Norris, a gray-haired veteran, looked up. “Get the license, Mike?” he asked quietly.
“First two letters were NK,” Shayne told him.
Norris repeated this into the transmitter and ended his report. Shayne looked at his watch.
“How long’s it take you boys to put out a general alarm?”
“About forty seconds,” Norris said. “There’s a lot of bottlenecks all through here. We might even pick them up.”
“Would you care to bet any money on that?”
“We-l-l-l—”
“I didn’t think so,” Shayne said.
He watched the sweep-second hand, and as it ticked off the forty-fifth second, he heard the first siren.
“Not bad. Did you get a look at them?”
“I didn’t, Mike. I was too busy getting the gun out.”
The driver had heard the question. “He was hanging out the back window, and the way his hair was whipping in his eyes it’s a wonder he could aim. But that was pretty good shooting, you know, from a moving car? How come he missed you?”
“I was lying down,” Shayne said. “Unsporting, I admit. What did he look like outside of the long hair?”
“I don’t know, Mike,” the driver said doubtfully, “but did you ever tangle with a hood named Frank Smith? Boo-boo, I think they call him.”
“I’ve heard the name,” Shayne said slowly. “But he’s not local, is he?”
“He’s all over. The reason I think of him is the tommy gun. They’re not used much any more. There was a big narcotics wheel who got the push last year in L.A., I think. It was supposed to be this Smith that did it. He used a tommy.”
“How about pictures?”
“Hell, you know those mug-shots. What good are they? And I only got that one fast glance. I was doing about seventeen things at the time.”
More sirens added their clamor to the first. They converged rapidly on the Southeast rectangle, bounded by Flagler Street, Biscayne Boulevard, the river and the bay. Shayne stood with the cops a moment longer, listening to the radio calls. He had miscalculated badly. He had been sure the killer wouldn’t strike again so soon. This gave him an unpleasant feeling, like a batter who is two strikes behind and knows that he now has to swing at anything. Was he wrong about other things as well? They had known the cops would be there, for shooting out the tires had been part of the operation, not something added at the last minute. A 24-hour police guard wouldn’t be maintained on Shayne much longer, and they must have known it. It could only mean that they were working against a deadline.
Now, more than ever, he had to get Lucy out of danger. He turned abruptly, remembering Agatha Wiley. She had come to see him, to put herself under his protection, and she had narrowly escaped being shot down. Shayne felt the pressure building up inside him. Perhaps Lucy had given him a piece of good advice. Perhaps he should forget about the plan involving Baumholtz, and go into hiding until the killer’s time limit, whatever it was, had expired. By putting himself up as a target, Shayne was endangering the lives of anybody who happened to be near him. Last night it was the boy, Terry Weintraub. This morning, if Shayne had been a trifle slower about leaving his feet, or if the sun hadn’t glanced from the gun barrel, another innocent person would have died.
His deeply trenched face was taut and serious. He checked the marks left on the sidewalk by the bullets before going into the hotel. He found four, and a ricochet had broken one of the hotel’s front windows, although in the confusion Shayne hadn’t heard the sound of breaking glass. The pressure was building up into a cold, implacable fury. The slugs had come perilously close.
One of the cops was shouting, trying to unsnarl the traffic. Pedestrians had returned to the sidewalk, and were watching Shayne. Another police car screamed to a stop beside the first. Shayne put a cigarette into his mouth. Without lighting it, he went into the hotel.
13
Doc Willoughby, who lived on the fourth floor of the hotel and was usually sober enough at this time of day to attend to patients, stepped back from the blonde. She was sitting in one of the large leather chairs in the lobby. A knot of onlookers had gathered near them, and the girl held her blouse together self-consciously.
“If you weren’t a guest in this hotel I wouldn’t have much of a practice, Mike,” Doc Willoughby said.
“How is she?” Shayne asked.
“Not too bad, not too good. She took a bad crack on the back of the head, another on the cheek. No fracture, no apparent concussion. Shock, mostly. And she’s going to look like hell when that bruise colors up.”
