Slam the Big Door (14 page)

He was a gaunt stooped man in his late fifties, with bad teeth, a threadbare suit, thinning hair dyed a violent purple-black, an artificial affability in his manner, the grey rubbery face of a retired comedian, and a firm over-prolonged handshake.

“Rodenska? Aren’t you the fella visiting Troy and Mary? Sit down. What can I do you for on this beautiful day?”

“I guess I wanted a little free advice, Mr. Haas. I got talking to Rob Raines the other night about my putting some money into Horseshoe Pass Estates. I know you own stock in it.”

“Eighteen percent,” Haas said with a wistful smile. “They’re right pretty stock certificates.”

“Rob didn’t think it was a good idea, but I guess he didn’t want to say anything about his girl’s stepfather, so he told me you’re an honest man and you’d tell me the things he didn’t want to.”

Haas shook his head. “Now, I could paint a big wonderful picture for you and I could make it sound good, and maybe we could take your money away from you, Mr. Rodenska. But it wouldn’t be right, and it wouldn’t be fair. Frankly, I got stung. I figure I’ve lost my money. Oh, I may come out with some if we can ever unload the whole corporation, but I just thank God I didn’t have more to put into it, or I might have, and that would be gone too. I only got in on account of knowing Mary’s daddy so well, and knowing her first husband—lot older man than Troy, and I hate to say it, but a lot smarter man too. It’s pitiful that girl has to lose her money that way. I can go into details that probably wouldn’t mean too much to you, Mr. Rodinski.”

“Rodenska.”

“I’m sorry. Man likes to hear his name said right. Were you thinking of any sizable amount?”

“Three hundred thousand, maybe.”

He pursed his lips and shook his narrow head. “Wouldn’t help. It’s too late for that. Throwing good money after bad. Rob did right sending you to me. It would be a turrible mistake. I can go into details about what them problems are, but like I said…”

Mike pulled a sheaf of notes out of his pocket. “Care if I go into details?”

“What? What’s that?”

“Want to hear what I think of it?”

“I don’t see how you’d have much of an idea about—”

“Let’s try it and see.” Mike began to talk, carefully, explicitly. At first Haas looked dazed. And then all expression went out of his face. His eyes were watchful. From time to time he reached up and touched his throat with his fingertips and swallowed.

Mike put his papers back into his pocket. “Those are the figures. Those are the problems. Three hundred thousand would more than bail it out. You know that. I know that. Troy knows that. I’m going to loan the corporation three hundred thousand, and take Troy’s and Mary’s stock as security. I didn’t come here for advice. I came here to tell you something, Haas. I’m going to hire a detective. And if there’s any more bad luck out there, and he can prove who caused it, like your bribing that construction clown to goof off, you’re going to have a conspiracy suit on your hands. I’m sorry I can’t get your eighteen percent back from you. You stand to make a lot of money out of it. And it’s too good a thing for you to ever let go of. That’s all I have to say to you.”

“Just a minute,” Haas said quietly. “Sit down, Mr. Rodenska. I thought you were just a newspaperman.”

“That’s all.”

“You would have made a hell of a good businessman. You still might.”

“A glorious ambition.”

“Eh?”

“I just collected facts and suspicions, Haas. I did some leg-work. That’s all.”

“That’s all,” Haas said bitterly. He seemed to be trying to make up his mind about something. He waited long minutes. “All right. It won’t hurt me none to admit something else has been cooking, and when it all blew up and the dust settled, Jamison would be out but not hurt too awful bad, and I’d have me a bigger piece of it. It’s worth waiting for the size money that thing’ll make. So I’ll tell you this. Detective or no detective, I can work against you and give you a hell of a lot of problems one way or another. Or I can work with you, and things will smooth out just fine.”

“What’s on your mind?”

“I’ll split the risk with you. One-fifty apiece, hear? We’ll juggle the stock around. You’re in for a third, I’m in for a third, and the Jamisons are in for a third. You and me, we’ll run it right.”

“No thanks.”

“Why not?”

“Mister Corey Haas, I wouldn’t go in with you on a ten-cent pail of water if we were both on fire.”

“That’s a rough way to talk to a man, Mr. Rodenska.”

“I can make it rougher.”

Haas smiled. “You’re new here. Jamison was new. Don’t have any idea what makes the wheels go around here. You just bought yourself a mess of trouble. Go into it if you want, newspaperman. The more I think about it, the more I don’t think three hundred will quite do it.”

