Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 39, No. 5, November 1976

When a murderer strikes from beyond the grave, it means one of three things. Either he is not dead or someone alive is using his name — or a ghost is walking. After a gruesome double killing, it is up to Shayne to find out which.

I

Mike Shayne pondered. It had all the earmarks of being a domestic case and he normally did not mix in family beefs. He would not have seen her at all if Jim Rourke had not pushed him into it as a favor to a friend.

The woman waited patiently. She was perched in the chair placed strategically in front of the redhead’s desk. She had class, was unpainted and still attractive in middle years. A few treadmarks were visible here and there, but most of her lines and planes remained smooth and she exuded an air of cool confidence and intelligence.

When she phoned in for an appointment at Mike Shayne’s Flagler Street office, she had said her name was Samantha. She was Samantha of Samantha’s. It meant nothing to Shayne, but his secretary had instantly perked.

“She is weddings, Michael,” Lucy Hamilton had said, excitement sharpening her tone. “If you have a posh Miami wedding these days, Samantha is your planner.”

Samantha’s father had not been seen by nor been in contact with her mother since the previous Friday, when he left the family home to go to his office at Brooks and Associates. It meant he had been out of touch for five days.

“Brooks,” mused Shayne. “Those are the land people. Worldwide. Right?”

Samantha nodded. “Father has been with them for years. He is considered an expert in land valuation.”

“You’ve talked to the Brooks people? Are you sure your father has not been sent—”

“They are concerned, Mr. Shayne. They do not understand his absence. Father has an enviable company reputation for attendance.”

Shayne slouched lower in his chair and used a thumb and forefinger to tug an earlobe. It was an habitual gesture when he was thinking hard. “How old is your father, Miss Bums?”

“Sixty-seven.”

“He and your mother get along okay?”

“They are contented people, Mr. Shayne — and, no, father has not scurried off to some corner of the world with a young secretary clinging to his arm. Should you discover that he has, I will pay you ten times your normal fee. You may have a contract to that effect drawn by your secretary.”

The redhead gave her a sharp look from under shaggy eyebrows. “You are perceptive, Miss Bums.”

“I know my father,” she said.

He sat up suddenly, braced large forearms on the edge of the desk, interlocked meaty fingers. “Okay, you got any ideas about where he might have gone, why he might have—”

“None,” she interrupted. Her lips tightened. “It’s totally out of character.”

“How about your mother?” the detective asked.

“She’s almost ill with worry. That’s one of the reasons I have come to you.”

“Another being you have not gone to the police.”

“No,” she said. “I have not. Frankly, I do not want newspaper publicity. More importantly, I want someone concentrating full time on finding Father. I can afford to pay for that service.”

“Have you or your mother considered foul play?”

She took a moment before answering. “Mother hasn’t, I’m sure. But I... well, after five days, Mr. Shayne.” She abruptly waved a ringless hand. “I don’t know. I can’t conceive...”

She let the words trail off.

Shayne reached for the phone. One avenue needed to be explored immediately. The phone could cut a comer.

“City Morgue,” answered the voice. “Zoner.”

“Mike Shayne, Ray. I’m looking for a missing person. He hasn’t been in the newspapers.”

“Got two unidentifieds, Mike, a male and a fe — oops, you said he. Okay, got one male unidentified. Negroid, twenty-eight to thirty—”

“Nope. Caucasian. Sixty-seven, probably well groomed and—”

“Got two of them, too. But they’re freshies, just came in about an hour ago. And kinda weird — they came in together. That part ain’t weird, of course. I mean, they was found staked out in a swamp, the way I hear it. Now, that’s weird, ain’t it? I mean, two guys staked out in—”

“You get them with papers, Ray?” Shayne asked sharply.

“Yep. No trouble with I.D. Blake Thomas Singleton, Caucasian, male, age sixty-six—”

“Nope.”

“Patrick Nole Burns, Caucasian male, age sixty-seven—”

“Bingo!” Shayne said grimly.

“Oh, boy, you do pick the dandies! Like I said, these two boys were found staked out in a swamp, side by side, heads and faces packed in mud. Some alligator hunter fell over them early this morning, I hear.”

Samantha Bums went ashen and shot to her feet when Sayne told her where she could find her father. She did not know Singleton, she said, taut and trembling. She looked as if she could explode at any second.

The redhead hooked a long arm up and over his shoulder, yanked open a drawer of a filing cabinet. He brought out a fresh bottle of Martell, planted it on the desk. His hand disappeared into the drawer again, returned with a glass. The movement had spread his lapels wide, exposed the holstered .45.

Samantha Burns stared at him. “I don’t drink,” she finally managed. “And I must go to mother.” She continued to stare hard for a few seconds, then she seemed to gather herself She took a deep breath.

“Mr. Shayne,” she said coldly, “find my father’s killer.”

“Un-huh.”

“And when you do, use that... that gun!”

Shayne opened the bottle and poured some cognac. He slugged down the drink before he rose and slammed the glass against the desk top.

“Miss Bums,” he said flatly, “I am not a hired gun. I will find and take your father’s murderer to the police! Understood?”

She had recoiled. She suddenly slumped. “Yes,” she said meekly.

Then she turned and walked out of the office.

II

Shayne busied himself with office cleanup the remainder of that bright Wednesday morning in mid-May. He was stalling. He was restless, anxious to launch the new investigation, but the police needed time to gather loose ends.

The cops could save him hours and miles. Preliminary, routine police investigation of the double deaths — plus autopsies — would swiftly compile information he needed.

Will Gentry, chief of Miami police, looked up from his desk, his eyes narrowed in dark curiosity, when the redhead finally descended. He sucked a breath and sat back, his squat body wider than the leather chair. A black cigar stub, long dead, bobbed in one corner of his clamped lips.

“Mike,” he said. Then he went silent.

Shayne knew why. Gentry was already waiting. They had been acquainted for years, had worked together on many cases. Each respected the expertise of the other. More importantly, they were friends, had an acquired mutual insight. Gentry was now drawing on that insight. He knew the large redhead had not rolled into police headquarters simply because he had heard on a radio about a new double slaying that confronted the police.

Shayne gave Will Gentry Samantha Burns. Minor surprise showed briefly on the bulldog face of the chief as he scratched the name on a yellow legal pad. He sat back again. The cigar butt shot up to a forty-five degree angle.

“Two men murdered,” he said. “They were hit, staked out in a swamp. It’s got a definite odor, hasn’t it?”

“Gangland, yeah.” Shayne nodded, hooking a hip on a corner of the chiefs desk. He thumbed back his hat and lit a cigaret. “But it isn’t.”

“We’ve had feelers out all morning, Mike. Nothing. Nobody in the mob ever heard of Singleton and/or Burns. The hierarchy is as curious as we are. If unknowns from out of town are drifting in, they want to know pronto.”

Shayne picked a strand of tobacco from the tip of his tongue. “Ray Zoner down at the morgue tells me the heads were packed in mud.”

“According to the autopsy reports, Singleton died from a skull blow — probably a sap of some kind — while Burns suffocated. Both had swamp mud packed in their throats and nostrils. We’re figuring Singleton was dead before the staking. Bums also had a skull wound, but it didn’t kill him. He probably was unconscious while being packed.”

The victims had been dead approximately five days, give or take a few hours. Pinning the exact time of death was difficult for the medical boys, because the bodies were not in the best of shape after such a long period of exposure to hot sun, dampness, snakes, insects and other parasites. Each victim was fully clothed. Pockets had not been rifled. Wallets had been found on each body. Singleton was carrying $248 in cash and a string of credit cards. Bums was carrying $89 and credit cards. No packets in the credit card folders were empty.

Mugging, robbery as a motive, were out. Their money made that certain.

No vehicles or tire tracks had been found at the death site. Cops had immediately fanned out, searched the police car pound, looked around town for automobiles that had been parked in one spot for days.

Then it had been determined that Singleton was a non-driver and that Bums had called a cab to take him to work last Friday morning. His wife had needed a car to keep a hairdresser appointment that morning and her Vega was in a garage having a muffler replaced.

“The staking, Will,” said Shayne, leaving the desk. “That’s cold-blooded stuff.” He paced the confines of the office, trailing smoke behind him.

“New stakes, fashioned like tent stakes. Hell, you wouldn’t figure there’s that many places a man could get stakes these days — until you start nosing around. There’s the lumber yards, the discount stores with lumber departments, home builders, carpenters — big outfits or individuals — all over the city. Then maybe the killer is a Handy Dan himself who has the saw to make his own stakes.

“The rope — also new, cut in short lengths. It could have been purchased anywhere. All a guy needs is three or four bucks and a sharp pocketknife.

“So, from the materials? No clues. The stakeouts themselves? We get an insight into the killer. He’s a mean goon. He can sap two guys, dig two holes, dump ’em in, cover them. Job done. He doesn’t. He goes to the trouble of spread-eagling them, flat on spines on top of the ground, staking, then packing the air passages.”

Shayne continued to pace. “The alligator man?”

“For now, we make him clean.”

“The Bums woman says she never heard of Singleton,” said the redhead. “I buy that to mean her father and Singleton didn’t bend elbows together. She’d know. She’s a sharp dame, Will, close to the family circle.”

“We’ve got Burns walking out of the Brooks place around two last Friday afternoon. He was mum about destination but that wasn’t unusual, according to his secretary. In one way, he was a loner around there, kept busy but never talked about what might be on the stove until it was cooking.

“So the secretary didn’t even stop typing with the departure. Burns could’ve been going to the water well, home or out to meet a prospective client. When he had something for her, he’d tell her. And that’s when he disappeared, Mike. We haven’t turned up anyone yet who laid eyes on him after he walked out of his secretary’s sight.”

“Phone calls?” Shayne asked.

Gentry shrugged. “The secretary says he probably had a dozen or so on Friday, most of them from inside the building. But there is an hour and a half period — noon to one-thirty — when she wasn’t in. Bums was. He was a brown-bagger, never went out to lunch. He could have had calls in that period.”

Shayne again parked on a comer of Gentry’s desk, took a last drag on the cigarette, stubbed it out. “Okay. What about Singleton?”

Singleton also had been a land expert — but with Tiener South, the conglomerate. Where Brooks and Associates concentrated on land buying, selling and development, Tiener South had many ventures — mining, oil, transportation, the movie industry — and land.

Singleton’s pew had been land. He was considered one of Tiener South’s experts. He had been with Tiener 30 years, was a bulwark, but not irreplaceable. In fact, the replacement prospect was in Tiener South’s immediate future. Singleton had announced plans to retire on July 1.

