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  Gator Wave

  A Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller #8

  David Berens

  For James Edward Summers,

  my step-father,

  who was in every single respect other than blood,

  my dad.

  He read and enjoyed every single book I’ve ever written.

  I miss you dearly.

  Contents

  Gator Wave

  Prologue

  1. A Foul Gator

  2. Running Behind

  3. The Good Work

  4. Hammock Style

  5. Goin’ Back To Miami

  6. The Beat Of A Different Drummer

  7. Cinnamon Girl

  8. Dripping With Dollars

  9. Writer’s Block

  10. The Cowboy Killer

  11. The Non-Stripping Side

  12. A Murderer In The Room

  13. Just Rewards

  14. Exchanging Glances

  15. Kandy Kane’s Kicks

  16. Dead Kayak

  17. Coronas And Key Limes

  18. It’s Blackmail, Sugar

  19. Work With Me

  20. Kayak Hunting Season

  21. A Basketball Jones

  22. A Sassy Nation

  23. Home Sweet Home

  24. A Cowboy, An Assassin, and a Cop

  25. Not A Finger

  26. I Ain’t No Fortunate Son

  27. Splashing And Thrashing

  28. The Big Reveal

  29. Nobody Home

  30. The Nose Knows

  31. A Dead Man’s Purse

  32. Can You Hear Me Now?

  33. Yekaterina’s Got A Gun

  34. With One Headlight

  35. Losing It In The Keys

  36. Gator Crossing

  37. Guns And Ammo

  38. I Shot The Sheriff

  39. That Rings A Bell

  40. Strangers In The Night

  41. Le Voyeur

  42. Back To The Beginning

  43. Brawlin’ After Midnight

  44. Light My Fire

  45. Molotov Cocktails

  46. Dazed And Confused

  47. Who’ll Stop The Rain

  48. The Cavalry

  49. The Sheriff Is Near

  50. Just Desserts

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Also by David Berens

  Gator Wave

  A Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller #8

  Prologue

  One hour before the coldest August dawn Islamorada had seen in twenty-two years—the most colorful locals saying colder than a nun’s brass bra—Matteo Caparelli hiked into the mangroves wearing an exquisite lavender, V-neck sweater his father had bought him for Christmas last year. He marched into the swampy tangle of flora common to the island with no way of knowing that it would be the last thing he ever wore. He had known, however, that his father had given him the extravagant gift to infuriate his mother—the newly divorced and highly jaded, Jackie Caparelli. Based on the colorful cacophony of swear words she’d used when she had watched him open the box, Matteo could tell it had worked like a charm.

  Dante Caparelli would have been horrified to see his son tripping through the spongy, sucking marsh in the fifteen-hundred dollar Tom Ford Classic cashmere gift. But Matteo—Matty to his closest friends—would never make it back to hear the disappointment in his father’s cigar-cough, hack-laden rebuke.

  That was to say nothing of the way the slippery, tepid mud was oozing into his crocodile Salvatore Ferragamo loafers like an over-poured Wendy’s frosty. Yes, Dante would have been furious, if Matty hadn’t been slogging along toward an untimely—if not gruesome—end.

  1

  A Foul Gator

  Gary John Suskind walked forward ahead of Matty in high-knee style steps, dragging the construction-sign orange kayak across the top of the swamp. It was hard work for Gary, who had never been accused of being strong, or hardy for that matter. He’d broken three manicured nails on his right hand already and knew Madame Teresa up on Tavernier would be most upset that he’d treated her immaculate work with such … disparagement. And, to beat it all, he’d put an inch long gash in his left thigh scraping up against a broken limb of one of the God-forsaken spidery trees that threatened to trip him with every step. He’d have to look into some micro-stitches for that. It wouldn’t do to have an unsightly scar marring his buttery tan skin—thanks to Madame Teresa’s Mystic Tan Kyss spray booth. A blemish of that kind would send his Instagram followers dropping off by the thousands. He sighed inwardly. A small price to pay to get close to the subject of his unrequited infatuation. He planned to change the unrequited part of his flirtation today.

  He suspected that Matty wasn’t gay, but without direct confirmation of the fact, he proceeded to woo him with lunch dates, seemingly innocuous—but actually meaningful—gifts, and outdoor excursions like this one. In a kayak, there would be ample opportunity to squeeze his thighs around Matty and maybe a chance to fake a fall from the boat and grab him around the chest. Hmmm, wonder if my future lover would give me mouth-to-mouth if I should happen to drown? Gary thought. He resolved to keep his options open. Suddenly, with a splash, he was knee deep in a watery void in the marsh. He squealed more effeminately than he intended and lurched sideways. The kayak kept him from going under, but he was now sopping wet.

  “You okay up there?” Matty called from behind him.

  Gary slapped on a smile. “Oh, yeah. All good. Just getting kinda deep up here. Maybe we should get in now.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  Gary pulled himself up into the back of the kayak and Matty tumbled into the front. The boat rocked violently back and forth until Gary, who tried in vain to counteract Matty’s motion, lost his balance and splashed out into the marsh again.

