Acts Of Nature Part 2

"Oh, I see," I said. "The real stars in your eyes."

She laughed, caught, at least partially, by the truth.

"Oh, all right," she said, reaching up and pulling my face down to the crook of her shoulder and neck where she could still see the sky past my head. "Tomorrow night, we can switch places."

FIVE.

"Shut the f.u.c.k up, Wayne."

"Oh, you got a better idea? We're sittin' here with no smoke, no cash, and no chance of scoring any more deals. What? What else we got, dawg?"

Christ, thought Buck, tipping the sweating bottle of Budweiser up and taking a long slow drink off the beer. Even out here these guys are picking up somebody else's bulls.h.i.+t lingo, watching some MTV s.h.i.+t or listening to the hip-hop radio c.r.a.p out of Miami.

Dog. h.e.l.l, he could still hear his daddy's voice saying if you had a good dog and some shotgun sh.e.l.ls you could eat forever out in the Glades for free. But that didn't last, did it? Didn't even last for the old man, did it?

"You tell him, Buck. Tell him he's full of s.h.i.+t," said Marcus, the younger one.

Buck took another pull off the beer and the two watched him, each waiting for a yea or nay from the man. He took his time at it.

"Wayne might have hisself an idea," Buck finally said. "He ain't thought it out yet, but there might be some possibilities there."

Wayne sat back in his wooden, straight-backed chair, balancing on the back legs, smirk on his face that made him look even more like a cartoon balloon with his features drawn on with a marker, his face all pudgy and white and hairless with his baseball cap turned backward so it yanked his eyebrows up and out of shape. Marcus kept his eyes down toward the tabletop.

There's your dog, son, Buck thought, slapped on his snout and chastised like some mutt.

"We're gonna have to get somethin' goin' soon unless you boys want to go on up the road and get a job at the Wendy's," Buck said.

"s.h.i.+t. Ain't doin' nothin' at no Wendy's but a ten up," Wayne said. The reference to an armed stick-up raised Marcus's head, floating on a smile. He and Wayne snickered and both reached out and tapped knuckles.

Buck shook his head. His father had warned him about getting involved with chuckleheads like these two. But it wasn't like Buck had a lot of choices these days. After his last stint up at Avon Park Correctional for burglary and possession of stolen property he was looking at a three-strike rule and after he was released he'd come home to the Ten Thousand Islands thinking he might try to live straight for a while, stay the h.e.l.l out of trouble. But none of his old running buddies had stuck around to ride with. The place was still a s.h.i.+thole if you wanted to do anything but sc.r.a.pe boat bottoms or hire on with a commercial fis.h.i.+ng crew or work in the stone crab warehouse. You could try to make some extra cash by catching gators and selling the skins that, yeah, was illegal but really hadn't been considered that by anyone who grew up here because their daddies and their daddies' daddies had always done it. You could pilot an airboat around the Glades and the islands, taking tourists from New York or the Midwest out on the water trails and point out the hyacinths and gator holes and give tutorials on the flora and fauna. But someone was always askin' some stupid-a.s.sed question and you couldn't just yell at 'em to shut up, or if you did, you got fired by the tour operator.

Buck had called Bobby the Fence about the electronics and such that they'd got the other night over in the suburbs but Bobby was working a deal with a guy he said had hijacked an entire eighteen-wheeler full of big-screen televisions and would have to get back with him. Or maybe that was just bulls.h.i.+t to set him up for the lowball price that Buck was already expecting. Things were tight, but this wasn't a place where ingenuity let a man down. Buck was only a kid when things were tighter and they were doing a lot of surviving in the Ten Thousands on what seasonal stone crabs you could catch and living on the fish you pulled for your own consumption. But then the state of Florida put a couple of brains together in Tallaha.s.see and came up with a cap on the amount of fish each commercial rig could catch. They called it conservation but the locals here in the southwest corner of the peninsula called it money out of their pockets. It was during these slow 1980s that the best cash crop coming off the Gulf of Mexico was in the form of bales. Marijuana suppliers bringing product up from South America were constantly trying to find a new pipeline to avoid federal authorities. Buck's father, one of the best guides in the Everglades, had already come across a few lonely bales out near some access roads where the small plane pilots either got scared and dumped their loads or simply missed the dirt strip by a few hundred yards with the last one out the door. He had also come upon some water-soaked packages out on the fis.h.i.+ng grounds and the scuttleb.u.t.t would be that boaters trying to bring in loads to land had dumped them while being chased by the Coast Guard. Buck's father was never one to waste, no sir. Knowing people, he got the word out and was able to conceal his finds until someone contacted him. He didn't get full price, but the cash was American and he didn't want to smoke the s.h.i.+t anyway.

