The big man patted Shayne lightly on the hips and under the arms, slid one hand inside Shayne’s coat and took out his wallet. The man holding the gun stepped backward while the other held the wallet to the moonlight.
“I told you it was Mike Shayne,” he said.
“You boys owe me ten bucks apiece,” a voice said behind Shayne. He looked around and saw a small, neatly dressed man with a badly eroded face, who was smiling cheerfully. “When I heard you were in on this I knew you’d turn up, Shayne. Just a matter of time.”
“Yeah, but how in God’s name did he—” the man with the gun said.
“Maybe I tipped him off so I could collect the twenty bucks,” the small man said. “What difference does it make? Do you like boats, Shayne? We’re having a little party aboard. I know you’ll enjoy it.”
“I’m in no mood for a party,” Shayne said.
The big man with the gun grinned. “The party’s in the mood for you.”
“Turn around, Shayne,” the small man said. “There’s three of us, and you’re the only one here without a gun-Draw your own conclusions. Keep holding your hands just that way.”
Shayne said, puzzled, “I don’t get it. How much money is in this Welfare Fund Harry’s trying to get hold of?”
“Plenty. Stick it in his ribs again, Whizzer. Give him a jab with it now and then. One thing I’ve heard about him, he’s not too impressed with being on the short end of the odds.”
Whizzer started forward, and Shayne said quickly, “Somebody’s been telling lies about me. I’m realistic. Put the gun away.”
He stepped off the curb, between the cars. This was the only chance he’d get to deal with them one by one. He stumbled and went headlong, landing on his hands. Twisting, he lashed out with one foot and caught the man named Whizzer in the soft flesh above the knee. In the same motion he doubled forward, coming underneath the gun as it swung down at him. His big hand glanced from the barrel and knocked it skyward, and his other hand fastened on Whizzer’s wrist.
Shayne’s powerful body uncoiled in one continuous, fluid movement, driving upward beneath the gun, and slammed a hard right against the side of Whizzer’s jaw. The blow had started from the pavement, picking up speed as it went Whizzer went sideward against the front grill of the nearest car, making a sound like air escaping from a balloon. Shayne still had him by the wrist. He swung him like a door, aiming at the big man, who was trying to get in position to make his size and weight count.
“Grab him, Jack!” the small man cried.
Whizzer’s feet left the ground. He crashed into Jack, the big man, who tripped against the curb and went down. Shayne whirled. The small man had danced away. He had a gun out and was waving it back and forth.
“Stand still, you dumb Mick,” he said softly.
Shayne snarled. The big man had thrown Whizzer off and was coming up at him. Shayne sidestepped, to get the man’s bulk between him and the gun. He evaded a high punch to the head, blocked another to the body, and catching the other around the waist, wrestled him backward, trying to force him against the gun.
“Don’t try to out-slug him, Jack!” the smaller man shouted. “Just hang onto him.”
The big man, cursing steadily, wrapped one of his long arms around Shayne and began working on his mid-section with his right. The small man darted past and cracked Shayne’s head sharply with the flat of the pistol. The big man drove two more hard rights against Shayne’s body. The redhead’s strength was beginning to go. Then the man with the gun reversed it and brought the butt-plate down on Shayne’s skull.
He didn’t go all the way out, but he came close. He sank to his knees. The big man continued to work on his body with his right. Shayne heard the small man’s voice: “That’s all, Jack. That’s all. We don’t want to have to carry him.”
Shayne’s brain turned over weakly. “What was the last name? Klipstone?”
It came out in a kind of mumble, but they heard him.
“What’s that?” the small man said sharply.
Klipstone said, “The bastard’s too educated. I want to work him over some more when we get him aboard. I won’t make any noise.”
“Let’s not start shifting strategy at this date, for God’s sake,” his companion said. “Get him up.”
“How about Whizzer?”
“He can lie there till he can move by himself. He deserves some hard pavement for hanging his jaw out like that. Jesus! I thought for a minute Shayne was going to get away from us, and that would really be something, you know?”
