Dolls Are Deadly (12 page)

“Did any of your men,” Shayne asked acidly, “notice that a new engine had been put in Sylvester’s boat? And, if they did, did they ask themselves why? Or where a poor Cuban got the money? Or if he didn’t get the engine himself, who got it for him? And dirtied it up to look like an old one?”

“Look, Shayne, if you knew all these things why didn’t you tell me this morning?”

“I had trouble getting you to listen to what I did tell you. Your three hoodlum vacationers put that engine in Sylvester’s boat. Sylvester thought it was because they liked him.”

“Maybe it was. You’ve been shamusing for so long you’ve forgotten that the milk of human kindness does run in the veins of some people.” Painter laughed dryly.

“Is that why you have a tail on me? To protect me—out of kindness?”

“I haven’t, you egotist. You asked me that before. What do I care where you go? Just keep out of the way of police department investigations.”

“I’ll do better than that. You can sit back in your swivel chair and wait while I do your job for you.”

Shayne hung up, his gaunt face bleak and deeply trenched.

Three men, engaged in different and unconnected criminal operations, had come to Miami at the same time from three different parts of the country, had chummed up and pretended to go fishing and had murdered Sylvester. One of the men, conveniently, was an expert mechanic and he had put a new engine in Sylvester’s boat; another was adept at handling a boat. Shayne had seen him bring the
Santa Clara
to berth with nearly as sure a touch as Sylvester’s. The third, genial Ed Woodbine, seemed to have served no function as yet.

Things seemed to funnel from diverse directions to one point—Madame Swoboda. Ed Woodbine had attended a séance; Clarissa Milford and Henlein had both received voodoo dolls.

Shayne stepped on the starter abruptly and turned south toward the Miami River and the last decaying house on a moldering street.

The gray Buick held a wary distance behind him, passing as he parked in front of Swoboda’s. It didn’t come back. Shayne stepped out of his car to the deserted street and strode toward the rotting yellow house.

By daylight it looked even more precariously placed than it had the night before. The stilts which supported it on the river side were sagging and covered with slimy moss. One piling had split and, in a makeshift effort to keep the house still standing, someone had bound it with rope. The rope stretched and creaked as the water lapped at the piling.

This was the only occupied house on the block. The others, in only slightly more disrepair, stood empty, condemned, their windows gaping and broken, eyeless, in a sort of mute envy of the flicker of life which still existed around them.

The redhead strode back, took a .38 from the glove compartment of the car and dropped it into his side pocket, then again crossed the sinking flagstones with an animal litheness at variance with his bony height. Though the sign beside the heavy pine door still read
Walk in,
he pushed the button.

Nothing happened. He flattened his thumb on the bell button and held it there. Finally the door was opened by Madame Swoboda. Her ebony hair lay smooth and shining in a long pageboy bob and her skin was ivory white against it. The gray, black-lashed eyes looked even more beautiful in the light of day than they had last night.

When she recognized Shayne, her face stiffened. “What do
you
want?”

She made a quick move to close the door but Shayne blocked it and stepped inside.

“This is—illegal!” She was seething. “I’ll have you thrown out!”

Shayne moved his eyes over her body. She was wearing a trim tweed skirt and a blouse which, though severely tailored, accented the sexy swell of her breasts, her narrow waist and the exciting curve of hips and thighs. Except for that intense femaleness, however, she looked like any girl on her way to the supermarket, or perhaps to a golf game. Her appearance today was so far removed from what it had been at the séance table that it was hard to believe she had been the “mystic channel” through which messages had flowed from the “other world.”

Behind her, several pieces of expensive-looking luggage were stacked against the wall.

“Going some place?”

She bit her lush lips. “It’s no concern of yours!”

“I’d hate to lose you just as we’ve become acquainted.” The redhead walked past her into the waiting room and sat down on one of the hard benches. His big hand patted the seat beside him invitingly.

After a moment’s hesitation, she came over and sat down. “Now,” she said coldly, “why did you force your way in?”

“It’s the brute in me. Do you admire brute strength, like D. L.?”

“Is that cryptic remark supposed to mean something to me?”

