The Private Practice of Michael Shayne (17 page)

Unobserved, he went to his parked roadster and got in, drove away slowly toward the Miami Beach police station where he parked half a block away and contentedly waited for developments to develop.

SHAYNE DIDN’T have very long to wait before one of the police cars came back bringing Painter and about half of the detectives who had gone to the yacht.

John Marco was close behind them in his limousine. Shayne pleasurably observed the strained look of horror on the big gambler’s face as he got out of his car and tramped heavily into the police station behind Painter.

Shayne relaxed in the seat of his roadster, bright-eyed and watchful.

Ten minutes later a radio car rolled up in front of the police station and disgorged a burly cop in uniform and a passenger.

It was Elliot Thomas.

The millionaire yachtsman appeared to be more angered than frightened. He was remonstrating hotly with the officer—or it looked so from Shayne’s position. The policeman led him up the steps and they disappeared inside a door.

Shayne lit a cigarette and dragged smoke out of it happily. He felt tense, keyed up to a high, feverish pitch. Anything could happen in the next half-hour. He didn’t know what, but he liked that feeling of sitting atop a powder keg. Moments like this were what made life worth while. One slip would mean utter disaster. One tiny break in the rhythm of events—one fatal flaw in his line of reasoning—

He delayed as long as he dared, savoring to the utmost the thrill of being poised above a precipice before taking the final leap from which there could be no turning back.

He took a final drag on his cigarette and flung the butt away. Smoke trailed lazily from his wide nostrils as he eased his long body out from under the wheel and sauntered to the entrance.

It was two-twenty when he entered the corridor. The afternoon edition of the
Miami News
would be on the streets in ten minutes.

A group of detectives were loitering in the hall outside the closed door of Painter’s office. They glared at Shayne as he strolled up, and two of them got between him and the door.

“You can’t go in there,” one of them announced belligerently. “Chief’s got an important conference on.”

Shayne kept moving directly toward the door. His eyes were impersonally cold, steely gray. His voice matched his eyes, “I’m going in.”

Reluctantly, they got out of his way. There was something about Shayne that moved them aside.

He turned the knob without knocking and went in.

Painter, Elliot Thomas, and John Marco were alone in the office. Marco was slumped into a chair mopping his bald head. His big features and tiny mouth were lax, as though the fibers of his flesh had disintegrated under the unnerving shock of learning that his daughter was a suicide victim.

Thomas was leaning over the desk facing Painter, his ruddy face angrily flushed. His fist thudded down and words spurted out into the detective chief’s face.

“—damnable outrage. I have no knowledge of this affair. Absolutely none.”

He gestured with a shaking hand toward Marsha Marco’s jacket, felt hat, and the suicide note lying in front of Painter.

“I have no idea how those got on my yacht. Not the faintest. I haven’t seen Miss Marco for days. She’s never been aboard the ‘Sea Queen’ to my knowledge.”

Marco glanced apathetically at Shayne. Painter darted one keen glance at him with no sign of recognition. To Thomas, he said silkily, “You entertained some woman on your yacht last night. The steward and two of the sailors saw you bring her aboard. If it wasn’t Miss Marco, who was it?”

Thomas was breathing heavily, audibly. He straightened and answered, “It certainly was not Miss Marco. It was another woman entirely. And she left early. Why, it’s absurd.”

“None of the crew saw her leave,” Painter told him. “You can prove your story by giving me her name. I’ll have her brought in for questioning.”

Thomas started to say something, then stopped. He swallowed hard and began in an uncertain voice, “That’s the devil of it. I don’t know her name. That is—Helen—” He paused, licking his lips.

He turned slightly and saw Shayne lounging against the door. His eyes brightened and relief spread over his face.

“Mr. Shayne. Thank God you’re here. Tell them I—that the woman who was aboard my yacht last night wasn’t Miss Marco. Mr. Shayne knows her,” he went on triumphantly to Painter. “He can tell you her name. You see, I happened to meet her in his apartment last night and we left together.”

Shayne’s eyes narrowed.

He said, “Don’t try to drag me into this to save your own hide, Thomas. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

Thomas swung about in utter amazement.

“You don’t? Why, last night in your apartment—”

Shayne shook his head, regarding him bleakly. “I didn’t see you last night. Don’t expect me to lie for you. Painter’s just waiting to hang a murder charge on me.”

