Slam the Big Door

Three

On the nineteenth day of April, on that sleepy Sunday afternoon while the residents and their guests on the north end of Riley Key used the beach and each other’s houses and cabañas, with a customary stop at the Jamison’s, and drank, and played bridge and tennis, and did a little surf casting and went out in their boats, and discussed the weather, property values, segregation, the vice president, local sexual intrigues, diets, investments, and where to go in Nassau and Varadero, and while they made their vague arrangements about ending up in one group or another at the Key Club, later on, four men, thirty-five miles away in another county, were deciding the financial future of Troy Jamison.

They had met, by prearrangement, at Purdy Elmarr’s ranch, twelve hundred acres, part of it bordering the upper Myakka River. The old frame ranch house was set back about three hundred feet from State Road 982, at the end of a straight sand road bordered by squat elderly oaks. The infrequent tourist who braved the potholes of 982 could look at the old house with the oak hammock beyond it, and the old trucks and implements corroding away in the side yard, and the gray, soiled-looking Brahman cattle feeding in the flat pasturelands between the scrub pine lands and the overgrown irrigation ditches, and see a certain picturesqueness in a down-at-the-heel ranch with rickety sheds, swaybacked roofs, weatherworn paint. If they jolted by shortly after the rural delivery truck, they might see Purdy Elmarr himself trudging out to his roadside box, a wiry old man in dusty work clothing, with a big shapeless black felt hat, steel-rimmed glasses — and feel that pleasant pity which is born of a sure knowledge of superiority. Poor old fella.

They could have no way of knowing that Purdy lived exactly the way he wanted to live, that no matter how frequent his visits to his bank in Sarasota, wearing his drab city-suit and an old cloth cap with a long visor, the executive staff of the bank leaped to attention, and became excessively affable — a social and professional gesture that never elicited a shadow of response.

He had a good riding horse and a pack of Blue Tick hounds, and two high-stake poker evenings a week. He got his turkey and quail and deer every year. At sixty-six he was in perfect health, and drank one full tumbler of prime bourbon whisky every night of his life. His granddaddy, a drover out of Georgia, had homesteaded a big chunk of land and bought more, ranch land and Gulf land and Key land and bay frontage. His daddy, with very little fuss or notoriety, had acquired a lot more. It had been simpler for them to get it, hang on to it and make a profit off it. Purdy had to use the services of a sharp firm of attorneys and accountants. He had control of about twelve corporations, but he wasn’t confused. He could read a financial statement with the same ease — and almost the same degree of pleasure — with which most men would read a dirty limerick. He drove a six-year-old car, listened to a twelve-year-old radio, underpaid his help, was generous with his friends, knew almost to the penny what he was worth at all times, and hated to see a month go by without adding to it. He was in citrus and celery, cattle and securities, motels and shipping, dredges and draglines, shopping centers and auto agencies. But the basis of all of it was land. He loved land with almost the same degree of intensity as he loved money.

He knew more about other men than they were ever able to learn about him. He knew the flaws and strengths and habits and vulnerabilities of every long-term resident in three counties who had a net worth of over twenty-five thousand dollars. Those men could be divided into three categories. There were those who had never had any dealings with Purdy. To them he was a mysterious, powerful, slippery old coot. Then there were those who had gone in with him on something and tried to get fancy and had got thoroughly stung. To them he was a vicious, crooked, merciless old bastard. Others had gone in with him and let him call the turn, and taken their profit. To that last group, Purdy was the salt of the earth.

The four men sat in comfortable old wicker chairs on the wide front porch of the ranch house. Purdy Elmarr was the eldest. Rob Raines was the youngest, twenty-seven, a solidly built young man with a small mustache who had the manner of earnest reliability of the ambitious young lawyer. (A manner which, he had begun to suspect, was not helping him at all in his program of re-seduction of Debbie Ann.) On this day, in this place, he was so full of deference as to hover dangerously close to obsequiousness. He had the wind-and-weather look of the sailing enthusiast. After much thought he had worn a necktie, which he now knew was a mistake, but it was too late to take it off. It was his first invitation to the ranch. He sensed that his career was balanced on the sultry edge of this idle afternoon — and here it would be determined whether, in the far golden years, he would become Judge Raines, a figure of dignity, solemn with wealth — or ole Robby Raines, that lawyer fella they say had a real good chance and muffed it that time, back when old Purd Elmarr was still alive, making deals. Rob Raines wondered whether he had poured too much or too little bourbon into his glass. As the idle talk went on, with nobody coming to the point, he was getting more instead of less nervous.

