Orchid Blues

HAM STOOD AT ONE END OF THE AIRSTRIP AND watched through the sights of the Barrett’s rifle as a jeep towed a nearly wrecked car across the opposite end, four thousand feet away. The car was moving at about twenty miles an hour, he reckoned.

He led the car a yard and squeezed off the round. A large hole appeared in a rear door of the car. “Do it again,” he said to Peck, who was standing beside him. “And I want to know how fast he’s moving.”

Peck spoke his instructions into a handheld radio, then he turned to Ham. “He says he was doing about fifteen miles an hour.”

“Tell him to speed it up to twenty-five this time,” Ham replied. “Nobody drives that slow on purpose.”

Peck relayed the instructions, and the jeep turned around and started another pass, this time faster.

Ham fired again, and the glass in the front passenger door shattered.

“Of course, the explosive round will take out pretty much everybody in the car.”

“Still, I’d like you to be able to hit the rear-door window every time,” Peck said.

Ham fired the big rifle until they had to stop and let the barrel cool off.

At lunchtime, Ham was sitting with Peck when John came into the dining room.

“Pretty good,” John replied. He produced a cell phone and switched it on. “Tell me something,” he said, “what kind of cell phone signal strength do you get out here?”

“Pretty poor,” Peck said. “Sometimes you have to try half a dozen times to get a call through.”

“Interesting,” John said. He held up his cell phone for Peck to see. Ham saw it, too—there were five bars of signal strength showing in the display. “You know anything about cell phone improvements out here?”

“Haven’t heard a thing,” Peck said. “I tried to use mine a couple of days ago, and I couldn’t get a call out.”

“There’s nothing much out here that would cause them to install a new cell, is there?”

“Not that I can think of. We’re about it for twenty miles or so. Are you worried about this, John?”

“I’m not sure whether to be worried,” he replied. “But I’ve never experienced a sudden improvement in cell phone service. I’ve experienced worse service many times, but never better service. If you were going to install a cell out here, where would you put it?”

“On top of something, I guess. A water tower, a church steeple, a microwave tower. The terrain is flat as a pancake for miles.”

“No, that sort of thing is usually around I-95, to the east, or the Florida Turnpike, to the west.”

“Ham, why don’t you join us? You’re an observant fellow.”

“Sure.” Ham drank the last of his iced tea and followed them to a car outside. Peck drove, John took the shotgun seat and Ham sat in back.

“Take a right and drive to I-95, then turn around and come back,” John said. He held his cell phone up, so that Ham could see it, too. They reached the highway and Peck turned right. “Strong signal all the way to the main road,” John said.

Ham watched the cell phone display and wondered what the hell was going on.

They drove east for a few miles, then John spoke again. “Signal’s dropping. We’re down to two bars.” A couple of minutes later: “Up to three bars, now four.” Ham could see I-95 ahead. “Five bars. Turn the car around.”

Peck made a U-turn and the same phenomenon occurred. “Drive right past our turn,” John said, watching the phone. “Five bars at our turn,” he said. A few miles later: “Signal’s dropping—three, now two. The no-signal light is on. Turn around.”

“Ham,” John said, “did you notice anything unusual along our route?”

“There was a power company van pulled over a few miles back, and a man up a pole, but I don’t know if you’d call that unusual.”

“Normally, not,” John said, “but I wonder why the hell we’re suddenly getting such good cell phone service out here. There’s the power company van, Peck. Slow down as we go by.”

The car drove slowly past the van, and everybody had a good look.

“One man up the pole,” Ham said. “The van doors were closed.”

“Yes,” John said. He watched his cell phone signal all the way to Peck’s house. “Peck,” he said as they pulled to a stop, “anybody you know of have a cell phone out here?”

“I asked everybody,” Peck said, “and I collected a dozen, including Ham’s. Why?”

“Because I wonder if somebody has a phone we don’t know about, and if somebody else has suddenly improved service in the area just so he can make a few calls.”

“You want me to conduct a search of the whole compound?”

“No. If there’s a phone here, I doubt if we’d find it. I want someone to monitor a scanner on the cell phone frequencies, though. We just might pick up something.” He turned to Ham. “I understand there was a boat near the bunkhouse last night.”

“Yes, there was,” Ham said. “I went outside to sleep, because a snorer was keeping me awake; Jimmy woke me up in the middle of the night and pointed out the boat. It appeared to be an empty dinghy that someone hadn’t tied up right.”

“I watched it for a good half an hour while I was trying to get back to sleep, and it never moved in the water. Later on, a breeze came up from the north, and it must have blown back where it came from.”

“I don’t know how big a cell phone transmitter is, but I wouldn’t think you could get one into a small dinghy.”

“You’re right,” John said. “The dinghy must have been a coincidence. I don’t think the signal strength is an accident, though. I want a twenty-four-hour watch on the scanner, Peck, and I want somebody to drive past that power company truck every hour. I want to see how long it stays there.”

Ham wondered if this had something to do with the cell phone delivered to him, the one lying on the bottom of Lake Winachobee.