Condominium Page 21

  “I think Sherm is plain old-fashioned nuts. In the pictures he looks like a kid. But he has to be close to fifty. Dietitians, face lifts, sunlamps, a gym in the office. I saw a thing about him in Forbes a year ago, saying he wanted to buy his own studio and make some movies about his life and star in them himself. He is nuts, but he has been in a line of work where it is very difficult to tell crazy guys from sane guys.”

  “Until too late.”

  “Everybody used to think Howard Hughes was nuts. Two billion dollars’ worth of crazy. But Sherm is crazy in a different way. I don’t think he really believes anything could ever go wrong. I’ve never met him, of course. I could be way off.”

  The rain was easing. “Benjie … I keep wondering if there is any way we could get some nice … terminal bonuses out of Marty.”

  “Like how much?”

  “Like you and I split half of that extra mil he got.”

  “Like we mousetrap him somehow?”

  “Something like that. You know, though, he always hints about the hard-nose people in Miami. What is it he calls them?”

  “The firemen. They come and put out fires for you.”

  “Is he kidding?”

  “I don’t know. That outfit, that Services Management Group, it stands to reason they’d have troubleshooters. In construction there are always people trying to make trouble.”

  “Did he ever use them for anything?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been with him nine years, a couple years longer than you, Lew. People have tried to make trouble and they’ve had bad luck. They have had bad falls and they have fallen asleep smoking in bed, and they have gotten cramps and drowned.”

  “Oh.”

  “It could be coincidence, but I don’t want to run any test. Do you?”

  “I don’t think so. It’s funny. I’ve used those people as a threat when somebody got out of line, but I never believed. Not until now. I’m not even sure I believe it all the way now.”

  “Maybe Marty just has natural luck.”

  “I don’t want to test it. Oh, God damn it all, Benjie, what am I going to do?”

  “You are a single guy with a law degree. You asking a guy with ten kids what you should do? Let’s talk again about all this. I got to go now. You hear anything, let me know. I’ll do the same.” He rolled the side window down and held his hand out. “It’s almost stopped.” He got out and leaned back down to the window. “Maybe we can pick up some scraps while the big dogs fight, old buddy. Cheer up.” In another minute he had backed the station wagon out and driven away.

  Lew Traff drove back to his apartment, parked in back and hurried through the rain. His head ached. He poured a glass of milk and sat and sipped it, easing the dull pain of the ulcer.

  Inventory time again. Stocks worth not quite twenty thousand, or one ninth of what they’d cost in the go-go days. The money from the short sale of EMMS had gone to clean up two of the three demand notes at the bank and pay off the compromise settlement with the IRS. But that gain was ordinary income and the tax would be heavy.

  And if the three thousand a month from Marliss stops coming in? Who needs Lewis Traff, specialist in real estate options, transfers, deeds, titles, metes and bounds? The times had suddenly rendered him obsolete.

  His back teeth on the upper right side ached. He put his thumb tip back there and gently wiggled the molars. They seemed to be quite loose. He looked across the living room at the digital clock atop the television set. He closed his left eye and then his right eye. When he had his right eye closed the orange numerals of the clock were misty and blurred. He could sharpen them by squinting. The goddam teeth and eyes and ulcer and constipation and the goddam premature ventricular beats waking him up in the middle of the night, scared and sweaty.

  If only Adele would get married. Without the alimony payments maybe he could get a little bit ahead. Enough to have breathing space.

  Maybe the Jerry Stalbo solution wasn’t all bad. It had really made Marty jumpy, the way Stalbo had done it. From the way the police had reconstructed it, Jerry had siphoned a two-quart milk container of gasoline out of his about-to-be repossessed Continental, gone up to the penthouse, stripped, put on his silk pajamas, stood on his rear wall, drenched himself, lit himself, and jumped flaring and screaming down through the soft black night, landing with sodden bursting impact upon the curbing of an auxiliary parking area. Dru said that when Marty heard how it happened, he had barely made it to his executive washroom. They had been close at one time, years ago, she said, back when they had both been married to their first wives, back when they had both been building small homes in an orange grove they had purchased jointly.

