The Private Practice of Michael Shayne ms-2

by Brett Halliday

  He wondered, irrationally, whether the white-haired man in Marco’s office had escorted Marsha Marco straight home from the casino-and whether she had stayed at home.

  Making the turn at Thirteenth Street into Biscayne Boulevard, on the mainland, he heard a newsboy shouting on the street.

  “Detective held for playboy murder! Read all about the beach murder! Miami detective charged with shooting Harry Grange!”

  Shayne stopped and bought an early morning edition of the Miami Herald. He spread it out on the steering wheel and stared morosely at a picture of himself in the middle of the front page. The cops and the handcuffs were plainly in evidence, but the picture of their prisoner was not flattering.

  He grunted and folded the paper on the seat beside him, drove on down past Flagler Street and pulled up at the curb by the side entrance of his apartment-hotel.

  A sedan with New York license plates was parked at the curb just in front of him.

  A man got out of the front seat as Shayne locked the ignition and got out. He was short-legged and squatty, with a black felt hat pulled low over his face. He loitered forward on the sidewalk until Shayne stepped up on the curb, then moved to intercept him, saying hoarsely, “It’s him, Marv.”

  A blunt automatic showed in his right hand. Shayne stopped and glanced over his left shoulder at the car. The muzzle of a sub-machine gun was pointed out through the rear window at him. He stood still and said, “Okay, boys. I wasn’t expecting you so soon.”

  The squatty man motioned toward the sedan with his automatic. “Crawl in the front seat.”

  “You can take everything I’m carrying right here,” Shayne argued mildly.

  “You’re goin’ for a ride with us.” The voice was raspy.

  Shayne said, “Okay,” and walked over to climb into the front seat of the sedan.

  The squatty man followed him to the other side and got behind the wheel.

  As the starter whirred, a silky voice spoke quietly from the rear seat. “Keep looking straight ahead and don’t try to pull any funny stuff.”

  “I’m not in a humorous mood,” Shayne assured the unseen speaker.

  The motor roared and they slid away from the curb, straight across the bridge over the Miami River and south on Brickell Avenue to Eighth Street, where the driver swung west and drove at a moderate speed out on the Tamiami Trail.

  Chapter Six: AN ACCIDENT ON THE TAMIAMI TRAIL

  The trail was thickly settled with both business houses and residences until they passed the huge stone entrance to Coral Gables on the left. Beyond this point the land was sparsely settled, and after passing the Wildcat and the cluster of small buildings near it, the Trail was open country.

  None of the three men spoke until the Wildcat lay behind them and they were purring on into the swampy Everglades.

  Then Shayne broke the silence by saying, “If this is a snatch you’ve got the wrong guy. There’s nobody this side of hell that would pay ten bucks for me, dead or alive.”

  “You know what this is, all right,” the driver grated. Below the low brim of his hat, Shayne glimpsed a brutal, undershot jaw covered with a stubble of black whiskers. “It’s curtains, bo. Because you ain’t got sense enough to keep your long nose clean.”

  “Take it easy,” Marv’s smooth voice warned from the rear as the driver accelerated up past fifty. “State cops patrol this road sometimes. No use taking any chances.”

  “Curtains, eh?” Shayne had been sitting stiffly erect. Now, he relaxed against the seat and fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette. “In that case, I might as well get comfortable.”

  “Yeh,” the driver jeered. “You ain’t got long to be comfortable in.”

  Shayne struck a match to his cigarette. In front of them, smooth blackness of macadam glistened like molten rubber in the soft sheen of moonlight. Palmetto and gnarled cypress pressed close to the edge of the pavement on both sides, the gray-white bark of many dead cypress trees looming like ghosts against native pines.

  An eerie silence encompassed them.

  “Where do we bump him?” the driver jerked back over his shoulder.

  “Just keep on taking it easy. There’s a deep canal along the side of the road pretty soon. With enough lead in him, a guy will stay down on the bottom a long time. Lots of people have accidents on this road,” he added in a conversational tone.

  “Yeh. Jest las’ week a man-” the driver ventured.

  “Shut up,” snapped the oily voice from the rear.

