“Would you like some orange juice?” Doom asked.
“Perhaps later, thank you. I thought we’d get down to it straightaway.”
Doom sat beside his old professor.
“Shall we begin with Prentiss Throckmorton?”
“Yes, Professor.”
Professor Goode cleared his throat, momentarily remembering the old days, thirsty if unrefined young minds, some overflowing into the aisles, to hear Professor Goode parse the “Bower of Bliss” canto in The Faerie Queene and thereby be shaken from their iconoclasm. “It could be said that Throck, for that’s what his cronies called him, yanked south Florida into the present by the ties of his own railroad. As he walked it farther and farther south, his minions built subdivisions, entire towns, in its wake, and only then did he set about luring residents down. He credits himself as the inventor of what today we call public relations. He was quoted in The New York Times of July 18, 1922, saying, ‘The public is a rabble meant to be manipulated.’ He held bathing-beauty contests, staged publicity stunts with midgets and African wildlife to attract attention to his real estate offerings in south Florida. Throck was inventing the very tools of hucksterism. He is unique in another way: He was murdered.”
“Did Broadnax do it?”
“Throck hired Broadnax to build him a luxurious retreat, the centerpiece of which was to be the Oseola Hotel, but Small Hope Bay was in the way, and Broadnax was to remove it. The Oseola was an idea dear to Throck’s old heart. Not just another sucker’s subdivision, the Oseola was meant to be the site of his retirement. He intended to die there.”
“Did Broadnax actually manage to drain Small Hope Bay?”
“Dry. In fact, there are sketchy reports of fires breaking out on what had been under eight feet of water. But Broadnax had his own agenda. Apparently he meant to cut Throck right out of the picture.”
“So Broadnax did swindle Throck?”
“He tried, but first there was The Bust. On September 17, 1926, a hurricane struck. The blow obliterated the Oseola and the rest of Broadnax’s work. It refilled the bay. The coldest winter on record followed, then in ’28 another savage hurricane. And then the stock market collapsed. Broadnax was broke.
“After that—after the Oseola was gone, after property values had dropped to zero—after it was all over, Throck got wind of the old plot to swindle him. Throck completely ruined Broadnax. He bought up all Broadnax’s creditors and hounded him into ruin.”
“So is that when Broadnax murdered him?”
“That’s when somebody murdered him. Somebody strangled Throck in the bathtub at his Fifth Avenue mansion.”
“Strangled, huh?”
“The killer apparently entered the mansion by shinnying up a drainpipe and forcing a window. Suspicion fell on Colonel Broadnax. Two witnesses placed him in New York at the time of the murder. However, one witness died in a fall from a high window, and the other recanted. There was never a trial. The murder of Prentiss Throckmorton is unsolved to this day. Broadnax himself died penniless a year later, survived by his only son, Aloysius, the present-day Big Al.”
“What about the present-day Donny Sikes? How does he fit in?”
“His mother, Abigail, was an illegitimate daughter of Prentiss Throckmorton’s. She lived in Throck’s mansion and worked for him as a personal secretary, but Throck never claimed her as his own. Probably a class conflict. However, she was generously rewarded in his will.”
Doom passed the professor $2,000 in new twenties.
“What is this?”
“That’s an additional fee for research. Compliments of Donald Sikes and friends.”
“Why, thank you very much, Dennis.”
“My pleasure, Professor.”
“If I may speak, Dennis—”
“Please do.”
“It’s about Duncan. Duncan is falling into a funk. The trailer park is no place for a young crook like him. Jail may be the only place for Duncan, but until that day comes, he needs something to boost his waning self-esteem. Frankly, I think young Duncan could present trouble if left unsatisfied. And now, as for yourself.”
“Yes, Professor?”
“I think this whole endeavor is bad for you. All this plotting and conspiring and double-dealing—it can only come to a nasty end. A violent end. That’s its nature.”
“What do you think I ought to do?”
“You don’t look well these days. I think you and Rosalind ought to sail away just as quickly as you can.”
