Pale Gray for Guilt (13 page)

"If you don't help me a little bit, and when I do get to Gary Santo, which I most certainly will, he is going to wonder what took me so long, and I am going to tell him that I just couldn't get past that limey wench with the white hair under the spotlight."

"But, sir! Really, I have-"

"Your orders."

"Quite!"

"Do I look like a con artist? Do I look like a salesman? Do I look like a pest? Dear girl, aren't you supposed to exercise some instinct and judgment about people?"

"Sir, one might possibly say… pest, should this go on too much longer. Oh! My word! Are you a pilot? Is it about that… currency matter?"

"I am not a pilot. But some currency might enter into it. I just remembered something. Somebody said at one point that to get to Santo with a certain suggestion, they had to clear through Mary Smith. Is that a person or some kind of a code name for something?"

"Mary Smith would be a person, sir."

"A special personal private secretary, maybe?"

"Praps just private secretry, sir, might be suitable."

"Now, please don't tell me I need an appointment with her."

She studied me for a moment, tilted her head, looked slightly quizzical and inwardly-and possibly bitterly-amused. The appraisal was like unto that given a side of beef when the US Grade stamp is not easy to read.

"You could give me your name, sir?"

"McGee. T. McGee."

"This is teddibly irregular. Just a chawnce, y'know."

"Tell her I do card tricks, have never been completely domesticated, and show signs of having been struck sharply in the face in years gone by."

"At least you are amusing," she said.

"Quite!" said I.

"Please have a seat. I'll find out what she says, Mr. McGee."

I sat cautiously in a chair that looked like the slope-end of a blue bathtub resting on a white pedestal, and found it more comfortable than it looked. Windowless rooms always give me the feeling of having been tricked. Now they've got you, boy, and they're going to come through all the doors at once. I opened a mint copy of Fortune and a grizzled fellow looked out at me with alert and friendly squint of eye, advertising my chummy neighborhood power company. I think I could remember having seen him on somebody's television set shilling an adenoidal housewife into squealing in ecstasy about suds.

The limey maiden murmured into the oversized mouthpiece of one of those privacy telephones. In a little while she hung up and said with a certain air of accomplishment and mild surprise, "She will be out in a few moments, sir."

A flush door, bone-white, off to the left of the receptionist opened, and little Miss Mary Smith came through and toward me without a glance at the receptionist. I put Fortune aside and stood up. She marched to within four feet of me and stopped and looked up into my face. At least it was not a name they handed around the office. She was the one I had seen with Tush Bannon in the bar lounge atop the International Hotel. The dark and rich brownauburn hair fell in a straight gloss. I had misread, across the room the last time, the expression on her face. It was not petulance, not discontent. It was a total and almost lifeless indifference, a completely negative response. In a special way it was a challenge. It said, "Prove I should relate to you, buddy." Her eyes were the improbable emerald of expensive contact lenses, made more improbable by just enough eye makeup to make them look bigger than they were. And they were generous to start with. Her skin texture was a new grainless DuPont plastic. The small mouth did not really pout. It was just that both upper and under lip were so heavy it was the only choice it had. They were artfully covered with pink frost. White blouse, navy skirt that nunnery flavor of offices and hospital wards.

She looked up at me, motionless as department store wax, with two millimeters of query in one eyebrow.

"The eyebrow," I said, "is the exact same shade of those wooly bear caterpillars I remember from my childhood. You'd look for them in the fall to see if they were heading north or south. It was supposed to predict what kind of a winter we'd have."

"So you've verified Elizabeth's claim you're mildly amusing. This is a busy office."

"And I just happened to come bumbling in off the street to bother all you busy; dedicated people."

She took a step back, a quarter turn. "Then, if that's all."

"I want to see Santo. What do I have to say to you? A magic word?"

"Try good-bye."

"My God, you are a silly, pretentious little bitch!"

"That doesn't work either, Mr. McGee. The only thing that does work is to state your business. If Mr. Santo did not employ people of some judgment to screen out the clowns, his time would be taken up with clowns… and eccentrics, and clumsy con men. Do you want him to finance a flying saucer?" She rested a finger against her, small chin and tilted her head. "No, you have that deepwater look. A bit salty? This is probably more of that treasure-map nonsense. Spanish galleons, Mr. McGee? And you have some genuine gold coins minted in the New World? I would say we average eight or ten of you people a month. So either you tell me or you don't tell anyone here at any time. Is that quite clear?"

"All right. I will tell you. I will tell you enough so that you will open the door for me to see Santo."

"May we call him Mr. Santo?"

"But I am not going to talk standing here like the last guests at a cocktail party. I want to sit at a desk or a table and you can sit on the other side of it and listen to as much as I care to tell you."

"Or as much as I care to listen to." She turned to the receptionist and said, "I shall be in Conference D, Elizabeth."