His wife had died five months earlier, there were no children, and Singleton had informed the people at Tiener’s that it was time for him to pack it in, sit in a chair in the sunshine for the remainder of his years. Tiener people agreed with him. The death of his wife had taken the steam out of Singleton. He was a prime candidate for chair and sunshine.

But he had not been a candidate for murder.

Singleton had been Mr. Straight. He could push, pull, maneuver, be tenacious, but always with a slight smile on his face, always quietly. And he was fair. Secretaries said he was fair. Too, he was careful — he liked things recorded, indexed on cards. For instance, there was a daily record of telephone conversations. They were categorized by the hour and a P for placed, or R for received.

His office routine also included remaining at his desk one to two hours after everyone else had left the building each evening. He reviewed the day’s recordings in this uninterrupted time slot, removed the chaff and put the wheat in proper order for the next day’s attention.

On the other hand, there had been a definite change in Mr. Singleton’s personality and office routine in recent weeks. Mr. Singleton had been down. He no longer smiled, had occasionally had displayed flashes of previously unknown anger, even shouted at a secretary. And the daily record of work moves was no longer complete.

For instance, Mr. Singleton sometimes took and sometimes made phone calls, dictating that the calls not be recorded. He had received one such call early last Friday afternoon. It had come in from a man who had identified himself as a Mr. Jerry Warner. Mr. Warner had asked to speak to Mr. Singleton, stating that Mr. Singleton would recognize his name.

Mr. Singleton had. He also had immediately informed his secretary not to record the call. She had not. But she remembered it for two reasons — it had come in between 2:28 and 2:30 p.m. — because she always took a fifteen-minute coffee break at 2:15 p.m. and she always left the snack bar at exactly 2:25 p.m. At normal pace, it took her three minutes to return to her desk. She also remembered the name because she had once been married to a sailor named Jerry Warner.

No, this was not the same Jerry Warner. She would have recognized the voice.

Yes, the phone call had excited or angered or frightened or done something to Mr. Singleton. After receiving it, he had shot out of the office without a word and no one had seen him since.

Shayne used thumb and forefinger on an earlobe. “Singleton was lured?”

“Sounds like it,” grunted Gentry. “And the timing could fit. We’ve checked it. Burns walks out of Brooks around two. It’s about a twenty-minute haul over to the Tiener headquarters. So knock off ten minutes for a phone call from a pay booth.”

“Whap, whap with a sap,” Shayne mused thoughtfully. “Two guys hauled away in a car?”

Gentry lifted hands. “They were in the same racket — land. For different outfits, that’s all.”

He scowled deeply. “There’s another little twist. The swamp where they were found was up for grabs late last year. Brooks was the successful bidder. Tiener’s had been bidding, too — although they now say their interest was only mild.

“Brooks people tell a different story. They say Tiener people thought they had the swamp deal sewed up, but Brooks moved in in September, knocked Tiener’s off the pedestal. There’s some undisguised joy over at Brooks. The people at Tiener’s are downplaying, not talking loudly.”

“Tell me Burns and Singleton were the chief adversaries in the deal,” Shayne said, his interest undisguised.

But Gentry sighed. “Wish I could, Mike. It might make things simpler for both of us. But the way we get it, there were teams haggling over the swamp. Neither Bums nor Singleton was on the teams, oddly enough.”

“Will, there has to be some damn reason Burns and Singleton were hit and staked as a package.”

“Uh-huh,” growled Gentry, his face darkening. He sat forward suddenly, shuffled papers on the desk. Then he looked up at Shayne from under a cocked brow. “We’ll be looking, too, shamus.”

Unspoken message — the cops were open to help. The chief would reciprocate with new tidbits for a private eye — if and when he had new tidbits.

III

Every newspaper office has a high producing mine of information tucked in some cranny of its cluttered interior. It’s called a library — a morgue.

The morgue at the Miami Daily News included efficient employees and a couple of semi-private rooms where clippings and photographs could be spread on a table and studied. One of those rooms became totally private when veteran crime reporter Tim Rourke took Michael Shayne into it and closed the door behind them.

Shayne dropped into a chair at the table. Rourke remained standing against the door, his lanky frame loose, his face expressionless, only his eyes mirroring the broiling curiosity inside. Rourke, as a writer, may have had a peer or two around the country. There were none when it came to reporting. In addition, Rourke would trust Shayne to care properly for his latest blonde acquisition and last bottle of rye while Shayne would allow Rourke to handle a loaded and cocked gun in his presence. Rourke and Shayne were friends.

Rourke came to the table, slid the thin, brown morgue envelope to the detective, folded into a chair opposite and looped legs up and across a corner of the table.

“Mike,” he said, “I just finish turning in first edition copy to the city desk about one of the most bizarre murder cases in this city’s history — two well-to-do land men found dead and staked out in a swamp like it’s back in the days of Geronimo out west — and then you come in and want a package on the particular piece of land where these two dudes were found. Okay, what in the hell is going on?”

The multi-million dollar purchase of the swamp land had been large enough to earn one printed story. It was a cold flat story stuffed with names and statistics. Only one paragraph gave an insight into the true vastness of the transaction. There was speculation the swamp land might someday be the site of a new Miami satellite community.

Shayne gave Rourke a sharp look. “I missed this when it appeared in the paper, Tim. Most people probably did. I’ve got a hunch it was buried. No mass appeal.”

“Pablum, agreed,” Rourke nodded. “But the potential is there. The one ’graph, the speculation. And you can bet your kiester Sol has it stored in his craw. Sol Pearbome is probably the best business writer in Florida. He’s working on it, Mike. One of these days it will be a Page One story. There are stories like that. The ingredients are there, but it takes time for jelling.”

“Sol around?”

Sol Pearbome was a small man with a receding hairline and permanent think lines across a broad brow above black rimmed glasses. He also had a keen ear tuned to the underground swells of the business world.

“It isn’t only the swamp that stinks in that deal, Shayne,” he said significantly. “Tiener’s supposedly had it locked up tight and then — bang — Brooks is in. Some people are saying Tiener South was sold out.”

“By someone inside their own organization?”

“The original deal was very hush-hush. But Brooks moved in. The Tiener people were hot, still are. This kind of thing just doesn’t happen over there. Normally, it’s the other way. Somebody has something working and Tiener’s move in — but that was when the old man was alive.”

Shayne looked at Rourke.

Rourke waved a casual hand. “Robert Hume Tiener was a maverick, the roughneck in life and in business, the adventurer, the philanthropist who owned a pair of socks and no more when he found his first gold mine in South Africa. At thirty, he already had the vision and intelligence of a successful conglomerateur of seventy. At seventy, he still maintained the exhuberance, lust and don’t-give-a-damn dare of a twenty-one-year old. Age didn’t exist for Tiener. He was born young, he lived young, he died young — if he is dead.”

Shayne lifted an eyebrow questioningly.

“I remember, Mike, because I covered it top to bottom. Three months ago, February twenty-seventh, the Coast Guard found Tiener’s yacht adrift at sea, no one aboard. He had gone out alone a day earlier. There are those who say he was washed overboard in a quick storm, drowned, while the yacht survived. There are those who say he lives and simply wanted to disappear, that it was his way of dropping out of sight. Take your pick.”

“If I picked he dropped out of sight,” Shayne said “Tiener had a reason, I assume.”

“Maybe,” Rourke shrugged. “He was seventy, he had a young wife of twenty-seven. They were married about a year, and then she was killed. I told you he was great on young people. He surrounded himself with young people — in business and at play. He was a big giver to colleges and universities. Anyway, he married this young chick and then in January of this year she was killed in the crash of a private plane.

“The only trouble with that is, the pilot of that plane was Vernon Dobbs, thirtyish, the communications rich boy, all inherited. Tiener was in South Africa on business at the time. Dobbs’ wife was in Europe. Dobbs and Mrs. Tiener had gone out to his hunting lodge in Wyoming, been there a week or so, were returning when they crashed in a snowstorm someplace in Oklahoma.

“She was killed and Dobbs is in a wheelchair for life. There are those who will tell you that little episode rocked old Robert Hume Tiener right out of his shoes, shook his faith in youth. Then there are those who say, ‘Bull!’ ”

Shayne eyed Sol Pearbome again. “This speculation about someone at Tiener’s selling out to Brooks — what do you think?”

Pearbome adjusted the glasses on his nose. “Could happen.”

“Singleton?”

“The guy who was found dead this morning? Yeah, maybe. He supposedly wasn’t involved in the deal, but he’d be in a position at Tiener’s to know about it.”

“The cops say he was about to retire.”

Pearbome pulled his lower lip in thought. “Okay, so maybe Singleton was looking for some feathers for his retirement nest. I’d say Brooks would pass a rather handsome bundle under the table for the swamp kind of tip.”

“Then there’s Burns,” mused Shayne with a frown. “Where does he fit?”

“Shayne, look.” Pearbome sighed. “Over the years, you will find that Brooks has lost a few deals to Tiener’s, and here and there you will hear that Tiener always had a man inside at Brooks, a spy, someone who keeps Tiener’s advised about what’s going on at Brooks.

“You’ll hear that vice versa, too, but I’d put more credulity in the spy being inside Brooks. Old man Tiener was that kind of operator — turn any trick, clip any corner for gain, or sometimes just for fun. I hear he liked to hear people howl.

“Okay, you want to put Burns, a longtime Brooks employee, in the role of being a spy for Tiener? Be my guest. Or Singleton in that role for Brooks at Tiener’s? Again be my guest. It’s all possible.”

“They were found dead side by side on swamp land that once was a high prize. What would you say that means, Sol?”

“That, Shayne, is for detectives to figure out,” Pearbome replied significantly.

IV

Brooks and Associates occupied the seventh floor of a gleaming building in middle Miami. The floor was a posh and dimly cool oasis out of the mid-afternoon heat. Shayne was given a Mr. Morgan, who professed to know most things transpiring at Brooks and Associates.

Mr. Morgan had twenty spare minutes. He was due on the first tee at 4:30 p.m.

Mr. Morgan also said that Brooks and Associates were saddened and disturbed by the double murder, especially the loss of Mr. Burns. Mr. Burns had been a valued and trusted employee. There had already been a discreet inner office investigation of Mr. Burns’ accounts and everything was in proper order as expected.

“You people scored one, I guess, with the recent purchase of a swamp,” said Shayne.

