“Maybe I didn’t give you a hell of a lot of choice. Or her.” I felt him staring at me as we passed street lights. “What’s your name again?”
“Travis McGee. Friend of Frank Hopson. Over here from the east coast on business.”
“Look at that! She turns without any kind of signal at all.”
“Maybe she’s got a lot on her mind.”
“Sure. Like how to get more overspin on her backhand. Don’t let her sucker you, McGee. That’s an ice cold bitch. She’s slowing for the driveway. It’s on the left there.”
It was a broad driveway and one of those long low Florida block houses with a tile roof, a double carport and, beyond any doubt, a big screened cage off the rear, with or without a pool. Awning windows, glass doors on aluminum tracks, a heat pump system, you could guess it all before you saw it, even to a couple of citrus trees and cocoanut palms out back. Terrazzo floors, planting areas in the screened cage and a computerized kitchen. But even at night I saw other clues, a front lawn scruffy and sunbrowned, a dead tree at the corner of the house, a driveway sign saying The Watts which was turned, bent and leaning from someone clipping it on the way in.
I parked in the drive, behind her car. He got out at once, advancing to meet her as she walked back toward my car.
“Congratulations, sweetie baby,” he said. “Now you got proof I spoiled your evening. See how early it is? Now you can suffer.”
She planted her feet, squared her shoulders. “There might be one member left who would trust you to write up a simple will or even search a title, dearest. So let’s protect all that charming innocent faith as long as we can, shall we? Come on in the house before you fall down.” She turned toward me. “I’d offer you a drink, but I guess you’ve had about all anyone would want of this, Trav.”
“I might come in far a few minutes, if it’s all right. I would like to ask Crane about something. something maybe he could help me with.”
“Him?” she said, loading the word with enough contempt for a month.
“Loyalty, loyalty,” Crane mumbled.
We went into the house. She turned lights on. She kept turning lights. on, even to the outside floods in and beyond the screened cage, rolling the glass doors open, and, with a gaiety very close to hysteria, she said, “And this is our happy mortgaged nest, Mr. McGee. You may note a few scars and stains. Little domestic spats, Mr. McGee. And did you see that the pool is empty? Poor little pool. It’s a heavy upkeep item to operate a pool, more than you’d think. And we don’t care to run the air-conditioning this summer. You wouldn’t believe the bills. But you know, I do have my little indulgences. My tennis, and my once a week cleaning woman for some Saturday scrubbing, in case we entertain on a Saturday night, but there aren’t many people left we could invite, really. But, you see, I pay for the tennis and the cleaning woman. I have this lovely little trust fund, a whole hundred and twenty-one dollars a month. Don’t you think wives should have an income of their own, Mr. McGee?”
She gave me a brilliant smile, sobbed suddenly, whirled and ran, her hands over her face. She went out of sight down a corridor and a door closed behind her.
Mumbling almost inaudibly, Crane Watts took a bottle from a bar corner and headed for the kitchen. As he passed me, I lifted it out of his hand.
“I need that!”
“Not if we’re going to talk. If we’re going to talk, you need a shower and you need some coffee, before and after the shower.”
“Talk about what?”
“Maybe how you can help me make some money.”
He wiped his face slowly with his hand, stopped and looked at me with one skeptical eye between his fingers. “Mean it?” I nodded. He sighed. “Okay. Hang around. Make coffee, if you can find the stuff.”
I found powdered coffee. I made a strong mug of it and took it toward the sound of the shower. The bathroom door was ajar. I put it on the counter top next to the sink, yelled to him that it was there, and went back to the living room. Houses where love is dead or dying acquire a transient look. Somewhere there are people who, though they do not know it yet, are going to move in.
He came wandering in, mug in his hand, hair damp, wearing a blue bathrobe. He sat wearily, sipped the coffee, stared at me. His color was not good. There were dark stains under his eyes. He had a drinker’s puffiness, not far advanced, but enough to alert the observant and the wary. But the mists had lifted.
“Why me?” he asked. “That’s the best question I can ask.”
“I could need a hungry lawyer.”
“You found him. Maybe I’m not as hungry as I have to be. I won’t know, will I, until you tell me.”
“I’m doing a favor for a man. For a fee. He trusts my judgment and my knowledge of Florida land values. He just came into a very big piece of money. He wants to put half of it in securities and half in land. A broker is working up a portfolio for him. I’m… hunting around.”
“You an agent?”
“No. If I could locate something good, a very promising investment, something in the eight or nine hundred thousand range, he’ll give me ten thousand finder’s fee. He’s interested in raw land.”
“And you need a lawyer to check out something quietly?”
“Not exactly. I found a couple of very clean deals, one near Arcadia and the other up the coast, south of Cedar Keys. Each is worth the finder’s fee.”
“So where does a hungry lawyer fit?”
I stood up. “Let’s adjourn to the office.”
Looking bewildered, he followed me to the bathroom. I turned the cold water in the shower on full, then leaned on the countertop. He understood quickly enough. “You’re more careful than you have to be, McGee.”
“I always am.”
He leaned against the countertop beside me, and we spoke over the roar of the shower. “Ten thousand seems smaller every day, Watts. If a deal could get more complex, maybe a little more would rub off. Like if something could be picked up and held and resold. You might have more ideas about that kind of thing than I would.”
“Why should you think so?”
“From some bar talk today I got the idea you pulled off something pretty cute.”
“Oh, it was cute all right,” he said angrily. “It was even legal. But all I got was peanuts, comparatively speaking. It wasn’t anything I set up. This lousy town. Other lawyers get a little tricky and everybody says how smart they are. You know what I got? A whispering campaign. I’m down to a practice that just about pays the light bill.”
“Maybe you could try it again, and cut yourself a bigger piece. Legally, of course.”
“Maybe your guy is too shrewd for it. The one they cleaned was truly stupid.”
“My guy is no giant, and he’s never held a job in his life. You said they cleaned. Who?”
“Some out-of-town operators.”
“Would we need them?”
He frowned, tugged his lip. “It wouldn’t hurt at all to bring one of them in on it. He’s damned good.” He straightened up. “You’re acting as if we’re going to try it, and you don’t know a damn thing about it.”
“All I want to know is that there’s no ten years in Raiford afterwards.”
“Nothing like that. It’s all legal, believe me.”
“How does it work?”
“Your guy has to go along with certain things. Like being willing to be in on a land syndicate operation. And your guy should be off balance a little. They used a woman on the last one.”
“Is she still around?”
“Not that I know of. Why?”
“It could work with my man too.”
“Listen. You said he trusts you. The way this thing works, it isn’t halfway. It has to clean him completely, or it doesn’t work. Would that bother you?”
“Not on his account. But it makes me a little nervous. We’re talking about close to two million dollars, Watts.”
“With family lawyers riding herd on it, maybe?”