Джон Макдональд - Pale Gray for Guilt

“I do? Why?”

“Because she ought to come down here.”

He cocked his head. “Connie suggested?” I nodded. “I should discuss all this with her. It is only fair to her.”

“And she should sign some papers, maybe?”

“Very important-looking documents.” He scratched his chin, tugged at his potato nose. “One part of your thinking I don’t understand. That lousy fellow, that LaFrance, it makes some sense he should go to Santo to see if he can get bailed out by maybe peddling him the option he’s got on the Carbee land. So doesn’t he mention you?”

“If he mentions me, it’s the same as telling Santo that he was a damned fool. If he admits he’s smashed and trying to salvage something, the price from Santo will go way down.”

“How can you be sure of how that idiot will react?”

“I can’t be sure. I just make my guess and live with it.”

The freeze hit low spots well to the west and north of the To-Co Groves, hit them hard enough so that all the smudge pots and airplane propeller fans and bonfires of old truck tires failed to save the dreams of a lot of the smaller growers. They expected the same on Saturday night, but the upper winds changed and a warm, moist breath began coming up from the lower Gulf and the Straits of Yucatán, moving across the peninsula from out of the southwest, and after some unseasonable thunderstorms, the afternoon was clear and warm and bright on Sunday when Janine Bannon arrived in the car Tush and I had fixed a quarter of a year ago.

I was watching for her, knowing when she had left the groves, and went and took her small suitcase from her and brought her aboard. She had been aboard before, when I had taken the Flush up the Shawana River, back when the Boatel was doing well, and they had told me their plans with an air of pleasure and excitement, so she knew the layout.

She looked trim and attractive in her green suit and yellow blouse, but thinner than she should have been. The difference in her was the way the vitality had gone out of her, deadening her narrow and delicate face, making her move like a convalescent, taking the range and lilt and expression out of her voice. Even her dark hair had lost luster, and there were deep stainings under her eyes, fine lines around her mouth.

I took her back to the guest stateroom and she said, “I don’t want to be a bother. I should have found a place.”

“Which would be a very good trick right now. No bother. You know that. Get yourself settled in. Meyer will be over in a while for drinks and talk, and then we’ll go out and find some beef, or Chinese, or whatever you feel like.”

“Oh, anything is all right. Trav, it’ll just be for overnight. I have to get back.”

“That will depend on what Meyer has set up for you to take care of.”

A little while later I heard some small clatterings in the galley and the chunk of the refrigerator door. I went forward and found her bending over and frowning into the little freezer. She turned and said, “I’d feel a lot better about all this if you’d let me earn my keep, Trav. Connie has all that help, and they have their own ways of doing things, and I feel like a parasite. You have lots of stuff here. Honestly, I like to cook.”

“Never volunteer, lady. Somebody will take you up on it. So you’re hooked.”

She smiled. “Thank you. You know things, don’t you? Like you know what people really want to do. Now go away and let me just potter around and find out where everything is and how everything works, all by myself.”

I went in and looked at the tape labels and picked out one of a lot of classical guitar with Julian Bream and started it rolling, adjusting it to that level that is not quite background and not quite for listening only. It wasn’t until Meyer was aboard and I called Janine in from the galley that it occurred to me that they had never met.

She put her slim hand into his paw, and she had that speculative reserve that women seem to have for the first twelve seconds when confronted with the rather outrageous presence of Meyer.

He peered at her, shaking his head slowly in a disconcerting way and then said, “Tricked again! Janine, my dear, if I had been told you were beautiful, I wouldn’t have been working so hard to make you rich.”

“Beautiful! Now really .”

He turned to me. “See? A fishing expedition even. She protests so she can hear it again. Okay, Janine. You are a beautiful lady. I am very sensitive to beauty. A man who makes children run and hide behind mommy is very receptive to beauty.”

“You should see the wolf pack of little kids,” I said, “following this character up and down the beach, listening to his lies.”

Suddenly her dark eyes looked lively. “Meyer, you too are beautiful. I do not know how you are doing it or why you are doing it even, but if you are making me rich, I will be very pleased and grateful.”

“I am doing it because McGee nags me. That is a good guitar to drink by. And how long do we stand around with no drinks?”

She cooked up a great kettle of a delicious thing that she called “Sort of Stroganoff.” I found some red wine that, for a change, Meyer approved of. After she had cleaned up, she and Meyer went into a huddle at the desk over the papers he had brought over. I sat on the yellow couch, reading and digesting, hearing them with half an ear.

At last she came over and plumped down beside me, sighing. I put the book aside. “That fantastic man keeps telling me fantastic things, Trav.”

“Meyer is like that.”

“He says you are supposed to tell me where so much money came from to start with. I know you somehow tricked Mr. LaFrance into paying such a price for our place. But there’s a lot more.”

“He made a donation, Jan. Press LaFrance made a nice gesture.”

“But... if you stole it from him, I don’t—”

“Meyer, did he give you that money willingly?”

“Willingly!” said Meyer. “He could hardly wait to get rid of it. That is the truth, dear lady.”

“Okay. I give up. But apparently I might end up... Tell him, Meyer.”

“It’s an estimate only. At the end of this year, after all taxes are paid, you should have, I think, about two thousand shares, free and clear, of G.S.A., General Service Associates, worth seventy dollars a share now, and more then. The dividend income will be six to seven thousand a year. All your eggs in one basket, but a very nice basket. Great ratios, great management, fantastic promise. Meyer will have his eye on the basket. With little kids, and you a young woman, you need growth and income. Tomorrow we see some people, start setting up some basic living trust structures.”

“I have to stay over another night,” she told me.

“Or more,” said Meyer. “Depending. A three-year program and you will be on a five-figure income with a nice reserve, with insurance trusts maturing for the college expenses. The boys grow up, get married. You can go abroad, go to Spain, rich and foolish, marry a bullfighter, buy fake paintings. I’ll be right here. A little trembly old man, feeling terrible because I ruined your life.”

And I wondered if it was the first time she had laughed loudly and long since Tush had died.

On the following Tuesday night at ten thirty, after Janine had once again fed us well, I strolled with Meyer back to his boat to check on the strategy.

“A piece of genius,” he said, “that call from Connie.”

I had arranged it earlier with Connie, while Meyer was taking Jan to mysterious appointments with lawyers and trust officers, and Connie had called back at six and asked Jan if it was all right if she took the boys with her for a few days. She would take Marguerita with her to look after the kids. There was an Association meeting in Tampa, and then she wanted to go up to Tallahassee for a few days, and stop and visit some other growers on her way back. She’d be gone a week, and why didn’t Jan stay right where she was?