Soon after, what had once been occasional found money became a business. The suppliers were looking for boat-handling middlemen to unload the pot off the big smuggling s.h.i.+ps offsh.o.r.e and then use their native knowledge of the hundreds of small inlets and rivers through the thick and unmapped mangroves to get the product to land-based drivers. Buck's father was one of the best and was recruited. His mistake, as he told Buck later, had been bringing on the chuckleheads when the demand became high and when the word, as it always does in a small community, started getting pa.s.sed around on the docks and down at the Rod & Gun Club. Where Buck's father was careful, h.o.a.rding his newfound money, planning a retirement, the chuckleheads were spending. They'd taken trips up to Tampa and over to Miami to buy four-by-four pickups, projection TVs, jewelry for their wives and girlfriends, and new outboards for their boats. They paid cash, but sometimes the businesses that sold the goods still kept records. One hot, muggy August afternoon more than three dozen DEA and IRS agents backed up by the Collier County Sheriff's Department and the State Forestry Division swooped in with their hands full of arrest and search warrants and probable cause statements and a fistful of plastic flex cuffs.

Nearly every man in town over the age of eighteen was taken by Department of Corrections buses to the county courthouse. Those who turned state's evidence and helped the feds make a tighter case cut themselves deals and got county jail time. Others, who simply refused to talk, did eight to ten in the federal penitentiary. Those identified as the leaders, including Buck's father, weren't offered much of a choice: lead us to the suppliers or do twenty-five years.

Buck remembers the three men in sweat-stained, b.u.t.ton- down s.h.i.+rts coming down to the dock. All of them had holsters tucked up under their arms, the b.u.t.ts of 9mm handguns sticking out where a st.i.tched nameplate might normally show on a man's work s.h.i.+rt.

His father was sitting in his boat, a fis.h.i.+ng line flung out the back where Buck knew you couldn't catch nothin' but a lazy longnose garfish at best. But his father's eyes watched out over the gunwale, focused placidly on the glimmer of early sun on the water. The men asked him several questions to all of which he simply replied, "I'm just a fisherman, boys. I ain't got the slightest notion what you're talkin' about."

Eight years later Buck's mother would receive a piece of mail in a long brown envelope with a Department of Justice seal stamped in one corner. She signed for it and slit it open with a kitchen knife, read a few seconds, and then crumpled it up and tossed it in the trash with a look so cold and stoic it even made Buck s.h.i.+ver. He fetched the letter out after she left the room and read the line where "Ernest T. Morris has been p.r.o.nounced dead of injuries sustained during an inmate- related altercation at the Federal Penitentiary in Hibbsville, Georgia."

By the time Buck got busted for his own forays into the drug business, then the sale of stolen property business, which mostly involved boats and boat parts, and then the flat-out stupid business of hijacking and delivering semi truck containers of everything from stereos to microwave ovens to, once, a thousand boxes of MP3 players, his name and state records were far too well distributed along the west coast of the state from Orlando south.

Only thing to do was to make some occasional raids on the other side of the state off the Tamiami Trail where those new suburbs had sprouted up like weed pines. But them folks did have some money and did buy some awful nice merchandise to put in them pink box houses that were easy to get into. Making some contacts with inmates who knew people on the outside was probably the only good thing that happened to Buck up in Avon Park. That was how he met Bobby the Fence and even though he knew Bobby was getting too big of a cut on the stuff that Buck stole, he was a line to fast cash. But even with all of the precautions Buck took, he was smart enough to know that the new neighborhoods would eventually get their s.h.i.+t together and hire extra security to patrol and supplement the regular cops. He had to look for other ways to make a living.

"OK, give it to me again, Wayne," he said, snapping open another beer, this time pus.h.i.+ng it over to the kid, not offering any to the other one.

"Yeah, well, like I said," Wayne started, now not as bold as when he'd just been throwing the idea out there, "this guy I know, a guy who does a bunch of dock work and sinking foundation poles and such to build fis.h.i.+n' camps out in the Glades, he done a bunch of jobs up in the north round Palm Beach County and Broward.

"There are folks up there spending big dinero dinero on these camps just to come out and stay in because they're sick of the city or somethin'. Anyways, he says they got all kind of fancy s.h.i.+t they bring out to their places so that on the weekends they can party and have their families with them and fish and shoot." on these camps just to come out and stay in because they're sick of the city or somethin'. Anyways, he says they got all kind of fancy s.h.i.+t they bring out to their places so that on the weekends they can party and have their families with them and fish and shoot."

