Tornado Pratt (33 page)

“There’s sure going to be one hell of a storm. My name’s Tornado Pratt.”

“Gabelli—George Gabelli. My wife: Maria.”

He had a slight Italian accent, but, with his grey hair and square face, he didn’t look too Italian while the lady was a typical, plump Italian mama. I tried again:

“Hope I don’t make you nervous. I live about twenty miles down the coast. Often come here to fish.”

The next instant, lightning split the air close by and, almost simultaneously, a brilliant crash of thunder deafened us. Gabelli jumped to his feet, tugging the gun from his pocket. Maria gave a cry. I was none too happy at seeing that automatic fluttering like a storm-tossed leaf and I murmured soothingly:

“Let’s take it easy, huh? It’s only thunder.”

George looked down sheepishly at his gun, frowned and replaced it in his pocket. I said:

“You’re very nervous, Mr Gabelli.”

“Sure. I got reason to be.”

“Well, I don’t know what you’re afraid of but I don’t mean you any harm. I didn’t know there was anyone in this shack. I just walked too far from my car and didn’t want to get wet. There’s no need to shoot me.”

And I gave him a big, disarming smile. He stuck it for a moment then he nodded rapidly with a wry smile and pulled his gun-hand out of his pocket without the weapon.

“We’re crazy. We’ve had such—bad experiences—anyway, I’m pleased to meet you, Mr—what was it?”

“Pratt. Tornado Pratt.”

“Say, have I heard that name some place?”

“Could be—but it’s a long time since I could count on it.”

Well, we shook hands at last. And after that we talked for a couple of hours. That’s how long that fierce storm raged and kept us penned up in the shack. After a while, we made up a fire and,
sure enough, found a can of Nescafé and sipped steaming black coffee. At first we just talked desultorily but then something occurred to me and I asked:

“Did you find the door open too—or did you have a key?”

Well, it turned out they’d been given the key by the agent who was handling the property, five hundred acres of scrub, wood and coast. The Gabellis were thinking of buying it and building
themselves
a house. I enthused:

“Fine place to settle. I’ve been here two years.”

But Maria then got a bit tetchy and grumbled under her breath. This initiated a family squabble, part in Italian and part in
querulous
English. It took me some time to get the hang of it but I gradually perceived that this was a routine part of their life, looking at potential sites for building themselves a retirement dream house, and that Mrs Gabelli was disgruntled because, after five years of looking, they still hadn’t settled on anything. She seemed to blame her husband for this. He turned to me and admitted:

“She’s right. Trouble is, I’m scared.”

“Scared? Of what?”

“Wolves—human wolves. I want to live in the country but I can’t bring myself to abandon the security of the city—such as it is.”

Then he told me of the family’s grim experiences. His second daughter had been kidnapped and raped by three hoods. She’d been returned alive, after a ransom of a hundred thousand bucks had been correctly dropped, but she was now “a nervous wreck” and “would never find a good husband”. George’s city home had been robbed and defiled with excrement and obscene scrawls and, worst of all, he himself had been assailed at his office by safe crackers who, when he walked in on them by chance, beat him near to death, tied him up and left him to rot. He’d lain bleeding and unconscious for thirty-six hours that Christmas—his family believing him to be in Canada—until a cleaner found him. The last item in the sick catalogue was that Maria had been mugged and lost a handbag full of dough. George was longing for nature but scared that it would come laced with psychopathic hoodlums who’d have him and his wife at their mercy.

Naturally, I suggested to him one of the estates which has
protection
, armed security guards and so on but George, who had a peasant feeling for the outdoors, said he’d looked at a few of those and they were “phoney”. So that set me thinking, Horace. When the storm was over, I took the Gabellis’ address and claimed
I might just be able to help them. I’d formed the idea of Paradise in my mind already.

