses to get his kicks.

The rest of the day was spent in a six-by-eight cell in the Ogathalla jail. The cells next to me in the decrepit old building were empty, leaving me suspended in sweltering heat and the aftersmells of ten thousand previous tenants.

I wasn’t yet in the grip of real gut-fear. I figured LaFarge for a bored bully shoring up his tough, big-man self-image. He’d picked me up on a pretext, but he could only go so far. This was still the U.S. of A.

I couldn’t see any other angle. I came from nowhere, was going nowhere. I had traveling bread; enough, I hoped, to satisfy LaFarge and a crooked magistrate in a kangaroo court.

I finally slept in a pool of soured sweat and the stink of the lumpy bunk.

After daybreak the next morning LaFarge came to the cell, grinned at me through the barred door, and slipped a tin plate through the slot at the bottom of the door. “Breakfast, Rogers.”

I gripped the bars, white-knuckled. “I want a lawyer.”

“Jimbo,” he drawled, “you’re old enough for your druthers not to hurt you. Relax and enjoy Ogathalla hospitality while you can.”

He didn’t seem to mind the things I yelled at him as he went away. He returned in late afternoon with another tin plate of swill. After the vacuity of the day the sound of any other human footstep was welcome — almost. “Can’t we be reasonable, Sheriff?” I asked, ignoring the food.

“Sure. I’m the most reasonable man in the county.”

“Then what’s the charge against me?”

“Ain’t decided yet, jimbo. I’m looking into you like you never been looked into before. I may be a hick sheriff, but I got a long-distance phone and a badge and a title, and before I’m through I can tell you if you’ve ever spit on Times Square.”

I didn’t have anything to say for a moment, and while I stood there looking at him through the space between the bars the first worms began crawling through my guts.

“Sheriff,” I said, wetting my lips, “I do have some rights.”

“Here, jimbo? Who says?”

“You can’t keep me here forever.”

“Who says? You got anybody to come fetch you out?”

The sun gradually slipped off in its habitual way, and nightfall came as a heavy and unwelcome shadow. The questions that had bothered me for so many months had a particular sharpness there in the darkness of LaFarge’s jail, but I wouldn’t let myself think too hard about anything, including the hours ahead and the idea of LaFarge having the last word.

I stood at the single small barred window listening to the nightly din of the nearby swamp. LaFarge couldn’t have secured me more to his liking if he’d put me in a tomb, although I knew, bitterly, that stockade inmates I’d heard about in Vietnam could have cracked this cruddy, weather-rotten cell without much trouble.

I turned finally and sat down on the edge of the bunk, head in my hands. After a while, I stretched out on my back, feeling the sag of the bunk, listening to it creak every time I drew a breath. It seemed about ready to fall apart... and with that thought my eyes snapped open.

I sat up quickly, whipped the grimy pad to the foot of the bunk. The springs and braces and framing stood out in the moonglow. My hands explored and tested the framework. A diagonal corner brace, a flat piece of old metal about an inch wide and twelve inches long, seemed to be hanging on only with the help of its rust. The rust showered off in grainy flecks as I took hold of the brace and twisted it back and forth.

The job was harder than it looked. The edges of metal rasped my palms to rawness. The effort and humid heat of the night oozed a sticky sweat out of my skin, but I had plenty of time. Patiently I twisted the brace back and forth, gripping it hard and putting muscle into it At last, when the moon had shifted shadows about on the floor, I felt — or imagined — the brace yielding a little further.

Then the rivet at one end slipped out of its rust-eaten hole, and with the direct leverage that this gave me, I yanked the other end free. A pulse lifted through my chest as I gripped the end of the brace and took a couple of practice swings with it at an imaginary LaFarge hovering in the darkness.

He came to the cell two hours later than usual the next morning.

“We’ll talk a little today before you have breakfast, jimbo.” While he fitted the key in the lock, he looked in at me as if to note how I was making out I was slightly ripe by this time, wrinkled, grimy, beardy, a few pounds having melted from a frame that couldn’t afford the loss. LaFarge grinned with satisfaction at what he saw, and the metal weapon felt a few degrees warmer against my forearm where it was concealed by my sleeve.

LaFarge pushed the door open, and as he was wriggling the key from the balky old lock, the metal strap slipped down into my hand.

LaFarge glanced down at the lock, and I moved. He jerked about, glimpsing the metal strap slashing at him. Fear broke his knees and welded him to the door. The reflex saved him. The metal strap missed his head, glanced from his shoulder. Still clutching the door, he threw himself blindly away from me. The metal strap smashed against the edge of the moving door, and before I could balance and swing a third time, LaFarge was outside the cell, the lock snicking, the door a barrier between us.

A moment passed while we faced each other. LaFarge was rubbing his shoulder, but if it hurt, he didn’t seem to mind.

“You’ve made it personal now, Rogers,” he said softly. “I’m going to enjoy taking you to the others. Enjoy it real personal, believe it.”

I looked at the piece of metal in my hand, useless now. I opened my fingers and watched the strap hit the dirty cement floor with a small explosion of grit.

Finally, I looked up and saw the bars banded over the image of LaFarge’s face. “Who are these others? What’s this all about? Why me, LaFarge?”

