John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 09 - Pale Gray for Guilt

by Pale Gray for Guilt(lit)

  He went with me to the front door, through the ripe smell of flowers in full bloom, through the muted organ music.

  He put his pale hand out, smiled his pale smile, and said, "Please express our sympathy to the bereaved."

  I stared at his hand until he pulled it back and wiped it nervously on the side of his jacket. I said, "Junior, you could make a tangible expression of your sincere sympathy."

  "I don't believe I follow you."

  "Before you send her the check for her credit balance, just refigure your bill. She's a young widow with three boys to raise. You padded it by at least two hundred and fifty dollars. I think it would be a nice gesture."

  His face went pink. "Our rates are-"

  "Ample, boy. Real ample."

  Outside I took a deep breath of Shawana County air, but there was something vaguely industrial in it, some faint acid that rasped the back of my throat.

  We were moving in, stirring them up with a blunt stick. The old judge, with good law and good timing, was snatching the ten acres right back out of the hands of LaFrance, just when he thought he had his whole deal lined up. And soon he would know a stranger was moving into the game, buying some chips, asking for somebody to deal. When in doubt, shove a new unknown into their nice neat equations and see how they react.

  Hungry men think everybody else is just as hungry. Conspiratorial men see conspiracy everywhere. I strolled through industrial stink toward the bank.

  Six

  WE GATHERED again in the bank president's office at two thirty. Sanders had the Bannon file on his desk, and a Mr. Lee, an attorney for the bank, sitting near his left elbow. Lee had a round, placid face and a brushcut. He could have been thirty or fifty or anything in between.

  With obviously forced cordiality, Sanders said, "Well, Mrs. Bannon, the bank has decided to accept your payment and mark the mortgage account current and in good order."

  Judge Wellington yawned. "You say that as if you had choice in the matter, Whitt. All right. My client is grateful. She thanks you." He opened his old briefcase and pawed in it and took out the papers that had been prepared Wednesday afternoon in the judge's law offices. He flipped them onto the desk in front of Whitt Sanders, saying, "Might as well get this taken care of too, as long as we're all foregathered here. Everything is all ready to record, but what we need is the bank's approval of the transfer of the mortgage from Mrs. Bannon to Mr. McGee here."

  Mr. Lee hitched closer to the president as Sanders leafed quickly through the legal documents. He stared at Judge Wellington with a look of astonishment. "But... according to this, she's selling her equity in the property for fifteen thousand dollars, Rufus!"

  "Wouldn't you call that a pretty good deal? Sixty thousand mortgage balance, and you were going to sell the whole kaboodle for thirty-two five and have a judgment against the estate, if any, for twenty-seven thousand five. So she pays the mortgage down to fifty thousand, then, sells for fifteen thousand, which puts her five ahead instead of twenty-seven five behind. Why, this little lady is thirty-two thousand five hundred better off right this minute than she was when she walked in here. Or maybe you just looked surprised she did so good. Remember, she's got a good lawyer."

  "But we can't just... approve this transfer. We don't have enough information. Mr. McGee, we'll have to have a credit report on you, and we'll have to have a balance sheet and income statement. This would be highly irregular. I have a responsibility to..."

  "The stockholders," the old judge said. "Whitt, you went through those papers too dang fast. Try it a little slower."

  He did. He came to an abrupt stop. He stared at Connie. "You'll be the guarantor on the mortgage note, Mrs. Alvarez?!"

  "That's what it says there, doesn't it?"

  "If you're still nervous, Whitt," said the judge, "go look up To-Co Groves in your D. and B."

  "Oh, no. I didn't mean anything like that. It was just... "

  The judge sighed. "Could we just stop fumbling and get. the red tape done so we can get this stuff recorded and set out for home?"

  "Excuse me just a moment," Sanders said. He took Mr. Lee out of the office with him and over to a quiet corner of the carpeted bullpen. They held about a forty-second. consultation. I hoped I knew exactly what it was about. I looked to the judge for reassurance, and got it in the form of a slow wink an almost imperceptible nod.

  Mr. Lee came back in with Sanders. He was apparently nominated by Sanders to put the matter into careful legal jargon.

  "Mrs. Bannon," he said, "whether or not your sale of your interest to Mr. McGee is final at this moment, the bank feels that it is ethically obligated to inform you that shortly after two o ',clock this afternoon a local attorney contacted Mr. Sanders here and asked him if the sale of the foreclosed properties had been consummated. When Mr. Sanders said that it had not, this attorney then said he was representing a party whose name he could not divulge, but who had directed him to inquire of the bank if, in the event the properties had not been sold, a firm offer of eighty thousand dollars would be sufficient to acquire it."

  Sanders then interrupted, making Lee look exasperated for an instant. "It isn't a firm offer," he said to Janine. "But I don't think young... the local attorney would make a trivial inquiry. You see, if your arrangement with Mr. McGee isn't firm, or if he would like to withdraw, this might be a lot more advantageous for you. You would get back your ten thousand, plus the overage above the sixty thousand mortgage, or another twenty thousand."

