Ten minutes later he looked at his watch again. He had won fifteen thousand dollars, fifteen hundred dollars a minute. The spectators came over to watch, even the redheaded girl who was reluctant to get too far from the liquor. Blackstone edged into the room. This time the players didn’t fade Clayton’s full bet, and Blackstone took some bills from a bulging wallet, and said quietly, “I’ll take the last three thousand.”
Clayton got rid of the dice without any flourishes. The stick-man called his point: nine. Whispered odds ran around the table. Clayton knew he could make his point, but he had nothing further to wager except his gun. He would be needing that.
He rolled: a three and a one. Again: a five. As the dice came back he heard a faint chime from the doorbell, and he remembered that he hadn’t come here tonight to shoot craps. He felt a sudden stab of regret. He would win, he knew, but he would have to divide his winnings with two other people.
Without waiting for the call, he rolled, and turned up an eight. He was getting there, slow but sure. The chimes sounded again. He hurried his next roll, and swore under his breath. A pair of deuces.
The door-guard came in from the other room. “A man from the telephone company,” he said to Blackstone. “Our phone seems to be out of order.”
“Be with you in a minute,” Blackstone said. “Go ahead, Mr. Briggs.”
This time Clayton gave the roll the complete treatment, urging the dice to do the honorable thing. They tumbled from his hand and bounced. A nine, by God.
There was a quick expiration of breath around the table. Blackstone waited to see what Clayton would decide to do.
“I’m going to let that ride,” Clayton said happily. “Fade me, good people. I’m hot tonight.”
But before Blackstone had time to react, Clayton crumpled forward as though he had been hit very hard in the stomach. He clutched at his heart, his face twisted in anguish.
“I—”
Blackstone and another man hurried to help him to a chair. Clayton gasped, “Glass of water.”
A glass was brought from the bar. He shook two aspirin tablets out of an unlabelled medicine bottle, and swallowed them with a sip of the water. He smiled weakly.
“Better,” he said. “Be back with you in a few minutes.”
The stick-man, he thought, seemed slightly suspicious. Everyone else, including Blackstone, were looking at Clayton with alarm and concern. His winnings were given to him, and he stuffed the bills carelessly into his pocket.
Again the chimes sounded, and the door-guard reminded Blackstone, “That telephone guy is still waiting.”
Bending over Clayton solicitously, Blackstone asked him if there was anything else they could do. Summon a doctor, perhaps? Clayton knew the reason for the gambler’s anxiety. He didn’t want one of his customers to be carried off by a heart attack before he had a chance to lose the money in his pocket.
“No, no,” Clayton said. “Sorry to be such a nuisance. I’ll snap out of it in a minute.”
“You’re sure, now?”
The gambler went into the other room, where he picked up the phone. He signalled impatiently for the switchboard, but as the door-guard had told him, the line was dead.
He nodded to the guard. Above the dice-talk from the crap table, Clayton heard the chain being taken off. In a moment, through the open doorway, he saw Fran Smith cross the room with his big metal tool-chest. One of his thin shoulders was pulled down by its weight. He placed it on the floor near the phone and opened it. The hinged lid concealed its contents from the room.
His lips were open and he seemed unusually pale. He and Clayton exchanged a look, and they both rose at the same instant. Clayton took out his .45, Smith had his tommy gun in both hands, the safety flap open.
No one appeared to notice him.
Clayton called out briskly, “Don’t be alarmed, ladies and gentlemen. This is a stick-up.”
The faces at the dice tables swung toward him, shocked and empty of expression.
Clayton went on, “I want you to forget all about dice for a moment, and go into the other room. That’s right. Put the dice on the table.”
He moved the big automatic in a wide sweep, holding it high enough so no one could fail to see it. Moving slowly, not to set off any nervous reaction, he collected them into a group and began to herd them toward the door.
