Thorn said, "Look, Winchester, you think I'd come all this way, go to all this trouble and not bring it?"
Sylvie lifted her face, stepping back out of her father's peripheral vision, the impish smile resurfacing. Laced now with something new, respect maybe, or excitement. The smile gradually growing wider as her eyes feasted on his.
"Well, then," Harden said, his stance loosening. "I suppose you'd like to take a look at the operation, now that you're here."
"Of course."
"Then I can drive Mr. Lavery back to town. Get him situated."
Harden turned and glanced at his daughter, then back at Thorn.
"Can we call you Peter?" Sylvie said.
"Sure," said Thorn. "Why not?"
Harden said, "And you're still staying at the Ritz Carlton, Peter? Or did you change that part of your plan as well?"
"No. The Ritz is fine."
Harden hesitated, giving Thorn another careful inspection.
"Is there a problem, Mr. Winchester?"
Harden smiled, and raised his hand apologetically.
"Forgive me," he said. "You're not at all what I pictured."
"Daddy thinks rich people should dress rich."
"Well, I apologize," Thorn said. "But silk shirts make me itch. And I haven't found a pair of jodhpurs yet that don't rub me funny."
Harden hesitated a second, then smiled and clapped Thorn hard on the shoulder.
"Well, okay then, you're one of us."
"Yeah," Sylvie said. "Lucky him."
For the next hour, Harden Winchester led Thorn on a thorough and unhurried tour of the fish farm. The three of them walked around the perimeter of each of the large breeding ponds. Each one was surrounded by a two-foot high earthen dike. Thorn stopped to look at the fish swarming at the surface of the dark water. Doughy white, they were shaped like snapper, but glided about as lethargically as drugged mullet.
With quiet pride, Harden demonstrated the aerator, a large electrified paddle wheel that ran up and down the length of each of the larger ponds to force bubbles of air into the stagnant water. Thorn listened, made responsive noises, but said little. Sylvie brought up the rear, and when her father wasn't watching, she poked Thorn playfully in the back with a stiff finger.
They halted at one of the smaller pools, the hatchery, Harden said, and he pointed out the filtering system he'd invented, all very low-tech, he was pleased to say. None of that Ph.D. Fiberglas indoor tank bullshit for him. His filter consisted of concrete burial vaults, three-by-seven-foot boxes that he filled with sand to screen out the algae and other impurities. Keep the water circulating, the thousands of fingerlings flourishing.
"Daddy doesn't like impurities," Sylvie said. "But he just adores burial vaults. They remind him of his career in the military. Don't they, Daddy? All those burial vaults full of your enemies."
Harden led them on.
"Daddy had to kill ten thousand fish in this larvae pond a few days ago. Now, that was what I'd call fun. Killing ten thousand of anything is a gas. Wouldn't you agree, Mr. Lavery?"
They were standing on the muddy bank of a dark pond. Twenty yards away was a stand of Australian pines, and through the pines Thorn could see the glitter of moving water.
"Why'd you do that?"
"This bank we're standing on," said Winchester, giving Sylvie a cold stare, "it had a crack in it. I felt it was about to go, so I had to kill the fish. Birds could swoop in, pick a fish up off the ground, drop it in a lake or canal somewhere nearby, and the fish and game people would be back here the next day blaming me for doing it."
"I see," Thorn said.
Sylvie said, "He killed all those fish with sodium fluoroacetate. It's a poison. A long time ago they used it to kill rats, but now it's outlawed. Isn't that right, Daddy? It's outlawed because it's so effective. But Daddy still gets it smuggled in from South America. A thimble full can kill a horse, and if a dog eats the flesh of that horse, the dog dies too. The fleas on the dog, and on and on. Outlawed, isn't that right?"
"It's a damn good fish killer," Harden said, and waved them on. "But I'm sure we're boring you, Peter. You're a tilapia man. You know all of this already."
"My operation is a little different."
"Yeah, and how so?"
"It's much more high-tech," Sylvie said quickly. "All done indoors. Chrome-plated tanks, everything very clean. Daddy knows that. He's read about you, Mr. Lavery. He's just playing with you, aren't you, Daddy? Testing you."
