Acts of Nature (3 page)

In three hours’ time they were winging their way north on a commercial flight out of Montevideo to Miami. Sitting in first class, Squires was folded into the seat next to him sleeping easily after consuming several brown bottles of Cerveza Especial at the airport bar and then reading some Cuban novel he’d purchased called
Adios, Hemingway
and passing out. Harmon, though, was nervous, but his anxiety had nothing to do with the bit of trouble they’d had at the pipeline. He and Squires had been in such situations before. It would pass. When they were still in the helicopter on the ground at the airport, Harmon had said his good-byes to the pilot by handing him a brick of ten thousand dollars in bills from the briefcase. There would be no mention of what he may have witnessed during the routine ferrying of the Americans. Harmon knew the pilot was a player by the way he’d stared straight ahead after banking into the quick pickup and then quickly lifting back out of the clearing, never hesitating over the fact that Squires was still hanging out of the open side door with his MP5 covering the increasingly agitated group of fuel thieves, some of whom by then had magically produced weapons of their own. The extra cash in his pockets in addition to his professional fee would ensure that no report or even a vague memory of the incident would remain. Harmon’s only regret was that in the interest of the company’s unwritten policy—what happens there stays there—he’d had to instruct the pilot to sweep low over the middle of an inland lake where he and Squires wrapped their used weapons in Harmon’s bullet-pocked jacket and tossed the bundle out the door. He hated having to do that with the little Colt. He only had one more like it at home.

No, Harmon’s nerves were twitching because while Squires had been drinking at the airport bar he’d been watching a satellite news station, concentrating on the reports of a tropical storm that was moving westward from the open Atlantic through the southern Caribbean. It was expected to strengthen to hurricane status within the next twenty-four hours and continue on a path vaguely in the direction of the Yucatan, but as a longtime resident of Miami, Harmon knew you couldn’t predict these bastards. A hurricane had an eye, but you could not read it, and it never showed reluctance or hesitation. And unlike most human dangers, Harmon was scared as hell of it.

THREE

The kid still had his eyes closed when the collar of his shirt yanked back, the first button pulled up into his throat until it popped and went skittering onto the girl’s dresser top.

“Dream about the panties on your own time, son. I brought you up here to steal stuff, not sniff it,” Buck said, releasing the fistful of collar and then lightly backhanding the boy’s head.

“OK, OK, man. Jeez, chill,” Wayne said, tucking his head down into his shoulders. When he turned, Buck was already focused on the jewelry box on the pink and white dressing table. He flipped open the top and while Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” plinked away, he pawed through the necklaces and earrings. “Junk,” he snorted and then started toward the bedroom door.

“If you’re not going to do me any good in here, Wayne, next time you stay outside with Marcus,” Buck said and then stopped to toss the big-handled screwdriver at the kid. “Now go downstairs and check the guy’s study. And if the desk drawers are locked, pry ’em open. That’s where the good shit will be.”

“Yeah, all right,” Wayne said, turning his back and straightening his shirt. But Buck stood and watched him for one more second, saw him take the teenager’s panties and stuff them into his jeans pocket. He shook his head and wondered again why he ever thought of using these kids on these burglary gigs. The fact that they would do almost anything you asked without hesitation was their only redeeming value. That plus he needed someone to help do the heavy lifting. But one day they were going to put him in the weeds, he thought as he moved down the hall toward the master suite. Then there’d be no more Miami-Dade Correctional Center for him. He’d be riding straight up to Raiford Prison. He looked at his watch again. They’d been in the house for twenty minutes already, first stripping the wires on the big plasma television in the living room and loading it into the van. Then the other electronics: CD players, stereo components, the Xbox computer games. You take the heavy stuff first in this kind of work. Buck had again borrowed a friend’s white van, slapped the magnetic FreezeFrame Air Conditioning Service sign on the side, and come probing for the right house.

The two boys had been useful because they got a charge out of sneaking over the walls of these gated communities and then scurrying around from house to house with the laser intercept Buck had put his hands on. They’d hide in the bushes like they were playing a kid game and soak up the garage-door laser signals of home owners coming in after dark from work. It was another benefit of these far-out suburbs. The commute into Miami took these office workers forever and they rarely got home until after sunset this time of year. They’d hit the button to open their garage and the boys would be right there to record it with the intercept.