“It was a coup, Mr. Shayne!” Mr. Morgan, fingered a pencil moustache that had been out of style for ten years.

“The same swamp where Bums died.”

“Well, yes.”

“But Burns wasn’t involved in the swamp transaction.”

“No.”

“How about Singleton over at Tiener South?”

Mr. Morgan became cool. “We are not acquainted with Mr. Singleton or his work. We do not understand why Mr. Bums and Mr. Singleton were found as they—”

“It’s my understanding,” Shayne interrupted, “that Tiener South was in the saddle on the swamp purchase, then you people got a hand in at the last minute.”

“That happens,” Mr. Morgan nodded.

“With outside information, I assume.”

Mr. Morgan became stone.

“Where did you get that information, Mr. Morgan? In this case, from Singleton? The guy was about to retire. Maybe he was after a little extra cushion.”

“I think, Mr. Shayne, I am expected at the country club sooner than—”

“What was Bums working on last week?”

The abrupt switch in focus briefly jarred Mr. Morgan. He stirred in his chair, reached for a pen that wasn’t there, then settled back and restroked the pencil moustache. He frowned. “If you must know,” he said, “Mr. Bums has been in Hawaii for the most part of the last six weeks. We have a transaction in progress. Mr. Burns has been handling that transaction — almost solely.”

“So he wouldn’t have been aware of the swamp deal?” the detective asked.

“There is no reason he would have been.”

“He wouldn’t have any contact with Singleton?”

“Not unless they knew one another socially.”

“They didn’t.”

Mr. Morgan lifted both hands in a helpless gesture. He had regained his confidence.

“Burns is above suspicion?”

Morgan immediately frowned. “Suspicion of what? I told you, Mr. Shayne, we already have conducted—”

“Have you people ever suspected you might have a spy in your midst, someone who kept the competition informed about various transactions here?”

Mr. Morgan seemed shocked. “Good God, that’s absurd thinking!”

“Could be,” agreed Shayne with a jerky nod. “Unless you happen to be looking for a reason two land men are found dead together in a swamp.”

Morgan sat with his mouth hanging open.

“Singleton, an employee at Tiener South, didn’t just happen to be keeping an ear to the ground for you people over there, did he?”

“That’s all!” Morgan shot to his feet behind the polished desk. The pencil mustache quivered. “This interview is terminated!”

Shayne stood, too, eyed Morgan hard. “Pal,” he said, “if Burns and Singleton were spies, or double agents, or guys who’d occasionally sell out for a few bills, I could have a possible tie for their being found dead together in a swamp — right?”

Morgan’s cheeks had deepened in color. His stare was piercing. He curled a comer of his mouth and snapped, “Pursue that absurd line of thinking, Mr. Shayne, cast a shadow on Brooks and Associates, and you are on very dangerous ground!”

Shayne cocked an eyebrow. “You’ve got a short fuse, Morgan,” he said.

He strode out of Brooks and Associates. Thirty minutes later, he was inside Tiener South, another opulent oasis. There was hurry-scurry also inside Tiener South, handled with soft tones of voice and quick footsteps that were soundless upon thick carpeting.

But Shayne’s practiced eye noted that was where the similarities between Brooks and Associates and Tiener South ended.

Brooks had been rich in polished dark paneling and gleaming dark desk fronts, dark plants and paintings, brass wall decorations and ornaments, efficient employees in conservative dress and pampered gray-black hair.

Tiener South, on the other hand, was open, airy, colorful. Bright colors prevailed on walls, floors, appointments and in the dress of most of the scurriers. Hair coloring did not include gray. Wigs or artifical coloring covered or fashionable pure white prevailed.

Shayne towered over one of the predominantly yellow blondes who was vivaciously cute in brilliant purple pantsuit as she sat at a white typewriter behind a small, bright-orange desk.

“Hi,” she said perkily. “My name is Carole Ayers. What can I do for you?”

Tim Rourke, who had an affinity for blondes, would have been shuffling around with ants under his toes. Shayne didn’t shuffle, but he turned on a crooked grin. The blonde was infectious.

“Want to see someone, honey, who will talk to me about your Mr. Singleton who was found dead in a swamp this morning,” the redhead said bluntly, purposely exuding casualness.

The blonde was a test. Had Singleton’s murder rocked Tiener South? Or had it been worth little more than ten minutes of excited rap over a can of cola and then put aside for more important things — like the next appearance of Bob Dylan in the city.

Light blue eyes brightened. “Wow! You, too? You’re another pi... er, police detective? We’ve been invaded today. Old Singie goes out and gets blown away and—”

“I’m a private investigator,” Shayne interrupted. “Point me to the inner sanctum. I can see this is Cola and Dylan territory.”

The blonde head became cocked in pure curiosity. “Cola and Dylan? I’m not on that wave length, Red. You want to lay a little explanation on me?”

“I’d rather hear about Old Singie.”

“Cute, but Dullsville,” said the blonde with a slight shrug. “I’ve heard he was born in 1776 with a flag in his hand. If he was, it’s too bad he had to get hi own away just after the big birthday party, don’t you think?”

“Un-huh,” agreed Shayne.

“But Singie was okay,” said the blonde. “Don’t misunderstand.”

“Some age here and there is tolerable, I guess.”

“Well, sure!” The blonde brightened again. “Now, take you, Red. You’re—”

“I’m ageless, honey. These lines on my face represent miles. How come Singie was okay?”

“Well...” She seemed to ponder. “I didn’t know him, understand, But... well, he was just okay! Did his thing and let other people do theirs. No coming on heavy with the scorn — like young people don’t know sh... er, things, are dumb.”

“Like?”

“Like?” She cocked her head, looked up at Shayne quizzically for a couple of seconds. Then she sighed and lowered her voice. They suddenly seemed to be conspirators. “Mind if I lay a little something on you?”

He shrugged.

“I’m about to send you to Miss Scorn. Sorry, man, it’s the only route to the Inside around here. Just figure you’re on a mountain, almost to the peak. There’s just thing one road and you’re sailing along, okay, see. Then you round this curve and there it is, a roadblock. Her name is Elizabeth Stewart.”

The blonde smiled suddenly, sat back and took a deep breath. “Of course,” she said, “the alternative is you could stand here and we could rap for what little there is left to this working day — which is about ten minutes. Then we could go down the street to this place I know and have a cocktail or two and you could explain this Cola-Dylan jazz to me and—”

Shayne made his grin large as he cut in, “Roadblocks fascinate me.”

She shook her head. “Okay, so pass around me, go down that corridor you see behind me — but when you get there tell her you raped me to get in. I’m not supposed to let anymore of you guys past this desk.”

V

Elizabeth Stewart was fortyish, thin, prim, hair a glistening artificial brown color, eyes gray slate. There was a large, polished closed door behind her which she was guarding with her life.

Shayne displayed identification and said, “You didn’t get a call from the young lady out front because I scared hell out of her.”

“The fact that you found one of the young ladies at her desk surprises me, Mr. Shayne,” Elizabeth Stewart said coldly. “Normally, they are congregated at the drink-dispensing machine. Your business?”

“Old Singie.”

She became an iceberg. “I’m not at liberty to discuss Mr. Singleton.”

“Is anyone around here?”

“No.”

“I bet I want to talk to the guy hiding in the office behind you,” said Shayne.

“No one at Tiener South hides, Mr. Shayne,” she said frostily. “Nor is anyone in — which happens to be the truth at this hour. However, I would tell you the same thing if it were ten o’clock in the morning and each member of the board of directors was congregated in plain view behind me.”

“Why?”

“Because we at Tiener South know absolutely nothing about why Mr. Singleton was murdered. It had to be for a reason totally without association with this company. Too — what information we do have has already been passed to the proper investigative authorities, the police.”

“The cops ask you people anything about Burns over at Brooks and Associates?”

She remained stone. Only new light in the gray eyes mirrored the jolt. Then her lips thinned and she said, “We are not acquainted with Mr. Bums.”

“He didn’t happen to be doing some work for you people over there?”

“Please leave, Mr. Shayne!”

He felt as if he were spinning wheels in a beach rut. He suddenly went around Elizabeth Stewart to the polished door. He opened it, poked his head into a vast office. The office was empty. He closed the door, moved past the startled woman again.

“See you,” he said.

Carole Ayers was still at the orange desk out front. Shayne went past her on long strides, growled out of the comer of his mouth, “You were raped, honey.”

“Thanks,” she called after him. “And I’m still curious about Cola and Dylan.”

“Another day,” he said over his shoulder.

“Make it a night, Red. At four-five-three-two Palm Tree Road. It’s small, but it’s cozy and I live alone. You can...”

Mike Shayne lost the rest of her words as he moved out of range. Outside the building, he lit a cigaret, sucked deeply on it and got into the Buick. He sat for a moment, thumping the steering wheel, then moved to kick on the motor. Shayne stopped. Elizabeth Stewart had come out of the building and turned down the sidewalk. She was moving away from him. Sixth sense came alive in him. The woman was in a hurry. Why?

She turned into a pay parking lot, drove out in a bright blue Volkswagen. He trailed her. She had a heavy foot. The Volks darted in and out of the lanes, using holes in traffic too small for the Buick. But he managed to keep her in sight. Finally she turned into a crowded parking lot at a supermarket, found a slot and braked into it.

Shayne was forced to move into the next traffic aisle. He inched along. No parking holes. He cursed under his breath, stopped, opened the door, hooked a hand under the edge of the Buick roof and stood on the edge of the floorboard. A woman driver behind him slapped a hand on a horn button.

He waved to her, looked out over car tops. Elizabeth Stewart had stopped at a public phone stall in the lot. The detective saw her dial without looking in the phone book. He dropped back inside the Buick and drove it around behind Elizabeth Stewart. She was talking.

He inched on down the aisle. No cars behind him at the moment. He stopped, watched Elizabeth Stewart in the rearview mirror. She hooked the phone and went on into the supermarket without looking to right or left. A driver to Shayne’s right blasted a horn. He sat twisted in the front seat of a station wagon, wanted out of a parking hole. The Buick was blocking him.

Shayne eased out to the busy avenue, cruised along, driving reflexively. Elizabeth Stewart’s use of a public pay phone in a supermarket parking lot didn’t have to figure in his investigation of a double murder. Actually, it could be a pretty damn simple daily routine — woman leaves work, stops at a grocery store, phones husband, daughter, son, mother, apartment roommate, says, “Start mixing the cocktails. I’m on my way.”

Everyone is in a hurry in 1976. So the rapid walking pace leaving the office, the zipping in and out of traffic lanes, didn’t have to mean anything either.

