Brett Halliday - Mermaid on the Rocks

“Take her up,” Shayne snapped.

As soon as they were off the ground and heading for Miami, the pilot explained what had happened. A tart old lady named Mrs. Eda Lou Parchman had presented a written order signed by Shayne, telling him to take her to Miami. Blakey had never seen Shayne’s handwriting, and had had no reason to suspect that the order was forged.

“Let’s see how fast you can make this thing go,” the detective said grimly.

Judge Francis X. Shanahan, playing nervously with the neck of a water carafe, was hearing argument from opposing counsel in a negligence case. The heavy bags under his eyes were the only visible indication of his well-known fondness for late hours, noisy nightclubs and glossy, ambitious young women. As Shayne entered his courtroom, an expression of extreme physical discomfort passed over his still-handsome face. He gave his little two-part mustache a quick stroke with the ball of his thumb.

Tim Rourke was in the last row, nibbling his nails. Hearing the door open, he looked around hopefully. The detective slid in beside him.

“Where’s Will Gentry?” Shayne asked in a low voice.

“Down on the street in a radio car.” The reporter glanced at Shayne’s head bandage. “You had some trouble, I see. I didn’t think you sounded right on the phone.”

“I gave him the names of four people,” Shayne said. “How many did he find?”

“You see Shanahan up there. So far that’s it. We’re batting. 250.”

Shayne swore under his breath. “Did he get through to Kitty Sims?”

Rourke shook his head. “She’s registered at the New York hotel all right, but she’s not in her room.”

“Is he sure?”

“Yeah. Her luggage was there when he called, but she wasn’t. A Do Not Disturb ticket was on the doorknob.”

Shayne went on scowling. A bailiff left his post beneath an American flag and came over to warn them that they were making too much noise. They ignored him.

“Give Gentry a message,” Shayne said. “There’s one other person I want him to pick up, and I hope he can find this one. An old lady named Eda Lou Parchman. Cal Tuttle’s common-law wife. Blakey set her down at the Watson Park heliport and she must have picked up a cab at the stand there. Skinny old dame, fake white hair, heavy eye makeup, striped cotton suit, high heels. Plenty of style.”

Rourke made a few quick notes. “Gentry’s beginning to get restless, Mike. I told him as much as I knew, but you know how much that is-not a hell of a lot.”

“Tell him to meet me in Shanahan’s chambers as soon as he gets the new call out. I’ll tell him about it.”

He stood up.

Rourke said, “Court doesn’t recess for half an hour.”

“It’s going to recess in twenty seconds,” Shayne promised him.

Sidestepping the bailiff, he went down the aisle to the broad railing. From the raised bench, Judge Shanahan watched him approach. At the swinging gate Shayne stopped and took out his wallet. He had borrowed thirty dollars from Rourke after Kitty cleaned him out at backgammon. Without taking his eyes off the judge’s face, he removed the bills from the wallet and counted them out slowly on the oak railing.

Shanahan’s mustache jumped. He took a long swallow of water while the detective counted his money again.

“Yes, I get the drift,” Shanahan said, breaking into a droning citation of precedents from one of the lawyers. “I’ll rule after lunch. Court will now stand in recess.”

The lawyer’s jaw dropped as Shanahan stood up. Stuffing the bills carelessly in his pocket, Shayne opened the gate and sauntered through. The bailiff moved to cut him off.

“Here now. Where do you think you’re going?”

Shayne gave him a hard look and he stood aside.

Shanahan, his mustache working nervously, was waiting in his chambers. “Hell, Mike, couldn’t you think of any other way? That joker who was moving for a dismissal merely happens to be head of the ethics committee of the Bar Association, that’s all. It’s lucky he doesn’t have eyes in the back of his head.”

“Sorry, Frank. It couldn’t wait.”

“Rourke has been dropping hints I don’t care for at all,” Shanahan went on. “Why single me out, for God’s sake? You know you don’t get named to the bench in this town just because you wear the right color necktie. And how did a guy like you get involved, I’d like to know? I never figured you for a crusader.”

Shayne grinned at him. “That forty thousand payoff is just a jack handle, Frank, to jack some information out of you on another matter. I could use a drink, how about you?”

“Could I! After the needling Rourke has been giving me? Shut the door.”

Shayne kicked the door shut and sat down on a leather sofa. The judge took a bottle of whiskey and two glasses out of the lower drawer in his desk. After pouring two drinks he handed one to Shayne and sat down on the corner of the desk with a swish of his black robes.

“Cheers,” he said, lifting his glass. “And the one thing the boys insisted on when they gave me the endorsement was that I’d stick to tap water while court’s in session.” He ducked his head toward the glass to meet it as it came up and drank greedily. “Nothing like whiskey.”

“Have you seen your fiancee this morning?” Shayne said.

“Who?” Judge Shanahan asked.

“Mrs. Lemoyne.”

“Oh, yeah.” He gave an unwilling snort of laughter. “Damn it, I know I’m getting married, but-no, I haven’t. This is one of her hospital days. I’ll see her for dinner. I hear on the grapevine that you’re working for Kitty Sims.”

“That was yesterday. Today I’m working for Florida-American. I’ve been retained to find out if there actually is any buried treasure on Key Gaspar.”

Shanahan choked on a mouthful of whiskey. When he was able to stop coughing he remarked indifferently, “Didn’t they brief you? They win either way.”

“Not if I can show it to be a hustle.”

“But that’s actually the whole point, Mike. It was worked out in 1925 as a fraud on the lot-buying public. All we’re doing-”

He broke off abruptly and looked at Shayne over his raised glass, his mustache twisting.

“Yeah,” Shayne said, “there’s always that one other possibility. I’m surprised it took this long to hit you. That it doesn’t date back to ’25 at all. That it was worked out fairly recently as a fraud on Florida-American. And if that’s the way the publicity breaks-and there’s going to be publicity, Frank, lots of it-Quarrels will be out a million bucks and he’ll look stupid, which is bad in his business. You know there’s no buried treasure, Frank.”

“I deny that. I deny it categorically. There, may or may not be. But I’ve examined the evidence, and as a lawyer I can assure you-”

Shayne made a scornful noise and tossed off his whiskey. “The victim has to be willing. That’s rule number one. Did your office draft Cal’s will?”

“No. I recommended a firm which makes a specialty of eccentric trusts. If he’d asked my advice, I would have advised him against setting it up as a joint tenancy. But I was tickled that he wanted me in. The others are a rather emotional bunch. I’m the only one who pays attention to taxes, for example.”

“Frank, where were you at three-fifteen this morning?”

“Why?” Shanahan asked calmly. “What was going on at three-fifteen?”

“Somebody was shooting at Barbara with a carbine.”

“Did they miss?”

“They missed.”

“Well, I hope I don’t have to tell Barbara where I was. I was spending the night with somebody, as a matter of fact.”

“She won’t break the engagement over a little thing like that,” Shayne told him. “Did you know that Brad planned to call on Kitty last night with a deck of pornographic playing cards and a greasy comb and a knife?”