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

by Pale Gray for Guilt(lit)

  "So in the morning the kids headed on away in the camper truck and the first thing I did was tell Roger the whole thing. That was Friday, and Hazzard came out in the afternoon and sent Roger out of the place and talked to me. He said he'd put the evidence away in a safe place, and in the pictures he had proof on both Roger and me on the teeny-bopper on corrupting a minor, and lewd and lascivious conduct. Then he questioned me over and over on what I saw that Sunday. Then he brought up if I knew a friend of Bannon's named McGee. I told him about just that one day, and he made me remember every little part of it. So he walked back and forth and then he told me I was going to come in and make a statement and what I was going to say. I asked him why I should do anything he said, because if he left us alone, I wouldn't say anything about him. He said if I didn't do it, he would bust us both good, and he had enough proof and enough charges to get us both five to ten anyway. And I said if he tried to bust us that way, when he took us in, I'd tell what I saw him do. And he said then it would be pretty clear to everybody that I was making it up just to try to get him in trouble for doing his job and nobody would believe it because nobody ever believes an acid head about anything, and those pictures would make a hog sick. He said if I did my part, then after McGee was convicted, he'd give back everything he took. Then he gave me a chance to talk it over alone with Roger and for a while we thought maybe we ought to just take off and go merge into a colony someplace, but we went that road for a while and we relate better like plastics."

  "What? What?" asked the sheriff.

  "Take the group thing now and then, and have a square thing we do for bread. We take off and we lose the trade we've built up that comes to maybe a hundred and fifty a week on average, and then maybe that Hazzard could get us brought back anyhow." She combed the fingers of both hands back through the dark blonde stiffness of her long hair, shook it back and said, "So we decided okay, only what we didn't know is how I could get busted a lot bigger for the statement than for what he's got on us, and I didn't know McGee would be in the clear, because he said maybe McGee might not even get to answer any questions at all. So where are we?"

  "Where are you?" the sheriff asked. "Honest to God, I don't even know what you are, girl."

  I looked at my watch. It was just eleven o'clock. The sheriff told Arlie he'd like to hold her and her husband in protective custody on a voluntary basis, and she agreed. I knew that part of the case against Freddy Hazzard would be Press LaFrance's testimony about whatever conversation he'd had with his nephew, triggered by my comment to LaFrance about the possible reason why Tush had been killed. But had I reminded Burgoon of that point, he was going to mess up my timing, which was already two hours off. So I wondered out loud if Tush could have come in by bus early Sunday morning and if Hazzard, cruising around, had picked him up near the bus station and driven him out there.

  Arlie had been taken off to the female detention tank. Tom, the chief deputy, said that if anybody could place Hazzard and Bannon together in town at dawn on Sunday, it would lock it up tighter.

  "Tighter than the way he run?" Burgoon asked. "He was a good boy. He worked harder than any two others I got. Just a little bit too handy with that mailorder pacifier sometimes. But you take a county where you got some hard cases back in the piney woods, a little head-knocking keeps things leveled off. He lived clean and straight. It must have shook that boy when he checked out that complaint, walking in on that. Like looking into a bucket of mealy grubs. What's going wrong with folks lately McGee?"

  I had neared the ultimate promotion to Mr. McGee.

  "It's a mass movement against head-knocking, Sheriff."

  "What kind of a joke is that?"

  "All kinds of head-knocking. Commercial, artistic and religious. They're trying to say people should love people. It's never been a very popular product. Get too persistent, and they nail you up on the timbers on a hill."

  He stared at me with indignation. "Are you one of them?"

  "I recognize the problem. That's all. But the hippies solve it by stopping the world and getting off. No solution, Sheriff. I don't seek solutions. That takes group effort. And every group effort in the world requiring more than two people is a foul-up, inevitably. So I just stand back of the foul line and when something happens that doesn't get called by the referees, I sometimes get into the game for a couple of minutes."

  "Around here today," he said sadly, "it's beginning to seem to me like in my sleep last night I must have forgot half the English language."

  "Can I go take care of my business matter?"

  He looked at Tom, got some signal in reply; and said, "Stay in the area, Mr. McGee."

  Thirteen

  I SAW PRESTON LaFrance sitting at his desk inside his little real estate office in a converted store on Central Street. He had his head in his hands, and he was alone.

  When he heard the door open, he looked up with the beginnings of the affable show you-a-fine-parcel smile, and it froze there partially developed. He jumped and boggled and said, "McGee! You... you're alone? But I saw you with... you were..."

  "Sorry I couldn't keep the coffee date, Press. I had to go answer some fool questions the sheriff wanted to ask me."

  "Bunny... let you go?"

  "What's the matter with you? Are you disappointed?"

  "No! Hell, no! Sit down! Sit down, Trav! Cigar? Take that chair. It's more comfortable."

  I sat down. "Did you have the same weird idea Burgoon had? Did you think I killed Bannon?"

