Reluctantly Jake Harp had agreed to play nine holes. He didn't like golf with rich duffers, but it was part… — Carl Hiaasen
Reluctantly Jake Harp had agreed to play nine holes. He didn't like golf with rich duffers, but it was part of the deal. Playing with Francis X. Kingsbury, though, was a special form of torture. All he talked about was Disney this and Disney that. If the stock had dropped a point or two, Kingsbury was euphoric. If the stock was up, he was bellicose and depressed. He referred to the Disney mascot as Mickey Ratface, or sometimes simply The Rat. (Chapter 13)
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Like many wildly successful Floridians, Francis X. Kingsbury was a transplant. He had moved to the Sunshine State in balding middle age, alone and uprooted, never expecting that he would become a multimillionaire. And like so many new Floridians, Kingsbury was a felon on the run. Before moving to Miami, he was known by his real name of Frankie King. Not Frank, but Frankie. His mother had named him after the singer Frankie Lane. All his life, Frankie King had yearned to change his name to something more distinguished, something with weight and social bearing. A racketeering indictment--seventeen counts--out of Brooklyn was as good an excuse as any. (Chapter 5)
Like everything else at the Amazing Kingdom, the Vole Project had begun as a scheme to compete with Walt Disney World. Years earlier, Disney had tried to save the dusky seaside sparrow, a small marsh bird whose habitat was being wiped out by over-development along Florida's coastline. With much fanfare, Disney had unveiled a captive breeding program for the last two surviving specimens of the dusky. Unfortunately, the last two surviving specimens were both males, and even the wizards of Disney could not induce the scientific miracle of homosexual procreation. Eventually the sparrow fell to extinction, but the Disney organization won gobs of fawning publicity for its conservation efforts. (Chapter 2)
