The Private Practice of Michael Shayne (5 page)

Shayne looked up at him with a gleam in his eyes. Slowly he looked around at the others.

“All right. I admit I didn’t recognize the voice at first. That was because I didn’t have any idea. Then, when I realized it was a fixed-up job, I began checking over the people who might want to pull a rotten, dirty stunt like that, and I started wondering.”

He paused, got up with his hands thrust deep in his pockets.

“It’s been coming clearer and clearer while I sat there. I’m pretty sure now—sure enough to take oath on it. Do you know why, Tim?” He whirled suddenly and faced Rourke with a wide grin. “I’ll bet you can’t guess. It’s because I’ve been listening to that same voice—recognizing it more certainly all the time.”

Silence hung over the room. Pencils waited above notebooks. Peter Painter stared at Shayne in silence.

Shayne lit a cigarette, then turned about to point a long, bony finger at the chief of the Miami Beach detectives.

“Peter Painter is the man who called me to the scene of murder. He’ll deny it, but what the hell can you expect? You’ve all heard him threaten to get me a dozen times. He saw his chance to hang one on me—and that’s what he did.”

The reporters stared, breathed again, and pencils flew over white paper.

Rourke, alone, kept his pencil and pad in his pocket. After a long look at Shayne, he turned his face away, no longer able to control his delighted laughter.

FOR A MOMENT, Peter Painter was too stricken to move. Then he sprang to his feet like a jack-in-the-box.

“Me?” he exclaimed in a smothered tone. “Why… you… you…” His throat moved convulsively.

“Yes, you,” Shayne said wolfishly. “You’ve forced my hand—so take it.”

“You’re crazy,” Painter sputtered. “You—you’ve lost your mind.”

Behind Shayne, Timothy Rourke laughed aloud. “Crazy like a fox,” he exulted. “Oh, my sweet grandmother! This is one for the book.”

Shayne disregarded his friend’s whooping merriment. He kept his face set in solemn lines.

“I’m sorry, Painter.” He sounded very convincing. “That’s the hand I’m playing. You
would
have witnesses.”

“But I—” Painter sank back into his chair. “You’ll never make it stick, Shayne. God knows,
I
didn’t phone you.”

“That’s what you say.” Shayne shrugged and sat down. “You’ve shot off your mouth too often about hanging something on me to hope anyone will believe you didn’t grab off this chance to do it.”

Slowly, the bewildered expression cleared from the chief’s face.

“I get it,” he snarled. “You know goddamn well it wasn’t me. You’re bluffing—hoping I’ll back down.”

“I don’t give a damn whether you back down or not,” Shayne clipped out. He leaned back easily and crossed his legs. “Without a shred of real evidence against me, you were all set to try me in the newspapers. All right, I’ll play that way. These boys are just itching to get out of here and make some headlines.”

“And how!” Rourke burst out. “Is that the way it’s going to lie, Painter?”

“Lie!” he roared. “That’s the word, all right. Now wait.”

The tip of Painter’s finger trembled as he caressed his mustache.

Rourke stood with a hand on Shayne’s shoulder, pressing down. Shayne’s hands were on the chair arms, pressing up.

“No use going off half-cocked,” Painter went on. “You boys certainly don’t believe Shayne’s absurd accusation.”

“We’re not writing our opinions,” Rourke told him sharply. “We’re reporting facts.”

“That,” said Shayne, settling back again, “is all you’ve got to worry about, Painter. The mere facts. Just because I tried to save you embarrassment by not naming you as my anonymous telephone caller at once—”

“You know damn well it wasn’t me—”

“I’m taking an oath that it was. If you want anyone to believe you’re clean—dig up the man who called and prove he wasn’t you.”

“And in the meantime Shayne will be languishing in your bastile working up a swell case for false arrest,” Rourke reminded Painter.