Doom and Rosalind went sailing that afternoon in Card Sound. Doom practiced upwind helmsmanship, searching for “the groove” about which he’d been reading, trying to feel on his face the lifts and headers as the apparent wind shifted. By dark he understood why all the writers had warned that one can’t learn to drive a boat upwind from books. Doom recognized, further, that if his father had not become a professional crook, had remained a sailor, Doom would already know how to steer. He would have understood the effects of the apparent wind on sail and helm.
By dark they returned Staggerlee to her befouled berth.
GHOSTS
Donny Sikes was troubled, sitting in the fantail sipping a piña colada, feet propped on the mahogany transom. Things didn’t feel right down here. Things went wrong down here. He had had Big Al all set up to take the fall for the murder of Denny Loomis, motive and everything, but that stupid sheriff called it an accidental drowning. How could he miss the fishing line wrapped around Loomis’s neck?…People down here weren’t acting according to the laws of human nature, and Donny Sikes prided himself on his innate understanding of human nature and his ability to manipulate it to his own ends.
So, all right, his initial plan to hang the Loomis murder on Big Al Broadnax didn’t work. Sometimes that happens. One has to remain flexible, but why didn’t the secondary plan work? You tell a guy, convincingly, that his father’s been murdered, you tell the guy the name of the murderer and the murderer’s motive, you’d expect that guy to go take a measure of revenge. Human nature. Age-old shit, avenging fathers’ murders. Ancient Greeks did it all the time. Comes up even in the Bible. It would have been a beautiful thing to watch—the son of the man whose murder Donny had ordered doing Donny’s bidding, then taking the fall for the killing, while Donny, in the clear, sat sipping piña coladas on the poop deck. He never expected Doom to actually sail away as he said he was going to do. People down here weren’t as duplicitous as in New York. Could that be it? Or maybe the sun made them lax, torpid, and stupid, ambition-sapped. He’d have to take that into consideration from now on.
Donny felt a surge of relief when Prentiss Throckmorton joined him on the afterdeck. Gramps wore his three-piece Harris tweed suit, the one Donny remembered from childhood, its scratchy feel against his cheek as he cried into the lapel. Gramps would know what to do.
“Would you like a piña colada, Gramps?”
“Quit drinking that gop. It’ll rot your brain out,” said Gramps. “Nobody wants a drunk for a grandson.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How many times have I told you that?”
“Many.”
“Pour it overboard. All right, then. You know what I think? I think you have a fly in the ointment. The fly’s name is Loomis. I mean young Loomis, Doom Loomis. I didn’t get to my station in life by being ignorant of human nature. That’s what you must learn—human nature. You never did have an adequate understanding of human nature. In addition, you are impetuous. For instance, killing that punk Ozzie Mertz. That was impetuous.”
“But he embezzled from me. You always told me if you give an employee an inch, he’ll take a mile.”
“But I never said kill him. You could have used Mertz. He was ripe for manipulation. And what about Mertz’s common-law slut of a wife? You didn’t need to have her killed. That was gratuitous. That was overkill. And then there’s the strangulation. You could have shot them, the way civilized people do, dumped their carcasses in the swamp.”
“But, Gramps, t
hings are different down here.”
“Rubbish. Things are the same world over. Who did the actual killing?”
“A man named Walter Freed.”
“A professional?”
“Yes…I did it for you.”
“For me?”
“Because old man Broadnax strangled you!” Donny Sikes was about to cry. He hated it when Gramps was hard with him. Gramps was a hard man intrinsically. How else did he get where he got?
“I understand, Donny, you did it for sentiment. Sentiment’s all well and good at weddings and funerals, but not in business.”
“But Gramps, this isn’t business, it’s vengeance.”
“I know that, but vengeance must always be treated like business. In vengeance there is no room for passion.”
Roger Vespucci whipped up another piña colada in the new blender and went to deliver it to the boss, but Roger stopped at the sound of Donny Sikes’s voice out on the fantail. Talking to himself again. After his fifth or sixth piña, it would start. Family shit. Donny Sikes figured he was the only guy in the world with a rotten childhood. Roger Vespucci’s was no bed of roses, but hell, that was blood under the bridge. He didn’t carry on conversations with the deceased. He knew a guy in the pen did that, talked to the dead. Somebody finally offed the guy. Then the guy didn’t need to talk long distance.
