“You asked me that before,” she said shortly, “and I told you I set myself up. And the reason is apparent.”
“Not to me. Let’s come at it from another direction, then. What was the meaning of those numbers on Jimsey’s tape at last night’s séance?”
“Tape?” Her face was blandly innocent. “Do you mean the message from ‘outside’?”
“Let’s drop the act. It was a message all right—from inside! It was information in some sort of cabala. What was the message? Who was it for?”
“In numerology there is a mystic meaning to all numbers.” Her voice was rarefied. “What those particular numbers meant, I do not know. I am only the—magnet which attracts the spirits. The person for whom the message was meant would know.”
“Since the voice was supposed to be from the spirit of the boy, Jimsey, the message was meant for his parents, the Thains. Did they understand?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t think they did. I think those numbers were incorporated in Thain’s message for someone else. I want you to tell me who it was.”
“I wouldn’t know. Different people attend my séances every night. Except for a few regulars I don’t know any of them.”
“Where did you get the numbers?”
“They came to me in my trance.”
“Now look.” Shayne’s voice hardened. “You didn’t say anything in what you call your ‘trance.’ Those messages were prepared beforehand on tape, and both you and I know it.”
“Well,” she took a deep drag on her cigarette, “what of it? I give them a good show. They get their money’s worth in entertainment.”
“They get more than their money’s worth. You could charge more. Why don’t you?”
“Because I’m not greedy,” she snapped.
He held her with his eyes. “I think you are—for everything.” He saw the rise and fall of her breasts beneath the silken blouse. Slowly, she moved one hand and rested it on his knee. The pressure was light, but he could feel the warmth of her tapering fingers.
For a moment Shayne wondered—would Dan Milford, or any man, resist her female appeal? Had he been too ready to believe Dan Milford’s assertion that he loved only his wife?
With a curious detachment, he saw that the roots of her hair were light and her skin too creamy for the ebony hair. Evidently Madame Swoboda had reversed the usual process and dyed her naturally blond hair, black.
Experimentally, he pulled her over, pressing a hard kiss on her lips. They pulsed. Her breathing quickened and Shayne felt her hands creep across his chest, her nails digging through his shirt.
It might have been the creak of a board in the moldering house, or because she opened her eyes to look beyond his shoulder into the opened doorway of the darkened séance room. Or perhaps it was a sixth sense of animal preservation that the redhead had acquired during a lifetime of professional sleuthing.
In a single burst of action he was out of her arms, crouched with one knee on the floor and his gun in his hand.
The two guns spoke at nearly the same instant, their combined echoes breaking flatly in the barren space.
The bullet aimed at Shayne went over his head and splintered the plastered wall. Shayne’s shot was precise. The man who had come from the dimness of the séance room heeled back as the bullet drove into his rib casing. The gun dropped from his hand, and both hands pressed hard over the spreading blood.
13
The figure stumped toward them into the light of the waiting room. Blood seeped from between the man’s fingers where he held his hands tight-pressed, his face was white and contorted. It was the acned face of the man who had been tailing Shayne since last night in the gray Buick.
“Who hired you?” Shayne drove at him.
“Get me to a hospital!” The words rasped hoarsely.
“Who hired you?”
“I’m bleeding to death, I tell you!”
“You’ll live—if we get you to a hospital in time. Who hired you?”
“Some guy… didn’t tell me his name.”
“Do you know D. L.?”
“Who doesn’t?”
“Are you working for him?”
“Hell, no. I’m an independent. So’s the man that hired me.”
“How do you know?”
“He was afraid of D. L. I had instructions to stay clear of D. L. or any of his boys.”
“Describe the man who hired you.”
“I can’t. Medium size is all I know. He was wearing dark glasses.”
“Are you working with the other tail?”
“No. Don’t know him. For God’s sake, quit blabbing and get me to a doc.”
“Were you hired to tail me or kill me?”
“At first, just to tail—”
“When did they change the instructions? Before you tailed me to the boat this morning, or afterward?”
“Afterward. I was to take you out if you done certain things.”
“What things?”
“Comin’ here.”
“How do you contact the man who hired you?”
“I don’t any more. Dunno where to find him. He’s paying me off by mail—he says.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow, he says.” The man moaned again and sank to one of the benches. “Can’t we go now?”
Shayne nodded bleakly. “As soon as I wind things up with the Madame.” He turned to the girl whose face was nearly as pale now as the wounded man’s, “Who wants to keep me away from you so badly he’d kill me?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know anything about this.”
“Put a call through to police headquarters.” He jerked his head toward the phone on the desk.
“Shayne!” She was pleading, desperately. “It’s the God’s truth! I don’t know—”
“When you get the police, tell them we’ve got a gun-shot man here.”
“Oh—” She moved toward the phone, looking relieved. “Thank you.”
“But whether the cops take you with them, depends on how fast you talk before they get here.”
She made the call sullenly and walked back.
Shayne eyed the luggage stacked in the hall. “Why were you running away?”
“It’s you and your goddam investigating!” She blazed at him, white-faced and defensive. “It was bound to bring the police in.”
