A Flash of Green

by John D. MacDonald

  “I wouldn’t want you making that kind of talk too many places.”

  Her placid smile did not change. “Chrissake, honey, if I was to start now, I’d go down one hell of a long list before coming to you, so don’t fret yourself. Thanks about my sister. We’ll get along, you know. That’s what he’s good at, always knowing people will get along good together. Goodnight, Jimmy.”

  She left. He locked the door. He watched her little car turn out into the flow of traffic, heading toward town.

  He went back and picked up the beer bottle and stood by Elmo’s desk until Elmo looked up at him, and then he said, “Maybe what you should do, Commissioner, is take an ad in the paper. You know the usual form. We are pleased to announce that James Warren Wing has become associated with us.”

  “Are you sore, boy?”

  “A little, I guess. Last night Leroy was so damn cute.”

  “You handled that real fine. Leroy likes the way you took it, and so do I.”

  “Thanks a lot. Does Sandra get to pat me on the head too?”

  “Steady down, Jim, for God’s sake. You know what Leroy proved? He proved something I already knew, but he had to check it himself so he’d feel easier in his mind about it. He had to make sure you weren’t one of those people have to jump on every chance to make a brag. Most people are like that. It makes them feel bigger to hint around how important they are. I’m clearing you right now to talk right out to Leroy about any part of all this.”

  “Leroy and Sandra so far. Do you want to write out a list for me?”

  “You got the ugly on you tonight, boy. One thing you keep in mind, will you? What good would you be to me if everybody knew our deal?”

  “Not very much I guess, but …”

  “Sandra has been with me eight years. She’d just turned eighteen when she came to work here. Anything I do, she knows. Like Leroy does too. And like you do from now on. Man, I’m not a damn fool.”

  Jimmy went back to the couch. “I guess you’ve never given me that impression.”

  Elmo went to the cabinet bar and chuckled as he started to fix himself a drink. “Just don’t worry about who knows what. Take a damn fool like Flake. He never gets to know more than I need him to know so I can get the use out of him I have to.”

  “But you have an arrangement with him on his share of this Palmland Development, don’t you?”

  “I got some ways of keeping him tame. Leroy and Sandra I don’t have to worry about. They know they do good when I do good. So they like to come up with all the he’p they can give me. Hell, after Sandra married Pat Straplin, I made him a lend of the money to get into the contract electric business on his own, and I keep him busy. I got a couple of her kin onto the county payroll a while back.” He pulled a chair toward the couch, sat down and put his drink on the coffee table. “What happens to a man, Jim, he gets a lot of other people fastened onto him in one way or another, so sometimes you have the feeling it’s turned into a whole army, all pushing in one direction, everybody anxious to do all they can, because this is the way they make things better’n they’ve ever been. It’s getting so it would be hard to find a public place around Palm County where a man could bad-mouth me and not get knocked flat and bloody.”

  “I suppose the biggest danger in that is beginning to believe it yourself.”

  Elmo looked at him narrowly, then laughed. “Hell, I believe some of it. Why shouldn’t I? My name doesn’t sound the same to me it used to. Elmo Bliss—it used to have a raggedy-pants sound. But I’ve pulled it higher than anybody thought I would already. It doesn’t sound the same to me any more. You want I should be humble? It surprises me ninety-nine per cent of the human race can feed themself. Anything wrong with a man knowing he’s in the one per cent on top?”

  “As long as he stays on top, I guess.”

  “Women, liquor and gambling. That’s what throws men, Jimmy. I do my gambling in a business way, where I know the odds. I got my drinking done early in life. And the women I got are no more anxious for any scandal talk than I am, and anything new that comes along will be selected just as careful, boy.”

  “So you’re safe, Elmo.”

  “It’s something you should know, you betting your future on me. If I should go down, I’ll fall heavy. And you might be right in the way.”

  “You better decide whether you’re going to keep me in line by threatening me, Elmo, or by sweet-talking me. This way, you keep confusing both of us.”