The stick-man’s eyes flickered down to the money. There was a slight but noticeable change in his expression, and Clayton swiftly took two steps forward and pointed the automatic at the boy’s stomach. He said in a deadly tone, “Raise both hands. Higher. Turn around slowly and stand just where you are. The rest of you folks, keep moving. Nobody’s going to get hurt, unless this kid makes a mistake. Don’t rush, just keep moving.” He circled the table, keeping behind the crowd, and touched the stick-man at the base of his spine with the .45 muzzle. He found the boy’s gun, a little .22 in a belt-holster. Clayton pulled it out and threw it on the table.
“Move along now. Don’t anybody fuss or fret. It’s only money. Take it off your income taxes.”
One of the women began to cry, but shock kept the rest of them quiet. Clayton was the last one into the doorway, and he found Smith in control of the poker room. One of the players had stood up so suddenly that his chair had gone over backward. The others remained sitting down, several still with their cards in their hands.
Smith had taken the door-guard’s gun. He was high and dangerous.
“Here’s the way we’re going to do it,” Clayton said pleasantly. “You guys at the table get up and move over against the wall where we can all look at each other. Do that now. Wait a minute, all but Bradley.”
“You heard him, you heard him,” Smith said. Clayton came up behind Bradley and touched him in all the places where he might have been wearing a gun.
“That’s right,” he said. “You’re too big a man to carry your own guns. Get up.”
Bradley heaved himself out of the chair. He gave Clayton a cold look, and Clayton smiled.
“Forget it, Ed,” he said. “I’m nobody but Joe Doakes. Don’t waste any valuable men looking for me.”
Bradley moved back, his expression unchanged. Suddenly the drunken redheaded girl lurched out from the wall and grabbed Clayton’s gun-arm.
“What’s the matter with all you bums?” she screamed. “Are you going to let—”
Clayton switched his gun to his left hand and brought it around in a sweeping upward blow, raking her face with the automatic’s front sight and opening it up from cheek to forehead. She screamed once and fell to the floor.
“I hope the rest of you will use your heads,” Clayton said, in the same even, somewhat humorous voice. “We don’t want to shoot anybody, naturally, because the cops might hear about it.”
His gaze swept around the room. Blackstone seemed resigned. The door-guard was looking carefully at the floor, his hands out in front of him, in full view. Smith apparently had scared him a little when he took his gun. Only the boy from the dice-game still worried Clayton.
And then an accident happened. Clayton blamed himself; he should have checked the balcony. A man in a sports shirt, probably one of Big Ed’s boys, stepped into the room and fired one shot from a revolver before Fran Smith brought the tommy gun around and let go a quick nervous burst which caught him in the chest.
The revolver went spinning out of his hands. The heavy slugs had knocked him back against the French doors. He was probably already dead, but he took another second to fall.
There was a strong acrid smell in the room. Smith moved the tommy gun in a tight little circle but no one else moved at all. Clayton knew that the slightest reaction could set Smith off, and this time he wouldn’t let go of the trigger until he had emptied the long clip.
“That’s one less hoodlum for the cops to worry about,” Clayton said pleasantly, his eyes wary. “I think we’ll let Big Ed and Blackstone get rid of the body. Everybody else is going to be all right. Now you know these guns are loaded.”
/>
He swept chips and cards from the poker table.
“Here’s the procedure. You’re all going to line up, and each one of you is going to put your money and jewelry on this table. No watches, please. We won’t have time to search you all. But as soon as we finish taking up the collection, we’re going to pick three people. Two men and one woman. We’re going to give those three a real going over, and we don’t want to find anything. If we do, I personally will put a .45 slug in that person’s kneecaps. Is that clear? You might walk again, but I guarantee you’ll walk crooked. You’re all gamblers, you have time to figure the odds. We’ll start with Big Ed.”
Smith took a sudden step to one side, as though correcting his balance. Clayton didn’t look around. He motioned with his automatic for the line to start moving. “Are you hit, kid?” he asked.
Smith grunted.
“How bad?”
“I’m all right, for Christ’s sake.”