“Because you were in the right place at the right time, jimbo.”

“This is crazy!”

“Can you think of many things in this world that ain’t?” He slipped the handcuffs from his belt. “Cool it while you can, jimbo. I won’t take any more chances with you. Now then, you just stick your hands out here... both hands through the same opening between bars so’s I don’t hook you to the door... and we’ll fit the bracelets. Then the two of us will march the little distance to the helipad behind the jail and take a little trip in the Department chopper. You’d be surprised at the crime in this bayou country: poachers, moonshiners, thieves and killers. Chopper’s the only way to chase some of them down.”

The ride wasn’t as short as LaFarge had promised. He flew us due south until the shoreline of the Gulf was below. Then we followed the coast eastward. We whirred over a traffic-clogged expressway, bisected the wake of a tanker steaming to the busy port just below the horizon to our rear.

Streaming along far beneath us were Gulf-front homes with private docks, pink-and-white resort hotels claiming miles of cake-icing beaches, little white sails cavorting offshore.

Then the interstate veered north through a wilderness of piney woods and cypress trees dripping Spanish moss, and we veered south with the curve of a shoreline that lost all traces of people.

In eight to ten minutes, LaFarge put the shoreline to our tail, and a scattering of small wilderness islands slid beneath the Plexiglas bubble. None of these interested LaFarge. Then the finger, one-quarter pure plush and three-quarters raw jungle, came into view, and the chopper began to drop.

As we whirred closer to the estate, three people came out of the west wing of the palatial home and started jogging southward across the lawn.

“On their way to meet us,” LaFarge said.

“The others?”

“The others, jimbo.” LaFarge gave a short laugh. “Ten grand to me every time I bring them a tiger, jimbo. Helps a poor country sheriff make ends meet, though I don’t find a special nobody on a motorcycle every day who meets the purely rigid requirements. Make you feel any better, knowing you’re worth ten thousand dollars?”

LaFarge had settled the copter a considerable distance from the house, not more than a hundred yards from where the jungle began.

As LaFarge prodded me out with his gun, the three men who’d trotted from the house came to a halt, semicircled about me and looked me over.

They were all young, very close to my own age, dressed in khaki shorts, bush jackets, and laced boots. Each carried a carbine, lightweight brush guns, in the crook of his right arm.

I had a vague feeling of having seen them before, of knowing them from some time or place, which seemed impossible.

The man on my right was very tall and thin, with muscles like wire, a gaunt face, a corrugated skull that was already totally bald, though he was only in his middle-twenties.

Facing me most directly was a heavyweight whose dark face and build reminded me of LaFarge. On his flank, the third member of the party was tall, broad-shouldered, round-faced, with ash-blond hair done in the wildest Afro style I’d ever seen.

“Rogers,” LaFarge said, “meet the Quixote Hunt Club. Hepperling the bald. McMurdy with the beef. And Convers, the panther here with the big blossom of white hair.”

I knew, hearing the names, why they hadn’t seemed total strangers. I — along with millions — had met them at a distance in newscasts and Sunday supplements.

Hepperling meant sugar millions; McMurdy, shipping; Convers, oil. The three were the latest stems on family trees that in all branches meant a good slice of a billion dollars in economic wealth and power. For each of them the coming of age had meant trust funds, allowances, and inheritances the rest of us wouldn’t risk dreaming about. The three might have pooled their resources and bought themselves a small, undeveloped country rather than a mere island.

As Quixotes, they’d frequently made headlines; crashing a plane and disappearing in Alaska for a week after a Kodiak hunt, going after jaguar in restricted tribal grounds in South America, creating an international incident when Kenyan authorities had arrested them for poaching bull elephants, and they’d taken pains to insult the Kenyan government before a bank of international television news cameras.

LaFarge was saying, “Rogers is completely safe, fellows. No family ties, no close friends. Nobody to ask the first question about his disappearance.”

“We know.” McMurdy dismissed LaFarge as a human being. “We always make our own inquiries when you have a prospect in custody, and we’ve the agents and the means.”

LaFarge endured McMurdy’s insulting tone like a well-trained hound.

McMurdy studied me head to toe. “You seem to come from a tough-luck line, Rogers. Father walked out when you were six or seven — never seen or heard from him since. Mother remarried — a real stinker. Both of them killed in a car crash when you were hardly out of high school. Worked your way through a couple years of college, then the Army taps you. Off to Vietnam. Rough time over there. MIA for a while. Wounded once. Finally hung up dockside, one of the last to leave.”

“I didn’t have much to come back to,” I said.

“But you survived,” Hepperling said. “You seem to survive anything. That’s a good omen. That should make it good.”

“Let’s hope so,” Convers said. “We haven’t had a good island hunt in months now.”

I think I’d suspected the truth when they’d first ringed the grounded chopper with their carbines, but now as it was coming closer to me with every passing second, I still couldn’t believe it I wouldn’t believe it Then I looked at them, at the jungle, and back at them — and I had to believe it Convers bobbed his woolly white mane toward the jungle. “You’ll be given a canteen of water and some field rations before you go in there, Rogers. How much life you buy for yourself is up to you, your wits and strength.”

