A Tan & Sandy Silence by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online

eleventh and 15 penthouse apartments on top. You have 315 apartments. The building and the apartrnent equipment cost nine million. So you price them and move them on the basis that the higher lit the air they are and the bigger they are, the ntore they cost. All you have to do is come out with about a thirty-three hundred net on each apartrttent on the average after all construction expanses, overhead expenses, and sales commissions, and you make one million dollars, and you are a btuiden millionaire before taxes.
    But if the apartments are retailing at an average tarly thousand each and you sell off everything in that building except ten percent of the apartments. Own instead of being a million bucks ahead, Page 18

    you are two hundred thousand in the red. It is deceptively simple and monstrously tricky. Meyer says that they should make a survey and find out how many condominium heart attacks have been admitted to Florida hospitals. A new syndrome. The first symptom is a secret urge to go up to an unsold penthouse and jump off your own building, counting vacancies all the way down.
    As I did not care to be remembered because of Miss Agnes, I drove to a small shopping center on the left side of the highway, stashed her in the parking lot, and walked back to the Casa de Playa.
    On foot I had time to read all of the sign in front.
    NOW SHOWING.
    MODEL APARTMENTS.
    CASA DE PLAYA.
    A NEW ADVENTURE IN LIVING.
    FROM $38,950 TO $98,950.
    PRIVATE OCEAN BEACH. POOL.
    HOTEL SERVICES. FIREPROOF AND SOUNDPROOF CONSTRUCTION.
    SECURITY GUARD ON PREMISES.
    NO PETS.
    NO CHILDREN UNDER FIFTEEN.
    AUTOMATIC FIRE AND BURGLAR ALARM.
    COMMUNITY LOUNGE
    AND GAME AREA.
    ANOTHER ADVENTURE
    IN LIVING
    BY
    BROLL ENTERPRISES, INC.
    The big glass door swung shut behind me and closed out the perpetual sounds of the river of traffic, leaving me in a chilled hush on springy carpeting in a faint smell of fresh paint and antiseptic.
    I walked by the elevators and saw a small desk in an alcove. The sign on the desk said: Jeannie Dolan, Sales Executive on Duty. A lean young lady sat behind the desk, hunched over, biting down on her underlip, scowling down at the heel of her left hand and picking at the flesh with a pin or needle. "Sliver?" I said.
    She jumped about four inches off the desk chair. "Hey! Don't sneak up, huh?"
    "I wasn't trying to."
    "I know you weren't. I'm sorry. Yes, it's a sliver."
    "Want some help?"
    She looked, up at me. Speculative and noncommittal. She couldn't decide whether I'd come to deliver something, repair something, serve legal papers, or buy all the unsold apartments in a package deal.
    "Well ... every time I take hold of something, it hurts."
    I took her over to the daylight, to an upholstered bench near a big window which looked out at a wall made of pierced concrete blocks. I held her thin wrist and looked at her hand. There was red inflammation around the sliver and a drop of blood where she had been picking at it. I could see the dark narrow shape of the splinter under the pink and transparent skin. She had been working with a needle and a pair of tweezers. I sterilized the needle in her lighter flame, pinched up the skin so that I could pick a little edge of the splinter free. She sucked air through clenched teeth. I took the tweezers and got hold of the tiny end and pulled it out.
    "Long," I said, holding it up, "Trophy size. You should get it mounted."

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    "Thank you very very much. It was driving me flippy," she said, standing up.
    "Got anything to put on it?"
    "Iodine in the first aid kit."
    I followed her back to the desk She hissed again when the iodine touched the raw tissue. She asked my advice as to whether to put a little round Band Aid patch on it, and I said I thought a splinter that big deserved a bandage and a sling, too.
    She was tan, steamed-up; a quick-moving, fast-talking woman in her late twenties with a mobile face and a flexible, expressive voice. In repose she could have been quite ordinary. There