It seemed as though J. C. Arlenton would drone on forever. He was Buddha fat, pink-bald, with little short thick hands and feet. He wore khaki pants and a white shirt and carpet slippers, and he had driven out in a Cadillac that was as dirty as any car Raines had ever seen. Rob knew he had been in the state legislature one time, a long time ago, and since then had shoved a couple of governors into office. He had a lot of grove land over in Orange County, and a good-sized building-supply business, and he was known to be in a few things with Elmarr. One of them was the regular poker session.

J. C. Arlenton sat hugging his glass with his little thick hands and said in a tone of complaint to the fourth man present, Corey Haas, “Now Corey, damn it, you know better’n to set right there telling me Wink Haskell ever had one dollar put into Sea-Bar Development. Wink, he never went into nothing without control and that was the reason how he lost out here and there, and Sea-Bar was one he lost out on, so don’t you let him suck you in hinting on like how he had him a fine thing there, because Wink, he’s like to do that way to you, proving how smart he is. When Sea-Bar sold that whole tract to Mackel, ole Wink didn’t get one dime on account he wasn’t in it, so don’t let him hint you different.”

“Have it your way, J. C.,” Corey Haas said indifferently. “You’ve been down on Wink ever since he crossed you on that zoning thing and ever’body knows it.”

Corey Haas was, in this matter, Rob Raines’s ticket to join the discussion. Corey had thrown Rob a little bit of legal work lately. Of the four, Corey was the only one who wasn’t a native Floridian, but he had come down from West Virginia so long ago there wasn’t any perceptible difference in speech or manner. He’d lost a land-boom fortune so big that he’d spent the rest of his life trying to catch up to where he once had been. There were some who’d said he’d made it all back. He liked to get in on land syndicates. And he was in with Troy Jamison on Horseshoe Pass Estates.

“You stop chawin’ each other a minute, we can get business out of the way and get back to drinking,” Purdy Elmarr said quietly.

“Sure, Purd,” J. C. said quickly.

Purdy Elmarr looked over at Corey Haas with a little glint of animosity in his faded old eyes and said, “Don’t properly remember just how you come to go in with Jamison, Corey.”

Corey looked uncomfortable. Rob, watching the exchange, suspected that Purdy knew exactly why Corey had gone in with Troy Jamison.

“I told you,” Corey said. “It’s on account of Mary being Charlie Kail’s daughter before she married Bernard Dow, and her remembering how Charlie and me and Dow were in on a few things together, and when it looked like more than Troy could swing, they come to see me and it looked all right. And my end sure isn’t enough to pinch anybody. I got forty-five thousand into it. It was like for old times’ sake, Purd.”

“Man has a right to throw his own money away, I guess,” Purdy Elmarr said.

“I told him forty times he was going about it wrong,” Corey said hotly, “but he’s got control and he’s stubborn, and there was no point bringing it to a head on account of she’d vote it the way he asked her to. So I’ve been just waiting.”

“What were you figuring on doing?”

“Just waiting, Purd.”

Purdy Elmarr smiled off into space. “I know that tract well, boys. I guess we all do. Little over eight hundred acres, with two thousand feet on the bay right opposite Horseshoe Pass. Joe Wethered had it and he passed on and June Alice Wethered had it and passed it on to young Joe and I remember it because he damn near lost it for taxes one time and I was hoping on picking it up. You remember old Joe used to have a fish shack there?”

“Remember it well,” J. C. said.

“I got no quarrel with the figure Jamison paid for it. Eleven hundred an acre. Figuring conditions and location, I think it was bought fair and sold fair. I made me some rough figuring the other day. You take eight hundred thousand for that land, and with the clearing, grading, canals, bay fill, sea-walling and all, you got to put in another seven — eight hundred thousand, maybe more. Then say a half million on streets, entrance, sewers and so on. But I figure you get two thousand prime lots that’ll average out at eight thousand a lot, meaning sixteen million, or a gross of thirteen five, which sort of brings my interest to a head, boys. Now just how do you think he’s gone wrong, Corey?”

“The big mistake, of course, was trying to engineer the whole thing at once. He shoulda took one little section and finished it off complete and nice, and sold it off to pay for the next piece, but he had to go right ahead and do it big, bulldozers, dredges, draglines all over the damn place, so every one of ’em had to be pulled off the job near two weeks back.”