“You know D. L., of course.”

“No, I don’t.” She widened her round gray eyes and accepted the cigarette he offered, keeping them fastened provocatively on his face and leaning closer than necessary while he lit it. “What do you really want with me?”

“Besides the obvious, I’d like to know who set you up here and why.” He was aware of the warmth of her thigh.

“You asked me that before,” she said shortly, “and I told you I set myself up. And the reason is apparent.”

“Not to me. Let’s come at it from another direction, then. What was the meaning of those numbers on Jimsey’s tape at last night’s séance?”

“Tape?” Her face was blandly innocent. “Do you mean the message from ‘outside’?”

“Let’s drop the act. It was a message all right—from inside! It was information in some sort of cabala. What was the message? Who was it for?”

“In numerology there is a mystic meaning to all numbers.” Her voice was rarefied. “What those particular numbers meant, I do not know. I am only the—magnet which attracts the spirits. The person for whom the message was meant would know.”

“Since the voice was supposed to be from the spirit of the boy, Jimsey, the message was meant for his parents, the Thains. Did they understand?”

“Of course.”

“I don’t think they did. I think those numbers were incorporated in Thain’s message for someone else. I want you to tell me who it was.”

“I wouldn’t know. Different people attend my séances every night. Except for a few regulars I don’t know any of them.”

“Where did you get the numbers?”

“They came to me in my trance.”

“Now look.” Shayne’s voice hardened.
“You
didn’t say anything in what you call your ‘trance.’ Those messages were prepared beforehand on tape, and both you and I know it.”

“Well,” she took a deep drag on her cigarette, “what of it? I give them a good show. They get their money’s worth in entertainment.”

“They get more than their money’s worth. You could charge more. Why don’t you?”

“Because I’m not greedy,” she snapped.

He held her with his eyes. “I think you are—for everything.” He saw the rise and fall of her breasts beneath the silken blouse. Slowly, she moved one hand and rested it on his knee. The pressure was light, but he could feel the warmth of her tapering fingers.

For a moment Shayne wondered—would Dan Milford, or any man, resist her female appeal? Had he been too ready to believe Dan Milford’s assertion that he loved only his wife?

With a curious detachment, he saw that the roots of her hair were light and her skin too creamy for the ebony hair. Evidently Madame Swoboda had reversed the usual process and dyed her naturally blond hair, black.

Experimentally, he pulled her over, pressing a hard kiss on her lips. They pulsed. Her breathing quickened and Shayne felt her hands creep across his chest, her nails digging through his shirt.

It might have been the creak of a board in the moldering house, or because she opened her eyes to look beyond his shoulder into the opened doorway of the darkened séance room. Or perhaps it was a sixth sense of animal preservation that the redhead had acquired during a lifetime of professional sleuthing.

In a single burst of action he was out of her arms, crouched with one knee on the floor and his gun in his hand.

The two guns spoke at nearly the same instant, their combined echoes breaking flatly in the barren space.

The bullet aimed at Shayne went over his head and splintered the plastered wall. Shayne’s shot was precise. The man who had come from the dimness of the séance room heeled back as the bullet drove into his rib casing. The gun dropped from his hand, and both hands pressed hard over the spreading blood.

The figure stumped toward them into the light of the waiting room. Blood seeped from between the man’s fingers where he held his hands tight-pressed, his face was white and contorted. It was the acned face of the man who had been tailing Shayne since last night in the gray Buick.

“Who hired you?” Shayne drove at him.

“Get me to a hospital!” The words rasped hoarsely.

“Who hired you?”

“I’m bleeding to death, I tell you!”

“You’ll live—if we get you to a hospital in time. Who hired you?”

“Some guy… didn’t tell me his name.”

“Do you know D. L.?”

“Who doesn’t?”

“Are you working for him?”

“Hell, no. I’m an independent. So’s the man that hired me.”

“How do you know?”

“He was afraid of D. L. I had instructions to stay clear of D. L. or any of his boys.”

“Describe the man who hired you.”

“I can’t. Medium size is all I know. He was wearing dark glasses.”

“Are you working with the other tail?”

