Dolls Are Deadly

by Brett Halliday

  Shayne shot his half-smoked cigarette irritably into the water. A black depression was growing within him. “I think I’ll go aboard for a minute.”

  Slim looked up for almost the first time since the redhead had come. “O.K. Help yourself.”

  Shayne stepped across and prowled around the cockpit, cabin and deck. It was the same as last night; everything was in place. He leaped from the gunnel back to the dock and then, looking back, he noticed that the coil of rope on the deck forward had no anchor attached to it.

  “Where’s the anchor?”

  Slim had finished cleaning the fish and was lowering a bucket on a rope over the side of the dock to get water to sluice away the blood and fish offal that was already attracting flies. “Anchor ring needed a weld. Somebody picked it up for the fix after we came in last night.”

  Had the anchor been there when he looked over the boat last night? Shayne couldn’t be sure.

  As Slim moved in from the dock edge with the bucket of water, Shayne stepped in ahead of him, took off his hat and mopped his forehead. The handkerchief slipped from his hand and landed in the fish blood.

  “Too bad,” Slim drawled as Shayne bent to pick it up. “Better throw it away. It’ll smell like hell of fish.”

  “It’ll wash out.” Shayne folded the handkerchief so the blood was inside and returned it to his pocket.

  Slim tossed the water forcefully from the bucket onto the bloody planks and turned back to dip up some more.

  “Funny how things go,” Shayne said. “I ran into Ed last night.”

  “Yeah? Where?”

  “Séance. At Madame Swoboda’s.”

  Slim laughed shortly. “Yeah, his wife goes for that stuff. Sometimes she drags him along.”

  “You ever go?”

  “Once, for kicks. There weren’t any.”

  “You staying at Ed’s hotel?”

  “Yeah. Blue Grotto.”

  “What about Vince?”

  “He’s at the Mirador.”

  “What’s his last name?”

  “Becker.” Slim gave him a probing look. “Why you so interested all of a sudden?”

  “I’m not sure I am, yet.” Shayne turned abruptly and started walking back to his car. “See you around.”

  “O.K.” Slim sloshed more water on the wharf.

  Before starting the motor Shayne sat staring off over the water, his gray eyes bleak, his face deeply trenched. His feeling of depression had not abated, and now a slow fury grew within him. He thought of Sylvester’s neat cabin and of his love for the boat and a lump choked his throat. Still… there was nothing rational to go on yet.

  He gunned the engine and moved out into the traffic stream headed for the Causeway to Miami. His two tails stayed with him, but they were the least of his worries now. On Biscayne he slammed on the brakes in front of a just-opened bar, parked and went in. He ordered a Hennessy from a pale and disinterested-looking bartender, downed it in one gulp, strode to a phone booth in the rear and scanned the yellow pages of the directory. Only a few blocks away, he found a medical laboratory run by a William Fox.

  He heeled out to the car, slid behind the wheel and drove the short distance, stopping in front of a modern white stone and glass building. The tails drove past, averting their eyes with elaborate casualness.

  The day was growing hotter. Sweat seeped down inside the redhead’s collar, wetting his shirt. It felt icy. He got out of the car and stalked up the walk into the building, went down the hall and through a door marked William Fox, Laboratories.

  The blond receptionist, startled by his peremptory entrance, looked up from a roll and a paper container of coffee.

  “I’d like this blood analyzed.” Shayne took the wadded handkerchief from his hip pocket.

  “Certainly, sir. But no one’s in yet.”

  “Get someone in! This is urgent!”

  Shayne’s inner tension and barely-leashed fury, communicated itself to the girl. She stared hypnotized into his stark eyes and her own face whitened. Her fingers tightened on the paper coffee container and she half rose. “I think I just heard Mr. Fox come in. There’s a door to the laboratory from the other side.”

  Before she could protest, Shayne strode past her, thrust open the door behind her desk and entered the laboratory. A stout, graying man, just struggling into a white coat, eyed him with acute disfavor.

  “No one’s allowed back here. Please wait outside.”

  Shayne dropped the wadded handkerchief on a bare, white table top. “I’ve no time for formalities. Analyze this blood.” While the man stammered, Shayne added, “I’m investigating a murder.”

