THREE

Officer Delinko shielded his eyes against the noon glare.

“Took you long enough,” said Curly, the construction foreman.

“There was a four-car pileup north of town,” the police officer explained, “with injuries.”

Curly huffed. “Whatever. Anyways, you can see what they done.”

Again the trespassers had methodically removed every survey marker and filled in the stake holes. Officer Delinko wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he was beginning to suspect that this wasn’t the random work of juvenile pranksters. Perhaps somebody had a grudge against Mother Paula and her world-famous pancakes.

“This time you got a actual vandalism to report,” Curly said pointedly. “This time they messed up some private property.”

He led Officer Delinko to the southwest corner of the site, where a flatbed truck was parked. All four tires were flat.

Curly raised the palms of his hands and said, “There you go. Each a them tires is worth a hundred and fifty bucks.”

“What happened?” the policeman asked.

“The sidewalls was slashed.” Curly’s shiny head bobbed in indignation.

Officer Delinko knelt down and studied the truck’s tires. He couldn’t see any knife marks in the rubber.

“I think somebody just let the air out,” he said.

Curly muttered a reply that was difficult to hear.

“I’ll make a report, anyway,” the policeman promised.

“How about this?” Curly said. “How about you put some extra patrols around here?”

“I’ll speak to my sergeant.”

“You do that,” Curly grumbled. “I got some people I can speak to myself. This is gettin’ ridiculous.”

“Yes, sir.” Officer Delinko noticed that three portable latrines were strapped on the back of the flatbed truck. He caught himself smiling at the name painted on the blue doors: TRAVELIN ’ JOHNNY .

“For the construction crew,” Curly explained, “for when we get this project started. If we ever get started.”

“Did you check ’em out?” asked the policeman.

Curly frowned. “The johns? What for?”

“You never know.”

“Nobody in their right mind’s gonna fool around with a toilet.” The foreman snorted.

“Can I have a look?” Officer Delinko asked.

“Be my guest.”

The policeman climbed up on the bed of the truck. From the outside, the portable latrines appeared untouched. The cargo straps were cinched tight, and the doors to all three units were closed. Officer Delinko opened one and peeked his head inside. The stall smelled heavily of disinfectant.

“Well?” Curly called up to him.

“A-okay,” said the policeman.

“Truth is, there ain’t much to wreck on a port-a-potty.”

“I suppose not.” Officer Delinko was about to shut the door when he heard a muffled noise—was it a splash? The policeman stared uneasily at the blackness beneath the plastic seat. Ten seconds passed; then he heard it again.

Definitely a splash.

“What’re you doin’ up there?” Curly demanded.

“Listening,” replied Officer Delinko.

“Listenin’ to what ?”

Officer Delinko unclipped the flashlight from his belt. Edging forward, he aimed the light down the toilet hole.

Curly heard a cry and watched in surprise as the policeman burst from the doorway of the latrine, leaping off the flatbed like an Olympic hurdler.

What now? the foreman wondered unhappily.

Officer Delinko picked himself off the ground and smoothed the front of his uniform. He retrieved his flashlight and tested it to make sure the bulb wasn’t broken.

Curly handed him his hat, which had come to rest near an owl burrow. “So. Let’s hear it,” the foreman said.

The policeman nodded grimly. “Alligators,” he declared.

“You’re kiddin’ me.”

“I wish I was,” said Officer Delinko. “They put alligators in your potties, sir. Real live alligators.”

“More than one?”

“Yes, sir.”

Curly was flabbergasted. “Are they ... big gators?”

Officer Delinko shrugged, nodding toward the Travelin’ Johnnys. “I imagine all of ’em look big,” he said, “when they’re swimming under your butt.”

Miss Hennepin had notified Roy’s mother, so he had to repeat the story when he got home from school, and once more when his father returned from work.

“Why was this young man choking you? You didn’t do something to provoke him, did you?” asked Mr. Eberhardt.

“Roy says he picks on everybody,” Mrs. Eberhardt said. “But even so, fighting is never the right thing.”

“It wasn’t a fight,” Roy insisted. “I only punched him to make him let go. Then I got off the bus and ran.”

“And that’s when you were struck by the golf ball?” his father asked, wincing at the thought.

“He ran a long, long way,” his mother said.

Roy sighed. “I was scared.” He didn’t like lying to his parents but he was too worn out to explain the real reason that he had run so far.

