Fred took out a big white handkerchief and mopped his mouth and his bald head. “It’s the least I can do for an old and good customer.”
“Can’t you lay off that paper on the apartments somehow? Can’t you discount it with somebody?”
“I don’t know. We took … just the class-A risks out there.”
“How good are they if the buildings fall down?”
Fred went to the window wall and looked out toward the key. “It’s all crap. They won’t fall down. I could discount those mortgages and peddle them. Sure. Then I have to explain it at the next board meeting when the hurricane has long since hit the Texas coast and died in New England. It would be like giving away money. ‘What are you, Hildebert, some kind of hysteric?’ What do I do, read them this Harrison report? Put it in the minute book as an exhibit?”
“How much paper do you have? Approximately.”
Hildebert pulled a short length of machine tape out of his pants pocket. “We’ve got a hundred and twenty-one total at an average present payoff of twenty-eight thousand three hundred, or three point four million.”
“Of which a certain amount would be collectible even if the buildings blew away.”
“A certain amount, sure, with a lot of legal diddling around and a lot of insurance adjustor finagling, and a lot of it would be a plain dead loss because some of those people, a lot of them, in fact, have an okay income to live on but no cushion at all. And on the other hand, of course, over a certain age we make it a stipulation they have to pay diminishing term insurance on the outstanding face amount.”
“So it would be fine if they got washed away with the people in them, huh, Fred?”
“It would be nice to be able to carry on a civilized conversation with you, Martin.”
“You came to the wrong place at the wrong time. Get out of here, Fred. Don’t forget your disaster report. I’ve got a copy. I feel good about one thing. I’ve had to suck up to you for years, and now that I don’t, it feels good. I never liked you, Fred. I tried to, but I never could.”
“You’re a slippery little bastard, Liss. I never trusted you. Not for a minute.”
“You loaned me a hell of a lot of money over the years.”
“You’ll never be back in business in this town.”
“Don’t bet on it.”
Mick Rhoades of the Athens Times Record sauntered casually into the private office of Billy Scherbel, the assistant to the Palm County manager. Mick wore white slacks, white shoes, a short-sleeved white shirt and the kind of white cap one sees in old newsreels of gentlemen golfers. His gentle brown eyes peered placidly out from under the down-tilted brim of the cap. His face and arms were very brown from outdoor labor on the grounds around his new house.
Billy looked up sharply when Mick closed the door.
“I said I wasn’t to be interrupted!”
Scherbel was middle-sized, soft, petulant, with thinning blond hair and glasses with thick black rims. Mick didn’t answer until he had lowered himself into an armchair and shoved his cap back. “It’s sure God humid out there, Billy.”
“How’d you get in here?”
“Me? You saw me walk in. I walked in here. I hung around until Helen had to go to the can. That girl has a very small bladder.”
“You can leave, Rhoades. Right now.”
“Don’t you want to know how I happen to know that the whole thing is going to blow?”
“What whole thing?”
“Denniver. Marty Liss. Payoffs. Harbour Pointe.”
“I know all about it. Don’t you read your own paper?”
“And it’s going to blow you up too, Billy.”
The door was flung open. Helen said, whining, “I didn’t let him come in here, Mr. Scherbel. Honest, he just—”
“It’s okay,” Billy said. “Shut the door.”
Helen glowered at Mick and pulled the door shut. Mick said, “You still balling her, Billy?”
“Never! I’m a happily married—”
“Forget it. We’re wasting time.”
“You’re wasting my time.”
“When we had a little conference about this whole thing, I told the guys that it was my opinion that you were not in on any payoffs. And I really don’t think you were. Traff was the bag man for thirty-six thousand, minimum, that got passed along to Jus Denniver. It’s obvious that Denniver, as the ramrod, kept the biggest part of it. He would pass some along to Steve Corbin and Jack Dorsey. They said you probably got a share and I stood up for you. I said you were honest, in a certain limited sense of the word.”
Scherbel was staring at him with horrified fascination. “Who were you talking to?”
