Бретт Холлидей - Murder in Haste

“Where’s Luke Quinn come in?”

“Plato needs Quinn’s backing to put him over. That’s the way I hear it, and I’ve got a couple of pretty good contacts in the so-called rank and file. There’s a dozen different districts in the union, all with their own favorite sons. The wheeling and the dealing lately has been fierce. You stick a knife in the man from New England, you buy off the man from the Southwest, you wheedle, you charm, you promise, you use your muscle. Get the general picture?”

Shayne was worrying his earlobe. “And if Quinn backs him, Plato’s in?”

“That’s about it. There’s a rank-and-filer in the argument and they’re letting him stay in, so people will know what a democratic union this is. There’s one real candidate besides Plato, from the West Coast. Whichever way Quinn leans, that man’s got it. So Quinn is being wooed. This is the situation that gets me up here when I would rather be convalescing in a comfortable bed from late hours and too much bourbon. Because how do you woo somebody like Quinn? He’s only been in the upper echelons a couple of years, so you can’t promise to get him one of the top jobs. He’s got to mature first. You can’t use muscle on him, because he’s got muscle of his own, and plenty of it. What would you suggest, Mr. Shayne?”

“Money,” Shayne said.

“Money is the correct answer,” Rourke said. “You’ve been coached. That’s what my sources say, anyhow. Mike, if I could get the real lowdown on what’s happening here, and prove it, honest to God — it wouldn’t just be local news. It’d make page one in every paper in the country. Of course,” he added, “I don’t want to get the story and end up on the obituary page in the same day’s paper. I keep telling myself to be careful. Some of these guys give me goose pimples, or is that melodramatic?... I need another drink.”

They went back to the corridor. Rourke went looking for a friendly delegate who would fill his glass. Shayne took the elevator to the lobby, where he shut himself in a phone booth and dialed Beach headquarters. Joe Wing seemed to be glad to hear from him.

“Have you got him, Mike?”

“No, he slipped me,” Shayne said. “His Ford’s in front of a drugstore just off the causeway on Collins.”

“Not any more. We just towed it in. It was stolen last night at International Airport, and one of the boys spotted the tags. We’re trying to raise fingerprints, but everything’s pretty smudged.”

“He took a cab to the St. Albans from there,” Shayne said, “and he got away from me on the twelfth floor. The place is running over with truckers in for the big convention, if that means anything.”

“Uh-oh,” Wing said, and went on slowly, “Al Cole, the boy you gift-wrapped for us, pays dues in that union. I’ve been talking to Baltimore. He has a medium-long sheet. Five or six arrests, a couple of small convictions. What did you hit him with, Mike?”

“I didn’t like the looks of that silencer,” Shayne said. “It surprised the hell out of me, and I nearly lost a client. That’s something I hate to do. I was afraid for a minute I’d broken my hand. But it seems to be okay.”

“Maybe your hand is okay,” Wing said dryly, “but he’s going to be eating through a straw for the next few weeks. He also won’t be doing much talking. Did you get anything more on Painter? You may not believe this, but I’m beginning to worry about the twerp.”

“I get an impression, for what it’s worth, that he was onto something and he tried to squeeze it too hard. I want to see Norma Harris. She’s probably not talking to the Beach police these days, but there’s no reason she wouldn’t talk to me. Outside of that, I can’t see anything to do but try to retrace Petey’s footsteps the last couple of weeks.”

Wing sighed. “I was hoping this would turn out to be something simple. How are you going to trace his footsteps if he didn’t leave any? He must have been afraid of a leak in the department. That’s the only way I can explain it. I’ve been checking his schedule, starting with the day Norma Harris came to see him. It’s full of gaps. He was out of the office a lot, but he didn’t tell anybody where he was going or why. He did His phoning from a booth, and that’s not like Painter — he’s a man who liked to hang onto his dimes.”

“How about after what’s-his-name started driving him? Heinemann?”

“Well, he’s a little dim, Mike, if you didn’t notice. A perfectly good cop, but he doesn’t do any more thinking than he has to. We’ve been talking about it. I was tired to begin with, and a lot tireder when I finished. I’ll go through my notes on what he told me and see if anything points to the Truckers. Do you want to call me back?”

“No, I’ll hold on.”

Shayne waited, drumming impatiently on the wall of the booth.

Wing exclaimed, “Here’s something. I knew the St. Albans rang a bell. Painter went there the day before yesterday. He talked to somebody on the house phone and went up in the elevator. He was gone a half hour.”

“Did Heinemann notice what floor?”

“That’s just the sort of thing he doesn’t think he’s being paid to notice. I know there’s something else here, if I can find it.”

Again Shayne waited. He put down the phone and started a cigarette.

“Yeah,” Wing said finally. “Not that it’s much. Heinemann’s not sure when this was, sometime last week. He drove Painter to a very crummy bowling alley, somewhere in the neighborhood of Eighth, called the Three Hundred Club. Painter checked his .38 before they went in. It’s that kind of joint. Heinemann stuck with him to the manager’s office, and then he stayed outside and watched the door. The name is Horvath, Sticky Horvath. I looked up his record, and it’s not good. He served two jolts for receiving stolen goods, and he was mentioned in that loan shark investigation a few years back. Remember, Mike? Nothing came of it in the way of prosecution, but Horvath was supposed to have a corner on the loan-sharking in the Truckers local.”

“Painter didn’t tell anybody why he wanted to talk to him?”

“Not a word. That might be something for you, Mike. A guy like Horvath doesn’t talk to us unless we have something to hit him with. But you better let us backstop you.”

“No, that might queer it,” Shayne said. “I’ll see what happens. How’s Mrs. Heminway?”

“Pretty shaky. She thinks you’re hot stuff, incidentally. Everything’s quiet over there, and I left a man with her to be sure it stays quiet.”

“One other thing,” Shayne said. “Tim Rourke’s going to be calling you. His paper knows that something’s up, and you can’t sit on the story much longer. He might be willing to hold off if you give him an exclusive deal, but not for long.”

“Thanks, Mike. I’ll see if I can stall him. Keep moving in. I’ve got a hunch we might be on the edge of something.”

Shayne hung up. He had a surprising feeling of let-down, of incompleteness, as though something important was missing. It took him a moment to put his finger on what it was. It was Painter. Given a choice between a hard-working, hard-driving, intelligent cop like Joe Wing, and an irrational, infuriating bundle of contradictions like Peter Painter, only a total fool would choose Painter. But without Painter to rail at and out-maneuver, there was no doubt that some of the keen enjoyment Shayne usually got from an intricate case like this was simply not there. He smiled ruefully, but the smile left his deeply lined face as he threaded his way through the crowded lobby. What had happened to the little son of a bitch?

The doorman whistled up Shayne’s car. The redhead threw away his cigarette and stuck another in his mouth. He left it unlighted. It was still there some ten minutes later when he cruised slowly up and down the streets in the honky-tonk section at the southern end of the Beach, until he found the Three Hundred Club, an establishment which compared unfavorably with the luxury hotel he had just left.