Mr. Eberhardt examined the bruise over his son’s ear. “You took a nasty shot here. Maybe Dr. Shulman ought to have a look.”

“No, Dad, I’m okay.” The paramedics had checked him out on the golf course, and the school nurse at Trace Middle had spent forty-five minutes “observing” him for signs of a possible concussion.

“He seems to be fine,” agreed Roy’s mother. “The other young man, however, has a broken nose.”

“Oh?” Mr. Eberhardt’s eyebrows arched.

To Roy’s surprise, his father didn’t seem angry. And while he wasn’t exactly beaming at Roy, there was unmistakable affection—and possibly even pride—in his gaze. Roy thought it was a good opportunity to renew his plea for leniency.

“Dad, he was strangling me. What else could I do? What would you have done?” He pulled down his collar to display the bluish finger marks on his neck.

Mr. Eberhardt’s expression darkened. “Liz, did you see this?” he asked Roy’s mother, who nodded fretfully. “Does the school know what that thug did to our son?”

“The vice-principal does,” Roy piped up. “I showed her.”

“What did she do?”

“Suspended me from the bus for two weeks. Plus I have to write an apology—”

“What happened to the other boy? Wasn’t he disciplined, too?”

“I don’t know, Dad.”

“Because this is assault,” Mr. Eberhardt said. “You can’t choke another person. It’s against the law.”

“You mean, they could arrest him?” Roy didn’t want to get Dana Matherson thrown in jail, because then Dana’s mean and equally large friends might come after him. Being the new kid in school, Roy didn’t need to be making those types of enemies.

His mother said, “Roy, honey, they’re not going to arrest him. But he needs to be taught a lesson. He could seriously hurt somebody, picking on smaller kids the way he does.”

Mr. Eberhardt sat forward intently. “What’s the boy’s name?”

Roy hesitated. He wasn’t sure exactly what his father did for a living, but he was aware it had something to do with law enforcement. Occasionally, when talking to Roy’s mother, Mr. Eberhardt would refer to his working for the “D.O.J.,” which Roy had deciphered as the United States Department of Justice.

As much as Roy disliked Dana Matherson, he didn’t believe the kid was worthy of the U.S. government’s attention. Dana was just a big stupid bully; the world was full of them.

“Roy, please tell me,” his father pressed.

“The boy’s name is Matherson,” Mrs. Eberhardt chimed in. “Dana Matherson.”

At first Roy was relieved that his father didn’t write the name down, hoping it meant that he wasn’t going to pursue the incident. Then Roy remembered that his father seemed to have a supernatural memory—for instance, he could still recite the batting averages of the entire starting lineup for the 1978 New York Yankees.

“Liz, you should call the school tomorrow,” Mr. Eberhardt said to Mrs. Eberhardt, “and find out if—and how—this boy will be disciplined for attacking Roy.”

“First thing in the morning,” Mrs. Eberhardt promised.

Roy groaned inwardly. It was his own fault that his parents were reacting so strongly. He should never have shown them the marks on his neck.

“Mom, Dad, I’ll be fine. Honest I will. Can’t we just let the whole thing drop?”

“Absolutely not,” his father said firmly.

“Your dad’s right,” said Roy’s mother. “This is a serious matter. Now come to the kitchen and let’s put some ice on your bump. Afterwards you can work on that apology letter.”

On one wall of Roy’s bedroom was a poster from the Livingston rodeo that showed a cowboy riding a ferocious humpbacked bull. The cowboy held one hand high in the air, and his hat was flying off his head. Every night before turning off the lights, Roy would lie on his pillow and stare at the poster, imagining that he was the sinewy young bull rider in the picture. Eight or nine seconds was an eternity on top of an angry bull, but Roy imagined himself hanging on so tightly that the animal couldn’t shake him no matter how furiously it tried. The seconds would tick by until finally the bull would sink to its knees in exhaustion. Then Roy would calmly climb off, waving to the roaring crowd. That’s how he played the scene in his mind.

Maybe someday, Roy thought hopefully, his father would be transferred back to Montana. Then Roy could learn to ride bulls like a cowboy.

On the same wall of his bedroom was a yellow flyer handed out to drivers entering Yellowstone National Park. The flyer said:

At the bottom of the handout was a drawing of a tourist being tossed on the horns of a fuming bison. The tourist’s camera was flying one way and his cap was flying another, just like the cowboy’s hat in the rodeo poster.