  “It just goes to show how much I want to depend on you. It’s making me too anxious. I guess once you get to work, we’ll both feel better. I was awake in the night thinking about you, Jimmy. A good man should get paid what he’s worth. I decided old Buck is going to sell a little bigger piece than he thinks he is, when the time comes. He’ll sell you some, and take your note. You should clear ten thousand on it, which would be seven thousand, almost, keeping money, once you pay capital gain.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  “There’ll be little things like that coming along ever’ so often, boy. By the time you get out with a profit, I’ll have a good place you should put it and watch it make you fat. I figure a man like you should feel more like a partner than somebody hired.”

  “I’ve been a hired man all my life.”

  “Then it’s time you should stand on this side of the fence and see how it feels. I know what you’re thinking right now. You’re thinking I’m awful goddam anxious this land fill goes through. I am. But I’m not so anxious I’m losing track of anything.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to.”

  “They had their first meeting this evening, and the first one you should go after is that son of a bitch Sinnat. Now we’re down to cases, boy.”

  “As I understand this, Elmo, you want me to dig up some things about these people, things which can be used to get them off this Grassy Bay campaign.”

  “That’s exactly right!”

  “But what kind of things, damn it? How much proof? How are they going to be used?”

  “Now you listen here, Jimmy Wing! What I want is that Dial Sinnat finding out it just isn’t worth while for him to mix into this thing. He put up a good piece of the money the last time, and they’ll be wanting to clip him for more. It’s like a dog, he sticks his nose in a hole and a big yella bee stings it, he don’t care what else is in that hole any more. Just how it gets used depends on what it is you can come up with. And I don’t think it has to be too much. You know why? It would take one hell of a lot to keep me or Leroy or Felix Aigan out of this deal, because we come out at the end of it with something you can hold in your hand, namely money. What’s the word for the opposite of something you can hold onto?”

  “Abstraction?”

  “That’s it. All the damn bird-watchers and do-gooders and nature boys, they got an abstraction they’ve fell in love with. But the average man, you tell him that bay is a mess of mud flats likely to make his kids sick, he won’t see anything pretty in it, and he won’t want to save it. When the average man goes to look at nature, he wants something going on, like a porpoise coming ten feet up out of the water to eat a fish, or like pretty girls underwater, sucking air from a hose and eating bananas. There’s nothing going on in that bay they can look at. But the goddam do-gooders got this abstraction they look at. They like the idea of nature being left the hell alone. Boy, it never is left alone. Never. Not when there’s a dollar you can make out of it. Now, what I’m saying is that money in hand is a lot more persuasive than the abstraction of leaving it like it was when the Indians first found it. So it’s easier to chase a man off an abstraction than it is to chase him away from meat and potatoes.”

  “Wait a minute, Elmo. A lot more men have died for abstract considerations, for ideas, than for money.”

  “Is Sinnat one of those, for God’s sake?”

  “N-no. He isn’t one of those.”

  “So what can we use?”

  “I don’t know, Elmo.”

  “Then you find out.
On his fourth wife, isn’t he? Anything he’s doing, or his wife is doing, or any of their kids are doing that he wouldn’t want too many people knowing about, he could be cooled off real fast on this nature-lover business. You’re the one can find out easiest and fastest of anybody in town, Jim. And he’s the one I want discouraged first. Anything looks promising, you bring it right to me.”

  “And if there’s nothing?”

  “One thing I’ve learned. There’s always something. Maybe you got to turn it a little sideways before you can use it, but it’s always there if you look for it.”

  “How much time is there?”

  “The petition gets presented to the commissioners next Tuesday morning. As far as setting the date for the hearing, I just plain don’t know yet. The law sets two weeks’ minimum time to wait after the petition is presented. I got to move a little easy on it, so the other commissioners won’t get the idea I got a special ax to grind.”

  “Last time around, I helped the do-gooders all I could.”

