Fit to Kill

by Brett Halliday

  “What’s the tune you’re whistling, Mike?” she said in a low, intimate voice.

  “I’ll give you a hint,” Shayne said. “It has something to do with diamonds.”

  He swung in onto the approach to the big hotel, following the signs that pointed to the parking lot. There he turned the sedan over to an attendant, accepted a check, and hurried Carla along the palm-lined walk. He had her firmly by the elbow. She protested and tried to free herself, but he maintained a firm grip.

  Releasing her briefly, he put her into a section of the great revolving door, but took her elbow again just inside.

  The lobby spread out almost indefinitely beneath a high golden dome. At the far end, wide golden steps went up to a sort of mezzanine, where drinks could be purchased at a high price. This section probably went by some such name as the Peacock Lounge, but Shayne did his drinking in less pretentious bars, and this was unfamiliar country.

  As was usual at this season, the St. Albans was host to a convention, this one a gathering of used-car salesmen. All the available open space was crowded with convivial middle-aged men, representatives of a profession notorious for its flamboyance and lack of restraint. Few were entirely sober. Most of the other guests were elderly, having reached the age when they could afford to pick up a thirty-dollar-a-day tab. They didn’t seem to be having a very good time.

  “You’re hurting me,” Carla complained. “Or is that your object?”

  “Sorry,” Shayne said. “Take my arm, if you want to do it that way. But no funny business.”

  “Why, Michael,” she said merrily. “What could we do in a crowd like this?”

  She rested her fingers lightly on his arm. The used-car delegates, with their enormous button-hole badges, swung around to goggle at her.

  And then Shayne saw Quesada.

  The professor stood beside an abstract sculpture, facing the bank of elevators in his old-fashioned but elegant suit. He was smoking a cigarette in a long filter holder. He had placed himself with care, in the most conspicuous spot in the entire lobby—on a broad landing, five steps above the lower level, all alone beside the strangely-shaped sculpture. There was a theatrical element in the studied manner with which he raised his cigarette, drew on it gravely, and flicked away the ash.

  Carla’s fingers tightened on Shayne’s arm. “There’s Professor Quesada.”

  “I see him.”

  He also saw Tomas, the youth who could hit like a power hammer. He was lounging not far from the professor, with one thumb hooked into his waistband. Shayne’s eye roamed through the crowd, looking for other faces he knew.

  “It looks posed,” Carla said, in a worried voice. “As though he’s trying to draw attention.”

  “If I’m right,” Shayne said, “and he’s here to take delivery of the diamonds, he wants to be out in the open where everyone can see him. People have got killed for less than three hundred thousand bucks.”

  Carla shivered. “But the way he’s standing—it scares me, Mike. He’s like a target, with a red heart sewed to his chest.”

  Suddenly, as they moved through the crowd, Harry Mann appeared in front of them. Mann had always cultivated an easy-going manner, as though nothing could worry him; it had been a part of his style. But now he was tense and taut, strung up to the snapping point. There were new lines in his face, lines of strain.

  Sammy loomed up behind him. It was clear that the broken-nosed hoodlum had been in a fight, but the redhead had marked him less than he had hoped.

  “You bastard, Shayne,” Mann said grimly, “will you butt your nose out of this?”

  “Out of what?” the detective said innocently. “Has there been a change of ownership here? Do you own this hotel?”

  “I’m not in a kidding mood, punk,” the gambler snapped. “Back up or you’ll get hurt.”

  “Who’s going to hurt me? You or your boy?”

  Mann’s sallow face shone with sweat. “I swear I’ll kill you, Shayne. I swear it, by the Mother of God. Get it through your thick Irish head that I mean it.”

  “But why take it so hard?” Shayne asked him reasonably. “You used to be able to roll with the punch, Harry. What did they do to you up at Atlanta?”

  “They took away my marbles before I got to Atlanta. The lawyers cleaned me. This is important to me, Shayne. It’s going to make all the difference.” His upper lip came back in a snarl. “Take care of this tough shamus, Sammy. He doesn’t carry a gun. He’s famous for it.”

