John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 13 - A Tan and Sandy Silence

by A Tan

  At long last I saw Meyer coming toward me, striding right along, and I guessed that was Mr. Woodrow Willow a half step to the rear. I watched Meyer. He was going to rub his nose if he wanted me to join the act. He looked through me and did not see me at all. Woodrow Willow was not what I expected. This was a young man, tall, fresh-faced, snub-nosed, round-headed with the same mouth old Walt used to draw on his chipmunks. I sauntered after them, and caught up when they talked to a man who had ,his own big blond desk in a solitary, private thirty-by-thirty area of coral carpet right out in the midst of everything. The man used a phone. Soon a rangy woman came over walking like one of those heel-and-toe competitors, elbows pointed outward. She listened. She picked up the phone. A far younger girl came, carrying a ledger card. She jogged. Every part of her jogged.

  After she left, Meyer shook hands with the man at the desk, and Meyer, Willow, and the rangy woman walked all the way across to a line of teller's stations on the far side of the bank. The rangy woman spoke to a slender girl with brown hair. Then she spoke to a man patrolling behind the cages. The slender girl closed her window and came around and out onto the bank floor. Meyer turned toward me and rubbed his nose. The rangy woman was leaving.

  I walked up, and Meyer said, "Mr. Willow, this is my associate, Mr. McGee. McGee, may I present Miss Kathy Marcus."

  "Who is this person?" Willow said in a voice of despair. "Good God, I had no idea you were going to bring in-"

  "A place where we can talk?" Meyer said. "Just to have Kathy tell us in her own words before we get into anything else. Then we won't be taking up so much of her time."

  "Take a lot," she said. "I've got a three-dollar short that's driving me up the wall."

  "We'd better use one of the small conference rooms upstairs," Willow said.

  Upstairs was 1910 banking, as opposed to 1984 version in the lobby. Oak paneling, green rugs, leather libraries. The computers were hidden offstage. Park your Mercer under the elm trees and come in and talk about buying a block of Postal Telegraph.

  There were six chairs around the table in the small conference room. There were two framed prints of clipper ships and a seventeen-pound glass ashtray on the polished walnut. As soon as the door was shut, I shed the ranch hat, shades, and camera.

  "Enjoying your stay?" Kathy asked me with a quick wink.

  "Little gal, when I come across those Everglades in that big old air-conditioned Greyhound bus, I said to the little woman, I said, Mother, we shoulda-"

  Kathy guffawed, stopping me. Willow rang the big glass ashtray with his pipe in authoritarian tempo, silencing everybody. "Please! This is a very serious matter. If I have your attention, Miss Marcus, we would like to find out to what extent you are involved-"

  "Whoa, friend," she said sharply, no laughter in her voice or her level stare.

  "Now you will listen to me, Miss Marcus! I was saying-"

  She got up and went to the door and smiled and said, "When you go home to the wife and kiddies tonight, Woodie, tell her that nice Miss Marcus quit the bank and went right down the street to another bank. Some loyalty, huh?"

  "Come back and-"

  "Woodie dear, the banks are so hard up for anybody who is worth a damn, it's pathetic. They've been hiring people here if they're ambulatory and feel warm to the touch. And I am one very damned good teller, and I have been here four years, and I am not now, nor have I ever been, involved in anything hanky or panky."

  "Please, come back and-"

  "Woodie dear, you just can't have it both ways. You can't call me Kathy and fun around with me when we're alone in an elevator and give me a friendly little grab in the ass and a chummy little arm pressure on the tit and then expect me to sit meek and mild in front of these gentlemen and take some kind of accusatory shit from you. No thanks. I'll tell them downstairs who ran me out of this bank."

  "Kathy," he said.

  With her hand on the knob she looked at him with narrowed eyes and said, "That's a start at least. Say the rest of it."

  "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to imply-"

  "Do you want me to come back and sit down, Woodie?"

  "Please. I would appreciate it very much."

  She came slowly back to the chair, sat, and smiled and said, "If these men had been strangers, Woodie, I would have let you go on being a jackass, and I would have cooked you later. But I'm among friends. Friends who rescued an eerie blonde from the oldest floating houseparty in the world."

  "I remember already," Meyer said.

  I looked at her more closely. "Delmonica Pennypacker?"

  "Just a little name I made up for my vacation. Anyway, as I understand it, Woodie, you want a play-by-play account of cashing the check for Mr. Harry Broll."

  Woodrow Willow was coming out of shock. He cleared his throat and told how a Mr. Winkler, a vice president of the bank, had received a telephone request last Wednesday at closing time from Harry Broll, stating that he would be in at about eleven on Thursday to cash a check for three hundred thousand on his personal account. He wanted to make certain the bank would have cash available in hundred-dollar bills. This is not an unusual request in an area where large real estate deals are made.

  Kathy took over and said, "The way our system works, everything has to go through teller records, or we're out of balance. The cashier is Herman Falck, and I suppose Mr. Winkler told Herm to have the cash on hand. Herm told me he would run it through my balance, and he said Mr. Broll would probably bring in a dispatch case for the money. That amount would fit with no trouble. We run a minimum cash balance in the drawer at all times to make the place less appealing to the knockover boys. We signal the vault for more cash or to come make a pickup when we get too fat. They come zipping in a little electric money cart.

