Condominium

by John D. MacDonald

  35

  ON WEDNESDAY MORNING Audrey Ames listened to the weather news on Channel 13 on the kitchen television set. She looked at the charts and the pictures, and then went to her bulletin board and put a magnetic marker at Ella’s coordinates on the metal chart which included the entire area, from the coast of Africa to Texas.

  When Brooks Ames came out of the bathroom he went over and studied her chart. “She’s sure been moving straight and steady,” he remarked.

  “And quite fast, they say.”

  “She ought to smack right into Yucatán.”

  “If she doesn’t turn north.”

  “There’s no sign that she will.”

  “Except that most of them do.”

  “Because most of them do doesn’t necessarily mean that Ella will.”

  “You are becoming an expert on practically everything.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Lately you contradict everything I say, no matter what I say. Have you noticed that at all?”

  “Come on, now.”

  “You do, Brooks. You really do.”

  “I don’t.”

  “See?”

  “See what?”

  “You contradicted me.”

  “What kind of a game is this, Audrey? I reserve the right to disagree with you when I know you are wrong.”

  “But most hurricanes do turn north.”

  “I agree.”

  “Then why did you contradict me?”

  “I didn’t. I said that because most of them turn north, it’s no reason to say that Ella will.”

  “Why won’t she? What’s to keep her from turning north?”

  “Nothing. I was being logical. You can’t say she will turn north. That is not accurate. You have to say that the odds are in favor of her turning north.”

  She sat down and stared at him blankly. “My God! What’s the matter with you? That’s what I said. I said she might turn north because most of them do.”

  “If you had really said that, I would have agreed with you.”

  “Word games! Word games! You want to play these damn irritating games with me all the time. I am not one of your volunteer guards in your private army, Brooks.”

  “Thank God. You’d destroy all discipline.”

  “Please don’t be so snotty. I only work here.”

  “And you argue a lot.”

  “And I get contradicted a lot.”

  He poured himself coffee, sat and said, “You read that thing Gus arranged to have sent to us?”

  “I skipped a lot, but I got the sense of it.”

  “Think it could happen?”

  “Brooks, I don’t want to think about it.”

  “I have to think about it. It comes under security. Security is part of my job.” He took a piece of paper from his shirt pocket and looked at his notes. “I’m going to get a list of emergency shelters from the Red Cross or Civil Defense and figure out which ones will be handiest for people coming off the key and make a list of those and distribute the list to everybody. I’m going to make a list of emergency phone numbers in Palm County and distribute that too. All my men have CB radios in the cars now, and that will help. I’ve been working out a hurricane checklist, as the third item to distribute. Lay in a portable supply of food that needs no cooking or refrigeration. Gallon thermos of water. Water purification tablets. Everybody gases up their cars ahead of time. Emergency flashlights. Battery radios. Candles. Matches. First-aid kits. I am going to ask every resident and every renter to contact me when the family unit is ready for inspection and then I will inspect or have one of my men inspect, and we will give them the okay if they have everything they need. I’ll be checking the approved units off the master checklist. And then—”

  She threw her head back and yelled, “Jeeeezuss!”

  “What’s the matter with you, Audrey?”

  “Honestly, you are so … so picky and self-important and you bustle about so. You turn everything into checklists.”

  “Your life would be a lot more orderly if you would do the same, woman.”

  “I prefer disorder, thank you.”

  “Obviously. What I was about to say was that you will go on ahead to a place of safety and I shall remain behind with Jim Prentice and Ross Twigg, my best men, and see that the building is empty as requested by whoever orders the key evacuated. Clear?”

  “Maybe if you give me a little close-order drill everything will suddenly be revealed to me.”

  “You are as bad as that goddam George Gobbin. What neither of you understand is that I am in the business of protecting life and property, and that is just what I am going to keep on doing. Clear?”

  “Yessir, Captain, sir.”

  He leaned and stuck his face close to hers. “Sarcasm is cheap!” he shouted. “Very very cheap!”

  With a look of dismay she said, “Brooks, I really wonder if you are losing your mind. I really wonder.”

  At breakfast Henry Churchbridge was rereading portions of the Harrison report. Carlotta was reading the morning paper, glancing at her husband from time to time, trying to guess from his expression his reaction to the report.

  When she particularly wanted his attention she would revert to the kind of English she had spoken when first they met. “Wot you theenk of eet, Yawnkee?”

  “Hah? What? Oh, hell, there’s no arguing with it. The man is competent. He is right, and the building they’ve been doing along this coast is insane, and we were crazy to buy this place.”

  “I am not really so red hot about this place, my dear. It is just a little bit too institutional. I really would rather have a house.”

  “Lot of work.”

  “Not so bad. What I can do, there are so many poor branches of my family, I can invite nieces and grandnieces to visit. They are very well brought up, and very pretty, and they would all like to help me, one or two at a time, of course. And I have the money for a nice little house. Maybe not so little.”

  “What would I have done without a rich wife?”

  “You would not have lived as nicely. That is all. Darling, what we should do is move all our treasures out of here, put them in a nice, insured, air-conditioned storage warehouse, and then go visit our children as you promised we could, and then we will think about a house somewhere. Possibly nearer one of them?”

