John D MacDonald - Barrier Island Page 3

  "What exactly did Dawn do on these deeds?"

  "Tuck's office sent me a fact sheet for every purchase. Name, address, lot number, price, down payment, mortgage terms and so on. We put the deeds on disk, and Dawn filled in the data in between the boilerplate. She ran the required copies, and they went back to Tuck's office. His notary verified the signatures. They came back here and Dawn went down and recorded them, and in the next couple of days they would show up in the news of record."

  "With our name?"

  "We're the real estate agency involved."

  "Not very involved."

  "How involved can you get for one-point-five percent?"

  "How did we get the commission?"

  "In the mail. A check drawn on Loomis Development and sometimes on the Bernard Island Corporation."

  "And we're the agency of record."

  "Don't keep saying it and making it sound so sinister, for God's sake."

  "Listen, we started fourteen years ago. Just the two of us in that phone-booth office in the old West Bay Citizens Bank building. Now we've got eight full-time employees, plus those part-timers Frank Mettler works with. A clean operation, Bern. We haven't had to tuck ourselves under the wing of one of the national franchises. We're a class act. Sometimes things get a little thin, but we always make out somehow. I'm not crazy about this arrangement."

  "I know you aren't. You keep telling me. That's why we had Rick Riker check it all out. He's happy with it."

  "You mean he couldn't find anything particularly wrong with it."

  "When he can't find anything wrong, he's happy, isn't he?"

  "That island is inside the West Bay County limits, and I tell you there is no way he could have gotten the county and state permits."

  "When they added Bernard to the Gulf Islands National Seashore, then the whole thing about permits became academic, Wade."

  "And this is where I say Aha!"

  "I don't exactly follow you."

  "Just when did Tuck Loomis find out they were going to take over that particular barrier island and add it to the rest of them?"

  "When everybody else did, I guess. When it was announced. Last month. When the Park Service began condemnation. That put a stop to all sales and development. That's when they put seven hundred thousand in escrow as payment for Tuck's island."

  "When did Tuck start planning the development?"

  "Hmmm. Maybe two years ago."

  "Isn't it worth seventy-seven thousand to make a land scam look a little more legitimate? Hell, we both know what he paid the Campana family for it."

  "Half a million dollars."

  "Ten thousand down and a note for the balance."

  "What are you getting at, Wade, dammit? Look what he paid for all that raw land he turned into Parklands."

  "And look at the amount of money he put into it out there, Bern! He and Colonel Barkis and Fred Pittman. Let me tell you a couple of things they can use to lift our license to do business, Bern. Employing an unlicensed salesman. Who exactly is selling these lots? Collecting an illegal commission.

  Did you ever hear of one-and-a-half percent for paperwork? Filing false instruments. Are these legitimate sales, or part of a scam? Conspiracy to defraud. Defraud who? The government?"

  Bern jumped up, scowling. "Honest to Christ, Wade. You get to be more of an old lady every year. Riker checked it out. He didn't bring up any of that stuff. Thanks to Tuck Loomis, we had a damn good year, and we'll be able to stuff nice money into the Keoghs. And here's something I haven't told you. Tuck told me that when it comes time to open up that final five hundred acres at the Parklands, he might let us handle it. Do some of your damn arithmetic on that!"

  "When did he tell you that?"

  "I don't know. Last year maybe."

  "Way back when he wrote you the letter asking us to handle the mortgage deeds?"

  "I guess so."

  "And that's what made you so hot to trot. Why did he pick us, Bern?"

  "Maybe he likes the way we do business."

  "Tuck likes money, women and bourbon, in that order."

  "Do you think he was kidding me?"

  "I think he was encouraging you to not look too close at these Bernard Island mortgage deeds."

  "I'm not some innocent kid!" Bern shouted and sat down again, so hard that his chair rolled back and thumped against the mural of the county map on the wall behind his desk.

  "I don't want some big scuffle about this," Wade said. "All I want you to do is think about it. And if you decide that maybe, just maybe, our necks are out, and that something might come out at the condemnation proceedings that could hurt us, you write me a detailed letter about why we shouldn't have gotten into this thing, and I will write you one, seconding your opinion, and those letters will go in the file and we will have something to produce if we have to, something besides a confession of greed."

  "You are worrying too much. It's over. We did it and collected the money, and no more is coming in, not from that arrangement. It's over, Wade. So ease up on it, will you?"

  "Nothing like that is ever over. Not when it's in the records. Not when it looks funny. So let's at least try to cover ourselves with the letters to each other. And put in yours the verbal promise he made about the five hundred acres he's going to open up at Parklands."

  "No way."

  "I convinced you we ought to get out of the bank and build this building three years ago. And they've been bumping the rent at the bank ever since."

  "Mark up one for you."

  "And I talked you into hiring Frank Mettler."

  "And I still don't like the son of a bitch, but he sure can produce."

