He shrugged. “Your expenses will be fully paid, and your minimum fee will be one thousand dollars, in advance, for one afternoon’s meeting with Sir Harry.”

That was seductive, too.

“Why me? Why not some Florida dick? Or somebody from the East Coast? Ray Schindler’s the society private eye-maybe you ought to call him. I have his New York number….”

“You were recommended by a friend of Sir Harry’s.”

“Who?”

“Sir Harry didn’t share that with me.”

“Brother.” What if this was a mob job? Rich guys had those kind of connections all the time. I sighed. “When does he want to see me?”

“Day after tomorrow, if it’s convenient. You’d fly to Miami in the morning. The following morning, you’d be in the Bahamas. It’s beautiful there, Nathan, truly it is.”

What sounded beautiful was that G-note guarantee.

And my agency could sure as hell use a handsome yearly retainer from a major corporation like Oakes’ Lake Shore Mines of Canada. Maybe I could even open up a Canadian branch of the A-1….

“You’ll do it, then?”

I frowned at him and shook my finger in his face. “Mr. Foskett, Sir Harry Oakes may be the richest man in the world, but somebody’s got to teach him that money can’t buy you everything.”

His face fell.

Then I grinned and patted his tan cheek like a baby. “But, Walt-that somebody isn’t going to be me. I can use a thousand bucks.”

2

I barely had a foot on the spongy wooden surface of the landing wharf before I slipped out of my suitcoat; I’d worn lightweight clothing, including a seersucker suit and short-sleeved white shirt, but they couldn’t stand up to one minute of muggy Nassau. It was probably only about eighty degrees-child’s play for a Chicagoan who could stand up under the coldest and hottest weather the planet had to offer-but that didn’t stop my shirt from going immediately sopping.