“I’m not denying anything,” Fred said. “Her letters were always cheerful. She remembered birthdays and anniversaries. How was I to know she was going downhill? I thought it was all working out for her, same as you did.”
“If she’d been living with us, or even near one of us, she would have been okay,” Jud said.
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“Maybe not. But I like the odds. And maybe my kids would have had some benefit from it. I have the feeling that the more people there are around kids who are … related to them, part of a bigger family around them, the more the kids respond to approval and disapproval.”
“Jud?”
“What?”
“It … makes me feel ashamed, and then angry for feeling ashamed when I really can’t see why I should feel that way.”
“It’s a start.”
“And you are saying that somebody stays here until she can travel west?”
“Which will probably have to be you. I’m in too much of a dog fight with the regulatory people right now over our holding company. I told you about it.”
Fred sighed. “Which will probably have to be me. Why not? With these nine-thousand-share days, the office is like a graveyard. If Ginny can get her sister to take the kids, she can come help out.”
“Stay in the apartment?”
“I guess so. We’d better wait and see if they stop that bleeding before planning anything.”
From the hotel coffee-shop stool, Jud could look left through tinted glass and see the tall caramel towers of the condominiums stretching along the beach of Fiddler Key.
“There’s a lot of them,” he said softly. “Buildings full of the old folks, under some kind of compulsion to enjoy the hell out of the sunset years. They should be with their blood kin, and deep inside them they know it. Can’t admit it. If they admit it, it means admitting their children are selfish, indifferent turds. How the hell did old folks get to be a race apart? For that matter, how did the teenagers become a different tribe? We’re all split up into fragments of what it used to be, brother. And it seems to me that no part of it all is having a good time by itself. And the kids don’t learn shit about their own family past. All those apartments, Freddy, think of it. What it is, maybe, is a market. The oldsters market. Sell to the senior citizens. Group them and sell to them. If they are scattered all over hell and gone, it costs too much to reach your market. Get them into a herd, and sell one, and he’ll sell his neighbors.”
Fred said, “I’m going back to the hospital. Coming?”
“No. I’m going to walk to Golden Sands.”
“That would be two miles, about. It’s hot and we’re going to get that rain again today.”
“Well … drop me off. Phone me there if there’s a change.”
“Sure. We … we did what we thought was best. And she could have gotten sick wherever she was.”
“Probably. Probably.” His tone was lifeless. The conversation was over. It was the voice he used to bring committee meetings to an early adjournment. He still wanted to walk, but it wasn’t worth the argument. And he wanted to cry, but knew he couldn’t, not yet.
28
ON A TORRID WEDNESDAY MORNING in early August, Martin Liss took scratch paper and once again computed his net worth after taxes. Four and a quarter mil, figuring it conservatively. The speculation in Swiss francs was doing very very well. With Sherman Grome’s crap game listed on the big board at six, he could count a profit thus far of two hundred and twenty-two thousand on his short side of EMMS shares.
And there was no more fun in trying to push the Harbour Pointe project. There was no way he could win and no way he could lose. There wasn’t enough money to do it the way he had planned, absolutely first class. The Tropic Towers problem was being solved. What they had done was scare hell out of the few buyers already in residence and gotten them to approve pets and kids. Then they had moved in a dozen families rent-free, into furnished apartments, on a thirty-day or sixty-day basis, families with kids and dogs and cats and so forth. Lots of activity. Young people running around all over the place. And he had cut the average price to $23,995 and taken a couple of full pages, and in spite of the times they had really moved a bunch of them. Take a little loss here and now, but make it up over a period of time in recreation leases and maintenance agreements.
Drusilla Bryne had done an absolutely first-class job at Tropic Towers once she had moved into the penthouse, functioning as manager and sales manager, just as she had in the early days of Golden Sands. Good thing there hadn’t been too much to do at the office, giving her more time at the Towers. He rocked back and forth on his elevator shoes and stared frowning at the horizon line and tugged at his goatee, and wondered what sort of bonus he should give her, if any. It could come out of Marliss. Nice cash balance in Marliss since Letra had reimbursed Marliss for all prior costs on the Harbour Pointe project.
He felt edgy and restless. The report on the third Mrs. Liss was a month old and he had not done a thing about it, or wanted to. It didn’t seem that important. The investigator had been a second-generation Cuban with a cracker accent. His report was semi-illiterate but crammed with facts, and accompanied by some grainy blowups of black-and-white telephoto shots. Francie Liss was presently getting laid by the assistant tennis pro at the club. It was a matinee arrangement on Mondays and Thursdays, his afternoons off. He shared a frame cottage on a side street a mile from the club with two other gainfully employed jocks. She would drive down a narrow alley and park her gray sun-roof Mercedes between a tin shed and a giant banyan tree and walk through the junk in the yard and go in through the back. They would do most of their screwing on a big blanket-covered mattress on the floor of the so-called Florida room at the rear of the house, and Martinez had gotten his art photos by waiting in the banyan tree one Thursday for her to arrive and staying there until well after she left. The agency had made blowups of the few which showed her face distinctly and left no question as to what she was doing, and no question that it was not with her husband, who was some eight inches shorter, thirty pounds lighter, and far hairier than her muscular lover.
