Acts of Nature by Jonathon King Read Free Book Online Page B

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 shiver. He fetched the letter out after she left the room and read the line where “Ernest T. Morris has been pronounced 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 shit 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 pushing 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 fishin’ 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 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 shit 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 shit?” 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