  The technician’s eyes bulged. “Are you from the police?”

  “What difference does it make? No, I’m not. I’m a private detective.”

  “I only asked.” Fox picked up the handkerchief gingerly and carried it to a laboratory table in front of a window, looking back uneasily. “I don’t want to get in any trouble.”

  Shayne’s hands clenched. “What trouble could you get in? If I were the murderer I’d know whether my victim was a man or a fish. And that’s all I want you to tell me—whether that’s human or fish blood.”

  Fox turned to the table and began working with tubes, liquids and eyedroppers.

  Shayne lit a cigarette and blew smoke in a blue cloud toward the window. After working silently for a few minutes, Fox looked around. “There’s more than a trace of human blood mixed with the fish blood,” he said.

  “Have you typed it?”

  “From first examination, I’d say ‘O.’”

  “That limits it, anyway. What do I owe you?”

  “Ten dollars. Pay the girl, please.”

  Shayne gave him a bleak nod, turned and went through the door, dropping a ten-dollar bill on the receptionist’s desk.

  9

  From the drugstore downstairs, Shayne called his office.

  “I’m dreaming!” Lucy said. “Or are you? Talking in your sleep, I mean?”

  “It’s the shank of the day, angel.”

  Sensing the depression beneath his glib words, she asked anxiously, “What is it, Michael?”

  “Phone Mrs. Santos and find out Sylvester’s doctor. Phone the doctor and see if he has Sylvester’s blood type and if he has, if it’s Rh. Then phone the information to Peter Painter’s office where I’ll go from here. Got it?”

  “Got it. Michael, is something the matter with Sylvester?”

  “I think he’s been murdered.”

  She gasped. “Oh, Michael, I know how you—”

  “One thing more,” he broke in, keeping his voice matter-of-fact, “has Bill Martin called in a report on Clarissa Milford?”

  “Yes. Nothing’s happened. She hasn’t left the house and no one has gone in.”

  “Not even her husband?”

  “No one, he said.”

  “Next time Bill phones in, tell him to hang on till I can get somebody to relieve him.”

  “All right, Michael.” She paused. “Whatever it was with Sylvester, is it part of the voodoo doll business?”

  “That’s something I have to find out. The only connection now is that one of the men I met on Sylvester’s boat turned up at Swoboda’s séance last night.”

  “Then there might be—”

  “Yes, there might be,” he said bleakly and hung up.

  Peter Painter had just taken off his coat when Shayne burst into the office. The Detective Chief turned irritably at the early morning intrusion.

  Shayne asked humorlessly, “Something bad you ate, Petey? Or is it me?”

  Painter sat down behind his desk with bristling officiousness, lifted one hand and traced the thin line of his black mustache with his thumbnail. He did not invite Shayne to be seated. “It’s you,” he said.

  Putting his knuckles on the desk, Shayne leaned toward Painter. “Did you get a phone call this morning that concerns me?”

  “I think I’ve had two. One from your secretary, and one from
a William Fox of the William Fox Medical Laboratories. I’m sure Mr. Fox was describing you. ‘Paranoiac type,’ he said. ‘Delusions of grandeur. Probably homicidal.’ In fact, he thinks you’ve already murdered somebody. So do I. Henry Henlein.”

  “No, it would be William Fox,” Shayne said, “except that I didn’t have time. What did my secretary say?”

  “She wanted me to report to you that Sylvester Santos’ blood type is Rh.”

  Shayne said grimly, “Then I want to report to your office, Painter, what I believe to be the murder of Sylvester Santos. He’s been running the Santa Clara, a charter boat, for years.”

  “I know who you mean.”

  “If you work fast enough before they move it, I think you’ll find Sylvester’s knife-stabbed body on the harbor bottom, weighted down by his own boat anchor, at the slip where he rents mooring space.”

  Painter made notes on a pad. “Would it be in order,” he asked sarcastically, “for the police department to inquire how citizen Shayne came by this rather precise information?”

  “It would be in order,” Shayne said evenly, “but I haven’t time to tell you. Get going on this, will you?”

