Gentry lifted hands. “They were in the same racket — land. For different outfits, that’s all.”
He scowled deeply. “There’s another little twist. The swamp where they were found was up for grabs late last year. Brooks was the successful bidder. Tiener’s had been bidding, too — although they now say their interest was only mild.
“Brooks people tell a different story. They say Tiener people thought they had the swamp deal sewed up, but Brooks moved in in September, knocked Tiener’s off the pedestal. There’s some undisguised joy over at Brooks. The people at Tiener’s are downplaying, not talking loudly.”
“Tell me Burns and Singleton were the chief adversaries in the deal,” Shayne said, his interest undisguised.
But Gentry sighed. “Wish I could, Mike. It might make things simpler for both of us. But the way we get it, there were teams haggling over the swamp. Neither Bums nor Singleton was on the teams, oddly enough.”
“Will, there has to be some damn reason Burns and Singleton were hit and staked as a package.”
“Uh-huh,” growled Gentry, his face darkening. He sat forward suddenly, shuffled papers on the desk. Then he looked up at Shayne from under a cocked brow. “We’ll be looking, too, shamus.”
Unspoken message — the cops were open to help. The chief would reciprocate with new tidbits for a private eye — if and when he had new tidbits.
III
Every newspaper office has a high producing mine of information tucked in some cranny of its cluttered interior. It’s called a library — a morgue.
The morgue at the Miami Daily News included efficient employees and a couple of semi-private rooms where clippings and photographs could be spread on a table and studied. One of those rooms became totally private when veteran crime reporter Tim Rourke took Michael Shayne into it and closed the door behind them.
Shayne dropped into a chair at the table. Rourke remained standing against the door, his lanky frame loose, his face expressionless, only his eyes mirroring the broiling curiosity inside. Rourke, as a writer, may have had a peer or two around the country. There were none when it came to reporting. In addition, Rourke would trust Shayne to care properly for his latest blonde acquisition and last bottle of rye while Shayne would allow Rourke to handle a loaded and cocked gun in his presence. Rourke and Shayne were friends.
Rourke came to the table, slid the thin, brown morgue envelope to the detective, folded into a chair opposite and looped legs up and across a corner of the table.
“Mike,” he said, “I just finish turning in first edition copy to the city desk about one of the most bizarre murder cases in this city’s history — two well-to-do land men found dead and staked out in a swamp like it’s back in the days of Geronimo out west — and then you come in and want a package on the particular piece of land where these two dudes were found. Okay, what in the hell is going on?”
The multi-million dollar purchase of the swamp land had been large enough to earn one printed story. It was a cold flat story stuffed with names and statistics. Only one paragraph gave an insight into the true vastness of the transaction. There was speculation the swamp land might someday be the site of a new Miami satellite community.
Shayne gave Rourke a sharp look. “I missed this when it appeared in the paper, Tim. Most people probably did. I’ve got a hunch it was buried. No mass appeal.”
“Pablum, agreed,” Rourke nodded. “But the potential is there. The one ’graph, the speculation. And you can bet your kiester Sol has it stored in his craw. Sol Pearbome is probably the best business writer in Florida. He’s working on it, Mike. One of these days it will be a Page One story. There are stories like that. The ingredients are there, but it takes time for jelling.”
“Sol around?”
Sol Pearbome was a small man with a receding hairline and permanent think lines across a broad brow above black rimmed glasses. He also had a keen ear tuned to the underground swells of the business world.
“It isn’t only the swamp that stinks in that deal, Shayne,” he said significantly. “Tiener’s supposedly had it locked up tight and then — bang — Brooks is in. Some people are saying Tiener South was sold out.”
“By someone inside their own organization?”
“The original deal was very hush-hush. But Brooks moved in. The Tiener people were hot, still are. This kind of thing just doesn’t happen over there. Normally, it’s the other way. Somebody has something working and Tiener’s move in — but that was when the old man was alive.”
Shayne looked at Rourke.
Rourke waved a casual hand. “Robert Hume Tiener was a maverick, the roughneck in life and in business, the adventurer, the philanthropist who owned a pair of socks and no more when he found his first gold mine in South Africa. At thirty, he already had the vision and intelligence of a successful conglomerateur of seventy. At seventy, he still maintained the exhuberance, lust and don’t-give-a-damn dare of a twenty-one-year old. Age didn’t exist for Tiener. He was born young, he lived young, he died young — if he is dead.”
Shayne lifted an eyebrow questioningly.
“I remember, Mike, because I covered it top to bottom. Three months ago, February twenty-seventh, the Coast Guard found Tiener’s yacht adrift at sea, no one aboard. He had gone out alone a day earlier. There are those who say he was washed overboard in a quick storm, drowned, while the yacht survived. There are those who say he lives and simply wanted to disappear, that it was his way of dropping out of sight. Take your pick.”
“If I picked he dropped out of sight,” Shayne said “Tiener had a reason, I assume.”
“Maybe,” Rourke shrugged. “He was seventy, he had a young wife of twenty-seven. They were married about a year, and then she was killed. I told you he was great on young people. He surrounded himself with young people — in business and at play. He was a big giver to colleges and universities. Anyway, he married this young chick and then in January of this year she was killed in the crash of a private plane.
“The only trouble with that is, the pilot of that plane was Vernon Dobbs, thirtyish, the communications rich boy, all inherited. Tiener was in South Africa on business at the time. Dobbs’ wife was in Europe. Dobbs and Mrs. Tiener had gone out to his hunting lodge in Wyoming, been there a week or so, were returning when they crashed in a snowstorm someplace in Oklahoma.
“She was killed and Dobbs is in a wheelchair for life. There are those who will tell you that little episode rocked old Robert Hume Tiener right out of his shoes, shook his faith in youth. Then there are those who say, ‘Bull!’ ”
Shayne eyed Sol Pearbome again. “This speculation about someone at Tiener’s selling out to Brooks — what do you think?”
Pearbome adjusted the glasses on his nose. “Could happen.”
“Singleton?”
“The guy who was found dead this morning? Yeah, maybe. He supposedly wasn’t involved in the deal, but he’d be in a position at Tiener’s to know about it.”
“The cops say he was about to retire.”
Pearbome pulled his lower lip in thought. “Okay, so maybe Singleton was looking for some feathers for his retirement nest. I’d say Brooks would pass a rather handsome bundle under the table for the swamp kind of tip.”
“Then there’s Burns,” mused Shayne with a frown. “Where does he fit?”
“Shayne, look.” Pearbome sighed. “Over the years, you will find that Brooks has lost a few deals to Tiener’s, and here and there you will hear that Tiener always had a man inside at Brooks, a spy, someone who keeps Tiener’s advised about what’s going on at Brooks.