  Marty had said to Lew, “It wasn’t me, you know. Nobody forced him to build that big pile of crap and paint it brown and yellow to match. He had to be a big man. Live in the suite. Have a lot of broads. He thinks he could stay in the suite forever? If it wasn’t us trying to move him out, it would have been somebody else. He was a bankrupt. Besides, he was nuts. Absolutely. I swear it. You should have seen how he was the last time I saw him, like he’d shrunk down to half his size. And he kept crying. My God, he used to have a laugh, that man, you could hear him a block away. In a restaurant, everybody would jump, like a lion was roaring.”

  Lew stretched out on his couch, wadding a pillow behind his neck. The hiss of the air conditioning shut out all sounds of the world, of rain and wet tires and music in the other apartments.

  The Stalbo solution did not have to be in the Stalbo manner. The thought of burning made his flesh crawl. A nice glass of warm milk to wash down a handful of sleeping pills, and then crawl, yawning, into the downy bed and fade off into sleep, smiling, thinking of all the grasping bastards who would have to stop taking chunks of his hide and flesh. Disappear down the rat hole of dark sweet sleep.

  He reached back beyond his head and picked up the phone and placed it on his chest. Margo’s phone did not answer. Nor did Ruthie’s. He hesitated, then looked up the Denniver number and exhaled his tensions when Molly answered.

  “Hey!” she said with obvious delight. “This is a coincidence. I phoned you a couple times. Noon, I think. And one thirty.”

  “I was playing out at Gator Hole and we got rained out after nine. Whyn’t you come on over here, honey. I’ve got some good wine cooled and—”

  “Now you know I won’t come there, Lew, not ever. You’ve asked me often enough. What would people think if anybody sees me going in or out of your place? I wouldn’t want to start up any idle gossip about you and me. Besides, we promised it wouldn’t happen again ever.”

  “I’m sorry. It was just an idea. Where’s Justin?”

  “He’s staying over at that meeting at Kansas City. He left here a day early and he’s not anxious to get back, and it isn’t hard to figure out why, the way every fool in the county has been badgering him about the land-clearing on the Silverthorn property. What I called you about, my tennis tournament got called off, and I wondered if you’d like to come over here and have a nice swim.”

  “In the rain?”

  “It’s nice, Lew. It really is. The rain really comes down through the screen. Anyway, I want to prove to us that we can behave for once. Okay?”

  “Okay, honey. Why not?”

  22

  JULIAN HIGBEE FOUND the service cart parked in the hall outside 4-B, and he went in and found Leanella in the kitchen, washing up. She was a six-foot black girl in a brief white uniform. Her skin tones were gold and ivory, and her hairdo was an enormous carrot-colored natural. She wore sandals with high cork soles. With the additions she was almost seven feet tall.

  She beamed at him, eye to eye. Her little radio was on the countertop, turned so high the rock was hissing and frying. She was moving her shapely hips to the beat. Her belt was pulled tight around the slenderness of waist.

  He turned the radio down to a whisper.

  “They left?”

  “What do you think, man? They sure God did. When the rent got
raised, they took off like they were saying they would.”

  “How much longer’ll you be here?”

  “Nuther hour.”

  “I’ll go down and get the owner’s list. You can help me with the inventory.”

  “No way, Mr. Julian.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Get you Coreen. That woman likes counting up stuff and marking them off. It drives me weird. What I’m paid for is cleaning. No counting.”

  “See much damage?”

  “Maybe more than usual. These Sappers spilt and dropped.”

  “Sapphiere.”

  “That’s right. Sapper. Go look where that little throw rug got moved in front of the couch. God only knows what they spilt there. Hot tar, maybe. It’s got a hard shine on it like a parking lot.”

  He went and looked and shouted to her—she had turned her radio up again—“Good thing we’ve got a security deposit.”

  She turned it down. “What?”

