Brett Halliday - The Private Practice of Michael Shayne

Driving slowly, relaxed behind the wheel of his roadster, Michael Shayne drew long drafts of the heavy-bodied air into his lungs.

It seemed to him that time stood still as he approached the Round-up. He shook his head irritably. It was a silly thought, of course. A poor way of expressing what was in his mind.

Yet, the illusion persisted. It was a night for illusions-as are so many nights in Miami. Shayne caught himself wondering if the night air actually had some toxic effect upon otherwise sane men. Possibly that was what poets meant when they wrote about the lotus flower of the tropics. The poisonous conviction that only the present is important. This hour-this moment-time standing still.

He wrenched his thoughts back to reality when a cluster of lights showed a low building set back from the thoroughfare in a clearing hewed out of the jungle growth. Dim colored lights were strung between tall coco palms, and faint yellow half-moons showed through shuttered windows.

After parking his car near the street, he got out and picked his way across embedded coral rocks toward the low building with its furtively darkened doors and windows.

He knew little about the Round-up except by reputation. Obviously it was one of the many cheap dives that open up on the outskirts of Miami at the beginning of each winter season, favored by the scum of the winter visitors, and inquisitive yokels who can’t afford the cover charge at glamour joints on the beach and in downtown Miami.

A head-high screen of laced bamboo separated the darkened entry from the purplish gloom of the interior. A fat-bottomed boy with rosy cheeks and penciled eyebrows leaned on a pine counter just inside the door. He screwed his face up into a smirk that was intended to suggest unmentionable depravities, and said in a falsetto voice, “Check your hat, mister.”

Shayne brushed past him without replying.

A roped-off square in the center of the large room was surrounded by tables. In the dingy half-light provided by dim ceiling globes, half a dozen of the tables could be seen to have occupants. Along three of the walls, intimate booths were partitioned off by shoulder-high enclosures of unpainted wall board, with curtains suspended on steel wire.

Here was none of the gaiety and mirth of the palaces of vice in the city. Here sin was not a pleasure to be lightly accepted; rather, a thing to be worked at for a livelihood, to be accomplished in the half-light with all the loathsome viciousness dredged up from the secret places in the warped souls of people who gravitate naturally to places like the Round-up.

A girl glided up to Shayne as he stood inside the room. The top of fluffy blonde hair reached almost to his shoulder, and she cocked a pert, childish face up at him. She wore a flimsy blouse of white lace that showed a pink brassiere cupping immature breasts. She laid thin, moist fingers tipped with crimson nails on his arm, and asked, “Looking for a good time, big boy?”

Shayne shook his head with passive disinterest, his gaze going over her head and around the room. “I quit playing nursery games a long time ago.”

She slid her fingers from his arm to her hips and wriggled her undersized buttocks suggestively. “You don’t know but what I might show you somethin’ you ain’t never seen before.”

A high-pitched giggle echoed crazily through the stifling, smoke-laden atmosphere.

Shayne said, “I doubt it, youngster,” and moved away from the girl toward the curtained alcove from which the giggle came.

A man came from nowhere and fell in step with him. He had a long, sallow face, glistening black hair grew down in a low peak in front. He wore tight-waisted, plaited slacks, and a dirty, white mess jacket. Smoke curling up from a cigarette between his bloodless lips had the acrid pungency of marijuana.

He asked, huskily, “Lookin’ for somebody, mister?”

Shayne said, “Yes,” without slackening his pace.

They passed directly under one of the dim globes and the man exclaimed, “Hey! You’re-ain’t you that private dick that had a run-in with Bernie last fall?”

Shayne made no reply.

The man caught his sleeve and tugged at it anxiously. “What d’yuh want here? For God’s sake, mister, le’s talk this over.”

The giggle hadn’t sounded any more.

Shayne stopped in front of half a dozen curtained booths and said, “There’s nothing to talk about. I want to see Belle. Let go of my sleeve.”

The man let go and took a trembling drag on his reefer.

“Belle who?” he inquired.

“You know what Belle I mean. She’s here, and she’s high as a kite. That was her I heard giggling awhile ago. Which booth is she in?”

“Lissen,” the sallow-faced man husked confidentially, “a couple of Bernie’s boys is hittin’ it up with her, see? There’ll be trouble if you bust in on ’em. Go on back to the door and I’ll get Belle.”

“I like trouble,” Shayne grunted irritably. “Where is she?”

“We can’t afford to have no trouble here, but by the lord Harry you’ll get it if you don’t do what I say. I’ll handle it.”

Shayne said, “No. Am I going to have to start jerking all these curtains and seeing things that aren’t supposed to be seen to find her?”

He stepped forward with arm outstretched toward the nearest drawn curtain.

A shrill voice from the third booth down stopped him before he touched the curtain. “Wait’ll I see Chuck again. Will I make that low-lived bastard crawl on his knees before I let him touch me.”

Shayne moved to that booth and pulled the curtain open. The sallow-faced man turned and slunk away.

The booth held a narrow table with plain wooden benches on each side. There was a bottle on the table, and glasses, a conch-shell ash tray piled high with closely smoked cigarette butts. The stench of stale alcohol and marijuana blasted out in Shayne’s face as he pulled the curtain.

Belle was half lying on the table, glassy-eyed, her lolling head supported on her fat arm. She wore the same inadequate lace evening gown Shayne had seen her wear at Marco’s casino. One of her breasts was half out of the gown, lying in a little pool of spilled liquor.

A ferret-laced young man looked at Shayne through dreamy, hall-closed eyes from his position against the wall, with one foot on the bench. His cheeks were flushed and feverish. Long, yellow fingers held a half-smoked cigarette a few inches from his mouth.

On the side of the table next to the curtain, a thicknecked, bushy-headed man was hunched forward with elbows resting on the table, hairy forearms bared, calloused palms supporting a square chin bristling with whiskers. He tilted his chin in his hands to look up at Shayne. A jagged, ugly scar twitched the corner of his right eye.

Shayne said, “Hello, Butch,” and let his gaze slide past to the dreamy-eyed younger man, asking without interest, “How’re tricks, Ned?”

Butch made no reply.

Ned Parradone said, “What’s it to a sonofabitch like you?” and slid the cigarette up to his lips.

A giggle came from Belle’s pouted lips. She didn’t move, and her glazed eyes were not quite focused on Shayne’s face. She asked throatily, “Er you gonna take that from Ned?”

“Sure,” Shayne said. “I’m an easy guy to get along with.”

Butch’s scar twitched and he muttered, “He’s scairt of Ned. Can’t you see he’s scairt?”

He dropped the splayed fingers of one hand toward a glass of whisky in front of him and tipped it over.

Shayne touched Belle’s shoulder and said, “I heard Chuck pulled out on you.”

She closed her right eye tightly and widened the other one to fix it on Shayne’s angular face bent close to hers. She slurred, “The bashtard-crawl on hizh knees-”