SWAMPWATCH (Ada Wendt fiction)

1. The Goundbreaking / "Twenty minutes," President Duane Beck repeated, running a hand through his greasy yellow hair. "Twenty minutes to change everything." An idea had come to him three weeks ago...

"Twenty minutes," President Duane Beck repeated, running a hand through his greasy yellow hair. "Twenty minutes to change everything."

The idea had come to him three weeks ago during a helicopter tour of South Florida. He'd been surveying hurricane damage when they'd flown over the vast expanse of the Everglades. Miles and miles of untouched wetland, home to nothing but alligators, birds, and the occasional lost tourist. Federal land, sitting unused while prisons across the country burst at the seams.

Dr. Torres shifted in her chair. "The facility would house up to 15,000 immigrants initially, with potential for expansion. The cost savings alone---"

"Would be tremendous," Beck finished. "Absolutely tremendous. We're talking about the most efficient, most secure, most technologically advanced detention facility ever conceived. It's not just a prison -- it's a model for the future."

His chief of staff, Jane Morrison, checked her watch. "Fifteen minutes, Mr. President. Should I tell them you're ready for hair and makeup?"

"In a moment." Beck turned back to face the room. "I want everyone to understand what we're doing here tonight. We're not just announcing a new detention center. We're announcing a new era in American immigration. We're showing the world that America doesn't just identify problems -- we solve them. Boldly. Decisively. Beautifully."

As he walked toward the door, Dr. Torres called after him. "Mr. President, about the nickname …"

Beck paused, his hand on the doorknob. "Alligator Alcatraz."

"Some of us feel it might be a bit... inflammatory."

A slow smile spread across the President's face. "Exactly."

The red light on the center camera blazed to life, and President Duane Beck looked directly into the lens, his expression serious but confident, his voice carrying the weight of absolute conviction.

"My fellow Americans," he began, his words carrying across the nation and around the world, "tonight I come to you with a solution. We call it Alligator Alcatraz."

He paused, letting the gravity of the moment settle over his audience of millions.

"It will be, quite simply, the most beautiful detention center you have ever seen."

* * *

The new access road terminated abruptly at a hastily erected platform draped in red, white, and blue bunting that seemed to emerge from nowhere and lead to nothing. Beck stepped out of the lead black SUV, his signature red tie whipping in the humid Florida breeze as helicopter rotors thrummed.

"This is it, folks!" Beck boomed into the microphone that had been thrust toward him by a CNN reporter. "Today we break ground on the most secure, most efficient immigrant detention facility this country has ever seen. Alligator Alcatraz – and believe me, that's what it's going to be – will hold fifteen thousand detainees while we process their deportations. Absolutely tremendous."

What Duane didn't mention -- and what his followers couldn't see -- was that less than twenty-four hours earlier, he had filed incorporation papers for Everglades Enterprises LLC, Swampland Souvenirs Inc., and Detention Depot Holdings. The paperwork, buried deep in Delaware's corporate filing system, listed him as the managing member of all three entities. His daughter Melanie had done the same with Gator Gear LLC and Alcatraz Apparel Inc., while her younger brothers had formed Border Boost LLC and Patriot Prison Products Inc.

The family's lawyer, a skeletal man named Harold Wickham who specialized in creating corporate structures so convoluted they required a team of forensic accountants to untangle, had spent the previous week establishing a web of subsidiaries, holding companies, and licensing agreements that would funnel merchandise revenue through the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, and finally into a trust based in South Dakota---a state whose privacy laws made Swiss banks look transparent by comparison.

Senator Patricia Blackwood of Alabama stepped up to the microphone next. Her hair was perfect. "I want to thank President Beck for his vision," she declared, gesturing toward the surrounding wilderness as if it were already transformed into a gleaming facility. "This detention center represents everything we stand for as Americans — security, order, and the rule of law." Her husband’s company, B & Associates, had been awarded a $47 million subcontract to build the facility's "administrative complex.”

Representative Mike Bronson of Texas took his turn at the microphone, his cowboy hat slightly askew from the helicopter downwash. "This is what real leadership looks like," he shouted over the noise.

The crowd of supporters, bused in from Naples and Fort Myers, cheered. A team of photographers worked the crowd, capturing images that would soon adorn campaign websites and fundraising emails. The real action, however, was happening fifty yards away, where Duane “Dewey” Beck, Jr. was being interviewed by Sarah Chen, a reporter from the Tampa Bay Times. He pulled out his phone and showed the reporter a mockup of the first t-shirt design: a cartoon alligator wearing a prison uniform and Uncle Sam top hat above "I Survived Alligator Alcatraz.” "We've got the first 10,000 units being printed right now,” neglecting to add “in Vietnam.”

