Maximum Bob

7

The alligator, a ten-foot female weighing about five hundred pounds, opened her eyes and, after several minutes, moved her head from side to side, drowsy, disoriented, not knowing where she was, not catching the scent of anything familiar other than grass and dry soil. No water close by. She raised her head and hissed in the night, in the sound of insects. The wind rose and with it came a scent she recognized as something she liked that she had smelled before sometime in her life and had eaten. After several more minutes she began to move in a sluggish sort of way as though half asleep, not entirely upright on her legs, brushing the grass with her tail. The scent she liked became stronger as she moved and kept moving until her snout touched something she had never smelled before. She sniffed and air came through it into her nostrils, bringing a strong scent of the thing she liked. Now she pushed and whatever it was in front of her bent against her weight until it gave way and the alligator walked through it and felt the ground cold now, smooth and hard. The scent she liked was here, though not enough in one place that it would become the thing itself she could fasten her jaws on and tear or take into her mouth whole. She settled on the cool ground, feeling it become warm beneath her as she went to sleep.

One time Leanne happened to mention that psychic power was at its highest level between the hours of two and four a.m., and thought she would never hear the end of it.

Big jumped on that, asking why she didn’t go outside to meditate then. Was she afraid of the dark? She told him, “No, I’m not afraid of the dark. I don’t get up in the middle of the night ‘cause I don’t have to. I can raise my cosmic consciousness anytime I want.” She could, too.

He’d act innocent and ask her, oh, then why did she go outside every morning six o’clock on the dot if she could do it anytime? Her answer to that was “Because I love the morning. The world glistens and is clean.”

He’d become crude in his anger saying, bullshit, it was because she was afraid of the dark, not letting go of that idea, until she would turn it around and remind him of what he actually was afraid of.

“You’re scared to death of dying.”

She knew he didn’t like her saying that, but it was true. He could send people to death in the electric chair without giving it a second thought. But mention his own passing, like saying to him, “Big, you’re gonna have a terrible time on the other side if you don’t open your heart before you go.” He’d become furious trying to think of something smart to say, something hurtful. She’d say to him, “Oh, my God,” before he thought of a remark to pass, “you should see your aura,” and that would usually end it.

He hated knowing he had an aura she could see and he couldn’t. Sometimes she’d catch him standing in front of the full-length mirror on the bedroom closet door, looking at himself naked.

This morning he was looking out the kitchen window by the sink.

“Nice day, huh?”

Almost pleasant for a change.

He usually didn’t get up till seven. By eight-fifteen he’d be in his pickup truck with a mug of coffee heading for the courthouse.

“We could use a cleanup, that blow we had. I’ll call the Stockade for a crew. Those monkeys, if I could find one guy knew what he was doing… Get me a Japanese gardener brought up on some charge, killed his wife, I’d have the son of a bitch confined out here. Lock him up in the pump house at night.”

What Leanne could not understand was how a person who loved flowers could be so irritable. What happened to the soft-spoken gentleman who came to Weeki Wachee, bought her Coca-Colas, patted her hand in the hospital… made promises he never kept. That part was okay. She had Wanda Grace, she had Pokey, she had her crystals, she had gifts more valuable than any earthly goods… Which reminded Leanne, as she gathered three white quartz forming a triangle on the kitchen table and dropped them in a leather bag, she had a window crystal buried out in the yard, returned to the earth to get its visionary power turned up. She’d dig it up this morning after meditation and a nice talk with Wanda. Leanne turned from the table.

“Pokey? Where are you? Here, Pokey! Come on, sweetheart.” She stooped down as Pokey came skidding across the vinyl floor to hop up into her arms. “Her wants to play with Wanda’s Pokey, don’t her? Big, she hears that other Pokey bark and just about goes crazy, runs around in circles.”

She heard Big, standing at the sink, mutter, “Jesus Christ.” If she could ever get him to say that with reverence it would change his life. The old poop.

“You want, I’ll fix your breakfast.”

“No, you go on.”

“There’s oat bran, bananas…”

“Fine. Listen, you be careful.”

Walking through the dining area and the living room with Pokey and her bag of crystals, Leanne was thinking, Careful of what? That was a strange thing for Big to say. Was he becoming human after all these years?

