B009XDDVN8 EBOK (45 page)

“Sell them yourself,” I said.

“How?”

“Open your own brokerage, provide the mortgages, and then offload them. Since you’ll in effect be paying yourself for the houses, it shouldn’t even require too much of an investment on your part.”

“Really? I mean, you can do that?”

“Sure, it’s a snap. Everfair Financing.”

“Something like that, it’s kosher?”

“Not much isn’t kosher in the mortgage-broker game.”

“Son of a bitch, how do you like that?”

“I could set it up for you,” I said, feeling suddenly magnanimous. And why shouldn’t I be? After a quarter century of fear and caution, after a quarter century of running from what the three of us had done, it was finally over. I had gambled on the one possible way to get my daughter back and myself out of hock, I had reached beyond Clevenger into my past to find Derek Grubbins, and then I had negotiated everyone out of the deep crap. Just like I had planned. When the hell does that ever happen, really now? I had even picked the exact right number for the payoff, and have no doubt, there was always going to be a payoff—nothing seals a deal like cash.

So I leaned back with confidence as Derek rambled on about Everfair: the golf course, the clubhouse, the huge homes with high ceilings and infinity pools, built-in barbecues, three-car garages. And the more he talked, the better I felt, because the more he had to lose, the more solid was my deal. Maybe it was still the buzz from the Scotch or the getting out from under all that had been keeping me down for so long, but I felt my sense of security build as he kept up his patter.

“Here we go,” said Derek, as we turned off onto a wide construction road that led toward the open gate of a great stone wall. “My baby.”

“What are we doing here?”

“Clevenger’s inside, waiting for us.”

“Why here?”

“He wanted to be put up in style, and you know our motto: in Fort Lauderdale, if you want style, you want Everfair.”

On the stone wall, the name of the development was formed in stylized letters of gold, surrounded by green enameled mangrove trees. It was a lovely entrance designed for a lovely
development, a Patriots Landing of the Everglades. But that was just the entrance—what was beyond the entrance was something else entirely. In the whole of my life I had never seen anything more terrifying than what I spied behind those walls.

“That’s the fourth fairway over there,” said Derek Grubbins, pointing to a wide plot of mud and weeds just to the side of the road. “The lake we’re going to build will stretch to the front of the green and will be stocked with fish to bring in the hawks and herons, ospreys. The PGA guy what’s designing the course says it’s going to be our signature hole.”

The only bird I saw was a crow, pecking at a dead piece of gristle on the guttered road.

“These are the townhouse units,” he said, pointing at a stretch of uneven ground not far from the entrance. “For those who ain’t so flush. Upper-class amenities for the upper-middle class.”

The ground he pointed to was pocked with uneven, half-finished cinder-block walls rising from poured foundations and looking like the teeth on a scurvy old sailor begging for rum.

“The clubhouse will go right up there,” he said as he drove farther into the huge property, pointing at an artificial rise formed of rock, rusting twists of discarded metal, blocks of chewed-up cement. “It will overlook the lake. People in the know who have looked at the plans already say it will be one of the top four golf courses in Broward County.”

One thing I had learned in the real-estate business is that people in the know always know nothing.

“And this here,” he said, waving toward a completely undeveloped patch of marsh choked with weeds and scrub trees, “the part of the property that overlooks the lake and the holes leading back to the clubhouse, this is where the super-premium houses will be built.”

“There’s nothing there,” I said.

“Not yet. These houses are going for two mil plus. You don’t buy a super-premium suit off the rack, you get it tailor-made.
This is Rodeo Drive, baby. This is all custom. You pick the plans, you add your extras, we build to your exact specs.”

I looked around. As far as I could see along the blighted fairways, the silent half-built ruins, the mud-spattered roads, there was no one. It was late in the day, sure, but still there was no one. “And your builder?”

“Ready to go.”

“Why isn’t he building now? The townhouses at least, or the other, less exclusive properties.”