Standing beside the largest pond, Thorn looked back and forth between the two of them.
"Is that right, Winchester? Are you playing with me?"
Harden held his eyes, but didn't reply.
Sylvie said, "In human beings sodium fluoroacetate causes ventricular fibrillation. A little bit of it in somebody's food, and look out, you better stand back before they fibrillate all over you."
Harden turned on her.
"Sylvie," he said, his voice under stiff control. "Go make us some lemonade. We'll have it on the patio."
"I'll shut up," she said.
"Go do it, girl. Right now. I'm tired of you baiting me."
"Aw, Daddy."
"Right now."
She ducked her head, held her ground for a moment, then she turned sullenly and stalked off toward the house. Halfway there, she peeked over her shoulder, saw that Harden wasn't watching, and she spun around, pretending she was holding an automatic weapon, gripping it at waist level, exuberantly spraying bullets at her father's back. Then she smiled, blew Thorn a kiss, and skipped on toward the house.
Thorn followed Harden through the completion of the tour, learning the rest of the gospel of tilapia according to Harden Winchester. Their sixty acres were almost completely circled by national park land with no access roads of any kind.
"We like living in the wild," Harden said. "It suits us. We can go weeks sometimes without seeing another soul out here. Except for our visits from Judy Nelson, of course."
Thorn remained uncommunicative as Harden led him past the shop, a storage lean-to. He saw the rump of a boat trailer behind the shop building, but couldn't see if it carried a vessel.
Finally Harden ended the tour on the keystone patio beside the house, and they sat down on some metal chairs in the shade of a white gazebo a few feet from the large swimming pool. A curved blue slide had been erected beside the pool, and a small waterfall tumbled across some coral boulders and splashed into one end. The pool seemed strangely shallow, a wading pool perhaps.
"Why all the lights?" Thorn said, motioning toward one of a dozen poles scattered around the grounds, a cluster of spotlights mounted on each one. More floodlights were fixed to the sides of the barns, the roof of the house.
"We have to work through the night sometimes," Winchester said. "You know how that is, right? Sudden fluctuations in the pH balance. Cold fronts coming through. Can't have the water temperature drop too low."
Thorn met his eyes, but said nothing.
Sylvie brought out the lemonade on a Coca-Cola tray and they drank in silence for a minute or two.
Sylvie finished her drink, and smacked her lips. A laughing gull sailed past the umbrella and landed on the far edge of the swimming pool. It hopped up onto the lip and peered down into the shallow water. Harden stood up suddenly and waved his arms at the bird and it lifted off.
"Sometimes Daddy shoots the birds. He takes his Uzi out and machine-guns them. Anhingas, cormorants, gulls. Don't you, Daddy? You Uzi them to death."
Harden sat back down and had another sip of his lemonade. He glared out at the eastern sky where a small flock of laughing gulls banked in and began to circle around the largest of the fish ponds. Finally the flock scattered, taking up positions all along the opposite earthen bank.
"Goddamn vultures," Harden said, rising from his chair and staring at them. "Wait here. I'll be right back." He walked a few steps, then broke into a trot toward the pond.
When he was halfway across the yard, Sylvie stood and said,
"Come quick, let me show you what you're up against."
Thorn pushed himself to his feet and followed her silently in through the back door of the house.
From the kitchen window, Sylvie glanced out at Harden, the man marching down the far bank of the largest fish pond, flapping his arms at the birds, flushing them back into the air. Sylvie took a key from a wooden rack by the back door and unlocked a narrow door beside the kitchen table. She swung it open, pulled the string on a light cord, and stood back.
The pantry was ten by ten, and the walls were hung with a wide array of military hardware. Uzis and M-16's, Lugers, .45 Brownings, a small rocket launcher, something that looked like an antitank gun. And there were some civilian weapons too, a MAC-10, a collection of automatic handguns. Thorn was no expert on exotic weapons, didn't know the exact names of all of those before him, but clearly it was a damn impressive collection.
On the floor just inside the door were four wooden crates. Nestled in the straw were neat rows of dark green hand grenades. Thorn squatted down and ran his fingers lightly across the cool thick steel. No bigger than pine cones, designed to spray their shrapnel in neat clouds for maximum carnage.
