Fever Dream - Douglas Preston [143]
“This TEC-9 looks suitable,” Hayward said, picking up the handgun from the pile of weapons. She looked it over, removed the magazine, examined it, slapped it back in. “Converted to fully automatic. Fifty-round magazine, too. Plenty of rounds left to smoke everyone right here, right now.”
“An effective, if inelegant, choice,” said Pendergast.
Hayward pointed the TEC-9 at the group. “Who still wants to see the floor show?”
Silence. The only sound was Tiny’s choked sobbing. The tears streamed down his face, but he remained as immobile as a statue.
“I’m afraid,” Pendergast said, “that you folks have made a serious error. This lady is indeed a homicide captain of the NYPD, and I am truly a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We’re here on a murder investigation that has nothing to do with you or your town. Whoever told you we were environmentalists lied to you. Now: I’m going to ask a question, just once, and if I get an answer that isn’t satisfactory, I’m going to cut Tiny’s jugular and my colleague, Captain Hayward, is going to shoot you down like dogs. Self-defense, of course. Being law enforcement, who’s to contradict us?”
A silence.
“The question is this: Mr. Tiny, who called you to say we were coming?”
Tiny couldn’t get the answer out fast enough. “It was Ventura, Mike Ventura, Mike Ventura…” He choked out the words in between stifled sobs, his voice reduced to a babble.
“And who is Mike Ventura?”
“A guy who lives over in Itta Bena, but he comes down here a lot, big sportsman, lots of money, spends a lot of time in the swamp. It was him, he came into my place, told us all you was environmentalists, you was looking to turn the rest of Black Brake into a refuge, take away all the work from us swampers—”
“Thank you,” said Pendergast, “that’s sufficient. Here’s what’s going to happen. My colleague and I are going to continue on our way in Mr. Tiny’s excellently equipped and fully loaded bass boat. With all the guns. You all go on home. Understand?”
Nothing.
He tightened the knife beneath the vein. “May I have a response, please?”
Murmurs, nods.
“Excellent. You can see we are now heavily armed. And I can assure you that both of us know how to use these weapons. Captain, would you care to demonstrate?”
Hayward pointed the TEC-9 at a nearby stand of saplings and opened fire. Three short bursts. The trees toppled slowly into the water.
Pendergast slipped the knife out from under the vein. “You’re going to need a few stitches, Mr. Tiny.”
The fat man merely blubbered.
“I’d advise you all to discuss it among yourselves and come up with a nice, believable story as to how Mr. Tiny here cut his neck and how old Larry there shot himself in the foot. Because the captain and I have bigger fish to fry, and we don’t want any more disruptions. Assuming you don’t annoy us further—and assuming you leave my rather expensive car alone—we don’t see the need to bring charges or arrest anyone—do we, Captain?”
She shook her head. Funny how Pendergast’s way of doing things began to make sense—out here in the middle of nowhere, without backup, in front of a crowd who wanted nothing better than to serially rape her and murder them both and sink their bodies in the swamp.
Pendergast stepped into the bass boat, Hayward following, picking her way among the assorted weaponry. Firing up the engine, Pendergast eased the boat forward; the surrounding boats unwillingly parted to give him passage. “We’ll see you all again,” he called out. “I regret to say that when we do, there might be more unpleasantness.”
Then he throttled up and the bass boat headed into the widest inlet at the end of the bayou, heading south into the thick braid of vegetation under a dying evening light.
68
Malfourche, Mississippi
MIKE VENTURA WATCHED FROM HIS PARKED Escalade, A/C going full blast, as the boats straggled back into the slips beyond Tiny’s. The sun had just set over the water, the sky a dirty orange. He began to feel uneasy; this did not look like a war party returning from a successful raid. It had more the sullen,