Roy had saved the Yellowstone flyer because he was so amazed that anybody would be dumb enough to stroll up to a full-grown buffalo and snap its picture. Yet it happened every summer, and every summer some nitwit tourist got gored.

It was exactly the sort of idiotic stunt that Dana Matherson would try, Roy thought as he contemplated his apology letter. He could easily envision the big goon trying to hop on a bison, like it was a carousel pony.

Roy took a piece of lined notebook paper out of his English folder and wrote:

He took the page downstairs and showed his mother, who frowned slightly. “Honey, it seems a little too ... well, forceful.”

“What do you mean, Mom?”

“It’s not the content of the letter so much as the tone.”

She handed it to Roy’s father, who read it and said, “I think the tone is exactly right. But you’d better look up ‘arrangement’ in the dictionary.”

The police captain slumped at his desk. This wasn’t how he had planned to end his career. After twenty-two winters pounding the streets of Boston, he’d moved to Florida with the hope of five or six warm and uneventful years before retirement. Coconut Cove had sounded ideal. Yet it had turned out not to be the sleepy little village that the captain had envisioned. The place was growing like a weed—too much traffic, too many tourists, and, yes, even crime.

Not nasty big-city crime, but flaky Florida-style crime.

“How many?” he asked the sergeant.

The sergeant looked at Officer Delinko, who said, “Total of six.”

“Two in each toilet?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How big?”

“The largest was four feet even. The smallest was thirty-one inches,” replied Officer Delinko, reading matter-of-factly from his report.

“Real alligators,” the captain said.

“That’s right, sir.”

Officer Delinko’s sergeant spoke up: “They’re gone now, Captain, don’t worry. A reptile wrangler came and got ’em out of the johns.” With a chuckle he added, “The little one almost took the guy’s thumb off.”

The captain said, “What’s a ‘reptile wrangler’—aw, never mind.”

“Believe it or not, we found him in the Yellow Pages.”

“Figures,” the captain muttered.

Normally an officer of his rank wouldn’t get involved in such a silly case, but the company building the pancake franchise had some clout with local politicians. One of Mother Paula’s big shots had called Councilman Grandy, who immediately chewed out the police chief, who quickly sent word down the ranks to the captain, who swiftly called for the sergeant, who instantly summoned (last and least) Officer Delinko.

“What the heck’s going on out there?” the captain demanded. “Why would kids single out this one construction site to vandalize?”

“Two reasons,” said the sergeant, “boredom and convenience. I’ll bet you five bucks it’s juvies who live in the neighborhood.”

The captain eyed Officer Delinko. “What do you think?”

“It seems too organized to be kids—pulling out every stake, not just once but twice. Think about what happened today. How many kids do you know who could handle a four-foot gator?” Officer Delinko said. “Seems awful risky, for a practical joke.”

Delinko is no Sherlock Holmes, thought the police captain, but he’s got a point. “Well, then, let’s hear your theory,” he said to the patrolman.

“Yes, sir. Here’s what I think,” Officer Delinko said. “I think somebody’s got it in for Mother Paula. I think it’s some kind of revenge deal.”

“Revenge,” repeated the captain, somewhat skeptically.

“That’s right,” the patrolman said. “Maybe it’s a rival pancake house.”

The sergeant shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “There is no other pancake house in Coconut Cove.”

“Okay,” said Officer Delinko, rubbing his chin, “so then, how about a disgruntled customer? Maybe someone who once had a bad breakfast at a Mother Paula’s!”

The sergeant laughed. “How can you mess up a flapjack?”

“I agree,” the captain said. He’d heard enough. “Sergeant, I want you to send a patrol car by the construction site every hour.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Either you catch these vandals or you scare ’em away. It doesn’t matter to me as long as the chief isn’t getting any more phone calls from Councilman Bruce Grandy. Clear?”

As soon as they left the captain’s office, Officer Delinko asked his sergeant if he could come in early to work the Mother Paula patrol.

“No way, David. The overtime budget’s tapped out.”

“Oh, I don’t want any overtime,” the patrolman said. All he wanted was to solve the mystery. U/pA4Q5XT0LFCVZQfbTFRN8lj+hVR3iqR9cqnXGF7Oc63VlaBjF+esPlBc7zIvEH