The Private Practice of Michael Shayne Page 16

  “You can probably tell, all right, when you find her body,” Shayne said cheerfully. “If you ever find it. Those channel tides are tricky as the devil.”

  In the intense silence following his words the chant of a newsboy drifted through the open window of Peter Painter’s office. Three of the men in the office stiffened and stared at each other in disbelief as they heard what the newsboy was yelling at the top of his voice. Shayne relaxed with a satisfied grunt of approval.

  “ELLIOT THOMAS GRILLED IN DROWNING OF BEACH DEBUTANTE! MILLIONAIRE SUSPECTED IN STRANGE DEATH OF LOCAL SOCIETY GIRL. READ ALL ABOUT IT IN THE ‘NEWS.’ EXCLUSIVE STORY WITH PICTURES OF SUICIDE NOTE THAT MAY BE FORGERY. GET YOUR MIAMI ‘DAILY NEWS’ HERE. EXCLUSIVE.”

  Elliot Thomas sprang to his feet, wetting his lips and staring out the window.

  “How—how could they have the story? It’s libel, by God. I’ll sue that paper for a million dollars.”

  Painter looked at Shayne quizzically. “That’s the first real scoop I ever met face to face. I think I begin to understand—”

  Shayne interrupted him, talking fast. “Hadn’t you better get a handwriting expert to look at that suicide note? Her father knows her better than we do, and he finds it hard to believe Marsha would commit suicide. I agree with him. It looks more like a plant to me.”

  “We’d have to have a specimen of her handwriting to compare it with,” Painter told him. He was watching Shayne closely, calculatingly. “It appears to me that you—”

  “You can’t blame me for being interested in it,” Shayne growled. “I tell you there’s some hook-up between the Grange killing and this drowning affair. Ask Marco why he had Marsha doped and locked in her room the next morning after Grange was killed. Ask him.”

  John Marco came to his feet with a bound, a crazed glitter in his eyes. “I’ve listened to you long enough, Shamus. We all know you bumped Grange.”

  “You’re going to listen to me some more.” Shayne slid from Painter’s desk to his feet. He moved slowly toward the gambler with bony chin out-thrust.

  “You’re going to tell us what you know about Banjo Boy winning the fifth at Hialeah—and about those ex-con friends of Whitey’s who went through Chuck’s room thinking he had the dope, then took me for a ride thinking I’d got it from Grange.”

  Marco’s features became hard, masklike. He slid a hand in his coat pocket and said, “Don’t come any nearer, Shayne.”

  Shayne stopped a pace in front of him. “I’m close enough to smell the stink of your rotten guts. Thought you could put me on the spot? You’d sacrifice your daughter to do it, wouldn’t you? She was with Grange when he was killed. She knew who did it. Maybe you had a hell of a good reason to keep her locked up. Maybe, by God, you had a hell of a good reason to say that suicide note looks genuine to you. I wouldn’t trust a rat like you not to drown his own daughter.”

  A sharp rap on the outer door broke through Marco’s labored breathing. Painter barked, “Come in,” and the door opened to admit an excited detective sergeant with Timothy Rourke squeezing in behind him.

  The detective rushed exultantly into the room, waving some crumpled sheets of paper.

  “Here you are, sir. I found these in a desk in Mr. Thomas’s stateroom. Proof that the suicide note’s a forgery. Plain as the nose on your face.”

  He spread the crumpled sheets of paper out in front of Chief Painter, each one covered with the damning scrawls of an amateur forger practicing Marsha Marco’s handwriting.

  Marco moved close to the desk while Painter bent forward and scrutinized the sheets. Shayne winked at Rourke and faced Thomas who appeared frozen to his chair, but quite able to comprehend the meaning of this final blow.

  “In your stateroom, eh?” Shayne said sympathetically to the millionaire. “How very careless of you. You might have gotten away with it if you’d been more careful.”

  “But I didn’t—I don’t know—” Thomas sprang to life, and to his feet, wildly.

  “Sit down,” Painter barked. “This pins it on you, Thomas. You forged that note to make it look like suicide when you pushed Miss Marco off the deck.”

  “I didn’t,” Thomas cried in a choked voice. “Good God, I tell you I didn’t. Why should I?”

