Condominium (22 page)

“No, no,” Marty said impatiently. “Who blames you? Now, once again, Lew, what I want from you is a rundown on all the permissions and I want your assurance nobody can put a stick in the wheels.”

“Don’t get the idea there isn’t going to be some screaming. There is. Lots of it. But everything was properly done. I’ll go to court on any of it, and I’ll successfully fight any injunction to shut us down. I went over it all last night with Denniver. The big thing on our side is that construction is falling off so bad, nobody really wants to kill this kind of big new project.”

“The ecology freaks?” Kimber asked.

“They’ll be the loudest,” Traff said. “When does Herb move in?”

“He’ll hit there with all his big yellow machines next Saturday morning. Saturday because the government is all closed down for the weekend. Mike’s outfit, Marine Projects, should have the dredge, barges and draglines in place about the same time.”

Marty nodded and closed his eyes and pursed his lips. Everything seemed to be all right, but it didn’t feel quite right. There was less excitement than he had anticipated. A lot of the risk had gone out of it. And a lot of the fun. He had his personal million in capital gains. By hard scrambling he had managed to short three blocks of EMMS shares, eight thousand, five thousand and three thousand.
Sixteen thousand shares. He had dumped three hundred and twenty thousand into his margin account to finance that short position. His brokers hadn’t been able to find any more to borrow. It had faded to eighteen dollars on the big board, giving him a thirty-thousand paper profit so far. He was dimly amused to be playing Sherman Grome with that strange man’s money.

“Marty?” Benjie asked.

“Yes?”

“I got to start repricing this whole thing with Cole here and his purchasing guy, and I ought to start today.”

“Meeting adjourned.”

Marty walked slowly back to his office with Drusilla. He had her bring her book into his office. “It’s getting hotter,” he said.

She pulled her dress away from her body. “Horrible.”

“Look, I won’t keep you. What you should do, I want you to write that up as if it was a meeting of the officers of Letra. Lewis Traff, C.E.O., presiding. Put in the reports and make up the motions and all that shit, and then have Lew sign it and you sign it and put it in the minutes book, okay?”

“Surely.”

“Do I have to tell you what to put in and what to leave out?”

“I wouldn’t think so, love. I’ll run you a copy just in case.”

“What have you got planned for today?”

“Well … a light lunch and then I’ve got a tennis lesson.”

“You shouldn’t try to play tennis in heat like this, Dru. I’m not kidding. People fall over dead.”

She slapped herself on the haunch. “I do love the heat. It melts this off ever so much faster. What are you going to do?”

“Float around in my pool. Then she’s got people coming in for drinks and we go out to the club for dinner.”

She lifted her notebook, raised one eyebrow in question.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “You don’t have to do these now. It’ll give you something to start on tomorrow morning. This is to Stalbo, Penthouse A, Tropic Towers. Dear Jerry. Reference our conversation Friday morning, I want to confirm what I told you at that time. I was given an information copy of the termination agreement between your company and Equity Mortgage Management Shares, as signed by you and Mr. Sherman Grome, duly notarized and recorded and so on. I need not remind you that this severed any relationship between you and the Tropic Towers project. I realize we have known each other a long time, but that does not mean that I can provide you with gratis housing at Tropic Towers. If it were up to me, Jerry, certainly I would do you the favor. But I am advised that to avoid clouding the agreement, you must vacate Penthouse A no later than the last day of this month. Naturally, if you wish to buy that condominium penthouse as a private person, that would be fine with me. I notice that on your last sales list it is down at ninety-five five. I also note that it is the display apartment and was furnished by Epic Interiors out of Tampa. A search of the records indicates that they still own the furnishings, and a suitable arrangement will be made with them to either remove the items or purchase them for a mutually agreeable figure. I will expect you to phone me after you receive this letter and tell me if you will vacate as requested, or if you will purchase. If you will purchase, I must have the necessary documents signed and in hand by the last day of this month. Make it cordially yours, I guess. Put it in paragraphs. Dru, I think what happened to that son of a bitch, he tried to be some kind of Hefner.”

“What do you mean?”