She slid open the glass door and stepped out on the porch, a concrete slab painted a pale gray that ran the length of the living room, across the front of the house. About to slide the door closed behind her, Leanne stopped. She saw the huge hole in the screen, the edges of it pushed inward. She heard a strange hissing. She turned her head toward the sound and saw the alligator, a giant alligator up on its legs looking at her, and she screamed and was back inside the house sliding the glass closed, locking it, before she realized she was no longer holding Pokey and her bag of crystals. She screamed again and kept screaming as Big came in a hurry from the kitchen.

He got to the glass door in time to see Pokey, for a moment, in the alligator’s jaws before the alligator raised its head as if to look up at the tile ceiling and Pokey was gone, swallowed whole. In those moments all Bob Gibbs could do was stare, not believing an alligator was on his porch. It wasn’t supposed to be there but it was. The next moment he was running into the bedroom to get his.38 revolver, knowing his shotgun wouldn’t do the job. By the time he got back with the weapon Leanne was wailing and sobbing something awful, becoming hysterical on him and standing in the way. He had to push her aside to slide the glass door open enough to draw a clear bead on the gator, Jesus Christ, a big one he estimated to run ten or twelve feet. There were hollow-points in the revolver, given to him by a fishing buddy of his in the Sheriff’s Office, Bill McKenna, in charge of all their criminal investigations. Bob Gibbs closed one eye, aimed at the alligator’s head, a spot between its beady eyes that showed red when you shined a light on them at night, and fired-Christ, Leanne screaming again, throwing him off-and fired and fired again until the revolver clicked empty. The alligator didn’t even shake its head. It hissed a couple of times, came over and smashed the glass door to pieces with one swipe of its tail.

When the first green-and-white arrived Leanne and Bob Gibbs were out in front by the gravel drive, on the side away from the porch. Both the uniformed deputies came bareheaded with their hands on their holstered revolvers. One of them asked where it was, sounding confident, used to this type of call. Bob Gibbs said, “It’s in the goddamn house. In the living room.”

By the time they had gone around to the yard by the porch and could see the alligator inside, another green-and-white arrived and two more deputies in dark green joined the group. Bob Gibbs told them he had put six hollow-points into the son of a bitch and it was in there eating his sofa. Leanne, still sobbing, told them it had eaten her dog. One of the deputies said, “Well, it’s a fact, gators love dog.” Leanne asked if somebody would get that leather bag, see, lying there on the porch? The deputy who mentioned gators loved dog checked the loads in his revolver and said, “Let’s go do it.”

The four deputies stood in the middle of the porch, about fifteen feet from the alligator in the living room. They fired their magnum revolvers through the shattered door frame with patience and deliberation until the alligator raised up, started to come at them and the deputies got out of there, hurrying out to the yard.

Now the alligator was once again on the porch. Leanne watched it nuzzle her bag of crystals with its snout, saw the jaws open and she began to scream even before the leather bag disappeared inside the alligator’s mouth.

Gary Hammond came in an unmarked Dodge Aries, light gray. He was in the driveway on the other side of the house, out of the car putting on his suit coat when he heard the scream. So Gary arrived on the alligator scene in his dark-navy tropical suit, dressed to go to work.

He had been told what to find here, but was still surprised to see the judge and a woman who must be his wife, in a pink warm-up suit, and four deputies with drawn guns, all looking at a full-grown alligator on the porch, the gator not paying much attention to them. It twisted sideways as if to bite its own tail, jerked itself straight and that tail lashed out to send a metal table and chairs flying. Now it crawled around to see what all the noise was about and rested there with its back to them.

They had noticed Gary Hammond walk up, one of the deputies nodding to him; but now they were talking, the deputies and the judge, sounding like hunters.

“We musta hit him.”

“Yeah, there’s blood. See, on the cement there? Less he cut himself coming through the glass.”

“No we hit him a good twelve times.”

“More than that, boys. I put six in him before you got here.”

This was the judge, in bedroom slippers and a sport shirt hanging out of his pants. Gary Hammond had appeared in his court to testify and have warrants signed, but had never been introduced to him.

“I know a fella has a gator skull on his microwave,” a deputy said. “Looks like a hunk of rock.”

“We need something heavy, a high-powered rifle.”

“Hit him with an ax. That’ll do him.”

“I think we better get Game and Fish out here.”

“Or some old boy from the Glades, Canal Point.”

Gary Hammond said, “One of you better bring a car around here.”

