Hadley Forrester put his piece of paper aside and said, “Of course, when the Articles of Condominium were drawn up by Mr. Traff, Mr. Liss’s attorney, who was at that time an officer of the Association, it could have been an oversight that such powers of renegotiation were not clearly put forth. We, your officers, feel we would like to have that power. But before putting it to a vote we thought it only fair to let everyone know how we intend to make use of those powers insofar as the recreation lease and the management contract are concerned. The Declaration forms a part of every deed, and so this amendment will form a part of every deed, provided we can get a two-thirds favorable vote.”
As McKay still stood, his expression strained, McGinnity asked him if he had any further comment.
“Just this, sir. If this passes, I am being mousetrapped. I cannot afford to maintain the two apartments I own, and I don’t see how I can sell them if they are subject to the litigation your actions will surely bring. Anyone else who wishes to sell will be in the same boat. It isn’t fair.” He sat down.
“That screwed up the game plan,” McGinnity whispered to Forrester.
“Go ahead now, then,” Hadley suggested.
McGinnity nodded meaningfully at George Gobbin, sitting placidly, half smiling, in the midst of uproar and turmoil. George hopped up at once and was recognized.
“Mr. Chairman, I have listened carefully to the amendment as proposed by you officers of our Association. I want to say this. You have worked long and hard in our best interests. We all trust you to go on doing so. I do not think it is fair that you should be handicapped by the fact there is a gap in our Declaration where that amendment really and truly belongs. You shouldn’t be handcuffed in your attempt to right wrongs. And we are protected by the fact it gives you the authority to renegotiate in only one direction. Down. Let’s face it. Marty Liss set us up. We were pigeons. This is our chance to show him we’re not that dumb. I move that we consider the amendment as read by Mr. Forrester. And I hope we pass it by a big margin.”
“Second the motion,” several people shouted.
“Seconded by Ross Twigg,” McGinnity told Mrs. Gregg. “All in favor signify by raising their right hands. Remember now, one vote per apartment, except for Higbee and McKay, who are voting two each, and Mr. Wasniak, who’ll be voting nine proxies. How many total votes is that, Mrs. Gregg?”
“Uh … forty.”
“All right. Keep those hands high. No. Let’s not do it that way. Everybody in favor, get up and move over by the windows. What? Yes, couples too. Everybody in favor. Except the people at this table. The officers are all in favor and how are you voting the proxies, Stanley? In favor. Right. So that’s fifteen yes votes right here at the table, when we include you, Mrs. Gregg. I’d appreciate it if you’d vote one way or the other. You’ve got the right to abstain, of course. I would just personally appreciate a vote from everybody. Now then, let’s see who we’ve got left. You, Mr. McKay. That’s two against. And you, Julian. Two more. Mrs. Kelsey, are you going to … Ah, fine. Thank you. Okay, if we have forty, then we have thirty-six in favor, four against.”
“Thirty-five. Mr. Branhammer left.”
“Right! We count him as abstaining. One abstem … The hell with it, we’ll count him as absentee, along with the other seven absentees. Thirty-five for, four against, eight absent, totals forty-seven. Your officers really and truly appreciate this from the bottom of our hearts, folks. You make our task easier. Yes, you can go back to your seats. Now I want to report on what we’ve found out about the project behind us, which isn’t too much.…”
Thelma Mensenkott stood up slowly. She was in the middle of the front row. She was a quiet woman, bigboned and self-effacing, speaking quite pleasantly when spoken to. Most of them knew she was about thirty years younger than her husband, and that his first wife had died of some kind of cancer. Her mouth worked and no sound came out. Jack Mensenkott tugged at her, whispering, “Thelma, honey. Sit down, honey. It’s okay, honey.”
She twisted away from his grasp. She stared earnestly at McGinnity. She had laced her fingers together, holding them so tightly her knuckles whitened. There had been muttered conversations, the sounds of people shifting in the chairs, rustling the papers which had been handed out. Gradually all these sounds stopped as everyone became aware of the tension and strangeness of the woman’s silence.
For a time she had seemed to be trying to break her own silence. Now her mouth was still. Her face was emptied of all expression. McGinnity realized she was staring at a spot a couple of feet over his head.
Jack Mensenkott stood up beside her and put his arm around her. “Sit down, honey,” he said in a low voice. “Please.”
There was no sign she had heard him. He glanced around at everyone and shrugged apologetically and said, “I think … I think we better go. She wanted to say something about … everything being cleared off that land. But I guess …”
He had to physically turn her. People made room for her to pass. If he kept pushing her along, she walked. If he stopped pushing, she stopped walking. His face was red.
When the door swung shut behind them, there was a concerted sigh. Carlotta Churchbridge, who had been sitting on the other side of her, said, “I think I’ll go see what I can do to help. She wanted to speak to this matter. It’s important to her. When they cleared that land, something strange happened to her. They’re right next to us, you know. She was making a study of that jungle. It was ruthless and wicked, wiping it all out like that. May I be excused?”
“Run along, dear,” Mr. Churchbridge said.
