Brett Halliday - Armed… Dangerous…

“Bedtime,” Shayne said. “Big game tomorrow.”

Szigetti objected, but he had come reeling to his feet to brush off the ice cubes, and the change of position finished him. Shayne steered him toward the door. They fell upstairs together. Shayne straightened the corridor out for him, picked him up when he fell down, and manhandled him into the bedroom he was using. On the approaches to the messy bed, Shayne released him and let him dive the rest of the way by himself.

Szigetti flopped over on the pillow, talking gibberish, as though his tongue was too large for his mouth and improperly attached. Then he fixed Shayne’s swimming face in loose focus and said distinctly, “Miami. Bigshot detective. Whaz-name, Mike Shayne. Nev’ mind, good buddy.” He smiled, his eyes whirled and he revolved himself asleep. Shayne turned and found Michele watching from the doorway.

If she had heard the name Mike Shayne, it meant nothing to her. “That was the quickest way, whiskey after whiskey, but oh, he will feel so sick tomorrow morning.”

“Maybe sick enough to lay off Brownie. Let’s see what we can find in the kitchen.”

They found two minute steaks. Irene looked at the bloody, scored meat and turned pale. “It’s whiskey on top of wine,” she explained, and wobbled away, her fingers to her lips.

Brown and Billy were already gone. Michele cooked the steaks and they ate in the kitchen, under a glaring light. They left the dirty dishes on the table.

“What’s your idea about the night?” Shayne said. “Separate rooms?”

“Positively! We have too many currents, far too many currents. Irene, for instance-it’s clear that she fancies you, and if she thought we were asleep together she might steal in and murder us both.”

“That’s not the proposition she made me,” Shayne said dryly.

They went up together and said goodnight at Michele’s bedroom door. She kissed him silently and hurriedly.

“I wish I were in the habit of saying prayers. We need any help we can get.”

Midnight, the time he had fixed on with Tim Rourke, had come and gone. In his own room, Shayne smoked a cigarette and finished the drink he had brought upstairs. He had to wait another half hour for everyone to settle down.

There was a faint scratching sound at the door. He turned off the light and waited, hoping that whoever it was would go away. The knob turned and the door opened slowly.

Billy’s voice whispered, “Anybody awake?”

Shayne sighed and turned on the light. “Yeah.” He went to meet the boy before he could get too far inside the room. “I’m beat, Billy. Some other time.”

“I can’t get to sleep,” Billy said. “A couple of things bother me. I didn’t want to ask her. I thought we could have a cigarette and talk for a few minutes.”

“I wouldn’t make any sense, kid. It’s been a long day. Tomorrow after breakfast.”

It took him five minutes to get rid of the boy without throwing him out bodily. He slid the bureau in front of the door and turned off the light again. He forced himself to wait ten minutes more. The last two minutes seemed to take almost as long as the first eight. He took the screen out of the window and swung out.

There was no light in Irene’s bedroom. He eased himself slowly past. The night air was filled with the mating dialogue of small insects. A breeze stirred the branches of the overhanging maple, and one of the tree’s spinning seeds hit him as he looked up.

Some of the tongue-and-groove lumber under the dry shingles had rotted away, but he decided that the two-by-six at the end of the roof, rotten or not, was going to hold him. He slid over and let himself down quickly. As soon as his feet touched the porch railing he let go and jumped to the ground.

The moon was in its final quarter, all but gone. He walked down the driveway without using the cover on either side. Approaching the gate, he moved more cautiously. He located the little electronic eye and stepped across.

He reached the crossroads out of breath after jogging most of the way. A dim neon glow still came from the bar and grill, but most of its customers had gone home for the night. Only three cars were parked on the pocked asphalt. One was the same police Ford Tim Rourke had used during the day. Shayne crossed the parking area and got into the front seat with Tim and a girl.

“You’re overdue,” Tim observed. “We just about gave you up. Cognac in the glove compartment.”

The detective snapped open the little compartment, found the bottle and held it up to the light.

“We had a couple,” Rourke said. “This is Terry Fox, Mike. She was out with Herman Kraus last night but she isn’t sure she wants to talk about it. She let me put my arm around her so people would think we’re necking, but that doesn’t mean she thinks I’m a friend.”

The girl stirred beside Shayne. “But who are you?” she said in a light, agreeable voice. “For a Miami newspaper reporter you’re a long way from home. I don’t know why I let you bring me all the way out here, except that those stories in the papers made me so damn mad.”

Shayne unscrewed the cap of the bottle and drank. “I thought you would have explained things by now, Tim.”

The reporter said hotly, “What do I know about what’s going on? I came along with you because things always tend to happen where you’re around. Just because I’ve already won one Pulitzer doesn’t mean I’d mind winning another. I thought you’d talk about it on the plane, but you were too busy with those damn road maps. You have one infuriating habit, boy, and that’s the way you hold up on explanations before you have everything wrapped up in tissue paper with all the ribbons tied. That’s your method and most of the time, God knows, it seems to work. You told me to fall down and break a cackle bladder on my face, and did I ask any questions? Did I point out that I might have a hell of an embarrassing half hour if somebody found me before I could wash my face, which is the way it happened, incidentally?”

Shayne laughed. “If I’m still alive at the end of twenty-four hours, I’ll sit down and give you the full play by play. Is it Miss Fox or Mrs.?”

“You might as well call me Terry,” she said.

“All right, Terry. Do you think Kraus killed himself?”

“Of course he didn’t.”

She put a cigarette between her lips and pressed in the dashboard lighter. The faint glow showed Shayne a surprisingly pretty girl. She was younger than Herman Kraus, if the News had been right in giving his age as thirty-three.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell people all day,” she said, “and I haven’t made an inch of headway. I’m furious! I’m so mad I could burst. The police won’t talk to me, and still they put those lies in the papers. ‘Spurned!’ Herman wasn’t spurned. I wasn’t his fiancee. Tim says your name is Mike Shayne. Oddly enough, I heard Herman speak about you. He used to say he had no more to do with criminals than if he’d gone on working for an insurance company, which is where he started, and that’s why he liked to read stories about real working detectives. I’m groggy, I’m afraid. You are the one he talked about?”

She reached behind him and snapped on the dome light. There were deep hollows in her cheeks, blue marks of weariness beneath her eyes. She remained an extremely pretty girl on the edge of exhaustion.

“You aren’t at all! Mike Shayne has red hair.”

Shayne flinched. “That’s dye,” he said in disgust.

“Does he or doesn’t he?” Rourke murmured.

“Yeah. They tell me if I shampoo it with a strong enough soap it’ll come right out. I’m under wraps on this, Terry.”

She snapped off the light, and Shayne continued, “I see how you feel, and I wish I could give some answers. I don’t know enough yet. But the cops had reasons for brushing you off today. There’s something big in the works and they don’t want to spoil it. They’re hoping the fiancee story will hold up through the morning papers. They have a suicide note, it seems, a confession that your guy has been stealing narcotics.”