Carol-Anne did not much like Mr. Williams, and not only because he was a EXPLETIVE DELETED!! Yankee.
“I’d really like to see you, my precious,” she said.
“Yeah, me too, but that’s the way the EXPLETIVE DELETED!! ball bounces.”
Carol-Anne decided to be gracious.
“Well, I’m sure Phil will be happy when you tell him I got your plan to go to Scotland off to a good start.”
“Are you out of your EXPLETIVE DELETED!! mind? If Phil even suspected that just one woman was going along, even to do the laundry, I couldn’t get him on the EXPLETIVE DELETED!! airplane at the point of a EXPLETIVE DELETED!! bayonet.”
“Sorry, my darling. I forgot that.”
“Give me a ring tomorrow and I’ll see if I can fit you into my schedule.”
Randy hung up.
Carol-Anne then went to the bar and ordered a vodka martini—“Stir, don’t shake”—with itsy-bitsy white onions.
[ THREE ]
The Warren
2700 Muddiebay International Airport Boulevard
Muddiebay, Mississippi
1:30 p.m. Friday, September 5, 1975
Three days after The Tuesday Luncheon Club’s Tuesday Luncheon, Carol-Anne turned the nose of her Mercedes-Benz off Muddiebay International Airport Boulevard and onto the ramp leading to the underground garage of The Warren.
She desperately hoped that no one she knew had seen her doing so. She would have been severely taxed to explain what she was doing at The Warren, an enormous (eight-hundred-odd apartments) complex built to service the employees and customers of Muddiebay Ship Building & Dry Dock & Cruise Ship Repair & Fumigation Company, Inc. (MSB&DD&CSR&FC, Inc.).
MSB&DD&CSR&FC, Inc., was a fairly recent addition to the industrial base of Muddiebay, but its predecessor company, the Muddiebay Ship Building & Dry Dock Company, Inc. (MSB&DDC, Inc.) dated back to the First World War, and its predecessor company, the Muddiebay Ship Building Company (MSB), traced its history back to the War for Southern Independence, sometimes called The Civil War.
MSB&DDC, Inc., had gone belly-up twenty-five years ago, at which time it had fallen into the hands of RCB Holdings, Inc., which bought out the stockholders for peanuts. RCB Holdings, in turn, had sold the stock to Mr. Randolph C. Bruce for peanut shells, permitting RCB Holdings, which was wholly owned by Mr. Bruce, to take a very nice tax loss.
Mr. Bruce was not at all interested in shipbuilding or, truth to tell, that much interested in legally questionable tax dodges, but rather in the several hundred acres of tidal lands surrounding the shipyard that had been in the hands of the company since the days of the MSB Company.
They were absolutely useless for any commercial purpose, consisting as they did of hundreds of tiny islands that the waters of Muddiebay Bay inundated twice daily with the tides.
The one thing the tiny islands were good for was as construction sites for duck blinds, which is why Mr. Bruce had bought MSB&DDC, Inc.
He proceeded to build blinds and make other improvements, which gave him the largest private duck-shooting area in North America.
He thought that eventually some innocent soul would come along onto whom he could unload MSB&DDC, Inc.—less the tidewater acreage—and recoup his initial investment. Whatever could be said about Mr. Bruce, and a good deal was, no one ever suggested that ol’ Randy didn’t know how to turn a buck.
Four years previous to the events to be chronicled in this romance novel, he thought such an innocent soul had indeed come.
Señor Pancho Gonzales of Miami contacted him and said that if the price was right, he might be induced to take the ruins of what had been the physical plant of MSB&DDC, Inc., off Mr. Bruce’s hands.
No one ever justly accused ol’ Randy of ever being asleep at the switch, either. Randy had the greatest admiration for the ethnic minority—of which he suspected Pancho was a member—which now owned eighty percent of Florida from Key West to Palm Beach—the Miami-Cubans who had escaped their Communist homeland with nothing but five-dollar bills and the shirts on their backs.
Randy put Tancey, Castleberry, Porter & Lipshutz to work finding out just who Pancho was.