Except...

Elizabeth Stewart was implanted at Tiener South. Elizabeth Stewart could use a Tiener phone to make personal calls. So why go to a parking lot pay telephone booth? Two possibilities — Elizabeth Stewart had had a sudden thought while driving. Or she didn’t want the call to go through a switchboard, even though it might be a computer switchboard.

All right, if the latter were so, she could make the call from home. That is, if she lived alone...

Or could it be necessity that made it imperative for her to make a private phone call as soon as possible after walking out of Tiener South?

Shayne spotted a bar, parked the Buick, went inside. Over a cognac and ice-water chaser, he decided he was reading too much into Elizabeth Stewart. After all, she was only a secretary-receptionist at Tiener South, not privy to all inner workings at the conglomerate even though she might live with that fantasy, waft it over secretaries of lesser stature. And it just could be, just could be...

...Elizabeth Stewart was a double personality. Miss Cool, Miss Efficiency, Miss Thin Lips, Miss Straight Spine, Miss Conservative at Tiener South, Miss Uptight.

Until 5 p.m.

At 5 p.m. daily, Elizabeth Stewart could become Miss Hot-To-Trot, Miss Uninhibited, a woman who wore gold-spangled pants and no more when she answered a maintenance man’s knock.

Shayne put Elizabeth Stewart aside with a second cognac and concentrated on two dead men. Their unknown relationship to one another tormented. He gave brief thought to a steak somewhere, dumped the thought and went to his apartment, where he stuffed a TV dinner into the oven, poured cognac into a glass and took the glass into the bath. He put down the lid of the toilet. The drink was handy while he showered.

Thirty minutes later, Shayne stood at a window in the front room of the apartment. He wore a white toweling robe belted at the waist as he stared out on the evening that had just darkened. The hot TV dinner was on a kitchenette counter, forgotten. Shayne had a fresh drink in his hand. Burns and Singleton. Singleton and Bums. There was a tie no matter how a man looped it.

Okay, swampland is for sale, Tiener South is buying. It’s a multi-million dollar deal, hush-hush. Singleton is not involved. But Singleton is in a position at Tiener South to hear about the pending swamp sale. And Singleton is on a downer, his wife has died, he’s lost his zip, he has decided to hang up the straps.

Singleton has been doing okay financially all of these years at Tiener South, but suddenly here is an opportunity to pad a nest so deep a man doesn’t even have to think about Social Security.

Singleton puts out a feeler to Brooks, gets a nibble, puts out more, gets a bite. Brooks is a very legit outfit, very up-and-up, but not above placing cash in a safety deposit box for choice tidbits of information.

Did Brooks know they had a Tiener spy inside their organization, a man who had been keeping Tiener South abreast of Brooks’ interests for years, asks Mr. Singleton.

Impossible!

Not at all, says Mr. Singleton. Try Mr. Burns. Mr. Singleton was in a position at Tiener South to know that Mr. Burns was in a position at Brooks to feed Tiener South anything they wanted to know about Brooks — for a cash remuneration naturally. Mr. Singleton had been assigned to some of the feeds.

“Oh, Christ, no wonder we’ve lost out on some deals!”

“That information costs extra, of course — or I call Mr. Brooks, himself, in the morning and inform him...”

“No, no, Mr. Singleton. Your information is valuable. We’ll take care of you. If Mr. Brooks should learn that we have allowed a spy to penetrate — well, we could all be on food stamps tomorrow!”

Shayne lit a fresh cigaret, drew deeply on it, continued to stare out of the window without seeing anything.

But what if Singleton had been an honest working man all his years, loyal to Tiener South, contented with a nest egg accumulated through diligence, intelligence, gradual advancement? Why did he have to be a Bad Guy?

And what if Burns was his opposite number at Brooks? What if both were exactly what they seemed to be on the surface? What if each was a real estate expert, knew the name of the other because of the similarity of their business, but that was where it ended? What if Bums and Singleton had met on a few occasions, but were not acquainted?

And then — what if this spy — counterspy — business was all something a detective was manufacturing because a newspaper business writer had suggested the possibility?

Shayne dipped to his right to dump cigaret ashes into a lamp table tray and the bullet whined past his ear. Shattered window glass sprayed him.

VI

Mike Shayne rolled to his right with the crack. He spun into the lamp table and sent the lamp flipping to the carpeting as he plastered himself against the wall. The shade bounced from the lamp, but the base and bulb remained intact, the bulb coating him in its garish light.

He sucked a deep breath, glanced down his front. The white toweling robe glittered here and there. Splinters of glass protruded from the loose fabric.

He blinked cautiously, testing. They seemed okay — no slivers of glass embedded. But there was a spot that tingled high on his left cheekbone. He touched the spot with a fingertip. Glass — and the fingertip was stained red.

Across the room, wall plaster had split in thread-like jagged lines. There was no definite pattern. Only a center point where all the cracks began, made by a large bullet hole in the wall.

The main light switch was on the other side of the shattered window. Shayne went down on hands and knees and moved gingerly through the glass below the window edge. It was unlikely the sniper was still hanging around out there in the night somewhere. He probably was tracking fast. But Shayne wasn’t making a second offering as a target.

He slid a hand up the wall and snapped out the light in the room. He realized that if the sniper did happen to be rooted, the light blinking out was the tipoff to failure. But the sniper was going to know anyway within a few hours because he was going to have an angry redhead on his tail.

Shayne eased to the window opening, looked outside. The night was warm, quiet. There was scattered light. Down below, people were stirring, clusters were forming. The sound of the gunshot had attracted attention. Far in the distance, there came the wail of a siren. Someone already had called the cops.

The detective padded back to his bedroom. He had left the bathroom lights on and the door open. The light spilled into the bedroom, cast an eerie glow. He shrugged out of the toweling robe, dropped it in a heap, padded naked into the bath. Arching forward slightly, he studied his face in a huge mirror. A tiny triangle of glass protruded from his cheek. A trickle of blood had inched down from it.

He plucked the triangle out, dropped it in a wastebasket, got out a plastic bottle of medical alcohol, daubed the skin break. He cleaned away the blood and slapped on a Band-Aid.

He dressed, thoughts clicking fast as he speculated. Someone obviously didn’t want him poking into the double murder. But if a sniper was going to float around the city this balmy night, taking shots at everybody who was investigating, he was going to be a busy gun. Will Gentry probably had at least five detectives working on the case — and twenty in reserve.

So the investigation itself hadn’t brought out the sniper. Anybody who killed and left bodies in full view would expect an investigation. Therefore the reason for the window blast went deeper. Somebody had jangled a nerve somewhere. Somebody — perhaps just bumbling along — had turned up a stone that exposed supposedly concealed worms. And since a private eye had been a target for the killer/sniper, it seemed logical to figure the eye had kicked over the stone.

Who had the shamus scared? Brooks and Associates? Or Tiener South? They were the only territories he had penetrated thus far.

Brooks had acquired the swamp. There was undisguised pleasure at Brooks. Morgan had tabbed the transaction a coup. True, one of their employees had been found dead on that land, but that’s where the tie seemed to end. Burns hadn’t even been working on the swamp project.

On the other hand, Morgan had gone icy at the suggestion Brooks might have made the acquisition via inside info from Singleton at Tiener South.

Was that suggestion a worm? Had speculation on the part of a private detective sent messages crackling along the hot line inside Brooks and Associates? Had the word gone out — knock off Shayne before he pursues this speculation? He’s dangerous to us!

Shayne took a moment to fantasize the image of an unknown dictator inside Brooks barking out the order. Then he yanked up his trousers, zipped them closed and concentrated on Elizabeth Stewart at Tiener South.

He took a shoulder rig and a .45 from a bureau drawer, shrugged into the rig, checked the .45 and jammed it into the holster. Elizabeth Stewart had made a dash to a parking lot telephone. Had it been to tell someone about a red-haired private detective who was aggressive, abrasive and had to be stopped before he got started?

Stopped from doing what? Investigating the murder of a Tiener South employee?

Or stopped because he had asked about Burns over at Brooks and Associates, had even suggested that Burns might have been a spy for Tiener South?

Shayne put on a coat, returned to the living room, snapped on the lights. A gentle breeze wafted through the shattered window. But no one waiting to take a second shot was outside now. People had grouped around a police patrol car below. The two patrol boys were braced against the car, asking questions, looking around, gesturing with arms.

Shayne went to the bullet hole in the wall, bent down and took inventory. The slug was in there. He got a knife from the kitchen and dug it out. It obviously had come from a high-powered hunting rifle. Had it hit him between the eyes it probably would have put his head in the wall.

He dug out the phone book. No Elizabeth Stewart was listed. He muttered an oath, flipped pages. There was only one Carol Ayers listed. And the address was 4532 Palm Tree Road.

She was home, she sounded perky, but she was bored. TV was horrible.

The Scorn Machine? Yeah, she lived in the Towers. “Hey, man, what’s with you? You got a hangup on the Stone Age?”

“Vintage can be beautiful.”

“Sh—”

Shayne had dropped the receiver in its hook on the expletive and was rolling. The corridor outside his apartment was empty. He moved on long strides to the elevator doors. The cops were still checking apartments below, asking questions. It was a good place for them to be. He didn’t need them. He’d get a discreet job done on wall and window in the morning. It wouldn’t be the first time. He had lived in the building for years and management was used to him — and used to occasional violence in his joint.

The Towers was an old, solid, conservative apartment house. After nine of an evening, silence and only occasional stirring by a resident prevailed. Large rugged-looking strangers eyeing lobby mail box names and numbers made a pale desk clerk nervous.

“C-can I be of assistance, sir?” asked the desk clerk politely.

“Yeah,” said Shayne. He put a business card on the counter. “You can call upstairs and tell Elizabeth Stewart I’m coming her way — and that I’ll buzz her buzzer until she answers.”

The clerk danced to the phone and Elizabeth Stewart stood in an apartment doorway down the corridor when Shayne walked out of the elevator. She was pale, unpainted, wore a flowing housecoat, and her hair was a chopped off gray-black, the gray dominating. Her glistening brown coif was being shaped for tomorrow’s wearing at Tiener South.

“P-please, Mr. Shayne,” she stammered, even before he reached her. “Go away!”

“You called someone from a parking lot pay phone this afternoon,” he asked her. “Who?”

She blanched and recoiled. He put a foot against the door, stopped its closing.

“P-please...” she stammered.

“You alone?”

