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Deep Water
G.P. Putnam's Sons All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
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Prologue The blue sea kayak glided silently through tea-colored water as Irlo “Bobby” King let the paddle rest against his chest. Somewhere in the thick morning mist, not so far ahead now, was the lone acacia tree that, according to his earlier reconnaissance, marked the southern boundary of Africaland. Africaland, wedged between New Patagonia and Swamp Country, abutting the Untamed Arctic and across the river from Golf, U.S.A., and, of primary significance to Irlo King, the site of all four deaths of Wild Dominion's much-ballyhooed rare and endangered species. For ten straight hours the previous day, from park opening to sunset, Irlo had ridden the Wild Dominion Safari Tram, over and over, breaking only for a zucchini and sprouts sandwich he'd smuggled past the turnstiles in a fanny pack. Ten straight hours of mind-numbing banter from the pith-helmeted “guide.” Ten straight hours of Discovery Channel platitudes mixed with Whipple Corporation self-congratulatory propaganda, as he surreptitiously but painstakingly sketched a layout of the habitats of the dead animals vis-a-vis the Serenity River. Fifty-six dollars and fifty cents, less the five percent Florida resident discount but including a usurious nine percent tourist tax, it had cost him. Nearly a full day's pay. But, as he kept reminding himself, it would be worth it. If his theory was correct, then sixty bucks to the devil himself would be worth it. The gentle current began nudging the nose of the kayak downstream again, and Irlo King dipped his double-ended oars, pulled awkwardly one way, then the other, until the boat pointed north again. Or at least what he thought was north, given the opacity of the mist. The fear began to nag him that he wouldn't be able to find it before the park opened, but then he calmed himself: If not today, then tomorrow. What was going on, Whipple would not be able to fix in a single day. No way. With a deep, calming breath, he peered through the fog until, finally, not ten yards off, appeared the solitary acacia marking the end of the ingeniously landscaped fence that kept the carnivores of the savannah from feasting on llama and other South American delicacies. He resumed paddling as quietly as he could, first stroking closer toward the Golf, U.S.A., side, then paralleling the riverbank just close enough to make out some detail on shore. Stealth was of the essence. An early-morning groundskeeper at the golf park, a Dominion trainer doing his rounds – either would have a radio with which to summon a Whipple sheriff's deputy. And that, he knew, would not be good. Definitely not good. Eyes glued to the shore, he counted strokes as he paddled. He had estimated it was about three hundred yards beyond the border. Three football fields. The better part of a fairway in a developer's wet dream. Three hundred yards of upland scrub, slashed and carted off to make way for a nice, weed- and bug-free strip of overfertilized grass. Or even worse, three hundred yards of wetland, ditched and drained to round out yet another back nine. With an effort, Irlo King unclenched his teeth and set his mind to the problem at hand. No point getting all worked up and losing his focus. The Southside Mall, Egret Chase, the River Bend Club: All were important projects, and all deserved his undivided attention, at the proper time. Just as Whipple Corporation deserved it now. He kept counting his strokes, wondering if perhaps he could have missed it, when suddenly it appeared on the golf park bank: a thick black pipe, partially buried, running down into the murky water. He allowed himself a smile, then gracelessly turned the kayak across the river and pulled himself to the Dominion side. If it was there, it would be most readily apparent either right across from that pipe or just downstream. He felt the riverbank through the floor of the kayak before he saw it, the fog was so thick, and decided he wasn't going to be able to see anything from the boat. He waded through the muck, dragging the boat up onto the dirt and weeds, before he reminded himself that he was now, on foot and unprotected by fence or moat or any other barrier, in Africaland, where a trainer had been mauled and partially eaten by a pride of lions just a month earlier. He began walking, and almost immediately his mouth went dry and his heart began to race when he noticed a powdery, whitish residue on the pebbles at his feet. With eyes wide and fears of being consumed by carnivores at least temporarily at bay, Irlo moved up the bank, stooped at the waist, until finally he found a demarcation line marking the limit of the residue. He glanced back at the river, estimated a height difference of about one and a half feet, and immediately ran a couple of mental calculations to derive a water flow rate. This time he allowed himself a full, ear-to-ear grin, buckteeth biting deep into his lower lip, eyes bright and distant. He could just see the size of the headlines as, finally, Whipple Corporation was confronted with a scandal even its storied public relations machine couldn't sweep under the rug. From a pocket of his cargo pants he produced a gallon-size Ziploc bag, into which he collected as many pebbles, leaves, clumps of grass and handfuls of silt as he could fit, all of it coated with the still-damp residue. Carefully pressing the seal together, he tucked the bag into the kayak, then from another pocket of his pants pulled out a half dozen plastic vials. One by one, he filled each with river water, once more dreaming about his impending vengeance upon Whipple Corporation, nay, upon the entire Central Florida pro-strip mall, pro-sprawl ruling elite – SQUAWWWWK!! Irlo nearly fell face-first into the river, the noise so startled him, and his first instinct was flight. After all, he'd seen enough National Geographic specials – had even been to the real Africa once – to know that birds always sensed the approach of a predator, even before the prey.... And then he stopped to consider the noise again, placed the sound as the defensive bark of a turkey vulture. He blinked twice. Turkey vulture. Carrion eater. What carrion would there be in Africaland, where all the beasts got their London broils and porterhouses, extra rare, at the same time each day? Unless, of course, the rumor of the missing snow leopard was true.... And, no, not once in ten hours at the park the previous day, a total of seventeen tram rides, had he seen so much as the whiskers of the animal. Inexorably drawn now, he moved along the bank in the direction of the noise, half wondering if he could have been mistaken about it being a turkey vulture, when through the mist appeared a gaggle of the birds, snapping and picking at a carcass in their midst. It was the snow leopard. Recently dead, too, Irlo surmised from its condition. One of the birds pecked at his hiking boot, and Irlo kicked it away disgustedly. They were foul creatures, perpetually covered with their own droppings, so that even a scratch would quickly become a raging infection. He thought of the pebbles and the water, of the significance of their laboratory analysis, and compared it with the shock value of a dead, endangered Whipple animal, the fifth in as many months, and Irlo knew what he had to do. With a dead animal, it wouldn't be just headlines anymore, but satellite trucks. A great, big, long line of satellite trucks, parked end-to-end on the shoulder just outside Whipple property, with puffed hair, heavily made-up TV babes breathlessly describing the unspeakable horror of yet another rare, endangered specimen, this time a cuddly snow leopard, barely more than a cub, dead at America's favorite theme park, and in the words of the massing protesters here: What would Waldo say? Irlo kicked aside one bird, then another, ignored the pecks and scratches of two others as he moved in toward the dead cat. This was national now, not just Florida. The New York Times. The Washington Post. CNN. Hell, it was the stuff of Jay Leno jokes, so that even the Orlando Advocate would be forced to acknowledge it. He smiled at that thought as he scooped up the carcass over the protesting squawks and began staggering back toward his kayak. Finally! The bastards weren't going to get away with it this time! All their cockamamie excuses about why none of the dead animals could possibly be their fault, how they were just as disappointed, dismayed and so forth as the animal rights groups, how they had every confidence that their internal investigation would ultimately solve the mystery, without the well-intentioned but unnecessary meddling of outside organizations – all of the crap they'd gotten by with following the previous deaths simply wasn't going to fly this time. Because this time he, and not Whipple, would be in charge of the necropsy, and the truth would not be denied. He jerked the deadweight of the animal higher as he walked, ignoring the decaying flesh's fetid odor as he imagined the airtight case the cat’s remains gave him. Now, not only did he have evidence of Whipple's environmental carelessness, he had absolute, incontrovertible, made-for-TV proof, as well! Another vulture pecked his ankle, replacing his vision of being interviewed by Ted Koppel with a white flash of pain. Irlo kicked at it angrily but connected only with feathers as the big bird squawked