Nice Fillies Finish Last ms-52

by Brett Halliday

  He put the pedal all the way down. The powerful Buick overtook the truck and swerved back across the double line. He kept the pedal down, to leave a large enough gap for the second car, a black four-door sedan. The damn fool was still coming, he saw, trying to pass them both.

  Shayne touched his brakes lightly, to alert the truck driver. His unconscious mind was figuring an equation involving his own car and three others, moving at various rates of speed, and he didn’t like the answer he was getting. The sedan pulled even. He glanced at the driver, who had a grizzled head, a weather-beaten face and an excited expression. Shayne came down hard on his brake. He had to slow down fast, to let the sedan in, but if he slowed down too fast, he was sure to be rammed by the truck. The interval between Shayne’s Buick and the truck narrowed, then held. For an instant he thought his calculation had worked. But the driver of the sedan cut in too sharply, much too soon. Shayne swerved, scraped past one utility pole and smashed a fender on the next, and then the truck hit him from behind.

  The Buick skidded across the highway, through the retaining cables and dropped heavily down the six-foot embankment to the beach.

  CHAPTER 9

  Shayne had seen what was coming and tried to break out of the skid. But his right front tire had blown and the Buick was out of control. There was a searing pain in his left arm, a flare of lights, and that was all he knew until he heard a siren. More time passed before he could move his head.

  He was lying face down in the sand. He had sand in his mouth and sand in his eyes. He rolled painfully and came up on one elbow. Some ten yards away, a familiar-looking car hung on the embankment with its front end pointing toward the highway. An accident, he thought. Then, recognizing the car as his own, he sat up the rest of the way.

  Bathers were running up to find out how many people had been killed. Shayne must have been unconscious several minutes, for a police car with a blinking red eye on its roof had already pulled up in the open lane. The big refrigerator truck had been brought to a halt well down the road. A uniformed trooper swung over the slack cable and came toward Shayne.

  He wanted to be on his feet by the time the cop reached him, but he had to stop to rest on one knee. Then he clenched his teeth hard and stood up. He grunted when the cop asked if he was hurt, and fumbled out his detective’s license.

  “I thought I recognized you,” the cop said. “Wait, I want to talk to you. Where are you going?”

  Without answering, his head down, Shayne continued to plod through the sand. The tide was in. At the water’s edge he waded in without taking off his shoes. He nearly pitched head forward when he stooped down. Then he scooped up a double handful of salt water and splashed it in his face. By the time he started back, dripping, he knew that he wouldn’t need the ambulance that had pulled up behind the police car on the highway.

  The cop had his notebook out. “Not that I give a damn, but when the lieutenant spots your name, he’ll want to know if this is tied in with something you’re working on. That better be my first question.”

  “Give me a minute,” Shayne said. “How many vehicles do you have in this?”

  “Just the two, yours and the semi.”

  “No black four-door Ford sedan, a couple of years old, Florida plates?”

  “No. What did he do, cut in on you?”

  “Yeah, he thought he had time to get back, but at the last minute I guess he got rattled. It wasn’t the truck-driver’s fault.”

  “In other words,” the cop said carefully, “and I’m only asking because I know what the lieutenant’s going to want to know, nobody tried to pile you up?”

  Shayne shrugged. “I never saw the driver before. About fifty, short grayish hair, a nice tan. There won’t be any marks on his car.”

  “It’s not much,” the cop said, “but I’d better call it in.

  He went up the embankment. A small man with a mustache, carrying a briefcase, edged up to Shayne.

  “My name’s Ross Gilmore,” he said. “Attorney-at-law. I happened to see this, and you’ve got a sweet liability action here against that truckdriver for tailgaiting. Now’s the time to line up your witnesses. I’m prepared to-”

  “Get lost,” Shayne said.

  The man recoiled a step, but he went on trying. “It’s no skin off him, you realize-the insurance company will have to pay it.”

