Randy White - Dead of Night

Something else we noticed: My old friend began buying toys for himself. Friends, too. Spending lots of money. The only really smart thing he did was buy majority interest in a funky little restaurant near the wildlife sanctuary and rename it Dinkin’s Bay Raw Bar amp; Deja Brew.

He stopped battling Ransom. Even tried to help her when he could.

I watched Tomlinson smack himself on the forehead again, finish his drink, then wobble toward the galley to make another. He turned toward me, exasperated. “That’s the problem. I don’t know if I want to go back to being my old self.”

“What?”

“I kinda like some of the things I’ve bought. The dinghy’s an example. It’s nice not to get soaked when the bay’s choppy. And the Harley. Man, what a rush to rumble down the middle of Periwinkle, cars on both sides, when traffic’s backed up. Free.

“Then there’s the clothes. Some say I look very, very hip in a white silk suit. A whole new fashion experience. And did you know Rance’s going to bring out a line of sarongs? My own private label. Finest quality.”

He said all this in a rush, enthusiastic, but with a confessional undertone.

I said, “I see. That’s the problem. You enjoy having money.”

He looked at the floor. Nodded.

“Just like Ransom predicted.”

He nodded quickly, his face blotching as if he might cry.

“Give yourself a break. You’re human. It’s normal to like money. She was right about that, too.”

“Man, I don’t like money. I love it,” he said miserably. “Slapping down the Gold Card for anything I want? It’s got me jonesing worse than a smack freak on Super Bowl Sunday. My God, Doc, I almost put earnest money on a Cape Coral condo yesterday. A place that’s got cable. The guard wears a uniform. Hear what I’m saying? I’m out of control!”

Tomlinson put his palms together, then touched index fingers to his lips-usually a religious posture that now signaled the depth of his distress.

“You’re right,” I said. “That’s going too far.”

“You’ve got to help me. I’m thinking of buying a shock collar. Give myself a little zap every time I reach for the ol’ billfold. Negative reinforcement.”

“Not for you. For you, it would be recreational. How about this: I tell Ransom to keep the money, don’t give you a cut.”

He winced. “Cold turkey, man. I don’t know. Do you think she would?”

“My cousin? You’ve got to be kidding.”

I thought of something else. “I’m working on a job-a sort of contract deal. It has to do with the parasites I mentioned, and maybe some of the noxious exotics you told me about.”

“Yeah?”

“It may be related. I could use some help. A researcher.”

“Then I should find that Rolling Stone article for you.”

I considered Harrington’s reaction-he’d be furious-before I said, “That’s exactly the sort of help I need. A project as important as this, it might shift your priorities. The organization can pay, but nothing like you’re used to.”

“A private organization, or government?”

“Government. Definitely government. But one of the lesser-known agencies.”

He seemed interested. “Screw the cash. I’ll do it to show goodwill-that’s more valuable than cash.” The old Tomlinson was still in there, talking.

I told him, “Sometimes, a lot more valuable.”

Serpiente

Dr. Desmond Stokes-Mr. Sweet.

Dasha liked replaying the name; it gave her a warm feeling because it brought Solaris into her head.

Mr. Sweet had told Dasha, “What I’ve been doing is only a hobby. It’s not my life’s work. But the… satisfaction of the last fourteen months. Manipulating germs, disease vectors-relocating soldier-animals to help Earth retaliate. Thinning the human population of ‘primasites.’ I’m contributing. Which is why we can’t allow that little retard, Applebee, to stop us.”

He invented words to remind people he was a genius. Primasites were human parasites. Soldier-animals-things with stingers and teeth.

Helping Earth fight back-he had a bunch of speeches on the subject. Maybe even believed it at one time. But Dasha had been working for him long enough to know it was a lie. All the rich man cared about was scamming more money, more control. Ways to demonstrate his superiority-that’s what it was about.

Revenge, too. Mostly revenge.

She’d discovered that on her own. Went through the man’s files when she got the opportunity. The ones on his personal computer, the files in his office.

Head of security. Her job had its advantages.

A couple of years after Stokes had gotten out of medical school, he’d gone before a state review board and lost his license. Something to do with a therapy he’d been working on, injecting people with cells from the placentas of sheep.

Around the same time, the government shut down his fledgling vitamin company. He’d been illegally mining petrified coral somewhere around Key Largo, then processing it into calcium tablets.

Purest form of calcium. Holistic. Expensive. Buyers fell for it.

The state of Florida nailed him both times, and the feds got some licks in, too.

Revenge was a major motivator.

Power. That’s what he preached to leaders of the militant Greenie Weenie groups who visited the island. Over the last year, there’d been dozens of them. From the States, Britain, France, Canada. Everywhere. They were rallying behind some idiot article in an American music magazine. Smuggling dangerous exotics across the border was the newest kind of guerrilla warfare.

Mr. Earl had sent out many thousands of copies of the article over the Internet, Dasha had also discovered, inviting Greenie Weenies to the Bahamas for help and advice.

The surest way of displacing primasites, Dr. Stokes told them, was to create panic, disrupt the local economy, then be ready with organizational funds to buy properties cheap when they came on the market. Dump a thousand piranha into lakes in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, then sit back and wait. The West Nile virus outbreak on Cape Cod-same technique, different tools.

“The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it,” he told them. “Abbie Hoffman.”

They always applauded that line. Idiots.

“The best way to save the land is to buy from the fools who are destroying it.”

The Greenie Weenies saw it as a righteous war. For Mr. Sweet, it was a way to get even.

Dasha knew. Took note of what made the rich man tick. Began researching him, putting together a secret dossier.

The only people he actually associated with? Respected? There were a handful, all billionaire power brokers. Sugarcane. A couple of Texas oil barons. A guy who ran one of the largest mining and lumber companies in the world. Private jets, private conversations, secret deals.

The idiot Greenie Weenies had no idea what Mr. Sweet was all about.

How would they? Go to the public records, do a computer search, and the name Dr. Desmond Stokes would not appear as owner of several thousand acres of agricultural property, Central Florida, or as an officer of Tropicane-even though he controlled much of the stock. Maybe a majority.

The name of his personal assistant was on the record, though. Mr. Earl. Same with a long list of companies: OffShore Gulf amp; Caribbean Petroleum, Coralway Pharmaceuticals, Ragged Isle Shipping, and others that Dasha traced to Stokes through the name of Luther T. Earl.

The man owned sugar, a couple of phosphate mines, four oil tankers his company leased to a Hong Kong-based group named Evergreen, stock in steel mills in Sweden and Germany, a rubber plantation in Sumatra. Plus pharmaceuticals. That’s where the real money was. Paid investors eight times the return per hundred thousand dollars invested.