Synopsis

Trix and Elaine find a man dead in a downtown Sarasota parking lot. He has $10,000 in his pocket in $100 bills. Why was Harlen Reed killed? It wasn’t for the money. Trix soon uncovers that Harlan was wandering the streets giving money to the homeless. 

Was this direct giving initiative the reason he was murdered?

Trix and Lester follow a convoluted and dangerous trail to answer that question. They soon discover that with hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts at stake to “solve the homeless problem”, there are those who consider direct giving to be direct competition. 

While following people and instinct from Spearfish, SD to Warsaw, Poland, Trix and Lester confirm there is a homeless industry ripe for monopolization. Dead bodies signal this is not an industry being consolidated by polite lawyers and genteel businessmen.

The unscrupulous and greedy are one step ahead, have a plan, and uncovering that plan could prove fatal.

Chapter 1.

They brought her from the delivery room and asked if I would like to hold her. If that’s the tradition, you bet.

If it’s an evangelical movie and the epiphany is a scene of personal conversion, we’ll hear an orchestra in the background. Lots of strings, a slow crescendo. Light filtered through muslin shines on the heroine’s angelic face. Her eyes are wide, perhaps the funnel through which the Holy Spirit seeps into her soul.

If it’s a black-leather-jacket movie, the hero is on his knees, stroking the forehead of his dead fiancée, the blossom of blood expanding unevenly on her white blouse. The camera then scans rapidly across the impatient faces of surly drivers who pound their car horns and want only for the body to be removed so they can continue to the nowhere that they mistakenly believe is somewhere. As her eyes close slowly and permanently, he lifts her head. One lonely tear slaloms down his cheek. His loss can never be recovered.

And if it’s an accomplished lecher who once started with the ankle and worked his way slowly up to the smile, bypassing heart, soul, mind and spirit, it’s holding his first baby for the first time.

Who knew she would be the most beautiful child ever born?

A life-changing subatomic vapor was infused through my body. How did that happen? What was it?

No violins, no blaring car horns, no careful lighting and dramatic shadows. I kissed her forehead. I realized what it was.

It was the nascent love of a father for his newborn daughter.

There are many experiences in life that people would have forgone if they had known what it would be like. Several medical procedures I’ve endured come to mind. A week of night-aggressor military training in a cold, wet forest is on the list. Add to that a couple college classes, several blind dates and a beer-chugging contest. Not to forget combat.

Enduring long, sleepless nights would tempt one to put “raising a child” on that list. Last night was one of those. So was the night before.

We had a small library—a very small library, three books—both guiding and reaffirming our childrearing practices: the most recent edition of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Childcare and the first two in the What to Expect series.

We quickly discovered that Spock was no longer tolerated among the intelligentsia because he had no tolerance for tolerant parenting. Evangelicals, ultra-liberals, contrarians and hunters who shoot pheasants from two feet are all delighted to have Spock as such an easy target.

The What to Expect books appear to provide good counsel from someone who has already done the planning and implementation. That is, until you encounter the unexpected.

And then the unexpected happens. A small cut. No, can’t you see that? It’s a ravine, a deep abyss. There’s nothing about that in the book. Let’s go to Urgent Care. Let’s go to the Mayo Clinic. Can we get a private jet? There’s a specialty clinic in Zurich.

After a couple sleepless nights, you begin to wonder at what age a child can legally be sent to boarding school.

Elaine had taken a kind-of-leave-of-absence (I doubt that’s in the HR manual) from her job as president/executive director of the Unbroken Shore Foundation, a significantly large foundation in southwest Florida. The kind-of bit meant that she could sit in front of a desk and computer at home instead of a desk and computer in the office. That, of course, was during moments when she wasn’t practicing mindful child raising.

The first year had lasted about five years. The second year looked to only be about three years. We weren’t at all sure if this was linear or geometric progress, and if the latter, what did the graph look like? Did it mean that the third year would seem like a year, the fourth like half a year? At that rate, by the time the kid is fifteen, snap a finger and she’s sixteen. A shame this function isn’t inverted. I’d like to snap a couple times and get the kid in pre-school. It’s that sleepless night thing.