  “And just when do we start this epic program?”

  “In the night when I couldn’t sleep, I got up and I got two empty boxes and filled them with things, and made a list. You know, to be orderly. You could tie them up and put them in the car and go find the warehouse this morning, while I fill more boxes.”

  “Just like that!”

  “Just like what? Look at the paper here. They are counting dead people, from drowning in the rivers and from buildings being blown down upon them and from trying to save their little boats. Twenty-two so far in Puerto Rico. Seven on Guadeloupe. They think maybe fifty or more in the Dominican Republic. And you are reading that thing that scared me last evening. There are enough messages, Enrique. I do not think this is a time for dallydilly.”

  “Dillydally.”

  “Whatever.”

  He sighed and looked around the bright and pleasant apartment as if already bidding it farewell. “Okay. More coffee, please, and then I’ll start on the Yellow Pages.”

  “Good!”

  “Most probably nothing at all will happen here, but at the very first warning we are getting out right away.”

  “Good!” she said.

  “It isn’t very macho, I guess, to run like a rabbit.”

  “On the way to the mainland I will pass rabbits. I will leave them behind me, panting their little lungs out.”

  “I have always liked your images.”

  “And my coffee.”

  Jack Cleveland stood in the pool Wednesday morning in water up to his neck, chatting with Frank Santelli from 2-A, who was holding onto the gutter and slowly exercising his bad leg. An inflammation of
the sciatic nerve had created atrophy of certain muscles of the lower leg, ankle and foot, leaving him with a condition known as drop foot. Exercise was conditioning other muscles to take over for the ones no longer usable, and he had recently been able to give up the special shoe he had worn for six months.

  Jack Cleveland said, “Back in Ohio in the lumber business and in banking and so on, I had to deal with these engineer types with their computer models and their systems analysis and their goddam gobbledygook talk. I’m telling you, Frank, when you deal with computer technology you have to remember GIGO. Always remember GIGO.”

  “What the hell is this geego?”

  “They are the initials that stand for Garbage In—Garbage Out. Gee Eye Gee Oh. You see, what you got to remember, the computer can’t think. It isn’t a holy object. It is just a goddam dumb machine. And men put the information in one end and those same men take it out the other end after the computer gets through screwing around with it.”

  “Hey, that’s pretty good! I like that. Garbage in, garbage out. Sure. What you’re saying, Jack, that report we all got from Gus Garver, that’s all garbage?”

  “No, I didn’t say that. I am saying that a guy can put in perfectly good and valid information into the input. But if he gives the wrong weight and importance to some things, and if he happens to leave out some stuff, or if he puts in stuff that really doesn’t form part of the problem he’s solving, then his answer is going to be skewed.”

  “Screwed?”

  “Skewed. It means twisted, warped, that sort of thing. I read a dozen pages carefully and then I knew I could just scan the rest of it and toss it aside.”

  “Marie read it and she’s scared shitless. She wants to leave now, for God’s sake, and that hurricane is like maybe a thousand miles away from here and it could go anywhere. She knows it’s coming right here, right at her, personal. I’m going to tell her you say it’s a lot of crap. And she is going to say, How do you know?”

  Jack thoughtfully scratched his haunch. “Look at it this way, Frank. Look down there, south, along the beach. Look at those places. Do you really think that the county and the state and the federal government would let that construction go on, let all those hundreds of millions of dollars be spent, if they thought there was any chance of all that being washed away? I know the construction game. You can count on that. And I know that all these big high-rise buildings are anchored right down to solid rock. They don’t float for God’s sake. And you got so many millions of tons, you can’t put them on any kind of mushy base. You think the banks would loan money the way they have on these structures if they thought they could get washed away? For Chrissake, Santelli, look around you and tell me what you see!”

  “So don’t get sore!”

  “I’m not sore. I’m telling you what to tell your wife.”

  “Did Grace get all upset when she read it?”

  “She wouldn’t have the patience to go through dull stuff like that. I think she got past about two pages and then gave up and said she’d take my word about what to do.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Lay in a good supply of drinking water and food that doesn’t need cooking or refrigeration. That is, of course, if the storm comes anywhere near us. I’ve got friends who live down here, been here in Athens for twenty years, and they say that every season they try to scare everybody about hurricanes and nothing much happens. It’s kind of a local joke. People have hurricane parties. But it doesn’t hurt to take reasonable precautions. I’ve got a gasoline lantern I’ll make sure is working okay. We’ll get candles and batteries for the portable radio, and I’ve got a portable TV that’ll work on batteries too. When the winds start blowing, we’ll pour a nice big drink and wait it out.”

  “That Brooks Ames says we all have to get out.”

  “Who the hell is Brooks Ames? This is my home, Frank, and if I want to leave, I leave. If I want to stay, I stay. Brooks wants to boss people around. He’s a Nazi at heart, that guy. I fought a war to keep guys like Ames from taking over the world.”

  “He said he’d use force if need be.”

  “Let him try. Just let him try that on me.”

  “Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to go to a shelter.”

