Randy White - The Man Who Ivented Florida

Impressed, Joseph said, "Sure looks like it's got vitamins in it."

"You bet it does."

"Almost looks… alive. Like salt water on a dark night when you stir it around. And I thought you was lying."

"Lying, hah! Not me, Joe." Tuck stood with his hands on his hips, staring at the water, before he said, "Lot of these islands got artesian springs, but I ain't never seen none like this. Has to be some kinda natural piping to get the water up this high. Probably just like your grandpa described it, huh?"

"Nope. He always said it was a river. The legend, you mean? That was supposed to be a river. This ain't no river."

"No, but she perks right along."

"Besides, they already dug out all the rivers. Straightened 'em for boats. If it was real, that river, she's gone now."

"God amighty, it sound's like you're complaining. This'll just have to do."

Joseph got down on his stomach. He dipped his hands in the water and watched it drip from his fingers. He wiped the water over his face, then drank from the spring. He looked up at Tucker.

"This close to the bay, you'd think it'd taste salty. But it don't. It tastes… it tastes like…"

Tucker said, "I know. A little salty, but more like sulphur. But that ain't no big problem. Maybe we can work out some kinda filter system. Or put cherry flavor in it. People like a good cherry drink."

Joseph said, "Naw, I didn't mean-" He was staring into the spring, but then he looked up at Tucker. "Filter? Filter this water? You crazy? Wait a minute-" He stood, wiping his hands, face-to-face with Tuck. "I'll be damned. You don't even believe it yourself, do you?"

"Believe what?"

"You know what I'm talking about. Believe about this water, what it does-"

"Now that's a helluva thing to say, Joe! I'm only the man who discovered it. Well, Roscoe."

"That's the way you always do it, actin' so innocent."

"How the hell you want me to act when I am? I'm tryin' to tell you about what happened. The old bastard kept disappearing, and it took me about a week to track him here. Once I saw Roscoe's personal gear'd growed back, it didn't take me long to put two and two together." Tucker jutted his jaw out. "And tell me this- what's the first thing I did? Go ahead and become a millionaire? Nope. I went and rescued my old buddy from the rest home. Now this is the thanks I get. Calling me a liar."

"You don't got to lie, Tuck. All I'm saying, why run it through a filter if you believe it's got vitamins in it?"

"What the hell do you care if I'm lying or not? Made you feel better, didn't it?" Tucker still had his chin out, a serious expression on his face. "Now, after all we've been through, you saying you don't trust me?"

"I never did trust you. I'm talking about this little spring."

"Why would I make up a story about it?"

"That's what I'm askin'."

"Joe, if I was gonna make up a story about vitamin water, why'd I need you? Think about it a minute."

"Well… I can't figure you. Never pretended I could."

"There ain't a reason in the world, that's why. You're my oldest and best friend, so I got you in on it. Hated to think about you rustin' away in that damn rest home while I'm down here getting spunkier every day, just full of the old Nick like when I was young. You saying that jug a water didn't make you feel pretty good?"

"Yeah, but maybe it's just in my mind."

Tucker hooted. "No offense, Joe, but you ain't got the imagination. You think you imagined your back not hurtin', your joints not hurtin'?"

"Well… they still hurt, just not so bad."

"Gawldamn it, don't you ever get tired of complainin'?"

"I'm just telling you, that's all."

"Then what about that fight you was in tonight? You imagine that?"

Joseph began to nod his head slowly. "Now that's true. That's true enough." Then he offered, "And I was with a woman only a few days after you brought me the jug."

Tuck studied Joseph a moment. "You was with a woman? You mean you-"

"Yep. Sure did."

"Naw."

"Three times."

"I'll be-" Tucker found his footing and crunched his way up to the spring, then got on his belly. "No way. Not three times?" Joseph was nodding his head as Tuck scooped water into his hands and took a tentative drink, listening as Joseph told him, "Not counting the next morning. Five or six times in all. I kinda lost track."

Tucker made a face at the rotten-egg taste of the water, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then put his whole face in the spring. He came up shaking his head. "Whew! I can't get enough of this. Probably a regular soup of all sorts of healthy stuff."

"Yeah," said Joseph, "that's why you can't filter it."

"Huh?" Tuck was standing, wiping his hands on his jeans. "Filter it? Hell no, we can't filter it. I meant change the taste of it, that's all. Get it sweetened up a little so people will buy it. Did I say filter?" He leaned forward to make his point. "Joe, this little spring is gonna open all kinds of doors for us. You know what they sell now? Little green bottles of water from France. I got a couple at the house. Damn stuff's got bubbles in it, and they still get a buck a bottle. You know how much we can sell this stuff for? About twenty bucks a jar, if it's worked right."

"Sell it in jars," Joseph said. He was shaking his head.

"Right. Which brings us to the heart of that little problem I was telling you about."

Joseph said, "Huh?"

Tucker cleared his throat and said, "Them survey stakes I brought to your attention. There's a small matter of me not owning this property no more."

An investigator from Florida's Department of Criminal Law arrived at Dinkin's Bay Marina on a late Thursday afternoon, just after the fishing guides got in and just before Ford left in his twenty-four-foot trawl boat-the cedar-plank netter he'd bought used in Chokoloskee more than a year ago and had chugged up the inland waterway past Mango and Naples and Fort Myers Beach, so he could drag the shallows off Sanibel, collect specimens for his marine supply business.

The investigator's name was Walker, Agent Angela Walker, out of the St. Pete office, sent down by the governor's office in Tallahassee. She could have signed out one of the department's white four-door Chryslers, but she drove her own new Acura Legend LS instead, plum red, with brown leather interior, slowing at the highest span of the Sanibel Causeway to get a better look at the bay below, the Gulf glittering toward the western horizon, the long green island with its white beach borders, mansion-sized homes showing through the trees, and the black cowling of a lighthouse sticking up above the palms and casuarinas.

My, my, my, she thought. Look at all the money…

At the stop sign, Angela Walker turned right on Periwinkle Way, stopped at Bailey's General Store for directions, then followed Tarpon Bay Road through the mangroves and into

the shell parking lot, trying to find some shade beside the Dinkin's Bay Marina sign-BEER, BAIT, FISHING GUIDES.

Stepping out of the Acura, with its tinted windows and CD player, was like leaving a small, cool fortress; like stepping into a kiln, the whole place silenced by the heat, the parking lot nearly empty, a sleepy little clearing on the water with docks and boats that was a blur of searing white until she got her sunglasses on and her eyes adjusted.

October in Florida is too damn hot. Shoulda taken the job in San Diego…

She was wearing a linen skirt and a sleeveless silk blouse, both from Dillards, oyster-shell white over navy, and she considered leaving the linen jacket in the car but decided it wouldn't look professional. Be like going off without her ID, badge, and. 38 snub-nosed S amp;W with the checkered grip, all department issue, all kept in her purse unless she was on a hot call. Then the ID was pinned outside the jacket, the. 38 S amp; W kept under the jacket in the Jensen quick-draw holster. Not that she had ever been on a hot call. No. She'd been with the department less than a year, recruited out of New York University right after graduation, master's in criminal science, lured to Florida through the state's minorities hiring program-not that that was ever mentioned to her. But she knew. She also knew that with her 3.5 GPA she could have gone anywhere she wanted.