Hog Valley

By Gary Showalter

Terry Rankin is the owner of Rankin Protective Services Inc, in Orlando, Florida. It’s a small company with a few very nice contracts. Terry has a meeting with Travis Warren, at his horse ranch just north of Ocala. He has invested a few months in negotiating for a very lucrative contract to provide bodyguard services to Mr. Warren and his family. This is the morning when all of that time and effort are going to pay off.
He does not expect to walk into a home invasion.
As the thieves wrap up their looting, Rankin and Mr. and Mrs. Warren are being held in Travis Warren’s office. Terry watches through the French doors along the rear wall as five well-dressed though disheveled Latino gentlemen cross the back lawn and step onto the flagstone patio. As the leader of the thieves raises his shotgun toward Rankin, Terry watches in relief as the Latinos fire into the backs of the invaders.
What Rankin doesn’t know is that the five Latinos have orders to shoot him on sight.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gary Showalter
• Release date: Aug 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311492715

Gary Showalter

Gary Showalter was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. He lived in Aruba, Florida and the Panama Canal Zone before joining the U.S. Army during the 1960s. Mr. Showalter has picked cotton in East Texas, baled hay in Ardmore Oklahoma, sold light bulbs in Los Angeles, California, and built cattle pens in Fallon, Nevada (during a blizzard, of course). After settling in Atlanta, Georgia, Mr. Showalter worked as a professional gardener before turning his hand to furniture making.In 1981, he moved to Israel, married, and raised four children while working as a furniture maker, silversmith, goldsmith, and ornamental wood turner. He served in the Israel Defense Forces Reserves for sixteen years, and when not on active duty he worked in government and private security. He has also served in senior management positions in two software development companies in Israel.Mr. Showalter has published articles dealing with international terror and the Israel-Arab conflict in the Jerusalem Post, Israel national News and several political science web sites.Mr. Showalter returned to the United States in the fall of 2003. He published his first novel, “The Big Bend”, in the fall of 2008, his second novel, “Hog Valley”, in 2009, his third novel, “Twisted Key”, in 2010 and his fourth novel, “Lonesome Cove”, in 2011.Mr. Showalter resides in Dunnellon, Fl, where he is working on the fifth Terry Rankin novel.

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Acknowledgement

Retired Master Deputy Michelle Brown and Sergeant David Hopkins of the Marion County Sheriff’s Office provided a great deal of background information on crime scene operations. Other officers also provided a great deal of helpful information for this novel.

I would like to thank each of these officers and the Marion County Sheriff's Office for their kind and generous cooperation.

Marion County covers over sixteen hundred square miles of territory. It has rolling hills, swamps, lakes, rivers, and forest. There are a few cities, lots of roads and lots and lots of open land. The Sherriff’s Office has a big job, and some of the finest law enforcement officers I have ever met work for the Marion County Sheriff's Office. They meet the demands of their job with skill, professionalism, and pride.

Walt and Trudy Carroll, who both work at Silver River State Park near Ocala, have gone well beyond simple friendship in making the writing of this novel possible. I will never be able to properly repay them for their kindness, patience, encouragement, and willingness to read and reread the manuscript.

Mickey and Rayne Summers of Silver River State Park also provided reading and editing services, friendship, and encouragement. Mickey and I spent hours driving and walking through the Ocala National Forest, scouting and photographing sites for scenes in the novel.

We also spent more than a few hours on several occasions sipping beer at the bar in the 88 Bar & Grill and in Cactus Jack’s in Silver Springs. Mickey is a wealth of information on the history and geography of Marion County, and a wonderful educator, bluegrass musician and artist. Mickey and Rayne, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

The 88 Bar & Grill is a real place, and is much as I have described it. It is a road house, close to Salt Springs, and is a hangout for locals. Tourists are welcome, as long as you are well behaved, friendly and courteous. Also, it really helps to have a sense of humor.

