The Way of All Fish: A Novel (23 page)

Off the American Airlines flight, into the mini-nation that was the Miami International airport, and into a Chevrolet Impala, the typical rental car that acted like no owner-driven car on the road—that was where Hess finally landed. The roads swirled around like a soft ice-cream cone, seeming to go nowhere, but finally spitting him out onto the Tamiami Trail and thence at a steady sixty miles per hour due west for some eighty miles to Everglades City.

A
nd here she was, Aunt Simone and Uncle Simon rolled into one, an untidy cigar that left bits of tobacco on his tongue. At one point after her “change,” she had married a man named Simmons. Simon Simone Simmons. What a name.

“Bass, dear, how good of you to come! And so quickly!”

As if I had a choice. He was enfolded in swirls of colored silk, as that goddamned bloodred and coal-black parrot was hurling at him what Bass was sure were obscenities.

“Simone, but you’re looking very well,” which, unfortunately, was true. Her hair was lustrous as a crown of black pearls, her skin as translucent as white ones. Simone was quite good-looking. For a man. He went on, “You don’t look at all ill.”

“Oh, it comes, it goes. Have a drink, dear.” She sashayed back to the dining room sideboard and her vast selection of bottles.

He was miffed. Raising his voice, which was too thin-timbered to reach very far, he said, “You said on the phone I must come at once, that the doctors had given you a gloomy prognosis.”

“Whiskey and water, as usual?” Why ask when she was already dumping shots of it into a tall glass and picking ice cubes from the silver bucket.

“So what is it, Simone?” He did not try to keep the edge of annoyance from his tone.

“You sound almost sorry that I’m not dead at your feet.”

Bass tried out a disbelieving laugh as he moved to the dining room door. “Really, Simone. I came right away, didn’t I? I’m deeply concerned.” His eye fell on a thick document which lay by the jug in which she was twirling vodka and vermouth. She poured herself a drink, put down the
pitcher, and held up this sheaf of papers. Her smile was lively as could be. “My will.”

He tried to temper his frown. “You’re making changes again?”

She didn’t bother answering as she walked their drinks—and her will—back to the Tommy Bahama room. She took her usual seat on the sofa. “Now, as you know, I’m leaving Bolly—my houseboy—something, and now I’ve decided to leave him another hundred thousand.”

Bass blanched as he sat down in an uncomfortable wicker chair. That worthless son of a bitch of a houseboy was already getting a sizable amount. But how could he object? “Do you think that’s wise, Simone?”

“What has wisdom to do with it? I’m fond of Bolly.”

Bass crossed his legs and sipped his whiskey. “You’ll leave him so well off he won’t have a motive to shift for himself.”

“Well, he doesn’t do that now. I don’t see how he could be more shiftless. But he is fun to have around, and he watches the house like a hawk when I’m away. Then there’s the half million to the Everglades Foundation; I’m increasing by another million.” She smiled broadly.

He didn’t. He was horrified. “Another
million.
Why?” He checked his sharpish tone. “I mean, Simone, well, the Everglades have been here forever. It’s unlikely the place will get run-down.” He gave a little laugh.

“ ‘Run-down’? Good god! It’s not a housing development. Although there’ve certainly been enough attempts to turn it into one. That shows how little you know about Florida ecology, not to mention politics. The Everglades has been a political football for years. Development, builders, just waiting for the legislature to pass a bill that lets them in. Can you see the land being subdivided into all sorts of faux-Flagler, Mediterranean houses?”

In his mind’s eye, Bass saw and applauded. Why on earth people would want to preserve this swampy, mangrove-treed, alligator-holed, marled and hammocked, snake-laced, mosquito-swarmed land, he had never understood. Better a few Meisner-inspired houses, surely. Better a flood of Flagler hotels. Better anything else.

She was off like the front-runner at Hialeah. He slipped down in his chair.

“. . . and have you the slightest idea what this was like in the nineteenth century before one millionaire after another, including Flagler,
and their harebrained schemes to drain the swamp? What a paradise for birds this was!”

Jasper let out a great series of squawks.