Shayne could hear what they were saying, but he didn’t have much command over his arms and legs. Klipstone lifted him to the fender of the nearest car.
“Hold him there,” the small man said. He came close to Shayne. “You made your point. You’re a big tough man and how you trailed us here without dogs I’d like somebody to tell me sometime. You’re probably a pretty good detective. Congratulations. Are you hearing me?”
“I hear you,” Shayne mumbled through numb lips.
“Act intelligent and maybe you’ll live through this. Act dumb and I can tell you for sure—you get dropped in the bay. It’s that simple. We’ve got something big going here, and there’s too much involved to kid around. Now on your feet.”
Shayne swayed away from the fender. With Klipstone no longer holding him, he pitched forward, turning as he fell so he would land on his uninjured shoulder. Oddly, the shock cleared his mind and he was able to look at the question soberly; should he try to walk by himself, or make them carry him?
The small man solved it for him. Stooping down, he slapped Shayne with his gun, just hard enough to sting him. Shayne lurched to his feet. Klipstone let him lean on him as they crossed the street to the marina entrance. Shayne swung his head toward the office as they passed. The watchman’s head and shoulders lay on his desk, an uncorked bottle of Scotch beside him. They headed down the long dock between the boats. The small man took Shayne’s arm to hurry him along. The dizziness was passing off, but he continued to lean on Klipstone, for any advantage it might bring him later. As they approached the large white boat, Shayne saw the lettering on the broad stern change from a blur to “Panther, New Orleans.”
Another man, wearing nothing but a pair of tattered shorts, heavily-muscled and tattooed, came out of the shadows of the deck-house. He caught Shayne as he was thrust aboard.
“Take a good look, Mac,” the small man said, jumping down on the deck. “This is the well-known Michael Shayne. He tried to take all three of us, and he damn near did it, too. Put him below.”
“Okay, Mr. Gray. In the same cabin?”
“Why not? Shayne seems to know all our little secrets. How is he?”
“I’d say he’s starting to slobber.”
“Well, he’s got a bigger capacity than I gave him credit for. Glad to have you aboard; Shayne.”
Shayne gave him a piece of rude advice, and he raised his eyebrows, pretending to be shocked. “Such language.”
The tattooed man spun Shayne around and thrust him into a companionway. The stairs were very steep, and Shayne descended them carefully. He had taken enough falls for one night. At the bottom, a tattooed arm reached past his shoulder and unlocked a door. Shayne was pushed into a small cabin. A light was on, but the porthole on this side faced toward the bay, which was why he hadn’t seen it from the shore. He heard the door being locked behind him.
The cabin’s furniture consisted of a double bunk, a table and a chair. Someone lay in the lower bunk, and Shayne was not really surprised to see that it was Peter Painter. His usual dapper figure was a shambles. He still wore a necktie, cinched up tightly, but his shirt was open all the way down to the beltbuckle. A highball glass was balanced on his chest. He wore no shoes and only one sock, the garter flapping. His head turned and he looked at Shayne. “Hi, Mike,” he said amiably.
Then he came up off the bunk as though he had received an electric shock at the base of the spine. The highball spilled and he cracked his forehead on the
underside of the upper bunk. He clapped his hand to the injured spot and swung his feet out.
“Shayne! I’ve been looking all over. Where have you been, you bastard? You’re under arrest!”
Chapter Fifteen
Painter pointed an accusing finger at Shayne and waved wildly with the other arm, as though calling up reserves. “I arrest you for breaking and entering and attempted manslaughter, and that’s only the start, by God! I’ve been waiting for this for years. Now I’ve got you where I want you, and I’m going to make you squeal!”
Shayne laughed. “Take it easy, Petey.” He picked up an article of women’s underclothing from a chair and dangled it in the air for a moment before letting it drop. “I see they’re taking good care of you. And to think we’ve been worrying.”
Painter’s mood changed abruptly. “I know all about it You and your hoodlum friends think you’re going to get me drunk, do you? I’m too smart for you.”
Shayne put one hip on the table and repeated skeptically, “You’re too smart for us.”
