Murder Spins the Wheel ms-53 Read online

  Painter smiled unpleasantly. “I cut my eyeteeth on trouble. I’ve let you have your say, and now you’ll listen me.”

  He motioned to the stenographer, who opened his book. “We’re going to cut out the fooling and get down to business. Oddly enough, I’ve managed to inform myself on a few points. I know that an eight-passenger Cadillac caught on fire tonight not far from Harry Bass’s house on Normandy Isle. The license plates were destroyed, but we do know that Harry owns an eight-passenger Cadillac, which is not now in his garage. A Negro man named Billy Wallace was found on the scene with a fractured skull. The registration on his pistol gives his address as care of Harry Bass. You’re one of Harry’s cronies. All this is well known. I don’t really have cotton in my head, Shayne. When you show up at a party at Al Naples’ boat, with Harry Bass’s son Steve-”

  Shayne looked at him sharply.

  “Oh, he didn’t use his right name when he was booked,” Painter said, smiling. “Further, when a hypodermic needle is found under the bed in the main cabin, and adhering to the point are a few burned grains of a substance that will undoubtedly prove to be heroin-” He looked quizzically at Shayne. “Do you follow me?”

  “Petey, I really don’t,” Shayne said candidly.

  “OK,” Painter snarled. “If you don’t want to pick up a hint, see how you like it this way. Your public is going to eat up this orgy story. Unless you cooperate to the fullest extent, I’m going to play that deadpan. Laugh it off if you like, Shayne. It’s going to hurt. But I’m willing to compromise. I’ll put the lid on. I’ll see if I can quash the charges against you for hitting Maguire. It’s going to play hell with morale in the department, but I’ll go out on a limb, in the larger interest. If you want to be tough about it, it stands. I’ve finally got a club I can use on you, and don’t think I won’t use it unless you tell me all you know, and I do mean all.”

  “About what, Petey?” Shayne said patiently.

  “About that shipment of heroin.”

  Shayne looked at him in surprise. He quickly added a mocking half-grin to make the surprise seem less real.

  Painter said, “I see you know nothing about it. Of course not. Did you expect anything else, Sanderson? Frankly, I didn’t.”

  “Refresh my memory,” Shayne said.

  “I’ll tell you what little I know, so you’ll know precisely what gaps I want filled.” He moved around the table and sat down, tipping into balance on the back two legs of the chair. “My relations with the Bureau of Narcotics are currently not too good. We had a difference of opinion a few months ago. They thought I had something to do with the failure of a raid they had hopes for. Actually they bungled the affair themselves from start to finish. Well, I’ve had a tip from my own sources. This one I’m keeping to myself. When I’m ready for an arrest I’ll hand it to those slewfeet on a silver platter. They’re the experts on drugs, they think. Everybody else is nowhere.”

  “Are you going to tell me about it?” Shayne said.

  “Without interruptions,” Painter replied. “The tip comes from an export-import man who’s been feeding me information for years. He heard from connections in France that five hundred thousand dollars worth of heroin was on its way to Miami. That’s a retail figure, of course. Thanks to efficient police work, we have the drug problem under control here. It can’t be eliminated entirely, considering the comings and goings of travelers from New York and the Caribbean. All of a sudden heroin has become surprisingly simple to procure, excellent heroin at a non-panic price. I know that the shipment left Nice during a ten-day period in October. I cabled the French police to check hotel registrations. One of the Miamians who was visiting Nice at the time was Harry Bass.”

  “Harry has nothing to do with narcotics,” Shayne said flatly.

  “As a regular thing, of course not. He wouldn’t have public opinion behind him on it, which is unfortunately the case with bookmaking. But as a one-shot, to meet a sudden demand for capital? I wonder. The profits are enormous, and they can be realized immediately. We’re putting pressure on all our stoolies to find out about it, but it’s being handled very cleverly. We had our first break this afternoon. Sanderson, you tell him. He might not believe me.”

  Sanderson said, “It’s second or third hand, Mike. Just a rumor that one of the big bookies is behind it.”

  “I don’t pretend to have all the answers,” Painter said. “How about Steve Bass? Is he a pusher?”