  "But Freddy said an eyewitness had turned up, and they were going to grab you down there in Lauderdale and he was going to go down and bring you back."

  "It would have been an exciting trip."

  "What happened? What about the eyewitness?"

  "Burgoon satisfied himself that she was lying and I wasn't."

  "Freddy said everything fitted together."

  "It did."

  "What? What do you mean?"

  "It worried you a little, Press, when I told you that maybe somebody was trying to give you and Monk Hazzard a lot of cooperation in rousting Bannon out of his property, and maybe they busted him up too much. And you said that there wasn't anybody involved who'd do a thing like that, but you hesitated a little. So you were thinking of Nephew Freddy, the head-knocker. So you came back and laid some very indirect questions on him and he convinced you he was absolutely innocent, and then you told him who had been feeding you such crazy ideas. So, lo and behold, the eyewitness was brought in and she changed her story and the sheriff let me go."

  "I guess then we can... talk business?"

  "Sure, Press. That's what I'm here for. By the way, the eyewitness identified Freddy as the killer. He heard about it by accident and took off. They're running a manhunt right now. So it was a pretty good guess."

  "I got the money together, but first I have to... What did you say? Freddy? Come on!"

  "He ran, Press. He took off. Check it out. Call Burgoon."

  He reached for the phone, hesitated, then picked it up and ran a thumbnail down the typed list of numbers under the desk-top glass. He dialed and asked for Burgoon. "Okay, then give me Tom Windhorn. Thanks.... Tom? This is Press. Say, Tom, is Freddy in some kind of a... Huh? No kidding! But look, it couldn't really be that he would... Oh.... I see.... Yeh.... Boy, some mess. Anybody get hold of Monk yet?... Oh, that's right I forgot.... No, Tom, I don't even know what route they were taking. Monk said he was going to take his time and see the sights. Sis will be out of her mind. Tom, is everybody absolutely positive he... All right. Sure. I'll be over later." He hung up and shook his head in bewildered fashion. "I just can't believe it. He's a nice clean-cut boy."

  "I'm afraid you've got too much on your mind. This is no time to talk business. We've got another deal we can work out. So let's forget the whole thing. Okay?"

  "But I... but I need-"

  "Just hang onto your fifty acres and use the forty thousand to pick up that Carbee land. The way the area is going to go, you ought to make a nice pr
ofit in a couple of years. Just sit tight."

  His smile was slightly ghastly in its attempt to be reassuring. "Listen, Trav. Believe me, I can keep my mind on your proposition. I mean this is a terrible tragedy in the family and all, but it isn't going to do anybody any good for me to lose out on something.

  "Maybe you won't like it anyway" I said. "Give me a piece of paper and a pencil. I'll show you how it works."

  I wrote down a little tabulation on the sheet:

  Carbee 200 acres @

  $2000 = $400,000

  LaFrance 50 acres @

  2000 = $100,000

  McGee 10 acres @

  2000 =$20,000

  Total purchase price =

  $520,000

  Cost to LaFrance:

  McGee 10 acres $90,000

  Carbee 200 acres $40,000

  $130,000

  Total available for split :

  $390,000

  To LaFrance :

  $265,000 $135,000

  McGee (+ 40,000 from LaFrance) $95,000

  X $60,000

  $390,000

  "Who is this X? What does your ninety-five thousand come out of? I don't understand this."

  "Mr. X is the man we're going to meet at the hotel for lunch. The point is, I don't trust him completely. But he has the authority to buy-from one single owner-those two hundred and sixty acres at two thousand an acre. And because he's going to the top limit authorized, he wants a cash kickback, under the table. The trouble is, he wants it now. And I don't think we ought to turn it over until we get the full amount on the land. If something went wrong, we couldn't prove a thing. Right?"

  "Yes, but-"

  "Listen, can you get my forty thousand in cash instead of by certified check?"

  "I... I guess so. Sure. But--"

  "Then, maybe there's a way we can work it so we won't end up with the dirty end of the stick, Press." "But what's this ninety-five thousand for you?" "For putting this thing together. You are going to sell me a twenty-five percent share of that option for five thousand."

  "The hell I am! I can sell that Carbee land for-"

  "Forget it. Forget Calitron. You'll see why when you see the correspondence X has. If X can't deal with us, he'll deal with Gary Santo and we'll be out in the cold. Why are you crying anyway, LaFrance? You get all your bait back, all hundred and thirty grand, plus a hundred and thirty-five on top. That's fifteen thousand over a quarter of a million."

  We had lunch with Meyer at the hotel. He was superb. He told us where he was staying. I went to the bank with LaFrance and got the papers on our land sale signed and notarized, and he got the forty thousand cash. I drove him to the motel where Meyer was waiting, and before we went in, I unlocked the trunk compartment and dug out the little package of currency I had taped to a far dark corner. It was my total war fund, and it made me feel uneasy carrying it around. Meyer showed us the rest of the correspondence and the overlays. He took them out of the bulky dispatch case. He was properly arrogant, properly shifty. LaFrance bought the con. I could read it on his face and in the sweatiness of his hands, leaving damp prints on the papers.

