Mermaid on the Rocks ms-55

by Brett Halliday

  “Well-l, if you want an off-the-record answer, and I’ll deny it if anybody quotes me, let’s say that on that subject I have a well developed bump of cynicism. At the same time, I recognize a first-class story when I see one. There isn’t much romance in real-estate development as a rule, Shayne. We sell location and shelter. At so much a square foot. If you can add a small dash of pirate gold, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum and all that, and make it look reasonably plausible, it gives you an edge. That’s all we’re looking for here. Will the Key be mentioned in connection with Tuttle’s death?”

  “You can bet on it. I want to be sure I understand your attitude. As far as you’re concerned there are only two possibilities? If your bulldozers turn up a chest of doubloons you get back your out-of-pocket costs. If they don’t, you still get mileage out of the story.”

  Eda Lou returned with another aromatic cup of coffee. Shayne drank some and set it down.

  Quarrels said, “I think I can go along with that. It’s either-or.”

  “No, there’s a third possibility,” Shayne said. “That you’re being taken.”

  “I don’t quite see-”

  “If the key word in the publicity is ‘fraud’ instead of ‘romance’ you’ll lose that edge, won’t you?”

  There was a moment’s silence. Shayne sipped at his coffee royal while he waited. Eda Lou had put more cognac in this one.

  Quarrels said carefully, “Will you enlarge on that a little, Shayne?”

  “It’s only a theory. You’ll want to base your decision on facts. A good deal of work still has to be done on it. I was brought in on overnight bodyguard duty, and at the moment I don’t have a client. If I can prove before you pick up your option Wednesday that you’ve been a victim of a clever swindle, you’ll save yourself a million bucks and a certain amount of embarrassment. I’ll send you a bill for twenty thousand.”

  Quarrels hesitated. “I’d say ten.”

  Shayne was too tired to argue. “Ten. With luck I can wrap it up today. Are you in Miami?”

  “No, in Atlanta. I’m about to leave for Miami.”

  “O.K., we’ve got a deal. I’ll be in the Dade County Courthouse in Judge Shanahan’s chambers.”

  Quarrels started to reply but Shayne handed Eda Lou the phone, which had become too heavy to hold. She hung up for him, looking worried.

  “Mike, you’re pushing too hard. You can’t hope to snap back from that kind of knock on the head. Don’t pass out on me now. I’ll tell you one thing. You’re seeing a doctor before you take any helicopter rides. Finish your coffee. I’ll get out the car.”

  Shayne’s head rocked. He tried to hold it still, using both hands, but then the whole house started to rock.

  “Shot of cognac. I’ll be O.K.”

  “Like hell I’ll give you a shot of cognac!” she snapped. “Cognac in coffee is bad enough. Hang on, for the love of God. You’re getting in that car under your own power or you’re staying right here.”

  Heavy weights pulled at Shayne’s eyelids. Eda Lou’s face went in and out of focus. He needed sleep, he told himself. A brief nap would make a big difference. There was no point in going up against Shanahan in this condition. He needed a clear mind and a cool eye. He had to gauge reactions, which he couldn’t do when he wasn’t even able to keep one side of Eda Lou’s face from changing places with the other. And why did she have five eyes?

  “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “Get some sleep now and you can move faster when you wake up.”

  He was lying on the sofa with his feet up, he discovered. This was more comfortable. He wound and set his mental alarm clock. He would wake up in exactly half an hour. He was vaguely aware that his friend Eda Lou was thumbing back one of his eyelids. It was a professional gesture. A professional himself, Shayne appreciated professionalism in others. She had drugged his second cup of coffee, of course, but she was such an unsentimental old lady that he could hardly hold it against her. He fell asleep.

  chapter 16

  A door slammed. An instant later a car got away to a wheel-spinning start on the crushed clamshell driveway.

  Michael Shayne, sleeping heavily, heard these noises, and as they entered his dream they became transformed into something sinister and ominous. He stirred. Suddenly he was trying to escape on foot through loose clamshells from a squadron of armored helicopters, hovering above him at treetop level, adjusting their speed to his. He threw his head from side to side, weaving evasively while fifty-caliber machine-gun bullets sliced the air around him.