“We can try,” Mike said, and left.

He placed a call to Purdy Elmarr from a drugstore booth. An hour later he was seated on Purdy’s front porch, with a bourbon in his hand. The old man gave an impression of ageless strength that did not match the frailness of his voice over the phone. There was no cordiality in him. He looked out toward the highway, his face still.

“My basic deduction, the reason I came to see you, may be entirely wrong, Mr. Elmarr. So I can save both of us time by starting with a question. Are you interested in any way in Horseshoe Pass Estates?”

There was a long silence. The old man spat over the railing. “Keep talking.”

“As I told you, I’m a newspaperman. Ex-newspaperman, at least for a while. I’ve done a lot of interviewing. I listen to what people say and how they say it. And I remember. I want to give you as near a verbatim conversation as I had today with Corey Haas as I can manage. There’s no point in telling you why I came to go to him. But I did. Here is what was said.”

Except for the infrequent lift of the glass to the lips for a measured sip, the old man was motionless as a lizard. Mike wondered if he was really hearing any of it, or if he was far off in one of the misty reveries of senility.

“That’s all. I said, ‘We can try.’ I left and phoned you within the next five minutes.”

Purdy Elmarr stood up and went to the table and fixed himself a fresh drink, slowly, carefully. He went back to the chair, sat down and said, “He’p yourself any time you feel like.”

“Thanks.”

“One thing. That Raines boy bring up my name?”

“No. It was just a guess.”

“Never liked newspaper people. Spent my life keeping my name out of the papers. Every time you open a paper, there’s the same damn fools grinning out at you. So I never got to know one. Why’d you bring this to me?”

“It seemed like a good idea. And somebody told me you aren’t… merciless.”

“Have been. Can be again if I have to. One third to him, one third to you, and one third to Mary Kail and her husband. Pretty. But you didn’t like that. I know you’re telling me exactly how it was, because you got the figures right, and that’s just how Corey would say things. What are you after?”

“I like Mary. I don’t like Raines and I don’t like Haas.”

“I don’t have to like the people make money for me. So you’re just going around doing good?”

“Call it that.”

“You could come out with a nice profit. They’ll want to cut you in. Mary will anyhow. Nice girl. Haven’t seen her in years. Is that the only money you got?”

“Yes sir.”

“Funny you want to risk it all in something you don’t know anything about.”

“It isn’t very important to me. When it could have been, I didn’t have it. And got along fine.”

“I got stacks of money, son. If there was twenty of me and we all went hog wild, we couldn’t spend down to the end of it. Don’t use it for anything special. Just like piling it up.”

“I can see how that could be.”

“I like you. You aren’t the least damn bit scared of money. Most people come here act a little trembly, like I’d bite hell out of them.”

“There are things I’m scared of. Money isn’t one of them.”

“He wanted one third of it. It’s the second time he’s acted cute on the same project. Corey is getting awful hungry, seems.”

“I guess so.”

“I’m going to break a rule. I don’t generally tell people my plans. Then if they don’t work out good, I don’t have to explain anything. I’ll tell you a couple things. You keep them to yourself. I wouldn’t tell you if I thought you couldn’t. First off, put your money into that thing. I’ve give up wanting it. Second, you won’t have no trouble of any kind. I’ll talk to Corey. If there’s trouble anyway, come to me and I’ll tell you how to fix it.”

“Thank you, Mr. Elmarr.”

“Now here’s the last thing. You can think about this some. I’ll talk sweet and pretty to Corey Haas. I think I’ll last another five years. He should too, if he doesn’t kill hisself. I’d say about five years from now, sooner if I can do it, Corey Haas is going to be walking the streets with his skinny old tail sticking out through his raggedy pants a-wondering just what in hell happened to him. He tried to cross me a second time, and I shouldn’t have let him get away with it the first time.”

Purdy Elmarr turned as he spoke and looked squarely at Mike. The faded old eyes were like bits of a wintry sky, and he wore a slow barracuda smile. In a very few moments Haas had been tried, sentenced and executed.

“I guess you know why I don’t keep on saying thank you.”

“Do I?”

“Some of this is because you’re probably a decent enough man, Mr. Elmarr. But you feel like it’s smart to play it safe, too. Because I’ll be quiet. Otherwise I might be crazy enough and lucky enough to get the whole thing in print.”