  "We've got a good team. And don't think they don't know we've taken in a nice net on commissions for doing practically nothing. At least the smart ones know, and that includes Helen Yoder. She asked me about it months ago. I told her it was your account. I suppose she asked you and the answers didn't satisfy her, so maybe she let Tuck pick her up Thursday night because she wanted to ask him what the hell is going on. She has a good nose for something a little bit off. He's lost the island, right? Those buyers stand to get their little down payments back with interest. The recorded deeds will be canceled out. Without us in the picture, Bern, without an outlay of seventy-seven thousand dollars commissions on sales, the rest of it would look pretty thin. And the money he paid us will be in the statement he will produce at the condemnation trial, along with what he has paid engineers, architects, lawyers, model-makers, botanists, marine biologists and God knows who else. He can show that he could sell seventy-six acres for five plus million and did sell those acres, and if the Park Service hadn't spoiled the party, he would have had another couple of hundred to sell. We can be called in to testify. How are we going to look?"

  "Just fine. Wade, you've got to realize we're living in the age of six-hundred-dollar toilet seats and three-thousand-dollar hex socket wrenches. If Tuck has found a way to get something for nothing out of the government, more power to him. We're doing nothing illegal."

  "How about immoral?"

  "You can worry about that, if you've got the time."

  "Where are those data sheets you mentioned?"

  "Dawn's got the file."

  "Mind if I look them over?"

  Bern Gibbs waved a casual hand. "You own half the action around here, buddy." Wade Rowley started toward the door. "Wait a minute," Bern said and came to stand in front of him. "I don't like fussing about this. I don't like the feeling you give me that I'm naive about Tucker Loomis and Bernard Island, and you are so wise and so sound. I've asked around. The general feeling among the developers and bankers and lawyers is that if anybody could have made out developing that six-hundred-acre island, of' Tuck could. He bought it. The title was good. It was his. He could have gone to live in those old Campana shacks at the east end if he wanted to."

  "They've been torched. Tod found an old anchor sitting in the charcoal."

  "I didn't know that. Anyway, what he paid for it doesn't have a lot to do with what it's worth. You have to add in Tuck's vision of what it could become. Creative value added. And why should we argue about a nice piece of business? We'd have to sell a million-dollar building to make that much.

  Suppose it is some kind of a scam, Wade. What difference does it make? Our skirts are clean. We've got that letter from Tuck, his original proposal. We performed a service for a fee. Why do you get so damned nervous about things?" Wade shrugged. "I guess it's the way I am."

  __When Wade got back to his own small office Brud Barnes was sitting on a corner of his desk, leafing through a copy of Real Estate Today. He was as tall as Wade, but not as heavy through the chest and shoulders. He had a narrow face, amber brown eyes that tilted down at the outside corners, big ears, beaver teeth, and thinning dark hair. He wore khakis, a white shirt, a faded baseball cap.

  As he tossed the magazine back onto the desk, Wade said, "Either you want to borrow money or go fishing. It can't be in your line of work because I'm not what you call newsworthy."

  "Been so long, I thought I'd make it a social call. But if you want to force money or fishing on me..."

  "Fishing, sure. Any time."

  They had grown up on the same street. And the years of running and battling and fishing had turned them into close friends. They both liked the outdoors, the woods and the water and the silences, and the creatures therein. They were both interested in conservation, but Brud's position as executive editor on the West Bay Courier Journal, one of the very few independent daily papers still operating on the Mississippi coast, and operating very profitably, gave him the chance to be effective.

  They had served on many committees together, signed the same petitions, enjoyed a few minor victories and suffered more than a few major
setbacks.

  "How's Beth and the kids?"

  "Chugging along pretty good. Tod had to do summer school this year. He faded in the stretch in the regular term."

  "You and I did that once."

  "I hate to remember that damn summer. I really do. How are you making out, Brud?"

  "Keeping busy."

  There had been a time when Brud's pleasant inquiry about Wade's family would have brought about a query about Alice and Sissy. But they were two years gone, living in Austin, Texas, with the lawyer Alice had married after she divorced Brud. Wade thought of all the others in their high-school class who'd been married and divorced. It was a small plague which had struck heavily in that age group in West Bay. And now it was infecting Helen and Buddy Yoder.

  "I haven't seen you in over six months. I sent you a note about how much I like those three articles you've been doing on the islands."

  "But I didn't answer, I guess. Busy or lazy. Probably lazy. Thanks anyway. I kind of bore down on Tuck Loomis and his plans for Bernard Island."

  "Get any response?"

  "Nobody walked in and shot me in the city room. And Parklands hasn't been running enough advertising lately so that it was worth it to them to pull it out. I run into him at the Hyatt one time over a month ago and he gave me that crookedy grin of his and said, "Brud, baby, you never gone win any Pulitzer with that kinda shit." So I asked him for something useful I could print, like how long had he known that the feds were going to pick up Bernard Island. He gave me his wide-eyed-innocence look and he said, "You musta knowed before I did." It gripes my ass the way he comes on so grits and syrup these days. The son of a bitch come down here from Ohio. He thinks he's one of the boys, in with them close and tight, boys like Derks and Ellenson and Loudner. But they're just jollying him because he's making a little money for them here and there, and they do love that green stuff. If things get a little sticky for of' Tuck, they'll drop him like a snake."