A week later, Moses Lipshutz bought Randy lunch at the Muddiebay International Trade Club and announced that in exchange for a check in an amount that made Randy wince, he would tell him what he had learned about Señor Gonzales.
Randy promptly wrote the check. Moses’s advice had always been more than worth the money Randy had paid for it in the past.
“Don’t look so unhappy, Randy,” Moses said. “When I do your income taxes this year, my fees will appear thereon as a fully deductible business expense.”
Moses then told Randy that he had learned that Señor Gonzales had indeed escaped Castro with nothing but a five-dollar bill and the shirt on his back. And that he now owned a shipyard in Miami, engaged almost entirely in the maintenance, repair, and fumigation of the armada of cruise ships now plying the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.
The enterprise was profitable, Moses reported, but not as profitable as Mr. Gonzales thought it could be if he could move the operation elsewhere, and get out from under the taxes of the City of Miami, Broward County, and the Sovereign State of Florida. Not to mention the outrageous wages he had to pay his unionized workers for standing around with their thumbs inserted in their ears, noses, and other bodily orifices.
Due diligence on Mr. Gonzales’s part had revealed there was a derelict shipyard perfectly suited for his needs in Muddiebay, Mississippi, which he could probably steal, as its owner would most likely be some ignorant Mississippi shit-kicker.
“Moses, why don’t you and Rachel take a few days’ vacation in Palm Beach? As my guests. And while you’re there have a chat with Pancho. I’ll go along with anything you come up with so long as I get to keep my duck blinds. And if you can make a deal, take ten percent from my end for your trouble.”
“Fifteen percent, and I’ll take care of incidentals.”
“Done.”
—
The result of that luncheon meeting was the Muddiebay Ship Building & Dry Dock & Cruise Ship Repair & Fumigation Company, Inc., Pancho Gonzales, president and chief executive officer, Randolph C. Bruce, treasurer, and Moses Lipshutz, vice president and general counsel.
The dry details of who now owned how much of this new enterprise would little interest those who purchased this tome for its romance, so they will not be chronicled here.
But it should be noted that Mr. Moses told his wife, in the privacy of their bedroom, that while it was true a Jew could outwit an Arab at the bargaining table, the Jew she was married to had all of his legal and negotiating skills taxed almost to the breaking point when he sat down with Randy’s Miami-Cuban to play Let’s Make a Deal!
It had immediately become apparent to the executives of MSB&DD&CSR&FC, Inc., that one of their first problems was going to be housing for the many employees of the shipyard and for the crews of the cruise ships who could not stay aboard their vessels while they were being serviced, repaired, and/or fumigated.
The Bruce Construction Company almost immediately began construction of the enormous apartment complex built on land acquired by RCB Holdings from the Bruce Land & Timber Company, Incorporated.
The precise details of this similarly would be of little interest to those hoping to read of romance, and will not be recounted here.
But, en passant, the architect of the project prepared his plans by going to the nearest 8 Dollar Motel, which was thirty-seven miles distant from Muddiebay. He took careful measurements of the 8 Dollar Motel’s “Luxury Suites” that rented for $10.95 per night. He reduced the room dimensions by twenty-five percent and used them for the plans of the apartment complex.
In doing so, he hadn’t considered the ramifications of reducing the size of the bathrooms by twenty-five percent. The resu
lt of this oversight was that while the restrooms in the apartment complex did provide the necessary sanitary accommodations, they did so in a rather crowded environment like those of the unisex facilities on airliners.
The executives of MSB&DD&CSR&FC, Inc., on reviewing the plans, instructed the architect to make a few minor changes.
In order to explain this, the reader must think of the project as a three-story structure in the shape of the letter E lying on its side, the open side facing the waters of Muddiebay Bay. Three stories only because four or more stories would require elevators and elevators cost money.
The architect was instructed to merge the six suites on the third-floor bay side of each part of the E into one suite. In other words, where there had been eighteen “Bay Side Apartments” there would now be three. There were now to be elevators running from the basement garage to what were going to be the three Executive Apartments. They would not stop at intermediate floors, but serve only the Executive Apartments.