Clayton stepped back so he could include Smith in his line of vision. Smith’s left hand was pressed against his right shoulder.
“We’re going to change guns,” Clayton said. “Back up a step and sit down.”
Smith moved backward until he touched a chair. He sank into it. Clayton put the .45 in his left hand, took the tommy gun from Smith and gave him the .45. He picked out the blonde with the diamond bracelet.
“Come over here, honey. No, put that bracelet on the table first. I want to look at this boy’s shoulder. You’ve probably got something on we can use for a bandage. Now Mr. Blackstone, if you don’t mind. First your wallet. Then I want you to pull the phone out of the wall. After that I’m going to ask you to open the safe.”
21
Michael Shayne awoke with a blinding light in his eyes. His head throbbed with each beat of his heart. He lay on a narrow bed. The ceiling above him was cracked and stained, and he knew by the smells that he was in a hospital.
There was somebody beside the bed. He turned his head slightly, wincing.
It was Peter Painter, smoothing his hairline mustache, a gloating expression on his lips. Shayne closed his eyes again. He seemed to be tied to the bed, although that seemed an unlikely thing for even Peter Painter to do to a patient who has recently been shot in the head at point-blank range with a dummy round of .45 ammunition.
With a tremendous effort. Shayne raised one hand and felt the cap-like bandage. He must have groaned.
Painter said with satisfaction, “Hurts, does it?”
“Where—” Shayne said. He could get no further.
“Where are you? You’re in Emergency reception at the Angel of Mercy hospital. I know you’re going to want to tell us how you acquired those interesting wounds. You have a bruised side and a broken rib. You have a deep laceration on your head, that seems to have been inflicted by a dull knife, and you have severe powder burns in the same region. Who did it, Shayne?”
“Go to hell,” Shayne said weakly.
He turned his head further. Two other cops were in the room, one a stenographer. The other was Squire. His face had a lopsided look because of a badly swollen jaw. He looked down at the redhead with unfriendly eyes.
Painter said, “In your usual obliging mood, I see. But we’re in no hurry. I’ll leave Squire with you, and whenever you want to talk, let him know. This time you can’t pretend you don’t know who attacked you. You got those injuries in a hand-to-hand fight. Maybe we can catch him for you, if you give us a little cooperation.”
Shayne wondered what had happened to Painter’s usual fuss and bluster. He didn’t wonder long. At last the little man had the upper hand, and he could dispense with threats. He had the redheaded detective exactly where he had always wanted him.
“I’ll take care of it myself,” Shayne muttered.
Painter laughed. It was a long, loud laugh, extremely unpleasant to Shayne’s ears.
“Sure, you’ll take care of it,” Painter said sarcastically. “Somebody beat you up, and naturally Mike Shayne won’t let him get away with that. Try lifting your head off the pillow.”
Shayne’s mind was beginning to function. It would do no harm to have Painter think he was more seriously injured than he actually was. He raised his head a few inches, and let it drop with another groan. He discovered that he was exaggerating only slightly.
Painter gave another unpleasant laugh. “This is one time you won’t take care of a thing, Shamus. It may have slipped your mind that you have twice today assaulted police officers, on the second occasion in the presence of witnesses. I never had much respect for your methods, but I always thought you had a few brains. Not many, but a few. I find I was wrong.”
He leaned forward, his manner completely serious. “One, you’re going to lose your license. Two, you’re going to jail. Adjust yourself to the idea. You’re going to be out of my hair, once and for all.”
“Yeah,” Shayne said bleakly.
“But I’m not forgetting that I’ve sworn to uphold the law,” Painter said. “Tell me who’s been trying to kill you, and I’ll be glad to pull him in for you.”
He couldn’t resist taking two strutting steps to the foot of the bed and back. “Well, Shayne?”
Shayne sighed heavily. He turned his head to look at the stenographer.
“The name’s Bram Clayton,” Shayne said. “Nickname the Actor. Stickups. I put him away a long time ago, forgot all about him.”
