Condominium

by John D. MacDonald

  “You’ll go home pretty soon. I’ll see you tomorrow. I’m changing your medication just a little bit, okay? Meanwhile, as another favor for me, I want you to work up another analogy for what has happened inside your head, Thelma. Will you?”

  “I’ll try, but I don’t know if—”

  “This time try to make it something living instead of just a dish.”

  “Living? Well, okay. You trimmed your mustache.”

  She blushed brightly. He laughed and said, “Just a little on the ends. Thanks for noticing.”

  After Lew Traff rang the doorbell of the Denniver home on Fiddler Key the second time, he heard the faraway, irritable response. “Coming! Coming!” Molly Denniver cried.

  Bees were working a big bush by the doorway. A mockingbird was developing a new routine. Some summer teens roared down the quiet street and out again, their motorbikes ripping the air with flatulence.

  “It’s you!” she said, surprised. “Whyn’t you phone up?” She wore pale blue denim shorts and a white denim work shirt, both spattered with yellow paint that matched a dappling on her jaw and cheek and on her work gloves.

  “Is Justin home?”

  “If the son of a bitch was ever home, he could do some of the painting I kept asking him to do until finally I got so tired of asking I’m doing it myself. But I’m almost through.”

  “I tried the store and I tried the courthouse.”

  “He’s thinking of trading boats. Kingsley’s got him out somewhere on what is supposed to be a good used Bertram. Come on in.” He followed her through the living room and out to the kitchen. Three freshly painted barstools stood on newspaper and the fourth was half done. “Make yourself comfortable while I finish this, huh? Hey, get me a beer out of the box there, and one for you, of course. I shouldn’t drink it. I’m getting a beer belly. I’ve told Jus a dozen times that the Mako out there is all we need. If we get something too big for the davits, then we got all that scraping-the-bottom business twice a year, and it costs, you know? And even with the Mako, the channel coming in here is getting so shallow you have to be real careful taking it in or out at low tide. But you know how he is. He decides he wants something and he has to have it right now.” She reached and took the opened can of beer. “Thanks, hon. Hope you’re not in a hurry or anything. Maybe we could have a little swim. It won’t be too refreshing because that pool water is what I mean hot, but it will help some.” She shoved her hair back with the back of her wrist and looked at him. “Something wrong?” There was a ghost of anxiety behind her round green eyes.

  “Pretty much wrong, I guess. Big wrong. Bad wrong.”

  She finished the last brush stroke and put the stool with the others, then stripped her gloves off again. “What do you mean?”

  “Marty is jammed up. Harbour Pointe is dead. The financing collapsed.”

  “I heard about that. It doesn’t have to be so bad it makes you look like that, does it?”

  “It’s all going to come before a federal grand jury in Tampa. A lot of charges. Conspiracy to defraud. Fraudulent certifications on loans. Misuse of insider information.”

  “They’re after you too?” she asked.

  “Let me tell you how this goes. This is exactly what Benjie Wannover told me. They came to him and wanted to take a preliminary deposition. He said no way. They said they would subpoena him and haul him before the grand jury. He said to them, Okay, lots of luck. They said the grand jury, on the instruction of the Assistant U.S. Attorney, would offer him immunity in return for complete testimony, and Benjie said he would not testify. Okay, they said, if you refuse to testify after being granted immunity, that is contempt, and the penalty is eighteen months in jail. He said, Hey, I’ve got ten kids. They said, Tough. He said, I only did what I was told to do. They said, Tough. He said, I got to have a lawyer. They said, Okay, but he can’t appear with you before the grand jury. He said, That isn’t the way the American system works. They said, Where have you been, Mr. Wannover? It’s been working that way a long long time. So Benjie came and talked to me and he went back to them and said, Okay on the immunity. What do you want to know?”

  “Can they really do that?”

  “They really can. And they can do it to me too.”

  “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “In the FBI investigation of the books of Marliss and Letra, they came across thirty-six thousand dollars over the past several years without enough documentation. The checks were cashed downstairs at the bank, usually by me, and Benjie will say it is his understanding the cash was given to you by me. It is hearsay, but there isn’t a hell of a lot of reliance on the rules of evidence at a grand jury hearing.”

