Mermaid on the Rocks

chapter 8

The Tuttle house on Key Gaspar was a good example of the pseudo-Moorish period in Southern Florida architecture. Its walls were stucco, its roof steeply pitched and tiled. There were innumerable balconies with wrought-iron railings. On the seaward side, however, part of one wall had been knocked out and replaced by a large picture window and a glass door opening onto a flagstone terrace.

Pulling up in a cobblestone turn-around at the foot of this terrace, Shayne unkinked himself from the front seat of Kitty’s Volkswagen and stamped several times to start the blood circulating in the foot he had used on the accelerator. His injured leg had stiffened in the ride from the heliport. After stitching and bandaging the long cut on his calf, the doctor had changed to a larger needle and sewn up his torn pants.

The house was ablaze with light. Through the big front window, Shayne saw a black-haired woman, probably Cal Tuttle’s daughter, putting on eye-liner at a narrow pier-glass mirror.

He limped along a path skirting the terrace. Arriving at the front door, he pulled a jangling iron bell.

Almost at once the door was opened by an extraordinary old lady. A cigarette dangled from the corner of her mouth. The smoke was making her squint. Her eyes were heavily madeup, the lashes and upper lids very black, the lower lids blue green. Her hair, piled high on her head, was the color of heavy cream. She was barefoot, wearing very brief shorts and a bulky knitted sweater. Her legs were firm and beautifully tanned, her toenails painted blue-green to match her eyelids. In addition to a musky perfume, she gave off a strong smell of gin and vermouth.

“Mike Shayne,” she said in a low hoarse voice.

She didn’t move out of the doorway until she had looked him up and down. Reaching forward with a clawlike hand laden with rings, she pinched the flesh at his waist.

“You keep in shape,” she said approvingly. She jerked her head toward the room with the big window. “You’re going to make a big hit in there. That’s my weather forecast for tonight. Come on in.”

Turning abruptly, she led him along a hall and down several carpeted steps to the living room. The other woman had moved from the mirror to a deep sofa. She put out a hand to Shayne without getting up. She had the same magnificent tan as her housekeeper, though less of hers was showing. She was dressed in tight tapering red pants and a loose belted jacket, without buttons. By leaning forward to shake hands, she established the fact at once that there was nothing under her jacket but smooth skin, some of it tanned, some untanned. Her hand was hard and dry.

“Mr. Shayne,” she said. “I’ve read about your exploits, of course. I’ve always hoped to be able to ask you. How much of what you achieve do you ascribe to luck and how much to-well, rapid footwork, I suppose you’d call it? Please tell me your secret.”

“I just try not to make too many mistakes.”

“Now that’s a wonderfully evasive answer!” she cried. “I prefer to believe that luck enters into it, which is why I’m so delighted to meet you. I like lucky people. I like to be in their orbit.”

She settled back. “We’ve been drinking martinis because that was what we were in the mood for, but fix yourself what you want. Kitty mentioned cognac. There’s some over there.” She waved at a mahogany sideboard. “Eda Lou, honey, you’ve been a love. Get to bed now. You must be worn to a frazzle.”

“I’m about ready to drop,” the older woman agreed. “What do you need before I go? Ice, sparkling water, booze-it all seems to be there.”

She gave Shayne another up and down look. “Come down in the daytime and go swimming with us, Mike Shayne. The men we’ve been getting down here have been getting pansier and pansier.”

Barbara laughed from the sofa. “Maybe I’ll make myself so fascinating that Mr. Mike Shayne will still be here at dawn. That’s the best time in the whole twenty-four hours for a swim. Not if you get up for it, if you stay up. I’m sure we can find him a pair of trunks.”

“Well, if he’s still here and you do go in, wake me up. I mean it, Babs.”

She gave Barbara a forceful nod, which finally jarred loose the ash of her cigarette. She padded out.

Barbara went on laughing silently. “Did you ever see such a sex-hound? We’re both pretty well fried, incidentally, do you mind? Such an hour. Can you find everything you want?”

Shayne opened a bottle of Courvoisier at the sideboard and half-filled a bubble glass. He took it back across the long room. The rugs were a little threadbare. There was an equally threadbare tapestry on one wall, the dusty pipes of a pipe organ on another.

“Ducks, before you sit down,” Barbara said, “just look out in the hall and see if she’s listening, will you?”

Shayne gave her a look, put his brandy on a low table and went to the hall. It was empty.

“We’ll be talking about Daddy’s estate,” Barbara said when he came back. “She has no share in the property whatsoever, but the way she takes on you’d think she’s the sole heir. Kitty probably told you. Eda Lou was Daddy’s, let’s say paramour, for ages and ages. Do I shock you?”

“Not especially,” Shayne said.