“That’s the trouble with the little fellas,” Purdy said. “They try to get big too fast. You take him. He was a little bitty house builder, only down here a few years, not big enough for anybody to pay any serious attention to, and making a little money here and there, so he up and marries Mary Dow and she’s got just enough money so he gets to thinking big, and he loses it for her. But he got to be big for a little while. How much has he got into it, cash money, his and hers, Corey?”

“I’d say about... oh, three hundred thousand.”

“They got more to put in?”

“By selling stuff. The boat, jewelry, mortgage the house, maybe they could find another hundred quick. But the way I see it, his nerves have got jumpy and he don’t want to ask her to put every last thing in.”

“How much would it take to save it?”

“Well, the land payments are spread pretty good, and I think maybe it could be done for three hundred thousand, no less.”

“I expect they’ve come to you for more.”

“I just couldn’t spare more. My cash position isn’t so good right now, Purd.”

Purdy Elmarr grinned like an amiable old coyote. “I can tell just what you were fixin’ to do, Corey Haas. You was going to set right there and let things get just as bad as they could get, where it would look like Jamison was going to lose the whole damn thing, and all of a sudden you were going to be able to put in cash to save it, but you’d want control, and he was going to be so grateful after being so scared you were going to do just fine, and once you had control you were going to run it your way, and slap one section together cheap and fast and soon as it begun to prove out you were going to unload your stock interest you stole from him, and make a big capital gain and get the hell out. And I bet you had that in mind right from the start, but you didn’t know I was going to get interested in it.”

“Hell, I didn’t even know you were going to find out about it.”

The three of them laughed. Raines felt confused. There were undercurrents he didn’t understand.

“Now here’s maybe what will happen. You set us up a little corporation so we’ll be ready, boy. Ought to have a name. You’re good on names, J. C.”

“Uh... how ’bout Twin Keys Corporation? Riley and Ravenna are about the same length, and this land is chunk between ’em.”

“Boy,” Purdy said to Raines, “you check that name out with Tallahassee and set it up fifty and one half percent to me, thirty-nine to Corey, ten to J. C. and a half percent to you instead of legal fees and all. Set it up minimum, boy. Corey, you look like you bit down on something soured you. Got anything to say?”

“Not a word, Purdy.”

“Good. Now here’s the way it’ll work, Corey. Listen close. You set the timing. When things are as bad off as they’re going to get, you tell Jamison you’re peddling your stock to this Twin Keys Corporation for forty-five thousand, and getting out of this Horseshoe Pass Estates Corporation. Tell ’em it’s me behind Twin Keys. And you hear I’ll buy theirs too. That’ll get ’em in the clear without much loss to speak of. Wouldn’t want to hurt Charlie Kail’s girl too bad. So Twin Keys borrows and buys up all the stock, then sets on it a while, and we get good estimates on just what it would cost to complete it, and what we can figure on getting back off sale of the lots, and then we sell the whole thing to my Ravenna Development Corporation and take us a good fat capital gain on the holdings of Twin Key stock, hear?”

J. C. stirred and grunted and said, “Ought to work out, Purd. Ought to work out good.”

“Excepting for one thing,” Purdy said gently. “We got to be sure Jamison don’t get no he’p anyplace to bail himself out. Corey, you tole me this lawyer boy could find out what I was a-wondering about.”

“He found out,” Corey said. “Go ahead, Rob.”

Raines cleared his throat. “Well... I was with Debbie Ann last night at a party at Jamison’s and later at a beach party. I don’t know exactly how much her father left her because I didn’t ask her directly, but from what I was able to check other places, she got somewhere around three hundred thousand then. She doesn’t have to touch it now because she gets enough alimony from that Dacey Hunter to live pretty good. I found a chance to ask her whether she’d invested anything in Horseshoe Pass Estates and she laughed at me. She said Troy Jamison had had a long talk with her about it three weeks ago, showing her the engineering plans and talking about potential and all. She said she’d told him that when she came into the money she’d had it taken out of the trust and put it in an investment portfolio that was heavier in common stocks than the trust list had been, and it had been doing so good she certainly didn’t want to disturb it for any land deal. She told him her father wanted her to be comfortable her whole life long, and that was just what she planned to be. She told him she couldn’t help it if her mother was a damn fool about money. That didn’t mean she had to be too.”

“They don’t get along so good? The girl and Jamison?”

“Not good and not bad either,” Rob said.

Purdy spat over the railing into the yard. “Boy, what did you find out about that funny-name foreigner staying there? He got any cash money?”