“Somebody comes in every half hour and pours me some more gin.” He chortled. “Only what they don’t know is that I don’t really drink it, I let it trickle down my chin. Clever?”
“You’re just pretending,” Shayne said.
“Oh, I take a sip now and then to make it look good, but I’m one jump ahead all the time. I know what you’re planning for the morning. You’re going to dump me in a motel, stinking of gin, with a lot of empties and some ladies’ underwear, you dirty-minded so-and-sos. Goodbye career. Out on a bat when I should be attending to business. It takes a real psycho to think of something like that, and I know whose idea it was, too. Yours—you sadist! But you didn’t expect me to outguess you, did you? You always underestimate my intelligence. I saw through the whole thing when I found those—those—”
“Pants,” Shayne said.
“Pants. Yes. But you never should have tangled with me, Shayne. I’m sold cone stober, that’s what give me my advantage.”
He let go of the railing to make a more emphatic gesture, and fell to the floor. Shayne picked him up.
Painter murmured, “Slippery wax.” He peered at Shayne. “Okay, now make a new plan, damn you. I’ll outfox you again. You had sense enough not to show your face all day, and it’s lucky for you, boy. Right now I happen to be a little tired, but wait till I get my strength back.”
“You’re not making much sense, Petey,” Shayne told him. “Is there any more gin?”
“May be a bottle round somewhere, but I’m not giving you any of it. I always knew you were low. But these aren’t just juvenile delinquents or something. They’re killers and big thieves, and I never figured you to throw in with an outfit like this for a few lousy bucks. I guess I’m an idealist, but I figured you for a few scruples. Not many, just a few. How’s Heinemann?”
“He was okay the last time I saw him,” Shayne said.
“And Gray? I suppose he’s okay, too?”
Shayne shrugged. “If you mean the little guy with the pockmarks, there were two others in the way and I didn’t get around to him.”
“Oh, no. You just opened his scalp to the bone, that’s all. I hope the ambulance got there in time—or do I? If he kicked off, I get you for murder in the second, and that’s more satisfying than manslaughter.”
Shayne saw a square bottle sticking out from beneath the bunk, and he captured it. There were still two fingers of gin in the bottom. He swirled it around once and drank it, while Painter, from the bunk, watched indignantly.
“Did I say you were low?” Painter cried. “I suppose it didn’t occur to you to offer me some?”
“You’ve had enough,” Shayne said, tossing the empty bottle into the top bunk.
“You think so, do you? I’m not even getting started. You think you can hold your liquor better than ordinary people, don’t you? There’s a few drops in a bottle, and you hog it all. I don’t care how much they’re paying you! You made a bad mistake this time. You can’t break into apartments and rob people’s files and slug Senate investigators and sucker a police officer in the performance of his duty and get away with it, and you’ll find that out in a hurry!”
“Cut the clowning, Petey. I don’t need you to tell me that people have been killed by this bunch. If we’re going to get out of this mess, you’ve got to start talking sense.”
Painter ran out of steam all at once. He said helplessly, “I thought this was one time I was ahead of you. How did you know?”
“Know what?” Shayne said.
“That I had the real story on the Beach Trust robbery. What was it, instinct?”
“We’ll get to that in a minute. Who’s this Senate investigator you think I slugged?”
“I only think you slugged him? I see. It wasn’t anything but a hallucination. You didn’t break into my apartment. You didn’t tear the place to pieces. Certainly not. You didn’t take me on a wild-goose chase up Collins, and lead me into a dead-end so your pals could grab me. Oh, no. Four of them—they came at me from all sides at once—I didn’t have a chance to defend myself—four to one, real sporting of you, Shayne. But that wasn’t you. You’re too law-abiding.”
Shayne was trying hard to make sense of this. “Will you go through that again, Petey? Slowly?”
“I’m surprised you deny it. It worked, and that’s the main thing, isn’t it? I thought you’d be bragging about it. I have eyes, after all. It was your license number.”
Shayne said sharply, “You were chasing a car with my tag?”
“A car, hell. Your car. I recognized it even without the number.”