One of these was assigned to Señor Gonzales, the second to Mr. Lipshutz, and the third to Mr. Bruce. They provided a place for the MSB&DD&CSR&FC, Inc., executives to discreetly entertain their guests. Señor Gonzales’s and Mr. Bruce’s guests were almost invariably of the gentle sex, while Mr. Lipshutz’s guests were invariably gentlemen in their middle years who liked to get together for a few friendly hands of high-stakes poker and could see no good reason why they should have to give a cut of their pots to the EXPLETIVE DELETED!! Yankees and Cowboys who operated the casinos in Biloxi and Ocean Springs in order to do so.
The Executive Apartments were furnished on a “cost be damned” basis. In Señor Gonzales’s case, this meant—in addition to other amenities—a mirror ceiling in the master bedroom. Mr. Lipshutz’s apartment had a pool table. And Mr. Bruce’s had an indoor range at which he could fire .22 caliber shot cartridges at moving duck targets.
On Carol-Anne’s third visit to Mr. Bruce’s apartment—the first two had been both brief and entirely devoted to the satisfaction of what the Book of Common Prayer terms “the sinful lusts of the flesh”—she asked Randy why the apartment complex was called The Warren.
“It fits,” he replied.
“I don’t understand.”
Randy had exhaled audibly in resignation.
“Okay,” he said. “One day I was researching CuNi—”
Carol-Anne felt a tingle.
“Oh, you wicked boy, you!” she said, and stuck her tongue in his ear.
Carol-Anne thought that she understood what her lover was researching: instruction in the techniques of an absolutely wicked sexual practice that she would never have dreamed, before Randy, of allowing anyone to practice on her body but now seemed a quite attractive activity.
She erred.
Randy was researching a supplier of piping with a certain percentage of copper and nickel in its makeup at a lesser price than he was now paying for it. Such piping, called CuNi in the construction business, resists the corrosive effects of seawater more effectively than non-CuNi piping.
“Control yourself,” Randy ordered. “You want me to answer your question or not?”
“I can hardly wait, my precious, imaginative lover!”
“And there it was, Cuniculture.”
“I don’t know what that means, Precious, but from the way it sounds, I’m all for it,” Carol-Anne, now tingling all over, said. “Culture is my middle name.”
“It means commercial trade in rabbits,” Randy explained. “And you know what they call a place where a lot of rabbits live?”
Carol-Anne confessed her ignorance.
“A warren,” Randy said. “Get it?”
Carol-Anne had felt the tingling stop and quickly excused herself to go to the restroom. She was determined that Randy not see the tears of disappointment roll down her cheeks.
[ FOUR ]
Carol-Anne had a dual mission at The Warren today.
After bouncing around on the waterbed with Randy for twenty-two exciting minutes, Carol-Anne turned to the second.
“All the arrangements for our trip to Scotland are in place, my precious.”
“It’s about EXPLETIVE DELETED!! time,” Randy replied.
In truth, Carol-Anne was rather well-known for her skill in organizing things. This was in large measure due to her ability to get people who knew how to do things to do them for her, whereupon she would take the credit.
She explained to Randy that she had had a word with Mary-Louise Frathingham, whose husband, Amos, was proprietor of Muddiebay Exotic & Exciting Vacations Travel, Inc. Mary-Louise had long hungered to be asked to join the Ladies of The Tuesday Luncheon Club. Amos had long lusted after more business from both the First National Bank of Muddiebay and the MSB&DD&CSR&FC, Inc.
Carol-Anne did not have to remind Mary-Louise that she was president of The Tuesday Luncheon Club, or that her husband was president of First National, as she already knew.
But Carol-Anne did say that all three of the senior executives of MSB&DD&CSR&FC, Inc.—Mr. Moses Lipshutz, Señor Pancho Gonzales, and Mr. Randolph C. Bruce—would be going to Scotland. Mr. Lipshutz would be accompanied by his wife, Señor Gonzales by a niece, and Mr. Bruce by an unnamed friend, gender not specified, who was going to get the trip as a birthday present.
ME&EVT, Inc., rose to the challenge Carol-Anne gave them.