  The swishing sound of air against encroaching tropical verdure was monotonous.

  Shayne dragged in a lungful of smoke and exhaled it slowly.

  “Mind telling me why I’m slated for the flowers?”

  The brutal-jawed driver snickered. “He’s a card, ain’t he, Marv? Nervy sonofabitch, too. You’d think we was all joyridin’.”

  “All we want,” Marv explained, “is what you took off Harry Grange tonight. Had to kill him to get it, huh?”

  “I didn’t take anything off Harry Grange. And I didn’t kill him.”

  “Naw?” Without warning, the driver jerked his right hand from the wheel and slapped Shayne, backhanded, in the mouth. “Think we can’t read, huh? How’d you talk yourself outta the pinch?”

  Shayne placed both hands on his knees. His tongue licked out on his swollen lips. He didn’t say anything. In the faintly reflected moonlight his eyes were murkily red.

  From the rear seat, Marv sounded bored.

  “No use knocking him around, Passo. We’ll roll him for it after I’ve leaded him down.”

  “I like to hit tough babies like him,” Passo said. “You’re a tough baby, ain’t you?” He leered sidewise at Shayne.

  Shayne kept looking straight ahead as though he had not heard.

  “Answer me, you bastard.” Passo swung the back of his hand again.

  Shayne turned his face to take the blow on his cheek. Bleakly, he said, “Tough enough to take anything you can hand out.”

  “Wait’ll I get both hands loose where I can go to work on you,” Passo promised jovially. “I’ll soft you up. Pulpy-like.”

  “Take it easy and shut up,” Marv cautioned as their speed increased. “I think we’re coming to the canal.”

  “What makes you think I took anything from Harry Grange?” Shayne asked stiffly over his shoulder.

  “Because we know you’re wise, see? Else why would you kill a dumb cluck like Grange?”

  “I didn’t kill him,” Shayne said patiently. “I-”

  “Shut your trap.” Passo sloughed him again. “Think we don’t know you bumped into Chuck tonight and he give you the lay? And you was workin’ with your lawyer friend. Hell’s bells-”

  “You talk too goddamned much with your mouth, Passo,” Marv interrupted silkily.

  “What the hell does it matter? This tough baby ain’t gonna repeat nothin’ I say. Are you, toughie?”

  Shayne didn’t say anything.

  Moonlight glistened on still water by the side of the road ahead where a canal had been dredged in the swamp to build up a solid base for the Tamiami Trail across the Everglades, and for the further purpose of draining the marshy land.

  Marv said, “Talking’s no good. I know this guy’s rep. He’s got too much guts for his own good. That’s why we’re going to leave him under water where he won’t pop up and make trouble. Anywhere along here’s all right.”

  They were traveling along the smooth narrow strip of macadam at slightly less than fifty miles an hour.

  Shayne’s right hand crept up to rest on the door latch. He braced his long legs against the floorboards.

  As Passo’s foot lifted from the gas feed to the brake in response to Marv’s suggestion, Shayne’s left hand swept out and gripped the steering wheel, spinning it out of the driver’s lax hands.

  Tires screamed in the still night and the speeding sedan lurched out of control. Shayne held a fierce grip on the wheel, sending it straight for the canal. As the car careened over th
e edge and plunged downward, his shoulder hit the unlatched door, and a tremendous drive of braced legs drove his body headfirst into the water and free of the sedan as it splashed, then heeled over to sink to the muddy bottom.

  Shayne came up to the surface a few feet from the bank, caught a bunch of tough reeds, turned to watch the boiling eruption of placid water.

  There was the frightened croaking of frogs down the bank, loud gurgling as the waters swirled over the sedan, covering it completely.

  He dragged himself to the bank and squatted there. Night silence closed down again. A string of bubbles rose to break the surface of the water as the car squashed deeper and deeper into the yielding mud.

  Then the water was placid, shimmering smooth again. He waited a long time, but no more bubbles came up. Water-soaked clothes were clammy and cold when he stood up and started walking east. Water squinched in his shoes at first, but it oozed out after a little time.

  He walked swiftly, swinging his arms and gritting his teeth to keep them from chattering.

