Brett Halliday - Killers from the Keys

“I’d like to talk to her myself,” the tall man told him angrily. “She and her dance partner have both ducked out and left me holding the bag with a couple hundred people inside who came to see them dance. That was right after Shayne was here and she talked to him the first time.”

“Where can I find her?”

“If I knew, I’d tell you, Chief. They just disappeared. I’ve got a man at her place, but she hasn’t showed.”

“What’s the address?”

“Southwest Third Street.” He gave the address. “If she’s in trouble with the law,” he went on slowly, “I want no part of her. Minute she shows her face around here again, I’ll notify your office.”

Gentry holstered his gun and said shortly, “See that you do if you want to stay in business. Come along, Mike.” He turned his back and trudged stolidly toward the outer door.

Shayne hesitated briefly, and then followed him out. His sedan stood in front of the canopy where he had left it. Directly behind was Chief Gentry’s longer and heavier car with his driver at the wheel. The parking attendant was not in evidence at the moment.

Coming up behind Gentry, Shayne said, “I didn’t know you packed a gun, Will. Thought you’d cut out that kid stuff years ago.”

“It wasn’t kid stuff tonight. Those mugs would have taken you… oh, for God’s sake, Mike, when will you learn you can’t win by bulling in with your fists alone?”

“I’ve done all right this far.”

“You’ve done all right?” Gentry’s tone mocked him. Then he put a hand on his arm and his voice became more friendly. “Like tonight, Mike? Where have you got us on this thing?” He held up a broad hand to stop Shayne’s protest.

“Wait a minute and think it over. You were holding out on me this afternoon, and I know damned well you were. I knew it this afternoon, but what the hell? You’ve pulled rabbits out of your hat before, but this time where are the rabbits? We’ve got an unidentified dead man who may be named Renshaw… passing as Fred Tucker in Miami while he hides out from syndicate hoodlums… but which I doubt. You managed to scare off the motel manager who could have identified him, and you don’t know where to locate his wife who could do likewise.

“And you don’t know where your secretary is, who is the only person in Miami with the wife’s address. And you come out here throwing your weight around earlier in the evening, and so Sloe Burn and her dance partner take a runout powder, and nobody knows where they are. And if I hadn’t been packing a gun inside there… kid stuff or not… by God you’d be tossed out on your ear right now with all hell sapped out of you. All right. You take it from here. I’ll, by God, take it from here my own way.”

He turned and strode toward his car, and Michael Shayne stood alone helplessly and watched him go.

It took Shayne ten minutes to drive to Lucy Hamilton’s apartment building near the Bay in the Northeast section of Miami. In the small entryway his face was deeply trenched with worry as he buzzed his customary signal on her button. The trenches deepened while he waited for her to press the button in her second-floor apartment that would release the front-door lock. When it didn’t come, he got out his key-ring and found the key she had given him long ago for such an emergency, and unlocked the outer door. As he went up the stairs, he selected the other key that opened her apartment, and had it ready in his hand when he reached her door.

It opened onto a dark and silent apartment. He flipped the light switch beside the door and strode in, stopped just inside the long and pleasantly furnished sitting room for a comprehensive look.

He had stopped by the apartment to pick up Lucy for dinner some four hours previously, and they had had one drink together before going out.

The sitting room was now exactly as he remembered they had left it. The cognac bottle and an empty wineglass beside it on the low coffee table. Farther over, a tumbler half-full of water and melted ice cubes; Lucy’s own glass with the dregs of her drink on the nearer side of the table, and lying over the back of a chair where he remembered her tossing it as they went out, was a light wrap which she had decided she didn’t need at the last moment.

With this evidence that Lucy had not been back to her apartment after she went out with him, Shayne strode across the room to the telephone and dialled a number.

A curt voice said, “City desk,” and he said, “Tim Rourke.”

He waited, listening to the background clatter of teletype machines and typewriters, until his friend’s voice came over the wire. “Rourke.”

“Tim. I’m at Lucy’s place and she hasn’t come home yet.”

Timothy Rourke chuckled evilly. “I’ve been warning you for a long time, Mike… you better marry the gal if you want her to stay home waiting for you. Listen. You know that picture I grabbed in Tucker’s cabin…?”

“I’m worried about Lucy,” Shayne cut in. “I thought you were going to see her home.”

“I put her in a cab at the Bright Spot,” Rourke defended himself. “Maybe she decided it was too early and stopped off some place. About that picture… come on down and I’ll show you something.”

“You didn’t get the number of Lucy’s cab… the driver’s name or anything?”

“For Chrissake, Mike! When did you ever take the number of a cab or the driver’s name? Act your age.”

Shayne slammed the telephone down in a burst of futile rage. He knew Tim was right, and that added to his rage. It was foolish to worry about Lucy. She had been making her way around in Miami in cabs for a good many years, and there were dozens of reasonable explanations for her not being home yet. A lot of his anger was directed at himself for neglecting to get Mrs. Renshaw’s local address that afternoon. Will Gentry had been perfectly right in bawling him out at the Bright Spot for having got things in a mess.

He turned away from the telephone with a shrug of his wide shoulders, crossed the room to pour cognac into the wine-glass nearly to the brim.

No matter how many reasonable explanations there were for Lucy’s absence, he was worried, damn it. She knew he was working on a case. She knew his hurried departure from the Bright Spot meant that things were breaking. She knew he might need her for something at any moment. It wasn’t like her to make herself unavailable.

Too many people were missing at the same time, he told himself angrily as he tossed off the drink. Sloe Burn and her dancing partner… probably Fred Tucker, or Renshaw (if his hunch was right about the dead man), and Mrs. Renshaw and Lucy… and he didn’t even know where to look for Baron McTige, he realized dismally.

He emptied the glass and set it down, took one last look around the room, and then strode back to the telephone table and scrawled a note on the pad beside the instrument:

“Check with me or Tim or Will Gentry the minute you come in.” He signed it and carried the pad back with him to drop it on the floor inside the door where Lucy couldn’t possibly fail to see it as she entered. Then he hurried out and down the stairs to his car.

Timothy Rourke was at his desk in the City Room, tapping out copy with one finger on his battered typewriter when Shayne came up to him. The reporter swivelled around in his chair, deep-set eyes gleaming happily. “This time, 7 hit the jackpot, Mike. I knew there was something damned familiar about that picture on the bureau in the Pink Flamingo cabin. Thanks, by the way, for helping to cover up for me when I snatched it. Gentry’s going to be plenty sore at both of us.”

“Not at me. I didn’t do anything.”

“You knew I was grabbing it. Thanks anyhow. Look here, Mike,” Rourke exulted. He turned back to his desk and hunted through some clippings, came up with a newspaper reproduction of the same photograph of Mrs. Renshaw and the two children that had been in Tucker’s cabin.