“You know, we got us a little poker group meets out here.”

“I’m not that crazy or that lucky, Mr. Elmarr.”

The old man thumped his thigh and gave a wild high cackle of laughter. “Damn if I don’t like you some, son. Never thought I’d see the day. Northun fella. Newspaper fella. Foreign name on you. Just tell me one thing. What got you started digging on this land deal? What got you to wondering?”

“Rob Raines acted too anxious about keeping me from putting any money in it.”

“Ummm. See how that could be. Just another kid lawyer. Gawd damn! New crop every year. But a man can’t find him a good one any more. Seems like every year they’re hungrier. Want to get rich right now, and don’t give a damn how they do it, long as it’s a little bit legal. They don’t seem to have anything on the inside of ’em any more, any old-time rules of what a man can do and can’t do. They wear everything on the outside. Raines looked possible, but damn if I felt right about a man willing to mess around with a girl for more than that one good old-fashioned reason. Guess I’m losing my judgment about folks. Want to take a look at some nice pups I’ve got?”

“Thanks, but I’d better be getting back.”

The old man cackled again and said, “People just don’t do that to Purdy Elmarr. I say come look at the pups, they say sure thing. I say go gnaw down that oak, and they say how far up from the ground, Purd? Anything to get close and cozy to where the money is. Maybe one time you could bring Mary out, just to say hello. Not her husband. Just her.”

“Why not her husband?”

“He’s got another woman, and I don’t want a cheatin’ man settin’ foot on my prop’ty.” He spat over the railing. “And he can’t handle his liquor. And he was pig stupid about how to develop that land. You put your money in it, boy, you handle it yourself.”

“You keep in touch with things, don’t you?”

And once again he saw the barracuda smile as Purdy Elmarr said, innocently, “Why, people just seem to keep coming out here telling me things.”

Elmarr walked out to his borrowed station wagon with him. “Glad you come out,” he said. “I mean that. I told you what I would do, and that makes it a deal, so, on account of it’s a deal, I’ll shake your hand. It’s the only time I ever shake a man’s hand. Shaking it for hello and goodby is just damn silly. It gets to mean nothing. Here.”

He shook the spare leathery hand, and they exchanged conspiratorial smiles, and he drove away from there. All you could do—all you can ever do, Mike thought—is make the best guess you can about a man, and play it that way. The rough road brought out the rattles and creaks in the station wagon. The low sun glared into his eyes when, almost an hour later, he turned toward the bridge to Riley Key. It was five-thirty when he reached the house.

Durelda came to the carport just as he got out of the car and said rapidly, her eyes round and white in her dark face, “Miz Debbie Ann says I was to tell you case you come home ’fore my husban’ comes to pick me up—the sheriff called twicet and final got ’hole Miz Debbie Ann telling her the mister got hisself messed up on drunk driving, and it was two hundred dollars cash money to get him out, so Miz Debbie Ann borrowed it here and there and took off maybe a hour ago to go down bail him free.”

“Thanks, Durelda. Was there an accident? Anybody hurt?”

“Nobody said nothing about anybody hurt, but he went and messed up our car some ways.”

He went into the house and phoned the Ravenna County Sheriff’s office and got hold of a deputy who told him Troy Jamison had been released about twenty minutes ago.

“He was definitely drunk?”

“I wouldn’t know, mister. He missed a curve on Ravenna Key and he put that Chrysler smack through one of his own signboards, and he couldn’t walk. This was two o’clock in the afternoon, mister, and he threw up in the patrol car, and when they brought him in here he was yelling that Marine Corps song but you couldn’t hardly understand a word of it, so what do you think?”

“Oh. Where’s the car?”

“I don’t know, but that girl, that stepdaughter I guess it is, arranged something about it.”

“And he wasn’t hurt?”

“Man! Tomorrow he’s going to feel like somebody’s spooning his brains out with their thumbnail.”

Mike thanked him and hung up.

The white Porsche, with the top up, snorted into the drive five minutes later. Debbie Ann got out quickly, her face rigid with disgust. “It’s somebody else’s turn now,” she said. “Anybody’s.” She turned and walked swiftly toward her room.

“Hold it!” Mike said sharply. She turned and waited for him. He took his time catching up with her. “Want to clue me in on it?”