“It was really more of a common-law marriage. I’ll say this for her, she was devoted to Daddy. She doesn’t look at all mushy on the surface, does she? Well, I happen to know that she takes flowers to the cemetery, for heaven’s sake. I never go near the repulsive place, and I’m the man’s daughter.” She studied her drink, as though it could tell her something. “I often wondered why they never married. My theory, not that I can prove it, is that she has Negro blood. She claims it’s Indian. Now I ask you. I’m not prejudiced, understand.”

She paused for breath, and Shayne put in, “About your offer from Florida-American-”

Barbara had been about to put down her martini glass. Her hand stopped. She took a small sip, and made a face expressing disgust and near-nausea.

“This is pure water. If you want me to make any sense you’re going to have to mix me up another batch.”

“In a minute,” Shayne said patiently. “I have a chopper waiting on Goose Key and it’s costing me twenty-five bucks an hour. As I understand it, Florida-American-”

“I’d like to know how the little bitch found out! Excuse the dirty language, you probably think she’s the Christian and we’re the lions. I’ll just point out while I’m on the subject that you haven’t known her very long.” She held out her glass. “Give me some gin, ducks. Don’t worry, I won’t pass out. I never pass out. I just get talkative.”

Shayne brought over the gin bottle and a bowl of ice from the sideboard. He emptied the dregs of the pitcher into the bowl, dropped in two fresh ice cubes and covered them with gin. After giving the pitcher a quick swirl he filled her glass.

She tasted it. “I must say you make wonderful martinis,” she said approvingly. “Imagine Kitty hiring a private detective! I thought she was supposed to be so broke. How can she afford your rates? I’m not trying to stall, Mike. I’m going to answer your question sooner or later. I really am. I’m just curious. What kind of a story did she give you?”

“She said somebody cut her cat’s throat.”

Barbara smiled. “That sounds like Brad. He believes in the old-fashioned methods. Imagine anything like that working nowadays.”

“I haven’t had time to look up his record,” Shayne said, “but I wouldn’t be surprised to find at least one killing in it.”

She waved her hand. “Long, long ago, dear man. Of no consequence whatever. The mores of those days were altogether different. Though the funny thing is, I mean it seems funny now, that’s why Daddy spent all that time in jail.”

Shayne looked at her sharply. “Let’s stop there for a minute.”

“If you want to,” Barbara said pleasantly. “But where’s the connection with your client who wasn’t even born at the time? Is that what you call her-a client?”

“She’s my client,” Shayne said.

“The year was 1927. Brad killed somebody in a speakeasy fight. Trust Brad-he had to do it in front of a dozen witnesses, including the sheriff, if I remember the story rightly. That entitled him to twenty years to life, and Florida still had the chain gang in those days. Let me see. What was the expression they used to use? Squeal. Brad squealed on Daddy in return for a nolle-pros in his own case. Daddy was in the export-import business, which was how I used to describe it to myself, isn’t it silly? He was a rumrunner, as a matter of fact, a damn good one. The sheriff couldn’t have cared less about that speakeasy manslaughter of Brad’s. I think he was up for reelection-I was the merest infant at the time, Mike, so don’t hold me to any of this-and the papers were saying he was getting rich from the liquor interests, which was true except that he didn’t happen to be getting rich from Daddy. Bootleggers weren’t getting more than thirty days if they had a good lawyer, and Daddy believed in hiring the best. So it was Daddy’s thirty days against twenty years for Uncle Brad, and Brad made the deal. They bottled Daddy up in the cove right in front of this house and the irony of it was-he killed a man. He never held it against Brad. He understood how it happened. Maybe not at first, but he had plenty of time to think about it. Does that dispose of that? Because I want to ask you a question. Did you go to bed with Kitty yet?”

She laughed at the look on his face. “She’s moderately sexy, I suppose, if you like the type. She’s paying you a contingency fee, isn’t she? That’s the explanation! And from our point of view that’s fine. Mike, they’ve made us a perfectly fabulous offer. An even one million dollars in cash! A quarter million apiece! Kitty can invest hers in an apartment house and get an income of twenty thousand a year, pretty much taxfree. How in heaven’s name can she have the effrontery to turn us down?”

“Has anybody offered her a quarter of a million?”

“No-o,” Barbara admitted. “I wanted to, but I was outvoted. My Uncle Brad, that great IQ, thought we should put on the screws, in his phrase, say nothing about the resale possibilities, and persuade her to resign her share for a more modest figure, say forty or fifty thousand, in the interests of peace and quiet. We decided to let him try. But I’ve never underestimated that female. She wound Daddy around her finger. He was in his dotage, granted, but even so he was never easy to fool. Come on, Mike. How did she find out about the deal? Everybody swore they’d keep it a secret.”

“That’s a hard kind of secret to keep. Her husband’s in the real estate business. Maybe he told her.”

“No, they aren’t on speaking terms. Of course,” she added, “if he had hopes of getting a slice-Anyway, it’s out of the bag now, and I’ll call Brad in the morning and tell him a change of tactics is in order. I can see why Kitty 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.