“As soon as it looked like he was in real trouble and would maybe lose his ass, that second wife of his, that Irene with the big boobs, that barracuda about one year older than his oldest kid, she
gets a smart lawyer and moves fast and puts a lock on liquid assets before he can dump them into the company to try to save it. He has to move out of the house, so he moves into Tropic Towers. So he turns that penthouse into a permanent house party. Booze all day and food brought in and stereo rock and some of those tough little teenage hookers that hang around the beach. It seems as if a man starts getting bad ideas, they gradually get worse instead of better. Maybe he’s trying not to think about how he can’t sell those apartments and can’t pay the interest on the loans. Finally he gets a dose. What did he expect from those hustlers? He gets it cured with antibiotics. When he tries again, he can’t get it up. Anxiety, I guess. Plus being pretty well burnt out with all the games and fun. When the food and booze stops, all the young boys and girls go elsewhere, but a housewife he has hired to sell apartments moves in with him and puts him on grass to cure the anxiety, and pretty soon he can make out with her, but then he has what he thinks is a heart attack while he’s in the saddle and that turns him off again and she moves out.”

“Love, who
told
you all this?”

“Who told me? Jerry Stalbo told me when I went up there to see him Friday. He wouldn’t meet me anywhere. He had big draperies drawn across the windows. He looked like hell. He kept crying every once in a while. He looked like a dead man. What he wanted me to do was talk Grome into letting him come back into Tropic Towers for a piece of the action. A piece of nothing. I can’t fool with Jerry. He’s going down the tube so fast you wouldn’t believe it. It is a terrible job of design and construction and planning, but the penthouse looks okay, what I could see of it. Look, honey, you want the penthouse? Same terms as when you were living in Seven-E in Golden Sands.”

“Is there a pool? I know there is, but is it usable?”

“It was in use Friday when I was there looking around. And the tennis courts look okay.”

“As soon as you get that dreary little man out, I’ll move in. Thank you! Were there more letters?”

“There were, but the hell with it. I got to get out of here. Look at this shirt. Like I’d been under water. Get out of here, kid. And don’t work too hard in the hot sun.”

IN THE FIRST GRAY LIGHT
of an early Saturday morning, George Gobbin drifted in and out of light sleep. Neither he nor Elda liked to sleep in the false chill of air conditioning, even in this torrid month of July, when, as George liked to tell his new neighbors, it was “almost as hot as July in Iowa.”

By experimentation they had found it best to close off the bedroom, leave the rest of Apartment 3-C air-conditioned, with the thermostat set at 75 degrees, and open the windows which faced toward the jungle behind Golden Sands. A small rubber-bladed soundless fan on the low chest of drawers against the foot of her bed kept the warm moist air moving. The early bird-sounds slid him back into a dream of the Iowa farm. He was small. He was crawling through the tall corn on black earth that muddied his hands and knees. It was cool and shadowed under the corn leaves, below a breeze that rattled their broad green curves. He heard a roaring grinding sound and in a sudden sweat of fear he crawled
through the corn to the edge of a slope and looked up a slope to where a stone road crested the hill. With a louder roaring the lead tank of the column came over the ridge, black cross on the turret that turned slowly from side to side, the slender deadly 88 searching, searching.…

He came awake with a gasp, yanked back out of the hedgerows of that deadly war now fading so swiftly back into the myths of history and dropped into the new bed in the new bedroom. Elda was right over there in her bed, spread-eagled, facedown. (How in hell could she breathe with her face stuffed in the goddam pillow?) The sheet was pushed down below her bare behind, down to mid-thigh. As he looked over at her, he suddenly realized that the roaring grinding noise had not stopped when the dream had stopped. He got out of bed, creaked as he stretched, and went over to the windows. By pressing his cheek against the screen and looking north, he saw two big yellow bulldozers move along the edge of the parking area toward the jungle. The trucks and flatbed trailers which had brought them there were parked in the Golden Sands lot.

It puzzled him. Were they going to widen the path, clear the easement? He pulled on his trousers and shirt and sneakers, made sure he had his keys and let himself out of the apartment. As the fire door swung shut behind him and he started down the concrete stairs in semidarkness, a voice above and behind him said, too loudly, “Identify yourself, mister.”