  “You sonofabitch. You girl-murdering bastard.” Marco spoke in a low, deliberate tone, moving slowly away from Painter’s desk. “So that was your game. When I was playing ball—”

  A bunched hand in his coat pocket swung up sharply. Shayne lunged forward, knocking him to one side, and the bullet went wild. The sergeant jumped in and wrested a revolver from Marco’s hand.

  “That’s all right,” Shayne soothed the gambler. “He’ll burn for drowning Marsha, all right. We’ve got everything but the motive, and you can give us that.”

  “You’re goddamn right I can. Marsha saw him kill Harry Grange. She ran down the beach, scared to death, and called me as soon as she got home. And I told her—”

  “To keep quiet about it,” Shayne interrupted savagely. “You saw a chance to hang one on me and also have something you could blackmail Thomas with for the rest of his life.”

  “But I didn’t. It’s all a mistake. I didn’t drown the girl, Marco,” Thomas protested once more.

  “No,” Shayne agreed. “You didn’t. But that doesn’t help you a hell of a lot. You can burn for two murders in this state just as well as for three. Where did you ditch Larry Kincaid after killing him?”

  “Kincaid? How—?” Thomas sank back into his chair laxly, his face white, an unclean drool oozing out of the corner of his mouth.

  “How do I know you killed Kincaid?” Shayne laughed harshly. “I should have known from the beginning. That one bullet that had been fired from my jammed gun had to go some place. You didn’t know enough about guns to unjam it after killing Larry and use it on Grange, too. And you didn’t have brains enough to know a ballistic test would show my gun hadn’t killed Grange. It had to be you, Thomas. Marco knows more about guns. And he wouldn’t have sent his hoodlums after me to get that racetrack evidence if he hadn’t thought that first I’d killed Grange and gotten it. At first, he thought it would be a good stunt to get that evidence to blackmail you with, but later he found something better to hold over your head. You sent Chuck Evans to Jacksonville on the eleven o’clock train to send the message from Larry Kincaid to his wife. Larry had lost his nerve about meeting Grange himself, hadn’t he? He called you from my apartment and met you and told you he couldn’t go through with it. He had my gun and you figured out the whole plan in a flash. A perfect plant for a guy with my reputation.”

  “All right, all right.” Thomas covered his face with his hands and rocked back and forth. “I did it. I killed them both. But I didn’t drown Marsha Marco. I swear to God—”

  “Of course you didn’t. If I’m not mistaken, Marsha will be popping up out of hiding to refute the newspaper story being howled all over the city. And you might as well break that extra, too,” Shayne added, turning to Timothy Rourke.

  “You bet.”

  Rourke’s nostrils flared, his eyes stalking a window on the east side of the room. He leaned far out, thrust two fingers into his mouth and whistled two long blasts.

  The sound was echoed down the street. The raucous shout of newsboys split the afternoon calm even as he pulled his head back in:

  “EXTRA! EXTRA! MILLIONAIRE CONFESSES TWO MURDERS. EXTRA! THOMAS IS KILLER OF TWO. GET YOUR EXTRA HERE. MILLIONAIRE SPORTSMAN CONFESSES. PAINTER GETS FULL CONFESSION.”

  “More newspaper history,” Shayne remarked gently to Peter Painter. “And I’ll take that thirty-two of mine back from you now, if you don’t mind. After Thomas takes you to Kincaid’s body and you get the bullet out of him, you’ll be interested to compare it with one shot from Marco’s gun.”

  “But I thought—he said—your gun killed Kincaid.”

  Painter was pulling a drawer open, taking out Shayne’s pistol.

  Shayne reached over and took it from his nerveles
s fingers. “The Colt company really shouldn’t make their automatics with interchangeable barrels,” he said. “It makes it so confusing to detective chiefs. And you’ll enjoy knowing you had me plenty worried for a few hours about that ballistic test. Until I hit my stride on this thing, I was scared stiff that Marsha Marco had done the shooting and I had planted the evidence in my own gun. Drop around some day and I’ll show you how it’s done.”

  While Painter gasped in astonishment, Shayne turned to Rourke and said, “Let’s go buy a paper, Tim. I have a burning desire to see my maiden literary effort in print.”