“No. Don’t know him. For God’s sake, quit blabbing and get me to a doc.”

“Were you hired to tail me or kill me?”

“At first, just to tail—”

“When did they change the instructions? Before you tailed me to the boat this morning, or afterward?”

“Afterward. I was to take you out if you done certain things.”

“What things?”

“Comin’ here.”

“How do you contact the man who hired you?”

“I don’t any more. Dunno where to find him. He’s paying me off by mail—he says.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow, he says.” The man moaned again and sank to one of the benches. “Can’t we go now?”

Shayne nodded bleakly. “As soon as I wind things up with the Madame.” He turned to the girl whose face was nearly as pale now as the wounded man’s, “Who wants to keep me away from you so badly he’d kill me?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know anything about this.”

“Put a call through to police headquarters.” He jerked his head toward the phone on the desk.

“Shayne!” She was pleading, desperately. “It’s the God’s truth! I don’t know—”

“When you get the police, tell them we’ve got a gun-shot man here.”

“Oh—” She moved toward the phone, looking relieved. “Thank you.”

“But whether the cops take you with them, depends on how fast you talk before they get here.”

She made the call sullenly and walked back.

Shayne eyed the luggage stacked in the hall. “Why were you running away?”

“It’s you and your goddam investigating!” She blazed at him, white-faced and defensive. “It was bound to bring the police in.”

“You’re clean with the police. I’ve checked. And you explained last night how legitimately you’re operating here.”

“Who wants to be mixed up with the police anyway?”

“If you don’t, keep talking! Because since I left you last night another man’s been murdered—this time a friend of mine.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Shayne.” Her voice took on its deep timbre. “I suppose he had one of my voodoo dolls in his pocket,” she added in a hurt tone.

“No, but I think he was murdered by one of your regulars—Ed Woodbine, better known in Detroit as Slug Murphy.”

“You must believe me! I don’t know anything about it.” She sat down slowly and looked directly at him without provocativeness, but with a kind of suspended fear. When she spoke it was as if she were talking to herself.

“He told me there was no risk when he set me up.”

“Who told you?”

She shrugged fatalistically. “I was doing a mind-reading act in a second-rate club in Vegas, and a gentleman who asked me to have a drink with him one night suggested this. His name was John Smith.”

Shayne snorted. “Captain John Smith, no doubt.”

“I knew it was a phony, but what difference did it make? He gave me cash—more than I’d ever seen—and told me to come here and rent a house and start the séances. All I’d ever have to do, he said, aside from my regular business, was to work certain numbers into my spirit messages. He didn’t tell me what they were for, and I didn’t ask.”

“Where do you get the numbers?”

“If he’s got me into trouble,” she said through clenched teeth, “I’ll find him and squeeze him dry!” She paused, continuing after a moment with weary resignation. “They come by mail written on a plain sheet of paper in a plain envelope. The postmark is New York City.”

“How are they written?”

“Typed, and in the order to be given.”

“Has John Smith,” Shayne emphasized the name disdainfully, “given you more money since?”

“Yes. Cash sometimes, in the envelopes.”

“What do you think the numbers are for?”

She shrugged again. “I suspect I’m a go-between for some sort of Syndicate deal. Policy numbers maybe, or race-track betting. It could be anything, I guess. I don’t know and I don’t want to know.”

“Have you had any dealings with De Luca?”

“No.”

“Did John Smith put any restrictions on you?”

“No-o—Except to keep the séances light entertainment and not to gouge the customers.”

“Do you know why that was?”

“He didn’t want to attract the attention of the police to his other operation, I guess—whatever it is.”

A police siren shrilled outside. The girl’s face turned whiter. “I’ve leveled with you, Shayne. I’ve told all I know.”

The redhead rose as two policemen entered. He indicated the wounded man with a curt nod. “He took a shot at me. Have him fixed up and then let Will Gentry shake him down. See if his tongue’s looser then. I’ll be in later to lodge a formal complaint.”

“Right, Mr. Shayne.” The policemen helped the man out.

Shayne turned to Swoboda. She stood up, swaying toward him. “Thanks, redhead.”