The yachtsman’s eyes bulged and his lower jaw dropped slackly. Then anger blazed in his eyes and his mouth snapped shut.

Regaining control of himself, Thomas yelled, “You’re lying. Trying to save yourself. You can’t get away with it, Shayne. You’re going to tell the truth or I’ll—”

He took a forward step, fists knotted.

Shayne swayed forward lazily with an easy flow of rippling muscles. His right fist moved in a terrific uppercut that smashed against Thomas’s jaw and sent him reeling back.

“Don’t ever call me a liar,” he growled, then turned on Painter, who was standing up, white-faced and trembling.

Staring down into the smaller man’s eyes, Shayne asked, “Could you see me privately for a moment?”

Painter read the imperative message in his eyes aright. After a momentary hesitation, he nodded and went through a door into an inner office. Thomas sank down into a chair holding a handkerchief to his jaw, his face twitching with sudden hatred and with fear as Shayne went out.

Closing the connecting door behind them, Shayne said swiftly, “Get smart, Painter. You won’t lose anything by taking good advice from a fellow who’s given you good advice before. Rush a man out to the yacht to search Thomas’s stateroom. If I were doing the searching, I’d pay particular attention to the center drawer of an unlocked writing desk.”

Painter studied him a long time with suspicion actively alive in his black eyes.

“You’re pulling another fast one,” he charged. “I ought to—”

“You’d better do as I say,” Shayne interrupted.

Painter hesitated. “About that pistol of yours—”

Shayne put his hand on the smaller man’s shoulder and gave him a good-natured push toward the door.

“I’m right here where you want me. Start a man out to the yacht.”

Shayne went back through the connecting door. Painter went into the hallway and spoke to one of the detectives waiting outside.

Marco was leaning over Thomas when Shayne stepped back into the office without warning. The millionaire was looking up at the gambler with revulsion showing on his face, one hand up as though to ward off what Marco was saying.

The gambler turned away hurriedly when Shayne entered.

Shayne grinned and said, “You’re a hell of a father to be consorting with the man who murdered your daughter.”

“I don’t believe it for a minute,” Marco snarled.

“Don’t believe it—don’t believe she’s dead? You don’t believe Thomas knew she was there?”

Shayne asked the questions in a pleasant voice. He sat on the edge of Painter’s desk and swung one foot. Painter came in and dropped into a chair behind him.

“I don’t believe either one,” Marco rasped. “This is some kind of a plant. With you mixed up in it, I don’t believe anything.”

“Not even your daughter’s farewell note?” Shayne gestured behind him to the articles on the desk. “And those are her clothes, aren’t they?”

“I don’t know whether they are or not. Might be any dame’s clothes that were planted there.”

“It can be proved easily enough.”

Shayne paused to light a cigarette. Staring through the flame, he added casually:

“You seem mighty damned unconcerned about your girl, Marco. Maybe you
know
she isn’t dead. Maybe you—”

“You know damn well I don’t know where she is,” Marco bellowed. “Do you think I’d have offered to pay you money to find her if I knew?”

Shayne shrugged.

“How can you laugh off this note? It’s her writing, isn’t it?”

“I haven’t examined it closely,” Marco mumbled.

“Look at it again,” Shayne urged. “Study it closely.” He reached behind him for the note and passed it over to Marco who took it with some reluctance.

“If it’s a genuine note, that proves it was suicide,” Elliot Thomas broke out excitedly. “Perhaps she did slip aboard my yacht and plunge over the side. She didn’t like me. In a deranged state, she might have thought to cause me publicity and trouble. But I can’t be blamed if a crazy girl chooses my yacht for a jumping-off place.”

“I don’t think you’ve convinced anyone you didn’t bring her aboard last night and get her so soused up on champagne she maybe didn’t know what she was doing,” Shayne said drily. “You’ve told nothing but lies about the mysterious girl the sailors saw.”

“Lies? Why, you—you—

Thomas started to his feet, but Shayne’s lips pulled away from his teeth and he started to swing off the desk.

Thomas subsided with a frustrated mutter of fury, and John Marco spoke up from where he sat studying the suicide note, “This looks like Marsha’s writing, all right. But I can’t believe—she wouldn’t do a thing like that. Not Marsha.”

