Killers from the Keys ms-39

by Brett Halliday

  He surveyed her with equal interest as he went toward her across the thick carpet. She had sculptured features and a disdainful red mouth and a big bust that pushed out toward him above the top of her desk. She murmured, “Something I can do for you?” making her eyes round and welcoming and her voice dulcet.

  Shayne grinned and said, “Lots of things, I bet, but right this minute I’d like to see Mr. Mason.”

  She lowered long, dark lashes and looked at a pad in front of her. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “Tell Mason it’s Michael Shayne.”

  She glanced up at him dubiously, and then turned her head to speak into a microphone on a stand beside her. “A Mr. Michael Shayne to see you, Mr. Mason.”

  A disembodied voice came from somewhere. “Send him in.”

  She indicated a closed door marked PRIVATE to the right of her desk. “Go right in, Mr. Shayne.”

  Shayne crossed to the door and opened it. A trim, alert, athletic-figured man wearing a light brown business suit and a black four-in-hand tie stood up behind the bare desk in the center of the room. His face had a wide smile that showed strong white teeth. In a cultured voice, he exclaimed, “It’s good to see you, Mike. You don’t get around this side of the Bay very much these days.”

  Shayne said, “Not much. Petey Painter doesn’t run up a flag of welcome for me.”

  “Painter!” Mason dismissed the Beach Chief of Detectives with a shrug. “Stand a drink?” He turned toward an elaborate bar. “Cognac, isn’t it?”

  Shayne said, “I just had a drink,” and added after a perceptible pause, “Thanks. Is Little Joe Hoffman still making book?”

  “Little Joe… Hoffman?” Mason turned back with lifted eyebrows. His voice hardened. “Making book, Shamus? What a peculiar question to ask me.”

  Shayne leaned forward and put both hands flat on the desk. He growled, “I haven’t time to trade jokes. Get the word out to Little Joe that he’s in trouble if he doesn’t look me up tonight. At the Bright Spot in Miami, between, say, ten and twelve.”

  “Really, Mike?” There was well-bred amusement on Mason’s face. “I should get the word out?”

  “Just to keep things smooth. It would be bad for business if one of your boys got knocked over.”

  “See here, Shayne. If you’re threatening me…”

  “Not threatening… just telling you. I’ll be expecting Hoffman to look me up at the Bright Spot tonight. If he’s not on your payroll, it’s not your worry whether he does or not.”

  He went out of the office without looking back, winked happily at the receptionist as he passed her, and went on to his final stop of the day, Miami Beach Police Headquarters.

  In the squadroom of the Detective Division, he went up to the sergeant on duty behind the desk, lifting a hand in response to greetings from three or four of the dicks lounging about the room.

  “Hank Madison around, Sarge?”

  “Hi, Shamus. Long time no see. Hank? I think he’s off this week.” The sergeant ran a thumb down the duty roster. “Yeh. Till Friday.”

  “Who would be collecting bookie payoffs in his place?” Shayne asked the question with placid casualness, as though anticipating an equally casual answer, but loudly enough for all the men in the room to hear him.

  The sergeant’s eyes twinkled, but he shook his head sternly and said, “You know you’re off-base, Mike. No payoffs here on the Beach. No bookies either,” he added as an afterthought.

  Someone snickered behind Shayne. He snorted, “Tell that to Peter Painter and maybe he’ll believe you.”

  “Tell what to Peter Painter?” an incisive voice snapped in the sudden silence behind him.

  Shayne turned slowly, resting one elbow on the counter, and grinned at the slight, dapper figure of the Beach’s Chief of Detectives who stood in an open doorway on his right. “I didn’t know you were in, Chief. I would have come direct to you with my problem if I had.”

  “What is your problem, Shayne?” Peter Painter was an aggressively small man with a wispy black mustache and flashing black eyes.

  “I want to get word to one of your bookies operating here on the Beach,” Shayne explained. “Figured this was the best place to come. Any of your boys see Little Joe Hoffman this evening…”

  That was as far as he got before his words penetrated Painter’s consciousness. “Bookies? Here on the Beach!” He raised himself on tiptoe in rage. “I’ll have you know, Shayne…”

  “I know, I know,” Shayne waved a big hand good-naturedly. He turned to look at the frozen faces of the detectives in the room. “But if any of you do happen to run into Little Joe or any of his pals, pass the word that Mike Shayne wants to see him at the Bright Spot in Miami tonight.”

