“An interesting opportunity to introduce yourself to the man you were supposed to interview last night,” Mr. Earl told her, his contempt undisguised. “If you can manage to get back in time.”
At a little after 5:00 P.M., Saturday afternoon, when they were near Kissimmee, and only a few miles from the Bartram county line, Mr. Earl called again, his voice oddly formal. “Dr. Ford is on his way to the county hospital. I don’t know for certain, but a friend of his may be the victim of an unusual parasitic fish.”
“You’re not serious. A candiru?” Dasha’s vicious mood was instantly lightened. “Those fish were my idea. Wonderful! Did it actually climb into this man’s-”
“Yes,” Mr. Earl interrupted, “we’re trying to shed light on the matter now.”
He was in a room, people listening. Obvious.
Dasha thought he was joking about the fish, working some kind of angle, until he added, “One of our employees insists it’s true, and he doesn’t find it humorous. He came to me and demanded that I notify law enforcement. I’m sitting here with him right now. Dr. Jason Reynolds, Department of Environmental Oversight. And a detective from the sheriff’s department who just finished taking his statement.”
Dasha could guess the cop’s name: Jimmy Heller.
She was already driving faster, phone to her ear.
“Dr. Reynolds told Detective Heller some very disturbing things. About company employees taking part in a conspiracy to pollute the Everglades with exotic animals. Worms. Parasites? Snakes, too-but he’s only guessing about snakes.
“We may have a terrible scandal on our hands if we don’t take immediate steps. But Detective Heller and his department can only do so much.” Long pause. “That’s why we need our head of company security. The detective has agreed to turn the investigation over to our internal affairs department once you get here. Hopefully, that’ll be very soon.”
The woman understood. “You’re at the ranch? Twenty minutes.”
Mr. Earl said, “I’m so very glad you’re taking this seriously. If what Dr. Reynolds says is true, he’s going to need all our help and protection. Unfortunately, Dr. Reynolds has also confessed to taking part in the conspiracy, so we’ll need to assign him one of our corporate attorneys.”
Another message there: They had leverage on Reynolds if needed.
Located on the Tropicane acreage, several miles from the mansion, was a place known as the “Chicken Farm.” A dozen employees lived there-“multiple executive housing” was the classification, because the company couldn’t acknowledge that it was actually a commune. There was an organic garden, goats for milk, hens for eggs, a spring-fed pond where residents could swim naked, smoke dope, baptize themselves during sacred satanic rituals-Dasha didn’t know or care.
More than a year ago, she’d done a “security/safety assessment” at Mr. Earl’s insistence. It had to do with singling out problems that might cause Tropicane legal headaches down the road. She spent an afternoon at the Chicken Farm, the only time she visited the place.
She came back and said to Mr. Earl, “You got a bunch of overeducated American brats playing dress-up games, every one of them a lawsuit waiting to happen. My advice? Pour gasoline around the doors, wait until they’re stoned, then strike a match. Mass suicide-cult groups do that sometimes.”
That won Mr. Earl’s broadest grin. “I hear what you’re telling me. Fire them. Woman, you don’t need to tell me about spoiled white kids.”
They both had a good laugh. The man could be funny on occasion.
Her advice didn’t seem so extreme now, sitting alone in a locked room with Jason Reynolds, one of the overeducated American brats. Doctor Reynolds, he reminded her, when he got tired of playing his flaky, nice-guy role. Scraggly-haired with a goatee, wearing a silly tie-dyed T-shirt, sitting there with his scrawny arms telling her he was concerned for the environment, doing his humanitarian duty, that’s all. And didn’t appreciate being interrogated by a company security hack.
It was in his attitude. Dasha, with her accent, her spotty grammar, irritated him.
“I’ve already talked to the official fuzz. Why do I have to answer the same questions from you?”
He’d said that several times, several ways.
“Fuzz,” he explained to her, rolling his eyes, was another word for “cop.”
Dasha knew that. She’d asked just to piss the kid off. Giving him rope.
She’d given him plenty.
On the table between them was a little silver tape recorder. The same one she’d used when she’d try to get information out of Jobe Applebee.
“Remember how that one went,” Mr. Earl reminded her before she took Reynolds into the room. “Come up with a secondary plan in case he won’t cooperate.”
She already had: In exchange for not prosecuting, she’d tell the kid he had an hour to collect his things, kiss his commune family good-bye, and they’d escort him off the property.
Actually, she’d stick him with the knockout drug, have Aleski load his body and belongings into a plane. Then dump everything halfway between the Florida Keys and Cuba from nine thousand feet.
“Very workable,” Mr. Earl told her, adding that he’d decided to fly back in the DC-3 earlier than planned. He’d be waiting in the Bahamas, interested to see what she decided.
Washing his hands of the matter, in other words.
“No,” Dasha told him. “We leave together. We’re partners now. Am I correct? Besides, the DC-3’s bigger. We may be taking two extra people back to the island. Ford and that idiot kid.”
She put it out there experimentally, not expecting him to go along with it. But Mr. Earl did. Seemed almost meek.
Signing those orders, then fucking the old man-a very smart thing to do.
Now Mr. Earl was somewhere upstairs, stirring up a fresh pitcher of martinis, probably, while Dasha sat across the table from Jason Reynolds. She had the recorder, and also a notebook, but only pretended to write in it.
On the floor beside her was a canvas purse that contained four vials of Versed, a box of disposable hypodermics, duct tape, and a rolled-up copy of the Tampa Tribune.
She used her toe to nudge the bag closer as she listened to Jason Reynolds say, “How many times do I have to tell you this? Look, sister, yes, I released guinea larvae into water systems that connect to Disney. Several thousand catfish hatchlings, too. Candiru. But I never really believed the fish would attack a human being. It’s just too far-out, man-scientifically speaking.
“Even so, I stand by my decision. It was the right thing to do. It’s not ecoterrorism. We call it ‘ecotage’-‘ecosalvage’ -another term to describe a proactive way to help save a planet that’s being gutted and poisoned.”
In her flat cop’s voice, Dasha said, “You were aware that you were breaking the law?”
The kid sighed. “Like a broken record, you keep asking the same shit.”
“You were aware that it’s a felony? A federal crime.”
Bigger sigh. “Yes! Sister, do you have any idea how much destruction that damn theme park has caused this state? Any idea how many more housing units they’ll build in the Everglades if the sugar companies sell their land to developers?”
Dasha was briefly interested. “How much money you think that land’s worth? Millions?”
“Millions?” Reynolds snorted. “Construction conglomerates have already run the figures. Billions. That’s why we… why people like me are taking action. Doing things like releasing parasites into the water system. Earth’s natural guardians-what do you think mosquitoes are? Scare the hell out of potential buyers, make the land worthless as a commodity. But for a reason-create a haven for wildlife.”
Billions. Dasha felt her abdomen flutter. The kid seemed to know what he was talking about. She really was going to be rich.
“The activist group you mentioned, the Albedo Society, has a few hundred thousand members. How many of them have been doing this sort of crap-”