“He’s trying to flatter me,” the girl said with a nervous laugh.
“Any reason she can’t talk to me for a while, Doc?”
“Not if she takes it easy. I might prescribe a small shot of your cognac. And if you want to offer a small shot to an aged physician who’s had a hard morning—”
“Maybe later, Doc,” Shayne said, and held out a hand to the girl. “You heard what the doctor prescribed.”
“What I really need,” she said, embarrassed, “is a needle and thread.”
“Pete, get her some sewing stuff from the housekeeper,” Shayne said. “Let’s go upstairs, Miss—it is Miss Wiley, isn’t it?”
She nodded with a half smile. Taking Shayne’s hand, she stood up, swaying as she came erect. The redhead put an arm around her shoulders.
“I’m all right,” she said. “Really.”
Shayne took her to the elevator and they rode up to the second floor. He felt the pleasant pressure of her breast against his arm. They left the elevator, moving slowly. Pete overtook them halfway down the corridor.
“Here it is, Mr. Shayne,” he said breathlessly. “Thread, thimble, the whole works.”
Shayne took the little sewing kit, and at that second the girl seemed to fall apart. She sagged against him and her pupils rolled up and disappeared as she started for the floor. The detective got one arm under her knees and swung her into the air. Pete scuttled ahead of them to unlock Shayne’s two-and-a-half room suite.
Pete hurriedly swept an accumulation of magazines and newspapers off the sofa. Shayne gave him rapid directions. The desk clerk whipped two pillows off an easy chair and piled them at one end of the sofa. Shayne lowered the girl gently, her feet on the pillows. She was extremely pale. The black skirt slipped back from her knees. Pete looked down at her, his mouth open.
“Get some ice and a towel,” Shayne said. “And snap it up.”
Pete hurried to the kitchen. Shayne pulled at the girl’s skirt, but it was caught beneath her. She was breathing heavily, her breast rising and falling beneath the torn blouse. Shayne considered slapping her, but he didn’t entirely trust Doc Willoughby’s diagnosis. Frowning, he went to the phone, but before he could pick it up to call another doctor, the girl’s eyelashes trembled and her eyes opened. She looked at the ceiling for a moment, without comprehension, then she swung her legs hastily off the pillows and sat up.
“I didn’t faint, did I?”
“You did,” the detective told her. “You went out like a light.”
“My goodness,” she said, and looking down, she snatched her blouse together in front. “I’m sort of exposed.”
“Pleasantly,” Shayne assured her, grinning. Pete came to the doorway with a bowl of ice. “She’s recovered? I guess you won’t be wanting this ice, then, Mr. Shayne?”
“Leave it out,” Shayne said. “We might be able to find a use for it.”
“Do you really think the doctor meant what he said?” the girl asked. “That I ought to have a drink?”
“It sounded like an order,” Shayne said.
“Well—”
“I’ll fix it, Mr. Shayne,” Pete said eagerly, turning back to the kitchen. “I know exactly how you like it.”
Agatha Wiley said with an embarrassed laugh, “I don’t think I ever fainted before in my life. It’s all so mixed up. I was so sure I was too late—the taxi driver didn’t understand what I told him, and he
took me to the wrong part of town. I was practically run over crossing the street, and then you suddenly charged me, and there was all that noise and shouting. And I just realized this minute in the corridor what happened. Somebody was shooting at us! If you hadn’t bowled me over, we would have been killed!”
“I’m afraid so,” Shayne said gravely. “And I guess there’s no point in telling you I’m sorry. The fact is, I owe you a lot more than an apology. If I hadn’t been watching you I wouldn’t have seen the gun. They would have got me, and they would have got past the cops.”
She put her fingertips to her temples. Pete came back from the kitchen with a loaded tray. Shayne noted with amusement the two wine glasses for the cognac, the water tumblers and the tinkling pitcher of ice water. The desk clerk set the tray on the low table in front of the girl, and looked at it with approval.
“You know what I did?” he said. “I forgot the most important thing.”
