Brett Halliday - Murder Spins the Wheel

“Ladybug,” Waters said reluctantly. “There’s no mystery. She’s a Naples horse, in his wife’s name, for tax reasons. In two years she never did a thing. Fifth, sixth. What do you want Shayne to do, Harry, walk in on Al Naples and ask him if he fixed the race? Sure he fixed it. He fixed it by hiding the mare’s speed. Why worry about how? There are ways. He fooled everybody, and she paid off at sixty-five to one. His wife couldn’t get to the track this afternoon. She had to have her hair done, and anyway she didn’t want to bet at the track, she said, because she didn’t want Al to know she was betting seven C’s on the mare, she liked her so much. That was her story, and what was wrong with it? They got four thousand down all told, here and there. I tried to call you, Harry, and where were you? We could have come back to the track with some of that, fed it into the machines. But you weren’t answering the phone.”

Shayne finished his cognac and poured himself some more. “If it was just the football game or just the horse race, would you still need Harry’s help to make the payoff?”

“He’s like my banker,” Waters said defensively. “I don’t keep that amount in a bureau drawer. Maybe I could have pieced it out, the football payoff, with a little squeezing. It’s the two hits at the same time that hurts. And what I’m trying to get a statement out of you on, Harry, is what the hell am I supposed to do now? Naples expects it, and what do I tell him? It’s me he’s collecting from, not you.”

His voice was rising. Harry cut him short.

“I said I’d take care of it,” he said, his eyes hard. “Mike, are you in?”

Shayne nodded. “With pleasure. I took a couple of cracks on the head myself, and I’d like to find the man and get an apology. I’ll start with Johnny Black, but don’t count on anything there, Harry. If he buttons up and stays buttoned up, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Use psychology, Mike. Do you want a retainer?”

“Can you afford it?”

Harry snorted and Shayne stood up. “If I find the dough, I’ll take ten percent.”

“Ten percent!” Waters exclaimed. “That’s high.”

“OK, Mike,” Harry said briefly, closing his eyes. “Call me. Maybe you’ll get lucky and I won’t have to knock myself out raising it.”

“Do what the doctor tells you,” the redhead said, looking down at him. “You’re not a kid any more.”

“Prime of life,” Harry said without opening his eyes.

The doorbell chimed and Theo went to answer it. It was a Beach patrolman, wanting to know if by any chance Mr. Bass was missing a Cadillac. The doctor arrived as Shayne was leaving. Theo accompanied Shayne to his car.

“I take it you’re going to be working for him. I’m glad.”

“He’s making pretty good sense,” Shayne said. “I was hoping those drinks would knock him out. If you can get rid of Doc Waters, so much the better.” He hesitated. “You might pass this on to the doctor. I was with Harry another time when he had a concussion. It was a freak accident-a dead branch fell off a tree when he was out hunting. He didn’t seem to be too badly hurt. But then somebody said something he didn’t like-nothing important, just a remark-and he went haywire. It took three of us to haul him off the guy before he committed a murder. That time there wasn’t any doctor around.”

She shivered. “I’ll certainly tell him. Did Harry say anything about-” She stopped. “I don’t know what I’m trying to say. But something’s been eating at him the last few weeks. He’s under some kind of strain. Well, I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”

Shayne put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it with the dashboard lighter as he went down the driveway. He stopped after turning onto North Shore Drive and put on the dome light, to check a road map for the quickest way to the Florida Christian campus. After putting away the map he waited another moment, smoking thoughtfully. Then he made up his mind and headed for the causeway.

Using the phone he had recently had installed in the front seat of the Buick, Shayne called the Accident Investigation Unit of the Miami police. After being shuffled from one extension to another, he was finally connected with Squire, the sergeant he had met at the wreck of the stolen Dodge.

“Glad you called, Mike,” Squire said. “You dropped a couple of remarks I want to follow up on. There were two guns in the car, and one of them had been fired. Chief Gentry thinks you ought to come in and tell us what you know.”

“I’d like to do it on the phone, if that’s OK,” Shayne said. “I’m still working on it. Here’s what happened. I had to pull up sharp to keep from hitting a Cadillac which was on fire. When I got out to see what I could do, I was jumped. A Negro was lying in the street. I didn’t have time to check him for bullet holes. This was on Normandy Isle, in Painter’s jurisdiction, and that makes it tricky. You know how I don’t get along with Painter. When you talk to him you’d better not tell him where the information comes from.”

Squire chuckled. “He’d probably arrest you for setting fire to an automobile.”

“Yeah. Since I saw you I’ve found out a little more. The guys who bushwacked me had just held up Harry Bass, and I’m told it was a very nice score. Maybe you better not mention that to Painter either. Harry won’t report it, and you know how Painter can complicate the simplest things.”

“This doesn’t sound too simple to begin with, Mike,” Squire said. “If it was up to me I wouldn’t tell Painter anything. God knows I’m not impartial on the subject. The Chief said to pass on what we have if you cooperated, and you seem to be cooperating more than you sometimes do. There was no important dough in the wreck. No luggage. Just a couple of hundred bucks personal cash in the guys’ pockets. They were both from St. Louis. Pedro Sanchez and Thomas J. Pond, Jr. Sanchez was carrying a pass book in a St. Louis savings bank, with one entry, a deposit of ten thousand bucks, dated last Thursday. We’re sending their prints to Washington, and that’s all. Mike, I still think you ought to come in.”

Shayne put him off, thanked him for the information, and then settled down to some fast driving.

Florida Christian was twenty-five miles from Miami, on the edge of the Glades. There was little traffic on the Trail, and Shayne made good time. He had been here often to football games, but that was all he knew about the institution. The stadium, of course, was the principal structure on the campus, a huge bowl illuminated by a necklace of lights. Shayne circled around it in widening arcs until he found a brightly-lighted two-block section that functioned as a downtown.

He cruised slowly, made a U-turn and came back, stopping when he saw two husky undergraduates, one wearing a football sweater. He called them over. He was right in assuming that they could tell him where to find Johnny Black. Black was a Lambda Phi. The Lambda Phi house was the third building from the end of fraternity row. Fraternity row was the first street to the right.

This being Saturday night after the last game of the season, the Lambda Phi’s were having a party. The house was big and rambling, with white columns and a screened-in porch. Shayne went all the way in, passing several clumps of young men and girls, before asking for Black.

“He’s here somewhere,” the boy he spoke to told him, “but where? Hold this.” He handed Shayne his beer can, cupped his hands around his mouth and called, “Johnny!” in a piping voice not intended to penetrate the din. He turned back with a mock shrug. “You’ll just have to look.”

Shayne went on. Somebody was playing a guitar in one room. In another there was a beer keg, but the Lambda Phi’s and their guests were using empty cans as mugs, holding the triangular punched opening under the spigot. Shayne asked several more youths for Johnny Black. They all assured him that Black was present, and to keep looking.