“Roseate spoonbills, green herons, carpets—
carpets
of egrets—”

As she went on with this, L. Bass sat reflecting on his shrinking inheritance: There went another million-plus right out the window. How much did she have, anyway? All he knew or had known when Simone was still Simon was that her-his-their father had been worth millions back in the days when a million was a real million and a millionaire somebody. The father had been what Simone was presently disdaining: a developer. He had bought up more and more land encroaching on the Everglades and might have successfully sliced off a few thousand acres for a mess of high-rise condominiums had he not dropped dead from a stroke.

“. . . and as to your own inheritance—”

He sat up straight, ears alert.

“Oh, do get me a refill; my throat is dry as a bone.”

Dammit! She would stop motormouthing right there! He quickly rose, took her glass, and all but ran to the bamboo sideboard, filled hers from the glass pitcher, and fairly flew it back to her, trying not to appear too eager.

“Thank you, dear. Now, where was I?”

Bass pretended to try to recall, knotting his eyebrows over his nose. “I believe you were talking about my own inheritance?”

“Oh, yes. Yours. Now, you will of course get the house; I know you always enjoyed coming here.”

Sold!
To the first snowbirds who dropped from the sky!

“And Daddy’s famous collection of fossils, and the antiques. There’s the dining room sideboard; that’s extremely rare bamboo—”

And vodka, he didn’t add. Why in hell didn’t she leave some of her money to Absolut instead of Bolly? Denmark had done more for her than he had.

“All of this”—she swung her arm in an arc to take in the living room—“is largely Tommy Bahama.”

God! Was she going to enumerate every last piece of furniture?

“As for other things, I’m leaving Bolly the silver service, the candlesticks, and the rest of it.”

Bass’s financial antennae quivered upward. “All of the silver? That’s a small fortune in itself.”

“He’s always said how much he’d like to have a silver service just like it.”

“Let him buy one like it—ha-ha-ha—with that extra hundred thousand. He can afford to.”

“I’m sorry. I never found you interested in the tea service or the silver.”

Bass gave this a bit of thought. Rarely did he invoke his wife’s wishes, but now he said, smoothly, “That’s true, not I, but Helen admires it so much . . .”

“How is dear Helen? I haven’t seen her in ages.”

Oh, Christ, why had he dragged Helen into it? He could be sitting here until doomsday talking about her, since Simone clearly thought he mistreated her.

“She’s good. She’s fine.”

“Why do you never bring her with you?”

It was not a question, but a judgment. He wanted to say, Because it’s hard enough coming myself. “It’s always something—you know, appointments, obligations. Her family always wants to have her over the holidays.”

“Quite selfish.” She laughed and reached across the coffee table and slapped Bass’s leg with the rolled-up will.

“Before you tear that to smithereens”—he choked out a laugh—“carry on with the contents, why don’t you?”

Simone looked at the document with little interest. “You know you get the bulk of the estate.”

But what is the bulk? he wanted to ask. He totted up what had been subtracted from it in the last fifteen minutes—well over a million, so the bulk must be vastly more. “Ah. That’s kind of you, Simone.”

She sipped her martini and held the glass up to the late-afternoon light swimming through the slatted blind and said, “There are one or two little conditions.”

Alert, Bass sat up. “Conditions?” Good Lord, condition as in the inheritance is null and void if you divorce Helen, or become a Mormon, or sell this cottage, or refuse to keep Bolly on as houseboy? The list could go on and on.

Just then, the parrot squawked.

“Ah,” she said with a rueful look, “right there is one.” She rose, glass in hand, to step over to the cage, about the size of a small tugboat, and stick in her finger, which the parrot sniped at. “Jasper. That’s one condition. You will take care of Jasper.”

God in heaven! He’d almost rather have Bolly in his spare room than this damned painted bird anywhere within a hundred miles of him. “You must understand, Simone, I’ve little experience with birds.”

“Oh, there’s nothing to it.” She rose, moved over to Jasper’s cage. “A little food, clean the cage, fresh newspapers. And, of course, his meds. But you’ll manage.”

What he’d manage would be to get rid of Jasper at the same place she’d found him: one of the exotic pet dumps. “Meds?”

“He needs his pill every day. And medication from a syringe. You give that orally.”

Bass wanted to double up with laughter at the very notion that he’d be medicating Jasper. Fat chance. He stopped laughing when he heard her tack on “Bolly will stop by every so often to make sure Jasper is all right.” With a sigh, she reseated herself.

“What? What?” He coughed behind his hand and lowered his voice. “Bolly will stop by the Wilton house to check on the parrot?” Was he going crazy?

