Read Online Slam the Big Door by John D. MacDonald - Free Book Online
Authors: John D. MacDonald
Tags: Suspense
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again, then went to the small desk to write to his sons. They did not like joint letters. They wanted one apiece.
“Dear Micky, There is a curious phenomenon down here called sunshine. I will try to explain it to you. Every day this big round yellow thing comes up out of the east, surrounded by a sky which is an abnormal blue instead of the grubby gray we’re used to. Exposure to this yellow thing turns people bright red instead of the infinitely more pleasing fish-belly white, but the natives down here seem to feel this ugly red is a desirable.…”
The “o” on the old portable was printing solid. He opened the lid, picked the goo out of the “o” with a match stick, lit a cigar and continued the letter, typing with four fingers, working—in a special sense—at his trade, taking comfort in the familiar sound, the cigar angled well to port to keep the smoke out of his eyes, a stocky man—very much alone.
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 Myaka 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 Brahma cattle feeding in the flat pasture-lands 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, sway-backed roofs, weather-worn 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 onto 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,
“Dear Micky, There is a curious phenomenon down here called sunshine. I will try to explain it to you. Every day this big round yellow thing comes up out of the east, surrounded by a sky which is an abnormal blue instead of the grubby gray we’re used to. Exposure to this yellow thing turns people bright red instead of the infinitely more pleasing fish-belly white, but the natives down here seem to feel this ugly red is a desirable.…”
The “o” on the old portable was printing solid. He opened the lid, picked the goo out of the “o” with a match stick, lit a cigar and continued the letter, typing with four fingers, working—in a special sense—at his trade, taking comfort in the familiar sound, the cigar angled well to port to keep the smoke out of his eyes, a stocky man—very much alone.
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 Myaka 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 Brahma cattle feeding in the flat pasture-lands 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, sway-backed roofs, weather-worn 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 onto 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,
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