"So you're selling merchandise for a prison that hasn't been built yet?" Chen asked.

"Not just any prison," Dewey corrected. "The most secure immigration detention facility in American history. People are going to want to commemorate it.”

Melanie Beck — at 28, the family's designated social media influencer — worked the crowd with practiced ease, with 6.2 million followers across various platforms. "Guys, you cannot believe the energy here," she said into her phone camera, pivoting to capture the swampland behind her. "Dad is literally making dreams come true. And my 'Gator Girl' collection is going to be absolutely iconic."

A dozen golden-plated shovels – a grand each courtesy of the American taxpayer – were distributed to the VIPs who would participate in the photo opportunity that would define the day. "Ladies and gentlemen," the President intoned, "today we turn the page on failed immigration policies and begin a new chapter in American security. With these shovels, we break ground on Alligator Alcatraz, which will process immigrants faster, more efficiently, and more humanely than anything that has come before." The golden shovels bit into the soft earth, kicking up small clouds of black sod specially trucked in to soak up several inches of mud.

The ceremony concluded with a prayer led by Reverend Billy Matthews, a televangelist who had endorsed Beck's campaign in exchange for increased funding for faith-based immigrant services.

As the crowd began to disperse, a smaller group of insiders gathered around Beck for what his chief of staff called "the real meeting."

"Gentlemen," Beck said, his voice dropping to a conversational tone, "I want to be clear about our timeline and expectations. The American people are counting on us to deliver results, and we're going to give them exactly what they want to see."

Harold Wickham, the cadaverous family lawyer, distributed a folder to each person in the circle. "These are your individual contracts and specifications," he explained. "Everything is structured to maximize efficiency and minimize bureaucratic interference. Payment schedules are front-loaded to ensure rapid progress, and all environmental assessments have been streamlined to avoid unnecessary delays." Conducted by a firm owned by President Beck's golf partner, they concluded that the Everglades ecosystem would benefit from major construction and gained EPA approval in 47 minutes. AlligatorAlcatrazOfficial.com would go live at midnight Eastern Time. Visitors could pre-order everything from coffee mugs to limited-edition commemorative coins. By the time the last helicopter departed and the swampland returned to its natural silence, the website had taken in over $340,000 for merchandise that didn't yet exist for a facility that might never be built.

In the distance, an honest-to-God alligator watched the last of the vehicles disappear down the $3 million road, its ancient eyes reflecting the fading light as it settled back into the murky water that had been its home for millions of years. It would remember exactly what this place used to look like.

* * *

Three weeks after the groundbreaking ceremony, the first tour bus – a 45-foot luxury coach emblazoned with the words "Patriot Pilgrimage Tours" in gold lettering – arrived at dawn and discharged 47 passengers onto "Freedom Plaza," a hastily constructed viewing area that offered visitors an unobstructed view of nothing worth seeing. The passengers, mostly retirees from Ohio and Michigan who had paid $179 each for the "Alligator Alcatraz Experience Package," stepped off the air-conditioned bus into the oppressive Florida humidity in matching red baseball caps and fanny packs, swelling with a sense of history. What they couldn't see from the viewing platform was that the "construction site" visible in the distance consisted of three bulldozers driving in circles, kicking up dust clouds that obscured the complete absence of actual construction.

They didn’t really care. The Alligator Alcatraz Gift Emporium, a 2,400-square-foot prefab hovel made to look like a rustic frontier trading post, had been assembled in 18 hours by a crew working under floodlights and contained carefully calculated patriotic kitsch. American flags hung from every available surface, interspersed with photographs of President Beck at various campaign rallies and staged photo opportunities. A massive flat-screen television played a continuous loop of footage from the groundbreaking ceremony, accompanied by a stirring orchestral soundtrack that had been commissioned from a composer in Prague – John Williams was busy – who specialized in what the music industry called "inspirational government themes." The keychain section alone occupied an entire wall. Visitors could choose from alligator-shaped bottle openers ($12), miniature handcuffs labeled "Border Security" ($8), or a brass "Detention Key" ($15) attached to a leather fob that supposedly opened "the door to American security."

"This is exactly what America needs," said Dolores Hutchinson, a seventy-three-year-old retired warehouse worker from Akron, as she examined a snow globe containing a miniature replica of the jail. Dewey, Director of Visitor Experience, beamed, chuckling at her delusion that the purchase would fund U.S. security as opposed his vacation in the Caribbean.

As the first tour group worked their way through the store, filling shopping bags with everything from alligator-shaped salt and pepper shakers ($19.99) to replica orange prison uniforms ($89.99), a second bus was already pulling into the parking lot. Within an hour, three more buses had arrived, disgorging 178 visitors and, more importantly, about $31,000 in potential sales.

