Condominium by John D. MacDonald Page B

Big delays mean big losses. What happened there was bathroom fixtures. The crews were all ready to put them in, and the main supplier is struck, and also there is a trucking strike. Marty had found out that if he could steer the maintenance and service and supply contracts to local subsidiaries of a Miami corporation, they could solve problems for him, they said. He got in touch, and all the bathroom stuff came right through, because of some kind of arrangement with the unions. It’s a permanent relationship on all the projects now. It’s all cleanlegal business, you understand, but the money behind it could have come out of Mafia links.”
    She looked uncertain. “Just what are you trying to tell me?”
    “Marty gets excited and does things on impulse. All the costs have been cranked into the formula on this Harbour Pointe project. I can’t guarantee that if I go back to him for another ten, he won’t complain that he’s being held up for more money by a local county honcho, and then there would be the danger somebody might overreact.”
    She moistened her lips. “Like how?”
    “There was that situation over in Hallandale, where a subcontractor was stalling a big project for more money, and persons unknown went in one night and rapped him and his wife on the skull, put them in the trunk of their Chrysler, drove it out into the boonies and lit it like a big gasoline lantern.”
    She swallowed with obvious effort, tried to smile and said, “Come on, Lew, really!”
    “Maybe he won’t get excited. Maybe he will think it’s worthwhile to pay you, but he certainly will find somebody else in the future, to do little favors. Nobody likes a gun in their ribs.”
    “Well … maybe you better forget I said it.”
    “The east coast people who take care of little problems for Marty do so as a way of cementing goodwill. From what I’ve observed, they seem to react badly to situations where people want to change an existing agreement.”
    “All
right
, Lew,” she said angrily. “Just forget it. It was a rotten idea anyway. I won’t push that way again. Justin thought it was worth a try, that’s all. He needs money. He says business is terrible.”
    “As a friend of both you nice people, I felt I had to speak up, just as long as there was any outside chance anything might …”
    “You scared hell out of me, just as you wanted to do. Don’t worry about Jus. I’ll quiet him down.”
    She got up and went to the long wardrobe and racked one of the sliding doors back, revealing a rainbow array of Justin Denniver’s sports jackets and slacks. She pushed them apart, sliding the clothes along the bar, revealing the little barrel safe cemented into the cinder-block wall behind the clothes at waist level. She bent over to see the combination as she turned the dial. She kept her legs straight. Her little tennis skirt hiked up in the back, revealing the white panties and the full round buttocks. He smiled, knowing that if she’d been alone she would most probably have squatted or knelt to work the combination. And he was reassured by a stirring tingle in his groin. He was glad to know that he might come back to life some day. She chunked the safe closed and spun the dial, backed out and stood up and rearranged the hangers.
    He stood up as she turned, looking at her watch.
    “I think we talked right through fried-egg time,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m really starving. What we’re down to is peanut-butter-sandwiches time.”
    They went to the kitchen. He leaned against the counter and sipped a tall glass of milk as she assembled the two thick sandwiches.
    “I bet I made forty-five thousand of these before the kids went off to school,” she said.
    “What are they going to do this summer?”
    “God knows. I think Midge wants to work at Disney World again if they’ll take her. Brud is looking for something that’ll grow meat and muscle.” She gave him his sandwich and said, “Do you ever think about getting