  Shayne ground out his cigarette on the floor. “This is all news to me.”

  “Now Shayne,” Painter said pityingly. “The steno is taking this down. That statement’s absurd on the face. There are too many coincidences here.”

  “Harry’s an extremist on the subject,” Shayne said. “He won’t do business with anybody who comes anywhere near narcotics.”

  Painter teetered on the back two legs of his chair. “That kind of operator will always make an exception if the price is right. And how about you, Shayne? Your principles have a way of bending when there’s money involved.”

  Shayne put both hands flat on the table. A pulse in his forehead was beginning to beat dangerously. “You think I’ve been going in for smuggling heroin?”

  Sanderson put in, “Chief, maybe we ought to get back to that kid who was missing from the boat. Shayne says-”

  Painter stopped him with a movement of his hand. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Shayne’s.

  “If Harry Bass and Al Naples have a heroin deal going, they need a contact, somebody with a tough veneer to keep the small boys in line, somebody who can go back and forth with parcels without stirring up the narcotics people. I’m an admirer of your footwork. I may not be able to pin it on you. But I can make you stand still for this assaulting-an-officer rap, and that’s the deal I’m offering. A clean bill of health, in return for which you tell me everything you know on the subject of the Basses, senior and junior, Al Naples and his boat and half a million dollars worth of uncut heroin.”

  Shayne came to his feet “You little pipsqueak, I wouldn’t give you the time of day! If I’m going to be slammed for hitting a cop, I think I’ll compound it.”

  “Sanderson!” Painter piped.

  Shayne picked up the bottle of red ink with one swipe of his big paw. Neither Sanderson nor the stenographer moved to stop him. As Shayne’s arm cocked, Painter shrank away from the blazing look in his eyes, and his chair went over backward.

  The door opened and Tim Rourke and Harry Halstead, Shayne’s lawyer, came in.

  “Captain Rourke of the U. S. Cavalry,” Rourke announced. “Hi, Mike. Been hitting cops again, have you? Where’s Painter?”

  14

  Shayne put the bottle of ink on the table and dusted his hands. Painter scrambled to his feet.

  “You heard that, Sanderson!” he cried. “You heard him threaten me.”

  “I did,” Sanderson said gravely. “And he called you a pipsqueak. That’s going to count against him.”

  Painter darted him a suspicious look. “Well, I guess we’ve got enough on him already,” he said grudgingly. He glanced up at his big redheaded nemesis. “But if I was disposed to be lenient before, forget it. You want to do this the hard way. OK, that’s the way we’re going to do it.”

  The wall phone rang. The stenographer answered.

  “For you, Chief,” he said. “The lab.”

  Painter came out from behind the table to take the phone. He listened for a moment, his face darkening. “OK,” he snapped, and hung up with a clatter.

  “What did they do, test the end of the hypodermic needle?” Shayne asked. “What was it, granulated sugar?”

  “Shut up,” Painter said with a vicious look.

  Rourke laughed. He was long, thin and disheveled, with an offhand manner which concealed his loyalty to his friends and a passionate dedication to his profession. He waved a big envelope at Shayne.

  “The trouble you get yourself into when I’m not around! Wait till you see these pictures. They’re the hottest thing
since Sodom.” He slapped the envelope on the table. Picking up the stick of marijuana, he sniffed it. “Mike, you’re branching out.”

  “Put that down!” Painter snapped. “That’s evidence.”

  Halstead, a gray-haired, sleepy-looking man, observed, “Something you found in my client’s pocket?”

  “No-o,” Painter admitted, “but if you think there aren’t various other things we can hang on him, you don’t appreciate the situation. Who let you in here, anyway?”

  “To be candid, Peter,” Halstead said, “we had to pull some strings. It seems that one of the boys you picked up is Judge Pike’s son. That greased the skids a bit.”

  “Shayne’s in for more than drunk and disorderly, counselor,” Painter said. “You can have young Pike. You can’t have Shayne until we get a medical report on Sergeant Maguire. That won’t be for twelve hours.”

  Halstead smiled. “Tim?”

