Stranger in Town (4 page)

The policeman was young and clean-featured, and aggressively hard-jawed. He leaned his elbow on the door beside Shayne and said, “Stranger in town, huh?”

“Driving through.”

“Guess you didn’t see that ticket on your windshield, huh?”

“Just noticed it.”

“H-m-n. Got your motor running and all. You wouldn’t be planning on slipping away from town without stopping by the station to settle it up, I guess.”

Shayne said, “No.”

“Wouldn’t like for you to do that. Been parked here in front of this bar a long time, haven’t you?”

“You should know.” Despite himself, Shayne’s irritation leaked out into his voice.

“Had yourself a lot of drinks, huh?”

“Is that any of your business? Okay, so I over-parked. If you’ll get your wagon out of the way I’ll pull around to the station and settle the ticket.”

“Maybe it is some of my business.” The young cop’s eyes narrowed importantly. “From that whiff of your breath I just got I’d say that’s quite a load you’re carrying.” His voice changed abruptly to curt command. “Cut off your motor and step out here. You’re not driving anywhere till I decide whether you’re sober enough to be trusted behind the wheel.”

That did it. Despite all his past experience with arrogant cops, small-town or big-town—despite the fact that all he wanted in the world was to get to a hotel where there was food and drink and a telephone and a soft bed to relax on, Shayne lost control.

All the frustrated, bottled-up anger of the last two hours came out in his snarl, “Out of my way, punk. I’ve had one damned drink if that’s what…”

The door came open and an officious hand grabbed his shoulder and jerked hard. Shayne braced himself and chopped the edge of his palm down on the policeman’s forearm muscles, numbing them so the hand fell away.

“Keep your goddamned hands off me.” Shayne’s voice was throaty and rough.

The young policeman was well-trained. He stood back, rubbing his forearm, and called out, “Want to come here a minute, George? Got a drunk that thinks he’s tough.”

Sanity reasserted itself as the other door of the police car opened and a bulky figure stepped out.

Shayne knew this was no good.
Never argue with a strange cop.
Who knew that axiom better than he? But here he was—a hundred miles from home—

He stepped out from behind the wheel as the other patrolman approached and said thickly, “Sorry, Officer. I really didn’t mean…” Pain hit him in the neck as he stood upright and he swayed slightly and put his hand on the open door to steady himself.

The second cop was burly and red-faced and older. He shoved the first one aside and said happily, “Drunk and resistin’ arrest, huh? Come along with me now.” He caught Shayne’s left wrist in both big hands and moved in behind the detective swiftly but inexpertly to thrust the arm up behind him in a hammerlock.

Everything went crimson before Michael Shayne’s eyes. Every man is constituted to endure so much before the breaking point is reached. Shayne had endured enough in Brockton that night.

He eeled out of the hammerlock and drove his right fist into the bulbous red face beside him. The burly cop staggered back with blood spurting from his nose, and the younger man stepped in calmly and sapped Shayne behind the ear with his blackjack.

For the second time in Brockton that evening, Shayne went out like a candle in a hurricane.

MICHAEL SHAYNE awoke quite early the next morning. He lay on his back on a rough army blanket folded to cover a built-in bunk of iron lattice-work. His coat was rolled up under his head for a pillow. He was in a small, iron-barred cubicle, dimly lighted by a 25-watt ceiling bulb in the corridor outside.

Shayne lay as he was without trying to move for several minutes which he devoted to cursing himself and his goddamned crazy temper that had betrayed him into this situation. He clearly recalled all the events leading up to the point where he socked the older policeman in blind rage. After that, there was hazy memory of being pushed and pulled around, of voices questioning him and of somewhat incoherent replies on his part.

His head ached dully and steadily, and for a long period of minutes he didn’t dare try to lift it for fear neck muscles wouldn’t respond. It was very quiet in this cell of the Brockton jail. He got up strength finally to lift his arm and squint at his wristwatch. 6:30. It would be hours yet before there’d be any chance of talking his way, or paying his way, out of jail.

“And when that chance comes,” he warned himself grimly, “keep your goddamned big mouth shut, Mike Shayne. Take every insult like a little man, and speak only when you are spoken to. Apologize for living, if necessary, and plead guilty to whatever they throw at you.”

Much as he hated to admit it even to himself, it was basically his own fault that he was in a cell right now instead of luxuriating in a soft bed in the Manor Hotel. Couldn’t blame the two cops too much, he admitted grudgingly. Sure, they had been over-tough and officious, but most cops are. They get that way after dealing with criminals and drunks night after night. It’s an occupational disease.

And no one knew that better than Michael Shayne. That’s why it was his fault more than theirs. The pair who had picked him up hadn’t known, of course, about what had happened inside the bar earlier. They didn’t know he was already boiling with anger because no official cognizance had been taken of the unprovoked attack on him.

