Alligator Strip pbk 02 Jun 05 by Chris Haslam AuthorTitle KeywordPublisher  About the Author Bibliography

British Pbk Original - Abacus (2005)

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‘You heard of the Skunk Ape?’ asks Captain Bill, stumbling thigh-deep through the moon-splashed waters of a sawgrass swamp. ‘Lot of folk say it’s bullshit, but I seen it.’ Bubbles of foul-smelling marsh gas are bursting slowly on the scum-flecked surface. ‘I smelled it, too,’ adds Bill.
Two hours ago, as the sun set over the gulf, I was enjoying a dinner of deep fried ‘gator tails and crab cakes in a lean-to Chickee bar in Everglades City, Collier County, Florida. I’d come to see if the inappropriately named shanty town – population 469 – lived up to its lawless reputation. It was near here in 1910 that serial killer EJ Watson was gunned down by a posse of crackers unnerved by his practice of killing workers on payday and where advertising mogul Baron Collier established the hell-raising work camps for the completion of the Tamiami Trail. Hundreds of desperadoes were drawn here in the twenties to build the last 72 miles of a road that would link Ybor City in Tampa to the swinging Calle Ocho in Miami, a two lane blacktop built through a feverish landscape owned by mosquitoes, alligators and Cottonmouths. ‘Money, machinery and men’ would tame the wilderness, boasted Collier. Muck, misery and moccasins would even the score, claimed his workers. Cheap liquor, sharp knives and undeclared firearms laid many unregistered souls to rest beneath the limestone causeway before it was opened in 1928, but the riches the road had falsely promised to Everglades City never came. The workers drifted away and the City Bank, with its classical portico and marble floor, stood empty.
South of here lie the Ten Thousand Islands, a maze of sandbanks, Mikosukkee shell heaps and rafts of vegetation, rising a few feet from the uncharted channels that divide them. Boats disappear when they sail in here, and by the mid-eighties the independently-minded folk of Everglades City had turned that labyrinthine quality to their advantage. Federal legislation had restricted commercial fishing to the point where costs outweighed benefits, so boat owners cast around for alternative careers. It was the early eighties, and Crockett and Tubbs were still at the Police Academy. Smuggling had long been a profitable sideline in these parts - there’s rum on sale here that last touched dry land in Havana - and pretty soon a thriving industry based on the importation and distribution of Colombian goods took over, with quite astounding quantities of marijuana and cocaine arriving weekly on rotting jetties along the Barron river.
Then it all went wrong. In 1984 Everglades City substation commander Lt. Charles Sanders provided police cover for the FBI’s infamous Operation Everglades – the first shock and awe salvo of Ronnie Reagan’s War On Drugs. Nearly one third of the population went down for headline-grabbing twenty year mandatory sentences, and only now are the lucky ones coming home. They spend their days drinking and moaning in the Chickee bars, and that’s where I met Captain Bill. Most of the men in Everglades City are Captains. Got a fishing boat? You’re a Captain. Airboat? Captain. Peaked hat with iron-on gold braid? Captain. All Bill had was a baseball cap that said Liquor in the Front, Poker in the Rear, but I took his word for his rank. Currently boatless, Cap’n Bill claimed to run the ultimate eco experience in the Everglades: barefoot walking safaris. I was horrified and tempted in equal measure. In Alligator Strip, the two protagonists are forced to cross a sawgrass swamp, on foot, by night, during a hurricane. I figured it would be wet and windy, and I could make the rest up. Bill thought otherwise, demanding that I conducted the appropriate research, and now he and I were drunk, barefoot and alone, at night, in a swamp that seemed to pulsate with evil intent. The first alligator we encountered waited until we were a couple of squelching paces away before diving for cover in a heart stopping splash. I wondered if he was related to my dinner, and then, unhelpfully, if I might be part of his. Another crashed through the swamp weed, leaving an irritated hiss hanging in the fetid air. ‘Don’t worry about them ‘gators none,’ advised Cap’n Bill. ‘They’re pussies. It’s the moccasins you gotta watch out for. They feel kinda muscular when they brush against you. Just keep your hands clear of the water.’
Marvellous.
To be honest, there’s not that much to be really scared of in a swamp. The alligators are indeed pussies and the snakes stay well clear of anything bigger than them. The mosquitoes chew like terriers, but they can’t kill you and all the fear that’s left is in the mind.
Apart from the Skunk Ape.
The Himalayas have the Yeti. Washington State has the Bigfoot. Northern California the Sasquatch. Collier County Florida has the imaginatively named Skunk Ape, so called because he smells like a skunk and looks like…you’re ahead of me. He was discovered – the unkind say invented - by Dave Shealy, a dungaree-wearing man who deserves an A for effort, down on his Trail Lakes campsite in nearby Ochopee. He’s seen the beast three times and filmed it once. Inspectors from the Collier County Commission were astounded by the clarity, stating that there was little doubt that this was indeed a man in a gorilla suit. Legends linger however, like Ochopee resident Scotty, who tells a tale of slowing one stormy night on a remote back road to offer a pedestrian a lift. A hairy, smelly arm came through the window and Scotty scarpered. Captain Bill was camping out on the islands with some buddies a few years back. They were passing the bottle around the campfire when they heard slow, dragging footsteps approaching. They issued a challenge. No reply. They shone flashlights into the bush and suddenly, at the edge of the clearing, the lights picked out a pair of eyes a good eight feet off the ground. They scarpered. Dave himself has plaster casts of the monster’s footprints and once had a fur sample on display at the Florida Panther Gift Shop he runs with his brother in Ochopee. One day a dark sedan arrived and two men in black suits, white shirts, black ties and shades came into the shop. They seized the fur sample…and scarpered. Dave has turned the gift shop into the Official Skunk Ape Research Centre and hosts an annual benefit party to raise funds. This year a crowd of nearly thirty convened at Trail Lakes for a day of Skunk Ape fun and live music. ‘Disappointing,’ said Dave.