“She was in love with Harry Grange, wasn’t she?” Shayne asked sharply. “Maybe after he died she decided life wasn’t worth while.”

“The report we received didn’t sound like suicide,”

Painter said importantly. “The fisherman who telephoned in said explicitly that she was
thrown
off the yacht. He testified that she screamed before she was thrown overboard.”

“You can probably tell, all right, when you find her body,” Shayne said cheerfully.
“If
you ever find it. Those channel tides are tricky as the devil.”

In the intense silence following his words the chant of a newsboy drifted through the open window of Peter Painter’s office. Three of the men in the office stiffened and stared at each other in disbelief as they heard what the newsboy was yelling at the top of his voice. Shayne relaxed with a satisfied grunt of approval.

“ELLIOT THOMAS GRILLED IN DROWNING OF BEACH DEBUTANTE! MILLIONAIRE SUSPECTED IN STRANGE DEATH OF LOCAL SOCIETY GIRL. READ ALL ABOUT IT IN THE ‘NEWS.’ EXCLUSIVE STORY WITH PICTURES OF SUICIDE NOTE THAT MAY BE FORGERY. GET YOUR MIAMI ‘DAILY NEWS’ HERE. EXCLUSIVE.”

Elliot Thomas sprang to his feet, wetting his lips and staring out the window.

“How—how could they have the story? It’s libel, by God. I’ll sue that paper for a million dollars.”

Painter looked at Shayne quizzically. “That’s the first real scoop I ever met face to face. I think I begin to understand—”

Shayne interrupted him, talking fast. “Hadn’t you better get a handwriting expert to look at that suicide note? Her father knows her better than we do, and he finds it hard to believe Marsha would commit suicide. I agree with him. It looks more like a plant to me.”

“We’d have to have a specimen of her handwriting to compare it with,” Painter told him. He was watching Shayne closely, calculatingly. “It appears to me that you—”

“You can’t blame me for being interested in it,” Shayne growled. “I tell you there’s some hook-up between the Grange killing and this drowning affair. Ask Marco why he had Marsha doped and locked in her room the next morning after Grange was killed. Ask him.”

John Marco came to his feet with a bound, a crazed glitter in his eyes. “I’ve listened to you long enough, Shamus. We all know you bumped Grange.”

“You’re going to listen to me some more.” Shayne slid from Painter’s desk to his feet. He moved slowly toward the gambler with bony chin out-thrust.

“You’re going to tell us what you know about Banjo Boy winning the fifth at Hialeah—and about those ex-con friends of Whitey’s who went through Chuck’s room thinking
he
had the dope, then took me for a ride thinking I’d got it from Grange.”

Marco’s features became hard, masklike. He slid a hand in his coat pocket and said, “Don’t come any nearer, Shayne.”

Shayne stopped a pace in front of him. “I’m close enough to smell the stink of your rotten guts. Thought you could put
me
on the spot? You’d sacrifice your daughter to do it, wouldn’t you?
She
was with Grange when he was killed.
She
knew who did it. Maybe you had a hell of a good reason to keep her locked up. Maybe, by God, you had a hell of a good reason to say that suicide note looks genuine to you. I wouldn’t trust a rat like you not to drown his own daughter.”

A sharp rap on the outer door broke through Marco’s labored breathing. Painter barked, “Come in,” and the door opened to admit an excited detective sergeant with Timothy Rourke squeezing in behind him.

The detective rushed exultantly into the room, waving some crumpled sheets of paper.

“Here you are, sir. I found these in a desk in Mr. Thomas’s stateroom. Proof that the suicide note’s a forgery. Plain as the nose on your face.”

He spread the crumpled sheets of paper out in front of Chief Painter, each one covered with the damning scrawls of an amateur forger practicing Marsha Marco’s handwriting.

Marco moved close to the desk while Painter bent forward and scrutinized the sheets. Shayne winked at Rourke and faced Thomas who appeared frozen to his chair, but quite able to comprehend the meaning of this final blow.

“In your stateroom, eh?” Shayne said sympathetically to the millionaire. “How very careless of you. You might have gotten away with it if you’d been more careful.”

“But I didn’t—I don’t know—” Thomas sprang to life, and to his feet, wildly.

“Sit down,” Painter barked. “This pins it on you, Thomas. You forged that note to make it look like suicide when you pushed Miss Marco off the deck.”