  “See here, Shayne.” Peter Painter bounced forward on the toes of his small feet and stood directly in front of the rangy redhead with his black eyes glittering upward at the detective’s impassive face. “There’s not a man on my force who wouldn’t arrest any known bookie on sight. If you’re intimating that there’s any liaison between this office and any bookmaking establishment, I dare you to prove it and charge you with libel.”

  Shayne said, “I’m not intimating anything. Just making an announcement where I thought it might do some good.” He turned aside and brushed past Painter. “The Bright Spot tonight, boys. Then I won’t have to come around here tomorrow looking for Little Joe myself and maybe upset some applecarts.”

  He walked out of the Detectives’ room and down a long corridor with long strides, pausing near the entrance to get a dime from his pocket and enter a telephone booth.

  He dialed his office number and when Lucy Hamilton answered, he began apologetically, “Hi, angel. I just called to say…”

  “Oh, Michael.” Her voice sounded choked, curiously close to hysteria, but whether from anger, fear, or laughter he couldn’t tell. “I’m so glad you called,” she hurried on. “There’s a fellow Eye here to see you. From Chicago. His name is Baron McTige and one of the things he keeps telling me is that… well… that Private Eyes in Chicago don’t have such pretty secretaries. You’d better come, Michael.

  5

  When Shayne burst into his office five minutes later, the scene that met his eyes was so ludicrous that he would have burst out laughing if the expression on his secretary’s face hadn’t prevented him from doing so.

  Lucy Hamilton was in her typist’s chair pressed back against the farther wall and cowering back as far as she could get from the beefy figure of a man who was balanced precariously on the low railing, leaning as close to Lucy as he could get without falling off, gesticulating with a stubby-fingered left hand while his head was tossed back and he laughed raucously at some witticism of his own.

  Lucy’s eyes widened and she jumped to her feet as Shayne appeared in the doorway. The man who had her helplessly cornered stopped laughing with his mouth wide open and turned his head slowly, grabbing at her typewriter with his left hand to pull his thick body upright on the railing.

  Lucy said quickly, “This is Mr. McTige, Michael. One of Chicago’s foremost Eyes.” Her lips twisted over the word and her voice capitalized it. Without pausing, she went on rapidly, “He’s been telling me the most fascinating things about the way a Private Eye operates in a big city, and it makes us seem just too provincial for words down here in this little old hick town.”

  “Aw, I wouldn’t say that,” protested McTige magnanimously. He slid off the railing and stood up to face Shayne, a youngish man about five feet nine inches tall who would tip the scales at two hundred and twenty pounds at the very least. His face was very red and suety-fat, with moist, blubbery lips and a receding hairline that gave him a curiously naked and babyish appearance. He wore an offensively garish sport shirt of virulent yellows and greens, without a jacket, and thick, crepe-soled brogans that had not been designed for tropical wear.

  “You got something right here in this office that beats anything we got in Chi, like I been telling Lucy. Hi-ya, Mike.” H
e held out a thick, short-fingered hand with dirty fingernails. “You got quite a rep around the country, you know that? I always wondered why you didn’t come up into the big-time… like New York or Chi, you know? But if I could cozy it up down here like you got it, I’m telling you right now you might have some competition.”

  Shayne took his hand briefly and dropped it. He looked over the Chicagoan’s head and asked Lucy, “Is Mr. McTige making a business or social call?”

  “Call me Baron, Mike.” He laughed blusteringly. “As one Eye to another, huh, there’s no call for formality. I just dropped in, see, to size you up and decide whether to let you in on a good thing or not.”

  “Here’s Mr. McTige’s card, Michael,” Lucy said hastily, thrusting a large square of white pasteboard at him. “He’s been explaining to me how it pays to advertise.”

