Night Vision by Randy Wayne White Read Free Book Online Page A

shifted from the pond to what he was holding. He used the flashlight to go through credit cards, business cards and IDs that showed a nerdy-looking guy with a jaw and glasses.
    Marion D. Ford, Ph.D.
Sanibel Biological Supply
Dinkin’s Bay Marina
    Marion. What kind of name was that for a man?
    The guy was a damn scientist or something, apparently. What the hell was a scientist doing at a trailer park full of chilies and wettails? Squires put one of the man’s business cards into his back pocket before he went through the other stuff, paying special attention to a couple of unusual IDs.
    Yeah, the dude was a scientist, but there was some other stuff that worried Squires. Could be the asshole worked for the feds, too, because one of the IDs gave this guy, Marion Ford, unlimited access to something called the Special Operations Center at MacDill Air Base in Tampa.
    What the hell was that about?
    And there was another plastic ID for a military base in Cartagena, Colombia. But that one was mostly in Spanish, so there was no telling what it meant.
    The dude, Ford, Squires guessed, must be some small-time scientist who worked for the feds. But he wasn’t really in the military—not according to what Squires was looking at in the billfold, anyway. Just maybe hired by the military, for some reason or another.
    Could that mean the hippie and the nerd were actually with the Department of Immigration? Squires gave himself a few seconds to think about it. At first, that made some sense to him. Why else would they come snooping around a trailer park ass-deep in chilies and chulas ?
    But then Squires got a sinking feeling. What if the two dudes were actually with the DEA instead? What if they had come here trying to set up some kind of drug bust on the small steroid operation Squires was operating?
    Squires whispered “Son of a bitch” as he glanced toward the pond, where he could see the gator rolling in a spray of water, and he thought, Eat that bastard, Fifi! Kill them both!
    Squires was pretty sure he had seen the hippie, Tomlinson, before, cruising around the park in some shitty old Volkswagen that had to be twenty years old. Sometimes a girlish-looking electric bike, too. Which wasn’t that unusual. Dopers often cruised the parks because they knew that the chilies arrived from Mexico carrying baggies of weed or peyote buds in their pants instead of cash.
    Hell, Squires had bought grass from them himself, although, more often, he just took the shit when he wanted it. Sometimes, he’d yank a guy up by the ankles and shake him, like shaking quarters out of an old pair of jeans. What the hell could a Mexican do about it? Call the cops?
    That was one of the good things about managing a place like Red Citrus. No one on the whole goddamn property wanted the cops around, especially Squires and Frankie, so that made it a safe place to be. Which is why, in their newest double-wide trailer, Squires had set up a smaller version of the cookshack they had out there at the hunting camp. It wasn’t the sort of cookshack where he actually cooked food. What he cooked up was home-brewed steroid gear like testosterone enanthate, and equine—which was a horse steroid called EQ—plus winstrol and deca-durabolin.
    “Gear” was bodybuilder slang for steroids, almost always purchased illegally.
    Squires had become good at rendering high-grade veterinarian powders into injectable muscle juice. The kitchen was well supplied with Whatman sterile filters, 20-gauge needles, sesame oil, benzyl benzoate and everything else needed to produce a first-class product.
    Squires had started small, producing just enough gear for himself and Frankie, who had, at one time, been one of the top female bodybuilders in the country. Then he began to sell to a few guys he trusted, and that’s how they got started.
    It was Frankie who noticed how fast the cash was piling up just from selling to friends. So the two of them had expanded the operation, thinking they could