Jack and the Beanstalk (Matthew Hope) Read Online Free PDF

years back, asking pretty much the same questions I was asking now. Burrill’s idea had been to start small, planting his fifteen acres in snapbean bushes, and then selling his product only to local markets. Porter had told him that snapbeans could be grown here, but that they did better in organic soil. Moreover, the reason they were grown primarily on the East Coast was that the technology for harvesting and marketing was there, and here in Calusa he’d have no access to machines and his harvesting costs would double because he’d have to hand-harvest.
    He’d gone on to break down for Burrill what the actual pre-harvesting costs—feed, fertilizer, spraying and dusting, repairs and maintenance, licenses and insurance, and so on—would be, and these came to something like $450 per acre per year. Added to these would be his harvesting and marketing costs—picking and packing, containers, handling, brokerage fees, and so on—which would come to $228 per acre per year, for a total operating cost of $678 a year. Burrill could expect a yield of eighty-five bushels per acre, and he could expect to realize gross receipts of $804 per acre. When he deducted his operating costs of $678 per acre, this would leave only $126 per acre, from which he would have to subtract return to capital, management fees, interest, and whatnot. In short, a snapbean farm in this part of Florida would be a losing proposition, and Porter had told that to Burrill as clearly and succinctly as he knew how. Burrill had gone ahead anyway, and—as predicted—had gone under. And now he wastrying to sell his losing proposition to a twenty-year-old kid who didn’t know snapbeans from snapdragons.
    I called McKinney as soon as I had this information.
    I told him exactly what I’d learned, and I advised him against making the purchase. McKinney told me the same thing Burrill had told Porter three years ago: he knew how to make snapbean farming profitable in this part of the country. I gave him the facts and figures. I told him there was no way he could make it work. But he insisted that I call Burrill’s lawyer to confirm the details of the deal, and there was nothing I could do to persuade him otherwise. McKinney had come to my office to sign the contract last Friday. At that time, he brought with him four thousand dollars in cash, the ten-percent deposit required by Burrill. I asked him at that time if he would need a mortgage or other financial assistance to meet the balance due on the closing date. He told me he had the $36,000 in cash and that he would bring it with him to the closing. I suggested that he bring instead either a certified check or a cashier’s check. When I told him we should insist on a week or ten days to inspect the plumbing, heating, and electrical systems in the farmhouse, he told me he would waive such inspection. I’d insisted, however, on an exterminator’s inspection for termites and other pests. Pending the customary title examination and tax search, the closing had been set for the second day of September.
    That was it.
    “Four thousand in cash, huh?” Bloom said.
    “Yes,” I said.
    “Against a forty-thousand-dollar purchase price.”
    “Yes.”
    “And he said he was going to pay the balance in cash, too?”
    “That’s what he said.”
    “On my block, that’s a lot of money, Matthew.”
    “On my block, too.”
    “Where’d a twenty-year-old kid get forty thousand dollars to spend on a farm?”
    “I have no idea.”
    “Big money,” Bloom said thoughtfully. “What’s the first thing that comes to your mind, Matthew?”
    “Inheritance,” I said.
    “That’s the difference between a lawyer and a cop,” Bloom said. “First thing comes to my mind is narcotics.”
    “Well,” I said.
    “Only because this is Florida, and the kid was murdered. He didn’t say where he got that kind of money, huh?”
    “He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.”
    “Twenty years old,” Bloom said, “he’s got forty