Brett Halliday - Dolls Are Deadly

“Michael Shayne?” Ed repeated quickly. He looked at Shayne, as did Slim and Vince, from the wheelhouse. “You mean,” Ed said with no unsteadiness in his voice, “you’re Michael Shayne, the private detective?”

“The same,” Sylvester said proudly. “My friend, he is famous everywhere.”

“Well, I’m damned!” Ed smoothed his angel’s halo of graying hair. “Miami’s best-known detective on our boat. Wait’ll I tell the folks back home.”

“Better keep it under your hat,” Slim advised. “They’ll think your wife put him on your tail.”

“My friend, Mike, he does not tail.” Sylvester straightened with drunken dignity. “My friend, Mike, he heads the big cases.” He roared loudly at the pun.

“Like murder and such?” Ed asked, adding recklessly, “We’ve drunk to everything else today. Let’s have a drink to murder!”

It was as if the words were prophetic. Vince had the radio tuned in to a station in Miami. The local news was on. Shayne had been hearing the droning voice only as background sound, then suddenly the newscaster’s words jumped acutely into his consciousness.

“… the body of Henry ‘Henny’ Henlein, behind a pile of dirt at the site of the excavation on Washington. Henlein has a long criminal record, has been arrested many times, but never convicted on a major charge. A certain mystery surrounds the slaying. Death came apparently as a result of a gunshot through the heart, but around the neck of the body there was a piece of rope-a noose tied in a hangman’s knot. It has not yet been determined…”

Vince cut the radio off and there was only the muted roaring of the new engine as it thrust the Santa Clara through the empty expanse of water toward the Beach.

Shayne stood very still in the silence after Vince snapped off the newscast, three vertical lines deepening in his forehead.

He lit a cigarette and walked to the rail, tossing the match overboard into the water. So, after all, Henlein’s fear had been justified. He had been murdered precisely as he had been afraid he would be-and within hours after he had left Shayne’s office.

Lucy was going to look very accusing about this. Even so, the redhead had no regrets for having refused aid to the hoodlum. The world would have one less law-breaker in it, that was all. However, Shayne did have an absorbing curiosity as to what lay beneath the surface. Who had killed Henlein and why? Those two little dolls didn’t add up to mob murder-unless something novel had been added to mob methods in Miami lately.

He turned sharply at a raucous sound. Sylvester lay prone on the bench under the starboard rail, his toes up, his wide mouth open and snoring.

“Sylvester’s out,” Slim called to Vince. “You’ll have to take us all the way in. Can you make the channel?”

“I think so. I’ve watched Sylvester do it.”

The sun was lowering now and the slanted afternoon light seemed to have a quieting effect on the three men. Ed took out a deck of cards and began playing solitaire. Slim, huddled in the cushions, stared glassy-eyed at the wake the boat left. The Santa Clara, gunning for the Beach under Vince’s able handling, passed a boat which had run up its tuna flag. There were girls on it, but no one on the Santa Clara was showing any wolf-strain now. They all seemed tired, as though relaxing after a strenuous day of sport, which was a little peculiar, considering they hadn’t roused themselves to any effort more enervating than pouring a drink. Even the rum couldn’t account for all their lethargy. Sylvester had downed the biggest part of it.

As the boat sliced through the less tranquil waters near the Beach, the men stirred. Ed retrieved his bonito from the ice box and was holding it, ready to go ashore, when Vince cut the engine twenty feet out and let inertia carry them to the pier. Shayne and Slim jumped off and made the fore and aft moorings fast and put out the rubber-tire fenders.

They stood for a moment on the dock, then shook hands with Shayne-all except Ed. “My hand’s fishy,” he said apologetically. “You know, sometimes I wonder why I ever bring fish home. My woman won’t clean them. She makes me do it and if there’s anything I don’t like, it’s cleaning fish. For two cents I’d throw it back.”

“It’s sure been nice, Mr. Shayne,” Vince said.

“It was nice of you to let me barge in.”

“Not at all,” Slim assured him. “Any time.”

They hesitated, glancing over at Sylvester. “You think he’ll be all right?”

Shayne nodded. “I’ll carry him into the cabin. He’ll sleep it off.”

The three men started down the dock, waving back at Shayne, who was standing tugging at his left earlobe. They were friendly all right, as Sylvester said. Weren’t they a little too friendly? Or was he too suspicious? He shrugged. That’s what a lifetime of poking your nose into other people’s crimes would do for you.

Still, something was bothering the redhead. It was connected in some way with the big fish Ed was so unenthusiastically carrying away. No, not that fish, the other one. The barracuda Ed had swapped to the Cubans.

Suddenly, he had it. Barracuda was the fastest spoiling fish on the coast. And they didn’t have any ice on La Ballena, as proven by the fact that they had borrowed a bucket of cubes from Sylvester for their drinks. Without ice to hold it, the barracuda would be unfit to eat by the time they made port in Cuba. Had the Cubans known that-they must have! — and accepted the fish just out of a Latin sense of politeness, because the charter crew on Sylvester’s boat had been so eager to be friendly? Or was there another reason?

A policeman moved into sight from around the dock shed. The three men had taken no more than a dozen steps from the boat. As the young cop, walking purposefully, came toward them, the men seemed to falter infinitesimally in their stride. Then Vince and Slim moved out a little ahead of Ed who was carrying the bonito and with what appeared to be studied casualness, put themselves on either side of him, almost as though they were a bodyguard. They kept moving in a sort of inverted V, came abreast of the policeman and passed him. Without giving them a glance, he continued in his positive stride straight to Shayne at the dock edge.

“You Michael Shayne?”

The cop’s youth and truculence rubbed Shayne the wrong way. He nodded sourly.

“Peter Painter wants to see you.”

Shayne took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one, flipping the match into the water. “Suppose I don’t want to see Peter Painter?”

“It don’t make any difference what you want. When a guy’s found murdered with your address in his pocket, you’re involved, brother.”

“Don’t ‘brother’ me! Half the people in greater Miami carry my address in their pocket.”

“But half the people ain’t murdered. Henny Henlein was.”

“What does Painter want me to do? Send flowers? It would be a pleasure-to Henny’s murderer.”

The cop blinked uncertainly. “You hadn’t ought to talk like that. You’re in a bad enough jam as it is. And you’re not helping yourself by keeping Painter waiting.”

Shayne took a deep drag on the cigarette and blew out smoke. “Maybe you don’t know how things are between Peter Painter and me. There’s nothing I’d rather do than keep him waiting-and vice versa.”

The policeman stared at Shayne with the look of a boy who had been sent on a man’s job. “Come on now, Mr. Shayne. I’ve got a job to do.”

Shayne growled, “Why didn’t you put it that way in the first place? Where’s Painter?”

“On Washington, right off Alton-where they found Henlein’s body. Painter won’t let them move it till you get there.”