"Thank you, miss Smith," said the humble limey. I pushed the glass door open for little Miss Mary Smith and followed her down the corridor. Her walk was engaging, as it seemed to involve a conscious effort to inhibit any swing and flourish of her solid little rear end, and was successful to but a limited degree.

Conference D was a ten by twelve cubicle. But the end wall opposite the door was all window, looking out across Biscayne Bay to the improbable architectural confectionary of Miami Beach, with a. sunlit glitter and shimmer of traffic across the Julia Tuttle Causeway a little to the north, and the residential islands off the Venetian Causeway about the same distance south. It was a gray room with gray armchairs, six of them, around a Chinese red conference table. On one wall was a shallow gray case, glassfronted, wherein a very diversified collection of white nylon gears and cogs and rods and bushings of various sizes had been arranged against a Chinese red background in simulation of some of the art forms of Louise Nevelson.

I could be reasonably certain that as we had walked down the corridor, Elizabeth had, as common practice, turned on whatever bug system was used in Conference D. After all, Elizabeth could look through the glass doors and see which door we had entered.

I had learned the right terms from Meyer. She sat across from me, radiating skepticism.

"I am a speculator, Mary Smith. I'm not a trader. My specialty is in the maximized capital gains area. There is enough income from certain other sources so that the Fed hasn't, and won't, class me as a professional and cut it all back to straight income. Is this over your head."

"Hardly! In fact, you've almost run out of time, Mr. McGee."

"I do not want to sell Santo a hot item. I do not want him in any syndicate operation. I do not want any piece of his action, or even any knowledge of the details just so long as he does move in on it. This is not nickel and dime. It's a listed security. Now, usu ally I operate in a sort of informal syndicate deal. Every man for himself, but we make the same move at the same time. But we've done so well we've got some security leaks. I dug this one out and it's too damned good to get the edge taken off of it by too many leaks. I could probably establish a position in it and then arrange a show of interest on the part of one of the aggressive funds. But they work out in the open, and the blocks they buy are too big."

I looked at her questioningly. "You haven't lost me. And your time hasn't run out," she said.

"So I have the word here and there that Santo will swing when something looks good. And I think he is smart enough to ease his way into it, because if he comes in too hard and fast, it is going to go up the ladder so fast I'm not going to have a chance to use the buying power on the margin account to keep doubling on the way up. He'll have to set it up to work through several accounts, and be willing to sell off blocks of it to kill the momentum if it starts to go too fast."

"You said something about it not being nickel and dime."

"So it would depend entirely on how far he wants to go with it. If he goes in, it will take a million to create the pressure it needs. I would say he could come in anywhere from one million on up to a tops of four. Over four and it would put it too far out of balance and attract too much attention in the long run. Frankly, I'd be hitchhiking, using his buying pressure to get on for the ride up, and taking the chance he can keep the climb controlled. I could assemble syndicate money because the track record is good, but the leaks would hurt. If I had the million, I wouldn't be here. Let's say he can count on three hundred percent long-term gains, if he doesn't plumber it. This is the kind of thing that comes along every three to five years, where all the factors fit like a beautiful watch."

"Mr. Santo has very little tendency to plumber anything."

"That was my evaluation. And when the ride is over, I should be where I won't have to fool with syndicates and Santo. I'll be where I can make my own markets."

"A listed security?"

"And a company in a potentially dynamic growth area."

For the first time I saw the suggestion of a smile on that heavy little-girl mouth. "And absolutely no point at all in asking you the name of it, of course. But I can ask you for… bank references?"

"That's a silly question. If he wants to dig around and check me out, lots of luck. He could find worms in the apple. All he'll be interested in is the track record." I took the envelope out of my inside jacket pocket and took out the brokerage account forms and flipped them over to her. "Take a look, if you can read them and interpret them, and then you can give Santo a nice verbal reference."

She went through the margin account monthly summary forms first, sheet by sheet. Midway through she gave me a sudden green glance of reappraisal. On the last one, the December one, I had penciled beside each stock listed in the security position the January second market value. She checked those values against the purchase confirmations-not all of them, just a random few.

"May I hold these for a few days?" she asked.

"No."

"Can I have them Xeroxed? It would take just a few minutes:"

I hesitated. "On one basis, and I can't enforce it. You see them and Santo sees them, and that's it."

"That would be up to him,"

"So relay my humble request to the great man, sweetie."

"Do you have to be so sarcastic?"

"Am I supposed to be impressed by Gary Santo? He happens to be my number one on a list of three possibles. Whoever it turns out to be will make a bundle on their terms while they help me make a bundle on my terms. I didn't come to beg, sweetie."

"You do make that clear. I'll be right back."

"If you ever stoop to manual labor around this shop, I think it would be nice if you did the Xeroxing yourself."

"I shall, sweetie. And you just made a nice brownie point. Cautious is as cautious does. We treasure that around here."

She was back in under ten minutes. She did not sit again. I stowed the account forms in the envelope and in my pocket.