  Despite his best efforts, Gary John Suskind went under. The brown, soupy swamp swallowed him and he thrashed violently, unable to tell which way was up. And then the hands wrapped around his upper arms. He realized with relief that Matty had reached in and grabbed him. His head broke the surface and he gasped. Matty was laughing and doing nothing to hide the fact. Gary’s instinct was to feel hurt and dejected, but then thought better of it. He imagined this was how guy pals would react in this situation. He faked a chuckle with all the authenticity of a silicone injected Playgirl model.

  “Help me up, ya big lug.” He winced, hearing himself try to fake hetero-speak.

  But Matty didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he didn’t care.

  Matty pulled hard on Gary’s arms and as he cleared the side of the kayak, he lost his balance and tumbled down on top of Matty. For one rainbow bathed, “Dream Weaver” second, he was in Matty’s arms. The fire burned inside him and before he could stop himself, he smashed his lips to Matteo’s voluminous Italian mouth. He tried to force his tongue in to seal the kiss, but Matty’s teeth were clenched tight.

  Gary—not realizing that he’d closed his eyes in the embrace—opened them to find Matty staring wide-eyed back like a man who’d taken a big gulp of what he thought was orange juice only to find it was grapefruit instead. It was not the stare of adoration or infatuation. No, this didn’t remind Gary of a soft-focus movie sequence with Gary Wright crooning out his only hit song in the background. No, it felt more like the shocking twist scene in The Crying Game. Matty shoved hard, throwing Gary off of his chest. His friend’s face was a red splotched, mangled mess of shock, embarrassment, and—worst of all—rage.

  “What the shit was that all about?” Matty growled, his Northern accent more prominent in his anger. “Are you flippin’ crazy?”

  “I … I’m sorry. I just—”

  Gary John Suskind was interrupted by a thump that shook the kayak violently. He wondered if somehow they’d gotte
n caught in a current and had run aground. But scanning through the dappled sun-streaks shining into the shadowy, mangrove canopy around them, he saw no sign of anything they could’ve hit.

  “I asked you a question, fairy boy.” Matty’s rage growing.

  Gary raised his hands. “Now, hold on just a second, Matty. I didn’t mean any harm. It’s just that we have such a good time together that I—”

  This time, something slammed into the kayak so hard it tipped up on its side. Matty finally noticed they were under attack. The prehistoric, log-like skin of an alligator slid past them in a froth.

  “Holy shit,” Matty said, his feet scraping hard and pushing him back into the kayak. “What the hell is that?”

  Gary would’ve answered, but he was in shock. Even while flailing about trying to keep his body in the boat, he knew what had hit them this time. Alligator Mississippiensis or the American Alligator. Looking for all the world like a knotty log come to life in a blur of motion, it had slammed into their boat raising the stern up at least a foot off the rippling surface. Gary didn’t know much about them besides what he’d learned in middle school, but he hadn’t heard of them attacking people very often on Islamorada. They were usually lazier than the tourists and liked to bake in the sun just as much, if not more. Most likely, they had gotten too close to its gator hole, or maybe even its nest and it was defending its turf. But wait, was that alligators or crocodiles? He couldn’t remember.

  When the kayak hit the water again, Gary fell down into the boat smacking his left arm so hard, he wondered if he’d broken it. Pain surged into his elbow sending pins and needles and numbness racing up and down his arm. Matty, however, fell backward and with his weight unexpectedly throwing him toward the opposite side, he fell overboard. The splash seemed impossibly simultaneous with the gator jerking its broad head around to see what had caused it. Before Gary could scream, the creature lunged at the object it had seen entering the water.

  In a strange, but cogent moment of bravery, Gary launched himself toward the fray, preparing to kick the alligator with his borrowed patent-leather camouflage boots—clearly not made for this endeavor—until it swam away. The churning whirlpool of blood blossoming in the vortex where Matty had gone under, instantly turned his valiant effort into a terrifying regret. The alligator’s head crashed above the surface and in the split-second before Gary entered the water, to his horror, he saw a severed hand in its mouth.

  2

  Running Behind

  Gary was bumped and thumped and turned over several times under the water. His lungs burned as he held his breath desperately trying to make sense of what was happening. A hazy beam of light snaked down through the murky water and Gary decided that moving toward it was as good a choice as he had right now. A better choice than inviting Matty out for a kayak ride, that much was now certain. He kicked hard and one of the stylish boots he’d borrowed from his best friend slipped off his foot and sank. His stockinged foot thrashed hard and he began to make slow, but sure headway toward the surface.

  The prehistoric animal was still swirling around him in a blur making the underwater scene look like that maniacal boat ride in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. And then the gator crashed into him from underneath. The force hit him like a rocket and thrust him up so quickly that his stomach lurched and he vomited. Luckily, he was still underwater when his breakfast of baked peach almond oatmeal exploded out of his mouth. With the alligator beneath him, he broke through the surface and was thrown ten feet like a rag doll. He slammed into a branchy tree and grabbed tightly with both hands. He gripped the reddish-gray trunk and scaled the tree as fast as he could, the gator snapping at his heels. He kicked off the second of his borrowed boots and scrambled into a crook about twelve feet off the surface of the churning swamp below. The alligator lunged at him snapping its ferocious mouth, but for the time being, it appeared he had climbed high enough to stymie the animal’s attack—or maybe it was too full and heavy from eating Matty.

