Bright Orange for the Shroud (12 page)

“Is there some trouble here?” a nervous voice asked, and I turned and saw a club employee in the doorway.

“No trouble. I was just getting ready to take Mr. Watts home.”

I cued Watts with a little pressure. “Just going home,” he
said in a gassy whisper, and with a strange imitation of a reassuring smile. The employee hesitated, said goodnight and went away.

Crane Watts made a very cautious attempt to pull his hand free, and found that it added to the pain. He walked out very carefully beside me, quite erect, taking small dutiful steps, not wavering a bit. A Nassau police official had showed me that hold. Improperly applied, it snaps the bones or dislocates the knuckles. In correct adjustment, it pulls the nerves of the two middle fingers against the knuckle bones in a way that you can hit ten on the dolorometer. Nine is the peak for childbirth and migraine, and all but the most stoic faint at some point between nine and ten. You watch their color, their sweat and the focus of their eyes to keep it below the fainting point. And it is a quiet thing. Small pain makes people roar and bellow. The excruciating ones reduce them to an almost supersonic squeak. Also, intense pain is one way to induce a sudden sobriety. By the time I opened the car door for him, I knew he would be no further trouble. I pushed him in and went around and got behind the wheel, started up and followed the Mercedes.

“Jesus,” he groaned, hugging his hand against his belly.

“It’ll throb for ten minutes or so, and then it will be all right.”

“It goes all the way up into the back of my neck, fella. Is it some kind of judo?”

“Something like that.”

After a few minutes he slowly straightened up. “Beginning to go away, like you said.”

“Sorry I had to do it, Crane. I promised your wife I’d get you home.”

“Maybe I didn’t give you a hell of a lot of choice. Or her.” I felt him staring at me as we passed street lights. “What’s your name again?”

“Travis McGee. Friend of Frank Hopson. Over here from the east coast on business.”

“Look at that! She turns without any kind of signal at all.”

“Maybe she’s got a lot on her mind.”

“Sure. Like how to get more overspin on her backhand. Don’t let her sucker you, McGee. That’s an ice cold bitch. She’s slowing for the driveway. It’s on the left there.”

It was a broad driveway and one of those long low Florida block houses with a tile roof, a double carport and, beyond any doubt, a big screened cage off the rear, with or without a pool. Awning windows, glass doors on aluminum tracks, a heat pump system—you could guess it all before you saw it, even to a couple of citrus trees and cocoanut palms out back. Terrazzo floors, planting areas in the screened cage and a computerized kitchen. But even at night I saw other clues, a front lawn scruffy and sunbrowned, a dead tree at the corner of the house, a driveway sign saying The Watts which was turned, bent and leaning from someone clipping it on the way in.

I parked in the drive, behind her car. He got out at once, advancing to meet her as she walked back toward my car.

“Congratulations, sweetie baby,” he said. “Now you got proof I spoiled your evening. See how early it is? Now you can suffer.”

She planted her feet, squared her shoulders. “There might be one member left who would trust you to write up a simple will or even search a title, dearest. So let’s protect all that charming innocent faith as long as we can, shall we? Come on
in the house before you fall down.” She turned toward me. “I’d offer you a drink, but I guess you’ve had about all anyone would want of this, Trav.”

“I might come in for a few minutes, if it’s all right. I would like to ask Crane about something. Something maybe he could help me with.”

“Him?” she said, loading the word with enough contempt for a month.

“Loyalty, loyalty,” Crane mumbled.

We went into the house. She turned lights on. She kept turning lights on, even to the outside floods in and beyond the screened cage, rolling the glass doors open, and, with a gaiety very close to hysteria, she said, “And this is our happy mortgaged nest, Mr. McGee. You may note a few scars and stains. Little domestic spats, Mr. McGee. And did you see that the pool is empty? Poor little pool. It’s a heavy upkeep item to operate a pool, more than you’d think. And we don’t care to run the air-conditioning this summer. You wouldn’t believe the bills. But you know, I do have my little indulgences. My tennis, and my once a week cleaning woman for some Saturday scrubbing, in case we entertain on a Saturday night, but there aren’t many people left we could invite, really. But, you see, I pay for the tennis and the cleaning woman. I have this lovely little trust fund, a whole hundred and twenty-one dollars a month. Don’t you think wives should have an income of their own, Mr. McGee?”