Hadley Forrester said, “I think we should have another meeting when we’ll have more to report on the construction, Pete. It’s almost four o’clock and—”
“Wait! Wait a minute!” Julian Higbee said. “I’ve got to say something about this thing you’re going to do, about not paying Frank West and Sully.”
Pete looked at his watch. “We can give you a couple of minutes.”
Julian Higbee looked smaller in clothes. He wore a long-sleeved shirt jacket in off-white, with a blue collar and blue pockets. The sleeves covered his big brown meaty arms, and his gray slacks hid the thick powerful legs. His carefully coifed auburn cap which was usually brushed and sprayed across his forehead was in disarray. He had been running his hands through it. He wore a frown of concern.
“I don’t know where to start. Look, I know everybody here. What I mean to say is, okay, I got off on the wrong foot around here because the way it was in the beginning, like it still is over at Captiva House next door, was squeeze out the last dime. I mean if I could skip some kind of maintenance, or put in a big bill, or scrimp on parts, anything like that, then I looked better to my boss, Mr. Sullivan. You can see how that is. Gulfway Management has got like thirty-four condos, eleven motels, a couple of car washes. They got a cleaning service, lawn service, linen service, and some franchise distributorships in beer and soft drinks and vending machines and so on. And it is all run the same way, in a good business way, like make the most you can out of everything. It is all on long-term contracts.”
“Unless you can get to the point …”
“What I’m saying is that Sully, Mr. Sullivan, changed the rules all of a sudden. You people all know the way it is now. I’m following his orders, and his orders to me were to do everything possible to make everybody happy here. I have been busting a gut doing everything like you ask, and you got to admit I’ve been trying.”
“Everybody is happy for the change in your attitude, Higbee, but that is neither here nor there.”
“I heard that you were planning to maybe stop paying the management fee, so I phoned Mr. Sullivan and I asked what I should do. What he did was send me a letter to read here to you all if you were deciding to do anything like that.”
Julian took the letter out, unfolded it, cleared his throat and read. He was not a good reader. Though he stumbled over the words, the meaning was clear. “ ‘Gulfway Management is one of the subsidiary m
anagement companies of the Services Management Group, a Florida corporation based in Miami. The last monthly intra-office report stated that SMG now manages on long-term contracts, through its subsidiaries, one hundred and three condominium complexes, containing a total of eight thousand and eleven residential units. Julian, please tell the directors there at Golden Sands that we would merely report any moratorium on payments to SMG and, because of the implications of such a precedent, I feel quite sure that SMG would defend our legal position with utmost vigor. I do not believe any accommodation could be reached in this matter.’ ”
As he refolded the letter, Julian said, “That’s what my point was, Mr. McGinnity. The letter is to me instead of you people, but the easiest way to tell you was to read it and—”
“Thank you, Julian,” McGinnity said. There was a different atmosphere in the room. The faces were changed. McGinnity had no doubt but that, had the letter been read before the vote, the vote might have been different. He was glad he had rammed the vote through before Julian took the floor.
Someone said, “Maybe we ought to give it a little more …”
“Do I hear a motion for adjournment?” Pete McGinnity asked, leaning toward the microphone.
“So move,” said Wasniak.
“Second,” Dave Dow whispered.
“In favor? Carried! Meeting adjourned.” As he got up he accidentally kicked the card table leg. The table collapsed toward the audience and the microphone slid off and bounced onto the carpeting. Rolph Gregg made a hiss of dismay and snatched it up and spoke into it.
“Testing!” the huge hollow voice said. “Testing. One two three four.”
25
THE NEWSROOM WAS on the second floor of the Athens Times Record building on Bay Drive, three blocks from the north bridge onto Fiddler Key. During the seven years Mick Rhoades had been on the paper, he had gradually desk-hopped his way back into a badly lighted corner.
He was in his middle thirties and looked younger. He was trim, five eight with his lifts, dark hair, small neat mustache, soft brown eyes which conveyed a false impression of naïveté and gentleness. He was as naïve and gentle as a pit viper. He was always spick-and-span, tailored and barbered and manicured. He affected white: white suits, slacks, shirts, shoes, socks. He had an impressive memory.
On this Saturday morning in late July he was at his desk earlier than usual. He had covered a breakfast meeting of the County Planning and Zoning Board. Local governments were learning to live with the Sunshine Law. The simple answer was to schedule lots of meetings at inconvenient times and places, and send out the proper notifications. Sooner or later there would be a meeting where no press and no public showed up. Then the off-the-record political trades and deals could be made with impunity. He was pleased at the sour hush which had fallen over the small group in a corner of a motel dining area when he had joined them. Nothing of any consequence was said. He had nothing to write. As Holmes had explained to Watson, the significance was that the dog had not howled in the night.
He had a small television set on his desk, the sound off, the screen showing white words appearing on a green background, the local cable channel for news and music. They were repeating a lot of Friday news. It was happening more frequently lately. Automatic equipment. Stay in bed. Let the sucker run. They were turning Saturday into a second Sunday. Pretty soon no mail. Then they’d get to work on Monday morning. And when the bastards did work, when they weren’t striking, they had starting blocks screwed to the floor so they could get positioned and be out the door at thirty seconds before five.
