Джон Макдональд - Pale Gray for Guilt

“And you are comparatively large but fair.”

“I think of myself that way. Where did the check go? Into the pocket so fast? Good.” He looked at his watch. “I am taking a lady to lunch. Make a nice neat deck there, Captain.” And away he went, humming.

And not over four minutes later a half-familiar voice said, “McGee?” I looked up from the tricky bit of fitting the vinyl at the hatch corner and saw the three of them lined up on the dock, staring at me without much affability or enthusiasm. Gary Santo on the left. Mary Smith in a bright orange minitent and a little-girl hat standing in the middle. A stranger on the right, medium tall, of that hunched, thin pallor that looks like sickness, even to the little watermelon pot, with a face like a bleached mole, glasses with massive black frames, a briefcase in hand.

“Howdy do there, Gary boy,” I said. “Miss Mary.”

“And this is Mr. D. C. Spartan, one of my attorneys. May we come aboard?”

“Why, surely. Please do.”

I took them into the lounge. There was no handshaking going on. I excused myself and went and washed the grime off my hands, pulled the sweaty T-shirt off, swabbed chest, neck and shoulders with a damp towel, put on a fresh white sports shirt and rejoined them, saying, “Coffee, folks? Booze?”

“No thanks,” said Santo.

Spartan said, in a voice like a talking computer with a slight honk in the speaker system, “It might be advisable for you to have your attorney present, if you could reach him quickly.”

“Now what would I need lawyers for? Somebody suing me?”

“Don’t get so damned cute!” Santo said. His face looked slightly mottled and puffy, as if the facials weren’t working well lately.

“Please, Mr. Santo,” Spartan said. “Mr. McGee, we are facing what might shape up into a very exhaustive investigation of Mr. Santo’s role in the speculation in Fletcher Industries. And it may well become necessary to have you testify as to your part in bringing this... uh... investment opportunity to Mr. Santo’s attention.”

“Why?”

“There seems to be an unfounded opinion that Mr. Santo knew of the precarious condition of Fletcher Industries and conspired to run the stock up, and then short it, and that this scheme was interrupted by the suspension of trading in Fletcher common. To show Mr. Santo’s good faith, we will have to subpoena your trading records and show that you had taken a position in Fletcher and then went to Mr. Santo to elicit his interest, and that Mr. Santo then made a cursory investigation of the company’s condition before beginning a very active trading in the common stock.”

I shook my head. “Mr. Spartan, you lost me there somewhere. I never bought a share of Fletcher. I don’t own any stock at all. Never have.”

“Come off it, friend,” Santo said in an ugly way. “You better be able to show me you took a real good bath in Fletcher. You better be able to show me you got stung.”

“I’ve never owned a share of stock in my life!”

Spartan looked sad. He dug into the briefcase. He took out the stapled Xerox copies of the fake margin account with Shutts, Gaylor, Stith and Company. “Come now, Mr. McGee! Surely you know that your account records can be subpoenaed from the brokerage house.”

I looked at them and handed them back. “I’d say that’s going to be a very confused bunch of brokers, folks. If I had to guess, I’d say these were Xerox copies of some kind of forgery, or there’s somebody else with my name. I just don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“But Miss Smith can testify to what you told her and to you giving her the originals to Xerox. Do you actually want to deny that you went to Mr. Santo’s offices and talked about this whole matter to Miss Smith?”

“Oh, I went there all right. I didn’t have any appointment, and I had a hard time getting to talk to anybody, even this pretty little quail. Now, I suppose whatever we said was taped, just as a matter of convenience, you know, for reference. But I don’t think you can introduce that kind of a tape, and even if you can, it would have to be the whole tape, not just some edited parts of it.”

“There is a tape, of course,” Spartan said. “And we can prove it predates Mr. Santo’s interest in Fletcher common.”

“Spartan,” said Gary Santo, “I think this son of a bitch is too cute. I think he was working for somebody. I think he was setting me up.”

“Sometimes I work for people,” I said. “But not for long. Mary, you remember the long talk we had about that Gary’s parcel he holds up there in Shawana County under the name of Southway Lands, Inc.?”

“What?” she said. “There wasn’t anything like that.”

“But, honey, you confirmed the rumor that Southway was going to sell out to Calitron for a nice price, if a fellow up there by the name of LaFrance could assemble the rest of the acreage.”

“But what are you trying to do to me?” she asked.

“Say! If I’ve spilled the beans and gotten you into some kind of trouble or anything... I guess we didn’t talk about it up in the offices. That was later, honey.”

“We never talked about that!”

I shook my head. “But you told me how Bannon got through to you, and you had a drink with him at the airport, and he told you how he was being squeezed and wanted Santo’s help, and you decided you couldn’t take a little thing like that to Mr. Santo and waste his time with a little guy who got caught in the middle.”

She caught her little lip in her teeth the same way she had when talking to Tush.

I continued. “Remember, honey? You said that you thought Mr. Santo had mentioned how, up in the hotel penthouse in Atlanta, LaFrance had tried to get Santo to buy Bannon out and Santo told LaFrance that it was his problem and he should handle it? That was the same night you told me you’d give me a clean bill with Santo.”

I moved just fast enough. Santo got up and got over to her and got his hand back for a slap that would have loosened her teeth. I caught his wrist. The position gave me very nice leverage. I swung the wrist back and over and down and ended up in about the same position as a pitcher after letting go of his best fast ball. Santo boomed into the yellow couch hard enough to snap his head back, and then bounced forward onto his hands and knees on the rug.

“Now just a minute. Gentlemen! Just a minute!” Spartan said.

Santo shook his dazed head. I picked him up by the nape of the neck and sat him on the couch.

I stood in front of him and said, “Fun time is over, Gary baby. I didn’t get a damned word of this from pretty-bit over there. She’s devoted. She’s energetic. She just never got a chance to get close to me. I made sure of that. Tush Bannon was a damned good friend. Your pressure, second-hand, drove him into the ground. And it went a little wrong up there and they went further than they had to and killed him.”

He stared up at me, very attentive.

“I squashed LaFrance. I would have squashed you too if I could have figured a way. But you’re too big and too spread out. All I could do was sting you a little.”

“A little?” he said wonderingly. “A little? You cut my venture capital right down to the nub, friend. You fixed me so I’m associated with any new stock issue and it never gets off the ground. Sting me a little! God damn you, I might never take up the slack you put in me. And all of this was over some... dreary little smalltime buddy of yours?”

I leaned over and slapped his face sideways and backhanded it back to center position.

“Manners,” I said.

I moved back to give him a chance to come off the couch. He thought it over. Then he took out a frosty-white handkerchief and patted the corner of his mouth and examined the dappling of blood.