A Flash of Green

by John D. MacDonald

  “And our recruiting is terribly discouraging,” Major Lipe said. “I’ve just been reporting to the colonel. It looks as if I’m not even going to be given a chance to talk to some of the groups I’m supposed to contact. And I haven’t found a single recreational club which will back us unanimously. You know, I can’t even line up a decent committee to help me? I don’t see how they could have done such a tremendous propaganda job without our hearing about it. Jackie tells me she’s having the same problem. And Wally is going out of his mind trying to find reputable people to write the commissioners. It isn’t anything like it was last time.”

  “You heard we lost Dial Sinnat?” Jennings said.

  “Kat told me.”

  Jennings sighed and smiled. “We’ll still make a good presentation at the public hearing. And losing this battle does not mean losing the war. That’s our advantage, you see. They have to win every battle. All we have to do is win one. They won’t be able to endure delay. Their money structure will collapse. And, best of all, Jimmy, we’re right and they’re wrong.”

  They walked toward the exit, erect and in step, chins up, arms swinging in unison.

  When it was time, Jimmy got into the creaking elevator and rode up to the tower office of Calvin Lupen, the ancient man who held the job of courthouse custodian, and who had been on sick leave for almost a year. His office was a ten-by-ten cube with one narrow window. The scarred desk was thick with dust. One wall was papered with yellowing Playmates of the Month, many of them with anatomical oddities added with pen and pencil.

  Elmo sat at Cal’s desk, his feet on the low windowsill. He was staring at the wall of nudes.

  “One thing I never noticed before, Jimmy. All different shapes and sizes of girls, but every smile is alike. Look at them.”

  Wing had closed the door. He blew dust off a chair and sat and looked at the girls. “I think you’re right.”

  “How did I do down there? How did I sound?”

  “Eminently fair, Mr. Commissioner.”

  “I didn’t want to overdo it. That damn Gormin looked like he was going to crack up. Leroy is the only solid one in the group. And maybe Doc Aigan. Buck has got hisself so pussy-happy over that Prindergast piece, he’s no damn good to anybody. I wish to hell his wife would come home and bust up that romance. Burt Lesser phoned me at home last night and talked like a crazy man.”

  “About Sinnat?”

  “Hell, yes. The Halley woman chewed him out. Oh, you were there, weren’t you?”

  “What did you tell Burt?”

  “What could I tell him? I said that if he thought I was the kind of man who’d use underhand methods on Dial Sinnat, then in the interest of harmony, maybe he’d better let me buy a hundred percent of his interest after my term runs out on the commission. That slowed him way down. He’s scared of that mean-mouth wife of his. She’d never let him forget I edged him out of his only chance to make any real money. He likes being president. I said if some nut was going around scaring people, it wasn’t my fault or his. He finally apologized. But I haven’t given up the idea of squeezing him out, that is, if he keeps getting in my hair. Worked out just fine with Di Sinnat, didn’t it though?”

  “What made it work so well, Elmo?”

  Elmo looked at him too blandly. “Why, I guess he didn’t want his little girl’s name dragged in the mud.”

  “Maybe he didn’t want his little girl dragged in the mud, personally. Maybe he didn’t want her whipped by a bunch of south county nuts.”

  “What in the wide world are you talking about, Jimmy boy?”

  “Di reacted pretty violently. I’m making a wild guess, Elmo. You got a heavy vote from those people.”

  “Man, I can’t help who votes for me! Anyhow ol’ Darse Coombs is kin of mine, about a fourth or fifth cousin. His middle name is Harkness, and my pa’s great-aunt married a Harkness from Collier County. But I don’t know as that means much to Darse. He figures me for a sinner. Told me so. Roared right into my face, sprayed me like a faucet.”

  “Elmo, I wouldn’t want any part of this if you pulled something like that.”

  “Boy, I wouldn’t want any part of it myself. You actually think that little Sinnat girl is going to get her tail whipped?”

  “Not now, no.”