  "So at ten after eleven Herm brings these two men over to me. I put out my closed sign so that a line won't build behind them. He takes the dispatch case from the man with Mr. Broll and hands it around to me. Mr. Broll gives me the check, and Herm initials it. Then Herm goes back and brings the cash cart behind the cage. It's just a matter of packing the sixty wrapped stacks of hundreds into the case. A black plastic case, imitation lizard. I counted them out as I packed them. Five, ten, fifteen, on up to three hundred. The case was below eye-level looking from the floor of the bank. I snapped the snaps and slid it up onto the counter, and the other man took it, and they walked away."

  "Had you ever seen Mr. Broll before?" I asked.

  øI think so. He looked sort of familiar. Maybe I waited on him. The name seems familiar."

  "How did he act?"

  "Well, I guess he's really a pretty sick man. I don't think he could have managed without the other man helping him."

  "In what way did he seem to you to be sick?"

  "Well, he was very sweaty. His complexion was gray, and his face was wet. He kind of wheezed. Like asthma sometimes. He didn't have much to say. Usually, men joke about lots of money when they put it in or take it out. They joke with me because I'm all girl, I guess. His friend had to kind of support him walking to my window, I noticed. Mr. Broll walked slowly, a little bent over and taking small steps. His friend was very nice to him: Considerate."

  "What did his friend look like?"

  "Younger. Dark curly hair. Tall. Middle thirties, I'd guess. A very nice voice. Some kind of accent. Marvelous clothes. Conservative mod. But he was too pretty for my taste. Husky pretty. Great eyelashes. He called Mr. Broll 'Harry,' but Mr. Broll didn't call him anything. Let me help you, Harry. Here, let me take that, Harry. Come on, there's no hurry, Harry. Take your time, old man. It took them a long time to walk to the main doors. The fellow helped Mr. Broll and carried the dispatch case. I watched them. They didn't go right out. I guess Mr. Broll felt faint, because they stopped and sat down in that lounge area left of the main doors. It made me uneasy. You like to see three hundred thousand get to where it has to go and get locked up again. They sat side by side on the couch. I could see the fellow leaning toward Mr. Broll and talking quietly and c
onfidentially. I saw Mr. Broll put his hand over his eyes. The other man pulled it away and took his handkerchief and wiped Mr. Broll's face, wiping the sweat away, I guess." She frowned. "Maybe I shouldn't say this, but the whole scene had a funny flavor. It seemed faggoty to me, like a wife with a sick husband.... No. The other way around. A youngish husband with kind of a fat, sick old wife he doesn't really love but feels sort of affection and gratitude and... a sense of duty to, if I don't sound flippy."

  "Not flippy at all."

  "I was busy, and when I looked again, they were gone. I would guess it was about twenty minutes before noon when they left the bank together."

  Willow said, "Would you say Mr. Broll was drunk or drugged?"

  She thought it over. "No. He kept his eyes sort of squinted up. He knew what he was doing. He just seemed... fragile. As if he was in terrible pain. As if he had the world's worst bellyache and was wondering if he was going to pass out with it. And... he smelled sort of sour. He was wrinkled, and he had beard stubble. I wondered if he'd been traveling all night or he'd slept in his clothes. I suppose it could have been the world's worst hangover."

  "Thank you, Miss Marcus," Willow said. "Uh... Kathy."

  "That means take off, huh?"

  "With our thanks, Kathy," Meyer said. "You are a bright girl and a good observer. And if it ever becomes possible to tell you anything about this whole matter, we will."

  "Thank you," Kathy said. She paused at the door and said, "McGee, do you still have that wild floating pad?"

  "The Busted Flush. Slip F-18."

  "I'll come visit. If you haven't gotten married up."

  "Come visit, Kathy. Bring your swim pants."

  "I'll bring a bowl of Greek salad. I make one hell of a Greek salad."

  When the door shut, Willow said, "Good help is so terribly hard to find and hard to keep that one has to... uh... put up with a degree of impertinence that... uh..."

  "Like she said, Woodie," I told him, "it's a lot easier to get respect from the pretty ones if you don't keep grabbing them by the ass in the elevator. Right, Meyer?"

  "Absolutely right. An executive can't have it both ways."

  "Keep the pretty ones at a distance," I said. "Grab the dog-faced ones by the ass. Then you have a happy bank."

  "A contented bank," Meyer said.

  "Goddammit," Willow yelled. "Tell me what this is all about!"

  Meyer said, "I'll ask you the same question I asked you before, Woodrow. Could you swear that you were absolutely, positively certain that Mary Broll was alive when you processed that loan?"

  "The answer is still the same. But why are you asking the question?"

  "I'll ask you another. What was Harry Broll going to use the money for?"

  "To buy the SeaGate stock to pay the balance due of three hundred thousand. Don't look at me like that. It's legal, you know. It is illegal to borrow money to buy listed securities."