  Jan had been coached in how to react, by the Judge, if Puss had been successful in conning the young attorney, Steve Besseker.

  "But couldn't this mysterious party be the same Mr. Preston LaFrance you were going to sell it to?" Janine asked.

  "I don't think it would be very likely that Press would-"

  "But haven't you told Mr. LaFrance he wasn't going to get my property?"

  "Well... yes," said Sanders uncomfortably.

  "Then, couldn't he turn right around and make a bigger offer through a lawyer, if he wants it bad enough?" she asked.

  "It might be possible. Remotely possible."

  "But don't you see," she said, frowning, earnest, leaning forward, "Mr. LaFrance owns the acreage directly behind us. He's been after our property all along. He's schemed and plotted to drive us out of business, Mr. Sanders, so he could buy it, and so he's responsible for what... my husband... responsible for..."

  She snuffled into her handkerchief and Sanders, edgy and uncomfortable, said, "Now, there. Now, now, Mrs. Bannon. We all like to have some specific thing or person to blame when... when things don't go right. I'm sure Press LaFrance wouldn't--"

  "My husband was convinced of it, and that's enough for me," she said spiritedly. "Why, I wouldn't accept any blind offer like that if it was... twice as much. Three times as much! I would rather sell it to Mr. McGee for eleven cents than see that man get it!"

  Whitt Sanders fussed with the documents in front of him. He looked over at Rufus Wellington. "Rufius, I'd be way out of line, as you well know, if I made any comment about... about the resources of anybody doing business with us. All I can say is that... it is remotely possible the attorney is representing Press LaFrance. But it isn't very damn probable."

  "You telling me, Whitt, it's pretty much a known fact around town this LaFrance couldn't scratch up eighty thousand?"

  "I didn't say that."

  "Around the courthouse this morning, Whitt, talking to the County Clerk, and passing the time of day with your Assessor, I got the feeling things are a little slow lately in the land business in Shawana County. Now if this LaFrance is up to his hocks in land deals, he might be like the fella with the itch who was juggling the family china and walking a tightrope, and a bee stung him right square on... Sorry, ladies, we'll leave that one right there. Probably got a goodlooking balance sheet, all considered, and you got some of his notes, but you won't go one more dime, and you're a little nervous about him." The judge laughed suddenly and slapped his thigh. "By God, Whitt, tha
t explains how come you acted sorry as a skunked hound you couldn't sell off the foreclosure to this LaFrance. He must have some deal in the making that would get him free and clear. He into you a little deep, boy?"

  "Now, Rufus," Sanders pleaded. "I haven't told you a thing, and I'm not about to."

  "Not in words," the judge said. "But we've set in poker games together, Whitt, and I never had much trouble reading you."

  So then the red tape was taken care of, and the necessary documents were recorded at the courthouse. I walked with the judge to his black airconditioned Imperial and he stopped out of earshot of his driver, who had gotten out and opened the door for him.

  "Son, we sure God rammed a crooked stick into the hornet nest and stirred it up. There'll be folk sitting up half the night trying to make sense out of it all, not knowing it doesn't make sense-not the way they're thinking. Make sure you keep back far enough from the hornets."

  "I'll be careful, Judge."

  "You tell that big sassy redhead she did good. That's as much woman as a man is likely to see in a long day's journey. Where are you meeting up with her?"

  "Not anywhere near here," I said. "Back at Broward Beach. She said she could probably get Besseker to drive her over there, and if she couldn't, she could get there somehow"

  He squinted into the late afternoon sunlight and said, "There's a gal like that so clear in my mind it's like yesterday, son. And that was nineteen twenty and six." He turned to me with a look of dismay. "And if she's alive anyplace in the world, she's somewhere in her sixties. Hard to believe. Know something? I wrote poems to that gal. First, last and onliest time in my life. You let me know how you make out with that old swamp rat, that old D. J. Carbee, will you? McGee, tell me one thing. Are you going to let the angries get in the way of pumping some cash money out of this for that widow girl and her kids?"

  "The money first, Judge."

  He looked at his watch and grinned. "The way Connie drives, they're probably halfway back to Frostproof by now."

  It took me a long time to find anybody who could give me any kind of clear directions on how to find the Carbee place. He had no phone. He had a post office box in Sunnydale, and it was his habit to come in no oftener than once a week to pick up his mail.

  In the end I had to go over the unending construction project that ran by my new property. Florida is full of long-range, unending road jobs that break the backs, pocketbooks and hearts of the road side businesses. The primitive, inefficient, childlike Mexicans somehow manage to survey, engineer and complete eighty miles of high-speed divided highway through raw mountains and across raging torrents in six months. But the big highway contractors in Florida take a year and a half turning fifteen miles of two-lane road across absolutely flat country into four-lane divided highway.

  The difference is in American know-how. It's know-how in the tax problems, and how to solve them. The State Road Department has to take the low bid, by law. So Doakes Construction says a halfyear contract will cost the State ten million, and a one year contract will cost nine, and a year-and-ahalf deadline will go for eight. Then Doakes can take on three or four big jobs simultaneously, and lease the equipment from a captive corporation, and listlessly move the equipment from job to job, and spread it out to gain the biggest profit while the only signs of frantic activity can be two or three men with cement brooms, looking at first like scarecrows but, when watched carefully, can be perceived to move, much like the minute hand on a clock.