So, all right. So, the thing now was to get out of jail. Meek and submissive, that was the ticket.
Until
he got free. After that—well, he thought maybe he’d be around Brockton for a short time at least, and chances were he might run into the two cops again under more propitious circumstances.

The thought invigorated him enough that he temporarily lost his caution and sat up suddenly.

A groan escaped his lips before he could repress it. Sledgehammers began pounding inside his skull, and his neck and shoulder muscles on the right side were a mass of agonizing pain.

He stayed sitting up, head held askew in the only position that wasn’t sheer torture, gritting his teeth and moving it a tenth of an inch from this side to that to work some of the stiffness out.

No wonder the guy was called Mule. Probably nicknamed that by some other victim whom he had kicked around.

Shayne fretfully began wondering
what
and
why
again, then sternly stopped that guessing game and concentrated on massaging the soreness out of his neck. Because it couldn’t be anything but a guessing game until he accumulated a few facts to go on.

He thought about his brown-haired secretary instead. Lucy Hamilton in Miami—expecting his return last night. He remembered the one faintly plausible hypothesis for the affair that he had come up with last night. If it was a new case that someone didn’t want him to work on, he’d been effectively prevented from taking it all right. At least for one night. But he wasn’t lying in the morgue yet, the victim of a hit-run driver. That was one consolation.

He found a crumpled pack of cigarettes in his pocket and lit one. He was smoking his third and had worked the stiffness out to a point where he could turn his head a couple of inches in both directions when a sad-faced turnkey came down the corridor with the breakfast Brockton jail served its guests for free.

There was an aluminum pie-plate with a thick piece of tough fried ham and a mound of boiled grits with meat fat poured on top. And a slice of bread. And there was a big aluminum mug of muddy coffee so sweet that it set Shayne’s teeth on edge.

These were slid through a small hole in the bars at floor level by the turnkey and Shayne sat on the edge of his bunk and thanked him as though it were a serving of crisp bacon, fluffy scrambled eggs, golden toast and steaming black coffee.

The turnkey was obviously unused to such fulsome gratitude, and he rocked back on his heels with a snaggle-toothed grin.

“Ain’t no Waldorf Astoria, but ain’t nobody never starved tuh death here yet. You that tough private shamus they was talkin’ about from Miami?” He regarded Shayne with open-mouth interest.

“Not so tough,” Shayne told him wryly. “Pass the word along, huh? Maybe I thought I was till I tangled with those two boys of yours last night, but they sure as hell taught me different.”

Snaggletooth chuckled delightedly. “Brockton ain’t so such-a-much fer a fact, but I reckon our police force does stack up purty good. Burke and Grimes, now, they sure ain’t a pair to take no foolin’ when they goes to make a pinch.”

“You’re telling me,” said Shayne fervently. He gingerly picked up the aluminum pan and balanced it on his knee after trying a sip of the liquid in the mug. “What’s the routine here in Brockton? How soon can I pay a fine and get out?”

“City judge sits downstairs at nine. Them that’s got sense and pleads guilty gen’ally gets out fast.”

“How much,” asked Shayne humbly, “do you think my fine will be?”

The turnkey considered this judiciously. “Way I heard it, you socked Grimes good. Dependin’ how drunk you was, I reckon. An’ how Judge Grayson’s liver’s actin’ up this mornin’. Fifty an’ costs, maybe, if he feels good. I gotta go now.”

“Thanks for everything,” Shayne called after him. “Any chance of me getting in first to see his honor I’d appreciate it.”

He gagged over a spoonful of the lumpy grits as Snaggletooth disappeared. How To Win Over Turnkeys and Influence Judges by Michael Shayne, he thought disgustedly. But right now Snaggletooth would be spreading the news that the tough private eye from Miami had more than met his match in the Brockton police force. That he was penitent and submissive after a night in one of their cells.

All right, he told himself angrily. Keep it up.
Be
penitent and submissive if you don’t want to spend thirty days eating hawg and hominy.

And—it paid off for once. Snaggletooth appeared at his cell-door a few minutes before nine o’clock jingling a huge brass ring with keys strung on it. His features were still sad, but it was a jovial sort of sadness.

“All out for the honorable butt-kissin’ court. Take yuh down first, huh, tuh see how Hizzoner feels this mornin’.”

Shayne said, “Fine. Thanks,” with more heartiness than he felt.

He came out of the small cell with a faint sigh of relief as the door opened, waggled his head cautiously backward and forward as he followed his jailer down a short corridor to stairs leading downward.

The early morning hearings conducted by Judge Grayson were quite informal. There was a small anteroom at the rear of police headquarters with a desk and a swivel chair behind it, and one straight chair drawn up at one side. The judge sat behind the desk with crossed American flags behind him. A bored clerk sat beside him with pen poised over a large, open ledger. Standing stiffly at attention along one wall, in uniform, were the two traffic officers who had arrested Shayne the night before.

