estimates of the number of visitors, he nearly fainted. I had told him we were going to bring gambling to the project, but maybe he didn’t comprehend what that meant. He wanted the museum and the habitat so much, maybe he closed his eyes to the rest. But now he sees the ten-year projections, and they stagger him. Widening Tamiami Trail, two thousand buses a day, Phase Two of the housing plan, high-rise condos, apartments, town houses. It blew his mind, but what could he expect? How did he think I was going to pay for the museum?
“Selling alligator wallets at the souvenir stand,” I suggested.
“We’re talking forty-five million for construction and other capital expenditures, another fifteen in start-up costs, and ten to twelve million in shortfall revenue per year. I couldn’t pay for it with greens fees.”
“So you killed him.”
Florio shook his head. “Wrong! Christ, don’t you know I told you the truth about Tupton? The guy was drunk. He wandered into the wine cellar, popped a few corks, and passed out.”
“We’ve been over this,” I said. “Why didn’t the caterers find his body?”
“Damned if I know. Maybe he wandered off and came back after the caterers left, who knows? Maybe somebody moved him, but it wasn’t me. Jake, I liked the guy, I really did. I tried to tell him we could have it all. In addition to everything else, I promised him fifteen percent of the casino profits for preservation of endangered species. Do you knowhow much money we’re talking about? Shit, they could create new species with the cash flow. We’re talking ten million visitors a year.”
“Which is what he objected to.”
Florio nodded. “Not even willing to listen. He was going to run to the papers with news about the casino. It would’ve blown sky-high.”
“Sooner or later, it’ll happen anyway,” I said.
“But I’ll choose when and where. It’s the only way to keep the media from screwing everything up. There was a headline the other day that the Florida Keys coral reef is dying, and who do they blame? Builders, because everyone wants simple answers, and we’re the guys who bulldoze the mangroves, dredge up the sediment. It doesn’t occur to these smart guys that hurricanes, cold fronts, black-band disease, and a bunch of other natural causes can kill the coral. Why the fuck shouldn’t the coral die? Everything in nature dies. Maybe a hundred years from now, another coral reef will form somewhere off Australia, but they don’t consider that. We’re so damned intent on preserving nature that we don’t let nature take its course.”
“You’re saying the alligator kills the wood stork, so why shouldn’t you?”
“I’m saying nature is deadly. In the Glades, some Australian pine trees are so toxic their falling leaves will kill other plants along the canals. That’s Mother Nature, pal. Lightning hits a hammock of slash pines and turns the shrubbery into kindling. But once the shrubs are burned up, the sunlight reaches the ground where the pine seedlings are just taking root.”
“So you’re just another lightning bolt?”
“As usual, Jake, you’re missing my point, which is that developers are easy targets. We’re as despised as…”
“Lawyers.”
“Yeah, almost. We make better villains than the farmers. Why don’t they take on Big Sugar? You knowhow much of the Everglades is planted with cane? I’ll tell you, five hundred thousand acres. You can’t even imagine it until you see the fields. The runoff of phosphorous has done more damage to the ecosystem than all the condos ever built.” Florio stared out into space. “Fucking De La Torre.” He turned to me. “You know him?”
“President of National Sugar, but I always thought his first name was Carlos.”
“The prick fucking owns Tallahassee. Between government price supports and paying slave wages, he’s gotten filthy rich.”
“You sound jealous.”
“Yeah, well, I gotta pay union wages and bid on jobs. But it ain’t all sweet with sugar. The new free-trade treaty with Mexico, the imports from Cuba when Castro falls, the GATT treaty, they all keep De La Torre awake at night. So he wants a sideline, some extra security for the future.”
“What’s that have to do with you?”
“De La Torre’s the only one who could have stopped us. He held me up like a highway robber, but I greased his palm, so he’s on board, just like the Indians. Christ, I had everybody in my pocket except Tupton.”
Something was gnawing at me. “What about the legislature? You can’t buy ’em all, and I don’t see how you’ll get a gaming bill passed. You’ll be up against the unholy alliance of racetrack and jai alai interests plus the fundamentalist Christians. The hotel industry’s been trying to pass a casino law for thirty years and has never come close.”
“That’s the beauty of it, Jake. We don’t need a law.”
“Of course you do. Casinos are illegal in Florida.”
“You still don’t get it, do you? We don’t need permits. We don’t need impact statements. We don’t need zoning variances or business licenses or special laws.”
“You don’t?”
“Jake, why the fuck don’t you listen? We ain’t in Florida. This is Injun country.”
Nicky Florio explained it to me. By the numbers.
One: In 1962, the United States secretary of the interior approved the constitution of the Micanopy Tribe. Seventy thousand acres of land were now under the exclusive jurisdiction of the tribe’s general council. Tax-exempt land with some soggy farms and lots of alligators and not much the white man wanted.
Two: Florio began doing business with the Indians in the seventies. He built low-cost housing for them in hard-to-reach areas. He fished with the Tiger family and became friendly with council leaders.
Three: Florio purchased an option for a ninety-nine-year lease on ten thousand acres for the housing, commercial, and recreation ventures. The lease is boilerplate and all-inclusive, granting everything from construction and air rights to mineral rights. The tribe will get 10 percent of pretax profits. He smiled a pickpocket’s smile.
Ten percent of Florio Enterprises’ profits, Florio emphasized. But that company assigned the long-term lease to a holding company, which assigned its rights to a Cayman Islands Trust. Florio Enterprises only gets a management fee from the holding company. The real profits, hundreds of millions, will be passed through, and the Indians don’t get a cent of them.
A red cent, Florio said.
Four: The mixed residential-commercial town went off without a hitch. No permits needed, except from the tribe’s general council.
Five: the law.
“You ever hear of the Federal Indian Regulatory Gaming Act of 1988?” Florio asked.
“I don’t pay attention to statutes unless they have something to do with fender benders or burglaries.”
“The Act allows Indians to run the same gambling allowed by the state.”
“Fine. Open a racetrack or a fronton. Florida law doesn’t allow casinos.”
“Sure it does, Counselor. The churches hold Vegas night for charity all the time. It’s right in the law. How do you think we operate a bingo hall with cash awards? Because churches are allowed to. It’s the same principle.”
I thought about it. A loophole, Nicky would call it. But that’s what lawyering is all about, drawing parallels between your client’s quirky facts and those from a case that goes your way. Making analogies, sidestepping distinctions, taking exceptions and making them the rules, and in general patching holes in the water bucket that is your case.
“You’ll still face a court challenge,” I said. “The state attorney general or the racetrack folks or someone will want to keep you out.”
“I expect that. So be my lawyer. Give me an opinion. Who’ll win, and no bullshit about needing time to research it. Rely on your instincts.”
My instincts hadn’t been very good lately, but I gave it a shot. “You’ll argue that the state can’t allow a church to operate a casino, even one night a year, without letting the Indians do it full time under the federal statute. It would be discriminatory to bar equivalent gambling games on Indian land. The law is just one side of the equation, of course. Politically, the strength would be with the opposition. On your side, you’ve got a few thousand Indians who live in a swamp and want to lease you land for a casino. On the other, some big moneyed interests in
