Brett Halliday: Mike Shayne's Torrid Twelve

The redhead scooped up the phone and dialed. A rich, throaty, woman’s voice answered.

“Hello, Mabel,” he said. “Michael Shayne.”

“Mike!” the voice gurgled. Mabel was forty-five, with bright orange hair. She weighed two hundred and fifty pounds and owned one of the larger Miami beauty shops.

“Sweetheart! I was just sitting here waiting for you to call!”

Shayne chuckled. Two months before a New York woman had died suddenly in Mabel’s shop, under a dryer. He had proved it was because of a dose of poison her husband had slipped into her coffee, and not because of anything Mabel’s operator had done. Mabel had sworn undying gratitude.

“Mabel, I need a favor.”

“Ask me anything, honey.” Mabel’s voice was languorous. “And I do mean anything.”

“Did you ever hear of a beauty parlor girl named Ireneabelle?”

“That’s a new handle to me, Mike. I have Clara Sue and Betty-Lee, and a dozen more, but no Ireneabelle.”

“She probably works in some little, cheap shop. But I want to find her and get her home address and I want it fast. Will you call all your friends in the business and ask them? And if they don’t know, have them each call five friends, and keep the ball rolling until we locate Ireneabelle?”

“Just let me get started. In ten minutes the phone company will wonder what hit them. Believe me, they will!”

He chuckled again and hung up. He poured himself a stiff drink, to help ease the ache in his head, then went into the bedroom and found the clothes Whitey had discarded. They were cheap, Army-Navy store stuff, smelling of fish. The shirt didn’t even have a laundry mark.

He threw them into his closet and went on into the bathroom. He ran cold water over his head, and the tenderness where Shorty had sapped him eased off. He was putting his shirt back on when the phone rang.

It was a woman who spoke when he lifted the receiver. But it wasn’t Mabel.

“This is Sandra Ames, Mr. Shayne. May I speak to Captain Tolliver, please?”

“Sorry, Captain Tolliver isn’t here,” Shayne said, keeping his tone noncommittal.

“He’s left already?”

“Some time ago.”

“But he said that he’d — Did he say where he was going?”

“He didn’t say.”

“The captain was supposed to call me as soon as he talked to you. Did you accept his offer?”

“I didn’t accept anything. We didn’t have time to talk. The captain was kidnaped before I could speak to him.”

“Kidnaped!” The word was a gasp. There was a long silence. Then a new voice spoke, a man’s voice, high-pitched, excited, touched with an English accent.

“Mr. Shayne! Did you say Captain Tolliver was kidnaped?”

“I said kidnaped. From my apartment. By two armed men.”

“Good Lord! He said he was being watched and followed but — Have you any idea who they were or where they took him?”

“If I did I wouldn’t be standing here talking to you. Who are you, anyway?”

“Excuse me. I’m — I’m very upset by what you’ve told me. My name is Mollison, Hugo Mollison, and I — that is, Miss Ames and I — were about to become Captain Tolliver’s partners in a business venture. But if he’s been kidnaped — I’m afraid I’m a little incoherent.”

“A little.”

“What I’m trying to say is, you must do your best to find him. I’ll guarantee any fee you name. Will you please take down this phone number and address, and if you find him, call us or come here with him at once?”

Hugo Mollison gave the phone number and address — a very expensive motel where the individual houses were miniature bungalows, affording both space and privacy. “Please keep in touch with me, Mr. Shayne. I’m dreadfully upset.”

Michael Shayne promised to keep in touch, and hung up. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Captain Tod Tolliver knew something that a lot of other people were suddenly very anxious to know. But unless Mable phoned soon—

The phone rang. This time it was Mabel.

“Mike, honey,” she gurgled, “the girl you’re looking for lives at three hundred and three Vista. Bedroom at the top of the stairs. Door’s unlocked. Just hurry over and go right up. She’ll be waiting for you.”

He grinned at the phone. “Mabel, baby,” he said, “three hundred and three Vista is your address. I’ll take you up on that sometime, but tonight I have to find Ireneabelle.”

“What’s she got that I didn’t have twenty years ago?” Mabel sighed. “Okay, I tried. Her name is Ireneabelle Smith and she lives at seven thirty-one Morton Street.”

“Thanks, gorgeous.” He hung up before Mabel could turn coy again. From his desk he took his.38 and slid it into his coat pocket. Then he went downstairs, got his car out, and headed for Morton Street.

It was a drab street and 731 was an old two-story stucco apartment house. He let himself into the vestibule. An almost new card in a slot under a mail box said Ireneabelle Smith was in Apartment 7. The locked door opened for one of the special keys on his chain and the redhead let himself in and went up the scuffed stairs quietly, inhaling the smell of old buildings — sweat and cooking and ammonia and decay, all blended into an essence of poverty. Silently he moved down the dim hall and by the light of a dusty bulb found No. 7. He thumbed the doorbell with urgent pressure.

There was the creak of bedsprings inside. A guarded, feminine voice whispered, “Who is it?”

He put his mouth close to the door. “I’m from Whitey. Open up.”

“Just a second.”

The springs squeaked again. Light footsteps crossed the floor. The door opened. The dim light showed a small, dark-haired girl clutching a cheap wrapper around herself.

“What about Whitey?” she asked.

“I can’t talk out here.” Shayne deliberately pushed into the room and closed the door. Ireneabelle fell back, doubt and suspicion on her sullenly pretty features. Her eyes were cold.

“That’s better,” he said, abruptly. “Whitey is in a jam. He wants to get his hair back again the right color. He wants to know what stuff to use on it.”

“I already told him,” the girl said. “The dumb cracker, if he can’t remember—” She broke off, with a sudden look of cunning. “You don’t come from Whitey. Get out of here or I’ll start screaming.”

“Scream away, baby.”

“You’re a dick!” Ireneabelle shrilled. “But I ain’t done a thing! You can’t say I have.”

“You’ve just been an accomplice to a kidnaping, that’s all.”

“No such thing. Whatever he’s done, I don’t know anything about it!” Panic edged her voice.

“Maybe yes and maybe no,” the detective said noncommittally. “Give me a little information and I’ll forget that dye job on him.”

“What do you want to know?” Her tone was sullen, her gaze wary.

“His address first.”

“I don’t know it.”

He sighed. “Okay, baby, come on down to Headquarters. Maybe your memory will be better there.”

“No,” she whimpered. “He lives at nine twelve Bayard. It’s a shack he owns. He takes out fishing parties when he can get them.”

“You know a guy named Shorty?”

“I only saw him twice. Whitey hasn’t known him long.”

“He live with Whitey?”

“Whitey said he was bunking with him.”

“That’s all, then. We won’t bother you again unless you’ve given me a bum steer.”

“It’s a straight steer. But he’s going to be sore at me.” Ireneabelle’s voice was a self-pitying whisper. “He doesn’t like cops.”

“He’s got a reason not to.”

The redhead let himself out. Bayard Street was near the waterfront. It was a rundown district where a man’s business was his own private affair. The smell of garbage and dead fish was in the air. The houses were shacks and at night they leaked light through the cracks between the boards. No. 912 was back from the rest, with a marine junkyard on one side and an old garage on the other. From the front no light was visible.