Her eyes widened. “Y-yes.”

“Let’s talk.” He took a step forward.

But she put her body against the door. “No! Go away! I don’t want you here!”

Then he lifted his foot and the door was slammed in his face. He heard the lock click home. But he didn’t move. He stood scowling in thought, without seeing the wood that was only an inch from his nose.

She was frightened by his presence. Why?

Was he supposed to be dead?

He walked slowly to the elevator and rode down, his thoughts whirling. A young well-dressed man was waiting for the elevator in the lobby. He said nothing, stepped aside politely for Shayne.

The detective moved halfway across the lobby before stopping. He turned and stared at the closed elevator doors. Something about the young man tingled his nerve-ends. He couldn’t tag it. He attempted to remember the face. Smooth, almost boyish, eyes bluish, full head of pale yellow hair styled by a dresser, no scars.

He went to the desk, eyeing the elevator indicator. The needle hand had stopped on Elizabeth Stewart’s floor. He gave the desk clerk a hard look. “The man who just went up,” he said. “He’s a resident?”

“No, sir.”

“Who’s he going up to see?”

“I don’t know, sir. He didn’t stop at the desk.”

“You didn’t stop him?”

“People can come and go at the Towers.”

“You ever see him before tonight?”

“Yes, sir. This is the third occasion — and if he follows the pattern of the other two visits, he will be leaving soon.”

But Shayne waited an hour in the Buick. And the man didn’t come out of the Towers. He was on edge without knowing why. He had searched his memory repeatedly, attempted to fit the guy into some past investigation. No success. The face didn’t register. Yet he had the feeling the man was important to him.

He took a deep breath, fired an umpteenth cigaret butt off into the dirkness and left the Buick. Hell, the guy could be visiting anyone in the building. It didn’t have to be Elizabeth Stewart.

Shayne went past the desk clerk without a word and upstairs. He put a thumb against Elizabeth Stewart’s buzzer and kept it there. Nothing. He tried the door knob. It was locked.

He returned to the lobby in the elevator, motioned to the clerk from the doors. “Bring the house keys, buster.”

She lay sprawled on the carpeting of the neat front room. The sole indications of violence were the twisted body and the blood that had stained her dislodged dentures.

Elizabeth Stewart had been strangled to death.

VII

The desk clerk dashed across the room and into a bath. Shayne stood listening to his spastic reaction to the murder, then stuck a cigarett into a comer of his mouth and called out, “When you get finished, buster, call the cops.”

Shayne moved out swiftly. He lit the cigaret while riding the elevator down to the lobby, yanked the Band-Aid from his cheek. Outside he stood at the Buick door for a few seconds and stared up at the apartment lights. Was a killer still inside the building or had he faded down a dark fire escape?

Shayne pointed the Buick downtown. A mental image of the man with the boyish face loomed. He couldn’t seem to shake the man. Yet there was nothing about the man to tag him important. He didn’t have to be the killer just because he got off the elevator on Elizabeth Stewart’s floor. There were other apartments on that floor. The man could have been going to any of them, could still be inside and unaware that there had been a murder in the building.

Shayne shook his head in an attempt to put the man out of his mind. A hunch about someone was nothing to go screaming to the police about. Even if the man hadn’t lived up to pattern. The desk clerk said he had made two previous visits to the building. Both visits had been short. Tonight the man had not reappeared.

Shayne drew deeply on the cigaret, snapped the butt out the window. He spotted a greenish neon sign ahead. A watering hole. He braked the Buick, went inside. It was a small, dark untidy joint with only a scattering of customers. He straddled a stool away from the others and got a cognac with ice-water chaser. The muddy looking bartender slid change back to him.

“I’ll appreciate it, Mac, if you keep the heat packed,” he said, staring straight at the slight bulge in the detective’s coat.

“I’ve got paper for it.” Shayne waved him off and pinned his thoughts on Elizabeth Stewart. She had been frightened by his appearance at her door. How come?

She hadn’t been frightened of him at Tiener South in the afternoon. So something had changed for her from afternoon to evening. What? Did it have anything to do with her making a phone call from a supermarket parking lot? Had she tipped someone about his poking at Tiener South? But who the hell would she tip?

Shayne spotted a phone booth in a dark comer. Carole Ayers was still hooked to the TV, was still bored. “Stone Age action too slow for you?” she inquired.

“Elizabeth Stewart is dead,” Shayne said flatly.

“Wh-at? You’re sh—”

Shayne cut her off. “Strangled.”

“Oh, God! Heavy, man!”

“Point, honey. Just how heavy was she around Tiener South? How much pressure when she leaned?”

“Well, plenty. I mean she has — had weight. She’s — was, hey, man, it’s tough talking about the Scorn Machine in past tense. Anyway, she is/was Left Arm for T. J. Johnson. And T. J. Johnson is a southpaw, used to pitch for the Giants or somebody. T. J. Johnson also belongs to the Inner Circle. He’s a tribal chief. When Old Man Tiener was still around he called a periodic powwow of his chiefs. T. J. Johnson squatted in that circle, smoked the pipe.”

“How about Tiener and Elizabeth Stewart?” the detective asked.

“Oh, yeah. Close. I don’t know from where. Maybe they once slept together or something. She lays that — laid that closeness bit on us every so often, too.”

“Tiener is dead, huh?”

“Yeah. Fell off his yacht. Some shark fisherman will turn up his dentures someday.”

“I’ve heard some people think that was an act, that Tiener is alive and in hiding.”

“Un-huh. So the music goes here and there, but I don’t happen to be on that wave length.”

“If Tiener is in hiding, might Elizabeth Stewart have had a line to him?”

“Oh, Lordy, I dunno! It’s possible, I suppose. She’d tell you she did have, that’s for sure. But — hey, that’s real far out thinking, man!”

“Get a good night’s sleep, doll. I’ve got a hunch it’s going to be a tough day at Tiener South tomorrow. The joint is gonna be littered with cops.”

“You hanging up on me now, Shayne?”

“Yep.”

“Man, you’re — frustrating!”

He nursed a second cognac. Tiener was the kind of man to have the clout to hire a sniper — if he got the word that somebody was upsetting his applecart.

Question: Was Tiener alive, wielding clout?

Question: What was his applecart?

Question: If Tiener was alive, if he had an applecart, if he had been informed by a secretary that a private detective was pushing on that cart, if he had sent a sniper, if the sniper had failed — why kill the hand that had fed?

Or maybe Elizabeth Stewart’s death was independent reaction to failure. Maybe the sniper had trailed the detective to the secretary after the failure, might have panicked and killed. One mouth closed, one to go.

Shayne was acutely alert as he piloted the Buick back to his apartment building. Headlights occasionally hung in his rearview mirror for several blocks, but all eventually disappeared. He turned down the ramp into the basement garage knowing that he had not been trailed.

Inside his apartment, the gentle breeze continued to flow freely through the shattered window, and the cracks in the opposite wall were mute reminder, but the apartment was empty and he didn’t find any bombs ticking away under his bed.

He catnapped most of the night. During the waking periods he swept the cognac bottle from the table beside the bed, had a slug, then settled against the propped pillows and attempted to put together a mental image of a living Robert Hume Tiener.

His phone jangled at 7:30 in the morning. It was Will Gentry. “Get your tail down here, shamus,” the police chief growled.

Shayne rolled. Not because Gentry had summoned. He knew why Gentry had called — a business card had been passed from desk clerk to cops. He rolled because the cops had had enough time to clean up the preliminaries in their investigation of the murder of Elizabeth Stewart and he could get information from their same reports.

Hell, if the man with the boyish face had been the killer, if he had still been inside the building, maybe the police had the case wrapped up.

They did not. They had a mystery on their hands. Ninety per cent of the violent deaths that occurred were cut and dried — victim and murderer often in the same room when the cops arrived. Ten per-cent were mysteries. And policemen hate mysteries. They have enough work to do just sorting out the details of the open murders.

Gentry was in a dour frame of mind. He snapped, “You weren’t dodging, Mike. You left a calling card. So all I want to know is how come you went to see Elizabeth Stewart and what took you where after you found her dead.”

Shayne put a package together for the police chief. It included his visits to Brooks and Associates, to Tiener South, the shadowing of Elizabeth Stewart, a sniper’s shot and the speculation that had sent him to the Towers.

“She was alive, Will — scared but alive. But when I went back up to her place an hour later she was dead.”

“This man,” scowled Gentry, fingering the open folder on his desk. He rifled pages. “This is everything we’ve put together on the case and I don’t have a single thing in here about him.”

Shayne yanked an earlobe with thumb and forefinger. “He could be a dead end, he could be damned important. I haven’t got him tagged yet.”

“There’s some reason the guy is bothering you, Mike.”

“Hunch, Will. No more.”

“I gotta have more.”

“So you go your way. I’ll go mine.”

Gentry sat back then, his body width spreading beyond the lines of the leather chair. “Two men found dead in a swamp, a woman killed in her apartment. Two of the three victims are employees of Tiener South. You go out to Tiener’s, ask questions, then somebody takes a shot at you. It makes Tiener South a focal point, doesn’t it?”

“Is old man Tiener really dead, Will?”

He looked out from under thick eyebrows. “How the hell would I know? I wasn’t on his yacht. Go ask his sister.”

“Sister?”

“Lisa Hume Montgomery, a widow.”

Lisa Hume Montgomery lived many notches above squalor and maybe six below elegant splendor. The house probably had been constructed within the last ten years but presented a leaning toward English castle architecture.

Behind it, carved out of the expanse of green grass, was a 1976 swimming pool designed after a playing card club symbol. The blue pool water sparkled. So did the fingers of the sunbrowned, leathery looking woman who gazed up curiously at Shayne’s approach from a comer of the house. She wore several diamond rings.

Shayne stopped in his tracks as a young man shot up from a webbed chair near the woman. The young man left her fast and faded into the house. Shayne stared after him.

The woman looked from Shayne to the house door, back at Shayne. “You seem to have startled Tony. Are you two acquainted?”

“In a sense I think we might be,” responded the redhead.

VIII

Lisa Hume Montgomery wore a one-piece pink bathing suit. She was sixty to sixty-five years of age. The leathery look was a product of many hours in the wind and sunshine. She wore it as most other women her age and financial stature flaunted mink on lotion pampered skin.

“Mr. Shayne?” she said curiously from the propped layback chair.

He sat in the chair the young man had vacated at her feet. He was in the shade of a table umbrella. Shayne wasn’t a sun nut.

“I knocked,” he said to her.

