A smooth smile of satisfaction was widening on his face. Smooth, florid, well-barbered, nattily dressed, he had the same wise look as Louis Layre.
The blonde who sat beside him looked like a Broadway chorus girl. And probably had been one.
Lucille Palmer was not smiling. Her makeup emphasized a sudden pallor. I watched her. The fifth race didn’t mean anything to her.
I caught her digging fingernails into the palm of her hand. While the pooches were running, she watched that third row ahead, where the blonde and her escort were seated.
Once the man looked around at us. He’d noted where our seats were.
Rasputin, my hound, chased the rabbit in first for a change. The band began to play; the crowd surged from the seats again. Lucille moistened her lips.
“I—I’ve got to make a telephone call, Michael. Don’t bother to come.”
“It will be a pleasure,” I gave her primly.
I thought she was going to refuse. “Come along, then,” she said abruptly.
The closed door of the telephone booth cut off her words. But through the glass she looked nervous, excited. As a matter of fact, she looked frightened.
“Lousy bunch of hounds here tonight.”
He’d come down out of the grandstand without his blonde. He was smiling affably. “Cigarette?” he asked, opening a flat case.
* * *
—
I had to think fast to remember the Bon Ton glove counter and Cousin Jeffry. “Why—why, do I know you, sir?”
“Huh—what’s that?” He gave a quick, narrow-lidded look. “I get it,” he said, half to himself. Then he chuckled. “I know your lady friend, so it’s all right, friend. The name is Cushman. Bernard Cushman. What’d you say your name was?”
“Harris, sir. Mr. Michael Harris.”
“Well, well—it’s a pleasure, Mr. Harris. And here’s the little lady herself.”
The little lady was edging out of the telephone booth with her hand in her purse. If she didn’t have her hand on a gun, I was nobody’s business. All color had left her face. The rouge stood out. She was tense, like a cat coming out of a corner ready to fight.
Cushman ignored it with a bland smile. One hand out to shake hands, and the other holding the cigarette case, he said: “You’re the last kid I was lookin’ for down here. Lots of surprises, eh? Haven’t changed your name, have you—gotten married, or anything like that?”
“I’m still Lucille Palmer, Bernie.” She had a dangerous note of warning. I wondered what her name had been when they knew each other before.
Cushman chuckled.
“Never mind introducing me, Lucille. I’ve met Mr. Harris already.”
“So I see.” Lucille closed her purse with a snap. Her voice had a snap, too. Color was coming back into her cheeks. Her fear was giving away to suppressed fury.
Cushman ignored that, too. He had a bland, smooth manner. “Where you staying?” he questioned.
“Does it matter? I won’t be seeing you while I’m here. I’m—busy.”
Cushman chuckled again. “First time I’ve ever seen you too ritzy to pass up old friends. Say—I’ve got a sweet idea. You an’ your friend join us. We’re due at a live party in a while.”
“No, thanks!”
Cushman urged: “You know the fellow—Jack Wetzlaff. He’s got a yacht he won in a deal a few months ago. Just brought it down from New York, and he’s throwing a party on board tonight.”
“Steady, Mike,” says I to myself.
I was suddenly all ears. Wetzlaff was in the New York rackets—high up. He’d made plenty; was still making it. The devil only knew what kind of a deal had given him a yacht. Some poor lad had been squeezed hard.
Lucille’s anger abruptly vanished. “A yacht?”
“It’ll knock your eyes out.”
“I didn’t know you were running around with Jack Wetzlaff.”
“We’re like that.” Cushman crossed his fingers.
And I horned in. This was a chance to take. Crooks aren’t smart. Pour a few drinks into one when he thinks the company is “right,” and his tongue usually wags.
“A party on a yacht would be fun,” says I, hesitatingly.
“I doubt it,” Lucille came back positively. “I think you’d better take me back to the hotel, Michael. I’m getting a headache.”
Cushman grinned. “Let’s take Lucille back to her hotel, and then you come on to the party with us, Mr. Harris. There’ll be an extra girl for you if you want one.”