  Sammy’s right hand was hovering in front of his jacket opening. He stepped around Mann, his expression sleepy and relaxed.

  Carla’s fingernails dug into Shayne’s arm. “Mike, I’m—”

  Shayne shifted his balance forward to the balls of his feet. He shook off her hand, seeing a dull metallic glint as Mann took his right fist from his coat pocket. The gambler had slipped on three-finger stainless steel knuckles.

  Shayne hesitated. If he made a disturbance in the middle of the lobby, whoever had the diamonds would be frightened off. Shayne wanted one thing more than anything else—to bring the diamonds out in the open.

  He took a backward step.

  Mann’s sneer broadened. “That’s right, Shayne. Being tough is fine, but there are times when it’s better to be smart.”

  “Don’t get excited,” the redhead told him.

  Mann put his right fist back into his coat pocket. “Take care of it, Sammy,” he said, in his old careless manner. “Run him all the way out. Stick with him and see that he makes no trouble.”

  Shayne heard Sammy’s voice for the first time. It was surprisingly high-pitched.

  “How about the doll, Harry?”

  “Be polite to dolls,” Mann said. “Hit her if you have to, but do it politely.”

  Shayne began to move back toward the front entrance. Carla had taken his arm again in both hands, squeezing it tightly. Sammy was right behind them. The detective hoped he would have the sense not to hustle him.

  “I don’t like private dicks,” Sammy said, making conversation. “Cops I can take, but a private guy like you, them I don’t like. I owe you something, Shayne.”

  “I’ll give you a chance to pay it back,” Shayne said lightly.

  He had no intention of leaving the hotel until the diamonds had changed hands. To the right of the entrance he saw several doors labelled Private, beyond the travel counter, which was semi-circular in shape and jutted out from the wall.

  Coming abreast of the counter, he whirled suddenly. He had a fleeting impression that Carla had tried to hold him, but he was moving too fast. He seized Sammy’s thick waist with one arm while his other hand fastened on Sammy’s elbow. His thumb probed for the nerve.

  Sammy’s face contorted with pain. Shayne turned him easily and walked him to the wall, where the curving counter screened them from the lobby.

  “Stand still and I won’t hurt you,” Shayne advised him.

  Sammy twisted, bringing up his elbow in an attempt to break Shayne’s grip, but the redhead dug his thumb in and kept him under control.

  “I want to see this,” he said. “I know it’s important to Harry, but it’s important to me too.”

  “Mike!” Carla cried. “Something’s happened to Professor Quesada!”

  The redhead looked away from Sammy the same instant the girl cried out. Subconsciously he had probably heard the shot. The clerk behind the travel counter moved aside, and Shayne saw Quesada just as the jaunty little professor reached out and seized the base of the statue.

  For a moment he clung to the sculpture, holding the base hard with both arms. His hat had fallen off, and Shayne could see his gray hair, still neatly parted. Then his legs crumpled. He slipped very slowly to the floor.

  CHAPTER 18

  Shayne let go of Sammy’s elbow.

  “You think you can get away from me, do you?” Sammy screamed in his falsetto voice.

  Bringing out his gun in a swift motion, he chopped the barrel at the detective’s head.


  The sharp sight raked Shayne’s neck. The redhead spun around and put everything he had into a looping right to the point of the jaw. Sammy’s mouth sagged open, but he uttered no sound. The gun slipped from his grasp and banged on the floor. Shayne sent a crisp left upper cut after the right. It broke just where he wanted it. Sammy followed his gun, pitching forward head first.

  Shayne raced across the lobby, thrusting people out of his way with both arms. He took the steps two at a time.

  Professor Quesada lay on his side, gasping heavily. There were flecks of blood on his lips. Shayne raised him, finding the slight little body amazingly fragile. He saw the little hole burned through the white checked waistcoat. The hole was on the left side of the chest, a bad one. Shayne’s hand, against the professor’s back, was wet.

  “I—” Quesada said with a queer smile.

  There was a faint chance, if the bullet had only grazed the heart, that Quesada might live to say more than that, but just as the hope came to Shayne, the little man died in his arms. A final frothy bubble formed and broke on the pale lips.