“His name is Rodenska, Mike Rodenska. He’s a newspaperman. His wife died a little while ago. He’s got some money.”

“Has he got enough?”

“I think he’s probably got enough, if he wants to go in with Jamison. I don’t know if Jamison has talked to him or not.”

There was a long and thoughtful silence. “That’s a risk I guess we got to take,” Purdy said. “I’ve just about dried up every other place Jamison could go for cash money. Course, might be we could hedge it a little. Boy, you keep on seeing that Debbie Ann, and see if you can make you a chance to hint to that funny-name fella the land deal is sour.”

Rob said thoughtfully, “Of course it wouldn’t be sour if Troy could get hold of...”

“Boy,” Purdy said harshly. “One half percent of Twin Keys could be fifty thousand cash money.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean anything by what I just said, Mr. Elmarr. Not a thing. I was just working up to something else I think should be considered. I was wondering what there is to prevent Jamison getting in touch with, or being contacted by, one of the big land syndicates, say from the East Coast. They could see the potential in a minute. And he could still get out with a nice profit.”

J. C. chuckled. “Run into that before, Raines. Tell him about that time they come in and tried to grab a deal Wink was interested in, Corey.”

Corey laughed softly. “You can’t make a deal that big quick and quiet. Wink found out long before it was going to be closed. So he started scrambling around. First thing you know the tract comes up for a zoning change and the Ravenna County Board of Commissioners tabled it for further study. Next thing somebody brings an injunction against the bay fill that was going on. Then it turns out maybe somebody got a little sloppy approving the title on the tract. With one thing and another, the Miami boys pulled out, and soon as Wink got it, all those little problems sort of got themselves ironed right out.”

“I get the picture,” Rob said, swallowing. “By the way, Jack Connorly has been after Jamison to run for commissioner in November.”

“Honest to God?” Purdy said with blank astonishment. He rocked his chair down onto four legs, slapped his knees, and began to gasp with laughter. When he caught his breath he said, “That Connorly is pure horse’s ass, I swear. Gawd damn! Well, if he wants to make a big political figger out of Jamison, he better hustle his ass down the road, ’cause come November, Jamison is going to be back down to his proper size, building little bitty carports.” All amusement disappeared with an almost startling abruptness. “Anybody got anything to add?”

“Just one little old thing I was saving, Purd,” J. C. said, fat little fingers laced across his stomach. “I got this in such a roundabout way, it isn’t worth trying to explain it. But it’s a good guess Jamison has got him another woman. Don’t know who she is, but she’s staying at Shelder’s Cottages on Ravenna Key, there on the bay side, just below Whitey’s Fish Camp. Don’t know if it will have any bearing on what we were talking about, but they say Jamison and Mary Kail ain’t getting on so smooth lately, and the reason might be right there at Shelder’s. You get any hint they’re scrappin’, Rob?”

“Nothing specific. I think he’s drinking a little more than he was, from what Debbie Ann said. I thought it might be because he’s worried about his project. Pre-development sales are way off.”

“Nothing surprising about that,” Corey Haas said. “He can’t make any time sales and give title, on account he has to have cash money to get the mortgage release. And there’s a strong rumor with the real estate boys the development may never get finished. Jamison has cut down to one salesman, and they set in that office over there without much happening. Just be-backs.”

“Just what?” J. C. asked.

“People use up an hour staring at a lot, scuffing their feet, then say we’ll be back. But they never do come back.”

“That about does it for now,” Purdy Elmarr said. “You too dog-lazy to han’ me that bottle, J. C.? Thanks. Here you go, boy...”

A little over an hour later, his mouth slightly numbed by bourbon, Rob Raines plunged his little MGA west over bad roads toward the Tamiami Trail. Liquor made the world exceptionally vivid and slightly unreal. Thoughts, doubts, ambitions, boiled in his mind. Did I make the right impression? I know how they’re using me, but are they also planning to use me in some other way I don’t know about? This is the edge of the big time. One toe in the door. Handle it just right. No mistakes. Then there’ll be fifty thousand, maybe thirty to keep after taxes and all, and they’ll let me in on another one. Elmarr will still use Dillon and Burkhardt for most of his business, but they’re getting pretty old. They took Stan Killian in with them, but Stan is a tanglefoot. They’re all getting along. But they’ll last long enough for me to get in solid.