On cue, Jasper yelled. It couldn’t even be called a squawk this time; it was either a yell of derision or an SOS, DANGER!

Simone raised her superbly etched eyebrows. “Connecticut? Don’t be silly. You’ll be living here in the cottage. Remember, I’m leaving it to you.”

In his quick rise from the chair, he knocked over his glass. Fortunately, he had drained it when she’d informed him that he would be Jasper’s caregiver. A couple of ice cubes bounced on the grass carpet, and he retrieved them. “Sorry, uh, I don’t see how I could relocate, Simone. My work is in New York.”

“Oh, but it’s the sort of thing you could carry on from here. Like those cold callers who solicit things over the telephone.”

He could scream. “It’s a bit more complicated than that, running a literary agency. Wait, Bolly could continue to live here and take care of Jasper, couldn’t he?”

Simone looked crestfallen. “Really, Bass, if you’re going to throw up obstacles at every little turn. . . You won’t need to work at all after you get my money. There’s quite a lot of it, you know.”

He went to her and patted her arm and took her empty glass. “I’ll give this some more thought. In the meantime, let me freshen these drinks.” He carried both glasses to the sideboard like a water boy. He felt like bloody Gunga Din. Better Simone should set up a pulley between sideboard and sofa.

“Any other conditions?” he called over his shoulder in what he hoped was a smiley voice.

Jasper screeched.

Jesus, imagine having that thing around all day!

“Yes, there is one more. Thank you.” She took the proffered drink.

“What’s that?” He was wary, to say the least.

“As you know, I’ve my orchids.”

“You wanted me to take them on also?” The next thing to be plowed under once she was gone.

“Heavens, no. I’m giving them to the Museum of the Everglades.”

Wonderful. One less onerous chore for him. “That sounds like a good idea.” He took another tug at his whiskey.

“What I want you to do is get me a ghost orchid.”

“Oh? Is there an orchid dealer in Everglades City? Marco Island, more likely. Or could I get it by Googling some florist who deals in exotic flowers?”

Simone made an excellent play at a “how naive” tone. “Bass, it isn’t that easy. If anyone had one for sale, he wouldn’t advertise on Craigslist. No, you have to find one in its own habitat.”

He didn’t like the sound of that. “What? You mean actively search for one of these orchids? Where?”

“In the Everglades. The Corkscrew Swamp or Big Cypress National Preserve or the Fakahatchee. It’s an epiphyte. I mean, the orchid is. It anchors to trees such as the bald cypress—”

Bass held up his hand. “Just a minute, just a minute. Are you saying one has to go into a
swamp
to find this thing?”

“Don’t be so anxious. You’ve gone through the Corkscrew preserve before. On a fishing expedition.”

“That’s different.” He hated fishing, but she insisted he live up to his father’s name.

She ignored that. “I’ve arranged for a guide, a very good canoeist.”

“Canoe? I’m supposed to
canoe
through the Fakahatchee or the others?” Bass couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “If you’ve found a guide, why not let
him
get the goddamn— I mean, get the orchid?”

Simone smoothed her painted silk skirt and said, “That’s the thing, dear. It’s illegal. He makes his living here; he won’t jeopardize that for—”

“Poaching? That’s what I’m supposed to do? And what if I should run into some Fish and Game person?”

“That’s highly unlikely. And Monty knows the swamp like the back of his hand.”

“Monty?”

“That’s the guide. He’s very dependable.”

“Really, Simone.”

She sighed. “If you don’t want to, I suppose I could get Bolly . . .” She picked up the will. “If I increase his part of the inheritance. Then I’d have to get my attorney to rewrite whole sections, given the complications of stocks, mutual funds . . .” She plucked a cigarette from a parrot-shaped holder that resembled a small vase and was the image of Jasper.

Bass went for his cell phone. “I must make a call. Will you pardon me?” He moved into the dining room and speed-dialed his office. When Stephanie answered, he said, “Has Mackenzie returned that contract?”

“Yes. He had it messengered over just an hour ago.”

“Look at pages seventeen and twenty. See if he accepted those terms.”

A pause. “No. Those paragraphs are X’d out.”

Damn Bobby! If he’d given the go-ahead, Bass was going to tell Simone to stuff her orchid. He said good-bye and slowly made his way back to the living room.