  Headlights of a car going toward Miami showed in the distance. There was no place of concealment along the bare highway. When the lights were close, he slid over the edge of the pavement into the water until the car passed. Three times he hid himself by immersion, growing colder with each dip.

  The chill gray of dawn was breaking when he neared the end of the waterway.

  On either side of the canal in the marshes thousands of birds twittered of dawn. White herons flapped snowy wings and dipped into the shallow water of the marshland. Cranes, standing like statues on one foot against coral rocks, put the other foot down and lifted themselves in flight to the grain thickets. Blackbirds soared with raucous chatter. Quail scuttled away, fluttering in a loud whir as they rose in coveys. Silver-plumed gulls floated gracefully, circled, settled in the feeding ground.

  Diverted by the beauty of winged creatures, Shayne was almost cheerful. He kept on walking swiftly, but when the headlights of another car showed behind him, he did not duck for cover. Instead, he stood in the center of the road and waved both arms frantically.

  The car slowed cautiously, stopped about twenty feet from him. A straw-hatted head came out through the left window of the coupe and a voice called, “Hello, there. What’s up?”

  “I am,” Shayne grinned. “Been up all night.” He walked slowly to the car, full in the glare of the headlights, arms swinging loosely at his side. “Can you give me a lift to town?”

  The driver hesitated.

  “I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t,” Shayne said quickly, and smiled disarmingly. “I’ve been lost out in that goddamned swamp since yesterday. I’m wet and half-starved.”

  The driver said, “Get in,” after looking Shayne over carefully. “There’s a raincoat here you can sit on.” He spread the raincoat out and Shayne got in.

  As they drove toward Miami, Shayne recited a fabulous story about setting out on an alligator hunt in the Everglades with a Seminole guide-the Indian had deserted him, and he had been lost for eighteen hours, fighting his way through snake-infested swamps until he stumbled out on the highway.

  Luckily, the man was a traveling salesman from another part of the state, and he knew as little about the Everglades as most people. He swallowed Shayne’s story with bug-eyed enjoyment, and let him out of the car on Flagler Street just as sunlight streaked the sky over the Atlantic.

  Shayne walked to his hotel and found his car parked by the curb where he had left it a few hours previously. He went in the side door and up to his apartment without being observed.

  Stepping over the threshold, he hesitated with his finger on the light switch. Daylight streamed through an east window, lay wraithlike upon the figure of a girl curled up in a deep, overstuffed chair.

  He didn’t turn on the light. Instead, he catfooted into the room and looked down at Phyllis Brighton. She was sound asleep, right cheek cuddled on her crooked right arm, her breath coming rhythmically through half-parted lips.

  Shayne shook his head and moved around the sleeping girl. He took up the bottle of cognac he had left on the table last night. There was a good two fingers of liquor in it. He tipped it up and emptied the bottle without taking it from his stiff, sore lips.

  An ague seized him. He fought against it and went to the telephone and quietly gave the operator a Miami telephone number, waited for an answer.

  He could hear the bell ringing monotonously in the home of Will Gentry, chief of Miami detectives. After a long time, Gentry’s sleepy voice said, “Hello.”

  Shayne put his lips close to the mouthpiece and said, “Hello, Will. This is an anonymous informant.”

  “What?” Gentry sounded puzzled. “Who is this?”

  “An anonymous informant,” Shayne repeated in a low voice.

  “It sounds like Mike Shayne. What is it, a gag?”

  Once more Shayne said evenly, “This is an anonymous informant, Will.”

  “Oh, all right, have it your way, Mike. What’s up your long sleeve? I thought Peter had you under his jail.”

  “There’s been an accident out on the Tamiami Trail. A sedan went into the ditch with two men in it. A mile or so beyond where the roadside canal starts. The skid marks on the pavement and tracks cutting the shoulder will spot it for you, but the car’s all under water. It’ll take a derrick to hoist it.”

  “Yeh, I’ve got that, Mike. I’ll send a crew out.”

  “You’ll find a sub-machine gun and at least one forty-five automatic in the car or in the mud,” Shayne explained. “It’d be nice to do some awful close checking on the men and the car and the guns, Will.”

