Randy White - Night Vision

Harris Squires hated nosy people. Do-gooders. If he and Frankie wanted to have some fun with a few young wettails, what harm were they doing? But try explaining that to a goddamn do-gooder.

Carlson was a prime example. Now Carlson was getting exactly what the little turd deserved.

Squires nudged a couple of short people out of the way as he edged closer to the lake. He could hear what was happening-Carlson screaming his lungs out, begging for help. It wasn’t easy to make out details, though, because the mangrove pond was on the other side of the fence, in shadows cast by palm trees beyond the haze of security lights.

It made him wish he had his night vision binoculars. Those bad boys would’ve made everything bright as day, but they were behind the seat of his Ford Roush pickup, along with some other gear he usually carried: duct tape, an ax handle, handcuffs, condoms and sometimes a. 357 Ruger Blackhawk when he wasn’t carrying the gun in the glove box.

The handcuffs was something he carried for Frankie. The woman was crazy for bondage.

Squires turned toward the trailers, seeing kids’ bicycles and rusting trucks, now seeing Tula push open her trailer door, then running toward him, carrying something in her hand. Squires squinted to see a… bottle of liquor?

What the hell?

Yep, she was carrying a damn bottle of tequila. Well, no one ever claimed that Mexicans were smart. But then he also saw that she was carrying a flashlight, which was exactly what he needed, so he yelled to her, “Over here! Bring me that damn light so we can see what’s going on!”

The girl looked in his direction but ignored him. Because of that, Squires was about to yell something else, but that’s when a big white guy came dodging through the crowd, speaking in Spanish, saying something that might have been, “Excuse me, sorry. Let me pass.”

Definitely being polite, as the guy hurried to the lake’s edge, kicking off shoes, shirt, then tossing his wallet and cell phone onto the ground before he jumped into the water. A second later, another white guy appeared. He was a skinny scarecrow of a hippie who was doing the same thing, stripping to go in the water.

What the hell were these two white dudes doing at Red Citrus?

Squires yelled to the hippie, “Hey… you! What the hell you think you’re doing?” but the hippie was busy pulling off his shirt and talking into his cell phone at the same time, before he dropped the phone on the ground, next to his wallet, and then he went into the water, too, but on his belly.

Using his cell phone? The asshole had probably just called 911.

Shit! This was all Squires needed. Fifi was in the process of solving a serious problem, but now here were a couple of solid-looking white citizens messing in his business.

Squires spat, “Goddamn do-gooders!” as he headed after the flashlight Tula was holding, pushing people out of the way.

A moment later, speaking into the hippie’s cell phone, Squires was telling the 911 operator, “That’s right, cancel the emergency, ma’am. We made a mistake here on our end. I know, I know… it’s not the first time.”

He’d checked PREVIOUS CALLS. When he’d seen 911, he knew he had to do something to stop the cops from showing up.

But then Squires had to whisper “Damn it” as he covered the phone so the operator wouldn’t hear Carlson screaming across the water to the big white guy, yelling, “Help me! Take my hand!”

“Sir?” the operator said, raising her voice, “Who’s yelling in the background?”

“Ma’am,” Squires told her, being sweet, “I understand what you’re asking. And at first we thought someone was in trouble. But, turns out, it’s just a bunch of Mexican kids playing games. You know how girls squeal when they’re running round, playing games at night?”

The woman asked, “Did you place the call? Is your name Tomlinson?”

Squires hesitated, aware that it was sometimes a mistake to lie to the cops before thinking it over. “Yep, that’s my name,” he said finally.

The operator told him, “We’ve already dispatched units to that address. Dispatched it to… to a Red Citrus RV Park, Guava Street, just off San Carlos Boulevard. That’s near Fort Myers Beach, correct?”

Squires was getting nervous and impatient. He covered the phone and yanked the flashlight out of the weird little Bible freak’s hand because she kept turning the beam toward the water, where there was now a lot of splashing and swearing going on.

“Damn it,” he whispered to the girl, “pay attention!” as the operator asked him again, “Did you hear me? Is that the correct address, sir?”

Squires kept his voice pleasant and easy as he replied, “Well, if you reckon your people need to practice answering ambulance calls, ma’am, there’s nothing I can do to stop ’em. I just wanted you to know this one is a false alarm. Everything’s just fine here. Our folks are having lots of fun-it’s a sort of party going on. So I guess I’m gonna have to apologize to your people again when they show up here for no reason.”

The operator asked a couple more questions before Squires covered one ear, listening, until he suspected that the woman was convinced and had canceled the 911 call, no matter what she claimed. Then he hung up, as he swung the light toward the water, wanting to confirm the gator still had Carlson.

Fifi still had the guy, all right. But Squires could see the big white guy was swimming hard to catch up, which caused him to wonder, Who the hell is that crazy son of a bitch?

Well… there was an easy way to find out.

From the hippie’s billfold, Squires removed a wad of cash. It looked like a bunch of crisp twenties. He stuffed the money into his jeans, then retrieved the big guy’s billfold. There wasn’t nearly as much cash in it but enough. Yep, these two dudes were solid working citizens-plus, there were some other interesting things to see in this second billfold.

Squires’s eyes 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?