"Fancy s.h.i.+t?" Buck said, looking at the boy, trying to catch his eyes, which were avoiding his. The kid, Wayne, looked up quick at the question and then over at his buddy, hoping maybe he'd get bailed out with an answer.

"Well, tell him," Marcus said and then answered the question himself, earning his way back in.

"Says they got stereos and TVs and radio systems and such. Bunch of generators for power and brand-new tools that ain't hardly been used." Both boys were now nodding their heads, making a case.

Buck had not let down the front legs of his chair while he listened. Wayne was determined to make that happen, force Buck to be interested.

"And the guy says he once seen a computer. A laptop," he added and thought some more. "And guns."

Buck's hooded eyes came ever so slightly more open, exposing the tint of yellow in their corners caused by years of sleepless nights and bad prison food.

"Guns?" Buck asked. Just the vision of them made him nervous. He could well remember the tower guards at Avon Park, always looking down on the inmates in the yard, their faces dark in shadow but the long muzzles of their rifles in clear sight, intimidating, just daring someone to screw up big enough.

"Yeah," Wayne stammered on. "Says one day he's out there workin' on a roof when the owner comes out with some friend and they got some new shotguns and they ask this guy does he want to take a look. Guy says sure and takes a break and the owner shows him this brand new sixteen-gauge over- an'under. He's tellin' 'em about shootin' curlew back in the olden days and then these two, the owner an' his friend, take turns firing out at some squawk that come flyin' overhead. Guy says they can't shoot for s.h.i.+t but them guns is real nice and he never seen 'em pack them back to the city when they leave for the next week or two."

Buck moved forward, setting the front legs of the chair down with a thunk. thunk. He reached down and brought up another beer, opened it and pushed it across to Marcus. Now all three drank together. Guns, Buck thought. Bobby the Fence had just asked him last night if he'd had any guns to turn over. Much as Buck hated them, they were cash money these days. He reached down and brought up another beer, opened it and pushed it across to Marcus. Now all three drank together. Guns, Buck thought. Bobby the Fence had just asked him last night if he'd had any guns to turn over. Much as Buck hated them, they were cash money these days.

"So does this friend of yours know where these fis.h.i.+ng camps are?" he said, raising his eyebrows, being conspiratorial with them, which he knew got them going.

Wayne crossed his arms in front of him, turned his head in a playful way, like he was holding good cards in a game and wanted to savor the feeling for as long as he could without p.i.s.sing Buck off.

"He got a map," he finally said. "The boy ain't got the b.a.l.l.s to do a job himself. But he'll sell us the map with all the locations. GPS and everything."

At that moment a wind came up and pressed against Buck's stilt house and a shutter rattled and swung open on the kitchen window. He got up without a word and went to the sink and looked out. He'd heard some of the boat captains talking about a 'cane stirrin' up things south near Mexico. He'd have to check the forecast later. Right now he was concentrating on a possible score. The boys' eyes followed him and Marcus gave Wayne a "what the f.u.c.k you doin'" look. Finally Buck came back and looped his leg over the back of the chair and sat back down.

"Tell it to me again, son."

SIX.

They sat in the office at noon, Harmon at his desk in the middle of the room, alternately watching the unlighted incoming lines on the phone and the TV mounted high in the front corner. He used the same cynical and disdainful eye for both. Squires was at the other desk behind him, against the back wall, his short-cropped, blond-gray hair poking out on occasion from behind his computer monitor. When Harmon cut his eyes to the left, he could see his partner's hand cupped over the mouse on his desk like it was a cigarette you didn't want to expose or a clump of something you spilled on your mother's table linen and didn't want her to see. Squires's finger twitched and Harmon could hear the constant click of the machine but he knew the guy was just acting like he was working.

"Black eight on the red nine," Harmon said over his shoulder.

Squires hesitated, clicked once and then said: "f.u.c.k you, Harmon."

Harmon grinned, knew the guy was playing solitaire back there and then reached across the desktop for yet another toothpick, and looked up over the top of his wire-rimmed gla.s.ses at the Weather Channel.

"This drag-a.s.s hurricane is going to kick Cancun's b.u.t.t and then shoot right up the middle of the Gulf," he said. The sound on the television was muted and the bubble-headed bleach blonde had obviously just finished her spiel and was silently staring at the black guy sharing afternoon anchor duties with her like she was paying attention to him. Harmon was waiting for the blonde to get up and go to the wall map to point out the various "computer forecast tracks" for this new storm, Hurricane Simone.

"You just watch. Crandall's going to yank those rig monkeys off the platforms in Section C-seven and C-eight and we'll be out there three days later going through their lockers and the rig bosses' files trying to figure out what they've been s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g with for the last ten weeks," Harmon said, glancing again at the phone like his boss was going to call the orders in any minute.