She nodded. “I do not have domestics. I prefer to take care of myself and my home.” She paused, frowned slightly. “But who are you? Why are you here? Why did your appearance surprise Tony?”

“How do you know my name, Mrs. Montgomery?” he countered.

“Tony spoke it when you appeared.”

“Who is he?”

She contemplated briefly. “Anthony Andrews. He is in the employ of my brother, Robert Hume Tiener.”

Shayne ran a thumbnail along his jawline, fixed her with a steady look. “I understand your brother is dead.”

She smiled. “Some people think so. I do not. Robert has seen fit to disappear for the moment, but he isn’t in a grave — most certainly not in a watery grave.”

“How come?”

“Well, falling off a yacht is hardly Robert’s way to die. You’d have to know my brother to understand that, of course. But when Robert dies, he will have been killed violently or he will have taken his own life — just for the experience. Violence and death, people getting killed, have been a part of his life, Mr. Shayne, linked to most of his many ventures and adventures. It’s the way Robert will die.”

“Tumbling over the side of a yacht would be a little pale for him?”

“Yes.”

“But how about if he got knocked from the yacht by a huge wave in a storm?”

She shook her head. “There are two things wrong with that thinking. One, Robert went out alone. Two, he is an expert yachtsman, wise to the sea. Therefore, it follows, logically, that he is not dead.”

“Logically?” Shayne cocked an eyebrow.

She sighed. “Mr. Shayne, should Robert someday choose to die by his own hand, he will not be alone during the act — he will have an audience. Perhaps me, perhaps you, perhaps anyone. That’s just my brother. And, as to the other premise, if there was a storm the night Robert went out, the yacht survived. That means Robert survived.”

Shayne lit a cigaret, drew on it.

The woman extended a palm without getting up from the chair. “Please?”

Shayne started to lean into her, but she said, “No. Toss it.”

It was a challenge. He tossed the cigaret. She caught it deftly in her palm. She picked it up with her other hand, smoked.

Shayne grunted. “You Tieners are tough nuts, huh?”

“Very tough,” she said softly, suddenly staring at her bare toes. She wiggled the toes, but Shayne had a hunch she didn’t see the movement. “Which is the reason Robert isn’t dead,” she continued, sounding as if she was reassuring herself once again.

Shayne took time to light another cigaret. “Okay, so where is your brother today?”

She looked up. “Oh, I don’t know that!”

“No contact between you and him, huh?”

“Certainly not!”

“Got any ideas about why he wanted to disappear for a while?”

“It probably fits into some money-making scheme he has concocted. All of Robert’s ventures make money, you know. But as to details...” She shrugged, smoked, added, “I wouldn’t know.”

“He hasn’t holed up in remorse? I understand he recently lost his wife.”

She stiffened, said coldly, “Jane was a tramp!”

“She overpowered your brother? Had him taken to the altar in chains?”

Mrs. Montgomery snapped her cigaret into the blue-watered swimming pool. “Robert has had four wives. Three of them have been nice girls. They are living quite comfortably today, enjoying young men their own age because they were patient with Robert. But Jane couldn’t wait. She had to have another man while still with Robert. The consequence is obvious. She is dead and the man will be an invalid the remainder of his years. Fair enough, I say. Of course, Robert has said nothing and never will. He will talk about the loss of his dog, but not the loss of his wife.”

“What happened to his dog?”

She waved a hand, her rings flashing in the sunshine. “The dog was poisoned. Someone threw poisoned meat into the yard. Strychnine. Robert’s dog ate it and died. Robert was so furious, he immediately went to Angola.”

Shayne frowned and she waved her hand again. “He was going there anyway — some business trip or something. He merely went a week earlier. He had it settled when he returned, so it was a good trip for him.”

She paused, abruptly was calm again. She smiled. “Actually, it was one of his more productive journeys. He returned with Tony. I like Tony. He is considerate, dependable. I think he is a much better man than Lou Crawford.”

“And who is Lou Crawford?”

“Oh, he used to be Robert’s boy, but he got into some kind of trouble in Angola and his head was lopped off, I understand. Robert never did explain fully. All I know is, he returned with Tony as a replacement for Lou. Tony was fighting in some kind of war down there.”

Shayne yanked an earlobe. “Tony know where your brother is?”

“Certainly. He’s Robert’s contact with the world. It’s one of the reasons Robert has a young man. You must understand, Mr. Shayne, this is not the first time my brother has dropped out of sight for one reason or another.”

“Yeah.” The detective nodded from deep thought. “How come he does that, Mrs. Montgomery? Why does he occasionally go underground?”

“I have no idea,” she said. “Nor do I question Robert’s behavior. He provides for me without question or quibble. I reciprocate by not being inquisitive. But I must admit I’m curious about you, your presence. And you are not a provider, so why are you asking questions about my brother?”

“I’m investigating three murders.”

“Three. My goodness!”

“Two of the victims were employed at Tiener South.”

“Tiener South employs thousands of people around the world, Mr. Shayne, and I’d venture that some of those people die daily, some by accident, some by foul play, some—”

“These victims lived here, Mrs. Montgomery, and at least one of them may have enjoyed a close relationship with your brother.”

“That would be Miss Stewart, of course. Robert always thought a lot of Miss Stewart. She was quite efficient, I understand and closed-mouth, which is important to my brother. I was startled when I heard the news of her death on radio this morning. I summoned Tony immediately. Robert had to be informed, of course.”

“And Tony said?”

She smiled. “He already had been in contact with Robert. See? I told you Tony is a good boy for Robert.”

“I ran into Tony over at Miss Stewart’s apartment building last night.”

“My! What were you two doing there?”

“I was investigating one of the other murders. I don’t know about Tony. The next time I see him, I’ll ask.”

“So will I.” She nodded.

Then she stood up, looked down on the detective, smiled. “Good day, Mr. Shayne. You are an interesting man, but please do not return to my home. I have a very strange feeling about you.”

She went to the pool’s edge, knifed cleanly into the water. Shayne watched her glide the length of the pool without surfacing. She finally stood in the water at the far end, spine to the detective. She did not turn around.

He went around the comer of the house and found Tony Andrews braced against the front door of the Buick. Andrews didn’t stir as Shayne approached. Only when the detective stopped about two feet in front of him did Andrews step away from the car, giving Shayne ample room to open the door.

He said, “She’s wacky, Shayne.” He tapped the side of his head. “No longer packed tight up here.” His voice was flat, soft. He showed no emotion. “The Old Man is dead. She won’t accept.”

“So who are you working for these days, pal?”

He was cold. “The company.”

“You strangle the Stewart dame for the company?”

“I went to see her last night because late yesterday afternoon she called and said she had something important to the company to relate.”

“And?”

“She did not answer my ring at her door, naturally. You had been there. You came out of the elevator before I got on. I assume you killed her. Why did you kill her? If it doesn’t have anything to do with the company, I’m not interested. I have other things yet to do today. But if—”

“You stake out Burns and Singleton in a swamp a few days ago, Tony?” the redhead cut in.

Andrews didn’t flick a cheek muscle. He stared at the detective from dead eyes. Then he said, “You’re wacky, too, Shayne.”

He turned and walked down the drive. He moved at a steady pace, shoulders squared, spine straight. Shayne stood slightly spread-legged at the Buick, taut, fingers working reflexively. He itched to stop Andrews. The .45 in the shoulder rig was a weighty temptation.

But he dropped inside the Buick, gunned the motor. Andrews had turned from the drive and moved along a street sidewalk. Shayne moved the car into the street, eased along beside the walking man. Andrews didn’t look to right or left, finally reached the high, white stone wall of a mansion.

He moved along the wall to a wide drive, turned in and went up toward a magnificent house that stretched out of the detective’s sight. There was a black plaque on the wall at the entry. Brass colored letters, spaced in three tiers on the plaque, spelled out the name Robert Hume Tiener.

Andrews disappeared from Shayne’s sight. The detective studied the wide entry to the Tiener estate, what he could see of the grounds and house. The entry tempted. What would he find if he wheeled up to the house, banged on the door? Was Robert Hume Tiener holed up somewhere deep inside the house, pulling strings on murder?

Or was Tiener long digested in a fish belly?

Shayne slapped the steering wheel and drove toward downtown Miami. He was floundering in theories, speculations. He needed a sounding board.

He stopped at The Beef House on Miami Avenue. It was eleven-thirty. But Tim Rourke was not camped in his favorite back booth. Shayne called the newspaper office. Rourke was out to lunch. No one knew where, maybe The Beef House.

Shayne scowled and ordered a cup of black coffee laced with two jolts of cognac. He sat in the back booth and attempted to put some order to the speculations tumbling through his skull. A long shadow suddenly loomed over him. He looked up. Rourke’s grin was one-sided and curious.

“Sit and open an ear,” said Shayne.

Rourke ordered a rye and a cottage cheese salad. He nursed both while Shayne talked. When the redhead finally clammed, Rourke grunted and ordered another rye. He twirled the shot glass slowly in his long fingers, making a tiny whirlpool.

Finally he said, “I have an editor who is fond of saying, ‘You’ve got a helluva story here, Rourke. I’d like to print it — if you’ll go out and get me some facts to substantiate it!’ ”

Shayne sat back in the booth and squinted in thought. “You don’t get a smell of anything I’m missing?”

“Nope.” Rourke tossed off half the rye.

“Watching Andrews walk down the driveway out there at the Montgomery place this morning, I know I was watching a cold-blooded killer move out.”

“Could be,” Rourke agreed. “A mercenary, those kind of guys gotta be a special breed. But prove he spread two guys in a swamp, prove he strangled the woman.”

“Is Robert Hume Tiener dead or alive, Tim?” said Shayne. “That’s the key to the whole problem.”

Rourke nodded. “The way you’re putting all of this together, yep.”

Shayne gave him a hard look. “You see another pattern?”

Rourke shrugged. “Nope, but so far you’ve concentrated on Tiener South, their people. What about the Brooks operation? No bad guys over there?”

Shayne pulled an earlobe in thought. “I haven’t looked,” he admitted.

A waiter appeared at the booth with a portable phone in hand. He plugged in the wire, put the phone before Rourke. “Your office.”

Rourke listened, then jerked straight. “Right,” he snapped. “On my way.”

Shayne was alert, curious as Rourke scrambled out of the booth. “Come on, Mike,” said the newspaperman. “Vernon Dobbs has been murdered.”