  “I gather this is of close personal interest to you, shamus.” Painter’s thin lips stretched in an unctuous smile. “And inasmuch as you’re asking me to do something—there was a murder yesterday in which you also were involved…”

  A muscle twitched in Shayne’s cheek. “I can’t help you on that one, Petey.”

  “It’s just possible you won’t have to, hard as it will be for you to believe it. Ballistics has reported that he was shot by his own gun.”

  “That .32 Colt with the walnut handle that was lying beside him?”

  Painter nodded.

  “That’s funny. Henlein was a muscleman. I heard he didn’t usually carry a gun.”

  “That was the rumor. Maybe he bought one and committed suicide.”

  “Sure. And tied that noose around his own neck. Look, Painter, the one thing I can help you with—Sylvester—you don’t seem to want to listen to. If you find him murdered where I told you to look, I can name you three prime suspects.”

  Painter reached for his pen with simulated weariness, holding it poised and waiting.

  “Ed Woodbine, Blue Grotto,” Shayne said, “Slim Collins, Blue Grotto, Vince Becker, Mirador. I haven’t checked the addresses yet, but I think they’re right. These men are putting on a good, honest front.”

  “What if they are on the up and up?”

  “Then we look elsewhere. You might check back where they say they came from. They’re vacationists. Ed Woodbine’s in the insurance business in Detroit. He’s here with his wife. Slim Collins is a contractor with a hobby for working on internal-combustion engines. He’s from Philadelphia. Vince Becker owns a motel in Arizona. That’s what they told me, anyway. Their names may be phony. Becker looks Sicilian. In fact, none of them fit, but I’ll leave the checking to you.”

  “Your trust is gratifying. However, how do I know all this isn’t a red herring you dreamed up to dilute our efforts to probe into the Henlein murder?”

  A muscle jumped in Shayne’s cheek and his knuckles strained as his big hands gripped the table edge. He fastened his gray eyes on Painter with such bleak savagery that the Detective Chief drew back and lowered his own eyes to the neat pile of papers on his desk. “I don’t give a damn about Henlein,” Shayne snapped, “but Sylvester was a friend of mine.”

  “All right,” Painter murmured. “I was only asking. Your co-operation with this office isn’t always so good, you know.”

  Shayne swung away. “Phone Lucy at my office when you turn anything up on Sylvester.” At the door, he added, “I’ve got two tails on me this morning. If one of them’s yours, you’d better warn him not to get hurt.”

  “Now look here, Shayne—” Painter half rose, but Shayne was out of sight down the hall.

  The redhead stopped at a bar down the street, picked up a double Hennessy and carried it with him to a phone booth. He wanted to see Madame Swoboda again and to talk with Percy and Mabel Thain, but most important of all he wanted to find Clarissa’s husband, Dan Milford. Two men had been murdered since yesterday, and Dan Milford was still missing. Perhaps, as his wife feared, he had been murdered too, but if he was still alive…

  He downed the cognac, drew a well-worn address book from his pocket and thumbed through it.

  He dialed a number. When the connection was made, he said, “This is Mike Shayne, Bobo. How’s the world treating you?”

  “It ain’t.” The voice came sourly. “I’m treating it.”

  “You got any games going?”

  “Naw. Annual clean-up week. The cops closed us.”

  “Tight?”

  “Tight.”

  “Anybody they haven’t got to yet?”

  “You might try Harley. His friend on the force works harder for him than mine does.”

  “Craps or poker?”

  “Both, if he’s running.”

  “Thanks. What’s his number now?”

  “Hang on… Beach 7-9811…”

  “Thanks, Bobo.” Shayne forked the receiver, un-forked it and dialed again. When the line was open he could hear a mumble of male voices and an echoing rattle before a nasal “Hello” came over.

  “This is Shayne, Harley. I hear you’ve got a game running.”

  “Yeah? You keep your ears flapped out, you hear plenty. Who told you?”

  “Bobo.”

  “So?”

  “I’m looking for someone, Harley. Dan Milford. Is he there?”

  “How would I know? They’re all Joe Doakses to me, you know what I mean? That’s what they write on their phony checks.”