  When the back of his head, where he had been slugged in the tree house, struck the unpadded arm of the sofa, the explosion of pain blew him to his feet. At first he was sure he had been hit by one of the gunners in the helicopters, and he was surprised to find himself alive, though tottering, staring blindly at double bullet holes in a picture window. Beyond the window, sunlight danced on water. His arms hung helplessly at his sides.

  With the pain still vibrating in his head, he picked up the coffee cup. His lips came back in a snarl and he threw it at the great window. The window came down with a crash, and the noise helped clear his head.

  Picking up the cognac bottle as he passed, he lurched onto the terrace. The harsh morning sun hit him like a blow from a plank. His brain could only hold one thought at a time. To get back to Miami he needed a helicopter. To get to the heliport he needed a car. He peered down the driveway.

  Its straightness and blinding whiteness nearly hypnotized him.

  He fumbled the cork out of the bottle and raised the cognac to his lips. A long swallow helped get him off the terrace and back in the house, mumbling under his breath, “Goose Key heliport, don’t know the number.” He himself knew what he was saying, and he hoped he could make the operator understand.

  He knocked the phone over and fumbled at the dial. On the second try he managed to get the “O” all the way around. He picked up the phone and listened, but heard nothing except absolute silence, no hum, no dial tone. He gave the phone a shake, but there was still no response. The wires had been cut. He threw it through the broken front window.

  He had his next drink in the open doorway of the empty two-car garage, the one after that in the boathouse. He was out of breath, though he had taken a route giving him the maximum number of objects to lean against. He went to sleep again briefly as he studied the fiberglass sports fisherman. It needed some work to put it back in running condition, but so did he, Shayne thought wryly, so did he.

  He climbed into the pilot room and groped about until he found a flashlight. He pulled off the heavy plate covering the twin engines. They had quit on him the night before as soon as they tried to run on air instead of the usual mixture of air and gasoline. Shayne followed the gas line until he came to an open coupling. He forced the flexible copper line into feed-in position, slid the nut into place and tightened it with his fingers. He didn’t waste time looking for a wrench. He wasn’t going far.

  The engines hawked, hesitated, then took hold as the gas reached them. Again Shayne went to sleep. His chin jolted against his chest, and the sudden sharp rush of pain brought him back. He engaged the gears and put the throttle all the way down.

  The powerful boat surged backward. There was a splintering crash, and it broke through the door into open water.

  He came about. Leaving the cove, he circled the southernmost point and headed toward the bridges and causeways of the Overseas Highway. He woke up from another heavy sleep a little later and saw the tumbledown dock at the end of the track where he had left the Volkswagen. He veered to the right, shut off the power and ran aground. The shock carried him out of the wheel room and over the forward deck to the pebbly beach.

  He struck off toward the Volkswagen, resisting the impulse to lie down on the pebbles and go to sleep, letting the three remaining Tuttle heirs continue the elimination until only one was left. He saw the Volkswagen. He was glad he had had the foresight to point its stubby nose in the right direction. He fell into it and it seemed
to start by itself. He had to hold the steering wheel hard with both hands to keep it in the ruts. It was easier to control on the concrete highway. Shayne himself, however, wavered between being sixty percent asleep and sixty percent awake. The even whine of the motor soothed him. He began shaking his head from one side to the other. Presently the little car picked it up, seeming to shake its blunt front end in the same rhythm.

  He leaned into a long sweeping curve on the first causeway. The wheel increased its resistance, and in spite of anything Shayne could do, the little car drifted over the center line. He gave his head a sharp deliberate shake. The wheel’s resistance collapsed and the Volkswagen came back too far, scraping the retaining cable.

  Shayne’s common sense took over. He had been hurrying, but he was still too groggy to be driving this fast. He wouldn’t get there any sooner by way of the sea.

  The moment he touched the brakes he set off a series of quick jolting events. Apparently some of the strange sensations he had been experiencing had been caused by something more serious than the sleeping pills Eda Lou had put in his coffee.

