Brett Halliday - Murder Spins the Wheel

“Thanks,” Waters said bitterly. “As if I didn’t have enough on my mind.”

Taking out a little plastic container, he shook a white tablet into his hand and swallowed it with a mouthful of club soda. “Tranquillizers,” he explained. “But I’ve got to go easy. You can’t gobble these things like potato chips. Want a theory? I’ll give you a theory. Maybe Harry stuck himself up. Think about it. He’s Daddy Warbucks around here. He’s supposed to keep a reserve. But he’s been getting so goddamn legitimate! The idea of that much cash lying around not earning interest, it would make him sick to his stomach. When you go legit you start thinking about those things. You put it in stocks or in real estate. He’s got it, understand. He’s not like me, I’m hurting and I don’t mind saying so.”

“You think he packed some phone books in a suitcase and paid somebody to set his Cadillac on fire and crack his skull with a gun?”

“Put it like that,” Waters admitted, “and it sounds hard to believe.” He added whiskey and ice to his glass of soda, rattled the icecubes and drank. “But look at the background. The small fry around town have been getting restless. It’s not only me. They want him to pay attention to their problems, and not be tied up with real-estate lawyers all the time. He’s getting shaky and he knows it. I put in a call for funds, which I have every right to do. He knows I’m just getting on my feet after the shellacking I took in the Caribbean. He has to get up that dough or questions will be asked. Burning up a Cadillac is a small price to pay. And who says he was knocked cold? He says. Anybody can stagger around and pretend to have a headache. The doctor? You know how doctors are. They don’t get paid to tell you you’re not sick.”

“I’ll keep that on file,” Shayne said skeptically. “Nobody ever told me what happened to you in the Caribbean.”

“I was flimflammed,” Waters said simply. “They asked me to come in and set up a casino, teach them how to run it. Eighteen months later, when the house was beginning to run in the black, they changed the goddamned government and nationalized me. No revolution or anything, just a couple of different colonels, and I see now it was in the back of their minds all along. I had to pay through the nose before they let me off the island. The State Department wouldn’t lift a goddamned finger. I got out with an extra suit of underwear, that’s about all. I had to hock my right ball, practically, to get back in the business of booking bets.”

Shayne drank thoughtfully. “Do you think Naples has any ideas about getting active again?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him. He’s used to running things. Back in Chicago, when he said jump, they jumped. Maybe he misses that. He’s got a stable of horses, a hot-looking wife, a boat. But is it enough? All I know is, if Harry and Al ever really tangle, I want to be somewhere else.”

“What happens if Harry doesn’t come back with the money?”

“He better,” Waters said blackly. “Now don’t quote me-” He interrupted himself and drank, then felt for the container of tranquillizers. “Well, I know you’ll probably quote me, but Harry knows as well as I do that if he can’t lay that cash on the line there’s going to be a little revolution right here in Miami. He’s getting so slow! Six months ago he would have dropped the points on Florida Christian, he would have spotted the play on Ladybug and laid it off. You can’t do that without communication, and communications around here have been getting terrible. When that babe went to work for him, that’s when I date it from. Four and a half percent from a savings and loan, he thinks now, is better than twenty percent in something illegal. All of a sudden some things go and some things don’t go. I’m tired of it, and I’m not the only one.”

Leaning forward, Shayne put his empty glass on the table. “I think it’s about time for me to talk to Naples. Before I forget it, have you run into a kid named Vince Donahue?”

Waters had been about to feed himself a tranquillizer. Slowly and deliberately, he put the cap back on the container, put it away and reached for the rifle. Shayne was on top of him before the barrel was all the way around. He pivoted, lifting, and twisted the weapon out of the bookie’s hands.

“Everybody’s jumpy tonight,” Shayne observed. “What were you going to do, blow a hole in me because I asked a simple question? If you don’t ask questions you don’t get any answers. Something’s happened to your sense of proportion.”

Waters sneered at him. “It’s my experience that certain people only listen when a gun’s pointing at them. All I was going to suggest, don’t mention Donahue’s name to Naples. The kid’s in the sack with the wife a couple of afternoons a week, according to my information.”

“What does he do mornings?”

“That’s all for now, Shayne,” Waters said wearily. “Talk about slow-those pills really slow you down. I’m going to put the phone back on the hook. Harry’ll be calling pretty soon. Why not wait for the call?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You know you’ll just stir things up? Al’s sure to be plastered and he’s a fast man at flying off the handle. The last thing Harry wants is Al Naples on his neck. He likes this quiet life.”

Shayne unloaded the rifle. Swinging it by the barrel, he brought it down hard on the balustrade, breaking off the hammer.

“What do you think,” Waters said in his mournful tone, “that I’d shoot you in the back, and let Harry explain what you’re doing on his lawn? I was about to make you an offer. Don’t you even want to hear it?”

“Keep it brief.”

“Twenty-five G’s,” Waters said, “to go out and get drunk.”

Shayne tossed down the useless rifle. “I thought you said you were broke.”

“I am broke! I’ll write you an IOU. I’m good for it.”

Shayne laughed. “Take another pill, Doc.”

“That’s the trouble with people,” Waters commented, without sounding surprised. “If you don’t have cash in your pocket, nobody trusts you.”

Michael Shayne pulled up at the St. Albans, a huge wedding cake of a hotel, standing between Collins Avenue and the ocean. The doorman stepped forward smartly with a half salute.

“Oh, it’s you, Mike,” he said, dropping his hand. “How you doing? Park it for you?”

“Can I leave it here in front so I can take off in a hurry? No more than ten minutes.”

The doorman saw no reason why not. Shayne moved farther along the approach drive and left the Buick beside a No Parking sign. He put his hand in his pocket when he came back, but the doorman waved him away.

“Hell, Mike. Do I ever tip you?”

Inside, Shayne checked with the bell captain and tried several bars and supper rooms before locating the Al Naples party in the Mozambique Room on the roof. The decorations, of course, were tropical, and there was a Latin band and a circular bar where the bartenders were kept busy putting together elaborate rum drinks. Al Naples was pointed out to Shayne, a stocky man in a dinner jacket, with grizzled hair which he wore in a crew cut. He was enjoying himself. He was at a round table for twelve, only partially occupied; some of his guests were dancing.

Shayne knew one of the men at the table, a well known ex-major leaguer who was now selling insurance. The women were all younger than the men, or looked younger at this distance. Naples was standing between two chairs. He concluded a joke with a bray of laughter that carried easily to Shayne, on the far side of the crowded room, then dropped his cigar in an ashtray and weaved out onto the dance floor, where he cut in on a handsome black-haired woman in a low-cut dress.