He kept a bottle of Martell’s in his desk for his friend Michael Shayne, the private detective. Shayne was with him now. A big, red-haired man who spent as little time as possible in offices, Shayne kept moving, from the conference chair to the window to the corner of the desk. The paper had him on retainer to work with Rourke on the highway story. He was coming off two weeks in Washington, where he had combed the files kept by federal agencies on the Miami criminal infra-structure, looking for anything with a highway connection. Rourke was sorry to be told that he had come across nothing important.
Rourke was thin, gangling, extremely nervous. He smoked continually, to his regret, coughed too much, and had a tendency to miss meals, especially when his work wasn’t going well. He and Shayne had teamed up before to pull off some major coups. This time they couldn’t seem to make anything start happening. The paper had insisted that he launch the series before he was ready. Sometimes it didn’t matter. People would see the headlines and call in with leads. On this one, each day’s story was a little more feeble. Duds, they just lay there.
“If you have any good ideas, Mike,” Rourke said, “let’s hear them. I’ve had to listen to some heavy sarcasm from upstairs. Am I losing my touch? Possibly. In that case, I may be losing my job. I’m getting high pay with no contract. That means I have to produce.”
“They’re the ones who insisted on going ahead,” Shayne commented.
“That’s perfectly true. You tell them. I’ve tried, but I have a feeling they aren’t really listening. They want Canada’s head, not excuses.”
“What happened while I was getting nowhere in Washington? I could read the clippings, but this way you can leave out the padding.”
“That’s what it mainly is, padding. One new thing. Pilfering. You have to expect a certain amount of that on 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.