  Her plump little mouth sagged open. Her eyes looked stunned. She sat in the breakfast booth and looked up at him. “Oh, Jesus, Lew. Oh, Jesus.”

  “I know. And the IRS is standing in the wings. You and Justin file joint returns, I suppose.”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “Look, I’m going to get immunity too. I don’t think I could live through eighteen months in jail. I’m not in that great physical shape. It’s been tentatively offered and I’m grabbing it, and I am going to tell all, Molly, even to where that safe is and what it looks like.”

  “Not all! Not really all!”

  “What? Oh, no. Not that part. No need.”

  “Oh, God, what am I going to do?”

  “I’m sorry, but I think you are down the tube, you and Justin. I don’t know exactly how it will happen. All I know is that things will never again be as good for you two as they have been.”

  “Will I go to jail?”

  “I doubt it. Justin might, but I doubt that too. Big fine, big tax delinquency, probation, resign his office, and so forth and so on. Odds are you’ll lose this house.”

  Tears ran down through the dotting of yellow paint on her cheek. “Why did we ever get into anything like this?”

  “Pure, simple greed, I guess.”

  “Don’t be such a bastard, Lew. The children. All my friends. Everybody at the club. Oh, God, I’m going to be ashamed to show my face.” She clenched her jaw. “The son of a bitch responsible is Marty Liss. My husband would have been glad to do him little favors, just out of friendship, just to see progress in the community. But that slimy little son of a bitch had to send money.”

  “And Justin didn’t send it back.”

  “We got used to it. We began to think we deserved it. We even tried for more, remember? Now … wait a minute! Just a minute. How did I know that you were bringing money here?”

  “I gave it to you.”

  “In an envelope. I never opened the envelope, did I?”

  “Molly, every time I—”

  “I never opened it. I just took it and put it in the safe like Justin told me to do. I thought it was business papers. You’re a lawyer. How could I know your only client is Martin Liss? Let me tell you something, Lew. No matter what happens, Justin will swear on fifty Bibles that he never told me what you were bringing, and that when he went to the safe the envelopes were always sealed. If he says anything other than that, he is going to be the sorriest human spectacle in west Florida, and unless you play it that way too, you are going to be as sorry as he is.”

  “What do threats like that mean anyway?”

  “Try me and find out later. I am protecting myself and my home and my children and my reputation, and if you lie about me and tell anybody I knew about the money, I will personally shoot you stone dead!”

  Lew stared at her with a new awareness. “By gee, I think you would!”

  “Did you tell Benjie I knew about the money?”

  “I don’t think so, not in so many words.”

  “Well, in so many words, you tell him I didn’t know and don’t know now and never knew. I am never going to mention it again.”

  “Molly, that’s a very nice move. It might work and it might not work, but it is worth a try at least.”

  “Justin isn’t here right now. I expec
t him back about five.”

  “Okay.”

  “Were you leaving off an envelope for him?”

  “Uh … not this time.”

  “Shall I tell him to phone you?”

  “I always knew you’re the smart one in the family.”

  “Shut up, Lew. Go away. I have a lot of thinking to do.”

  Pete McGinnity, president of the Golden Sands Condominium Association, sat with a leaden lethargy in his tilt-back leather chair in penthouse apartment 7-B at three o’clock on Tuesday afternoon. The draperies were partially drawn, darkening the small “television room.” He had a Pay-Vision movie on the small screen. He had seen it one evening, an English movie about spies, and had guessed that he had not understood the plot because he had the two cocktails before dinner, a glass of wine with dinner, and the tall brandy afterward. Now, in sobriety, he realized glumly that he had not understood the plot because it was not consistent, coherent or understandable. It was an overacted mess.

  Irene, sitting in the corner of the couch doing needlepoint, was competing with the sound track. He hesitated with his thumb and finger on the dial of the remote control, wondering whether to turn the volume up or down, and decided on down.