“He’s waiting, we’re all waiting.”

“For what?”

“The third wave of financing.”

I nodded like it was all in the bag, and I suppose in a way, just then, for him, it was. These days, waiting for that third wave of financing for a real-estate development was like waiting for that first wave of ocean in Nebraska.

But really, as soon as we drove through the gates I knew. Even before I saw the weedy fairways, or the unfinished townhouses, or the swamp with delusions of Rodeo Drive grandeur, I knew. You’re in the business long enough, you can smell it. There was no profit here, this was real-estate desolation, as if a twister had ripped through the landscape, smashing every hope, the same tornado that had touched down in Augie’s Las Vegas development, the same tornado that had decimated developments from California to Virginia and cost me my job. I don’t know if it had ever been a feasible project, but now Everfair was as dead as the roadkill being pecked at by that crow. And so was my newfound confidence in getting my daughter back in one piece.

“This is all lovely,” I lied, “but we need to talk to Clevenger. Where is he?”

“At the model home. And it’s a beaut. Trust me, you’ll love it. One look and you’ll be ready to sign a contract yourself.”

I looked at Derek Grubbins as he drove me ever farther into the maw of his failed dream, and I grew ever more scared. Was
he delusional about Everfair, or a liar, or maybe a delusional liar? It didn’t matter which; my deal was falling apart like a tissue-paper banner in a hurricane. See, even in Derek’s overdone Lauderdale McMansion with its Bayliner hitched to the private dock, I had thought a hundred thousand dollars was enough money to ensure my daughter’s safety. But a hundred thousand dollars would disappear into the swamp that was Everfair without even making a ripple. I had assumed he had much to lose, but the landscape itself told me that everything he had to lose he had lost already.

“It’s right up there,” he said.

And there it was, just in front of us now, a single house rising out of a sea of weeds and hard-caked mud, a cobbled mash-up of a manse right out of the Patriots Landing handbook, something between a Patrick Henry and a George Washington, with a splash of Floridian stucco and a huge garage door staring at us like a fearsome mask.

“Our model home is the centerpiece of the entire show,” said Derek as he pulled the car into the driveway and pressed a button on the keychain that started the garage door to rising. “Granite countertops in the kitchen, granite sinks in the bathrooms. We even put it on the toilets, for Christ’s sake. One thing I learned in this business, you can never have too much granite.”

“And Clevenger’s inside?”

“Sure, just like I said. In fact, while you were blatting with Lucille at the front door, I gave him a call, told him I’d be bringing you on by.”

“And you’re going to tell him about our deal?”

“Just like I said I would. But I don’t think what we agreed on is going to hold much weight with the big guy. See, here’s the thing, Moretti, and I feel sort of bad about it and all, but I didn’t tell you the truth.”

“The truth about what?”

“About anything.”

I tried to stay calm, tried to stay reasonable: keep closing, keep closing, keep cool and keep closing. “You know, Derek, those calls are going to be made.”

“That’s going to be a problem for me, no doubt about it.”

“And the cash, forget about the cash, man.”

“It’s hard to give that up,” said Derek, with genuine rue in his voice. “You don’t know how hard.”

“So I don’t get it,” I said, just as I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye.

My head swiveled like it had been slapped. A man, short and stocky with black pants and shiny black shoes, a thug man, pulling a gun out of his belt as he walked out of the garage.

“I’ll sweeten your deal,” I said. “You want more money? Get me my daughter and I can get you more. Plenty more. Let’s talk, let’s negotiate.”

“I would, really, but see, your debt, it don’t belong to me no more.”

“What the hell does that mean?” I said.

“Clevenger don’t work for me like you thought,” said Derek. “He works for an outfit in Chicago what was hired by the boys that gave me my second wave of financing.”

“You went to a loan shark to keep this place afloat?”

“The project wasn’t progressing the way I had hoped.”