  Shayne took the card and looked at it in awe. In the exact center was a large, wide-open human eye staring malevolently up at Shayne. Across the top in heavy black lettering was the legend: WE-NEVER-SLEEP DETECTIVE AGENCY. On the left in slightly smaller type, it stated: “Divorce Evidence Our Specialty.” And on the other side of the centerpiece was proclaimed: “Erring Spouses Traced Confidentially.” Below, in the same size lettering as the top were the words: “BARON MCTIGE, Prop.” And beneath that was a street address and telephone number.

  “Got a lot of punch, huh?” said McTige complacently as he took a short, black cigar from his breast pocket and clamped his teeth over the end. He struck a match and drew fire into it lustily, looked for an ashtray on Lucy’s desk and saw none, dropped the burning stick on the floor and stepped on it. “I got lotsa competition in the big town. Ten guys hustling after every divorce case comes along. If you don’t get out and hustle for your share, you’ll never make it. See what I mean?” He took the cigar from his mouth and pointed it at the card which Shayne still held in his hand.

  Shayne said, “I see what you mean. The tempo is a little slower in Miami.” He tossed the card into a waste-basket the other side of the railing and said crisply, “Now that you’ve sized me up, what have you decided about letting me in on your good thing?”

  “Ha-ha. That was just a manner of speaking, Mike. Before you ever walked in that door I knew for sure you were right down my alley. You know why?” He winked broadly and nudged Shayne in the ribs. “You got what it takes to keep a secretary like Lucy around, you sure enough got what it takes for Baron McTige to hook up with you.”

  Shayne said mildly, “Believe it or not, she can type, too.” He grinned past the man at Lucy who stuck out her tongue at him, took McTige firmly by the arm and led him toward the door of his inner office. “We’ll be more private in here.”

  “Sure, if you like it private, Mike.” McTige laughed loudly and glanced back over his shoulder. “For my ownself I wouldn’t mind if Lucy wants to come and take dictation. She can sit on my knee, if you got no extra chair for her.”

  Shayne was holding the door open and he gave the detective a little shove into the room and pulled the door firmly shut behind him.

  Quite undisconcerted, the proprietor of the WE-NEVER-SLEEP DETECTIVE AGENCY thrust both hands into the patch pockets of his tweed jacket and strolled across the room on the good carpeting, pursing his blubbery lips around the black cigar and nodding approvingly at the decor of the inner office. “You got it fixed up real nice, Mike. The little woman’s touch, huh? Lucy let you keep a bottle around?”

  Shayne went behind the desk and sat down. He placed both palms flat on the oak surface in front of him, and said harshly, “Come to the point, McTige.”

  “Huh?” He turned, looking surprised and disappointed. “I just wondered could I get a drink here.”

  Shayne said, “I’m particular whom I drink with.”

  “Now, look here…” McTige blustered, but Shayne cut him off coldly without raising his voice:

  “If you’ve got business to discuss with me, start discussing it. If you haven’t… get out.”

  “Well, say now…” There was a look of childish consternation on McTige’s face. “I come in here all friendly-like and offer to cut you in on the hottest damn thing you’ll have dumped in your lap in a month of Sundays, and you start right off making tough. What kind of way is that for one Eye to treat another?” He sounded genuinely injured and his face had a sullen droop to it like a small child who feels he has been unjustly reprimanded.

  Shayne compressed his lips firmly, and then said, “You’ve been doing a lot of talking without saying anything.”

  “All right, so you think I’m shooting off my mouth,” said McTige belligerently. “How’d you like to pick up five grand for a few hours work?”

  “I’d like it fine. What sort of work?”

  “Something that ought to be easy as falling off a log for Mike Shayne if half the things they say about you are true. All I want you to do is find a rabbit for me that’s hiding out from his wife.”

  “And that’s worth five grand to her?”

  “There’s a hell of a lot of property involved.” McTige hitched up a chair and sat down. “Papers that got to be signed or a big deal won’t go through. Take my word for it, Mike, there’s five thousand bucks in cold cash for you if you turn this rabbit up fast.”

  “Who is he and what leads have you got?”

