Gator Aide (2 page)

Five months into the job as a wildlife inspector, I applied for special agent, and after sixteen weeks of hard training at the Academy in Glynco, Georgia, I was rewarded by making the grade. At the time, I could think of little else than my good luck. Even better, I had been immediately granted the posting I’d requested—to work under Charlie Hickok in Slidell, Louisiana.

“Good luck, kid. You’re gonna need it,” were the parting words of the agent who handed me my ticket. At the time, I hadn’t known what he meant.

I found the field near Des Allemandes that I’d been searching for. Scattered with rice and a few inches of water, it was the perfect poacher’s situation, with a levee providing near total concealment for hunters. Parking my VW out of sight, I made my way to the field, hunkering down low. The last thing I needed to do was surprise a group of angry rednecks with little tolerance for wildlife officers, who would dare tell them what they could or could not shoot. A female agent had recently been killed by a hunter who disagreed with her on the matter. I wasn’t bucking to notch the number to two.

At six o’clock in the morning, the heat was already pressing down, a hot iron on the board of land below. Geese were swarming in like locusts, settling among the tall water grass to feed on grain for the coming of winter. I let my mind traipse across the water, wondering what I would be doing right now if I were anywhere but here, when six figures suddenly rose out of nowhere, their rifles trained on the unsuspecting flock. All hell broke loose as the men fired convulsively into the crowd, making it impossible to distinguish between the cries of the geese and the continuous gunfire that roared as if war had just broken out. The still-dark sky grew darker as the birds rose en masse in an attempt to fly away, but carcasses tumbled back to earth as fast and furious as the rain that tore loose from storm clouds above. The hunters reloaded quickly after each round, and the mingling of gunfire and honks of fear ripped through the air with all the fury of thunder. Flapping in the field, crippled geese frantically struggled to get away from the men, who now ran in after them, shooting until they had no more ammunition left, only to continue the carnage by wringing the necks of those birds they could reach. A battleground of dead and dying littered the field as a haze of gunpowder burned through my lungs. More than anything, I wanted to run out, flash my badge, and haul the poachers in. But I knew that would accomplish little more than to leave Louisiana one less wildlife agent to contend with. The state’s unofficial motto flashed in my brain like a neon sign gone berserk: “If it flies, it dies. If it flies, it dies.” Not only anything that flies, but also walks, swims, or crawls is considered fair game. Furious at being able to do nothing, I set out to at least make their escape more difficult. Drawing near the other side of the levee, I found two dented pickup trucks half-hidden in a group of cypress trees. Pulling out my Swiss Army knife, I carefully slashed each tire, taking the time to write down the license plate numbers before leaving. I had hoped the gesture would make me feel better. Instead, I felt as impotent as the geese that had tried to fly away.

This was duck patrol. It had been my assignment since the day I landed in Louisiana. It wasn’t just the fact that Charlie Hickok was out to make life miserable for every waterfowl poacher around—he was also out to get rid of me. That I was not what he had expected was painfully obvious from my first day on the job.

“Goddamn! I ask for a man, and they send me a goose. What the hell am I supposed to do with some city girl?”

What he had done was to stick me out in the marshes day and night. Whenever I set foot in the office, my presence was announced by a series of dude calls that emanated from whereabouts unknown. I had been warned that women agents were few and far between, viewed only as necessary quotas to be filled. Like everything else in this world, breaking down barriers to notoriously male-dominated jobs was no Virginia Slims ad. But I had come to learn that Charlie Hickok was a name feared by both trainees and seasoned agents alike, while a posting to his station was generally reserved for those viewed as dispensable. More agents had resigned under Charlie Hickok than in all the rest of Fish and Wildlife combined. It was enough of a challenge to make me stay.

The windshield wipers on my car fought the downpour of rain, nearly blotting out the bullet-riddled signs for Nehi that dotted the countryside like giant gumdrops. Pulling into the first convenience store along the road, I placed a call to the local office of Louisiana’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. They had the manpower available to pick up the hunters if they felt so inclined. The problem lay in the fact that, more often than not, that wasn’t the case. The phone rang ten times before someone finally bothered to answer.