He thought about Jamison. A sitting duck. He had that big advertising agency background, and he’d done well enough as a small builder, but he didn’t have a chance against Elmarr, Haas and J. C. Arlenton. Jamison had no briefing on those kind of men. They’d tear him apart like a chicken and suck the bones.

He came out onto the Trail at the Stickney Point traffic light, and as he waited for his chance to turn south, all exhilaration faded and, without warning, he felt bleak, depressed.

Is this what I wanted? Is this where I was headed? He turned south, into a long line of traffic on the Trail, boxed behind a car from Ohio. The hell with it. I’ll make mine. It’s all legal. That’s what the training is good for. So you know where the line is, and you can stay on the right side of it. That’s what they use you for, to find out just how far they can go. And the closer to that line you can work, and still guarantee safety, the more valuable you are to those boys.

Forget all that idealism crap. It’s just a blindfold they put on you, so you won’t realize you’re living in a jungle. Whatever happened to Jamison was his own fault. He was like a stupid caveman who’d gotten lucky and felled a big piece of meat, and instead of hacking off all he could carry and taking it back to his cave, he was walking round and round it, stone ax in his hand. It was going to spoil before he could eat the whole thing, so now a bunch of them were watching him from the bushes, waiting for the right minute to spring. They weren’t even going to leave him with nothing — which they could. They were going to give him a little chunk to take home.

His widowed mother, Dolores Raines, called Dee by her garden club friends, sat fatly on her heels in the backyard, wearing her big straw hat, bulging green slacks, khaki shirt and gardening gloves, troweling a flower bed. She grunted erect as he approached, turned, beamed at him, and kissed the corner of his mouth.

“How did it go, sweetie? Are you going to be Purdy Elmarr’s new smart young lawyer? I’m so proud of you, sweetie.”

“I guess it went all right. It’s just a little thing. I’m setting up a little corporation. Purdy and J. C. Arlenton and Corey Haas. We’re going to pick up some land, maybe.”

“We, sweetie? Are you really in with them?”

“Just barely, Mom. One half of one percent.”

She hugged him and made a little squeal of ecstasy. “But it’s a start, sweetie! Even if you only make seven dollars, you’re in with some of the most powerful men in this part of the state.”

“I might make a little more than seven dollars, Mom.”

“You’ve had a lot to drink! I can tell by your eyes.”

“Purdy Elmarr’s liquor, Mom.”

They grinned at each other with private understanding. “Now don’t you get into any of those big poker games they have out there.”

“He’s not about to ask me. Yet.”

“Later on, sweetie, let’s go out to dinner to celebrate. Just you and me. A fat old lady and her wonderful, brilliant son.”

“I’m sorry. I better change and go down and see Debbie Ann.”

Dee’s mouth grew smaller. “I know she had a silly crush on you years ago even though she was years younger than you — hardly past childhood and you were almost a man, but I really don’t see what the great attraction is. She’s a divorced woman, Robert. I haven’t told you this before but I was actually shocked when I first saw her after she came back to live with Mary. She actually has a slutty look. I’m sure there are just dozens of really lovely girls around who would be delighted if you’d pay as much attention to them as you do to that...”

“Jealous?” he asked innocently.

“Oh, you!” She looked coy. “Maybe I am. A little.” She frowned. “Sweetie, I just don’t want my handsome intelligent son to get involved with a loose woman. I can remember how I used to worry about the two of you, years ago, wondering if she was... encouraging you in any way. She had that look, even then. I was so relieved when you broke up with her. And now, to have it start all over again... Really, sweetie, I am a woman of the world. I’m not an old prude. And I can see how she could be attractive to men... well, in a sort of primitive way... or you could say an animal way... and it wouldn’t particularly please me if that’s all you’re interested in, but it wouldn’t worry me the way it does thinking you might get serious about her.”

“When I’m ready to get married, it won’t be to her, Mom.”

She looked intently at him, sighed and smiled. “Just don’t let her trap you, sweetie. I guess it would be hard to trap a lawyer, wouldn’t it. Run along then. I guess men just have to be like that. You can settle down after you’re married, the way your father did. He certainly was no angel before he met me.”