Raising funds was the first stage of the operation. I reckoned I’d need about five million. First I got Alex, who was now a media star with a regular, networked television show, to put up a hundred thousand bucks for working capital. Then I took an office in Miami and got out prospectuses and dummy brochures. I contacted local money and big corporations that needed to diversify and within six months I had the five million subscribed.

The idea was for a small estate of about forty homes, scattered about! That was the unique feature. It was not to be an institution with a perimeter fence but just a flock of attractive country houses. The thing that made it Paradise was the security system. What I offered was a complete security package. Naturally, the place could never be as safe as some of the islands with guarded bridges, making them a kind of luxury Alcatraz, but I provided, along with the house, trained guard dogs, electronic warning systems, twenty-four hour automobile patrols with the guarantee that an armed guard would never be more than ten minutes from the front door. But the original gimmick and the heart of the plan was the “refuge”. Into each property I built two refuge rooms—one on each floor. These were, in effect, massive and virtually impregnable vaults, with their own air supply, drinking water and food. They didn’t need much food because they would never have to be occupied for more than a few minutes, hour at the most, but an ordinary-sized family could have occupied one in relative comfort for two weeks if
necessary
. The idea was: the slightest disturbance, monitored by
electronics
and dogs, and the occupants of the house retreated into a “refuge”, slamming the door behind them. When they did this, a sign lit up on the front saying: security guards will be here within ten minutes. Then all they had to do was press a button, triggering an alarm at security HQ, and then sit it out, totally secure, until the guards roared up and released them. Of course, the vaults could be opened from within too if necessary.

They were a fantastic success. In the whole history of Paradise, Horace, only one of our clients was ever physically assaulted. The refuge vaults have been used, to date, eight hundred and
seventy-four
times for genuine alarms. There have, naturally, been many thousands of false alarms too but the system was designed to accommodate that probability. Three Paradise homes have been
burnt down and the inhabitants knew nothing about it until they were released from their vaults by the guards and found
smouldering
ruin all about them.

In the ten Paradises at present inhabited throughout the United States and Hawaii, one thousand, nine hundred and twelve
retirement
families enjoy all the benefits of unspoiled surroundings with the very latest in—

What you could do, boy is take the dough I’ve left you—which you’ll find is a tidy sum—and write a book that will generate love because—that other book was crap, boy, and deserved what it got although I concede my action was disgusting but—

After you’d been with me for more than a year and I had
affection
for you and I believed you had affection for me. Which I still believe, Horace, but it was a big shock to me when I misplaced my car keys and needing them bad and thinking maybe I’d lent them to you and not being able to locate you finally forced open your desk and found

That’s what you called me in your novel: Big Mac.

At first, when I picked up that manuscript I was amused because you’d been so tight-lipped about it. No one in the house had you down as a budding author. You were always buying books and we figured you were reading when you locked yourself in for long spells. But it seemed you’d mostly been writing. My first reaction was a thrill of pride because you occupied the position of a son in my mind and I would have been proud to have a son who was a famous writer.

Then I just started flipping through the pages but very soon I became aware of a breathless feeling. I wouldn’t admit what I’d perceived for some time and just went on reading grimly but finally I had to concede that the chief character in that book was based on me. Big Mac—a kind of loud dinosaur, whooping like an Indian, steered about by his prick and grabbing at all the cookies in the jar. That book hurt me, son, but now, looking back, I can admit it contained some truth. Not much, because how can any book truly represent a man’s life? I reckon if you could slice through a man’s brain and reveal all the activity happening there at any one instant, the flashing of his thought back and forwards in time, and the millions of connections forming and reforming, why I reckon you’d have the material not just for one book but for a hundred libraries. So you have to admit, Horace, that any book you write
is going to be very selective. But what bugged me, son, was why, living under my roof and breaking bread at my table, you’d selected things—or at least imagined things that corresponded with what you’d observed and what I’d told you—which made me out a rumbustious buffoon. Why did you do that, Horace? It gave me the feeling you were a spy, that you hadn’t really come to find me because of romantic interest but because you were looking for material to turn into the kind of witty, bitchy book which is all that comes out of England these days, or which is the impression I receive from book reviews in the
New
York
Times
. So my first reaction to your book, Horace, was rage and if you’d been in the house then I’d have come at you with balled fists. Then—maybe it was rage and maybe it was those bad oysters we ate the night before but just at that moment my bowels heaved and I had to high-tail it into the john. I took your book with me and by the time I’d unloaded I’d read some more pages and was blind with fury. So I wiped my ass on your book, Horace. Naturally, the next minute I regretted my beastly action but the fouled pages had already been flushed away.