“You’re clean with the police. I’ve checked. And you explained last night how legitimately you’re operating here.”
“Who wants to be mixed up with the police anyway?”
“If you don’t, keep talking! Because since I left you last night another man’s been murdered—this time a friend of mine.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Shayne.” Her voice took on its deep timbre. “I suppose he had one of my voodoo dolls in his pocket,” she added in a hurt tone.
“No, but I think he was murdered by one of your regulars—Ed Woodbine, better known in Detroit as Slug Murphy.”
“You must believe me! I don’t know anything about it.” She sat down slowly and looked directly at him without provocativeness, but with a kind of suspended fear. When she spoke it was as if she were talking to herself.
“He told me there was no risk when he set me up.”
“Who told you?”
She shrugged fatalistically. “I was doing a mind-reading act in a second-rate club in Vegas, and a gentleman who asked me to have a drink with him one night suggested this. His name was John Smith.”
Shayne snorted. “Captain John Smith, no doubt.”
“I knew it was a phony, but what difference did it make? He gave me cash—more than I’d ever seen—and told me to come here and rent a house and start the séances. All I’d ever have to do, he said, aside from my regular business, was to work certain numbers into my spirit messages. He didn’t tell me what they were for, and I didn’t ask.”
“Where do you get the numbers?”
“If he’s got me into trouble,” she said through clenched teeth,
“I’ll find him and squeeze him dry!” She paused, continuing after a moment with weary resignation. “They come by mail written on a plain sheet of paper in a plain envelope. The postmark is New York City.”
“How are they written?”
“Typed, and in the order to be given.”
“Has John Smith,” Shayne emphasized the name disdainfully, “given you more money since?”
“Yes. Cash sometimes, in the envelopes.”
“What do you think the numbers are for?”
She shrugged again. “I suspect I’m a go-between for some sort of Syndicate deal. Policy numbers maybe, or race-track betting. It could be anything, I guess. I don’t know and I don’t want to know.”
“Have you had any dealings with De Luca?”
“No.”
“Did John Smith put any restrictions on you?”
“No-o—Except to keep the séances light entertainment and not to gouge the customers.”
“Do you know why that was?”
“He didn’t want to attract the attention of the police to his other operation, I guess—whatever it is.”
A police siren shrilled outside. The girl’s face turned whiter. “I’ve leveled with you, Shayne. I’ve told all I know.”
The redhead rose as two policemen entered. He indicated the wounded man with a curt nod. “He took a shot at me. Have him fixed up and then let Will Gentry shake him down. See if his tongue’s looser then. I’ll be in later to lodge a formal complaint.”
“Right, Mr. Shayne.” The policemen helped the man out.
Shayne turned to Swoboda. She stood up, swaying toward him. “Thanks, redhead.”
“We’re not through yet, babe.”
“No?” She widened her eyes provocatively and moistened her full lips.
“You’re not to leave town,” he said harshly. “Understand? And I want you to run another séance tonight.”
“Why?” She put out her slim hand and touched his cheek gently, invitingly, and moved closer.
“Because I say so,” he snapped, picked up his hat and went out the door.
Outside, he leaped into his car and sped to the News building. There were no tails behind him and it seemed almost lonesome.
He parked, entered the building, strode through the lobby and took the elevator up to the editorial floor, long-legging it through the desk-filled room till he reached Timothy Rourke’s office.
The gangling reporter was typing with two fingers, a green eyeshade on his forehead and a cigarette dangling from a corner of his mouth.
“I’d like to listen to that tape you made last night, Tim,” Shayne said.
“O.K.” Rourke stopped typing, opened a drawer and handed Shayne the spool.
“Where can we play it back?”
“Here, if you want.” Rourke’s bony hands swept a clear place on the desk. He rose, lifted a compact recorder-player from a precarious balance on top of a file case, and brought it over. He inserted the spool of tape and plugged it in. They rewound it quickly, then snapped it on “play” and bent together over the machine.
Once again the voice of Madame Swoboda came, rasping and mechanical on the imperfect pick-up. The words were recognizable, however, and the sound intelligible. First the intoned psalm to set the spiritual atmosphere as eerie as it had been last night… He hath done marvelous things… then the message from beyond… Sharon, my marriage was a mistake… and finally Jimsey’s voice speaking to Mother and Daddy… it is so far… for two hours and thirty-six minutes I have traveled… through the forty-eight outer worlds… I am happy—but when I lay dying Friday night I spoke your names eight times…
“Same old gobbledegook it was the first time,” Rourke observed cynically.
“I’m not so sure it’s gobbledegook.”
The redhead played it through once more, listening with strained and sober attention. Rourke went back to his typing, looking up as Shayne snapped off the recorder and rose with a faint, grim smile of satisfaction. “Guard that tape with your life, Tim. It might be Exhibit A.”
“What’s cooking?”
Shayne strode across the room. “Haven’t time to explain. Tell your boss to keep the presses open. The News might get one hell of an exclusive. Oh—and Tim—” He stopped half through the doorway—“Meet me at Swoboda’s a little before eight.”
“That tape recording must have been good,” Rourke said as the door swung shut.