I was unable to move.

Hepperling said, “You do understand, Rogers?”

“Sure.” The word was a husky whisper. “You guys have hunted everything, everywhere, until you’ve run all the way out of normal pleasure. So now, when you have the chance and can arrange it, here on this island... you hunt the prime game of all.”

“How afraid are you, Rogers?” Convers asked as if the subject really interested him.

“If I wallowed on my knees would it help?”

“Last time the prey almost went nuts before dashing off into the jungle,” Hepperling said, “screaming that we were crazy, not for real.”

“Oh, you’re for real,” I said. “In twenty-seven years of living I’ve discovered that anything can be for real on this planet. Adolf Hitler. Scientists who talk about dedication, and devote their lives to thinking up bigger bombs and deadlier germs. Charles Manson. The Mafia. I don’t doubt that you three are rather mildly real, compared to some of the things that go on.”

I walked a few steps from the chopper and stood looking at the jungle. Then I sat down on the green coolness of the grass. “Only I’m for real, too, fellows. And you’ve left me just one thing. You’ve stripped me down to this one real thing. I won’t do it. The hunt is off.” They came stalking toward me, their shadows flowing across me. “That’s the whole point of it,” I said. “Without the point, there is nothing in it for you. Without fleeing prey trying to hang onto a few more hours of life there in the jungle, you’ve lost the point, and it’s no dice. You’ve got the wrong tiger this time.”

“LaFarge,” McMurdy ordered in a quiet tone.

LaFarge came around to stand close in front of me. He pulled out his gun. “You want it right here, Rogers?”

“No,” I said, “I don’t want it anywhere for years and years yet But you’re betting against an enemy with nothing to lose, LaFarge. No matter what you do, the hunt is off. And I don’t believe you’ll be paid for this one or trusted in the future.”

He fired the gun almost in my face. The flash blinded me. I felt the bullet nip the hair on my crown.

I pushed back the need to be sick all over the place. “You’ll have to do better than that, LaFarge.”

He put the gun to my temple and slowly eased back the hammer.

“That’s the surest way of guaranteeing no hunt, LaFarge.”

Taking a step back, he ventured a glance at the faces of his young employers. He didn’t like the way they were looking at him. He didn’t enjoy what he felt as they measured him. He wasn’t liking any of it at all.

He coupled my name with a curse. “On your feet, Rogers. I’ll make you run! Hit for the jungle!”

He exploded his booted foot directly at my face. He didn’t have nearly the coordination or quickness of a Viet Cong. My handcuffed hands met the driving ankle. I flipped him hard, onto his back, and before he could catch the next breath, I’d wrung the gun from him and spun to face the others.

“Hold it!” I ordered.

Not a carbine moved. They had brains as well as loot. They knew they could have taken me — but not safely.

It was one of those crossroads moments in life for me, not because of anything outside myself, but because of the thought coming full-blown to my mind. I thought about the gig I’d had from the moment of birth. It seemed that the time was overdue for a putting of things in balance for a fellow named Rogers. The big, basic questions didn’t bug me any longer. I was certain, right then, of the direction my life would take. I let a grin build on my lips.

In response, the first edge of tension eased from the Quixotes. They slipped glances from me to each other. Actually, there was a lot more rapport between the Quixotes and myself than between any of us and LaFarge.

“Fellows,” I said, “being a country sheriff in mean bayou territory is risky business. If LaFarge turned up in some back bayou shot to death, no one would figure it any way except that he’d cornered one mean moonshiner or poacher too many.”

I eased the snout of the gun in LaFarge’s direction. “Into the jungle, big man.”

“You’re nuts, Rogers... Fellows, you tell this character—” His words broke off as he looked at them. He couldn’t take his eyes from their faces. He took a backward step... then another... and whatever it was that he’d substituted for nerve all of his life died inside of him. He broke and ran, disappearing quickly into the jungle.

McMurdy was standing closest to me. Carefully, I turned the police pistol around and handed it to him butt first.

“Gentlemen,” I said, “I think the hunt resumes. And don’t forget to get the keys to the handcuffs when you’ve tracked him down.”

That’s how my association with the Quixotes began. Now I draw seventy-five grand a year, plus expenses. I travel the plushiest resorts. I drive a thirty-five-thousand-dollar sports car. I buy the finest food and wines and wear a hand-tailored wardrobe.

Not surprisingly, I practically have to fight off the chicks. I usually pick the best-looking and healthiest of the crop of empty-headed dropouts and runaways from good, substantial homes. They’re easiest to con, and once on the Island it’s too late for them to come to their senses and realize they’re facing something entirely different from the romantic and exciting weekend they’ve been promised. They’re among the runaways who every year are simply not found. None is ever traceable to the Island. I see to that.

Girls... the ultimate prey. The Quixotes thought the suggestion was the greatest when I hit them with it. I coupled the idea with the offer to act as their agent, roaming the country, recruiting the prey, and bringing them to the Island. I’ve proven my absolute reliability, and the Quixotes respect my advice.

Summing up the brand-new life, I guess you could say I owe LaFarge a vote of thanks.