Brett Halliday - Murder Spins the Wheel

Shayne stubbed out his cigarette and started the motor. Black peered at him anxiously.

“I know the whole thing hangs on whether you believe what I say about the tape, that it was nothing but chitchat. I don’t know how I can prove it. Put me out of my misery. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to drop you,” Shayne said, “and I don’t think I’ll come in to say goodnight to Bus. Don’t sign with him tonight. If I decide your story’s true, or even ninety per cent true, you may still end up in the big money. I’ll let you know tomorrow. Now I want to ask you some questions about Donahue. You don’t know anything at all about how he makes a living?”

“Well, he used to claim that women gave him money, and I guess they did. The big hotels let him hang around the pools because he looked so good in trunks. If you want my honest opinion, I think he’d do just about anything, unless there was work involved.”

“You never had his address?”

“Two years ago he lived in a dumpy hotel in North Miami Beach, the Hotel Gloria. But it sure as hell didn’t go with a Jaguar or that girl I saw him with. He probably moved.”

“How about somebody who might know where I can find him?”

“I’m sorry. With Vince it was all one-sided. You didn’t ask him questions.”

“Yesterday was the first time he mentioned having the tape?”

“Yes. He wouldn’t have made it unless he expected to use it sometime, but he waited till the last possible minute.”

“One other question, Johnny. How smart is he?”

“Well-he always got lousy grades. I know that doesn’t mean anything because he hated the teachers. The brain’s a muscle, after all, or like a muscle-you have to exercise it. He didn’t seem to think he had to.”

Shayne pulled up in front of the Lambda Phi house. The party seemed one degree noisier than when they had left

“Don’t try to pull anything, Johnny,” Shayne said. “I can break any contract you sign, and the Warriors can stop payment on their check. Don’t go anywhere. I may want to call you.”

Black assured him that he would stay close to the phone. He apologized for hitting Shayne, and repeated that everything he had said was the absolute truth. He had a hard time finding the door handle; there was still something else he wanted to say.

“Mr. Shayne, about Vince. I know it’s serious. I know he’s been asking for it. But I hate to be the one to blow the whistle on him, I’ve known him so damn long. If you could see your way clear to give him a break-”

Shayne leaned across and unlatched the door. “I’ll give him a break if he deserves one. First I have to find him.”

The Hotel Gloria, two blocks from the bay near the Miami Beach city limits, had been built in a hurry, during one of the brief booms, using semiprofessional labor and second-rate materials. It was in bad need of maintenance. The upholstery on the lobby furniture was worn and dirty, marked by the backs of many heads. There was a musty smell.

Shayne asked the desk clerk, “Is a man named Vince Donahue registered here?”

The clerk was tall and cadaverous, wearing rimless glasses and a small goatee. His prominent Adam’s apple rose and fell as he looked the detective over.

“No, young Vincent hasn’t been in good standing here for months. You’re Mike Shayne, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. Did he leave an address when he checked out?”

The clerk laughed musically, showing a mouthful of decaying teeth that seemed to go with the hotel. “Anybody he wanted to see would know where to find him.”

“Is there a manager on duty?”

“I’m the night manager,” the clerk said coyly. “Come in during the daytime and you can speak to the day manager.”

“All right,” Shayne said patiently. “There must be somebody on the staff who knows where he moved to. Or how about another guest? Who knew him?”

The clerk put his fingertips on the counter and leaned forward. “Don’t private detectives usually offer a ten-dollar bill for such information?”

“Why should we?” Shayne said coldly.

“Well, I’ve got a brother-in-law in the police department here, and I happen to know for a fact that you never undertake a case unless you stand to clear thirty or forty thousand dollars. And he says that’s conservative! Per case! And maybe you wind it up inside of twelve hours. But of course you’ve got those terrific expenses. You go around to hotel people and restaurant people and lay out a ten here and a ten there, and at that rate you can spend as much as a hundred dollars an evening.”

“What’s eating you?” Shayne said.

The V-lines on Shayne’s eroded face were deeply etched. The clerk tried to look away, but Shayne held his eyes. The clerk didn’t like what he saw there. He took a half step backward.

“I’m warning you, if you hit me-”

Shayne made a disgusted face. “Would you have any objection if I bought a drink in your bar?”

The clerk moistened his lips and looked down. “Be our guest,” he murmured.

Shayne went into the bar through the lobby entrance. A line of unsmiling drinkers was watching a comic on television. The detective joined them, sliding onto a stool at the heel of the bar. When the bartender came over he said, “What’s the matter with the guy out there?” tipping his head toward the lobby and sketching a small beard on his chin.

The bartender laughed. “He’s like that. What’ll it be?”

Shayne told him, and the bartender brought him cognac in a four-ounce wineglass, with a glass of ice water on the side.

“All I did was ask him about a kid named Vince Donahue,” Shayne went on, “and you’d think I’d insulted the flag. You must have had Donahue in here. He probably stopped in for a nightcap most nights.”

“Donahue?” the bartender said thoughtfully. “To tell the truth I don’t get too many regulars. They come, they go. You can listen to a customer tell you his troubles every night for six months and in all that time you may never hear anybody call his name.” He met Shayne’s disbelieving look with a smile. “Excuse me. A man seems to want a beer.”

After drinking half his cognac and chasing it with a long sip of ice water, Shayne turned his back on the bar and looked the room over. There were two waitresses. One was brown-haired, with an apologetic manner. The other wore extravagant eye makeup and had prominent breasts and red hair. It was hard to tell about the breasts, but the color of her hair was probably not natural. When she came over to the bar with a tray of glasses Shayne grinned and said hello.

“Hi!” she said cheerfully, and looked up at his red hair. “Copycat.”

“I’ve had it all my life,” he said.

They went on from there, and Shayne was about to ask his question about Donahue when the bartender came over.

“To give an example,” the bartender said. “You didn’t tell me your name when you sat down, did you? I didn’t tell you mine, and that’s the way it goes. We were talking about not remembering people,” he explained to the waitress. “For some reason I don’t think he believed me. What was the guy’s name again?”

“Vince Donahue,” the redhead said to the waitress. “A good-looking boy. A diver. He drove a Jag for a while. But I don’t suppose you remember him either?”

“Gee-” she said regretfully.

“I didn’t think so. Of course I might be bringing him news about a legacy, except that that kind of kid doesn’t get legacies.”

He went back to his drink, and shook his head shortly when the bartender asked if he wanted another. He picked his change off the bar. Turning, he found the plainer waitress, the one with the brown hair, trying to make up her mind whether or not to speak to him.