"Too bad," said the wild-eyed man. He reached out and took him by the collar.
"Hey!" said the rental agent as he was dragged across the counter to the other side. He was so surprised that he didn't fight back. Renters had never gotten violent with him before, not here in the golfing capital of the world.
Very quickly he was sorry he hadn't fought back, because he was slammed to the floor and the wild-eyed guy was pulling a mallet from his knapsack.
"Okay, okay," the agent said excitedly. "Take a car. Don't hit me."
"I'm not going to hit you," Wild-Eyes said in a steady voice as the others grabbed his arms and legs. The rest placed heavy metal objects on his throat, chest, and stomach.
"What are those?" he asked uncomfortably.
"Spikes."
It was the last word he ever heard, because the mallet drove down in a sweeping overhand blow, pushing the cold steel into his throat. He died instantly. But to be sure, the hammerer drove the other two spikes into his chest and stomach.
His dead hands dropped to the parquet floor.
When he got to the Condome site, hours later, Fabrique Foirade's first reaction was one of disappointment.
"There's no fence," he complained. "How are we gonna block the heavy equipment from entering if there's no fence?"
"There isn't even any heavy equipment," Joyce spat.
Fabrique Foirade took in the gleaming Condome complex with a grim expression.
The great Plexiglas bubble had been finished. They could see the Spanish-colonial penthouse inside. All around the wide-open work area, construction workmen in yellow hard hats lugged prefabricated walls and other objects through an open door in the bubble. It resembled a colossal airlock.
As they watched, one lone worker, stooping to pick up a discarded drill, gave an ear-splitting shriek. He dropped the tool.
"Scorpion!" he yelled. He started stomping the ground with his heavy construction boots. "Damn you!"
"He's butchering that poor bug!" Fabrique hissed.
"Doesn't he know he should love all of nature's creatures?"
"Let's show him how," Fabrique said menacingly.
Shouting, Dirt First!! poured from their sheltering dune.
The construction worker who had had the misfortune to disturb a scorpion hiding in the shade of his power drill was sick of scorpions. Truth to tell, Edward Coyne was sick of the Condome project with its never-ending problems. So he was happy to have something to take his troubles out on. Even if it was a scorpion.
He stomped it hard. The tail curled up as if suddenly sucked dry. He stomped its head. He thought that did it, but the damned thing was still moving. It tried to scuttle away.
"Got you now, you devil," Ed said bitingly, lifting a heavy boot to deliver the coup de grace.
The coup de grace was never delivered because out of the desert came a horde of . . . Ed Coyne didn't know what the hell they were. They looked like atomic-blast victims with their dusty skin, matted hair, and wild red-rimmed eyes.
Whatever they were, they were shouting, "Dirt First!! Dirt First!!"
"Dirt?" he muttered. "We're in the desert."
Then they were all over him.
Ed Coyne was a big man, six-five and 225 pounds, with case-hardened hands like wooden mauls. He laid the first wave out cold. After that, he had a rougher time of it. They attacked him with the rounded ends of railroad spikes, banging on his hard hat with a vengeance and howling, "Spike him! Spike him!"
One lifted a mallet behind a spike, coming toward him looking like a crazed version of Dracula's Van Helsing.
That was enough for Ed Coyne. Struggling with the ones who were straining to pull him to the ground, he reached down for the electric drill. He hoped no one had kicked the cord loose from the generator plug.
No one had. His fingers closed around the trigger, and as he squeezed, he heard the reassuring high-pitched whine of the drill bit.
Ed brought it up like a pistol and waved it in the face of his attacker.
"Who's got cavities that need work?" he taunted. "The dentist is in!"
That did the trick. They changed their minds about spiking him. In fact, they changed their minds about everything.
"Retreat! Retreat!" the one with the mallet and spike shouted.
They slunk back into the desert. One stopped to gently gather up the wounded scorpion with two tender hands. He was stung for his pains. Howling, he dropped the insect and followed the others, crying that he loved the scorpion. Why couldn't it love him back?
The commotion brought the rest of the crew running from the Condome, where they were stowing tools for the night.
"Who the hell were they?" Ed was asked.
"I don't know. They kept yelling 'Dirt First!' Mean anything to you?"
"Oh, hell, it's those ecocrazies. You know, the ones who are forever trying to save every halt-and-lame subspecies of useless pest in the forest."
"But we're in the desert."
"I guess the forest got too hot for them," Ed Coyne remarked, gathering up his drill and cord. "Come on, we'd better tell Mr. Swindell. He's gonna love this."
Chapter 12
Connors "Con" Swindell was not having a good day.
In truth, he wasn't having a good year. The way things were going, he was well on his way to having a terrible decade.
It had all been so different back in the seventies and eighties, when he had been one of the giants in condomania.
As if it were yesterday, Con Swindell remembered those halcyon days. Especially the forever-golden moment the cabalistic word "condominium" had been whispered in his ear.
"Condoleum?" he had sputtered, perplexed.
"No, condominium."
"Condolonium," Swindell repeated, blinking.
It had been a real-estate conference in Phoenix. The man who whispered in his ear added, "It's the greatest thing to hit real estate since the thirty-year fixed-rate mortgage."
"Condomonium?" Con said, still struggling with the unfamiliar word.
"Condominiums," Morgan Mullaney repeated, a slight edge creeping into his usually smooth salesman's voice. He was in the high end of the residential market. Strictly penthouses and mansions. Nothing less than six-figure transactions.
"Why don't we just call them cons-just to get through the conversation?" Swindell had suggested, wondering if this guy was trying to snooker him somehow.
"How about condos?" Mullaney suggested. " 'Cons' sounds a little shady. No offense, you understand."
"None taken," said Connors Swindell, who had made a lateral career slide from used cars into real estate. He happened to have been sucked into buying some worthless Florida land back in the early sixties. Then Disney World had been hatched and Connors cashed in his worthless land for big bucks. He got out of used cars and traded up to fine homes. He had been trading up ever since, feeding the voracious public appetite for the American dream's ultimate aspiration, a home of one's own.
"So," he asked on that long-ago day, "what exactly are condos?"
Connors Swindell found himself being led to a display booth. There was a scale model of a Spanish-style apartment house tended by a busty blond. He had trouble keeping his eyes on the model.
"Nice," he said. "But I'm in private homes. Rentals are a pain. I like to sell 'em and walk away. Let the banks worry about whether the suckers are good for the mortgage."
"This, my friend, is no mere apartment house."
"Looks like one. Bigger than some, smaller than most. So what?"
"What would you say if I told you that this baby will generate more income than a comparable apartment house would if you rented it out for fifty years straight?"
"Where you plan on building it-Beverly Hills?"
"Burbank."
"Burbank! You're dreaming!"
"No, I'm developing. I'm in development now, Con. Condominium development."
"There's that word again," Swindell mumbled, staring at the apartment-house model. "How's it work?"