Brett Halliday - Dolls Are Deadly

Shayne got into the car, swung around in the middle of the block and turned north. An unpeopled silence had been about him when he left the river, but as he approached the center of town the tempo of city noises increased and when he parked, the hum of life was around him.

It was well known in certain circles that the loan-shark racketeer, De Luca, headquartered at a place called Joe’s Bar, near Southeast First and Flagler.

Inside Joe’s he ordered a Hennessy, turned sideways and leaned one elbow on the bar while he surveyed the long smoky room. Despite the fact that D. L. was known to be tops in mobster money, Joe’s Bar looked no more plush than a thousand others.

The room was half full, three men at the bar beside himself and five or six more in booths at the side. In the rear, next to the cigarette machine, a man slouched against a door, seemingly unconcerned, but obviously on guard. Downing the cognac, Shayne left a bill on the bar and walked over to him.

“Where do I see D. L.?” The redhead put coins into the cigarette machine and pulled a handle. With a tinkle and a thud the cigarettes dropped down.

The man looked at Shayne expressionlessly. The skin on his face was ridged and flaking, much like that of the man who had been tailing Shayne in the gray Buick. Acne was either an occupational disease of gangsters, or the result of childhood malnutrition.

“He ain’t in.” The words were insolently mouthed, the stream of smoke in Shayne’s face a calculated challenge.

“Then why are you playing bulldog?” With a violent yank Shayne grabbed the man’s coat collar in his big hands and pulled him close, holding him dangling with his heels off the floor as though he were a dog on a short leash. Then suddenly he released him with a shove that sent him thudding against the door.

The man swore viciously and, bracing his shoulders against the door, aimed a disabling kick at Shayne’s groin. The redhead stepped aside, throwing his own heel sideways and connecting with the guard’s knee. The man let out a yelp of pain. Shayne broke the sound midway with a short-armed jab that slammed his head against the door again.

One of the bartenders slid under the bar and moved in fast. The redhead stepped inside a murderously aimed leather sap and put two jabs to the flabby stomach. The bartender bent double, gasping. On the instant, the guard at the door slashed out with a switchblade knife. It cut only air before Shayne had the knife wrist in the vise of his big fist. With something tangible to vent his anger on, he crashed his other fist into the man’s jaw, watching him hang against the wall a moment before his body sagged and he slid to the floor in a crumpled heap, his eyes blank and empty.

Another man was moving from the bar when the door to D. L.’s office opened, and a quiet voice said, “Let him come in, Max.”

Shayne stepped over the unconscious guard and the crime chief closed the door behind him.

If the front of Joe’s Bar was not plush, the same could not be said of D. L.’s private office. Here the walls were covered with red velvet with a silken sheen. The furniture, even to the massive French desk, was a shiny gold. A four-foot crystal chandelier suspended from the ceiling reflected the colors in its ever-moving prisms with a dazzling effect.

Amid all this splendor the man in the room wore a rumpled white shirt that had an elongated coffee stain down the front. His collar was half open, his sleeves rolled up, his tie awry. He padded across the oriental rug to his desk where he squatted like a frog, smiling ironically and flashing gold fillings which matched the furniture.

The man from whom De Luca had inherited this loan-shark empire was dead and moldering-if not by De Luca’s hand, then by his direction. And lucrative as was the loan-shark racket in Miami, it was generally thought to be only a sideline with De Luca, and that his real profit came from narcotics smuggling. He master-minded the details of bringing it into the country for the Syndicate and seeing it safely on its way to cutting and distributing centers in the North. It was rumored that he had known Lucky Luciano before Luciano was deported to Italy, and had since visited with the dope and vice czar there. However, as yet no crimes of consequence had been hung on De Luca by local or federal lawmen, for he was cunning and capable as well as ruthless.

“I was expecting you, Mr. Shayne,” De Luca said in a soft voice, “though I was hardly prepared for such a violent entry. I deplore violence.”

Shayne said dryly, “Then you ought to teach your goon some manners.” He rubbed his knuckles and followed De Luca to the desk.

“My goon, as you inelegantly put it, is an ignoramus. Good muscles, though. Still, yours must be better. I admire both the mental and the physical.”

“Red velvet and gold don’t seem conducive to good muscles.”

“They aren’t. I haven’t good muscles myself. But I admire beauty too.”

“Such as Madame Swoboda’s?”

Shayne sat down on a red-velvet-upholstered chair beside the desk, eying the rumpled shirt with the coffee-colored stain. De Luca’s head reflected the red and gold lights almost as sharply as the chandelier prisms. His face was soft and round, his dark eyes puffy, his nose and mouth fat. Protruding and unsymmetrical ears broke the circular effect, emphasizing the only slight difference between the width of his face and his bull-like neck.

“Madame Swoboda? I don’t think I know her.” D. L. sounded contrite. “Ought I to?”

“She’s beautiful.”

“And she runs a whorehouse in Miami?” He looked honestly incredulous.

“She’s not that kind of madam.” Shayne played it straight. “Madame Swoboda’s a mystic. She holds seances and communicates with the spirit world.”

“I’m sure I never heard of her.”

“One of your musclemen must have known her. Henny Henlein.”

“Ah, yes. Poor Henny.” D. L. opened an ebony box on the desk and pushed it toward Shayne. The redhead shook his head and took a cigarette from his pocket. D. L. reached into the box himself, removed a cigar from its little wooden coffin, bit off the end and spat it carefully over the shoulder away from Shayne. He lit it from an ornamental desk lighter and leaned back in the ornate chair. “That was very unfortunate. You didn’t do it, did you?”

“No.”

“I heard the police thought you did. Henny had your address in his pocket.”

“Henny tried to hire me. You didn’t have him killed, did you?”

“Don’t you know yet?” D. L. blew a billow of smoke at the ceiling. “I thought you’d have it all unraveled by now. One just can’t believe everything one hears about the miracles private detectives perform.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“My dear Mr. Shayne, Henny was one of my most valued-henchmen, I believe you’d call him. Not mentally, of course. Mentally, he was an imbecile. But he had beautiful muscles.”

“Who killed him?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. There’s always an occupational incentive, of course, for a man like Henny to branch out on his own. Being stupid, he would have muffed it. Whoever he was doing it to probably killed him.”

“And who was that?”

“I’ve told you I don’t know. It certainly wasn’t anyone around here. We all loved him. He had a little-boy quality.”

“Maybe that’s why someone sent him two voodoo dolls to play with.”

“Voodoo dolls?” D. L. looked honestly bemused, “I didn’t know about that.”

“Your organization’s slipping. Why did you think he came to me?”

“To get protection from Dan Milford, of course.”

Shayne laughed shortly. “What about his beautiful muscles? Couldn’t he protect himself?”