Now he has an office layout of such size, elegance and persuasion it is sometimes called Goodson-Todman South. He owns substantial percentages of several successful clubs, a piece of a theater chain, a big interest in a television production company, and a hundred percent of both an equipment rental firm and a big commercial color lab. With the steady growth of the Miami area as a moving-picture and television center, Jake has maneuvered himself into a position where he can supply all the necessary production equipment, furnish all necessary technicians, build and rent sets, supply people for bit parts and for use as extras, costume them, and process the film for final editing.
Several years ago several con artists moved in on him, set him up beautifully, bled off his working capital, then moved in closer to bail him out in return for control. Somebody recommended me. I had to get Jake to imitate total defeat, and when their guard dropped and they began congratulating each other, we worked our own con game on them. Jake has not forgotten.
He came running across his half acre of carpeting. I introduced him to Meyer. Jake leaned back on his heels and stared up at me, like a man admiring a tall building. “Mr. Meyer,” he said, “how this monster saved my life, believe me! Thieves from the Coast in black neckties, they knew everything. They knew how to peel poor old Jake Karlo like a banana. So what problems could they have with a type like this McGee? Such a big rugged honest one, like they would cast him in westerns, and actors those people eat for breakfast. When they left, maybe it was by Greyhound bus. All we let them keep was the cufflinks and the black neckties, heh? This McGee, he never comes to see an old man just for friendship. Always some favor. What is it now? Jake Karlo’s right arm? All you do is ask, it’s yours.”
“Meyer,” I said, “you will never believe it, but this active young man has twenty-one grandchildren.”
“Twenty-three. Keep track, at least. But not one with the name. Every one we had was a girl yet. Six of them. Who gets the name? My brother’s boy. Such a genius! Seven jobs I try him in. Even emptying wastebaskets, he could find some way to cost me a thousand dollars an hour. Come on. Sit, gentlemen. I told them out there, no calls, no interruptions.”
I told him what I wanted, and he spread out the four photographs of Vangie, the five by sevens. He sat behind his giant desk and looked at them with pursed lips.
“You look,” he said, “you say lovely. Oval face, delicacy, some oriental blood. Absolutely great eyes. Then more and more you keep seeing animal. Like a warning there. Watch out. How about the size, the build?”
“About five seven. Hundred and twenty to twenty-five. But the kind of body that looks riper than the weight. Physical condition of a dancer.”
He nodded. “Sure. One kid I’ve got, she’s five foot and doesn’t go a hundred pounds. Not really so much upstairs or downstairs, but what gives it that look, the waist is practically nothing. You’ve got with her a fourteen-inch difference from waist to hips, nineteen to thirty-three. She’s doing a fishbowl at the Shoreliner, and the bar business, it’s making everybody rich, just when the smart money figured the fishbowl bit was dead forever.”
Seeing the puzzlement on Meyer’s face, I said, “A nude girl dances very slowly, making sort of swimming motions, in a little brightly lighted room directly under the bar. Mirrors reflect the image of her, only about four inches tall, into fishbowls full of water spaced along the bar. It’s an effective illusion. Jake, have you got anybody who might fit the bill?”
“How close does she have to work? What’ll the lighting be?”
“Daylight, but a long way off. Say a hundred feet.”
“So the face is important, but what has got to be right is posture, the way she moves, the way she walks.” He pressed the lever on his intercom and said, “Liz, bring me in the specialty book, the one the cover is green on.