Murder in Haste

by Brett Halliday

  Wing sat down around the corner from Shayne. “We seem to be setting precedents right and left. The fact is—well, we can’t keep it corked very much longer—the son of a bitch has disappeared.”

  The warden stared. “Painter?”

  “And let’s keep that between these four stone walls for the time being,” Wing said. “I still hope he’ll be at his desk when I get back, raising hell as usual. I hate to think of those headlines.”

  “But disappeared?” the warden said. “He’s probably just gone underground. He was being very cloak-and-dagger when he was out here. I just about had to swear a blood oath before he’d even tell me who he wanted to see. A great man for that kind of stuff.”

  “Could be,” Wing said. “And if he’s just off somewhere pretending to be Sherlock Holmes, he won’t like this a damn bit. But I’d look pretty dumb if there’s something serious wrong and I just sit back and manicure my fingernails, because I’m scared he’ll bawl me out.”

  The warden’s eyes glinted. “I don’t care for Painter any more than the next man, but we don’t want anything serious to happen to him, do we?” He gave a surprising hoot of laughter, which made him seem more human. “I’ll be god-dammed.”

  “And this is in confidence, right?”

  “Absolutely,” the warden said heartily, but without convincing Shayne. Tim Rourke had probably ferreted out the story by this time anyway. The warden went on, “But when I think of how he ordered my secretary out and just about looked under the rug to be sure I hadn’t planted some pixie there to spy on him—”

  “Did he bring a driver?” Shayne said.

  “Now that you mention it, he didn’t. He came in a taxi. The city probably paid for it, but still.”

  “He was only here once?” Wing said.

  The warden nodded. “My secretary might remember what day it was, if it’s important. Last week some time. If he didn’t want people to notice him, he certainly didn’t succeed. He played hell with our routine. The men were eating their dinner, and of course Mr. Bigshot couldn’t wait till they were finished, so we could bring Milburn in without making a special thing of it. We had to haul him out of the mess-hall, and everybody watched him go. He’s got a habitual rap coming to him next, and you know that old prison superstition, that two-time losers are good pigeon material because they have more at stake.

  “It’s more than a superstition,” Shayne said.

  “That may be. We’ve been having some trouble about the chow lately—the papers haven’t got hold of it, thank God. Taking Milburn out of the mess-hall set off a little racket. Nothing serious, a little rattling of cups and silverware. It quieted down after we grabbed a few of the ringleaders, guys we’ve had our eye on for quite some time. The point I’m making, I didn’t have time to chaperone Painter. I left him with Milburn, and then I had my hands full. I guess he got what he came for, because when I saw him again he was beaming. He looked like the cat who swallowed—what was it, a canary?

  “You know Painter. He made arrangements for picking up Milburn on his release date, and delivered some uncalled-for remarks about what would happen to me if I discharged the prisoner before Painter arrived to make the arrest. I’ve been in this business a long time, and nothing like that has ever happened, or ever will happen. So Painter’s in trouble, is he?” He smiled broadly. “Well, well. Excuse me. I’m laughing on the outside and crying on the inside.”

  “Painter was beaming,” Shayne said. “What was the prisoner doing?”

  “Hell, Shayne—I don’t have my people long enough so I can tell anything by how they look. And Painter was holding forth. I didn’t give Milburn any serious study.”

  The door opened abruptly. Looking around, Shayne saw the secretary and a uniformed guard. The guard beckoned the warden outside with a quick twist of the head. The warden got up hurriedly. Shayne and Wing were right behind him.

  “Real trouble this time,” the guard said.

  Whirling, he set off at a half run. The others pounded after him. At the end of the corridor, they ran through a barred door that was standing open. At the next barred door the warden flung over his shoulder, “Not you, Shayne. Wait here.”

  Shayne decided that he hadn’t heard him. The warden was in too much of a hurry to stop and make it stick.