  Of course if some brisk, hustling firm moved into the state and started bidding what the jobs are worth and doing them fast, it would upset the tax teacart. Some have been foolish enough to try it, and the well-established Contractor's Club has just taken round-robin turns low-bidding the interloper to death. When he has quit for lack of work, things settle down to the cozy old system whereby, through some miraculous set of coincidences, all the big boys have exactly the amount of work they need at all times.

  A couple of governors ago, when too many road jobs were not up to specification, somebody ratted and there was a big hassle about the State Road Department engineers and inspectors getting envelopes with cash money therein from some of the club members. Those contractors were restrained from bidding for a little while, and the engineers and inspectors were suspended. But it died down, as it always does, and the companies were reinstated with authorization to bid on upcoming work, and the state employees were put back on the job also, with the governor explaining that men should not be judged too harshly for a "moment of weakness," even though it had been made quite clear they'd had their little moments of weakness every Friday afternoon for a long, long time.

  The Shawana County project of repaving 80D was the same thing on a smaller scale. Though the workday was not over, the only sign of roadwork I saw was one bulldozer and one scraper parked and unattended off the side of the rutted road. I stopped at my dead business property, tore off the official notices of foreclosure, and decided against busting the shiny padlocks with a tire iron. Near the far end of 80D I found the sand road I was told to look for. It wound through scrub toward the bay shore, and when I drove into the clearing at the end I saw the traditional old Florida shack of cypress and hard pine set high on pilings, so that looking under it I could see the bay water and a crooked little dock with a skiff tied up.

  There was a twanging of dogs toenailing the wire of their run, and a heavy throated Arooo, Arooo of the indigenous hound. I was standing by the car looking at the hounds when the voice directly behind me said, "Evenin'." It gave me a violent start and when I whirled, I could see from the glint in his faded old eyes that he enjoyed the effect.

  In the days before age hunched him and withered him, he could have been nearly my size. His sallow jaws were covered with long gray stubble, and his head was bald except for a sparse white tonsure. He wore torn, stained khaki pants with a narrow length of hemp line for a belt, and an old gray twill work shirt. His feet were broad and. bare, and standing near him was like standing near a bear cage, but with a slight spice of kerosene amid the thickness of the odor.

  I gestured toward the dog run. "Red Walkers?"

  "Got some Walker in 'em. I don't sell no dogs this time of year. Got just one bitch carryin' but she got loose on me just the wrong time, so God knows what she'll drop."

  "Mister Carbee, I didn't come by to look at dogs. I came on a business matter."

  "Waste of time. I don't buy a thing except supplies in town and send for the rest out of the Sears."

  "I'm not selling anything."

  "They say that and I ask them to set, and it turns out they are after all."

  "It isn't like that this time."

  "Then, you come set on the stoop."

  "Thank you. My name is McGee." When we had climbed the steep steps and were seated, Carbee in a rocker and me in an old kitchen chair that had several generations of different shades of paint showing, I said, "I just bought the Bannon place on the river from the widow."

  "Did you, now? I seen her once and him twice. Heard he kilt himself last Sunday morning when he found he'd lost the place. Great big old boy he was. Him and that Tyler Nigra come on me one morning drifting on the bay. Year ago maybe. Heavy fog, and me out too deep to pole and the ingin deader'n King Tut. That Tyler knows ingins like he invented them. Spring thing busted on the little arm for the gas feed, and that Tyler fixed it temporary with a little piece of rubber, got it running good. That Bannon wouldn't take a thing for it. Neighborly. Couldn't been too much longer after that Tyler quit him. Heard Tyler is working at the motorsyckle place in town. Anywhere there's ingins he's got a job of work. Maybe Bannon knowed and maybe he didn't that when Tyler quit him, it was because no Nigra with sense like Tyler's got is going to stay in the middle of any white man's fussing. If you're going to run that place, Mr. McGee, , the first thing you better do is get Tyler back, that is if you're peaceful with everybody."

  "I'm not going to run it, Mr. Carbee. I bought it as an investment."

  "Lea
se it off to somebody to run?"

  "No. Just let it sit."

  I let him ponder that one, and at last he said, "Excuse me, but it don't make good sense, unless you got it for the land value alone. The buildings are worth more than the land."

  "It depends on who wants the land."

  He nodded. "And how bad."

  "Mr. Carbee, I've been checking land ownership at the courthouse. You own the two-hundred-acre piece that starts at my east boundary"

  "Could be."

  "Ever thought of selling it?"

  "I've sold a little land now and again. I've got maybe seventeen, eighteen hundred acres left, scattered around the east county, and except for this hundred right here, my home place, I imagine it would all be for sale if the price was right. You thinking of making an offer? If so, you better come up with the best you can do right off, because I don't dicker. Man names a price, I say Yes or I say No, and that's it."