every construction site, but naturally on Larry s sites it’s organized. There’s a hell of a lot of valuable equipment parked out there on the Homestead job, and the guys have been nibbling away. He collects the insurance on it. So far, that’s standard. The angle is that it ends up with a crooked used-parts outfit and he buys it back so it can get stolen again. Not that I can prove any of this, but the lawyers say I can use it.”
Shayne, a small bubble glass of cognac in his fist, was at the window, watching the traffic. “That won’t exactly set the Miami River on fire. Nothing else?”
“Nothing we can print. The tip is that Canada has something going with Phil Gold, the Highway Commissioner. Hell, we all know that. That Palm Beach interchange last year-they changed the location three times, and you know and I know that somebody made a mint. There had to be at least eight million bucks on that platter. Canada and Gold got the major chunks, everybody else got scraps. But the lawyers say it’s actionable unless we can trace the real estate transfers, and the boys did a marvelous job there. It’s like a stream of water coming into a desert. It disappears. We’d need subpoena power and a blanket promise of immunity. That means a grand jury. We can’t get a grand jury unless we come up with something major. So there we are.”
“We don’t need documents. A clandestine meeting between Canada and Gold would do it.”
“Sure. The crook and the Highway Commissioner. Why would they be getting together except to work out a deal? That’s why I wanted you back early. I have a feeling something’s about to break.”
Shayne sat down. “Trying to follow Canada would be a waste of time, Tim. He’s too good at the game. I explained this all to your editorial board. I’d need three cars with two-way radios, and that kind of operation is hard to hide. He wouldn’t do anything but go out to eat and play golf.”
“The paper wouldn’t pay for three cars, anyway. They want the story, but they don’t want it to cost them anything extra. So I put Frieda on the opposite end, the Gold end. There’s so much security on those state jobs that they get careless sometimes. She has a Tallahassee agency working twenty-four hours. I don’t think they’re likely to lose him.”
“Twenty-four-hour coverage. That’s expensive.”
“Well, it just struck me.” He waved at the scribbled notes and clippings spread across the desk. “Every one of the ways Canada scoops in the dough-the insurance deal, the consultant fees that go into the cost base, the kickbacks from subcontractors, all the skimping on specs, the patronage no-show jobs-he can’t exploit any of that unless he gets the contract in the first place.”
“You startle me, Tim,” Shayne said dryly.
“All right, it’s obvious, but how do they make sure he’s always the low bidder? They’re sealed bids. Companies from all over come in to bid on those jobs. Granted, the real money comes from the angles he works later, but everybody else knows those angles as well as he does. There are fortunes to be made in highway construction, and some of those guys would put in negative bids to get a shot at the skim. But since Gold has been commissioner, Canada hasn’t lost a competition. That’s an interesting streak.”
“You can print that.”
“But I can’t draw any conclusions, the lawyers tell me, without some hard evidence of collusion. All right. The Everglades link-up. Seventy-five comes down the Gulf Coast, 95 down our side, and the highway freaks can’t relax until they get them connected. We have two days before Gold opens the bids. Canada will be bidding as usual. There has to be some kind of communication before then, and would they do it by telephone? I doubt it. If we can’t catch them at it, I’ll have to advise the paper to close down the series.”
The phone rang. Rourke picked it up and listened. “Shayne? Yeah, he’s here, but if he’s already said no-”
He listened another moment, and Shayne saw his attention sharpen. “I’ll check.” He covered the mouthpiece. “It’s a woman named Chris Maye. Her husband got killed last week.”
“I talked to her,” Shayne said. “Not a hell of a lot I could do even if I had time. Look for a snitch, and the cops are better at that than I am.”
“She says he was kidnapped, and he was a Canada man. What do you think? Let’s listen to her.”
Shayne shrugged. Rourke told the woman he would send a copy boy out to show her the way. He went to the door and yelled.
“The radar is working,” he said, coming back. “Blip, blip, blip. Something is going on in this town.”
“Something generally is.”