Whenever he needed it, the report was there, documented and notarized. And illustrated. He could not really feel any differently about her than he had before. She was lively and decorative, and sometimes funny, and he had never trusted her and still didn’t.
What he ought to do, he thought, was fold up the Marliss Corporation. Liquidate all its assets. The big asset was the stock in Services Management Group of Miami. The quarterly dividends were heavy, but that was, of course, only a part of it. Enough of the income was in cash to permit a skim, nothing like the kind of skim those same boys had arranged out in Las Vegas before Hughes moved in and made a full declaration of all casino income and gave the IRS a basis for comparison. Some of them in Miami had talked about how it used to be in Vegas and Havana. They had some operations over there in Dade County that did not concern Marty Liss, and in which he did not want to get involved, but they kept Services Management Group clean, except for the little skim, because it was a legitimate investment area for some of the money from the other things. Sometimes somebody passing through would bring his share of the cash over, but usually he would get it when he had to be in Miami. Pocket money. He kept it in the locked drawer of his desk and took some out when he ran low.
He wondered why he felt so down. He wondered if something was wrong with him physically. A lung maybe? No weight loss. How did you feel if you had a cancer you didn’t know about? Lung, prostate, throat, liver, bladder, bowel, stomach … Jesus! There is no such thing as a good place to have one.
It couldn’t be knowing for sure about Francie, because he had felt down before that came out. Would a new woman help? He couldn’t feel the slightest stir of interest. It would just be a hell of a chore to go hunt one up and con her onto her back. And once you had her there, she wouldn’t be as good as Irish at it anyway. He wondered if he should phone them and have the boat tak
en out of storage and cleaned up and provisioned. For what? For where? Forget it.
Traffic crossing the north bridge to Fiddler Key was blurred by the heat waves rising from the pavement. He could see little scurries of wind moving across the stillness of the bay. Black storm clouds were low and heavy over the Gulf, and he saw a thick straight orange bolt of lightning appear between sea and cloud.
He looked at the Silverthorn tract, at the fourteen acres scraped clean, and at the curved finger of land protecting the boat basin. The dredge sat in the boat basin, and he knew that if he looked through his binoculars he would see the fill spewing onto the land, and see the cloud of gulls at the end of the fill pipe as they circled and dipped and yapped and snatched up the sea creatures which came hurtling ashore from the bay bottom.
There was no pleasure in the damned place anymore. No risk left. And, if it was built, no pride in it. More junk on the key. Not as bad as that Tropic Towers, but junk nevertheless.
He moved closer to the window and looked down toward the street. He imagined how Jerry Stalbo must have looked, flaming and screaming down through the night toward the hard concrete, and it made him feel sick and dizzy. But at the same time he had a strange soft compulsion to jump. He knew he probably couldn’t break through those big tinted windows with a sledge. How long would it last? What would you think about on the way down?
As he backed away, the intercom on his desk spoke with the unfamiliar country accent of the girl filling in for Drusilla.
“Could Mr. Traff come in?”
He said yes and Lew came in, frowning, to sit across the desk from Marty and nibble at the skin at the corner of his thumbnail.
“Something I can’t figure out, Marty. You know this revolt we got at Golden Sands, I had told Frank West and Sully that it was my opinion the best thing they could do would be continue to provide everything they had always provided so there wouldn’t be any hassle about any discontinuance of services. What they both said, they said it sounded to them like the right thing to do, but they would check it out with the legal guys over at SMG, Miami, on account of they had probably had this kind of thing happen over there and had a policy going on it. I told them I figured they would want to do that, and would they let me know what they say over there. So I didn’t hear and I started phoning, and I can’t get Frank or Sully on the phone, either one. They won’t return calls. It is very strange.”
“Some kind of misunderstanding,” he said. He called on his private line, using the unlisted number of the phone in a desk drawer in Miami, remembering the unwritten rule. No names.
“Yeh?”
“I’ve got something going over here in Athens I don’t understand too well.”
“Such as?”
“Such as one of my people getting a runaround from both the operations here, like not getting a call back in regard to some payments that weren’t made on the first.”
“Well, I guess what you are making reference to, we want to cut down on direct contact. Too much of that goes on, it makes confusion all the way around. It’s a new management policy.”
“What are you trying to tell me?”
“There is a reorganization going on, and you will be contacted in due course when everything is straightened away. And meanwhile, this number won’t be operative anymore after today.”
“You want I should come over?”
“People are so busy formulating new policy there wouldn’t be any time to sit down with you right now.”
“What if I want a buy-out?”
“I’ll be back to you in twenty minutes with an offer.”
Miami had hung up. Martin hung up. He stared at Lew Traff and wondered why it was that he had managed to surround himself with idiots.
“Something is very sour,” he said. “Something is going very bad, Lew.”
“Such as?”
