The Saint to the Rescue (9 page)

And at that susceptible moment, the Saint
looked farther
down
the road and saw the enormous billboard which pro
claimed that this was to be the site of “
BLISS HAVEN VILLAGE
—Another
Contribution to Florida’s Future by
ED
(Square)
DIEHL.
”

Even if Mr. Diehl had been physically aware of
the
extra-special attention which he had attracted, it is doubt
ful if it
would have perturbed him. Although he had never
outgrown an unquestioning loyalty to his
father’s corny touch
in the naming of
projects, he had come a long way since
the
precarious days of the Heavenleigh Hills promotion. In
fact, he had often thought of taking that skeleton
out of his closet and burying it, but a certain stubborn cupidity could
never quite let him renounce the small but steady
revenue
that still flaked off its
bones. Aside from that, the new boom
in
Florida land values which began in mid-century had
made fabulous profits possible even by legitimate
methods,
so that Mr. Diehl was even
accepted as an upstanding mem
ber of
the community by many citizens with short memo
ries. His dishonesties
were mostly neater and mellower than
they
had formerly been, and always cautiously covered by
shrewd legal advice; and such a brazen piece of
chicanery as he had perpetrated on Jim Harris was due more than
anything to an incurable attitude of mind that
would always
get the same kind of
egotistical lift out of hornswoggling an
unsuspecting victim that a Don Juan type derives from a
callous seduction.

Mr. Diehl had little else in common with the
picture of
a Don Juan, being a large gross man with a beefy red face
and small
piggy eyes as bright as marbles. He wore a very
large diamond ring
with apparent disregard for the fact
that its flashing drew particular attention to his hands,
which
nearly always featured a set of grimy
fingernails; and he
had other
unpleasant personal habits which would hardly
have made him welcome in
the best boudoirs. But Mr. Diehl,
who
preferred to base his self-satisfaction on his reception at the bank, was
contemplating nothing but rosy futures on
a certain morning when one of
his underlings sidled into his
private
office and told him that there was a potential client
outside whom he might want to see.

“The Count of Cristamonte, yet. And he’s
looking for a
big deal.”

Mr. Diehl had a plentiful staff of salesmen
and secre
taries to handle routine and minor transactions, but he
had
it understood that the most important properties were han
dled by
himself personally. In this way he could entitle him
self to pocket more
of the commission, and also give himself
more to brag about at
the Golf Club bar.

“Then send him in, boy, send him
in.”

The client had about him a quiet aroma of
potential moola
that Mr. Diehl recognized at once. He carried himself
with
the graceful and unhurried confidence of one who is accus
tomed to
deference, and his blue eyes had the easy non
chalance that nothing
buttresses quite so solidly as the spare
figures in a bank
account; and if the trim pointed beard
that outlined his lean
jaw gave him a somewhat rakish and
piratical appearance, that impression
was softened by the mild and engaging way he spoke. It was a characterization
to which
the Saint had lately become quite attached, and
it had yet to have
its first failure.

“What kind of price range were you
thinking in?” Mr.
Diehl asked bluntly, as soon as he could
bluntly ask it.

“I don’t think there are any ordinary
limits,” Simon said
calmly. “I represent a syndicate of
European investors who
happen to have very large dollar credits to
dispose of and
would like to keep their capital working in this
prosperous country.”

“What type of property are they
interested in? Income,
or development?”

“For a start, we were thinking of a
country club that might
be the most exclusive in America—strictly for
what I think
you call ‘rich millionaires.’ It would have to be on the
Ocean, for
the beach, and also on the waterway, for a pri
vate yacht harbor;
and besides the usual bungalows and
restaurant it would naturally need room
for its own tennis
courts, golf course, polo field, bridle trails, private
airport,
and so on. We could easily use two or three thousand
acres. And if the property was right, we should not haggle over a
million
dollars one way or the other.”

Mr. Diehl cleared his throat and aimed a
sloppy shot at
the brass cuspidor beside his desk, to prove that it was
not
just an antique ornament and that making light of a million
dollars did
not necessarily awe him.

“A hunk of property like that is going
to take a bit of
finding, these days, with all the subdividing that’s been
going on—”

“I’m well aware of that,” said the
Saint. “And so I shall
naturally be asking all the important brokers
what they
have to offer. You just happen to be the first one on my
list.
Eventually I shall have to deal with the one who has
the most suitable
parcel to show me. I hope there’s no mis
understanding about
that.”