He went in the house and showered. He thought about Debbie Ann. He knew he had made a bad decision last night when he had ignored her objections, thinking that if he could arouse her, she’d let him into her room. But it had made her furious. He had been as angry as she was. What the hell difference could it make to her? She was divorced, wasn’t she? And it had actually been so damn easy that first and only time, long ago. There had been girls before her, a very few, and a lot of girls and women since her, but it had never been like that. In his tipsy haste and clumsiness he had hurt her badly, and by rights that should have ended any chance of her response, but she had come out of the paralysis of the unexpected pain within moments, erupting into a greedy gasping frenzy that had at first shocked him, and then almost immediately depleted him. He remembered how she had cried afterward, and how she had looked, sitting on the blanket, her face contorted, tears flowing, sniffling, her small body red in the glow of a sun that sat cloudless on the rim of the Gulf, as she wriggled back into the damp swim suit. He remembered how she had kept shuddering there in the hot sun at each touch of his hands, keeping her eyes squeezed tight shut as though that somehow kept him from seeing her.

They had sailed back in dusk that turned into night, and she had refused to help with the boat, or look at him or speak to him. And after that, no matter how carefully he plotted, he couldn’t make her do it again. He couldn’t even get her alone.

When he heard she had come back for a divorce, even though eight years had gone by, the wanting came back, strong as ever. Last night had been the best opportunity yet.

As he dressed he told himself that he would have to hide his anger. Be very nice to her. Apologize extensively. Blame his insistence on alcohol. Because — and the thought chilled a little area in the back of his mind — if she refused to have anything to do with him, Purdy Elmarr would find out about it somehow. And he would be of no use to them. Any lawyer could set up a simple corporation. They weren’t paying him fifty thousand dollars for that. He knew what they thought. They thought they were paying him fifty thousand dollars to continue sleeping with Debbie Ann. It was a small hedge compared to a sixteen million gross. It was espionage money. He wished he could start earning it in the way they thought he was earning it. So change the approach. Maybe humility would work. All in all, it was something the law texts had not mentioned.

And suddenly he realized he had a lot more at stake than he had counted on. He stood in shocked silence, thinking. If the deal went through, no harm would be done. It would be a private matter. But what if it didn’t work? It would make a juicy story for Corey and J. C. to tell around Ravenna, Venice, Sarasota and Bradenton.

He could hear J. C. holding forth to a bunch of local businessmen at lunch, chuckling. “Purd, Corey and me figured we had that Jamison land practically in our pocket, boys. Hell, we even cut that Raines squirt in on a piece of it, on account of he’d cut himself in on a lot a pieces of somethin’ else raht under Troy Jamison and Mary Kail’s nose, so he was in a spot to steer it all our way a little, you know, but it just didn’t work out. But I bet it was the nicest kind o’ law work that boy ever had. Or ever will.”

Rob Raines felt his face grow hot. A thing like that, a story that would accumulate artistic exaggeration as it passed from person to person, and lent itself so readily to coarse and obvious puns, could cook you for good. Ten years from now they’d still be telling it.

“See that fella ’cross the street? Rob Raines. I’ll tell you how he got screwed one time.”

Rob suddenly knew that those three men knew the additional risk he was taking. “God damn them!” he whispered. And he knew that the deal had to go through. He had to make it go through. Because, if it didn’t, what had looked like the beginning of importance could turn out to be the end of any possibility of importance. It would not be the same in a city. But here, up and down this chain of Gulf-side resort towns and cities, the business and legal community was like one small town. Everyone knew your triumphs and mistakes, your golf handicap, your political opinions, your amorous adventures, the size of your father’s and your grandfather’s estate, and whether your mother had married up or down to produce you.

Had he previously established a public identity, had he made any particular start in establishing the legend of himself in the community, potential damage would not be as great. But he had been most careful. He had balanced the possibly critical opinions of the MGA and the sailing squadron and the addiction to rather expensive sports jackets, by subscribing to the opinions of the more conservative wing of the Democratic party, by avoiding divorce cases, drunk-driving cases and collision litigation, by serving on the hospital drive and the Community Chest, by entertaining and being entertained by the more responsible segments of Ravenna society. As an attractive young bachelor he had been able to be carefully selective. He had begun to acquire a small amount of estate work, and he had turned down one political opportunity that had seemed to him to require more work than kudos.

But should Twin Keys fall through, the results of the four careful years of practice would be bitched. He would be known as that young lawyer who was so eager to get cozy with the Elmarr group he had been willing to further his ambitions in bed. It would make of him a figure of fun. The community would not be indignant. Or cruel. They would be amused. It wouldn’t be the end of him. But it would set a limit. He could go only so far.

And so it was a sobered, apprehensive and completely determined young man who drove south to Riley Key through the gaudy lights of sunset, his brown hands sweaty on the wheel of the agile little car.