Michener, James A. (198 page)

'Are you doing this out of vanity, Mummy?'

Maggie pondered this. It was exciting to operate in what had been considered a man's field and to perform rather better than most of the men; of course she felt proud of her achievements. And it was breathtaking to gamble with such large funds, hers and other people's, and she was prepared to acknowledge this to her daughter, but at this critical time in both their lives she felt it improper to operate from such trivial and almost degrading impulses.

'Beth, you really do like Texas, don't you?'

'I'm in love with it. I can't even remember Detroit.'

'Do you want to remember?'

'No! This is freedom, excitement, the future. Wolfgang and I see unlimited possibilities. I don't mean life in the fast lane, or any of that nonsense. But a man like Wolfgang, with me beside him, he can do anything from a Texas base. Anything.'

'I feel the same way, Beth.'

'But Daddy isn't at your side.'

'No, he isn't.'

They dropped that subject, and after a while Maggie confided:

'I'm gambling most of my savings.' Before Beth could reprimand her, she took her daughter's hands: 'But do you think your mother . . . you know me . . . how cautious I am. Do you think I'd take such a gamble blind?'

'I'm not sure I know you any more.'

'Look at yourself. The way you were when we came down here. Lady poet and all that. Then lady baton twirler. Now lady socialite. I don't know you.' Quickly she added: 'But I'm very proud of you just as you are. Resplendent transformation.'

'What safeguards have you, Mother?'

'Mr. Rusk is in this with me, and we'd be out of our minds to buy that turkey.' She flipped a thumb contemptuously at the towers: 'We could never make it pay ... all that unrented space.'

'My conclusion too. All that glass with nothing behind it.'

'However!' And here Maggie smiled. 'I've found a group of potential buyers. Canadians. They have a hotel chain behind them. They believe that if they can get title at a low enough figure, they can install an operation that will pay out.'

'Why don't they buy it themselves?'

'Because they need someone like me to honcho the details.'

'If the second tier of deals works, do you make a bundle?'

'You always phrased things delicately, Beth. Yes.'

'And if you can't unload to the buyers and the hotel chain . . .'

'Now wait. The hotel chain puts up no money. Just a managerial contract, but a very enticing one, I must say.'

'How do you know about the contract?'

Maggie Morrison smiled softly: 'Oftentimes, Beth, a dumb-looking peasant from Detroit can learn things a billionaire like Ransom Rusk could never learn.'

'But if your clever plan falls flat? If your secret buyers drop out?'

'I lose everything.' In the silence Beth looked across to the glorious towers; they seemed almost to sway with the wind, and she understood why her mother would find exhilaration in this game of Houston roulette, and she understood her gambling everything on such a precarious toss, but then her mother said: 'I wouldn't lose everything. We'll be buying this for twenty-four cents on the dollar. If we did have to bail out, we could probably get back eighteen cents.'

When Maggie turned her attention from her pregnant daughter to the long-pregnant purchase of The Ramparts, she found the other players almost thirsting to conclude the deal, so she finished things off with a flourish. For $42,000,000 she acquired buildings worth $170,000,000, and she and Rusk had had to ante up only

$12,000,000 between them, the banks being happy to carry the rest. Even the Mexican politicians showed relief: 'Only paper money, as you said. We feared we might lose it all.'

In July 1983, when things were looking slightly better in Houston, she sold The Ramparts to the well-heeled Canadians, who would convert the top floors of the buildings into superpenthouses for their wives. The price that Maggie was able to swing for this part of the deal was $62,000,000, which meant that she and Rusk had picked up $20,000,000 for about a year's work. Generously, he split this fifty-fifty with Maggie, telling her that it was the traditional finder's fee.

When the sale was completed— finalized, in Houston jargon— Maggie took Beth to a victory lunch: 'Why did I risk so much? I wanted to give you and Lonnie the best start possible in Texas life. I'm afraid your father will lose everything with his exotic ranch.'

'Mummy! Wolfgang and I earn a good living. Far beyond what I dreamed.'

'For the time being. Linebackers don't last forever.'