Painter’s dark face was livid with wrath. In a choked voice he warned, “I’m going to get you, Shayne. If it’s the last thing I do on this earth, I’m going to hang one around your long neck that you won’t wriggle out from under.” Shayne’s bland gaze was fixed on the toes of his number twelve shoes stretched out in front of him.

“In the meantime I’ll be chasing down murderers and turning them over to you so you can stay on the public payroll.”

The reporters were becoming bleary-eyed from switching astounded gazes from Shayne to Painter.

“How about it?” one of them demanded irritably. “Does the suspicion of murder charge stick against Mike?” Painter ground his white teeth. His black mustache trembled upward when he snarled, “Not officially. If I release him, you won’t need to print—”

“What’s just occurred here,” Shayne put in swiftly for Painter. “Nope.” He shook his head and shot a warning glance at the newsmen. “Play the whole thing down, boys. Just say that I explained my presence at the murder scene to Mr. Painter’s complete satisfaction by identifying the voice that called me over the telephone.”

“Wait,” Painter protested. “That won’t do. You haven’t identified the voice. If you print that and it later gets out that you accuse me—” There was a tremor of panic in his voice.

“It might smoke someone out,” Shayne explained patiently, “if you didn’t do the telephoning. If the culprit reads the story, then he’ll figure he’s got to get rid of me in a hurry. That ought to bring him out into the open, and maybe I’ll get knocked off in the process—which should be a happy prospect for you, Painter.”

Peter Painter shook his head dubiously.

“I still don’t like—”

“To hell with what you like. You’ve stuck your neck out.”

Shayne stood up abruptly and turned to the row of reporters.

“I’ve never given you a wrong steer, boys. I’ve got a hunch this is something big, though I haven’t a goddamned idea what it’s all about. If you play this down tonight, you’ll be cutting yourselves in for a whale of a story later. Crack down, and I’ll leave you all in the lurch on the blow-off.”

He turned back to Painter and demanded, “Where’s my car?”

“I had one of the men bring it in,” Painter told him stiffly.

He pressed the buzzer on his desk and when a cop stuck his head in, said tersely, “Take Mr. Shayne out and give him the keys to his car. We’re not holding him.”

Disappointment spread over the cop’s heavy face. He snorted, then clumped down the hall ahead of Shayne. At the desk, Shayne recovered his keys and went on to his car which was parked outside.

The moon was overhead, dipping to the west, and the breeze of earlier night had died away. A smug grin replaced the scowl Shayne had worn on that last trip across the causeway.

As he drove with his left hand on the wheel, he fumbled in his pocket and pulled out the lacy handkerchief which he had picked from the dead man’s hand. He shook it out under the dashlight and saw there were no initials on it. Lifting it close to his nose, he drew in a deep breath and his nostrils caught an elusive, delicate fragrance. He thrust it back in his pocket and pursed his lips in a tuneless whistle.

He was in the middle of something—and didn’t know what it was.

He wondered, irrationally, whether the white-haired man in Marco’s office had escorted Marsha Marco straight home from the casino—and whether she had stayed at home.

Making the turn at Thirteenth Street into Biscayne Boulevard, on the mainland, he heard a newsboy shouting on the street.

“Detective held for playboy murder! Read all about the beach murder! Miami detective charged with shooting Harry Grange!”

Shayne stopped and bought an early morning edition of the
Miami Herald.
He spread it out on the steering wheel and stared morosely at a picture of himself in the middle of the front page. The cops and the handcuffs were plainly in evidence, but the picture of their prisoner was not flattering.

He grunted and folded the paper on the seat beside him, drove on down past Flagler Street and pulled up at the curb by the side entrance of his apartment-hotel.

A sedan with New York license plates was parked at the curb just in front of him.

A man got out of the front seat as Shayne locked the ignition and got out. He was short-legged and squatty, with a black felt hat pulled low over his face. He loitered forward on the sidewalk until Shayne stepped up on the curb, then moved to intercept him, saying hoarsely, “It’s him, Marv.”