He went back to the kitchen for the cognac bottle. Shayne thanked him, making a mental note to pick up a couple of bottles of Pete’s favorite bourbon the next time he passed a liquor store.
“Painter’s going to be looking for me,” Shayne said. “Tell him I’m out. I can think of better ways of spending the morning than listening to Petey Painter’s theories.”
Pete looked at the blonde with a smirk. “I understand, Mr. Shayne.”
When the desk clerk was gone, Shayne said, “I can probably find you some soda. I never drink the stuff myself, but I know other people do.”
“It’s fine like this,” she said.
He poured the drinks, and moved one glass a fraction of an inch in her direction. She picked it up.
“I never thought I’d be drinking brandy in a man’s apartment at ten o’clock in the morning,” she said.
“Remember what the doctor told you,” he reminded her with a grin. “It’s like medicine.”
He tasted his own drink, and waited till she had sipped at hers and set it down. She opened the sewing kit and took out a spool of thread and a paper of needles. She glanced at him. After being unnaturally pale, she had become somewhat flushed.
“Before you say anything,” she said, “I declare I don’t know what you’re going to think of me. Mr. Shayne, I told Timothy Rourke a lie.”
Shayne’s ragged red brows drew together. “What kind of a lie?”
“I know the only reason you waited here for me was because you thought I could tell you something about that horrible thing last night. That was the lie. I told Mr. Rourke I ate dinner at the Seafarer Restaurant, and naturally he thought I might be able to help you find the murderer. But I didn’t eat there. I read about it in the paper this morning, and when he wouldn’t tell me your address, it just popped into my mind.”
Shayne offered her a cigarette. She shook her head. He struck a match for himself without saying anything.
“I know I shouldn’t have done it,” she said, “but I had a good reason. Aren’t you going to say anything?”
“People lie to me all the time,” Shayne said noncommittally. “I do some lying now and then myself. You just heard me tell the desk clerk to lie to Painter.”
“I don’t know what to say, Mr. Shayne, you’re being so nice about it. I was afraid you’d be angry. I have to hire a detective, and I don’t know where to turn. I never dreamed I could get you, until I read in the paper that you hadn’t had a case for two months. That wasn’t a lie, was it?” she said anxiously.
“No. The cops didn’t believe it, but it’s true.”
“So I thought to myself, I think I’ll try my luck, but I suppose, after what just happened, you wouldn’t want—”
The redhead reached for his glass. “Painter will grab me if I go down now, so tell me about it. I might be able to recommend someone.”
“Oh, would you, Mr. Shayne? I looked at the names of private detectives in the phone book, and I was just flabbergasted. It has to be someone I know I can trust. That’s why I thought of you.”
Shayne laughed. “That’s a part of my reputation I don’t usually hear about. What’s the trouble?”
“Well, I—” She strengthened herself with another sip of cognac. “I live in Atlanta. My marriage was a failure, which was my fault, I guess. After my divorce I took my maiden name again. I—I fell in love with a married man, and I was sure he loved me.” She bit her lip, and brought it out with a rush. “We came to Miami together. A week ago he left me without a word of explanation. I’m afraid it’s all too obvious, Mr. Shayne, because he took some valuable jewelry with him. It was terrible. I couldn’t go to the police. We’d registered at the Saxony as man and wife. If this ever gets out, I won’t be able to set foot in Atlanta again as long as I live. That’s why it has to be absolutely confidential. Geoff—his name’s Geoffrey Home—was the golf pro at a country club I belonged to. He’s younger than I am. Not a lot younger, but enough so I’d look like a foolish middle-aged woman, which—” she added faintly—“I don’t think I am.”
“You’re not middle-aged,” Shayne said. “But you’ve been pretty foolish.”
“I agree with you—now,” she said quickly. “I’m so ashamed of myself.”
“And you want to recover the jewelry?”
“I wish I could just write it off to experience, but I’m not that economically secure. It’s insured, of course, but if I tell the insurance company that it’s missing, they’ll start asking questions, and the whole thing will come out. Oh, about the fee—do you think fifteen hundred would be about right?”