“Yeah?”

“If you head on over to Lac Des Allemandes, you’ll find six poachers with about two hundred dead geese.” Giving the officer a description of the pickup trucks and their license plate numbers, I found myself listening to dead silence on the other end.

“I don’t think they’ll get too far anytime soon. Their tires have all been slashed.”

The silence deepened as I beat my nails against the mouthpiece before finally receiving a reply.

“Just who is this?” requested a deep Southern voice.

I had a feeling their office didn’t get too many of these calls. First of all, I didn’t sport the local accent. Even more suspicious, I was a woman.

“Merely a concerned citizen.”

I hung up and headed back out into the rain. Times were hard in Louisiana, and, as usual, graft was rampant. Priding itself on having more poachers per capita than anywhere else in the U.S., Louisiana considers outlawing a time-honored tradition, just as much as down-home politics is a way of life. All a poacher needed was to be a registered voter, have a quarter, and pick up a pay phone, and any hunting charges would soon enough be dropped. I’d already been told it was crazy to try and fight the system. That had only intrigued me all the more.

Waterlogged, I headed back home late that afternoon. Like most other days since I’d been here, it had hardly been rewarding. Following the curve of the Mississippi River, I drove toward New Orleans. A steamy piece of bog crunched between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River, the city had originally been claimed by France in 1718, when that country swept its prisons clean of its derelicts, loading them onto boats bound for New Orleans. With a crime rate today to rival that of New York, it seemed as if some of their descendants still had a good hold on the city. When I had first arrived, I had been advised to live in or around Slidell. Rents were cheaper, it would be easier to get to work, and there was a lot less crime. But after a week of living in the local Econolodge, looking at strips of fast-food joints, creosote factories, and sawmills, I had decided to blow my budget and head where I was most comfortable. While it’s not New York, at least New Orleans is crowded, claustrophobic, and noisy. I felt right at home.

Once again my salary was being eaten up supporting a small and expensive apartment, but it was worth it. Situated in the French Quarter, the tiny two-story building of pale pink plaster had black wrought-iron tiers and balconies as intricately woven as my grandmother’s tatting. A minuscule courtyard and garden in back was a tropical jumble of multicolored flowers. Sweet-smelling magnolias mingled with angel’s trumpets, as flaming hibiscus competed with ginger lilies for precious space. But what had clinched the deal was the artwork strewn about the place. Small concrete satyrs romped in the garden, lusting after stone angels. A devil-head fountain spouted water over its long curling tongue, splashing onto nude maidens as they slept among the water lilies, the shade from banana trees dappling their bodies with intermittent rays of sun. Plaster masks of long-dead movie stars lined the wall outside the owner’s apartment, in an ode to Norma Desmond. From the owner’s taste in art, I gathered I had found a kindred spirit. I knew he was the kind of man who still dressed up for Halloween.

The upstairs apartment was small, which suited me fine. Having grown up in New York, I’m uncomfortable when faced with too much space. Fronting Chartres Street, the living room led to a closet-sized Pullman kitchen, which I managed to keep clean through minimal use. The bedroom in back had French doors leading onto a balcony that overlooked the courtyard, and was vaguely reminiscent of Tennessee Williams and his cast of dysfunctional characters. Old and in bad condition, the building was loaded with atmosphere and charm.

Stripping out of wet and muddy clothes, I left what I could of the marsh lying on my bathroom floor as I turned on the water in the tub. I planned on my usual evening activity of soaking for a while with a glass of wine and a trashy magazine, when I noticed the red light blinking on the answering machine. When I pressed the playback button, a familiar, deep Southern voice reached out toward me.

“Bronx, get your ass over to 138 Ursuline Street. There’s been a murder in the Quarter.”

The building was right around
the corner from the old Ursuline Convent. Locating the apartment, I flashed my badge and pushed through the crowd already gathered outside the door, eager to catch a glimpse of the body. While the DEA, the local police, and Fish and Wildlife sometimes worked on cases together, I’d never been included on a murder before. But having viewed more than my fair share of dead bodies both on TV and in the movies, I felt prepared for whatever might await me inside. Besides, if the case was a break from working on ducks, I was grateful for it.