and hopped aside. Where the hell was the kayak? He couldn't believe he'd walked that far in the first place. Or maybe the leopard's weight was starting to get to him. He estimated it was fifty or sixty pounds, spread across four feet of carcass, impossible to carry easily. Especially with a pack of angry scavengers picking at him. Which reminded him: Before the end of the day, he'd have to start on an antibiotic. Maybe Stephanie's husband could write him a scrip and save him some time. He sneered at the thought of the man his ex-wife had married, but then decided he wasn't going to let even that diminish his triumph. Every cause, he supposed, needed those whose role seldom went beyond attending cocktail parties and writing checks. At long last the kayak appeared out of the fog, and apprehension gripped his insides when he realized he could see it, even though it was still a good twenty or thirty yards away. The fog was starting to lift. He was running later than he'd planned. Way later. He stood over the little boat, still holding the cat, and decided that the only way would be to drape it over the bow. He let its front paws dangle down into his seat, shoved off, and quickly climbed in. He paddled briskly, sacrificing stealth for speed, every once in a while waving the oar at a vulture that would swoop down. He maneuvered to the middle of the river, but realized that even from there he could see both banks clearly. Meaning, he accepted with a gulp, that anyone on shore would be able to see him clearly as well. Well, a few more minutes and he was home free. He had to make it back down to where he'd pulled off the service road, just north of where the Serenity River passed the town's exclusive Founders’ Estates neighborhood and entered Lake Serenity. Five minutes to get the cat in the trunk, the kayak on the roof rack, and he was outta there. Five minutes to the Turnpike, an hour and a half to his pal at the veterinary school in Gainesville. He would use every minute of the drive on the cell phone to spread the word, get everyone organized, so that the moment they got the results from the necropsy and the water samples, they could start the media blitz. He should call Armstrong, too, he decided, to get him to work his contacts. But first, before anyone else, he would call Stephanie about that prescription. She'd ask why he needed it, and he'd let slip a couple of details. Real nonchalant. Like it was no big deal. And by the end of the conversation, when the enormity of his achievement was clear, she'd know how badly she'd screwed up, dumping him as she had. Another vulture flapped its wings at him as it snapped at the dead cat's body. Irlo awkwardly swung his oars at the bird again and immediately resumed stroking the water. Finally, he saw the clump of trees behind which he'd parked his car, and rhythmically pumped his arms from side to side. He was sweating heavily now, breathing hard, clenching his teeth against the stench of the carcass that seemed to grow stronger by the minute. The birds had already picked the poor creature's eyes out, and its hollow sockets stared at him ghoulishly. It would be nice to get the leopard safely in his trunk, where he no longer had to protect it from marauding birds or have its decaying face just inches away. Perhaps he would allow himself a stop at a motel on the way to Gainesville. Take a nice, hot shower. Maybe clean and dress his vulture bites. Put on clean clothes that didn't have snow leopard puss on them. Sure, he told himself as he ground the kayak into the grassy bank and hopped out. What was a twenty-minute stop in the scheme of things? Surely the cat's condition wouldn't worsen appreciably because of a slight delay. He dragged the boat out of the water, patting his cargo pants pockets for his keys as he backed uphill toward where the Saab was hidden, decided he would stop on the way to Gainesville – “Brought your own vultures, I see,” a voice rang out. “Now, that's advance planning.” Irlo turned enough to see a pair of cowboy boots and green trousers, and that was the last thing he saw before the black sackcloth came down over his head. Chapter One As he did every morning, Dickie Gillespie, Mayor of Serenity, Florida, strode along the Promenade with supreme self-importance, nodding authoritatively at passers-by, smugly acknowledging their apprehensive glances. Part of his mystique was the warm-up suit. With its official Whipple logo – the stylized muskrat head superimposed with an embroidered, cursive “W,” the suit was among the gear available only to top executives. It was unavailable in stores in stores – and therefore worth a small fortune on the black market for Whippleobelia. Gillespie made sure to wear a different color every day, a not-so-subtle reminder to the townsfolk of his pull with the company. But most of the deference the commoners showed him, he knew, derived not from anything he wore, nor from his less-than-intimidating physical stature. It came from The Clipboard, and Dick Gillespie made sure to carry it with him everywhere. The Clipboard, with its hundreds of pages of scheduled community chores, association rules and up-to-date records of membership dues in the various clubs, was the enforcement mechanism behind the covenants agreed to by every homeowner, and Mayor Gillespie was the enforcer. It was his affinity for that role, in fact, that got him the job as mayor. The shock of white hair and ruddy cheeks and disarming smile were all important as far as the quintessentially-quirky-but-warmhearted-small-town-mayor thing went, but Gillespie's reputation as the unforgiving casting director of Whipple World's various musical numbers, as someone willing to kick ass and take names – that was the sine qua non for the job. A jogger appeared through the mist and waved cordially at Gillespie. He returned a half- smile. Then, after she had passed, he turned to watch her ass recede into the fog. It was, he had to admit, a fine ass. Considering the woman was the mother of two toddlers, it was a magnificent ass, and Gillespie felt himself salivating as the blue nylon running shorts jiggled away. Quickly he turned to his clipboard and flipped through pages until he got to the M's. Debbie McMahon. Schoolteacher, taking time off to raise her kids. Husband an engineer at Lockheed. House on Charleston Lane in the Plantation neighborhood. Fully compliant. All community chores attended to. No demerits. Gillespie grumbled and shut the clipboard. With some women, it was just never going to happen. He shrugged it off and started moving again. He wasn't going to get upset about it. Life was too short. Plus, women were like the monorail at Whipple World: There was always another Mrs. McMahon in another couple of minutes. He power walked to the end of the Promenade, then across Front Street, down a block and began his survey of the single-family homes in the Cornwall neighborhood, the “most” New Urban of the whole New Urban town, whatever the hell that meant. The Whipple Architectural Division had tried to brief him on the goals of the movement, in case he ever found himself in the position of having to explain it to the media. But Dickie Gillespie's eyes had kept glazing over, and ultimately the higher-ups decided it wasn't worth the effort. That it would be easier to just make certain that Gillespie never had to talk about New Urbanism, which was all fine and dandy by him. What the hell did he know or care about architecture and urban planning? His background was showgirls, and he was damned good at it. Twenty years in Vegas, another dozen in Atlantic City, putting together the best revues in the business, and now in Florida in a quasi-retirement. Sure, the shows were tamer than the things he could do at casino hotels, but what the hell? The winters were nicer and golfing a lot better. And the fringe benefits were every bit as good. Ever since he'd been tapped for Serenity mayor and given free rein to staff Town Hall however he pleased, the fringe benefits were downright fine. He turned down Plymouth Street, began eyeing the two- and three-story, small-lot homes, each fronted by a flower bed cultivating species from the Serenity Annuals pamphlet, each accessorized with porch swings and planter boxes and mailboxes from the Serenity Patterns book. With practiced eye he took in the details of each house, checking for non-conformity in a quick once-over, then moved onto the next. He came to a three-story, tan Victorian that had, he saw, just installed a new picket fence. With a tape measure from his pants pocket he measured first the height of the fence, then the width of the gate, then grunted in disappointment. Fully compliant – no demerits. No demerits meant no fringe benefits for Dickie. He glanced back at the houses he'd already checked with a scowl, wondering whether to go back with a more critical eye, then decided against it. He had to be at UPSVIL by 11 to cast the Millennial Revue – one hundred and fifty new girls who had to be winnowed down to twenty. Dickie Gillespie considered those numbers and perked back up as he resumed his walking inspection, and had nearly walked the length of the street when he realized he hadn't seen anyone on any of the porches. Quickly he flipped through the clipboard to the Cornwall neighborhood, found Plymouth Street, and, checking his watch to make sure of the date, determined which house had porch duty that morning and strolled back down the block. It was a white colonial with black shutters, a crab