“So that’s the agreement, is it, Elmo? You promise to deliver Makelder, Lander and Bassette in return for a good price to buy in at.”
“I wouldn’t want anybody to think there was a deal like that.”
“Even me? I’m the guy who is supposed to know everything that’s going on. Remember?”
“There is a sort of agreement, Jimmy. Just casual like. Nothing in writing. No options or anything like that. Gus, Horace and DeRose will be happy to vote for something that’ll mean so much to the whole area. I’ll buy syndicate shares, and when Leroy turns it into a corporation, I’ll just sell off the shares I get, pay off my notes, pay the capital gains tax and put the money into something where I can get it out fast and easy when we come to needing it. See any holes in that?”
“Well... just one, Elmo. Voting to move the bulkhead line and voting to recommend the sale of the bay bottom by the IIF doesn’t mean it will go through without a hitch.”
“You keep proving to me what a good idea I had when I decided to make you the first member of the team, Jimmy. I watched you close two years ago when those outsiders tried to move in on us. Ben Killian tried to keep the paper neutral, but you got your licks in. You worked close with those Save Our Bays people, and you helped them a lot.”
“Van Hubble talked me into it. He was a good friend.”
“Jimmy, the way it stands right now, I’m pretty sure the bay fill group will win out over that Sandy Key crowd and all the damn fish lovers. But winning locally isn’t enough. They’ll want to take the fight right to Tallahassee and then into the courts. That’ll take money, organization, enthusiasm. So what we’ve got to do right in the first round is take the heart right out of them. We’ve got to win it so big they’ll have no stomach for carrying it any further. We’ve got to demoralize that bunch, Jimmy. So I want you to get just as close to them as you can. You know a hell of a lot about the people in this town. And there are some weird types on that executive committee. With enough private information, the kind they wouldn’t put in public speeches, we can cut the head right off that organization by clobbering their executive committee.”
“I’m supposed to spy on my friends?”
“First off, that’s the ugliest way you could have put it. Second, nobody is about to know it, unless you tell them. Third, if you don’t do it, Leroy will bring somebody in from outside who’ll maybe do a nastier job on them than would happen if you handle it yourself. I hear you show up at the bank pretty regular to take that redhead Hubble woman out for her coffee break. If all of a sudden it should get gossiped around that she’s took to screwing her dead husband’s best friend, who’s got a wife in the asylum—”
“God damn it, Elmo, I—”
“Easy, now. I didn’t say you were. But somebody else could make it sound that way, and it could hurt hell out of that nice little woman. True or false, it would take her mind off Grassy Bay real quick. I figure if those people are your friends, you can do a good job of coming up with stuff that’ll sink that executive committee without hurting the people too much. You’re in the best position to do that job, aren’t you?”
“I suppose so, but...”
“Jimmy, boy, when I was thinking about this little talk with you, I confess I started thinking about it all wrong. You see, I need you so bad and I respect you so much, I was thinking of ways to force you to join in with me. Hell, I thought of a lot of crazy things. I’ve got some wild kin who’d lay for you, grab you, run you way back up some slough and make you pray you could die. Then you’d jump fast every time I raised a finger, just to save yourself another trip up the slough, but once you do a man that way, it takes something out of him he never gets back, and he just isn’t worth as much to you or himself from then on.”
“I don’t scare, Elmo.”
“Now that’s a damn fool thing to say! Are you all the man Pete Nambo was? After Wade Illigan beat him out for Sheriff, some of my cousins kept him back in the swamp for eleven days, and since then nobody’s touched Pete all the six years he’s been driving a transit mix truck for me, but his voice still gets squeaky when I say good morning to him. I don’t bluff, Jimmy. I just decided I don’t want to do that to you. It was a bad idea. Then I thought about your wife. It was out of pure friendship I got her put into that state special-care program up near Oklawaha. That was three years ago, Jimmy. And it would have cost you five hundred a month to buy her that much private care. I was going to bring it up to you, and ask you if you don’t owe me something. But I wouldn’t like myself if I took advantage of that poor girl’s sickness that way. I even thought of hinting how easy I could work Killian around to firing you off the paper, but I guess you don’t give that much of a damn about the job. Finally I came around to right where we are now. You got the facts, I’m leaving it up to you. You can put that money on the desk and walk out. But your walking out won’t change any of the things that are going to happen. You’re thirty-three damn years old, boy, and you’ve been telling yourself too long you like to live small and quiet. You sit back inside yourself and sneer at how crazy the world is, and you like to think you don’t give a damn about anything. Okay, so here’s your chance to prove you don’t give a damn. Come aboard for the ride. Watch the animals. If you have to make excuses to yourself, you can tell yourself you’re researching a book. You’ve got your world shrunk down too small, Jimmy.”
Elmo stood up and came over to him and punched him lightly on the shoulder. The grin squeezed Elmo’s eyes to bright gray slits and bulged the knots of muscle at the corners of his jaw. “Come on, boy!” he said in a half whisper. “Let’s you and me stir things up. Ever since Havana that time, I knew you were going to fit somewhere. I need you, and what the hell have you got to lose?”
Jimmy Wing felt a sardonic amusement at how deftly Bliss was maneuvering him. Elmo had spread the possible rationalizations out in plain sight, inviting Jimmy to select the one which would make him the most cozy. Maybe, he thought, it isn’t so reprehensible to be maneuvered when you can see just how it’s being done, when you can see the foot on the pedal which controls the wheel.
“Suppose I want to say yes, but I’m afraid it might get too ripe for me later on?”
Elmo punched him again. “What the hell you think I’m operating here, boy? Bolita? Any time you want out, get out.”
“Knowing, as you said, everything there is to know?”
“Ah, but you wouldn’t use it! I use anything I can lift. But I’ve never crossed a friend. Or broke my word to a man living. You see, I don’t ask for your word, Jimmy, because I don’t have to.”
Jimmy Wing sighed and stood up and put his hand out. Elmo’s clasp was brief, dry and very strong. “We’ll have some laughs.”
“There better be some, Elmo. There haven’t been too many lately.”
They went out into the hot soft air of night, and for Jimmy Wing it was much like the transition from the unreality of a movie back to the ordinary casual world. He wanted to ask Elmo how he was to report what he learned, but he stifled the question as impossibly theatrical now that they were back in the summer night, crunching the gravel underfoot, strolling back toward the lights at the bottom of the lawn.
They went back down to the apron of the pool. Flake’s girl had changed to a checked cotton dress. She sat on a cedar tub which had been turned upside down. Flake stood behind her, drying her silver hair with a big cherry-colored towel. The towel obscured her face. She sat with her legs braced, her hands in her lap, so bonelessly relaxed that Buck Flake’s vigorous efforts rippled her body inside the snug dress.