Brett Halliday - So Lush, So Deadly

“Want me to answer it?” Rourke asked.

“No. I’m lying in a hallway with my skull cracked. Let’s leave it at that.”

Rourke grabbed the tape recorder and beat Shayne to the Ford. He had the motor running by the time the detective climbed in.

“Which way?”

“The Beach,” Shayne growled. “When are you going to get a decent car?”

“There’s nothing wrong with this car.” The transmission howled. He shot across a stop street without slowing down. “Fasten your seat belt. I’ll give you a ride you’ll remember.”

There was no seat belt to fasten. Shayne was scraping his chin, watching the speedometer. When the needle hit fifty Rourke came down into high.

“You know me, Mike. I hardly ever complain. We’re the only news outfit in town that had live coverage of the hippy riot, so thanks, pal. I wish I knew how it started.” He glanced across at Shayne. “People said some big ugly redhead thought the music was too loud and started throwing guitarists off the platform. Don’t tell me where we’re going. One story every twenty-four hours is all I deserve.”

Shayne’s face was bleak and hard. The muscles knotted and unknotted at the hinge of his jaws.

“You know talking’s supposed to relieve the mind,” Rourke said.

Shayne shook his head shortly. He still had too many connections to work out. He rapped his fist against his injured knee. The pain helped.

A cab appeared in front of them and Rourke touched his brake. The brakes grabbed, throwing the Ford into a hard swerve. He yanked at the wheel and managed to avoid both the cab and the parked cars.

“I’ve been meaning to get a brake job.”

“Pick it up, pick it up. You can go faster than this.”

Even at slower speeds, Rourke always drove as though he thought he was competing for the Grand Prix. He sawed at the wheel, his ungainly body jackknifed forward in a tense crouch, eyes flickering from the road ahead to the dials.

“Only one trouble,” he said. “Above sixty she gets this shimmy. At sixty-two we’re O.K. At sixty-three you get the feeling the front wheels are about to fly off. I’d hate to have that happen.”

The Ford rocked violently as he whirled onto Eighth Street. If there had been any traffic coming the opposite way he would have contributed several fatalities to the highway statistics for that day.

“Of course I could get sulky and drop you at a cab stand,” he said. “Everybody thinks I like staying up all night. When I was younger I thought it was romantic, but not any more. I’m human. That’s what people tend to forget.”

“Will you cork it for a minute, Tim? I’ll tell you about it as soon as I can check a few things. I could be wrong.”

“I’m not complaining. Anything you want me to do, Mike, go down in a catch basin, break my neck in an automobile-”

He shot across the bridge over the Miami River and made the quick jog east to Biscayne Boulevard. He slowed enough for a quick glance in both directions, and ran through a red light.

“That’s better,” Shayne grunted.

“Except if I get stopped and we have to spend fifteen minutes arguing it may not look too smart. Where on the Beach?”

“The St. Albans.”

Shayne uncapped the cognac bottle, waited till Rourke had the Ford on the smooth concrete of the causeway, and drank deeply. He had been faked out of position, but he was almost beginning to persuade himself that he had recovered in time.

“If you’re going in a hotel, Mike-well, I don’t want to put you down. Take a look in the mirror.”

Shayne switched on the overhead light and turned the mirror. He ripped a piece off his shirttail. Using the cognac, he cleaned the worst of the blood off his face. The pattern of the bicycle chain remained clearly imprinted along his jaw.

“It’s O.K. They know me there.”

“Yeah, but you have to consider the tone of the place, too. You’re going to lower it, pal.”

“Too damn bad.”

He had another quick drink and put the cognac away. Rourke crossed the Beach on Arthur Godfrey Road and turned north on Collins. There was more traffic here, but he had decided to show Shayne he could drive recklessly when he wanted to, and he didn’t slow down until he used his brakes again for the curving approach to the great wedding-cake hotel.

Shayne jumped out and thrust a bill at the doorman. “Be back in a minute. Don’t move it.”

“Right, Mike,” the doorman said.

The clerk at the front desk, who didn’t know Shayne, looked at him oddly when he asked for Tom Moseley’s room number. Then, leaning forward, he made a point of noticing Rourke’s muddy pants and bare feet.

“That’s 1421,” he said, making a discreet sign to summon the night security man. “Will you use the house phone, please?”

“Tim,” Shayne snapped. “Call him and tell him I’m on the way. I’ll explain while he’s getting dressed.”

“Why don’t I come too,” Rourke suggested, “and then you won’t have to explain twice?”

Shayne waved him away. The security man, Reuben Kaufman, looked out of his little office.

“Anything you want me to do, Shayne?”

“Just picking up somebody.”

He shut himself in an automatic elevator, which took him rapidly to the fourteenth floor. He found 1421 and buzzed. He could hear the phone ringing inside.

When the phone continued to ring he whipped out his picks, already knowing what he would find. Using only a hard celluloid strip, he forced the latch and entered the room.

The lights were on. “Yeah,” Shayne said softly.

There was a dead man on the floor.

He looked down at the body for only an instant. He had been clubbed from behind with a gin bottle. The bottle, three-quarters full, lay a foot or so from the dead man’s head, which amid the blood and clotted hair clearly showed the triangular indentation. The man had been wearing his glasses when he was struck, horn-rims with straight earpieces. He was fully dressed, in a business suit.

The phone went on ringing. Shayne pulled a Kleenex from a box on the bureau and picked it up carefully.

“Tim?”

“Yeah. What’s wrong?”

“What do you think is wrong? He’s been murdered.”

Shayne bent over the body and smelled the blood. Then he looked around. The television picture was coming in without sound. There were various small signs that a fight had taken place. A loaded ashtray had been knocked over. When Shayne returned to the body he saw something on the floor beside the right hand. At first he thought it was fur. Using the point of a pencil, he turned it over. It was a patch of human hair, blonde and curling. Each individual hair had been sewn to a piece of silk.

Shayne left it there. The buzzer sounded.

“Open it from outside,” he called. “I don’t want to smear the knob.”

The security man used his keys. Tim Rourke entered with him.

“Jolly,” Rourke commented, looking down. “Single occupancy. Not really supposed to have guests.”

“Tim, you have to handle this for me. He’s been dead a couple of hours, so I doubt if Painter will try to lay it on me. Tell him I’ll call in.”

“Mike, you found him,” Kaufman pointed out. “I’m afraid I’ll have to insist that you stay around till Painter gets here. It won’t be long.”

“You’re well within your rights,” Shayne assured him. “Insist. Tim, did you leave the keys in the Ford?”

“Yeah. But Mike, Kaufman has a point. Painter’s going to want to know what you wanted with him, and that’s for openers. What do I tell him?”

Shayne allowed himself a tight grin. “Tell him you can’t say anything before you talk to a lawyer. Mention the Supreme Court.”