John MacDonald - Slam the Big Door

“You stop chawin’ each other a minute, we can get business out of the way and get back to drinking,” Purdy Elmarr said quietly.

“Sure, Purd,” J. C. said quickly.

Purdy Elmarr looked over at Corey Haas with a little glint of animosity in his faded old eyes and said, “Don’t properly remember just how you come to go in with Jamison, Corey.”

Corey looked uncomfortable. Rob, watching the exchange, suspected that Purdy knew exactly why Corey had gone in with Troy Jamison.

“I told you,” Corey said. “It’s on account of Mary being Charlie Kail’s daughter before she married Bernard Dow, and her remembering how Charlie and me and Dow were in on a few things together, and when it looked like more than Troy could swing, they come to see me and it looked all right. And my end sure isn’t enough to pinch anybody. I got forty-five thousand into it. It was like for old times’ sake, Purd.”

“Man has a right to throw his own money away, I guess,” Purdy Elmarr said.

“I told him forty times he was going about it wrong,” Corey said hotly, “but he’s got control and he’s stubborn, and there was no point bringing it to a head on account of she’d vote it the way he asked her to. So I’ve been just waiting.”

“What were you figuring on doing?”

“Just waiting, Purd.”

Purdy Elmarr smiled off into space. “I know that tract well, boys. I guess we all do. Little over eight hundred acres, with two thousand feet on the bay right opposite Horseshoe Pass. Joe Wethered had it and he passed on and June Alice Wethered had it and passed it on to young Joe and I remember it because he damn near lost it for taxes one time and I was hoping on picking it up. You remember old Joe used to have a fish shack there?”

“Remember it well,” J. C. said.

“I got no quarrel with the figure Jamison paid for it. Eleven hundred an acre. Figuring conditions and location, I think it was bought fair and sold fair. I made me some rough figuring the other day. You take eight hundred thousand for that land, and with the clearing, grading, canals, bay fill, sea-walling and all, you got to put in another seven — eight hundred thousand, maybe more. Then say a half million on streets, entrance, sewers and so on. But I figure you get two thousand prime lots that’ll average out at eight thousand a lot, meaning sixteen million, or a gross of thirteen five, which sort of brings my interest to a head, boys. Now just how do you think he’s gone wrong, Corey?”

“The big mistake, of course, was trying to engineer the whole thing at once. He shoulda took one little section and finished it off complete and nice, and sold it off to pay for the next piece, but he had to go right ahead and do it big, bulldozers, dredges, draglines all over the damn place, so every one of ’em had to be pulled off the job near two weeks back.”

“That’s the trouble with the little fellas,” Purdy said. “They try to get big too fast. You take him. He was a little bitty house builder, only down here a few years, not big enough for anybody to pay any serious attention to, and making a little money here and there, so he up and marries Mary Dow and she’s got just enough money so he gets to thinking big, and he loses it for her. But he got to be big for a little while. How much has he got into it, cash money, his and hers, Corey?”

“I’d say about... oh, three hundred thousand.”

“They got more to put in?”

“By selling stuff. The boat, jewelry, mortgage the house, maybe they could find another hundred quick. But the way I see it, his nerves have got jumpy and he don’t want to ask her to put every last thing in.”

“How much would it take to save it?”

“Well, the land payments are spread pretty good, and I think maybe it could be done for three hundred thousand, no less.”

“I expect they’ve come to you for more.”

“I just couldn’t spare more. My cash position isn’t so good right now, Purd.”

Purdy Elmarr grinned like an amiable old coyote. “I can tell just what you were fixin’ to do, Corey Haas. You was going to set right there and let things get just as bad as they could get, where it would look like Jamison was going to lose the whole damn thing, and all of a sudden you were going to be able to put in cash to save it, but you’d want control, and he was going to be so grateful after being so scared you were going to do just fine, and once you had control you were going to run it your way, and slap one section together cheap and fast and soon as it begun to prove out you were going to unload your stock interest you stole from him, and make a big capital gain and get the hell out. And I bet you had that in mind right from the start, but you didn’t know I was going to get interested in it.”

“Hell, I didn’t even know you were going to find out about it.”

The three of them laughed. Raines felt confused. There were undercurrents he didn’t understand.

“Now here’s maybe what will happen. You set us up a little corporation so we’ll be ready, boy. Ought to have a name. You’re good on names, J. C.”

“Uh... how ’bout Twin Keys Corporation? Riley and Ravenna are about the same length, and this land is chunk between ’em.”

“Boy,” Purdy said to Raines, “you check that name out with Tallahassee and set it up fifty and one half percent to me, thirty-nine to Corey, ten to J. C. and a half percent to you instead of legal fees and all. Set it up minimum, boy. Corey, you look like you bit down on something soured you. Got anything to say?”

“Not a word, Purdy.”

“Good. Now here’s the way it’ll work, Corey. Listen close. You set the timing. When things are as bad off as they’re going to get, you tell Jamison you’re peddling your stock to this Twin Keys Corporation for forty-five thousand, and getting out of this Horseshoe Pass Estates Corporation. Tell ’em it’s me behind Twin Keys. And you hear I’ll buy theirs too. That’ll get ’em in the clear without much loss to speak of. Wouldn’t want to hurt Charlie Kail’s girl too bad. So Twin Keys borrows and buys up all the stock, then sets on it a while, and we get good estimates on just what it would cost to complete it, and what we can figure on getting back off sale of the lots, and then we sell the whole thing to my Ravenna Development Corporation and take us a good fat capital gain on the holdings of Twin Key stock, hear?”

J. C. stirred and grunted and said, “Ought to work out, Purd. Ought to work out good.”

“Excepting for one thing,” Purdy said gently. “We got to be sure Jamison don’t get no he’p anyplace to bail himself out. Corey, you tole me this lawyer boy could find out what I was a-wondering about.”

“He found out,” Corey said. “Go ahead, Rob.”

Raines cleared his throat. “Well... I was with Debbie Ann last night at a party at Jamison’s and later at a beach party. I don’t know exactly how much her father left her because I didn’t ask her directly, but from what I was able to check other places, she got somewhere around three hundred thousand then. She doesn’t have to touch it now because she gets enough alimony from that Dacey Hunter to live pretty good. I found a chance to ask her whether she’d invested anything in Horseshoe Pass Estates and she laughed at me. She said Troy Jamison had had a long talk with her about it three weeks ago, showing her the engineering plans and talking about potential and all. She said she’d told him that when she came into the money she’d had it taken out of the trust and put it in an investment portfolio that was heavier in common stocks than the trust list had been, and it had been doing so good she certainly didn’t want to disturb it for any land deal. She told him her father wanted her to be comfortable her whole life long, and that was just what she planned to be. She told him she couldn’t help it if her mother was a damn fool about money. That didn’t mean she had to be too.”