Pale Gray for Guilt (21 page)

"Where am I going to get that kind of money before seven?"

"The minute after you get back to Sunnydale and walk into the hotel, you'll have it back, won't you?"

"Yes, but-"

"Scrounge it somehow. You could pay somebody a very fat amount of one-day interest out of that fifteen extra, couldn't you?"

"But, Trav, suppose he takes the sixty and then screws us and makes his deal with Santo? What can we do?"

"Absolutely nothing. But stop running around in crazy circles, man, and listen to me. I'm assuming the risk. Got that? It's my money sitting up there. Give me a week and I could scrape up three or four times sixty in cash, but I damned well can't do it today. If it falls through, what are you out?"

"There's… maybe one possibility."

"Now you're beginning to think. I'll phone you back. How long will it take you to find out?"

"I… I should know by… you phone me back right here at two o'clock?"

The shape of larceny is, in time, written clearly enough on a man's face so that it can be read. Constant greed and sharp little deals and steals had left the sign on Preston LaFrance. There is the old saying that God and your folks give you the face you're born with, but you earn the one you die with.

I went back into the house at two o'clock and phoned him. I knew just how he had probably worked it out in his mind. Get hold of sixty thousand cash to buy the claim check to seventy-five thousand in cash. Nobody ever gets hurt taking a profit. The small towns of Florida are peppered with old boys who don't like to have too much information on record about the deals they make. And they like to keep a little leverage around in the form of cash money. LaFrance would know a couple of those shrewd old hawks. He'd hunt one up, probably put up his fifty acres and the Carbee option as security, if the bank wasn't holding them, and pay the old boy a thousand dollars or five hundred for the loan of sixty thousand in cash for a few hours. Then he'd hike the interest rate as high as he dared when he reported to me.

"Trav?" he said. "I've been dreading this call, cause there's something I hate to have to tell you."

"You couldn't get the money!"

"No, no. I got the money. I got it locked up right here in my office. I got it from a fellow that keeps cash on hand. Trouble is, he knows I'm spread thin. Maybe I got too anxious. Anyway, he gave it to me good. The only deal I could make was to pay him the whole fifteen thousand. Honest to God, Trav, when a man gets the tights, all the money dries up on you. There just wasn't anybody else who'd give me the lend of it."

"Pretty damned steep, Press."

"Like you said, this is an emergency."

It was the perfect example of the philosophy behind all kinds of con, big and small: You can't cheat an honest man. I gave him a B in the course. B for Brass.

"When I get back," he said, "that old boy is going to be right there in the hotel lobby with his hand out, and there won't even be any point in unwrapping it, except he'll want to count it slow and careful, and then go on rattling home in his old pickup truck, smiling like a toad in the moonlight. Trav, it was the pure best I could do on short notice, and that's God's truth."

"Okay, then. Tote it over to The Annex and give it to Doctor Meyer, and don't lose it on the way. Then we'll just have to keep calm and wait for the corporation check to come through."

"How long will it take?"

"Ask the Doctor."

I hung up, knowing it was going to work. The secret of the big con is to move the victim, bit by bit, into increasingly implausible situations. At last, in the act of plucking him clean, you have him performing such a damned-fool act he will never understand how he came to do it, why he didn't see through it. He was blinded by the conviction he couldn't possibly lose a dime. And when he learned he'd been conned, he couldn't take it to the law. He'd have to tell them he had been taking a sixty-thousand-dollar bribe to a man pretending to be a field representative of a huge corporation. He would have to tell them he'd paid forty thousand dollars for worthless equity in a defunct marina. If a story like that got out, every member of the Sunnydale business community would laugh himself sick. So he didn't have a chance. Poor LaFrance. Exactly the same situation he put Tush in. Smashed flat, plucked clean. No mercy for Tush. No mercy for LaFrance.

I walked out and found Connie by the equipment barn. We strolled over and sat on the mossy old stone bench under the huge banyan tree in the side yard.

I told her that our fish had gobbled the hunk of ripe bait, and the hook was perfectly set. A very greedy fish, that one.

Her weather-beaten face twisted in mocking amusement. "Maybe he's just greedy enough so your friend should be a little careful leaving that place, Trav."

"He's got a self-addressed envelope with him, and he walks right from The Annex through into the motel lobby and drops it in the slot. It's got more than enough stamps on it. It'll be solidly sealed with tape, and the money will have cardboard and a rubber band around it. Connie, again thanks. I'm going to head back."

'You come anytime, hear? Are you going to make our gal rich?"

"Let's say reasonably comfortable, if all goes well."

"And you'll have sixty more to fool with?"

"Meyer wouldn't like that verb."

