“You found him. Maybe I’m not as hungry as I have to be. I won’t know, will I, until you tell me.”
“I’m doing a favor for a man. For a fee. He trusts my judgment and my knowledge of Florida land values. He just came into a very big piece of money. He wants to put half of it in securities and half in land. A broker is working up a portfolio for him. I’m … hunting around.”
“You an agent?”
“No. If I could locate something good, a very promising investment, something in the eight or nine hundred thousand range, he’ll give me ten thousand finder’s fee. He’s interested in raw land.”
“And you need a lawyer to check out something quietly?”
“Not exactly. I found a couple of very clean deals, one near Arcadia and the other up the coast, south of Cedar Keys. Each is worth the finder’s fee.”
“So where does a hungry lawyer fit?”
I stood up. “Let’s adjourn to the office.”
Looking bewildered, he followed me to the bathroom. I turned the cold water in the shower on full, then leaned on the counter top. He understood quickly enough. “You’re more careful than you have to be, McGee.”
“I always am.” He leaned against the countertop beside me, and we spoke over the roar of the shower. “Ten thousand seems smaller every day, Watts. If a deal could get more complex, maybe a little more would rub off. Like if something could be picked up and held and resold. You might have more ideas about that kind of thing than I would.”
“Why should you think so?”
“From some bar talk today I got the idea you pulled off something pretty cute.”
“Oh, it was cute all right,” he said angrily. “It was even legal. But all I got was peanuts, comparatively speaking. It wasn’t anything I set up. This lousy town. Other lawyers get a little tricky and everybody says how smart they are. You know what I got? A whispering campaign. I’m down to a practice that just about pays the light bill.”
“Maybe you could try it again, and cut yourself a bigger piece. Legally, of course.”
“Maybe your guy is too shrewd for it. The one they cleaned was truly stupid.”
“My guy is no giant, and he’s never held a job in his life. You said they cleaned. Who?”
“Some out-of-town operators.”
“Would we need them?”
He frowned, tugged his lip. “It wouldn’t hurt at all to bring one of them in on it. He’s damned good.” He straightened up. “You’re acting as if we’re going to try it, and you don’t know a damn thing about it.”
“All I want to know is that there’s no ten years in Raiford afterwards.”
“Nothing like that. It’s all legal, believe me.”
“How does it work?”
“Your guy has to go along with certain things. Like being willing to be in on a land syndicate operation. And your guy should be off balance a little. They used a woman on the last one.”
“Is she still around?”
“Not that I know of. Why?”
“It could work with my man too.”
“Listen. You said he trusts you. The way this thing works, it isn’t halfway. It has to clean him completely, or it doesn’t work. Would that bother you?”
“Not on his account. But it makes me a little nervous. We’re talking about close to two million dollars, Watts.”
“With family lawyers riding herd on it, maybe?”
“No. How does it work? Make it simple. I’m not a lawyer.”
“You make your man believe the syndicate is going after one hell of a big piece of land. Everybody puts money into the syndicate trust account, on a share basis. The trustee is one of the syndicate. In this case it would be that man I told you about. The sucker thinks everybody is putting in cash. But, by separate letter of agreement, the trustee agrees to accept demand notes from the other partners, in view of their long association and so forth. There’s a clause in the syndicate agreement permitting additional assessments. Every time one comes along, the sucker comes up with cash and the others turn over promissory notes for their assessment. Another clause in the agreement says that if anyone can’t meet an assessment, they are dealt out, and their share is divided pro rata among the other partners. Another clause says that if it is decided the operation is not feasible, the syndicate will be disbanded and the funds in the trust account divided among the partners pro rata. So you just assess him until he’s dry, cancel him out with due notice, and a little while later close up shop and divide the pie. You have to keep him thinking that the whole thing is right on the verge of turning into a big fat gold mine.”
“And you got a piece of that pie?”
“Hardly. I got a twenty-five-hundred-dollar fee and a five thousand bonus. I was promised ten, but after it was over there was no way I could blow the whistle on them without putting myself in a sling, and they knew it.”
“What did they take the man for?”
“About two hundred and thirty thousand. When it was too late, he went to another lawyer. That’s how the news got all over town.”
“But you can still afford to lose five hundred dollars in a bridge game?”
He put his head in his hands. “Cut it out, will you?”
“Could you rig the same kind of operation again, for my man?”
“I don’t know. It’s a lot bigger. I don’t know how good my nerve is. I’d have to bring the other man in on it. Maybe he wouldn’t want to come in alone. Maybe he’d want to use the same people as before. They’d cut themselves big pieces.”
“So how could we defend ourselves against being left the small end?”
He shook his head. “I’ve got a headache, McGee. There are ways. You work this thing out in the open. We could set up the trust account so it would require three signatures for any withdrawal, and with our promissory notes being as good as the others, we could get in for any percentage we could dicker for.”
“He’s my man. What if we go for half between us, forty percent for me and ten for you? And let them cut the rest up any way they want, just so they swing it.”
“But wouldn’t he know you can’t come up with that kind of cash? I think it would have to …”
The bathroom door opened and Vivian stared in at us. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m getting rich, sweetheart. Close the door. As you leave.”