  He linked arms with the newspaperman, and they walked out together.

  Chapter Twenty: THE DETECTIVE’S PROFIT

  MOONLIGHT LAY enchantingly upon the rippling surface of the Atlantic, made a path of molten gold leading out into the soft blue of early night where the running lights of a coastwise vessel rode the horizon. Tiny waves sluffed gently on the sandy shore, receded with soft, regretful sighs. Overhead, the lacy fronds of royal palms swayed in the faint breeze like giant feathers against the backdrop of night.

  Dim globes high above the tables lining the boardwalk shone upon the diners, reflected a dancing glow from Phyllis Brighton’s eyes, lay softly upon her rounded cheeks.

  Michael Shayne sat across from her, his angular features presenting a complex pattern of light and shadow. Hard, clean lines were accentuated by the lights.

  Four sidecars were ranged in front of the detective. Phyllis’s fingers held the slender stem of a cocktail glass lightly. She lifted it and laughed.

  “I know why you brought me here tonight, Michael Shayne.” Her voice was low, intimately challenging.

  “You’re beautiful, Angel.” He lifted one of the four glasses and drank it with sincere approval.

  “Don’t waste your blarney on me. I’ve been beautiful all this time and you haven’t given me a tumble. I’ve been studying your methods, Mr. Shayne, learning that things aren’t what they seem when your directing genius is behind them.”

  “Can’t I take a girl out to dinner without an ulterior motive?” he protested.

  “You could, but I seriously doubt whether you ever have.”

  “You’ve got me all wrong, Angel. I’m still—practically twice your age.”

  Laughter gurgled from her lips. “I don’t mean that way. I wish I could believe I was in danger of being seduced.”

  Shayne shook his head sadly and reached for a second cocktail. “Such talk—from a mere infant. I’m—I’m appalled, Angel. Really I am.”

  “The price of my silence,” Phyllis told him happily, “is a great deal more than just one dinner. You’re hooked, darling, and you might as well admit it.”

  Shayne growled. “I don’t get it.”

  He drank, looking broodingly over the rim of his glass at her loveliness and wondering what the devil he was going to do about it.

  “I’ve got you in the palm of my hand,” she exulted. “Don’t forget I know all about the mysterious woman who went aboard Elliot’s yacht last night. One word from me, and you’ll be proved a liar and a cheat.”

  “Oh, that!” Shayne laughed easily and finished his second drink. “I’ve been proved that often in the past.”

  “But this is different,” Phyllis persisted. “You can’t spread lies all over the front page of a newspaper and get away with it.”

  Shayne put a cigarette between his lips and the flame of a match lighted the shadows on his face.

  “So, you’re going to blackmail me under the threat of telling all?”

  “You catch on quick. Which is quite natural, with you being so well up on all phases of blackmail and assorted skullduggery.”

  “This is a great relief to me,” Shayne assured her. “As a matter of fact, I did have an ulterior motive in asking you to dine with me tonight. I planned to ply you with wine and flattery, break down your resistance, and—”

  “And—?” Phyllis leaned toward him hopefully.

  “And induce you to swear to an affidavit that I planned that entire drowning hoax,” Shayne chuckled. “You save me a lot of trouble by threatening to do what I was afraid you wouldn’t do.”

  “I don’t believe it,” she cried furiously. “This is just another of your tricks. You think I’ll change my mind on your pretense that you want me to tell. I’m on to all your trickery, Detective Shayne, and it won’t work—not with me.”

  “You’re barking up the wrong tree this time, Angel.” Shayne paused to half-empty his third sidecar. “Right now, Peter Painter is trying to take all the credit for my very clever ruse in getting confessions from Thomas and Marco. He called me a short time ago and very generously offered to take full responsibility for planting the fake suicide evidence that drove Marco into telling the truth.”

  “I still don’t believe it,” Phyllis protested in a small voice. “It’s—why, it’s illegal to do a thing like that.”

  “But very effective,” Shayne pointed out. “Marco was determined to keep his daughter quiet and let me burn for the Grange murder until he was made to believe that Thomas had taken matters in his own hands and disposed of Marsha so she couldn’t tell the truth. The man who gets full credit for that ruse is going to be a hero.”