  He laughed hard through his terror at the beast, flipping him the finger. He cackled until he was hoarse watching as the alligator flung himself up at him over and over. The way it was acting, he was now certain that the super-pissed gator was indeed actually a she and that he and Matty had stumbled onto a nest or something. He wasn’t even sure if alligators laid eggs or had babies, but either way, this one was out to kill the outside threat to its offspring. It snapped its jaws at him and Gary was disgusted to see the hand—Matty’s hand—flopping about between its teeth in a gruesome mess of bubblegum flesh. The sun broke through the canopy and glinted on something in the alligator’s mouth. Gary realized it was a ring on his friend’s now detached hand.

  “You got what you want, asshole,” Gary yelled. “Get the hell out of here and let me go.”

  He realized that he was sobbing now, tears of anger and terror mixed together with a fit of something bordering on hysteria. Finally, the alligator seemed to tire of threatening the creature in the tree and he went back to destroying the kayak. Gary watched the gator chomp on the bright orange boat, tearing pieces of it off and flinging them hard to and fro. And of all the strange things to enter someone’s mind at a time when survival had become an uncertainty, Gary wondered what the hell he was thinking when he borrowed the kayak and invited his friend for a morning ride. If only that rich, white, sanctimonious bastard had taken the care to lock up his boat. None of this would’ve happened if the semi-famous writer man had just stored his glorified canoe somewhere other than propped up against the pylons under his house.

  Gary yelled a curse word that he rarely used as loud as he could. He regretted that instantly as the alligator looked up from his kayak destruction and lunged at him one more time. Gary repeated the four letter word over and over, howling in the empty heat of the swamp at the menacing creature snapping its dingy yellow, razor sharp teeth at him. The gator was close enough now that he could see the ring clearly stuck on a finger—maybe a pinky—dangling out of the corner of its mouth. The family crest sparkled in the dusky shafts of sunlight that created a prison of beams around him.

  He croaked out a sob, not so much out of sorrow for losing his friend, but at what might become of him if Matty’s father ever found out his role in his son’s demise. As the gator’s attack waned and the dark gray-green beast slunk away into the swamp, he wondered what might be worse—eaten by an alligator, or wearing concrete shoes.

  Two miles away, Chad Harrison’s unharmed and fully attached fingers clicked across his keyboard in a blaze of fury. He laughed out loud as he finished his piece. This article was sure to break the Keys News editor’s blue pen. He scrolled back up to the title: Hang ‘Em From The Banyans: Ending Tourism In The Keys. He knew fans of his Cap Wayfarer column would love it and the mail would support him, even if the editor did not. Eat your heart out Malcolm Gladwell.

  He saved the file and clicked over to a new, much longer document, took a deep breath, read the last few lines, and added the words THE END. to the bottom. His latest Florida fiction novel was complete and would go to the proofers at Manatee Press and they would mangle it, send it back to him with a garish cover, and then after a long and laborious fight, they would restore it to its original form and publish it.

  Chad knew what his fans wanted and he would give it to them, editors of the world be-damned. He closed the lid of his laptop and gazed out from his screened in porch. The waves were softly rolling and the high tide glittered in the afternoon sun. Normally, he wouldn’t go out at this hour due to the sweltering heat, but it had been oddly cool for a late August morning.

  “Babe, I think I’m gonna go for a quick row,” he called over his shoulder.

  His new—just-beyond-teenage—girlfriend of two weeks didn’t say anything. She was probably still passed out from too many strawberry daiquiris and subsequent viewings of the latest Justin Bieber concert footage splashing around on YouTube or Snapchat or whatever social app was hot this week. He frequently called her “babe” not
out of endearment, but because he often forgot her name, or confused her name with a previous girlfriend. It escaped him now as he was leaving the house. Was it Lindsay, or Buffy, or maybe Chantel? Eh, who cares.

  Chad didn’t care much if she stuck around long, but she was a deliciously taut, toned roll in the sack and he hadn’t had much of that since Linda had packed up and left last year. He shrugged his shoulders and trotted down the steps to the scruffy sand of his beachfront backyard. Being a New York Times bestselling author did have perks, and his oversized bungalow on Islamorada was certainly one of them. It wasn’t the type of beach photographed for postcards and airbrushed on cheap cotton t-shirts, but more of an interruption of the ocean for a bit of grainy, weedy, rocky sand with razor sharp bits that would slice a city-slicker’s arches to ribbons. Chad wasn’t a true outdoorsman, but he did enjoy the occasional dip into the wilderness around the key.

  He pulled the factory distressed Blind Melon shirt he’d bought at the Dolphin Mall in the Hot Topic off and tossed it aside. He clapped his hands together and then realized something was missing.