Murder Spins the Wheel ms-53

by Brett Halliday

  “That light, man, it’s murder.”

  The girl slipped her naked foot inside the leg of Shayne’s pants and scraped her toenails against his calf. “Come on down. We need some new blood.”

  Moving only his arm, the young man held out a brownish cigarette with a friendly smile. “Throw away that tobacco. Don’t you know that cigarettes can kill you? You’ll like this. It’s top quality.”

  “I wouldn’t deprive you,” Shayne said. “As you were, everybody.”

  He turned off the light, separated his leg from the girl’s foot and went back the way he had come. There was a patter of bare feet on the deck behind him. The girl leaped on his back like a jockey.

  “No fair! You can’t show up like that and then just walk out.”

  He pried her loose and forced her off his back, trying not to hurt her. She had little breasts and sharp hipbones, and gave off a dry, baking heat, like an open oven.

  “I’m Lee Ewing,” she said. “I’m feeling left out so why don’t we-? Come on, please. Steve’s inside trying to straighten out the movies. It’s honestly OK. You don’t want me to turn into a dried-up old maid, do you?”

  He took one of her wrists in each huge hand and made her hold still. “That’s the last thing I want. But business before pleasure. I just got here. Put on a few clothes and we’ll start over.”

  “And just have to take them off again? I don’t see the sense-all right,” she said quickly, “I know people don’t like girls to make the first move.”

  He released her wrists and she padded off toward the stern. Opening the nearest door, he entered a brightly lighted room. A youth with an unkempt shock of black hair-fully dressed, Shayne was glad to see-was pawing through a tumbled heap of movie film. There was a projector beside him, a small screen on the wall. He didn’t notice Shayne.

  “You’re Steve, aren’t you?” Shayne said. “Have you seen Vince?”

  “He’s around,” the boy said. He freed one hand to pick up a martini glass and drink. “Maybe you think you’ve seen dirty movies. Well, there’s a scene here somewhere, you never saw anything like it. All I have to do is get this organized. You wouldn’t be willing to give me a hand, would you?”

  “After I talk to Vince.”

  He tried a door. It led down to a small compact galley.

  “My advice is,” the boy said, looking up, “wait till morning. There hasn’t been a peep out of them for hours. Listen, all I have to do is find the damn end. Any damn end. Get it back on the reel. It’ll make your eyes pop. I mean some of the things they do are impossible.”

  “Vince won’t mind if I wake him up,” Shayne said, trying another door. This one was locked.

  “Yeah, but can you? After Vince puts himself away, forget it. What I was thinking, if I had somebody to help I could string the film around the room and take out the twists, find the end that way.” He held up a section and looked through it. “Take a look at this. Of course you don’t get any detail, but this babe has one of the biggest and sexiest cans-”

  Shayne took a strip of celluloid out of his wallet and forced it between the door and the jamb. Realizing what he was doing, the boy threw down the film and came over.

  “You’d better have some reason!” he said.

  Shayne looked around. “Sit down.”

  “Oh,” Steve said, retreating. “Well.”

  As the celluloid strip slipped between the bolt and the socket, Shayne stepped up the pressure. Slowly the bolt came back. In a moment the door sprang open.

  This was the master cabin. It was furnished like a motel room, with an ordinary double bed and wall-to-wall carpet. The bed was in a state of extreme disorder, the bedclothes in a heap. No one was sleeping in it. On the bedside table were glasses and two bottles of Scotch, one still unopened and the other nearly empty, an untouched plate of cold baked beans, overflowing ashtrays. One light was on, over a dressing table next to an open window. A girl was studying her reflection in the triple mirror. She wore a lowcut bra and a half-slip. The bra hook was open. A cigarette dangled from her mouth.

  She looked over her shoulder at Shayne. She had long untidy hair, over her forehead and down almost to her bare shoulders. Her eyes, in a pale face, were very large, with artificial lashes and green lids.

  “Come in,” she said without surprise. “I was trying to decide if I’m getting too fat. The minute I decide I’m the teeniest bit overweight I’ll go on a diet, like that.” She snapped her fingers. “I don’t kid around.”

