Big Money (49 page)

He had to keep on talking but it wasn't any use. He was too hoarse. His voice was a faint croak, he was so thirsty. They couldn't hear him. He had to make them hear him. He was too weak. He was dropping spinning being sucked down into

STARS PORTEND EVIL FOR COOLIDGE

 

If you can't tell the world

    
She's a good little girl

Then just say nothing at all

 

the elder Way had been attempting for several years to get a certain kind of celery spray on the market. The investigation of the charges that he had been beaten revealed that Way had been warned to cease writing letters, but it also brought to light the statement that the leading celery growers were using a spray containing deadly poison

 

As long as she's sorree

     She needs sympathee

 

MINERS RETAIL HORRORS OF DEATH PIT

 

inasmuch as banks are having trouble in Florida at this time, checks are not going through as fast as they should. To prevent delay please send us express money order instead of certified check

 

Just like a butterfly that's caught in the rain

    
Longing for flowers

    
Dreaming of hours

Back in that sun-kissed lane

 

TOURISTS ROB GAS STATION

 

PROFIT TAKING FAILS TO CHECK STOCK RISE

 

the climate breeds optimism and it is hard for pessimism to survive the bright sunshine and balmy breezes that blow from the Gulf and the Atlantic

 

Oh it ain't gonna rain no more

 

HURRICANE SWEEPS SOUTH FLORIDA

 

SOUTH FLORIDA DEVASTATED 1000 DEAD, 38,000 DESTITUTE

 

BROADWAY BEAUTY BEATEN

 

Fox he got a bushy tail

    
Possum's tail is bare

Rabbit got no tail at all

    
But only a tuft o' hair

 

FLORIDA RELIEF FUND FAR SHORT

 

MARTIAL LAW LOOMS

 

It ain't gonna rain no more

 

according to the police the group spent Saturday evening at Hillside Park, a Belleville amusement resort and about midnight went to the bungalow. The Bagley girls retired, they told the police, and when the men entered their room one of the girls jumped from a window

 

But how in hell kin the old folks tell

    
It ain't gonna rain no more?

Agnes got off the sleeper dressed from head to foot in black crape. She had put on weight and her face had a grey rumpled look Margo hadn't noticed on it before. Margo put her head on Agnes's shoulder and burst out crying right there in the sunny crowded Miami station. They got into the Buick to go out to the beach. Agnes didn't even notice the car or the uniformed chauffeur or anything. She took Margo's hand and they sat looking away from each other out into the sunny streets full of slowlymoving people in light clothes. Margo was patting her eyes with her lace handkerchief. “Oughtn't you to wear black?” Agnes said. “Wouldn't you feel better if you were wearing black?”

It wasn't until the blue Buick drew up at the door of the bungalow
on the beach and Raymond, the thinfaced mulatto chauffeur, hopped out smiling respectfully to take the bags that Agnes began to notice anything. She cried out, “Oh, what a lovely car.”

Margo showed her through the house and out on the screened porch under the palms facing the purpleblue sea and the green water along the shore and the white breakers. “Oh, it's too lovely,” Agnes said and let herself drop into a Gloucester hammock sighing. “Oh, I'm so tired.” Then she began to cry again. Margo went to do her face at the long mirror in the hall. “Well,” she said when she came back looking freshpowdered and rosy, “how do you like the house? Some little shack, isn't it?”

“Oh, we won't be able to stay here now. . . . What'll we do now?” Agnes was blubbering. “I know it's all the wicked unreality of matter. . . . Oh, if he'd only had proper thoughts.”

“Anyway the rent's paid for another month,” said Margo.

“Oh, but the expense,” sobbed Agnes.

Margo was looking out through the screendoor at a big black tanker on the horizon. She turned her head and talked peevishly over her shoulder. “Well, there's nothing to keep me from turning over a few options, is there? I tell you what they are having down here's a boom. Maybe we can make some money. I know everybody who is anybody in this town. You just wait and see, Agnes.”

