Brett Halliday: A Redhead for Mike Shayne

Shayne greeted Hogan with a handshake, was properly introduced to his younger partner who knew the redhead by reputation, and the pair went back to view the body while Shayne swiftly explained the circumstances that had brought him to the warehouse that night.

“And here’s Mr. Ericsson, the manager, who will verify what I’ve told you, Jim,” Shayne ended. “There’s the guy on the floor who broke in a window and started shooting at me while I was sitting inside this office here. He put a row of bulletholes in the wall behind the desk there, if you need any proof that I shot him in self-defense.”

Officer James Hogan looked at the dead man and at the bulletholes and at the chair in which Shayne had been sitting, and muttered feelingly, “Holy Mother of God, Mike, ’tis lucky your red hair was smoothed down slick tonight or I swear you’d of got a singe for free.”

At that point an ambulance drew up outside and two whitecoated men came trotting in with a stretcher and Hogan officially ordered the removal of the body to the morgue without waiting for an authorization from the medical examiner. He conferred briefly with John Ericsson, and made a note of the testimony of both Shayne and Ericsson, and dismissed them both with a wave of his hand.

“Come around to Headquarters tomorrow morning, Mike,” he directed the redhead gruffly. “You’ll have to sign a formal report as you know, and no doubt Petey Painter will want to know why in blazes you didn’t sit still in yon chair and get your head blown off instead of using your own gun. But you know how Petey is.”

Shayne said feelingly, “I know exactly how Petey is, Jim.” He clapped Hogan on the shoulder and said, “You’ve got things to do and I’ve got some sleep to catch up on.”

“Right you are. Early in the mornin’ at Headquarters, Mike. I’ve got your promise on that?”

“That you have, Jim.” Shayne went out with a wave of his big hand, happy to escape before some higher brass arrived on the scene and decreed that official protocol demanded that formal statement be made that night and that, at the very least, he should be locked up and held on an open charge until his claim of self-defense was fully substantiated.

He went around the corner to where he had parked his car earlier in the evening, got in and drove away swiftly, happy that the rain had ceased falling and there were only occasional gusts of strong wind to contend with.

The sky was clear and the stars were out brilliantly as he drove across the Causeway to the mainland. Whitecaps still rippled on the surface of Biscayne Bay, but the tropical night was unexpectedly serene in the aftermath of the storm, and Michael Shayne also felt unexpectedly serene after having taken the life of a fellow human being.

For, despite his profession as a private detective, the redhead had actually been responsible for the deaths of very few men during his long career. Normally, he never carried a gun on a case. Tonight had been an exception, of course, fully justified by the way things had turned out.

He resolutely put the affair out of his mind as he reached the end of the Causeway and turned down Biscayne Avenue toward his hotel on the north bank of the Miami River. What he needed now was a long drink of cognac and a few hours sleep. Tomorrow, he confidently expected to learn that the man who had died from his bullet tonight had a long record of violence and deserved no more pity than a savage beast of the jungle turned man-killer. Any man, Shayne told himself grimly, who sets out on a burglary job equipped with a hand-gun capable of doing the job that gun had done on the office wall tonight, is asking for whatever comes to him.

That gun! As he turned left off the Boulevard onto S.E. 3rd Street, Shayne was suddenly conscious of the weight of it in his side pocket. He hadn’t turned it over to the Miami Beach policeman. In fact, Jim Hogan hadn’t even asked to see the weapon which Shayne claimed had fired the shots into the wall of the office over his head. Shayne slowed his car as he approached 2nd Avenue, considering the matter carefully.

Hogan had been negligent in that respect. True, it had all been very hurried and very informal and he had been in a hurry to get on to other pressing calls, and his negligence would probably be overlooked under the circumstances, but Shayne hated to consider the possibility of Hogan being disciplined for his negligence.

He could, and he probably should, turn his car around and drive back to Miami Beach Police Headquarters, and turn the gun in tonight.

But that would entail all sorts of official explanations and the signing of detailed statements, and in the long run it might only serve to draw attention to the fact that Hogan had let him walk away with the gun in his possession without even asking to see it.

It might be better, Shayne decided gratefully, to forget the whole matter for tonight. He’d go to Beach Headquarters promptly the next morning, deliver the gun and take full blame by admitting that he had walked off with it in his pocket before either he or Hogan had realized what he was doing.

He turned the corner on 2nd Avenue toward the river and pulled into the curb in front of the side entrance to his hotel. He parked there and went in and climbed one flight of stairs, avoiding the lobby and the elevator.

In his apartment near the end of the hall, he turned on the overhead light and started to shrug out of his jacket, was suddenly conscious of the unaccustomed weights in both pockets and went to the table in the center of the room to empty them.

First, the flashlight from his left pocket, and then the large-caliber pistol from the right. Then his own.38 from his waistband where he always carried it on the rare occasions when he packed a gun because he had never owned a shoulder holster in his life.

He laid the three objects on the table in front of him and his gaze brooded down at them for a long moment, then he turned away into the kitchen where he ran hot water over a tray of ice-cubes and broke three of them loose, dropped them into a tall glass which he filled with water from the tap.

On his way back into the living room, he stopped by a wall cabinet and picked up a four-ounce wine glass and a half-filled bottle of cognac. He carried them to the center table, filled the glass with the amber fluid and settled himself in a deep armchair.

He lit a cigarette, took an appreciative sip of the mellow liquor and washed it about in his mouth to savor the taste after a long evening of only warehouse coffee to drink, then chased it down with a swallow of ice water.

He turned his gaze to the flashlight and the two guns on the table beside him, and considered them somberly. The familiar.38 had killed a man tonight. The other gun, unfamiliar and curiously designed, had tried to kill him. He stretched out one hand and turned it slowly so he was looking directly into the muzzle opening.

It seemed huge to him. As big as a.45? Bigger, he thought. But a.45 was the largest caliber pistol he knew. Of course, he wasn’t an authority on the calibers of foreign pistols.

He picked it up and turned it over and over in his hands, studying it curiously. The metal was dark, with no hint of chrome or of glisten to it. It looked brand-new, pristine, as though it had never been handled by human hands before.

It was a completely new design to him. Looking at it casually, he was unable to determine how it was supposed to work, where the cartridges were stored or how they were fired. He discovered three small push-buttons set in the butt of it where a man’s right thumb would normally rest, and he pressed each one of them, getting a faint click each time but no other result.

He shook his head disapprovingly and put it down and picked up the wine-glass to have another drink.