Michael Shayne stared dreamily from his office window, his chair at a nearly impossible tilt and his big feet scuffing the desk top. A close-burning cigarette warmed the knobby fingers of his right hand. Four fingers of his other hand warmed a glass of Hennessy. The cognac was good for a while yet, but the hot end of the cigarette was getting uncomfortably close to his fingers.

He had three choices.

He could swing his feet to the floor so he could reach the ash tray on the desk. He could try flipping the butt in from where he sat. Or he could drop it on the floor. He pushed the burning end of the cigarette out from his fingers another sixteenth of an inch while he pondered the alternatives. The second choice was adventurous and the third was easy-but Lucy Hamilton, his petite, brown-haired secretary whose typewriter was busily going in the front office, wouldn’t approve of either.

Shayne decided to do it the hard way.

He took a sip from the glass, swung his long legs to the floor, reached to the ash tray and thumbed out the cigarette. A breeze from the open window sifted through his red hair. The breeze smelled of the sea and he thought of his little Cuban friend, Sylvester, out there on it somewhere, his party-boat solid under his feet, and nothing but clean air and sky and water around him. Sylvester had no troubles. His boat was paid for and he ran it where and when he pleased.

Shayne’s heavy brows quirked upward and his lips compressed as he indulged in a moment of rare musing. “When I was picking out a profession what in hell made me think I wanted to be a private detective? I should have been a charter-boat captain. Everything clean and pleasant-and safe. I could be home every night. Lucy would approve.”

The redhead took another pull at the cognac. It would be good on the water today. Hot and cold by turns, invigorating and restful-like a Turkish bath. All this and a fishing pole bending double while the reel made shrill music as a marlin hit the mackerel bait and ran it out two hundred yards for the first jump.