Джон Макдональд - A Flash of Green

Kat turned and stared at her. “What does that make me?”

“The same as me, dear. We’re hunch bettors. We win big and we lose big.” She cocked her head. “Now who the hell is that dropping in?”

“Oh, I forgot. It’s Jimmy Wing. I should have told you.”

“Jimmy is welcome here any time, honey. You know that.”

As they walked toward the front door, Kat said, “I wonder how Jimmy fits into that dice game idea.”

“I think he just watches the game. I don’t think he makes any bets,” Jackie said.

“And Martin Cable owns the table?”

“We’ll have to play that game with everybody we know.”

Jimmy came smiling up onto the deck. Ross brought the oysters up to the house. Jackie fixed four oyster cocktails. They all sat on the rear deck with drinks and generous servings of the oysters, their chairs placed so they looked past the twisted trunks of the water oaks toward the quiet bay, the competitive children. Jackie and Kat reported the meeting, and told Jimmy of their bad luck with the women they had phoned. Ross took no part in it.

Jimmy said, “They’re handling it well. It’s the same doctrine we were up against last time. Growth, progress. Last time it was outsiders coming in, bearing gifts. This time it’s our own people, and it’s more persuasive. No absentee ownership. All the profits stay in town. Broader tax base. Nice new residents and so forth. I heard one of their battle cries today. Eight hundred families means sixteen million in new investment plus four million a year into the local economy. So they’ve been quietly lining up the local businesspeople, getting them all set to be boosters.”

“But that misses the point of the whole thing!” Kat said. “That bay bottom out there is public land. It belongs to all the people, all the people who don’t have a prayer of ever owning a home there, or making any profit off it. It belongs to all the people now living in the state and all the future generations, and this takes it away from them forever, and turns it into eight hundred pieces of private land. It’s like stealing it from the public.”

“I know that,” Jimmy said. “You know it and Jackie knows it and Ross knows it. The trustees are supposed to consider the health and welfare of the people of the State of Florida. But it’s going to be used for the health and welfare of the bank accounts of the businessmen of Palm County, and done with so many reasonable arguments it’ll be years before the public realizes what a polite screwing it took, here and all up and down this coast. Maybe what I’m saying is this, people. Nobody is going to listen to sweet reason. It’s going to be a very emotional squabble. The fighting is going to get dirtier than you can imagine. So I’d say get out of it right now. Just as I told you the day before yesterday, Kat. It isn’t the same thing it was last time. It won’t be a gallant battle and an honorable victory. So resign now.”

“No,” Kat said in a small firm voice.

“He’s right,” Ross said. “If you are lucky, they’ll ignore you. If you get too energetic, they’ll clobber you. It makes me damn uneasy.”

“You’re always uneasy, dear,” Jackie said. “You’ve got the idea the world is full of monsters.”

“But it is,” he said. He smiled at Jimmy Wing. “You see what we’ve got here? A pair of innocents. Their strength is as the strength of ten because their hearts are pure. Oh boy! I mind my own store. Back when I was sure I was going to be Van Gogh, I was full of social messages. I did a little marching and a little poster work and a little singing and carrying banners. I think I was coming out strong in favor of human decency. Three Chicago cops took me into an alley. They were real jocular. I told them fiercely I was an artist. I was ready to die for mankind, but I wasn’t ready for what they did to me. They held my hands against a brick wall and used a night stick on them. I couldn’t hold a brush or a pencil for eight months. Back in Dayton it cost my father twelve hundred bucks’ worth of corrective operations. And I can’t even remember why I was marching that day. I mind my own store. Messages are for Western Union. They always find a way to hurt you, some way you’re not expecting.”

“How do you stand on decency now, killer?” Jackie asked in a deadly voice.

He looked at her for a long moment, then stood up. “By now you shouldn’t have to ask the question. Excuse me. Couple of little things to do.” He went to his studio and closed the door.

“Me and my mouth,” Jackie said. “I’m sorry.”

“I’d always wondered about his hands,” Kat said.

“This is awkward as hell,” Jackie said. “I’m sorry. I’m no good at the game of pretending nothing happened. So I’m going to have to shoo you away and then go in there and tell him he’s a good man and I love him as he is, seeking no alterations in the merchandise.”

“I was going to have to leave in minutes anyhow, Jackie.”

“And we’ve got to pay those commercial fishermen out there,” Jackie said.

The kids had caught twenty-six bait fish, eleven by Alicia and fifteen by Roy. Jackie paid them the agreed rate to the penny, wise enough to know that any careless generosity at that time would have spoiled the game for them. As they walked out to the cars, Jackie and the children lagging behind, Kat said, “Can you come to my place, Jimmy? I didn’t get a chance to tell you about last night.”

He nodded. Just then Ross came out. “I didn’t know you people were going to run off so soon.”

“I tried to keep them around,” Jackie said.

As Kat turned around to drive out she saw Ross move close to Jackie and, with a slight defiant awkwardness, put his arm around her slender waist and hold her close.

When she arrived home, Kat had a slight problem convincing Roy and Alicia it was too late to go up to the Sinnats for a swim. She took their minds off it by reminding them of tomorrow’s picnic, and they went off to play in Roy’s room. She made herself a rum drink and opened a beer for Jimmy. They sat in the coolness of the living room, the draperies closed against the glare of the western sun.

“That’s the first time I ever saw any flaw in that united front,” Kat said.

“I admire the guy for the way he came out to say goodbye. She hit him a dandy. It’s easier to sulk.”

“You think it’s dramatic, and later you realize you were only being silly. It’s pride, I guess. The wrong kind. Last night was strange, Jimmy. I didn’t open my mouth. I just listened.”

She told him the conversation Martin, Eloise, Dial and Claire had, and then spoke of how Dial had reacted to it afterward. “He seems to think there’s somebody else behind it, Jimmy, somebody smarter than those five men we know about.”

“Where would he get that idea?”

“I don’t know. He’s a strange man. He’s big and hearty and sort of obvious, but there’s something... almost feline about him too. Intuition or something. And you’re never quite sure whether he’s laughing at you. And he’s also got the idea that somebody has been coaching Eloise, teaching her how to work on Martin, or Martin would never have gotten into this thing as deeply as he has.”

“They need Martin,” Jimmy admitted. “They need the access, and they’ll need the line of credit to develop the land once they get it.”

“If they get it. But they won’t.”

“That’s going to be a matter of considerable opinion around this town for a while, Katherine.”

“Why did you call me Katherine then?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s probably because you heard Van do it. Whenever he said anything to me like that, sort of dry and skeptical, when he thought I was getting a little too carried away, he’d call me Katherine.”