“Now let’s think that through,
Count,” said Mr. Diehl,
scratching himself vigorously, which he was
given to doing
when he was excited. “I don’t want to talk out of
turn, but
you probably haven’t any idea how many highbinders there
are in this
business. You’re lucky you came to me first. Every
one knows what they
call
me
around here: ‘Square’ Diehl—it’s
right out there on
the front of the building. But what they
call some of the
others I wouldn’t want to quote to you.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes, sir. And if there’s any kind of
buyer they’ll gang
up on worse than a Yankee, its a foreigner, if you’ll
excuse
the word. Maybe you were thinking that if you shop around,
you’d have
‘em all competing to offer you the best property
at the best price.
Well, you’d be wrong. They’ve worked
out a better system than cutting each
other’s throats. They’ve
got an unofficial combine, and what they’d do
is pass the
word along, and every one would jack up the price of
every
thing to you, and whoever you bought through they’d split
the
difference. In that way, everybody gets a commission—
and you’d be paying
all ten or fifteen of ‘em instead of
one.”

“But that’s almost crooked!”
exclaimed the Saint, in
shocked accents.

“You can say that again. But we can beat
‘em—if you’d
let me have this exclusive for a while.”

“How?”

Mr. Diehl spat again, almost missing the brass
bowl in
his haste.

“Like this. Besides checking everything
on our books that
looks promising, I’ll have my salesmen contact all the
other
real estate offices, but very casually, without mentioning any names,
see? That way, we’ll get an honest price on everything
that might suit you
that anyone has got listed. And then
when it comes to making an offer, I’ll
get a friend of mine
who lives here to put in the bid, and they’ll
know they
can’t fool him with any fancy prices, but of course he’ll
make an
agreement in advance to sell the property to your
syndicate at just a
reasonable mark-up for his trouble.”

“That sounds like an interesting idea.
But what have I
done to deserve so much help from you?”

“Just blame it on the way I was brought
up, Count. My
father, who founded this business, used to tell me, God
rest
him, ‘I never want anyone who walks in these doors to
walk out
saying he didn’t get a square deal.’ If I find you
what you want and make
the sale, I’ll be perfectly satis
fied.”

The Saint had no doubts whatsoever on that
score, but
did not judge the moment opportune to press Mr. Diehl for
details as to how this satisfaction would be achieved. He
simply
allowed himself to look deeply impressed by a revela
tion of corrupt
practices which might well have made the
collective hair of the
Florida Real Estate Board stand on
end if its members had heard it. Mr.
Diehl did not even
give that a thought, since there were no witnesses, and
in any case
there were a score of ways to explain how an
ignorant foreigner
might have misunderstood him.

“I’m very glad to have met you, Mr.
Diehl,” Simon said
with unaffected sincerity. “And I think I
shall give your
suggestion a try. Instead to contact other agents this
week
end, as I had planned, I shall let you do the work—while
I go
fishing, which to be truthful I much prefer.”

“You won’t regret it, I promise you. I’ll
put my whole staff
to work on it. While you go fishing. Have you arranged for
a boat? I can get you the very best sailfish captain in these
waters—”

“Pardon, but I was not thinking of the
ocean fishing,
though I know how wonderful it is here. But I have done
so
much of it—from Panama to Peru to New Zealand, you
understand.
Here in the southeast United States I like to fish
one thing only, for
which even in your country this is the
headquarters, and
which the rest of the world does not even
know—the big-mouth
bass.”

“The greatest fishing in the world,”
Mr. Diehl concurred
automatically.

“I have studied it very closely, and I
think on this visit I
must catch a record. At any rate I shall
enjoy proving my
theory. Perhaps you yourself are a bass fisherman, Mr.
Diehl?”

“There’s nothing in the world I like
better, except you-
know-what.”

Ed (“Square”) Diehl would have given
the same answer,
with the same leer and wink, to any customer with the same
profit potential, on any subject from baseball to Balinese
dancing in
which the customer expressed an interest.

“I’ve had a theory for a long
time,” Simon pursued, with
a somewhat Countly portentousness, “that the
reason why it
begins to be said that your Florida waters are fished
out——
is that they are. The new roads that go everywhere, the
new cars
that everyone has, the new boats and outboards that
everyone can afford on
installments—all this has placed an
unbelievable pressure on the fish, who
do not have similar
devices on their side. Therefore there are no important
bass
left to catch where anyone can go. But for some privileged sportsmen
there will always be some wilderness that is still fruitful in the old way,
which modern science can make ac
cessible. Here in Florida, in spite of your
fantastic coastal developments, you are still only on the perimeter of a sports
man’s
paradise to which the new key is—the helicopter!”

“You got something there, Count.”

“I am betting I have, Mr. Square. You
take off even today,
in your helicopter, in spite of all the
highways and turnpikes,
and in less than half an hour you can be
fishing where the
fish have never seen anyone but a Seminole. I would like
to show you
this. I happen to have a small private helicopter
which I bought to
inspect properties; and if you like, this
weekend, since I shall
not be consulting other sharkers—I beg your pardon,
brokers—
you should
come with me as a
good fisherman and let me prove this.”

Mr. Diehl thought quickly, which he could
always do when
the chips were down, and did not have to be any unusual
genius to
realize that a Count of Cristamonte anywhere in
the wilds with him
would certainly be worth more than the
same perambulating
exchequer exposed to the sales pitch
of the next grifter who might glom on
to him.