The Best American Mystery Stories 1998 by Sue Grafton & Otto Penzler

Author:Sue Grafton & Otto Penzler [Grafton, Sue & Penzler, Otto]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780395835869
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Published: 1997-12-31T21:00:00+00:00

JOHN LUTZ

Night Crawlers

from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

There’s plant life in parts of the Everglades that’s to be found nowhere else in the country, spores carried by hurricane winds from the West Indies that take root and flourish in the steamy tropical climate and are exotic and primitive and sometimes dangerous. Some say that in Mangrove City there’s animal life to be found nowhere else.

Mangrove City isn’t really a city unless you use the term generously. It’s a stretch of ramshackle, moss-marred clapboard buildings where the road runs through the swamp along relatively dry land. The “city” is a few small shops, a restaurant, a service station with a sign warning you to fill your gas tank because the swamp’s full of alligators, a barber shop with a red and white barber pole that’s also green with mold. There’s a police station in the same rundown frame building as the city hall, and a blackened ruin that was Muggy’s Lounge until it burned down five years ago. Next to the ruin is the new and improved Muggy’s, constructed of cinder block and with a corrugated steel roof. Not a city, really. Barely a town. More like something unfortunate that happened on the side of the road.

A mile before you get to Mangrove City, that is before if you’re driving west the way Carver had, is the Glades Inn, a sixteen-unit motel. It’s a low brick structure, built in a Uto embrace a swimming pool. Carver couldn’t imagine anyone ever actually swimming in the thing. The algae on its surface was green and thick. A diving board sagged toward the water and was draped with Spanish moss. From the far corner of the pool came a dull plop and a stirring of sluggish water as a bullfrog, tired of Carver’s scrutiny, hopped for green cover. Carver set the tip of his cane on the hot gravel surface of the parking lot and limped toward the office.

As he pushed open the door, a bell tinkled. That didn’t seem to mean much. The knotty-pine-paneled office was deserted. Behind the long counter, whose front was paneled to match the walls, was a half-eaten sandwich on a desk, next to an old black IBM Selectric typewriter. The only furniture on Carver’s side of the desk was a red vinyl chair with a rip in its seat that revealed white cotton batting struggling to get out. On the wall near the chair was a framed color photograph of a buxom woman in a bikini and cowboy boots, riding on the back of a large alligator. She was grinning with her mouth open wide and had an arm raised as if she were waving the ten-gallon hat in her hand. Carver leaned close and studied the photograph. The woman was stuffed into the bikini. The alligator was just stuffed.

“Some sexy ’gator, don’tcha think?” a voice said.

Carver turned and saw a stooped old man with a grizzled gray beard that refused to grow over a long, curved scar on his right cheek.

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