Condominium (37 page)

He wondered why he felt so down. He wondered if something was wrong with him physically. A lung maybe? No weight loss. How did you feel if you had a cancer you didn’t know about? Lung, prostate, throat, liver, bladder, bowel, stomach … Jesus! There is no such thing as a good place to have one.

It couldn’t be knowing for sure about Francie, because he had felt down before that came out. Would a new woman help? He couldn’t feel the slightest stir of interest. It would just be a hell of a chore to go hunt one up and con her onto her back. And once you had her there, she wouldn’t be as good as Irish at it anyway. He wondered if he should phone them and have the boat taken out of storage and cleaned up and provisioned. For what? For where? Forget it.

Traffic crossing the north bridge to Fiddler Key was blurred by the heat waves rising from the pavement. He could see little scurries of wind moving across the stillness of the bay. Black storm clouds were low and heavy over the Gulf, and he saw a thick straight orange bolt of lightning appear between sea and cloud.

He looked at the Silverthorn tract, at the fourteen acres scraped clean, and at the curved finger of land protecting the boat basin. The dredge sat in the boat basin, and he knew that if he looked through his binoculars he would see the fill spewing onto the land, and see the cloud of gulls at the end of the fill pipe as they circled and dipped and yapped and snatched up the sea creatures which came hurtling ashore from the bay bottom.

There was no pleasure in the damned place anymore. No risk left. And, if it was built, no pride in it. More junk on the key. Not as bad as that Tropic Towers, but junk nevertheless.

He moved closer to the window and looked down toward the street. He imagined how Jerry Stalbo must have looked, flaming and screaming down through the night toward the hard concrete, and it made him feel sick and dizzy. But at the same time he had a strange soft compulsion to jump. He knew he probably couldn’t break through those big tinted windows with a sledge. How long would it last? What would you think about on the way down?

As he backed away, the intercom on his desk spoke with the unfamiliar country accent of the girl filling in for Drusilla.

“Could Mr. Traff come in?”

He said yes and Lew came in, frowning, to sit across the desk from Marty and nibble at the skin at the corner of his thumbnail.

“Something I can’t figure out, Marty. You know this revolt we got at Golden Sands, I had told Frank West and Sully that it was my opinion the best thing they could do would be continue to provide everything they had always provided so there wouldn’t be any hassle about any discontinuance of services. What they both said, they said it sounded to them like the right thing to do, but they would check it out with the legal guys over at SMG, Miami, on account of they had probably had this kind of thing happen over there and had a policy going on it. I told them I figured they would want to do that, and would they let me know what they say over there. So I didn’t hear and I started phoning, and I can’t get Frank or Sully on the phone, either one. They won’t return calls. It is very strange.”

“Some kind of misunderstanding,” he said. He called on his private line, using the unlisted number of the phone in a desk drawer in Miami, remembering the unwritten rule. No names.

“Yeh?”

“I’ve got something going over here in Athens I don’t understand too well.”

“Such as?”

“Such as one of my people getting a runaround from both the operations here, like not getting a call back in regard to some payments that weren’t made on the first.”

“Well, I guess what you are making reference to, we want to cut down on direct contact. Too much of that goes on, it makes confusion all the way around. It’s a new management policy.”

“What are you trying to tell me?”

“There is a reorganization going on, and you will be contacted
in due course when everything is straightened away. And meanwhile, this number won’t be operative anymore after today.”

“You want I should come over?”

“People are so busy formulating new policy there wouldn’t be any time to sit down with you right now.”

“What if I want a buy-out?”

“I’ll be back to you in twenty minutes with an offer.”

Miami had hung up. Martin hung up. He stared at Lew Traff and wondered why it was that he had managed to surround himself with idiots.

“Something is very sour,” he said. “Something is going very bad, Lew.”

“Such as?”

“My God, I don’t know. I don’t
know
! What they have over there, they have a good line on what is happening. They’ve got people pretty well placed here and there. They have to know what’s coming up next. You know the feeling I got talking to him? Just from his voice? I’m nothing anymore. I’m worse than nothing. I’m an infection.”