  “Then don’t get all agitated. Damn it, Jimmy, I got a word for you. You’re morose. You got the sour uglies most of the time. Look out there at that great big broad sunshiny world, crammed full of people having a time. It’s a big world full of beaches and girls and sport cars. Full of bowling alleys and golf courses and cold beer. The things you get so broody about, why, they don’t matter a damn to those folks. They want ball games, westerns, the next drink, the next steak, the next roll in the hay. They can get a little jumpy about being blowed up with atom bombs, but aside from that one thing, you can hardly attract their attention. We’ll just be another part of the entertainment business, Jimmy, after we really get rolling. You give those people a few laughs and a little excitement, and they’ll love you forever.”

  “If you say so, Elmo.”

  “Here’s this week’s bite, Jimmy. A pair of fifties.”

  Wing took the money. “Plus twenty-one dollars expenses.”

  “Plus what?”

  “Twenty-one dollars I spent doing your work for you. If it’s a hundred a week, the least I can expect is to have it free and clear.”

  Elmo shook his head, chuckled, took two tens and a one out of his wallet. “You know, you’re making more sense as you go along, boy. I hope you run this up on that Doris Rowell.”

  Wing took the money, and told Bliss what he had learned. Elmo stared at him with a puzzled expression after he was through. “You mean there’s people take a thing like that serious, Jimmy?”

  “Yes indeed.”

  “Those eggheads that come down here when she yells for help, they’d stay away if they knew about this?”

  “Very probably. Even if none of them had ever heard of the incident before. It works like this, Elmo. Industry will use people who have been tossed out of colleges. Industry is interested in ability and results. But other educational institutions don’t want anything to do with anybody who has been caught in unethical practices. It’s a sensitive area.”

  “My, my,” Elmo said. “Think of that! I know how to handle a little case of where folks mess around in the ordinary ways, but what the hell do you do with a thing like this?”

  “It doesn’t have to be complicated, Elmo. She doesn’t even have to know we’ve done anything about it. I can look up the list of the experts who testified last time and just mail them, with no comment and no return address, the copies of the news items, with ‘Doris’ and ‘Rowell’ underlined in red wherever those names appear.”

  “You mean that would do it? They wouldn’t come down?”

  “It would be very unlikely.”

  “And she wouldn’t know what was wrong, would she?”

  “She might guess, sooner or later, but she could never be sure who spread the word.”

  Elmo closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You go right ahead and do it that way, Jimmy. I think I like it. Tom Jennings will be leaning heavy on having those experts telling everybody how terrible it is to mess with breeding grounds and tide flow and so on. This way he may not find out until the very last minute they’re not coming. I want him to walk in there with the heart tooken right out of him, with nothing left on his side but nuts and bird-watchers opposing the march of progress and prosperity.”

  “Tom told me a little while ago that you have to win every battle to win the marbles, and all he has to do is win one.”

  “I know that just as well as he does. What I got to do is win the first battle so big there won’t be anybody left to fight on his side. I’ve got lots and lots of people working, and now that it’s out in the open, they can work harder. By the time of the hearing, boy, I want to have this county so worked up that if anybody should speak out against the fill in a pub
lic place, they get cracked right in the mouth by the first person who can get to him.”

  “Who’s next on the priority list?”

  “You gettin’ eager, Jimmy?”

  “Not noticeably.”

  “Come on around to the house tonight when you get finished up. There’ll be some folks milling around out there. You an me and Leroy can have a little chat. Don’t look so nervous, boy. You’re supposed to go where the news is.”

  “The morning paper ought to please you, Elmo.”

  “Ben Killian promised Leroy it would.” Elmo slumped slightly in his chair. “You run along now and close the door, boy. I’ve got some quiet thinking to do. I’ve got to catch up on my mess list.”

  “On your what?”

  “Whenever I get into anything, boy, whenever I take one of those bites I was telling you about, I like to take time off to just set and make myself up a list of every possible thing that could go wrong, every bad break I can imagine. And I decide just what I would do in each case. Then when things blow up in my face, it doesn’t take me by surprise. I know just what direction to move because I’ve got it planned.”