I have made an earnest attempt to stay true to the geography, culture, and history of Marion County in particular and Florida in general. It is a vibrant history, constantly changing and growing, thanks in great part to the men and women who spend much of their lives in research and exploration.

You have my heartfelt thanks.

My editor, Eve Bell of ReVision Rendered in Ocala, did a yeoman’s job sifting through the manuscript and correcting my errors.

All of the characters in the novel were created out of whole cloth, and are not meant to personify anyone living, dead or somewhere in between.

Any errors in editing, plotting or description are, of course, mine.

You can reach me through my website: www.garyshowalter.com. My email address is [e-mail]. Use it, and let me know how you enjoy the tales I spin for you.

Dedication

This novel is dedicated to my four children;

Natanel, Yonatan Chai, Simcha and Vered.

This novel is also dedicated to:

Master Deputy (Ret.) Michelle Brown,

Of the Marion County Sheriff’s Office

And to:

My sister, Carol Ann

And her husband, Richard,

Who helped me out when I needed it the most.

Author’s Note

Hog Valley is a real place. The name originally referred to the Ocklawaha River Valley, due to the number of wild hogs to be found there. Around 1848, people began to settle at the head of the valley on the northern tip of what is now the Ocala National Forest, in an area that would become the town named Hog Valley.

At one time, the area was one of the most lawless in Florida. The area is now more or less settled, but the aura of its history lingers on. It is a very colorful history.

The Forest holds any number of unknown graves, many of them no doubt of a recent vintage.

My descriptions of the flora and fauna do not do the area justice. It really is made up of thick forest, scrub pine, swamp, ephemeral ponds, lakes, rivers, springs, prairie, marsh and people. Spend some time in the Ocala National Forest. You will come to love it.

At the end of the last glaciation, about fifteen thousand years ago, the then extant coastline of Florida slowly submerged under the ocean. The local natives, who lived along the shoreline and depended upon the seas for their food, were forced to move further and further inland. Eventually the Timuqua settled in what is now the Ocala National Forest, and many of their major shell mounds and settlements have been identified and, thankfully, preserved.

When settlement and exploration by the white man created a demand for building lumber, entrepreneurs built roads and railroads into the forest. The massive cypress and oak trees were cut and either floated out or hauled out on steamboats and railroads. The US Army, during the Seminole wars, built several forts in the area. Fort King and Fort McCoy were two such.

I have listened to any number of people tell me stories handed down in their families about their history in the area, and as many more contemporary tales. Some, parts of them anyway, made their way into this novel.

No writer can do justice to the ecology and the people who live in and around the Ocala National Forest. But that’s no reason not to try.

I hope you enjoy it.

Hog Valley

Chapter 1

Monday, November 10

Orlando

Clearwater

November is one of the better months in Central Florida. The weather is usually on the mild side, and with the coming of the holidays folks are usually in a neighborly frame of mind. My office is in Orlando, but I live in Clearwater, over on the west coast, just north of Tampa. Some people think of Clearwater as a suburb of Tampa, but those people don’t live in Clearwater – they live in Tampa.

My name is Terrance Charles Rankin. I’m from Leakey, Texas (we pronounce that ‘Lakey’, not leaky, as in faucet. Actually, we’re kind of sensitive about that). I am forty-nine years old, and the owner of Rankin Personal Protective Services in Orlando, Florida.

I spent fourteen years in the US Army; ten of those years in the MP’s before I got out with the rank of Captain. I spent another ten years in the Pennsylvania State Police as an Investigator before moving to Tampa, Florida, where I started up a security company. A few years later I married a well-connected party girl with connections that landed me a few very lucrative contracts.

Too lucrative for me. I wound up developing a gambling habit that cost me everything, including my party girl wife.

I moved to Orlando after I straightened myself out and started Rankin Personal Protective Services, which I am proud to say, is doing very well, thank you.

My private life, well, not so much.

