Carnal Hours

“The rich guy?” I said, wincing in confusion.

“The very rich guy,” he said, putting a slow Southern two-syllable emphasis on “very.”

“The richest man in Canada is what I read,” I said.

“Except he lives in the Bahamas, now-in Nassau.” Foskett’s eyes glazed over with admiration. “Here is a man who could live in a marble palace, big as the Taj Mahal, with a gilded dome sparkling with precious gems. Yet he prefers to live a relatively simple life in a tropical paradise.”

I managed not to laugh at that twaddle. “You don’t have to tell me why Oakes lives in Nassau-there’s no taxes in the Bahamas.”

Foskett seemed just a little offended. “Well, that too.” Then he brightened. “Don’t be misled: Mr. Oakes is very generous. I think you’ll like working for him.”

I shrugged. “I don’t mind working for rich people. In fact, I don’t mind saying I downright like it. But I do need to know what the job is first.”

The waiter came and we both ordered the finnan haddie. A green salad appeared almost instantly.

Instead of answering me directly, Foskett leaned forward chummily and said, “Let me tell you how I came to work for Sir Harry.”

I nodded, as if to say, Fine, while I began eating my salad. It was his nickel.

It seemed that once upon a time, in 1932, Oakes had business with the Palm Beach law firm in which Foskett was the juniorest of junior partners. The senior partners kept the bear of a man cooling his heels in the reception area for over an hour; Foskett, walking through, had smiled and apologized to Harry, who was fuming.

“Kid-d’you like working with a rude bunch of goddamn stuffed shirts?” Oakes had asked.

“Not particularly.”

“Come with me then,” Oakes had said, grabbing Foskett by the arm. “I’ll set you up in practice and be your only client.”

“Sounds like an interesting fella,” I said.

The finnan haddie was here; it was steaming, not particularly aromatic. What the appeal of this bland fare was I couldn’t fathom; not that good a detective. I dug in.

He was studying me like a legal brief. “How much do you know about Sir Harry?”

“Just that he’s self-made-a gold miner who hit the jackpot. Obviously British.”

“No he isn’t.” Foskett’s smile was a trifle condescending. “He was born in Maine. And yet he became a British baronet….”

I looked up from my fish and cast him my own condescending smile. “Walter, you don’t need to explain how a mining magnate became a ‘Sir’-money talks in England, just like in Chicago. The only difference is the accent.”

He frowned. “If you’re going to work for Sir Harry…”

“We haven’t established that yet, Walter.”

“If you are, I think you need a little crash course in just who this remarkable man is.”

While I ate, he talked. And I admit I was soothed by the Southern inflections of the attorney, even if his admiration for his wealthy client bordered on embarrassing. In any case, the story he told-Sir Harry Oakes’ story- really was remarkable.

A loner since his middle-class upbringing in New England, Oakes dropped out of Syracuse medical school, condemning businessmen and professionals for “making money off their fellow men,” yet paradoxically possessed by an overwhelming desire to accumulate riches. How could the young idealist accumulate wealth without taking advantage of his fellows? The answer seemed to be in the news of a gold strike in the Klondike.

For fourteen obstinate years, Harry Oakes wandered a penniless prospector, from Death Valley to Australia to the Belgian Congo, with many a stop in between, in search of the instant wealth mining could bring. Along the way he learned the skills of his trade, not to mention a hard-bitten form of self-reliance.

When he finally did find his mother lode-at Kirkwood Lake, Ontario, where Harry was convinced a bonanza awaited beneath its frozen surface-it took eight years of legal, logistical and financial struggles to make it happen; but eventually his Lake Shore Mines made him the richest man in Canada.

Foskett’s eyes were tight and gleaming; that flexible mouth savored every Southern-fried word he spoke. “Nathan-we’re talking about an individual who could write a check for two hundred million, and cash it-in any bank, anywhere.”

Despite his reputation as a cantankerous loner, Harry was also renowned for paying his debts: a Chinese laundryman who had grubstaked him when everyone else turned their backs was lavishly rewarded by the now wealthy Oakes. On the other hand, a hardware store owner who had refused Oakes credit suddenly found a new competitor opening next door, underselling him item for item, putting him out of business within three months.

More charitably, a teenage shopgirl Oakes had dated in Sydney, Australia, who once lent him money for passage back to America, was rewarded years later with a marriage proposal on a world cruise. He was forty-eight; Eunice was twenty-four. Five children were the happy result.

For business reasons, Harry had become a Canadian citizen in the early twenties; by the late thirties he’d taken Bahamian citizenship, due to the skyrocketing taxes in Canada, and the conspicuous absence of taxes in the Bahamas.

“You must understand,” Foskett said, pleading his client’s case earnestly, “that Sir Harry was one of Canada’s most generous philanthropists, above and beyond the jobs and prosperity his Lake Shore Mines had brought his adopted country. Even before the latest tax hikes, he was already Canada’s largest single taxpayer. He felt… plundered.…”

Now a Bahamian, Oakes shifted his charitable giving to London and Nassau, and the title of baronet was conferred upon him by the King in 1939. In the meantime, he became the uncrowned king of the Bahamas, a one- man development boom-adding an airline and airfield to Nassau, purchasing and renovating the British Colonial Hotel, increasing wages, expanding employment through the islands. Giving millions to island charities.

“Much of this charitable work,” Foskett said piously, “benefited the colored workers and their children.”

“Impressive,” I said. I’d finished my lunch. Somehow, despite all his talk, the lawyer had finished his as well. That was almost as impressive as his story. “But what does it have to do with hiring a Chicago private investigator?”

“That’s the problem, Nathan.” His face twitched in a gesture that pretended he wished he could be more helpful. “I’m not really at liberty to say. You see, it’s a personal matter, and Sir Harry wants to present it to you himself. He has asked that I request you meet with him in Nassau.”

“I really am not fond of tropical climes,” I said.

That was no smart-ass remark: Guadalcanal had been less than a year ago. I’d caught malaria there and it still flared up from time to time; only in recent months had the combat nightmares of that sticky, stormy hellhole subsided to where I could get some occasional restful sleep. My condition-what they used to call shell shock-had got me out on a Section Eight.

That’s military for crazy as a bedbug.

He was painting a picture in the air with a tanned, manicured hand; he wore a gold ring with an emerald the size of a doorknob in Oz.

“Nassau is a pleasant place, Nathan-an oasis in this war-torn world of ours.”

Funny how a Southern accent wrapped around crap like that can be seductive.

“Walter, it’s July. A getaway to the tropics is no real inducement. Let’s stick to the job itself. I like to know what I’m getting into.”

He shrugged. “Your expenses will be fully paid, and your minimum fee will be one thousand dollars, in advance, for one afternoon’s meeting with Sir Harry.”

That was seductive, too.

“Why me? Why not some Florida dick? Or somebody from the East Coast? Ray Schindler’s the society private eye-maybe you ought to call him. I have his New York number….”

“You were recommended by a friend of Sir Harry’s.”

“Who?”

“Sir Harry didn’t share that with me.”

“Brother.” What if this was a mob job? Rich guys had those kind of connections all the time. I sighed. “When does he want to see me?”

“Day after tomorrow, if it’s convenient. You’d fly to Miami in the morning. The following morning, you’d be in