apple tree in the front yard, and, of most significance to Gillespie, no one on the front porch. He clucked disapprovingly and put a check mark against the name Anderson. Another demerit. Another fine. He'd have to have another talk with them, remind the couple who'd had the shaggy lawn episode two weeks earlier and the peeling paint thing the previous month that one more demerit and they were gone, forfeiting any equity in their home, as per the sales contract. Gillespie allowed himself a smile as he considered his good fortune. The Andersons were among a good many house-rich, cash-poor Serenityites. He worked as a ride mechanic in the Enchanted Realm. She worked in the Golf, U.S.A., pro shop by day, served drinks at the Morty Muskrat Lounge at night. He recalled seeing her there in her uniform, how her legs seemed to stretch forever from spiked heels to the hem of her miniskirt. Yessir, he'd have to have a little talk with Gail Anderson, maybe during one of her breaks at the Lounge. Explain to her again the dangers of racking up demerits in Serenity, maybe offer her a way to work off some of them in her off hours. Yessir, life was good. He was wearing a wide smile at the thought of Mrs. Anderson in her Muskrat Lounge fishnets, making his way back to his own bungalow overlooking Lake Serenity, when he glanced up and noticed that the mist was finally clearing, and that he could see the town's water tower, decorated with the ubiquitous muskrat ears – and, this morning, also decorated with a giant yellow banner with red letters: “WWWS? FIX OUR HOMES!” His good mood instantly gone, Mayor Gillespie reached for the cell phone in his pocket, dialed with one hand as he broke into a trot toward the water tower. * * * Lew Peters stared fixedly out the arched windows of Prince Charming's Palace, overlooking the Enchanted Realm, as he listened to the chief financial officer's weekly update on Whipple Corporation's overall health. He stared out the window, rather than at the projection screen down the conference table, because his CFO always used a PowerPoint presentation to illustrate his talk. And PowerPoint was a product of the twerp. “Overall, we're looking good for the third quarter,” the CFO droned. “Attendance is up four percent from the same period last year at all four parks: here, California, EuroWhipple and Osaka Whipple. We're on track to break ground for Singapore Whipple by year's end. The network is dominating prime-time ratings. Consequently ad revenues are up nine percent. Whipple Records is –” “Our market cap?” Lew Peters demanded. The CFO sighed, thumbed his remote to move the presentation ahead a dozen frames. “As you can see, our stock's thirty-day rolling average is up a dollar nine from the beginning of the quarter. Unfortunately, Microsoft went up sixty cents. Because they have more total sh–” “Bottom line, we're still behind them.” The CFO nodded, yes, and then began explaining why that ought not matter, that their return on investment was better, and how in just the past three years they had surpassed both AT&T and General Motors, which was nothing to sneeze at, and they were growing with selective moves into high-profit areas, and ultimately that strategy would reward.... But Llewellyn J. Peters III had stopped listening. He hated Microsoft, and he hated even more the little twerp who ran it. Here he'd been for the past decade and a half, shrewdly building an empire from a tired, old amusement park company, finding and enforcing efficiencies to let him earn the cover of Forbes, twice, and BusinessWeek, once, in the past year alone, not to mention a glowing Column One write-up in the Wall Street Journal, and at the end of the day, it didn't matter one stinking little bit. Wall Street still loved Microsoft more than it loved Whipple, and the twerp consistently had stayed tantalizingly ahead. Even worse, the little geek hadn't even broken a sweat doing it. No risky mergers, no bold strategies, no nothing. Just the same, find-other-people's-good-ideas-and-steal-them as he'd always done, and Wall Street treated him like some boy-genius conquering hero. Well, fuck Wall Street. He had a five-year plan, and a ten-year plan, and a fifteen-year plan, and in the sixteenth year, there'd only be two corporations left worth owning. And then he'd take on the bastard, mano-a-mano, and kick his scrawny little ass, and then who'd be left standing? Peters looked up, realized the room had been silent for some time, and nodded at the first vice president to his left. “Investments?” “Yes, sir. We expect to have on the order of one-point-one, maybe one-point-two billion cash by the end of the fourth quarter. Approximately a third of that is necessary to complete the acquisition of Schylle Newspapers. Their second-quarter profit margin was twenty-nine percent, two points better than ours, but we think we can goose that up to thirty-three, thirty-four percent. As regards the remainder, we looked at the automakers, as you suggested, but the only lines that approach our profitability standards are the SUVs.” Peters grunted. “And I suppose Ford doesn't want to sell us just their Excursion and Expedition.” “Sir, those two vehicles account for a small fraction of total sales but make up nearly a quarter of total profits. So, no, sir, that's not likely. We looked into buying the entire company and closing down all but the sport utility lines, but their union contracts would make that prohibitive.” Peters grunted again. “Well, keep trying. They're making forty cents on the dollar on those damn things, and I can't think of one reason we shouldn't enjoy some of that.” “Sir, there's also come available a complete lot of gaming equipment. Brand new. An expansion deal fell through in Atlantic City, and now the contractor is unloading it below cost. Tables, machines, card shoes, chips, costumes for the waitresses. The whole suite. I realize it's not budgeted for this quarter, sir, but I think it represents a substantial savings –” “How much?” Lew Peters demanded. “Two-point-one million.” Peters stroked his authoritative chin for a few seconds, then nodded confidently. “Do it.” He glanced at the next VP down the table. “Litigation?” The company's chief lawyer cleared his throat and opened a manila folder. “Well, sir, we have sixty-four pending cases. Three injury claims from incidents in the parks, including that lady from Ohio who lost a toe in the Wicked Witch Tea Cups. Her attorney wanted her to hold out for five hundred grand, saying he could show negligence in the ride's design and so forth. But we were able to back-channel her with lifetime passes to all Whipple parks for herself and one-year passes for all her kids and grandkids. Two children, only five grandkids. We got off easy there.” Peters moved his wide mouth unhappily, as if eating something unpleasant. “Lifetime pass. How old is she?” The lawyer glanced at his folder. “Fifty-seven, sir. She's five-three and weighs two-seventy. Our actuaries say she'll be lucky if she makes it to sixty.” Peters wobbled his head from side to side, considering. “Okay. Do it. But be careful with those lifetime passes. They ain't cheap. Now, what's going on with the day care center thing?” “WeeWuns School in Lake City. That,” the lawyer flipped a page, “is one of the forty-seven trademark infringement cases currently open. I'm glad you brought that up, sir. We've looked at their books, and they're telling the truth. If we insist on a quarter million, they'll have no choice but to declare bankruptcy and close down.” Peters glared silently, dark eyes flashing. The man hadn't even wanted to press the suit in the first place, that despite the fact the school had allowed its kindergartners to paint a hallway mural depicting fully a dozen different Whipple characters. Morty and Mindy Muskrat. Gordon Gopher. Billy the Baboon. Mongoose Mike. Kallie the Kangaroo. Wally Warthog. All of them and more, and not even a token attempt to get permission. Not that Whipple Corporation would have granted it, but that wasn't the point. “You make it sound like a bad thing,” Peters said finally. “I, on the other hand, see it as the perfect teachable moment for all the other little brats thinking about ripping us off.” The lawyer squirmed in his leather seat. “Yes, sir, but I was just concerned.... Well, the school has nearly a hundred students, preschool through kindergarten. That's a hundred sets of parents. If the school has to close, the local paper will certainly do a story. We might not come out looking too good, is all.” Peters brooded a silent minute. “Fine. You win. What are their assets?” “Thirty-five thousand, seven hundred.” “Then settle for forty,” Peters ordered. “And I want the mural down, understand? Not just painted over. Removed. Make the little plagiarists scrape it off with their fingernails, if they have to. Got it? Good. Who's next?” Peters glanced down at his agenda, then up at his next vice president. “Ah, Whipple Development Corp. My favorite. So how are things at America's Hometown this fine morning?” The vice president for real estate, cowed by a near-weekly harangue, kept his eyes on his report. “Serenity is fine, sir. Between forfeitures and loan collections and user fees, we are maintaining a $960,000 monthly positive cash flow. Combined with an amortized accounting of the federal –” “We are not going to spread that out,” Peters interrupted. “That was a one-time bump for your revenue, and that's how we're going to account for it.” The Vice President