  "So, if we can settle the last little detail, gentlemen?"

  "Doctor Meyer," I said, "We get... I mean Mr. LaFrance gets the point five two million check or definite confirmation from topside that it has gone through, then you get the money we agreed on."

  He stared at me with a heavy, convincing contempt.

  "And sue you if I don't get it, Mr. McGee? Where? In Small Claims Court? You see the correspondence. You see the authorizations. It will go through. Believe me."

  "And at the last minute they change their minds. What have we got to make you give it back, Doctor?"

  "'There will be nothing in writing. You understand that. You have my word."

  "But you won't take ours, Doctor?"

  "So forget it, gentlemen. Impasse. I'll resume the negotiations for the other tract."

  "There's one possible solution, Doctor, that might satisfy both sides. It would be safe for both of us."

  "Which is?"

  I took out the two packets of money and dropped them on the coffee table. "Seventy-five thousand dollars, Doctor Meyer."

  "So?"

  "Let's seal it in an envelope and we can put it in the hands of a local attorney, and give him instructions about it."

  "To do what?"

  "I'll tear a dollar bill into three pieces. We each keep a third. The attorney is authorized to surrender the envelope to whoever shows up with the three pieces, or to any two who, between them, have all three pieces."

  "Kid games!" said Meyer. "Nonsense games!"

  "The extra fifteen, Doctor, is a bonus for doing it this way. Does the game sound better?"

  He nodded. "A little. But you can save fifteen by giving me the sixty now."

  "We'll pay the extra fifteen for insurance, Doctor." "Sometimes being too careful is stupid," he said. "I'll play your game."

  The good doctor had a fresh Manila envelope in his dispatch case. He handed it to me. I put the money in it and sealed it and handed it to LaFrance, saying, "Which lawyer do.. :"

  "I think," said Meyer, "as long as we are not trusting one another, I will choose not to trust any lawyer of your selection, gentlemen. The old hotel where we lunched has a safe, no doubt. And some sort of claim check arrangement. The claim check could be torn into three portions, and the manager instructed not to surrender the envelope except for an entire claim check taped back together. Satisfactory?"

  "Suits me," I said. "Press?"

  "Sure." So we went back downtown in my car, Press beside me, Meyer in the rear. I parked and we went in. Meyer hung back while Press and I went to the desk. The girl greeted him by name and Press asked for the manager by name. He came out of his office.

  "Can I help you, Mr. LaFrance?"

  "Harry, this is sort of a wager. Can you put this in the safe for me and give us a claim check. We're going to tear it into three hunks, and don't surrender it unless you get the whole claim check."

  Harry, was affable about the whole thing. He took the envelope into his office and came back with the other half of the perforated tag he had affixed to the envelope. I had a five-dollar bill ready and reached and laid it on the counter and said, "For your trouble," and he gave me the tag, telling me it wasn't necessary to... uh...

  "Go ahead, Harry," I told him. I turned away, and walked over to Meyer, with LaFrance hurrying to keep up with me. I tore the tag into three parts, making them irregular, and ceremoniously put a third on each of their outstretched palms.

  Meyer sighed. "Games for children. An expensive game for you, my friends." We walked out and stood by my car. I offered the doctor a ride back to his motel. He got into the front seat. I closed the door and turned and held my hand out to Preston LaFrance.

  "Press, I think we're really in business. I'll be seeing you in a few days. You draw up the agreement on the Carbee option."

  "Sure, Trav. I'll sure do that." His expression was doleful and earnest and anxious, like a dog hoping to be let in out of the rain.

  "I hope you get your trouble worked out all right."

  "What? Oh, that terrible business about my nephew."

  "The boy just got too eager, I guess. He knew you and his father were using every legal means to run Bannon out of business. He probably tried a different way of discouraging him."

  "That's probably it. And he tried to cover up. It was sort of an accident, I'd say. Freddy wouldn't want to kill anybody. When they find him, I think if he tells exactly what happened, they might agree on letting him plead guilty of manslaughter. Monk has got a lot of leverage in this part of the state. T'rav, how... how soon do you think our deal will go through?"

  "A matter of days. Don't worry about it."

  "I think I'll go over to the sheriff's office and see what's happening."

  He walked away. I walked around the car and got in and drove away. "Pigeon drop, smigeon drop," said Meyer. "How was I?"

/>   "Like a pro. Great natural talent, Doctor."

  I reached into my breast pocket and took out the intact green claim check and handed it to him. He took the little tin tape dispenser out of his pocket and tore the check in thirds and stuck it back together with the tape.

  I made two right turns and parked on the side street behind the hotel. He gave me the claim check and said, "So soon?"