Chapter 17
In the morning, still damp from the shower, we headed back for the Cape, stopped on the way for steak and eggs in a diner and got to the hotel room I still owned about noon. The fog had lifted and the sun was as clean and bright as we were, though less splendidly dressed. In my mailbox was a note to call Harv Shepard.
I called him from my room while Susan changed into her bathing suit.
“Spenser,” I said, “what do you want?”
“You gotta help me.”
“That’s what I was telling you just a little while back,” I said.
“I gotta see you, it’s, it’s outta control. I can’t handle it. I need help. That, that goddamned nigger shoved one of my kids. I need help.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll come over.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t want you here. I’ll come there. You in the hotel?”
“Yep.” I gave him my room number. “I’ll wait for you.”
Susan was wiggling her way into a one-piece bathing suit.
“Anything?” she said.
“Yeah, Shepard’s coming apart. I guess Hawk made a move at one of the kids and Shepard’s in a panic. He’s coming over.”
“Hawk scares me,” Susan said. She slipped her arms through the shoulder straps.
“He scares me too, my love.”
“He’s…” She shrugged. “Don’t go against him.”
“Better me than Shepard,” I said.
“Why better you than Shepard?”
“Because I got a chance and Shepard has none.”
“Why not the police?”
“We’ll have to ask Shepard that. Police are okay by me. I got no special interest in playing Russian roulette with Hawk. Shepard called him a nigger.”
Susan shrugged. “What’s that got to do?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I wish he hadn’t done that. It’s insulting.”
“My God, Spenser, Hawk has threatened this man’s life, beaten him up, abused his children, and you’re worried about a racial slur?”
“Hawk’s kind of different,” I said.
She shook her head. “So the hell are you,” she said. “I’m off to the pool to work on my tan. When you get through you can join me there. Unless you decide to elope with Hawk.”
“Miscegenation,” I said. “Frightful.”
She left. About two minutes later Shepard arrived. He was moving better now. Some of the stiffness had gone from his walk, but confidence had not replaced it. He had on a western-cut, black-checked leisure suit and a white shirt with black stitching, the collar out over the lapels of the suit. There was a high shine on his black-tassled loafers and his face was gray with fear.
“You got a drink here,” he said.
“No, but I’ll get one. What do you like?”
“Bourbon.”
I called room service and ordered bourbon and ice. Shepard walked across the room and stared out the window at the golf course. He sat down in the armchair by the window and got right up again. “Spenser,” he said. “I’m scared shit.”
“I don’t blame you,” I said.
“I never thought… I always thought I could handle business, you know? I mean I’m a businessman and a businessman is supposed to be able to handle business. I’m supposed to know how to put a deal together and how to make it work. I’m supposed to be able to manage people. But this. I’m no goddamned candy-ass. I been around and all, but these people…”
“I know about these people.”
“I mean that goddamned nigger…”
“His name’s Hawk,” I said. “Call him Hawk.”
“What are you, the NAACP?”
“Call him Hawk.”
“Yeah, okay, Hawk. My youngest came in the room while they were talking to me and Hawk grabbed him by the shirt and put him out the door. Right in front of me. The black bastard.”
“Who are they?”
“They?”
“You said your kid came in while they were talking to you.”
“Oh, yeah,” Shepard walked back to the window and looked out again. “Hawk and a guy named Powers. White guy. I guess Hawk works for him.”
“Yeah, I know Powers.”
The room service waiter came with the booze on a tray. I signed the check and tipped him a buck. Shepard rummaged in his pocket. “Hey, let me get that,” he said.
“I’ll put it on your bill,” I said. “What did Powers want? No, better, I’ll tell you what he wanted. You owe him money and you can’t pay him and he’s going to let you off the hook a little if you let him into your business a lot.”
“Yeah.” Shepard poured a big shot over ice from the bottle of bourbon and slurped at it. “How the hell did you know?”
“Like I said, I know Powers. It’s also not a very new idea. Powers and a lot of guys like him have done it before. A guy like you mismanages the money, or sees a chance for a big break or overextends himself at the wrong time and can’t get financing. Powers comes along, gives you the break, charges an exorbitant weekly interest. You can’t pay, he sends Hawk around to convince you it’s serious. You still can’t pay so Powers comes around and says you can give me part of the business or you can cha-cha once more with Hawk. You’re lucky, you got me to run to. Most guys got no one but the cops.”
“I didn’t mismanage the money.”
“Yeah, course not. Why not go to the cops?”
“No cops,” Shepard said. He drank some more bourbon.
“Why not?”
“They’ll start wanting to know why I needed money from Powers.”
“And you were cutting a few corners?”
“Goddamnit, I had to. Everybody cuts a few corners.”
“Tell me about the ones you cut.”
“Why? What do you need to know that for?”
“I won’t know till you tell me.”
Shepard drank some more bourbon. “I was in a box. I had to do something.” The drape on the right side of the window hung crookedly. Shepard straightened it. I waited. “I was in business with an outfit called Estate Management Corporation. They go around to different vacation-type areas and develop leisure homes in conjunction with a local guy. Around here I was the local guy. What we did was set up a separate company with me as president. I did the developing, dealt with the town planning board, building inspector, that stuff, and supervised the actual construction. They provided architects, planners and financing and the sales force. It’s a little more complicated than that, but you get the idea. My company was a wholly owned subsidiary of Estate Management. You follow that okay?”
“Yeah. I got that. I’m not a shrewd-o-business tycoon like you, but if you talk slowly and I can watch your lips move, I can keep up, I think. What was the name of your company?”
“We called the development Promised Land. And the company was Promised Land, Inc.”
“Promised Land.” I whistled. “Cu-ute,” I said. “Were you aiming at an exclusive Jewish clientele?”
“Huh? Jewish? Why Jewish? Anybody was welcome. I mean we wouldn’t be thrilled if the Shvartzes moved in maybe, but we didn’t care about religion.”
I wished I hadn’t said it. “Okay,” I said. “So you’re president of Promised Land, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Estate Management, Inc. Then what?”
“Estate Management went under.”
“Bankrupt?”
“Yeah.” Shepard emptied his bourbon and I poured some more in the glass. I offered ice and he shook his head. “The way it worked was the Estate Management people would see the land, really high-powered stuff, contact people, closers, free trips to Florida, the whole bag. The buyer would put a deposit on the land and would also sign a contract for the kind of house he wanted. We had about six models to choose from. He’d put a deposit on the house as well, and that deposit would go into an escrow account.”
“What happened to the land deposit?”