I spun around in the seat and spied another man, tall and lugubrious, coming up from behind, a gun already in his hand. I locked the door and quickly grabbed for the car keys, but Derek swatted away my hand.

“The problem is, these guys I borrowed from,” said Derek, “they’re not like a bank. A bank you can walk away from, they ain’t going to break your legs, right? But these guys, they don’t foreclose, they send Clevenger. And Clevenger, unfortunately, he don’t just break your legs neither. But he does like to make an impression.”

“What the hell did you do, Derek?”

“When he came after me, first he cut off a finger, snip-snap, just to get my attention. Then he sat me down to give him an accounting of everything I had that was anything at all. But I had nothing, see. My house is underwater, the car is leased, the boat is worth a ton until you try to sell it. Even the deeds to Everfair are as valuable as mud, what with the bank secured on every square inch. What the hell was I going to give him? Lucille? Not that he wasn’t interested in that.”

“Give me the damn keys,” I said, grabbing at them again.

Derek swung his good hand hard and slammed me in the throat with the back of his fist. I fell upon the door, grappling at my neck, gasping for air. Still struggling to breathe, I looked out my window and both men were standing there. The tall one tapped on the window with the muzzle of his gun and smiled. His smile was more terrifying than the gun.

And then, from out of the front door of the model home stepped a man in suit pants and a short-sleeved shirt. He was short and round, the arc from his neck to his groin was dented by his belt, and he squinted his pale fat face at me in the car. He was smoking a cigarette and bouncing slightly on the balls of his tiny feet in their black patent-leather loafers, bouncing with the air of a man who had just won a game of Skee-Ball.

“And as Clevenger was about to cut off something more valuable than my finger,” said Derek, “I thought of Ben. I wasn’t going to do nothing to you guys myself, it was a long time ago, and what the hell was going to be left after all these years? I mean, Ben had nothing, I figured you guys had nothing neither. But I gambled that a potential million plus in stolen cash might get Clevenger’s attention. So I did what I had to do.”

“You son of a bitch.”

“Hey, you know the way it goes. Things is tough, we’re all just struggling to get by.”

“He has my daughter.”

“Yeah, I still think he was wrong about that, and I told him so, but truth is it ain’t my call no more. You guys owed me, I owed Clevenger’s people, so I made a trade. I got two months’ forgiveness; he got you.”

S
O
,”
SAID
C
LEVENGER,
pausing to take a drag of his cigarette, in no apparent rush, “here we are.”

Yes, there we were. The “we” were me and Clevenger and his two collection agents, short-and-stocky standing behind me, tall-and-morose-with-yellow-teeth standing like a silent zombie behind Clevenger. The “here” was the basement of the model home at Everfair. While the upper floor I had been dragged across was impeccably finished, a living iteration of the granite-swathed American dream with brown leather couches and hardwood accent pieces, the basement was empty except for the table where Clevenger sat, two metal chairs, a white canvas bag, a lamp, a car battery. And no matter how beautiful the upstairs was, it appeared someone had skimped on the foundation; the concrete walls were already cracking, swamp water was already oozing.

“This little gallop of yours,” continued Clevenger as he leaned his elbows on the table, the smoke from his cigarette rising through the beam of light aimed at my face, “this run from Vegas, back to Virginia, and then up and down the coast, must have been quite the adventure. But for us, it was just business as usual. Do you think you are special? Do you think everyone else just volunteers to pay their debts?”

The question was undoubtedly rhetorical, as I was in no condition to provide an answer, bound to one of the sturdy metal
chairs in the middle of the floor, with a rope wrapped around my bare chest, my arms and wrists tied behind me, my legs tied to the chair legs, and a rag of cloth stuck in my mouth, held there by strips of silver duct tape. I was ready to give up, I was ready to trade everything, even myself, for my daughter, but, trussed like a turkey as I was, Clevenger wasn’t giving me the chance.