Free Pale Gray for Guilt by John D. MacDonald Page B

twelve noon with Mr. Whitt Sanders, the President of the Shawana National Bank and Trust Company. I saw the empty Pontiac in the bank lot and parked near it and sent Puss on her way, wishing her luck. When I went into the bank, I could see Connie and Janine sitting in a glass-walled office in the rear, facing a big man across a big desk. The receptionist took me back, tapped on the door, and held it open for me.
    Sanders stood up and reached across the desk and gave me a bully-boy handshake. He had tan hair and a big, sun-reddened, flakey face, a barrel of belly, a network of smile wrinkles and weather wrinkles, big red hands like ball gloves, and eyes that seemed to have the same size and expression as a pair of blueberries. "Mr. McGee!" he bellowed. "Pleasure! Sit right down and rest yourself."
    I did and he said, "I was just telling the ladies that my sympathy goes out to Mrs. Bannon in this tragic time. You can rest assured, Mrs. Bannon, that the bank is doing everything in its power to liquidate the properties in question at the maximum figure obtainable. Of course certain unfortunate situations in that area have made it a difficult piece to move at this time, but we have negotiated something which I think anyone would agree is more than fair. As a matter of fact…"
    And in came little old Judge Wellington with his cream-colored ranch hat shoved back locks of white hair escaping in random directions, in his dusty dark suit and gold watch chain, carrying a briefcase that had perhaps first seen duty during the LincolnDouglas debates, his face remarkably like one of Disney's seven dwarfs, but I couldn't remember which one. "Hidey, Whitt," he said, "New paneling, eh? Purty."
    "Rufusl I heard somebody say they thought they saw you over at the courthousel Glad to see you."
    "No. I'm not going to let you get aholt of my hand, Whitt. Not with my arthritis laying quiet for a change. So set."
    Whitt Sanders looked confused. "Rufus, if you wouldn't mind waiting outside until I finish with-"
    "Finish with my client? Now, even a jackass like you knows you can't keep a lawyer away from his client."
    "You are representing Mrs. Bannon!"
    "Why not? Mrs. Bannon is a dear friend of Mrs. Connie Alvarez here, and Miz Connie owns and operates To-Co Groves up to Frostproof, right in my backyard, which you may have heard of even down here in the wilderness, it being near three hundred thousand trees, prime Valencia on sour orange root stock, and she has enough legal battles going at all times with the Citrus Commission and the growers association and the concentrate plant she's got a stock interest in to keep me right busy in my declining years."
    Watching the bank president, I realized it is possible for a big man to slowly come to attention while seated, and even give the impression of saluting. Connie had taken me on a tour of the groves, and I could see why Whitt Sanders reacted. For the first year after her husband had died, a management outfit had operated the groves on contract Connie had spent every daylight hour with the crews and every evening studying, and at the end of the year she said she had been willing to take the risk of being able to do the job herself.
    When we had come upon a trio of big spray trucks lumbering down the geometric lines, the nozzlemen garbed like astronauts, and I'd asked if bugs were a big problem, Connie had planted her feet, rolled her eyes skyward and chanted, "Kill off the burrowing nematode, the aphid, the rust mite, white fly, white fly fungus, Mediterranean fly, red mite, six-spot mite, rust mite, Texas mite, mealy bugs, cushion scales, black scales, soft scales, yellow scales, wax scales, snow scales, purple scales, dictyospermum, melanose, citrus scag, mealy bugs and orange-dog caterpillars, and keep killing them off, and if you don't get a hard freeze, you've got half a chance, man, of hitting today's market with a hell of a nice crop, which at today's prices costs me one dollar and sixty cents