I said, "You see, Miss, there's all those chests of gold coin busted open and spilled out right across the white sand bottom next to Hustler Reef."

"That was clumsy, wasn't it? I must stop typecasting. Of course you realize I have no idea whether or not this will appeal to Mr. Santo. The idea, I mean. If it does, he will have to know the security you're talking about, and he will want to have it checked."

"Quietly, I hope."

"Of course."

"When do I get to see him?"

"How can I reach you?"

"I'm going to be on the move. Suppose I phone you tomorrow afternoon."

She shook her head. "Friday. Say at four in the afternoon. Ask for me by name and give my extension number or you won't be put through. Sixty-six."

"Just what is your job around here, Mary Smith?"

"You might call me a buffer zone."

"Have I gotten past you?"

"On Friday we'll both know, won't we?"

"McGee? Trav? I've been wondering all day-"

"Too much has been happening; Press. I might say that things are shaping up a little better than I'd hoped. I might have some good news for you when I'm able to get up there."

"I need some good news; and you can believe it. When are you coming up."

"I'll have to let you know. That money we talked about. Have you got it set aside?"

"Let me get one thing straight. I get to know about what's going on before I have to go ahead and buy that damned thing for three or four times what it's worth, don't I? I mean I get a chance to make a decision based on what you tell me?"

"Naturally. But as you must realize, I'm not in this thing for that kind of a profit."

"I can figure that out for myself all right. Okay I've got that money set aside, in case I want to go along."

"You will. I'll have the papers all drawn and bring them along. But one thing has come up which worries me a little, Press."

His voice tightened up. "What? What?"

"Have you had any recent contact with Santo?" No. No reason to. Why?"

"I think it would be a very good thing if you make certain he never hears about any kind of deal between you and me."

"I don't understand what you-"

"Did you hear anything about somebody topping your offer that same day title reverted to Mrs. Bannon, and I bought it from her?"

"I sure did, and it puzzled the hell out of me. It come through Steve Besseker here, and he won't say who made it."

"I have it on pretty good authority that Besseker was representing Gary Santo."

"What! The hell you say! Steve?"

"Santo sent some woman up to give him his orders, apparently. A tall redhead."

"By God, somebody was kidding Steve about seeing him over in Broward Beach with a big good-looking redhead sometime just before Christmas."

"It was probably the same day I bought the Bannon property. And it strikes me that the way things are going, Santo would want to know if there is any present or pending agreement between you and me, and he might have asked Besseker to find out."

I could hear him breathing, and then he said softly, "Well, I'll be a son of a bitch! The very next day he asked me if I knew you, and if maybe you were acting for me because, like Whitt Sanders said, that Bannon woman certainly wouldn't have sold to me no matter what I offered her. What's going on, McGee?"

"I'm afraid he's gotten wind of the deal I'm trying to pull off, and it would sting him a little. I suppose Besseker will keep him posted on every move you make. Well, we have to move a little faster than I planned. Santo will hear about you buying the Bannon place from me as soon as the sale is recorded. Until then, keep your mouth shut because I wouldn't want to have it turn out that you end up with no share in either his deal or mine."

"Listen, I can't risk anything like that happen-"

"Sit tight, Press. Hang on. Keep the faith."

As he started to speak again I hung up on him. About an hour later I played it for Meyer. He listened and then shook his head. "What's the point, Travis? Why are you confounding that dull boy with all this business of wheels within wheels?"

"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.

She sat bolt upright like a bright and obedient child and smiled at me with wide eyes and careful mouth, and told Santo she would have the regular, which turned out to be a straight shot of Wild Turkey with water, no ice, on the side. When she got it, she went at it with frequent little sippings, each of which must have been three or four drops by volume.

Santo turned finally, after some in-group jokes and conversation I couldn't follow, and faced me across Mary Smith, his back squarely toward the kraut lady.

"Our little Poo Bear here gives you a good mark, MCGee."

"Poo Bear Smith?" I asked.

"It's an office thing," she said. "I have this instinct or something. He says what about this one and I say Poo. And that one, and I say Poo. Then the next one I say okay for brownie points."

"She's got a nose for it. Questions, McGee. If I go for it, if I like the flavor of it, how much do you have to know?"

"The day you start and how much you are going to spring for altogether."

"Have you taken a position in it?"

"About the same way porcupines make love, but I'm nowhere near as far in as I want to be. It's been moving in a narrow range and I've been buying on the downs."

"Will you need to know my orders?"

"No. I'll have a man tape-watching it."

"There's one place where we have to be coordinated on it, and that's getting off it."

"As carefully as we get on, I hope."

"And the last thing, of course, is the name of it."

"Right here?"

"The other two can't hear, and Mary is the best you've ever seen at keeping her mouth shut. About anything."

"Fletcher Industries. American Exchange."

"Want to brief me a little?"

"Why should I? It's a duplication of effort If your people can't see why it's as good as it is, you need new people."

"You have your full complete share of mouth, McGee."