A Flash of Green by John D. MacDonald

fabulous name—Charity Prindergast. Please understand, James, we have extracted this data from Buck a fragment at a time. She went down to Lauderdale from some midwestern university for the spring orgy, and apparently developed such a taste for gin she never quite managed to get back across the city line, until Buck went over to Lauderdale a few weeks ago and found her there, living in squalor and confusion on the pittance her dismayed parents were sending her. Out of the goodness of his great heart, he brought her back here and gave her honest work—at least honest to the degree that the Palm Highlands development can be considered honest.”
    “We build a damn good house for the money,” Buck said.
    “Our Mr. Flake claims that his employment of Miss Prindergast has nothing at all to do with the fact his sweet wife Elizabeth and their two sturdy sons are spending the summer on her parents’ farm in Pennsylvania. Yet, when questioned, Mr. Flake admits that though he writes his wife faithfully, he had made no mention of his charitable gesture.”
    Buck scowled and then grinned. “All right, you bastards, so I shouldn’t have brought her over here.”
    “You probably couldn’t help it, Buck,” Leroy said. “You tend to consume as conspicuously as possible. The brightest colors, the biggest tail fins, the table closest to the floor show. Miss Charity is a spectacular morsel, and you have a great talent for vulgarity, Buck.”
    “Now hold it, you—”
    “But you must face the fact you will pay a price for unseemly display. Even if you should send the nubile creature on her glazed way before Elizabeth returns, she will inevitably be told about her, due to your carelessness, and then, my dear fellow, that dear little wife of yours will flay you, salt you down, and hang your carcass in the sun. Your lies will not work, and finally you will be blubbering and whimpering for forgiveness. All you have to decide now is whether the lassie is worth it.”
    “Get him the hell off me, Elmo,” Buck said.
    “Consume conspicuously,” Elmo said. “That’s a nice way to put it, Leroy. I guess I do that too, in ways a little different from Buck here.” He stood up. “Come along, Jimmy. You boys excuse us and yell for Major when you need him.”
    They went out through the door and up the path that branched toward the house. Elmo chuckled and said, “Leroy is teasing him, and Buck, he doesn’t want to get too mad about it on account he knows I don’t like him bringing that hard-drinking girl here to my house. Buck doesn’t use much sense about a lot of things.That’s the trouble with getting people together on anything, Jimmy. Everybody is a damn fool in his own way.”
    Elmo led the way around the side of the house and up the steps into the air-conditioned silence of his study. The big pale desk was shaped like a boomerang. Elmo turned on a single brass lamp on the desk. The floor was cork, the walls burlap, the chairs and couch of dark leather. Elmo had patterned it after the private office of a bank president in Jacksonville, even to the gun rack and built-in television and high-fidelity music system.
    Elmo sat in the deep chair behind the desk and put his feet up and looked across the desk at Jimmy Wing. “I should have brought it up right here in the first place, instead of at the courthouse this morning. Then you wouldn’t have spent all day wondering about the rest of it.”
    “I’ve done some guessing.”
    “Mostly what we need to go into is where we both are going to fit into this thing. Take me. I’ve made it plain I’m not running again. One term on the county commission is enough. I’ve told everybody I have to give more time to my building business. Do you have the idea I’m getting out of politics, Jim?”
    “No. You took to it too well.”
    “Do you think it’s been a good thing for Palm County, me being four years on the commission?”
    “Elmo, that’s a strange question, and I don’t know