The bulldozer driver glanced appreciatively at the cold beer in his hand. Hell, he thought, the old fart seems harmless enough. Probably just the racket he cares about.
“One week,” the driver said to Fishback. “That’s what the work order says.”
“Perfect.” Fishback pointed into the woods. “There’s a freshwater pond a quarter mile or so down that path. Be a good place to dump some dirt. I mean lotsa dirt.”
“Yeah?” The driver sounded interested.
Nils Fishback offered a conspiratorial wink. “Oh yeah,” he said. “We’re talking Toad Central, partner.”
5
In the week that followed, a conference committee of the Florida Legislature agreed to appropriate $9.2 million for a neighborhood development project in southwest Miami called the Willie Vasquez-Washington Community Outreach Center. The same committee approved $27.7 million in transportation funds toward the design and construction of an elevated four-lane concrete bridge to replace the creaky two-lane wooden span that connected Toad Island to the mainland. Governor Dick Artemus declared his strong support for both projects, and praised lawmakers for their “bipartisan commitment to progress.” A few days later, as the last of the oak toads were being plowed under, Nils Fishback and twenty-two other signatories of the anti-Shearwater Island petition met with Robert Clapley and his attorneys in a private dining salon at a fashionable Cuban restaurant in Ybor City. A deal was reached in which Clapley would purchase Fishback’s seventeen vacant lots for $19,000 each, which was $16,500 more than Fishback originally had paid for them. The other Toad Island “protesters” received, and eagerly accepted, comparable offers. They were flown home on a Gulfstream jet, and the next morning Nils Fishback called a press conference at the foot of the old wooden bridge. With a handful of local reporters present, “the mayor” announced he was terminating the petition drive because the Shearwater Island Company had “caved in to virtually all our demands.” Wielding a sheath of legal-sized papers, Fishback revealed that Robert Clapley had promised in writing to preserve the natural character of the barrier island, and had agreed to provide on-site biologists, botanists and hydrologists to supervise all phases of construction. In addition, Clapley had endorsed an ambitious mitigation program that required replanting three acres of new trees for each acre sacrificed to development. What Nils Fishback didn’t tell the press was that Clapley legally was not compelled to revegetate Toad Island itself, and that the new trees could be put anywhere else in Florida—including faraway Putnam County, where Clapley happened to own nine hundred acres of fresh-cut timber-land that needed replanting.
The architect of the mitigation scam was none other than Palmer Stoat, who’d had a very productive week. The governor’s cronies would be getting their new bridge, Willie Vasquez-Washington would be getting his new community center, and that impertinent tollbooth clerk in Yeehaw Junction would be getting a pink slip. Palmer Stoat flew home from Tallahassee and drove directly to Swain’s, his favorite local cigar bar, to celebrate. Here he felt vigorous and important among the ruddy young lawyers and money managers and gallery owners and former pro athletes. Stoat enjoyed watching them instruct their new girlfriends how to clip the nub oh-so-carefully off a bootleg Bolivar—the Yuppie foreplay of the nineties. Stoat resented that his wife wouldn’t set foot in Swain’s, because she would’ve looked spectacular sitting there, scissor-legged and preening in one of her tight black cocktail dresses. But Desie claimed to be nauseated by cigars. She nagged him mercilessly for smoking in the house—a vile and toxic habit, she called it. Yet she’d fire up a doobie every time they made love—and did Palmer complain? No, ma’am. Whatever gets you past the night, he’d say cheerfully. And then Desie would say, Just for once shut up, wouldya? And that’s the only way she’d do it, with him completely silent in the saddle. The Polaroid routine she’d tolerate, but the moment Palmer blurted a single word, the sex was over. That was Desie’s ironclad rule. So he had learned to keep his mouth shut for fifteen or twenty minutes in the bedroom, maybe twice a week. Palmer could handle that. Hell, they were all a little crazy, right? And besides, there were others—the ones up at the capitol, especially—who’d let him talk all he wanted, from start to finish. Like he was calling the Preakness.