  The lanky reporter slipped a sheaf of glossy five-by-eight photographs out of his envelope. “This is the sort of art that sells papers,” he said happily. “You missed the Sunday deadline, Mike, but you and your friends are going to be all over pages one, two, three and the split page on Monday. Believe me. I took one fast squint at the movie film, and I’m going to recommend that we pick out a few of the least lurid frames and use them as stills. I’m volunteering for the assignment. I don’t like to volunteer for anything usually, but I know I’ll enjoy this.”

  He slid several photographs across to Shayne. Having been present on the scene, the redhead already knew that the girls at the party hadn’t been unduly hampered by clothes. Rourke pointed out one of Lee, her blouse unbuttoned all the way down, flourishing a gin bottle.

  “We’ll have to paste a little strip of tape across that to keep the post office department off our necks. We’re a family paper.”

  Shayne laughed. “That photographer deserves a combat ribbon.”

  “I didn’t hear him complaining,” Rourke said. “Now I want to show you a sequence of three shots featuring Sergeant Maguire. When we heard what had happened to him we all shed a tear. We’ve followed his career for years, and when we heard his jaw had been dislocated, with a double fracture, we shed a quiet tear that it wasn’t worse.”

  He arranged the three photographs in order. The first showed Maguire stooping above Betty, nightstick raised. Betty cowered away. Her face already showed the mark of an earlier blow. Maguire’s face was congested with fury. His eyes bulged. It was a classic photograph of a type of sadistic cop and his helpless victim, and it was sure to be reprinted all over the country. The next picture showed Shayne arresting the nightstick as it came down. In the third, Maguire was reeling back from Shayne’s blow.

  “Of course she bit him on the neck first, as I understand it,” Painter said, “but you didn’t bother to take a picture of that.”

  “Since when did Maguire need a bite in the neck to slug somebody?” Rourke asked.

  Painter looked at the pictures again, one after another, then racked them decisively and tore them across. He slapped the pieces down on the table.

  “They’re distorted. They’re one-sided. But I’m a realist, Rourke. They could crucify us. In one day you could destroy the image of the police that I’ve been trying to put across. Give me your word that you’ll withdraw them, and your redheaded pal can walk out of here.”

  “And we want Maguire off the force,” Shayne added.

  Painter snapped, “If I feel that Sergeant. Maguire has outlived his usefulness, that’s a decision I alone will make.”

  Shayne exchanged a look with the gray-haired lawyer. Halstead said quietly, “In that case we’ll take a chance with a jury, Peter. If acquitted, and I assume Mike would be acquitted, I’d advise him to bring suit for false arrest.” In a less formal tone he added, “You know Maguire has been asking for this for a long time.”

  Painter ripped the red carnation out of his buttonhole, tore it apart petal by petal and ground it on the floor under his heels.

  “One of these fine days,” he warned the redhead, “you’re going to step over the line and I’m going to be standing there with a machete and chop off your feet. You’re shot full of luck, Shayne. If that photographer hadn’t been along, I’d have you. But there’ll be a next time. I’m working night and day on this matter. The minute I can tie you into it, I’ll have you back so fast it’ll make your head spin.”

  “Mike,” Sanderson said, “you said something about the Donahue boy being dead.”

  “Did I?” Shayne said. “It’s late, Bob. I’m tired. My brain doesn’t seem to be functioning too well.”

  Sanderson gave a rueful smile. “I guess I don’t blame you, Mike.”

  “What’s that?” Painter demanded. “What did you say? What do you mean by that?”

  Sanderson put out his cigarette slowly. “Not a thing, Chief. Just talking to myself.”

  “Well, don’t do it around me!”

  Halstead said, “There’s no point in putting Mike back in the tank. You’ll be getting the papers in another few minutes. They’re being typed now.”

  “No favors,” Shayne said firmly. “We all came in together and we’ll go out together.”

  He kept his lawyer from protesting with a curt shake of his head. Tim Rourke fell in beside him as they went out.

  “Mike, you’ll want a drink to get the taste of this place out of your mouth. By a strange coincidence I have a pint of cognac in my car. I’ll trade it for an explanation.”

