A Flash of Green

by John D. MacDonald

  “I suppose so, but …”

  “Jimmy, boy, when I was thinking about this little talk with you, I confess I started thinking about it all wrong. You see, I need you so bad and I respect you so much, I was thinking of ways to force you to join in with me. Hell, I thought of a lot of crazy things. I’ve got some wild kin who’d lay for you, grab you, run you way back up some slough and make you pray you could die. Then you’d jump fast every time I raised a finger, just to save yourself another trip up the slough, but once you do a man that way, it takes something out of him he never gets back, and he just isn’t worth as much to you or himself from then on.”

  “I don’t scare, Elmo.”

  “Now that’s a damn fool thing to say! Are you all the man Pete Nambo was? After Wade Illigan beat him out for Sheriff, some of my cousins kept him back in the swamp for eleven days, and since then nobody’s touched Pete all the six years he’s been driving a transit mix truck for me, but his voice still gets squeaky when I say good morning to him. I don’t bluff, Jimmy. I just decided I don’t want to do that to you. It was a bad idea. Then I thought about your wife. It was out of pure friendship I got her put into that state special-care program up near Oklawaha. That was three years ago, Jimmy. And it would have cost you five hundred a month to buy her that much private care. I was going to bring it up to you, and ask you if you don’t owe me something. But I wouldn’t like myself if I took advantage of that poor girl’s sickness that way. I even thought of hinting how easy I could work Killian around to firing you off the paper, but I guess you don’t give that much of a damn about the job. Finally I came around to right where we are now. You got the facts, I’m leaving it up to you. You can put that money on the desk and walk out. But your walking out won’t change any of the things that are going to happen. You’re thirty-three damn years old, boy, and you’ve been telling yourself too long you like to live small and quiet. You sit back inside yourself and sneer at how crazy the world is, and you like to think you don’t give a damn about anything. Okay, so here’s your chance to prove you don’t give a damn. Come aboard for the ride. Watch the animals. If you have to make excuses to yourself, you can tell yourself you’re researching a book. You’ve got your world shrunk down too small, Jimmy.”

  Elmo stood up and came over to him and punched him lightly on the shoulder. The grin squeezed Elmo’s eyes to bright gray slits and bulged the knots of muscle at the corners of his jaw. “Come on, boy!” he said in a half whisper. “Let’s you and me stir things up. Ever since Havana that time, I knew you were going to fit somewhere. I need you, and what the hell have you got to lose?”

  Jimmy Wing felt a sardonic amusement at how deftly Bliss was maneuvering him. Elmo had spread the possible rationalizations out in plain sight, inviting Jimmy to select the one which would make him the most cozy. Maybe, he thought, it isn’t so reprehensible to be maneuvered when you can see just how it’s being done, when you can see the foot on the pedal which controls the wheel.

  “Suppose I want to say yes, but I’m afraid it might get too ripe for me later on?”

  Elmo punched him again. “What the hell you think I’m operating here, boy? Bolita? Any time you want out, get out.”

  “Knowing, as you said, everything there is to know?”

  “Ah, but you wouldn’t use it! I use anything I can lift. But I’ve never crossed a friend. Or broke my word to a man living. You see, I don’t ask for your word, Jimmy, because I don’t have to.”

  Jimmy Wing sighed and stood up and put his hand out. Elmo’s clasp was brief, dry and very strong. “We’ll have some laughs.”

  “There better be some, Elmo. There haven’t been too many lately.”

  They went out into the hot soft air of night, and for Jimmy Wing it was much like the transition from the unreality of a movie back to the ordinary casual world. He wanted to ask Elmo how he was to report what he learned, but he stifled the question as impossibly theatrical now that they were back in the summer night, crunching the gravel underfoot, strolling back toward the lights at the bottom of the lawn.

  They went back down to the apron of the pool. Flake’s girl had changed to a checked cotton dress. She sat on a cedar tub which had been turned upside down. Flake stood behind her, drying her silver hair with a big cherry-colored towel. The towel obscured her face. She sat with her legs braced, her hands in her lap, so bonelessly relaxed that Buck Flake’s vigorous efforts rippled her body inside the snug dress.