As I entered the apartment, my umbrella, as well as the rest of me, dripped a large puddle of water onto the floor, but I had a feeling the tenant wouldn’t mind. Without being stopped, I made my way past a small circle of people, finally entering the room where the largest group huddled. What awaited me was a bloody scene. The bedroom walls were streaked with ribbons of red paint, except that the paint was still sticky and turned out to be blood. A tight knot of cops from N.O.P.D. were clustered about the body as if to keep the rest of us out. While I wasn’t sure I was that anxious to look, I found I couldn’t stop myself from trying to gawk over the bruisers in front, until one body got tired of my jabbing and turned around. Embarrassed at my New York aggressiveness, I flashed my ID as I backed up.

“Rachel Porter. Fish and Wildlife Service. I received a call to report here.”

At five-eight, I consider myself tall, but the face that peered down at me stood a good five inches taller. A thick tangle of curly black hair held droplets of rain from outside, while a pair of deep-set, dark eyes tried to focus on the badge I held too close to his face. Taking it from me, the man examined my shield. He had a strange face when examined part by part. A long, sharp nose that could have passed for a beak led down to lips tinged around the corners with disappointment at a life that had turned out differently than planned. Deep-set eyes didn’t stare so much as penetrate, with all the intensity of a laser beam focused in my direction. The lines engraved in his face looked as if they could have been etched there with acid, affirming that the wear and tear of life as a cop had more than taken its toll. Dark and brooding, he reminded me of a hawk in search of a kill. As he handed back my ID, I realized he’d been analyzing me just as closely as I had him. I felt myself fluster under his stare as I grabbed the badge out of his hand.

“Well, Rachel Porter, if you’re that anxious to grab a peek, don’t let me stop you,
chère
.”

I’d run into a lot of that down here. Women were never referred to by their proper names, but were instead called honey, sugar, sweetheart, darling, and
chère
. At first I’d been determined to put a stop to all that. After six months, I’d pretty well given up.

“So now that you know who I am, who are you?”

He silently handed over his own ID. Jake Santou. Homicide, N.O.P.D. A cop pulled away from the inner circle, and I instinctively squeezed in to grab a glimpse of the body. I was sorry I did. Lying nude on her back was a girl of about twenty-five. But then again, it was hard to tell. Her body and face had been slashed hundreds of times, making it seem as if she had been bounced off a spider’s web which had left its imprint in a myriad of fine lines. A mass of dark hair lay splayed about her head, giving her the look of a porcelain doll that had been broken and discarded. Her stark white skin, the color of fine bone china, was set in a mushrooming pool of blood as the cream-colored carpet beneath slowly turned a deep shade of crimson. An investigator busied himself dusting doorknobs, bedposts, and bureaus for any stray fingerprints, the cloud of fine dust floating through the air, descending onto the chalky whiteness of her skin and scattering a flaky cloud of dandruff throughout her hair. Glancing down at my feet to escape the surprised look of death in her eyes, I saw that the soles of my shoes were drenched in her blood. The man next to me chuckled, elbowing his companion, as I pulled back in horror and peered at the circle of faces around me. Impassive in their reactions, they had seen it all before. I backed out of the circle, grateful when somebody else moved in to take my place, hiding the bloody mess on the floor from my sight. As I walked away from the body, the soles of my shoes left a trail on the cream-colored carpet, the girl I’d just viewed following along in blood as well as spirit. Leaning against the post of her bed, I turned away from the scene, thankful that I hadn’t yet eaten as my stomach took a dive. Santou appeared behind me.

“That’s Valerie Vaughn. She was a topless dancer who worked a club over on Bourbon. But that’s not what you were called in for. That’s over here.”

Santou guided me past a maze of bodies, over to the doorway of the bathroom. Chained to the leg of an iron clawfoot tub was a ten-foot alligator. Looking like a giant handbag with black and beige bands, the gator, like the girl, was dead. Grateful for the distraction, I knelt down beside the reptile. It was the closest I’d ever been to one. My only other hands-on experience was with a gator skeleton I’d seen in New York with Harry Milsus, the local forensics expert used by the FWS office there.