  A little circle of silence had opened around the dead man and the curved abstract sculpture. A woman in an evening gown, with blue hair, faltered and sheered off. A heavily-built man in casual tweeds was approaching at a half-run. He reached the detective.

  “What’s the matter with him?” he demanded. “Heart attack?”

  “Yeh,” Shayne grunted, and straightened with the dead man in his arms. “With a gun. You’re security, right? Pick up his hat.”

  The hotel detective stooped for the dapper gray hat, and preceded Shayne to one of the doors marked Private, beyond the travel desk. The used-car salesmen melted discreetly out of their way. Shayne noted grimly that all his new acquaintances except Professor Quesada had disappeared: Carla, Tomas, Harry Mann and Sammy.

  He carried the almost weightless body sideways through the door. The outer office was empty. He went on into the main office. A man wearing a carnation stood up behind a big desk.

  “What happened, George?” he said quietly.

  “Looks like a homicide, Mr. Fine,” the heavy-set detective replied. “And right in the middle of the goddam lobby.”

  “Homicide! Is there any way we can—”

  “No, I’m afraid not. It’s for the cops.”

  Mr. Fine picked up a phone unhappily. As Shayne dropped the professor onto a leather couch he heard the official asking the switchboard to notify the police.

  “I’m Michael Shayne,” he said, wiping blood from his hands with a handkerchief. “When Painter gets here, tell him to look for me in the lobby.”

  “I wish it had happened somewhere else,” Mr. Fine said.

  Shayne went back to the lobby, holding the handkerchief to his neck where it had been gashed by Sammy’s pistol. Everything seemed to be normal. New guests were registering. The used-car salesmen were arguing drunkenly, and one group was gathered around a decorative young lady who obviously wasn’t married to any one of them.

  Shayne went to the abstract sculpture. On the carpet, a cigarette still smoldered in a long holder, where it had been dropped as the professor felt the bullet sting his chest. Shayne stepped on the cigarette but left the holder where it was, at the edge of a dark stain.

  When Shayne had seen Quesada, he had been facing the bank of elevators. The bloody place on his back had been directly behind the wound, to the left of the spine, which would indicate that he had faced his assailant squarely. But that meant little, for he could have turned before the shot was fired, as a result of a call or a signal. The detective pulled at his ear-lobe, trying to connect this with any of the things that had gone before. The poor old man had been set up for it. That, at least, was plain.

  Shayne heard the sirens.

  Two detectives in business suits were the first through the revolving door. After them came Peter Painter, rubbing his hands briskly. He was well-dressed and jaunty, like Professor Quesada, and they were approximately the same build. But there the resemblance ended. Painter, Chief of Detectives on Miami Beach, was much impressed with his own importance. He was pompous, quick to anger, a martinet with inferiors and a little too humble before anyone with wealth and position. And he had a strong and irrational prejudice against private detectives, which made life difficult for Shayne on this side of the bay.

  Angry lights sprang up in his eyes as he saw Shayne. His black hair-line mustache quirked upward.

  “That’s right,” Shayne said wearily before Painter could speak. “I picked him off the floor. He bled all over me, and I’m as sorry about it as you are.”

  “Frisk him,” Painter snapped.

  Shayne patiently held his hands out from his sides. “At my age it’s too late to start murdering people, Petey. You ought to know that.”

  One of the plainclothes detectives, a man named Brennan, murmured, “Sorry, Mike,” and patted him lightly.

  He picked Rourke’s .25 automatic out of the redhead’s side pocket. Painter shot his head forward eagerly as the detective sniffed the muzzle.

  “It’s been fired,” Brennan said. “Not so long ago.”

  “But before you put the cuffs on me,” Shayne suggested, “you’d better look at the hole in the guy’s chest and see if a .25 made it. He’s in here.”

  Painter frowned and went into the manager’s office. Shayne followed, flanked on both sides by detectives. In the inner office, Painter was looking down at the dead man. He twitched the waistcoat open to look at the wound.