I spent the first part of that Monday morning at my office in Orlando, reading through background investigations on four applicants, and making a few notes for Charley Weeks, my General Manager. Three men and one woman, all back from the Muddle East sand box, all newly discharged, and all hoping to parlay their military experience into good-paying careers as professional bodyguards. I couldn’t blame them, but it is a very tough business to break into.

But if I did take them on I would have to pay the freight – nearly ten thousand dollars - to send them all to a school in England where they would learn the basics of their new profession. I’ve had employees I knew and trusted recommend friends with great military records and all the chops I look for in an employee.

I took them on, of course, and sent them through the school. I can’t afford to do this very often, you understand, because sure as I’m sitting here, some of those men and women would leave me for larger employers with better benefits after only a few months. That means I can’t even recoup the money for the courses. A few of them have called me after a year or so to ask if I’d take them back.

I hung up on each and every one of them.

Charley Weeks, my general manager, was out doing spot checks on the guards we had standing post at a few vacant private homes on Merritt Island.

This was busy work for me, trying to keep my mind off what had happened a week ago. The itching of the very fine line of ‘U’ shaped stitches on my forehead, right at the hairline, didn’t help a damn bit. I didn’t need to be here. Charley and our office manager, Cecelia Parker, were both very capable of running the company without me, as they had proven time and again. I could have stayed on my trawler. I could have stayed depressed.

No, actually, I couldn’t have. That’s why I was out of bed at the crack of dawn and on the way to Orlando by six. I needed to get back in touch with my life.

My notes went onto Charley's desk as I walked out. I told Cecelia that I'd be out of the office for the rest of the day. I stopped at the outpatient clinic at Orlando Regional Hospital to have the stitches removed and was on the road back to Clearwater before eleven.

A veterinarian was due sometime in the afternoon to give a checkup and shots to a stray cat who had found himself a new home on my trawler, the Nina R. I’d named him Spike the very first day he’d walked aboard, looking for something to eat. That was on Friday, and he convinced me to pull a few tuna steaks out of my big freezer just forward of the salon and crank up the grill on the stern deck.

We had a great time, me and that large, scrawny black and white cat. I don’t think he’s left the trawler since he first showed up.

That was the first decent meal I’d had all week, too. Hospital food doesn’t count.

Once the vet left, I planned to spend the rest of the day doing some finish carpentry in the living quarters. I’ve only been living aboard since the end of August. Before that Nina R had been in Rolf Craddock’s boat yard in Tampa Bay. The repair and remodeling work to convert her from a shot-up commercial fishing trawler into a live-aboard vessel had required twice as much time and money than what we had agreed upon.

To be perfectly honest, much of the additional time was due to changes that Maggie Carter wanted. But since she was paying for them, I didn’t have any room to complain.

The trawler entered my life during an attack on a charter fishing boat I was using to rescue a lady cop who’d been abducted and forced to pilot two murderous psychos on their way out of the country. They were heading for a Venezuelan commercial fishing vessel in international waters off the west coast of Florida that was supposed to take them back to Venezuela.

I’d just rescued the lady cop from the smaller boat when the trawler appeared out of a curtain of heavy rain, with a .50-caliber machine gun mounted right up in her bows, firing its heavy slugs into my borrowed boat. A Coast Guard rescue chopper showed up and returned their fire, chewing the trawlers’ bows and wheelhouse into steel and wood splinters, along with some of the crew.

Several rounds from that heavy machine gun on the trawler struck the turbine on the chopper, forcing the pilot to put his bird down at sea in stormy conditions. The lady cop and I were able to pull them aboard without losing anyone. After that we secured the trawler and the remaining crew, and stood by until a Coast Guard vessel arrived to take the trawler under tow to the Tampa Bay Coast Guard Station.

According to the Coast Guard version of the event, I’d captured the Venezuelan trawler and rescued their air crew under very dangerous conditions and at great risk to my own life. What I’d really done was to rescue the woman of my dreams.