  “You bet.” Gentry was wide awake now. “Thanks for the tip, Mike.”

  “From an anonymous informant,” Shayne cautioned him.

  “Sure. I get it.”

  “Thanks.”

  Shayne hung up softly.

  When he turned away he saw Phyllis sitting up, staring at him with dazed, half-open eyes. There was a red blotch on her right cheek where it had rested too hard and too long on her arm.

  “Wha-a-t-?” she stammered, but Shayne cut her off abruptly:

  “Go on back to sleep or something. I’m getting out of these wet clothes and into a tub of hot water pronto.”

  He turned his back on her and strode to the bedroom, unbuttoning his soggy coat and stripping it off, dropping it on the floor behind him.

  Chapter Seven: THE GIRL WHO WAS GROWING UP

  The tiled bathroom was clouded with steam and Shayne was blissfully relaxed in a tub filled to the overflow outlet with water near the scalding point. The door opened a cautious crack and Phyllis’s voice came timidly through the steam.

  “Can I do anything? That is-”

  “You can stay out and let a man have some privacy,” Shayne shouted severely.

  He snatched the shower curtain the length of the tub and slid farther into the water. As the door started to close, he yelled out, “Wait. If you feel domestic, put on some coffee water to boil.”

  “Yes, Mr. Shayne,” Phyllis said meekly through the crack. “Is that all?”

  “That’s all, Angel.”

  He luxuriated in the hot water a little longer, then dragged his long, sinewy body out and turned on a stinging blast of the coldest water Miami affords. He stepped out and rubbed down briskly with a coarse towel. He then wiped the mist from the mirror and scowled at his marked face.

  Passo’s backhanded blows hadn’t added materially to his looks. His upper lip was puffed, and there was an ugly, livid bruise on the left side of his jaw. He quit scowling and grinned ruefully when he thought about the damage the hoodlums might have done if their scheme had worked.

  He applied witch-hazel to the bruises and wrapped a dry towel around his belly, then opened the door a few inches and peered into the living-room.

  It was empty. He hastily negotiated the few steps to his bedroom door, and closed it behind him. Five minutes later he emerged wearing gray flannels and a white shirt o
pen at the throat. His red hair was plastered to his head. He whistled an off-tune version of “Mother Machree” as he stepped out into the living-room.

  There was an unopened bottle of cognac in the wall cabinet. He went to the kitchen carrying it by the neck.

  Phyllis smiled at him from her position in front of the electric stove where she bent anxiously over an aluminum pot half full of water that was about to boil. She was wearing a yellow linen suit badly rumpled from her slumber, but the dark eyes that looked into Shayne’s were clear and purposeful.

  Shayne stopped behind her and said, “Last time, I made the coffee. Remember?”

  She nodded. “After harboring me for the night.”

  “It’s getting to be a habit,” Shayne complained, “sleeping in my apartment. One would think you didn’t have a bed of your own to sleep in.”

  “A habit?” Phyllis scoffed. “I’ll bet it’s a record.”

  The water began to boil. She started to pour it into the top of an earthenware dripolator, but Shayne put out his hand to stop her.

  “Let me see how much coffee you’ve got in there,” he growled. “Most women treat coffee as though it was more precious than diamonds.”

  He lifted the top with its tiny drip holes and nodded with surprised pleasure at sight of the middle container heaped high with drip-ground coffee.

  “It’s unbelievable,” he exclaimed in a tone of high praise. “You’re actually making coffee a man can drink. You’ll make some man a swell wife when you grow up.”

  She said, “I’m nineteen,” and grimaced charmingly, poured the water with a steady hand, though a deep flush came into her cheeks.

  “Uh-huh. One month older than you were last month-”

  “When you pushed me out of the door and told me to grow up.”

  She put the empty pot down and faced him, her eyes wide and probing.

  “Lord, you’re slow growing up,” he told her in a light, complaining voice, but his eyes were deep, serious.

  “Maybe,” she said gravely, “you’d be surprised.”

  He touched her cheek, then turned away abruptly to reach for a corkscrew.