All That I Have by Castle Freeman

Emory.
    “There ain’t much does, is there?” I asked him.
    “Look, Sheriff,” said Emory. “What do you want from me here? I’m in the real estate business. I’m not in the business of morality checks. Do I think Logan Tracy is a Sunday school teacher on vacation? No. Do I think Odessa Partners buys guide dogs for blind children? No. Do I care? No.”
    Look, Sheriff, says Emory. Look, Sheriff, says Logan Tracy. Look, this. Look, that. Your big lookers, these important fellows are. When you hear that “Look,” be careful. Go slow. Because the fellow who’s telling you to look don’t want you to. He wants you to think he’s an honest, plain-talking straight shooter who, when he says “Look,” is getting ready to level with you. He ain’t. He never is. He says look, but he means don’t look.
    “Do you follow me, Sheriff?” Emory asked. “I’m telling you that you know as much as I do here. I can’t help you. Much as I’d like to, I can’t. Now, I know how busy you are.”
    “I ain’t busy. I ain’t at all busy. Take your time. I’ve got all day.”
    “You do, maybe, Sheriff. I don’t. Can we wrap this up?”
    I got up from my chair. Emory stayed sitting behind his desk. He didn’t offer to shake hands.
    “Have a nice day, Sheriff,” he said.
    Well, I might have lost Emory’s vote there. Couldn’t be helped. No hard feelings on my end, though. Emory’s a businessman, sure he is. He’s in the real estate business. That means he’s a valuable man. The real estate business is big in these parts, and getting bigger. On the whole, that’s a good thing. Now, to be sure, it does bring in people like Emory, it brings in your big lookers, people with a very high opinion of themselves based on what, when you take away their money, it ain’t always easy to see. The big lookers are the — what do you call the bad part of the good part? They’re the downside. Are ten thousand Emory O’Connors a downside? You bet they are.
    But still and all, I say thank God for real estate. Because it looks like real estate is about the only thing we’ve got left up here that people are willing to spend serious money on. Other good things people used to get from us, like milk, cows, tool and die work, lumber, sheep, saddle horses, wool, and the rest they’re getting from someplace else, but real estate’s something people want that we’ve still got plenty of. We’re adding more, too, every day, and we’re selling the hell out of it. It looks as though there’s no bottom to real estate.

    At the department I had a note from Clemmie to call her dad. Was I making Addison work on Saturday? If so, we might be into something. Addison generally preferred to devote his weekend to toddy.
    “It’s about your title search,” Addison said when I reached him.
    “I’ve gotten a little farther with that, too,” I said.
    “Farther, how?”
    “Sat down with Emory this morning,” I said. “Emory says the owner of the place is some kind of investment company, I guess, in Bermuda. Odessa. Odessa Partners.”
    “Well,” said Addison. “Yes. Odessa is part of it. Odessa is the Cub Scouts. They still had the training wheels on when they set up Odessa.”
    “Training wheels?”
    “Stop by the office Monday,” said Addison. “Or, no. Lucian? Come to the house. Come now.”
    I drove out toward Devon, and at Addison’s I went right to the back of the house and came in through the kitchen. Addison was there, making a pot of coffee. He poured a cup for each of us, then uncorked the big jug of White Horse Scotch that he likes to keep ready to hand at all times. He held the bottle over my cup; I shook my head. Addison poured a shot into his coffee.
    “I need this, don’t you know,” he said. “You and your god damned title search.”
    We sat at the kitchen table, where Addison had laid out a folder full of yellow legal notepaper. He patted the folder.
    “I can write all this up for you, if that’s what you want,”