"Get your business done with Press?"
"Yes, thanks."
"Well... I guess there's no call to keep you waiting around. Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. McGee."
"Thank you for your courtesy and consideration, Sheriff."
When I phoned ahead, Connie said that Janine had heard the news and that she was very upset and puzzled. I said it would be well after midnight before I could make it, and she said that it had been too much of a long, hard day to wait up. I told her my day had been on the same order, and told her that everything had gone very smoothly so far.
It was ten after one when I got there and turned under the arch and through the glare of the gate light and drove to the big house. The night was cool and the stars looked high and small and indifferent.
Jan stood in the open doorway waiting for me. And she leaned up to rest her cheek for a moment against mine, with a quick, soft touch of her lips. "You must be exhausted, Trav!"
"And you shouldn't have waited up."
"I couldn't have slept."
I went in and sat down into the depth and softness of a big leather couch. There were two red embers among the silvery ashes of the hearth. She wore a floor-length navy robe with a white collar. She said, "Connie left orders to give you a great wallop of bourbon to unwind on." I said it sounded great. She drifted out of sight and I heard the clink of cubes and the guggle of a generous dose.
"Water?"
"Just the ice, thanks."
She brought it over and fixed the cushions at the end of the couch and told me to lie back and put my feet up. She moved a footstool close. The light behind her from the corner lamp, the only one on in the room, shone through the fine ends of her cropped black hair. Her face was in shadow.
I sipped the strong drink and told her about Deputy Hazzard. "That's what I couldn't believe," she said. "He and the older one, with the funny name. Not the Sheriff."
"Windhorn?"
"Yes. They were the ones who... came out with the padlocks and the notices. And he, the young one, seemed so very shy and nice and troubled about everything. There was no point in taking it out on them. They had their orders."
"Had he been out there before?"
"Several times, yes. To serve papers, and the time they checked to see about the licenses we have to have for the houseboats. A lanky boy with a long face, kind of a red, lumpy face, but sweet. But very official about what he had to do. All leather and jingling and creaking."
"That reconstruction of it doesn't fit," I said. "It doesn't fit Tush."
"I know. He never got mad that way. Not like me. I fly off the handle and want to hit everything I can reach. He'd just get very very quiet and sad-looking and he'd walk slowly away. It's better for me to... to be absolutely positive once and for all that he didn't kill himself, Trav. But it just seems to be such... a stinking trivial way to die, to be killed by that harmless-looking young man."
"Most of the ways people die are kind of dingy and trivial, Jan."
"It just shouldn't have been that way for Tush. But how in the world did that Freddy person get Arlie Denn to tell such an ugly lie about you? She always seemed to me to be sort of dull and placid. She never seemed mean or vicious or anything. It must have been horrible for her-watching like that. I would think she would just... have never told anybody at all, ever."
And that took some explaining and finally I managed to make her comprehend it, up to a point. But comprehension was comingled with revulsion. "But we let that wretched girl sit with our boys a lot of times! She could have taken something... and hurt them."
"I doubt it."
"What kind of people were those others? How old were they?"
"I'd say Roger and Arlie were the oldest. The others looked nineteen and twenty. And the one girl about fifteen or sixteen."
"What are they trying to do to themselves?"
"Drop out of the world. Hallucinate. Turn on. Dig the sounds and colors and feels. Be at one with the infinite something or other. I can't lay too big a knock on them, you know. In another sense I'm a dropout. I don't pay for my tickets. I jump over the turnstile."
"I think I've been dropped out somehow. For good."
"Now I am supposed to tell you about how you're a young woman still in your twenties with most of your life still ahead of you."
"Please don't."
"A guy will need you in the right way sometime." "Tell him not to really need me. That's when I run like a rabbit." She took my empty glass and said, "Another?"
"No. That one is going to do it."
"I made you talk too long. There's more I want to ask. But I'll wait until tomorrow."
She got up and took the glass away. I decided I'd better get up and head for bed while I could. I closed my eyes for a moment and opened them again and a high sun was shining and her middle boy was standing holding a saucer with both hands, and he had his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth to help with the chore of keeping the coffee from spilling out of the cup.
"Everybody's been up a long time," he said disdainfully. "Mom said bring you this and if I stood here, the smell would wake you up. I think it's a lousy crummy old smell and I'm never going to drink that stuff. Oh. Good morning."
My shoes had been removed, belt loosened, necktie removed, collar unbuttoned. There was a blanket over me. The lady had given me bourbon and loving care. I hoped that it would be at least another full year before I had to put a necktie back on.
I sat up and took the coffee.
"You spilled a little bit," he said. "I didn't."
"Like it here?"
"It's neat. Today there's a teacher's meeting, so we don't have to go on the bus. Charlie's going to let me ride on the tractor again with him. It's real neat. I gotta go." And he went at a full run.
I dialed Press LaFrance direct at twenty after ten.
