Late Tuesday afternoon just before sunset, Gannon was at his bungalow in Tarpum Head.
In his favorite pair of camo cargo cutoff shorts and the last of his clean button-down shirts, he was out on his covered back porch, lying back on a plastic chaise.
There was a warm bottle of beer in his hand, and he took a sip of it, looking out on things. On his backyard. On the thorny brush that edged it. On the blue glitter of the Caribbean to the south.
He’d come home around dawn and wolfed down the entire half tray of lasagna he had made two days before and proceeded to sleep like the dead. He’d woken up around three in the afternoon and had to call a resort he had just started working for to apologize for the diving appointment that he had missed.
“If this happens one more time, you’re fired,” the manager had screamed at him.
“You got it,” Gannon had said pleasantly before he hung up. “Goodbye now.”
He was freed up now, wasn’t he? he thought, smiling, as he put his hands behind his head in the warm breeze.
Freed up in a whole entirely new way.
He yawned and listened to the birds chirp in the warmth of the evening. He had just taken a shower, and his hair was still wet. He thought about bringing out the little Bluetooth speaker to get some tunes going, but he was too comfortable.
He looked out across the crabgrass. Alongside the edge of his yard were three chewed-up tennis balls he had forgotten to throw away. They had belonged to his late-departed boxer, Buster, who had died of old age two months before.
For the twentieth time, he told himself that he needed to find a new dog. Fishing, especially, had always been so much finer with Buster beside him. But something always seemed to come up.
He lifted his beer again.
It was probably because his good old Buster was so awesome, Gannon thought. He didn’t want to replace him yet. That was it.
He sipped his beer and nodded.
It was out of respect.
He closed his eyes and thought about all the problems he could erase now. The loan on the boat, the one on the house, the costly leak in the line between the Rambler’s tank and the fuel pump he was ignoring. Wipe those pesky critters away with one swipe.
Not right away, of course, he thought with a smile. No, no, no. He would wait and wait and wait. All he had to do was wait now. He sighed. He had no problem with that. When he put his mind to it, he could be quite a patient man.
He smiled. What was especially delicious was the secret of the whole thing. He had nothing to do with the local area of Little Abaco. He knew no one up there. There was no way to know that he had been there.
Besides, even if they surmised that the money had been picked up by someone, there were what? Five thousand fishing and pleasure boats in the Bahamas? Ten?
It made him giddy how free and clear he was.