"Better they're on leave than having those greasy Cajun f.u.c.kers on the deck giving you the voodoo eye while we're doing inspections," Squires said from behind his monitor. Harmon grinned. He was listening.

"You're a racist, Squires. Admit it," he said, just for something to do, poking at the man.

The gla.s.s door on their office said Martindale Security, stenciled on with some cheap paint by some cheap sign painter they'd found in the Hollywood, Florida, yellow pages. Martin Crandall, their biggest, h.e.l.l, their only client these days, had ordered them to rent the s.p.a.ce and label it up like a legitimate business. Probably had something to do with a tax write-off for the oil company but Harmon had liked the old days when he and Squires simply worked out of their homes or apartments, got a call from some contact, set up a meet at an obscure diner somewhere, and went over a plan. The only advantage now was the way things like the shooting in Venezuela seemed to disappear. When you do work for the corporations, matters like a few dead paramilitary smudges in the outback can disappear under the heap of more "important" and income-producing affairs. Harmon had rented this place because it was cheap and he could pocket the rest of the expense like he'd done with the extra forty grand he'd split with Squires from their latest trip. He knew Crandall would never ask for verification. It was a corner s.p.a.ce in an old-style strip shopping center. The east wall was theirs alone. The west wall they shared with a Chinese restaurant and take-out place. Every time the Chang Emporium brought an exterminator in to spray, the c.o.c.kroaches and monster-sized palmetto bugs would migrate through the cracks to Harmon's side of the wall. The infestation had scared away two receptionists already but Harmon didn't care. He just went ahead and pocketed her salary as well and never bothered with a replacement. It wasn't as if they were busy.

"I ain't racist. I like the black folk just fine," Squires grumbled from the back. "Least they ain't so stupid to bring a knife to a gunfight."

Last time they'd been sent out to do a security check on one of GULFLO's Gulf rigs he and Squires were doing a routine search of the worker's lockers, pawing through their personal stuff, knowing from years of experience what to look for. These guys were never too creative when it came to hiding their dope-the meth that kept them going at the dangerous and boring-as-h.e.l.l jobs they held, the c.o.ke that gave them something to dream about, and the downers to keep them level enough not to lose an arm in the drill works. One day Squires came up with a handful of some kind of animal teeth the size of a tiger's all strung out on a leather cord.

"Pop the tops!" he'd told the big Cajun rigger whose foot- locker he was searching.

"Don't know what you askin', me?" the old roughneck said, staring into Squires's eyes like a dare.

Squires had seen all manner of hiding places for the worker's chemical stashes including the one like this where they hollowed out the bones they used as jewelry, filled them with cocaine, and then capped them with a silver attachment that looped onto a chain or cord to form a kind of necklace.

"You carrying a little nose powder here, boy?" he said to the pair of unblinking, swamp green eyes.

The man just spat a string of tobacco juice to the side but when Squires selected the largest tooth on the string and started twisting at the clasp, the dark-skinned rigger raised his right hand as if to wipe the spittle from his chin and then in a blur of movement and a spin of elbow so quick it caught Harmon flat-footed, the man had stepped chest to chest with Squires and had a blade to his neck.

"You don't touch a man's prayer beads, you, less you preparin' to bleed," the rigger said through his clenched teeth, and Harmon was amazed to see the bundle of teeth back in its owner's possession.

But there was no hint of fear in Squires's face, even as the knife edge pressed hard against his jugular. The Cajun seemed only mildly baffled by the security man's stoic response until everyone in the silent bunkhouse heard the m.u.f.fled snick of a gun hammer being c.o.c.ked and the rigger must have felt the hollowed pipe of an HK Mk23 special ops handgun muzzle being pressed up into the rounded notch at the bottom of his breastbone. During the man's pirouette, Squires had come up with his own practiced sleight of hand.

"You might cut me, boy. But I'll blow your heart through a hole out your back before you see a drop of my blood hit the floor," Squires whispered.

They stood eye to eye for three seconds and an eternity before the rigger finally backed off.

"Ain't no powder in these," he said, holding the teeth out. "You look yourself. I ain't no doper, me."

Now Harmon was shaking his head at the memory, looking across the office at the back of Squires's computer. They'd found plenty of stash that trip but not in the tiger teeth. Squires had been wrong on that one account, but almost before the incident was over it was if he'd already forgotten it. That was the beauty of the guy. No memory, no conscience.

Blessed are the forgetful, some old philosopher once said, for they get the better even of their blunders. It was a way of living that suited warriors and lawyers, and Harmon could never understand it.