  “It don’t matter who he is… best you don’t know that… he’s using a phoney monicker here. Fred Tucker. I got a picture of him here.” McTige reached inside his jacket and drew out a 3x5 glossy print of a man and dropped it face up on Shayne’s desk. “Hells bells, if I had any good lead you think I’d be here cutting you in? They say Miami’s your town, Mike. If I was in Chi, now, I wouldn’t be asking help from no one. You’d be coming to me, most-like.”

  “You expect me to go out with this picture and find the man in a few hours?” demanded Shayne incredulously.

  “You know you got contacts, Mike. Pigeons all over that can start asking questions around. Like, f’rinstance at the real hotspots where a gink with lotsa money burning his pockets and all the time in the world on his hands might drift into.”

  “Places like the Bright Spot?” asked Shayne harshly.

  McTige goggled at him and his mouth opened so the half-smoked cigar almost fell out. He caught it between his teeth hastily, and said in an admiring voice, “Now that’s pulling a real fast one out of the bag. How’d you come to glom onto that right off?”

  “Don’t you remember,” said Shayne sardonically, “Miami’s my town, McTige. What does the Bright Spot mean to you?”

  “Nothing much,” averred the Chicago detective hastily. “One of the joints I been covering the last two days. There’s a young kid dancer out there I’d like to cover a little closer,” he went on with a confidential leer. “Maybe you could start on her and get some place… knowing the town like you do.”

  Michael Shayne got up from his swivel chair with a preoccupied air, went around to the water cooler behind him and took out two paper cups which he nested together. He filled the inner one with ice water, carefully nested two more together and went back to place them on the desk in front of him and sit in his chair again.

  While Baron McTige watched with open interest, he opened the bottom right-hand drawer and lifted out the cognac bottle Sloe Burn had tapped a couple of hours previously.

  McTige lumbered to his feet, licking his lips, as Shayne uncorked the bottle and poured amber liquid into the empty paper cup. Moving toward the water cooler, McTige said happily, “Now you’re cooking with gas, Mike. Whyn’t you break out that bottle sooner?”

  He took a paper cup from the container and came back to Shayne’s side, holding it out eagerly.

  The anticipatory look on his face faded to one of complete bewilderment as Shayne firmly recorked the bottle and returned it to the drawer.

  Shayne leaned back comfortably in his chair and took a generous swallow of cognac and reminded the detective sardonically, “I told you I’m particular whom I drink with.”
>
  “Yeh, but…” McTige looked down at the empty cup in his hand with a bemused expression, and then back at Shayne. “You and me are in business together,” he reminded the redhead defensively.

  Shayne shook his head and took another sip of cognac, smacking his lips in what he hoped was a gratuitously offensive manner.

  “You’re mistaken, McTige.”

  “What about?”

  “About us being in business together.”

  “You don’t wanta pick up five grand fast?” demanded the Chicago Eye incredulously.

  “I like money as well as any man. But that’s pretty heavy sugar for just locating a man in a civil case. It smells bad.”

  “All money smells the same to me.”

  “I imagine it does.” Shayne’s voice became harsh and peremptory. “Level with me, McTige. What’s your real reason for wanting to locate Fred Tucker fast?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you, Mike.” He hesitated and looked down at the empty cup in his hand and at the corked bottle in the drawer beside Shayne. Shayne finished off his own drink and took a sip of ice water, blandly disregarding the hopeful look on McTige’s face.

  “It’s like this, see.” He set the empty cup on the desk and moved back to settle his bulky body in the chair again. “This rabbit’s in trouble, Mike. Like I say, there’s a big hunk of money involved, an’ there’s crooks on the other side of the fence that’ll stop at nothing to prevent him going back to his wife and signing them papers. Not even murder. That’s why he’s hiding out. He’s scared to show his face, Mike, and he’s got a right to be. They got hired guns lookin’ for him right now.”

  “Like The Preacher?” asked Shayne sardonically.

  Again, as when he had mentioned the Bright Spot, McTige’s mouth fell open widely. This time the cigar dropped out and fell to the rug with a soggy plop. McTige squinted down at it and put his crepe-soled shoe over the smouldering end and crushed it into the rug. He closed his mouth and swallowed hard, and stammered, “What’s that? About a preacher?”