Judge Wellington yawned. “You say that as if you had choice in the matter, Whitt. All right. My client is grateful. She thanks you.” He opened his old briefcase and pawed in it and took out the papers that had been prepared Wednesday afternoon in the judge’s law offices. He flipped them onto the desk in front of Whitt Sanders, saying, “Might as well get this taken care of too, as long as we’re all foregathered here. Everything is all ready to record, but what we need is the bank’s approval of the transfer of the mortgage from Mrs. Bannon to Mr. McGee here.”
Mr. Lee hitched closer to the president as Sanders leafed quickly through the legal documents. He stared at Judge Wellington with a look of astonishment. “But… according to this, she’s selling her equity in the property for fifteen thousand dollars, Rufus!”
“Wouldn’t you call that a pretty good deal? Sixty thousand mortgage balance, and you were going to sell the whole kaboodle for thirty-two five and have a judgment against the estate, if any, for twenty-seven thousand five. So she pays the mortgage down to fifty thousand, then, sells for fifteen thousand, which puts her five ahead instead of twenty-seven five behind. Why, this little lady is thirty-two thousand five hundred better off right this minute than she was when she walked in here. Or maybe you just looked surprised she did so good. Remember, she’s got a good lawyer.”
“But we can’t just… approve this transfer. We don’t have enough information. Mr. McGee, we’ll have to have a credit report on you, and we’ll have to have a balance sheet and income statement. This would be highly irregular. I have a responsibility to…”
“The stockholders,” the old judge said. “Whitt, you went through those papers too dang fast. Try it a little slower.”
He did. He came to an abrupt stop. He stared at Connie. “You’ll be the guarantor on the mortgage note, Mrs. Alvarez?!”
“That’s what it says there, doesn’t it?”
“If you’re still nervous, Whitt,” said the judge, “go look up To-Co Groves in your D. and B.”
“Oh, no. I didn’t mean anything like that. It was just… ”
The judge sighed. “Could we just stop fumbling and get. the red tape done so we can get this stuff recorded and set out for home?”
“Excuse me just a moment,” Sanders said. He took Mr. Lee out of the office with him and over to a quiet corner of the carpeted bullpen. They held about a forty-second. consultation. I hoped I knew exactly what it was about. I looked to the judge for reassurance, and got it in the form of a slow wink an almost imperceptible nod.
Mr. Lee came back in with Sanders. He was apparently nominated by Sanders to put the matter into careful legal jargon.
“Mrs. Bannon,” he said, “whether or not your sale of your interest to Mr. McGee is final at this moment, the bank feels that it is ethically obligated to inform you that shortly after two o ‘,clock this afternoon a local attorney contacted Mr. Sanders here and asked him if the sale of the foreclosed properties had been consummated. When Mr. Sanders said that it had not, this attorney then said he was representing a party whose name he could not divulge, but who had directed him to inquire of the bank if, in the event the properties had not been sold, a firm offer of eighty thousand dollars would be sufficient to acquire it.”
Sanders then interrupted, making Lee look exasperated for an instant. “It isn’t a firm offer,” he said to Janine. “But I don’t think young… the local attorney would make a trivial inquiry. You see, if your arrangement with Mr. McGee isn’t firm, or if he would like to withdraw, this might be a lot more advantageous for you. You would get back your ten thousand, plus the overage above the sixty thousand mortgage, or another twenty thousand.”
Jan had been coached in how to react, by the Judge, if Puss had been successful in conning the young attorney, Steve Besseker.
“But couldn’t this mysterious party be the same Mr. Preston LaFrance you were going to sell it to?” Janine asked.
“I don’t think it would be very likely that Press would-”
“But haven’t you told Mr. LaFrance he wasn’t going to get my property?”
“Well… yes,” said Sanders uncomfortably.
“Then, couldn’t he turn right around and make a bigger offer through a lawyer, if he wants it bad enough?” she asked.
“It might be possible. Remotely possible.”
“But don’t you see,” she said, frowning, earnest, leaning forward, “Mr. LaFrance owns the acreage directly behind us. He’s been after our property all along. He’s schemed and plotted to drive us out of business, Mr. Sanders, so he could buy it, and so he’s responsible for what… my husband… responsible for…”
She snuffled into her handkerchief and Sanders, edgy and uncomfortable, said, “Now, there. Now, now, Mrs. Bannon. We all like to have some specific thing or person to blame when… when things don’t go right. I’m sure Press LaFrance wouldn’t-”
“My husband was convinced of it, and that’s enough for me,” she said spiritedly. “Why, I wouldn’t accept any blind offer like that if it was… twice as much. Three times as much! I would rather sell it to Mr. McGee for eleven cents than see that man get it!”
Whitt Sanders fussed with the documents in front of him. He looked over at Rufus Wellington. “Rufius, I’d be way out of line, as you well know, if I made any comment about… about the resources of anybody doing business with us. All I can say is that… it is remotely possible the attorney is representing Press LaFrance. But it isn’t very damn probable.”
“You telling me, Whitt, it’s pretty much a known fact around town this LaFrance couldn’t scratch up eighty thousand?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Around the courthouse this morning, Whitt, talking to the County Clerk, and passing the time of day with your Assessor, I got the feeling things are a little slow lately in the land business in Shawana County. Now if this LaFrance is up to his hocks in land deals, he might be like the fella with the itch who was juggling the family china and walking a tightrope, and a bee stung him right square on… Sorry, ladies, we’ll leave that one right there. Probably got a goodlooking balance sheet, all considered, and you got some of his notes, but you won’t go one more dime, and you’re a little nervous about him.” The judge laughed suddenly and slapped his thigh. “By God, Whitt, that explains how come you acted sorry as a skunked hound you couldn’t sell off the foreclosure to this LaFrance. He must have some deal in the making that would get him free and clear. He into you a little deep, boy?”
“Now, Rufus,” Sanders pleaded. “I haven’t told you a thing, and I’m not about to.”
“Not in words,” the judge said. “But we’ve set in poker games together, Whitt, and I never had much trouble reading you.”
So then the red tape was taken care of, and the necessary documents were recorded at the courthouse. I walked with the judge to his black airconditioned Imperial and he stopped out of earshot of his driver, who had gotten out and opened the door for him.
“Son, we sure God rammed a crooked stick into the hornet nest and stirred it up. There’ll be folk sitting up half the night trying to make sense out of it all, not knowing it doesn’t make sense-not the way they’re thinking. Make sure you keep back far enough from the hornets.”
“I’ll be careful, Judge.”
“You tell that big sassy redhead she did good. That’s as much woman as a man is likely to see in a long day’s journey. Where are you meeting up with her?”
“Not anywhere near here,” I said. “Back at Broward Beach. She said she could probably get Besseker to drive her over there, and if she couldn’t, she could get there somehow”
He squinted into the late afternoon sunlight and said, “There’s a gal like that so clear in my mind it’s like yesterday, son. And that was nineteen twenty and six.” He turned to me with a look of dismay. “And if she’s alive anyplace in the world, she’s somewhere in her sixties. Hard to believe. Know something? I wrote poems to that gal. First, last and onliest time in my life. You let me know how you make out with that old swamp rat, that old D. J. Carbee, will you? McGee, tell me one thing. Are you going to let the angries get in the way of pumping some cash money out of this for that widow girl and her kids?”