"Ahh, McGee, all those poor bastards who'll wish that Tush Bannon never had a friend like you. Anyway, when things get just a little quieter-if they ever do-please let me know because then I think would be a good time for you to phone Jan and tell her that there are papers to be signed or something, any excuse for her to come down there. I'll talk her into it and keep the kids here, and when she gets down, you make her stay awhile. She needs a change. She needs to get away from the kids and away from here. She ought to get a lot of sun, and walk on a beach and swim and catch a fish and hear music and be near happy people. Okay?"

"Okay Connie. Soon."

At eight thirty that evening the bing-bong announced that somebody had stepped over the gangplank chain and come aboard. I looked out and saw Meyer. I let him in.

He had a grin like a piano keyboard. He fell onto the yellow couch and said, "Build me one of those death-dealing in-and-out jobs named after somebody who's name escapes me."

"You'll get maudlin."

"So?"

"Any trouble at all?"

"None. You know, I have seldom seen or touched a greasier, grimier wad of money. I didn't know hundred-dollar bills ever got so cruddy. They must have come from a fondler."

"LaFrance was calm?"

"He stammered and sweat and his eyes bulged and he spilled his drink and mine. Otherwise, a cucumber. By now he's got the greeting card. By now he knows how it was done, by you switching claim checks as you turned away from him to walk over to me. By now he knows you picked it up ten minutes after it was checked. By now maybe he has leaned across the desk and hit Harry in the mouth. What a pity not to see him read the nice card I bought him."

"You'll get to see a certain amount of agitation."

"You can arrange that?"

"The phone is turned off. He'll be here in the morning. Count on it. Come over early. We'll play a little chess."

"I should be down watching the board. Today it moved almost too good. Volume is picking up. Very close to two points. Seven grand, practically, for the widow. I've got a friend on the floor of the exchange keeping in close touch with the fellow who maintains the position in Fletcher, and he calls me at my brokers the minute anything starts to look sour. And I should put in some orders for her out of the sixty. We'll have five days to meet the margin call. I don't think the mail takes that long from Broward Beach to here. At least not usually."

"We could be having a little game on the sun deck. The forecast is warm and bright. We invite him aboard. We have a little chat. He goes away."

"So I could phone in the first order. So it isn't as risky now in the beginning as it is going to get. Also, there is a variation of the queen's pawn opening I think I can break your back with. You know, you don't look so great."

"I brood a lot."

He finished the last of the drink in one huge gulp. He shuddered and got up and said, "Now if I can be standing by the bunk when that hits me…"

He crinkled up at us and said in his mellow bassbaritone, "Morning, gents. Nice day out today."

"Getting any?" Meyer said contemptuously.

"Can't complain, gents. It's the best season for it." He came to a momentary point and then lengthened his relaxed stride. I turned and saw two girls in beach togs with pale northern faces and legs, heading from the dock area toward the shops. Just as they disappeared from sight beyond the palm fronds Hero was ten feet behind them and, I suspected, clearing his throat and checking the third finger, left hand. That was his quaint little conceit, his only concession to any rule of human behavior. He proclaimed it often, with great conviction and emphasis. "I hold marriage sacred, and never in my life have I knowingly courted nor touched a lady united in the holy bonds of matrimony, no sir. It's something no gentleman would do."

A little later Meyer went below and phoned his broker and came back acting less restless. "It opened up a whole point, and then a couple of pretty good blocks came on the market and knocked it down to an eighth below yesterday's close. Insiders unloading, maybe. If so, in another week or two, they'll be slitting their throats at what they could have gotten."

At a few minutes before eleven, Preston LaFrance came along the dock at a half lope. He looked rumpled. He hadn't shaved. He came to a lurching halt and stared up at us.

"Doctor Mey…" It came out falsetto, so he coughed and tried again. "Doctor Meyerl"

"Hidey, Press," I said. "How you, old buddy? Come on aboard. Ladderway up here is on the port side." He came clambering up and came over and stood beside us. We studied the chess pieces.

"Doctor Meyer!"

"Just Meyer," he said. "Plain old Meyer."

"But don't you work for-"

"Work? Who should work? I'm an economist. I live on a little cruiser that has a case of dry rot lately. If I decide to get out the tools and go to work on it, then I'll be working."

"Then there isn't any… offer for the land?"

We both looked up at him: "Offer?" I said.

"Land?" said Meyer.

"Oh Jesus, you two were in this lousy racket together. You are a stinking pair of con men. Oh Jesus God!"

"Please!" said Meyer. "I'm trying to figure out why he moved his bishop."

"I'm going to have you two bastards thrown in jails."

"McGee," said Meyer, "let's finish the game after the noise stops." He stood up and leaned against the rail. Meyer in his white swim trunks reminds me a little bit of a man who is all dressed to go to a masquerade as a dancing bear. All that is left to do is put on the bear head and the collar. He stared at LaFrance? "Jail? For what?"