“Just a little group of people who’d like to have a cleaner city. I told them your trouble is that you’re always horny, in town or out of town, and if somebody wanted leverage on you, all they’d need do is set you up with jailbait and document it. I said you’d be in too much of a hurry to worry if the lady was thirteen or thirty-nine.”
“This is an outrage!” Billy Scherbel said too loudly.
“For a puffy, balding, myopic-type guy, I must confess that you certainly seem to get your share, Scherbel. You do pretty well.”
“What are you trying to do to me?”
“I’m worried about you, Billy. Aside from doing too many favors for that son of a bitch, Justin Denniver, you are a pretty fair bureaucrat. You are a hell of a lot more effective than your boss, Tod Moran, himself.”
“Why should you worr—”
“You’ve seen the Harrison report on Fiddler Key?”
“It’s nothing official. I heard about it. I did a little checking. It doesn’t come from any official governmental source, Mick. It’s just another one of these so-called scientific studies of doom from another one of the ecology freaks.”
“Let me tell you something that’s in that report. It says that if the Silverthorn tract had never been cleared of all its natural growth, and if a great deal of dredging and draglining had not gone on, then the key would have been in a lot less danger of a new pass occurring at that point. The report is out. There are lots of copies. A lot of people have read it. Now you’re a pretty fair practical politician, Billy. Let’s say that Ella, or the storm that follows her, or the one after that, comes ashore out of the Gulf near here. And let us say that the engineer, Sam Harrison, who, by the way, is a very impressive and competent guy, is right, and the pass does cut through, and ten million dollars’ worth of buildings fall down, with a considerable loss of life, and a special grand jury is appointed to look into the whole mess. They are going to come across that little article I wrote about how the land clearing and burning permit and the permit for some minor work, scouring a channel, were slipped into a long list of dull stuff you read to the commission. They are going to be made aware of the payoffs over several years from Marty Liss to Justin Denniver and company. Would you say it is a fair guess that they are going to haul your ass in front of that grand jury and they are going to tag you with some of those funny words like misfeasance, malfeasance, misprision and plain old common corruption?”
“But the report is nonsense!” Scherbel said in a high thin voice.
Mick Rhoades leveled a finger at him and said slowly, “I believe every single word of it. Every single word. And even if it wasn’t as persuasive as it is, are you in a position to take a chance on standing on the tracks when that kind of a train might be coming? Suppose even one person is killed if the condos fall down? Suppose twenty die? Liss and Traff and Wannover and Denniver and Corbin and Dorsey will be straining in every direction to find some dumb jerk they can nail it on. Could be you. It might fit, pal. It could be you.”
Scherbel shoved the folders aside and took off his glasses and patted his eyes with a Kleenex. He said, “You think you can come in here and …” His voice was listless. “Oh, shit, I don’t know. This goddam job. Neither of those permits should have been granted. I slipped them in. You know that. If they had been considered on their
merits, Troy Abel or Wally Wing would have started jumping up and down, and there would have been so much fuss, Jack Dorsey would probably have broken away and gone with Abel and Wing and killed it.”
“Why did you do it?”
“Not for money.”
“That was my guess.”
“You guess pretty good. I went to a conference in Orlando in January, and they set me up with a girl at the bar I thought I was picking up. Cindy Martinez or Fernandez. One of those names. They got an affidavit how I took her to room so-and-so at the Tropic Winds Motel and laid her, and they’ve got a copy of her birth certificate. Everything is notarized. She was fifteen. Hell, I’ve got a daughter seventeen. And my wife, Bets, would leave me if she knew. I couldn’t ever get through life without Bets. I guess I wasn’t flexible enough. So they needed a better handle on me, so they set it up. I didn’t know about it until the first time I wouldn’t go along with what Denniver wanted. That was the permit for scouring an existing channel, when I knew they were going to build a whole yacht basin. So I dragged my feet and they set the hook and gave a good yank, and I went along. I shouldn’t be telling you this.”
“Expect to read it on the front page tomorrow?”
“No. You’ve always been pretty straight with me. I want to be able to … find some way out of all this if the roof does fall in.”