  “Okay, Doc,” he told the police surgeon. “Look him over.”

  He swung around on Shayne, rocking slightly. “So you admit you picked him up, do you? You’ve had enough experience to know that you leave a body where it is until the police arrive. Are you drunk?”

  Shayne pushed his fists deep into his pockets, fighting the anger that always assailed him in the presence of this little man.

  “No, I’m not drunk. And he wasn’t dead when I picked him up. I can give you the exact position of the body. I couldn’t see any reason to leave him out there in the middle of a convention, so you’d have a bigger audience. I’ll tell you what I know, but don’t push me. We’ll get it over with a lot faster.”

  Painter sniffed angrily. “Oh, yes, you’ll tell me what you know! You’ll tell me exactly what suits you, and no more—as usual.”

  Shayne suppressed a grin. “Why, Petey, you know that’s not true.”

  “Of course it’s true,” Painter snapped. “Otherwise we’d solve your cases for you, and how’d you make a living?” He turned to the manager, Mr. Fine. “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know,” Mr. Fine said. “How about it, George?”

  The hotel detective said, “Search me. Maybe Shayne—”

  “All right,” Painter said with resignation, turning back to the redhead. “It seems I’ll have to ask you the questions. Give.”

  “He introduced himself as Professor Quesada, of the University,” Shayne said. “He’s unofficial head of a movement to overthrow the government of his native country. There’s an address for a Professor Quesada in the phone book, in Coral Gables. You can probably find people there who can identify him better than I can.”

  “What’s your interest in this, Shayne? Was he a client?”

  The detective replied truthfully, “I’ve had no clients since five o’clock this afternoon. You can check that with Miss Hamilton.”

  “What about the .25?”

  “That belongs to Tim Rourke. It went off by accident. Nobody got hurt, but I thought I’d better take charge of it.”

  Painter gave the rangy detective a searching look, then turned abruptly.

  “Come with me, Shayne. I want to see exactly where the man was standing when he got it.”

  Shayne took the detective chief to where the St. Albans carpet was stained with Quesada’s blood. Painter shot a startled look at the abstract sculpture, then listened carefully while Shayne described what he had seen. The detective chief was short on imagi
nation and fast to jump at conclusions, but he was a professional. He saw to it that the necessary machinery was put in motion. Detectives began to circulate through the crowd, trying to find someone who had seen the murder.

  Reporters and photographers were beginning to arrive. Painter strode through them brusquely, ignoring their questions. The police surgeon put his last piece of equipment away, and snapped his bag.

  “Well?” Painter said.

  “Death by gunshot,” the surgeon replied in a bored drawl. “Nicked the heart, and he didn’t live more than a few seconds. A .38 or heavier.”

  “From how far away?” Painter asked.

  “Judging from the size of the wound at egress, inside of thirty feet.”

  “All right, take him away,” Painter said, rubbing his hands. “We can get our positive identification at the morgue. Notify the switchboard and I’ll take incoming calls on this phone,” he told one of his men, and sat down at the big desk.

  He told another detective, “See if you can find an address for Quesada. That’s what, Q-U-E?” he asked Shayne.

  The redhead spelled it for him.

  “Check the house,” Painter said. “I want to see everybody you find there.”

  He shot his cuffs and snapped his fingers at another detective, who sat down at the end of the desk and produced a notebook and pencil.

  “Now, Mister Shayne,” Painter said pleasantly. “If you please.”

  He pointed to a facing chair, but to annoy him, the redhead merely lowered one hip to the corner of the desk. His mind was racing. He was trying to think how much he could tell Painter, and still have a chance of recovering the diamonds. Not very much, he decided. He had to do some fancy stalling until he could talk to Tim.

  “Remember Harry Mann?” he said quickly, before the detective chief could ask him again what he was doing at the St. Albans at the moment Quesada was shot. “He used to run the tables at a couple of joints on Ocean Drive. That’s right in your bailiwick, though it’s true that it took the feds to put him away. He just got out of the can, and he’s back in town. I asked him a few very ordinary questions, and one of his boys slugged me, as you can see from my face. Harry—”