"You two took a hunnert thousand dollars away from me! More than that! That Bannon place isn't worth half the mortgage on it!"

"Mr. LaFrance," I said, "the records will show that I paid a legitimate fifteen thousand for Mrs. Bannon's equity in the Bannon Boatel, and then I turned around and sold that same equity to you for forty thousand. And I think that your banker will remember how anxious you've been to get your hands on Bannon's ten acres on the river."

"But… but… damn it, that was because you said…" He stopped himself and took a deep breath. "Listen. Forget the forty thousand. Okay. You suckered me. But the sixty thousand I gave this man last night, that's something else again. I've got to have it back."

"You gave me sixty thousand dollars!" Meyer said in vast astonishment. "Look. Stop standing in the sun. Get some rest."

He stood there, blinking, clenching and unclenching his boney fists. His color was bad. He smiled what I would imagine he thought was an ingratiating and friendly smile. "You took me good, boys. Slick and perfect. You made a nice score off ol' Press LaFrance. And I guess you're not going to give it back just because I say pretty please with sugar. But you don't understand. I had to put up the Carbee option to get the sixty thousand. Now, if I had it back, I could go ahead and make my deal with Santo. That's what I got to trade with, boys. We'll draw it up legal. You'll get the sixty thousand back that you stole off me, and twenty more to sweeten the pot."

"If I had sixty thousand," said Meyer, "would I be hanging around with such riffraff? I would be riding around in a white convertible with a beautiful woman in furs and diamonds."

"How can you lose?" LaFrance said. "There's no way you can lose."

"No thanks," I said. "What shape does that leave you in, buddy?"

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "I just plain can't afford to get left in the kind of shape I'd be in. Why I would be worse off than dead broke. I would be a mile underground, boys. I would be attached and garnisheed the rest of my natural life. I would never have dime one to call my own the rest of my days."

"Now you know how it feels, Press."

"How what feels?"

"How some of the people felt who got in your way. Like Bannon."

He peered at me. "You bleeding for Bannon? That was straight-out business. He was squattin' right in the way of progress, and he was so dumb it took him a long time to catch on, is all."

"It would have helped him a lot if he'd had a brother-in-law on the County Commission."

"What in the wide world is eating on you, McGee? My God, there's a whole world full of Tush Bannons stumbling around, and they get et up left and right, and that's what makes the world go 'round. I put Monk onto some good things and he owed me a favor."

"And you and Monk let Freddy Hazzard know you'd appreciate him leaning a little hard on Bannon any chance he had?"

"Now, we never meant anything like that!" He smiled. "You're just trying to sweat me up a little. Isn't that right? Look boys, it won't improve the deal any. Twenty more on top of the sixty is the best I can do."

He was such a weak miserable, unsatisfying target. He still thought he was one of the good guys. I tried to reach him, just a little.

"If you could bring in a thousand-percent profit a day, LaFrance, I wouldn't throw pocket change on the deck there in front of you. If I was on fire, I wouldn't buy water from you. I came prowling for you, LaFrance. If the thing you cared most about in the world was that face you wear, I would have changed it permanently, little by little. If your most precious possession was a beautiful wife, she'd be right down there below in the master stateroom waiting for you to leave so I could get back to her. If you juggled for a living, friend, you'd now have broken wrists and broken elbows."

"What the hell is the matter with you?"

"Get off the boat. Go ashore. Tush Bannon was one of the best friends I ever had. All you give a damn about is money, so that's where I hit you."

"Best… friend?" he whispered.

And I watched the gray appear. That gray like a wet stone. Gray for fright. Gray for guilt. Gray for despair. His mouth worked. "You… rooned me, all right. Ever'thing I worked all my life for is gone. You finished me off, McGee."

"Wait a minute," Meyer said. "Maybe I've got an idea."

LaFrance came to point like a good bird dog. "Yes? Yes? What?"

Meyer smiled at him benignly. "The answer was staring us right in the face all the time. It's so simplel What you do is kill yourself!"

LaFrance stared at him, tried to comprehend the joke, tried even to smile, but the smile fell away. Meyer's smile stayed put. But not one gleam of hunior touched Meyer's little bright blue eyes. And I do not know many people who could have stared into that smile for very long. Certainly LaFrance couldn't. In the same soft persuasion a lover might use, Meyer said, "Do yourself a favor. Go kill yourself. Then you won't even know or care if you're broke. Maybe it hurts a little, but just for a split second. Use a gun or a rope, or go jump off something high. Go ahead. Die a little."

It is a kind of rat-frenzy I suppose, that dreadful and murderous fury of the weak ones when the door of the trap slams shut. With a mindless squalling he plunged at Meyer, long yellowed ridged thumbnails going for the meat of the eyes, knees jacking at belly and groin. The squalling and flailing and gouging lasted perhaps two and a half seconds before I clamped my forearm across his throat. I pulled him back away from Meyer, spun him and let go. He ended up against the far rail.