She gave me a brilliant smile, sobbed suddenly, whirled and ran, her hands over her face. She went out of sight down a corridor and a door closed behind her.

Mumbling almost inaudibly, Crane Watts took a bottle
from a bar corner and headed for the kitchen. As he passed me, I lifted it out of his hand. “I need that!”

“Not if we’re going to talk. If we’re going to talk, you need a shower and you need some coffee, before and after the shower.”

“Talk about what?”

“Maybe how you can help me make some money.”

He wiped his face slowly with his hand, stopped and looked at me with one skeptical eye between his fingers. “Mean it?” I nodded. He sighed. “Okay. Hang around. Make coffee, if you can find the stuff.”

I found powdered coffee. I made a strong mug of it and took it toward the sound of the shower. The bathroom door was ajar. I put it on the counter top next to the sink, yelled to him that it was there, and went back to the living room. Houses where love is dead or dying acquire a transient look. Somewhere there are people who, though they do not know it yet, are going to move in.

He came wandering in, mug in his hand, hair damp, wearing a blue bathrobe. He sat wearily, sipped the coffee, stared at me. His color was not good. There were dark stains under his eyes. He had a drinker’s puffiness, not far advanced, but enough to alert the observant and the wary. But the mists had lifted.

“Why me?” he asked. “That’s the best question I can ask.”

“I could need a hungry lawyer.”

“You found him. Maybe I’m not as hungry as I have to be. I won’t know, will I, until you tell me.”

“I’m doing a favor for a man. For a fee. He trusts my judgment and my knowledge of Florida land values. He just came
into a very big piece of money. He wants to put half of it in securities and half in land. A broker is working up a portfolio for him. I’m … hunting around.”

“You an agent?”

“No. If I could locate something good, a very promising investment, something in the eight or nine hundred thousand range, he’ll give me ten thousand finder’s fee. He’s interested in raw land.”

“And you need a lawyer to check out something quietly?”

“Not exactly. I found a couple of very clean deals, one near Arcadia and the other up the coast, south of Cedar Keys. Each is worth the finder’s fee.”

“So where does a hungry lawyer fit?”

I stood up. “Let’s adjourn to the office.”

Looking bewildered, he followed me to the bathroom. I turned the cold water in the shower on full, then leaned on the counter top. He understood quickly enough. “You’re more careful than you have to be, McGee.”

“I always am.” He leaned against the countertop beside me, and we spoke over the roar of the shower. “Ten thousand seems smaller every day, Watts. If a deal could get more complex, maybe a little more would rub off. Like if something could be picked up and held and resold. You might have more ideas about that kind of thing than I would.”

“Why should you think so?”

“From some bar talk today I got the idea you pulled off something pretty cute.”

“Oh, it was cute all right,” he said angrily. “It was even legal. But all I got was peanuts, comparatively speaking. It wasn’t anything I set up. This lousy town. Other lawyers get a little tricky and everybody says how smart they are. You know
what I got? A whispering campaign. I’m down to a practice that just about pays the light bill.”

“Maybe you could try it again, and cut yourself a bigger piece. Legally, of course.”

“Maybe your guy is too shrewd for it. The one they cleaned was truly stupid.”

“My guy is no giant, and he’s never held a job in his life. You said
they
cleaned. Who?”

“Some out-of-town operators.”

“Would we need them?”

He frowned, tugged his lip. “It wouldn’t hurt at all to bring one of them in on it. He’s damned good.” He straightened up. “You’re acting as if we’re going to try it, and you don’t know a damn thing about it.”

“All I want to know is that there’s no ten years in Raiford afterwards.”

“Nothing like that. It’s all legal, believe me.”

“How does it work?”

“Your guy has to go along with certain things. Like being willing to be in on a land syndicate operation. And your guy should be off balance a little. They used a woman on the last one.”

“Is she still around?”

“Not that I know of. Why?”

“It could work with my man too.”

