Pale Gray for Guilt Read Online Free PDF Page A

to put together a parcel of four hundred and eighty acres. And my little ten acres is right in the middle of all that riverfront land they want."
    "They?"
    "All that area is zoned as an industrial park ever since Tech-Tex came in, across the river. Big high lines come in with all the power anybody would need. They're going to dredge the river and the channel so barges can come in from the Waterway. Some big corporation wants to come in, apparently, and they'd pay a nice price for the land."
    "So who's putting it together?"
    "A local real estate man named Preston LaFrance owns the fifty acres right behind me. Besseker found out LaFrance has an option on the two hundred acres just east of me, at a price of two hundred dollars an acre. It's owned by an old boy named D. J. Carbee, an early settler. On the other side of me, to the west, there's two hundred and twenty acres owned by something called Southway Lands, Incorporated. Besseker found out that Southway is one of Gary Santo's operations. Do you know him?"
    "I know of him. Like everybody else in south Florida." A few years ago Santo had been the dramatic young swinger, with the touch of gold. Now he is the not-so-young swinger, moving in mysterious ways behind many scenes, behind barriers of privacy and money. The name in Miami has the flavor of penthouses, pipelines, South American playmates, mergers and acquisitions, private jets, and well-publicized donations to local drives in the art and culture areas.
    "I don't know the exact relationship between Santo and Preston LaFrance, Trav. Maybe LaFrance is just acting as Santo's agent. Maybe it's a joint venture. Besseker heard a rumor that the plant location experts nosed around the area a year and a half ago and recommended that the big company that wants it could go as high as eight hundred thousand! Seventeen hundred dollars an acre. About the time I learned all this, an old friend came out and told me he couldn't help it, and didn't want to do it, but he had to pick up the houseboats. I still owed on them. He told me that one of the Shawana County Commissioners, Mr. P. K. Hazzard-they call him Monk Hazzard-had hinted that if my friend repossessed his houseboats, he'd get a favorable ruling on a zoning application. So when I told that to Besseker, he said that Monk Hazzard was Preston LaFrance's brother-in-law, and there wasn't any way to prove a thing. He acted funny. He said he had a lot of things coming up and he couldn't promise to give me any more time. They'd gotten to him too, I guess. He has to make a living there."
    "All just folks," I said.
    He stared at the paper towel rack. He shook his head. "You know my style, Trav. I don't like all this round-and-about stuff. Direct confrontation. I'd seen Hazzard at a couple of those public hearings where they'd messed me up, like about taking that bridge out, but I hadn't talked to him. So I tried to make an appointment and he kept stalling, and finally I took Jan with me and we sat there outside his office until finally he saw us. Smallish man, with a long neck and a little bit of a round head, and big goggly eyes behind his thick glasses. Face sort of like a monkey, and a squeaky voice. I said we were citizens and taxpayers and landowners, and he was a public official, and it was his ethical and moral duty to see that the machinery of government wasn't used to shove me into bankruptcy so his brother-in-law could make a few bucks. You know about humiliation, Trav?"
    "I keep getting a little every once in a while."
    "He strutted around and he squeaked and lectured. Folks come down from the north and think it's easy to, make a living in Florida. Toughest place in the world. He wouldn't look at me. He looked out the window part of the time, and at Jan's legs the rest of the time. He said it wasn't the job of local government to save a man from his own mistakes and bad judgment. He said that the greatest good for the greatest number meant the best possible land use, and maybe a