Her Name Will Be Faith (11 page)

"He talked about maybe a couple of million
profit."

"That was off the top of my head," Lawson
told him. "Since then I've
been
getting down to facts and quotes. Listen! I can lay electricity to that
whole property for a hundred grand. There's no
water, but hell, no
property in North Eleuthera has mains water. But I
can build a cistern
big enough to serve the
whole area for another hundred, and a catchment
area to serve the cistern for fifty – hell,
just a big sheet
of sloping
concrete."

"So we're up to 250 grand on
top of the million," Big Mike pointed
out.

"Sure we are. But then we split those 42 acres
into quarter-acre lots. 168 of them. And you know what I reckon we'll get for
them, with water and electricity? Forty thousand dollars each. Work that one
out."

Big Mike pulled his calculator towards him, jabbed the
figures. And whistled. "Six million, seven hundred and twenty thousand
dollars."

"That's right. Five million profit. Half for me,
half for you."

Big Mike and his son exchanged glances. "We were
thinking of a
t
hree-way split."

Lawson hesitated, then grinned,
and shrugged. "Okay, if I get my
normal
two per cent for every lot I sell."

"Done," Big Mike said.
"I'll have that $100,000 in your account
tomorrow."

Michael poured them each a glass of port. "Seems
a bit unnecessary for me to come down at all," he remarked.

They all drank coffee in the kitchen. "Now
then," Babs said. "Let's talk about this summer. You going to
honeymoon on Eleuthera, Marcia?"

"Well..." Marcia looked
at Benny. "Would you be terribly upset if
we didn't, Babs? Actually, we don't mean to marry
until the winter. Right
now we want to
fix the house up first. Our house," she added proudly.

"Of course I'll be
upset," Babs said. "But I reckon you're probably
doing the right thing."

"You can count us in,"
Belle said, smiling at Lawson. She was dying
to tell her mother and sister about the McKinley deal, but he had sworn
her to secrecy until her father gave her the nod.

"I'll be there," Dale agreed.

"And Jo and Michael and the
grandchildren," Babs said. "Oh, it's
going to be such fun. How long is it since you were
on Eleuthera,
Michael?"

"Not since he started racing, seriously,"
Dale observed.

"Seven years," Michael said, thoughtfully.

"You'll find it's
changed," Big Mike said. "Boy, have I got some things
to show you."

"I'm looking forward to it," Michael agreed.

He wasn't entirely convincing, Jo thought. But he
wouldn't go back on
his word. And she knew
he would enjoy it, when he got there. She'd been
feeling rather guilty about him, ever since Sunday night. But she knew
she
had made him do the right thing.

She smiled at them all. She hadn't
been so happy since her wedding
day. And
she felt the happiness was shared.

"Here's to the summer," she toasted.
"It's going to be just great."

Two days later, Ed told her that
Kiley had agreed to give Richard an
extra
five minutes on Friday evenings following the early newscast, to chat about the
weather, and about hurricanes in particular; he had been encouraged by Anthony
down in the Caribbean, even if Anthony, after briefly reaching Category One in
the Gulf of Yucatan, was now fading fast. "So," Ed said. "If
you're serious about doing those interviews with
the 'man in the street', you'd better get with it." He had raised
no
objection when she told him she
wanted to cut down her office hours, and
do more work at home, but a
project was a project.
Jo was momentarily
taken aback. She had not actually planned out how she would go about it;
interviewing the man in the street was not
her forte. Normally her
meetings were with people used and eager to be interviewed, set up by the
magazine. So how did one buttonhole some perfect stranger and get his opinion
on something as remote as a hurri
cane? Then
she realized that she had at least one natural starter, Washing
ton, the giant black man who had worked as porter
in the apartment block ever since she had first lived there, and who had once
told her how he had been frightened as a child in Florida by tales of the 1926
storm.

"Couldn't hardly happen,
nowadays," he said, when she asked him
about it again. "They have all that sophisticated
gear to tell everybody
days in advance
what's going to happen."

"So living in South Florida wouldn't bother you,
now," Jo persisted. "Even if you know that by the law of averages
Miami has to get hit again by a big one some day?"

"Depends on whereabouts I'd
be living, Mrs Donnelly. Think maybe
I'd get worried if I was one of those rich folks out on
Miami Beach. My
son
and his wife took his mother and me down to Miami on a holiday
two years ago..."

"Yes, I remember you telling me about it."

"Didn't think too much about hurricanes at the
time, but now you mention it, I don't see how they're going to get all those
people off that sandbank, over the causeways, in time – even with plenty
warning. And that's if everyone moves kind of quick. You know what folks are,
Mrs
Donnelly. They won't make up their minds
to go until the last minute,
and
then there'll be one big traffic jam and panic and everything you can
think
of."

"Washington, have you ever thought that a
hurricane might hit New York, one day?" Jo watched his face as he
considered the question.

"Nope," he said at last.
"Never came into my head. Hurricanes don't
get this far north."

"Only because the water's too cool. But suppose
one year warm water spread up here, as it must have done the year Gloria came
so close?"

"Heck, I remember her,"
Washington said. “Jees, that was something,
eh? But she was a kind of freak, wasn't she? I guess
anything in the world
can happen."

"And if it happened once, it could happen again,
couldn't it?"

"I guess it could, ma'am.
But you don't get freaks very often. I wouldn't
expect to see another Gloria in my lifetime. And she didn't even hit
us, Mrs Donnelly."

