Бретт Холлидей - Murder in Haste

Shayne heard Rourke call, “Can I have a minute, Mr. Quinn?”

The redhead went down the hall. The next door after Harry Plato’s was locked. The door after that was marked with a red light, and led to the concrete fire-stairs. He returned to Rourke.

“Okay, okay,” Rourke was saying impatiently. “Play it cagey. I understand things are subject to change and you don’t want to commit yourself. But if something breaks, will you call me? You’re a local boy, and that ought to mean something. Don’t give it to the wire services first, give it to us and we’ll give it to the wire services. Anything you want in the way of pictures we’ll supply, within reason. You’ll get better space that way.”

“That’s good of you, Tim,” Quinn said, in a surprisingly gravelly voice. “But it’s delicate, you know?”

He glanced at Shayne, nodded and moved on.

Shayne said, “Luke Quinn? Do I know him?”

“This used to be his stamping ground,” Rourke said. “But he went up in the world, fast. He’s a big man in the international now, and he’s never even been booked for simple assault, what do you think about that?”

“I thought he looked familiar,” Shayne said. “He didn’t wear glasses when I knew him.”

“His eyesight’s probably o.k. The glasses are for class, to go with the suit. There’s a story here, Mike, I can smell it.” He gestured with both hands. “And if I can get it, it’s the Pulitzer, believe me. This union’s big news.”

“What kind of story?”

Rourke started to speak, but checked himself. There were too many delegates within earshot.

“I’ve got about sixty questions to ask you, and after last night I’m in poor health. I don’t like to do it, because they tell me it’s habit-forming, but I need a drink. How about you? You couldn’t have got much sleep either.”

“I didn’t get any. But the bar wouldn’t be open yet.”

“Hell, man, it’s been years since I paid for my own booze at a convention. When the Truckers are in town, you don’t wait for a bar to open.”

He walked into the nearest room. Several delegates were lounging about with drinks in their hands.

“Do you boys have a drop to spare for a couple of thirsty gentlemen of the press?” Rourke said. “I can’t sit through all that old-fashioned oratory without a little old-fashioned lubrication.”

“Don’t blame you a bit,” one of the men said. “Help yourself.”

Rourke found two glasses that were not in use, dumped the dregs of somebody else’s stale drinks on the carpet, and made two warm rye highballs. He gave one to Shayne. He thanked the men and noted down their names and home locals, for possible inclusion in his convention story. Outside in the corridor, he led the way to the fire stairs.

“You got to watch your step with this bunch,” he told Shayne confidentially. “Nicest guys in the world if they happen to like you. And if they don’t happen to like you, you might as well be out in a hurricane on roller skates. What’s this crap about Painter?”

“That’s a broad question,” Shayne said with care. “If you want to pick up gossip about Petey, don’t come to me. He’s not one of my big interests.”

Rourke gestured expansively with the drink. “ If you please, my dear fellow. Something’s up. Some female screwball has been bothering the paper lately about this Sam Harris who’s going to get singed this week. He’s innocent, and so on. So the boss told one of the boys to get a comment from Petey, which we figured would be a typical sample of his typical picturesque prose. And the bastard’s not available. Now when was the last time Petey wasn’t available to anybody in the newspaper business, at any hour of the day or night? And he didn’t come to work this morning. What do you think of that, man?”

“Do I have to think anything?” Shayne said. “He doesn’t punch a timeclock.”

“Mike. His home phone doesn’t answer. We find out with one call to an off-duty cop who owes the paper a favor that there was a general pick-up out on Mike Shayne last night. The same source tells us there was shooting in Petey’s neighborhood, at about the same time. The legmen are out working on it now. And on top of that, I was waked up out of a sound sleep at four in the morning to be asked a dumb question by one of the Beach detectives, and he wasn’t up that late because it was his own idea. What do you think, Mike? I don’t know how to add?”

Shayne drank some of the cheap blended whiskey. “You’d better get it from Joe Wing. I’ll call him and prepare the way.”

“Do that. And what are you doing at the Convention of the International Union of Draymen, Truckers and Handlers, if I may ask?”

Shayne said irritably, “I don’t know what I’m doing, and you know better than to push me, Tim. I tailed somebody here and lost him.”

“You lost him?” Rourke made a superior sound with his tongue. “I didn’t know that happened to Mike Shayne.”

“It happens,” Shayne said.

“How chintzy are you going to be with me?” Rourke said after a moment, peering at him suspiciously. “I don’t print everything I hear, for God’s sake. There isn’t room in the paper. Are you going to tell me what’s going on, or are you going to be a real son of a bitch? In which case, the hell with you, and when Lucy gets back I’ll tell her I had to give you an alibi for the hours between midnight and four a.m.”

Shayne laughed. “You don’t have to go that far. I’m working for a lady named Rose Heminway, and don’t ask me what she was doing between midnight and four, because I don’t know. Did you read those clips you got out of the morgue for me yesterday?”

“Read them? I wrote them... No, I know what you mean, and anything you’re interested in, I’m interested in too. So I refreshed my recollection. Rose Heminway would be the dead man’s widow, right? What’s she want to do, take back the identification?”

“Something like that,” Shayne said. “And you can’t expect Painter to like it. But talk to Wing. I don’t know how much they want to give out right now.”

Rourke squinted at Shayne. “And the tie-up with the Truckers?”

“That I really don’t know, Tim, and there’s a lot more I don’t know. I only took the case a couple of hours ago.”

Rourke finished his drink in two long swallows. He shuddered. “Well, that’s a little better, but I still don’t feel human. How do I look?”

“You don’t look human, either.”

“Compliments. That’s what I need in the shape I’m in. I was planning to spend the day with these guys, making contacts and drinking their booze, but now I don’t know. I don’t like the Painter angle. I hope he keeps the hell away from this convention, because anything he’s in on gets bolloxed for fair. And I’d really like to get this story. Plato’s running for head of the Welfare Fund. That’s not supposed to be public knowledge yet.”

“He just broke it to me.”

“Do you know how much dough there is in that fund? There’s so many goddam zeroes it looks like the Federal budget. When you’re playing around with something that size, and when you don’t have too many scruples to start with, and when you’ve got a loyal membership that figures you deserve a little gravy after all your hard work, and they’d take just as much if they happened to be in your thirty-buck shoes — well, that’s a job there’s some percentage in battling over.

“Plato’s got his heart set on it. Not that he didn’t do okay as president. Big house, big car, big boat. But big trouble to go with it, especially since these Senators have been nipping at him. Why, the way things are going, Mike, people are getting the idea. God forbid, that he’s no better than a crook. He wants a little peace and quiet, and he thinks he’ll get it, along with a few extra bucks, in the Welfare Fund. Right now it’s touch and go. Maybe he’ll make it, maybe not.”