“For the variation of the pigeon drop, my friend. If suddenly the whole world seems more conspiratorial than he ever believed it was, then he’ll be in a better mood to stand still for the sleight of hand. Confused people are less skeptical. I was going to use Besseker another way, but it had to be through Puss, and she doesn’t seem to be around any more, so I salvaged a piece of the situation anyway.”
“But one thing puzzles me,” Meyer said. “Here you are worming your way into one kind of thing, directly with Santo. And up there you have your thumb in another kind of pie, but that is Santo’s too, but not so direct. Up there you are Travis McGee, this address. And down there in Santo Enterprises, you are Travis McGee, this address. There is the chance that by some accident Santo or one of his people finds out you are into both things. That would immediately alert a man like Santo. He could find the relationship between you and Bannon, and he would smell mice.”
“So?”
“Maybe I should have been the one to set up the investment thing.”
“It would take the joy out of it. He might never make the connection. I need the chance to look him in the eye, laugh at his jokes, share some booze with him, and then sting him where it hurts. Then he can find out why it happened to him. I’ll tell him, given the chance. For the rest of his life, the name Bannon is going to make him feel sick.”
“Maybe he has some people who will make you feel sick in other ways.”
“And sometimes they almost make it.”
“This time they could.”
“You always worry. It’s nice. If you stopped, I’d worry.”
He sighed. “Okay. So look at my expert, specialist, impressive kit. Meyer, the big industrialist.”
He had the aerials of the Shawana River area, and the series of overlays marked as planned. He had soil surveys, water table data, labor supply data. He had business cards on expensive buff- stock, engraved, turning him into G. Ludweg Meyer, Ph. D., Executive Vice President of Barker, Epstein and Wilks, Inc. Management Engineering Services.
“Let us sincerely pray,” he said, “that one of these cards never finds its way back to that very sound and good firm.”
“It might be therapeutic. It might stir them up. Let me see the correspondence file.”
The letterhead startled me. It looked totally authentic. One of the giant corporations that have become household words in these days of electronic fantasy. I stared at him and he beamed at me and said “It was a bit of luck So wonder about it. Note that it is from the office of the President of the corporation. That is his name, truly. Note that it is marked confidential. Note the very impressive carbon ribbon type face. See the secretarial initials at the bottom. Those are the initials of his actual private secretary. The signature is not great. I copied it from a copy of their annual report. The top letters are background. The key letter is about the fourth one down. There. That’s the one. Is it what you had in mind?”
The president called him My dear Ludweg: The first paragraph acknowledged the receipt of reports and recommendations, and then the letter went on to say,
I tend to agree with your appraisal of the competitive implications and possible danger to our industry position in that particular manufacturing division should Calitron establish a branch facility in such close proximity to Tech-Tex Applications, Inc. Though the branch facility we now have in the final planning stage is smaller, one could logically assume that proximity to TTA would benefit profit margin to the same extent percentagewise.
In view of the necessity of moving quickly, and the favorable report our people brought back, you are authorized to make a firm commitment in the name of the Corporation for from 200 acres minimum or 260 maximum either in general area A, or general area B. A separate letter of authorization is appended hereto In In view of the other interest in these industrial lands, you are authorized to bid up to $2 thousand per acre, or a maximum of between $400 thousand and $520 thousand, at your discretion.
“Very nice,” I said.
“What should my approach be up there? How should I act?”
“Self-important, influential, crooked, and careful of being caught at it. Great letters, Meyer. You are showing more and more talent every time you get into one of these things.”
“And getting more and more scared. Isn’t this a conspiracy to defraud?”
“Let’s say to highjack. Now let me tell you how it is supposed to work.”
He buried his face in his hands and said, “I can hardly wait to hear.” After I explained it, it took him a long time to smile.
When I phoned Mary Smith at four on Friday, she said, “Mr. McGee, would it be possible for you to have a drink with Mr. Santo this evening at seven at the Sultana Hotel on Miami Beach?”
“I can arrange it.”
“The Out-Island Room, then, at seven. Just ask for Mr. Santo’s table.”
I arrived at the arched doorway a few minutes after seven. A lackey with a face like a Rumanian werewolf slunk out of the gloom and looked at me with total disdain, as if Central Casting had sent the wrong type with the wrong clothes. It was a cold day, and I had put on the Irish jacket. After five or six years, twigs still occasionally fall out of the dark coarse weave.
“Mr. Santo’s table; please.”
“And your name?”
“McGee.”
He lit up with joy at beholding me. He popped his fingers and a waiter trotted over, bowed several times, and led me back through the labyrinths of partitions and alcoves to a deep corner, to a semicircular banquette big enough for six, and a semicircular table to fit. He pulled the table out, bowed me in, put it back and bowed and asked for my drink order. At ten after he came on the run and pulled the table out again as the Santo party arrived. Gary Santo, Mary Smith, Colonel Burns, Mrs. Von Kroeder. I measured Santo as we shook hands. He was not as tall as he looked in his pictures, but with all the shoulders and chest so frequently mentioned in his publicity. He was shading fifty, but fighting it and winning the same way those more directly in show business win it, with the facials, the luxuriant hairpiece touched just enough with gray, the laborious hours in the home gym, and the sessions on the rubbing table, and the hefty shots of vitamins and hormones, and a hell of a good dentist. He came on all virility, white teeth, wrestler’s handshake, and the knack of looking you squarely in the‘ eye and crinkling his eyes as if you and he shared a joke on the rest of the world.
In resonant boyish baritone he told me I knew Mary Smith, of course, and presented me to Halda Von Kroeder, who had as much thin, pale, graceful neck as I have ever seen, a small, pert head, a tall, slat-thin body, a cascade of emeralds, and a set of breasts so awe-inspiring she gave the impression of leaning slightly backward to keep herself in balance. “So bleezed,” she said in a Germanic rasp, then hiccuped.
Colonel Dud Burns had the look of eagles… defeathered, earthbound, and worried about cirrhosis. Gary Santo arranged the group with himself in the middle and, at his left, first Mary Smith and then me at the end, and with Halda and Burns in that order at his right.
Mary Smith was at that daring outer limit where style becomes comedy. There was more eye makeup, and the mouth more frosted. She wore a gray sweater with a great deal of complex stitchery and welts and seams. It came down to within six inches of her knees. Showing under the sweater was two inches of blue tweed skirt. Below the skirt were sheer blue stockings that were a perfect match for shoes with stubby heels and high, stiff tongues. On her head was a wide-brimmed hat shaped much like the hats the novilleros wear in the bullring. It was of a stiff eggshell fabric in a coarse weave. She had it perched aslant on the gloss of the brown-auburn spill of hair, with a white thong under her chin, a blue wooden thong bead at the corner of her little jaw. The sweater sleeves came midway down her forearms. Her gloves and purse matched the eggshell hat When she pulled her gloves off, she uncovered nails painted a thick, pearly, opalescent white.