Джон Макдональд - A Flash of Green

He stood up. “Need another beer. Stay where you are.”

She heard the refrigerator door slam. Barnett rapped at the patio door. She got his money from her purse and took it to him. He told her he’d cut the vine off close to the ground, and when he came next Tuesday he’d trim the big pepper hedge.

She walked, frowning, back to the table where Jimmy Wing sat. “You should resign because it’ll be easier now than later. The new deal is called the Palmland Development Company. Your neighbor, Burton Lesser, is heading it up.”

“Burt! But he was against...”

“Against somebody else doing it. Leroy Shannard is in on it, handling the legal end. He handled Van’s estate, I know. And the uplands they took the option on is part of the Jerome Cable estate, and your neighbor and employer, Martin Cable, is the executor of that estate. A good piece of the financing has been worked out through the Cable Bank and Trust Company. And this time the newspaper isn’t going to be so scrupulously neutral.”

“Ben Killian should have been on our side last time,” she said indignantly.

“He won’t be this time. This is home industry, kid. It’s going to be patriotic to be for it, and like some unspeakable act to oppose it.”

She leaned back in her chair and stared at him in dismay. “But all those men know better, Jimmy.”

“And they know how much cash is sitting out there on those flats.”

“Grassy Bay is one of the most unique and beautiful...”

“You don’t have to sell me, honey.”

“You helped us last time.”

“Not this time.”

“Are you scared to, Jimmy?”

“I’m scared of a lot of things. This might as well be one of them. Katherine, you’d better take stock. There’s one hell of a difference between being Mrs. Vance Hubble, wife of an architect, and Mrs. Vance Hubble, the young widow who works at the bank.”

“I should keep my head down?”

“That’s my message. These are men you know, but they aren’t going to fool around. It could get dirty, honey.”

She stood up and walked away from the table, turned and looked back toward him with a puzzled expression. “So I should give up on something Van believed in? Just like that?”

“I know he took a certain risk in taking the stand he did. He lost some contracts. But he got some new ones to make up for it. So you could call it a calculated risk. I can tell you this, Kat. If he could see the way this one is set up, he wouldn’t mess into it.”

“That’s a filthy thing to say!”

“Why so? My God, the world is a practical place and Van was a pretty practical guy.”

“But he fought for what he believed.”

“Most men do, up to a point. But when they stand to lose too much, and gain too little, they think up reasons to stay out of it.”

“Van wasn’t like that.”

“It’s a point we can’t argue. I just don’t want you to get into any kind of... of a memorial campaign. The bay is gone.”

She moved slowly back toward the table. “When Van first brought me down here, I hated it. I missed the hills and the snow and the familiar seasons. One morning very early — it must have been nine years ago, because I was pregnant with Roy — we went to Hoyt’s Marina and went out in the boat. It was that old skiff we used to have, and he’d just bought it, used, and fixed it up a little. There was a heavy mist. The tide was going out of Grassy Bay, flowing out through Turk’s Pass. It was warm and still. He stopped the old engine and we drifted across the flats. It was a private little world, with the mist all around us. It was a time when if you wanted to say anything, you felt like whispering. I heard the sea grass brushing the bottom of the boat. Sometimes we’d catch and turn slowly and come free, or Van would push us off with the pole. I heard fish slap the water, and once we heard the snuffling of porpoise over in the channel next to the mainland shore. It grew brighter in the mist. I looked over the side and watched the sand, the mud, the grass, and a million minnows. Van told me to look up. Directly overhead the morning mist was so thin I could see the blue of the sky through it, and just then a flight of white pelicans went over, much lower than you usually see them. I saw them through the mist, and I heard a hushed creaking of their wings. It was a magic time, Jimmy, and that was the moment when I began to love this place. The rest of the mist burned away, and we were out in the middle of the wide blue bay. Van started the engine and we went chug-chug down to Turk’s Island and spent the day.”

“But it didn’t add a dollar to the economy. Kat, I’ve told you what’s going on because I don’t want you to be hurt. I gave my word I wouldn’t tell anyone, and I’ve broken it.”

“I appreciate it, Jimmy. And I know what you’re trying to tell me.”

“But?”

“I just couldn’t let all the work Van did go to waste. You can understand that.”

He grinned. “I knew what the reaction had to be. But I had to make the attempt. At least you have some idea what you’re up against. I’ll be standing by, Kat. Use me for a rest camp, a first-aid station.” He stopped smiling. “But I’d rather you keep this to yourself.”

“I can’t even do that.”

“But, honey, if the leak is traced back to me, they’ll put lumps on my head.”

She thought for a few moments. “I was at my desk in the bank and I heard two men talking about Grassy Bay.”

“That isn’t likely. They’ve been very careful. I know Sally Ann Lesser is in on it, because Burt couldn’t have come up with some of the basic money otherwise. So can’t you pry it out of her?”

“Now that I know what I’m after, I can. Otherwise, I can’t tell when she’s lying.”

He looked at his watch and stood up. “Thanks for the beer.”

“And thank you for the advance information, Jimmy. I think I really need a project right about now.”

They walked through the house to the front door. He shook his head and said, “Believe me, honey, nobody needs what you’re thinking of taking on. It could break your heart.”

“Again? Maybe I’m sort of invulnerable.”

“They’ll try to find out. You take care, hear?” He stood there for a rare moment of awkwardness, then walked on out to his car. He backed out and waved to her as he drove off down the narrow asphalt of Pine Road, toward the exit gate of Sandy Key Estates.

Katherine walked through the living room. She stopped at a west window. Beyond the pepper hedge the last smoke of the dying brush fire rose in a hazy column, bending slightly toward her as an imperceptible breeze off the Gulf shifted it.

Too many things were moving through her mind simultaneously, immobilizing her so that she could not begin any one of them. But the considerations of strategy had to give way to the homely obligations. She went to the phone to call Claire Sinnat and tell her to shoo the kids home from the Sinnat pool, then decided to walk up the road and collect them. She fixed her lipstick, ran a hasty brush through her cropped red hair, and went outside.

At first she thought it as stunningly hot as before, but in a little while she realized the sting had gone from the sun’s heat as it moved closer to the Gulf horizon. But the big black salt-marsh mosquitoes were out early. They whined in her hair and tickled her long legs and needled the backs of her shoulders and the small of her back between her green halter and the waistband of her white shorts.

By the time she reached the Pavilion she was being driven out of her mind by them. Gus Malta, the official caretaker, was hobbling around the Pavilion on his bad leg, fogging the ground, the shrubbery and the low branches of the trees with the rackety gasoline fogger he carried slung over his meaty shoulder. He stopped the motor and called to her in the sudden silence.