Бретт Холлидей - Murder in Haste

Shayne called from the phone, “Do you happen to know who writes the insurance for the Beach Trust? Wouldn’t that be Acme?”

Rourke answered from the bathroom. “They get most of the business in that part of town. Who do you think’s going to be there at this time of the morning?”

“Nobody. I’m calling the president, what’s-his-name, Goddard. He’ll be glad to skip breakfast.”

Rourke finished shaving and combed his hair, using Shayne’s equipment. The two men were more presentable when they were ready to leave.

“Wearing a hat, Mike?” Rourke said. “Isn’t that overdoing it a little?”

“Who knows? We may be on TV.”

“Gad. And I don’t have any make-up on.”

They pushed through the revolving door into the St. Albans lobby at five minutes of nine. From the number of police cars parked outside, Shayne saw that Painter had completed his part of the arrangements. Rose Heminway hurried across the lobby.

“Michael! I honestly don’t think I can stand much more of this. Is this how you live all the time?

“Not quite,” Shayne said. “Sometimes I get a little sleep.”

They walked up one flight to the ballroom. Rourke used his press-pass, and Shayne and Rose went up another half-flight to the gallery. They found seats overlooking a scene of considerable disorder. Harry Plato, on the dais, was hammering vainly with his gavel, but the delegates were in no hurry to settle down. One end of the gallery had been taken over by the TV cameras, which were not yet turned on. Rourke slipped into an empty chair at the press table, below Plato’s microphone.

“Take your places, brothers,” Plato was shouting. “This convention will come to order.”

Luke Quinn emerged from one of the side rooms, surrounded by a compact group of ten or twelve men, all but one of whom were smoking cigars. He said something to one of the men, and that man and several of the others laughed.

“Isn’t that Luke Quinn?” Rose remarked. “He wasn’t this sure of himself when I knew him.”

Gradually the knots of delegates broke up and drifted to seats at the long tables, which seemed to be arranged by geographical districts. Shayne glanced at his watch, which was functioning again. He saw Goddard, the insurance company president, come into the gallery and look around until he saw Shayne. The redhead gave him an inquisitive glance. He nodded.

“Wait here, Rose,” Shayne said. “I’ll want you later, so don’t go anywhere.”

He returned to the main floor, passing a compact formation of fifteen or twenty uniformed cops, and went along the hall to the entrance nearest the dais. Plato had brought the convention to order and a minister was giving the invocation. Shayne doubted if many of the delegates were actually praying. He was stopped at the door by a burly sergeant-at-arms. He found an envelope in his pocket and borrowed a pencil. Holding the envelope against the wall, he wrote. “Harry, did you know the Panther has been sunk with all hands? — Shayne.”

He folded the envelope and gave it to the sergeant-at-arms with a five-dollar bill. “Hand this up to Harry.”

“After he gets done?”

“Now.”

The man gave the envelope to someone at the nearest table, who passed it across the aisle. The minister finished the invocation and sat down. Shayne watched his message travel from table to table until it was finally passed up to Plato, who was back at the microphone. He finished a sentence and glanced at what Shayne had written. He went on, but broke into the next sentence and read the note again. He looked across at Shayne, who was planted in the doorway, his hat pushed back on his head, his hands in his pockets. Shayne grinned. After a moment Plato called another official to take the gavel, and came down. The ballroom was reasonably quiet, and the delegates were all watching him. His eyes were stormy.

As he came up to Shayne, the redhead said pleasantly, “I thought I’d be telling you something you didn’t know.”

“In private, baby,” Plato said briefly.

He led the way to a door marked, Midwest . He called over a nearby lounger. “We don’t want to be bothered in here.”

“Sure, Harry.”

They entered a private dining room, which was being used as headquarters of the Midwest district. A secretary was drinking coffee from a cardboard container.

“Outside,” Plato said.

“Certainly,” she said, spilling some of the coffee.

She went out hurriedly. Shayne tossed his hat on the nearest desk and sat down on the desk beside it “Where do you keep your liquor?”

“Let’s do it without,” Plato said. He picked up the phone, put it in a bottom drawer and stuffed rags around it. “We go over the place for bugs a couple of times a day, and we keep finding them, too. But with a phone you never know until you take it apart.”

Shayne grinned. “You don’t mean people want to listen to your private conversations?”

“Mike, you don’t know. They’re thicker than seagulls around a garbage scow, at convention time especially. Thank the Lord I had the sense to get out of it. Say it fast because I got to get out to vote for myself.”

“The water’s probably not over fifteen feet deep where she went down, Harry, so you can raise her. But let’s talk about money for a minute. I could use a retainer.”

“I might arrange something, Mike. In how many figures?”

“I keep thinking of about a thousand a month.”

Plato looked at him closely. “You’re trying to tell me it’s serious?”

“Yeah,” Shayne said soberly.

Plato cracked one powerful fist into his other palm, and for a long moment he did nothing but swear, using language he had learned before he became a labor statesman.

“You take the words out of my mouth,” Shayne said.

“What I’d like to do to that son of a bitch! Well, I better get the details on it so I don’t make a mistake.”

“You don’t want to hear the whole thing, Harry. I was looking for Painter. I—”

Plato raised a hand, puzzled. “I thought you two had a grudge fight going. What’s that, something they made up to sell papers?”

Shayne smiled. “There’s something to it. But he was planning to break a story yesterday morning, and I was looking for him to find out what it was. I found out. Do you know a hood named Juan Grimondi? And an ex-con from Baltimore, called Whitey?”

Plato ran his hand across his jaw. “Those names seem to ring a bell.”

“There were eight or nine in all. Your boys put up a good scrap, but they were outclassed. Gray’s dead.”

“Yeah?” Plato said bleakly. “I’m sorry to hear it. He was a good man.”

“That’s about all I can tell you. They opened up a plate in the engine room and she went down fast. Painter was taped up in a locked cabin, and I’ve got mixed feelings about that. It’s bad for public morality when one of you people knock over a cop. All things being equal, I’d like to put somebody away for it. But all things aren’t equal. A grand a month that I won’t have to pay taxes on is quite an inducement.”

Plato waited a moment, the fingers of his right hand opening and closing. “Jesus, I’ll be lucky to get out of this without a bleeding ulcer. It’s a deal, Shayne, as of now. The first thing I’d like to have you do is bring that son of a bitch in here.”

Shayne got off the desk: “Quinn? What do I say to him?”

Plato smiled grimly. “I’m still president of the goddam union, for another half hour. Do you carry a gun, Shayne?”

“No. Do I need one?”

“It might be a good idea, for when Quinn realizes you saw the Panther go down. I don’t think he’ll try to pull anything here, we got just about every cop in town, but the bastard is crazy! He’s out of his mind! Take care of your health, would be my advice.”