  "And so you came here to talk to me about Tuck Loomis and Bernard Island and deeds to lots on the island and all that?"

  "I guess I stayed away because I didn't want to talk to you about all that, Wade."

  "So let's sit and talk about it, friend. How come you changed your mind about talking to me?"

  Wade sat behind his cluttered desk. Brad sat in the chair by the window. "I guess I went through it a little more careful. I've always given you a hard time about how selling real estate and saving the bays and the beaches and the islands are kind of mutually exclusive."

  "I thought it was all in fun."

  "Well, hell, it was. Maybe here and there in quiet ways you've done more good than I have. Like you blocked that marina thing and got them to locate in a better spot. Anyway, when I found out who was doing the work on Loomis' deeds, I got hold of Rick Riker one day at lunch and pumped him a little. What he said was that Bern had asked him to look the deal over and given him the correspondence, and Rick told Bern that it was a legal arrangement. He told Bern he didn't like the look of it, and he wouldn't get into that sort of thing himself, but he couldn't fault it on any basis within the law."

  "So?"

  "You're not supposed to sit there and say So. You are supposed to say that this whole thing is Bern Gibbs' idea and you fought him on it but he insisted and he went ahead because it's nice money."

  "I'll just say that we discussed it and went ahead with it."

  "Bern has changed a lot the last few years."

  "We all have."

  "Look, you're talking to Brud Barnes, your old buddy from way way back. Why the defenses?"

  "I'm talking to a newspaper, aren't I? I don't want to read something that says Wade Rowley, half owner of the Rowley/Gibbs real estate agency, said yesterday that he opposed Bernard Gibbs' arrangement with Tucker Loomis for processing the deeds for the Bernard Island Corporation."

  "Okay, off the record. Even though I think it would be a good thing if something like that went in the paper. That's true, right?"

  "True enough, off the record. And off the record about Bern, he has changed. He's got some kind of inflated image of himself as a hustler. And he's doing a lot of womanizing, and he's spending too much on booze and boats and cars and women. Nita doesn't know anything for sure, but we Beth and I think she suspects. And she is one unhappy lady. We had another squabble today about the Bernard Island thing. We get over seventy-five thousand for doing a little bit of clerical work. Tuck doesn't give away money without a reason. He's using us as part of his front, trying to look respectable while he's running a land scam. I don't like it. We may split up over it. And over other things. I don't know yet."

  "What I'll maybe do is get back to you one of these days and find out if you want this conversation on the record." He looked at his watch and stood up. "I've got somebody to see."

  "Come around oftener. Maybe some fishing?"

  "Maybe. Sure." He started toward the door and then turned back to the desk. "This is off the record too. Walk very lightly and carefully, Wade. Look behind every bush. Cover yourself. The F, B and I is taking an interest in this whole thing."

  THREE

  On that Monday evening after Wade and Beth Row-ley came back from the Bayway Mall with their two children, there was still some daylight left. Tod had studying to do. Kim went next door to play with her best friend. After he had helped her put away the groceries, Wade and Beth went out onto the screened patio behind the house. She turned on the lights 'in the pool, and began watering some of the patio plantings, complaining about the lack of rain.

  He had been staring out into the backyard and he suddenly realized she was standing in front of him, fists on her hips, head tilted.

  "I realize you aren't ever real talkative, Mr. Rowley, but this evening you're setting some kind of new record."

  "Sorry, honey."

  "What is it?"

  "A long story."

  She sat beside him on the couch. "Tell me a story then."

  He took her hand and examined it thoughtfully, as if it were a rare and curious object. "Well, I'll tell you a short story first, okay. Then maybe the long one."

  "Nice to hear your voice."

  "A long long time ago, back when I was still in high school, there was a man about fifty years old here named Conrad Jester. Con was a hustler and he made out pretty well, but he was always on the fringes, never in the big action. He was always looking for the big one and never found it. He was a friend of my dad's. He built some little tract houses, and he bought and sold raw land, and I think he had a little transit mix cement business for a while. Anyway, he got advance news that they were going to build Bay Drive, after talking about it for years. And there was a tract of land there, sixty acres on the west side of town, that was in the Walker family. They had been holding on to it with the idea that someday they could get at least five thousand dollars an acre for it. That is peanuts compared to today's prices. Con Jester struck a deal with them. He would give the Walkers five thousand dollars nonreturnable option money against fifty-six hundred dollars an acre cash money, three hundred and thirty-six thousand. The Walkers wouldn't take any paper. He got to the Walker family a split second before several other parties did. The value of that land once Bay Drive was built was obvious."