Acts of Nature

can’t shoot for shit but them guns is real nice and he never seen ’em pack them back to the city when they leave for the next week or two.”
    Buck moved forward, setting the front legs of the chair down with a thunk. He reached down and brought up another beer, opened it and pushed it across to Marcus. Now all three drank together. Guns, Buck thought. Bobby the Fence had just asked him last night if he’d had any guns to turn over. Much as Buck hated them, they were cash money these days.
    “So does this friend of yours know where these fishing camps are?” he said, raising his eyebrows, being conspiratorial with them, which he knew got them going.
    Wayne crossed his arms in front of him, turned his head in a playful way, like he was holding good cards in a game and wanted to savor the feeling for as long as he could without pissing Buck off.
    “He got a map,” he finally said. “The boy ain’t got the balls to do a job himself. But he’ll sell us the map with all the locations. GPS and everything.”
    At that moment a wind came up and pressed against Buck’s stilt house and a shutter rattled and swung open on the kitchen window. He got up without a word and went to the sink and looked out. He’d heard some of the boat captains talking about a ’cane stirrin’ up things south near Mexico. He’d have to check the forecast later. Right now he was concentrating on a possible score. The boys’ eyes followed him and Marcus gave Wayne a “what the fuck you doin’” look. Finally Buck came back and looped his leg over the back of the chair and sat back down.
    “Tell it to me again, son.”

SIX
    They sat in the office at noon, Harmon at his desk in the middle of the room, alternately watching the unlighted incoming lines on the phone and the TV mounted high in the front corner. He used the same cynical and disdainful eye for both. Squires was at the other desk behind him, against the back wall, his short-cropped, blond-gray hair poking out on occasion from behind his computer monitor. When Harmon cut his eyes to the left, he could see his partner’s hand cupped over the mouse on his desk like it was a cigarette you didn’t want to expose or a clump of something you spilled on your mother’s table linen and didn’t want her to see. Squires’s finger twitched and Harmon could hear the constant click of the machine but he knew the guy was just acting like he was working.
    “Black eight on the red nine,” Harmon said over his shoulder.
    Squires hesitated, clicked once and then said: “Fuck you, Harmon.”
    Harmon grinned, knew the guy was playing solitaire back there and then reached across the desktop for yet another toothpick, and looked up over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses at the Weather Channel.
    “This drag-ass hurricane is going to kick Cancún’s butt and then shoot right up the middle of the Gulf,” he said. The sound on the television was muted and the bubble-headed bleach blonde had obviously just finished her spiel and was silently staring at the black guy sharing afternoon anchor duties with her like she was paying attention to him. Harmon was waiting for the blonde to get up and go to the wall map to point out the various “computer forecast tracks” for this new storm, Hurricane Simone.
    “You just watch. Crandall’s going to yank those rig monkeys off the platforms in Section C-seven and C-eight and we’ll be out there three days later going through their lockers and the rig bosses’ files trying to figure out what they’ve been screwing with for the last ten weeks,” Harmon said, glancing again at the phone like his boss was going to call the orders in any minute.
    “Better they’re on leave than having those greasy Cajun fuckers on the deck giving you the voodoo eye while we’re doing inspections,” Squires said from behind his monitor. Harmon grinned. He was listening.
    “You’re a racist, Squires. Admit it,” he said, just for something to do, poking at the man.
    The glass door on their office said Martindale Security, stenciled on with some cheap paint by some cheap sign painter they’d found in the Hollywood, Florida, yellow pages. Martin Crandall, their biggest, hell, their only client these days, had ordered them to rent the space and label it up like a legitimate business. Probably had something to do with a tax write-off for the oil company but Harmon had liked the old days when he and Squires simply worked out of their homes or apartments, got a