Джон Макдональд - The Last One Left

“Have to be real, real good,” Judge Billy said softly.

“Good enough, I guess, so that you and Tom D. would be glad to have a piece of it?”

“If it was something like that,” said the Judge.

Sam looked over at Tom Dorra. “It would ease my mind if I knew all this publicity was something Bix decided he’d just have to put up with. On account of Leila being along, if he’d wanted to be considerate, he could have let me have a little hint. But it isn’t too late for a little consideration. It’s something a man could give without having to say anything else about anything, wouldn’t you say?”

“Billy is doing the saying,” Tom said.

The Judge swiveled his chair and sat staring out the window. He turned back slowly. “I guess I tell you that we’re edgy about it too, you’d have to know more.”

“I guess I would.”

“What you do is keep it in mind that Tom D. and I are coming right out with it, without being cute, just because your little sister being a guest on that boat kind of takes it out of the business picture and makes it friendship.”

“I won’t forget it.”

“The way it started, you know Bix has been getting into resort operations outside the country. Sunshine Management, Incorporated. It’s a nice tax picture. He had an eye on the Bahamas. He found an outfit based there that was in trouble. Ventures, Limited, set up as a Bahamian corporation. They’d moved too fast, picked up too much land in too many places, but a lot of it right choice. Some kind of legal tangle was keeping them from selling off some of the beach land and islands to get even. It was all pledged against the full amount of the loans they’d gotten, I guess, and they’d borrowed to the hilt and no way to issue more paper to get development money. The only way out was to sell all the holdings at once, in one package, pay off the debt, and have something left to distribute to the shareholders. Eleven million five was the asking price. Bix muscled them down to ten three, but it was still too much he figured. He had it figured that about nine flat would be about right, but that was getting near the danger point because at that price maybe a lot of other promoters would have started to get interested. So he started snuffling around. He got a man who could deliver the whole board, a majority of the board, if he could have some leverage to work with. The leverage they worked out was eight hundred thousand cash, under the table. For that piece of money, Bix’s pigeon could get an affirmative vote through the board to take Bix’s cash offer of eight million seven. That makes the total nine five. He’s been working on it a year and a half. All he could scrape up for the under-the-table money was four hundred, in a real quiet way without attracting any attention. So Tom D. here and me, we came in for two hundred each. Bix’s program was to keep them sweating and see if he could get them to go along for less than the eight hundred, and if it was less, we’d all cut our ante the same percent. Sam, there’s no need to go into how we stand to make out. We worked it out with Bix, and let’s say it’s enough to make a man smile some. When there’s risks something could go wrong, and when you come up with the kind of money you keep in fruit jars, you want it should fatten up pretty good. So, considering, when the news came through, Tom and me started feeling some edgy. There isn’t a scrap of paper we’ve got to show, not even any way to write it off. It isn’t like Bix to get careless with any kind of money.”

“So the Muñeca left here with eight hundred thousand dollars in cash aboard her!”

“More than half of it hundreds, all the rest in fifties,” Tom Dorra said. “All banded and marked and packed neat in a suitcase, not a big suitcase, little bigger than one of those dispatch cases. Those boys on the board who were going along with it, it was going to make them well, but the others were going to get burnt and figure everybody got burnt.”

“Who was his contact?”

The Judge said, “A Canadian name of Angus Squires, has a place in Freeport and some kind of a hideaway fishing lodge on something called Musket Cay in the Berry Islands. The way it works, Bix had moved the eight million seven into a Nassau bank and had some lawyer in Nassau with a limited power of attorney who’d make the offer and when it was voted in, pay by bank check and take over the deeds to the holdings in the name of Sunshine Management, Incorporated. Squires would call an emergency meeting of the board in Nassau. On his way from Freeport to Nassau he’d meet Bix at Musket Cay. Bix would give him some of the cash money and show him the rest. When the deal went through, Squires would stop at the same place on the way back to Freeport and pick up the rest of it, the eight hundred, or whatever Bix was able to work him down to. Bix said he wasn’t going to hustle the deal through. He said he’d cruise around the islands some. He said the longer he dragged his feet, the more Squires and his crowd would be hurting. Last I heard from him, Sam, he give me a call from Miami when he got there, just about almost a month ago.”

“Who is that Staniker and his wife?”

“Now that would be the fella he took on in Miami. He said he’d want to get somebody who knows the waters. Bix and his boy, Roger, took it around the Gulf to Miami from here. He said he’d want to get a cook aboard too once they took off from the states. Reckon he found a couple that suited. Bix would check them out pretty good, that’s for certain. The thing is, Sam, there is no reason on God’s earth Bix would want to turn up missing this way. It’s a good safe boat, and he’d have a good safe place aboard for the money, but eight hundred thousand and no sign of the boat at all, it starts a man thinking, and it keeps your food from settling real good.”

“Who is the lawyer in Nassau?”

“Near as I remember, he didn’t mention a name.”

“What have you been planning to do, Judge?” Sam asked.

Tom Dorra said, “Earlier I was saying to Judge Billy we don’t hear anything in another couple days, I just might go on over and get that Squires off in private and dance him up and down some to see what might come loose and fall off him. But Bix didn’t talk like he was dealing with any hard case. What are you going to do?”

“Clean up a few things and see if I can get out of here by tomorrow night and get on over there and see if there’s anything they could be doing they’re not doing. I can take a look at Squires and let you know.”

“We would be most humbly grateful, Sam’l,” said the Judge.

“I’m grateful you told me what’s going on.”

“Just saved you a lot of digging is all, I expect. I sure hope that — everything is all right aboard that boat. You boys want to walk an old man down the street and let him stand you a touch of the nerve tonic?”

“Thanks, but I’d best be getting back up the line.”

“Nerve tonic is what I need most,” Tom said, rising to his full height, straightening his pale hat. “By the way, Sam, I was talking to old Goober the other night and he said he seen Lydia Jean a week back still up there in Corpus. Her old lady must be having some long spell of the sickness, I guess.”

“Can’t be helped,” Sam said.

“Can get tiresome, tending the sick. I got to go up to the regional meeting of the growers next week, and if I get a chance, I could give her a ring and cheer her up some.”

“You do that,” Sam said evenly. He said goodby to them and walked out. Tom D. started to follow along, but the Judge called him back in and closed the office door.

“Now what the hell were you trying to do, bringing that up about Lydia Jean?” Billy asked angrily.

Tom D. sprawled his bulk and weight back into an oak chair and said, smiling, “Now Billy, half the Valley knows Lydia Jean run out on him and he can’t seem to sweet talk her into coming home where she belongs. Thought I’d give him a little something to think on.”