Бретт Холлидей - Murder in Haste

“Listen to me, meat-head,” Shayne said roughly. “At least you had the sense to know what you were doing was dangerous. You took on a bodyguard. The people who grabbed you had to get him out of the way, and they couldn’t just invite you to get into their car and come along for the ride. They knew you’d act even more irrationally than usual if you thought you could hang something on me. Your views on the subject of Mike Shayne are in the public domain. Gray faked something. I don’t know what. You called an ambulance for him and ordered an all-cars alert for me. Somebody fired a couple of shots to get Heinemann away from your Caddy. You saw a car that looked like mine and took out after it.”

“You were in it! I saw you.”

“Maybe you saw somebody that looked like me. You didn’t see me.” Shayne gauged Klipstone’s height and build. Both were about right. So was his haircut, though he had brown hair. “What did you use, Jack? A henna rinse or a wig?”

Klipstone moved his feet, embarrassed. “Put your goddam hands behind you and turn around.”

Shayne looked from one man to another. Gray had his hand inside his coat.

“Conscious or unconscious?” Gray said.

Shayne turned slowly, putting his hands together at the base of his spine.

“The filing cabinet!” Painter said desperately. “The way everything was thrown around. And the car, the car!”

Klipstone ripped off a length of tape and wrapped it around Shayne’s wrists.

Gray said, “A car wouldn’t be much of a problem, Chief. We didn’t actually go to the trouble of stealing Shayne’s car. There are plenty of cars like it, and we didn’t want him to come out and notice it was missing. It’s simpler to switch plates. People don’t check to see whether they have the right plates from one week to the next. When it was all over, we switched the plates back. And the mess? How long would it take to straighten that up? Not very long. The timing was a bit off. I’d rather you hadn’t called the ambulance and so on. But I couldn’t stop you. Probably the phone should have been pulled out of the wall, but you can’t think of everything.”

Painter exclaimed, “That’s the slimiest trick I ever heard of!”

Klipstone gave Shayne a push, tripping him. He fell heavily. After taping the redhead’s ankles and slapping an X of tape across his mouth, he turned to Painter.

“Next.”

“But — but I thought you were just going to leave me at a motel! You aren’t actually—”

“It gets light in another hour,” Gray said. “People show up to go out sailing, and we don’t want you to yell for help and interfere with other people’s recreation. If anybody asked me, I’d say take both of you out in the Stream and drop you, but nobody’s asked me. Hands behind you, Chief.”

“But... but—” Painter sputtered.

Klipstone plastered tape over his mouth before fastening his wrists and ankles. They went out and left Painter and Shayne alone. The key turned in the lock.

Shayne struggled into a sitting position, his back to the bulkhead. Painter lay on his side in the bunk. They looked at each other. Painter’s eyes turned away evasively, but they kept coming back.

The overnight light had been left on. Painter seemed to be trying desperately to say something. As for the redhead, he wasn’t interested in anything Painter had to say, and he had nothing to say himself that wouldn’t have been profane.

Someone came down the companionway and went into the opposite cabin. There were footsteps and low voices overhead. After a time their captors settled down and the boat was quiet. Painter’s eyes closed. He forced them open. But the next time they closed, several minutes later, they stayed closed. Shayne remained awake, his thoughts going in circles, like mice in a cage.

His watch was behind him, strapped up beneath overlapping layers of adhesive tape. The sky, which could be seen through the single porthole, was beginning to brighten. Dawn could be no more than fifteen minutes away. Exactly twenty-four hours earlier, he had parked his car in front of his hotel, and Joe Wing and his boys had moved in on him. And too much had happened in the next twenty-four hours that he didn’t understand.

Occasionally he heard a car pass on the Beach, or the beat of a motor out in the bay. By now the fast Coast Guard cutters would have given up the search for the skin-diving bomber. Tim Rourke, he hoped, was still working north along the bayfront, looking for a large white boat called Panther. Unfortunately, he was also looking for a large white boat with a tuna-fish platform, but perhaps he would remember in time that such platforms are detachable.

Another boat’s motor, louder than those he had heard so far, was approaching the marina, coming down from the north. His attention sharpened. It didn’t go by, but swung into the open water between the lines of berthed boats, throttling down until it was barely turning over. Suddenly, no more than a half-cable length away, it cut out entirely. Shayne rocked forward, working his feet underneath him, and listened intently. He heard the faint slapping of waves against a hull; the other boat must be almost alongside.

Suddenly bare feet hit the deck directly overhead. Klipstone’s voice called, “Who’s that?”

When there was no answer a door slammed open across the companionway and someone ran up the companion ladder.

Klipstone’s voice, low and worried, said, “It looks like Juan Grimondi. Get Gray.” Then he called, “Juan? What gives, kid? Up late or up early?”

A voice with a strong Spanish accent answered, “Coming aboard you, Jack. Gotta talk about something.”

Shayne heard someone else run out on the Panther’s deck, and Gray said easily, “Take it easy, Juan, boy. You’ve got to be asked. That’s one of the things about boats.”

Shayne strained to hear the answer.

“Asked? You kidding me, boy. This here is important union business.”

“But this ain’t no union hall,” Gray said softly. “Who you got there with you? Is that you, Whitey?” he called more challengingly. “I didn’t know they let you out.”

“I made parole,” a voice answered from the other boat.

“And does your parole officer know you’re this far from Baltimore? How many more you’ve got there, Juan? You brought a little army with you, didn’t you? Hold it! We don’t want to overload. We’re crowded already.”

Shayne pressed his back to the bulkhead and slowly began to work himself to his feet. On deck, the argument continued.

Juan said, “What’s wrong with a little talk? We’re good union brothers.”

Shayne straightened his knees and came erect. He made the porthole in a series of careful movements, and looked out. The bow of the second boat had nudged into the same berth as the Panther, and the two boats lay alongside, front thirds overlapping. Shayne couldn’t see up to the deck. Painter, on the bunk beside him, snored heavily.

“Okay, tell you what we want,” Juan said. “You got that cop, right? Painter. Very good trick, I hear all about it, just like you, Mr. Gray. Now we going to take charge of that cop.”

“No, you’re not,” Gray said.

“Honest, Mr. Gray, we take care of him good. Nobody complain afterward, nobody find the body. We got some big cinderblocks, take him out in deep water.”

“The hell you will. Not unless I get told by the right people. Sheer off, or we’ll blow a few holes in your boat for you.”

Shayne bumped Painter’s shoulder with his knee, trying to wake him. The little man twitched, but slept on.

“We blow a few holes right back,” Juan said. “What’s the matter, Mr. Gray, you in love with this Painter, or something?”