Lucille scorched him with a look. I visibly weakened. She forced a smile.
“If Michael goes, I’ll take an aspirin and go, too. Someone might start a poker game. I don’t think Michael’s poker is good enough.”
I felt like a tasty morsel of meat they were bristling over. It didn’t matter. Maybe Lucille would talk, too, after a few drinks.
So we went to the party, taking my bodyguards.
CHAPTER IV
A Toast to Treachery
The yacht was tied alongside the causeway, with the fairy-like blaze of lights along the Biscayne Boulevard waterfront gleaming across the water to the west. The fainter lights of Miami Beach showed at the other end of the causeway to the east.
Jack Wetzlaff’s yacht had cost someone big money. Windows and portholes were gleaming with light when we went aboard. The party was already high.
I told my men to wait outside—and went in as nervous as a hen with pups. Someone on board might know me. The lid would come off then.
Five minutes later, no one in the mob cared whether I was Dinty Moore or the Emperor of Africa.
There was a good sprinkling of dinner jackets and evening gowns, including Lucille and myself. A smart dick from Centre Street probably could have identified sixty percent of them.
Wetzlaff looked better than his rogue’s gallery photograph. He was a short, stocky man, with a blue-black jaw, a pointed nose, ears flat to his head, and patent-leather black hair parted smoothly at the side. A big diamond glinted on his right hand. His face was flushed and he was bawling the words to the song as he hauled a droopy-lidded brunette around in a bad tango.
They’d cleared the saloon floor and were dancing to phonograph music. White-coated stewards were rushing drinks. To give the devil his due, the girls were all lookers. The men were in the money. Your crook is a picker when his bankroll can stand the tariff.
Bernie Cushman’s blonde—there was something familiar about Cushman—called herself Verna Shane. She was nice to me. Cushman’s orders, I guess.
Wetzlaff spotted us, ditched his girl, came over to greet us. You could tell he and Cushman were thick. Lucille Palmer got the welcome of an old friend. She looked nervous, on edge. She introduced me reluctantly.
“Mr. Wetzlaff—Mr. Harris.”
Cushman chuckled and said: “Jack is in Wall Street, Mr. Harris. You might remember him when you’re investing money.”
Wetzlaff had probably never gotten below Houston Street. He would have been pinched around Broad and Wall. I couldn’t resist a crack as I took his moist hand, which, surprisingly, was powerful. I remembered then that Wetzlaff had once been a stevedore.
“I’ll remember Mr. Wetzlaff when I need a broker. Everybody’s going into Wall Street now, aren’t they?” I cracked.
Wetzlaff gave me a quick look. Somebody must have given him the high sign. His face cleared into a welcome smile.
“I’ll be on tap for your extra money, Mr. Harris. You won’t even have to look me up. I’ll get in touch with you.”
They seemed to think that was funny—all but Lucille. She said, with a warning edge: “I’ll let you know when Michael needs you.”
Grinning, Wetzlaff said, “How about a drink?” He looked around, snapped his fingers. A white-c
oated steward swerved over to us with a tray of glasses—and we were launched in the party in a tide of liquor.
Wetzlaff took Lucille’s arm and led her aside. Cushman left his blonde with me. She’d have nothing but a dance.
Maybe it was the liquor—maybe the memory of Trixie and Louis Layre that made me willing enough. But while we danced my mind was working.
Why, I asked myself, had Lucille been so upset when she saw Bernie Cushman? Whom had she telephoned so quickly? Layre, her lawyer? And why had she come out of that telephone booth with her hand in her purse, as if she were expecting a gun? And why, after hearing that Cushman was friends with Jack Wetzlaff, had her guard come down a little?
I couldn’t spot a hook-up between all that and Colonel Wedgewood.
Bradley had said Lucille and her lawyer were in Miami Beach alone. They seemed to be putting the screws on Colonel Wedgewood by themselves, with only a two-way split to the money.
But you couldn’t tell. Show me a smart woman of the underworld, and usually I’ll show you a crook or two behind her. Sometimes more. The molls simply don’t work much alone.
