Джон Макдональд - A Flash of Green

Major Harrison Lipe stood up. He was a round little man with a fierce leonine face, a careful mane of snowy hair, a stance so erect he seemed in danger of tipping over backward. He was always in some stage of painful sunburn, blistered, puffy or peeling. His tone was stentorian and oracular. “Tom, though I am not familiar with the geology of this area, I do know that when the first... excuse me, ever since the first human feasted his eyes on the glorious beauty of Grassy Bay, untold generations have been entranced by its beauty. And once it is despoiled, it will be gone forever. In a few cynical months the dredges and the draglines can undo the glories of ten thousand years. Furthermore...”

“Harry!”

“... experts have assured us that this is one of the most unique breeding grounds for shallow-water fish in the entire...”

“Harry!”

“... west coast area of Florida. And — what is it, Tom?”

“Harry, I respect your sentiments. We all do. In fact, that’s why we’re here. You performed so well the last time, Harry, I hope you’ll take the same job again. It will be up to you to coordinate all the hobby groups and conservation groups in the area. Boating, angling, waterskiing, skin diving, garden clubs and the bird people. Locate their current officers, get the petitions written up and signed, and see that they come through with a maximum turnout at the public hearing. Form your own special committee as you did last time, Harry, picking anybody off the membership list you think you can use. Will you do that? We’re all pleased and all grateful, Harry. Thank you. Mr. Sinnat? Were you about to say something?”

Dial Sinnat did not stand up. He had one brown, hairy, muscular leg hooked over the arm of the chair he was in. He was a hard, handsome enigmatic man in his early fifties. His coarse black hair was just beginning to gray at the temples. Kat remembered how surprised she and Van had been when Di had jumped into the fight two years ago. He had not explained his motives until after the fight had been won. On a late night beside his pool he had said, “It isn’t atomic energy that’ll do us in, buddies. It’s sexual energy. Procreation. Billions of new bodies corrupting God’s world. In their history books they’ll read how once a man could walk all day long and not see another human or a house or a machine, and they won’t be able to imagine how it was. There’ll be oceans of squirming people, from sea to sea, fellows. So we kept them from gobbling one little bay, one little crumb, and it felt good, but it doesn’t mean much. How long have we been sitting here? Two and a half hours? There’s ten thousand more mouths in the world than there were when we walked out of the house. Rejoice, buddies. Mankind is on the march, heading toward that golden day when there’s nothing to eat but each other.”

Now Dial said, “Just thinking, Tom. This sounds rougher than last time. The clue is that option on the Cable property. Martin Cable has to be a convert, it would seem. He’s the executor. How big a piece is it?”

“A little over six hundred feet of bay frontage, running from the bay to Mangrove Road,” Colonel Jennings said. “And we can expect, this time, that Ben Killian won’t be neutral.”

“As it’s a local operation,” Dial said, “he’ll have to go with his advertisers. I’m beginning to think we ought to try to lean hard on something we didn’t give much attention to last time.”

“Such as?” Jennings asked.

“Maybe we ought to develop some statistics to show that it won’t help local business a damn bit.”

“I don’t think I follow you,” Jennings said.

“They’ll have statistics. Eight hundred new houses at umpty dollars apiece initial investment and umpty dollars a year upkeep and maintenance, and eight hundred new families in the area spending umpty dollars a year with the local businesspeople. They gave us that jazz last time, those Lauderdale hotshots. I think we could develop statistics out of St. Pete, Clearwater and Sarasota to prove that all a big development does is bring in more butchers, bakers and candlestick makers, so that after all the dust settles, everybody has just about the same gross business they had before. In fact, they might be a little worse off, because residential areas never pay back in taxes the cost of the services they require, particularly in Florida with this homestead free ride on the first five thousand of assessed valuation. Industry is the only thing which takes up the slack in the tax billing.”

“Could you get to work on that, Dial?”

“Better if it comes from some local businessman, Tom. I unloaded the family firm up in Rochester twenty years ago, took my capital gain and ran. I spend a couple of hours a day in the biggest crap game in the world, buying a little here and selling a little there, but I’m considered a playboy type, possibly because I am. Some yuk would question me from the floor and ask me if I’d ever met a payroll. I have, but it was too long ago. But I will see if I can find a convincing pigeon for you. This thing may be spread so wide it will be tough, but somebody is sure to be annoyed at being left out, and not in a very good position to capitalize on a big Grassy Bay development. I’ll look around.”

“Splendid!” Jennings said. “And I’d appreciate it if you’d line up the Power Squadron people and the Yacht Club people as you did so well the last time.” He made a check mark on the pad fastened to his clip board, turned over another sheet and said, “And you, Morton, will you operate just as you did the last time?”

Morton Dermond sighed in a somewhat dramatic way and said, “I shall rally all the forces of culture. Yes indeed. But it is tiresome, isn’t it, to have to go into the same little act all over again.” There was a slight stir of disapproval in the group. Dermond was a big waxy young man, apelike in construction — barrel torso, short thick legs, long meaty arms, a head dwarfed by the neckless span of the solid shoulders. His black hair grew low on his forehead, and his beard was a blue shadow on the pale solid jaw. He had a light, flexible voice. He wore lavender slacks and a coral sports shirt. A ruff of springy black hair erupted out of the V neck of the sports shirt. Dermond was a museum director, lecturer and art historian. For the past several years he had been the Executive Director of the Palm City Art Center.

“It may be tiresome, but it is important,” Jennings said.

“Of course it is,” Dermond said. “But I could agitate my people a lot easier if we had some kind of vivid new approach. I mean, some of them may actually yawn this time. I realize that out here in the hinterland it is really difficult to come up with truly creative ideas. Personally, I can’t imagine anything more grim than eight hundred new dreadful contemporary houses. All those tricky white roofs, blinding you. They’ll look terribly modern for the first twenty minutes, but in no time at all it will just be another dreary middle-class slum, littered with tricycles, glass jalousies, ceramic egrets and plastic lawn furniture. They’ll cram those tiresome houses in there, with no privacy whatsoever, and fill them with dreary fatuous little people, and then we’ll be just one step closer to utter mediocrity.”

“That’s defeatist talk,” Harrison Lipe said sternly.

Dermond smiled at him. “I’m a defeatist, Major. I’ll strain and strive, but as long as our society equates progress with quantity rather than quality, permit me my private dismals.”

Jennings said, “If you feel you can do better with a fresh approach, Morton, please try to come up with one. Now, how about you, Mrs. Rowell?”

Doris Rowell cleared her throat. She was an ample billowy woman in her sixties. She wore a faded cotton dress and sneakers. She wore her straight white hair in a Dutch bob. Her voice was a pugnacious baritone. “It should be no great task updating my materials, Thomas. A team from the University of Miami has been doing another shallow-water ecology study, and I was of some small assistance to them, so I see no problems in getting access to their findings. Just as soon as we know the date of the public hearing, I’ll make certain we have reputable marine biologists there to testify. And I’ll coordinate this with state and Federal conservation authorities. We’ll prove, as we did before, that filling Grassy Bay would have a disastrous effect on the local marine ecology, including, of course, game and food fish species. I can consider such a project no less than a criminal act.”