Джон Макдональд - A Flash of Green

“I wouldn’t want them to know what I’m doing.”

“They won’t know unless you tell them. I won’t. Leroy won’t. Sandra won’t. And let me tell you something else. Once it’s filled, the ones who were against it won’t give a damn either. Maybe they’ll feel regretful they lost, and maybe they’ll scowl when they look out onto that fill and the houses going up on it, but after they’ve seen it fifty times they won’t notice it any more, and they won’t miss the bay unless they stop and remember how it used to be. The only thing left of that bay will be some old memories and some old photographs hanging around. And after it’s filled there’ll be thousands and thousands of folks coming down here who won’t even realize it was open bay water, and will be bored if you try to tell them it was. Because they won’t give a damn. Jimmy, what the common man wants is television, air conditioning, a backyard barbecue, healthy kids and a normal sex life. If it was the last bay left in the world, he might get agitated. But there’s always more bays. And when he goes fishing, he doesn’t compare how good or how bad he does to what he could have done ten years ago or fifty years ago. If he gets two runty little trash fish last week and three this week, he’s happy to do better. If he sees one pelican and one blue heron all week, he’s glad there’s wild water birds around for him to look at. If they don’t look at him, he’ll yell and wave his arms to make sure they do. He likes nature to notice him. And that bay doesn’t notice him worth a damn. It just sits there, and when it’s gone he won’t miss it. Neither will your do-gooder friends. But I would sure as hell miss the money I’m going to make out of it. I’d want to lay down and cry if it went bad on me. I got to have it, and it’s not an abstraction, fella. It’s the most actual thing there is in the world, and I mean to have it, because I got just the right use for it. And now listen close. Name me one son of a bitch in this world who can prove which is the best thing to have out on those grass flats, eight hundred houses, or eight million minnows. It’ll be a nice high-class development, and the people who’ll live there’ll be happy they found such a pretty place to call home.”

“I’ll take the fish, Elmo.”

“If I had any choice in the matter, I would too. But if I chose fish, boy, somebody else would choose to fill it, because it’s close in, it’s shallow enough to fill cheap, and the state is still in the business of peddling land belonging to the people.”

“Which is a violation of trust.”

“Maybe it’s morally wrong, but it’s as legal as marriage, boy. When there’s next to nothing left worth saving, they’ll put it all under the Conservation Department where it should have been put years ago. But so long as the door isn’t locked yet, I’m walking through it before somebody else does. And I don’t want any long-drawn-out law fights either. That’s where you come in. And the first one I want nailed is Dial Sinnat. We set to go now?”

Jimmy Wing waited the space of three slow exhalations. “It should be interesting work.”

“You’ll get to like it, as soon as you break the ice.”

“Elmo, I don’t want to like it or dislike it. I just want to do it and get it over.”

“Where will you start?”

“I don’t know.”

Elmo reached and thumped Jimmy Wing on the knee with his fist. “You’ll figure it out. Boy, we’ll find time to talk this way often. We’ll get to know each other. The better I know you, the better I like you, Jimmy. You got a cool streak, but maybe that’s a good thing. I got plenty of people can get too damn hot and excited. You lay back and keep account on how we’re doing, huh?”

“Won’t you know?”

Elmo laughed. “Hell, I’ll know it when we go so slow on this thing I get nervous. Then I’d have to tell Leroy to get you some outside help on those folks. You’d still be in charge, sort of. But they’d be helping you dig. Leroy knows a damn good Tampa outfit with some smart ex-cops working for them.”

“But you said it won’t take much to scare those people off.”

“It won’t, Jimmy! It won’t! But we’ve got to have that little bit.”

Jimmy Wing wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “If you want something to start with, I can give you something on Morton Derm...”

“Dial Sinnat first, Jimmy boy! Before he can fatten the kitty for them. Hell, I got to get on home before Dellie skins me. Get those lights over there, will you? I’ll see that everything’s locked.”

Wing followed Elmo’s pickup as far as Bayou, then turned off toward the newspaper building. Seconds after he arrived, a state highway patrol tip came in on a bad one ten miles south of town on Bay Highway, just north of the town limits of Everset. Borklund shooed him onto it, along with Stu Kennicott for pictures. They hurried down to Jimmy’s car. Four blocks after they had turned onto Bay Highway an ambulance screeched by them. Jimmy tucked the old blue wagon in behind it, maintaining a minimum safe interval, and clicked on his illegal red flasher.

They had to yell at each other to be heard over the constant sustained scream of the siren and the hard roar of the old Plymouth engine.

“All you know is it’s a bad one?” Stu yelled. He was an aggressive little man with thick glasses.

“That’s all he said.”

“Goddam death trap from Palm City to Everset. Same as Venice to Sarasota. I won’t let Myrt drive it. You following too close?”

“I can see past him, Stu. If anything looks hairy ahead, I’ll fade back.”

“You do that. You know what I like?”

“What do you like?”

“I’m a beauty contest man. And animals. Long legs and cute kittens. I take a hell of a picture, man. These tore-up folks, they put my stomach off. Aren’t you too goddam close!”

“Flash Kennicott, the fearless photographer. I have to move up so I can pass when he does, or I get nipped off.”

“They’ll still be there and they’ll still be dead.”

“Cheer up, Stu. If it’s a bad enough schmear, maybe you’ll get a wire-service pickup.”

Stu kept both feet on imaginary brakes. Soon Wing saw the flashing lights ahead and he stayed close behind the ambulance as it slowed. Troopers with flashlights were moving the traffic through. He saw a state patrol car parked in a field, heading out, so he bounced through a shallow ditch and parked beside it. They got out and walked over to the mess. The sedan was on the near side of the road, upright, the front end accordioned. The old panel delivery was on the far side, on its side, damaged in the same way. Tow trucks were waiting to hook on, as soon as the state police gave the word. In the floodlights a heavy woman in orange slacks lay bonelessly spilling out of the open door on the passenger side of the sedan, facedown, legs tucked under the dash.

Kennicott’s power-pack bulb began to flash. Tires yelped far to the north and south as cars braked for the slow passage by the accident. They gawped as they went by, and pulled off when they were beyond the officers and came walking back through the confusion of lights and through the tall grass to stand and stare some more.

Jimmy Wing saw Cal Chadwicks, a patrolman he knew well, talking to another officer and a truck driver. He went over to them and said, “Evening, Cal.”

Chadwicks turned, smiled, grimaced. “Hey, Jimmy.”

“Head on, it looks like. We going to know how they did it?”

Cal gestured toward the truck driver. “This-here boy saw good. He lost forty dollars of burned-off rubber staying to hell out of it.”

“Heading north,” the driver said with that wooden tone indicative of shock. “The car there, the Nebraska car, passed me and come in between me and the truck ahead. Then he swang out to take a look, but the panel truck was too close, coming fast, so he cut back too far, tripped hisself on where the shoulder drops off and got flang back out right bang into that panel truck and got knocked right back again right across the front end of me to where it’s sitting now. It was a hell of a noise. Seemed like it went on a hell of a long time.”