A blunt automatic showed in his right hand. Shayne stopped and glanced over his left shoulder at the car. The muzzle of a sub-machine gun was pointed out through the rear window at him. He stood still and said, “Okay, boys. I wasn’t expecting you so soon.”

The squatty man motioned toward the sedan with his automatic. “Crawl in the front seat.”

“You can take everything I’m carrying right here,” Shayne argued mildly.

“You’re goin’ for a ride with us.” The voice was raspy.

Shayne said, “Okay,” and walked over to climb into the front seat of the sedan.

The squatty man followed him to the other side and got behind the wheel.

As the starter whirred, a silky voice spoke quietly from the rear seat. “Keep looking straight ahead and don’t try to pull any funny stuff.”

“I’m not in a humorous mood,” Shayne assured the unseen speaker.

The motor roared and they slid away from the curb, straight across the bridge over the Miami River and south on Brickell Avenue to Eighth Street, where the driver swung west and drove at a moderate speed out on the Tamiami Trail.

THE TRAIL WAS thickly settled with both business houses and residences until they passed the huge stone entrance to Coral Gables on the left. Beyond this point the land was sparsely settled, and after passing the Wildcat and the cluster of small buildings near it, the Trail was open country.

None of the three men spoke until the Wildcat lay behind them and they were purring on into the swampy Everglades.

Then Shayne broke the silence by saying, “If this is a snatch you’ve got the wrong guy. There’s nobody this side of hell that would pay ten bucks for me, dead or alive.”

“You know what this is, all right,” the driver grated. Below the low brim of his hat, Shayne glimpsed a brutal, undershot jaw covered with a stubble of black whiskers. “It’s curtains, bo. Because you ain’t got sense enough to keep your long nose clean.”

“Take it easy,” Marv’s smooth voice warned from the rear as the driver accelerated up past fifty. “State cops patrol this road sometimes. No use taking any chances.”

“Curtains, eh?” Shayne had been sitting stiffly erect. Now, he relaxed against the seat and fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette. “In that case, I might as well get comfortable.”

“Yeh,” the driver jeered. “You ain’t got long to be comfortable in.”

Shayne struck a match to his cigarette. In front of them, smooth blackness of macadam glistened like molten rubber in the soft sheen of moonlight. Palmetto and gnarled cypress pressed close to the edge of the pavement on both sides, the gray-white bark of many dead cypress trees looming like ghosts against native pines.

An eerie silence encompassed them.

“Where do we bump him?” the driver jerked back over his shoulder.

“Just keep on taking it easy. There’s a deep canal along the side of the road pretty soon. With enough lead in him, a guy will stay down on the bottom a long time. Lots of people have accidents on this road,” he added in a conversational tone.

“Yeh. Jest las’ week a man—” the driver ventured.

“Shut up,” snapped the oily voice from the rear.

The swishing sound of air against encroaching tropical verdure was monotonous.

Shayne dragged in a lungful of smoke and exhaled it slowly.

“Mind telling me why I’m slated for the flowers?”

The brutal-jawed driver snickered. “He’s a card, ain’t he, Marv? Nervy sonofabitch, too. You’d think we was all joyridin’.”

“All we want,” Marv explained, “is what you took off Harry Grange tonight. Had to kill him to get it, huh?”

“I didn’t take anything off Harry Grange. And I didn’t kill him.”

“Naw?” Without warning, the driver jerked his right hand from the wheel and slapped Shayne, backhanded, in the mouth. “Think we can’t read, huh? How’d you talk yourself outta the pinch?”

Shayne placed both hands on his knees. His tongue licked out on his swollen lips. He didn’t say anything. In the faintly reflected moonlight his eyes were murkily red.

From the rear seat, Marv sounded bored.

“No use knocking him around, Passo. We’ll roll him for it after I’ve leaded him down.”