Eliza, the black maid, brought in a silver coffeeservice and cups and a plate of toast on a silver tray covered by a lace doily. Agnes pushed back her veil, drank some coffee in little gulps and began to nibble at a piece of toast. “Have some preserves on it,” said Margo, lighting herself a cigarette. “I didn't think you and Frank believed in mourning.”

“I couldn't help it. It made me feel better. Oh, Margo, have you ever thought that if it wasn't for our dreadful unbelief they might be with us this day.” She dried her eyes and went back to the coffee and toast. “When's the funeral?”

“It's going to be in Minnesota. His folks have taken charge of everything. They think I'm ratpoison.”

“Poor Mr. Anderson. . . . You must be prostrated, you poor child.”

“You ought to see 'em. His brother Jim would take the pennies offa dead man's eyes. He's threatening to sue to get back some securities he claims were Charley's. Well, let him sue. Homer Cassidy's my lawyer and what he says goes in this town. . . . Agnes, you've got to take
off those widow's weeds and act human. What would Frank think if he was here?”

“He is here,” Agnes shrieked and went all to pieces and started sobbing again. “He's watching over us right now. I know that!” She dried her eyes and sniffed. “Oh, Margie, coming down on the train I'd been thinking that maybe you and Mr. Anderson had been secretly married. He must have left an enormous estate.”

“Most of it is tied up. . . . But Charley was all right, he fixed me up as we went along.”

“But just think of it, two such dreadful things happening in one winter.”

“Agnes,” said Margo, getting to her feet, “if you talk like that I'm going to send you right back to New York. . . . Haven't I been depressed enough? Your nose is all red. It's awful. . . . Look, you make yourself at home. I'm going out to attend to some business.” “Oh, I can't stay here. I feel too strange,” sobbed Agnes. “Well, you can come along if you take off that dreadful veil. Hurry up, I've got to meet somebody.”

She made Agnes fix her hair and put on a white blouse. The black dress really was quite becoming to her. Margo made her put on a little makeup. “There, dearie. Now you look lovely,” she said and kissed her.

“Is this really your car?” sighed Agnes as she sank back on the seat of the blue Buick sedan. “I can't believe it.” “Want to see the registration papers?” said Margo. “All right, Raymond, you know where the broker's office is.” “I sure do, miss,” said Raymond, touching the shiny visor of his cap as the motor started to hum under the unscratched paint of the hood.

At the broker's office there was the usual welldressed elderly crowd in sportsclothes filling up the benches, men with panamahats held on knees of Palm Beach suits and linen plusfours, women in pinks and greens and light tan and white crisp dresses. It always affected Margo a little like church, the whispers, the deferential manners, the boys quick and attentive at the long blackboards marked with columns of symbols, the click of the telegraph, the firm voice reading the quotations off the ticker at a desk in the back of the room. As they went in Agnes in an awed voice whispered in Margo's ear hadn't she better go and sit in the car until Margo had finished her business. “No, stick around,” said Margo. “You see those boys are chalking up the
stockmarket play by play on those blackboards. . . . I'm just beginning to get on to this business.” Two elderly gentlemen with white hair and broadflanged Jewish noses smilingly made room for them on a bench in the back of the room. Several people turned and stared at Margo. She heard a woman's voice hissing something about Anderson to the man beside her. There was a little stir of whispering and nudging. Margo felt welldressed and didn't care.

“Well, ma dear young lady,” Judge Cassidy's voice purred behind her, “buyin' or sellin' today?” Margo turned her head. There was the glint of a gold tooth in the smile on the broad red face under the thatch of silvery hair the same color as the grey linen suit which was crossed by another glint of gold in the watchchain looped double across the ample bulge of the judge's vest. Margo shook her head. “Nothing much doing today,” she said. Judge Cassidy jerked his head and started for the door. Margo got up and followed, pulling Agnes after her. When they got out in the breezy sunshine of the short street that ran to the bathingbeach, Margo introduced Agnes as her guardian angel.

