Brett Halliday - Michael Shayne’s Triple Mystery

“Oh — yes,” he stammered. “Room 305. She isn’t in. There’s been—”

“I’m the guy who telephoned you about an hour ago. Can you describe the men she went out with?”

“I’m afraid I can’t, sir. You see, I didn’t notice their faces.”

“Could one of them have been holding a gun on her?” Shayne demanded harshly.

The clerk began to tremble, and his voice shook when he said, “I really don’t know, sir. I — Do you think something has happened to her?”

“Do you know whether they came in after she got her key and went up, or were they waiting?”

“I — really don’t know. I didn’t see them come in after she got her key, but I’m afraid I can’t swear whether they were upstairs waiting for her or not.”

Shayne turned away and went to the elevator. It was run by a young Negro boy who stood very stiff and straight, but he couldn’t control his popping black eyes when they saw his face.

Shayne asked, “Do you remember the girl in three-o-five?”

“Yassuh. I knows the one you mean. Checked in jes’ today.”

“Do you remember her coming in late tonight and then going out again almost immediately?”

“Yassuh. That’s what she done. I ’members it.”

Shayne got out his wallet. “Now try to remember exactly what happened,” he said quietly. “Did you bring her down in the elevator with two men?”

The boy’s eyes rolled covetously toward the five-dollar bill. “Yassuh. I sho did. Ra’t after I’d done taken her up.”

“How long afterward?” Shayne prompted. “Did you make many trips in between?”

“Nosuh. Not none. I ’member how ’sprised I was when I stopped at the thu’d floor on the way down an’ foun’ her waitin’ with them two gen’mans, ’cause I’d jes’ took her up to three on mah way up.”

“Are you sure of that? You didn’t take them up after you took her up?”

“Nosuh. How could I when I’d done taken ’em up pre’vous?”

“How much previous?”

“’Bout ten minutes, I reckon.”

“Did you notice anything peculiar about the way either of them acted when they came down together?”

“How d’yuh mean peculiar?”

“I’m trying to find out whether she wanted to come down with them or whether they made her come.”

The boy chuckled. “I reckon she liked comin’, all right. She was sho all hugged up to one of ’em. The skinny one, that was.”

“Can you describe them?”

“Wal, nosuh. Not much. One was skinny and t’other weren’t. I reckon I didn’t notice no more.”

Shayne said, “You’ve earned this.” The bill exchanged hands and he went out. He had learned something, but he didn’t care much for it.

His next stop was at the Miami Daily News tower. The early hours of the morning were the busiest for the staff of the afternoon paper. Shayne found Timothy Rourke in one corner of the smoke-hazed city room pounding out copy with one rubber-tipped forefinger of his right hand, while the thumb of his left hand was poised and ready to shift for capital letters and shift lock.

Rourke looked up at Shayne and uttered a startled oath. He laughed raucously at the sight of Shayne’s face and said, “I’m not the beauty contest editor. You just go down that hall there—”

“You go to hell,” Shayne said bitterly.

“Michael!” Rourke drawled the name disapprovingly. “Such language in a newspaper office. Did he get his little face scratched?”

“It’s all your damned fault for sicking that female onto me,” Shayne rasped.

“My fault? My God, don’t tell me a female did that.”

Shayne lowered himself onto a corner of the desk and asked, “How well do you know Myrna Hastings?”

Rourke grinned up at him and said, “Not as well as I’d like to. Or, is she that sort of a gal? Of course, she’s not a blonde, but maybe I’d want to—”

“Cut it, Tim,” said Shayne wearily. “I’m up to my neck in murder, and God knows what-all. What do you know about the gal?”

Rourke looked into Shayne’s somber eyes. “Not much, Mike,” he said seriously. “She brought a note from a friend of mine on the Telegram in New York. I took her around and introduced her to a few people and places this afternoon. She found you at Renaldo’s, huh? Sorry I couldn’t make it.”

“She found me, all right,” said Shayne grimly.

“What’s doing, Mike?” His eyes glittered and his nostrils began to twitch like a bloodhound’s on the scent. “I wondered when Will Gentry called me about her tonight, but—”

“Do you know if she’s known in Miami?” Shayne interrupted.

“I don’t think so.” Rourke leaned far back in his swivel chair and gazed excitedly into Shayne’s puffed eyes. “She said it was her first trip, Mike.”

“Has anyone else called you for her address, Tim?”

“Only Gentry. Is it a story, Mike?”

Shayne’s gray eyes brooded, looking away from him, roaming around the room. He and the reporter had been friends for a long time, and he had given Rourke a lot of scoops in the past. He indicated the typewriter and asked, “Busy on something?”

Rourke pushed his chair back. “Nothing I can’t give the go-by, Mike.”

Shayne said, “I could use some help in your morgue.”

Rourke sprang up and led the way back to a large filing room guarded by an elderly woman. She was knitting a pair of bootees, and her wrinkled mouth was tilted in a smile.

“I’m interested in John Grossman,” Shayne told Rourke.

“The bootleg king?” They walked past the woman and Rourke stopped between a double row of filing-cases. “He’s the guy who is back in town on parole.”

“When did he get back?” Shayne asked.

“Three or four days ago. I tried to interview him, but he wouldn’t give out anything for publication. All he wanted was to go down to his lodge on the Keys and soak up some Florida sunshine.”

Shayne said, “I want to go back to his arrest by the Feds in June, 1930.”

“We’ve got a private file on him. It won’t be hard to find.” Rourke checked a card index eagerly and swiftly, then went to a file at the back of the room. He came back with a bulging Manila envelope and emptied it. He started pawing through it, Shayne close beside him and watching.

“Here’s the trial,” said Rourke. “It was a honey. With Leland and Parker representing him and not missing a trick. Here you are: June 17, 1930. Federal agents nabbed him at Homestead on his way in from the lodge on the Keys.” He spread out a large clipping.

“I remember it now,” Rourke said. He chuckled. “They had the income tax case all set but had been holding off, hoping they could hang a real charge on him. They thought he used his lodge to receive contraband shipments from Cuba, and they raided it several times, but never found any evidence. This time they thought they had him for sure, with a red-hot tip that he was expecting a boatload of French stuff. They kept a revenue cutter patrolling that section of coastline day and night for a week.

“Here’s the story on that.” Rourke turned his burning slate-gray eyes on Shayne, then flipped the pages back to a clipping dated June 16. It was captioned: CUTTER SINKS BOOTLEG CARGO.

“I covered that story. I rode the cutter three nights and nothing happened. After I was pulled off on the night of the fifteenth they encountered a motor craft creeping along without lights just off the inlet leading to Grossman’s lodge. They tried to make a run for the open sea, and bingo! the revenue boat cut loose with everything she had. There was a heavy sea running, the aftermath of a hurricane that blew hell out of things the day before, and they never found a trace of the boat, cargo, or crew. After that fiasco they gave up and decided they might as well take Grossman on the income tax charge.”