“I like to hit tough babies like him,” Passo said. “You’re a tough baby, ain’t you?” He leered sidewise at Shayne.

Shayne kept looking straight ahead as though he had not heard.

“Answer me, you bastard.” Passo swung the back of his hand again.

Shayne turned his face to take the blow on his cheek. Bleakly, he said, “Tough enough to take anything you can hand out.”

“Wait’ll I get both hands loose where I can go to work on you,” Passo promised jovially. “I’ll soft you up. Pulpy-like.”

“Take it easy and shut up,” Marv cautioned as their speed increased. “I think we’re coming to the canal.”

“What makes you think I took anything from Harry Grange?” Shayne asked stiffly over his shoulder.

“Because we know you’re wise, see? Else why would you kill a dumb cluck like Grange?”

“I didn’t kill him,” Shayne said patiently. “I—”

“Shut your trap.” Passo sloughed him again. “Think we don’t know you bumped into Chuck tonight and he give you the lay? And you was workin’ with your lawyer friend. Hell’s bells—”

“You talk too goddamned much with your mouth, Passo,” Marv interrupted silkily.

“What the hell does it matter? This tough baby ain’t gonna repeat nothin’ I say. Are you, toughie?”

Shayne didn’t say anything.

Moonlight glistened on still water by the side of the road ahead where a canal had been dredged in the swamp to build up a solid base for the Tamiami Trail across the Everglades, and for the further purpose of draining the marshy land.

Marv said, “Talking’s no good. I know this guy’s rep. He’s got too much guts for his own good. That’s why we’re going to leave him under water where he won’t pop up and make trouble. Anywhere along here’s all right.”

They were traveling along the smooth narrow strip of macadam at slightly less than fifty miles an hour.

Shayne’s right hand crept up to rest on the door latch. He braced his long legs against the floorboards.

As Passo’s foot lifted from the gas feed to the brake in response to Marv’s suggestion, Shayne’s left hand swept out and gripped the steering wheel, spinning it out of the driver’s lax hands.

Tires screamed in the still night and the speeding sedan lurched out of control. Shayne held a fierce grip on the wheel, sending it straight for the canal. As the car careened over the edge and plunged downward, his shoulder hit the unlatched door, and a tremendous drive of braced legs drove his body headfirst into the water and free of the sedan as it splashed, then heeled over to sink to the muddy bottom.

Shayne came up to the surface a few feet from the bank, caught a bunch of tough reeds, turned to watch the boiling eruption of placid water.

There was the frightened croaking of frogs down the bank, loud gurgling as the waters swirled over the sedan, covering it completely.

He dragged himself to the bank and squatted there. Night silence closed down again. A string of bubbles rose to break the surface of the water as the car squashed deeper and deeper into the yielding mud.

Then the water was placid, shimmering smooth again. He waited a long time, but no more bubbles came up. Water-soaked clothes were clammy and cold when he stood up and started walking east. Water squinched in his shoes at first, but it oozed out after a little time.

He walked swiftly, swinging his arms and gritting his teeth to keep them from chattering.

Headlights of a car going toward Miami showed in the distance. There was no place of concealment along the bare highway. When the lights were close, he slid over the edge of the pavement into the water until the car passed. Three times he hid himself by immersion, growing colder with each dip.

The chill gray of dawn was breaking when he neared the end of the waterway.

On either side of the canal in the marshes thousands of birds twittered of dawn. White herons flapped snowy wings and dipped into the shallow water of the marshland. Cranes, standing like statues on one foot against coral rocks, put the other foot down and lifted themselves in flight to the grain thickets. Blackbirds soared with raucous chatter. Quail scuttled away, fluttering in a loud whir as they rose in coveys. Silver-plumed gulls floated gracefully, circled, settled in the feeding ground.

Diverted by the beauty of winged creatures, Shayne was almost cheerful. He kept on walking swiftly, but when the headlights of another car showed behind him, he did not duck for cover. Instead, he stood in the center of the road and waved both arms frantically.