“So what do you think I should do, Gramps?”
“I’ve been mulling it over in my brain the last few days, and I think you ought to kill Doom Loomis, then go ahead and build this Perfection Park.”
Donny was surprised to hear that. “But Perfection Park was never anything real, nothing but sucker bait to hook Big Al Broadnax.”
“I know that. Don’t you think I know that? After all, it was my idea. But I’ve been thinking about it, and Perfection Park sounds like a viable proposition to me. Let’s build it. We’ll leave something lasting after we’re gone, something solid, terra firma. A man reaches his threescore and ten, he wants—”
Roger Vespucci knocked on the bulkhead and said pardon me, sir, piñas.
“Come in, Roger. I want to talk to you.”
Roger offered him his piña, but Donny Sikes said no thank you.
“…No?”
“You have it. Roger, I’ve been thinking about this Perfection Park business. I’m leaning toward building it.”
“…Really building it?”
“Terra firma.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“What?”
“Nothing. Uh, when would you start?”
“Immediately. Let’s get some bulldozers in there. Let’s clear out the site. Pronto.”
“Yes, sir. Uh, boss, a funny thing happened in town today.”
“Funny ha-ha, or funny peculiar?”
“I went in to buy a new blender, and this guy comes up to me in the checkout line and says he has a note to you from Sennacherib Broadnax.”
“What’d the guy look like?”
“Weird fucker. Wearing this Mets cap with a wig attached to it.” Roger took Snack’s note from his shirt pocket and handed it to Donny Sikes.
“He wants a meeting, this Sennacherib hick,” said Donny after reading Snack’s note. “Fine, fine with Donald Sikes. Let’s meet.” What the hell kind of name was Sennacherib? “Set it up, Roger.”
DUNCAN’S ELEMENT
Duncan loved deceit. It wasn’t that Duncan was a cynic, saying everybody’s crooked at bottom, so why should I be honest? He viewed things in a more positive light—he wanted to be more crooked than anybody. That’s what he’d hate most about jail. There’d be a lot of guys more crooked than him. Duncan glued his Fu Manchu mustache in place as he approached the guardhouse.
“Yes, sir?” asked the ancient Cuban at the gate.
“Roger Vespucci to see Mr. Broadnax. I’m expected.”
Fidel checked his book. “Yes sir, go right on in,” and ploddingly he pushed open the ornate iron gate with curlicues at the top. He was out of breath as Duncan motored past him. That’s what he gets for a life of honest labor— Oh, there was big bucks here—motoring along the driveway toward the Greco-Moorish mansion, the calm blue Atlantic for a backyard playground—enough to support a lifetime of leisurely deceit. The imported marble hallway stretched to Daytona Beach, and at least forty Iranian children went blind weaving the rugs. Duncan began to bow and scrape even before he got to the garden, where Big Al sat in his chair beneath a leafy hydrangea. Sheriff Plotner stood nearby, sweating, fidgeting. Duncan smiled at him reassuringly. Don’t worry, Duncan is here—watch the old fart’s head spin.
“Mr. Broadnax, this is that Roger Vespucci I told you about.”
“How do you do, Mr. Broadnax?” said Duncan obsequiously.
“Never ask an old man how he is. He might tell you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“This is my son, Sennacherib.”
Snack seemed to be lurking beneath the bushes. He and Duncan shook hands like strangers. Doom had “released” him only the evening before.
“Now then, Mr. Vespucci, what can I do for you?”
“Well, sir, it’s my wife. She needs surgery. Brain surgery. Tumor behind the eye. I’m afraid the prognosis is not good. I’ve been working two jobs, but I still can’t make ends meet. To tell the truth, sir, I’m near the end of my rope. I asked Donald Sikes for a loan, and he said no—”
“No? He said no? The swine.” Big Al’s lips formed a hideous rictus, exposing brown-rooted teeth in receding gums, and for an instant Duncan didn’t make it as a smile. “Sennacherib—”
“Yes, Father?”
“Note this. This is an example of bullshit. A man will go a long way if he learns to distinguish bullshit from nonbullshit. Vespucci? Vespucci? Where did I hear that name before?”
