be me.”
“Golly, it wouldn’t be me either. Anyway, it’s never going to happen again, so we shouldn’t worry. From now on it’s just a memory we share between us, a very sweet memory.”
He drew an icy line across the lower part of his chest with the bottom edge of his beer can and stared gloomily at his toes, his knobby ankles and his scrawny shins.
“You bring it?” she asked.
“Eh? Sure I brought it.”
“Look, I didn’t have any lunch or anything, and I got a tennis lesson at the club at two thirty, and …”
“And get off the dime. Sure, honey.”
Lew Traff got up and sauntered wearily to the guest room. After he had dressed in his pale gray slacks and light green shirt-jacket, he went into the bathroom and hung the wet trunks over the shower rail. He looked at himself in the mirror with customary distaste and combed his black hair over the places where it was thinning badly. The whites of his eyes looked yellow. His tongue was caked with white. He sighed and went back into the bedroomand put his dispatch case on the bed, clicked it open and took the Denniver envelope out of the file flap on the case lid.
With envelope in hand he went in search of her. She was in the master bedroom, all dressed in her little white tennis outfit, sitting at the dressing table, leaning toward the mirror, painting bigger lips onto her small fat mouth.
Looking at him in the mirror she said, “I got time I could make us fried egg sandwiches, okay?”
“Sure. Great.”
He put the envelope on the dressing table and backed away. She finished her mouth, inspected it, then picked up the envelope and ran her stubby thumb under the flap and ripped it open. She riffled the stack of bills and looked at him.
“Something wrong? One hundred hundreds equals ten big ones.”
“Well … Jus and I were talking about it last night. Like he says, he’s dedicating a part of his life to public service and all. But what Marty Liss wants to do is a lot bigger than before, you know? And it isn’t like there wasn’t expense coming out of it. Well, we thought it ought to be more.”
“How much more?”
“Justin thought maybe double?”
She had swiveled around on the bench. He walked a slow thoughtful circle and then sat on the foot of the kingsize bed and looked at her and shook his head sadly. “You disappoint me, honey. You really do.”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“You are the brains, baby. Justin D. Denniver can’t use a urinal without an instruction book. You are supposed to be smarter than this kind of shit you pull on us. I won’t go into arguments, liketelling you this time we don’t need any zoning exceptions so there won’t be any public hearing, or telling you that interest charges and construction costs are so high, maybe Marty shouldn’t be taking the risk at all, or reminding you that the building industry in Palm County is so flat on its ass, out of the five commissioners we could probably get three in favor without any help from Justin at all. What you’re trying to pull isn’t worth argumentation. What you should know, and what you know already, is there are wheels within wheels within wheels. Harbour Pointe is twelve million to fifteen million, and the visible part of it is the Marliss Corporation. You two are taking. And you know what Marty wants in return, right? That minor work permit for the so-called scouring of the channel, and an extension of the time limit on the permit on the land clearing.”
“I
know
that. But Justin said …”
“Down, girl.” He sighed, smiled, shook his head sadly. “I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”
Her mouth tightened. “What the hell kind of—”
“Shush, honey. Just listen. Marty and Benjie and Cole Kimber and me, we are not syndicate-type people. Take Azure Breeze, for example. A big project like that, it has to be a miracle of timing, not only getting all the permissions and certifications and so on, but getting it up on time.
“Golly, it wouldn’t be me either. Anyway, it’s never going to happen again, so we shouldn’t worry. From now on it’s just a memory we share between us, a very sweet memory.”
He drew an icy line across the lower part of his chest with the bottom edge of his beer can and stared gloomily at his toes, his knobby ankles and his scrawny shins.
“You bring it?” she asked.
“Eh? Sure I brought it.”
“Look, I didn’t have any lunch or anything, and I got a tennis lesson at the club at two thirty, and …”
“And get off the dime. Sure, honey.”
Lew Traff got up and sauntered wearily to the guest room. After he had dressed in his pale gray slacks and light green shirt-jacket, he went into the bathroom and hung the wet trunks over the shower rail. He looked at himself in the mirror with customary distaste and combed his black hair over the places where it was thinning badly. The whites of his eyes looked yellow. His tongue was caked with white. He sighed and went back into the bedroomand put his dispatch case on the bed, clicked it open and took the Denniver envelope out of the file flap on the case lid.
With envelope in hand he went in search of her. She was in the master bedroom, all dressed in her little white tennis outfit, sitting at the dressing table, leaning toward the mirror, painting bigger lips onto her small fat mouth.
Looking at him in the mirror she said, “I got time I could make us fried egg sandwiches, okay?”
“Sure. Great.”
He put the envelope on the dressing table and backed away. She finished her mouth, inspected it, then picked up the envelope and ran her stubby thumb under the flap and ripped it open. She riffled the stack of bills and looked at him.
“Something wrong? One hundred hundreds equals ten big ones.”
“Well … Jus and I were talking about it last night. Like he says, he’s dedicating a part of his life to public service and all. But what Marty Liss wants to do is a lot bigger than before, you know? And it isn’t like there wasn’t expense coming out of it. Well, we thought it ought to be more.”
“How much more?”
“Justin thought maybe double?”
She had swiveled around on the bench. He walked a slow thoughtful circle and then sat on the foot of the kingsize bed and looked at her and shook his head sadly. “You disappoint me, honey. You really do.”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“You are the brains, baby. Justin D. Denniver can’t use a urinal without an instruction book. You are supposed to be smarter than this kind of shit you pull on us. I won’t go into arguments, liketelling you this time we don’t need any zoning exceptions so there won’t be any public hearing, or telling you that interest charges and construction costs are so high, maybe Marty shouldn’t be taking the risk at all, or reminding you that the building industry in Palm County is so flat on its ass, out of the five commissioners we could probably get three in favor without any help from Justin at all. What you’re trying to pull isn’t worth argumentation. What you should know, and what you know already, is there are wheels within wheels within wheels. Harbour Pointe is twelve million to fifteen million, and the visible part of it is the Marliss Corporation. You two are taking. And you know what Marty wants in return, right? That minor work permit for the so-called scouring of the channel, and an extension of the time limit on the permit on the land clearing.”
“I
know
that. But Justin said …”
“Down, girl.” He sighed, smiled, shook his head sadly. “I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”
Her mouth tightened. “What the hell kind of—”
“Shush, honey. Just listen. Marty and Benjie and Cole Kimber and me, we are not syndicate-type people. Take Azure Breeze, for example. A big project like that, it has to be a miracle of timing, not only getting all the permissions and certifications and so on, but getting it up on time.
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