“With my help?”
“If you’re willing, when the time comes.”
“I think I might be.”
“Thanks.”
“But don’t count on much, Billy. I don’t think there’s any way in the world you can sidestep all hell, if a new channel cuts through where Harrison says it will. No way.”
“If I’d only had more guts …”
“Exactly what I keep saying to myself. Every day.”
“You? What are you afraid of?”
“Look at your own laundry list. It’s the same as mine. See you around. I’m fearless, all right. I did a story on the condominium dwellers’ revolt at Golden Sands and the resident creep killed it. I did one on Harrison’s report yesterday. Same fate. Now I’m going back and write one about how difficult it might be to get off the key in a hurricane if you wait too long, and they will probably kill that one too. Bad for the condo trade. Don’t make people edgy. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t irritate the advertisers. Don’t criticize the sheriff. Instead, go write a fearless feature on the new plantings being put in by the downtown merchants.”
Cole Kimber sat on the near corner of Loretta Rosen’s desk in her small office in the rear of her small building. He wore a white straw ranch hat, a thin gray shirt of Western cut with pearl snaps, custom slacks, custom boots. He smiled down at her. “Tell you again, pretty lady. I got rid of every son-of-a-bitching thing I had left. Sent all my old customers a letter they should get in touch with A to Z Construction and Maintenance, anything they want done. Took a loss on a termination agreement with Letra, on account of their accounts were frozen there at Athens Bank and Trust. Emptied out the apartment, even. Sold stuff, gave it away. Pretty lady, my ex-employees are on the unemployment insurance, and I gave them a nice bonus to tuck away, every one. Went out to Roger Gandey’s place and made him a cash offer on that custom motor home he took out to California and back last year. It’s in first-class shape. Generator, air conditioning, electric galley, rugs this thick. Runs smooth as a new Greyhound bus.”
“Are you trying to sell me a bus ride, for God’s sake?”
“You closed on selling this real estate office yet?”
“Tomorrow, the sixteenth. Noon. They take over then. I hope your advice was good, Cole.”
“It was perfect. If you made a cash deal.”
“I made a cash deal. I discounted a little to make it cash. Certified check for the balance.”
“You’re something, Loretta.”
“Cole, the answer is no!”
“We’d just drift on down around the Gulf Coast to Brownsville, and get the tourist cards and papers for Mexico there. No big hurry. Take all the time we want. Get all the way down to Guatemala, spend some time, then come back up to Yucatán and pick up the ferry service to bring the motor home on back to Miami. Make it last a year and then come on back here and see how things are going for everybody. To tell the plain truth, I got a little too close to Marty Liss and Lew and Benjie and Jus Denniver and those boys, and I think it would be a nice year for traveling.”
“Good-bye. Have a nice trip.”
“You remember why I used to have to take you way out in the wide bay or the Gulf somewhere in the old cruiser? Or why I had to take you way off into the piney woods to that hunting shack?”
“Shut up, Cole!”
“On account of when I’d get you going good, you were by God the noisiest piece of ass south of Atlanta.”
“God damn you!”
“Now here you are messing around with that kid lawyer, that pretty boy, that Gregory McKay. Little young for you, ain’t he?”
“You are a bastard.”
“Does he ever get you going to where you howl like a hound in the moonlight? Lord God, I’ve tried quite a few since you busted us up so you could go back to making money and keeping your mind on it, and they came on very stale ladies.”
“Cole, Cole, Cole.”
“I could make sure I always park the motor home way off in the boonies somewhere so you won’t scare all the Mexicans, honey. Look at you, by God. You’re getting all pointy just at the thought of it.”
“Go away, Cole.”
“And another thing. How many apartments did you sell in those four buildings? If they fall down, like the man says, those people are going to come right to this office with fire in their eye, and those new owners are going to send them right to you. But it could be hard to find you, the places I want us to go.”
“You are a persistent man.”
