'Say a man takes his boat out fishing on Christmas Eve, though he has virtually no history of fishing,' Victoria said. 'And his pregnant wife disappears the same day. Months later, her body and the baby's body wash up onshore in nearly the same place as the guy went fishing. A place the guy went back to when he claimed he was somewhere else.'
'The Scott Peterson case,' Junior said, unlocking the doors.
'His defense compounded too many improbables,' Victoria said, as they walked into a darkened room that seemed cooler than the rest of the house.
Steve smiled to himself. As much as Victoria complained about his lawyering, she was picking up his techniques.
'Steve's created a mathematical formula around the theory,' she continued.
'One of Solomon's Laws,' Steve said. 'I call it squaring the improbables: 'If you have one chance in three of convincing jurors of an improbable event, you have one chance in nine of convincing them of two, and-' '
'One chance in eighty-one of convincing them of three,' Bobby calculated.
'Exactly. In other words, no chance in hell.'
Junior flicked on a light switch, and a tiny spotlight in the perimeter of the ceiling came on. They were in a huge, windowless room, bathed in shadows. 'What I'm going to show you,' Junior said, 'only a few people have seen. Stubbs was one of them.'
Steve squinted, trying to make out the shape rising from the middle of the room, but could see nothing but shadows. This was all a bit theatrical for his taste. He had the feeling that Junior was putting on a show for them. Or more likely, just for Victoria.
'You have to know something about my background for this to make any sense,' Junior said. With the four of them standing in the half-light of the cool room, Junior spent the next few minutes explaining that over the years, with all the time he spent on the water, he'd become a deeply committed environmentalist.
The whole range of do-gooder ocean projects. Junior said he'd given away chunks of money to environmental groups, probably, he thought now, as penance for his father's actions. Hal Griffin, his son admitted, was a one-man tsunami when it came to ecosystems. Blowing opponents out of the water, literally sinking a Greenpeace boat in Sydney Harbor by ramming it with a barge. His old man was a major-league pillager, an All-Pro despoiler, his projects a dishonor roll of moneymaking, havoc-wreaking, eco-disasters. Eroded beaches from shoreline condos in the Philippines, massive fish kills off Jamaica after dredging a marina, a vicious sewage runoff from a gated community in the Caicos Islands.
'Everywhere Dad goes, environmentalists come after him with elephant guns.'
But does Dad go after others with spearguns? Steve wondered. Whereas the son, by his own immodest admission, was Sir Galahad of the Deep.
'You've heard of tree huggers,' Junior said. 'Call me a coral kisser. I've snorkeled the world's best, and they're all living on borrowed time. The coral reefs are the rain forests of the oceans.'
'All of which has exactly what to do with Oceania?' Steve asked.
'A couple years ago,' Junior continued, 'I was arguing with Dad and said something like, 'You won't be happy till you build a resort right on top of a coral reef.' And Dad took it as a challenge. He asked where there's a coral reef at least three nautical miles offshore from an English-speaking country, with a population center of at least three million people nearby.'
'Why three miles?' Victoria asked.
'So it's outside territorial waters,' Junior said.
'The cannon-shot rule,' Bobby said, and they all looked at the smartest boy in the sixth grade. 'From pirate days. Four hundred years ago, the farthest a cannon could shoot from shore was three miles. That's where the law comes from.'
'Thank you, Mr. History Channel,' Steve said, then turned to Junior. 'If you're outside the three-mile limit, you can run a casino. That the idea?'
'Exactly. But we'd still be within the two-hundredmile EEZ.'
Steve gave him a blank look.
'The Exclusive Economic Zone,' Bobby translated, adding sheepishly, 'I know most of the federal acronyms. Also most of the personalized license plates banned by the State of Florida.'
'Don't start,' Steve warned him.
'G-R-8-C-U-M,' Bobby said. 'I-W-N-T-S-E-X.'
'Bobby. .'
'B-I-G-P-N-S.'
'Cool it, kiddo!'
'Because we're in the EEZ,' Junior said, 'the federal government still has jurisdiction over development. So we need an environmental assessment report to get a federal permit.'
'Ben Stubbs of the EPA,' Victoria mused.
'Yep. Which is why Dad had to jump through all the hoops. He was cussing all the way, but he did it. And here's the result.'
Junior flicked another switch, and the enormous room was bathed in a soft light. 'Behold Oceania,' he said.
Looming in front of them was a three-dimensional diorama, maybe thirty feet long by seven feet high. From floor to shoulder level was the ocean-or at least a blue Lucite rendition of it, complete with miniature, plasticized fish. Floating on the surface were three donut-shaped buildings, connected by covered passageways. From the bottom of each building, steel cables angled downward and were embedded in the ocean floor. At the side of the center building was a marina with perhaps two hundred miniature boats, little plastic people waving gaily from the decks. Above the hotel, suspended in the air by a wire, was a seaplane, a larger version of what they had flown to Paradise Key.
'The center building is the casino,' Junior said.
'Two hundred thirty thousand square feet of slots, blackjack, craps, roulette, keno, poker rooms. The works. And unlike Atlantic City or Las Vegas, no taxes to pay. Or as Dad likes to say, 'Uncle Sam ain't no relative of mine.' '
'How would you get people out there?' Victoria asked. Ever practical, Steve thought.
'Seaplanes, private boats, hydrofoils leaving the mainland every thirty minutes.'
'What about hurricanes?' Steve asked.
'We'd evacuate the hotel, of course,' Junior said. 'But our construction method is revolutionary. Woven steel cables fasten the buildings to the sea bottom, but they're flexible, so the buildings can rise and fall in high seas. Computer models show we can withstand a Category Four storm.'
'What about Category Five?' Steve asked.
'Statistically improbable. Only two have ever hit the United States.'
Bobby chimed in: 'Camille in sixty-nine. Andrew in ninety-two.'
The kid watched the Weather Channel, too. 'You're not counting the ones before the Weather Service had a numbering system,' Steve said.
'We're confident our hotel can take the worst storm that's statistically likely to hit,' Junior said.
Not bad, Steve thought, giving Junior bonus points for lawyerlike double-talk. The guy was sharper than he looked, greater than the sum of his pecs and traps.
'You haven't seen the best part,' Junior said. 'Take a look at Building Three. We call it The Atlantis.'
They walked around to the other side of the diorama. The ocean floor sloped upward there, as it neared the largest of the donut-shaped buildings. But it wasn't just a sandy bottom. It was a coral reef in miniature, frozen in plastic, reproduced in startling detail. Staghorn coral, looking like deer antlers; green sea fans waving hello; grooved brain coral, looking like a human cerebrum. A moray eel poked its head out of a skyscraper of pillar coral. Swimming above and through the reef were giant grouper, bright blue angelfish, multihued parrotfish, huge tarpon, sea turtles,