He stopped and looked up into a bright flashlight beam, and the now-familiar voice said, “Oh, good morning, George.”

“Brooks? Brooks Ames? You startled hell out of me.”

Ames came down the stairs. He wore a straw ranch hat, khaki shirt and shorts, and a red armband with the letters G.S.P. embroidered in white, and had a white ID tag pinned to his shirt pocket which said
CAPTAIN B. G. AMES
. The grip of a handgun protruded
from his black leather holster. Around his neck he had a red woven cord with a black whistle at the end.

“Up early, eh?” Brooks said.

“I see you got your armbands and whistles.”

“You say that as if it was some kind of a joke, right? There are fourteen of us, George, volunteers, working our shifts, keeping this place safe and secure. We should be getting your thanks, not a lot of cheap sarcasm.”

“We all sleep sounder knowing you brave boys are on duty.”

“There’s no point in our trying to talk to each other. We can’t communicate. You have absolutely no idea of what is going on in the world. None at all. You are naïve. That’s it. Naïve.”

“I’m a bleeding heart, Brooks. I’m a pinko crime coddler. And while you’re standing here educating me, there are big trucks illegally parked in our lot. Go blow your whistle at them.”

“The hell you say!”

“I saw them out my bedroom window.”

Ames went plunging down the stairs, and George Gobbin had the vision of Ames bursting out the rear door, blowing his whistle and firing into the air.

By the time he reached the lot there were two more trucks there, and a pickup truck turning in. There were men in yellow hard hats. There were brush hooks and chain saws. The sky was turning pink in the east, beyond the bayside thickets. Some other early-rising residents had gathered. George saw Stanley Wasniak, the secretary of the Association, and went over to him and said good morning and asked him what was going on.

“Hi, George. I just talked to the foreman. They’re going to clear off everything between here and the bay. He said he guessed somebody maybe is going to build something on it, but he doesn’t know what.”

“I guess you fellows will take steps to find out?”

Wasniak had to raise his voice to be heard over the sudden staccato of chain saws. It sounded like people warming up for a motorcycle race. “You people want your noses blowed or your backs scrubbed, just get hold of your Association officers.”

“What the hell is everybody so touchy about?”

Wasniak leaned closer. “I am goddam sick of being held responsible for every goddam thing that happens around here. I came down here to retire, not be driven up the goddam walls by all you goddam people.”

George stared at him for a moment and turned silently away and began walking back toward the rear entrance to Golden Sands. After a dozen steps Wasniak caught him by the arm.

“Look, I’m sorry. It’s just one thing after another. It’s not you, George. It’s nothing about you. You should know how many times every day somebody is at me about something.”

“It’s okay, Stan.”

“I got snookered into this. What I want to do is sell and move out and get some peace and quiet. Sure, I’ll try to find out what’s going on, and I’ll let you know.”

“What’s going on is land clearing,” Gus Garver said as he approached them. “The whole fourteen acres between here and the bay shore.”

“Are you sure?” Wasniak asked.

“I talked with a guy driving one of those little cats.”

“
Little!
” said George Gobbin.

“Well, comparatively speaking. They’re big enough for this job. Pretty good outfit, I’d say. That equipment has seen a lot of hard use, but somebody is keeping a close watch on maintenance.”

“Clearing all of it?” Wasniak asked, wonderingly. “All those nice old trees and stuff?”

Garver said, “The land is so low it will need some fill, and if you put a couple feet of fill around the trees, it kills them. You can wall the fill away from the trunks, but that takes a lot of time and money. So the efficient thing to do is topple all that stuff, scrape it into big piles, douse it with oil and light it.”

“But, dammit, we bought here on account of all that green out there,” Wasniak said.

“Say good-bye to it,” Garver said with a tight smile. “All the courts and lawyers are out of business on Saturday, and they got enough people here to do it fast. Anyway, what does it say in your deed about the scenery? Is it guaranteed?”

Wasniak shook his head slowly. “I hate to face my wife,” he said, and walked slowly toward the rear entrance to Golden Sands. In a few moments George nodded silently at Garver and then headed back to his apartment.