On the counter lay Sabin Martinez’s business card. I didn’t consider him a friend, but the fact he’d been a confidant of a man like Harney Chatham was impressive.
Call me, he’d said, if you need help with anything at all. Anything. I’m a problem solver from way back.
The emphasis he’d given the word suggested that he was, indeed, an experienced problem solver.
I studied the card for a moment, then dialed.
When Larry was long gone, I returned to the quiet aft deck of my cruiser, where there are cushioned bench seats and a small teak table. My hands were still shaking. I had to take a moment. I used a first-aid kit and fishing pliers to remove the treble hooks, then called Mr. and Mrs. Gentry’s cell phone. They were my only clients who had an interest in citrus. I didn’t want to believe they’d go behind my back and hire another guide. Not after the talks we’d had about a partnership in developing a biotech patent.
My faith was well placed. Larry had made up a story or had someone else in mind.
“Are you referring to the crazy man who cut off my snook?” Dr. Gentry asked. “Never in a million years would we hire someone like that, my dear. I can tell you’re upset. Do you want to talk about it?”
I shared a few details, minus the threats of violence. “Somehow he knows about you and Mr. Gentry. About what we’re doing. And he used it to scare me-either that or he’s being chartered by someone else who knows.”
“I don’t like this, Hannah. It’s worth checking into. We might have to hire someone to keep an eye on you.”
“You sound worried.”
The woman remained serious but mitigated matters with a calming tone. “In the world of biotech patents, there’s always something to worry about until the patent is actually awarded. No, I’m misleading you. That’s just the start of your worries. During the process, you have data thieves, and leaks of every kind imaginable, and then the international courts to deal with. Science is a noble profession-until money gets involved. Then it’s like any other cutthroat business, only worse because… well, the stakes are so much higher. It’s the foreign companies that fight dirtiest of all. One of India’s recent biotech patents changed the entire economy of Mumbai-more than thirteen billion dollars the first year.”
I cleared my throat. “Did you say billion?”
My fishing client, the famous scientist, replied, “Get used to it. A million is the numerical starting point in this business. The numbers get bigger fast depending on who, and how many companies, want to license whatever intellectual property you happen to own.”
We had never talked money before, just ideas and methods. “Good Lord, Mrs. Gentry, you’re not telling me that-”
“No, no, no, it’s way too early to predict profits. And there seldom are, by the way. But big egos and the chance for big money-or even a piddly little research grant-can be a dangerous combination. That’s what I’m saying, Hannah. The man who threatened you sounds dangerous to begin with. If someone hired him, it can only be to steal whatever it is we’re after. Unless he’s just crazy. Either way, you need to be very, very careful, dear.”
Now I was worried, too. “Someone found out what we’re doing, that’s obvious.”
“They always do. I’ll bounce this off Doug when he gets home. We need to have another meeting anyway because of a conversation I just had. I told you that naturally occurring DNA sequences can’t be patented? That’s true. But I was wrong about my take on a Supreme Court ruling a few years back. There’s a loophole when it comes to seed stock. Monsanto has been patenting seeds under what’s called a stewardship clause. I knew that, but here’s how it applies to us…”
She went into greater detail. As hard as I tried, some of the terminology she used was indecipherable. “I don’t understand any of this,” I said after a while. “I can’t believe you and Mr. Gentry have been kind enough to guide me through the process this far.”
“Kindness begets kindness, my dear,” Dr. Gentry said. “But don’t forget, we’re businesspeople, too. If you can find that early Spanish seed stock, and if the DNA sequencing is even slightly different, we could really be on to something quite substantial, Hannah. There are a lot more ifs regarding their resistance to disease, but let’s save that for later and talk about something serious. How is Roberta, our young mother, getting along?”
There is no excuse for boredom if you live on a boat or own anything that floats bigger than a canoe. Maintenance, if not given daily attention, is guaranteed to become an annual disaster. I spent early Sunday afternoon battling a leak in the Marlow’s stuffing box, which was okay because it was mindless work. It gave me time to run through a list of people who might have hired Larry Luckheim to shadow me or to search for wild oranges.
Not a single client could I name.
He was lying, I decided, but I had no doubt he’d been tailing me for a while. Before the weather had turned foul, I’d spent two days gunkholing local islands and collecting samples of feral citrus and their leaves, plus bark scrapings. On an island off the Estero River, I had also found two prime little seedling trees-juveniles, they were called in the trade. These items all had to be bagged, labeled, and logged just so, as Roberta had demonstrated. The procedure required my full attention, so it was possible that Larry had tailed me, or at least gotten a peek at what I was doing. If true, his motives for lying were cloudy at best, but that was to be expected from a forty-some-year-old man who didn’t shave, and probably didn’t bathe, but who took tango lessons.
I dropped the subject and fixed the leak.
Missing church had left me with a residual feeling of sloth. On Sunday afternoons, the public pool on Pine Island clears two lanes for serious swimmers. Finishing first at high school regionals in the hundred-meter freestyle didn’t qualify me as serious, but I do enjoy a hard swim. The wind had swung northwest, the harbinger of a coming cold front. According to NOAA weather, the temperature would plummet into the low forties tonight, and the breeze already had an icy edge. There was also a bandage on my left bicep, and a laceration the nurse had told me not to get wet. I decided to swim anyway. To doubly ensure discipline, I jotted my workout in pencil and pasted the paper it was on on the tile when I was in the pool.
Warm-up laps are the best for letting the mind wander. After six hundred yards, Larry’s threats had been replaced by thoughts of Kermit Bigalow; images of his kindly smile and fatherly attention to his daughter, Sarah. Of course I would speak to him if he stopped by my boat at seven. I hadn’t actually consented, so maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t. But, if he did, how would I handle it? The news about Mr. Chatham’s will could not be shared; I had promised Sabin Martinez. Even if I hadn’t, it would be an awkward topic. I would soon inherit a portion of the very citrus operation from which he’d been fired, so how would I respond when the subject came up?
No… Kermit hadn’t said “fired.” He’d said that Lonnie had forced him off the property by padlocking his house. What a terrible thing to do to a man and wife with a ten-year-old daughter. Childhood was tough enough without the added hurt of legalities and changing homes.
On my flip turn, my legs snapped around with precision. Feet found the wall in synch. I pushed off… glided, while my legs imitated the thrusting strokes of a dolphin. When I surfaced, the easy flow of thoughts resumed.
Loretta floated into my mind. With her came a weighty sadness. All those years she had lied to me, her own daughter, yet her only regret was that she had sometimes heeded her moral conscience along with the commandments of her faith.