Bright Orange for the Shroud (6 page)

G. Harrison Gisik. The old one. The sick one. Tall and frail and old and quiet. Bad color. Moved slowly and with apparent great effort. From Montreal.

Like Stebber, G. Harrison Gisik had no woman with him. The other two each had one. The other two were each local.

Crane Watts. Local attorney. Dark, goodlooking, friendly. And unremarkable. He came equipped with wife. Vivian. Called Viv. Dark, sturdy, pretty—scored by sun and wind—an athlete. Tennis, sailing, golf, riding. She was, Arthur thought, a lady.

Boone Waxwell. The other local. From a local swamp, possibly. Sizable. Rough and hard and loud. An accent from way back in the mangroves. Black curly hair. Pale pale blue eyes. Sallowy face. Boone Waxwell, known as Boo. And he came equipped with a non-wife, a redhead of exceptional mammary dimension. Dilly Starr. As loud as good ol’ Boo, and, as soon as she got tight, slightly more obscene. And she got tight quickly.

“So okay,” I said. “The four members of the syndicate.
Stebber, Gisik, Crane, Waxwell. And Stebber the only one living aboard. A party, with Boo and his broad making all you nicer folks a little edgy. So?”

“We sat around and had drinks. There was a man aboard who made drinks and passed things, a Cuban maybe. Mario, they called him. When Calvin Stebber had a chance, when Dilly was in the head and Boo had gone ashore to buy cigars, he explained to us that sometimes, in deals, you weren’t able to pick your associates on the basis of their social graces. ‘Waxwell is the key to this project,’ he said.”

“How soon did they let you in on it?” I asked him.

“Not right away. It was about two weeks. Wilma kept after him, and she kept telling me that he said there wasn’t a chance, that there wasn’t really enough to go around as it was. But she didn’t give up hope. Finally one morning he phoned me from the yacht and asked me to stop by alone. He was alone too. He said I had a very persistent wife. Persistence alone wouldn’t have been enough. But this deal had dragged on so long that one of the principals had backed out. He said he felt obligated to offer it to other associates, but as long as I was on the scene and because he was so fond of Wilma, he had talked Mr. Gisik into agreeing to let me in, with certain stipulations.”

“Is that when he explained the deal to you?”

“Just in broad outline, Trav, not in detail. We were in the main lounge, and he spread the maps out on the chart table. What he called the Kippler Tract was marked off and tinted. Sixty-one thousand acres. It was a strange shape, beginning north of Marco and getting wider over east of Everglades City, and going practically to the Dade County line. The syndicate was negotiating the option of it on a two-year basis at thirty dollars an acre against a purchase price of a hundred and
twenty an acre. As soon as they had a firm option, he and another group were setting up a development corporation to buy the tract from the syndicate for three hundred and eighty dollars an acre. It meant that, after taking off syndicate overhead and operating expenses, the members would end up with five dollars for every dollar invested in the option—which would come to one million eight hundred and thirty thousand just for the option. He showed me the prospectus of what Deltona was doing at Marco Island, where the Collier interests along with Canadian money were planning a community of thirty thousand people. He said his staff had investigated every aspect of the plan, projected growth, water resources and so on, and if we could just get the option, it couldn’t miss.

“Then he told me that he was in for seven hundred thousand, Gisik for four hundred thousand, a New York associate for five hundred thousand. The remaining two hundred and thirty thousand was represented by Crane Watts and Boo Waxwell, one hundred even by Watts. He said those small pieces were a nuisance, but it was essential to have a bright young lawyer on the scene, and that Boo Waxwell was the one with the close association with the Kippler heirs and able, if anybody was, to talk them into the deal. The New York associate had bowed out and there was five hundred thousand open. He said my five hundred thousand would become three million, a net return of one million nine after taxes, and my investment back.

“I said I’d like one hundred thousand worth, and he looked at me as if I was a dog on the street and he rolled up the maps saying he hadn’t realized he was wasting his time as well as mine, and thanks for stopping by. Wilma was furious. She said I’d blown the whole thing. She said she’d talk to Calvin Stebber
again and see if there was any chance at all of his taking me in on the basis of two hundred thousand. I said it didn’t seem smart to gamble the whole thing, and she said it wasn’t a gamble.”