Then Buck would return with them a week later and scout the possibilities. If things looked cool he’d simply hit the garage door, back the van in, snap on the surgeon’s gloves, and in broad daylight they’d clean the place out. When they had what they wanted, they’d just open the door and drive away. In the past he’d left the two boys outside as lookouts, giving them a Nextel so they could beep him if anyone approached or things got hinky outside. This was the first time he’d given Wayne a shot at working the inside and he’d done it mainly so they could load the big stuff that he couldn’t hoist alone.

While Wayne went back downstairs, Buck did the master suite. He’d lied. The best stuff was always in the bedroom. He went to the walk-in closet first, the boxes up high and then behind all the hanging stuff, looking for a wall safe. You never knew, especially in these new suburban places. Folks had jewelry passed down, coin collections, shit that was valuable like Granddad’s antique fishing rods were to him. He dug an old gray metal lockbox out from a spot back on the floor. Take it with, there will be time later to bust it open. From the closet he moved to the dresser. There was unopened mail to someone named Briand A. Rabideau tossed on top but nothing like a credit card app or something he could use. Inside the drawers he found the lady’s jewelry box, under some silk nighties. Why did they always think that was a place to hide valuables? Like some burglar is going to be shy about rooting through their underwear. Young Wayne already proved that theory wrong and he wasn’t even seventeen yet. Buck went through the box, took the necklaces and the rings, some good-looking stuff there, and then stripped the pillowcase off the bed and tossed the jewelry and the lockbox inside. Then he moved to the bedside nightstand drawers: lip balm, bottle of aspirin, warming jelly, and a wad of one-dollar bills. Buck pocketed the cash and muttered something about the lucky bastard. He pulled the drawer out full. They were always stashing stuff in the back. That’s when he saw the old-style .38 revolver. He stared at it a minute. Bobby the Fence always liked to deal guns. Good as gold, he always said. Acid off the numbers, they went like cash on the streets and among the woodsmen out in the Glades. But Buck disliked guns. Too many idiots without an idea how to use them. Gave them bullshit false courage. Fools rush in; he remembered that one from his grandfather. Buck was a planner. Guns made shit happen too fast.

Bleep, bleep.
The sound of the Nextel decided for him. He shoved the drawer closed and left the gun behind.

Bleep, bleep.

Pissed, Buck snatched the phone off his belt.

“Goddamnit, boy. I tol’ you one signal was enough,” he said into the instrument.

“I know but I think it’s the lady, Buck,” came the excited voice from Marcus, who was keeping watch outside. “I think it’s her car just came in down at the east end. Y’all ought to kick on outa there.”

Buck was already at the top of the stairs and taking them two at a time.

“Let’s roll, Wayne,” he called out but the other one was already ahead of him, with an armload of stuff from the den and heading through the kitchen for the garage door. Both of them dumped what they had into the open van doors and Buck jumped into the driver’s seat, keys still in the ignition. Soon as the engine cranked, Wayne hit the garage opener alongside the entry door and skipped to the passenger side and slid in. Buck eased the van out of the garage while the door was still rising, and just like they’d planned, Wayne turned in his seat and pointed the stolen signal back and flicked it. The door rolled back down and its seemingly undisturbed look would give them a few more minutes of getaway time before the owner discovered the burglary.

Buck drove slowly out into the street and hung a left. Wayne looked sharply at him but was smart enough not to question why he was going in the opposite direction from the development’s entrance.

“We’ll run us a circle. The lady’s gonna drive the shortest route, straight home. Better she don’t even pass by a white van today,” Buck said to answer the question that hadn’t been asked. They took another left and another and then paralleled the street they’d been working on for four blocks before Buck used the Nextel to get Marcus, who’d been instructed to use the backyards to make his getaway if they ever had to bail out of a house.

“Meet us out on the main road,” Buck said into the handset.

When they took another left at the entrance road, they both peeked down to the west to see if the woman’s car was in her driveway, but it was too far to tell.