  They entered a busy shop. At long benches along one end of the room, a number of men wearing faded blue work clothes, with serial numbers stencilled above their breast pockets, were weaving cane seats for finished chairs. They seemed deeply absorbed in their work, so preoccupied with making the pattern come out right that they didn’t notice the warden’s party. At the lathes and drill-presses, other inmates were turning chair-legs and drilling holes for rungs, with the same seriousness and attention to detail.

  The guard, walking rapidly, led the way between two long rows of busy lathes. There was a pleasant smell of sawdust and wood-chips. None of the prisoners looked around. They were as tense as if they had been shooting craps for large stakes. The guard stopped.

  One of the workers had slumped against his machine. His head rested in a litter of chips and machine-oil. A chair-leg, mounted between centers, continued to revolve at high speed.

  The warden pulled at his shoulder, and he came all the way back, his head rolling. The warden caught him under both arms. The front of his work clothes was soaked with blood, and the handle of one of the turning chisels protruded from his stomach beneath his breastbone. He was alive, but he was breathing harshly and desperately, and Shayne didn’t think he could live much longer.

  Chapter Eleven

  No one had to identify this man for Shayne. The redhead knew it had to be Fred Milburn. He died on the oily floor before the prison doctor could reach him. He was a small, nondescript-appearing man, with a slight build, a thin face and what in life had probably been an unassuming manner. No doubt his manner changed when he had a gun in his hand.

  One of the guards pulled a master switch cutting off the power to the machines. Another ordered the men to come to attention beside their benches. They stood up, one by one, without hurrying. They didn’t look at the guards or the dead man, and in fact didn’t appear to be looking at anything at all. Shayne recognized one or two, but they had pulled back behind an invisible curtain.

  A bell clanged, and the prisoners turned at another command and walked off in single file. The warden frowned when he noticed Shayne.

  “Goddammit, did I give you permission to come in here? This is great, just great. Nobody pays any attention to what I say in this place.”

  The redhead stared down at Milburn, his eyes hooded. After a second he met the warden’s look.

  “Fine. I’ve got other things to do.”

  He started to turn, but the warden made a quick movement. “Oh, no, you don’t. You barged in here and asked to see one of my people, and before the message could get to him, he was stabbed. Now you think you can walk out without answering any questions? And tell your friends on the newspapers what happened? No, sir. It won’t be as easy to get out as it was to get in.”

  Shayne exchanged a look with Lieutenant Wing.

  Wing said, “I’m out of my jurisdiction, Mike. Somebody else is going to be asking the questions.”

  “And you’re going to be answering them, too,” the warden told Shayne. “Believe me! This is no goddam joke.” He took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. “Well, let’s break the news to the sheriff.”

  The dead man was left lying where he was until the sheriff arrived with two carloads of helpers. Shayne was taken back to the waiting room outside the warden’s office. There he finished his pack of cigarettes, listened to the clacking of the secretary’s typewriter, and went back patiently over everything he had been told by Norma Harris and Rose Heminway. The lines on his face were deeply etched.

  The sheriff was a pleasant fat man named Woodrow Wilson Smith, with a politician’s smile which he showed Shayne briefly as he came into the waiting room with the warden and a small crowd
of assistants.

  “Might as well come in, Mike,” he said. “We’re going to be using the warden’s office. I know you don’t want to hang around any longer than you have to.”

  He waved Shayne to the chair he had occupied earlier. He himself took the warden’s chair, and one of the young men with him opened a notebook. The sheriff gave the redhead another friendly smile, apparently not seeing a man but a potential vote.

  “I won’t start firing questions at you, Mike,” he said. “You and I have always got along fine, and I hope we can keep it that way. Why don’t you just tell me in your own words how you happened to want to talk to this fellow Milburn, and then we’ll take it from there.”

  Shayne went over what was now familiar ground, and the young man wrote it down in shorthand. At the end, the sheriff rewarded him with a smile that was even more brilliant than the one he normally wore.