  Shayne gave him a look that sent him back up to the highway. An intern from the ambulance was looking around for bodies. A second police cruiser arrived, and the cops who came in it began to get the traffic moving. A phone seemed to be ringing somewhere. Shayne was returning to normal slowly, but he still had a considerable distance to go. After the fifth or sixth ring, he realized that the sound was coming from his wrecked Buick.

  His front door was jammed. To reach the phone he had to go in through the back, while the ringing continued. Finally he succeeded in snatching it up.

  “Yeah?”

  “Michael!” his secretary, Lucy Hamilton, said. “I was about to give up. What does that guarded ‘yeah’ mean? Is somebody with you?”

  “Wait a minute.” Shayne’s head was hammering. He sank back into the rear seat, which was canted upward at a sharp angle, and waited till his breathing was more regular. “Go ahead, angel.”

  “Do I hear a siren?” she said, alarmed. “Michael Shayne, tell me what’s happening!”

  “What makes you think anything is?”

  “When I hear a siren and you’re around, nine times out of ten it has something to do with you. Are those waves?”

  “Those are waves, and I’ve just been in wading with my shoes on. All right, angel, I’ll stop being mysterious. I just smashed up the Buick. No, I’m OK,” he said as she started to speak. “I landed in some nice soft sand, and so far the cops are being friendly. Nobody’s offered me a drink yet, though,” he added.

  “Where are you?” she demanded urgently.

  “North of Lauderdale, but I really am OK. A sore shoulder’s about all. A guy knocked me off the highway with a piece of very damn good driving. He had everything figured to the inch. It was like a harness race for a minute. He didn’t wait around to be congratulated, but I think I’ll know him when I see him again. Which I have a feeling I will.”

  “Is he the same one who put Tim in the hospital?”

  “No, but it’s connected. I don’t know how or why. Tim’s been right about everything so far. He was right about the twin double and right about Joey Dolan. I’m beginning to take more of a personal interest in how this turns out.”

  “Michael!” she wailed. “It scares me when you get that note in your voice. I suppose there’s no use asking you to be careful.”

  “I’m always careful,” Shayne said, grinning.

  “You are? Well, I’ve had two phone calls. Do you want me to tell you about them now, or wait till you recover?”

  “I’m recovered. I can’t go anywhere until the cops are finished with me.”

  “The first was from the insurance company you’re supposed to be working for. I did what you told me to. I said I didn’t know where you were, which was true, and you’d call them in the morning. I don’t think they liked it.”

  “Too bad.”

  “And I had a very odd anonymous call, collect from Pompano Beach. Well, anonymous-he gave the operator the name Mr. Jones, but I’m quite sure it wasn’t his real name. I took it down in shorthand, as much as I could get. I’ll give you the high spots first. When I told him you weren’t in, I had a hard time keeping him from hanging up. He was quite skittery. I finally persuaded him to leave a message, and what he wanted to tell you was that he talked to Dolan early this morning, he thought around three.’”

  Shayne scraped his chin with his thumbnail, frowning. “That would be after Dolan called Tim.”

  “Yes, but he’d been drinking, Michael, both then and when he talked to me. He said Dolan had a half-empty bottle of sherry. It wasn’t very good sherry, naturally, and Jones said it had a funny kind of raw taste.
Dolan was very excited. He said-let’s see-he said he’d had a wonderful piece of good fortune, and if it paid off, he’d be rich enough to spend next summer in Ireland. But he was worried about something. He kept saying you had to take chances if you didn’t want to end your life in the gutter. He told Jones to listen carefully, in case anything happened. He was supposed to meet somebody in the Belle Mark Apartments in Miami, and he told Jones to write that down, the Belle Mark Apartments. He stood there while Jones did it.”

  “Where did this happen?” Shayne said, still frowning. “He wouldn’t say. He said it was a good thing Joey made him write down the address, because when he woke up this morning he’d forgotten all about it. He had a splitting headache, which he thinks may have been from whatever gave the sherry that funny taste. When he heard Dolan was dead, he felt in his pockets and found the paper. I asked him why he didn’t tell the police, and he gave a strange laugh. From what Tim told me, the police wouldn’t follow it up anyway, would they?”

