Brett Halliday - Marked for Murder

He strolled out, waved to Jimmy Dolan, and went out to the elevator.

Outside, he got in the police coupe Sergeant Jorgensen had found for him and drove to Miami Avenue. He turned north a few blocks and stopped in front of a small barroom squeezed in between a delicatessen and a pawnshop, and went in.

Half a dozen men were lounging at the bar. The bartender was a stranger to Shayne. Lucky Laverty was nowhere in sight. Two of the men at the bar were roughly dressed laborers, the others thin-faced punks.

Shayne went behind them toward a closed rear door. A man was seated at a table with a glass of beer. He was wearing a purple-striped shirt with bright suspenders and tight-waisted pants flaring into big legs at the bottom. He was about 25, with a slack mouth and protuberant eyes. He watched Shayne approach, pushed back his beer, and got up when Shayne went toward the door without looking at him.

He got in front of Shayne, muttering menacingly, “Where you think you’re goin’, bub?”

“In to see Lucky Laverty,” Shayne said mildly.

“Like hell. Not without-”

“Scram.” Shayne swung him aside with a sweeping motion of his right arm, and started on.

The doorkeeper crouched with a sobbing snarl, and naked steel flickered toward Shayne. Shayne drove the side of his big hand hard against the thrusting wrist and a knife spun to the floor. He hit the doorman on the point of his chin with a looping left, and he subsided quietly.

Shayne opened the door and went into a small back room thick with tobacco smoke. A green-shaded drop-light glared above a round poker table surrounded by five players. There were chips and cards on the table, and a fat man with a pink bald head was dealing stud. He slapped a card down and looked at Shayne, as did the others.

Shayne glanced around the circle of intent faces and let his gaze come to rest on Lucky Laverty’s face. Lucky was a well-built man with dark, strong features as inexpressive as chiseled granite. There was a withdrawn, remote look about him, not so much aloofness as carefully studied immobility.

Shayne said, “I wanted to see you, Lucky.”

“You’re seeing me.” The words were quiet and low-toned, as lacking in inflection as though produced by some mechanical contrivance. The other four men continued to stare at Shayne. He knew two of them. One was Whitey Buford. The other was Nig Carlton. Neither of them liked him.

“About Tim Rourke,” Shayne said.

Lucky kept on looking at him and didn’t bother to reply. Whitey was partially hopped up. His eyes flickered and demanded of no one in particular, “Where’s Bug-eyes? Lettin’ a Shamus walk in here.”

Shayne kept his eyes steadily on Lucky. He said, “Bug-eyes pulled a shiv on me. Things have changed in two years.”

“Things have changed,” Lucky said.

“But I haven’t.”

The other men glanced around at each other, then back at Shayne, but Lucky Laverty kept his staring eyes steadily upon the detective.

“Pass that word around,” Shayne said quietly. “To your friend Brenner and anybody else that may be interested.”

Lucky said, “You’re making a mistake, Shayne. Rourke didn’t get it on this side of the Bay.”

“I hear he was digging into stuff you didn’t want opened up.”

“So?”

“Such as blond gun molls and maybe whoever was working the racket with them.”

Nig Carlton pushed his chair back and got up. He had black kinky hair covering a bullet head, and a barrel-like torso. He breathed loudly through his open mouth, as though his nasal passages were obstructed. He growled, “Lemme throw ’im out, Boss.”

Lucky said, “Sit down, Nig.”

Nig sat down reluctantly, his small, close-set, and inflamed eyes glaring at Shayne.

Lucky asked, “Is that all?”

The trenches deepened in Shayne’s gaunt cheek. He said in an oddly gentle voice, “Are you sure you want it this way, Lucky?”

“Things have changed in the two years you’ve been away.”

Shayne nodded. He rubbed his square jaw reflectively. “I guess they have.”

Lucky Laverty turned his gaze away from Shayne’s cold eyes. He said, “Deal the cards,” to the man with the pink bald head.

Shayne turned and went out. A couple of the punks from the bar had dragged Bug-eyes up to a chair at the table and he had his jaw in both hands and was working it from side to side and moaning. The punks shrank back and looked at Shayne with scared eyes as he stalked past them.

At the bar, Shayne ordered a double shot of brandy. The bartender slopped out a double shot and said, “That’s a buck, Mister.”

Shayne drank slowly. When he finished he set the glass down and said, “It’s on Lucky.” He went out and got in the coupe, took his time about starting the motor and driving away.

No one came out of the barroom. Insofar as he could tell, no one followed him.

Shayne turned east on 13th Street and drove across Biscayne Boulevard onto the County Causeway leading across Biscayne Bay. A shimmering serpentine of lights marked the curving road, the glow reflecting in the rippling water.

A gentle breeze came through the window, cool and moist, heavy with the indefinable fragrance of tropical flowers mingled with the clean smell of salt sea air. An impossibly large and implausibly golden moon floated in the velvety blue of the night above the peninsula directly ahead, making a moon path on the bay. Shayne relaxed at the wheel of the police coupe, slowed his speed to 20 miles an hour, and reacquainted himself with the beauty of the tropical night.

Fleetingly, he found it good to be home again. He felt a surge of strength and assurance which had been lacking of late. Somehow, his work in New Orleans didn’t seem important now. He had a feeling of having marked time for nearly two years. It had been a long time since this sense of urgency pounded through him.

In a sudden flash of clarity he realized that was the ingredient lacking in nearly all his New Orleans cases. There had been no personal stress driving him on. In retrospect, they seemed dull and uninteresting after his years in Miami where every case had found him behind the eight ball fighting his way out.

Now, he was behind the eight ball again, and it was a good feeling. The brief interview with Lucky Laverty had raised his spirits immeasurably, and given the impetus he needed. The odds were stacked against him again, and that, by God, was the way he liked it.

He hit the east end of the Causeway and rolled east two blocks, made a left turn, and drove directly to the Flagler hospital. He parked the coupe and went in, stopped at the information desk to ask the number of Timothy Rourke’s room.

The girl told him 312, and he went up in an elevator. He started down the cool, silent hall and his number twelves sounded loud on the tiled floor. He saw the familiar uniform of a Beach cop on a man seated on a chair outside a door, but the officer’s face was unfamiliar.

Stopping in front of room 312, he started to open the door. The officer stood up and drawled, “Hold it. No admittance.”

Shayne said, “I’m looking for Tim Rourke.”

“No visitors allowed.”

“Whose orders?”

“The chief’s. Who are you?”

“Don’t you recognize a dick when you see one?” Shayne asked.

The cop looked him over carefully. Shayne tipped his hat back and scowled. The cop shook his head. “I never saw you before.”

“I’m private.”

“Maybe so. That don’t let you in.”

“The hell it doesn’t. I’ve come a couple of thousand miles to see Tim and no damned flatfoot is going to keep me out.”

“Let me see your tin.”

Shayne drew out his wallet and flipped it open to show his Florida identification. The cop frowned at it, looked up at him in surprise, and said, “Michael Shayne, eh? I’ve heard about you.”