With the exception of arrangements for the actual pheasant and grouse shooting, which would take place on the property of friends of Mr. Bruce, ME&EVT, Inc., would handle every other detail of the jaunt from the moment the travelers arrived at Muddiebay International Airport until they went the other way through the airport doors on their return.
Although there would not actually be twenty persons on the trip, ME&EVT, Inc., had planned the trip as if there would be. Using a trick known to the travel trade as a Twenty-Plus-Two, ME&EVT, Inc., would guarantee the purchase of twenty business-class seats on all airliners involved, ten double-occupancy rooms in the five-star Claridge’s Hotel in London, ten double-occupancy rooms in the two-star Dungaress Royal Hotel in Dungaress, Scotland—the best available in Dungaress, Population 5,602—and two ten-passenger motor coaches to move everybody around wherever they were to high-class restaurants, stores, et cetera.
In exchange for throwing all this business at the airlines, hotels, high-class restaurants, stores, et cetera, two “travel professionals” would be permitted to get the same services at no charge, plus a finder’s fee of ten percent of the purchase price on whatever the shoppers bought. This is what the Plus-Two meant.
Mary-Louise and Amos Frathingham were going to join the jaunt out of the goodness of their hearts, and at no cost to themselves.
II
ACTIVITY BEFORE THE TRIP
[ ONE ]
102 Country Club Road
Foggy Point Country Club
Foggy Point, Mississippi
9:30 a.m. Sunday, September 7, 1975
Phil Williams—who was forty-five years old, weighed 185 pounds, was not quite six feet tall, and was a victim of early-stage male pattern baldness—was sitting at his computer with a six-inch-long light brown cigar clamped in his teeth when the telephone on the credenza behind his desk rang.
Phil said, “Oh, shit!” and reached for the receiver.
Williams was an author—the difference between a writer and an author is that the former is just about anyone with a typewriter and the latter someone who not only has actually published a book, or books, but manages to support himself with the proceeds therefrom—and really disliked being distracted when he was plying his trade.
Telephone calls are well-known for their ability to distract. Knowing this, Williams had two telephone lines installed in his domicile at 102 Country Club Road. One had five extensions scattered around his three-bedroom, four-bath, pool-with-pool-house, three-car-garage, 3,100-square-foot home
, and the second was installed only in his home office.
Moreover, the number of the instrument in his office was not only not published in the telephone book but was known to only a very few people. They included his son, Philip Wallingford Williams IV, known as “Little Phil,” who was, incredible as it might sound, the food critic for The Dallas Afternoon Gazette, the largest newspaper in Texas, and the fifth largest in the nation; Phil III’s editor, Chauncey S. “Steel” Hymen, vice president, publisher, and editor in chief of J. K. Perkins & Brothers, Publishers since 1812; his literary legal counsel, the legendary Gustave “Rabbi” Warblerman; his literary agent Jennifer “Big Bad Jennie” Waldron; and a very few friends and acquaintances, including Bobby “Fender” Bender, proprietor of Foggy Point Garage & Good As New Used Parts, who maintained Phil’s twenty-year-old Jaguar.
“What?” Phil snapped into the telephone.
“Why don’t we go to Scotland for ten days and shoot some pheasants with Bertie?” his caller responded.
Phil recognized his caller to be Randolph “Randy” Bruce, as much from the question as the sound of his voice.
Among things said about Mr. Bruce was that he owned half of downtown Muddiebay and that if one of God’s creatures had fur or feathers, and wasn’t a dog or a milk cow, ol’ Randy hungered to shoot it. Muddiebay (population 260,000) was twenty miles distant across Muddiebay Bay from Foggy Point.
“When?”
“A week from tomorrow.”
Phil considered the proposal for ten seconds, and then said, “I’ll have to ask the Angry Austrian.”
The Angry Austrian was Mrs. Brunhilde W. Williams, a native of Vienna, Austria, who had been Phil’s wife for almost twenty-six years, which sometimes seemed longer. Much, much longer.
“So ask her.”
“I am never so foolish as to awaken the AA,” Phil replied. “When she does so herself, I will ask and get back to you.”
“Come by the house at one-thirty. Our plane leaves Muddiebay International at quarter to three,” Randy ordered, and hung up.
The Hunting Trip Page 2