  As they approached, Elmo was slightly behind Jimmy. Jimmy saw Leroy Shannard give Elmo a quick, searching look, and he could not doubt but what Elmo returned a nod of affirmation. I shall have to be alert for these little things, he thought. I’ll never know all of what’s going on. I’ll have to guess at a lot of it.

  The dancers were gone, the music silent, the workshop lights out. “For chrissake, Buck!” Elmo said irritably.

  Flake stopped immediately and backed away from the girl, leaving the towel draped half across her face.

  “I’m not dry, Buckey!” she said in a sweet, complaining, little-girl voice. “Dry me more.”

  “It’ll dry good in the car, Princess, with the top down. Come on. We’re going.”

  She stuffed the towel into her beach bag, combed her hair back with her fingers and stood up, arching her back, taking a deep breath, smiling at all of them. “Thanks for the sweetie drinks and the sweetie swim, people.”

  Shannard said, “You were a joy to watch, child.”

  “Now cut it out, Leroy!” Buck said.

  “What’s he doing he should cut out, Buckey? Jeepers, you’re getting so nobody can say a sweetie word to me any more!”

  “Come on!” Buck ordered and marched her away.

  They heard her thin sweet voice receding, and the angry gunning of Buck’s big car as he backed it out, and at last the dwindling whine of it on the midnight highway.

  “Where is he keeping her?” Elmo asked.

  “He’s got her stashed out there in one of his sweetie display houses,” Leroy said. “He took the sweetie sign down. She seems to stroll over to the office once a day and type one letter, with two sweetie fingers.”

  “She’s sure-God built,” Elmo said.

  “She’ll weigh in at one-fifty,” Leroy said, “without a half ounce of fat on her. Buck should age visibly this summer.”

  “Won’t you help him out?”

  Shannard smiled into the distance. “Elmo, old friend, you should know me well enough by now to realize that my libido operates in inverse ratio to the availability of the merchandise. That girl is without the old-fashioned restraint I’m accustomed to. She would accommodate me as merely a sociable gesture, like a healthy handshake, or remembering my name. I’m too old to think of sex as merely sensible hygiene. Mine has to be sharpened by the sense of sin and guilt. And it has to be difficult to arrange, so as to provide the stimulation of anticipation. If Buck’s college girl could sunbathe, swim, drink gin and make love simultaneously, that’s what she’d do every day, just because they all make her feel so peachy fine. No thanks, Elmo. Buck can struggle with this one all by himself. The hell with the new freedom. Give me a troubled, anxious, guilty woman every time. They think they’re giving away something of value, at least. So they don’t give it so often they tax me too much.”

  “Laziest lawyer in town,” Elmo said. “But I like to listen to him talk. He belts me with fees that would take your appetite away.”

  “But I didn’t charge him a thing the first time he came to me, James,” Leroy said. “He was in coveralls, wearing a carpenter hat, and he bulled his way in and dumped his records on top of my desk. He stared at me as though he was thinking about hitting me in the mouth. Then he said, ‘The net worth is maybe four thousand. I owe eleven. I can take on a contract that’ll make me twenty before taxes. I need ten thousand by tomorrow noon at the latest. Find it for me and you do my law work from now on. But find it as a loan, because I’m not selling any piece of my company.’ On any average day, I’d have
sent him right back out. But I was feeling euphoric. I had him sit in the outer office. I made a couple of phone calls to find out about him. Then I found him the money, right in my own bank account.”

  “At fifteen percent for three months. Just a little old sixty percent a year.”

  “Secured by a chattel mortgage on everything including the fillings in his teeth.”

  They grinned at each other. “Now I support you,” Elmo said. “I should claim you as an exemption.”

  “Don’t you?” Shannard asked. He hoisted his long body out of the chair. “You heading back to town too, James?”

  They said goodnight to Elmo and went along the path together. When they reached the open gate in the redwood fence, the pool lights and garden spots flicked out. Only one car was left in addition to Shannard’s Thunderbird and Jimmy’s old blue station wagon, and it was an elderly Chevy with Collier County tags.

