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it.
    "I'd heard you done good, all right, but..." Marris choked as he remembered the poor kid with only one pair of pants who had left Everglades almost thirty years ago.
    Rye clamped his big pawlike arm around Marris's shoulder and guided him over to the car. "Maurice Gainor, John Patterson, this here is Archie Marris, the one I told you about." He winked at Maurice. "How d'ya make out on that mule I sold ya?" he said to Marris.
    "You remember that?" asked Marris, surprised that a man like Rye should remember anything about him.
    "'Course I do."
    "Died six weeks after ya sold it to me, you thievin' bastard," said Marris, delighted to be associated with Rye, even if only in the role of fall guy. "Mangy rotten mule weren't good for nothin', 'cept maybe fertilizer."
    "Now there's where you're wrong." Rye laughed. "It was good for gettin' you, wasn't it?"
    Marris grinned like a shark. His enormous belly shook as he laughed. "See what I mean." He winked at Maurice and John. "A real bastard."
    "As mean as a gator," Rye said proudly.
    Marris suddenly grew serious. "Not as mean as this one."
    "Horseshit. He ain't nothin' but an oversized suitcase."
    "You weren't there when they brought in the bodies. One of them was missing his head. He's an angry one, Rye."
    "You're talkin' like that swimmin' log's got feelin's."
    "I don't know about feelin's," said Marris soberly. "I just know he's big and mean. Now Luke, he says it's the hand of God on Sodom and Gomorrah."
    Marris caught Rye looking at him as if he were crazy and quickly added, "'Course, we all know Luke is dealin' from a short deck."
    "Well, that gator won't be around much longer to speculate on," said Rye.
    "A lot of people been driftin' into town with the same idea," said Marris. "You figure to be the one to get it?"
    "I don't figure, I'm sure to get it."
    "Well, you got everythin' else you gone after, that's for sure."
    "A hundred fifty million on paper, New York Stock Exchange, and a fleet of bulldozers looks like the American Army. How about you?"
    "I ain't done as good as you, but I can't complain." Marris looked away, embarrassed. "I night-clerk during the week and dabble in a little land, but, like I said, I didn't do as well as you. Would have done better but luck kept runnin' against me an' ... you know."
    The conversation quickly wound down, and the two men stood on the street awkwardly, neither having much to say to the other, their futures being too dissimilar and their pasts too distant.
    "Bones died," said Marris finally.
    "Aw, shit no. You was always fond of him."
    "Yeah." Marris sighed. "He died last year. So did George Jenkins."
    "The one who run with the Maynard kid?"
    "That was Jesse," said Marris.
    "I can't remember George Jenkins."
    "He had blond curly hair and a long nose."
    "Can't picture him," said Rye. "Can't picture him."
    The men stood in silence for a moment; then Rye clapped Marris on his broad back and boomed, "What are we just standin' here for? Sooner I get a room, sooner we can get started drinkin' at Albert's." Rye turned and began to walk up the stairs of the hotel.
    "Need some help with the luggage?" asked Marris, looking at the overloaded Mercedes.
    "Don't worry about a thing. My boys'll take care of it." Rye pushed through the creaky old doors and disappeared into the hotel in a spray of peeling paint.
    "What did you expect, the Plaza?" Rye muttered to himself as he changed into a comfortable pair of blue cotton slacks and matching shirt that would have been more appropriate on the links than in the swamp. He looked around the hotel room with disgust. It was a broken-down room that was furnished in a jumble of dime-store modern and crumbling antique. Most of the furniture had been painted a glossy black to hide the nicks and chips of time. But even the new paint had begun to peel, in some places showing four or five different colors below. The bed was high and lumpy and covered with a graying, threadbare bedspread that had probably seen more