Brett Halliday - Pay-Off in Blood

Shayne’s big hand closed around the glass and he asked, “What’s hot at Hialeah this afternoon, Sam?”

“Look here now.” Sam screwed his face up in patent disapproval. “Not you, Mike. Not in your old age, you ain’t gonna start buyin’ oats?”

Shayne took a sip and grinned and asked, “How do you stay in business… discouraging possible cash customers?”

“Business?” said Sam virtuously, waving his hand toward the beer-drinkers. “You know… a mug of suds here an’ a slug of cognac there. I make out.”

“Sure, I know. Where do you little guys go these days to lay off a bet that’s too big for you to handle?”

Sam studied the hard look on the detective’s face for a moment, and then said softly, “I ain’t no stoolie, Mike.”

Shayne made an impatient gesture with his left hand. “This is important… to me, Sam. I can get the info a dozen places, but I don’t want to waste time going a dozen places.”

“Well… you know… the Syndicate,” said Sam uneasily.

Shayne said, “I’ve been out of touch. Would that still be Big Vic Cartwright?” He paused and recited a telephone number from memory.

Sam nodded, obviously relieved that he wasn’t passing on any really secret information. “Still at the old stand.”

“Bank of Bay Biscayne Building?”

When Sam nodded again, Shayne put down the rest of his drink and chased it with a gulp of ice water. He put a ten-dollar bill on the bar and said, “That was good cognac, Sam. Keep the change.”

He went out into the hot afternoon sunlight and got in his car, and five minutes later he was striding into the lobby of an office building on Flagler Street. He paused at the directory and found Cartwright Associates listed on the 5th floor.

There was a small, neat reception room with a pert blonde at the end of it, seated in front of a large switchboard. She was manipulating plugs and murmuring into the mouthpiece hanging from her neck, and Shayne stood beside her for thirty seconds before she glanced aside and said, “Yes?”

“I want to see Big Vic. Tell him it’s Mike Shayne. Important and personal.”

She nodded and turned back to her switchboard. Shayne lit a cigarette and waited. She continued to flip plugs dexterously, and to murmur briefly into the mouthpiece, and in a short time she turned again and nodded. “Second door on your left, Mr. Shayne. Go right in.”

The second door on his left was simply lettered, PRIVATE. He turned the knob and went in without knocking.

There were four telephones on the big desk in the center of the big room. The man who sat behind the desk talking into one of the telephones was big enough to fit well into the setting.

He nodded his bullet head at the detective, spoke softly into the mouthpiece and listened for a moment, scrawled a notation on a pad in front of him.

Shayne sat down in a chair across the wide desk from him. Big Vic Cartwright replaced the telephone on its prongs and leaned his massive weight back in the swivel chair and clasped two hamlike hands at the back of a very thick and very short neck, and said genially, “It’s all right, Shamus. I’ll go quietly.”

Shayne said, “Somehow, I doubt that, Vic. How’s business?”

“So-so.” The right-hand telephone rang. He snatched it up and said, “No calls, Vergie.” He put it down and looked at Shayne benignly. “If it isn’t a pinch, what is it?”

“I need some information, Vic.” Shayne frowned and tugged at his left ear-lobe. “I’ve got a client who’s got his teat really in the wringer. He’s in deep. ’Way over his head, Vic, to at least a dozen boys around town where he’s established credit over the years. But he’s had a real bad run of luck and they’re clamping down. Now, he can’t possibly pay off a hundred cents on the dollar. On the other hand, he’s a good Joe and doesn’t want to welsh. So he’s dug up a pretty fair bunch of dough which he hopes will get him off the hook. Instead of going around and trying to make separate deals with each one of the boys, he turned the thing over to me to see if I could clear it all off the books for him.”

“How much?” demanded Big Vic.

“Altogether, they’re holding markers for a little over thirty grand. I’ve got eighteen thousand of his money to make it right.”

Cartwright shook his head sadly. “You know that ain’t kosher, Mike. This sucker expects a clean pay-off when he wins, doesn’t he? He’s always got it, hasn’t he? Fair and square, and cash money on the barrel-head. So now he comes crawling and wants a discount on his losses. You know that’s no decent way to do business, Mike.”

Shayne said flatly, “I know that the boys around town will be damned lucky to divvy up his assets. They either take a share… or nothing.” He hesitated momentarily. “I don’t expect to make a deal with you, Vic. But I’ve heard around town that when a guy gets in deep like this there’s a sort of collection agency that takes over. They’re the boys who can deal with this. If I can’t convince them to take the short end of the stick, then it’s no skin off my ass. All the rough stuff in the world won’t get them any more money than my client has already dug up. But I want to lay it on the line… and all I want from you is where I go to lay it.”

Vic Cartwright nodded and unclasped his hands from behind his neck. “Take your problem to Jess Hayden. If there’s that much cash involved, he’s probably already got the whole thing for collection. I don’t say you’ll get anywhere with him, Mike, but you can try.”

Shayne shrugged his wide shoulders. “That’s all I want.”

Cartwright opened the center drawer of the desk and looked at a pad. “Try the Splendide Hotel. Suite three-twenty. That’s out on Biscayne Boulevard…”

Shayne said, “I know the place. Three-twenty? Jess Hayden. Thanks, Vic. If he’s inclined to be reasonable, we can do business together.”

He got up and went out with a wave of his big hand. The Splendide was one of the newer and fancier gimcrack hostelries that had been erected during the Fifties as one of Miami’s answers to the mushrooming tourist facilities on the other side of Biscayne Bay.

Shayne had never set foot in the place before, and he felt a little overwhelmed by the rococo lobby, the squads of extravagantly uniformed bellmen hurrying about to fulfill every guest’s slightest desire, the bustle and confusion of a huge afternoon crowd representing the total population of the hotel which equalled that of a small city.

With the unerring sense of direction of a homing pigeon, Shayne made his way among them to a quiet corridor at the rear of the registration desk and to a plain wooden door that was marked SECURITY.

He knocked perfunctorily and turned the knob and entered a small office with an erect, white-haired man seated behind a cluttered desk. He was in his shirt-sleeves, wearing a neat bow tie, and was relaxed with his feet on the desk and a paperbacked novel in his hands when Shayne opened the door. He hastily dropped his feet to the floor and straightened up and slid the book down onto the chair beside him and said frostily, “This is a private office.” Then he opened his eyes wider and stared for a moment and said happily, “Mike Shayne, by God! What are you doing in a classy joint like this?”

Shayne said just as happily, “Parson Smith! Last time I knew, you were a bouncer down in a little waterfront bar. Well, well! Congratulations are indeed in order.” He leaned over the desk and offered his big hand, and Smith took it in a hard grip and told him with a wide grin, “Sometimes I wish I were back there, Mike. It didn’t pay as well, but things did happen. Life is just about as dull as dishwater around this place.”