Vera was perspiring when we finished the dance. She wanted air. We went out on deck….
* * *
—
My two huskies were standing at the rail, puffing cigarettes. Near them a slim young man in a dinner jacket was staring at the automobile headlights moving along the causeway, between Miami and Miami Beach.
Gus Wayland, the big fellow with the flat nose, the long arms, and the trusting brown eyes of a good-natured spaniel, touched my arm as I passed.
“Can you talk to me a minute, Boss?” he asked hoarsely.
“In just a moment.”
The blonde giggled as I parked her at the rail. “Honestly,” she said, “that army you drag around paralyzes me, Mr. Harris. What good are they?”
“They’re my bodyguard. Suppose someone tried to kidnap me?”
She giggled again. “Get wise, Mike. Do you really think those two gorillas would be any good if some smart boys decided to take you?”
“Why—why, the agency guaranteed them, Miss Shane!”
She eyed me in the moonlight, and shook her head sadly. “I wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t hear it right here,” she stated. “I didn’t think there was one left.”
“I—I don’t understand, Miss Shane.”
“You wouldn’t.” She became scornfully candid for a moment. “Listen, they’d chase those gorillas up the first alley so fast the hams wouldn’t know what happened. Somebody sold you a pair of cranberries. Why, that guy there at the rail—” She broke off.
The young man she mentioned was ignoring us.
“Yes?” I prompted.
She shrugged. “Nothing. I’m gettin’ gabby like I always do when I hoist a few. Go on and talk with your nursemaid. He’s got the fidgets. I guess he’s gotta earn his money some way.”
Big Gus led me down the deck out of earshot. He ducked his head, so his whisper reached my ear alone. “Listen, Boss!” he husked. “It ain’t none of my business. I’m gettin’ my dough for taggin’ you around an’ takin’ orders. But I don’t like the looks of this gang you muscled into.”
“I don’t see anything wrong.”
“That’s what’s worryin’ Joe an’ me. Joe says, ‘I’ll bet Mr. Harris ain’t wise to these eggs. Maybe we better slip it to him straight.’ ”
“Go on,” I said. “Tell me about it.”
In the moonlight Gus looked at me doubtfully. “Sometimes,” he sighed, “you sound all right, Boss. An’ sometimes I ain’t so sure. Anyway, if you need bodyguards, this ain’t no place for you to be. Joe an’ I been lookin’ this crowd over. They’re mugs.”
“What makes you think they’re bad for me?”
“Lissen, that guy back there at the rail is watchin’ Joe an’ me. He’s packin’ a rod under his arm. Maybe it’s all right—but what’s he watchin’ us for?”
“Thanks,” I said. “Keep your mouth buttoned and your eyes open.”
My blonde was ready to go in. Lucille Palmer met us inside. “Thanks for giving so much attention to my friend,” she said in a voice that would have cut metal.
The blonde smiled sweetly as she left. “Anything for you, dearie.”
“That girl will make me mad someday,” Lucille said ominously.
“She was nice to me,” says I timidly.
“She would be,” says Lucille through her teeth. “Here, have a drink.”
A steward was there with two glasses on his tray. Lucille handed me one, took the other as if she needed it. “Here’s to—us,” she said, smiling over the rim.
* * *
—
I drank to that. She was all I wanted—as long as she had Colonel Wedgewood’s letters. And I wondered if she’d start talking after a few more drinks—
I was still wondering about it when I woke up, coughing and choking.
The biting fumes of ammonia were in my nose and throat. A light was glaring in my eyes. I was lying on a bed with my clothes on. The stocky figure of Jack Wetzlaff was bending over me, holding a handkerchief to my nostrils.
I pushed his hand away and sat up, gasping for breath. Cold, weak, and sick, I saw at once I wasn’t aboard the boat. The room was too big. It didn’t look like a hotel room either.
“What’s the idea?” I gasped, putting my feet over the edge of the bed and rubbing my bleary eyes.