  Steve had come into the doorway to look around. “Where’s Vince, Betty? This guy wanted to see him and I said it’d be OK. We don’t want to interrupt or anything.”

  “Interrupt what?” she said bitterly.

  Shayne glanced into the narrow bathroom and opened the sliding doors of the closet. Vince didn’t seem to be hiding in closets tonight.

  “Somebody hook me up,” Betty said. “It keeps moving around.”

  Shayne came back and hooked the bra.

  “Thank you,” she said nicely, her eyes on her own reflection. “I’m full, but you couldn’t call me fat. God, I worry every time I wake up. I have to go straight to a mirror and find out.” She took the cigarette out of her mouth and smiled at herself. “No, I’m still cute. I’ve got good bone structure.” She added somberly, “And right now, what a headache.”

  Her mood changed abruptly. “You know what I have to put up with Vince, Steve. You tell him.”

  Steve blew out his breath. “Not again, Betty. You’ve got to start looking at the bright side. Nobody likes a chick who keeps spilling over all the time.”

  “Are you referring to me?” she said icily. “I make it a point to never show my feelings, even when I’m crying on the inside.”

  “Oh, brother,” Steve said, and went back to his own problem.

  Betty swung around with a dramatic gesture which almost carried her off the backless bench.

  “All they think about is their own kicks.” She smiled at Shayne and held out an empty glass. “Will you freshen up my drink? And look in the John for an aspirin. Then we’ll talk.”

  Shayne made her a new drink, finishing the first bottle and opening the second. He found a tin of aspirin in the medicine cabinet. She shook a half dozen tablets into her palm. He picked out two and put them back.

  “Most of these jerks,” she said admiringly, “I could swallow the whole bottle and they’d figure it was up to me.”

  Shayne took a long drink of Scotch from the bottle and sat on the foot of the unmade bed. “What’s your idea about what happened to Vince?”

  She giggled. “Do you realize I feel much better? I’m like that. I sort of press a button and count three and I’m normal again. Vince-he disappears on me all the time.” She looked puzzled. “What time is it?”

  “About ten-thirty.”

  She nodded. “He’s out rambling. Rambling and looking and trying to hustle some poor chick out of a couple of bucks. How good a friend of his are you?”

  “I can take him or leave him.”

  “He owe you some money?”

  Shayne grinned. “Betty, you’re a mind reader.”

  “Oh, that doesn’t make me such a wonderful guesser,” she said modestly. “He owes all over town. I’ve made him some loans myself. I’m a receptionist, I drag down pretty good money. When he starts paying off you know who’s going to be first in line, yours truly. And I’m supposed to tell people that’s going to be soon.”

  “I hear he’s been making it with his boss’s wife. Why does he need money?”

  “She doesn’t have too much you can cash in on.”

  Shayne drank from the bottle again. “How long’s he been gone?”

  “I didn’t even know he was! My trouble is, I get disgusted and I drink too fast and forget to eat anything. Things don’t look so screwed-up after a couple of drinks. And all of a sudden I’m out like a light.” She drank off her Scotch and held out the glass, confident that he would get up and fill it for her. “Some
times I wake up somewhere else and I don’t know how I got there. What a feeling! I know I ought to eat, but ugh. We adjourned in here with those two nice bottles of Johnny Walker, compliments of Mr. and Mrs. Al Naples. Still wrapped up in tissue paper, like presents. What I wanted to do was go to bed, but Vince has been a flop in that department lately. So we opened the Scotch.”

  Shayne handed her a new drink. “He’s on junk, isn’t he?”

  She nodded slowly. “The person I’m in love with. I’m not like some people. I don’t jump in the hay with anybody. Before Vince moved up to H that was the one thing I didn’t like about him, the way he would do it with anybody. I don’t include Mrs. Naples. He has to make a living, I grant him that. But I was brought up different and I’m not about to change.”

  Her mind skipped. “For instance, the minute you walked in I knew you’d be gentle. Those shoulders of yours. You look tough, but you’re not, are you? I like the way you get me drinks without making a big deal out of it. You don’t know how tired I get of these boys. I’m ready for somebody more mature.”