for Real Estate swallowed hard. “In that case, Serenity is on track for a third-quarter pretax profit of eleven percent. Which, I must point out, is two points higher than the industry standard for home mortgage financial services, which at this phase of the operation is essentially what we are.” Lew Peters drummed his fingers on the varnished conference table. Outside the window, a bright green, Mongoose Mike-themed gondola rose toward the fake-snow-covered, fake Mont Blanc. “Yes, but you see, you're not any old home mortgage company, are you? You're a division of Whipple Corporation. And at Whipple Corporation, the target profit margin is twenty-seven percent, not eleven. So what action plan have you formulated to get you from where you are to where you need to be?” Peters watched with disdain as the real estate VP shuffled some papers, finally cleared his throat. “As I suspected,” Lew Peters said. “Fortunately, I do have an action plan. It is as follows. First, adjust the interest rate on all the loans upward three-quarters point –” “Sir!” Even the vice president seemed stunned by his own outburst. “I mean, well, we just two months ago raised the rate a full point. Folks are gonna start to grumble. I mean, I don't think they ever believed an adjustable-rate mortgage meant it was going to double in just three years.” “Then they should have read the fine print,” Lew Peters continued. “Perhaps now they will. Second: I seem to remember something from our Merchandising Department that we have about twelve hundred Jubilee Edition Gordon Gophers in a warehouse somewhere. If the Whipple-a-Month Club sends them out as a bonus selection, that should get rid of eleven hundred of them. Unless, of course, you have any objections?” The vice president stopped scribbling notes, shrugged in defeat. “They just got Gordon Gophers four months ago....” “Well, now they shall have two.” Peters interlaced his fingers and stretched his arms contentedly. “After all, they're all lucky enough to, quote, Live in Serenity, unquote. I should think they would be overjoyed to have a second Gordon Gopher. Finally, I would say a fifteen percent rate hike in electric, sewer and water is long overdue, no? A little quick arithmetic says...” Peters closed his eyes for a second, “approximately $44,000 in additional revenues per month. Puts it just over a million a month on the plus side. Still not twenty-seven percent, but a nice round number just the same. Wouldn't you agree?” The vice president forced a smile and nodded. Sure. “Good. Human resources?” A stern lady with a faint mustache kept her arms folded across her chest. “We continue to have problems with this Top of the World Club, sir. We caught two of the Enchanted Dancers sneaking out this morning.” Peters sighed with frustration. The tallest tower atop Prince Charming's Palace was the highest point in Whipple World, taller even than Mont Blanc in the Realm or the geodesic golf ball in UPSVIL. And at the very top was a sort of widow's walk, accessible by a concealed ladder, that had of late been littered with bits of foil wrappers and soiled with questionable stains. “Damn homos,” Peters muttered. “More trouble than they're worth.” “It's not just gays, sir,” the personnel vice president said primly. “Heterosexual cast members as well seem to have trouble checking their libidos when it comes to the Top of the World Club.” “Well, we'll help them, then. Have the locks for the roof access doors changed. And put out a memo: Henceforth, open-air copulation on Whipple grounds, be it male-on-female, male-on-male, or any other combination, is a fireable offense.” Peters nodded severely, began straightening his papers. “Anything else?” A nervous-looking vice president at the far end of the table raised his hand timidly, cleared his throat when Peters looked his way. “Sir, we're receiving a number of media requests to do a fifth-anniversary piece on Serenity. A couple of architecture magazines, the New York Times Magazine, and so forth. With the Jubilee coming up, they were wondering –” “Fuck them,” Peters declared. “Serenity is not the news. Our polar bears are the news. Tell them to write about our polar bears.” The Vice President for External Affairs bit his lip, then continued. “Sir, we've suggested just that. But not all of them are accepting it. Several have asked rather pointedly about the delay in Serenity's Phase II. And I'm afraid, sir, that one or two might try sneaking in without permission. You know, as tourists. That would require stepped-up surveillance, and even then we might not catch them. So I was thinking, if we offered an exclusive to a friendly outlet, it might take much of the pressure off.” Peters frowned, skeptical. “That's all it takes? The rest of them lose interest if someone else writes it first?” “It's worked in the past, sir.” Peters closed his folder and passed it to a waiting secretary. “Great. Fine. Call Leahy with it. If that's all, we're adjourned.” He whisked the profit-and-loss statement for Whipple Pictures out of his briefcase while he waited for his vice presidents to clear the boardroom, then ducked into a hidden passageway behind a bookcase. Still reading, he climbed a stone, spiral staircase built into one of the Palace's corner towers and emerged in an alcove off the anteroom to his own suite, where he nodded to his receptionist and wandered in to his desk. There he put down the Whipple Pictures financials and immediately saw the two memos at the top of his in-box. He scanned quickly, a scowl hardening as he read about the water tower incident. He pushed the button on his intercom and began growling even before his secretary answered: “Get ahold of Albright. Have him meet me this afternoon on the walkthrough. Then call Burbank. The lazy bastards ought to be up by now, right?” * * * Led by one teacher, and followed by two more plus a parent volunteer and an assistant principal, the three second-grade classes from Orlando's Willow Run Elementary School trooped into the darkened viewing room and lined up in front of the railing overlooking the Untamed Arctic's showcase tableau. Emma Whipple counted the little bodies as best she could, given their continued milling about, and marked the total on her clipboard. She directed the helmet-haired TV reporters and shaggy cameramen to opposite corners, then retreated to a folding chair at the back of the room to rub her bare arms for warmth and scribble notes for the press release she would write describing the events about to unfold. Just beyond the railing was inch-thick plate glass, and on the other side of the glass was forty-degree “ocean” water washing up on a cave-pocked plateau covered with real ice, all of it expensively refrigerated to near-authentic temperatures. It was Whipple World's most ambitious exhibit yet, a true challenge for the company's crack Enchanteers, who until then had dealt with only the papier-mâché reality of the Realm and the relatively simpler Africa, Asia and South America zones in the Dominion. Bringing the subzero habitat of Baffin Island to subtropical Florida hadn't been easy. The entire 130-acre exhibit had to be enclosed in an insulated shell of marine-grade plywood, the interiors covered with painted canvas to keep visitors from noticing that it was actually ninety degrees outside under a steamy white sky, not ten degrees beneath a cobalt-blue one. The project also had not been cheap. Even before the overruns, the last pre-construction estimate had been $14 million. Lew Peters had balked, even though the whole thing had been his idea, a way to take the fight directly to archenemy Sea World. Ultimately, of course, Peters had signed off, vowing to get it back in higher soda and ice cream prices, because it was integral to his plan to make Waldo Whipple World the sole tourist destination in all Central Florida. Naturally, corners had been cut to save pennies. Half-inch plywood instead of three-quarter. A fifteen-foot-deep “ocean” instead of twenty-five. The entire exhibit repositioned adjacent to the Dominion's southern border, so it could share refrigeration pipes with Serenity's ice-skating rink. Untamed Arctic still had come in over $17 million and almost three months late. The “soft” opening Emma had originally scheduled with Willow Run Elementary had to be postponed, once, twice, a total of four times. To the point where she had to bribe school administrators with free weekend, All-Parks Passports if they went through the effort of once again collecting signed field-trip forms. Which meant, Emma knew, a nasty memo from Lew Peters to her boss, who in turn would pass it along to her. She sighed in resignation. Peters saw freebies to the park not as low-cost good will, but lost profit. Such giveaways required permission from the division vice president – something Emma had failed to collect. The cost of the passes, therefore, would now be charged against her salary, and she began mentally tallying the damage and deciding how to cut her personal budget for the final two weeks of the month to avoid dipping into what was left of her savings. A crescendo of children's voices brought her back to the present, to the viewing room packed with seven-year-olds. Another ten minutes and she could leave the chill of the Untamed Arctic and head over to Africaland to simultaneously thaw out and interview the “new” woman elephant trainer for a press release she had to get out the next morning. She rubbed her arms again as she watched the second-graders start to