Brett Halliday - When Dorinda Dances

“When you’re making reservations,” said Timothy Rourke, rousing from his faked sleep and sprawled position, “count me in. It’ll be on the old expense account, Mr. Gibson.” He yawned widely, and added, “I believe the News is still solvent.”

The four men and Lucy Hamilton flew to New York together the next day on a plane that arrived shortly after two o’clock. They passed up the airlines bus that was waiting to carry passengers to the 42nd Street terminal, and took a taxi instead directly to The Berkshire on 52nd and Madison Avenue.

The hotel had a small, comfortable lobby with an entrance on 52nd Street, with an unostentatious desk on their right as they entered, a bank of three elevators directly in front, a magazine stand and arched entry to the dining-room and cocktail lounge on the left of the elevators.

Shayne paused inside the double doors to look the lobby over casually while the others went to the desk to check their reservations made by telephone the preceding evening.

He noted a youngish man wearing a well-cut tweed suit, white shirt, and unobtrusive tie lounging negligently at the entrance to the magazine stand, and he sauntered over to tell him quietly, “I’m Shayne from Miami. Are you on Godfrey?”

The New York detective nodded and held out his hand, his eyes becoming alert and interested as he looked the rangy redhead up and down. “We’ve heard a lot about you up here, Shayne. My name is Bemish.”

They shook hands cordially and moved away to stand just inside the dining-room archway out of earshot of anyone.

“Is Godfrey in now?” Shayne asked.

“In his room on the tenth floor. My partner, Dixon, is staked out in the next room.”

“Give me a quick runover of his movements since he reached town.”

Bemish shrugged and shook his head wryly. “There’s damned little. He went straight to his room from the airport, ordered lunch from room service, and came down once for some cigarettes and magazines. One phone call to White Plains which I think you were given last evening. He ate dinner alone here in the Berkshire Room, and went upstairs about eight-thirty.

“Breakfast in his room at nine-fifteen, and he came out at ten-thirty and walked up the street one block to De Pinna’s on Fifth Avenue where he had himself fitted for a suit. He has no account there and isn’t known. He gave this hotel as his address. From the store he walked back on Fifty-Second to a restaurant across the street, the Chez Cardinal, where he had three Martinis and a leisurely lunch. Then directly back here and upstairs about half an hour ago.”

“It sounds,” said Shayne with satisfaction, “as though he’s lying low.”

“Or else a man on vacation without a care in the world — just killing time until his cocktail date with a dame at four o’clock. Do you want to pick him up now?”

“No,” said Shayne emphatically. “Let him keep that date by all means. You see, this is a matter of identification. We want to observe him while he’s acting naturally with no idea he’s being followed.” He turned and saw that the other members of his party had registered and were waiting for him at the desk, and he lifted a hand to say, “We’ll go up now and get settled. We’ll be in the bar from half past three on. If he is our man, we’ll try to take him quietly.”

Bemish nodded and strolled over to the desk with him. “Let’s make it as easy as we can,” he agreed. “The management is being very co-operative.”

Shayne found that he and Rourke had been assigned a suite together on the eighth floor, with Lucy installed in a single room next door. Henry Black had a single room farther down the corridor, and Elliott Gibson had insisted on a suite for himself which necessitated his taking one on the twelfth floor.

As soon as a boy had shown them their rooms and left, Lucy and Black joined the two others in the sitting-room of a large and pleasantly furnished suite, and Shayne called Gibson on the twelfth floor to invite him down for a drink while they waited until time to adjourn to the bar.

When the lawyer refused, saying he would join them downstairs later, Shayne gave him a brief resume of Bemish’s report, then called room service and ordered four double sidecars sent up.

It was five minutes after three when Shayne re-entered the sitting-room. Black and Rourke were seated on the sofa talking together in low tones, and Lucy sat in a deep chair near one of the windows overlooking Madison Avenue.

There was a strained look on Lucy’s face and her fingers were twined together tightly in her lap. She shuddered a little and glanced at her watch as Shayne pulled a chair closer to her.

“I’ve got wiggles in my stomach,” she confessed miserably as Shayne sat down near her. “I wish I knew why you insisted that I come along, Michael. And that you’d give me some idea what to expect in the bar at four o’clock.”

He shook his head decisively. “I want you to come at it without any preconceptions at all. It’s too easy for a person’s mind to twist things around and see what they expect to see — when it may be something else altogether. Just relax,” he urged her with a grin. “This is your first trip to the big city, so try to enjoy it. If we’re lucky we’ll have this whole thing over by four-thirty, and then you and Tim and I will go out on the town. There’s a joint down in the Village where I hung out more years ago than I like to admit—”

He broke off to answer a ring at the door, admitted a waiter with their drinks.

The sidecars were strong with good cognac, bittersweet with plenty of fresh lemon juice and a judicious amount of Cointreau, very cold in their separate serving-receptacles nestled in crushed ice.

Lucy drank sparingly, but she did relax a little as the three men enjoyed their cocktails and talked about anything except the affair that had brought them North. The time passed with surprising swiftness, and it was a little past three-thirty when the last drop of the four double sidecars had disappeared.

They went down in an elevator together, and found Bemish in the lobby, reading the afternoon paper with apparent avid interest. His alert gaze met Shayne’s over the top of the paper, however, and he got to his feet, to join the quartet as they moved toward the archway.

“Still upstairs in his room,” he reported. “Here in the Berkshire, we get a break on a thing like this,” he added, “because the manager of the Five Hundred Room just happens to be an ex-dick, Larry Dagger. Recently retired after twenty years with the Detective Bureau. I’ve told him about you, and—” He broke off abruptly as they moved through the archway and around a corridor, moved forward to greet a heavily built, pleasant-faced man lounging at the entrance to the cocktail bar.

He turned with him, explaining, “This is Mike Shayne from Miami, Larry.”

Shayne shook hands with the ex-New York detective, introduced the others, and briefly explained the setup. “He’s meeting a woman in the bar at four o’clock. We want to observe them both without being noticed.”

Larry Dagger nodded as Bemish returned to his post in the lobby, led them forward into an intimate and tastefully decorated cocktail lounge with a right-angled bar covering most of two sides, and comfortable padded benches around the other two sides with tables set far enough apart for comfort and ease.

“He’ll probably come in this way,” mused Dagger. “Why not take this large table in the corner at your right. Will he recognize any of you?”

“We’re not sure,” Shayne told him truthfully. “You and Black sit on that side facing toward this entrance,” he suggested to Rourke. “Lucy and I will sit here facing the bar, and when Gibson comes down, he can take a chair in front of us.”