This meeting occurred in August of 1983 and as it ended, the television in the posh restaurant was broadcasting continuous alerts regarding the first hurricane of the season, Alicia, which stormed about in the Gulf, with winds exceeding a hundred and twenty miles an hour, presumably heading toward Galveston. The two women stopped to listen, and Maggie, who studied such storms because they could influence real estate values, said: 'Poor Galveston. In 1900 it was wiped out by a storm like this.'

'I've heard about it. Was it bad?'

'Are you kidding? Six thousand drowned. Worst natural disaster in American history.' When Beth gasped, she added, professionally: 'But they built a seawall afterward, and it's been impregnable.'

i would hope so,' Beth said.

During the next two days Maggie followed the tropical storm, but only casually, for the winds dropped to a relatively safe eighty miles an hour, which the Texas coast had learned to cope with. She had almost forgotten the threat when the storm stopped dead, about fifty miles offshore, and whirled about upon itself, as if uncertain where to land.

Now those who understood the rudiments of tropical storms became apprehensive, for this stationary whirling meant that the eye of the storm was picking up terrible velocities, perhaps as much as a hundred and sixty miles an hour, and with such accumulated force the hurricane could be a killer wherever it crashed ashore . . . and it did head for Galveston.

By the grace of a compassionate nature, the wild storm veerec off during the final moments of its approach to land and struck i relatively unpopulated area of the beach, so that instead of killing thousands, as it might have done, it killed only twenty. With i sigh, Galveston went to its churches and gave thanks for yel another salvation. The great storm of 1983 with its violent wind; had passed inland.

Through a curious trick of the winds aloft, when it was well pasi the coast it turned back on itself and struck Houston, not from the east as might have been anticipated, but from the southwest, anc as it came roaring in at velocities no architect or builder hac foreseen, it began to whip around the tall buildings, creating powerful currents not experienced before.

Now the lovely architecture of Houston, those spires challeng ing the sky, those castles of glass so brilliant in the rising or setting sun, were subjected to a tremendous battering, and one by one the windowpanes began to shatter. Glass from one building woulc somersault through the air and smash into the glass of an adjaceni building, which would in turn throw its panes toward another.

Maggie Morrison, hearing of the savage effects of the storm went outside, against the advice of everyone, to see at close hanc what was happening to The Ramparts, for which she felt a custo dian's responsibility even though the buildings were no longei hers. Finding partial refuge behind a concrete abutment, she watched in anguish as the fantastic winds struck at the towers.

'Pray God they hold!' she whispered as the climax of the hurricane struck, and she drew breath again when she saw that although they swayed, as Beth had imagined them to do that afternoon, they behaved with grace and dignity, bending slightly but not surrendering. 'Thank God,' she sighed.

However, when the winds at this great velocity passed around the curved expanse of the three buildings, it acquired that capacity which lifts an airplane—a kind of venturi effect as when material of any kind is constricted and flows faster—and on the far side oi the buildings, away from the frontal force of the gale, the wind began to suck out the windows, popping them outward from theii frames, and as they fell to the streets below, they formed a delicate, deadly shower of glass, millions of shards little and big, clattering to the asphalt streets and the cement pavements, maiming any who stood in the way, covering the passageways with icicles that would never melt.

Oh God! Look at my buildings! She stood behind her refuge, her fingers across her face in such manner as to allow her to see the devastation, and as the glass showered down around her, miss-

ing her miraculously with its lethal chunks, she wept for the tragedy of which she was not really a part but for which she felt a personal responsibility.

Standing in the howling wind and the falling glass, she wept for the broken dreams of the oilmen she knew whose world had collapsed; she cried for all the recently unemployed, many of whom had given up everything in the North to move to the lures of steady work in Houston; she sobbed for the Mexicans who had gambled so heavily and seen the ground swept from under them; and she felt particular sorrow for the Canadians who had purchased these buildings three weeks ago. The Ramparts, with their empty rooms and shattered facades, were the responsibility of the new buyers—of that there was not the slightest doubt—but she had escaped this disaster by only twenty days, and had she been dilatory in her manipulations, she would have borne the full weight of this catastrophe.

In the storm she wept for all those in Texas whose great gambles came crashing down.

