–so that by nine or ten P.M., one would, upon staggering out of the hotel, have only just enough energy left to stagger back in again and take the elevator home, ready to begin the entire descent yet again the following day, following, much like Dante, concentric circles ever deeper into the Hell that was now to be Bay St. Lucy.
AND OF COURSE THE CENTER OF IT ALL! THE PIECE DE RESISTANCE! THE PLACE TO BE SEEN, FOR THE DECADE TO COME! LODESTAR OF CINEMA ICONS TO SPORTS HEROES TO POLITICAL LEADERS TO THE FRANK SINATRAS AND DEAN MARTINS OF THE THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY---SEA-VEGAS, THE MOST OPULENT GAMING CENTER, THE MOST RICHLY DECORATED AND FANTASTICALLY ADORNED CASINO—IN THE WORLD!
And there it was.
There it was, all spread out before them.
The very rooms they had just been walking through.
The dining rooms, the galleries, the sun decks, the porches, the studies—
––these rooms were now being shown on the massive screens, but overlaid with crap tables, roulette wheels, and rows after rows of slot machines.
That was to be the center of Bay St. Lucy.
A casino.
Tom Broussard’s words came back to her as the “virtual tour” continued.
“The story is not over until it has taken the worst possible turn of events.”
The lights were rising now.
The screen was depicting a sunset and three banally idiotic HAPPYPEOPLE, a robot woman and a robot man and a robot child, all hand in hand, watching the sun set into the waves, not caring that such a thing might be more probable on the Pacific coast than here on the Gulf
“The story is not over until it has taken the worst possible turn of events.”
A few more bars of music and then, done.
Lights up.
Movie over.
So the presentation is over, Nina found herself thinking.
But the story is not over.
And the worst possible turn of events—
––is still to come.
For a while there was absolute silence.
Then Allana Delafosse rose.
Very slowly, she lifted her arm, and pointed her hand up at the woman who stood above them:
“What—have you done?”
The tone of the words, the expression on Allana’s face—they were all ghastly, as though delivered in the Voice of the Dead, in a combination of supplication and damnation.
“What have you done?”
There they hung, not seeming to have reached the demi-heaven from which Eve Ivory was sending down her decrees, but still some few feet above the graveyard where sat the few corpses that were still remnants of what had been Bay St. Lucy.
“What have you done?”
“I am certain, as I have said, that the proposed plan is—well, a bit of a surprise for many of you.”
Paul Cox stood, his body trembling, his voice, being a part of his body, also trembling.
“This is not what we talked about!”
“We talked about a great many things, Paul.”
“Not this!”
“This school is here, Paul. It wasn’t highlighted in the video clip; but it’s included in the plan. There is to be a new school.”
And now more and more voices began to rise, like rain inverted, the edge of a squall, the first hard showers, and the coming deluge, all spattering on the podium behind which Eve Ivory stood, repeating:
“There is to be a new school!”
First voice:
“For who?”
“For your children!”
“Our children? Our children?”
“We’re not going to be here!”
“Where are we in this plan?”
“What have you done to us?”
“You’ve destroyed the city!”
“These things are detestable!”
“We don’t want a casino here!”
“The Hell with you!”
“Go to Hell!”
“Go to Hell!”
‘You won’t get away with this!”
“You have no right!”
“You have no right to do this!”
“Who do you think you are?”
“You can’t come in here and––”
And then a huge black man appeared beside Eve Ivory.
She did not look at him.
He did not look at her.
He simply looked down at the crowd spread out beneath him.
Many were standing now.
He had on a superb black suit.
His eyes glowered.
And his voice rolled down on the people like thunder.
“That will be enough.”
––were his words.
And simultaneously, all of Bay St. Lucy was aware of what “Security People” were all about.
They stood, dark-suited, serious of mien, motionless, like church deacons ready to help at communion, at the end of each row.
Each one had fixed in a rigid stare, Nina realized, every townsperson who had spoken.
Once again Baal, the Dark Archangel, spoke to The Children of Israel-Lucy:
“I’m going to need you all to disperse. There are refreshments being served in the dining room.”
Tom Waterston, the mayor, stood and said to Eve Ivory:
“Ms. Ivory I just have to ask, as Mayor of Bay St. Lucy––”
She remained motionless as a statue while the man standing beside her said:
“Sir I’m going to have to ask you to disperse.”
“But––”
And suddenly there was with the mayor a whole host of angels, praising God and singing:
“That’s enough, Sir.”
A security guard in front of him; a security guard behind him.
Both saying:
“We’re going to need you to leave the room, Sir.”
Which he did.
Which they all did.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE TROUBLE WITH WINDOWS
“I have an idea that the phrase ‘weaker sex’ was coined by some woman to disarm some man she was preparing to overwhelm.”
Ogden Nash
For the next few hours all hell broke out in Bay St. Lucy. Everybody did everything and nobody did anything.
