Free Acts of Nature by Jonathon King

punk floor show. He slid off the stool but froze when a guy in a casino uniform approached the group. It made him nervous and he eased back onto the bar stool and turned his face half away but kept his peripheral vision honed on them. It took him a second to notice the dustpan in the uniformed guy’s hand, a broom in the other. Minimum-wage sweeper boy. He tapped fists all around and then motioned the group back under an overhang. Smart, Buck thought. Kid probably knows where all the cameras are and knows that most of them are focused on the gaming tables and you don’t want to end up on some videotape upstairs. The uniform took something from his pocket and passed it to Wayne, who gave him a small roll of bills in return. A tap of the fists again and they went their separate ways. Wayne, who had been so instructed, looked over at Buck, put one finger to the side of his nose and flicked it. Jesus, Buck thought. Was that the kid’s idea of a high sign? Fucking scene from The Sting. Hell, that film was older than the kid was. Buck signaled the bartender for his check, signed it with Mr. Hall’s scribble, and headed for the parking lot.
    “You cool?”
    Wayne and Marcus looked at each other, shrugging their shoulders like they were afraid to offer up the wrong answer to Buck’s simple question.
    “Uh, yeah,” Wayne finally said and both of them nodded their heads as they climbed into the pickup truck. Marcus took the backseat of the club cab.
    Buck got behind the wheel dunking: Jesus H. I know these two haven’t been smoking pot for at least a couple of hours. How did two human minds get so dense? He let it go.
    “He gave us six possibles,” Wayne said, taking a sheet of paper from his pocket and unfolding it for Buck to see. “Here’s the GPS coordinates for each one so we could use that handheld unit and he said you can get out to the first one in a couple of hours.”
    Buck started the truck engine and looked over at the paper. It was the lined type you used in school, the kind with the three-ring binder holes in it. The numbers made no sense to anyone unaware of global positioning systems, but most of the people in the Glades had been using the GPS to mark fishing grounds and crab trap placements for the last fifteen years. Out on the Gulf waters it had become almost essential, a quick and easy way to find your way on a sea of nothing but bare horizon once you were out beyond sight of land. Then they started miniaturizing the technology so everyone and their grandmother were using the thing now. They even started building them into high-priced cars and even cell phones so you could be a halfwit and still find your way around. It was the way of the world now, Buck thought. Easier and softer. Same with the people. That’s what made them such simple prey. They got fat and comfortable. Might as well have been asking for it.
    “So this sweeper guy knows these camps?”
    “Yeah. His uncle is a kinda contractor and ferries the building supplies and stuff out to these places when they’re building them or redoin’ them all modern. Sometimes this kid goes along with his uncle to load and unload the wood and shingles and plumbing pipes an’ all. They’ve got a big ol’ airboat that lugs it,” Wayne said, rushing on with as much detail as he could so that Buck wouldn’t think he was just stupid and they wouldn’t have just wasted two hundred dollars on the locations and that would really piss Buck off.
    Marcus sat in the back where he always did, watching the backs of the others’ heads. Wayne was stealing his idea, of course, and he’d never get any credit for it if it worked out. But then he figured he also wouldn’t catch all the shit if it didn’t. That was the trade-off.
    Buck looked at the numbers again. He’d have to map them out to have a clue where they were. All three sat in silence for a couple of minutes until Wayne couldn’t take Buck’s lack of response any longer.
    “Toby said this here