“Marty, dammit, that doesn’t sound—”

“Shut up.” He tapped his plump middle. “I get feelings in here that I listen to. What is the absolutely worst thing that could happen to me? I mean legally.”

Traff was lost in thought for a few minutes. Liss paced. “Okay,” said Traff, “here is the worst. The SEC starts building a case against Sherman Grome for draining off the assets of Equity Mortgage Management Shares into his own pocket and the pockets of his friends. Meanwhile the IRS is running a special audit of Marliss and Letra, in addition to the regular audit they have you under personally every year. Okay, the SEC taps brokerage house records to find out who has shorted EMMS, which would be you and me
and Benjie, and maybe, for God’s sake, Sherman Grome. The IRS guys coordinate with those FBI people, Barber and Grosscup, and some red-hot young U.S. Attorney pulls the whole thing into one big package. So all of a sudden, when they have everything in a row, we are all indicted, and all assets are frozen, the assets of the corporations and personal assets too. They hit us with huge bail and set us up for legal actions which will take two or three or four years to finish, with maybe big fines plus jail terms at the end of it.”

As Martin Liss stared at him aghast, Lew said uncomfortably, “Well, you wanted to know the worst.”

“I haven’t done anything
that
wrong!”

“You conspired with Grome to make his books look a lot better than they were.”

“Fred Hildebert cut off the money. He was the one who suggested Grome!”

“You squeezed that one million out of Grome in return for your taking over Tropic Towers, where Grome was taking a bath.”

“Whose side are you on?”

“Yours, Marty. And my own. You asked for the worst. Listen, how long do you think Justin Denniver and Molly would hold out if somebody braced them with the idea you’d been buying services from the commission, and they could have immunity or go down with you?”

“Would you tell somebody where the money went?”

“Marty, I haven’t got ten kids.”

“Oh. Would he?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I don’t know. If the worst happens, maybe he would. Just maybe.”

“Benjie?”

“Suppose he thinks you’re going to make a run for it.”

“Run for what?”

“I think you buying Swiss francs has him worried.”

“I was just playing the weak dollar against a strong currency. Speculation. That’s all.”

“Irish studying brochures makes him nervous.”

“Just a trip, for God’s sake. To the Greek islands. So you’ve been talking to him about all this. The two of you have been talking it all over!”

“Why wouldn’t we? The best thing we could have done back in May was absolutely nothing. That’s what we
both
recommended. But you wanted to go ahead with Harbour Pointe.”

“So you were
right
! Okay?”

“Don’t get sore at me when you want to get sore at yourself.”

Marty sat again. “You’re right. They heard something in Miami. It is something they can’t stop, so what they want to do is—”

The private line rang and he picked the phone up. “Yes?”

“The way things are, it would be twelve a share.”

“Twelve!”

“Cash delivered tomorrow and pick up the certificates.”

“But twelve is so—”

“Sometime you might want to come back in some way, and what you got is a verbal option it would be the same price. That is the best anybody can do. Okay?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Included is a buy-out on your personal shares in those two operations over there, fifty on one and seventy-five on the other. For old times’ sake, I would urge you take it.”

“Not enough.”

“By tomorrow maybe it will be.”

And that was the end of it. Marty said to Lew, “They want all relationship severed, one way or another. He gave me the feeling they are willing to get pretty hard about it. I’ve never been on the
inner circle over there. I was around, I guess, to make it look better. They want me out, they can push me right out. They would want anybody out who turned into bad news in the paper.”

“I could try to see what I could find out, but—”

“Should I run? Don’t answer that question. Why should I run? As far as I know, I haven’t done anything wrong. Stupid, maybe, but not wrong.”

“A lot of times it comes out exactly the same,” said Lew.

The country voice said, “Mr. Rittner in Tampa is on the line.”

“So what does the broker want? Put him on, please. Good morning, Norm. What’s on your mind?”

“Something just came over the wire I thought you should hear, Martin. All trading has been suspended in shares of EMMS. Though they gave no reason, the general feeling around here is that Grome’s management put them into too many bad situations and they could be bankrupt. Grome has not been available for comment.”