They were silent and drove out to Eighth Street and spotted Marcus sitting on a bench under a bus stop shelter. He jumped in back when they pulled over and then squirreled his way up until he was hunched between them.

“It was her, dudes. I watched her go right up into the garage.” His voice was excited, like he was describing some kind of sports play he’d watched in the game while they’d been out pissing.

“Man, you guys were just around the corner.”

“She see the van?” Buck asked.

“Didn’t see you pull out, no. Maybe seen your ass pull ’round the next street if she was payin’ attention.”

“Doubt that,” Wayne said.

“That’s why we switch the tags. Every time, boys.”

The two young ones nodded. Learning from the man.

“So what’d ya git? Huh?” Marcus said, taking a quick inventory behind and around himself but wanting to hear it.

“We might get a thousand out of it,” Buck said dryly.

“What? With this big screen? And that’s a brand-new Bose with the multiple changer, dude. That’s like nine hundred retail,” Marcus whined.

“What we do ain’t retail, boy,” Wayne said, deepening his voice to mock the phrase Buck always used on them. Both of them laughed and even Buck let a grin tickle the side of his mouth.

“An’ what’s this?” Marcus then said, reaching out to pull at a piece of turquoise silk that was now sticking out of Wayne’s side pocket. “This here somethin’ valuable, Stubby?”

Wayne looked down and slapped at his friend’s hand, blood flushing his cheeks and then cutting his eyes to Buck, who’d glanced over and then lost the grin.

“No, but this is,” Wayne said, recovering and leaning forward to reach under the seat to pull out a bottle of Johnny Walker Black he’d found in the den while Buck was upstairs.

“All right! Stubby. Lust and liquor, dude,” Marcus said. “Crack that dog.”

Buck heard the childlike tone in their voices and probably could have found some of his old self in there if he’d had a mind to. Instead he kept driving along the Tamiami Trail toward the west coast home. Get back to where they belong. Safe. Fuckin’ teenagers, he thought. Gonna get me killed.

FOUR

There is no specific way to know how old the river is that I live on. We know the larger cypresses that define the place have been growing for more than two centuries. The long, gauzy strands of Spanish moss and strangler fig that wrap themselves in those trees could be three to ten years. The bright green pond apples, each slightly larger than a golf ball, that hang on branches at the edge of our first bend are only from this season. The tea-colored water, opaque and sometimes sluggish, sometimes swift depending on the rain amounts in the Glades, is only today’s.

In the area near my shack the river runs through a shady tunnel of green. The cypress and water oak boughs mingle and meet and often form a roof above. When the water is high it floods out into the surrounding vegetation and the place looks more like a forest that is hip deep in dark water than a river. You have to watch the current closely, see where the strings of bubbles and the ripple of moving water are most obvious in order to stay midstream. My first several months here, when I was paddling hard and trying to burn the street images of Philadelphia out of my head physically, I must have looked like a madman bouncing off nature’s walls as I tried to make my way from one end of the river to the other, careering off felled tree limbs and bumbling into dead ends of marsh and giant leather fern. In time I learned the route by memory and then started paddling it at night in the moonlight until I knew it by feel.

Sherry used a strong paddle in the front, her back and shoulders flexing each time she reached out and grabbed at the next purchase of water and pulled it back, the strings of muscle in her triceps and forearms tight as cable. But she was still a novice. She steered the canoe like she was on the inner- city streets or in a pursuit chase, looking ahead to the next obvious turn in the river and then heading the bow in a direct, point-to-point line. I could tell her a dozen times to watch the current and just let the boat flow with the water, sometimes down the middle gut of the stream, sometimes in the deeper water running stronger near the edge. But it was like telling someone how to drive, a strong-willed someone. She had stopped glancing back at my suggestions and now simply ignored me. Her action had its intended effect. I shut up.

Now, only at times would I quietly call out “turtles to the right” when I spotted a crop of yellow-bellies sunning themselves on a downed tree trunk or “snout on the left in the pool” when I saw a gator’s arched eye sockets and nostrils floating on the mirror-flat surface of a pond of water off the main channel.