Curtis—witnessed the signatures. In retrospect Curtis realized he should have known
better than that, but he was excited.
A month or so after selling the undeveloped lot to Curtis Johnson, Vinton sold it to
Tim Grunwald, alias The Motherfucker. This time the price was a more lucid five-
point-six million, and this time Vin ton—perhaps not such a fool after all, perhaps
actually sort of a con man, even if he was dying—got half a million in earnest money.
Grunwald’s bill of sale had been witnessed by The Motherfucker’s yardman (who
also happened to be Vinton’s yardman). Also pretty shaky, but Curtis supposed
Grunwald had been as excited as he, Curtis, had been. Only Curtis’s excitement
proceeded from the idea that he would be able to keep the end of Turtle Island clean,
pristine, and quiet. Exactly the way he liked it.
Grunwald, on the other hand, saw it as the perfect site for development: one
condominium or perhaps even two (when Curtis thought of two, he thought of them
as The Motherfucker Twin Towers). Curtis had seen such developments before—in
Florida they popped up like dandelions on an indifferently maintained lawn—and he
knew what The Motherfucker would be inviting in: idiots who mistook retirement
funds for the keys to the kingdom of heaven. There would be four years of
construction, followed by decades of old men on bicycles with pee bags strapped to
their scrawny thighs. And old women who wore sun visors, smoked Parliaments, and
didn’t pick up the droppings after their designer dogs shat on the beach. Plus, of
course, ice cream–slathered grandbrats with names like Lindsay and Jayson. If he let
it happen, Curtis knew, he would die with their howls of discontent— “You said we’d go to Disney World today!” —in his ears.
He would not let it happen. And it turned out to be easy. Not pleasant, and the lot
didn’t belong to him, might never belong to him, but at least it wasn’t Grunwald’s. It didn’t even belong to the relatives who had appeared (like roaches in a Dumpster
when a bright light is suddenly turned on), disputing the signatures of the witnesses
on both agreements. It belonged to the lawyers and the courts.
Which was like saying it belonged to nobody.
Curtis could work with nobody.
The wrangling had gone on for two years now, and Curtis’s legal fees were
approaching a quarter of a million dollars. He tried to think of the money as a
contribution to some particularly nice environmental group—Johnsonpeace instead of
Greenpeace—but of course he couldn’t deduct these contributions on his income tax.
And Grunwald pissed him off. Grunwald made it personal, partly because he hated to
lose (Curtis hated it, too, in those days; not so much now), and partly because he had personal problems.
Grunwald’s wife had divorced him; that was Personal Problem Number One. She was
Mrs. Motherfucker no more. Then, Personal Problem Number Two, Grunwald had needed some sort of operation. Curtis didn’t know for sure it was cancer, he only
knew that The Motherfucker came out of Sarasota Memorial twenty or thirty pounds
lighter, and in a wheelchair. He had eventually discarded the wheelchair, but hadn’t
been able to put the weight back on. Wattles hung from his formerly firm neck.
There were also problems with his once fearsomely healthy company. Curtis had seen
that for himself at the site of The Motherfucker’s current scorched-earth campaign.
That would be Durkin Grove Village, located on the mainland twenty miles east of
Turtle Island. The place was a half-constructed ghost town. Curtis had parked on a
knoll overlooking the silent suspension, feeling like a general surveying the ruins of an enemy encampment. Feeling that life was, all in all, his very own shiny red apple.
Betsy had changed everything. She was—had been—a Lowchen, elderly but still spry.
When Curtis walked her on the beach, she always carried her little red rubber bone in
her mouth. When Curtis wanted the TV remote, he only had to say “Fetch the idiot
stick, Betsy,” and she would pluck it from the coffee table and bring it to him in her mouth. It was her pride. And his, of course. She had been his best friend for seventeen years. The French lion-dogs usually lived to no more than fifteen.