"She only just missed us," Jo reminded him.
"Well, I hope you're right that it can't happen again for a while, because
I've been told it's quite possible. If a hurricane were heading this way, what
would you do?"

The automatic glass doors swung open and a man crossed
the foyer.
Washington got up to speak with
him, returned to call one of the
apartments,
and directed him to an elevator. When he sat down again,
he shrugged.
"Hard to say."

"Suppose warnings were out on TV, that one was
coming straight for the Battery, would you leave town?"

He nodded, slowly. "Yes, ma'am, I reckon I would.
If there was going
to be a big one coming
straight at us, I reckon I'd do just that. Get the
wife and my daughter and little one, and call my
son to do the same. Yes,
reckon we'd all drive off to stay with my
brother until it was over."

Again the automatic doors opened to admit several
people, and Washington stood up.

Jo got up too. "Looks like you're going to be
busy for a while, so I'll
leave you now.
NABS will be doing a short feature on hurricanes after
the Friday
forecasts at six o'clock. I'd be interested to hear what you think
of them, some time. And thanks very much for the
interview, Washington.
I'll let you have a copy of the magazine when
this article is printed."

Washington beamed at her as they
left the office. "That'll be great,
Mrs Donnelly, just great. And I'll be sure to watch for
that feature. Thank
you, ma'am."

Jo gazed around the cafeteria, looking for a likely
subject, and saw one
sitting alone at a
green-painted, glass-topped table. "This seat taken?"
she
asked.

The elderly woman smiled. "No. Sit down, honey.
Feel free. Busy up here today."

"Railroad cafes usually are
at this time of day, and especially this one."
Jo surreptitiously inspected the woman while she
examined the menu: neatly permed white hair, framing a carefully made-up face,
turquoise polyester pants and loose, flower-printed shirt. She tried to sum her
up: lonely, probably widowed, not too much money... yes, this would be a likely
subject. She closed the menu and asked the waitress for a chicken salad and
coffee.

"Salads are real good
here," the woman told her. "My name's Lila
Vail."

She was making it easy by being so friendly. "I'm
Jo Donnelly."

"You eat here often?" Lila asked.

"Not really. I live in New York."

"Well, so do I, right now. With my sister."
Lila giggled. "Her name's Talma. But we call her Tootsie. Wouldn't
you?"

"Yes, I would," Jo agreed. "What
location?"

"One block south of East Houston. Where are
you?"

"Park Avenue, just off 48th."

Lila drank her coffee; their
respective locations, Jo thought, socially as
wide apart as Mayfair would be from Brixton in
London, were threatening
to end the
interview before it began. "Can you remember a summer so hot so
early?" she asked.

"Oh, sure," Lila said.
"Only moved up here from Florida less than a
year ago. When my Hughie died. Well, heck, Tootsie's a
widow too. It seemed right for us to get together, and she wouldn't come down
there.
She can't take the heat, right? So I
thought I'd give the Big Apple a try
for a couple of years. Right?"

"Right," Jo agreed again. She wanted to
sound interested, but she was disappointed; she had been looking for the
opinions of genuine New
Yorkers. Still,
having started… "Just like that weatherman on NABS.
Do you ever
watch him?"

"You mean Richard Connors?
When we're at home, sure. I used to
watch
him on Miami TV, too."

"Of course you would have.
He's an expert on hurricanes, so they say."

"Isn't everyone?"

"Did the thought of experiencing a hurricane ever
bother you, in Florida?"

"No way, my dear. As far as Hughie and I were
concerned they were just so much hot air." She threw back her head and
laughed at her own joke.

Jo tittered politely. "But if
you had heard a hurricane warning and
been
told to evacuate, would you have left your home for a safer area?"

"Oh, no! Safest place is your own home with
shutters over the windows." The older woman's tone was condescending.
"Might have a few trees down in the yard. Need to pick your washing in,
too." She laughed again.

Jo ignored that one. "The most serious problem
would be the surge of water..."

"Our house was two miles from the sea. That never
bothered us."

"But could you be sure it never would? In a
really big hurricane the
surge would
penetrate much farther than that. There is no high ground
in South
Florida to stop it."

"Don't you worry, my dear.
I've lived in Florida for years. I know
about
hurricanes. And I can tell you there's more crap – if you'll pardon the
expression – more crap talked about them down there than you'd
believe possible. In all the years we were there
we never had a problem."

"But did you have a hurricane?"

"Of course we did. They have them all the time,
in Florida."

Jo frowned. "I thought no major hurricane has hit
Florida since 1949?"

"That's nonsense. Every year we had the warnings,
and we put the
shutters up and the wind blew
and we had thunder and lightning and
rain...
if that's not a hurricane, what is? But they never troubled us.
But you know what gets people worked up and
scared of them? Self-styled
experts
like that pretty-boy, Connors. Every June, there he was on Miami
TV, telling us to prepare, and that at any time
there could be this big
storm, the
storm of the century, he would say, and how it was going to
do
unimaginable damage... absolute crap. And now they tell me he's
gonna give a series of talks on hurricanes up
here? What a waste of time."

There must be thousands of people down south who think
like this, Jo thought. What a terrible problem for the authorities, if there
was a severe
storm, like a Category Five, or
even a Three or Four, heading straight
for
all those high-rise condominiums, as Washington had pictured. But
it was
no use arguing with the old dear, or even getting annoyed because of her
criticisms of Richard. She tried another tack. "Do you believe a hurricane
could ever hit New York?"