When the rounds from that .50-caliber machine gun began to strike our vessel, she’d been at the wheel. I recall ramming the throttle forward and yelling at her, Spin the wheel! I didn’t give a damn which direction that wheel got turned as long as she did it really fast and it got us away from that machine gun. Yeah, I’m some kind of hero.

But the Coast Guard took advantage of the situation to repay a debt. That lady cop, Sergeant Cathy Diamond, and I did rescue their air crew under dangerous conditions.

In return, I was offered the trawler at far below its value in scrap metal.

She is a sixty-foot cabin forward trawler, but all of the commercial fishing gear, the outriggers, and all of the related deck hardware has been removed. The steel handrails capping the gunwales, the grab rails, hatch coamings and so on have all been replaced by teak (for all you boaty types who know what it’s like to scrape and varnish and then start it all over again, this was not my choice). The interior was thoroughly gutted, and the engineering spaces completely overhauled.

I had new navigation gear, new radios and weather fax, and a very nice wheel, courtesy of Maggie Carter, who’d hunted all over -via the Internet, of course - for a fancy wheel suitable for a converted trawler.

On the port side of the afterdeck, just forward of the transom (the left side of the back end to you non-boaty folks), I had Rolf Craddock build a steel cradle for a sixteen foot tender. That boat was a simple flat-bottom skiff built from marine plywood. The fifteen horsepower outboard motor and gas can were stored in a locker just forward of the cradle.

To starboard was an eight-place emergency life raft, stored in a cylinder designed to rapidly deploy the raft in an emergency.

I kept for myself the job of replacing the cabinetry in the living areas. The salon below decks, which had previously been the fish hold, was for now my cabinet shop. Once I had all of the interior work done I’d build myself a nice salon/library and office. In the meantime half of it was a work room, and the other half my exercise room. Those commercial boats sure do have a lot of space in them.

I named her Nina R, after my mother.

My previous boat was a thirty-two foot sport fisherman. Rosie was a shallow draft boat – she only drew about twenty-eight inches fully loaded, and I could put her into small coves and river channels without fear of running aground. Well, a healthy dose of common sense and some basic knowledge of the tides in the area helped, of course.

Nina R draws nearly eight feet (unless she’s loaded down with sixty thousand pounds of fish and ice, in which case she draws closer to fourteen, but since I don’t plan to do any commercial fishing, that’s just not gonna happen). Needless to say, I won’t be doing much gunk holing with her.

The drive back to Clearwater from my office in Orlando took less time than I had expected. It wasn't even noon when I pulled up to the guard shack at the entrance. He stepped into the bright Florida sun and told me the lady I was expecting had arrived.

I’d called the gate as soon as the appointment was made two days ago. Nobody gets into the marina unless they are an owner of one of the boats in the marina, a member of his immediate family, or a guest. As I walked past the marina office and the restaurant with its crowded outside dining area I looked out over the moored vessels. The sky was nearly cloudless, with a gentle offshore breeze slapping halyards against the masts of the sailboats. Dozens of seagulls and a few brown pelicans soared over the water.

I walked down the floating dock toward my converted sixty-foot trawler. There was a lovely young woman dressed in Levis and a red-checked western shirt in a lounge chair under the shade roof on the stern deck. Spike was curled up in her lap. Suddenly, life was good.

As I stepped onto the stern deck the lady smiled and introduced herself. I'm Dr. Lisa Carrillo. You're Terry Rankin?

I am, and you've already met Spike, I see. Can I get you something to drink, Doctor?

Call me Lisa, Mr. Rankin, she replied, staring at the gauze pad taped to my forehead. Why Spike? Like an idiot, I had forgotten it was there, believe it or not. I did the only thing I could. I ignored her stare.

