“They?”
“All that area is zoned as an industrial park ever since Tech-Tex came in, across the river. Big high lines come in with all the power anybody would need. They’re going to dredge the river and the channel so barges can come in from the Waterway. Some big corporation wants to come in, apparently, and they’d pay a nice price for the land.”
“So who’s putting it together?”
“A local real estate man named Preston LaFrance owns the fifty acres right behind me. Besseker found out LaFrance has an option on the two hundred acres just east of me, at a price of two hundred dollars an acre. It’s owned by an old boy named D. J. Carbee, an early settler. On the other side of me, to the west, there’s two hundred and twenty acres owned by something called Southway Lands, Incorporated. Besseker found out that Southway is one of Gary Santo’s operations. Do you know him?”
“I know of him. Like everybody else in south Florida.” A few years ago Santo had been the dramatic young swinger, with the touch of gold. Now he is the not-so-young swinger, moving in mysterious ways behind many scenes, behind barriers of privacy and money. The name in Miami has the flavor of penthouses, pipelines, South American playmates, mergers and acquisitions, private jets, and well-publicized donations to local drives in the art and culture areas.
“I don’t know the exact relationship between Santo and Preston LaFrance, Trav. Maybe LaFrance is just acting as Santo’s agent. Maybe it’s a joint venture. Besseker heard a rumor that the plant location experts nosed around the area a year and a half ago and recommended that the big company that wants it could go as high as eight hundred thousand! Seventeen hundred dollars an acre. About the time I learned all this, an old friend came out and told me he couldn’t help it, and didn’t want to do it, but he had to pick up the houseboats. I still owed on them. He told me that one of the Shawana County Commissioners, Mr. P. K. Hazzard-they call him Monk Hazzard-had hinted that if my friend repossessed his houseboats, he’d get a favorable ruling on a zoning application. So when I told that to Besseker, he said that Monk Hazzard was Preston LaFrance’s brother-in-law, and there wasn’t any way to prove a thing. He acted funny. He said he had a lot of things coming up and he couldn’t promise to give me any more time. They’d gotten to him too, I guess. He has to make a living there.”
“All just folks,” I said.
He stared at the paper towel rack. He shook his head. “You know my style, Trav. I don’t like all this round-and-about stuff. Direct confrontation. I’d seen Hazzard at a couple of those public hearings where they’d messed me up, like about taking that bridge out, but I hadn’t talked to him. So I tried to make an appointment and he kept stalling, and finally I took Jan with me and we sat there outside his office until finally he saw us. Smallish man, with a long neck and a little bit of a round head, and big goggly eyes behind his thick glasses. Face sort of like a monkey, and a squeaky voice. I said we were citizens and taxpayers and landowners, and he was a public official, and it was his ethical and moral duty to see that the machinery of government wasn’t used to shove me into bankruptcy so his brother-in-law could make a few bucks. You know about humiliation, Trav?”
“I keep getting a little every once in a while.”
“He strutted around and he squeaked and lectured. Folks come down from the north and think it’s easy to, make a living in Florida. Toughest place in the world. He wouldn’t look at me. He looked out the window part of the time, and at Jan’s legs the rest of the time. He said it wasn’t the job of local government to save a man from his own mistakes and bad judgment. He said that the greatest good for the greatest number meant the best possible land use, and maybe a marina wasn’t the best use when you think of the tax base and employment and so on. He said he’d overlook the slur on his honesty because a man in trouble says things he doesn’t mean. He said people just don’t know how much talent it takes to run a small business, and I’d probably be happier in some other line of work. He said that he didn’t know whether Press LaFrance was interested in my ten acres or not, but maybe if I could talk to him he might make me an offer, but I shouldn’t expect too much because the business was in bad shape. He said that people in trouble get to thinking the whole world is against them, and just because certain necessary county improvements were hurting my business, it didn’t mean it was done on purpose. He said thousands of little businesses go broke every year in Florida, and I shouldn’t think I was an exception. So we left and Jan was crying before we got to the car. Humiliation and frustration.”
“You’re bucking the power structure, Tush. You can’t hardly win.”
“I thought I could. When I saw LaFrance, I went along. He gave me the same line, as if they’d rehearsed it. I told him to make an offer. He said he wasn’t interested. He said maybe if it came on the market later on, he might make an offer on a foreclosure price, but he didn’t think it was worth the mortgage balance. A little over sixty thousand, that is. And we put fifty-one thousand in it. So I had to open my big mouth. I leaned across his desk and told him he was never going to get his hands on my property. I’d leave Jan there to run it and go back to sales work, and put every dime I could spare against that mortgage. So they squeezed a little harder.”
“HOW?”
“First they extended that road contract another hundred days. Then they sent out inspectors from the County Bureau of Services, and they condemned my wiring, and the septic tank drain fields, and my well, and lifted my license to do business. With the license gone, the bank said I come up with the whole amount of the mortgage in thirty days or they foreclose. It’s way past due. We did well for a while there, Trav. I didn’t overextend. If they’d left me alone, I had enough business to pay for the boat storage rack and the motel enlargement. We were going to have one of the best little operations in that whole area. I tried to see Commissioner Hazzard again. I waited and a couple of sheriff’s deputies showed up and said I could either leave or get picked up for loitering. So Jan and I talked it over and decided the best thing to do would be lay it all out for Mr. Gary Santo. We decided he was probably big enough so that he didn’t even know what was going on up there, and would tell them to put a stop to it if he did know. We decided that probably LaFrance just got too eager to do a big job for Santo and do it as cheap as possible. I put it all down on paper. I guess that between us we must have rewritten that letter about nine times, and Janine typed it on the old machine in the motel office, and we sent it down here Special Delivery, marked personal.”
“Any answer?”
“Verbal. From that girl I was sitting with. Her name is Mary Smith. I came down and tried to get to Santo. She was as far as I got. She said she’d meet me out here, because she had to catch a flight. Cold as a meat locker, boy. Yes, Mr. Santo had read my letter personally. Yes, he had an informal agreement with Mr. LaFrance. But Mr. LaFrance is not employed by Mr. Santo. Yes, Mr. LaFrance is under considerable pressure by Mr. Santo to produce the results promised insofar as land acquisition is con cerned. Mr. Santo feels no personal responsibility for your plight. He is not running a charitable organization. I wanted to know if I could see him in prison. No. Sorry. But no.”
“Now what?”
“We lose it. That’s all. The grace period is about gone. Januae is taking it hard. It’s a lot of money and work and time down the drain, and nothing to show for it. I… I wish I’d come to you sooner, Tray, before it got to be too late. Maybe you could have figured out some kind of a salvage operation. Your kind of salvage. Squeeze them like they’ve squoze me.” He gave me a strange, puzzled, thoughtful look. “You know, I keep thinking about how I might kill somebody. Hazzard, Santo, LaFrance. Somebody. Anybody. I never thought that way in my life before. I’m not like that.”