I got a duplicate of the look she gave him. She yanked the door shut.
“One other thing, Watts. I suppose you have to set up a fictitious piece of property.”
“Oh, no. That would classify it as fraud. We dealt with the executor of the Kippler tract, sixty-one thousand acres. We made legitimate option offers.”
“So where are you if he said okay, let’s deal?”
“He couldn’t. It’s all tied up by the terms of the will. But how could we know that if he didn’t tell us?”
“And he didn’t?”
“No. He wrote nice letters. Seriously considering your last offer. Must discuss it with the heirs and the tax attorneys and so on. They went in the file, in case anybody ever had to see the file. And he kept demanding a higher option offer.”
“Which required assessments. So he was coached?”
“Of course. And he got a nice little gift afterward. Hell, McGee, the whole file on this thing is clean as a whistle.”
“Could we use the same tract again?”
“Well … not on option terms. Too much money involved this time. Maybe on a purchase basis. With a good chance of resale if we could pick it up right, say at two hundred an acre. Twelve million. Then your man comes in for one twelfth … something along that line, where it would leave enough plausible spread to assess him out of the picture. You see, you have to know just about the absolute total the sucker can come up with. Once hooked big, then they have to keep throwing more in because they think it’s the only way they can protect themselves. The beauty of it is that when it’s over, they are picked so clean there’s hardly any chance at all of the
m coming up with any civil action to recover, and it’s a little too clean to make it attractive to any lawyer to tackle on a contingency basis. What’s your man’s name?”
“We’ll have to think about this and talk about it later. What’s the name of your expert?”
“He might be busy with something else. You’ll get in touch?”
“Soon.”
“In the meantime, just for the hell of it, and it can’t do any harm, call your man and act excited and tell him you think there’s a chance you can get him into something that will double his money in a year. Is he interested in doubling his money?”
“He wants to be nationally known as a wheeler and dealer.”
“What line of work are you in?”
“Salvage and demolition.”
“On your own?”
“Without overhead. Whenever the right kind of job comes along, I bid it in, rent the equipment, subcontract everything I can, come out with a low profit percentage that’s big enough to live well until the next chance opens up.”
He nodded. “Very smart. Very nice. So why all this sudden larceny, friend?”
“I wasn’t the low bidder the last few times, and the operating capital is getting a little too puny.”
“How can I contact you, McGee?”
“I’m staying with friends. I’ll be in touch.”
I did not see Vivian when I left. And I could well imagine how Crane Watts would feel the next morning when he remembered the conversation. The man suddenly and artificially sobered has a period of fraudulent lucidity. He thinks he is under control, but the cerebral cortex is still partially stunned, all caution compromised. Attempts at slyness are childlike and obvious. The business of the shower had reassured him. If I was that careful to drown out any listening devices, then, hell, I had to be okay.
In the sober morning it would have a dreadful flavor to him, and he would be aghast not only at all he had told me, but at the memory of even contemplating the same sort of thing with so much money involved. He’d know it was too big for that same kind of operation.
But he was hungry. His seams were splitting and the sawdust was leaking. I wondered if he was bright enough to realize that under the seedy look of failure was an old time conscience, prodding him into self-punishment. Such as playing losing bridge for high stakes.
Now I had things to go on, pieces to pry loose. The solo operator is often invulnerable. But group operations are weak as the weakest thief in the team. An equation applies. The weakest is usually the one who gets the smallest end of the take. And knows the least. But because of the quasi-legality of this operation, Crane Watts had useful information. The big con often needs a plausible local front man. I could guess how Arthur’s money had probably been split. A hundred thousand to Stebber, fifty to Wilma, fifty to G. Harrison Gisik, the balance to Watts, Waxwell, the Kippler executor and operating expenses. The role of Boone Waxwell troubled me a little. Beating Arthur so severely had been stupid. But maybe they felt they needed an enforcer. For whom? Watts wasn’t likely to get out of line. Perhaps there’d been a germ of truth in their story to Arthur, that Waxwell was essential to negotiations on the Kippler tract. That could mean control of the executor. And where was the coldly efficient Miss Brown? And would that cheap redhead with the improbable name—Dilly Starr—know anything useful if she could be found?
I drove slowly toward the center of the very rich and pleasant little city of Naples, wondering how good old Frank was enjoying Spain.
Eight
When I walked into the big drugstore on Fifth Avenue in Naples, I was slightly surprised to see that it was not yet nine o’clock. There were some rowdy teenagers at one of the counter sections, and I sat as far from them as possible. I like them fine in smaller units. But when they socialize, showing off for each other, they sadden me. The boys punch and shove, and repeat each comment in their raw uncertain baritone over and over until finally they have milked the last giggle from their soft little girls with their big, spreading, TV butts. And they keep making their quick cool appraisals of the environment to make certain they have a properly disapproving audience of squares. And have you noticed how many fat kids there are lately? And the drugstore comedians are usually the rejects. The good ones, as in any year, are taut, brown, earnest, and have many other things to do, and can even—unthinkably—endure being alone. This little fatpack was nearing the end of their school year and, predictably, would slob around all summer, with a few of them impregnating each other. They would dutifully copy the outlook and mannerisms of their momentary idols. Some of them would check out this summer as a bloody stain on a bridge approach. The survivors, ten years hence, would wonder how come their luck was turning so bad, why life wasn’t giving them any kind of break at all.