lose their initial interest in the still-empty exhibit, hoped the trainers were also noticing this and would soon get the show on the road. After years of planning and two months of serious hype, this was it: the unveiling of Waldo Whipple World's newest inhabitants, the cuddly, lovable polar bear cubs, Snoball and Igloo. Playful and rambunctious like all babies, and with a compelling backstory of having been orphaned and abandoned, then rescued from an iceberg found floating out Baffin Bay into the North Atlantic, Snoball and Igloo were poised to take the theme-park-going world by storm. The relentless Whipple marketing machine had already cranked out Snoball and Igloo T-shirts, sneakers, caps, coffee mugs and toilet seats. The Whipple-of-the-Month Club had already commissioned ceramic Snoball and Igloo figurines. Whipple Videos was set to release “The Snoball and Igloo Story” at $29.95 a copy, $26.75 with Whipple Club membership. All of it with the idea of cementing in the public's mind the association of arctic marine critters with Whipple, thus blunting Anheuser-Busch's five-year head start with their polar bears and easing the introduction of walruses in another year, dolphins in two years, and, three years out, a brand-new outdoor aquarium filled with Sea World's stock-in-trade: killer whales. Ahead of her, a chant began among the second-graders: “Snoball! Igloo! Snoball! Igloo!” Little feet began stomping in time, little hands started pounding the plate glass that offered both underwater views of the “ocean” as well as aboveground views of the shore. Emma glanced anxiously at the largest cave in the ice-covered “hillside,” where hidden inside were the polar bears' cages. She started reaching for the cell phone clipped on the belt of her skirt to call the trainer's quarters, find out what the holdup was – when suddenly, out of the black hole came ambling first one ball of white fluff, then another. The children broke into cheers and applause as the bears tried to stop on the ice, couldn't, and skidded into the water. The kids laughed uproariously, the camera crews dutifully recording the gaiety, and Emma smiled. Given Central Florida sensibilities, she could see that this was going to be the lead story at 5:30, 6 and 11. The bear cubs were still frolicking in the water, diving down deep, batting at the plate glass, wrestling with each other, when the arm of a trainer appeared from the cave, just long enough to toss a handful of Ball Park Franks, the Official Hot Dog of Waldo Whipple World, out onto the ice. In a flash, the bears popped out of the water and onto the ice ledge, the children hooting and laughing, and set upon the hot dogs, greedily snapping up a couple, and then batting the others around on the ice, chasing after them, batting them some more, batting each other, growling cheerfully. The children were eating it up, and Emma began composing in her head the press release she would blast-fax out to Florida newspapers, radio stations and television stations later that afternoon: Kids Welcome Hot-Dog Loving Cubs. She would have to interview a child or two, maybe a teacher, then pick a quote off the preapproved Lew Peters list ... when she noticed a flash of black in the “ocean,” saw it rocket up toward the ice, saw it climb up and out of the water with its forepaws. It was Sammy the Seal, whose birth in the adjoining Blue Ocean exhibit two months earlier had turned around a long string of negative news about unexplained animal deaths at the Dominion. She blinked, unable to remember Sammy's role in the soft opening's script, wondered if maybe the trainers had changed it without notifying her. And then she started getting a bad feeling in her belly. Maybe it wasn't part of the script! Maybe the little guy had climbed up and over the low retaining wall surrounding his tank at Blue Ocean, just like the consultant had warned.... Sammy barked happily, started waddling toward Snoball and Igloo. The bear cubs glanced at one another for a moment before ambling at the seal, setting upon him, quickly tearing him limb from bloody limb. Emma stared open-mouthed at the carnage for a long moment, finally realized that except for the satisfied grunts of the feasting polar bear cubs, the observation room was deathly quiet. Finally she heard a child whimper. Then another. With angry glares for Emma, the teachers and assistant principal began herding their charges out the exit, some crying, some with thumbs in their mouths, most just stunned into a zombie-like silence. On the ice tableau, a trainer wielding a forked stick was unsuccessfully trying to separate the cubs from the remnants of Sammy's carcass. With a long string of profanities heard by the last of the children, the trainer gave up and retreated to the “cave” containing the door to his office. Emma sighed wearily. She would have to cancel with the elephant trainer yet again. Also everything else she was planning that afternoon. She gathered up her clipboard and headed for the exit. It was going to be a long day. * * * Ernest G. Warner sat at his computer terminal, idly let his
fingers roll across the keys: the quick
brown fox kills the venal editor ... the quick brown fox maims the cowardly
reporter ... the quick brown fox procures a quantity of plastic explosives and
one night razes the venal, cowardly newspaper.... Ernie Warner, at age thirty: an almost winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his hard-hitting, take-no-prisoners environmental journalism. Ernie Warner, at age thirty-five: the managing editor for Florida’s fastest-growing newspaper, challenging the St. Petersburg Times and the Miami Herald as the state's best. Ernie Warner, at age forty: a languishing former star, enjoying the money and the perks earned from his continued loyalty to the profitable-as-ever but now thoroughly embarrassing Orlando Advocate, a big-city daily that had become not only more shamelessly boosterish and incestuous than the smallest town rag, but, even more troubling to reporters as a class, as tightly wound as the worst corporate bank. All employees were required to wear approved colored clothing every day except the fourth Friday of each month – a home-office-approved “casual” day on which khakis were permitted. All window blinds had to be kept at a uniform, thirty-five-degree angle, as measured from a plumb line from ceiling to floor. All desks and cubicles were to be cleaned of all paper at the end of each workday. Employees were limited to two, four-by-five photos at their work sites, to be displayed in Chicago-approved frames. No plants. No postcards. No campaign buttons or funny hats. To make sure the rules were followed, Chicago decided to make compliance with the neatness guidelines a standard of performance on employee evaluations, as important as meeting deadlines or accuracy. Most of the quality reporters and editors – which is to say, most of Ernie’s cohorts – had abandoned ship when the focus on good journalism got replaced by good Chamber of Commerce citizenship. The rest had bailed when the stupid edicts from Chicago began. Not that it made any difference to the pooh-bahs. Freshly minted journalism school grads could meet their word-count quotas almost as well as seasoned pros, with a lot less complaining and for a lot less money. Ernie erased all the subversive, brown-fox claptrap from his monitor and concentrated on finishing his story. It was a long, front-page feature about the new-car dealership about to open in Seminole County – a guaranteed sixty columns a month of advertising, Leahy had enthused when he’d assigned him the story. Ten years earlier, Ernie would have flat-out refused to write such a thing and probably quit the paper. Five years earlier, he would have argued that such an article belonged in the Auto Section, not on the front page. Now he tried gamely to find the best adjectives to describe the “low-pressure sales staff” and the “sparkling, 21st-century showroom.” He stopped for a moment to wonder what in hell that meant, “21st-century showroom.” The picture showed cars parked in a big, glass-walled room. And that was different from a 20th-century showroom ... how? He sighed to himself and glanced at the clock on the wall. Four-fifteen. Another hour and forty-five minutes and he could escape the place for a solid fifteen hours. Escape in his forest-green Mercedes that still smelled new, with a nice, soothing Mozart sonata on the CD player for the ride home. Escape in the hot tub on his real California redwood deck.... He shook his head and typed “21st-century showroom” when his assistant knocked at his door. The boss needed him. As usual, the television in the corner of Jack Leahy’s office was tuned to the Financial News Channel. Jack buffed his fingernails while he watched. “Hah! See that, Ernie? Ninety-one dollars a share! That’s up two bucks today. Which means, by just sitting here, going out for my lunch, coming back and sitting here some more, I’ve made about ... seventy-four thousand dollars. You know, that’s still enough to buy a house, in some parts of the country. Isn’t capitalism wonderful?” Ernie worked to contain his disdain. After all, Leahy wasn’t the only one in the newsroom who knew exactly how much richer or poorer each rise and fall of company stock left him. He himself knew almost instinctively that a two-dollar gain meant his deferred compensation plan was suddenly eighteen grand fatter. “You rang?” Ernie asked at last. “Got a hot story for you.” “I await with