“Then he let you in.”

“Reluctantly. I sent an airmail special to my brokerage house to sell at current market and airmail me a certified check for two hundred thousand. We met on the yacht, I signed the syndicate agreement, and it was witnessed and notarized. It gave me 9 and 15/100ths shares in the syndicate.”

“And you didn’t have a lawyer of your own check it out.”

“Travis … you can’t understand how it was. They seemed so important. They were doing me a favor to let me in. Without Wilma, they would never have let me in. It was my chance to afford her. And from the moment I’d messed the deal up when I had the first chance, Wilma wouldn’t let me near her. She’d hardly speak to me. She moved to a different bedroom in the beach house. And … they said it was a standard agreement. It was about six pages, single-spaced, on legal size paper, and I had to sign four copies. Wilma stood with her hand on my shoulder as I signed, and gave me a big kiss when it was over.”

“Stebber left soon after that?”

“A day or two later. About then Boo Waxwell began to hang around. He’d drop in without warning. It was obvious to me that he was attracted to Wilma. And she seemed too friendly toward him. When I complained to her, she said Calvin Stebber had said we had to be friendly to him. I tried to find out from Waxwell how things were going, but he’d just laugh and tell me not to sweat.”

“When did they ask for more?”

“On August first I got a letter from Crane Watts. It referred to paragraph something, sub-paragraph something, and asked for my check in the amount of thirty-three thousand three hundred and thirty-three dollars and thirty-four cents at my earliest convenience. I was shocked. I dug out my copy and looked at the paragraph. It said that members of the syndicate could be assessed on the basis of participation to cover additional expenses. I went to see him right away. He wasn’t as friendly as before. I hadn’t seen his office before. It was north of the city on the Tamiami Trail, and it was just a cubicle in a roadside real estate office. He acted as if I was taking up valuable time. He said that negotiations had progressed to the point where the Kippler heirs had decided they wanted thirty-five dollars option money per acre, which meant the syndicate members had to come up with an additional three hundred and five thousand dollars, and simple mathematics showed that 9.15 percent of that was what he had requested by letter.

“I said that I didn’t think I could make it, and that I guessed I’d just have to accept a proportional reduction of my share of the venture. He gave me a funny look and said he could understand my request, but if I had examined the subparagraph immediately following, certainly I’d realize it couldn’t be done. I hadn’t brought it. He got out an office copy and showed me the paragraph. It said, in effect, that if any participant failed to meet approved assessments, his share of the venture was forfeit, and would be divided among the remaining members in proportion to the interest they held at the time. He said it was perfectly legal, and the document had been signed, notarized and recorded.

“I went back to the beach house and it took me quite a
while to get it through Wilma’s head. Finally she understood that unless I came up with the additional money, we’d lose the two hundred thousand. She said it wasn’t fair. She said she would phone Calvin Stebber and get it all straightened out. I don’t know where she finally located him. She didn’t want me in the room. She said I made her nervous. After she talked to him, she came out and told me that he’d said his hands were tied. If he made any special arrangement for me, the others would raise hell. She said she’d asked him if he’d buy my share out, but he said his cash position at the moment was too low even to consider it at that time. He recommended raising the money, saying it was undoubtedly the last assessment, and he was certain the deal would go through any day. Wilma was agitated for a long time, but finally we sat down and tried to work it all out. I had, at current market, about fifty-eight thousand left in just two stocks. Standard Oil of New Jersey and Continental Can. I was going to have to sell something anyway to meet current expenses, as we had five hundred in the bank and three thousand in unpaid bills. I left twenty thousand in stocks, paid Crane Watts and the bills and put three thousand in the checking account.