He got up and went and got himself coffee out of the machine, with cream and sugar to kill the taste of acid and paper cup. As he went back to his desk a voice directly behind him said, “Your name Rhoades?”
It made him spill coffee on the back of his hand. He looked up at a tall, broad and substantial fellow, browned and weathered by wind and sun, a fellow of khaki, and leather, and metal buttons, with pilot-type shades and a white canvas hat.
“What you are supposed to do, you are supposed to let that lady out there at the desk use her phone and call me.”
“There is no lady out there. Not at the moment.”
“Oh. What do you want?”
“It’ll take a few minutes. My name is Sam Harrison.”
“What is it that’s going to be worth a few minutes, Sam?”
“Are you the red-hot environmentalist they say you are? Or is that a pose?”
“Come and sit down a minute.”
“Thanks.”
Mick Rhoades tilted back in his chair, eyes half closed, fingertips touching, and said, “Now don’t say anything. Let me guess. You represent some gigantic land-development interest, and what you want to say to me is that there is no way on God’s earth we can stop people flooding down here from the frozen North, and so if they are going to be coming down anyway, then the thing we have to do is face the inevitable and do it right. Your company has the money and the know-how. You are an advance man, sticking your toe in the hot water, and you’ve been told that if Mick Rhoades will buy your story, it might be easier to get started here in Palm County. Okay, what are you laughing at? What’s so funny?”
“If I was very very stupid, I would talk about how my vast project would broaden the tax base.”
“Bigger is cheaper, sure. That’s why property taxes are so much lower in New York City than they are in East Greenbush. Was my guess off?”
“Way way off. How serious are you on the environmental thing?”
Mick Rhoades shrugged. “This paper is owned by a chain. Their policy is, What’s good for business is good for the paper. It isn’t like the Lindsay papers in Sarasota, where they’ll really slug it out with the spoilers. They keep me around because I am sort of the environmental conscience, along with covering the City Council and the County Commission. I get in a good lick now and then. If I start to sting the wrong people too badly, they get me reeled back in. The power structure is very cozy here. Good old boys, all on a first-name basis, all thinking they know what’s best. They think bigger is better, progress is wonderful, and so on and so on. They’ll keep thumping tubs right up until the day we run out of water completely. They’ll make that day happen sooner, and then wonder what happened, and the ones who have made their money out of all the progress will move the hell away and leave the pigeons here to cope. Where do you fit in?”
“I read your article about the Silverthorn tract.”
“A half page that got cut down to a filler. Sure. Beautiful!”
“Why?”
“News has to be timely. It took me too long to dig out how those sons of bitches did it.”
“Which sons of bitches?”
“I have to know more about you.”
“Can it stay off the record for now?”
“If you want it that way.”
Sam Harrison unzipped the old leather portfolio he was carrying and put some drawings in front of Mick Rhoades. Then he picked up his chair and moved it around beside Mick’s chair.
“Here we are. I did some digging. It took quite a few days to come up with all this, and some of it is guesswork. Here is the shape of Fiddler Key as far back as I could check it out, about 1875. It turned out I could get pretty good information on about a twenty-five-year interval. Here’s 1900, then 1925, and 1950. And this last one is an aerial that’s in scale with these others, showing it as it is now.”
“It certainly changes!”
“Because the whole damned thing is what you could properly call transient land. Here is how the cycle works, Mick. You have a narrow island off the mainland, and you have a pass at each end of the island. Okay, you have a littoral drift on this coast in this direction. It tends to silt up the passes. As the passes grow shallow, less volume of water goes in and out on each tide. The bays themselves do not become shallower. The heavy load of water is still in there, but it is trapped by the shallowness of the passes. After a time the whole setup gets more and more fragile
as it approaches a period of dynamic change. The dynamic change is caused by a hurricane, and by hurricane tides. Waves and tide are wind-driven across the island, filling the bay much higher than normal, creating great pressures for that captive water to escape. A lot of it, of course, is going to go out through the passes. But the greatest escape pressure will occur here, around the midpoint of the island, and given half a chance it will cut across and cut through the island. These offshore keys are glorified sandbars. They are subject to dynamic change. Nature changes and renews. This process has been going on for a long long time here. Just think about the names of the passes up and down this coast. New Pass. Midnight Pass. Hurricane Pass. September Pass. And you haven’t had a hurricane come in around here in twenty years and more. Look in the aerial how narrow and silted the passes are.”
Mick Rhoades bent and studied. He said, “Complaints all the time from the yacht-club types. They can’t get in or out except on the high if they draw four feet.”
“Getting ready for change,” Harrison said.
“Damn! You know, I’ve known this all my life, without knowing I’ve known it. I sensed it would happen some day, but I didn’t know why it would happen.”
“Now here is an overlay for the aerial. Let me get it positioned. It is possible to make a pretty fair guess about where a pass might open up. First I took the three lowest and narrowest points in the mid-key area, along this two-mile stretch here, and marked them with grease pencil. They are possibles, but one of them is my favorite. Right here. Reasons are, first, this area here has been recently stripped of all protective growth. Second, the positioning of these two buildings on the Gulf front—”
Condominium Page 25