Somewhere north of Yeehaw Junction, a dirty black pickup truck appeared in the Rover’s rear window. The truck came up fast and then settled in, three car lengths behind Stoat’s bumper. Stoat was gnawing on fries and gabbing on the phone, so he didn’t pay serious attention until an hour or so later, when he noticed the truck was still behind him. Weird, he thought. Southbound traffic was light—why didn’t the idiot pass? Stoat punched the Rover up past ninety, but the truck stayed close. Gradually Stoat eased off the accelerator until he coasted down to forty-five; the black pickup remained right there, three lengths behind, as if connected by a tow bar.
Like most affluent white people who owned sport-utility vehicles, Palmer Stoat lived in constant fear of a carjacking. He had been led to understand that luxury 4x4s were the chariots of choice for ruthless black and Latin drug gangs; in such circles a Range Rover was said to be more desirable than a Ferrari. Glare on the truck’s windshield made it impossible for Stoat to ascertain the ethnicity of the tailgater, but why take a chance? Stoat groped in the console for the Glock semiautomatic that he’d been given as a Christmas gift by the president of the state Police Benevolent Association. Stoat placed the pistol on his lap. Ahead loomed a slow-moving Airstream travel trailer, as wide as a Mississippi barge and just about as nimble. Stoat accelerated around it and cut back sharply, putting the camper rig between him and the pickup truck. He decided to get off the turnpike at the next exit, to see what the tailgater would do.
The Airstream followed Stoat off the ramp; then came the dirty black pickup. Stoat stiffened at the wheel. The clerk at the tollbooth glanced at the gun between his legs but made no mention of it.
“I’m being followed.,” Stoat informed her.
“That’ll be eight dollars and seventy cents,” said the clerk.
“Call the Highway Patrol.”
“Yessir. Eight-seventy, please.”
“Didn’t you hear me?” Stoat asked. He handed the clerk a fifty-dollar bill.
“Have you got something a little smaller?”
“Yeah. Your brain stem,” Stoat said. “Now, keep the change and call the goddamn Highway Patrol. There’s some lunatic tailgater following me.”
The clerk ignored the insult and looked toward the vehicles stacking up behind the Range Rover.
In a low voice, Stoat said: “It’s the black pickup truck behind the travel trailer.”
“What pickup truck?” asked the clerk.
Palmer Stoat placed the Glock on the dashboard and stepped out of the Rover so he could peek around the Airstream. The next car in line was a station wagon with a square-dance pennant attached to the antenna. The tailgater was gone. “Sonofabitch,” Stoat muttered.
The driver of the camper honked. So did another motorist, farther down the line. Stoat got back in the Range Rover. The tollbooth clerk handed him change for the fifty. Dryly she said, “You still want me to call the Highway Patrol?”
“No, thanks.”
“How about the CIA?”
Stoat smirked. The little smart-ass didn’t know who she was dealing with. “Congratulations, young lady,” he told her. “You’re about to enter the cold cruel world of the unemployed,” Tomorrow he would speak to a man in Tallahassee, and it would be done.
Palmer Stoat found an Exxon station, gassed up5 took a leak and then headed back toward the turnpike. All the way to Lauderdale he kept checking his rearview—it was mind-boggling how many people owned black pickups. Had the whole damn world gone redneck? Stoat’s nerves were whacked by the time he got home.
They had brought their idea for Shearwater Island to Governor Dick Artemus in glitzy bits and pieces, and he’d liked what he’d heard so far.
A planned seaside community. Beach and boardwalks between the condominium towers. Public parks, kayak tours and a nature trail. Two championship golf courses. A clay pigeon shooting range. A yacht harbor, airstrip and heliport.
But Dick Artemus could not locate Shearwater Island on the wall map of Florida in his office.
That’s because it’s not called Shearwater Island yet, explained Lisa June Peterson. It’s called Toad Island, and it’s right there on the Gulf, near the mouth of the Suwannee.