I wanted him to have a lot of time to make some collections. Just as I was ready to hang up, he answered, out of breath.
"Who? Trav? Where are you? What's up?"
"Miami, boy. And I'm getting a little sweaty. Maybe we're in trouble!"
'How? My God, Trav, I thought everything was-"
"I've been making some long distance calls, Press. And it looks as if everything might go through okay. I was with Doctor Meyer a few minutes ago and he as much as admitted that he might wait until Roger Santo gets back from abroad and see if he wants to make a better deal on the side, a fatter deal for Meyer. I told you he's slippery."
"But what are we going to do?"
"If we play it his way, the way he suggested in the beginning, he'll move right ahead with it. But it has to be today. He's on his way up to Broward Beach. Do you know a place called The Annex?"
"Yes, but-"
"I had to take the chance, Press. I had to move fast. I gave him my third of the claim check. Now he's going to be at the bar at The Annex at seven o'clock tonight. I told him that you would meet him there and give him his damned sixty thousand in cash for the two thirds he's holding."
"Where am I going to get that kind of money before seven?"
"The minute after you get back to Sunnydale and walk into the hotel, you'll have it back, won't you?"
"Yes, but-"
"Scrounge it somehow. You could pay somebody a very fat amount of one-day interest out of that fifteen extra, couldn't you?"
"But, Trav, suppose he takes the sixty and then screws us and makes his deal with Santo? What can we do?"
"Absolutely nothing. But stop running around in crazy circles, man, and listen to me. I'm assuming the risk. Got that? It's my money sitting up there. Give me a week and I could scrape up three or four times sixty in cash, but I damned well can't do it today. If it falls through, what are you out?"
"There's... maybe one possibility."
"Now you're beginning to think. I'll phone you back. How long will it take you to find out?"
"I... I should know by... you phone me back right here at two o'clock?"
The sha
pe of larceny is, in time, written clearly enough on a man's face so that it can be read. Constant greed and sharp little deals and steals had left the sign on Preston LaFrance. There is the old saying that God and your folks give you the face you're born with, but you earn the one you die with.
I went back into the house at two o'clock and phoned him. I knew just how he had probably worked it out in his mind. Get hold of sixty thousand cash to buy the claim check to seventy-five thousand in cash. Nobody ever gets hurt taking a profit. The small towns of Florida are peppered with old boys who don't like to have too much information on record about the deals they make. And they like to keep a little leverage around in the form of cash money. LaFrance would know a couple of those shrewd old hawks. He'd hunt one up, probably put up his fifty acres and the Carbee option as security, if the bank wasn't holding them, and pay the old boy a thousand dollars or five hundred for the loan of sixty thousand in cash for a few hours. Then he'd hike the interest rate as high as he dared when he reported to me.
"Trav?" he said. "I've been dreading this call, cause there's something I hate to have to tell you."
"You couldn't get the money!"
"No, no. I got the money. I got it locked up right here in my office. I got it from a fellow that keeps cash on hand. Trouble is, he knows I'm spread thin. Maybe I got too anxious. Anyway, he gave it to me good. The only deal I could make was to pay him the whole fifteen thousand. Honest to God, Trav, when a man gets the tights, all the money dries up on you. There just wasn't anybody else who'd give me the lend of it."
"Pretty damned steep, Press."
"Like you said, this is an emergency."
It was the perfect example of the philosophy behind all kinds of con, big and small: You can't cheat an honest man. I gave him a B in the course. B for Brass.
"When I get back," he said, "that old boy is going to be right there in the hotel lobby with his hand out, and there won't even be any point in unwrapping it, except he'll want to count it slow and careful, and then go on rattling home in his old pickup truck, smiling like a toad in the moonlight. Trav, it was the pure best I could do on short notice, and that's God's truth."
"Okay, then. Tote it over to The Annex and give it to Doctor Meyer, and don't lose it on the way. Then we'll just have to keep calm and wait for the corporation check to come through."
"How long will it take?"
"Ask the Doctor."
I hung up, knowing it was going to work. The secret of the big con is to move the victim, bit by bit, into increasingly implausible situations. At last, in the act of plucking him clean, you have him performing such a damned-fool act he will never understand how he came to do it, why he didn't see through it. He was blinded by the conviction he couldn't possibly lose a dime. And when he learned he'd been conned, he couldn't take it to the law. He'd have to tell them he had been taking a sixty-thousand-dollar bribe to a man pretending to be a field representative of a huge corporation. He would have to tell them he'd paid forty thousand dollars for worthless equity in a defunct marina. If a story like that got out, every member of the Sunnydale business community would laugh himself sick. So he didn't have a chance. Poor LaFrance. Exactly the same situation he put Tush in. Smashed flat, plucked clean. No mercy for Tush. No mercy for LaFrance.