IX

Vernon Dobbs once had been a real-life version of the affluent, athletic, mod sportsman pictured in men’s magazines, the kind of guy who could turn a feminine eye, cause young housewives to toss caution to the Biscayne winds. When Shayne lifted an edge of the white covering he found a grotesque corpse, jaw slack, mouth open, tongue a glob, the face and neck and bare upper torso splattered with dried blood and foreign matter. Somebody had closed his eyelids. They were the only peaceful things about Dobbs. A strip of his skull — beginning high on the forehead and furrowing back on the right side — was gone.

Dobbs had been shot out of his wheelchair while sunning in the front yard of an expensively modernistic home.

Shayne dropped the covering and stood. “Thanks, Jack.”

Jack Leonard was one of Will Gentry’s best detectives. He stood across the corpse from the redhead, opened a fresh stick of gum and folded it into his mouth. “You and I need to rap, Mike?”

“No.”

Shayne knew Leonard was curious about his presence. He got out a cigaret, lit it, pulled deeply on it. “Gentry already has anything concrete I might offer, Jack.”

“Okay. Saves me time.” Leonard waved to the morgue men and turned away as they approached. He stood staring out toward the street. It was a quiet street, a picturesque combination of green things, sunshine and shade. Directly across it was another testimonial to modern architecture, a sprawling mass of white stone and glistening glass set far back on bright green grass.

“The people who live over there, Mike, are in India,” said the police detective. “And the next homes are a quarter mile down the street in either direction.”

“Un-huh,” grunted the redhead thoughtfully. “No witnesses.” He twisted and looked up at the Dobbs’ home.

“Dobbs’ wife is inside,” Leonard said. “Some friends are with her. She’s pretty well broken up, not much help to us. She says she was in the house alone, the only servant, a combination maid-housekeeper, is out grocery shopping somewhere. I’m waiting for her return.”

“The wife didn’t see or hear anything?”

“She heard the shot,” said Leonard. “It brought her out here where she found her husband. She says she didn’t see anything else, no cars peeling out.”

Shayne looked around, inventorying the entire scene again, sucked a deep breath. “A man has to figure the shot came from the street, and probably from a car. Now, if the killer is a loner, it figures he had to be parked out there somewhere, taken his pop and cut. But if there are two or more persons involved, then the shot could’ve come from a cruising car.”

Leonard nodded, munched hard on the gum. “Yep. That’s how we’re looking at it.”

“This sunning by Dobbs, was it part of his daily routine?”

Leonard continued to nod. “So his wife says. It was his habit to lunch, then come out here for an hour, hour and a half.”

“Pro killers live on habits, Jack.”

The police detective gave the redhead a quick side glance. “Un-huh, and friends know habits.”

Shayne used a thumb and forefinger to tug an earlobe. “Bright day, early afternoon, quiet street, guy sunning in his own front yard — it totals to the least likely time and environment in which to kill. But bang. I’ll take pro, Jack. Amateur killers do their stalking at night.”

“So lay a little motive on me, too, Mike. How come a guy sunning in a wheelchair gets knocked off by a pro?”

“Maybe he was a gambler, maybe he dabbled in narc running, maybe he—”

“Bull!”

“—or maybe an old love affair finally reached up and stiffed him.”

Shayne gave the police detective speculation. Leonard listened intently, his jaw working faster on the gum as the redhead talked. When Shayne had finished, Leonard breathed, “Holy Christ, you’re telling me that a guy who is dead really isn’t dead, that this Tiener finally sent an avenger? Shayne, get the hell out of here! Please? I’m already up to my knees in confusion and now you give me—”

“Jack?” Shayne interrupted.

“Yeah?”

“What do you figure Dobbs got hit with?”

“Rifle, high-powered. I’ll know tonight. The lab reports will be in by—”

“Can I talk to Mrs. Dobbs?”

“You can not. A doctor is with her.”

Shayne moved out toward his Buick abruptly. His strides were long, heels planted hard as he moved. He fired the cigaret butt off into the green grass. He could feel Jack Leonard’s eyes on his back. He got into the Buick, gunned the motor. Tim Rourke had already cut for the News office, probably was rattling a typewriter by now.

Shayne kept one eye hooked on the rearview mirror as he piloted the Buick. He picked up followers when he hit the busier thoroughfares, but he didn’t spot any car driving out of a secret nook to slide in behind him.

Still, he remained acutely aware. A sniper had snapped a shot at him from a high-powered hunting rifle. A sniper had killed Vernon Dobbs, the slug from a powerful rifle ripping open the man’s skull and spilling him from a wheelchair.

The Tiener Estate was silent and brilliant when Shayne arrived. Windows glistened in the sunshine. There were no cars in sight. Shayne sat for a moment and studied the area, looking for lurkers, someone eyeing him curiously. He spotted no one.

A pert maid at the front door informed him that Tony Andrews was out for the day and she did not know when he would return. Only domestics were in the house.

Shayne returned to the Buick, inventorying windows of the house. They remained blank. No drapes moved, no shadows drifted out of sight.

He drew the same blank at the Montgomery place. No one answered his knock. When he moved around to the swimming pool area, he found only a sparkling unoccupied vastness.

He headed downtown. His scowl was heavy as he chain-smoked. He wanted Tony Andrews.

The sharp crack doubled him over the steering wheel. He tucked tight and battled the wrenching of the wheel, struggling to bring the Buick under control. He spotted an open slot at the curbing, yanked the car into it and jammed on the brakes. He flipped off the ignition key and remained low in the seat for a few seconds. There were no more loud cracks. And a sniper could be pumping rifle slugs into the Buick, making sure he hit his target this time.

Shayne sucked a breath and rolled from the seat. Outside, he squatted and stared at the front wheel. The tire was flat. He found the split in it with his fingertips. The split had not come from a rifle bullet. He’d had a simple damn blowout.

Cursing, he went around to the trunk and dug out the jack and spare.

X

The vivacious blonde came out of Tiener South and turned along the sidewalk. She was tall and straight and flowed smoothly. Suddenly she curved across the walk, bent at the open window of the Buick and looked across the seat at Shayne. Her smile was genuine. Mischief lurked far back in her eyes.

“Hi,” said Carole Ayers and dropped onto the seat beside the detective without being asked. She crossed long legs. “My place or yours?”

“Point to a watering hole,” he told her.

“Hmm. Maybe this isn’t going to be as interesting as I briefly anticipated. Two blocks down. It’s small, dim. The tables are tiny, we can rub knees, the wine is inexpensive — and my car is in the parking lot next door.”

Then over the drinks she said soberly, “Shayne, I’m getting bad vibes from you, I think.”

“Old Man Tiener and Elizabeth Stewart...” He extended two fingers and rubbed one against the other rapidly. “...last night you intimated they might have been like this. For real or not for real?”

She seemed to think for a moment before she said, “Office gossip. I don’t think they were making it, never did — mostly because the Scorn Machine wasn’t his type.”

“His type being?”

“Me, and the thousands like me. Young girls, I think we’re called.”

Shayne yanked his ear. “He had four wives, all young. You happen to know any of them?”

“Sure,” she nodded. “The last one — Jane. There was a day when she occupied a chair four desks down from mine. That was before she professed an interest in yachting, of course.”

“And after she did?”

“Summoning vibes came regularly from the Crown Room.”

“From where Tiener ruled?”

“Right on.”

“How did Elizabeth Stewart react?”

“Stone.”

“Jane Tiener was killed in an airplane crash.”

“Un-huh.”

“You know Vernon Dobbs?”

“Hey, man, I’m just a little ol’ clerk-typist-receptionist.”

“So was Jane Tiener once.”

“The dif being she had universal interests. I don’t. I lean only to rugged looking redheads who wear guns in a shoulder pouch — or something. You take that thing off before you go to bed, don’t you?”

Shayne waved her off. “Dobbs.”

“Never have laid eyes on him. If I have, I didn’t know it. He could sit down here in the next thirty seconds and I wouldn’t—”

“He is dead, Carole.” Shayne explained briefly.

“Lord!” she took a deep breath. “You’re getting scary. Don’t you know any live people?”

“Yeah. Guy named Tony Andrews.”

She frowned deeply. “Never heard of him.”

“Lisa Montgomery.”

She shook her head. “No. Next?”

“Lisa Montgomery is Tiener’s sister.”

“Hmm. I didn’t know he had a sister.”

“Your car is in the parking lot next door?”

She sat back in her chair. “Shayne, don’t you ever relax? Listen to music — or something?”

He turned on a quick crooked grin for her as he rose. “Seldom. And when I do, I, too, have a clerk-typist-receptionist-secretary — and friend.”

“Oh!” She seemed to consider it. Then she lifted her shoulders in a slight shrug and sat forward. She smiled, but her eyes already were inventorying the male population of the small lounge. “Well,” she said, “if she ever dies, remember me. I’m heavy on typing. Really, I am.”

Shayne wheeled to the Miami News office and found Sol Pearbome stuffed inside a tiny cubicle off the main editorial room. The cubicle was cluttered with filing cabinets and overflowing wire baskets. Pearbome sat back in an ancient swivel chair, fishing through a wire basket on his lap, glasses on the end of his nose.

“Damn government safety regulations!” he mumbled. “I live for the day spikes are back in style. Then a man can find what he is looking for. What’s with you, Shayne, Vernon Dobbs Communications?”

“Tiener South and Lisa Hume Montgomery.”

Pearbome frowned over the top of the glasses, popped the basket on his desk and sat forward. “The Montgomery women is Tiener’s sister, but she doesn’t fit in Tiener South.” He steepled fingers, stared at them. “You sort of lit a fire for me yesterday, fella. I’ve been doing a lot of sniffing in the last twenty-four hours. You got me thinking, you know — Tiener supposedly dead — what did it do to the corporate structure? Well, I can tell you the structure is the same and functioning smoothly just like it was ten years ago.”

“But with no Lisa Montgomery involved, right, Sol? She’s my interest.”

He wagged his head. “She’s Tiener’s sister. Period. She doesn’t figure in the corporate structure.” He paused, then said significantly, “Probably because she’s supposed to be a little light upstairs, got a few loose marbles, people say. Not serious enough to consider institutionalizing, I’m told, but enough that she is no more than a shadow in the background.”

Pearbome looked up and past Shayne, alerting the detective. “Rourke,” he said in flat greeting.

Shayne twisted and shot a look at his friend. Rourke lounged in the doorway. “Saw you heading back here, Mike. What’s up? But make it sane, huh? I’ve had enough weirdos for today. Rich playboy shot out of his wheelchair by a street sniper and some alcoholic found murdered at his kitchen table, bottle in hand, the only problem being the booze had been laced with strychnine. That’s a full day in my book.”