It suits him. He's obviously a scrapper. Actually, Spike was one of the scruffiest looking cats I'd ever seen, but there was something about him that demanded a measure of respect, if not admiration. Sure fits him better than Fluffy, or Mopsy. She laughed at that.

Lisa Carrillo was a woman with long, glossy, pitch black hair held in a ponytail, a long, graceful neck, and dark brown eyes. She had a casual, competent air about her as she sat there with Spike draped in her lap, her left hand laid casually on his back.

No wedding ring. I’m a guy. I notice things like that. She appeared to be in her late thirties or early forties, with tiny little laugh lines in the corner of her eyes. Can I get you anything to drink, Lisa? I was repeating myself. I had other things to say to this beautiful woman, but every one of them would get me into serious trouble. Like, would you bear my children?

Coffee, if you don't mind, Mr. Rankin. Thank you. She smiled again. Meanwhile, now that you're here, I'll give Spike his checkup. She picked him up and stood. C'mon, big boy, she said to the cat, who had his eyes open and looking at her. Let's use the table over here so I can get a good look at you.

I was a little jealous of all the attention he was getting. I unlocked the hatch and headed for the galley, to put together a pot of coffee. Once it was dripping I set two heavy china mugs on a tray along with cream, sugar and spoons. When the coffee was ready I carried everything out to the table on the stern deck, where I watched Lisa give Spike his shots. I was amazed to see that massive, very well armed, potentially extremely vicious animal take the shots without so much as an eye blink.

Personally, I hate needles.

When she finished she shooed him off the table with a pat on his hip. While Spike twisted around her ankles (and what nice ankles they were), she collected her instruments and put them into her doctor’s bag. She stepped over to the sink built into the outside bar and washed her hands.

Spike is a Hemingway, she began as she toweled off. Hemingway’s are also called ‘Key West’ cats.

Is that something special? I asked as I poured the coffee.

Some people think so. They're polydactyls. That means many digits. You didn't notice his paws? She asked with a smile as she added cream and sugar to her mug.

I noticed that he has a lot of them. Four, in fact.

Cute, she laughed as if this was a joke she'd heard too many times. Yes, he has all four paws, just like most other cats. But he has two more digits on each paw. Hemingway’s are larger, with bodies that are boxier than normal cats. Their personalities are usually more gentle and easy going than your average house cat.

Uh, Spike doesn't strike me as the easy going sort, Lisa.

She laughed. He will be once he gets to know you. He's been abandoned, Mr. Rankin, and he's been struggling to survive. You treat him well and you will never have a better friend, I promise you. She smiled again. I really liked this lady.

Would you do me a big favor, please? I asked. Call me Terry.

She laughed. Okay, Terry. Anything else? If not, I'll make out the bill.

Would you have dinner with me some evening?

She looked at me, still smiling, but I noticed a touch of caution in her voice. What's the reason for that?

Well, you strike me as a very interesting lady, and I don't want you to leave without at least asking if you'd have dinner with me.

I thought she was spending a great deal of time to formulate an answer, but instead she asked, What is going on? and pointed over to the marina office and the main walkway leading down toward the docking slips. I turned to look and saw a number of armed and armored men as they reached the junction with the floating docks and turned toward the slip that held my trawler.

I have no idea, Never mind what I said earlier. Life was not good. In fact, it sucked.

They stopped at the foot of the gangway. One of the men asked, Terry Rankin? The patch on the front of his jacket said, 'F.B.I'. This was not a good thing. The jackets on the other men showed them to be with the U.S. Marshal's Service. For some stupid reason it never entered my mind that the F.B.I would have anything to do with what happened last week. I should have known they would. But I had been so shaken I’d shut my mind down. Not thinking can be a survival skill. Not a very good one, though.

That's me, I said, as I felt the dread grow in my stomach. I had been one of the victims in what happened last week. Why was I being raided?