  Shannard stopped in the darkness and said, “Being around Elmo is consistently interesting. He’s never ceased to surprise me. He’s impossible to predict, yet all the apparently meaningless things eventually fall into a pattern. Have you noticed that?”

  “Maybe I haven’t known him that well or that long.”

  “Let’s stop at the Spanish Mack for a nightcap.”

  As he followed the multiple taillights of Shannard’s car toward town, Jimmy Wing had the feeling he was the victim of some vastly complicated practical joke, the point of which would be made evident to him later on. Charity Prindergast was a bit player. He carried prop money. Elmo had learned his lines.

  But he knew that Elmo Bliss had probed for and found his special weakness, which was his understanding of his own role as an observer. Nothing could seriously touch him who watched. No blame could accrue to him who sat on the shady knoll and watched the armies at war. If you were offered a higher knoll, a better vantage point, why not accept? The invulnerable armor of the combat correspondent was the dry smile, the mental note, the clinical observation of self in relation to the furies observed. So all the breasts were wax, all the cries were recorded, all the blood was red enamel.

  Five

  THE SPANISH MACK WAS a cinderblock tavern east of Palm City, right at the city line, just over the highway bridge crossing Foley’s Creek. From there the creek wandered south and west, eventually emptying into Grassy Bay. It was a functional operation, without juke, pinball, bowling games or television. The habitual customer knew he would always find unobtrusive air conditioning, indirect lighting, comfortable chair or bar stool, enough soundproofing to keep conversations private, expert bartenders, local gossip, and package liquors at moderate prices.

  Less than half the bar stools were occupied. They took two stools at the middle curve of the bar. Howie, the smaller bartender, greeted them by name and took their orders. As he placed Jimmy’s drink in front of him he said, “Friend of yours was in, Jimmy. Left about a half hour back. The guy with the scar.”

  “Brian Haas?”

  “That’s his name. I always forget it.”

  “Drinking?”

  “First he had tomato juice. Then two fast doubles. Bang, bang, and he slapped the money down. Don’t look at me like that, Jimmy. They ask for it and I sell it, unless they’re stoned coming in. The only reason I’m telling you, I remember it was a year ago, wasn’t it, you were hunting for him all the time.”

  “Thanks, Howie,” Jimmy said. He excused himself and phoned Nan. He looked at his watch as the phone rang. It was five of one. When Nan answered he asked her if Bri had come home.

  “No, and I was beginning to worry, Jimmy. Do you want him to call you when he gets in?”

  “No. By accident I just found out he had some drinks about a half hour ago, at the Spanish Mack. He must have come here from the paper.”

  He heard the long weary sound of her sighing exhalation. “Oh, damn it, damn it. God damn it, Jimmy. He’s been edgy. He’s had a lot of trouble sleeping. He didn’t go to the last couple of meetings. He made excuses.”

  “I thought you ought to know, Nan. Is there anything I can do?”

  “Thanks, no. I’ve got a number to call. They’ll get people out looking for him. Did he buy a bottle there?”

  He asked her to wait a moment. He came back to the phone and said, “No. No bottle yet.”

  “Well, here we go again,” Nan said, with a kind of desolated gallantry. “Thanks for phoning me, Jimmy. I better make that call right now.”

  When Jimmy went back to his drink, Shannard said, “Trouble?”

  “He’s been off it fourteen months. The last time he went three years. His wife’s alerting the AA’s to track him down. Maybe if they grab him soon enough, they can steer him off it.”

  “I know Haas by sight, of course.”

  “He’s been the route, Leroy. A sweet and brilliant guy. When he was in his twenties he was a top man in the business. Right after the war the drinking started. He drank his way through all the papers who’d take a chance on him, and drank his marriage away, and most of his health, drank himself right down into skid row. Then some kind of rehabilitation outfit got hold of him and picked up all the pieces they could find and put him back together, and scouted a job for him and sent him down here to Ben Killian. Ben tucked him under my wing. I never thought it would work at all. It was hard to communicate with him. He was like some kind of a refugee, like a man who managed to escape by some miracle when his homeland was blown to hell, so that nothing which can ever happen to him again will be very important. But when he started to do all right with routine assignments, he started to come back a little, and when he married Nan McMay about five years ago, he came out of it a lot more.”