  “Which still doesn’t convince me you want it known you did it. What about your supposed disdain for public credit?”

  “This,” Shayne told her, “goes much deeper than a question of mere public credit. Dollars are involved, darling. And when dollars are involved, no one can say Michael Shayne is modest about stepping to the front and getting his.”

  “Dollars? I don’t see how—”

  “You will,” Shayne promised.

  He finished his third cocktail and asked irritably, “Why do you nurse that glass so tenderly in your hand? It’s not going to hatch any young ones. Drink up.”

  She lifted the glass obediently and took a sip. “I like your drinks best.”

  Shayne gazed at her in awed admiration. “What a girl! I’ve always sworn that if I ever discovered a femme who preferred straight liquor to these messy concoctions, I’d invest in a wedding license without further delay.”

  “They only cost a couple of dollars,” Phyllis said sweetly.

  “But two dollars is two bucks. A monumental sum to an indigent private detective faced with the loss of a fee because a stubborn twerp threatens to withhold an affidavit from him.”

  Shayne thumped down his third empty glass and considered the fourth and fast sitting in front of him.

  “If I was sure you’d invest that two dollars the right way, Mr. Shayne,” she said in a serious, businesslike tone, “I might be persuaded to make out this affidavit.”

  “Tell you what. I’ll give you the two dollars to use as you wish.” He made an expansive gesture.

  The girl’s breath quickened.

  She said, solemnly, “I’m not kidding.”

  “Reminds me of a joke,” Shayne said brightly. “What the nanny goat is supposed to have said to her pal, Billy: ‘Go as far as you like, big boy, just so you don’t kid me.’”

  Phyllis didn’t laugh. An uneasy silence fell over them. Shayne emptied his last cocktail glass lingeringly. Ultimate evaluations were beclouded in perplexity. Back there along the way, far back, he had lost something that Phyllis Brighton was offering to give back to him. She had it in her power to do that. Shayne had known she possessed that power when he first met her two months ago. He had evaded the issue.

  He set his empty glass down and looked around for the waiter to order another set of four. Phyllis leaned toward him and the firm coolness of her fingers closed over his big hand. Her eyes were darkly luminous. There was a serene knowingness of youth upon her face. She said, “Please, Michael, don’t drink any more right now.”

  “All right. I won’t.”

  She patted the back of his hand and withdrew her fingers.

  He caught the waiter’s eye, called him over, and ordered dinner.

  The pounding we
nt from his temples and the fever of unbearable desire left his blood. Darkness settled more heavily and the stars were brighter overhead.

  Shayne attacked his steak with the appetite of a man no longer obsessed with doubts. Phyllis thoughtfully ate her crabmeat salad, finding it surprisingly good.

  After a time she said, “I’m slowly learning lots of interesting things about the detective business. But I still don’t understand how you make a living at it. You wouldn’t even take a retainer from me when you got me out of my trouble. And I don’t see how there could possibly be any profit in this case just ended.”

  Shayne grinned at her. “I manage to get along. Though I was practically dragged into this case, and had to swim out. And, by the way—”

  He took out his wallet and drew two one-thousand dollar bills from it, handed them to her.

  She looked at them in amazement. “Where—what are they for?”

  “That’s the two grand I rescued for you from John Marco’s coffers. The money you lost on his crooked roulette wheel.”

  “But I didn’t know—”

  “Stick them in your purse before some crook lamps them and follows you home,” he advised.

  She obeyed him, murmured her astonished thanks, then resumed the discussion of his income.

  “You tried to convince me that other time that you made out all right without my retainer. I’ve always believed you lied. I believe you’re lying now.”

  “I never lie, Angel. Not about money.” He looked around for the waiter and summoned him with a crooked finger. “Is the final edition of the ‘Miami News’ out?”

  “I believe so, sir. Shall I get one for you?”

  Shayne said, “Please.” He grinned at Phyllis. “Now I know you’re in earnest. One of the first things I learned in getting my bachelor’s degree was to beware of a woman who takes a personal interest in your income.”

  “I’ve been in earnest all the time,” she told him candidly.

  The waiter came back with a folded paper. Shayne spread it out and read the latest headline aloud: “Marsha Marco refutes rumor of her own death.”