  “If you want to spend three days and nights in some damn gymnasium full of squalling kids, sitting on the floor and sleeping on the floor and eating doughnuts, go ahead. Enjoy. Grace and me, we’ll be here enjoying the view and sleeping in good beds.”

  • • •

  The six o’clock evening news located Ella at 16 degrees north, 62 west. At about five o’clock a gust of a hundred and thirty knots had been registered at Santo Domingo, and shortly thereafter the wind-velocity recording device was destroyed by the winds. The hurricane was said to be intensifying. Communications with the badly damaged islands in its wake were slowly being reestablished. There were appeals for food and medical supplies. Estimates of total fatalities and total damages were fragmentary. Ella still moved at a steady pace, moving almost due west, covering an ever greater area in the satellite photographs.

  36

  ON THURSDAY MORNING Fred Hildebert, president of the Athens Bank and Trust Company phoned Marty Liss to see if he was free and then rode up to the twelfth floor of the bank building to see him. Fred bustled into the office, obviously upset. His eyes seemed to goggle larger than usual behind the heavy lenses. His bald head was dewed with sweat and there was a faint sharp odor of nervous anxiety about him.

  “What are you doing, Marty?”

  “I am taking things out of these drawers and I am putting them in this box.”

  “Why?”

  “Jesus Christ, Fred! Why don’t you keep better track? Wannover is gone because he is getting immunity for giving testimony against me. Lew Traff is gone because there is nothing here for him to do anymore. The Irishman is gone because she is doing better selling apartments for me than running a desk. I let the other two girls go because—maybe you noticed—the Marliss accounts downstairs are frozen and so are the Letra accounts. So I can’t afford the rent here. And don’t tell me I have a lease, pal. Marliss had a lease until you froze the funds.”

  “Me? You know better than that!”

  “Sit down. You’re making me nervous. I know it was the Feds that froze the account balances. Money can come in. Nothing goes out. Great. Wish I could always do business that way. Want to buy a nice desk? Look at it. Real slate and teak and pewter, pal. Beautiful. Thirty-four hundred bucks it cost. You can have it for one thousand cash.”

  “Marty, I came up to talk to you about this!” He held out a bound report.

  “What have you got there? Oh, the big report on how we’re going to have two keys out there instead of one. Where’d you get it?”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Davenport brought it in. A very nice old couple. They’re in Seven-C in Golden Sands. This upset them terribly. And me too. What’s it all about?”

  “Didn’t you read it?”

  “Of course I read it. It says that a hurricane will cut the key in two and wash away Golden Sands, Captiva House, Azure Breeze and the Surf Club, right? If it hits here at the right time and the right angle. I mean, Marty, what is it about? Why this? If lightning strikes me on top of the head, I will probably fall over dead. If your aunt had balls, she’d be your uncle. Do you know how much paper we’ve got on those apartments out there in those four condos you built?”

  “Lots and lots.”

  “Do you know how much we’re already writing off anyway?”

  “Lots more.”

  “What I do not need is some jackass engineer predicting those buildings are going to be washed away. How can you let stuff like this get distributed to your customers, Martin?”

  “My customers? I’m out of all four of those. I wheeled and dealed and sweat blood to buy that Franciscus tract nine years ago on credit, Fred, and what I thought I had left out of it was some money, a good reputation, and a nice feeling of pride whenever I drove by and looked a
t those honest buildings. I did that. Me. Martin Liss, who twelve or thirteen years ago didn’t have enough income to warrant an audit. Thirteen years ago I was still partners with Jerry Stalbo and we were scramblers, believe me. You know what? I think that if that hurricane comes anywhere near close to here, those four buildings are going to go, just like the man said.”

  “Don’t say that, Marty. Don’t even think it. I’m in enough trouble with my board and the examiners already. Just a little bit more bad luck, and we are going to be so weak we are going to get shoved under the wing of some bank holding company strong enough to pick up our losses and bail us out. And where am I going to be if that happens? Oh-you-tee, out. In the street. And I’ve put a lot of my life into that bank.”

  Marty sat in his big black judge’s chair and put his sandals on the slate desk, ankles crossed. He thumbed the wiry hair of his goatee and smiled up at Fred Hildebert. “Fred, I’m crying for you. See? I’m all cracked up over your terrible problem. You, you son of a bitch, set me up with that Sherman Grome, and he fixed me good. I still have your letter guaranteeing me a line of credit. Eleven million. Your honor, I present this letter in evidence. Mr. Hildebert told me he could not honor it, and he sent me to Mr. Grome, assuring me that Mr. Grome could loan me what I needed. I thought that Mr. Grome was okay because my own banker advised me to do business with him.”

  “Hey!” Fred said. “Hey, no!”

  “But that is exactly how it was, friend. Exactly.”

  “No. You leave out how I told you that it was a very very bad time to get into anything that big. But you wouldn’t listen. You wanted to go ahead with it. And at that time, as far as anyone knew, Grome was substantial and reliable.”

  “If I get indicted and have to go to trial, Fred, will you appear for me and testify that you put me in touch with Sherman Grome? Because if you don’t I can make it sound a lot worse.”