by Unknown
Timothy Rourke wasn’t at the bar and he wasn’t in any of the booths. Shayne frowned and turned impatiently toward the swinging doors.
A voice called, “Mr. Shayne?” when he reached the third booth from the end.
He stopped and looked down at the girl alone in the booth. She was about twenty, smartly dressed, with coppery hair parted in the middle and lying in smooth waves on either side of her head. She didn’t wear any make-up and her small face had a pinched look. Her eyes were brown and shone with alert intelligence. Her left hand clasped a glass half-filled with dead beer as she smiled at Shayne.
The Miami detective took off his hat and stood flat-footed looking down at her. Lights above the bar behind him cast shadows on his gaunt cheeks. He lifted his left eyebrow and asked: “Do I know you?”
“You’re going to.” The girl tilted her head sideways and looked wistful. “I’ll buy a drink.”
“Why didn’t you say so?” Shayne slid into the bench opposite her.
A waiter hurried over and the girl said, “Cognac,” happily, watching Shayne for approval.
The detective said: “Make it into a sidecar, Joe.” The waiter nodded and went away.
“But Tim said cognac was your password,” the girl protested. “That you never drank anything else.”
“Tim?” Shayne arched a bushy red brow.
“Tim Rourke. He thought you might tell me about some of your cases. I do feature stuff for a New York syndicate. Tim couldn’t make it tonight. He’s been promising to introduce me to you, so I came on to meet you here instead. I’m Myrna Hastings.”
Shayne said bitterly: “When you order cognac these days you get lousy grape brandy. California ’44. It’s drinkable mixed into a sidecar. This damned war …”
“It’s a shame your drinking habits have been upset by the war. Tragic, in fact.” Myrna Hastings took a sip of her flat beer and made a little grimace.
Shayne lit a cigarette and tossed the pack on the table between them. Joe brought his sidecar and he watched Myrna take a dollar bill from her purse and lay it on the table. Shayne lifted the slender cocktail glass to his lips and said: “Thanks.” He drank half of the mixture and his gray eyes became speculative. Holding it close to his nose, he inhaled deeply and a frown rumpled his forehead.
Joe was standing at the table when Shayne drained his glass. “I’ve changed my mind, Joe. Bring me a straight cognac—a double shot in a beer glass.”
Joe grinned slyly and went away.
Sixty cents in change from Myrna’s dollar bill lay on the table. She poked at the silver and asked dubiously: “Will that be enough for a double shot?”
“It’ll be eighty cents,” Shayne replied.
She smiled and took a quarter from her purse. “Tim says you’ve always avoided publicity, but it’ll be a wonderful break for me if I can write up a few of your best cases.”
The waiter brought a beer glass with two ounces of amber fluid in the bottom, took Myrna Hastings’ eighty-five cents, and went away.
Shayne lifted the beer glass to his nose, closed his eyes and breathed deeply of the bouquet, then began to warm the glass with his hands.
“Tim thinks you should let yourself in on some publicity,” the girl continued. “He thinks it’s a shame you don’t ever take the credit for solving so many tough cases.”
Shayne looked at her for an instant, then slowly emptied his glass and set it down. He picked up his cigarettes and hat and said: “Thanks for the drinks. I never give out any stories. Tim Rourke knows that.”
He got up and strode to the rear end of the bar. Joe sidled down to him and Shayne said: “I could use another shot of that stuff. And I’ll pour my own.”
Joe got a clean beer glass and set a tall bottle on the bar before Shayne. He glanced past the detective at the girl sitting alone in the booth, but didn’t say anything.
The label on the bottle read, MONTERREY GRAPE BRANDY—Guaranteed 14 months old.
Shayne pulled out the cork and passed the open neck of the bottle back and forth under his nose. He asked Joe: “Got any more of this same brand?”
“Jeez, I dunno. I’ll see, Mr. Shayne.” He went away and returned presently with a sealed bottle bearing the same label.
Shayne broke the seal and pulled the cork. He grimaced as the smell of raw grape brandy assailed his nostrils. He said angrily: “This isn’t the same stuff.”
“Says so right on the bottle,” Joe argued, and pointed to the label.