  Her eyes misted over. “We’d be great! I know just the things I’d like to do with you.”

  She was beginning to move about excitedly and she was breathing more quickly. She slid forward so her knees touched his.

  “But I’m not going to do them!” she said, her eyes shining with excitement. “So never mind asking me. Because I love Vince! I don’t believe in cheating on the guy you love, with all his faults. But how I’d like to!”

  He took hold of her knee to hold it still. Her flesh was cool and smooth under his hand, and she moved her leg between his so his hand slid along it. Using both hands, he closed her knees firmly.

  “Betty, you and Vince came in here and locked the door. You made yourself a drink. What did he do?”

  “What do you think he did?” Little lines of tension gathered around her eyes. “Why do they have to do it? Do you know? Shoot themselves full of that crap and pull out of the human race? I get a kind of-you know”-she seemed embarrassed-“sexy feeling when he puts in the needle, and what good does it do me? I know he’s going to be nodding in thirty seconds. What could I do but get stinking?”

  “When was this, Betty, about seven or eight?”

  “What’s the point of all the questions? We both know what happened. They sold him a bad bag. They cut it all the way down so it didn’t give him much of a charge. He woke up sick and he had to get dressed and go out looking for somebody with five or ten bucks so he could hunt up a connection and get himself right again. You want some advice about how long to wait? You know better than that. He could walk in this minute, or he might be gone a couple of weeks. That’s what it is with a junkie.”

  “There’s a watchman on duty,” Shayne said. “He says nobody’s passed him.”

  “A watchman? Don’t be dense, honey. He dozed off. Get me another drink. One more, and then I’m going to eat those baked beans if they strangle me.”

  “And Vince didn’t get dressed,” Shayne went on.

  He went back to the closet. One section was labeled “Hers,” the other “His.” He pulled a lightweight blue blazer off a hanger. It was longer, more narrow and more rakish than Al Naples’ clothes.

  Betty said, “He was sick, he didn’t wear a jacket. Now you’re going to stop being polite? I’ll pour my own drink.”

  She misjudged the corner of the bed and went headlong on the crumpled blue sheets. Shayne sorted through the slacks until he found a pair that was too long for Al Naples, with tapered legs into which the older man could never have forced his heavy thighs.

  “And he forgot his pants,” Shayne said. “His shoes must be here somewhere.”

  Betty groaned. “Why does he do those things? He’s always been so wild-”

  “No, this was fairly intelligent,” Shayne said, “and maybe somebody else thought it up for him. He cooked his shot and put it in his arm, and he probably let out a groan to make you think he was getting a jolt of the real thing. It was probably only sugar. He knew you’d knock yourself out with the Johnny Walker as soon as he closed his eyes. And that’s what happened. He hung his clothes in the closet so they wouldn’t get wrinkled. Then he went out the window.”

  Shayne pulled the sliding window open as far as it would go. A narrow rope ladder was fixed to two cleats beneath the sill.

  “Yeah,” Shayne continued. “He wouldn’t want to dive because somebody might hear the splash. The south shore of Normandy Isle is about an eighth of a mile away. He didn’t have to hurry. The door was locked and no one would bother you. He could swim back half an hour later, unfasten the ladder and let it go. Then he’d dry himself off, get back in bed and give himself a real shot of heroin. He’d be in the clear all the way.”

  Betty stared at him, the uncapped whiskey bottle in one hand. “Where is he, then?”

  “Probably still in the bay, don’t you think?” Shayne said.

  “Vince?” She gave a high giggle. “You’re so wrong. He’s a marvellous swimmer. He could swim to Palm Beach and back.” Her face changed. “Unless somebody-”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Shayne said.

  He took the bottle out of her hand and drank from it. He gave it back and left her on the bed, looking after him with a dazed expression.

  11

  In the other room Steve was on his hands and knees, loops of loose film around his neck and across his back.

  “I can’t find either end!” he cried. “It’s a nightmare.”

  “It has to be there somewhere,” Shayne said.

  “You promised you’d help me!” the boy called after him as he let himself out.