  “I like the way you organize things, Mike,” he said. I wish more people had that gift. A few small points. When Chief Painter was here last week, if Milburn admitted that he and Sam Harris were mixed up in shenanigans up in Alabama the night of the big bank job, well, that’s a terrific piece of news, front-page stuff. Painter’s no recluse, as far as publicity’s concerned. Why didn’t he spring it right away?”

  Shayne spread his hands. “I gave up trying to follow Petey’s reasoning about ten minutes after I met him.”

  “You don’t think there’s a chance he found out something different? Milburn and Harris were friends. Maybe they were working together on the big one. I always did think it was screwy, one man handling something that size. And then the dough.” His smile disappeared and he leaned forward. “Mrs. Sam Harris found Milburn for you. I don’t like to cast reflections on any lady, but it seems to me she might be thinking more about what happened to that good bread than about what’s going to happen to her husband. So this occurred to me when you were talking, Mike. Maybe she wanted you to lean on Milburn a little, so he’d cut her a slice?”

  “There’s nothing to that, Woody,” Shayne said, without showing the irritation he felt. “I wouldn’t be seeing Milburn alone. Joe Wing was going to be with me.”

  He was silent while Sheriff Smith studied him, working his lips in and out. The sheriff said, “Now don’t take offense at this, Mike, because as far as I know now we’re all working the same side of the street. But Joe Wing and myself, we’ve been talking this over, and I think we’re in agreement. We think you’re telling the truth as far as you go. But we both have a sneaking suspicion that you don’t go quite far enough.”

  Shayne looked around at the Beach lieutenant, who said, “A couple of things don’t add up, Mike.”

  The sheriff went on, “The warden here makes a suggestion that’s a little emotional, but it does express one point of view. He thinks we ought to put you in the hole on bread and water and see if we can brainwash you. He doesn’t mean that literally, but I’m vetoing the whole approach. I wouldn’t say that brainwashing Mike Shayne would be one of the easiest jobs in the world. You’re going your own way, regardless, and let’s hope it turns out all right in the end. But I want to say a couple of things.”

  “Only a couple, Sheriff?” Shayne said, his eyes narrowing.

  “Only a couple, and I think Joe will go along with both of them.” He touched his index finger. “The dough. A recovery fee from the insurance company is legitimate loot, and if regular police officers like us aren’t allowed to collect, that’s our hard luck. But don’t try to hold onto more than the legitimate fee, Mike, or we’ll make some real trouble for you. Point two is Painter.

  “You’ve got a grievance there, and I’m not the one to say that it’s not justified. When it was just between the two of you, the rest of us could sit back and enjoy it. But this thing makes a difference. A guy has been killed. If he was actually dumb enough to go robbing with Sam Harris he was due to spend the rest of his natural life in the can. But he was a human being just the same, and somebody murdered him.”

  “I appreciate that,” Shayne said crisply. “What were you going to say about Painter?”

  “Just don’t let your feelings lead you astray. That’s all. You can go now if you want to. We’re going to check back to the Sam Harris defense and get the details on those Alabama stickups. And we’re going to be working on the stabbing. We’ll take these guys one at a time and hammer them. Between you and me I doubt if we get anything, but we’ve got to try it. That’s what we’ll be doing.” He looked at Shayne sleepily. “What will you be doing, Mike?”

  Shayne smiled. “I’ll be making some phone calls.”

  “That’s logical. Who are you going to be making these phone calls to?”

  “My client, for one. After that I’m not sure. But I’ll check in with you or Wing if I find anything.”

  The sheriff started to speak, but he made a disgusted gesture and sat back. “You’d better go now, Mike, before I’m tempted to go back to the warden’s suggestion. Check in promptly. There’s going to be some strong heat on this, and we don’t want to learn about something when we see it in the papers.”

  “You’ll be the first to know,” Shayne said, standing up. He asked Wing, “Where are you going to be, Joe?”

  “Out here, for the time being. I’ll leave word where I go. And I want to second what Woody just said. If Milburn passed any information along to Painter, and it looks as though he did, that makes Painter just as hot. We don’t want to find him with a knife in him.”