bated breath.” Leahy flashed a smirk. “Oh, let’s not be cynical. That’s the last thing the world needs is another cynic. Skepticism? Sure, we need that, in our business. But cynicism? Uh-uh. No sir. Not here.” Ernie forced his lips into the semblance of a grin. “Gee, Jack! What is it?” “That’s better. Anyway, I just know you’re gonna love it: You know it’s been five years since Serenity opened?” Ernie couldn’t help but groan. He hated anniversary stories, and he flat-out loathed Whipple stories. The two intertwined would be a living hell. “I was thinking,” Jack Leahy continued, ignoring him, “a look-forward sort of piece: the second five years in America’s premiere planned community. Maybe: Urban Planning the Whipple Way. Subhead: A Fairy Tale Come True.” Leahy looked up with his usual cheerful grin, and Ernie knew it was well past the stage where he might be able to talk him out of it. He studied the tanned, pleasant smile, the pale blond hair. He wondered in what life, on what planet, Jack Leahy could possibly have been a streetwise reporter and a crack, frontline editor, a man savvy and smart enough for Ernie once upon a time to have looked up to as a mentor. “Why don’t you just have the Whipple flacks write it and put my byline on it? It’ll save everyone a lot of time.” “Ernie, Ernie, Ernie.” Jack shook his head sadly and rose to primp before a mirror. “Do you know how your salary compares to the median reporter’s here?” Ernie shrugged, defeated. “More,” he admitted. “Five times more. You’re earning an upper-management salary for a senior reporter's job. But you know what? I think you're worth every penny. Always have. You're my go-to guy. When there's only two and a half seconds left, and it's our ball at halfcourt, there's no one I'd rather have take that three pointer. You the man!” Ernie sighed dejectedly. Ever since the pro basketball franchise had come to town – Orlando's first and to date only big league sports team – Leahy had become the insufferable, white, upper-middle-class hoops fan. Ernie had long ago given up trying to discourage him from talking like some fool sports announcer. “When do you need it?” Ernie asked flatly. Jack Leahy grinned, put Ernie in a headlock and squeezed. “See? I knew you'd come around. You're the franchise, man! And don't think Chicago hasn't noticed, if you know what I mean.” He nodded at him seriously, then moved around and sat back at his desk. “Anyway, I was thinking your piece would make a swell anchor for our Jubilee package.” With his hands, Leahy started laying out the paper in the air in front of him: “Your story, stripped across six columns. Maybe Tommo's column down the left.” Ernie groaned inwardly. Tom “Tommo” Biaggo was the paper's insipid local columnist who'd yet to see, visit or hear about something Whipple-related that he didn't immediately find need to orgasm over in print. “So his column would actually touch my story on the page?” “Now, now, now. Team player, team player,” Leahy tsked. “Maybe an aerial shot of Serenity in the middle. We can call it ‘Five years of Serenity.’ Or something like that. Or even better, maybe somehow we can get a picture of those cute little bears on the front. Now, that's something I know our readers will eat right up. Remember, when we put them on the front page, back when Whipple got them, our single-copy sales spiked forty percent? Our focus group that week gave the bears picture and story an eighty-seven percent approval rating. That's almost as high as our coverage of the Ted Bundy execution. I just wish there was a way to put the little buggers on the front every day. Now I wonder if there isn't any sort of connection between the two, something we can use as a peg....” The more Leahy talked, the more Ernie realized what a total pain in the ass this assignment was going to be. He would have to find a way to weave cuddly polar bears, a fawning mention of the Whipple Institute, a respectful nod for the serious work at the Whipple BioGen Research Lab, a worshipful description of Whipple president Lew Peters, and a reverential history of Waldo Whipple himself, all into a glowing, 2,000- or 2,500-word tribute to a place whose mere existence made his skin crawl. He glanced at Leahy's clock, told himself: one more hour. One more hour and he could leave all the stupidity behind for the rest of the day. “Have the bears ever been in Serenity?” Leahy asked, still on the bears. “If they haven't, I'm sure we could get Whipple to bring them out there for our photographers,” Ernie deadpanned. Leahy blinked twice, nodded thoughtfully. “You know what? I bet they just might, if we told them they were going to be the centerpiece for the page. And I know just the place: Founders Park, out by the lake. Maybe swinging on the swings with some of the neighborhood kids.... You suppose bears know how to hang on to swings?” Ernie shrugged helplessly. “Well, anyway, see what you can do, bear-wise.” Ernie shrugged again and nodded weakly. He had no intention of asking anybody to do any such thing. He had learned long ago that when it came to idiotic suggestions from editors, a shrug and a noncommittal nod were the best response. “I'm thinking of having an extra twenty thousand copies printed to be distributed free at the Jubilee. You know, kind of a souvenir issue for all the national and international media that will be there. Give ourselves a little exposure.” Leahy picked up a putter leaning against the wall. With a toe he scattered a handful of golf balls on the carpet, then set a rimmed cup in their midst. Ernie said, “If the Clean Team comes in right now, am I an accomplice to this unauthorized use of company floor space, or do you take the fall yourself?” Leahy shot him a wry smile and missed another three-footer. “Cynicism versus skepticism, Ernie. Remember that.” Three shots later, there were still no balls in the cup, and Ernie forced himself to look away from his boss's ineptitude. Every month or so, he felt obliged to accept Jack's invitation to play a round at their gated subdivision's, Jack Nicklaus-designed, championship course. The pure displeasure of these outings usually provided him with three weeks worth of excuses not to play again. “You know, we really ought to hit the links soon,” Leahy said. “It's been, what, a month?” “So you want me to finish writing twenty-first century dealership first? Or get right on Serenity?” Ernie asked quickly. Jack Leahy paused to think about it. “I'd really like to get the dealership into the paper by the end of the month. Their grand opening is in August. How about if you start on Serenity tomorrow and finish writing the dealership story when you can? Speaking of which, how's the Mercedes?” Ernie had started to move for the door when he turned back with a sigh. Like it wasn't enough working with the man, and then living in the same exclusive neighborhood. He'd had to compound things further by agreeing to go car-shopping with him a few months earlier. Buying two cars at once, they had figured, would save them each an extra few thousand dollars. “The car's fine.” “It's not a car. It's a Mercedes. And it's not just fine. A Honda Civic is fine. A Chevy Corsica is fine. A Mercedes, my friend, is an exquisite piece of engineering. An infusion of art into the everyday,” Leahy enthused. “I can't tell you how much I look forward to even short drives, now.” As much as he hated to, Ernie found himself agreeing. As stupid as it sounded, his time each morning and each evening in his S500 had become a thing to savor. Leahy clucked as he resumed hitting golf balls. “I hate to say I told you so, but you should have gotten the convertible. I've lost count of all the fine, young female specimens who check me out at stoplights. I pretend not to notice, especially if Lynda's in the car. Don't need to get slapped, after all. But a good-looking, single guy like you....” For a moment Ernie saw himself in Jack's cream-colored SL500, cruising top-down along A1A, his favorite part of the road, up in Flagler County where it paralleled the red sand beach on one side and coastal marsh on the other, a beautiful brunette beside him. No, a blonde. Maybe ... one particular blonde. Maybe Stephanie.... He shook himself free and reached for the door. “Thanks, but I like my car all the same. Good old fashioned frame. Safer in a rollover, all that.” Leahy retrieved his golf balls and put them back in a jar on his credenza. “Whatever. But you get a hot date and need to borrow a one-hundred-percent, guaranteed babe magnet, you just let me know.” Ernie once more made for the door. “Oh, hey, hey, hey, before you go: Remember we have that Circulation Task Force meeting next week about that eighteen- to thirty-year-old male problem. You do remember, right? Market penetration fourteen percent? Sports came up with the idea of having Mountain Mathis cover City Hall as a way of luring those readers. I'm not sure about that. I'd think he'd need some pretty heavy editing.” Mountain Mathis was the Orlando Magic's seven-foot-two, three-hundred-pound center. The man could barely write his own name, Ernie knew. He had a seven-million-dollar house filled with arcade games and not a single book, according to a loving profile the paper had done some time back. “No, Jack, I don't think Mountain would be a good idea.” “I thought not,” Jack Leahy agreed. “So what have you come up with?” Ernie hadn't given the problem a second thought since Jack had appointed him to the committee a month earlier. “Tits,” he said. Leahy