  He came to the kitchen door. “We’re holding four hundred dollars’ security deposit.”

  Leanella leaned against the sink, long arms folded. She shook her head and said, “Folks sure change.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “You run around working your white ass down to the bone these days. Anybody wants their nose blowed, you come on the run holding out the hanky.”

  “What the hell is it to you?”

  “Now that sounds like you used to be. Want to fire me? I got nine better jobs I can go to. God knows why I stay in this rotten place. Force of habit. Get to know where everything is and get to know what’s going on here and there. Like, you know, me and Coreen were talking about it, how the big nurse lady in Two-C, Nurse Fish, after she and Miss Lorrie got friendly, she won’t let you run in and love her up no more.”

  “Now God damn it, Leanella!”

  “And unless you keep on the run all day long, Mr. Sullivan will maybe send somebody over to whip your ass again.”

  He reached her in two strides, drawing his hand back.

  “Let it go,” she whispered. “Pop me just one time, honky, and my man will have you talking soprano all the rest of your short life.”

  He sighed and slumped and let his hand fall. He studied her. “Will you please help me do the inventory on this apartment for the Coopers?”

  She thought and then nodded. “I surely will. See? Anything you want, when you ask nice and polite, you might just get it.”

  “I don’t need any—”

  “You watch it, now!”

  He turned away and hurried down to the office. Pete McGinnity, president of the Condominium Association, was just asking Lorrie where he could find Julian.

  “Can I help you, sir?” Julian asked.

  “It’s just a suggestion, Higbee. I think we’re going to get a very big turnout for the meeting tomorrow, and I was wondering how we could get hold of some extra chairs.”

  “I can get some from the company, Mr. McGinnity. It costs forty dollars for a hundred folding chairs, twenty to deliver and twenty to pick up.”

  “About thirty more chairs ought to do it. Can’t you go get that many in the pickup? The Association can’t afford forty cents.”

  “I’ve got a crew digging up that drain off the parking area to get it—”

  “Before one thirty tomorrow?”

  “Well … I guess so. Okay.”

  “Good man!”

  As soon as he left Julian said to his wife, “Dig out the inventory on Four-B. The Coopers in Youngstown own it. Honest to God, these people are going to drive me crazy. They are going to drive me right up the wall. The more I do for them, the more they want. And we’re not turning a dime out of this place anymore.”

  “Here’s your inventory.”

  He flipped the sheets. “Jesus! They listed everything.”

  “Who’ll help you?”

  “Leanella said she would. Maybe she can do it. Maybe not. She’s got a big mouth. You know that? She had something to say about your friend, the nurse.”

  “I was damned close to being a nurse when I met you.”

  “You tell your sad story to Leanella?”

  “I wouldn’t have to. Those two know everything that goes on in this building. I don’t know how they know, but they know, every time. It’s like the old story, you know, about the wife being the last to know.”

  “Isn’t it about time you let up on me?”

  “You haven’t even earned the right to ask. You are a rotten bastard, Julie. Bobbie was going through a bad emotional time in her life and you came upon her when she was drinking and forced yourself on her and then blackmailed her into keeping on doing it with you.”

  “That’s her version?”

  “It’s what happened.”

  “Then why was she phoning down here all the time, making you suspicious and making me nervous? Who was blackmailing who?”

  “When she was drinking she … wanted to.”

  “For God’s sake, Lorrie! I slipped once, okay? She called me up there to fix a leaky faucet and she was half dressed and ready, and you got to admit she is stacked. She was asking for it.”

  Lorrie stood with folded arms, glowering at him between the dark shining wings of her hair. “If it wasn’t for that little number on the top floor over in the Captiva House, and if it wasn’t for that pretty old lady over in—”

  “Now, honey, please. I got too much on my mind to handle all this fighting too. Can’t you just forgive and forget? Please?”

  “I don’t know whether I’ll forgive you, but I know I won’t ever forget. Not that it really means that much more anyway.”

  “Lorrie!” he cried, stung by the indifference in her tone.

  “Go count things,” she said, turning away.

