Brett Halliday - Murder Spins the Wheel

“I’m glad I don’t have to argue with you. He took a bad beating, and he ought to be in bed right now, under sedation. Instead of that he’s out beating the bushes for two-day money. He couldn’t find it in Miami so he went to New York. I might have been able to talk him out of it if I’d been there, but I wasn’t. He’s got a hell of a temper, as you probably know. One thing a concussion does is take off the brakes, and I hope everybody handles him with kid gloves. Naturally he’s going to be wondering who did this to him. He’s sure to be in a half-haze and not thinking too clearly, but somewhere along the line, on the plane going up or the plane coming back, it’s going to hit him-is it possible his old friend Al Naples-?”

He drank the rest of his cognac.

Naples said, “Hell, he can take my blood pressure. I’ll let him bring his own doctor.”

Shayne said seriously, “I’d like to get you to agree not to talk to him tonight at all.”

“I’ll hide under the bed,” Naples said. “Will that do?”

“I’m serious,” Shayne said. “Harry doesn’t go in for nonviolence. If he makes up his mind that you did it to him, he may come looking for you with a gun in his pocket.”

“For Christ’s sake! Give him credit for more sense.”

“I come back to what I said before,” Shayne said. He took out a cigarette and reached past Mrs. Naples to get a book of St. Albans matches. After lighting the cigarette he leaned forward again to toss the match into the ashtray. She was half-turned toward a paunchy little man with a head like a dried apple, but Shayne saw the small signs that meant he and her husband had her full attention.

He said deliberately, “It’s either somebody like you, with experience and confidence, plenty of funds and plenty of muscle. Or it’s somebody young and wild, without sense enough to be scared. I’ll tell you a few things I’ve picked up. Two of the stickup men died in a car crash. Both of them come from St. Louis.”

Mrs. Naples’ shoulder made a slight involuntary movement. The redhead went on, “St. Louis is close enough to Chicago so you’d know people there, but not too close. A third man got away. The money got away with him, but we’re hoping to find his fingerprints in the wrecked car. I have a lead to a fleabag hotel called the Gloria. I have another lead to a football fix. There are indications that that was planned here at the St. A.”

“What do I know about football?” Naples said.

“All you need to know is somebody who knows the quarterback. Harry hired me to look for the dough. I took the job before I knew you were involved. If this ends in a killing, if I find out who robbed Harry and the man is killed, I’m in line for an accessory rap. That could be serious if it happens here on the Beach, where the cops don’t like me. So I’m on a peaceful errand. I hope everybody will make up. Thanks for the drink. I don’t suppose you have any soothing message you want me to give Harry.”

“Tell him he has my sympathy,” Naples said. “I’ve been through it myself. If you see Doc, tell him I’m waiting for my dough.”

Shayne pushed back his chair and stood up. “Harry can’t be back from New York before one, so enjoy yourself. After that don’t answer the phone and don’t go to the door. I hope I can head him off. Nice to have met you, Mrs. Naples.”

She started and swung around. “Going, Mr. Shayne? It was a pleasure to meet you.”

The ex-baseball player made him stop and meet his new wife. Out of the corner of his eye, Shayne saw Mrs. Naples excuse herself and start around the dance floor toward the ladies room. He freed himself from the ex-ballplayer and his bride and took the elevator to the lobby.

“I didn’t think it would take that long,” he said to the doorman. “Everything OK?”

“Perfect.”

Shayne slid into his Buick and started the motor. He was gambling that Mrs. Naples wouldn’t be able to reach Vince Donahue by phone, or would want to talk to the boy in person, to warn him that Shayne was looking for somebody who formerly lived at the Hotel Gloria. Shayne pulled back his coat sleeve to check the time. If she didn’t come out in two minutes, he would have to go back and scare her some more.

In just under two minutes, an open red convertible shot out of the underground parking garage and turned north on Collins. Mrs. Naples had a gauze scarf over her hair, tied under her chin. She was driving rapidly, in a hurry to deliver her warning and get back to her party before she was missed.

Shayne joined the traffic behind her. Her scarf blew loose and she poked it back angrily with one hand. At 63rd Street, she swung sharply to the left and crossed the bridge to Allison Island, then turned again, over the canal to La Gorce. It seemed unlikely that Donahue would be living on this island of big estates. In a moment more she stopped near the mouth of a short lane leading to the bay. There was a lighted boathouse at the end of the lane. Several boats were tied up along both sides of a floating pier.

She unlatched the door hurriedly and started to get out, then checked herself and came back into the car. She removed the scarf and fluffed out her hair. Adjusting the mirror to check her lipstick, she caught the glint of Shayne’s headlights behind her. She whirled.

He blinked his lights at her and brought the Buick to a halt behind her convertible. He got out without hurrying. She waited for him, her lipstick raised as though to slash him with it. The boat at the end of the pier, he noted, a sixty- or seventy-foot cruiser, was brilliantly lit up.

He opened the convertible’s front door and got in beside her. She shivered and said in a low controlled voice. “I thought you were setting a trap for Al. You were setting it for me, weren’t you? And I walked right into it.”

“I meant part of what I told him,” Shayne said quietly. “I don’t want Harry to kill anybody. That includes Donahue.”

She made a distracted gesture with her open lipstick. “You don’t care about him and you know it.”

“That’s true,” Shayne said. “He kicked me in the kidneys a few hours ago, while one of his friends from St. Louis was rapping me behind the ear with a gun. That’s all right. I get used to it. But my client isn’t as understanding as I am. If Vince wants to live through this, he’ll turn over the dough and leave town fast.”

“You can’t really think that he robbed-”

“Sure I can. And so can you, Mrs. Naples, or you wouldn’t be here. He heard about Al’s plans for Ladybug from you, didn’t he?”

“Naturally.” She was trying to paste herself back together, and nearly succeeding. “Al said it was surefire. I saw no reason Vince shouldn’t benefit by it. He hates to take money from me.”

Shayne snorted. “I’m sure.”

She looked at him pleadingly. She seemed older than she had under the flattering lights of the Mozambique Room, but she was still a beautiful, passionate woman. She put her hand on his.

“I’m in your clutches to some extent. Apparently you’ve picked up some circumstantial evidence, but I know Vince! I know his strengths, his weaknesses. He couldn’t have done this. He’s too interested in having a good time.”

“The quarterback who shaded the points in the football game gave me a definite identification, Mrs. Naples. One of the dead hoods is an old acquaintance of your boy. Vince was the third man in the robbery, and we both know it. The money wasn’t in the wrecked car. That means he has it, or he knows where it is. I want it.”

She touched her diamond necklace. “I don’t suppose you’d settle for-”

“No,” Shayne said brusquely. “It’s true I stand to collect a ten-percent recovery fee, but that’s not the only reason I have to have it. I need it to slow Harry down. He’s walking around like a time bomb. If I can scare Vince into coughing up the dough, and get it to Harry before anything happens, I think I can control him. I won’t use any names. As far as I’m concerned, Vince can take off. I’ll even leave him a couple of thousand for traveling money.”