Shayne’s mouth was grim. “You were suckered, all right I left my car outside a Beach saloon. Somebody must have borrowed it.”
Painter sneered weakly. “How dumb do you think I am?”
“Pretty goddam dumb,” Shayne said, “if you think I’m fronting for killers. Why did I do all this?”
“For money! You’d sell your best friend, if the price tag was right, and I’m not your best friend, as everybody knows.”
“That’s true,” Shayne said. “The more I see of you, the less I like you. And while we’re on the subject of no-brains, if you found some evidence to clear Sam Harris, why in God’s name have you been sitting on it?”
“I had my reasons,” Painter said smugly.
“They’d better be good. Because as a direct result of your damn foolishness, a man named Fred Milburn was killed, a hood from Baltimore tried to take a shot at Rose Heminway and came pretty close to doing it, somebody else blew up Benjamin Chadwick’s room at his nursing home. But you’re not dumb. No, you’re brilliant. They’ll write about you in Argosy.”
Painter looked at him, blinking. “Somebody shot at Rose? But why would anybody—?”
“That’s one of the things I don’t know. I happened to be behind a door and I jumped him before he could pull the trigger, but it might as well have worked out another way. Fred Milburn was killed because he knew it couldn’t have been Sam Harris who robbed the bank. But who did, Petey?”
“I’ll reveal that in my own time, on my own terms.”
“Petey,” Shayne said, more and more exasperated with the little man. “Don’t you have even the faintest inkling of the jam you’re in? And we’re both in the same boat, in more ways than one. I’ll try to help you, God knows why, but we don’t have any chance at all unless you level with me. Who pulled the Beach Trust job?”
“Don’t tell me there’s something the great private eye doesn’t know?”
“Petey, will you forget that old feud for once? Forget about who’s going to get the credit. We’ve got to use our heads, and take advantage of any break that comes up. What’s the tie-in with the Truckers?”
“It’ll be a long, cold day when I answer any questions you ask me, Shayne. You’ll try to help! What a joke. I know what you think of me—you wouldn’t throw water on me if I was on fire. You’re trying to find out how much I know so you can tell your newfou
nd friends. They couldn’t get anything out of me any other way, so they rung you in. And as for somebody shooting at Rose, or killing that no-good con Milburri, I don’t believe that for a minute. How could anybody kill him? He’s in jail.”
“Am I working for hoods or not?” Shayne said angrily. “If I am, I wouldn’t have to ask you any questions. I’d know the answers.”
“Maybe you don’t know every last detail. This wouldn’t be the first time in your life you’ve tried to play both ends against the middle. But you won’t come out on top this time. You can whistle for that recovery fee. I’m enjoying this,” he said, his tone contradicting the words. “I really am.”
Shayne made a sound that was only half a word. He took a step forward, towering over the dishevelled figure on the bunk. “I’ve seen you do some moronic things, but you’re surpassing yourself. It’s between you and me now.”
“Don’t you dare lay a finger on me!”
“I’m going to lay more than my finger on you if you don’t answer some questions. What did Plato have to do with the robbery?”
“Plato?” Painter smiled unpleasantly. “Not a thing that I know of.”
Shayne reached out for him as the door opened. The small man named Gray walked in briskly. Jack Klipstone followed. The third man, the husky one with the tattooes, blocked the doorway. Painter looked past the redhead, and when he saw Gray his face changed.
“Gray! It’s about time.”
“Is it?” Gray said.
“I knew you’d show up sooner or later. They’ve been treating me like dirt, but I kept telling myself not to worry. The Senate was on their trail. This man Shayne is under arrest Watch yourself with him. He can be tricky.”
Gray smiled at Shayne. “Tricky, eh? What’s wrong with your friend here, been hitting the sauce?”
“Oh, you know him, do you?” Painter said. “Well, I hope you brought enough cops with you, because there’s one thing I learned about Shayne, he doesn’t like to be arrested.”
“I can understand that,” Gray said cheerfully. “I’m like that myself.”
“They certainly did a good job on you.” Painter said, peering at him more closely. “Nobody would ever know your head had been cut open.”
Murder in Haste Page 14