Shayne stopped at a bar, ordered a double cognac and carried it with a tall glass of ice water to the phone booth where he dialed Will Gentry’s private number.
“Did the mug I sent you open up, Will?” he said when the connection was made.
“He was open. You did a good job.”
“He’s not dead, is he?”
“No, just a few shattered ribs.”
“What’s the dope on him, Will?”
“He’s no one on record.”
“Who hired him to go gunning for me?”
“A stranger came up to him in a bar and bought him for the tailing job—he said.”
“That’s the story he told me.”
“He really seems to be some sort of screwball independent as he claims,” Gentry said. “There’s no Syndicate affiliation that we’ve been able to uncover, at least. He claims he shot at you in self-defense. How about that?”
“Nuts!”
“O.K. Suppose you brief me a little, though. How come it happened in off-hours at a spook house? What was it—a love triangle? Are you courting the Madame?”
“Not exactly, but it’s an idea.” Shayne paused, took a sip of cognac and followed it with water. “You might have a man at tonight’s séance, Will. Just in case.”
“Just in case of what? We’ve checked Madame Swoboda. She’s clean.”
“Maybe so. I haven’t got it all added up yet.”
“Well, while you’re figuring, I’ll keep my men on tap here. By the way, I hear you’re in trouble over at the Beach.”
“That’s nothing unusual. As long as Painter warms the chief’s chair, I probably will be.”
Gentry chuckled. “All right, Mike. I’ll let you know if anything develops here.”
Shayne hung up, broke the connection, dropped in another coin and called his office, finishing the cognac while he waited for Lucy to answer.
“Did Bill Martin call, angel?”
“Yes. There’s nothing threatening Clarissa Milford so far.”
“I only hope that eager-beaver knows a threat when he sees one,” Shayne said somberly. “On his next report, tell him to tail Clarissa when she goes to the séance tonight.”
“Are you going, too?”
“Yes, but I think that’ll be it. She’s closing down.”
“Good. No more voodoo threats for anybody—especially you.”
“Nobody’s put a hex on me.”
“Maybe not, but Will Gentry called earlier this afternoon and I know about Swoboda putting that gunman on you.”
“Who says it was Swoboda?”
“I do.”
“She’ll sue you for slander.”
“Michael—” her voice grew suddenly small—“please be careful.”
“I will, angel. See you later.”
He hung up and went out to his car. It was exactly five minutes to five when he arrived at the building which housed the Federal Narcotics Bureau. He parked in front, bounded up the stairs and into the marble lobby, crossing it without slowing his stride. He by-passed the long, wide stairway and long-legged it down the hall.
When he burst through a door at the far end, he found his friend, Steve Grain, standing in the outer office at the water cooler.
“Hello, Mike. What’s the rush?” Grain dropped the cup he held in a basket and extended his hand. “I’m about to call it a day. Shall we go down and have a drink?”
Shayne shook his head. “No, let’s go into your private office. I’d like some information, and I may have some that will interest you.”
Grain
led the way down a door-lined corridor to an office at the end. Inside, he motioned Shayne to a chair, closed the glass-paneled door behind them, and tilted back in his own swivel chair, pushing cigarettes and a lighter across the desk to Shayne.
Grain was not what is commonly called a self-made man, but rather a keep-what-you’ve-got man. A career man in the narcotics service, he had started at the top and stayed there. His face was austere and pale and he regarded Shayne through silver-rimmed glasses with old-fashioned wire hooks over his ears. Shayne had worked with him on previous occasions and had found him capable, honest and intelligent, dedicated to his chosen task of combating the drug traffic.
Shayne crossed his long legs, lit a cigarette and said, “I know you cut off the flow of dope into the Miami area a few months back. Has it stayed cut off?”
Grain’s forehead wrinkled. “It’s still tight as a drum. We’re covering every wharf and inlet. The big operators have either been jailed or run out of town or, as in the case of De Luca, kept under such strict surveillance that they’re inoperative.” He laughed shortly. “They tell me De Luca’s had to hedge by moving into the loan-shark racket.”
Shayne nodded. “And very successfully, I believe. So you’re sure he’s not actively involved at present with narcotics?”
“Absolutely. We’ve got the Syndicate stopped short here.”
“I’m glad to hear it. It confirms my opinion.”
“Which is what?”
“That what I have to discuss with you is a wildcat operation.”
Grain frowned. “You think dope is coming in?”
“I’d stake my license on it,” Shayne said.
14
The redhead briefed Grain on what he had come to suspect during a day and night’s sleuthing.
“If those three sportsmen hadn’t become worried about my presence on Sylvester’s boat,” Shayne said, “and showed it in a number of ways, I might never have suspected anything. They swapped a fish in a jolly drunken way with the men on the Cuban boat, and now I’m convinced they brought in a fish-belly full of dope right under my eyes.”
Grain nodded. “It’s possible. Since Castro’s revolution in Cuba, the stuff has dammed up there. The old smuggling contacts have been broken and it takes time to set up new ones. In the interval, someone from the old regime might well do a little hijacking over there and start a hit-and-run operation of his own.”
Dolls Are Deadly Page 11