“On September first the option price went up to forty dollars an acre, and they asked for exactly the same amount again. By then I had four hundred in the bank and the twenty thousand. But I knew we
had
to raise it. I’d taken the agreement to another lawyer by then. He said it was ironclad, and only a damn fool would have signed such a thing. That was the time Wilma really cooperated. I thought that she was really beginning to understand the value of money. We sat down together and put everything into the pot. The rest of my stock, the car,
my cameras, her furs and jewels. She went over to Miami and sold her stuff. We were just able to get it all together, with about four hundred dollars over. We paid off, and gave up the beach house and moved to a cheap motel room five or six blocks north of the intersection of Fifth Avenue and the Trail, the Citrus Blossom it was called. We cooked on a grill in the room.

She kept asking what in the world we’d ever do if they asked for more. And she’d cry. It was her idea that I should make up a list of old friends who might come in on a good thing. She kept after me. I didn’t want to do it. Finally I had a list of thirty-two reasonably successful people who might be willing to trust me. She rewrote my letter several times, making it sound like the greatest opportunity in the world, and we made up thirty-two originals on the motel typewriter and sent them off, asking for a minimum of one thousand each, and any amount up to ten thousand they might want to put in. Then we waited. There were sixteen replies. Eight of them said they were sorry. Eight sent money. Four of them sent a thousand each. Two sent five hundred. One sent a hundred dollars and one sent fifty dollars. Fifty-one hundred and fifty that we put in the joint account. No letters came in the next week. I sent signed notes to the eight friends as I had promised in the original letter. Then I got a call at the motel from Crane Watts. Calvin Stebber was staying at the Three Crowns in Sarasota and he wanted us to come up and see him. Watts said it might be good news. Wilma had such a headache she said I better go alone. We had no car. I took a Trailways bus to Sarasota and got there at five o’clock, and at the desk they told me Mr. Stebber had checked out but he had left a message for a Mr. Wilkinson.
I identified myself and they gave it to me. It merely said that it looked as if it might be another six months or so before the deal would go through, and probably before the time was up there would be another assessment, just a small one, for operating expenses. My share would probably not be over eight or ten thousand.

“I just sat there. I couldn’t seem to think clearly. I took a bus back. I didn’t get to the motel until a little after midnight. My key wouldn’t work. I hammered on the door. Wilma didn’t answer. I went to the office and the owner came to the door after I’d rung the night bell a long time. He said the lock had been changed and he hadn’t been paid for two weeks, and he was holding my clothes and luggage until I paid up. I said there was some mistake, that my wife had paid him. He said she hadn’t. I asked where she was, and he said that in the middle of the afternoon he’d seen her and some man carrying suitcases out to a car and driving away, and it made him think we were going to beat him out of the rent, so he had put my stuff in storage and changed the lock. He hadn’t noticed the car particularly, just that it was a palecolored car with Florida plates. She hadn’t left any message for me. I walked around the rest of the night. When the bank opened I found out she’d cleaned out the account the previous morning, when I thought she’d gone grocery shopping and came home with that headache.”

Toward the end of it his voice had grown dull and listless. Chook stirred and sighed. A gust of the freshening breeze swung the boat, and some predatory night bird went by, honking with anguish.

“But you found her again, later on,” I said, to get him started.

“I’m pretty tired.”

Chook reached and patted him. “You go to bed, honey. Want me to fix you anything?”

“No thanks,” he murmured. He got up with an effort and went below, saying goodnight to us as the screened door hissed shut.

“Poor wounded bastard,” Chook said in a half whisper. “It was a very thorough job. They got everything except the clothes he had on. They even milked old friendships.”

“He hasn’t much resistance yet. Or much spirit.”

“Both of those are up to you.”

“Sure, but try to make it a little easier on him, Trav, huh?”

“She took off in late September. It’s late May, Chook. The trail is eight months cold. Where are they, and how much do they have left? And just how smart are they? One thing seems obvious. Wilma was the bird dog. Rope a live one and bring him to Naples. Remember, she got booted off that cruiser out of Savannah. I think there was one on there a little too shrewd for her, so she took a long look at what we had around here. And picked Arthur. Marriage can lull suspicion, and she used sex as a whip, and when she had him completely tamed and sufficiently worried about money, she contacted Stebber to tell him the pigeon was ready for the pot. It was a professional job, honey. They made him ache to get in on it. They made him so eager he’d have signed his own death warrant without reading it.”