“And spend my life keeping track of what the hell I’m doing?”
“Who said anything about keeping track? If you can get so complicated you confuse yourself, imagine how confused the poor computers are going to be.”
“Is she putting me on, Meyer?”
“She’s giving you good advice. If you try to hide, you are easy to find. You are leaving only one trail in the jungle, and the hounds can follow that one. Leave forty trails, crossing and recrossing. The computers are strangling on data. The courts are strangling on caseload. Billions of pieces of paper are floating around each month, clogging the inputs, confusing the outputs. A nice little old lady in Duluth had twelve post office boxes under twelve different names, and had twelve social security cards and numbers, and drew checks on all twelve for eight years before they caught up with her. And they wouldn’t have, if she hadn’t signed the wrong name on the wrong check five years ago. The government seeks restitution. She says she lost it all at bingo. Think of it this way, Travis. With each new computer that goes into service, your identity becomes more and more diffuse and unreal. Right now today, if every man, woman, and child were put to work ten hours a day reading computer printouts, just scanning the alphabetical and numerical output of the printers, they could cover about one third of what is being produced. Recycling of computer printout paper is a giant industry. We’re all sinking into the oblivion of profusion, and one day soon we will all be gone, with no way to trace us.”
Aggie began to giggle and gasp. “Millicent Waterhawk,” she said in a strangled voice. “Your business partner.”
“What’s so damn funny?” I asked.
Meyer started laughing, and pretty soon I had to join in. It was such a dreadful blow to my selfimage that it took me a while to see any humor in it. But there was a lot, I guess.
The funeral service was on Friday noon in the little Everglades settlement of Bonahatchee. There was a better turnout of the Fantasies than Mits had expected. She was obviously pleased that almost a hundred and fifty machines had assembled at the Oasis and had rumbled at slow funeral pace to Snead’s Funeral Home in Bonahatchee and, subsequent to the eulogy and service, had followed the hearse out to where the flowers covered the raw dirt mound of the pre-dug grave.
All the brothers and sisters wore black arm bands. After the graveside service things began to break up, and they milled around for a time, talking to people they hadn’t seen since the last biker funeral, then peeled off in twos and threes, roaring past the two state trooper cars which had apparently been summoned just in case, no doubt by nervous residents of the town, unstrung by the bearded, burly, helmeted visions which made such a powerful and flatulent sound as they moved through the town slowly in columns of four.
Daviss Grudd came over and introduced himself after the service. Mits had pointed him out to me and said he rode a 900cc Suzuki with a new Windjammer fairing for touring. She had to explain what she meant. He was a smallish man with big shoulders and a big drooping mustache and a voice like something in the bottom of a barrel. I introduced him to Meyer. He followed us back to the Oasis, which was closed for the day. He brought in the portfolio he took out of a saddlebag, and the four of us sat at one of the tables in front of the bar.
“Meyer,” I explained, “is my adviser in business matters.”
Mits said, “I can’t believe I’m gonna own half this place. I never owned anything in my life.”
“The cash situation is pretty good,” Grudd said. “What you’ve got to have here is management. Ted, for all his kidding around, was a good manager. It has always looked messy around here, but it does turn a dollar.”
“I wouldn’t want to manage it even if I could,” I said quickly.
“Who kept the books?” Meyer asked.
“Ted did,” Mits answered. “They’re in his desk drawer. You want them?” Grudd nodded, and she went and brought them back. Checkbook, journal, ledger, inventory sheets, payroll, withholding, state sales tax, ad valorem tax records.
“I’ve got the corporate books, minute book, and so on.”
Meyer flipped pages, ran his thumbnail down columns of figures, went backwards through the checkbook. Then he said, “I can make a couple of preliminary judgments.”
“Hey I like how he talks,” Mits said.
“Pay a good manager what he would be worth, a manager who can get along with and attract the kind of trade the place caters to, and there’ll be damn little left over for dividends. If there is anything left over, it should go into replacing equipment and maintaining the buildings. At first glance I see a very clean debt situation. There are nine acres of land with a seven-hundred-foot frontage on a not-very-busy tertiary road. Land value, twenty-five to thirty thousand. Liquor inventory, fifteen hundred. Motorcycle and parts inventory, about ten thousand to twelve thousand at cost. Liquor license, how much?”
“Maybe twenty thousand if we can move it somewhere else,” Grudd said.
“Shop equipment and tools, say five thousand. Let me see, that would come to about sixty-five to sixty-eight thousand. My advice would be to liquidate.”
Mits glared at him. “Now I don’t like the way you talk. No damn way do we liquidate. No way!”
I don’t know whether or not he was going to try to talk her into it. Two big machines came in, popping and grumbling. Mits jumped up and looked out and said, “Hey, it’s Preach and Magoo.”
“Top officers of the Fantasies,” Grudd explained. “Let ‘em in, Mits.”
Preach was tall and thin and wore a gray jump suit with a lot of silver coin buttons. He had long blond hair and a long thin blond beard. Except for the little gold wire glasses he was wearing, he looked like folk art depicting Jesus. Magoo was five and a half feet high, and about four broad, none of it fat. If he could have straightened his bandy legs, he would have been a lot closer to six feet. His arms were long, large, sinewy, and bare, with a pale blue tracery of dragons, fu dogs, and Chinese gardens under the tan. His head was half again normal size, with a brute shelf of acromegalic jaw. The expression was at once merry and sardonic, happy and skeptical.
Preach put his hands on Mits’s shoulders and looked down into her small brown face with warmth and compassion. “Mits, Mits, Mits,” he said. “A bad thing, eh? Couldn’t make it in time, kid. We’re sorry. We were in Baja when we heard. Flew back.”
“I wondered,” she said. “It’s okay. You know Daviss Grudd. This is Mr. Meyer and this here is Travis McGee.”
“Preach,” he said, and stuck his hand out to me, ignoring Meyer. His hand was thin and cool, the handshake slack. I saw his eyes flick down to take in the metal badge Cal had slipped to me, and I saw a trace of amusement. “McGee, meet Magoo.” His was a hot beefy grasp. “Heard about you,” Preach said. He turned to Grudd. “What did Teddy do with it?”
“Half and half. Mits and McGee. An even split.”
“Interesting,” Preach said.
Mits broke in. “Mr. Meyer thinks we ought to sell it off.”
Preach studied Meyer. “What would give you thoughts like that, book man?”
Meyer smiled at him. “Common sense. Blaylock didn’t draw salary. And he slacked off on maintenance and repair. Some of the cycle inventory has been around a long time. Once you start paying a manager and picking the place up, there won’t be enough left over.”
“Whose friend is he?” Preach asked Grudd.
“He’s with me,” I said.
Preach wheeled around and studied me again. “You tell your friend Meyer that management will be provided.”
“He says management will be provided, Meyer,” I said.
“Are you being a little bit smartass, McGee?” Preach asked.
“Just enough so you’d notice.”
“I notice you,” he said. “Grudd, you folks deal the cards or something. I’m going walking with the McGiggle twins here.”