She put her slim hand into his paw, and she had that speculative reserve that women seem to have for the first twelve seconds when confronted with the rather outrageous presence of Meyer.
He peered at her, shaking his head slowly in a disconcerting way and then said, “Tricked again! Janine, my dear, if I had been told you were beautiful, I wouldn’t have been working so hard to make you rich.”
“Beautiful! Now really.”
He turned to me. “See? A fishing expedition even. She protests so she can hear it again. Okay Janine. You are a beautiful lady. I am very sensitive to beauty. A man who makes children run and hide behind mommy is very receptive to beauty.”
“You should see the wolf pack of little kids,” I said, “following this character up and down the beach, listening to his lies.”
Suddenly her dark eyes looked lively. “Meyer, you too are beautiful. I do not know how you are doing It or why you are doing it even, but if you are making me rich, I will be very pleased and grateful.”
“I am doing it because McGee nags me. That is a good guitar to drink by. And how long do we stand around with no drinks?”
She cooked up a great kettle of a delicious thing that she called “Sort of Stroganoff.” I found some red wine that, for a change, Meyer approved of. After she had cleaned up, she and Meyer went into a huddle at the desk over the papers he had brought over. I eat on the yellow couch, reading and digesting, hearIng them with half an ear.
At last she came over and plumped down beside me, sighing. I put the book aside. “That fantastic man keeps telling me fantastic things, Trav.”
“Meyer is like that.”
“He says you are supposed to tell me where so much money came from to start with. I know you somehow tricked Mr. LaFrance into paying such a price for our place. But there’s a lot more.”
“He made a donation, Jan. Press LaFrance made a nice gesture.”
“But… if you stole it from him, I don’t-”
“Meyer, did he give you that money willingly?”
“Willingly!” said Meyer. “He could hardly wait to get rid of it. That is the truth, dear lady.”
“Okay. I give up. But apparently I might end up… Tell him, Meyer.”
“It’s an estimate only. At the end of this year, after all taxes are paid, you should have, I think, about two thousand shares, free and clear, of G.S.A., General Service Associates, worth seventy dollars a share now, and more then. The dividend income will be six to seven thousand a year. All your eggs in one basket, but a very nice basket. Great ratios, great management, fantastic promise. Meyer will have his eye on the basket. With little kids, and you a young woman, you need growth and income. Tomorrow we see some people, start setting up some basic living trust structures.”
“I have to stay over another night,” she told me.
“Or more,” said Meyer. “Depending. A three-year program and you will be on a five-figure income with a nice reserve, with insurance trusts maturing for the college expenses. The boys grows up, get married. You can go abroad, go to Spain, rich and foolish, marry a bullfighter, buy fake paintings. I’ll be right here. A little trembly old man, feeling terrible because I ruined your life.”
And I wondered if it was the first time she had laughed loudly and long since Tush had died.
Sixteen
ON THE following Tuesday night at ten thirty, after Janine had once again fed us well, I strolled with Meyer back to his boat to check on the strategy.
“A piece of genius,” he said, “that call from Connie.”
I had arranged it earlier with Connie, while Meyer was taking Jan to mysterious appointments with lawyors and trust officers, and Connie had called back et six and asked Jan if it was all right if she took the boys with her for a few days. She would take Marguerita with her to look after the kids. There was an Association meeting in Tampa, and then she wanted to go up to Tallahassee for a few days, and stop and visit some other growers on her way back. She’d be gone a week, and why didn’t Jan stay right wliere she was?
“Once she gave in,” said Meyer, “you noticed the relaxation. You noticed she ate better too? You noticed she laughed a little?”
“Conspiracy.”
“The best kind,” he said. “Today I unloaded a thousand shares of Fletcher at thirty-one and moved the funds into G.S.A. It’s the critical time right now. I don’t know how high the rocket goes. Ninety-two thousand shares traded today. Suppose in the morning I call her and tell her the men we have to see will be available Friday morning. No. Saturday morning. So you should move that hunk of ugly luxury before it congeals to the slip. A nice little cruise someplace.”
“I’ll try it. Don’t count on it.”
I went ambling back and went aboard and into the lounge. Janine was standing in the doorway at the forward end of the lounge, the companionway dark behind her.
“Trav?” she said, and her voice was all wrong. It was a sick sad scared voice, and the belt she was wearing was a sinewy, sun-reddened forearm. “Trav? I’m… sorry.”
A knuckly hand appeared at her left side, at waist level, aiming a short barrel of respectable caliber at my middle. “I’m sorry about this, Mr. McGee,” he said. I could make out a tallness behind her, a relative pallor of the face against the gloom behind her.
“Freddy?” I asked.
“Yes sir.”
“I’m sorry about this too, Freddy.”
“Just you stand quiet,” he said. The arm left her waist. A set of regulation handcuffs arched toward me, gleaming in the light, and fell on the lounge carpeting with a jingling thud.
The arm quickly clasped her waist again. “Now you move all the time like slow-motion movies, Mr. McGee. You get down on your knees and take those cuffs there slow, and you edge over slow and reach both arms around that pipe thing and put them on and press them nice and tight.”
“Or?”
“I think you know the corner I’m in, Mr. McGee. It has piled up on me, and no way to stop it or change It. I couldn’t stand being locked up anyplace even for une month without being turned into some kind of tuoimal. So I’ve got no choice. I’m sorry about everything, but sorry doesn’t help. So do it right now, start II mving, or I’ll lay one slug right through your forehead, Mr. McGee.”
Freddy had been worn thin. He was on the edge, ami the truth was in his voice. It made me very obecьwt. Very humble. I moved the way the specialists move when they are lifting the fuse out of a bomb. I snapped the cuffs snugly, taking a faint remote comfort in the knowledge that given ten seconds alone in the lounge I could brace myself, wrench the stanchion loose and get my hands on the revolver in the desk.
He walked Janine out of the doorway and into the lounge. As he put the handgun away, I heard him sigh with the release of tension. He released her and gave her a little push. She stumbled forward, her body slack, head bowed in her despair. “I’m sorry,” she said in a low voice.
His hand went to his hip pocket, then reached out toward her quite casually. There was a barely audible sound of impact, a hairsoftened, leathery little thopp. She took half a broken step, face emptying. She started to lift her arms to break the fall, then pitched onto her face, jelly-slack, with a tumble of cushioned bone against the lounge carpeting.
I had seen something odd in his face just as he had flicked the lead against her skull. It had been a moment of change and revelation, showing a pleanure of erotic dimensions, of sensual pleasure. It is not an unusual way for the mind of a man to turn rancid. Cops fall in love with the hickory nightstick. Prizefighters forget to pace themselves, going for the sweet knockout. It is a pull that takes some twisted ones into anesthesiology, or into preparing the dead for burial, or into scut-work in asylums. They are the dark brothers of the slackened flesh, turned on in some soiled way by a total vulnerability.