Gator Aide by Jessica Speart Page B

long way off, if ever—you just set your fanny back and watch a pro at work.”
    I never knew how Charlie was going to react until it was too late. The most volatile man I’d ever met, he was also a walking encyclopedia on the bayou and Cajun life. It all depended on whether or not he felt like sharing his knowledge with you. So far, he’d rather have worked with a trained baboon than with me. I closed my eyes again as he continued to mutter away. But a few minutes later, he was back into a loud harangue.
    “I’m feeling good tonight. I’m going to show that sucker how the cow ate the cabbage. One of my missiles is coming, and it’s gonna hit ol’ Trenton right between the eyes.”
    I made the mistake of yawning.
    “Listen up, Bronx. This is a war zone out here.” He slapped at a mosquito that had left me for greener pastures. “Hell. I gave up my goddamn life for this job, and this is how the Service pays me back. If I had a good team of agents, I could clean up this swamp in no time. But it ain’t never gonna happen with the amateur material they keep sending me.”
    “Right, coach. Possibly with a SWAT team you could get rid of all the poachers around. But since I’m the only team you’ve got, maybe it’s time you started making better use of me .”
    I hadn’t come along to be insulted. Besides, the worst he could do was to relegate me once again to full-time duck patrol, and that was already a foregone conclusion.
    “And since we seem to be clearing the air, Charlie, there’s something that’s still bothering me about that gator the other night. I just don’t think those bullets penetrated deep enough to kill it.”
    “Something keeps bothering me too, Bronx. And that’s having some smart-ass Yankee female as a rookie agent. But it seems like there’s nothing I can do about it. You just gotta learn to live with the cards you’ve been dealt. And in these here parts, I’m king of the hill as far as catching outlaws goes. And the cards you’ve been dealt is to deal with me. As far as that gator is concerned, I don’t need no goddamn fancy-pants forensics lab to tell me what I already know. The gator was shot to death. That’s that. Period.
Comprende
?”
    I kept my mouth shut for the rest of the ride. We were headed into Jean Lafitte Reserve near Barataria, famous for its pirates of past and drug smugglers of present. It consisted of nine thousand soggy acres of marsh, swamp, bayous, and wetland. A fortune in drugs had been smuggled in through here. Also a refuge for otter, mink, and nutria, it was teeming with gators. Lafitte was a national park considered taboo territory by poachers. Most wouldn’t dare to go near the place. For Trenton, it was a favorite hunting location.
    Finding Charlie’s “lucky spot,” we parked and unloaded the mud boat. Not a sound was to be heard except for the slapping of water against wood. A sheet of black velvet covered the sky and dozens of stars peeked out through tiny moth-eaten holes. Pushing off, we entered the swamp, and soon even the pinpricks of light disappeared.
    Age-old cypress trees slid by as we made our way through a watery maze. A bullfrog croaked in angry protest at our presence. Sounds are always different at night. The tiniest noise in the swamp becomes magnified a hundred times, until every bit of space hums with its own peculiar song. But soon even the noise died down, making it all the more frightening. Charlie loved the swamp, which was something I’d never yet understood. Even during the day there was always an eeriness to it. At night it was terrifying. Every tree became sinister, every animal was threatening. It was here that bodies were dumped and left to rot. People swore that spirits wandered among the cypress trees at night, with curtains of Spanish moss their only camouflage.
    This was one of those suffocatingly hot Louisiana nights when not even a breeze dared invade the area. A swarm of mosquitoes danced about my head in a