  "He'd lose a great opportunity if he didn't buy the block of stock?"

  "Oh, yes! Really great."

  "Would he have to have cash to buy that stock, Woodrow?"

  "Of course not! A certified check would-"

  "Do you think he bought it?"

  "I don't know."

  "Can you think of any way of finding out?"

  "Don't go away."

  We were left alone. Meyer sighed. I told him he was pushing Woodie around beautifully. All he did was sigh again. When Meyer gets the silents, he isn't very good company.

  Twenty-one

  AS MEYER drove conservatively back toward Lauderdale in fast traffic, he said, "We can summarize what we know, if you think it will help."

  "You do it, and I'll tell you if it helps."

  "We do not care whether Harry Broll was running from Dissat or hurrying to meet him. Immaterial. Dissat had him from some unknown hour early Wednesday morning until they walked into the bank Thursday at ten after eleven. By three o'clock Wednesday afternoon Harry Broll was forced to make the phone call to Mr. Winkler about the large cash withdrawal. Dissat had to then sustain Broll on that depressed level where he could make his appearance at the bank without creating suspicion, yet would have no interest in appealing for help. Total emotional and physical defeat. A person reduced to Harry Broll's condition is beyond feeling terror. Only despair. The only part left would be the details of disposal, or if he'd already planned how to do it, to go ahead with it. If it required darkness, he would have to have a place to take Broll to wait for night, or better yet, a place to immobilize him safely so Dissat could put in an appearance elsewhere. If we are building the structure of limitation, the parameters of time and space, we need to know if Dissat appeared at the West Palm office on Wednesday, and if he did, the time spent there."

  "And where he is right now," I said. "When I wonder where he is right now, I wonder if he's crouched on the floor behind us. That's what he does to me, Meyer. Sorry. He was so pleased with himself, so damned delighted when he reached out with his bare toes and turned her head so she looked at me with those empty, crazy eyes. It was a funny kind of innocent pleasure, as if he had no idea there was anything really wrong about it. He was like a little kid who'd built a kite that would fly, and he wanted me to tell him how great it was. He tried to talk tough. Movie tough. But it was like something that had to be said. An obligatory part of the ceremony. After that we were going to share something, he and I. Some special personal important relationship. Dammit, I can't say it so that you can understand how it was."

  "He fits the pattern of a certain kind of damaged personality I have read about, Travis. He could be called the activated sociopath sadist. Bright, healthy, energetic, competent. Excellent in areas requiring ritual. Mathematics, accounting, engineering. Quite cold inside. Tricky. Unable to concede the humanity of people around them because, having no basis of comparison, they think all of us have their same dry and barren soul. They are loners. They can charm when they choose. Sexually stunted, inhibited, often impotent. When Mary tried to escape from him and he caught her and they fell badly and injured her seriously, that activated him. Now he knows what he wants. He wants inventive episodes like the one with Lisa. The money will be meaningful only in how many such episodes it will buy. He isn't aware of evil. Only of being caught. You have to think of him as a bored child who suddenly discovers that it is wonderful fun to go to the pet store and buy a mouse and bring it home and do things to it until it is dead. Life is no longer boring. It is full of rich and wonderful excitement. The mouse shares the experience, so he feels fond of the mouse for as long as it lasts. You could say that the child loves the mouse to the extent he can feel love."

  "Jesus!"

  "I know. Stroking Lisa's forehead, drying Harry's sweaty face, are imitations of emotion. We can imagine he spoke tender words to Mary because she was pleasing him, giving him release. He's not a madman in any traditional sense. He cannot feel guilt or shame. If caught, he would feel fury and indignation at the game ending too soon. He'll go to great lengths to stay free, unsuspected. His career is a lot less important to him than it used to be. My guess is he'll be gone by the deadline, the tenth, a week from today."

  We rode in silence for a time. "Meyer? How did you get that Woodie Woodchuck to snap to attention?"

  "By reminding him that he had informed me of the approximate value of the assets in one of his trust accounts without any authorization from the trust customer or the senior trust officer. Banks take all confidential relationships very seriously. He soon said he would be very happy to help me find out all about the three hundred thousand."

  "How did he find out Harry had forfeited his option?"

  "I don't know. Probably phoned a contact at SeaGate and asked what value, as collateral, Harry's hundred-thousand-share block would have. The stuff is too closely held to have an OTC quote."

  "Couldn't he have borrowed against the stock he was going to get?"

  "Not if he had already done so."

  "Sick condominiums and a sick constructio
n business. How about the seven hundred thousand he's supposed to get back from SeaGate?"

  "If it went into land improvements at the site, then I guess he'd have to wait until the public issue money comes back to SeaGate."

  "So that goes to pay off other debts, and then Harry's business quietly fades away and dies?"

  "Reasonable guess."

  "He had to take Harry somewhere and keep him there. Harry and Harry's car. Transportation problems, Meyer. Logistics and tactics. If he took him to wherever he lives-"

  "A cluster apartment complex at West Palm on the bay shore. Rental apartments. Not likely."

  "I suppose you have his phone number?"