In the president’s office the president said, “I didn’t realize you were the Mrs. Alvarez.”
“So I asked the judge if he could do anything to help my friend here, Jan Bannon.”
Janine sat silent and motionless, dressed in darkness, and the blueberry eyes of Whitt Sanders seemed to slide uneasily past her.
Sanders said, at last, “I guess I don’t know what you’re driving at, actually. The business holdings don’t fall into the estate because there was an actual foreclosure before the time of death, with all proper advertising and notifications. So title passed. It’s a standard first mortgage agreement, Rufus. Title passed to the bank.”
“That so?” said the Judge. “Funny. I got the impression that when I turn over to you the certified check I got here for ten thousand dollars in the name of Mrs. Bannon, that is going to cover back payments on principal, plus interest, plus fees and expenses, and leave a little over which you can apply on the next payment, and I got the impression that title is going to ease right on back to her.”
“But the grace period is up! It isn’t possible now!”
Judge Wellington sighed. “Bullshit,” said he. Then he swept his hundred-dollar ranch hat off in courtly fashion, nodded toward Connie and Janine and said, “Begging your pardon, ladies.” He dropped the hat on the floor beside his chair and said, “Whitt, I can’t remember you ever being admitted to the Florida bar, so there’s no point in me citing the pertinent and appropriate cases where the courts have ruled that in the cases of widows and orphans, especially where the widow was one of the parties on the mortgage, foreclosure action can be set aside provided the bank has not yet passed title on to a third party in a liquidation of the recovered assets.”
“But we’ve accepted earnest money from-”
“One Preston LaFrance in the amount of three thousand two hundred and fifty dollars, representing ten percent of the agreed price on the foreclosed business property on the Shawana River, and the acceptance of that money did not constitute a change of ownership on the property, and here is the certified check for ten thousand, Whitt, and I request a signed receipt, with the date and the hour thereon.”
“I can’t accept it until I find out-”
“You take it and you make out the receipt saying you are taking it and holding it in escrow pending the decision of your legal people, or you and me are going to go around and around right here, boy. Besides, here is a situation where, by accepting the mortgage obligation and paying it up to date, Mrs. Bannon is putting that mortgage back on the books, sound and whole, in the amount originally owed and paid down to where this check puts it, and it would seem like a bank officer thinking of his stockholders-and thinking of the State Banking Commission-would snap at the chance to keep from showing a loss. Why do you seem to be holding back, Whitt?”
Sanders patted his red forehead with a handkerchief. “As you pointed out, Rufus, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know what our obligation to Mr. LaFrance might be.”
“Absolutely no obligation, I can tell you, but you’ll feel cozy hearing it from your own people, so we’ll give you a chance to do just that. Suppose we come back at two thirty?”
“That… that ought to be time enough. Uh… Mrs. Bannon, do you intend to operate the business there yourself?”
“She’s going to think about it,” Judge Wellington said. “When her husband couldn’t keep up on his insurance, he had the good sense to tell the company to apply the cash value to the premiums instead of drawing it out, so she has a little money to give her time to do some planning. We’ll let you get on back to work, Whitt.”
We left the bank and walked two blocks to the old Shawana River Hotel, and got a corner table in the dark-paneled, high-ceilinged old dining room. Janine was at my right, and the judge across from me. Connie and the judge and I ordered drinks. Jan didn’t want any. There was a yellowish look to the tan of her lean, Mediterranean-boy face, and the skin of her face and hands had a papery look.
I touched her hand and said, “Okay?”
She gave me an abrupt nod, a smile that appeared for but a moment. The judge seemed lost in private thought. Finally he gave a dry little cough and said, “McGee, you seem to know what you’re trying to do for this little lady, and I know Connie well enough to know she’ll go along with some pretty wild ideas. But I’ve heard a few hints around the courthouse, and a few rumors, and I can put things together, and I wouldn’t be doing right by my client not to give advice, whether it’s wanted or not.”
“I want your, advice, Judge,” Janine said.
He sipped his bourbon and licked his lips. “These little counties all got what you could call a shadow government: These folks have known each other for generations. They got to putting this land deal together, and there is a little business right in the way and doing pretty good. Expanding. So they use the county government to stunt that business and knock it down to where the price is right. It doesn’t take all five county commissioners. Just a couple, plus the other three needing favors themselves sometime, with no need of anybody asking too many questions. You depended on highway trade and river trade, and giving service to local residents. Now they could have kept that road open to traffic and in pretty good shape too while fixing it, and set up a short-term contract on it. There’s pollution-control ordinances on the books to keep that river in better shape. They could have denied that Tech something outfit when they petitioned to have the bridge taken out. When you didn’t drop off the vine as fast as they wanted, then they put those regulatory services people onto you and really closed you down. Okay, Miz Bannon, you got squoze bad. So what I say is this. I say don’t mess too fancy with these folk because in the long run you can’t win. You can lay the squeeze right back onto them. I know how these folks think. You just say a hundred and twenty-five thousand, plus the buyer takes over the mortgage. No dickering. No conversations: Let them make the offers. When time starts to run out on them, somebody is going to get nervous and offer a hundred thousand, and then you by God grab it and walk away, and you’ll know you’ve skimmed some good cream off their deal.”
“That isn’t enough,” she said in a barely audible voice.
“But, girl, you’d be hurting them in the place that hurts the most. What are you trying to get out of this? Lord God, you can’t make anybody ashamed of how they did you, even if they’d ever admit it wasn’t just kind of a series of accidents. They just say it’s dog eat dog and lots of businesses fail all the time.”
“But they had Tush killed.”
That little embellishment had been kept from the judge. He leaned forward, his old eyes wide. “You say killed? Now, young lady, I can understand how you could come to believe it was like that, but these folks just don’t operate that way. That man of yours worked hard and long and it was all going down the drain, and sometimes a man gets to the point where he-”
“You didn’t know Tush Bannon,” Connie said. “I did. And Travis McGee knew him longer than either Jan or me. We’re not taking any votes, Rufus. We’re not talking about probably this or probably that. We’re telling you he was killed.”
Judge Wellington leaned back, so upset he tried to drink out of the glass he had already emptied. “Well now! Then, it must have been some fool mistake. It must have been something else that went wrong. Then, by God, the thing to do right now is put it in the hands of the State’s Attorney for this Judicial District and…” He stopped suddenly and frowned at Connie. “By God, I must be getting old. He’d turn it over to the Assistant State. Attorney for Shawana County, and the Shawana County Sheriff’s Department would make the investigation, and the Shawana County Medical Examiner would do the autopsy, and all these folks are elected to office, and there’d be all the pressure to cover it over and forget it, and even if it went to a Grand Jury if it got that far, who’d get indicted? I’m getting so old I’m forgetting the facts of life. Second childhood. I’m thinking the world is like I thought it was when I was back in Stetson Law School.” He scowled into his empty glass. “Maybe bring in somebody from the Attorney General’s office to poke around?”