  “That’s good, boy. They’ll want more help. Try to give it to them.”

  Jimmy Wing stared at the commissioner. “Maybe I’m not getting through. I agree with what they’re trying to do.”

  Elmo finished his drink. “So do I, in more ways than you might imagine, Jim boy. If this whole coast could be just as it was when I was a boy, I’d be happy. Right in the middle of all those hundreds of little houses Earl Ganson built in that Lakeview Village of his, I used to get me my quail with an old single-bar’l Ithaca sixteen-gauge when I wasn’t as high as it was long. Had a busted stock wrapped with wire, and every time you fired it you had to bang the butt on the ground to make the trigger spring back to where it belonged. Hell, you’re old enough to know how it was around here.”

  “Remember that old dock on the north end of Cable Key, the long one on the bay side at the old Esterly place?”

  “Sure do.”

  “I must have been about eight years old. It was a Sunday in May. There was a school of mullet in there like nobody has ever seen since. I’d say they were schooled up six miles long, a mile wide and ten feet deep.”

  “Say, I remember that! God damn! We gigged all day long until our arms like to fell off.”

  “Everybody did. Half the town was out there.”

  “And the fish house price fell off to two cents, finally, and then they wouldn’t buy at all because they had no room. I remember we run a truck of them down to Naples, but it was a hot day and we had no ice, and the man down there didn’t like the look in their eye by then. So we dumped ’em damn near in the center of town and took off fast.”

  “The whole town here stank for a week. That was the last big school, the last one on this coast, Elmo.”

  “It’s a sad thing to think about, surely. And so are a lot of other things, Jimmy. All those miles of dead empty beaches. I was at a party at a big motel on Cable Key the other night. A political thing. Out at that Blue Horizon. I bet you Gidge Tucker put a million bucks into that, all told. And it’s got places on either side of it damn near as big. I was standing out on the beach where they had a bar moved out there, and lanterns strung and all, and grass-skirt music going on, talking to a committeewoman from Tampa, and I looked at the way the shoreline curves right about there, and knew where I was at, and all of a sudden I had to laugh and I couldn’t tell her what I was really laughing at. I had to make something up. You see, right about where we were standing, I’d spread me a blanket maybe twenty years ago, with a bottle and a fire and a little darkhead waitress from Estero, and we stayed right on there through most of the next day, the only time putting our clothes on to go all the way to town to get something to eat and some more wine. We had a game we were shipwrecked on a desert island, and we didn’t see a soul all day, or expect to. Gidge paid three hundred a foot for that same shoreline we blanketed on, and it’s worth more now, but if it had been three dollars a foot back then, I couldn’t have bought enough for a grave, except maybe lengthwise from the water. It’ll all be a sad thing the way it changes, all the wild things and wild places going, one by one, but you and me, we can’t change it or keep it from happening. All we can do is get in there and get our piece of it. Hell, I know why you went along with those folks. Vance Hubble was a good friend, and I know for sure that the people who fought the fill the last time and will fight it this time make better people to be around, for a man like you, than the ones over on my side of the fence. But you did it to help your friends and be with them, not out of any great big complex about saving the world. You don’t give enough of a damn about things like that to make it any great jolt for you to work against them instead of for them.”

  “I wouldn’t want them to know what I’m doing.”