“Let’s have a description,” Painter said.
“Won’t help. Disguise. You saw him—used the name Baumholtz.”
“Baumholtz! That jerk from New Jersey?”
Shayne nodded. “Just out of state prison. You can get picture, prints. Planted bomb. Working with Francis Smith, Red-and-white Ford station wagon, MK 861. Armed—burp gun, .38 police special, .45 Colt. Something’s underway tonight. Said to get money.”
“A stick-up at this time of night? Where?”
Shayne could feel the mists beginning to close in around him again. “Can’t—”
He went under.
When he came back he had the strange impression that Painter was weeping beside the bed. Had he misjudged the little man? No, he realized, it was a woman’s voice.
“Michael, Michael,” Lucy Hamilton said when she saw his eyes open. “This time he came close, didn’t he?”
He smiled grimly, and he surprised himself by saying a complete sentence. “The son of a bitch fooled me. Atlanta?”
“Michael, the whole thing was a trick!”
“Trick?”
“It was a complete fake, all of it. There’s no Agatha Wiley in Atlanta, no country club by that name. It was made up out of whole cloth. I was boiling, I can tell you. I thought you’d cooked it up between you, you and that bottled blonde, to get me out of town so you could—”
“Angel, angel,” he said gently.
“I know, but I couldn’t think straight. I should have known. You made it up so I wouldn’t be around to keep you from some reckless—”
“I didn’t make it up,” Shayne said.
And all at once it came back to him. She’s going to be chewing her fingers. The blonde, Agatha Wiley. It was Shayne she had wanted out of town, not Lucy. And what else had Smith said? We’re half an hour late. You want him to walk into the St. A with every cop in Miami?
Shayne raised his head. He was relieved to find that he could actually do it.
“Michael,” she said in alarm. “The doctor said you weren’t to have any excitement or—”
“What time is it?”
“Going on midnight. Why? Get some sleep.”
“Where’s Petey?”
“He dashed off in a great tizzy. I couldn’t make out what was happening, but he was certainly in a hurry. He left a guard outside. Michael, what happened while I was gone?”
Without answering, Shayne swung his long legs out of bed. The room whirled about him and he almost fell. He was still very weak, but the pain had lessened. Perhaps they had given him something for it
�
�Hand me my clothes.”
“Michael, I absolutely refuse—” He shook his head, and tried to stand. She said more weakly, “In your condition—”
He still said nothing. He stood leaning against the bed, his bandaged head swaying. She flew across the room for his clothes. She helped him pull his pants over his pajama bottoms. He pushed his arms clumsily into his shirt. He looked at the frosted-glass window.
“Are we on the ground floor?”
“Yes, the ambulances discharge right outside. Surely you aren’t intending—”
“I’ve slugged enough cops for one day,” Shayne said, grinning ruefully. “And the way I feel now I couldn’t swat a fly.”
He held onto the bed as long as he could. The lower half of the window was protected by bars. Lucy clambered onto the steam radiator and lowered the upper half of the sash. It yielded with a loud squeal of protest. Shayne swung around and waited for the door to open, but the cop in the hall must have thought the noise came from outside.
Lucy helped the redhead up. He looked out onto a lighted apron in front of the hospital’s emergency entrance. An ambulance was parked near the door, and the sound of voices came from inside the building.
He nodded to Lucy. She climbed over, hobbled by her skirt, and held to the bars for a minute before dropping to the pavement. Shayne came after her. How he made it without pitching head-first he never knew. He gripped the sash long enough to right himself, then staggered to the ambulance.
“You’ll have to drive, angel.”
“I can’t drive an ambulance,” she said, aghast.
“You can learn.”
He had trouble with the high step. After he was in, Lucy came in behind him and closed the door with care. They would have to get away fast. The desultory conservation inside the building continued, and Shayne heard a raucous laugh. He switched on the dashboard lights.
Target_Mike Shayne Page 19