  “Let’s look on the bright side,” Shayne said. “Maybe they’ll use a gun.”

  “Now Mike,” Wing said uneasily.

  Shayne’s grin disappeared as he went out through the waiting room. Outside, he stopped on the front steps of the forbidding building, his eyes cold and deadly. This made twice. His unknown adversary had failed with Rose Heminway and succeeded with Milburn. Shayne promised himself that there wouldn’t be a third time.

  He drove carefully, making sure that nobody assigned to him by Sheriff Smith was on his tail. Coming into downtown Miami, he found a parking place, ate a hasty sandwich at a drugstore, bought cigarettes, changed a dollar into dimes and shut himself up in an outdoor phone booth. He tried Rose Heminway’s number first. There was no answer. He dialed the other number she had given him—the nursing home. He asked if Mrs. Heminway was there visiting her father.

  “I think I saw her come in, sir,” a pleasant voice told him. “I’ll ring the floor nurse.”

  He repeated his question to another voice—less pleasant, as nurse’s voices are likely to be—and a moment later Rose was on the line.

  “Mike! I didn’t want to leave the house before you called, but Father gets nervous if I’m not on time.”

  “How is he?”

  “Just the same. But one of these days I know he’s going to say hello when I walk in. He keeps trying.”

  “Is there a place there where we can talk?” Shayne said. “I want to go over a few things.”

  “I’m sure we can find a place, Mike. If there’s anybody in the waiting room we can go outside.”

  Shayne told her to expect him in half an hour. He spilled a handful of dimes on the shelf, opened a little black book and began to dial. The day bartender of a Miami Beach bar answered. Shayne gave his name and asked several questions. He hung up and tried another number. In the next ten minutes, he used up his dimes and went back into the drugstore to change another dollar.

  In Shayne’s early years as a detective, when he could work on several cases at once, getting up early, driving hard all day, never going to bed till the bars were closed, he had picked up a wide acquaintance in that twilight world where people live by their brains and their connections, working desperately hard at not working in the ordinary daytime sense. Gamblers, promoters, finders, ten-percenters, they looked on a nine-to-five job with as much distaste as a stretch in jail. The two things they had in common was that they needed money and they kept up with the news that doesn’t get in the newspapers. They spe
nt most of their waking hours in public places, their ears open.

  Many were still friends of Shayne, though he no longer saw much of them since he started spending evenings with Lucy Hamilton, and many owed him small favors. He had no power or control over them, as cops usually have over their stool pigeons, and there were only two reasons why they gave him information—they liked him, and if it was useful to him he paid well for it.

  His fifteenth or sixteenth call was to a man named Kinky Kincaid, a stag-party talent agent. The ringing of the phone interrupted Kinky’s afternoon nap in a three-dollar-a-day hotel. He had trouble understanding who was on the line.

  “Spain?” he said blurrily. “Shayne. Mike, how are you, boy? If this is a business call, I hope I can help you because I’d like to get my wrist-watch out of hock. What time is it, anyway?”

  Shayne told him. He said more alertly, “You want to know about Painter?”

  “Damn right,” Shayne said, surprised. “Do you have anything?”

  “I’m so broke these days I can’t even buy my own paper, but I read about it over somebody’s shoulder and I said to myself, ‘Uh-oh.’”

  “Why did you say that, Kinky?” Shayne said patiently.

  “Wait till I get a cigarette. I’m hung-over from here all the way to Key West. Where are you, Mike? Maybe you could give me a piggy-back ride to the neighborhood saloon and buy me some medicine.”

  “Sorry, Kinky. I’ve got a date at the other end of town. I have to do this by phone. Get your cigarette.”

  A moment later Kincaid’s voice continued, “That’s better. It’s still not good. You’re really interested in what happened to the bum? I didn’t think you cared.”

  “I’m on a case,” Shayne said briefly. “It seems they’re connected.”

  “He never gave me no personal trouble, but when a cop gets in a jam it gives me a warm feeling inside, like I just had my first shot of the day, you know how it is, Mike?”