  “Don’t give me that, Harley. You know all of them. You have to, to stay in business. Is Dan Milford there?”

  “Look, Shayne, I wouldn’t stay in business ten minutes if I handed out names to every cop, wife or private eye who asked me. You know that.”

  “All I know,” Shayne said angrily, “is I’m coming over there and if Dan Milford isn’t there because you tipped him that I’m coming, the annual cleanup week will hit you and your police department contact so hard you’ll both be out of business—for good!”

  “Now wait a minute, shamus. How you going to know if Dan Milford was here or wasn’t here if he’s gone?”

  “I won’t. I’ll just assume he was and you tipped him. So if he isn’t there, go get him. He’s in one or another of the floating games, if there’s any more left besides yours. I’ll be over in fifteen minutes.”

  Shayne slammed down the receiver, strode out and got in his car and started moving. Harley’s place was in an old warehouse on Southwest Fourth Avenue. As the redhead turned south toward the river his thoughts seethed. The gray Buick and the green sedan were still with him. Assume for the moment that Peter Painter had not put a police tail on him. The loan-shark boss, De Luca, had ways of keeping in touch with that part of the Miami world which could affect him. If De Luca knew that Henny Henlein had come to Shayne’s office yesterday, De Luca would be worried today. So one of these tails could be his. And if the other had been hired by the three vacationists on Sylvester’s boat, it would seem to indicate either that the hoodlum’s murder and the murder of Sylvester were unconnected, or that one half of the vengeful group did not know what the other half was doing.

  While this speculation was a subterfuge to keep from thinking about Sylvester, agonized thoughts of the little man kept breaking through. He must have been knifed only minutes before Shayne had arrived at the dock. Slim, and any of the others who might have been with him, could have sighted Shayne maneuvering for a parking space in the lot at the head of the slip. They’d have had time to drop Sylvester’s body over the side with the anchor weight, then leave while Slim grabbed the grouper from the ice box and began to clean it over the place on the wharf already soaked by Sylvester’s blood.

  Still, why had they killed Sylvester? Mrs. Santos said Sylvest
er had been looking for Shayne last night. Had Sylvester known something at that time—something the others couldn’t risk having him tell? Or had Shayne’s presence on the boat yesterday alarmed them unduly? They might have reasoned that Sylvester had motivated it and that the little man knew something damaging to them which, actually, he didn’t. Then too, if they had been suspicious because of Shayne’s presence on the boat yesterday, their suspicions of Shayne, and Sylvester, must have zoomed into high when Ed met Shayne at the séance last night, assuming that Ed’s presence there was more than coincidental.

  If they had felt themselves so imperiled that they had killed Sylvester, wouldn’t Shayne now be marked out for early slaughter?

  The tailing cars, and the apparently innocuous séance last night, were taking on a more sinister character. Even Henlein’s murder, distant as it seemed from the three fishermen, might be interrelated some way. And Clarissa Milford. Where did she fit in this mélange of murder?

  Shayne stopped the car, strode across the sidewalk and moved out of sight between two weather-beaten buildings, sagging in the sun. A narrow warehouse door opened in one of them and a short, unshaven man in shirtsleeves, chewing the stump of a cold cigar, stepped out.

  “All right, Harley. Where is he?”

  The man removed the cigar from his mouth, spat on the sandy ground, put the cigar back and motioned over one shoulder with his thumb. “Inside.”

  As Shayne moved toward the door, Harley added, “Wait a minute, shamus. I never done this before. I got a favor to ask you.”

  “What is it?”

  “Just don’t tell him I was in on this, see? If it got around it could ruin me.”

  “All right.” Shayne turned impatiently. “Your reputation, such as it is, is safe with me.”

  “To tell the truth, I’ll be glad when he’s out. He’s losin’ his shirt.”

  “I thought that was how you made your living.”

  “Only when they pay,” Harley said sourly. He took the cigar stump out of his mouth and spat again. “This guy gives paper no bank knows.”

  At a sign from Harley to a suspicious face that had been peering at them through a sliding panel, the door opened and Shayne stepped inside.