  “There are too many things I can’t explain myself yet, Tim. I may need some more help. I’ll meet you at your place if I can. Otherwise I’ll call you.”

  “If you insist. Marijuana, granulated sugar, dirty movies. I look forward to it. First I want to get that chick’s phone number, the one in the picture. Lee something. Thin and wild is the way I like them.”

  At the gate into the drunk tank he said, “Which of those dolls was yours, Mike? The one in the blouse and no bra, the one in the bra and no blouse, or the one in neither blouse nor bra?”

  Shayne grinned at him and went in. The gate clanked shut. Steve was watching for him, his parted lips and quick breathing showing his anxiety.

  “Do you mean to say you’re Mike Shayne?”

  Shayne lifted a sleeping drunk off the bench beside him, and deposited him on the floor. The drunk didn’t wake up.

  “You didn’t tell me your last name was Bass, either,” he said, sitting down. “I don’t think I’ve seen you since you had braces on your teeth.”

  The boy groaned. “I told them I was Joe Taylor. I knew it wouldn’t work.”

  In spite of the oppressive heat in the huge cell, the boy was shivering. The short ride in the patrol wagon and the shock of finding himself in jail had driven the gin out of his head. He kept picking at the crease in his slacks and yawning nervously.

  “I haven’t any right to ask you,” he said, “after throwing all that film on you and socking you in the jaw and everything. But will you tell Dad I didn’t smoke any of the pot? I never even sampled it. I was scared to.”

  “Right now Harry has other problems.”

  Steve shook his head gloomily. “This is going to take precedence. I know from experience. He wanted me to go to college. He didn’t finish eighth grade himself, but he thinks there’s something sacred about having a B.A. So I went to college. I squeaked through. Now he wants me to get a job in some big company and sit in an air-conditioned office with the light on all day, and do what they tell me. And look glad. I just don’t see the point. I only have one life. I know I’m driving him out of his mind, but he’s driving me out of mine.”

  “I want to ask some questions, Steve,” Shayne said. “Do you remember any of the things I said about Vince?”

  His fingers roved uncertainly across his forehead. “Something about a stickup? Mr. Shayne, it’s not possible.”

  “It’s not only possible, it happened. And then somebody drowned him, a hard thing to do to a semipro swimmer. How w
ell did you know him?”

  “He used to hang around the Lambda Phi house at college. He knew some of the brothers. The last couple of months I’ve been running into him all the time. I never went on a party with him before. That’s what I’ve got to convince Dad of. I guess somebody backed out at the last minute. He called up and wanted to know if I was busy. I didn’t know there was anything but liquor involved. But who’s going to believe that?”

  “Your father may,” Shayne said. “He’s the one Vince and his buddies robbed. Vince wanted you at the party to give him an alibi. Not for the cops. For Harry. If you said you knew for a fact that he was locked in that cabin while the stickup was taking place, your father would take your word for it. That was the reason for the movies-so you’d stay put.”

  Steve had begun shaking again. “I don’t know if you ever noticed Dad’s secretary?”

  “Theo Moore? I met her tonight.”

  “Those damn movies. Every time I think of the way I let myself get hypnotized-I can’t expect Theo to stop reading the newspapers all of a sudden. And that will be that.”

  Remembering the kiss Theo had given Steve’s father, Shayne said carefully, “Have you been dating her?”

  “I’ve been trying to. She puts in a lot of overtime. I doubt if she’ll be too impressed with somebody who puts in a whole evening looking at a dirty movie, when the real thing was right there under his nose. It isn’t healthy. She’ll think I’m some kind of creep.”

  Shayne felt a grin trying to break through. He forced himself to say seriously, “I think I may have an out for you, Steve. Your father lost two hundred thousand bucks tonight, and naturally it rankles. If I can locate it and find out what happened to Vince, it’s going to take off a lot of the heat. In fact, I’d be willing to tell your father you worked with me on it. If he wants to figure that’s why you went to Vince’s party, I won’t disillusion him.”

  Steve’s face cleared. “Mr. Shayne!”

  “Wait a minute. If you actually contributed something, it would sound more convincing. I need to know who Vince has been seeing the last week or so. How about Betty? Would she know?”