The rest of that day I was grouchy because I had a great sadness. It seemed to me that you hated me or, at best, ridiculed me and, although maybe I’d not acknowledged it to myself, by then I’d come to love you, boy.

The next couple of days I kept waiting for the explosion when you discovered your book had been tampered with. But nothing happened and finally the suspense got too much to bear. We were in the kitchen, me fixing coffee and you making sandwiches to take walking. I asked:

“Been working on your book lately?”

“No, as a matter—”

Then your head jerked towards me and you stopped buttering bread. Your lovely face took on a puzzled expression but you just asked mildly:

“How did you know about my book?”

“You haven’t touched it for the last couple of days?”

“No, I don’t think so. No, I haven’t.”

Then the frown of reproach began to form. You protested:

“Look here, you haven’t—”

“I’ve seen it. I had to go to your desk, for my ignition keys. Had to bust it open.”

You gave a little jump which made you look like a kid or a girl.

“You did what?”

“Had to bust open your desk. I needed the car keys.”

“They’re not—I’ve never—look here, you didn’t read—”

“I read some of it.”

You maybe went a little pale. You turned back to your sandwich and picked up the knife but never used it. You said bitterly:

“I see.”

“Son, that book of yours made me so mad, I tore out a couple of pages and—burned them. So that’s what you can expect to find.”

“You had no right—”

I cut you off with a great roar:

“I had every goddamm right. It’s my desk and my house and my key and my car!”

Then I raged at you, son, about your meanness and treachery. I hand it to you. You bore it with great dignity. You faced me and, when I finally ran down, you just turned on your heel and marched out into the garden. That seemed like cool contempt, boy, and I stormed out after you and began cursing again. I told you to pack your lousy bags and get the hell out of my house. I warned you that if you ever published your sheaf of crap I’d sue the balls off you, if you had any. Even while I was erupting, Horace, I was drinking in your fair, frail face which was the echo of my love’s. You just gazed ahead of you, away from me this time, and when I again dried up, you turned to me and said quietly:

“I’ll certainly go if you want me to. But I’d hate you to think that—that I don’t like you.”

That seemed such damned hypocrisy, after what you’d written, that I felt an impulse to slug you. But I also wanted to believe it was true. I saw the labrador barking up a tree down by the parrot garden. I shook my head and tried to make with a bitter, ironic laugh. But I was surprised as you were, Horace, when what I heard was a kind of gulp and then a string of sobs. You exclaimed:

“Oh, God, I’ve hurt you. Look, I—Tornado—just—just wait here for one minute.”

I sank down on to a log bench and a couple of minutes later you flew back with the cruel manuscript. You asked urgently:

“Tell me, how much did you read?”

By that time, I’d pulled myself together somewhat and was calm.

“The first couple of chapters.”

“Well, read this page—please! It’s important.”

I reluctantly accepted the page and read it. Nothing registered
because I was too distressed and so I read it again. I found it was a description of a selfish old lady. I asked:

“Okay, I’ve read it—so?”

“Well—that passage is based on my mother. And I love her very much. You’ve got to believe that.”

I nearly smiled, Horace, at the American expression fluting from your lips in that upper-class British accent. But I just said:

“Okay, I believe it.”

“And—this—read this page. Please.”

So I read it and asked:

“Well?”