I leave the Everglades feeling that I have too much information. I’ve ticked snakes, smugglers and alligators off the research list. The next item is firearms. Here’s a tip: if you need a handgun in a hurry, and it could happen to any of us at any time, don’t go to a Florida gunshop. If you don’t have State ID it rapidly becomes tediously bureaucratic. If you’re not an American citizen, forget it. For service with a conspiratorial smile try a pawnshop – there’s one on every corner in most Florida cities. Strict legislation exists covering the sale and registration of firearms but in one long day spent visiting pawnbrokers in Naples, FL, I was offered two cheap and nasty Saturday Night Specials. Forget the Glocks, the P99s and the state of the art Smith and Wesson automatics you see on TV. Most killings are performed using cheap, pressed-steel, pocket-sized junk guns with low melt components. Gangbangers need their money for crack, rubbish CDs and baggy jeans, and they rarely have access to $700 side arms like the HK USP. They buy guns made by the Mister Buyrights of the firearm world, gunsmiths like Bryco, Arcadia Machine & Tool, Phoenix Arms and Lorcin Engineering, the so-called Ring of Fire manufacturers of Southern California who account for around one third of all arms sales in the US annually. It’s these lethal weapons that end up in pawn shops, evidence depositories and the bottom of lakes. In a dodgy shop of bad intentions I am offered an AMT Backup pistol in .380 for $500, no questions asked. Naturally I refuse – you can get a new one for $225 - and I scurry away, feeling slightly soiled, to visit the Naples Gun Mart, slogan: Quality Guns at Low Prices.
Something about my appearance tells the strangely similar-looking staff that I am from out of town. No baseball cap, no plaid shirt, no wallet on a chain and no beard. I’m party to no conspiracy theories and I’m not particularly angry about anything. Weirdo.
Kill.
A well-stocked gunshop has an atmosphere like no other store on the retail park. Here are several hundred square feet dedicated to the efficient delivery of death in a variety of calibres. It’s not about self-defence, conservation, sport or the right of the individual to bear arms. It’s about killing, and everyone’s affected by the lethal radiation emitted by the engineering displayed on the racks and in the glass cases. Customers seem furtive, almost guilty, and the staff project a brazen attitude to conceal their shame.
‘Can I help you with something?’ growls the attendant, a tall, well-built Cracker with a thick beard and hairy knuckles. His belt buckle says ‘In God We Trust.’ Steve Earle called the handgun ‘the Devil’s Right Hand.’
‘Just looking,’ I reply, hefting an AKS assault rifle.
‘Got ID?’
I give him my passport. He passes it to his colleague, clearly his twin. They squint at it than pass it back.
‘This here’s a British passport,’ says the twin. His t-shirt says ‘Guns don’t kill people.’ He scratches his beard. ‘I admire Tony Blair n’ all, but you can’t buy nothing in here without state ID.’
‘Can I just look?’
He tosses back the passport. It lands next to a pile of leaflets advertising an advanced knife fighting course. ‘Knock yourself out,’ he grunts. The store smells of oil and sweat and sells everything from a $22,000 antique English shotgun down to plastic thumb restraints at a dollar a dozen. Outlets like this justify their stock by claiming to serve the law enforcement market, but if my local copper was spending time and money in here I’d want him suspended on medical grounds. US Marine fighting knives, grooved for easy extraction, $75. Knight Firearms suppressor for 9mm, $340. Lightweight flesh coloured body armour, $1100. A paraplegic Gulf war vet is out with his mum, choosing something nice for his 19th birthday. He wheels his electric chair along a row of pump action shotguns, stops, and shakes his head. ‘I think I’m gonna go with the Remington 870 Supermag, mom,’ he decides. She smiles and nods. ‘I think you’re right, son.’
I’m mesmerized, and the evil twins are watching me. I try to engage them in conversation. They look like they’d like to engage me in a firefight.
‘What’s your favourite handgun?’ I ask Tweedle-Dee.
He glares at me for a moment, then draws a matt-black firearm from a concealed hip holster and places it on the counter. ‘Walther P-99 in forty cal.,’ he replies. ‘Nice. And how close would you have to be to be sure of putting a man down with this?’
He sweeps the weapon from the counter, snaps the slide and points it at my head. ‘About this close is good,’ he says softly. His brother giggles. I know when I’m not wanted.
Okay: alligators, snakes, smugglers and firearms are done. All that’s left is the coin trade and strip clubs, but you don’t want to read about the coin trade.
Strip clubs in Florida fall into two categories: topless and liquor, and full nudity and 7-Up. If you want to see a naked girl you can’t have a drink. It’s like saying you can go to the track but you can’t lay a bet, and fortunately it seems that certain establishments in the Fort Myers area have interpreted the law to forbid the sale of alcoholic beverages. Top tip: slip a hip flask down your python skin boot and mix your own, and if you want to know where to find the best strip joint on the Redneck Riviera, you’ll have to buy the book.

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Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.

Alligator Strip (Abacus Pbk, 2005) Pbk Jun 05

Twelve Step Fandango (Abacus Pbk, 2003)

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