  A rear wheel rolled past him. The little car swung into the lefthand lane, knocked down two retaining posts and swung all the way around, ending up headed the wrong way with the wheelless rear axle on the heavy rock fill at the extreme edge of the causeway.

  The door burst open as Shayne hit it, but the Volkswagen was halted an instant later by the retaining cable. The detective sprawled half in and half out of the car, fully awake at last.

  chapter 17

  Three hours later, a scowling Michael Shayne strode into the Dade County Courthouse on West Flagler Street, near North Miami Avenue.

  The first car to come past after Shayne’s Volkswagen lost a wheel was a big semi-trailer, running empty. The driver blinked his directional signals but didn’t stop. The next car stopped. It was driven by a hard-bitten, red-faced trooper who had been operating in Southern Florida for only two months, having learned his trade as a deputy sheriff in farming country in central Mississippi.

  He had never heard the name Michael Shayne. He had a strong prejudice against big-city private detectives. Shayne’s makeshift head bandage aroused his suspicions. Detecting the odor of brandy, he forced Shayne to walk a straight line. By this time Shayne was coldly furious. He knew the folly of antagonizing this kind of low-level official, and by biting down hard he suppressed any remarks he would ordinarily have made. His anger took care of the last of his vertigo. He walked the line without wavering.

  After that the trooper wanted to know what he was doing in a Volkswagen registered in someone else’s name. Shayne told him evenly that it was a stolen car, and to take him in. The Marathon Chief of Police recognized him at once, and after Shayne explained the nature of his accident, ordered the trooper to drive him to the heliport.

  The trooper did so in silence, fuming. Reaching the heliport, Shayne found that Blakey, his pilot, was no longer waiting. He put in an angry phone call to Miami. Blakey, he was told, had brought in a passenger and was on his way back to Goose Key. The helicopter settled down on the strip as Shayne hung up.

  He went out to meet it.

  “What the hell?” he demanded, throwing the door open. “I told you to wait.”

  “Sure, Mike,” the pilot said. “Didn’t you-” One look at Shayne’s face gave him his answer. “Uh-oh. You didn’t.”

  “Take her up,” Shayne snapped.

  As soon as they were off the ground and heading for Miami, the pilot explained what had happened. A tart old lady named Mrs. Eda Lou Parchman had presented a written order signed by Shayne, telling him to take her to Miami. Blakey had never seen Shayne’s handwriting, and had had no reason to suspect that the order was forged.

  “Let’s see how fast you can make this thing go,” the detective said grimly.

  Judge Francis X. Shanahan, playing nervously with the neck of a water carafe, was hearing argument from opposing counsel in a negligence case. The heavy bags under his eyes were the only visible indication of his well-known fondness for late hours, noisy nightclubs and glossy, ambitious young women. As Shayne entered his courtroom, an expression of extreme physical discomfort passed over his still-handsome face. He gave his little two-part mustache a quick stroke with the ball of his thumb.

  Tim Rourke was in the last row, nibbling his nails. Hearing the door open, he looked around hopefully. The detective slid in beside him.

  “Where’s Will Gentry?” Shayne asked in a low voice.

  “Down on the street in a radio car.” The reporter glanced at Shayne’s head bandage. “You had some trouble, I see. I didn’t think you sounded right on the phone.”

  “I gave him the names of four people,” Shayne said. “How many did he find?”

  “You see Shanahan up there. So far that’s it. We’re batting. 250.”

  Shayne swore under his breath. “Did he get through to Kitty Sims?”

  Rourke shook his head. “She’s registered at the New York hotel all right, but she’s not in her room.”

  “Is he sure?”

  “Yeah. Her luggage was there when he called, but she wasn’t. A Do Not Disturb ticket was on the doorknob.”

  Shayne went on scowling. A bailiff left his post beneath an American flag and came over to warn them that they were making too much noise. They ignored him.

  “Give Gentry a message,” Shayne said. “There’s one other person I want him to pick up, and I hope he can find this one. An old lady named Eda Lou Parchman. Cal Tuttle’s common-law wife. Blakey set her down at the Watson Park heliport and she must have picked up a cab at the stand there. Skinny old dame, fake white hair, heavy eye makeup, striped cotton suit, high heels. Plenty of style.”

