Brett Halliday - Dolls Are Deadly

“Flattering of Petey to call me in on consultation. All right, tell him I’ll be there, after I’ve put my friend where the mosquitoes won’t get him.” He turned abruptly and stepped onto the boat.

When the policeman did not move, Shayne added, “Or would you rather make a real pinch and take me in handcuffed?”

“Of course not, Mr. Shayne.” Now that he saw that the redhead was not going to be difficult, the policeman’s manner changed. He looked toward Sylvester, saying mildly, “He looks like he’s dead.”

“Livest dead man you ever saw. Put your fingers in his mouth if you don’t believe me. But count them first.”

Scooping Sylvester up in his arms as though he were a half-grown boy, Shayne carried him down the companionway steps into the cabin and laid him on a bunk. He’d have a talk with Sylvester tomorrow, after the Cuban sobered up.

He tossed the cigarette butt into the water as he strode up the dock to his car with the young officer. “How’d you find me? I know my office didn’t give out.”

“Painter put out an alert on your license number. The squad boys covering this area reported your car parked here.”

Shayne grunted. “The master criminologist at his devious best.”

By barreling his car all the way between lights, Shayne arrived in a dead heat with the policeman. Except at the near end where a few condemned houses still stood, the street was a pile of rubble where buildings had been razed preparatory to putting up a multiple-unit apartment building. Toward the middle of the block a mound of earth, removed in the process of replacing a water main, covered half the street. Across from it a line of cars was parked-two black police cars, the photographer’s Jaguar and Peter Painter’s lime-green coupe. In front of the mound of dirt two policemen stood guard to deflect the morbidly curious.

Shayne parked and strode toward the dirt pile. Painter, a small, slender man with sharp eyes and a thin black mustache, scowled and caressed his mustache with his thumbnail.

The redhead stopped, looking down at the lifeless body of Henny Henlein. Blood had seeped from a wound in his chest, staining his pin-striped coat. Around his neck, incongruously, was a hangman’s noose. A few feet away a snub-nosed pocket gun with a walnut handle lay in the dirt.

Shayne stooped over the body. There was no question but that the bullet which had killed Henlein had been fired at close range. The hole in his coat was marked with powder burns. The noose around his neck was made out of common clothesline and was tied in the same hangman’s knot as the noose around the neck of the tiny voodoo doll Henlein had brought to Shayne’s office.

“All right, Shayne,” Painter said, making his voice weary, “what’s your involvement in this?”

“What makes you think I’ve got any?”

Painter’s eyes flared. “Because it’s just the kind of cockeyed murder you’d have something to do with. Look at that noose! It didn’t kill him. His neck isn’t even bruised. It was hung on him after he’d been killed. It’s a symbol, or a threat, or a message to someone.”

Painter was right about this anyway. The noose had probably been put around the hoodlum’s neck to let someone know that he had been murdered by the same person who sent him the voodoo doll. It was like a signed card saying, “I did it.” But who was it meant for? And why had Henlein been shot instead of strangled or stabbed? The other doll had had a pin through its chest. Had two people sent dolls to Henlein?

“Any other clues on him?” Shayne asked casually, wondering why Painter had not mentioned the voodoo dolls before this.

“Yes, a good one. Your name and address. What’s your connection? Who killed him?”

The redhead fastened his gray eyes quizzically on Painter. “I wouldn’t know. Do you? Or is that question too personal?”

“He had your address,” Painter sputtered.

“As I told your bright young man when he came crowding me, so do half the people of greater Miami. My newspaper publicity pays off. Maybe he was going to call me, but the guy with the gun interfered.” He gave Painter a wicked grin. “And now, if you’ll excuse me-”

Shayne turned slowly, expecting Painter to produce the little dolls at any moment for a surprise effect and start his grilling all over again.

Painter did step in front of him, but not to produce any dolls, merely to sound a belligerent warning. “Don’t get sarcastic with me, shamus. You’re not above the law and my office is going to be watching you close on this. You give me the ghost of a reason and I’ll have you down to headquarters so fast it’ll make your teeth rattle. So now, just give me the facts. What’s that noose doing around Henlein’s neck?”

“How do I know? Maybe he always wears it. Look, Petey, I’ve got other things to do.”

“Such as what?”

“It’s none of your damned business.” Shayne stepped around Painter and strode down the road to his car.

He slammed the door decisively, made a U-turn to head south on Alton Avenue, and sped toward the McArthur Causeway which led to the city of Miami. Once there, he stopped at the first bar he came to on Biscayne Boulevard, ordered a double brandy, carried it to a phone booth and dialed the Daily News. He asked for his old friend, Tim Rourke, and after a moment the veteran reporter’s voice came lazily over the wire.

“Hi, Mike. What’s new?”

“That’s what I called to ask you.”

“Nothing much. A murder over on the Beach. A hoodlum-”

“I know about that. What else?”

“God, you’re jaded. What do you want, a massacre?”

“Just some information-about that woman down by the river who’s been holding seances the last month or so. Her name’s Madame Swoboda.”

“Yeah. She’s quite a tourist attraction. I’ve been going to do a story on her for the paper.”

“Does she sell voodoo dolls?”

“By the hundreds. Also conjure candles, love potions and goofer dust.”

“What the hell is goofer dust?”

“Graveyard soil. I don’t know what it’s good for, but I can find out if you want some.”

“Don’t bother. If I ever do, I know where to get it free.” Shayne finished the brandy. “One thing more, Tim. Henny Henlein was working for De Luca. Any reason you know why D. L. might want him under six feet of goofer dust?”

“Can’t think of any. From what I hear, Henny was the ideal muscleman. He followed orders and he couldn’t think.”

“Maybe he began to try to think.”

“Don’t know why he should. D. L.’s supposed to be a good boss, as gangsters go. Even pensions ’em off-if they live that long.”

“Maybe he decided to save money on one pension.”

“Henny wasn’t old enough to be retired. And anyway, the loan racket’s booming.”

“Do you think Henny got out of line and tried a speculation on his own?”

“I don’t know. I’ll keep an ear to the ratline though, and let you know if I hear anything.”

“Thanks, Tim. I’ll see you soon.”

Shayne hung up, waited a moment, then raised the receiver, dropped in a coin and dialed his office number. It was after hours and he expected to get his answering service, but was pleasurably surprised to hear Lucy Hamilton’s voice come musically over the wire.

“Michael Shayne’s office.”

“It’s the man himself, in person. Has anything happened since I left?”

“Has anything happened, he asks! Has anything not happened. The police have been calling. That man with the little dolls has been murdered-”

“I know about that. Anything else?”

“Anything else! Yes, there is something else. You should have taken that poor man’s case when he asked you to. Then maybe he wouldn’t be dead now. You’re just as involved as if you had taken it, because he had your address in his pocket-”