  The other girl was waiting on deck for him. She was still barefoot, but she had put on a blouse, a skirt and lipstick. Her hair was up in a knot in back, and with her elbows out and her small breasts poking against the front of her blouse, she was shaping the knot and driving pins into it.

  “Well?” she said.

  “Well what?”

  “I want to get you a drink and start over.” She jabbed in the last pin. “There. Now I look a little more civilized. Did I tell you my name? It’s Lee Ewing, and I know it was silly to jump on your back that way. What’s your name?”

  “Mike Shayne,” he said abstractedly, listening.

  He tried to get around her, but she sidestepped, putting herself between him and the gangway. “You don’t have to go. I want to tell you how that happened. I couldn’t see why for once two people couldn’t do something simple. Why waste a lot of time talking about the weather and the movies and who do you know and so on? What I forgot was that I was way ahead of you as far as whiskey consumption went.”

  Shayne frowned. Something was bumping at regular intervals against the side of the boat.

  “At least you’re thinking about it,” Lee said approvingly. “That’s a step. I won’t say another word until you’ve had a few drinks and we’ve taken care of the weather. Isn’t it a pleasant evening? Warm, and all that crap? What’s your favorite TV program?” She leaned her forehead against him. “Mike, you’re so big.”

  “Yeah.” Shayne went around to the other side of the boat and looked over the rail. By leaning out he could see a few rungs of the rope ladder beneath the window of the main cabin, and below that, nothing but black shadow. The thumping sound came again.

  Lee had followed him. “Honey?” She drew his arm against her breast. “Did I say anything wrong?”

  “The big trouble is, Lee,” Shayne said, moving away from the rail, “we’re in different time zones. You’re relaxing. I’m working.”

  “What kind of work?”

  “I’m a detective.”

  Gently but firmly he moved her out of his way. She let him go, but called after him, “And does that mean you’re not human?”

  Steve was sitting helplessly on the floor, surrounded by film. “I’m licked,” he told Shayne. “My old man tells me never to start something and not finish it, but this-”

&nb
sp; Shayne stepped over a loop of film and entered the cabin. Betty was back in front of the mirror, twisting from one side to the other, to get different slants on her stomach and hips.

  “Fat as a pig,” she said with disgust. “And I hardly eat anything. I just nibble at a piece of dry toast for breakfast.”

  Shayne looked for the light switches and turned them on. There was a tiny expandable tensor light on one of the bedside tables. Extended to its full stretch, it just reached the window.

  “You decided to come back,” Betty said, recognizing him. “Tell me. You don’t have any axe to grind, one way or another. Am I too big back here?”

  She slapped herself resoundingly. From the resonance, there was nothing but flesh under the half-slip.

  Shayne directed the concentrated beam of the little lamp downward toward the water, without replying.

  “All I want is an opinion,” she complained. “I didn’t say you had to flatter me or anything.”

  A passing boat had sent out a long wake, which was now beginning to subside. The bottom of the ladder was taut where it went into the water, as though something was weighing it down. Shayne shifted the lamp’s beam. A long black shadow swam up from below, knocked lightly against the boat’s planking and sank out of sight.

  Lee’s voice called from the rail, “What was that?”

  Shayne waited, playing the light back and forth along the slick black surface. The shadowy object came up again. It was unrelieved black along its entire length. This time it barely nudged the boat, not quite breaking water before it was gone. It looked shiny and hard, and was about as long as a man’s body.

  Shayne wedged one of the joints of the lamp over the sill and slipped off his jacket.

  “Why not?” Betty said approvingly. “I’m not going to bed with you, and don’t try to persuade me. One man at a time is my motto, irregardless. But go ahead, take off some clothes. It’s stuffy in here.”

  Shayne kicked out of his shoes and swung one leg over the sill. Betty watched open-mouthed.

  As his foot found the top rung of the ladder and he swung his second leg after the first, she cried shrilly, “You don’t care how you upset people, do you? Come in here and say those things about Vince-I’m just beginning to forget I heard them. Then you come in again and climb out the window! How much can a person stand?”