We both realized that it was important to have some quiet time together. That, of course, meant that we had to hire a squad of Rangers and a paramedical staff, just in case.

Fortunately, we found all that in one woman.

Occasionally we stopped by the Varsity Room on Friday evenings for a glass of Happy Hour wine. It was mostly to meet people new to Black Forest Country Club. So far they had all been people who were better people than the wine was wine.

Jané—pronounced zha-nay—was a relatively young retired Air Force Colonel, M.D. who had served in the medical service. Not only did she have a grandchild in Ohio, she kept fit by taking self-defense courses. She was in the middle of a C.O.B.R.A. course: Combat Objective Battle Ready Applications. As a divorced, attractive, financially secure resident of an exclusive country club, she said, some needy, groping asshole she met online could promptly be dissuaded from the idea she was fruit for the plucking.

Hard to call her a babysitter. More like a Self-contained Combat, Medical and Nurturing Unit, though that makes for a lousy acronym.

Elaine wanted to have dinner at Pascone’s, an Italian restaurant five minutes from our home in Naughty Pines. The developer of BFCC loved all things English. He named each of the other thirty-two communities after areas in England—Mayfair, Eaton, Notting Hill, Wimbledon, etc. But the thirty-third he named Naughty Pines. Bust a gut, that English humor.

My view was that if you were that close to home, you hadn’t really left home. Elaine begrudgingly conceded to a walk through the downtown, twenty minutes away, then pop into a restaurant without a reservation. Pretty daring, that.

It was late winter. Normally at this time of the year, the snowbirds (seasonal residents) had settled into their southern nests, and the ponds, and the fields, and the byways. Which meant the concert halls were fully booked, restaurants had waiting lists, you could listen to a full quarter-hour episode of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar

Jané’s idea of being on time was being early. Having earned some bruises in close combat training, I inquired about her C.O.B.R.A. course. She offered to demonstrate a few moves. Since the flooring in the entire house was tile, I declined. Mind you, I would have declined if the flooring were goose down. There were simply too many things in the house that were breakable. Including me.

Elaine had typed up a list of instructions. Do this if, don’t worry about that, don’t forget to, all that. Jané had seen this list several times. She had lived through these things with her child and grandchild. The list was for Elaine. A way to preempt guilt if anything should happen.

We did the almost-kisses-on-the-cheek bit and off we went, with Elaine looking over her shoulder.

For decades, Sarasota was touted as one of the unnoticed gems in a Florida crown that included West Palm Beach, St. Augustine, St. Pete, Boca Raton, and Orlando. Fifty other communities would argue that they should be on that crown.

And then Sarasota became noticed.

Look at the lovely little sandcastles we can build in our sandbox, we said. And many came to build sandcastles. But after a while, there was no room for both people and little sandcastles. So they began to build very tall sandcastles. And still there was not enough room. They moved the two-by-fours on the north and south and east sides of the sandbox. Many were disturbed that they were now inside and not outside of the sandbox. They began to have meetings. They would beat their pails with little shovels and demonstrate and insist that the rules had been changed.

But the sandcastles grew taller and the two-by-fours were again moved. And again.

Here’s another way to look at it. One day last week I noticed the difference between the low temperature in northern Minnesota and the high temperature in Sarasota was one hundred and thirteen degrees.

If I’m from Duluth, I’m going to drive down in my Ford F-350 and help pull those two-by-fours back a little bit farther so there’ll be room for me.

It had been a while since we had wandered the streets downtown. Old restaurants had become new restaurants, rebranded and refurbished with new menus that were old menus with new words to describe the old ingredients that were now farm fresh. A vacant lot was now a hotel that hugged the sidewalk and made one wonder if the term “setbacks” was in the local lexicon.

The town had quickly become condominiumized in the name of walkability for those who wanted an active lifestyle and/or easy access to place of employment. Condo projects normally sold out in advance with eager agents encouraging prospective buyers to sign up on the waiting list.

Occasionally a millennial editor in the local paper will write a

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