I had coffee and a sandwich, and went to a booth to check the thin Naples phonebook. Mrs. Mildred Mooney was listed. 17 Twenty-first Avenue. After the fifth ring she answered in a listless voice, said she was Mrs. Mooney.
“I wondered if I could stop by and talk to you about something. My name is McGee.”
“I guess not. Not tonight. I was supposed to babysit and I got one of my sick headaches and I had to get somebody else, and I already gone to bed, mister.”
“At least I can tell you what it’s about, I’m trying to help a man you worked for. He needs help. Arthur Wilkinson. You might have some information I could use, Mrs. Mooney.”
“He’s a real nice man. He was real good to me. He had some terrible bad luck, losing all his money like that, so sudden and all. But I don’t see how I could help.”
“I won’t take up much of your time.”
After a long silence, she said, “Well, I can’t seem to get to sleep anyhow.”
“I’ll be along in a few minutes then.”
She sat in a corner chair in the small living room of her efficiency apartment, sat in the dimness of a single small lamp burning in the opposite corner. Dumpy woman with a worn face and bushy gray hair, wearing a quilted wine-colored robe.
“When I’m like this,” she said, “it’s like bright light was needles sticking into my eyes. It comes on me about three or four times a year, and then I’m just no good for anything until it goes away. I got regular people, and I can get enough work to keep me going. Working at that big beach house last year was more than I like to take on. It was good pay, for around here, and just the two of them, but she didn’t lift a finger. And I lost a lot of regular people taking steady work like that, and it took so long to get my regular people it seems like I ended up about even, except for working harder. Oh, I don’t mind work, but when they come and go you have to look out for yourself so you have something coming in steady. But I want to tell you right now, I make it my rule not to talk about my people. You start that and the first thing you know it gets around, then they don’t want you. Land, the things I seen, I could fill a book, and you better believe it.”
“I wouldn’t want to ask you to talk about any of your regular people, Mrs. Mooney. I want you to consider something that maybe you never thought of. I want you to think back, and see if it would make any sense to you to believe that Wilma was a part of a conspiracy to defraud Arthur Wilkinson of his money.”
“But wasn’t she his wife like they said?”
“They went through a ceremony. Maybe she wasn’t free to marry. Maybe it was just one of the ways of setting him up, to make it easier to take his money.”
She made several little clicking sounds with her tongue. After a thoughtful silence she said, “I came close to quitting a lot of times out there, believe me, and stayed on account of him. She was a pretty little thing, and real lively, but I’d say older than maybe he knew. She sure did spend an awful lot of time on her face and hair. You know one thing she would do I never did hear of before? She would sandpaper her face, and that’s God’s truth, take little strokes and get it raw almost and then put on white goo and some kind of mask and lay down for an hour. She was loving to him, most of the time, nice en
ough to me when he was close, but with me and her alone, I was just a piece of furniture. She didn’t see me, and if I said anything, she didn’t hear me. She’d turn on me sometimes, just as mean as a wasp, eyes all narrowed down. Not hot angry, but cold as can be. I don’t have to take that from anybody. But he was a nice nice man. I tell you, the way she used him was wicked. She had him waiting on her hand and foot, something she wanted that was closer to her than him, he had to go get it and bring it to her. He brushed her hair, that real pale thin kind of hair, a hundred strokes, putting a little bitty dab of some kind of perfume oil on the soft brush every ten strokes, with her whining if he lost count. She had him oil her head to foot for going in the sun, and another sickening thing, I tell you, she had him run her little electric razor, shaving the fuzz off her pretty legs, then she’d feel to see if he did it good, tell him where he missed, and pat him when he finished. My husband Mr. Mooney, God rest his soul, was a man, and no woman ever lived could have turned him into a lady’s maid like she done with Mr. Wilkinson. I felt so sorry for that poor man. I don’t know, Mr. McGee. I thought it was just bad judgment, him investing in something that turned out bad for him. But I guess she was the kind out for herself and no regard for anybody else.”
“So let’s say she was setting him up for Mr. Stebber to cheat him. Would that fit?”
“Mr. Stebber seemed like a real gentleman, the kind that thanks you nicely for any little thing. A smiley man. And you could tell he was a real big man, successful and all. She knew him from someplace. Then there was that tall sick-looking man with the funny name.”
“Gisik.”
“He didn’t have much to say at any time. He acted as if he was busy thinking about important things happening far away. I guess if Mr. Wilkinson got cheated, then young Crane Watts must have got the same dose. They say he’s going down hill something terrible, drinking and gambling and his practice going down to nothing, and probably they’ll lose the house, so it’s a blessing there’s no children. It’s children get hurt the worst in a thing like that. They don’t understand. They’re not regular people of mine, or ever were, so it isn’t like I’m saying anything nearly everybody doesn’t know already.”
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