Keep your hands out where I can see them, Mr. Rankin. You too, Lady. We're coming aboard. In a matter of moments my hands were behind my back and I was being cuffed and searched. A search warrant was stuffed in my shirt pocket while I was being led off the trawler. Lisa Carrillo was searched and cuffed by a lady marshal, and then was taken off the boat.

The rest of the marshals stayed aboard to search my vessel. When I was being 'perp-walked' up the floating dock to the marina parking lot I noticed that everyone and his brother had come out to watch the parade. That made me angry. I had a history with the F.B.I, and now they were writing a new chapter.

My chances of dinner with Dr. Lisa Carrillo were fading fast.

We were taken in separate vehicles to a place I had no wish to ever see again in my entire life. The offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on West Gray Street, in Tampa. I sat in an interrogation room for an hour before an agent came to start the questioning.

He was of medium height and weight, with short brown hair, in his mid-thirties, wearing a dark gray suit and black wingtips.

Before he could begin, I did. The lady your men picked up with me is a veterinarian. She came to check out my cat. That's all.

He gave no sign that he heard me. I am Special Agent Frank D'Agostino, Mr. Rankin. I have a few questions for you. He stated that there would be a video and audio recording of the interview. Are you willing to cooperate, Mr. Rankin?

I said Yes. They hadn't read me my rights at the time of the arrest, and this agent hadn't either, so I was not being charged with anything, yet.

Then he asked if I wanted an attorney present. I said, Not at this time.

Your name is Terry Rankin, is that correct?

Yes

You reside at slip 24-C, at the West Wind Marina in Clearwater, Florida?

Yes.

You're the sole owner of Rankin Personal Protection Services, headquartered at 201 West Colonial Drive in Orlando, Florida?

Yes.

How long have you known Mr. Travis Warren, Mr. Rankin?

I want my attorney now, I said. The agent turned off the video recorder and left the room.

They allowed me to make a phone call, which I used to contact my corporate attorney, Catherine Sanders. Then I asked for a bathroom break, which they also allowed me, and a cup of coffee, which I was also given. Then it was back to the interview room to wait for my attorney.

On the way back to the room I asked about Lisa Carrillo, but they ignored my question again. So I sat in the interview room for another two hours until Catherine arrived. Catherine Sanders is the mother of three, a lovely brunet who carries just a bit more weight than she wants. She is in fact darned near voluptuous, and happily married to a detective in the Tampa Bay police department.

Terry, she said as she put her briefcase down on the table and sat, "The F.B.I is all over your office in Orlando like a bad smell. Charley Weeks called me about one thirty, less than a minute after they walked into the office with a search warrant. I had Charley put the agent in charge on the phone and I told him to wait until I arrived before they removed a single piece of paper from your office.

When I got there, Charley said they had collected personal information from him and your office manager and two job seekers who'd come in to fill out employment applications. That scared those two men like nobody's business. I don’t think they’ll be pursuing a career with your company after that experience.

Catherine is a tall woman in her early forties, who'd left the world of big corporate law firms after ten years to hang out her own shingle. The CEO of one of her clients at the large law firm was also one of my clients, and when he told me she was available I leaped at the chance to have her in my camp.

When I got there they were going through your files and making a hell of a mess, she said. I put a stop to that until I had a chance to read the search warrant. After that I couldn't stop them from searching, but I made sure that anything they took was within the limits set by the search warrant.

The agent doing my interview asked me about Travis Warren, Catherine. That's when I stopped the questioning.

She looked at me quizzically, but decided now was not the time to ask about my relationship with the man. Catherine had drawn up the contract with Warren for me, but she didn’t have any of the details of what happened last week. They were looking for anything in your office about Travis Warren and your business with him, Terry.

They didn't read me my rights. That means I'm not being charged with a crime. But they hauled me and a lady veterinarian off my trawler in handcuffs, with damned near everyone in the marina watching. Catherine, please find out what they've done with her. She's just a veterinarian, for crying out loud. Do what you can for her, please?