“I don’t give a damn what the label says,” Shayne growled. He reached for the first bottle and poured a drink into the empty beer mug. Keeping a firm grip on the bottle with his left hand he drank from the mug, rolling the liquor around his tongue. His gray eyes shone with dreamy contentment as he lingeringly swallowed the brandy, while a frown of curiosity and confusion formed between them.
“Any more of the bar bottles already opened?” he asked Joe.
“I don’t think so. We don’t open ’em but one at a time nowadays. I’ll ask the barkeep.” Plainly mystified by Shayne’s request, Joe went to the front of the bar and held a whispered conference with a bald-headed man wearing a dirty apron that bulged over a pot-belly.
The bartender glanced back at Shayne, waddled toward him. He looked at the two bottles, and asked: “ ’Sa trouble here?”
Shayne shrugged his wide shoulders. “No trouble. Your bar bottle hasn’t got the same stuff that’s in the sealed one.”
The hulking man looked troubled. “You know how ’tis these days. A label don’t mean nothin’ no more. We’re lucky to stay open at all.”
Shayne said: “I know it’s tough trying to keep a supply.”
“You’re private, huh? Ain’t I seen you ’round?”
Shayne said: “I’m private. This hasn’t anything to do with the law.”
The bartender regarded Shayne for a moment with murky, bulging eyes. “If you got a kick about the drink, it’ll be on the house,” he decided magnanimously.
“I’m not kicking,” Shayne told him earnestly.
“I’d like to buy what’s left in this bottle.” He indicated the partially empty one which he had moved out of the bartender’s reach.
The man shook his head slowly. “No can do. Our license says we gotta sell it by the drink.”
Shayne held the bottle up and squinted through it. “There’s maybe twenty ounces left. It’s worth ten bucks to me.”
The big man continued to shake his head. “You can drink it here. Forty cents a shot.”
“Maybe I could make a deal with the boss.”
“Maybe.” He waddled around the end of the bar and preceded Shayne to an unmarked door to the left of the ladies’ room. Shayne saw Myrna Hastings still sitting in the booth watching him.
The bartender rapped lightly on the door, turned the knob and motioned Shayne inside.
enry Renaldo was seated at a desk facing the doorway. He was a big flabby man with a florid face. He wore a black derby tilted back on his bullet head, and an open gray vest revealed the sleeves and front of a shirt violently striped with reddish purple. He was eating a frayed black cigar that had spilled ashes down the front of his vest.
The bartender stood in the doorway behind Shayne and said heavily: “This shamus is kickin’ about the service, boss. I figured you might wanna handle it.”
Renaldo’s black eyes took in the brandy bottle dangling from Shayne’s fingers, and they became unguarded for a moment. He wet his lips, said, “O.K., Tiny,” and the bartender went out.
Renaldo leaned over the desk to push out his right hand. “Long time no see, Mike.”
Shayne disregarded the proffered hand. “I didn’t know you were in this racket, Renaldo.”
“Sure. I went legal when prohibition went out.”
Shayne moved forward, set the bottle down with a little thump and said mildly: “This is a new angle on me.”
“How’s that?”
“Pre-war cognac under a cheap domestic label. Monne
t, isn’t it?”
“You must be nuts,” Renaldo ejaculated.
“Either you or me,” Shayne agreed. “Forty cents a throw when it’d easily bring a dollar a slug in the original bottle.”
Henry Renaldo was beginning to breathe hard. “What’s it to you, Shayne? Stooging for the Feds?”
Shayne shook his head. He lifted the bottle to his lips, let cognac gurgle down his throat and murmured reverently: “Monnet, Vintage of ’26.”
Henry Renaldo started and fear showed in his eyes. “How’d you …” He paused, taking the frayed cigar carefully from his lips. “Who sent you here?”
“I followed my nose.”
Renaldo shook his head. He said huskily: “I don’t know how you got onto it, but why jump me?” His voice rose passionately. “If I pass it out for cheap stuff, is that a crime?”
Shayne said: “You could make more selling it by the bottle to a guy like me.”