  “Elmo, who phoned Sinnat?”

  “Nobody he knew. Nobody you know. And they’ve got no way of knowing either you or me had anything to do with any part of it. One nice thing about this mess list is the way you get in the habit of doing things in such a way you cut way down the number of things which could go wrong. The only time to get brave is when you’ve got aces back to back.”

  “Is that what you have now?”

  “It’s more like queens backed, but the up card is the highest one on the table so far. If I was raised, I’d bump it again, because there is one hell of a lot in the pot. The opener was forty thousand.”

  “From Mrs. Lesser?”

  “Most of it.” Elmo smiled and closed his eyes. Jimmy went out and closed the door quietly. As the little elevator descended in the airless shaft, he decided he would work at home that day, and bring his copy in by late afternoon.

  Seventeen

  THE TABLE-TOP MODEL OF PALMLAND ISLES was brought into the bank as soon as the doors were closed to the public. It was set up about fifteen feet behind Kat Hubble’s desk. A railing was installed around it, just far enough to keep the public from touching the exhibit.

  A placard on a nearby easel was inscribed, Palmland Isles—A Planned Community—Styled for the Best of Tropical Living.

  Martin Cable and Burt Lesser looked it over after it was set up. After they left, the bank employees gathered around it.

  Kat stood beside two girls from the installment loan section.

  “All the work in that thing!” one of them said.

  “It’s absolutely gorgeous!” the other one said. “Chee, would I ever love to live there! What a place for kids, huh? What I’d like is that cute gray house there on that kinda point where the road curves around.”

  “So tell Johnny you won’t settle for less.”

  “Hah! Waterfront land? The only waterfront I’ll see is the kitchen sink. The closest I’ll get to that house is going by in a rowboat.”

  “That bay belongs to both of you,” Kat said.

  The two girls turned and stared blankly at her. “What do you mean, Mrs. Hubble?” the taller one said.

  “You can use the bay now, Betty. Nobody can chase you off.”

  “What would I use it for? Nobody swims there. It might as well be houses for all I care. Because I can’t afford it, it doesn’t mean other people shouldn’t have it that good.”

  “Hey, I like the little red house best,” the other girl said. “On the wide canal there. A convertible in the front yard and a cruiser in the backyard. Wow!”

  Kat went back to her desk. For the first time she had a hopeless feeling about their chances of defeating it. The model was the first tangible evidence that they were up against competence, imagination, money and a disheartening confidence.

  She finished her routine typing a few minutes before three, and phoned Tom Jennings.

  “They just set up a big model of that thing right here in the bank, Tom.”

  “I saw it at the meeting this morning. It was a little like being hit in the head. I’ve been a little dazed ever since.”

  “Somebody heard over the radio the hearing is two weeks from tomorrow. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Golly, that’s awful soon, isn’t it?”

  “It’s being rammed through, Kat. The commissioners went along with it like lambs. All except Elmo Bliss. He gave me a chance to object, but they voted for that date. He was the only one who seemed to resent the very smooth job Lesser and company was doing on them.”

  “He’s sort of an expert at the same thing.”

  “Yes. I suppose. Anyway, it was the only help I got in any form, so I was grateful. I’ve been alerting the others about how little time we have. No pleasant chore. Doris Rowell was very savage about it. By the way, Kat, that model is out of scale. There won’t be that much of the bay left. I noticed that and called attention to it at the meeting. I hope the paper will make some mention of that. Both Mr. Borklund and Jimmy Wing were there. And a lot of pictures were taken. I’m going to go over the budget tonight with Harry and Wallace Lime and see what we can afford in the way of radio spots and newspaper ads. It won’t be much, I’m afraid.”

  “I have to hang up, Tom. They want to close the switchboard.”

  “I’ll phone you about the date of the next meeting, Kat. Don’t let that table-top promotion scare you.”