“I hope you won't disappoint us today the way you did yesterday, ma dear young lady,” began Judge Cassidy. “Perhaps we can induce Mrs. Mandeville . . .”

“I'm afraid not” broke in Margo. “You see the poor darling's so tired. . . . She's just gotten in from New York. . . . You see, Agnes dear, we are going to look at some lots. Raymond will take you home, and lunch is all ordered for you and everything. . . . You just take a nice rest.”

“Oh, of course I do need a rest” said Agnes, flushing. Margo helped her into the Buick that Raymond had just brought around from the parkingplace, kissed her and then walked down the block with the judge to where his Pierce Arrow touringcar stood shiny and glittery in the hot noon sunlight.

The judge drove his own car. Margo sat with him in the front seat. As soon as he'd started the car she said, “Well, what about that check?” “Why, ma dear young lady, I'm very much afraid that no funds means no funds. . . . I presume we can recover from the estate.” “Just in time to make a first payment on a cemetery lot.” “Well, those things do take time . . . the poor boy seems to have left his affairs in considerable confusion.”

“Poor guy,” said Margo, looking away through the rows of palms at the brown reaches of Biscayne Bay. Here and there on the green islands new stucco construction stuck out raw, like stagescenery out on the sidewalk in the daytime. “Honestly I did the best I could to straighten him out.”

“Of course. . . . Of course he had very considerable holdings. . . . It was that crazy New York life. Down here we take things easily, we know how to let the fruit ripen on the tree.”

“Oranges,” said Margo, “and lemons.” She started to laugh but the judge didn't join in.

Neither of them said anything for a while. They'd reached the end of the causeway and turned past yellow frame wharfbuildings into the dense traffic of the Miami waterfront. Everywhere new tall buildings iced like layercake were standing up out of scaffolding and builder's rubbish. Rumbling over the temporary wooden bridge across the Miami River in a roar of concretemixers and a drive of dust from the construction work, Margo said, turning a roundeyed pokerface at the judge, “Well, I guess I'll have to hock the old sparklers.” The judge laughed and said, “I can assure you the bank will afford you every facility. . . . Don't bother your pretty little head about it. You hold some very considerable options right now if I'm not mistaken.” “I don't suppose you could lend me a couple of grand to run on on the strength of them, judge.”

They were running on a broad new concrete road through dense tropical scrub. “Ma dear young lady,” said Judge Cassidy in his genial drawl, “I couldn't do that for your own sake . . . think of the false interpretations . . . the idle gossip. We're a little oldfashioned down here. We're easygoin' but once the breath of scandal . . . Why, even drivin' with such a charmin' passenger through the streets of Miamah is a folly, a very pleasant folly. But you must realize, ma dear young lady . . . A man in ma position can't afford . . . Don't misunderstand ma motive, ma dear young lady. I never turned down a friend in ma life. . . . But ma position would unfortunately not be understood that way. Only a husband or a . . .”

“Is this a proposal, judge?” she broke in sharply. Her eyes were stinging. It was hard keeping back the tears.

“Just a little advice to a client. . . .” The judge sighed. “Unfortunately I'm a family man.”

“How long is this boom going to last?”

“I don't need to remind you what type of animal is born every minute.”

“No need at all” said Margo gruffly.

They were driving into the parkinglot behind the great new caramelcolored hotel. As she got out of the car Margo said, “Well, I guess some of them can afford to lose their money but we can't, can we, judge?” “Ma dear young lady, there's no such word in the bright lexicon of youth.” The judge was ushering her into the diningroom in his fatherly way. “Ah, there are the boys now.”

At a round table in the center of the crowded diningroom sat two fatfaced young men with big mouths wearing pinkstriped shirts and nilegreen wash neckties and white suits. They got up still chewing and pumped Margo's hand when the judge presented them. They were twins. As they sat down again one of them winked and shook a fat forefinger. “We used to see you at the Palms, girlie, naughty naughty.”