“Listen. You said he trusts you. The way this thing works, it isn’t halfway. It has to clean him completely, or it doesn’t work. Would that bother you?”

“Not on his account. But it makes me a little nervous. We’re talking about close to two million dollars, Watts.”

“With family lawyers riding herd on it, maybe?”

“No. How does it work? Make it simple. I’m not a lawyer.”

“You make your man believe the syndicate is going after one hell of a big piece of land. Everybody puts money into the syndicate trust account, on a share basis. The trustee is one of the syndicate. In this case it would be that man I told you about. The sucker thinks everybody is putting in cash. But, by separate letter of agreement, the trustee agrees to accept demand notes from the other partners, in view of their long association and so forth. There’s a clause in the syndicate agreement permitting additional assessments. Every time one comes along, the sucker comes up with cash and the others turn over promissory notes for their assessment. Another clause in the agreement says that if anyone can’t meet an assessment, they are dealt out, and their share is divided pro rata among the other partners. Another clause says that if it is decided the operation is not feasible, the syndicate will be disbanded and the funds in the trust account divided among the partners pro rata. So you just assess him until he’s dry, cancel him out with due notice, and a little while later close up shop and divide the pie. You have to keep him thinking that the whole thing is right on the verge of turning into a big fat gold mine.”

“And you got a piece of that pie?”

“Hardly. I got a twenty-five-hundred-dollar fee and a five thousand bonus. I was promised ten, but after it was over there was no way I could blow the whistle on them without putting myself in a sling, and they knew it.”

“What did they take the man for?”

“About two hundred and thirty thousand. When it was too late, he went to another lawyer. That’s how the news got all over town.”

“But you can still afford to lose five hundred dollars in a bridge game?”

He put his head in his hands. “Cut it out, will you?”

“Could you rig the same kind of operation again, for my man?”

“I don’t know. It’s a lot bigger. I don’t know how good my nerve is. I’d have to bring the other man in on it. Maybe he wouldn’t want to come in alone. Maybe he’d want to use the same people as before. They’d cut themselves big pieces.”

“So how could we defend ourselves against being left the small end?”

He shook his head. “I’ve got a headache, McGee. There are ways. You work this thing out in the open. We could set up the trust account so it would require three signatures for any withdrawal, and with our promissory notes being as good as the others, we could get in for any percentage we could dicker for.”

“He’s my man. What if we go for half between us, forty percent for me and ten for you? And let them cut the rest up any way they want, just so they swing it.”

“But wouldn’t he know you can’t come up with that kind of cash? I think it would have to …”

The bathroom door opened and Vivian stared in at us. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m getting rich, sweetheart. Close the door. As you leave.”

I got a duplicate of the look she gave him. She yanked the door shut.

“One other thing, Watts. I suppose you have to set up a fictitious piece of property.”

“Oh, no. That would classify it as fraud. We dealt with the executor of the Kippler tract, sixty-one thousand acres. We made legitimate option offers.”

“So where are you if he said okay, let’s deal?”

“He couldn’t. It’s all tied up by the terms of the will. But how could we know that if he didn’t tell us?”

“And he didn’t?”

“No. He wrote nice letters. Seriously considering your last offer. Must discuss it with the heirs and the tax attorneys and so on. They went in the file, in case anybody ever had to see the file. And he kept demanding a higher option offer.”

“Which required assessments. So he was coached?”

“Of course. And he got a nice little gift afterward. Hell, McGee, the whole file on this thing is clean as a whistle.”

“Could we use the same tract again?”

“Well … not on option terms. Too much money involved this time. Maybe on a purchase basis. With a good chance of resale if we could pick it up right, say at two hundred an acre. Twelve million. Then your man comes in for one twelfth … something along that line, where it would leave enough plausible spread to assess him out of the picture. You see, you have to know just about the absolute total the sucker can come up with. Once hooked big, then they have to keep throwing more in because they think it’s the only way they can protect themselves. The beauty of it is that when it’s over, they are picked so clean there’s hardly any chance at all of them coming up with any civil action to recover, and it’s a little too clean to make it attractive to any lawyer to tackle on a contingency basis. What’s your man’s name?”