  At home, after she changed, she walked to the Sinnats. The children, a half dozen of them, were on the beach with Esperanza, building sand forts and moats. Florence Riggs, the housekeeper, said, “Natalie drove them on over in the big car to catch that boat, Mrs. Hubble. She said she’d probably be back here about eight or nine o’clock if you want to see her.”

  “It’s not important, Floss, thanks.”

  “Mrs. Sinnat sure hated to go. It was like he had to drag her. I guess it was it all being so sudden. When that man makes up his mind, he moves fast.”

  “I hope the children won’t be too much trouble now that she’s gone.”

  “They’re no trouble at all! There’s always somebody with them. You can be sure of that.”

  Well … you send them home about five-thirty, will you?”

  “I certainly will.”

  When she walked back she saw some young people on the beach near the pavilion. She thought others were playing tennis, but when she neared the courts she saw that it was Sammy and Wilma Deegan playing doubles against Angela McCall, Sammy’s sister and Carol Killian. Sally Ann Lesser sat in the shade of a beach umbrella, a thermos jug and a stack of paper cups on the bench beside her. She called Kat over.

  “Sit and learn some new words,” she said in a stage whisper. “This is for blood.” She filled a paper cup and gave it to Kat. It was rum and fruit juice, icy cold, alarmingly strong.

  Sammy and his sister were excellent players. Wilma tried to kill the ball whenever she could reach it. Carol had a model’s superb grace whenever she was standing still, which was most of the time. When she had to go after the ball, she moved in a curious, floundering, knock-kneed trot and swung at it stiff-armed, turning her face away from the ball as she patted it.

  Wilma Deegan was a spare, brown, savage little woman with a withered face and a cap of tight gray curls. She was some ten years older than Sammy. She and Sammy and Sammy’s widowed sister, Angela, and Angela’s strange, shy, frail ten-year-old son all lived well on the royalties from the books and plays Wilma’s first husband had written.

  “No tricks today,” Sally Ann said softly. “No parlor routines. But Sammy and Angela will make it come out just right. Victory by a narrow margin for Wilma.”

  The players were sweaty. Tennis, Kat thought, like ballet, needs a little distance. Their tennis shoes slapped the asphalt. Their gasps of effort were audible. Carol Killian’s long smooth golden thighs, exposed b
y her very short shorts, looked splendid when she stood still. When she lurched into her strange half-gallop, the thighs rippled into an unpleasant looseness, her breasts and buttocks bounced, and she made a squeaking sound as she bit her lip and swung the racket.

  “Goddammit, stop poaching!” Wilma snarled at Sammy.

  “Add here,” Angela said, and crossed to the service court.

  “What the hell did you do to Burt last night?” Sally Ann demanded. “He was very upset.”

  “Jackie Halley gave him a bad time.”

  “Burt said she was disgustingly drunk.”

  “He’s wrong, Sally Ann. She was a little high. Mostly she was just angry about Dial Sinnat.”

  “Why should she think Burt had anything to do with that?”

  “I guess because he has a lot to do with Palmland Development.”

  “So do a lot of people. Do you know how many miles of roads there’ll be in the Isles?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “It’ll be a very substantial contract for somebody. Burt told me last night that he can’t help it if people get so anxious to see it go through they … do unpleasant things to anybody opposing it. He wishes you’d get out of it, dear. He told me so.”

  “I couldn’t let Tom down now, even if I wanted to.”

  “But he’s such a dreary, solemn type. All those retired Army, they just can’t stop organizing things. And fighting against the fill is really terribly unrealistic this time. Everybody is in favor of it. You know, dear, I sold some very happy little securities so I could put money into this, and I wouldn’t have done that if there was the slightest chance of it falling through. I’m not a gambler. I’m much too stingy. Burt acts worried, but then he always does. Leroy and Martin are supremely confident. Burt was as fidgety as a bride this morning, getting ready to go down and talk to those dreary little commissioners. If you really want the truth of the matter, dear, Dial Sinnat probably spread some tale of persecution so he could ease out and save his face. He’s a shrewd man, you know, and why should he make himself look silly by thrashing around for a lost cause?”