Dirty Old Manatee by Ward Parker

Author:Ward Parker [Parker, Ward]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mad Mangrove Media
Published: 2021-01-30T23:00:00+00:00

13

The Wages of Amorality

"What are these difficulties you mention?" Myron Hickey asked Manny Rodriguez, who had called him right before Myron's meeting with his biggest client.

"Nothing to be overly concerned with," Manny said. His tone was anxious, though. "There are indications that our work is no longer secret."

"Such as?"

"One of my guys got arrested."

"He got busted for dumping the chemicals?"

"No. For attacking a woman who was snooping in the facility where the chemicals are mixed."

"Who cares if she was snooping? It's a brewery. No one would know what they're putting in the barrels."

"This was right after we caught a guy spying on our crew delivering barrels to the boats. There had to be a connection."

"As long as it's not the EPA or the Fish and Wildlife Service, I'm not concerned," Myron said.

“Well, last night a distribution operation was broken up. A boat was damaged. One of Mr. Pistaulover’s boats.”

Now this was becoming more serious. Now Myron realized why Pistaulover had demanded the meeting he was about to walk into. He was actually grateful for Manny giving him the heads-up, so he didn’t get ambushed.

“What exactly happened?” he asked.

“Mothers for Manatees. It was like a commando raid. The boat was being loaded at a waterfront restaurant after hours. The guys thought it would be safer to do it there rather than a public boat ramp after they caught that guy spying on them. It would have gone down flawlessly if those old ladies hadn't shown up. And then the police. The drivers got fined for trespassing and the shipment was confiscated.”

“Confiscated?”

Myron was worried about this development. Now the Feds would get involved, wondering why they were dumping the barrels. The only thing that kept him from outright panic was the fact that the “chemical” mixture was technically harmless. The Feds could analyze it all they wanted and all they would find was nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves. There was no way they'd know that black magic played a part in it.

The cover story he had devised for the operation was brilliant. The liquid in the drums was a special autumn beer that failed in the marketplace because everyone was sick of pumpkin pie spices. The brewery had sewer problems and couldn’t dump enough of the beer there. So they’d had to improvise.

The problem with this story was the crews hired to dump it often got the story wrong. And it would be tricky trying to use this excuse if you were caught dumping the barrels into pristine natural springs upstate.

And the worst part of Myron’s predicament was that the Feds would start keeping an eye on their operation. Maybe pumpkin-spice beer wasn’t considered a toxic substance, at least by some, but there were laws against dumping stuff into the environment. Myron needed to look into that. Maybe he could lobby the legislature to pass a bill that gave an exception to pumpkin-spice beer.

“What do you want us to do?” Manny asked.

“Stick with the plan. The next manatee census is later this year. We’re running out of time to kill manatees.

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