  “… it is a disgraceful thing,” she said. “He’s such a strange kind of spooky man, don’t you think? And Mary Starf seems like such a nice little person. That girl that comes up here is young enough to be his granddaughter. She’s pretty, but you can see at a glance she’s hard as nails. Grace Cleveland says the girl hangs around the Sand Dollar Bar a lot. There’s a very rough crowd hangs out there, they say.”

  “I had the chance,” Pete McGinnity said. “There I was. I had walked out of that goddam meeting. I was mad. All I had to do was keep walking. But no. I had to let them con me into coming back. So I’m still stuck in the middle of everything.”

  “This is a decent place with decent people in it, and I just cannot understand the Reverend Doctor Starf sending out for a prostitute to come and visit him. Grace says we should get Brooks Ames to … what do they call it?… stake out this floor the next time Mary Starf goes to Chicago, and then he can stop that little slut and ask her what her business is.”

  “How the hell can you renegotiate fees with people who won’t even return a call? Gulfway Management, Investment Equities—you’d think they didn’t give a damn whether we pay or not. But I know better. Those people are going to come down on us like a ton of bricks, and the worst of it is that there are some people living here who just can’t pay the full amount. What about them? What are they supposed to do? Sell? Ha!”

  “Then again I suppose she would say that she was visiting Reverend Starf, and what could Brooks do about that? Nothing. The other day Grace said in that deadpan way of hers that maybe the girl was giving Dr. Starf some kind of therapy, and it got Honey Wasniak laughing so hard I thought she’d have hysterics.”

  “What I’ve got out of retirement, I’ve got more on my mind than I had when I wasn’t retired. I’m getting more indigestion, even. I thought I could get Jack Cleveland into my slot, but he’s too smart for that. He’d rather stay on the outside and complain. Everybody would rather complain than do anything. I say we ought to expand the Board and put Jack Cleveland and Colonel Mark Simmins on it. Spread the load a little.”

  “I’d like to know if that minister has been in trouble before. I’ll bet you he lost his church on account of something like this.”

  “You going to have any more iced tea?”

  “And if I am, you want some?” She smiled and got up and left the room. Pete stared gloomily at the screen. A marksman shot a girl off her water skis, and she tumbled dead in a sprawl of long white legs as the marksman jumped into a small car and was driven furiously away.

  Sam Harrison found Insta-Print on the north side of Athens, on the truck route, in one of a scattering of small shopping areas and service areas. He and the girl who came to the counter had to speak up to be heard above the clattering roar of equipment in the back room, and something that made an inaudible thudding which shook the floor. They had prepacked the report in two cartons, heavier than he expected, and he signed the receipt, put them in the car and drove on out to Golden Sands.

  Mr. Messenger was up and dressed, with better color and looking more vital than the last time Sam had seen him. Barbara was astonished that Sam had waited until he was at their apartment to take a look at one of the copies of the report. Gus Garver was already there, anxious to get at the chore of signing his cover memoranda. Barbara and her husband and Sam sat and leafed through copies of the report as Gus signed the others.

  It was bound in dark blue with a light blue card glued to the front cover with the title they had agreed upon: Possible Topographic Alterations in Fiddler Key Due to Storm Surge by S. D. Harrison, C.E.

  “Looks pretty good,” Sam told Barbara.

  She smiled her pleasure. “I think so too.”

  He turned to Gus’s introductory memorandum and then looked with mock astonishment at Gus. “If I’d known you thought that much of me …”

  “You’d have wanted more money. Read on.”

  Gus had named the four vulnerable condominiums—Golden Sands, Captiva House, Azure Breeze and the Surf Club—stating that they stood upon the narrowest and most frangible and vulnerable portions of the middle segment of Fiddler Key.

  He backed Sam’s conclusions, mentioned the major hurricane now damaging the Antilles, called attention to the official policy of trying to give residents twelve hours of daylight before a storm to evacuate the keys, and finished with the warning, “I feel it would be the height of folly to try to ride out a hurricane in any one of these badly situated condominiums and, in fact, on any part of Fiddler Key or Seagrape Key.”

  “Strong,” Sam said. “Points it up nicely.”

  “Joint effort,” Gus said. “Mr. Messenger made it sound better than the way I had it first.”