Everyone called everyone else, sobbing, yelling, screaming.
Until finally all of the telephone lines were jammed, or busy, or overloaded, even the technicians did not know exactly which, but the bottom line was the phone service went dead.
People met on street corners, yelling insults at Eve Ivory, until the small groups that had formed were approached by police cars, ice-blue lights flashing, bull horns intoning:
“Please disperse. Please disperse.”
It took only a few minutes to realize that these were not Bay St. Lucy police vehicles.
They were previously unseen vehicles owned by MEGAVENTURES SECURITY SYSTEMS.
The men and women driving them, and using the bullhorns, were no longer dressed as Jehovah’s Witnesses.
They now had on uniforms.
The townspeople gravitated to Margot’s garden, where, at precisely 10:30 P.M., Allana Delafosse, could be heard holding forth.
“I have always,” she said, “decried the use of the word. It is a detestable word, made all the more so by the fact that it is so often used to describe persons of my own gender. It is the most vile word, to my knowledge, in the English language. But in reference to this, to this, ‘Eve Ivory,’ it is the only applicable word.”
She paused to let this sink into the ten or so women who encircled her.
Then she continued.
“The woman, let us admit it, is a complete, unadulterated, pure––”
Pause.
Say it.
Say it, Allana Delafosse.
And then she did:
“The woman is a complete parvenu.”
Ooooh.
Aaahh.
No one had ever heard Allana Delafosse use that word before.
And these were the ki
nds of things that happened. Not simply in Margot’s now-all-night-shop and planning/complaining center, but all over town. There was an emergency meeting at City Hall.
A great many measures and counter measures were proposed.
An excellent law firm.
The city would hire an outside law firm.
These land developments could certainly be postponed, perhaps locked up in the courts for years.
Couldn’t they, Jackson?
To which Jackson Bennett rose and said:
“No.”
It was one of the things, remembered Nina, that Frank had always admired about Jackson.
He was not as wordy as most lawyers.
“But couldn’t we petition the Joint Zoning and Revenue Office for a Temporary Stay of––”
“No.”
“But Jackson, how can she––”
“She owns it.”
Then Jackson Bennett left the Emergency City Hall meeting and went home to his family.
The first report of violence came, apparently, around eleven P.M.
Two citizens—their identities kept secret—were brought to The Bay St. Lucy jail and deposited there for Moon Rivard to incarcerate.
They had apparently tried to ‘infiltrate’ the grounds of the Robinson Estate, and had, of course, been apprehended by representatives of MEGAVENTURES SECURITY SYSTEMS.
Nothing was known of their physical condition, but an ambulance was observed to arrive at the jail some fifteen minutes later.
The ambulance stayed at the jail some time and then left, with no patients riding in it.
One argument, at least, against those who kept avoiding the professional term ‘security specialists’ and substituting the unfairly premature—given the fact that the people had been in town only slightly more than twenty four hours and were both newcomers and guests—appellation “thugs and goons.”
There were more fights, some of which Nina heard about. There were more small meetings; in fact it was almost like bar-hopping.
Meeting hopping.
One antique store to the other.
Contingency plans.
Rumor control.
Still the stories about violence continued.
Once, enroute from Carol’s Sea Fantasies, where nothing had been accomplished, to Joyce’s Bed and Breakfast, where nothing had been planned, she and Margot and Emily Fontenot encountered a true Bay St. Lucy police car, driven by the young Cajun who’d come to the restaurant weeks before—how long ago that now seemed! To tell her about the damage done to her shack.
This woman and a male partner now pulled beside them, stopped, and rolled down the window:
“Ladies––”
“Yes, officer!’
“You might want to go inside.”
“We’re going over to the Bed and Breakfast.”
“Yes, Ma’am. Whatever you want, but—it would just be good for you to be inside. It’s real bad out there.”
“Are there more injuries?”
“I don’t know. I think so. We keep getting calls. It’s just—these other security people––”
There was a crackle of static on the radio.
“I have to take this. But do try to stay inside.”
“We will.”
And so it went, until midnight, when Nina drove her Vespa home.
She arrived to find two patrol cars parked in her driveway, and the light burning in her living room window.
“What the––”
Someone was in her house.
She parked the Vespa, noting the now familiar logo of MEGAVENTURES SECURITY SYSTEMS painted on the door of the car nearest her.
She climbed the steps, opened the door, and found Eve Ivory standing in the middle of her living room floor, and glaring at her.
“This! This! All of this! All of what is happening in this town! This is what you were supposed to prevent!”
Shocked, she could only ask:
“How did you get in?”
The question had no effect.
Eve Ivory began to pace now, just as Nina had seen her pace on the morning when she’d discovered her slashed tires.
She was smoking.
Nina had not seen her smoke before, but she did it as viciously as Margot Gavin, except that each gesture, each movement of the cigarette to and from her lips, was short and brutal, like punches to the face.