  “It would really rack me up, honey, if you ever …”

  Her small smile was bitter. “Have no fear. It’s never been all that great, lover.”

  LeGrande Messenger lay in restless sleep in the master bedroom of penthouse apartment 7-A. He stirred and wakened enough to hear the distant rapid ticking of the Selectric II as Barbara typed the corrections on the final reports which would wind up the last of the Mexican involvements. He could hear afternoon thunder bumbling across the horizon.

  It was tidy, he thought, to be able to dismantle the interwoven, intertangled business affairs of a lifetime instead of leaving it up to the platoons of bankers, attorneys, trustees and executors. It was tidy to be able to steal the time in which to do it, time achieved at the cost of pain which was sometimes bearable, sometimes ghastly. The clumsy folk who entered the scene after death could yank out the wrong part first, toppling other parts in delicate balance. But he knew what had to come down first, and he could send the right people up into the superstructure and tell them which bolts and fastenings must first be loosened.

  Corporations and companies, partnerships and syndications, fractional interests and majority interests. In each case you could take it apart most profitably if you knew just how it had been assembled in the first place.

  … He was spending the weekend at his ranch north of Harlingen, renegotiating the overriding royalties on the oil leases with the Austin group and losing just enough to them in the Saturday-night poker game to keep them feeling expansive. He had showered and shaved on Monday morning and was just stepping into his pants when he heard the bray of the loud horn of Larry’s white Cadillac convertible, playing the first five notes of “Home on the Range.” The Austin group had left Sunday afternoon in the Bonanza. Larry would want to know how he’d made out.

  He looked through the screen and saw that Bill and Ted were in the back seat, leaving the seat beside Larry, the driver, for him. Larry had turned around in the big area by the porch and was headed out. He shouted to them that he was coming, and when he had put his hat on, he gathered up the papers he had studied after going to bed and slipped them into the zipper case.

  He hurried through the house to the front door, pausing to tell
Lopez he’d be back in two weeks. He went out onto the porch and stopped at the top of the steps.

  His three oldest and best friends were looking up at him expectantly. The top was down. They sat in the rusted ruin of a convertible nearly forty years old. Shreds of rubber dangled from the wheel rims. Parched grass grew tall under the car and beside it. His three best friends were stained and yellowed bone, clad in dry shreds of skin and the rotted fabric of ranch clothes. With lips gone, their broad toothy smiles were a deadly welcome.

  That ruined car had not moved in years. Yet he knew they were waiting for him and had been waiting a long time. He knew that he was meant to go around and get into that car beside the driver, and knew that if he did, it would start up and they would roar away. He backed away from the porch steps, yelling “No! Oh, no, please!”

  He burst up out of the dream, sweaty and panting. He wondered if he had yelled aloud and he waited and, when Barbara did not come to him, knew that the yelling had been only in the dream.

  He waited for the dream to fade, but it remained vivid in his mind. Larry, the rancher. Bill, the geologist. Ted, the banker. They had come up out of the ground, into his sleep, to take him on another of those trips they made, to look at something “interesting.”

  Larry had been the first one to go. Predictably. A man of high blood pressure, vast appetites, great intensity. A noisy, red-faced, fat man, who all his life did a superb job of concealing a superior intelligence. After the coronary occlusion he lasted eight days under the oxygen tent. Bill went next. They took out his left lung at Ochsner in New Orleans, hoping to give him two or three years more, but all they gave him was six months of slow suffocation. Ted lasted until … my God, it was fifteen years ago he died. That long! Hit head on in Oklahoma by a drunken Indian in a pickup who came across the median. Three dead, one banker, one chauffeur and one Indian. Big funeral, but not as big as Bill’s, whose was not as big as Larry’s. And mine will be the smallest of all four. Messenger’s equation: Funerals are small if you outlive the people who would have attended.

  So what does the dream mean? Come join us? No way to avoid it, men. Except temporarily, as I have been avoiding it, with three little operations and chemotherapy and a few series of cobalt.