Renaldo spread out his hands. “I gotta stay in business. I gotta have something to sell over the bar. If I can hang on till after the war …”
Comprehension showed on Shayne’s face. “That’s why you’re refilling legal bottles.”
“What other out is there?” Renaldo demanded. “Government inspectors checking my stock.”
“All right, but let me in on it,” Shayne urged. “A case or two for my private stock …”
“I only got a few bottles.”
“But you know where there’s more.”
“Make your own deal,” Renaldo said sullenly.
“Sure. All I want is the tip-off.”
“Who sent you to me?”
“No one,” Shayne insisted. “I dropped in for a drink. And got slugged with Monnet when I ordered cheap brandy.”
“Nuts,” sneered Renaldo. “You couldn’t pull the year on that vintage stuff. I don’t know what the gimmick is.…”
A rear door opened and two men came in hastily. They stopped in their tracks and stared at the detective seated on one corner of Renaldo’s desk. One of them was short and squarish, with a swart face and a whiskered mole on his chin. He wore fawn-colored slacks and a canary-yellow sweater that was tight over bulging muscles.
His companion was tall and lean, with a pallid face and the humid eyes of a cokie. He was hatless and wore a tightly belted suit. He thinned his lips against sharp teeth and tilted his head to study Shayne.
Renaldo snarled: “You took long enough. How’d you make out, Blackie?”
“It wasn’t no soap, boss. He ain’t talkin’.”
“Hell, you followed him out of here.”
“Sure we did, boss,” Blackie said earnestly. “Just like you said. To a little shack on the beach on Eighteenth. But he had company when he got there. There was this car parked in front, see? So Lennie an’ me waited. Half an hour, maybe. Then a guy come out an’ drove away, an’ we goes in. But we’re too late. He’s croaked.”
“Croaked?”
“So help me. Then we beats it straight back.”
Renaldo said sourly to Shayne. “Looks like that fixes it for us both.”
Shayne said: “Give me all of it.”
“Can’t hurt now,” Renaldo muttered defensively. “This bird comes in with a suitcase this evening. It’s loaded with twenty-four bottles of Monnet, 1926, like you know. It’s pre-war, sealed with no revenue stamps. All he wants is a hundred, so what can I lose? I can’t put it out there where an inspector will see it, but I can refill legal bottles and keep my customers happy. So I give him a C and try to pry loose where there’s more but he swears that’s all there is and beats it. So I send Blackie and Lennie to see can they make a deal. You heard the rest.”
“Why yuh spillin’ your guts to this shamus?” Lennie rasped suddenly. “Ain’t he the law?”
“Shayne’s private,” Renaldo told him. “He was trying to horn in.…” He paused, his jaw dropping. “Maybe you know more about it than I do, Shayne.”
“Maybe he does.” Lennie’s voice rose excitedly. “Looks to me like the mug that came out an’ drove away, don’t he, Blackie?”
Blackie said: “Sorta. We didn’t get to see him good,” he explained to Renaldo. “He was dressed like that—an’ big.”
All three of them looked at Shayne suspiciously. Renaldo said: “So that’s how—” He jerked the cigar from his mouth and asked angrily: “What’d you get out of him before he kicked off? Maybe we can make a deal, huh? You’re plenty on the spot with him dead.”
Shayne said: “Nuts. I don’t know anything.”
“How’d you know about the Monnet?”
“I dropped in for a drink and knew it wasn’t domestic stuff as soon as I tasted it.”
“Maybe. But that didn’t spell out Monnet, ’26. Now my boy’ll keep quiet if …”
Shayne slid off the desk. His gray eyes were very bright. He said dispassionately: “You’re a fool, Renaldo. Your boys are feeding you a line. It’s my hunch they messed things up and are afraid to admit it to you. So they make up a fairy tale about someone else getting there first, and you swallow it.” He laughed indulgently. “Think it over and you’ll see who’s really on the spot.” He turned toward the door.
Blackie got in front of him. He stood lightly on the balls of his feet and a blackjack swung from his right hand. Behind him, Lennie crouched forward with his gun hand bunched in his coat pocket. His pallid face was contorted and he panted: “Don’t you listen to him, boss. Blackie an’ me can both identify him.”