“You were supposed to prevent this kind of thing!”
The presence of Eve Ivory anywhere and in any condition was such a dominant condition that it blotted out other beings; but seeing her this way was so stunning that it even made Nina completely unaware, for a full fifteen minutes, of the two security guards standing on each side of her.
They looked like the offshore riggers she’d seen; faces impassive, one wearing a blonde goatee, the other wearing a light brown goatee.
“Do you know what’s been going on in this town?”
Nina shook her head, still speechless.
“Chaos! Stupidity and chaos!”
“People are upset.”
“Then let them be upset, dammit! But they will not behave like this! I will not be treated this way! I will not! Can you comprehend that, you, you, you little dolt?”
The word hit her like punch in the stomach.
She forced herself to stammer back:
“I’m not sure what I can do. think I told you that before.”
“You—you what?”
“I said, I think I told you that before.”
“Are you contradicting me?”
“No. I just––”
“You are! You are! What is the matter with you, are you insane? Have you lost your mind? Are you an imbecile?”
She tried to think of something to say but could not.
The two men standing on either side of Eve Ivory remained motionless, each looking at the other.
Finally Nina was able to say:
“People think you’re going to destroy the town.”
Eve Ivory glared at her, hurled the cigarette on the carpet and crushed it out viciously with her shoe. Then she took a step toward Nina and shouted:
“What town? What town? What town? There is not a town here—there is a blight. Look at these shacks along the coastline! It’s blight, don’t you see that? Do you know what actual coast line is worth today? A million dollars per hundred feet. A MILLION DOLLARS PER HUNDRED FEET! Don’t you see that? You look at this this ‘village’ as you choose to call it. One deserted lot after another. You’ve been isolated by the world for forty years, it’s like some, some insane fairy tale. WELL WAKE UP, YOU IDIOTS!”
She lit another cigarette and continued to pace.
“It was coup, a coup, a coup, to bring Megaventures here. These are billion dollar players we’re talking about. They could have gone anywhere in the world. ANYWHERE! But they’re coming here, just because they’ve been able to see what’s happened. A veritable jewel of development potential has been trapped in a damn time machine. This is the last package of coastal property of this kind IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE, DON’T YOU SEE THAT?”
“But what if we don’t want that?”
To which Eve Ivory, in a voice seeping up out of the ice caves over which she presided, hissed:
“Who the hell cares?”
It was at that moment that Tom Broussard arrived.
She knew it was Tom without turning to look, because of the clatter he made on her stairs, which always threatened to collapse with his weight.
She could not take her eyes from the glaring face of Eve Ivory, so she did not see him, but only heard his voice from just behind her, as he entered.
“Penelope,” he said quietly, “is out in the harbor. You need to come.”
“What?”
“Some big yacht is out in the basin.”
“Who is this?”
“Eve, this is my fried Tom Broussard. He’s a writer.”
“What is he talking about?”
“A yacht,” T
om continued, “has anchored out in the basin.”
“My God! That’s Bill Shipley! He’s the president of Megaventures! He’s one of the richest men in the world!”
“Tom,” said Nina, quietly, “what’s Penelope got to do with it?”
“I guess she heard about the meeting tonight. People heard her saying, ‘They’ll take my boat away. They won’t want me here.’ And I guess she was drinking some.”
“What is she doing, Tom?”
“She’s out in her boat.”
“Yes?”
“She’s about fifty yards abeam the yacht. Shouting at them. Telling them to get out and leave her alone. Leave Bay St. Lucy alone. She’s shouting, you know, the way Pen can do.”
“Yes.”
“And she’s got a gun. The people on the yacht say it’s a forty five.”
“What?” screamed Eve Ivory. “What is this bumpkin saying? Oh my god!”
Nina turned and faced Tom. His hair was black and tangled; he had on black oilskins, which gleamed from the light of the streetlamps beneath.
He was looking not at Nina, though, but straight into the eyes of the security man standing nearest her.
“This man,” said Tom, “is white trash.”
The room gave a slight gasp.
Then there was no sound, except a slight patter of rain that had begun to fall.
Tom Broussard took another step into the room.
He was no more than a foot from the first man’s face.
Into which he whispered.
“Get out. Get out now.”
Eve Ivory screamed at him:
“What? What? Who the hell are you, anyway? You get out!”
The second security man turned slightly, and said:
“Sir, we’re going to have to ask you to moderate your tone.”
To which Tom Broussard replied:
“You’re white trash, too.”
“Sir––”
“You’re both white trash. And you’re in the home of a lady.”
There was more silence.
Furl, who’d been hiding in a closet, saw his chance, and dashed across the room to hide in the clothes hamper, which was in the bathroom.
Eve Ivory spoke more quietly now; she looked at first one of her security men, then the other.
Sea Change (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 1) Page 16