She got up and knocked on the door until an agent opened it for her. She was gone ten or fifteen minutes. When she returned it was with another agent.

I'm Special Agent in Charge Daryl Thomas, Mr. Rankin, Thomas was a medium height, stocky African-American, who looked as if he belonged on a pro football team instead of in an F.B.I office. I owe you and the lady vet an apology for the way the two of you have been inconvenienced.

Note that he did not in fact apologize; he just said he owed us an apology.

His light gray suit and dark red, shot silk tie against an Egyptian cotton dress shirt marked him as a man who knew how to dress. Personally, I'd call him a clothes horse, but not where he could hear me. Please understand that this case has put us under some pressure.

I looked at Catherine, who shrugged her shoulders in ignorance. So he hadn't told her anything, either. What case is that, Agent Thomas?

Multiple murders and possible kidnapping, Mr. Rankin, at the home of Mr. Travis Warren, at his horse ranch north of Ocala, Florida. That was Monday of last week, November the third.

Catherine stepped around the agent and walked to my side. Are you thinking of bringing charges against my client, Special Agent?

Not at this time, Mrs. Sanders. If it were our intention to charge your client with anything, you can be sure we would have read him his rights. He smiled disingenuously. But we would like to ask him some questions.

Since I wasn't interested in sitting around the rest of the day if I didn't have to, Catherine suggested that they allow me to record a statement on video for them, with Agent Thomas asking any questions he needed to for clarification as necessary. Thomas graciously agreed.

This is what I told them on that video, dated 10 November:

Travis Warren's executive secretary, Robert Wesley, had called my office on a Friday in early July. He asked for a ten o’clock meeting on the following Monday with Mr. Warren at his home in Ocala. Considering just who Travis Warren was, my acceptance was a given.

Warren had starred in several blockbuster movies over the last twenty years; he had his very own football team, his own music publishing company, a significant percentage of stock in a popular cable news network, several homes, and a few hotel chains. He also owned a very large and successful horse ranch north of Ocala.

I hoped he wouldn’t ask me to go riding with him. I hadn’t been on a horse in thirty years, and didn’t have any desire to get on one ever again. Never mind that I’m from west Texas. I don’t like horses.

I got off I-75 at the Ocala exit and headed to Northeast Jacksonville Road, where I turned north. Thirty years ago, Ocala was the archetypal sleepy Florida town. Other than Silver Springs it didn’t have a lot to lure tourists off highway 441, and once I-75 replaced it as a main north-south (well, kinda-sorta north-south) artery, Ocala promised to slide back into sleepy obscurity along with most other small towns on 441. But the area north-west of Ocala had something most of Florida lacked.

Good grass and lots of it, along with a great year-round climate that horses just loved. It’s a well-known fact that Ocala, Florida, is prime horse country. More than a few media stars and corporate bigwigs own horse ranches in the area. The city fathers are well aware of this, and they run the town accordingly.

Once out of the Ocala city limits I started to follow the directions Warren’s secretary had provided. Twenty minutes later I turned onto the entrance road to Warren’s horse ranch. White three-board fencing ran along both sides of the road, and several massive old oaks provided shade for the well maintained pasturage. After a mile I passed the first of three stable complexes, each with its own oval exercise track.

The main house was well away from the stables. I was stopped at a security gate, which was built into an eight foot tall red brick privacy wall that enclosed a large piece of property. I gave my name to the fellow in the gate house, who called the house to verify my appointment. Then he gave me instructions to the guest parking.

Five minutes later I reached the parking area in front of the main house, an enormous red brick affair fronted by a wide porch with white columns and shaded by more of the old oaks, and bordered by large azaleas. I was met by Travis Warren himself, dressed even at this early hour in a dark blue business suit and necktie.

He was older, somewhere in his middle sixties, and heavier than I expected, with more than a bit of a paunch. He carried himself well for a man of his years, but then his last movie was five years ago, and he hadn’t played a young man in that