This could be the most dangerous road in America,' Ranger Cletus Macnab said to his tall, hefty brother as they sped southwest from Fort Stockton toward the pair of little border towns which faced each other across the Rio Grande, Polk in Texas, Carlota across the rickety bridge in Chihuahua.

'Doesn't look too bad to me,' Wolfgang said, nor did it: a solid macadam roadway no narrower than most secondaries, bleak plains east and west, with cautionary white flood gauges at the dips where a bridge would have been too costly for the relatively little use it would have gotten. Looking at the black warning marks, foot by foot, Wolfgang asked: 'Can a flood really rise thirteen feet through this land? Looks bone-dry.'

'When it flashes up in those hills, fifteen feet in ten minutes, and if you're caught in this hollow, farewell.'

'Is that what you mean, "the most dangerous in America"?'

'No! Sensible travelers learn to beware when they see rising water. Those warning poles are for tourists . . . like you.'

'Then why the danger?'

The Ranger, a very tall, thin man in his mid-thirties, wearing Texas boots, a fawn-gray whipcord ranch suit and the inevitable Stetson, pointed to a car speeding south ahead of them: 'On this ! road I would stop that car only with the greatest caution, Wolfgang. And if I saw it stalled over on the shoulder, I'd approach it 3nly with drawn gun, expecting trouble.'

'Why that particular car?'

'On this road, any car, watch out. Chances are it's been stolen up north. That one's from Minnesota, so what in hell is it doing on this road? I'll tell you what. Some goon has stolen it up there, late-model Buick, and is high-tailing it to Mexico to sell it for a million.'

is there a market?'

'Are you kidding? They caught the head of a Mexican police agency, fronting for an organization of hundreds, buying stolen American cars all along the border, changing numbers, repainting, selling them all over Mexico at outrageous prices. So if I try to stop them, they shoot.'

'If it's known, why don't they . . .? Did they throw the police

chief in jail?'

'What do you think? We're approaching northern Mexico, a world unto itself, a law unto itself.'

'So you steer clear of cars heading south?' 'And on this road, cars heading north, too.' He indicated a low-slung, modified Pontiac roaring north with Kansas plates. 'Probablv loaded with marijuana or cocaine.' He studied the car as it whizzed past, if they are running the stuff, they'll give me a gun battle.'

'So what do you do?' i notify Narcotics farther along the line. They intercept them with machine guns.' And he cranked up his police radio: 'Vic, Macnab. Nineteen eighty-two Pontiac four-door. Kansas plates ending seven two one. Heading north on U. S. 69.'

'And I suppose many of the northbound cars carry wetbacks?' 'We don't bother with them.' 'Why not? If they're illegal?' 'Border Patrol has charge of that. So we let them handle it.' He hesitated: 'Of course, if a wetback commits any kind of crime . . .'

'They give you much trouble?' in the old days, almost never. Today, a more vicious element moving in. They rob. Now and then a murder. But we can track them pretty easy.'

Wolfgang, four years younger than his brother, a mite taller at six-seven and much heavier, reflected on this strange state of affairs, then said: 'Grampop Oscar would go out of his mind if he heard how you were running the show. Remember how he hated Meskins, how he ordered them around?'

'AH that's changed, Wolfgang. I work very closely with Mexican officials on the other side of the river.' Before his brother coulc reply, the Ranger added: 'Couldn't do my job without their help.

When they approached the dip that would carry them down to the Rio Grande, Cletus slowed the car and said gravely: 'Wolfgang, you sure you want to go the rest of the way 7 This isn't for fun, you know.'

'1 asked to come, didn't I?'

'True, but once across that bridge . . .'

'That's the part I want to see.'

'So be it, little brother. Here we go.'

They dropped in to the American town of Polk, named after the Tennessee President who had fought so valiantly to bring Texas into the Union; it was a miserable testimony to a great leader, a town of sixteen hundred persons living for the most part in crumbling Mexican-style adobe huts. The town's chief fame derived from summer weather reports: 'And once again the hottest spot in these United States—Polk, Texas, down on the Rio Grande, a hundred and nine degrees.'