Wetzlaff’s smile was not too pleasant. “Got a head on you, hunh? No wonder, after all those drinks you put down. Your pulse was going ragged, so I thought we’d better wake you up. You can go back to sleep now.”
I looked at my wrist watch. It was a quarter to four. “Where am I?” I groaned.
“In my house,” Wetzlaff told me. “You’re all right. Go on back to sleep.”
But I persisted. “What am I doing in your house and where’s Miss Palmer?”
“She went home.”
“Where’s my bodyguards?”
“They went home, too.”
“Why didn’t I go with them?”
Wetzlaff grinned—and it looked nasty.
“You stayed with the party. Nobody could stop you. I never seen anyone hoist the booze like you did.”
I could remember that drink Lucille Palmer had handed me. After that there was some vague talk through the noise and music. I’d sat down, feeling sleepy—
But there’d been no wild drinking. I don’t do it. Wetzlaff was lying.
One drink had done it. That meant knockout drops. Had Lucille done that?
Wetzlaff’s mention of my weak pulse hinted at part of the truth. I’d been given too strong a dose. My condition had become alarming; he’d worked on me and brought me around.
I wasn’t having any more sleep. Sick and weary as I was, and still dopey, I knew this was no place for Mike Harris. If I’d been given knockout drops, there was a reason.
“I think I’ll go back to the hotel,” I said, standing up giddily.
“It’s too late,” Wetzlaff said curtly. “Go on back to sleep. You’re all right.”
I started toward the door. “I’ll go back to the hotel,” I insisted. “Sorry to have bothered you this way.”
I saw it coming—but I couldn’t dodge. He hit me on the cheek and knocked me back across the bed.
“All right—you want it, an’ you’ll get it!” I heard him snarl as I bounced on the mattress. “An’ for much more, I’ll take a rod an’ put the heat on you myself, you lousy dick!”
CHAPTER V
Moonlight Flight
Wetzlaff’s words hit me harder than his fist. I’d fumbled the job. They knew who I was. That explained the doped drink, the watch which had been put on my bodyguards.
I
was almost sick enough to lie there and take it. But I was too mad. I’d spent Colonel Wedgewood’s money like a drunken sailor. I’d put on an asinine act that had even made Trixie Meehan razz me. And all the while I’d only been making a fool out of myself.
Wetzlaff’s lower lip was shoved out in a snarl as he bent over the bed. “Had enough, rat?” he grated. “Or do you have to get the works before you get the idea?”
I was on my side, half doubled up. My left leg was crooked. I kicked him in the stomach as he finished.
He doubled up with a loud grunt, and hurtled back across the room into the wall. When I came off the bed he was bent over, face livid, muscles paralyzed, breath gone for the moment.
I’d have tackled him—but I already knew how strong he was. His right hand was fumbling under his coat. The moment he caught his breath and got the gun, he’d have me.
I got through the doorway just in time. His gun roared behind me. I didn’t look around to see where the bullet hit.
I seemed to be in an upstairs hall. Ahead was a flight of stairs going down. Further along the hall, Cushman’s blonde was just stepping out of a doorway in a peach silk negligee.
She screamed as the gun went off; screamed again as I dove for the stairs….
The winding flight of steps was only a blur. So was the lighted hall below. Just before I reached the bottom, a man wearing a dinner jacket and holding a liquor glass in his left hand stepped out of a doorway at the right, directly into my path. Vaguely I remembered having seen him on the yacht—
That was all I remembered. He hurled the glass. It splattered the front of my coat—and I was on him an instant later.
His fist hit my shoulder. Then I smashed him on the jaw with my flying weight behind the blow. We crashed to the floor together and brought up with a slam against the front door.
He was out like a bundle of old clothes. My hand felt as if it were broken. In the next room women were crying out, men were shouting, as I staggered up and yanked on the door.
Wetzlaff’s yell of warning came down the steps as I left the house. “Stop him!” Then I slammed the door behind me so hard the glass shattered.
The Big Book of Female Detectives Page 40