Brett Halliday - Murder Spins the Wheel

“How did she turn out?”

“She was very good,” Rose said without irony. “I mean sexually. She’d been so scared of her husband that she’d never had anybody before. Vince said it was like turning loose a skyrocket. They had some busy afternoons. Vince wasn’t exaggerating. I was in a position to know.”

“The more I hear about Vince Donahue,” Shayne said, drinking, “the less I expect to like him.”

“That’s the trouble with talking about him! I can’t explain him to you and I’m not going to try. I think the reason the sex part was so good with them, if you want me to go on, was that it was so dangerous. Naples almost walked in on them a dozen times. Boy! One time Vince had to hide in the closet. That sounds funny, but it isn’t so funny when you think that the husband’s Al Naples, and he used to murder people. They both knew what would happen if he caught them, and I couldn’t compete with that. So far they’ve been lucky, but there is such a thing as the law of averages.”

“And he can’t catch them together if Vince is in jail?”

“That. Other things, too.”

She finished her drink and shook her head when he looked at her to see if she wanted a refill. “I was so worried I tried to get him to stop seeing her. I never did that with any of the other women, doesn’t that prove I’m not really jealous? ‘Realistic’ is a better word. She gave him money to move out of here. He didn’t want to go, but I sort of made him. I thought if they had a place of their own to meet it might not be quite so risky. They can’t deliberately take chances. I told him not to tell me or anybody else his new address. He’s been making some new connections lately and I thought-well.”

“What new connections, Rose?”

“I can’t tell you everything. There’s a limit to how much trouble I want to get him into.”

“Did he have a gun?”

“Never! He was very snooty about people who went in for that kind of thing.”

“Do you know anybody named Pedro Sanchez or Tom Pond?”

She groaned. “Oh, no.”

“Does that mean you know them?”

“I met Pete once. I didn’t know he was in town. I have to stop talking now. I think it was all right to tell you about Mrs. Naples-you could have picked that up from any number of people. But I want to ask you a favor.”

“You don’t want me to tell him I’ve talked to you?”

“That’s right. I could have made you promise before, but I don’t pay too much attention to promises any more. I hope you won’t tell him. He divides the world into rats and non-rats, and I don’t want him to put me in with the rats. I’d like to wish things would have a happy ending. At the same time I’m pretty sure they won’t.”

She blew her nose into a Kleenex and said brightly, “That’s my big drawback. I take myself seriously.”

Shayne wanted to reassure her that happy endings sometimes happen, but in Vince Donahue’s case he didn’t think that one was likely. Reaching out, he brushed the point of her breast very lightly with his thumb,

“You’re a damned attractive girl, Rose.”

“No, I’m not.”

He left her crying into her Kleenex. He collected some dirty looks on the way out.

Returning to his car, Shayne called Harry Bass’s number. The line was busy. He drove south and tried the number again after several blocks. When he found it still busy, he turned off Collins Avenue onto 71st Street, leading to Normandy Isle.

There was no answer when he rang Harry’s doorbell, though the lights were still on in the house. He tried the door. It was locked.

After ringing again he walked along the porch to look into the front hall. The phone there was off the hook. Apparently Harry had been taken to the hospital for X rays.

He returned to the Buick and started off. But he kept the wheel over and circled back into the turnaround. Something had caught his eye as he was leaving: one of the compartments of the two-car garage, which had been open before, was closed now. Taking a flashlight, he went between the house and the garage and shone the light through the duty side window of the garage. One car was a little Volkswagen. The other was Doc Waters’ sleek black Thunderbird.

Frowning, Shayne went around the house and up on the flagstone terrace that overlooked the golf course. This side of the house was dark. Suddenly the beam from a flashlight as powerful as his own hit him in the eyes.

Doc Waters’ voice said, “The hardworking shamus. I might have known you’d look in the garage.”

“Get that light out of my face,” Shayne said evenly.

After an instant Waters turned off the flashlight. As soon as Shayne’s eyes adjusted he saw that the bookie was leaning back against the house in a chair without arms, with a rifle across his knees.

“How’s the investigation coming?” Waters said sarcastically.

“It’s coming. Where’d they take Harry?”

Waters hooted. “They didn’t take him. He went. Shayne, you’re going to be surprised. Nobody around here can lay their hands on that kind of cash on a Saturday night, so Harry got on a plane and went to New York.”

“Yeah, I’m surprised,” Shayne admitted after a moment’s silence.

He came up on the terrace. Seeing what looked like an array of bottles on a low table, he turned on his flashlight and found that one of them was the same bottle of cognac he had been drinking from before. He emptied the watery dregs of a highball from the only glass, and poured a drink. Then he turned off the flashlight and sat down on the stone balustrade.

“What shape was he in?” he said.

Waters waved. “Hell, it takes more than a bump on the head to stop old Harry. The doctor and that babe, they both told him to go to bed, but Harry knows his obligations. I’ll say that for him. And why not, for Christ’s sake? What else does he do for that two percent? It’s his own damn fault that he’s short. If you knew the businesses he’s been putting dough into lately! He owns a piece of a bank! Did you know that? I don’t mean the kind of bank where you go down and open up the vault when you feel like it. He’s a stockholder. He has to wait till nine A.M. Monday morning like anybody.”

“Who’s he seeing in New York?”

“We’ve got to keep some secrets, Shayne. It’s just up and back. You know these jets. Whoosh! They were going to try to get him on a nine-thirty flight. The babe drove him.”

Shayne drank, not liking this. Harry shouldn’t be walking around.

“Who’s the rifle supposed to be for?”

Waters, embarrassed, reversed the rifle and leaned it against the house. “I don’t know what to expect. Naples is giving a party to celebrate the big win. He wants me to be guest of honor. That’s what you call a sense of humor. First he busts me, then he wants me to get plastered with everybody in the St. A. standing around with a big grin on their face. And I’d have to make believe I enjoyed it. We’re supposed to have ice water in our veins, that’s what it says in the books. Ten o’clock, he said, with the cash. What’ll he do when I don’t show up? Send a couple of characters out looking for me? I don’t know what he’ll do. I know what he did in the old days, but has he changed? Seriously-what have you come up with, if anything?”

“Nothing conclusive,” Shayne said, picking his words. “But I begin to get the feeling that these stickup guys were after more than the dough.”

“What do you mean?” Waters said, worried. “If you take Harry’s word for it, they walked away with two hundred big ones. That would make it worthwhile.”

“First they beat you with a horse and a football player. Then they doubled the take with an armed robbery. Maybe it doesn’t stop there. What if the real object was to show that you and Harry can’t handle a big hit any more?”