“Leroy and Sandra so far. Do you want to write out a list for me?”
“You got the ugly on you tonight, boy. One thing you keep in mind, will you? What good would you be to me if everybody knew our deal?”
“Not very much I guess, but...”
“Sandra has been with me eight years. She’d just turned eighteen when she came to work here. Anything I do, she knows. Like Leroy does too. And like you do from now on. Man, I’m not a damn fool.”
Jimmy went back to the couch. “I guess you’ve never given me that impression.”
Elmo went to the cabinet bar and chuckled as he started to fix himself a drink. “Just don’t worry about who knows what. Take a damn fool like Flake. He never gets to know more than I need him to know so I can get the use out of him I have to.”
“But you have an arrangement with him on his share of this Palmland Development, don’t you?”
“I got some ways of keeping him tame. Leroy and Sandra I don’t have to worry about. They know they do good when I do good. So they like to come up with all the he’p they can give me. Hell, after Sandra married Pat Straplin, I made him a lend of the money to get into the contract electric business on his own, and I keep him busy. I got a couple of her kin onto the county payroll a while back.” He pulled a chair toward the couch, sat down and put his drink on the coffee table. “What happens to a man, Jim, he gets a lot of other people fastened onto him in one way or another, so sometimes you have the feeling it’s turned into a whole army, all pushing in one direction, everybody anxious to do all they can, because this is the way they make things better’n they’ve ever been. It’s getting so it would be hard to find a public place around Palm County where a man could bad-mouth me and not get knocked flat and bloody.”
“I suppose the biggest danger in that is beginning to believe it yourself.”
Elmo looked at him narrowly, then laughed. “Hell, I believe some of it. Why shouldn’t I? My name doesn’t sound the same to me it used to. Elmo Bliss — it used to have a raggedy-pants sound. But I’ve pulled it higher than anybody thought I would already. It doesn’t sound the same to me any more. You want I should be humble? It surprises me ninety-nine per cent of the human race can feed themself. Anything wrong with a man knowing he’s in the one per cent on top?”
“As long as he stays on top, I guess.”
“Women, liquor and gambling. That’s what throws men, Jimmy. I do my gambling in a business way, where I know the odds. I got my drinking done early in life. And the women I got are no more anxious for any scandal talk than I am, and anything new that comes along will be selected just as careful, boy.”
“So you’re safe, Elmo.”
“It’s something you should know, you betting your future on me. If I should go down, I’ll fall heavy. And you might be right in the way.”
“You better decide whether you’re going to keep me in line by threatening me, Elmo, or by sweet-talking me. This way, you keep confusing both of us.”
“It just goes to show how much I want to depend on you. It’s making me too anxious. I guess once you get to work, we’ll both feel better. I was awake in the night thinking about you, Jimmy. A good man should get paid what he’s worth. I decided old Buck is going to sell a little bigger piece than he thinks he is, when the time comes. He’ll sell you some, and take your note. You should clear ten thousand on it, which would be seven thousand, almost, keeping money, once you pay capital gain.”
“Thank you very much.”
“There’ll be little things like that coming along ever’ so often, boy. By the time you get out with a profit, I’ll have a good place you should put it and watch it make you fat. I figure a man like you should feel more like a partner than somebody hired.”
“I’ve been a hired man all my life.”
“Then it’s time you should stand on this side of the fence and see how it feels. I know what you’re thinking right now. You’re thinking I’m awful goddam anxious this land fill goes through. I am. But I’m not so anxious I’m losing track of anything.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to.”
“They had their first meeting this evening, and the first one you should go after is that son of a bitch Sinnat. Now we’re down to cases, boy.”
“As I understand this, Elmo, you want me to dig up some things about these people, things which can be used to get them off this Grassy Bay campaign.”
“That’s exactly right!”
“But what kind of things, damn it? How much proof? How are they going to be used?”
“Now you listen here, Jimmy Wing! What I want is that Dial Sinnat finding out it just isn’t worth while for him to mix into this thing. He put up a good piece of the money the last time, and they’ll be wanting to clip him for more. It’s like a dog, he sticks his nose in a hole and a big yella bee stings it, he don’t care what else is in that hole any more. Just how it gets used depends on what it is you can come up with. And I don’t think it has to be too much. You know why? It would take one hell of a lot to keep me or Leroy or Felix Aigan out of this deal, because we come out at the end of it with something you can hold in your hand, namely money. What’s the word for the opposite of something you can hold onto?”
“Abstraction?”
“That’s it. All the damn bird-watchers and do-gooders and nature boys, they got an abstraction they’ve fell in love with. But the average man, you tell him that bay is a mess of mud flats likely to make his kids sick, he won’t see anything pretty in it, and he won’t want to save it. When the average man goes to look at nature, he wants something going on, like a porpoise coming ten feet up out of the water to eat a fish, or like pretty girls underwater, sucking air from a hose and eating bananas. There’s nothing going on in that bay they can look at. But the goddam do-gooders got this abstraction they look at. They like the idea of nature being left the hell alone. Boy, it never is left alone. Never. Not when there’s a dollar you can make out of it. Now, what I’m saying is that money in hand is a lot more persuasive than the abstraction of leaving it like it was when the Indians first found it. So it’s easier to chase a man off an abstraction than it is to chase him away from meat and potatoes.”
“Wait a minute, Elmo. A lot more men have died for abstract considerations, for ideas, than for money.”
“Is Sinnat one of those, for God’s sake?”
“N-no. He isn’t one of those.”
“So what can we use?”
“I don’t know, Elmo.”
“Then you find out. On his fourth wife, isn’t he? Anything he’s doing, or his wife is doing, or any of their kids are doing that he wouldn’t want too many people knowing about, he could be cooled off real fast on this nature-lover business. You’re the one can find out easiest and fastest of anybody in town, Jim. And he’s the one I want discouraged first. Anything looks promising, you bring it right to me.”
“And if there’s nothing?”
“One thing I’ve learned. There’s always something. Maybe you got to turn it a little sideways before you can use it, but it’s always there if you look for it.”
“How much time is there?”
“The petition gets presented to the commissioners next Tuesday morning. As far as setting the date for the hearing, I just plain don’t know yet. The law sets two weeks’ minimum time to wait after the petition is presented. I got to move a little easy on it, so the other commissioners won’t get the idea I got a special ax to grind.”