That got them looking at him. The deputies knew he was a sergeant in the Detective Bureau, worked Crimes Against Persons and was maybe a homicide star. Check the suit. They might know he’d transferred from Palm Beach PD, where he’d kept the island safe for millionaires, but that was about all these deputies would know of Gary Hammond.

One of them said, “Sir, what do we need a car for?”

A mild kind of put-on, polite in front of the judge and his wife.

“The gator walked in there,” Gary said, “it can walk out. What do you do then?”

The deputy said, “I guess run like hell.” With a grin to show he was kidding.

“I’d want a car to jump in,” Gary said, “even if we didn’t have Mrs. Gibbs to think of.” She looked as though she might be in shock or some kind of trance. He saw her eyes half close and the lids flutter as he said, “You know an alligator can outrun a man?”

Gary turned toward the porch, see what the gator was doing, and just then heard a voice that sounded like a young black girl.

“You bes’ hurry up get that car.”

The one in Gone With the Wind, Butterfly McQueen.

That was who he thought of and turned back expecting to see the deputies grinning, one of them way out of line trying to be funny. But they seemed as surprised as he was, glancing at one another.

Now the judge said, “You heard him. Get a car.”

Him? Meaning you, Gary thought, not the voice. The judge ignoring the voice.

Gary said, “Judge,” and introduced himself. Bob Gibbs gave him sort of a nod, that’s all. He seemed more concerned for his wife and took her aside now, whispering to her. One of the deputies walked off and then started to jog. The other three moved toward the porch, though didn’t get too close, talking again, looking at the alligator.

Gary Hammond stood by himself in his neat navy-blue suit.

This morning a few minutes before seven Gary’s boss, Colonel McKenna, had called him at home and said, “You’re not doing anything, are you?” Gary’s current assignment had him reviewing cold cases, homicides over a year old and still open. No, not something pressing, which McKenna knew. He told Gary about the alligator report and how to get to the judge’s house, out Southern Boulevard about a mile this side of the Stockade, turn left. “It might be the gator wandered in,” McKenna said, “a canal runs by his property. Or some idiot brought it as a joke. Or then again it wasn’t meant to be funny. You understand? So look around good.”

“What do I do about the alligator?”

“Call Game and Fish if you have to. What I’m concerned with is finding out how it got there.”

So now, the next step… He could call Game and Freshwater Fish, wait around for somebody to come out and kill the alligator. That was a fact, they weren’t going to dress its wounds. Gary watched a green-and-white creeping toward them from the far end of the house, coming past sabal palms, dipping over the uneven ground in low gear. The judge seemed to have a tropical garden out here, orchids hanging from trees… He was taking his wife by the arm toward the squad car. The three deputies were looking that way now.

They could spend half the day waiting for a Game man to get here. Then stand around some more, watching. Gary thought about taking his suit coat off. No, he’d leave it on, he was comfortable in it. He drew the Beretta holstered on his right hip.

Walking past the deputies Gary racked the slide to put a nine-millimeter load in the chamber. They turned as one at the familiar sound it made. Gary kept going, his eyes holding on the gator as he opened the screen door, closed it quietly, walked up to stand over the gator and stare at its head. You could crouch low and shoot it through an eye or into its ear to find its tiny brain. Or you could stand close and aim at a spot directly behind the animal’s skull, drive the bullet straight down to cut its spine. He had seen Game men and contract nuisance hunters kill this way. A shame even when it had to be done. Poachers hit them with an ax or a sledge looking at forty-seven dollars a foot for the hide to make belts and shoes for snappy dressers.

Someone, Gary believed, had brought this gator. It did not know where the hell it was or want to be here lying on a cement floor. There were nicks in its hide, a mark on its skull, a dent, it looked like, where someone had given it a good lick. He aimed the Beretta at the spot behind the skull, the muzzle a foot away, and fired one shot. The gator flattened and lay still.

The deputies waited for him to come out to the yard before they filed in, each one giving him a look before approaching the gator to poke it with a toe.

“I think it was brought here,” Gary said, standing with his back to the kitchen sink. “It could be malicious mischief we’re looking at, criminal negligence, or it could be more serious.”

The judge had come into the kitchen dressed for business in a gray suit and maroon tie. He said, “Wait,” got a glass from one cupboard, a bottle of Jim Beam from another, and poured himself a good one, eight o’clock in the morning. He went to the refrigerator for ice, then moved Gary out of the way to add a splash of water. Now he took a couple of deep pulls on his highball, raised the glass and said, “Ahhh, that’s better. It’s been quite a day. An alligator walks into my house and my wife walks out. She says, ‘That’s it, I’m leaving.’”