The car slowed cautiously, stopped about twenty feet from him. A straw-hatted head came out through the left window of the coupe and a voice called, “Hello, there. What’s up?”

“I am,” Shayne grinned. “Been up all night.” He walked slowly to the car, full in the glare of the headlights, arms swinging loosely at his side. “Can you give me a lift to town?”

The driver hesitated.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t,” Shayne said quickly, and smiled disarmingly. “I’ve been lost out in that goddamned swamp since yesterday. I’m wet and half-starved.”

The driver said, “Get in,” after looking Shayne over carefully. “There’s a raincoat here you can sit on.” He spread the raincoat out and Shayne got in.

As they drove toward Miami, Shayne recited a fabulous story about setting out on an alligator hunt in the Everglades with a Seminole guide—the Indian had deserted him, and he had been lost for eighteen hours, fighting his way through snake-infested swamps until he stumbled out on the highway.

Luckily, the man was a traveling salesman from another part of the state, and he knew as little about the Everglades as most people. He swallowed Shayne’s story with bug-eyed enjoyment, and let him out of the car on Flagler Street just as sunlight streaked the sky over the Atlantic.

Shayne walked to his hotel and found his car parked by the curb where he had left it a few hours previously. He went in the side door and up to his apartment without being observed.

Stepping over the threshold, he hesitated with his finger on the light switch. Daylight streamed through an east window, lay wraithlike upon the figure of a girl curled up in a deep, overstuffed chair.

He didn’t turn on the light. Instead, he catfooted into the room and looked down at Phyllis Brighton. She was sound asleep, right cheek cuddled on her crooked right arm, her breath coming rhythmically through half-parted lips.

Shayne shook his head and moved around the sleeping girl. He took up the bottle of cognac he had left on the table last night. There was a good two fingers of liquor in it. He tipped it up and emptied the bottle without taking it from his stiff, sore lips.

An ague seized him. He fought against it and went to the telephone and quietly gave the operator a Miami telephone number, waited for an answer.

He could hear the bell ringing monotonously in the home of Will Gentry, chief of Miami detectives. After a long time, Gentry’s sleepy voice said, “Hello.”

Shayne put his lips close to the mouthpiece and said, “Hello, Will. This is an anonymous informant.”

“What?” Gentry sounded puzzled. “Who is this?”

“An anonymous informant,” Shayne repeated in a low voice.

“It sounds like Mike Shayne. What is it, a gag?”

Once more Shayne said evenly, “This is an anonymous informant, Will.”

“Oh, all right, have it your way, Mike. What’s up your long sleeve? I thought Peter had you under his jail.”

“There’s been an accident out on the Tamiami Trail. A sedan went into the ditch with two men in it. A mile or so beyond where the roadside canal starts. The skid marks on the pavement and tracks cutting the shoulder will spot it for you, but the car’s all under water. It’ll take a derrick to hoist it.”

“Yeh, I’ve got that, Mike. I’ll send a crew out.”

“You’ll find a sub-machine gun and at least one forty-five automatic in the car or in the mud,” Shayne explained. “It’d be nice to do some awful close checking on the men and the car and the guns, Will.”

“You bet.” Gentry was wide awake now. “Thanks for the tip, Mike.”

“From an anonymous informant,” Shayne cautioned him.

“Sure. I get it.”

“Thanks.”

Shayne hung up softly.

When he turned away he saw Phyllis sitting up, staring at him with dazed, half-open eyes. There was a red blotch on her right cheek where it had rested too hard and too long on her arm.

“Wha-a-t—?” she stammered, but Shayne cut her off abruptly:

“Go on back to sleep or something. I’m getting out of these wet clothes and into a tub of hot water pronto.”

He turned his back on her and strode to the bedroom, unbuttoning his soggy coat and stripping it off, dropping it on the floor behind him.