The judge was a sallow-faced, balding man who was sucking carefully on a long black cigar as Shayne was ushered in. The turnkey spoke Shayne’s name and withdrew.

The detective glanced anxiously at the two officers as he entered. The younger one, Burke, he assumed, was drawn up very stiffly with folded arms, and he glared at Shayne as though he had never seen him before and hoped never to see him again.

His red-faced companion was not quite so obviously at attention. He had a bulbous nose, and a network of tiny red veins showed in his cheeks, and Shayne was happy to detect the trace of a human twinkle in his eyes. There was a slight swelling on his upper lip which Shayne supposed had resulted from contact with his fist the night before, and he played it by ear by nodding solemnly to the judge and then turning impulsively aside to Officer Grimes and saying:

“I
must
have been crocked last night, Sergeant. Buy you a drink to make up for it if I get out of here with the price of one.”

Grimes grinned momentarily, but the clerk was reading the charges against Shayne aloud in a sing-song voice, and the detective swung back to listen to them solemnly.

“Over-time parking… Drunk and Disorderly on a public street… resisting arrest… How say you, Michael Shayne?”

Shayne looked down at the judge and said, “I plead guilty, your Honor.”

Judge Grayson leaned back in his swivel chair and judicially placed the tips of five fingers against the tips of five other fingers beneath his chin. “Any extenuating circumstances?”

Shayne hesitated and gulped once. He lowered his eyelids and said humbly, “I’m afraid I had one too many to drink, your Honor.”

“I see. I understand you are a licensed private detective in the State of Florida.”

“Yes, your Honor.”

“Is it your habitual custom to drive your automobile while under the influence?”

“No, sir.”

“Yet you were attempting to do so last night when Officer Burke intercepted you.”

Michael Shayne drew in a deep breath and lifted his eyelids to look squarely at the judge. “I will always be thankful that he did, your Honor. I congratulate Brockton on their diligent and alert police officers.”

“Very well.” The judge’s voice was peremptory, but Shayne felt he had scored a point. “Brockton is a community of children and of homes. We like to think of ourselves as a friendly community, but we do love our children. Ninety-five dollars and costs,” he told the clerk. He looked past Shayne to the doorway where the next offender was being ushered in. “Next case.”

Grimes and Burke disappeared while Shayne was paying his fine and receiving his wallet and other possessions back from another uniformed man who took him in tow.

It was almost ten o’clock before he sat in his car again, parked in the rear of the police station, and was free to drive away, to put the smell of Brockton and their efficient police force behind him.

Instead, he had gotten directions to the Manor Hotel, and he drove directly there. It was a large, six-story modern building on Main Street, and his spirits rose when he saw a liquor store with its doors open for business directly beside it. He maneuvered the Hudson into a small parking lot in front of the hotel, got out and handed his keys over to an impressively uniformed doorman.

“Two bags in the back seat,” he told him. “I’ll be right in to register.”

He found a bottle of Monnet in the liquor store, returned to enter the cool, modernistic lobby with it tucked securely under his arm. His head had almost stopped aching, and he had learned to turn his head slowly and gingerly so it didn’t feel that it would fall off each time he did so. The world was distinctly a better place to live in than it had been two hours ago.

The room clerk had a sandy mustache and a deferential manner. His manner became almost effusive as he studied the registration card Shayne filled out and the detective asked him for a suite.

“Yes, indeed, Mr. Shayne. From Miami, eh? In our little town on business?”

“Certainly not for pleasure.”

“Indeed… yes.” His toothsome smile stayed in place, though very slightly awry. “I can give you a lovely suite, Mr. Shayne. Double bedroom and a
lovely
sitting room. Will you be with us long?”

Shayne shrugged. “No longer than it takes me to clear up a few things.”

“A pity, Mr. Shayne. We in Brockton pride ourselves on our hospitality to strangers within our gates. We are a small community of home-lovers, but friendly we like to think. Front!” He struck a bell on the desk sharply.

A neatly uniformed young bellboy took Shayne’s bags up to the fourth floor. Shayne took the bottle out of its paper wrapping as the boy bustled about opening windows and checking towels. He gave him a dollar and said, “Bring up a pitcher of ice, please. I’ll leave the door unlocked because I may be in the shower.”

As the boy nodded and started to leave the room, Shayne stopped him with another dollar bill in his outstretched hand. “This is for not explaining how friendly Brockton is to strangers.” He turned away and started shucking off the clothes he had slept in the night before.

The pitcher of ice cubes waited for Shayne when he emerged naked from the bathroom ten minutes later. He padded across to the cognac bottle, opened it and poured a water glass half full. With two ice cubes tinkling in the glass, he lit a cigarette and sat down beside the telephone. He gave the hotel operator the number of his Miami office, and drank half the contents of the glass while he waited to hear Lucy’s voice lilting over the wire.