I walked out and found Connie by the equipment barn. We strolled over and sat on the mossy old stone bench under the huge banyan tree in the side yard.
I told her that our fish had gobbled the hunk of ripe bait, and the hook was perfectly set. A very greedy fish, that one.
Her weather-beaten face twisted in mocking amusement. "Maybe he's just greedy enough so your friend should be a little careful leaving that place, Trav."
"He's got a self-addressed envelope with him, and he walks right from The Annex through into the motel lobby and drops it in the slot. It's got more than enough stamps on it. It'll be solidly sealed with tape, and the money will have cardboard and a rubber band around it. Connie, again thanks. I'm going to head back."
'You come anytime, hear? Are you going to make our gal rich?"
"Let's say reasonably comfortable, if all goes well."
"And you'll have sixty more to fool with?"
"Meyer wouldn't like that verb."
"Ahh, McGee, all those poor bastards who'll wish that Tush Bannon never had a friend like you. Anyway, when things get just a little quieter-if they ever do-please let me know because then I think would be a good time for you to phone Jan and tell her that there are papers to be signed or something, any excuse for her to come down there. I'll talk her into it and keep the kids here, and when she gets down, you make her stay awhile. She needs a change. She needs to get away from the kids and away from here. She ought to get a lot of sun, and walk on a beach and swim and catch a fish and hear music and be near happy people. Okay?"
"Okay Connie. Soon."
At eight thirty that evening the bing-bong announced that somebody had stepped over the gangplank chain and come aboard. I looked out and saw Meyer. I let him in.
He had a grin like a piano keyboard. He fell onto the yellow couch and said, "Build me one of those death-dealing in-and-out jobs named after somebody who's name escapes me."
"You'll get maudlin."
"So?"
"Any trouble at all?"
"None. You know, I have seldom seen or touched a greasier, grimier wad of money. I didn't know hundred-dollar bills ever got so cruddy. They must have come from a fondler."
"LaFrance was calm?"
"He stammered and sweat and his eyes bulged and he spilled his drink and mine. Otherwise, a cucumber. By now he's got the greeting card. By now he knows how it was done, by you switching claim checks as you turned away from him to walk over to me. By now he knows you picked it up ten minutes after it was checked. By now maybe he has leaned across the desk and hit Harry in the mouth. What a pity not to see him read the nice card I bought him."
"You'll get to see a certain amount of agitation."
"You can arrange that?"
"The phone is turned off. He'll be here in the morning. Count on it. Come over early. We'll play a little chess."
"I should be down watching the board. Today it moved almost too good. Volume is picking up. Very close to two points. Seven grand, practically, for the widow. I've got a friend on the floor of the exchange keeping in close touch with the fellow who maintains the position in Fletcher, and he calls me at my brokers the minute anything starts to look sour. And I should put in some orders for her out of the sixty. We'll have five days to meet the margin call. I don't think the mail takes that long from Broward Beach to here. At least not usually."
"We could be having a little game on the sun deck. The forecast is warm and bright. We invite him aboard. We have a little chat. He goes away."
"So I could phone in the first order. So it isn't as risky now in the beginning as it is going to get. Also, there is a variation of the queen's pawn opening I think I can break your back with. You know, you don't look so great."
"I brood a lot."
He finished the last of the drink in one huge gulp. He shuddered and got up and said, "Now if I can be standing by the bunk when that hits me..."
Fifteen
WE HAD placed the chess table and chairs near the rear of the sun deck so we could look down onto the dock. We surveyed the morning traffic between moves. At one point Hero went by, swaying his big shoulders. The usual lock of hair was combed to fall just right over his forehead. He was taking a morning saunter through the game preserves, just in case he might flush something even at an unlikely morning hour. His gray slacks were tightly tailored to his narrow hips, and the broad belt was cinched tightly around his improbable waist.
He crinkled up at us and said in his mellow bassbaritone, "Morning, gents. Nice day out today."
"Getting any?" Meyer said contemptuously.
"Can't complain, gents. It's the best season for it." He came to a momentary point and then lengthened his relaxed stride. I turned and
saw two girls in beach togs with pale northern faces and legs, heading from the dock area toward the shops. Just as they disappeared from sight beyond the palm fronds Hero was ten feet behind them and, I suspected, clearing his throat and checking the third finger, left hand. That was his quaint little conceit, his only concession to any rule of human behavior. He proclaimed it often, with great conviction and emphasis. "I hold marriage sacred, and never in my life have I knowingly courted nor touched a lady united in the holy bonds of matrimony, no sir. It's something no gentleman would do."
A little later Meyer went below and phoned his broker and came back acting less restless. "It opened up a whole point, and then a couple of pretty good blocks came on the market and knocked it down to an eighth below yesterday's close. Insiders unloading, maybe. If so, in another week or two, they'll be slitting their throats at what they could have gotten."
John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 09 - Pale Gray for Guilt Page 21