Shayne turned and told Renaldo: “You’d better call them off. I’ve a friend waiting outside and if anything happens to me in here you’ll have a lot of explaining to do.”
“If I turn you over for murder …”
Shayne said: “Try it.” He turned toward the door again, the open bottle of cognac clutched laxly in his left hand.
Blackie remained poised with the blackjack between him and the door. He appealed to Renaldo: “If it was him out there an’ the old gink talked before he passed out …”
A sharp rapping on the door behind Blackie interrupted him. A grin pulled Shayne’s lips away from his teeth. He said: “My friend is getting impatient.”
Renaldo said: “Skip it, Blackie.”
Shayne went past the dark, sweatered man to the door and opened it. Myrna Hastings stood outside. “If you think—” she began.
He took her arm firmly and pulled the door shut behind him. He slid the uncorked bottle into his coat pocket and started toward the front with her. She twisted to look back at the closed door, and said uncertainly: “Those men inside. Didn’t one of them have a weapon?”
He said: “You’re an angel and I was a louse to treat you as I did.” They went out through the swinging doors and he stopped on the sidewalk. “Keep on being an angel and beat it. I have things to do.”
Myrna looked up into his face and was frightened by what she saw there. “Something is wrong. I felt it when you acted so funny.”
He shrugged and said: “Maybe this’ll be a case you can write up.” He went to his sedan parked at the curb and started to get in.
“Can’t I go with you?” Myrna asked breathlessly. “I promise not to be in the way.”
He took hold of both her elbows and turned her about. “This is murder, kid. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”
CHAPTER TWO
THE EMACIATED CORPSE
hayne drove out Biscayne Boulevard and turned right on Eighteenth Street. A slim crescent of a moon rode high in the cloudless sky overhead and the Miami night was humidly warm. He drove slowly to the end of the street and stopped his car against a low stone barrier overlooking the bayfront.
He turned off his motor and lights and sat for a moment gripping the steering wheel. Light glowed through two round, heavily glassed windows in a low, square stone structure at his left. It sat boldly on the very edge of the bluff overlooking the bay, and a neat shell-lined walk led up to the front door.
Shayne got out and went up the walk. The little house w
as built solidly of porous limestone and its only windows were round, metal-framed portholes that looked as though they might have been taken from a ship. The door had a heavy bronze knocker, and the hinges and lock were also of bronze.
Shayne tried the knob and the door opened inward easily. A square ship’s lantern fitted with an electric bulb hung from a hand-hewn beam of cypress in a narrow, cypress-paneled hallway. An open door to the right showed the interior of a neat and tiny kitchen. Shayne went down the hall to another door opening off to the right. The room was dark and he fumbled along the wall until he found a light switch. It lighted two wrought-iron ship’s lanterns similar to the one in the hall. Shayne stood in the doorway and tugged at his left earlobe and looked at the man lying huddled in the middle of the bare floor.
He was dead.
A big-framed man, his face was bony and emaciated. His eyes were wide open and glazed, bulging from deep sockets. He wore a double-breasted uniform of shiny blue serge with a double row of polished brass buttons down the front. His ankles were wired together, and wire had cut deeply into his wrists.
Shayne went in and knelt beside the body. Three fingernails had been torn from his right hand. These appeared to be the only marks of violence on his body, which was warm enough to indicate that death had occurred only half an hour or so before. Shayne judged that shock and pain had brought on a heart attack, causing death. He was about sixty and there was no padding of flesh on his bony frame.
Shayne rocked back on his heels and looked morosely around the room, which was bare of furniture except for a built-in padded settee along one wall. Bare and scrupulously clean, the room had the appearance of a cell.
Shayne wiped sweat from his face and went through the dead man’s pockets. He found nothing but a newspaper clipping and the torn stub of a bus ticket. The ticket had been issued the previous day, round-trip from Miami to Homestead, a small town on the Florida Keys.
The clipping was a week old, from the Miami Herald. It was headed, PAROLE GRANTED.
Shayne started to read the item, then stiffened at the sound of a car stopping outside. He thrust the clipping and ticket stub in his pocket.