"You gonna get that, boss," Squires said, snapping Harmon out of his flashback. "Line two?"

Harmon looked down at the blinking light on the phone. They'd disabled the chirping noise of incoming calls the day the last receptionist left. Only the boss ever called on line two. It had to be Crandall. He would be alerting them to get ready to travel after the storm pa.s.sed. But Harmon knew from experience the man wouldn't say where until the day they left. He picked up the phone and swiveled his chair away from Squires.

"Harmon," he answered. "Yeah. Sure. Yeah. We'll be ready. Have we ever not been ready?"

SEVEN.

"What are we going to do, Max?"

I hear the question, but with only half of my attention. I thought Sherry had been reading, her back settled in the bow of the canoe, ankles crossed on top of the cooler, which held the last of the beer, a book of Ted Kooser's poems I'd lent her in front of her face. I was at the other end, a hand line dropped over the side, daydreaming. Like the gentleman that I am, I'd kept the eastern sun to Sherry's back and pulled down the brim of my baseball cap, the one st.i.tched across the front with the reversed script letters that perplexed most people unless they figured out that it was simply "FOCUS" spelled mirror backward. After three days my eyes were getting used to the starburst glitter of sun off the slow-moving water.

"Huh?" I said, full of elocution.

"What are we going to do about us? When we get back, I mean, to civilization?"

It hadn't all been small talk since we started this odd vacation, but tackling the future and the meaning of our relations.h.i.+p was not something we'd poked at. I'd decided the reason was because we were both, fundamentally, cops. We'd been trained, I suppose, to be more reticent than most people. Trained also, I believed, to be more careful with the people we met, be they citizens or suspects or potential trouble or all three at once. If you ever sat down in a diner with a few of us you would immediately feel it as an outsider. We're trained to evaluate you, give nothing up until we've got some kind of take on where you're coming from. It's a broad ripple effect of the way we're taught to approach a driver during a car stop when we're all rookies: search the mirrors, look for hand movement, a.s.sess with your gut and let it tell you if you should have your own hand on the b.u.t.t of your sidearm.

I had been on the force in Philadelphia for more than a decade. I'd grown up with the cop rules and what they brought home with them and had seen it turn my parents' relations.h.i.+p ugly and violent. But I had also known my grandparents to be a loving and respectful couple despite the lifestyle.

Sherry and I had been dancing for a couple of years now. Granted, some of it had been very close dancing, but like the school chaperone, an emotional hand had always been measuring a s.p.a.ce between us.

"Hike you, Max."

It wasn't the words that got my attention. Sherry's eyes always had this ability to subtly change color depending on her mood-a green when she was loose and happy, but decidedly gray when she was being fierce and suspicious. I was trying to see them now, in the shade of midmorning sun.

"I think you might have said that last night, when it was my turn to look at the stars," I said, stalling.

I could see her narrow those eyes, but still couldn't pick up the color.

"I want you to move in with me, into the house in Fort Lauderdale. But I don't want to ask."

It was a statement. Clear and matter-of-fact, but I knew how much it had taken for her to let the words out of her mouth. I was trying not to overthink what my response should be. It has always been my burden, rolling questions and answers around in my head, probing them, searching for the rough edges, grinding the sharp spots, the dangerous possibilities, and trying to smooth them. Maybe she sensed my hesitation because I could see her face begin to change, like she was going to take back the invitation. Before she could say anything I leaned forward and gripped either side of the canoe gunwales and rocked forward and stepped to her. Now her look turned to a wary smile but before she could come out with anything I led with my mouth and kissed her fully on the lips, holding my body weight above her like doing a push-up.

"Oh, is that an answer, Max?" she said. "Because it's very nice, but..." I know she did it. Because it sure as h.e.l.l wasn't me who suddenly threw my weight to the starboard side of the canoe causing gravity to take hold and barrel-rolling the whole boat and flipping us both into the water.

Later we spread out our soaked clothes on the Snows' isolated deck and lay in the sun naked.

"I've never been dunked by a woman before," I said into the sky and then immediately wondered where the words had come from. Sherry cut a look at me, a slight wrinkle in her brow. She too was caught by the oddity of the revelation.

"Dumped but not dunked," I said, trying to recover.

"You would have stayed with your ex if she hadn't been moving up?" she finally said. Sherry knew my ex-wife was a former police sniper who was now a captain running the internal affairs division for the Philadelphia Police Department. We had met while working on the same SWAT team.

"Not once I realized she was just collecting the pelts of men on her way up the ranks."

Sherry laughed out loud.

"Bitterness does not become you, Max," she said, reaching over to run her fingertips over my brow. "Honestly, she was a better shot than you, right?"