Brett Halliday - So Lush, So Deadly

He shuddered and drank the gin-flavored melted ice at the bottom of his glass. “Now that I think of it, that Brady has a bad eye. Mean and lazy. He wouldn’t walk a block out of his way, but if he could do it without getting up, yeah-I really think he could pull that trigger.”

Shayne took Petrocelli to a motel in Biscayne Park, on the Miami side of the bay. The gin had finally caught up to him, and he seemed badly frightened. Shayne left him watching a gangster movie on T.V.

Using an outside phone booth, he called Luke Richardson, the Beach detective who had talked with Petrocelli. He was at home, still awake, and Shayne heard gunfire in the background. Apparently he was watching the same movie.

“Petrocelli,” he said, after Shayne told him what he wanted. “I caught that squeal. Who’s your client, Mrs. De Rham?”

“Her lawyer. I haven’t been able to talk to her yet. How seriously are you taking this?”

“I think he could have something, Mike. Did he tell you about the guitar? I didn’t get the full story. My theory with somebody like Petrocelli, you sit still and let him talk. But as luck would have it, Chief Painter didn’t have anything better to do that day-”

“Is he mixed up in this?”

“You know Painter, he doesn’t like anything to happen anywhere on the Beach that he doesn’t know about, especially involving people who own fifty-thousand-dollar boats. He didn’t like Petrocelli on sight. He put him down as a drunk with a grievance, fired for cause and out to make trouble, and he more or less threw him out. As a matter of fact, we’ve been getting a lot of these marina cases lately. After a few days at sea one of those luxury boats is like a pressure cooker, and things happen. Wait a minute till I turn down the T.V.”

He was back in a moment. “We talked to Mrs. De Rham the next day, and a man named Paul Brady, I think, a passenger. She’s the kind of society-page dame Painter gets protective about. She was haughty with him, and he ate it up. If you ask me, she was plastered. She could hardly finish a sentence. But you know Painter-if they have money everything’s understandable. Her husband walked out and she was drinking to kill the pain. Officially that’s where it stands.”

“How about unofficially?”

“Unofficially, I put out a missing persons sheet. I’ve got the marina people keeping a schedule of all traffic on or off the Nefertiti, and I’m going to stay on it myself until De Rham shows. That’s about all I can do, given Painter’s theory about not making waves. They’re visitors in town, and Miami Beach lives on visitors.”

“What did you think about the situation on the boat?”

“I think Mrs. De Rham and Brady are probably sleeping together, Mike, but that’s not a law we enforce, since we live on visitors. I don’t quite think they murdered him. Why would they hang around? All they have to do is put gas in the tank and go.”

Shayne told him about Mrs. De Rham’s cash transfers from New York, and Richardson whistled.

“Then I think we’d better start looking for unidentified corpses. Keep in touch, Mike. Incidentally, I just got a call. Somebody using your name beat up a woman in a bar. I don’t have to tell you how Painter reacted. I’m sure he jumped up and down. Better stay out of his way for a few days.”

“I always stay out of Petey’s way. I just wish he’d stay out of mine.”

He hung up thoughtfully. After a moment he returned to the Buick and drove back to the Sunrise Shores. Only one light burned aboard the Nefertiti, a battery lantern at the inboard end of the gangway. Tacked beneath it was a message printed on a shirt-cardboard:

Mike Shayne: Looks hopeless for tonight. She’s sound asleep and snoring. Going to bed myself. Try tomorrow at 9. - Brady.

Shayne frowned, feeling disconcerted and off-balance, as though he had missed a step coming downstairs in the dark. He had just been picking up momentum.

But there was nothing he could do except go home. He returned to Miami, taking his time, and garaged the Buick. He lived in an apartment hotel on the north bank of the Miami River, in the same two rooms he had rented when he first came to town. He still needed the same amount of space, he liked the down-at-the-heels neighborhood, and he saw no reason to move.

He made a final brandy and soda. While he drank it and prepared for bed, he thought about the De Rhams and Paul Brady. There were immense gaps in what he had been told. Something was seriously out of focus, but he had always had the ability to stop speculating about possibilities when he ran out of facts. He added up his checkbook, filled out his expense register, and turned out the light.

He was instantly asleep.

In the last year or so there had been a wave of boat robberies in Miami Beach. Professional thieves had discovered with delight that an amazing number of women on boats took their jewels along, and an amazing number of men carried amazing amounts of cash. The big marinas, which at first had been nothing but long floating docks, had begun to adopt security measures, and when Michael Shayne entered the Sunrise Shores the next morning he had to pass inspection by a uniformed guard.

Nearly every berth was taken. The Nefertiti was at the extreme end of its row, with open water on two sides. Paul Brady, in bathing trunks and sunglasses, was reading the Miami Herald on the forward sun deck. He folded the paper, weighted it with the coffee pot, and stood up as he saw Shayne approaching.

“Mike Shayne. I knew you’d be up early.”

“It’s not that early. Is Mrs. De Rham awake?”

Brady shook his head. Shayne saw himself reflected in the wraparound lenses of the sunglasses.

“She may be awake but she’s not up. But by God, she’s going to get up. Her husband’s been gone about two weeks now. Don’t you think it’s time she got used to the idea? I’ll get you a cup. Pour yourself some coffee while I bang on her door.”

He ducked in through a companionway and disappeared in the galley, to return a moment later with a cup and saucer, which he had just rinsed.

“We run what’s known as an un taut ship, wall to wall filth. Dishes tend not to get washed.”

“I’m told she’s been drinking,” Shayne said.

“She’s been drinking. I keep her company up to a point, but after a certain number of drinks I get sleepy.”

“This is all because her husband walked out on her?”

Brady threw out his hands. “Ask her head-shrinker. She didn’t do much twenty-four-hour drinking before this happened. They had their fights, but this time I think she’s finally convinced he means it. She’s beginning to pull out of it, I think-I mean I hope. That visit from the cops shook her up. It’s time she took some nourishment. She must have lost about fifteen pounds.”

“What’s your role here, Mr. Brady?” Shayne asked. “Just a friend?”

“Just a long-suffering friend. I thought they’d decided to make up, or I wouldn’t have come along. I have a marital problem of my own. But when they had the bad fight and the drinking started, I thought somebody ought to stick around. I don’t mind telling you I’m close to the end of the road.”

He crossed the salon and went down one step to rap on the stateroom door. He had promised to bang on it; instead, he knocked respectfully and repeated the knock when there was no response.

“What do you want?” a voice called.

He ducked his head, tried the door as though suspecting it might be locked, and stepped in.

Shayne poured himself coffee and waited. He was on the boat’s exposed side. He was half-sitting on the rail, not wanting to commit himself to a deck chair. A girl came out on the deck of the next boat, separated from Shayne only by the width of the catwalk. She had long blonde hair, coming down to where an old-fashioned bathing suit would have begun if she had been wearing that kind instead of a bikini. She came up on her toes and stretched, up and out.