“Amerigus Vespucci,” added the sheriff helpfully. “Columbus named America after him. Amerigus—America.”
“Amerigo,” said Duncan.
“What!” asked Big Al.
“Amerigo, not Amerigus.”
“Who gives a fuck! What do you want!”
“Money,” said Duncan simply. “You’re right, Big Al. May I call you Big Al? All that wife stuff—bullshit. You’re a wise man to see through it. I heard you were a wise man. You even look like a wise man. The fact is, me and Donny Sikes ain’t close, and I want to sell his ass right out, speaking plainly.”
Big Al felt good. He had this Amerigus fellow in the palm of his hand, and now he’d bounce him like a basketball in front of his son, show Sennacherib the kind of man his father was. “I guess you want to sell me something, Mr. Vespucci.”
“Information.”
Big Al wanted to know how much information and how much it would cost.
“Doom Loomis shills for Donny Sikes. Sikes will send Loomis around to sell you a phony deed to the Perfection Park property. So be careful. That’s free information. Want to hear more?”
“Pho—the deed was pho-phony?”
“What? He’s been here already?”
“I never laid eyes on the punk! What the hell’s his name? Loomis?” Big Al’s limbs began to twitch.
“I see you’re a little bit behind the times, Big Al. You better get out your purse for this next bit of info. I ain’t a greedy man. Give me ten grand, you know, for my poor wife’s operation. Cash.”
“You tell me, then we’ll talk price.”
“Okay, Big Al. I’d want a little proof myself. Ready? Donald Sikes has a bomb planted on your property.”
“A bomb—?”
“Yep, a big one.”
“A big bomb—here?”
“Sort of a chilling thought, huh? A guy who can blow your tits off whenever he feels like it. That’s the kind of savage prick you’re up against, Big Al.”
This guy is a pro, thought Sheriff Plotner, having himself a grand old time reducing Big Al to quivering goo. The sheriff about missed his cue. “Where is it!”
“Now, that’s the question, isn’t it? Where? Where indeed?
Could be under your chair.”
“Ten…thousand?”
“Cash.”
“…Deal.”
“It’s not a deal until the jack shows up.” Duncan waited, grinning, until the jack showed up. Lucas limped in with it. Then Duncan said, “It’s under your gimp van with the hydraulic lift to hoist your ass aboard.”
The sheriff waddled out onto the patio, down the marble and coquina-stone steps, at the base of which his black-and-white was parked. A Longnecker special was stowed beneath the front seat in a brown paper bag. Stinging drops of sweat rolled into his eyes as he removed and carried it to Big Al’s garage, where he fiddled around for a while, shining his light on the van’s underbody, imagining himself actually removing the bomb, a gutsy piece of police work. He could have gotten blown halfway to Bimini, and the old fart wouldn’t have appreciated it.
Meanwhile, back in the phony garden, Big Al was thinking things over. He wasn’t without clout. He had the law on his side. His son would never respect him if he didn’t bring it to bear on this smart-ass Roger Vespucci with the stupid mustache.
“Here it is,” said the sheriff, bearing the bomb gingerly. “I disarmed it. Little somethin’ I learned in advanced antiterrorist school. All wired up to the ignition, real professional, the kind favored by Muslin fundamentalists and Christian Phalangists.”
“Sheriff Plotner, arrest this man in the name of the law!”
Here was a new wrinkle, thought Duncan. “Arrest me? Are you nuts? I just saved your neck—”
“Arrest him for extortion and attempted murder. What else? Arson! He tried to arson me! Go on, slap the cuffs on the punk!”
Sheriff Plotner was getting confused. This wasn’t in the script. It must be what Loomis had called on-the-scene improvisation. Sheriff Plotner slapped the cuffs on Duncan Feeney. “Maybe you Yankees don’t know about Florida jails. You’ll come out farting a whole lot different than you do today.”
“Take him away!…Unless we can strike a deal.”
Here it comes. Duncan felt tingly all over. He loved it when the chumps jumped into the pit of their own accord. “A deal?” said Duncan in a quavery voice.
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