  “Probably not. Why did he call me?”

  “He said something about seeing you at Sweeney’s last night. I take it that’s some kind of bar or cafeteria. Maybe he only talked to someone who saw you. Apparently it’s known that you and Tim were supposed to meet Dolan and he didn’t show up. I said I knew you’d want to talk to him. He said, ‘Why?’ very nervously. I tried to convince him that trained investigators are able to see things that ordinary people overlook, and if he wanted to keep it anonymous, he could call back when you were in and go on using the names Jones. He said no, you’d trace the call, and then before I could tell him that calls can’t be traced, he got excited and said he didn’t want the same thing to happen to him that happened to Joey, and bang, he hung up. I’m sorry, Michael. I’ve been thinking of different ways I should have handled him.”

  “Forget it. We’ve finally got a concrete lead, and believe me, we needed it. What impression did he make on you?”

  “It’s a funny thing, Michael, it seemed to me he was trying to hide his identity by pretending to have more of an education than he actually did. Part of the time he seemed drunk, part of the time sober. Southern. Sure of himself and very anxious, by turns. This is all no help, I know.”

  “Did you look up the apartment house?”

  “The Belle Mark-yes, it’s on Ninety-sixth Street, in Miami Shores. I think that’s a high-rent district. I don’t know for sure.”

  The trooper was looking for Shayne. He seemed surprised to find him talking on the phone in the back seat of the wrecked car.

  “That’s fine, Miss Hamilton,” Shayne said, to let her know he was being overheard. “Do you remember the Mercedes you looked up for Tim?”

  “Of course. Mrs. Domaine’s.”

  “That’s a husband and wife operation. And didn’t Tim mention another name?”

  “Paul Thorne?”

  “Yeah. Go to the head of the class, angel. I want you to check with MacMaster. You’ve met him-the News city editor. See if he can dig up some pictures of those people, and get a shot of Dolan if they don’t have one already. Take the pictures to the apartment building and show them around. Spend some money if you have to.”

  “Then should I come back to the office?”

  “Call in first. I may be able to meet you there. If I can’t, I’ll leave a number with the answering service where you can reach me.”

  “All right. And Michael, will you please be careful?”

  “I sure as hell intend to try,” the redhead said, smiling, and put down the phone.

  The cop said in a worried voice, “Seriously, Shayne-if somebody tried to kill you here, why not tell us about it? We might be able to do something.”

  “The truckdriver had a good view. What does he think happened?”

  The trooper shrugged. “The guy in the Ford cut in too soon, but as you say, maybe he got rattled. Nobody took his license number.”

  “How about a wrecker for the Buick?”

  “It’s on the way. And there’s somebody up there in a Cadillac wants to talk to you. He says his name is Larry Domaine.”

  Shayne gave him a sharp look. “How long has he been there?”

  “Just a couple of minutes. I’m supposed to tell you that because of the legal aspects, the thing for you to do is report in to the hospital and have them take a look at you. If you want to go in a private car, that’s up to you. A Cad’s more comfortable than an ambulance. We’ll look after your Buick for you. If you have anything valuable in the car, you’d better take it with you. It’ll be at Joe’s Auto Body, on One, just off Oakland Park Boulevard.”

  Shayne thanked him.

  “Hell,” the cop said gloomily, “so many of these things nowadays you get to know what to do. At least nobody was killed in this one. Honest to God, sometimes I think we ought to go back to the horse and buggy.”

  He returned to the highway to continue with the post-accident routine. Shayne brushed sand off his clothes and ran his fingers through his bristling red hair. That was all he had time for. He looked at his watch. He had looked at it, he remembered, just before starting to go around the refrigerator truck. Twenty-five minutes had passed. He would be interested to find out how Mr. Larry Domaine had known what had happened so soon.

  He climbed the embankment and stepped over the cables. A black, gleaming Cadillac of one of the vintage years waited across the road near an open-air stand selling seashell jewelry. Both lanes of the highway were working again. When a gap appeared, Shayne hurried across. A man stepped out of the Cadillac to meet him.

