Slither - Edward Lee [30]
"Wait a minute," Trent said as they were about to go back to the row of head shacks. "I was going to take a shower."
"Go ahead," Nora told him.
"Just get a broom," Loren added, "and sweep the things out. They won't bite."
Loren and Nora walked away with their specimens.
Trent looked back at the shower curtain and grimaced. "Maybe I'll skip the shower for now," he muttered.
CHAPTER SIX
(I)
Banks of gray-black murk chased the sun behind the horizon. Slydes nodded his approval as the weatherworn cabin cruiser churned ahead. The darker, the better, he thought at the wheel. Clear nights were so much riskier.
Ruth sat hunched at the bow, her feet dangling off the side as she watched for other boats. Not much traffic this far off Clearwater, but they always had to sweat the local police marine patrols and the Natural Resources boats.
Everything looked nice and clear.
Jonas could be heard clattering belowdecks, making room for what they'd be bringing back: several pounds of high-grade hydroponic marijuana.
They'd only started growing it at the island a few years ago, and since then, Slydes was secretly jealous. His brother's product dwarfed his gator poaching profits. But we're family, he reminded himself. Share and share alike. Jonas took care of the brainy horticulture stuff, while Slydes took care of details, like getting them on and off the island quickly, gauging the tides and the weather. Ruth was just squeeze, but she helped in her ways too-Mainly in bed, he thought, but she had lots of street contacts and helped out immeasurably in their sideline jobs, like pawning stolen goods, jacking ATMs with cards they ripped off, and helping the brothers bury the occasional body.
It was a system that worked.
"Is it high tide yet?" Ruth called back from the railed prow.
Slydes swigged more beer, burped, then nodded. "And there's the island."
A mile ahead, the island's bulk began to form in the murk.
It was a great gig. Before they'd found out about it, Jonas truly was a pissant pot grower. They rented rooms in some of the bum motels, and that's where Jonas set up his hydroponic gear, but these days the narcs were wise to everything, eyeballing erratic and nontypical electricity bills. Fuckers think of everything, Slydes bemoaned. He didn't smoke weed himself (beer and women were all he needed), but the market couldn't be better. And the stuff Jonas was growing was so topdrawer he was getting a rep as the man with the best. All the punks and college kids in these beach towns? They couldn't buy enough of the stuff. Hydro was the New Deal, and Jonas was cornering the market.
Because of the island.
The way it worked was like this: The bigger the plants grew, the more potent the THC, but you needed a place big enough to grow them past ten feet. Solution: the island. And you needed square footage, too. The average dupe could grow a plant or two in his apartment without anyone getting wise, which didn't amount to anything but small-time dealing. But what if you had a place where you could grow hundreds of plants? And keep twenty-four hours of light on them without having to worry about the narcs getting wind of your sky-high power bill?
Again, the solution was the island.
All the space we need, free electricity, free running water, and twenty foot ceilings, Slydes thought. A pot grower's dream.
"Got my stows all ready," Jonas said when he came up from the cabin. They'd rigged some panels to pop out just behind the head. "But look what I found." Jonas giggled.
He held up a -severed foot.
Slydes stared with alarm, then remembered. "Oh yeah, that ritzy business-looking chick we carjacked last week." They'd pinched a chunk of change off her, all right. Fancy laptop, big-ass wedding ring, not to mention her Mercedes, which they'd sold to the chop shop. They'd brought her back to the boat for a little party, but as they'd been dragging her clothes off, she'd kicked Slydes a swift one in the nuts. Hadn't planned to kill the bitch, he thought, but, shit, she asked for it. He figured the best way to teach