“I can give you the name of a man who will handle it for that,” Shayne said. “He doesn’t make many mistakes.”
Her face clouded. “Can I really trust him, Mr. Shayne? It’s just got to be kept secret, and I don’t want Geoffrey put in jail, either, so it’s more complicated than it sounds. You really couldn’t do it yourself, Mr. Shayne? It wouldn’t take more than a few days in Atlanta, and meanwhile, this assassin—”
Shayne said thoughtfully, “Maybe I could, at that. You think this Geoffrey Horne has gone back to Atlanta?”
“I know he has. I talked to a friend on long-distance last night. She’d seen him.”
Shayne drained his glass. “All right, Miss Wiley. We’ll take care of it for you. We may have to put some pressure on Horne, but I take it you won’t mind too much about that?”
She said uncertainly, “What kind of pressure?”
“That depends on what we find out about him. You’d probably prefer not to know the details.”
“You won’t—hurt him?”
Shayne grinned. “No more than he deserves, Miss Wiley. But anybody who would run out on you, taking your jewelry, deserves a little something.”
The phone rang, and Shayne went to get it. The girl threaded a needle and looked down ruefully at the long rip in her blouse. She couldn’t repair it properly without taking it off. She fingered the buttons. Shayne, at the phone, watched sardonically. Looking up, she met his eye, gave a little start and then defiantly unbuttoned the blouse and took it off.
She was wearing no slip, merely a bra. She sat forward in embarrassment, one arm in front of her breast, but she couldn’t maintain this position long. She glanced again at the tall redhead, then sat up straight and reached for the thimble.
“I know it’s silly,” she said “You can go out on the beach and see a thousand girls in low-cut bathing suits. It’s just the brandy and everything.”
The phone rang again under Shayne’s hand. He said, “If it’ll make you feel better, you can put on one of my shirts.”
He went into the bedroom, grinning, and pulled open the second bureau drawer, where he kept clean shirts that had come back from the laundry. He took the one that was on top, pulling out the cardboard and the lynchpin at the collar, noting with annoyance that they had used starch again. He took it back to the living room.
“Catch,” he said, and threw it across to the girl.
The phone gave a third ring, a short, hesitant one,
as though Pete was afraid he was interrupting something. The detective picked it up.
“Yeah,” he growled.
Pete’s voice came breathlessly over the line. “Gee, I hate like anything to break in on you, Mr. Shayne, but I know you want this call. You’re busy and all that, and I told him to leave his name and number and you’d call him back. So he told me his name, and it struck a responsive cord. Remember you had me check at the Sans Souci for Walter Baumholtz?”
“Hell, yes,” Shayne said quickly. “Put him on. Wait a minute. Did Painter come in?”
“Yes, he did,” Pete said guardedly. “They’re sort of going and coming.”
“Any news about the Chevrolet they were after?”
“Well, I happened to overhear a reporter phoning in the story. I wasn’t exactly eavesdropping, I couldn’t help hearing, and he said the—uh, hoodlums had slipped through the net. The stolen car was found abandoned in Coral Gables, and they know it was the one because there was a bullet hole in the side. I listened with both ears, having a pretty fair-to-middling idea that you’d want to know what was what.”
“Thanks, Pete. Now give me that call, will you?”
The girl said anxiously, “Did they catch the men who were shooting at us?”
“Hell, no,” Shayne said in disgust.
The desk clerk plugged the outside jack into Shayne’s line, and said, “Go ahead, please.”
“Baumholtz?” Shayne said.
Baumholtz’s voice exploded in his ear. “All present and accounted for! And how about yourself?”
Wincing, Shayne moved the phone an inch or so from his ear. “I tried to get hold of you at the Sans Souci. You didn’t do what I told you.”
“I did so!” Baumholtz declared indignantly. “First I went to the Fountainebleau, and then I pulled that Statue of Liberty play, just the way you—oh, I know what. You asked for me under the name Baumholtz.”
“You registered under a different name?”
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