  “They won’t know unless you tell them. I won’t. Leroy won’t. Sandra won’t. And let me tell you something else. Once it’s filled, the ones who were against it won’t give a damn either. Maybe they’ll feel regretful they lost, and maybe they’ll scowl when they look out onto that fill and the houses going up on it, but after they’ve seen it fifty times they won’t notice it any more, and they won’t miss the bay unless they stop and remember how it used to be. The only thing left of that bay will be some old memories and some old photographs hanging around. And after it’s filled there’ll be thousands and thousands of folks coming down here who won’t even realize it was open bay water, and will be bored if you try to tell them it was. Because they won’t give a damn. Jimmy, what the common man wants is television, air conditioning, a backyard barbecue, healthy kids and a normal sex life. If it was the last bay left in the world, he might get agitated. But there’s always more bays. And when he goes fishing, he doesn’t compare how good or how bad he does to what he could have done ten years ago or fifty years ago. If he gets two runty little trash fish last week and three this week, he’s happy to do better. If he sees one pelican and one blue heron all week, he’s glad there’s wild water birds around for him to look at. If they don’t look at him, he’ll yell and wave his arms to make sure they do. He likes nature to notice him. And that bay doesn’t notice him worth a damn. It just sits there, and when it’s gone he won’t miss it. Neither will your do-gooder friends. But I would sure as hell miss the money I’m going to make out of it. I’d want to lay down and cry if it went bad on me. I got to have it, and it’s not an abstraction, fella. It’s the most actual thing there is in the world, and I mean to have it, because I got just the right use for it. And now listen close. Name me one son of a bitch in this world who can prove which is the best thing to have out on those grass flats, eight hundred houses, or eight million minnows. It’ll be a nice high-class development, and the people who’ll live there’ll be happy they found such a pretty place to call home.”

  “I’ll take the fish, Elmo.”

  “If I had any choice in the matter, I would too. But if I chose fish, boy, somebody else would choose to fill it, because it’s close in, it’s shallow enough to fill cheap, and the state is still in the business of peddling land belonging to the people.”

  “Which is a violation of trust.”

  “Maybe it’s morally wrong, but it’s as legal as marriage, boy. When there’s next to nothing left worth saving, they’ll put it all under the Conservation Department where it should have been put years ago. But so long as the door isn’t locked yet, I’m walking through it before somebody else does. And I don’t want any long-drawn-out law fights either. That’s where you come in. And the first one I want nailed is Dial Sinnat. We set to go now?”

  Jimmy Wing waited the space of three slow exhalations. “It should be interesting work.”

  “You’ll get to like it, as soon as you break the ice.”

  “Elmo, I don’t want to like it or dislike it. I just want to do it and get it over.”

  “Where will you start?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Elmo reached and thumped Jimmy Wing on the knee with his fist. “You’ll figure it out. Boy, we’ll find time to talk th
is way often. We’ll get to know each other. The better I know you, the better I like you, Jimmy. You got a cool streak, but maybe that’s a good thing. I got plenty of people can get too damn hot and excited. You lay back and keep account on how we’re doing, huh?”

  “Won’t you know?”

  Elmo laughed. “Hell, I’ll know it when we go so slow on this thing I get nervous. Then I’d have to tell Leroy to get you some outside help on those folks. You’d still be in charge, sort of. But they’d be helping you dig. Leroy knows a damn good Tampa outfit with some smart ex-cops working for them.”

  “But you said it won’t take much to scare those people off.”

  “It won’t, Jimmy! It won’t! But we’ve got to have that little bit.”

  Jimmy Wing wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “If you want something to start with, I can give you something on Morton Derm …”

  “Dial Sinnat first, Jimmy boy! Before he can fatten the kitty for them. Hell, I got to get on home before Dellie skins me. Get those lights over there, will you? I’ll see that everything’s locked.”

  Wing followed Elmo’s pickup as far as Bayou, then turned off toward the newspaper building. Seconds after he arrived, a state highway patrol tip came in on a bad one ten miles south of town on Bay Highway, just north of the town limits of Everset. Borklund shooed him onto it, along with Stu Kennicott for pictures. They hurried down to Jimmy’s car. Four blocks after they had turned onto Bay Highway an ambulance screeched by them. Jimmy tucked the old blue wagon in behind it, maintaining a minimum safe interval, and clicked on his illegal red flasher.

  They had to yell at each other to be heard over the constant sustained scream of the siren and the hard roar of the old Plymouth engine.

  “All you know is it’s a bad one?” Stu yelled. He was an aggressive little man with thick glasses.

  “That’s all he said.”