blinked twice. “Excuse me?” “Like in England,” Ernie deadpanned as he opened the door. “Page Three girls. Birds of the day. Think about it.” * * * Lew Peters walked, arms crossed, toward the end of Front Street to survey the new bandshell at the east edge of Portofino Square. He led his entourage through a buzz of activity, with some workmen laying brick pavers, others installing bulbs in the old-fashioned streetlights, and still others putting a second coat of white paint on wooden pilings along the lakefront seawall. “The bleachers,” his external affairs vice president pointed, “will go there. Capacity about two thousand. Folding chairs in front up to the foot of the bandshell, another thousand, and then families who want to set up blankets on the lawn can do that, too. I'm thinking we'll have four thousand of the five thousand residents in attendance.” Lew Peters scowled. “Why not the other thousand?” The vice president tugged at his tie uncomfortably. “I suppose we could make it a requirement. I just thought it would be easier to generate applause if we had mainly those who wanted to be there. Plus, trust me, sir, this is not a big site. Four thousand plus all the tourists will look really crowded.” “Okay, fine. Four thousand. But let's make sure we take attendance. Keep a record of those who don't show up. Turn it over to Sheriff Albright for his files.” Ferret Albright said nothing as he followed Peters and the vice president along the Promenade, occasionally looking downward and back over his shoulder whenever they walked past a woman in high heels. The vice president made a note on his clipboard. “Consider it done, sir,” he murmured, then pointed left and right. “There and there will be the risers for the cameras. The satellite trucks can park on Front Street. And our production van will go right there.” Peters asked: “How many cameras?” “So far seventy-four. Of those, fourteen will be broadcasting live. Another twenty-seven stations, mainly foreign, won't be here physically, but will be using our feed and doing live commentary from their home countries.” Lew Peters grunted and walked down to the waterfront, where tiny wavelets on the lake splashed against the concrete wall. In another week, the entire seawall was to be packed with boats tied stern-to, like they did in the real Portofino, and dressed out in full colors. It would be the biggest party the world had seen since Millennium Eve in Times Square. Headliner acts from morning until midnight, celebrities out the yin-yang, all to commemorate the twin anniversaries of Waldo Whipple World's Twenty-Fifth and Serenity's Fifth. Actually, the two were four months, one week and three days apart, but Peters had decided to roll them together for hype's sake into one, glorious Whipple Jubilee that would also serve as the official ribbon-cutting for the latest profit center, the Chataqua-like Whipple Institute. “WBC will be here live all day,” the vice president continued. “The anchors from the news division will take turns hosting. Oh, and they agreed to preempt championship figure skating in the afternoon and Who Wants to Be Adopted by a Millionaire that night.” “How gracious of them,” Peters said. “Now I won't have to fire them. Sponsorships all set?” The vice president flipped a page. “Yes, sir. Our corporate sponsors total one-point-three million. A couple of them asked again about hanging a banner, and I told them you said if they didn't stop complaining, you'd take their names out of the program, too. Our costs came in at just under eight hundred thousand instead of the original eight-fifty, thanks to your labor suggestion, so we'll see a profit of five hundred thousand.” “Excellent.” Peters began walking back toward the bandshell, eyes closed as he calculated. “Five hundred thou return on outlays of two-point-one over seven months.... Not too shabby, eh? Now if Serenity could generate those kinds of numbers consistently, we wouldn't have to be so hard on them, would we?” The vice president muttered assent, then tapped his pen on the clipboard's final page. “I believe that's it, sir. As you suggested, the Advocate is doing a piece on Serenity's five-year anniversary as part of their Jubilee special edition for that morning. They asked permission to distribute copies here. I told them you wouldn't mind....” Peters grunted, his eyes squinting down the road, out beyond the edge of downtown where a work crew was erecting a Cyclone fence topped with barbed wire around the base of the water tower. “Sure, whatever. But tell Leahy that in light of the circumstances, we'll be wanting sixty percent of ad revenues, not the usual fifty. It is, after all, our goddamned Jubilee.” Then he turned on Albright. “Mr. Sheriff.” Albright pulled his gaze off a mini-skirted brunette in a pair of platform sandals and instantly moved to his boss's side. “Sir.” “Your forensics department –” Instantly, Peters' aristocratic nose crinkled unhappily and sniffed at the air. “Good God, man, what have you been in? You reek of dead cat.” Ferret Albright blinked, once more confounded by Peters' uncanny sense of smell. On his second week at Whipple World, Albright had reorganized his collection before work one morning. Hours later, Peters had told him he smelled like shoe leather. “Snow leopard, sir” Albright answered. Lew Peters narrowed his eyes and regarded his security chief severely. “This isn't some new fetish of yours, is it?” Then he raised a palm to forestall an answer. “Forget it. I don't want to know. Your forensics people, have they come to any conclusions yet regarding this morning's vandalism?” Albright eyed the water tower up and down, once again nice and shiny and white and unadorned save for the muskrat ears. “No sir, not yet. The banner was six flat sheets taped together. No name brand, could have been purchased at any Wal-Mart in Central Florida. The lettering was spray paint. Nothing special about it, either. We're still trying to lift some hairs from the duct tape.” He patted Peters on the shoulder. “Don't you worry about it, sir. We'll track down whoever did it.” Lew Peters unhappily regarded the spot on his polo shirt where Albright had touched him. “Sheriff, I know who did it, as do you. It was those Serenity Weathermen assholes.” “Serenity Underground, sir,” Albright corrected. “Whatever. Fucking vermin is what they are. Rodents. I don't need to tell you, Albright, that I expect not one peep out of them during the Jubilee. Not so much as a paper napkin with that stupid W-W-W-S crap. Understand?” Albright, eyes lowered, grunted. “They are vermin, Mr. Albright. Your job is pest control. If you don't stay on top of them, they'll multiply uncontrollably.” Lew Peters watched as the workmen held a branch against the electrified chain link until it burst into flames. “If you can't handle it, we may well need a new sheriff in town. Got that?” * * * With blonde in wobbly stillettos in tow, Mayor Dickie Gillespie hustled through the deserted but still lighted Old Towne Square, across the shortcut through FutureWorld, skirted the moat for Prince Charming's Palace and headed directly up the exit ramp into the unloading area for the Good World ride. “Hey,” the blonde complained through her chewing gum. “We're goin' the wroo-ong way, Mr. Gillespie. Says right they-uh: exit.” Gillespie ignored her and kept moving up the ramp. She had great legs, good tits and not even a trace of the ridiculous Brooklyn accent in her singing voice. Which is to say she had cleared the first hurdles on the road to a mezzo-soprano slot Gillespie had in his Millennial Revue. There was only one audition left. They reached the top of the ramp and came to a shallow slough filled with a line of empty boats that extended into a dark tunnel. He released her wrist to move behind a control console against the wall. She bent over to pull off one shoe and massage her foot. “For Goo-od's sake, Mr. Gillespie, if you'd a told me we were gonna run the whole way, I'd a taken my shoes oo-off!” Dickie Gillespie grunted, studying the row of switches, finally threw a series of white ones. The water in the slough began flowing, a dim series of night lights came on in the tunnel. And echoing through the tunnel came distant singing, noticeably out of phase between one side and the other: It's a world of sunshine, a world of fun.... Gillespie quickly dragged the blonde into the lead boat just as it began slipping down the tunnel. Impatiently he undid his Sansabelts and pulled them to his ankles, then watched with increasing interest as the blonde pulled her cotton blouse over her head and reached around her back to undo her bra. “I swear to Goo-od I don't understand how come we just can't get a room,” she complained as heavy white breasts burst free and settled on his knobby knees. He pointed skyward and put a finger to his lips: “Listen!” The boat emerged from the tunnel into a cavern filled with miniature landmarks from around the globe as tiny, animatronic puppets finished their refrain: ... a good world, yes it is! It's a good world, yes it is! It's a really good world! “Hear that? I've worked in this place seven years, and I can say with all sincerity, I hate this fuckin' song! But this night forward? When I hear it, I'm gonna remember this. Now, you want in the Millennial Revue or not?” The puppets, after a short bridge, began again in a new key as the blonde bent to Dick Gillespie's boxer shorts, stopped, then reached into her mouth to remove her gum and began looking around the