“You’re old enough to know exactly what you want, and I know just how to give you what you want, and you’ve held onto your build better than any woman your age I ever saw anywhere. You shouldn’t be messing around with some kid lawyer. You are forty-six damn years old, pretty lady, and I am forty-eight, and right now we are both free as birds and we can leave Saturday or Sunday, whichever you say. And here is a pretty I got for you, to give you when you decided to say yes, but here, take it anyway.”
She opened the box and gasped at the lovely ring. It was an oval cabochon of opal, big enough to reach almost from knuckle to knuckle, a milky white with a shifting glimmering fire of orange, red, green, blue, aqua. “You idiot,” she said in a low voice. She exhaled. “Sunday.”
“Hah?”
“Sunday. I can’t leave until Sunday sometime. I have to store my stuff. I have to pack. I have to put the house up for lease.”
He stared at her. “I never thought you’d say yes.”
“You didn’t give that impression. You acted certain.”
“Well, hell. Turn that kid back to his old lady, and we’ll have us a vacation you wouldn’t believe.”
The photograph taken at six o’clock located Ella at approximately 17 degrees north, 75 degrees west. That placed the center a hundred miles southeast of Morant Point, the easternmost tip of Jamaica, and about two hundred and fifty miles due south of Guantanamo. In the photograph the great spirals of rain cloud curved in toward the tiny visible eye. They were counting the dead in Santo Domingo, and estimating the dead in Port-au-Prince. It was raining very heavily and steadily in Havana, and heavily but intermittently in the Keys. The flow of data into the National Hurricane Center was very heavy. From the pilot program of the Integrated Global Ocean Stations System, supervised jointly by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission and the World Meteorological Organization, oceanographic data was being transmitted through the World Weather Watch along with the usual atmospheric observations. Prediction of probable direction was becoming ever more critical as Ella neared major land masses. Wind currents in the upper atmosphere and the hemispheric patterns of highs and
lows indicated that Ella would probably turn northward in the next forty-eight hours. If it was an angled turn, the hurricane could carry on up into the pocket of the Gulf of Mexico. If it waited long before turning it could be in large measure subdued by the hills and jungles of Yucatán. Were it to turn sharply and abruptly, it would smash across Cuba into the lower Keys. As with a person walking down a long hallway lined with doors, each stride reduced the number of choices remaining.
37
A HEAVY RAIN FELL across the lower half of the Florida peninsula during the dawn hours on Friday, August sixteenth. Sarasota, Venice, Athens, Boca Grande, Fort Myers and Naples all received about two inches, and almost three inches fell at Key West, Matecumbe and Islamorada. Havana reported seven inches in the previous twenty-four hours, with winds gusting to seventy.
A bright blue bolt of lightning and instantaneous slam of thunder snatched Francie Liss up out of another of those dreams about Troy Mallory. In the dream he had been giving her another tennis lesson, but the court was soft and yielding, as if they were playing on a gigantic mattress. She kept falling, and when she fell she would lose the racket, and while she looked for it, Troy would yell angrily at her. When she found the racket and did hit the ball, she could not make it go fast. It seemed to float over the net toward him, and she wondered why he was not wearing anything at all as he played. As she looked down at herself, the lightning and thunder woke her.
In a few moments the torrential rain began again and she relaxed, having heard and believed that the lightning travels in front of the rain and there is no danger once the downpour begins.
She got out of bed and in her short nightgown she padded over to the sliding doors onto the terrace that overlooked the bay, looking west toward Fiddler Key. She held the Mexican draperies aside and looked out at the silvery bounce of rain from the terrace stones and felt such a great surge of romantic love for Troy Mallory that she felt unable to take a deep enough breath. Yesterday afternoon had been the very best yet. It just seemed to get more and more fantastic for them every time they met. And everything had become so dear to her. That narrow little alley and the big old banyan tree, and the walk through the overgrown little back yard to the funny cottage, where he would be waiting to open the door and take her in his arms, all of it had become magical. He was so tender and so strong, and he had such a wonderful crinkly smile. He was a perfect age for a man, twenty-four, and by wonderful coincidence just one day older than she.
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