"Kaboom!" Sylvie barked. Thorn jerked his head around.
In the pantry doorway, Winchester stood just behind his daughter. He was breathing hard and his right hand rested heavily on her shoulder. The glass of lemonade was in his left.
"You're showing Mr. Lavery all our secrets, Sylvie."
"Oh, no, Daddy," she said, "not all of them. That would take too long."
"Got yourself quite an arsenal, Winchester."
Harden peered into Thorn's eyes.
"We have to stay prepared out here. You just never know. A man can never be too well armed. Don't you agree, Mr. Lavery? Or are you some kind of gun-control nut?"
"I own a six-shooter, that's all. Never cared much for the automatic weapons."
"Yes. And why's that?"
"I've always thought that if you couldn't kill something with one shot," Thorn said, "you don't deserve to kill it at all."
Winchester smiled. Thorn cut his glance to Sylvie. She was giving him an encouraging look.
"You see," Winchester said, "in my former career, I made quite a few enemies. Some of them very violent individuals. And I'm afraid those kind of people have very long memories. Of course, one on one, I don't use weapons at all. But if they were to come in a group, Mr. Lavery, in large numbers, this room might prove to be most useful."
"Some people might call my daddy paranoid," Sylvie said. "But not me. He's just Daddy to me."
Harden continued to block the doorway, exploring Thorn's face as if he were trying to read the small print of his personality. Thorn could feel the pressure building in his throat, and he pictured for a moment spinning around and grabbing down one of those assault rifles. Find out if it was loaded.
Sylvie sighed loudly, broke the spell. She turned her back on Thorn, put her fingertips against her father's chest, and maneuvered him out of the way.
"So, Peter, maybe you'd like to go swimming," she said, tossing it over her shoulder as she walked into the kitchen. "Cool off after your long trip."
"Sylvie," her father said. A warning.
"Never mind, never mind. I forgot. Daddy doesn't like anybody to use the swimming pool. Might get the water dirty."
With his eyes still on Thorn, Harden drained his glass of lemonade. Then he formed an empty smile, and turned his back on Thorn and walked over to the sink and set his glass down.
"Okay, Mr. Lavery," he said. "How do you suggest we work our arrangement?"
He leaned his butt against the sink, arms crossed over his chest. Thorn came out of the pantry and stood near the back door.
Sylvie's lips formed a delicate smile. She was aiming her dark eyes out the window, off toward the stormy eastern sky. Waiting for Thorn's answer.
"To tell the truth, Winchester," he said, "I was thinking more along the lines of checking into my hotel about now. Taking a nap. I believe our business can wait till later."
Harden unfolded his arms, and set about limbering the fingers on both hands. He seemed to be fighting back his irritation, a man who was used to defining the moment, not liking it a bit that he wasn't in full command.
"Well, then," he said, keeping his gaze from Thorn, as if his mind were suddenly occupied with more important thoughts. "You want to get to your hotel. Then don't let us keep you here a second more."
Sylvie led him outside and across the yard to a shed near the river where a red '83 Oldsmobile was parked.
"You fooled him," she said. "So far, so good."
"I don't like this, Sylvie," said Thorn. "Not one bit."
"Oh, yeah, you fooled him, all right. Or else right now you'd be dead."
Thorn was silent, following a step behind her.
"You know, this whole farm," she said, picking her way past a muddy patch of ground, "it's all marshland. We're only an inch or two above mean high tide out here. And over there through the pines, that's the Okehatchee River. It's an estuary really, an arm of the Gulf. As the crow flies we're just a few miles from the coast. So whenever we get a full moon high tide, the Gulf rises, the Okehatchee backs up and floods its banks and we're knee-deep in water. Once a month the yard is underwater, the river climbs up the front steps. Water up to my crotch, sloshing around. It's really cool, you should see it. Almost to Sylvie's crotch. Can you picture that?"
"Let's go, Sylvie."
She gave him a dizzy smile as she unlocked the car.
Sylvie handled the Olds like someone who'd only just that afternoon come into contact with modern machinery. She switched on the ignition, gunned the big V-8 several times, then held the pedal to the floor for half a minute before backing off. She put the shifter in drive, clamped her hands on the wheel at three and nine o'clock, and steered the big car with a grim formality.