  “Nanette Melton McMay,” Shannard said. “I was in on that case.”

  “Were you? I didn’t remember.”

  “Why it didn’t destroy her, I’ll never know. So that makes them a pair of refugees, in a sense. At least she should be strong enough to cope with anything.”

  “This is the third time she’s had to face it. The last time he fell off, we got him hooked up with the AA’s, and it seemed to work. Borklund wanted to let him go then. Ben Killian said he could have one more chance. If they don’t get him in time, if he blows it, I don’t know what will happen to him. He’s forty-five. He’s got no place to go, not from here.”

  “Howie?” Shannard said. “Once again here. Where were we, James? Oh, we were discussing the infinite variety of the commissioner. Did you get a tidy news story out of him tonight?”

  Jimmy Wing felt an immediate wariness. “Nothing I can use right off, Leroy. More like background material.”

  “Over the last few years, Elmo has been the best source of any of the five commissioners, I’d imagine.”

  “Well, you could say a practical politician on any level makes use of the press. Some of them have a feeling for it. Elmo does. Sometimes it’s a knack of saying nothing in such a way it comes out sounding like news.”

  “Would you think Elmo’s knack is worth pursuing?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Could he go further with it? Higher offices?”

  “If he has the desire. But Elmo has the knack of making money too. Maybe that’s more important to him.”

  “But you’re talking about alternate roads to the same thing, Jimmy. Aren’t you?”

  “Power and importance? It would depend on what kind Elmo wants, and how much of it he wants.”

  “Let’s assume his appetite is insatiable.”

  “Where are you heading, Leroy?”

  The eagle face creased into a sleepy, knowing grin. “Hell, I’m just talking. He’s an interesting man. I wanted to get your slant on him. He likes you, Jimmy. If you wanted, you could latch on and go along with him. That’s what I’ve been doing.”

  “I’d have to wait for him to ask me, Leroy. I’d have to know where he was headed. You see, I can’t think of anything I want very much that I haven’t got.”

  Shannard put the money down and got off the
stool. Jimmy thanked him and they walked out to their cars.

  “I guess I was too obvious about it, Jimmy,” Shannard said.

  “Too obvious about what?”

  “He said you’d know how to handle it, but I had to check it out myself.”

  “I just don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  Shannard got into the Thunderbird and grinned up at him. “You’re perfectly right, you know. Elmo should clear it first. But welcome aboard anyway. Night, James.”

  By the time Jimmy drove out of the parking area beside the Spanish Mack, Shannard’s car was out of sight. Three carloads of teenagers passed him, cutting from lane to lane, yelling at each other. The stoplights were off, blinking yellow down the length of Center Street through the middle of town toward City Bridge. The lift of the drinks was gone. He felt stale and sleepy.

  A block before the bridge he changed his mind about going straight home. He turned right and cut back to Brian Haas’s place. Brian and Nan lived in a garage apartment. The big house had been torn down and replaced by a row of connected one-story shops and small offices erected close to the sidewalk with parking area in the rear. The garage apartment was just beyond the asphalted area. It had a small walled garden at the side, shaded by an enormous banyan tree.

  When Jimmy Wing parked by the garden wall and turned his lights off, Nan Haas came hurrying out.

  “Just me,” he said. “Anything new?”

  “Not yet, Jimmy. They’re looking for him. Come in and help me wait. Isn’t this a hell of a thing?” Her voice was casual, but he could sense the strain behind it. He followed her into the tiny ground-floor living room. She wore white shorts and a dark blue sleeveless blouse. She was barefoot, and her hair was short, curly, brown-blond. Nan was a short, plump woman, ripely curved, light on her feet, firm in her skin, with a round, placid, pretty face and the beginning of a double chin.

  “Coffee?” she asked.

  “If you have some made.”

  “In this house, always.”