“I could see she was scared,” Gary said. “But she’ll get over it. I mean, you don’t think she’ll actually move out, do you?”

“That’s what she says.”

Gary watched the judge sip his drink. He didn’t seem too upset.

“This is the second time it’s happened to her. She isn’t going for three, I know.”

“You had one here before?”

“No, it was up at Weeki Wachee, years ago. My wife was a mermaid at the time I met her. An alligator swam into her act one day and she hasn’t been the same since.” The judge paused to take a drink. “It did something to her, I don’t know what. See, then another one comes along, the poor woman can’t handle it. I said, ‘Well, hon, it’s up to you.’ At least she can go someplace there aren’t any alligators. Maybe in time… I don’t know, people do have phobias. Some are scared to death of cats. A cat walks in the room, they’re petrified.”

There was something here Gary didn’t understand. He said, “Yeah, but everybody’s afraid of alligators. You’d better be. I mean it’s normal.”

The judge had turned and was gazing out the window, at deputies appearing out of the trees, poking through his plants.

“What’re they looking for?”

Gary edged up behind the judge to look over his shoulder. He said, “I think the alligator was brought here.” Then had to step back when the judge turned to face him.

“Why?”

“Well, I did notice driving in, there’s a canal over on the other side of your property where it might’ve come from…”

The judge said, “I don’t see there’s any question about it. That canal hooks into a network of canals. One or the other will take you right up to Okeechobee.”

“I know,” Gary said, “but I can’t see a gator that size climbing the spoil bank and coming all this distance through your orange grove away from water.”

“You’re an alligator expert,” the judge said. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“No sir,” Gary said, “but I do know they live in water and never go too far away from it. That’s why I think it was brought here. And if it was, its mouth would’ve been taped shut and its legs bent up behind its back and taped together. The legs hinge in a way you can do that. So I wondered, when they got here and pulled the tape off, if they might not’ve just thrown it aside.”

The judge half turned toward the window again.

“That’s what they’re looking for, tape?”

“Duct tape or electrical tape. Either one.”

“You find any?”

“Not yet.”

The judge nodded and took a sip of his drink.

Gary said, “You didn’t hear anything last night?”

“Not a sound.”

“I was thinking if they drove in with it, came past the house… Maybe your wife heard something.”

“No, she didn’t either.”

“Could I speak to her?”

“You’re asking me, can you have a conversation with her about alligators? In her condition?”

“I wondered if she might’ve heard a truck.”

“Jesus Christ, but you keep beating on it. I just told you she didn’t hear a thing. Now we’re through here. I’m going to work.”

Gary said, “Yes sir,” and paused and said, “Can I ask you something else? It’s unrelated. Well, in a way it is.” The judge, with the glass raised to finish his drink, didn’t answer. “When I first got here,” Gary said, “I told one of the deputies to go get a car. In case the gator came out after us.” The judge lowered the glass and was looking directly at him now. “Right after I said it, I heard a voice that sounded to me like a young black female, you know, kind of a high voice? Repeating pretty much what I said.”

Gary waited.

The judge stared at him.

Gary didn’t care for his expression. Ice-cold.

The judge said, “What’s your name again?”

“It’s Sergeant Gary Hammond.”

“You like detective work?”

“Yes sir, very much.”

“Better than driving a squad car.”

“Yes sir.”

“Did you know Colonel McKenna was a buddy of mine?”

“No sir, I didn’t.”

The judge said, “Well, you do now, boy. When I tell you we’re through here, it means we’re through, you don’t ask any more questions. You understand?”

“Yes sir.”

“The alligator wasn’t brought here as a prank or otherwise, to cause anybody harm. It came out of that canal all by itself. So there’s no need of you to write up an Offense Report.”

Gary said, “I still have to tell Colonel McKenna what happened.”

“That’s all right,” the judge said, “long as you don’t color it.” He smiled then, his mouth did while his eyes remained cold. “Tell Bill for me he should’ve sent the dog-catcher.”

Gary said, “Yes sir, I will,” paused a few seconds wanting to bite his tongue, but had to ask it. “Judge, has your life ever been threatened?”