  Lee Messenger said, “I wish I’d had you two working for me a few years ago. I like the way your minds work.”

  “What kind of work?” Sam asked.

  “Hydraulic mining. Campeche.”

  “Wasn’t that Tech-Mex?” Sam asked. Lee nodded. Sam said, “They struck out, didn’t they?”

  “Yes, it was a bad bruise, but my interest was through Far West Resources, and because our deal with Tech-Mex was turnkey, we didn’t get hurt badly. If it had gone well, it would have been a bonanza. Well, the sooner those are signed, the sooner Dow and Forrester can start the distribution.”

  At six o’clock Ella was centered approximately at 16 degrees north and 62 degrees west. The eye, approximately thirty-five miles in diameter, had just finally cleared the town of Basse-Terre on the island of Basse-Terre, the southern island of Guadeloupe. Screaming winds of a hundred and fifteen to a hundred and twenty miles an hour were tearing at Antigua, Montserrat, Saint Kitts, Saint Croix, the Virgins and Hispaniola. The great winds circled and came down out of the north across the Caribbean Sea sending heavy breakers against the shore of the La Guaira peninsula of Colombia, against the sheer rock cliffs of Aruba and against the beaches of Curaçao and Bonaire.

  The hurricane had great reach and scope and power, blowing down walls and trees and power lines. It smashed the people and drowned them and washed them into treetops. It turned rivulets to roaring streams and turned brooks to rivers. The pressure inside the eye was measured at 27.33 inches. Nearly all communications with the exposed islands were severed. Satellite pictures were taken and distributed every thirty minutes until nightfall. Ella was too huge for radar to be of much use except to reveal the onmoving areas of the most intense rainfall, much of it coming down at a four-inches-an-hour rate.

  Meanwhile, scientists were attempting to predict the effect on water levels in those areas of the continental United States where Ella might make landfall. There were too many variables as yet to make any sort of precise prediction. In addition to the timing in respect to the tides, and the prediction of direction, th
ere were the constant forces in the area which would affect the final computation. For example, the Gulf Stream moves through the Straits of Florida, between Key West and Cuba, at a speed of 3.5 nautical miles per hour, at a volume of thirty sverdrups. A sverdrup equals one million cubic meters per second. The volume can be appreciated by comparing that flow with the total flow of all the rivers of the world, combined. The total flow of all the rivers of the world is two sverdrups.

  Another factor is the effect on water depth of the spinning of the earth. This spin moves water northward from the equator in the Northern Hemisphere with a constant force. The sea level off Cat Cay and Bimini is ten inches higher than the water off Miami.

  There is another imbalance in water levels to take into account. The southeast trades normally push water into the Gulf of Mexico, establishing a level generally four inches higher than the water in the Atlantic Ocean. This forms a hydraulic impetus for that portion of the Gulf Stream which flows from there, going to join the eventual seventy sverdrups off the Carolinas.

  There are minor considerations, a deep cold fast current which runs northward into the Gulf along the Mexican coast, and a weak southerly current, an underflow, along the Florida coast running counter to the Gulf Stream.

  It was necessary to begin the predictions, to feed in the data on existing weather patterns, upper and lower currents in the atmosphere, the seasonal intensity of the tide patterns, the estimated effect of rainfall, the velocity and direction of the storm itself, and its effect on all the other factors affecting ocean levels. Input could be revised hour by hour as the hurricane moved closer, with the hoped-for result that when it finally came ashore, if indeed it did come ashore, whether in Palm Beach, Galveston, Pensacola or the Keys, the hurricane advisories could give the anticipated number of feet above high-tide level which could be expected, and a close approximation of the time of maximum water.

  The occasional heavy rains had reached the eastern end of Cuba. The Rio Salado and Rio Cauto had already overflowed their banks in their headlong rush into the Gulf of Guacanayabo. There was flooding already in Santa Cruz del Sur from the Rio Najasa. Hurricane Center bulletins were picked up by Radio Havana and broadcast over all stations on the emergency warning service. The land was sodden, with the heaviest rains yet to come.