When they finally made it out to the main road, Sylvie floored the accelerator for half a minute at a time, then let off. And for thirty seconds that behemoth coasted down from around ninety to somewhere near the speed limit.
She slowed as a couple of oncoming cars approached, and sped up as a white plumbing van tried to pass. Sylvie raced the van for a mile, keeping it pinned in the lane beside her, almost forcing it off the road. Then suddenly she let off the accelerator and watched the van fly past.
Thorn tightened his safety belt.
A moment or two after the van incident, along a straight empty stretch of highway, Sylvie suddenly put both feet on the brake pedal, stood up on it, and the Olds's big tires squealed.
Thorn lurched forward, smacked his hands against the dashboard, and cursed. When they were stopped, Sylvie turned to him and pointed at a car halted on a dirt side road just ahead of them.
"Don't you see that guy?" she said. "He has the right of way."
She waved the astonished driver out onto the road in front of them.
"You had the goddamn right of way, Sylvie. This is a main highway we're on."
"Oh, sure. What the hell do you know? You're from Georgia. Everybody drives crazy up there."
She smiled at him, then floored the Olds, gradually caught up with the other car and sailed around it.
It took them almost an hour to get to the Ritz Carlton. Without all the unnecessary stops, and wrong turns, it might've been half that. She led them on a twisted tour of the city, up and down the same street several times, denying that she was lost, missing stop signs, her eyes continually drifting away from the road to stare at the suburban scenery.
As far as Thorn could tell, Naples had changed considerably since the last time he'd been there as a teenager. But it hadn't gone the way of most Florida towns. The folks over here had apparently circled their Lincolns and Rolls-Royces and had taken their stand against the plastic franchises, the massage parlors, the trashy bars. Every building and subdivision seemed less than ten years old. Freshly scrubbed and painted, all red-tiled, make-believe Mediterranean, even the
downtown square was full of what looked to be Palm Beach boutiques. Tie stores, handkerchief shops, charm, charm, charm. It was the kind of beautiful sterility that only a steady gush of cash could create and maintain.
Golf courses everywhere, and each front yard was shaved as slick as a putting green. Carefully sculpted hedges, meticulously pruned trees. Apparently the perfectionist Disney World virus was spreading south. The city fathers probably even imported well-scrubbed teenagers armed with whisk brooms and dustpans to nab every trace of litter before it hit the earth.
As he watched the scenery slide past, Thorn recalled a story he'd read a year or two ago in the Miami paper. It was about a police action in Naples. Seems the manager of a restaurant that served one of the posh country club retirement developments had discovered a single Idaho potato in his kitchen with an obscenity carved in its skin. He called the police. Squad cars were dispatched and a thorough investigation followed, but the culprit was never caught. "We'll find the freak," a police detective said. "Don't you worry about that. It may take a while, but we're committed to this."
By the time Sylvie got them to the Ritz Carlton, Thorn was hungry for a little sleaze. A bait store painted garish purple, reeking of decaying fish for blocks around. A mom-and-pop motel with a neon sign out front that flickered on and off all day in the sunlight, offering free telephones and Magic Fingers for a quarter. Even a stray sheet of old newspaper blowing down the street would have made him feel a little more at ease.
Sylvie wheeled up to the hotel's elegant front entrance, missing the open door of a Range Rover by inches. While two doormen in black shorts and white shirts hurried out to the Olds, she switched off the car and swiveled around on the seat so she was facing him.
"You came for me."
She clapped her hands and smiled, and kept her palms pressed together as if she were offering up a loony prayer. She glanced over her shoulder at the doorman at her window but gave no sign she was ready to get out.
"Let's go inside, Sylvie. We have some things to discuss."
"You're good, Thorn. Damn good," she said. "I tell you my name, and a couple of days later, here you are. Even know who Peter Lavery is, where he lives. Thomasville, Georgia. Man, oh, man, a smart one. I got me a smart one. We'll take this one slow. Milk it out for a while."
Mean High Tide (Thorn Series Book 3) Page 19