“My God, I don’t know. I don’t know! What they have over there, they have a good line on what is happening. They’ve got people pretty well placed here and there. They have to know what’s coming up next. You know the feeling I got talking to him? Just from his voice? I’m nothing anymore. I’m worse than nothing. I’m an infection.”
“Marty, dammit, that doesn’t sound—”
“Shut up.” He tapped his plump middle. “I get feelings in here that I listen to. What is the absolutely worst thing that could happen to me? I mean legally.”
Traff was lost in thought for a few minutes. Liss paced. “Okay,” said Traff, “here is the worst. The SEC starts building a case against Sherman Grome for draining off the assets of Equity Mortgage Management Shares into his own pocket and the pockets of his friends. Meanwhile the IRS is running a special audit of Marliss and Letra, in addition to the regular audit they have you under personally every year. Okay, the SEC taps brokerage house records to find out who has shorted EMMS, which would be you and me and Benjie, and maybe, for God’s sake, Sherman Grome. The IRS guys coordinate with those FBI people, Barber and Grosscup, and some red-hot young U.S. Attorney pulls the whole thing into one big package. So all of a sudden, when they have everything in a row, we are all indicted, and all assets are frozen, the assets of the corporations and personal assets too. They hit us with huge bail and set us up for legal actions which will take two or three or four years to finish, with maybe big fines plus jail terms at the end of it.”
As Martin Liss stared at him aghast, Lew said uncomfortably, “Well, you wanted to know the worst.”
“I haven’t done anything that wrong!”
“You conspired with Grome to make his books look a lot better than they were.”
“Fred Hildebert cut off the money. He was the one who suggested Grome!”
“You squeezed that one million out of Grome in return for your taking over Tropic Towers, where Grome was taking a bath.”
“Whose side are you on?”
“Yours, Marty. And my own. You asked for the worst. Listen, how long do you think Justin Denniver and Molly would hold out if somebody braced them with the idea you’d been buying services from the commission, and they could have immunity or go down with you?”
“Would you tell somebody where the money went?”
“Marty, I haven’t got ten kids.”
“Oh. Would he?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I don’t know. If the worst happens, maybe he would. Just maybe.”
“Benjie?”
“Suppose he thinks you’re going to make a run for it.”
“Run for what?”
“I think you buying Swiss francs has him worried.”
“I was just playing the weak dollar against a strong currency. Speculation. That’s all.”
“Irish studying brochures makes him nervous.”
“Just a trip, for God’s sake. To the Greek islands. So you’ve been talking to him about all this. The two of you have been talking it all over!”
“Why wouldn’t we? The best thing we could have done back in May was absolutely nothing. That’s what we both recommended. But you wanted to go ahead with Harbour Pointe.”
“So you were right! Okay?”
“Don’t get sore at me when you want to get sore at yourself.”
Marty sat again. “You’re right. They heard something in Miami. It is something they can’t stop, so what they want to do is—”
The private line rang and he picked the phone up. “Yes?”
“The way things are, it would be twelve a share.”
“Twelve!”
“Cash delivered tomorrow and pick up the certificates.”
“But twelve is so—”
“Sometime you might want to come back in some way, and what you got is a verbal option it would be the same price. That is the best anybody can do. Okay?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Included is a buy-out on your personal shares in those two operations over there, fifty on one and seventy-five on the other. For old times’ sake, I would urge you take it.”
“Not enough.”
“By tomorrow maybe it will be.”
And that was the end of it. Marty said to Lew, “They want all relationship severed, one way or another. He gave me the feeling they are willing to get pretty hard about it. I’ve never been on the inner circle over there. I was around, I guess, to make it look better. They want me out, they can push me right out. They would want anybody out who turned into bad news in the paper.”
“I could try to see what I could find out, but—”
“Should I run? Don’t answer that question. Why should I run? As far as I know, I haven’t done anything wrong. Stupid, maybe, but not wrong.”
“A lot of times it comes out exactly the same,” said Lew.
The country voice said, “Mr. Rittner in Tampa is on the line.”
“So what does the broker want? Put him on, please. Good morning, Norm. What’s on your mind?”
“Something just came over the wire I thought you should hear, Martin. All trading has been suspended in shares of EMMS. Though they gave no reason, the general feeling around here is that Grome’s management put them into too many bad situations and they could be bankrupt. Grome has not been available for comment.”
“I never had that happen to me before. What does it mean? Can I close out my short position?”
“No, Martin. You went short sixteen thousand shares. We borrowed those sixteen thousand shares, and to get out of your position you have to replace them, and you can’t buy them to replace the loan until trading is permitted.”
“Like when?”
“Well, if they are bankrupt, then they would be delisted, and I would imagine somebody would make a market in the shares in the over-the-counter marketplace. Then you could probably pick them up for twenty-five cents or so apiece. That would make your gross short-term profit close to three hundred thousand, eventually.”
“Eventually. Great. Al, what I want you should do is take me out of the Swiss francs.”
“Hold cash in the account?”
Condominium Page 29