Brett Halliday - Killers from the Keys

Shayne grinned and said, “Lots of things, I bet, but right this minute I’d like to see Mr. Mason.”

She lowered long, dark lashes and looked at a pad in front of her. “Do you have an appointment?”

“Tell Mason it’s Michael Shayne.”

She glanced up at him dubiously, and then turned her head to speak into a microphone on a stand beside her. “A Mr. Michael Shayne to see you, Mr. Mason.”

A disembodied voice came from somewhere. “Send him in.”

She indicated a closed door marked PRIVATE to the right of her desk. “Go right in, Mr. Shayne.”

Shayne crossed to the door and opened it. A trim, alert, athletic-figured man wearing a light brown business suit and a black four-in-hand tie stood up behind the bare desk in the center of the room. His face had a wide smile that showed strong white teeth. In a cultured voice, he exclaimed, “It’s good to see you, Mike. You don’t get around this side of the Bay very much these days.”

Shayne said, “Not much. Petey Painter doesn’t run up a flag of welcome for me.”

“Painter!” Mason dismissed the Beach Chief of Detectives with a shrug. “Stand a drink?” He turned toward an elaborate bar. “Cognac, isn’t it?”

Shayne said, “I just had a drink,” and added after a perceptible pause, “Thanks. Is Little Joe Hoffman still making book?”

“Little Joe… Hoffman?” Mason turned back with lifted eyebrows. His voice hardened. “Making book, Shamus? What a peculiar question to ask me.”

Shayne leaned forward and put both hands flat on the desk. He growled, “I haven’t time to trade jokes. Get the word out to Little Joe that he’s in trouble if he doesn’t look me up tonight. At the Bright Spot in Miami, between, say, ten and twelve.”

“Really, Mike?” There was well-bred amusement on Mason’s face. “I should get the word out?”

“Just to keep things smooth. It would be bad for business if one of your boys got knocked over.”

“See here, Shayne. If you’re threatening me…”

“Not threatening… just telling you. I’ll be expecting Hoffman to look me up at the Bright Spot tonight. If he’s not on your payroll, it’s not your worry whether he does or not.”

He went out of the office without looking back, winked happily at the receptionist as he passed her, and went on to his final stop of the day, Miami Beach Police Headquarters.

In the squadroom of the Detective Division, he went up to the sergeant on duty behind the desk, lifting a hand in response to greetings from three or four of the dicks lounging about the room.

“Hank Madison around, Sarge?”

“Hi, Shamus. Long time no see. Hank? I think he’s off this week.” The sergeant ran a thumb down the duty roster. “Yeh. Till Friday.”

“Who would be collecting bookie payoffs in his place?” Shayne asked the question with placid casualness, as though anticipating an equally casual answer, but loudly enough for all the men in the room to hear him.

The sergeant’s eyes twinkled, but he shook his head sternly and said, “You know you’re off-base, Mike. No payoffs here on the Beach. No bookies either,” he added as an afterthought.

Someone snickered behind Shayne. He snorted, “Tell that to Peter Painter and maybe he’ll believe you.”

“Tell what to Peter Painter?” an incisive voice snapped in the sudden silence behind him.

Shayne turned slowly, resting one elbow on the counter, and grinned at the slight, dapper figure of the Beach’s Chief of Detectives who stood in an open doorway on his right. “I didn’t know you were in, Chief. I would have come direct to you with my problem if I had.”

“What is your problem, Shayne?” Peter Painter was an aggressively small man with a wispy black mustache and flashing black eyes.

“I want to get word to one of your bookies operating here on the Beach,” Shayne explained. “Figured this was the best place to come. Any of your boys see Little Joe Hoffman this evening…”

That was as far as he got before his words penetrated Painter’s consciousness. “Bookies? Here on the Beach!” He raised himself on tiptoe in rage. “I’ll have you know, Shayne…”

“I know, I know,” Shayne waved a big hand good-naturedly. He turned to look at the frozen faces of the detectives in the room. “But if any of you do happen to run into Little Joe or any of his pals, pass the word that Mike Shayne wants to see him at the Bright Spot in Miami tonight.”

“See here, Shayne.” Peter Painter bounced forward on the toes of his small feet and stood directly in front of the rangy redhead with his black eyes glittering upward at the detective’s impassive face. “There’s not a man on my force who wouldn’t arrest any known bookie on sight. If you’re intimating that there’s any liaison between this office and any bookmaking establishment, I dare you to prove it and charge you with libel.”

Shayne said, “I’m not intimating anything. Just making an announcement where I thought it might do some good.” He turned aside and brushed past Painter. “The Bright Spot tonight, boys. Then I won’t have to come around here tomorrow looking for Little Joe myself and maybe upset some applecarts.”

He walked out of the Detectives’ room and down a long corridor with long strides, pausing near the entrance to get a dime from his pocket and enter a telephone booth.

He dialed his office number and when Lucy Hamilton answered, he began apologetically, “Hi, angel. I just called to say…”

“Oh, Michael.” Her voice sounded choked, curiously close to hysteria, but whether from anger, fear, or laughter he couldn’t tell. “I’m so glad you called,” she hurried on. “There’s a fellow Eye here to see you. From Chicago. His name is Baron McTige and one of the things he keeps telling me is that… well… that Private Eyes in Chicago don’t have such pretty secretaries. You’d better come, Michael.

When Shayne burst into his office five minutes later, the scene that met his eyes was so ludicrous that he would have burst out laughing if the expression on his secretary’s face hadn’t prevented him from doing so.

Lucy Hamilton was in her typist’s chair pressed back against the farther wall and cowering back as far as she could get from the beefy figure of a man who was balanced precariously on the low railing, leaning as close to Lucy as he could get without falling off, gesticulating with a stubby-fingered left hand while his head was tossed back and he laughed raucously at some witticism of his own.

Lucy’s eyes widened and she jumped to her feet as Shayne appeared in the doorway. The man who had her helplessly cornered stopped laughing with his mouth wide open and turned his head slowly, grabbing at her typewriter with his left hand to pull his thick body upright on the railing.

Lucy said quickly, “This is Mr. McTige, Michael. One of Chicago’s foremost Eyes.” Her lips twisted over the word and her voice capitalized it. Without pausing, she went on rapidly, “He’s been telling me the most fascinating things about the way a Private Eye operates in a big city, and it makes us seem just too provincial for words down here in this little old hick town.”

“Aw, I wouldn’t say that,” protested McTige magnanimously. He slid off the railing and stood up to face Shayne, a youngish man about five feet nine inches tall who would tip the scales at two hundred and twenty pounds at the very least. His face was very red and suety-fat, with moist, blubbery lips and a receding hairline that gave him a curiously naked and babyish appearance. He wore an offensively garish sport shirt of virulent yellows and greens, without a jacket, and thick, crepe-soled brogans that had not been designed for tropical wear.