“It means you’d better come up with some answers. Somebody cased that job, and you look mighty good for it.”
“You mean just because I was aboard? That boat was for sale, and open to inspection by anybody.”
“The watchman says you were the only one that’d been aboard for nearly a month. He gave us a description of you, and we traced you back here.”
“Description? Hell, I told him my name, and where I lived.”
“He says you gave him some name, but he couldn’t remember it. So it could have been a phony.”
“Well, I’ll have to admit that makes sense.”
“Don’t get snotty, Ingram. You can answer these questions here, or I can take you back down there and let you answer ‘em. I’m from the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department. That boat had been lying there at her mooring in the harbor for nearly a year, but whoever stole it knew she was still in condition to go to sea.”
“Maybe they towed her away.”
“She left under her own power.” Quinn leaned his arms on the desk and stared coldly. “So how would they know there was even an engine aboard, let alone whether it’d run or not, or whether there was any fuel in the tanks, or the starting batteries were charged? You were on there all afternoon, poking into everything, according to old Tango. You started the engine and ran it, and inspected the rigging and steering gear, took the sails out of their bags and checked them—”
“Of course I did. I told you I was looking for a boat to buy. You think I went down there just to find out what color it was painted? And, incidentally, what was the watchman doing all the time they were getting away with it? He lived aboard.”
“He was in the drunk tank of the Dade County jail. Clever, huh?”
“Dade County? How’d he get up here?”
“He was helped. He went ashore Monday night in Key West and had a few drinks, and all he can remember is he ran into a couple of good-time Charlies in some Duval Street bar. About three o’clock in the morning a patrol car found him passed out on die sidewalk on Flagler Street here in downtown Miami. He didn’t have any money to pay a fine, so it was three days before he got out, and it took him another day to thumb his way back to Key West and find out the Dragoon was gone. Of course, everybody around the Key West water front knew it was, but didn’t think anything of it. He’d already told several people there’d been a man aboard thinking of buying it, so they took it for granted it’d been moved to Marathon or Miami to go on the ways for survey. See? Just a nice convenient string of coincidences, so the boat was gone four days before anybody even realized it was stolen.”
“I was in Tampa Monday night,” Ingram said. “Also Tuesday, and Tuesday night.”
“Can you prove it?”
“Sure. You can check with the Grayson Hotel there. Also with a Tampa yacht broker named Warren Crawford. I was in his office a couple of times, and aboard a ketch named the Susannah. If you’ll look in the breast pocket of my coat you’ll find the receipted hotel bill. And the stub of an airline ticket from Tampa to Nassau, Wednesday morning, and a receipted hotel bill from Nassau for Wednesday night to last night. Then there’s a Pan American Airways ticket stub for the flight from Nassau back to Miami. I landed here at three-forty this afternoon and came straight to the hotel. Anything else?”
Schmidt had already removed the receipts and ticket stubs from the coat and was riffling through them. “Seems to be right.”
“But he could still have cased the job,” Quinn insisted. “The whole thing’s too pat. And if he was just the finger man, he’d make sure he had an alibi.” He whirled on Ingram. “Let’s take another look at this pipe-dream you were going to buy the Dragoon. What’d you expect to do with it?”
“Sail it out to Honolulu. I’m thinking of going back in the charter business. That’s what I used to do, here and in Nassau.”
“You know the owner’s asking price?”
“Sure. Fifty-five thousand dollars.”
The detective surveyed the room with a contemptuous smile. “You must be one of those eccentric millionaires.”
Ingram felt his face redden. “What I pay for hotel rooms is my business.”
“Come off it, Ingram! You expect us to believe a man living in a fleabag like this really intended to buy a fifty-five-thousand-dollar yacht? How much money have you got?”
“That’s also my business.”
“Suit yourself. You can tell us, or sweat it out in jail while we find out ourselves. What bank’s your money in?”
“All right, all right. The Florida National.”
“How much?”
“About twelve thousand.”
“We can check that, you know. There’ll be somebody at the bank till five.”
Ingram gestured toward the telephone. “Go ahead.”
“So you expected to buy a fifty-five-thousand-dollar yacht with twelve thousand?”
It might have been more sensible to explain, but he was growing a little tired of Quinn’s attitude and he’d never been a man who took kindly to being pushed. He leaned forward in the chair and said, very softly, “And if I did? Quote me the law against it, by section and paragraph. And stop breathing in my face.”
“Come on, Ingram! Let’s have it. How many of you were there, and where’s the boat headed?”
“If you won’t take my word for it, call the owner. I wrote to her.”
“In a pig’s eye. You wouldn’t even know who the owner is.”
“Mrs. C. R. Osborne, of Houston, Texas. Her address is in that black notebook in my bag.”
Schmidt gave him a thoughtful glance, and removed the notebook. Quinn, however, smiled coldly, and said, “Funny she didn’t mention it. We talked to her about an hour ago and told her we were looking for a man named Ingram, but she’d never heard of you.”
“You mean she’s here in town?” he asked.
“Yes, she’s here,” Schmidt said. “She flew in this afternoon. When did you mail that letter?”
“Saturday morning, from Nassau,” he replied. “Maybe she left Houston before it was delivered.”
“We can find out. But what’d you say in it?”
“I made her an offer of forty-five thousand for the Dragoon, subject to the usual conditions of survey.”
“And payable how?”
“Cash.”
“All right,” Schmidt said crisply, “if you did write a letter, which I doubt, it has to be a bona-fide offer, or a phony—in which case it’s probably a deliberate alibi. You haven’t got forty-five thousand dollars. So what were you going to use for money? Put up or shut up.”
Ingram hesitated. Then he shrugged wearily, and said, “All right. I was acting for a third party.”
“Who?”
“His name’s Fredric Hollister, and he’s president of Hollister-Dykes Laboratories, Inc., of Cleveland, Ohio. They manufacture ethical drugs. He’s at the Eden Roc Hotel; go ahead and call him.”
“Why didn’t you tell us this in the first place?” Schmidt demanded.
“Partly, I suppose, because it was none of your damned business,” he said. “But principally because he didn’t want it known the buyer was a corporation until after the deal was set, because of the effect it might have on the price. I was to select the boat, subject to his final approval, and then take over as captain. We’d pretty well settled on the Dragoon after I gave him the report on it Sunday night, but decided to wait till I’d looked at the others in Tampa and Nassau before we committed ourselves. I’m supposed to call him this afternoon.”
Schmidt nodded. “Can I use your phone?”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
The detective picked it up. “Get me the Eden Roc Hotel, in Miami Beach,” he said, and waited. The room was silent except for the faint humming of the air-conditioner. “Mr. Fredric Hollister, please . . . Oh? . . . Are you sure? . . . And when was this?”