Bradley Beck, the president's younger son and the family's “brand manager,” watched the proceedings from the elevated office that had been built into the gift shop's mezzanine level. Through the one-way glass, he could observe customer behavior patterns, tracking which items drew the most attention and how long visitors spent in each section of the store. The data he was collecting would inform the rollout of Phase Two of the merchandising operation: a nationwide network of "Alligator Alcatraz Experience Centers" in major cities across the country. These satellite locations would allow supporters to purchase merchandise and view virtual reality tours of the detention facility without making the journey to Florida.

While Dewey and Melanie focused on mass-market merchandise, a sophisticated money-laundering operation was located in a converted warehouse in downtown Los Angeles. Older daughter Sophia Beck-Westfield had transformed herself from law school grad into a sought-after and high-priced conceptual artist, creating installations that tech oligarchs purchased for millions while never questioning the true nature of their transactions, not to mention the real value of the art objects. Her latest piece, "Correctional Sublime," consisted of 847 authentic detention center handcuffs arranged in a perfect golden spiral across the gallery floor, purchased by Harrison Webb, founder of Nebula Cryptocurrency Exchange, for $12.7 million. "My work explores the intersection of state power and capital accumulation," Sophia explained to Artforum with stealthy irony.

At 2 PM, Melanie and her driver arrived at the gift shop in a white Chevy Suburban, her lacquered blonde hair apparently immune to humidity. She carried a leather portfolio containing prototypes and marketing materials for what she privately called "detention chic for the discerning patriot." "I want to show you something incredible," she announced, opening the portfolio to reveal photographs of handbags, jewelry, and home accessories that transformed the alligator motif into luxury design elements. "This isn't just merchandise – it's lifestyle branding for people who understand that border security is a fashion statement."

The centerpiece of the collection was a $2,400 handbag crafted from "ethically sourced Florida alligator leather" and featuring hardware shaped like, yeah, miniature handcuffs. The bag, manufactured by a luxury goods company in Italy that had previously produced accessories for several major fashion houses, would be available in limited quantities through high-end department stores and the family's website. "The profit margins are extraordinary," Melanie cooed, pulling up a spreadsheet on her iPad. "The handbag costs $340 to produce, including materials, labor, and shipping. We're selling it for $2,400, which gives us an 86 percent gross margin. If we sell just 500 units, we're looking at over a million dollars in revenue." The most ambitious item in the Swamp Chic collection was a limited-edition coffee table made from what appeared to be reclaimed cypress wood and featuring a glass top etched with a map of the Alligator Alcatraz facility, at $14,999. "We're not just selling products," Melanie explained to her brothers as they reviewed the collection in the gift shop's back office. "We're selling an identity."

By 4 PM, the gift shop had processed 312 transactions totaling $43,847 in sales. The average transaction was $140.66, significantly higher than Dewey's projections and suggesting that demand for the merchandise was even stronger than the family had anticipated. Other entrepreneurs wanted to capitalize on the traffic. A food truck had appeared in the parking lot without authorization, selling "Gator Bites" (fried chicken nuggets) and "Swamp Water" (sweet tea with green food coloring). Bradley initially considered having the truck removed but then realized it might be more profitable to charge a licensing fee. Within a week, three more food trucks had joined the first, along with a temporary tattoo stand, a face-painting booth, and a photographer who offered to take professional portraits of visitors posing with life-sized cardboard cutouts of President Beck.

Bradley's ambitions extended far beyond a single retail location. He envisioned a branded entertainment complex that would include a museum, an educational center, and a "Border Security Experience" featuring interactive exhibits and virtual reality simulations. Visitors would be able to experience what it felt like to be an immigration officer, complete with decision-making scenarios and realistic props. The educational component would be particularly important for maintaining the facility's credibility as a serious government project rather than a tourist attraction. Dewey had already commissioned a team of writers to develop curriculum materials that would present immigration enforcement as both a patriotic duty and an exciting career opportunity. School groups would be encouraged to visit, with specially designed programs for different age levels.

The virtual reality experience was still in development, but early prototypes suggested it would be both popular and profitable. Visitors would pay $25 for a fifteen-minute simulation that allowed them to "patrol the border" using military-grade VR equipment. The simulation, developed by a gaming company in Austin, combined staged-action footage from the US–Mexico border with interactive scenarios designed to emphasize the dangers and challenges faced by immigration officers confronting criminals and terrorists. But the Swamp Chic tagline, developed after weeks of focus group testing, was deliberately subtle for the country club set: "Strength. Security. Style."

The alligator slipped back beneath the surface, leaving barely a ripple.

Thanks for reading. Look for another installment next week.