“I never had that happen to me before. What does it mean? Can I close out my short position?”

“No, Martin. You went short sixteen thousand shares. We borrowed those sixteen thousand shares, and to get out of your position you have to replace them, and you can’t buy them to replace the loan until trading is permitted.”

“Like when?”

“Well, if they are bankrupt, then they would be delisted, and I would imagine somebody would make a market in the shares in the over-the-counter marketplace. Then you could probably pick them up for twenty-five cents or so apiece. That would make your gross short-term profit close to three hundred thousand, eventually.”

“Eventually. Great. Al, what I want you should do is take me out of the Swiss francs.”

“Hold cash in the account?”

“Send me a check, okay?”

“Of course, Martin. Anything you say.”

Liss hung up and said, “Of course, Martin. Anything you say. You can enjoy this with me, Lew. EMMS is delisted and maybe bankrupt, so there’s no way to cover a short position.”

“Beautiful,” Lew said. “Just beautiful.”

“Grome isn’t available for comment.”

“Grome is a crazy person.”

“When he was making people rich, he was genius,” Marty said. “Back to what you were saying before, when you were telling me the worst that could happen. About freezing personal assets.”

“It’s done often. Tax cases and fraud cases. Bank accounts and brokerage accounts, lockboxes and so on. And real estate too.”

“They can do that?”

“They do it.”

“Marliss has a heavy cash position right now.”

“I know what you’re asking. Yes. It is a closely held corporation.”

Martin Liss paced from the desk to the window and back. “This is a crazy day,” he said. “I was so bored with my whole life I felt like jumping out the window. Now I’m not bored. I still feel like jumping out the window. How do you fight stuff like this, Lew?”

Traff sighed heavily. “I think you get a better lawyer than the one you got. And you wait for the roof to fall in.” He gave a weary laugh. “At least we don’t have to worry about Harbour Pointe any more. With EMMS stalled, Fred Hildebert won’t release any of that cash. That eight mil will have to go back to Atlanta, a little drop in a big empty bucket.”

“I could finish that thing and make money on it.”

“Forget it, Marty.”

“I could! I know I could. If I could get to Fred to—”

“Marty! Have you gone crazy as Sherman Grome?”

Martin Liss stared at him. In a dead voice he said, “You’re right, of course. Get out of here. Try to find out what’s going on and let me know.”

After Lew left, Martin stood once more at the big windows and looked at the place over on Fiddler Key, beyond the channel. The fill was dark where it spewed out of the pipe. The sun had whitened the fill from prior days as it dried.

He knew he had to stop the dredge. He was mildly surprised to feel a sting of tears in his eyes. He was going to ask the girl to get Cole Kimber for him, but then he punched out the number on his private line. He was glad he caught Cole in. He was hard to reach. He told Cole to stop the dredging and told him why.

Cole sighed audibly. “Okay. Herb’s subcontract was finished and paid for, and I got my reimbursement. On Marine Projects it is going to be a little different. Mike has been paid up through last Friday, so we’ll owe him two and a half days, plus extra expenses for premature termination. The way the agreement is written up, we are liable for an agreed figure on overhead per day up to a maximum of fifteen days, or until he gets the dredge working on another job. Let me see here. I think it’s seventeen hundred … right. Seventeen hundred a day. Twenty-five thousand five.”

“And I suppose you would take your cost plus on top of that?”

“Shall I read you our agreement, Marty? I mean my agreement with Letra.”

“You start to fall and they pick your bones before you hit the fucking ground, Cole.”

“I can’t afford not to, old buddy. I told you in front that I do not like and did not like the shape and size and color of this whole project. It got way too fancy for me. And I told you that was why
I would only deal on an arm’s-length basis, strictly by the book, because if I deal in any other way I am part of the package. This is why I can’t and won’t negotiate any change at all. Understand?”

“I’ve put a hell of a lot of money into your pocket, Kimber.”

“You’ll find I’ve got some termination costs written in there too.”