  “You’re Mike Shayne, of course,” he said. “Thank God you weren’t hurt.”

  He shook Shayne’s hand while the redhead looked him over curiously, matching him against his cool, lovely, blonde wife. He was in his fifties, thirty pounds overweight. His color was high, but not from being out of doors. He was wearing pince-nez, the first pair of those old-fashioned glasses Shayne had seen in years. His white hair was abundant and too long, especially over the ears. His clothes were very good: a black-and-white checked sports coat, fawn-colored slacks, beautifully polished Italian boots.

  “I really goofed,” Domaine said regretfully. “If anything serious had happened to you, I would have been just about ready to give up. I’m responsible for this accident, Shayne. I can see I have some explaining to do.”

  CHAPTER 10

  “Nobody got the guy’s license number,” Shayne said. “You didn’t have to admit it.”

  “No, you don’t understand,” Domaine said. “Get in and let me give you a drink.”

  He opened the back door for Shayne, holding his hand under Shayne’s elbow in case he needed help. A woman in the front seat looked at the big redhead with unconcealed interest. Expensive tweeds hung loosely from her rangy frame. She was probably in her middle thirties, Shayne thought. She had too-bright lipstick and snapping black eyes. She was crackling with energy, much of it sexual.

  “My friend, Mrs. Moon,” Domaine said, following Shayne in. “Mike Shayne, the Miami detective.”

  She gave Shayne her left hand, amid a jangle of bracelets. “Larry tells me they’ve been trying to kill you. You look like a hard man to kill.”

  “Molly, I must say,” Domaine said with disgust. “What a grotesque sense of humor. He might have been killed. It’s nothing to laugh about.”

  Mrs. Moon went on laughing with genuine enjoyment, deep in her throat. Shayne smelled whiskey, and saw a folding aluminum cup on the ledge above the dashboard.

  “Apologize to him, Larry, so we can go somewhere and do some civilized drinking.”

  Domaine pressed a button on the back of the front seat and a flat shelf snapped down. From a compartment beneath it, he took two more aluminum cups, a container of ice and a bottle of bourbon.

  “I talked to one of the troopers,” he said. “They aren’t planning to give you the drunk-test?”

  “No, everybody agrees that I’m the victim,” Shayne said.

  Domaine poured a slug of bourbon, and Sh
ayne told him to forget the ice. Mrs. Moon raised her cup to Shayne.

  “To the survival of the fittest.”

  Shayne emptied the cup and Domaine refilled it. “I don’t know where to begin. First, do you mind telling me who you’re working for?”

  “That’s confidential,” Shayne growled.

  “I expected that,” Domaine said, wincing. He brought one fat thigh up on the seat and hooked his foot beneath his knee. “I suppose you’ve been brought in by the powers-that-be at the track, in one way or another, to find out if there’s going to be any hanky-panky on the program tonight. And I want to emphasize to you that, to my positive knowledge, there has been no tampering with horses, no bribery of any kind, nothing in any way illegal. The reason for all the hugger-mugger is simple and obvious-so too many people won’t hear about it and want to get in on it.”

  “Do you know what these crazy Domaines are hoping to do?” Mrs. Moon said. “They think they’re going to abscond with half the twin-double pool. Did you ever hear anything like it?”

  “Molly, please,” Domaine said. “If you keep interrupting, I can’t explain this in orderly sequence.” He turned back to the redhead. “Molly’s an innocent bystander. We’ve been looking at a horse of mine she’s thinking of buying. When I heard about the accident, I wanted to drop her at a bar, but she insisted on coming, to see what Michael Shayne looked like. Try to ignore her.”

  “Are there any of your horses in the twin-double races tonight, Mrs. Moon?” Shayne said.

  She gave another caw of laughter. “A lovely little filly named Fussbudget, in the ninth. I love Larry and Claire dearly, but if I can spoil things for them, I assure you I’ll take great delight in doing it. And you know, I just might!” she warned Domaine.

  “That’s one thing I won’t worry about,” he said dryly.