  Rourke made a few quick notes. “Gentry’s beginning to get restless, Mike. I told him as much as I knew, but you know how much that is-not a hell of a lot.”

  “Tell him to meet me in Shanahan’s chambers as soon as he gets the new call out. I’ll tell him about it.”

  He stood up.

  Rourke said, “Court doesn’t recess for half an hour.”

  “It’s going to recess in twenty seconds,” Shayne promised him.

  Sidestepping the bailiff, he went down the aisle to the broad railing. From the raised bench, Judge Shanahan watched him approach. At the swinging gate Shayne stopped and took out his wallet. He had borrowed thirty dollars from Rourke after Kitty cleaned him out at backgammon. Without taking his eyes off the judge’s face, he removed the bills from the wallet and counted them out slowly on the oak railing.

  Shanahan’s mustache jumped. He took a long swallow of water while the detective counted his money again.

  “Yes, I get the drift,” Shanahan said, breaking into a droning citation of precedents from one of the lawyers. “I’ll rule after lunch. Court will now stand in recess.”

  The lawyer’s jaw dropped as Shanahan stood up. Stuffing the bills carelessly in his pocket, Shayne opened the gate and sauntered through. The bailiff moved to cut him off.

  “Here now. Where do you think you’re going?”

  Shayne gave him a hard look and he stood aside.

  Shanahan, his mustache working nervously, was waiting in his chambers. “Hell, Mike, couldn’t you think of any other way? That joker who was moving for a dismissal merely happens to be head of the ethics committee of the Bar Association, that’s all. It’s lucky he doesn’t have eyes in the back of his head.”

  “Sorry, Frank. It couldn’t wait.”

  “Rourke has been dropping hints I don’t care for at all,” Shanahan went on. “Why single me out, for God’s sake? You know you don’t get named to the bench in this town just because you wear the right color necktie. And how did a guy like you get involved, I’d like to know? I never figured you for a crusader.”

  Shayne grinned at him. “That forty thousand payoff is just a jack handle, Frank, to jack some information out of you on another matter. I could use a drink, how about you?”

  “Could I!
After the needling Rourke has been giving me? Shut the door.”

  Shayne kicked the door shut and sat down on a leather sofa. The judge took a bottle of whiskey and two glasses out of the lower drawer in his desk. After pouring two drinks he handed one to Shayne and sat down on the corner of the desk with a swish of his black robes.

  “Cheers,” he said, lifting his glass. “And the one thing the boys insisted on when they gave me the endorsement was that I’d stick to tap water while court’s in session.” He ducked his head toward the glass to meet it as it came up and drank greedily. “Nothing like whiskey.”

  “Have you seen your fiancee this morning?” Shayne said.

  “Who?” Judge Shanahan asked.

  “Mrs. Lemoyne.”

  “Oh, yeah.” He gave an unwilling snort of laughter. “Damn it, I know I’m getting married, but-no, I haven’t. This is one of her hospital days. I’ll see her for dinner. I hear on the grapevine that you’re working for Kitty Sims.”

  “That was yesterday. Today I’m working for Florida-American. I’ve been retained to find out if there actually is any buried treasure on Key Gaspar.”

  Shanahan choked on a mouthful of whiskey. When he was able to stop coughing he remarked indifferently, “Didn’t they brief you? They win either way.”

  “Not if I can show it to be a hustle.”

  “But that’s actually the whole point, Mike. It was worked out in 1925 as a fraud on the lot-buying public. All we’re doing-”

  He broke off abruptly and looked at Shayne over his raised glass, his mustache twisting.

  “Yeah,” Shayne said, “there’s always that one other possibility. I’m surprised it took this long to hit you. That it doesn’t date back to ’25 at all. That it was worked out fairly recently as a fraud on Florida-American. And if that’s the way the publicity breaks-and there’s going to be publicity, Frank, lots of it-Quarrels will be out a million bucks and he’ll look stupid, which is bad in his business. You know there’s no buried treasure, Frank.”