boat. “Now what?” he demanded. With an index finger she stuck the gum onto the boat's gunwale. “Savin' it for later.” * * * Her eyes bleary from yet another fifteen-hour day, Emma Whipple put the finishing touches to the great Seal Dismemberment Cover-Up: a cover letter for the lifetime, All-Parks Whipple World Passports for the reporters and camera crews who had filmed the debacle, and then oh-so-graciously turned over their videotape afterward. She had already sent out one-day tickets for all the children and their immediate families and one-month passes for the teachers and administrators of Willow Run Elementary. A grand total of $51,000 in graft. At least, she thought sourly, she hadn't needed to argue the necessity of this one with her boss. The authorization letter had been waiting on her desk when she got back from the Dominion, along with the memo reminding her, in all capital letters, that under the terms of the visiting media members' credentials, all audio or video recordings of events on Whipple Corporation grounds were Whipple Corporation property, and unauthorized release would be considered actionable. No such threats, of course, had been necessary. The reporters had salivated at the thought of the lifetime passes, face value $9,995, and had happily agreed that Sammy's demise was but a tragic accident, and surely there was no reason to ruin an otherwise perfect Grand Opening by mentioning it to anyone back at the station, let alone to the general public. Emma took a long breath and blew it out slowly. Such had become her life. In the best light, she took Whipple's circumstances on any particular day and gave them the most favorable spin possible. In the worst light, she lied for a living. A lackluster world's fair with blatantly commercial sponsorship had been sold as a forward-thinking, global showcase. A sixty-dollar-a-day zoo became a research center for threatened species. The careless slaughter of a baby seal became a non-event. It hadn't, of course, started out that way. The great-niece of Waldo Emerson Whipple himself, Emma had come to work at Whipple World fresh out of college, starting in hotel management, moving to finance, then external affairs. She was the only Whipple child in her generation remotely drawn to the company, the rest of the relatives developing an interest only after Uncle Waldo died suddenly and distributed the entertainment empire in pro-rated pieces across his extended family. The company declined precipitously for four years during the squabbling. Upgrades and renovations, indeed, all capital projects, were put on hold, then forgotten. Feature films didn't get made. The animation studio all but shut down. So when a management group led by consumer finance king Lew Peters promised to reorganize the company, to make it healthy again, Emma had inwardly cheered as her greedy relatives took their ill-gotten gains and handed over their pieces of their family legacy to a professional. It took only a few months after the public offering for Emma to start reappraising Peters. Gone forever, she realized, was Uncle Waldo's at times eccentric emphasis on top-quality entertainment at the expense, if need be, of bigger profits. Instead, everything was driven by profits. Admission prices were raised once, sometimes twice a year, even as park staff was cut. Water fountains were eliminated while soda cups were shrunk and the prices, naturally, raised. And then, when the good times hit and the money started rolling in, Peters had gone on a buying spree of every undervalued company on Wall Street, regardless of its core business. Uncle Waldo's little amusement park company now owned such things as Whitney Pharmaceuticals, World Broadcasting System, Fontaine Auto Auctions, Pace Communications, a raft of dot-coms, a big piece of Roper-Joyner Tobacco, a majority interest in a record studio known for its artists who liked to cuss, and controlling interest in the Southeast's biggest chain of pawnshops. The latest rumors included a secret takeover of a newspaper chain and a behind-the-scenes partnership with Las Vegas's second-biggest casino. For the first year or two, Emma was treated with quiet respect when she reminded her bosses that her great-uncle had stood for family and quality first, a fair value second and profits last. By the third and fourth years, deference became tolerance, and by the fifth, barely concealed impatience. Over the past few years, she had come to accept that she wasn't going to change the way Peters ran things. She knew Peters would never dare to fire her – to oust the only remaining Whipple at the Whipple Corporation would generate far more bad press than it was worth – but she could see that her job would grow increasingly insignificant compared to her title. “Associate Vice President for External Affairs,” was what her business card said. One of a team of flacks, was what she was, responsible for press releases about Wild Dominion and Serenity. When Uncle Waldo had been alive, she was being groomed for upper management, rotating through the divisions to learn the company through and through. That stopped abruptly when Peters brought in his own management team, and Emma was left to languish in the department she happened to be in at the time of Waldo's stroke. At first, she had dreamed of a shareholder revolt: a grassroots uprising against Peters' mercenary, un-Waldo-like worship of the bottom line. It eventually dawned on her that shareholders liked Peters' way of doing things, and she, not he, was out of touch. Merely embodying her uncle's dreams wasn't going to make them real. She realized she had waited too long to cut bait and move on. Now, at age thirty-six, she was single, not even dating, and her biological clock echoed ever louder in her head. By year's end, she promised herself for the hundredth time, she would reevaluate, decide then where to go and what to do. But until then, she would get Waldo Whipple World through the latest crisis brought about by Lew Peters' expansionary zeal. They had built a wild-animal park as big as the one in San Diego without any of the necessary but expensive wild-animal expertise on staff. They were now taking the first steps to challenge Sea World without any marine mammal expertise or even any common sense. How else to explain an unsecure boundary between an Arctic ringed seal and its natural predator? Emma cleared her head of such thoughts and returned to the cover letter. She gave it a final once-over and stuck the six copies in their individual overnight envelopes for delivery the following morning. She put all six envelopes in her out basket and removed the one remaining item from her in basket. With a deep sigh, she began reading yet another necropsy on yet another dead Dominion animal, this time a snow leopard. Like the previous necropsies, this one, too, was essentially useless. No surprise, really, given that the forensics “vet” was really the chef at UPSVIL's Mongolian Village. He had taken a couple of veterinary courses in a community college once, and Peters didn't want to spend the money for a real animal pathologist. The animal's carcass, it seemed, had washed up on the shore of the Serenity River, half eaten by vultures. Or perhaps an alligator. The vet-chef wasn’t sure. Emma read through the meager report a second time, then set it down on her desk. She put her fingers to her keyboard and began, almost somnambulantly to type a press release about the tragic death of Sorley the Snow Leopard – wholly natural and therefore not newsworthy. She attributed his demise to a condition he had before Whipple had acquired him. She reconsidered that for a minute, but put her queasiness aside. The necropsy, after all, hadn't specifically ruled such a thing out, and given its inconclusiveness, her theory seemed as good as any. Following standard operating procedure for bad news, she postdated the release and put a sticky note on it indicating that it should be sent out Friday after 6 p.m. – late enough to miss Friday's newscasts and, she hoped, Saturday's papers. With any luck, it would not be noticed until Monday, when most media outlets would deem it too stale to mention at all. She felt more than a little greasy, like she did each time her job forced her to cross the gray area between stretching the truth and flat-out lying, and decided she would take a nice, hot bath when she got home. And then she remembered the date and groaned. It was her night for Promenade duty, and she was running late. Porch duty and downtown duty she didn't mind, but Promenade duty she couldn't abide. Her choices were jogging, which she hated, or walking the town's big, dumb, slobbering Labradors, which she hated even more. She gathered up her purse and made for the door – when she noticed the sheet of paper in the output tray of her fax machine. She set down her purse and sat back down at her desk. She would definitely be late for Promenade duty, but at least she would be able to claim an excused tardiness. With her eyes scanning the police report from the Whipple Sheriff's Office, her fingers began typing out another press release. A gray 1992 Saab had been found at the bottom of the retention pond in the middle of the cloverleaf of the Turnpike’s exit for Serenity. No sign of the driver. Per standard operating procedure with this sort of item, Emma did not mention in the news release that it was the third such car found in the pond in as many months.
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