wouldn’t want to sell for peanuts. She wants to hang on till the rest of us die off, which in my case, by the way, isn’t going to happen for years. I know she thinks of herself as the child of the group. Stistically-and by that I mean sta- tist-ic-ally, I have trouble with that word, drunk or sober-she may be right. As a practical matter I intend to outlive her, if only out of spite. But that’s not the point. Who knows what prices will be like on that faroff day? If they’re as high as a quarter of a million I’ll be astonished. You tell her. Leaving personal feelings aside, and I’m as much at fault as anyone, doesn’t it make sense? A certain quarter of a million now, or wait till she’s a very old lady, when she won’t have any guarantee that she’ll inherit, or that she’ll get as much as a quarter of a million for the whole thing. But we have to get all four signatures by Wednesday or the deal’s off. This is no time for Kitty to go off on a vacation.”
“I’m the one who advised her to get out of town,” Shayne said. “That was before I knew about the million- dollar figure. It’s damned high.”
She frowned. “Do you think so? They made a great deal of money up in the Tampa area, and they want to spread out. Gaspar’s just what they’re looking for. I don’t pretend to understand business people, why they offer one million instead of two, or half a million. Real-estate developers are nothing like you or me, thank God. We look at Gaspar and see some lovely beaches, a mangrove swamp and that priceless thing, privacy. They see royal palms and poinsettia beds, fifty houses with two bathrooms, a dock and a two-car garage, at a minimum net profit of four thousand dollars a house.”
“So it’s a simple business deal,” Shayne said.
“But what else?” she asked. “Mike, I’ve always heard you were a heroic drinker. You’ve hardly touched that cognac.”
Shayne drained his glass and stood up abruptly. “I’ll tell her. You’re offering to bring her in on the deal and give her a full fourth. If you don’t want to wait till morning to find out what she says, stay awake and I’ll call you.”
“Mike, you just got here! You don’t mean to say you’re going back to Kitty at this hour?”
“I’ll wake her up if she’s asleep. There’s no point in dragging it out. It’s a simple case of yes or no.”
“You did go to bed with her!” Barbara exclaimed. She sat forward, her breasts swinging interestingly inside the loose jacket. “Well, by God, I’m not letting you out of here without a battle. Mike, of course there’s more to it than a simple real-estate transaction. Much more! If the only way I can keep you out of her clutches is to tell you, I’ll tell you. Don’t stand there looking stern and disapproving. She’s getting two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, isn’t that enough? Does she have to get a tumble in the hay with you, too? Pour yourself another drink.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Shayne said flatly.
“Oh, Mike, don’t be so dim.”
She came to her feet. She was taller than she had seemed on the sofa, only three or four inches from being as tall as Shayne himself. Taking his glass to the sideboard, she splashed brandy into it and brought it back.
She held it out. “Now sit down and I’ll tell you about this million-dollar figure. It’s a wild tale. You may not believe it at first, but I think you’ll enjoy it.” She pressed the brandy glass into his fingers. “Sit.”
He allowed her to back him toward the chair. He shrugged and sat down. He was facing a large baroque clock, on which the minute hand was laboring up toward three. Rourke would be calling in another fifteen minutes.
chapter 9
Barbara perched on the edge of the low table facing him. Their knees didn’t quite touch.
“I hoped Kitty wouldn’t have to know about this,” she said. “She’s such an avaricious thing, not that I expect you to agree with me. You’re quite right-a million dollars for Gaspar as it stands is fantasy. That’s thirteen thousand an acre, and most of those acres you can’t get to unless you happen to be a mosquito or a bulldozer. We’re swindling poor gullible Mr. Hilary Quarrels, that farsighted, hard-headed businessman, and if you sip your brandy and let me put my hand on your knee from time to time to emphasize a point, I’ll tell you about it.”
To emphasize that point, she put her hand on his knee. “You were limping, Mike. What’s the matter with your leg?”
“It’s still cramped up from that damn Volkswagen.”
“Poor dear,” she said sympathetically. “When the Germans designed that car they were thinking of somebody else’s specifications.” She stepped up the pressure for an instant, then removed her hand. “You don’t want me to make advances. You want to hear about our million-dollar deal. Mike, Quarrels and his organization aren’t buying just a development site. They’re buying a development site plus buried treasure.”
Shayne made a scornful sound. She chortled happily.
“Wait. The Key’s named after one of the last of the Florida pirates, Jose Gaspar. His main base was up St. Petersburg-way but there’s an old tradition that he had a stockade here where he kept people he was holding for ransom. Please, wipe that skeptical look off your face. I have no intention of telling you that Gasparilla buried a chest of doubloons in our back yard, and we have a treasure map to prove it. Not that we don’t have a map. We have a marvelous map. But it isn’t to pirate’s gold, it’s to swindler’s gold.”
“Barbara, can you move it along a little faster? I’m thinking of my helicopter.”
She drank off half her martini at a gulp. “Patience. I told you gin makes me talkative. Mr. Quarrels didn’t believe it either at first. But he believes me now, and by the time I’m finished with you, my fine skeptical friend, you’ll believe it too.”
“If you think there’s treasure on the Key and you have a good map, why don’t you do your own digging? Why sell it to Quarrels?”
“Don’t think we didn’t try.” She held out both hands and examined the palms. “They don’t show now, but I had callouses! Me!”
Shayne stirred, and she said hastily, “I admit I’m stalling. I don’t want you to walk out of my life one minute after you walked into it. Here it is. It started in the great Florida land boom of 1925, and what a crazy time that was. I’m so full of the subject I could talk about it for hours. Don’t worry. I know how anxious you are to get back to your client.”
She came forward suddenly, took his face in both hands and kissed his mouth. She darted her tongue against his lips for one tantalizing instant, then pushed away.
“Don’t say it! Your helicopter’s waiting! Back to ’25!” She gave him a mock salute. “Mike, imagine yourself a real-estate promoter in the spring of ’25. You’ve taken an option on a promising patch of swamp, but nobody’s interested in buying your lots because they’re miles and miles from anywhere, with no access, no ocean frontage, too many insects. The other promoters have more money for advertising and more salesmen, and possibly better drainage. You need a gimmick. One night you wake up with an inspiration. A week or so later some local yokel is digging for bait in the middle of your swamp and his shovel hits a crock of buried treasure! It’s genuine treasure. You’re positive about that because you buried it yourself the day before. The news makes the papers all over the country. People crowd in with picks and spades. But naturally you don’t let them dig until they’ve made the down payment on one of your hypothetical lots. I know it sounds crude, but I guess people were stupider in those days. It worked. The first promoter who tried it made a mint. There were three or four finds that summer, each one bigger than the one before. One of the big ones was on Key Largo.”
“Now you’re getting to the point,” Shayne said.
“Our man’s name was Jethroe. If suckers could be persuaded that pirates came ashore to bury their gold on Key Largo, or in Miami Shores, or in some place in the ’Glades a long way from salt water, why not on a Key that was actually named after a pirate? Daddy sold him the key, the way they sold real estate in those days, on a ten- percent binder. Jethroe built the trestle and this one sample house. He was all ready for the first public announcements on a certain day in October. The ads never appeared. I have the proofs. With nothing but those ads to go on, you’d honestly think Gaspar was bigger than Miami, with a brighter future.”
“And then the boom fell apart.”
“Pow. There was no mention of treasure in the ads, but there was quite a spiel about fabled romance and the swashbuckling days of the buccaneers, to set up the atmosphere. First there had to be a flashy opening, with a free boat ride from Miami, free food and entertainment. Jethroe had William Jennings Bryan booked for the main oration.