Obscenities are tiresome. He kept repeating himself. I cuffed him quiet and he went down the ladderway and I helped him along the way and onto the dock.

He stayed there perhaps three minutes. He was going to come back with a gun. He was going to bring friends. He was going to have my boat blown up. He was going to have it burned to the waterline. He was going to hire some boys from back in the swamps to come with their knives some dark night and turn us into sopranos. We were going to be awful sorry we'd ever messed with Preston LaFrance and you can by God believe it.

His eyes bulged and his voice had hoarsened and the saliva shone on his chin. And finally he hitched up his pants and walked away. His walk was that of a man wearing new bifocals and not being very sure of how far away the ground might be. Meyer was able to stand up straight without much discomfort, and I dabbed iodine on the thumbnail gouge under his left eye. He seemed troubled, thoughtful, far away. I told him LaFrance wouldn't make any trouble. I asked him what was bothering him.

Meyer, scowling, pinched the bridge of his nose. "Me? Did you hear me? On the sidewalk if there is a bug, I change my step and miss him. For me the business of the hooks almost spoils fishing. Me! I don't understand it. Such a rotten anger I had, Travis! Thick in the throat like a sickness. Oh, he won't kill himself. Not that one. He'll live on and on so he can whine. But it was like changing your step to squash the bug, not flat, just a little squash so he can crawl a little bit, slow, leaking his juices. McGee, my friend, I am ashamed of that kind of anger. I am ashamed of being able to do something like that. I said to myself when I first got into your line of… endeavor, I said forgive me for saying this to you-I said I will go only so far into it. There are things McGee does that somehow hurt McGee, hurt him in the way he thinks of himself. I talked to Muggsie. This business of the pretty little woman who just somehow happened to go off with Hero, that wasn't pretty, and you were punishing something in yourself. Now I find myself a little bit less in my own eyes. Maybe this is a bad business you're in, Travis. Is there this kind of ugly anger in a man that waits for some kind of virtuous excuse? Was it there in me, waiting for a reason only? Travis, my friend, is this the little demonstration of how half the evil in the world is done in the name of honor?"

He wanted help I couldn't give him. One does not pat a Meyer on the head and give him a lollypop. He had overturned one of the personal stones in my garden too, and I could watch leggedy things scuttling away into comforting darkness.

I said, "You still didn't figure out why I moved my bishop."

He sat down and fixed a total concentration on the board. He gave a little nod at last and pushed a pawn one space forward, spoiling the sequence I was planning. He pinched at the bridge of his nose again, then smiled across at me, a hairy Meyer-smile, and said, "You know, I think I must have taken some sort of a dislike to that fellow."

Two days later, Friday afternoon, Meyer came aboard the Flush at four thirty, just after I got back from the beach. A mass of that arctic air that Canada sends down free of charge had begun to change the day a little before noon. It had come down so swiftly I knew the grove people would be worried. There were frost bulletins on all the broadcasts. An edge in the crisp northeast breeze had cleaned the long beaches of everybody except diehard Yankees and one masochistic beach bum named Travis McGee. I had been taking out all the kinks, in the muscles in both body and brain, of too many sedentary days, swimming parallel to shore, in and out of the surf line, for all the distance, endurance and occasional speed sprints I could manage. It had been hard work to even stay warm, and I had ground away at it, breaststroke, backstroke, crawl, until on my chattering lope back to the Flush I felt as if I had pulled most of the long muscles loose from the joints and sockets and hinges they were supposed to control.

Any persistent idiot, like Hero, can strain away at the door-frame isometrics and build impressive wads of chunky fibrous muscle with which you can lift the front end of any sedan to make the girls say Oooo. But if you want the kind of muscle structure that will move you from here to there very very quickly, that will enable you to slip a punch, snatch a moving wrist, turn a fall into a shoulder roll that will put you back on the balls of your feet, balanced and ready, then you'd better be willing to endure total expenditure over long, active and dogged periods. I was going to be slowed down by time and attrition, and maybe it had begun, but not to a degree as yet for me to notice, nor to a degree to make me doubt myself-and doubt, of course, is more fatal than slowed reflexes.

I had the heat going aboard. Meyer drank coffee and worked on his investment figures while I hotshowered the salt away, dressed in ancient, soft, treasured, threadbare checked shirt, gray Daks, and a pair of Herter's Two-Point woodsman's shoes, of oiled, hand-treated bull hide, worn to a condition as flexible and pliable as an Eskimo wife. In the shower I had begun to raise tentative voice in song, but had remembered another day, another shower, when that same song had been interrupted by a lady named Puss handing me in a well-made sample of the drink known as a McGee. So that song clogged and died, and I dressed and made the drink myself and took it into the lounge.