Brett Halliday - Mermaid on the Rocks

Shayne shook his head. “That’s the story you sold Quarrels?”

“I didn’t tell it to him the way I’m telling it to you. I showed him the documentation. There’s absolutely no question that Jethroe buried treasure on Gaspar October 2, 1925. I can prove that. I can’t prove it’s still there, but so? Quarrels comes out ahead either way.”

“What kind of documentation?”

“Eda Lou-” she raised her voice slightly and turned toward the hall-“and if you’re listening out there, dear, correct me if I’m wrong about any of the details-Eda Lou found the map in an old suitcase of Daddy’s. One day last fall I came down from Miami without phoning first. Eda Lou was nowhere to be seen, in spite of the fact that her car was in the garage. Then what did she do but walk in with a shovel. She doesn’t broadcast her age, but I know she’s too old to be out digging holes on a hot day just for the exercise. I followed her tracks and found three holes. Big ones. She refused to explain. I did a little snooping. It’s my house, after all, never mind what it says in that kooky will. And I found the map under the lace runner on her bureau.”

She studied Shayne for a moment. “I was going to say it’s in a safe-deposit box in the city, but damn it, I think I’ll show it to you.”

Going to the sideboard with quick steps, she pulled open a drawer and took out a locked dispatch case. She unlocked it, removed an envelope and brought it over to Shayne. She took out the map very carefully. It was obviously old. It had been folded twice and the markings had worn away at the folds. Other lines were blotted out by a brownish stain.

“And what do you think that stain is?” she asked. “Blood! Or maybe coffee, who knows?”

She opened both arms in a dancer’s gesture. “Isn’t it magnificent! I was absolutely nuts about pirates as a girl. Let’s be honest-I still am. One of the tragedies of my life has been that I’ve met so few. Mike, if you ever run into a pirate who wants to capture a sex-starved lady and hold her for ransom, put in a word for me, will you? Well! I waved this map under Eda Lou’s nose and did a little screaming. Where did she get it, what made her think it was O.K. to dig holes on somebody else’s property, et cetera? I pulled out a handful of hair, I’m sorry to say, and don’t be fooled by that switch she wears-that came from the wig store. She doesn’t have any of her own to spare.” She raised her voice again. “Do you, angel? Mike, at first we thought this must date all the way back to Gasparilla’s day. But I knew that couldn’t be, or Daddy would have shown it to me when I was going through my pirate phase. Then I remembered reading about that Key Largo promotion. It was in a book of memoirs by Ben Hecht, and I’ll loan it to you if you want to read it, it’s around the house somewhere. Nothing this interesting had happened to me for a long time. I went up to the Miami Public Library and took out a file of 1925 newspapers. I’d heard Daddy tell stories about Jethroe. He was one of the big men of the day, and whenever he cleared his throat on the subject of Florida’s future it made the front page. There were little squibs here and there about his plans for Gaspar, but never anything about what he was like personally, where he came from, whether or not he had a family. I talked to some old-timers who knew him, but nobody had any ideas about what might have happened to his records or his personal papers. I came back and practically took the house apart. And way in the back of a storage space up under the eaves, Mike, I finally found an old beat-up manila envelope.”

She emptied her glass and started back to the sideboard.

“There was a lot of junk in it I couldn’t understand,” she said over her shoulder, “along with the proofs of those opening-day ads, and things like the bill of sale for that pipe organ-which still works, incidentally. And then there was a sheet of ruled paper torn from a notebook without any heading, and I got a real fluttery pulse when I saw what it was.”

She selected a paper from the open dispatch case and brought it back.

“It’s a list of purchases of old Spanish money. The first time this trick was pulled it didn’t have to amount to much or look particularly authentic. Then as the summer went on, people began to get suspicious, and by the time Jethroe was ready, his map had to be very good, the treasure had to be genuine and of the right period, and there had to be lots and lots of it. There weren’t many real doubloons on the market, though of course the same coins were used over and over. As soon as one promoter milked all the publicity out of them, he sold them to another, at a nice advance in price. Now look.”

She sat on the arm of Shayne’s chair, her breast against his shoulder, and with a pointed fingernail ticked off the abbreviations on the top line. “July 6, twenty-seven eight-escudo gold pieces, seven thousand dollars. Then that word ‘Ort.’ That’s not an exotic kind of coin, it’s a man’s name, Charles Ort, the man who ran the Key Largo promotion!”

The fingers of her free hand were in Shayne’s rough red hair. “Now August 17. More doubloons from another promoter. September 6, a chest, New Orleans, fifteen hundred. A gold chain, New York, seven thousand. Some chain! Next line. More doubloons, some bar silver, Havana, C. T.-who can that be but Cal Tuttle, Daddy was going back and forth all the time-eighteen thousand. Mike, eighteen thousand! ‘Objects, seven thousand.’ Admit it, you’re impressed, aren’t you?”

“I’m impressed,” Shayne said. “How much does it total, around seventy-five?”

“Over. That’s a lot of money for a gimmick, but he only expected to tie it up for a few weeks, with the value going up all the time. Naturally I’ve tried to find out how much it would be worth today. A Philip V doubloon in good condition, costing say two hundred in 1925, will set you back a thousand now. A silver piece-of-eight brings about a hundred, and Jethroe paid twenty-five. And how about that gold chain? Those ‘objects’? There’s no way of knowing. Quarrels of Florida-American had an expert go over the list. He thinks four hundred thousand would be a pretty close guess.”

“It’s a long way from a million,” Shayne said.

“No, it isn’t really. Companies like Florida-American never put much of their own money into one of these things. Four hundred thousand would more than cover their cash outlay. And here’s the part they couldn’t resist. They’ll come out ahead whether or not they dig up the treasure. We aren’t giving them any guarantees, after all. We’ve had some bad storms since 1925, and maybe the chest has been swept out to sea. They’ll still get their money’s worth in publicity. Don’t tell me this story won’t sell real estate. Back in 1925 you could show people a map like this and they’d believe a pirate named Gasparilla rowed ashore with a band of cutthroats one dark night in the early 1800’s and buried a chest of gold. We’re more sophisticated today. But tell us that a crooked real-estate promoter rowed ashore one dark night in 1925 and buried a chest of gold to swindle the suckers of his day-”

“It’s an up-to-date version of the original swindle.”

“Isn’t it! Mike Shayne, you deserve another drink. And we have so much more than just the map. We have this cost sheet. The newspaper ads that never ran. A photostat of the story about Jethroe’s death. And one other thing I haven’t shown you yet.”

She left him for another quick visit to the dispatch case, and brought back a faded yellow sheet of copy paper. “This is the first draft of the press release on the finding of the treasure.” She gave it to Shayne. “Now be careful with it. Not that I don’t have a Xerox copy in the safe-deposit box, but it’s the color, the feel of the paper-”