Бретт Холлидей - Murder in Haste

The boy in the leather cap had been joined by two others. Shayne went toward them at a leisurely walk. A path opened for him. Horvath screamed, “Crack his skull! Knock the goddam teeth out of his head!” Then more frantically: “Get this goddam thing off me!”

Shayne went through the door and closed it behind him. The three boys kept a pace away, shuffling uneasily.

The youth in the leather cap said, “Hurry it up, will you?”

“Aren’t you going to throw me out?” Shayne said.

“Well, you’re going anyway, why make a production out of it? When you first came in, I didn’t know you were Mike Shayne.”

Shayne went through the waiting room. Behind him, one of the boys took a bowling ball out of the rack and began slamming it against the cinderblock wall. Another boy groaned.

Shayne returned to the garage and paid for his car.

Norma Harris had a walk-up apartment on the Miami side of the bay. A moment or two after Shayne rang her doorbell, the lobby door opened and a dark-haired woman came out. She glanced at Shayne as she passed, turning back as she reached the outer door.

“You didn’t just ring Harris?”

“Yeah. Are you Mrs. Harris?”

“That’s me. You’re probably Shayne?” She put out her hand and looked him over frankly; he seemed to pass. “I was just talking to Rose on the phone. Some excitement you had out there this morning, and I wish you’d tell me what the hell it was all about.”

“Can I take you somewhere?”

“No, let’s go inside, o.k.? I was on my way over to that pipsqueak Painter. I have a piece of information for him, and this time there better not be any crap about not letting me in.”

She unlocked the door. They started up the stairs, which were too narrow to walk on side by side. Shayne was several steps behind. She was wearing a tight black skirt and very high heels, and Shayne had no trouble observing that she was trimly built.

She looked back at him. “Finding your way all right? Somebody’s going to kill himself on these stairs some day. Don’t lean on the banisters. I’d hate to lose you at this stage of the game.”

Shayne laughed. After four flights, she took him along a narrow hall and unlocked a door which let them into a small, almost airless apartment. Shayne got a better look at her as she took his hat. Her make-up was slightly excessive, but it had been put on carefully. Her figure was as good from the front as from the back. She had a small, stubborn mouth and hard eyes.

“Can I give you something?” she said. “All I’ve got in the way of liquor is gin, and I’m not going to offer you any of that because I want you to keep sharp. The time factor is terrific. The way you look, you could use some coffee.”

“Sure, if it’s no trouble.”

“Hell, I don’t have time for anything that’s trouble.”

She had a two-burner unit on a counter in a little alcove which could possibly be called a kitchen. She put on water to boil and spooned out instant coffee into two cups.

“What’s the matter with that little two-bit Hitler over on the Beach, anyway?” she demanded. “He solved a case once. Great. Everybody probably told him he was a marvellous detective, and he felt very respected. So now he’s got a vested interest. I tell him, solve the goddam case all over again. Prove Sam is innocent after all, and he’ll get tremendous publicity. He convicted a guy, but his conscience wouldn’t let him rest, and so on. They’d write editorials about it. A thing like that could only happen in America — you know how it goes. But he won’t listen to a word out of me any more, and the calendar is crowding us. Sit down, Mr. Shayne. This takes about a minute and a half.”

Shayne picked up a straight chair and turned it backward. “Maybe he already has a new solution, and he’s just holding it up so he can break it with a real splash.”

“What?” she said sharply. “How do you mean, a real splash? What’s he waiting for, the last half-hour countdown?”

“I don’t think even Petey would go that far. But he wouldn’t mind holding up a day or two, even a week or two, if he saw a chance to come out of it with bigger space in the papers.”

“Then it’s simple,” she said decisively. “Let’s get the newspaper boys together and blast him.”

“I like your approach, Mrs. Harris,” Shayne said, grinning, “but first let’s get something to blast him with. What’s this piece of information you’re taking to him?”

“I found out where Milburn is.”

“Who?”

“Fred Milburn. That won’t mean anything to you, I guess. How much did Rose tell you?”

“She said something about a letter.”

“Yeah — that’s how this started. Have you got a cigarette you can give me?”

Shayne fished one out for her and offered his lighter. She took a deep drag and breathed out smoke.

“Come on, damn you, boil,” she said, talking to the water on the burner. “Everything takes so damn long lately! I’ve been as nervous as a flea for the last month or so, and it seems to get worse. Here’s how it happened. I wanted something to take my mind off, and I was cleaning out some old trunks and junk, and I found this letter. You know about Sam’s defense? He said he couldn’t have robbed the damn bank because he was somewhere else that night. They asked him where. He said with me. Well, he wasn’t with me, and never mind how they proved that , but they proved it. This was all Painter’s doing, and it gave him a fixed idea about my morals, or lack of morals. You’re following this, I trust.”

The water came to a boil, and she filled the cups. She gave Shayne one and sat down across the table. “There’s cream and sugar, if you want it, or maybe there is.”

“Black’s fine,” Shayne said.

“He made a pass at me at the time, I might add. I nearly chewed off his arm.”

“Painter?” Shayne said incredulously.

“He thought he’d found something available. I wasn’t that available, thank God, but it may explain this high-and-mighty-and-don’t-bother-me act of his lately. Where was I? Well, after his brilliant police work proved that Sam wasn’t with me that night, Sam said he’d tell the truth. He was sticking up a gas station in Alabama, with another guy. A great law-abiding citizen I’m married to, but such is life. They stuck up a few other stores and hit a small payroll, and that’s where the twenty thousand came from, that they found in his suitcase.

“I didn’t exactly believe him, myself. Somebody actually did stick up that gas station, though, and they took Sam up for an identification. Well, you know eye-witnesses. When you want them, they’re half blind in one eye and all-blind in the other. When you don’t want them, they’ve got twenty-twenty vision and a wonderful imagination. And this gas-station guy in Alabama said he’d never set eyes on Sam in his life. That kind of did it, as far as I was concerned.”

“Were you on good terms with him at the time?”

“Why shouldn’t I be? He played around, I played around, but we had a very good marriage, what there was of it. They were always busting him for something, and I didn’t exactly go into holy orders every time they turned the key on him for a few years. So I said to him, Sam, if you’re going to insist on that alibi, who were you robbing with? Because produce him, I said, let’s see what he has to say. But he wouldn’t. He said the guy had two felonies already, and the next time was for keeps. Well, it was his own fault, I said, if he went out sticking up places with a habitual hanging over his head, but Sam wouldn’t see it that way. Now nobody’s that public-spirited. I mean with the rap Sam was up against himself, and I made up my mind it was all talk, he wanted to cop a plea to armed robbery and get out of murder. Except it didn’t work.”