But this money was not, of course, a gift or bribe. Elmo had made that clear. It was specific pay for specific employment. He had become a moonlighter. And, should the job itself become distasteful, or should the fact of having two jobs become burdensome, he would tell Elmo his acceptance had been a little too hasty. Elmo, of course, would take it gracefully. There would be no instructive visit to one of the back-country sloughs, not for a mildly recalcitrant member of the press.
But Ulysses S. Grant looked out from the money with a brooding, dubious expression. Hadn’t he had some money trouble himself?
Now there was a summons from Elmo, and the money had given it a different flavor than had been apparent in the summonses of past years. His response to it had been altered also, in just as subtle a way. He wondered how many more there were who now played the same game, who had become a part of the expanding universe of Elmo Bliss, willingly or unwillingly — even knowingly or unknowingly. Frannie had said that he made her feel alive. Maybe that was the most effectively deadly subversion of all. All the children felt gloriously alive, marching away from Hamlin.
The offices of Bliss Construction were in a small one-story building in a commercial area on Bay Highway, south of the city, just over the city line, about a mile and a half north of the light where Mangrove Road turned toward Grassy Key. Behind the office structure, and enclosed by hurricane fence, were the storage buildings, a workshop and the vehicle park. His transit-mix cement plant and his hot-mix asphalt plant were in a heavy-industry zone north of Palm City. Though Elmo had expanded with startling speed throughout the fifties, he had the curious ability to give each new venture the flavor of having been his from the very beginning. His expansion no longer seemed as brash and reckless as it had been. He had adjusted so readily to being one of the city’s most influential businessmen that it was easy to believe he always had been. The tales of his early wildnesses were told with that same fond nostalgia usually reserved for incidents of a prior century. Jimmy Wing had wondered why this could be true, and had finally realized that Elmo would have been unable to achieve this quality of acceptance in a more static community. Palm County growth had been dramatic. Total county population had been a little over twenty-five thousand when Elmo had been swinging a brush hook on a county road gang. Now it was over seventy-five thousand, and most of the newcomers had arrived after Bliss Construction was an established firm. To them, the Elmo Bliss of the wild years had the quality of myth.
Elmo’s office headquarters was set back just far enough from the curbing of Bay Highway to provide room for a loop of asphalt drive in front of the entrance. The long dusk had ended when Jimmy Wing arrived. Tinted floodlights were buried among the broad shining leaves of the shrubs in the planting area that stretched the length of the front of the building. The right half of the structure was unlighted. The blinds were closed in the left half, but light escaped at the edges of them. He parked behind Elmo’s blue pickup truck. It was, he knew, a considered part of the image, a truck with the worn, battered, dusty look of the ranch lands, a more telling symbol than any Cadillac or Mercedes could be. Beyond the truck, in a more shadowy place, was a stubby, elderly Renault, sun-seared and rusty.
He tried the door and found it locked. Over the hum of traffic on Bay Highway he heard from inside the building a shrill yapping laugh of a woman. He pressed the bell beside the door. An inner door opened, and light streamed out into the reception desk area. A bright fluorescence flickered on, and a woman came toward the locked door, smiling, patting her hair, hitching her skirt. She was young, short, sturdy, her slender waist latched so tightly in a wide belt it accentuated hips and breasts far beyond their need for emphasis. Her face was broad, pale, pretty in a rather insipid way, roughened by acne scars. Her hair was dyed a dark red, and worn in a rather incongruous and inappropriate beehive style. She jounced toward the locked glass door on very high heels, coming down hard with each step. She looked cheap, trivial, empty and troublesome, but Wing had learned, during Elmo’s term on the commission, that she was shrewd, competent and trusted.
She opened the door and said, “Hey, Jimmy.”
“Evening, Miz Sandra.”
She locked the door again and said, as they walked toward Elmo’s office, “How about with my little sister in the Sunday paper, hey?”
“All set. They were going to make it a one-column cut, but now they’ll use it three columns wide.”
“It’s only fair, her being the one in the family with looks, and marrying better than me or Ruthie. When I married Pat we didn’t have the money to have a picture took, even.”
Elmo was sorting papers on his desk. The desk and the room were like his study at his home. He looked up with an abused grin and said, “Rick Willis keeps telling me everything is running just fine, but whenever I spend two days away from this desk, I get all this here crud to sort out. Make yourself a drink, Jimmy.”
The doors of the bar cabinet in the corner were open. He heard Elmo and Sandra Straplin talking about the work she was to do. He opened the small built-in refrigerator and found some beer on the bottom shelf, dark frosty bottles of imported Tuborg. He opened one and took it over to the long deep couch under the windows.
“You want I should do any of it tonight, like maybe the airmail to Costex, Elmo?” she asked, standing beside Elmo, frowning down at him.
“No. You have it all for me to sign tomorrow, so you just tell me when to come on in here.”
She riffled the sheaf of papers in her hand. “About like two o’clock?”
He slapped her on the haunch and turned it into a little push, urging her toward the door. “Two o’clock will be just fine, Sandra. Goodnight, girl.” He turned to Jimmy. “You follow along and lock that outside door behind her, boy, so we can talk easy. I got to get this desk cleaned the hell off.”
Sandra put the papers in her desk drawer, took her purse from another drawer, turned out the reception room lights. They went to the door and she said, “What you do, you turn this hickey here to the right. Guess you’ll be coming around more often?”
“Are you telling me or asking me, Sandra?”
The nearest light standard on Bay Highway shone a pale white light through the glass door, slanting across her wide white face. Her perfume was a very sweet and heavy flower scent. She smiled up at him. “Neither one, Jimmy. Just making talk.”
“I wouldn’t want you making that kind of talk too many places.”
Her placid smile did not change. “Chrissake, honey, if I was to start now, I’d go down one hell of a long list before coming to you, so don’t fret yourself. Thanks about my sister. We’ll get along, you know. That’s what he’s good at, always knowing people will get along good together. Goodnight, Jimmy.”
She left. He locked the door. He watched her little car turn out into the flow of traffic, heading toward town.
He went back and picked up the beer bottle and stood by Elmo’s desk until Elmo looked up at him, and then he said, “Maybe what you should do, Commissioner, is take an ad in the paper. You know the usual form. We are pleased to announce that James Warren Wing has become associated with us.”
“Are you sore, boy?”
“A little, I guess. Last night Leroy was so damn cute.”
“You handled that real fine. Leroy likes the way you took it, and so do I.”
“Thanks a lot. Does Sandra get to pat me on the head too?”
“Steady down, Jim, for God’s sake. You know what Leroy proved? He proved something I already knew, but he had to check it himself so he’d feel easier in his mind about it. He had to make sure you weren’t one of those people have to jump on every chance to make a brag. Most people are like that. It makes them feel bigger to hint around how important they are. I’m clearing you right now to talk right out to Leroy about any part of all this.”