“No,” Rourke insisted, coughing. “It’s like that five minutes before a hurricane. You know something’s different. This highway series-why haven’t people been calling me? We’ve had one good tip, just one, the Gold- Canada tie-up. I know it’s authentic, but the guy who gave it to me didn’t owe me that big a favor. He owed me a favor, but more on the order of a superfecta at Pompano. Who stands to benefit? If Larry Canada is cut up and thrown to the sharks, who inherits? It strikes me that I don’t really know.”
“You’re the number one crime reporter in Miami. If you don’t know, who does?”
“Hell, all the number one crime reporter knows is what people are willing to tell him, and lately some of my friends have been crossing the street when they see me coming. Mike, the thought hit me when this woman was talking. What if that wasn’t a real kidnapping? What if it was only a cover to knock over a Canada man without starting a war? When that kind of high-level argument is going on, there are ways you can milk it. Or you can end up in the middle,” Rourke added, “which has happened to me a few times, as I know you remember, so I’m walking short. Nothing impulsive and sudden, like the old days.” He tapped his forehead. “I’m going to think before I jump.”
Shayne laughed. “I’ll believe that when I see it.”
Shayne had long experience with Rourke’s extrasensory hunches. They bit him hard, and while he was feeling their effect, he wasn’t open to rational argument. Still, once in a while they paid off, and Shayne had learned not to disregard them completely. Several winters before, with Shayne scoffing most of the way, one of these hunches had carried Rourke into an investigation that led to a Pulitzer prize.
The copy boy came in with a nicely dressed woman wearing glasses, who introduced herself as Chris Maye. In Eddie Maye’s world, the wives seldom get taken to the races or the games, and Shayne was meeting her for the first time. She refused Rourke’s offer of a drink, but accepted a cigarette. When that was out of the way, she said abruptly, “I have twenty-five thousand dollars. I don’t know what you usually charge, Mr. Shayne, but I don’t know who else I can go to. I haven’t slept more than an hour at a time since Eddie-”
The rest of her breath came out in a sob. Rourke was around the desk in an instant. He was surprisingly good with grief-stricken women. He patted her, gave her Kleenex, poured whiskey, and made her drink it. Shayne let him handle it. He had liked her husband, but there was nothing surprising about his early death. Loan sharks have only a slightly longer life expectancy than racing-car drivers.
After a time, Rourke said gently, “Can we talk about it, Chris?”
“We have to talk about it.” She blew her nose hard. “I’m not a weeper and a wailer as a rule. I want to find out what happened to Eddie so it will have some meaning. Or shape. I don’t know how to say it.”
“How much did you use on it, Tim?” Shayne said.
“Couple of paragraphs. Found slain, was about all. Chris, will it bother you if I tell him?”
“In a phone booth outside the Bowl,” she said, looking down at the wadded Kleenex. “A bullet hole in the head. There wasn’t much-mess, considering. He had tape marks on his mouth and wrists. The phone booth was where I was supposed to leave the money.”
“Do you have a ransom note?”
She took out a folded paper, on which the instructions and the usual threats were printed in ragged capitals.
“‘He will be killed,’” she said, quoting. “‘You will never see him again unless instructions are followed, to the letter.’ So I followed instructions, to the letter. The strange thing is that I wasn’t especially scared. It sounded so businesslike, it didn’t occur to me that if I met their price they wouldn’t deliver. I scurried around, saw a few people-”
“Can we stop there?” Rourke said. “Did these people include Larry Canada?”
“Of course. You know how Eddie made a living. He didn’t keep it a secret. But he wasn’t part of any Godfather organization or anything like that. He used to laugh about the stories in the papers. I know you have to simplify things, Mr. Rourke, use labels and so on. ‘Alleged,’ ‘reputed,’ ‘according to law enforcement officials-’ Most of the law enforcement officials I’ve ever run into are morons. Eddie and Larry grew up in the same neighborhood, that’s all it amounts to. Larry took bets, Eddie made loans. I needed a hundred thousand to go with this twenty-five. Larry collected it for me. I don’t know how Eddie would have paid him back, but he’s been talking about selling the
