Brett Halliday - Killers from the Keys

Shayne watched its taillights disappear among the palmettos, and then stalked back to the motel office. It was empty when he entered this time. There was a bell on the counter with a card in front of it that said, “Ring for Manager.” Shayne hit the top of it sharply with his palm three times, and it made a loud, pinging noise, but nothing else happened.

There was a hinged wooden flap at the end of the counter. Shayne lifted it and went around behind where there was a telephone on a shelf. He lifted the receiver and dialed Chief Will Gentry’s home telephone number.

The chief, himself, answered.

“Mike Shayne, Will. Got a pencil?”

“Sure, Mike.”

“I’m at the Pink Flamingo Motel… off the Trail, west.”

After a pause, Gentry said, “And…?”

“I’ve got a dead man in Cabin Number Three. The occupant of the cabin is registered as Fred Tucker, Will.”

“Hell. That goddamned Syndicate…?”

Shayne said, “Maybe. But it doesn’t look like a Syndicate kill. Also… there’s a couple other things.” He sighed unhappily. “I thought you’d want to look at it yourself, Will.”

“Stay right there.”

“Of course. Don’t I always when I turn up a body for you? See you.”

Shayne hung up the telephone. He hesitated and then opened a door leading into a corridor behind the office. It was lighted by a ceiling bulb, and he followed it back to a door opening into what was evidently the manager’s living quarters. The room was lighted, and Shayne stood in the doorway without entering. There was an open suitcase on the bed with some shirts and underwear in it, which looked as though it had been abandoned by the owner in his haste to get away. The top bureau drawer sagged open, and from where Shayne stood he could see it was empty.

He turned away from the open door and followed the corridor back to a rear exit with a carport. It was empty now, and tire tracks through the sand led around the rear of the cabins. Shayne pulled the door shut behind him and trudged through the sand, following the tracks around to the side of Cabin No. 1, where they circled to join the paved road leading out through the palmetto hummocks to the main highway. He stopped at this point, convinced that the car he had seen round the row of cabins and disappear had been driven by the bushy-haired motel manager.

The wail of a siren came faintly through the night from the Tamiami Trail, and then it lingered away to silence as the patrol car turned off on the side road toward the motel.

Shayne turned and walked slowly back to No. 3. He stood outside the open door, his rangy figure bathed in the light from inside as a radio car came up fast from the palmettos and braked to a stop in front of him. A uniformed policeman leaped out of the far side of the car and came around through the headlights toward him. The driver got out more slowly.

The first officer was young and appeared excited. He stopped in front of Shayne and asked truculently, “You report a murder?”

Shayne jerked his head toward the open door and said, “Inside.”

The driver was older and more phlegmatic. He said, “Hold it, Johnny,” as the other started to rush inside the cabin. He stopped beside the redhead, sighing gustily. “Mike Shayne, huh? We got it over the radio. Don’t mess anything up, son,” he advised his younger partner mildly. “Leave that for the dicks.”

“I just wanted to see for sure.” Johnny stood outside the door peering inside curiously.

“If Mike Shayne says there’s a stiff, there’s pretty sure to be a stiff. In fact it’s a pretty good bet there’ll always be a stiff where this guy turns up. That right, Shamus?”

Shayne said, “Somebody has to find your bodies for you.”

“Sure. Or make ’em for us? Ha-ha.” The officer told his younger colleague, “If you’re through gawkin’, Johnny-boy, get on the radio and confirm it. What’s his name and who killed him?” he asked Shayne offhandedly.

“The cabin is rented by a Fred Tucker,” Shayne told him. “Don’t bother taking any notes. I’ll tell the rest of it to Will Gentry when he gets here.”

“What makes you think the chief will bother with this one personally?”

Shayne said, “Because I asked him to.” He got out a cigarette and lit it, and he could hear Johnny talking excitedly behind him on the two-way radio in the police car. Then they heard the distant wail of sirens on the Trail eastward again, and Shayne said good-naturedly, “Homicide will be here to take over from you in a few minutes. Here’s a tip. I think the motel manager took off in his car just before I phoned in. If you want to play it smart, check the office and see if I’m right… so you can feed it to the dicks when they get here.”

“Sure. Thanks.” He lumbered away, and Shayne stood where he was, lazily drawing smoke into his lungs and exhaling blue vapor, only half conscious of the wail of approaching sirens, seeking to adjust his thoughts and the meager information in his possession into some sort of order that would make sense to Gentry on his arrival.

Suddenly they were there, one car after another, and the Pink Flamingo Motel was the scene of bustling, floodlighted, official activity.

First there was a squad-car with a Homicide Lieutenant and three plainclothesmen, and an ambulance behind them and another car with the technical crew, and not too many minutes later, Will Gentry in his unmarked car with an officer behind the wheel.

Michael Shayne had drawn back unobtrusively from No. 3 while the others went bustling inside. The lieutenant in charge seemed unaware of the redhead’s presence while he put his technicians to work inside the cabin and sent others around the motel knocking on doors and getting statements from the various occupants, most of whom were registered under false names and frightened out of their wits by the possibility of publicity, and all of whom swore they knew nothing at all about Cabin No. 3 or what had happened there.

Shayne came forward slowly when Gentry got out of his car and conferred with the lieutenant. Gentry saw him. He exchanged a final word with the lieutenant and then turned to Shayne with his solid jaw set squarely. “All right, Mike. What have we got?”

“I don’t know. I swear I don’t. Not even if the dead guy is my man.”

“You said Fred Tucker.”

“I said the cabin he got dead in is rented to a man who registered under the name of Fred Tucker. When you get back to Headquarters do a fast check on The Preacher. Little Joe Hoffman told me flatly this evening that The Preacher has been dead for six months.”

“Little Joe could be lying.” Gentry got out a black cigar and thrust it aggressively between his teeth.

“Could be. Somehow I doubt it. What’s the Loot got out of the death scene this far?”

“Not too much. No identification on the body. Been dead about forty minutes. And there’s those two halves of a hollowed-out loaf of bread, Mike. What’d you make of it?”

“Hollowed-out… loaf of bread?” Shayne asked in surprise.

Gentry had been watching him closely for a reaction. He relaxed a trifle and put the flame of a match to his cigar. “All right, maybe you didn’t case the joint before you phoned in. Lieutenant Yager said they were lying on the floor with the cut-out sides down so you couldn’t tell it wasn’t a complete loaf if you didn’t pick the pieces up and look. But the inside had all been cut out of it, Mike. And what do you reckon?”

“At this point I’m not trying to reckon,” Shayne told him honestly.

“There were three hundred-dollar bills still jammed up in one end of the loaf. Sort of like there’d been a lot more hidden inside there and someone missed those three.”

While Shayne was digesting this bit of information, another car came up hurriedly and Timothy Rourke jumped out of it. “I sent Lucy home okay, Mike. What goes on here?”