A tiny light flickered inside Shayne’s skull. He stared hard at Rourke. “What’s the pitch on the poison case?”

Rourke showed mild surprise. “Man found dead in his two-by-four home by a neighbor. The neighbor called the cops. The poor devil lived alone, was a bachelor, name was Carter Lincoln. He was a TV repairman by day, an alcoholic by night, worked every day, got drunk every night.

“At home— Never went out. Just got off work, went home, got out his bottle and the ice cubes and sat at the kitchen table. Sometimes he slept there, sometimes he made it to bed. But last night he got pinned to his chair good.

“Cops are speculating he got the laced bottle by special messenger early last evening. The reason being the neighbor saw a messenger hit Lincoln’s front door around seven, saw Lincoln accept the package, sign for it. Cops got back to the messenger service.

“Their records show a guy who signed a ticket as an Anthony Spear paid to have the package delivered to Carter Lincoln. But that’s where it ends. The girl down at the messenger service doesn’t remember anything in particular about this Spear other than he was a man probably about thirty, had blonde hair.

“Lincoln in business for himself?”

“No. Worked for Palm TV. It’s an independent operation — small. Owned by an ex-chain outfit TV repairman who finally went on his own, built a trade, has hired three employees along the way, Lincoln being one of them. How come you’re so damned interested, Mike?”

Shayne stomped past Rourke and out of Pearbome’s cubicle, not offering an answer. He stopped in the news room and used the City Directory. He found an address for Palm TV, the name of an owner — Alfred Bannister.

Bannister was working late. It was past the normal closing hour for the small shop, all of the employees had gone home, but Bannister was up to his elbows in TV repair work. He had lost a repairman the previous day, a man named Carter Lincoln. Lincoln had been murdered. He still couldn’t believe it. Murder was big — but even-bigger was the repair load Bannister suddenly found on his shoulders.

Had Palm TV ever had a service call from the Robert Hume Tiener Estate?

Bannister thumbed through small cards in a box. Yep. He had a call recorded for a Tiener. It had been a home call and the service had been minor, replacement of a small tube in a color set. Carter Lincoln had handled it.

Carter Lincoln had filed a complaint after the call. When entering the Tiener grounds he had been attacked and claimed to have been bitten by an unchained dog.

What had Bannister done about the complaint?

Called the Tiener place, talked to somebody out there who admitted the dog had attacked. Compensation was forwarded — five hundred clams. Bannister said he had handed Lincoln the five bills.

“But did you?” asked Shayne.

Bannister bristled. “Lincoln went on a ten-day drunk! And that’s answer enough if you’ve investigated Lincoln!”

“Lincoln was an alcoholic,” said Shayne. “So how come you kept him?”

“Drunk, Carter Lincoln was a better TV serviceman than most men are sober, that’s why!”

“Who killed him, Bannister?”

“Hell, I dunno! All I do know is, the killer went the best route. If you wanted to kill Lincoln give him a jug saturated with poison. He’d drink it because it had a booze label on it. Taste wasn’t important to him.”

Shayne went to the bar, ordered a cognac and ice water chaser, took both to a corner table where he was out of the flow of bar traffic and away from the other table customers. He did not want to be disturbed. It was skull time.

He had five deaths — Burns and Singleton staked out in a swamp, Elizabeth Stewart strangled in her apartment, Dobbs shot out of his wheelchair and Lincoln poisoned at his kitchen table. There was at least one common tie — Robert Hume Tiener or Tiener South. Add an ex-mercenary, a man who on the one hand seemed totally subservient to a master and on the other had the ingredients of a cold-blooded killer.

Shayne lit a cigaret. Okay, five murders, one killer. Cozy package if it held together. So what was the glue?

Burns and Singleton. Each had been a land expert, employed by competing firms going after the same piece of swampland. Brooks and Associates had won, Tiener South had lost. Then Burns and Singleton had been found staked out on the same piece of swamp.

Dobbs, a sportsman who had taken Tiener’s wife on a tryst to a Wyoming hunting lodge — Dobbs, killed by a slug from a hunting rifle ripping across his skull.

Lincoln, an alcoholic TV repairman who had been attacked by Tiener’s dog, the dog later found dead, poisoned by strychnine. Then Lincoln dies. Strychnine in a bottle of booze.

Each had burned Tiener. Burns and Singleton — money. Dobbs — the man’s wife. Lincoln — the man’s dog.

Shayne shuffled his feet and smoked rapidly as he savored the smell of eye-to-eye vengeance.

Problem.

Shayne stopped shuffling, scowled. Where was the vengeance in the strangulation of Elizabeth Stewart?

Answer — her death simply didn’t fit.

Shayne finished the cognac, sat twirling the ice water without drinking. And who was pulling Tony Andrews’ string? Robert Hume Tiener, a fantastically wealthy eccentric with a history of occasionally crawling into a cave and pulling the opening in after him?

Or was Lisa Hume Montgomery a super shrewdie, had she been one all her years? Her brother was dead, really dead this time out. Lost at sea. And now Lisa was pulling strings? On her brother’s behalf?

Shayne butted the cigaret and walked out of the bar on long strides, his heels digging in, his jaw squared, his eyes hard. An ex-mercenary had answers.

Mike Shayne was going hunting.

XI

The pert maid at the Tiener front door cocked her head slightly in recognition and said, “I’m sorry, sir, Mr. Andrews has not returned.”

“Un-huh,” said Shayne, running a thumbnail along his jaw line. He twisted and looked over his shoulder at the plain, cream-colored sedan braked ahead of his Buick in the drive. It was the only car he had ever seen at the Tiener place.

When he turned back to the door, he found it closed. It looked solidly in place. His blood pressure went up and he raised a fist to hammer it, then dropped his arm.

He stomped to the Buick and rolled away from the house. But a hundred yards down the street, he made a U-turn and braked at the curbing. The Tiener entry was in sight. Evening was dusk, but he had a clear view. He slouched behind the steering wheel and settled down for what could be a long night. The next time the plain sedan left the estate, he’d be on its tail.

The sedan popped into view and turned away from him in just twenty minutes.

He rolled cuatiously keeping plenty of distance between himself and his tailee. The streets were quiet, no other cars to hide behind until the sedan turned onto a busy boulevard.

Shayne applied pressure to the Buick’s accelerator, closed the distance. There was a station wagon immediately ahead of him, then a dented pickup truck, a glistening sports car. The sports car was riding the sedan’s tail.

Suddenly it zoomed around the sedan and the gap closed. Shayne eased off, allowed another car to get into the lane ahead. The line rolled smoothly for three miles, then the sedan drifted into the right lane and turned off at the next intersection.

Shayne made the turn cautiously. The sedan had shot away from him. He gunned the Buick, dodging in and out of two lanes of light traffic. They were in the university area. Pedestrians became a problem. Clumps of students moved along the sidewalks, intersections had a lot of foot traffic and occasionally students popped across the street in mid-block, seemingly paying no heed to moving vehicles.

The sedan turned abruptly into a small parking lot that adjoined a pizza and beer place. Shayne stopped out in the street, left the Buick, waved honking traffic around him. He threw up the hood of the car and bent over the motor. Under his arm, he watched Tony Andrews come out to the sidewalk and enter the pizza and beer joint.

He found an empty slot beside the sedan in the parking lot. Leaving the Buick again, he adjusted his shoulder rig, then moved out to the sidewalk. The building was low slung with a large front window. Sidewalk traffic — if interested — could watch flying pizzas.

Shayne entered the place. The smell of pizza filled his nostrils and the din of babbling students assailed his ears. Five yards straight ahead lay a vast open room with old-fashioned high-backed booths lining the walls and wooden picnic tables slapped haphazardly between them — also a tiny dancing area. Beer pitchers were filled in a back wall.

Shayne threaded through the mass of youthful humanity, his size and age drawing little more than a curious glance here and there as he searched the booths. He spotted Tony Andrews sitting beside a man in a back booth.

Shayne dropped into the booth opposite. Andrews said nothing. He wore a tight smile. Beside him was a wide solidlooking man of at least 70 years. His skin was tight and had been browned by many suns. Pure white hair was shaggy, eyes a steely gray-blue. He wore a cheap gray sports shirt open to his solar plexus. A brass necklace with a huge brass coin hung from his neck. His interlocked fingers were thick and ringless.

And most of the young people in the place called out greetings to him. “Hi, Pops.”

He acknowledged each with a nod of the head, a hand wave, an amiable grin, in most cases a name.

“My friends, Mr. Shayne,” he said from across the room. “My true friends in this world.”

Then he snapped back and lifted a half filled pitcher of beer. “Need a glass?”

“No.”

“Good.” He filled his glass and drank. “You want?” he said suddenly. His eyes had become shiny like cobalt. He still looked relaxed, but Shayne knew that inside Robert Hume Tiener was taut as an archer’s string.

“You told your boy Andrews to bring me,” countered Shayne. “He did. So I want to know why you wanted me.”

“You want?” Tiener repeated, his tone flat, his eyes bristling.

Shayne shrugged. “I was hired to find the killer of Patrick Burns. Along the way I ran into four more murders. All five point to you and your boy. So I’m here.”

Tiener stared at him hard. “That’s simply put,” he said. “I like that. I wish we had met under different circumstance, Mr. Shayne. I think I could have used you.”

“Nobody uses me, Tiener.”

The old man chuckled. It sounded more like a belch erupting. He drank beer. Then he said darkly, “Bums screwed up. I had him over there at Brooks for years, and he was a good man, but he screwed up on the biggest deal of all.”

“Bums was a spy.”

“And Singleton sold out. The bastard! He shouldn’t have done that. I was good to him over the rough times. But he sold out and Bums didn’t catch it.”

Shayne grunted and said bluntly, “Dobbs got your wife and Lincoln your dog.”

Tiener didn’t stir, but he flushed. His hand on the beer glass tightened until the knuckles were white.

“But that leaves Elizabeth Stewart,” said Shayne.

Tiener stirred. He sat up, stared into the beer glass. “Poor judgment on Tony’s part. You had been to the office, then you were up to her place. Tony didn’t know Elizabeth like I did, so under the circumstances he acted. It was a defensive act of sorts, I guess — although I wish he hadn’t killed Elizabeth. I liked her. Still, he acted according to circumstances. I can see that. Tony and I have discussed the matter. It is finished.”

“So are you, Tiener.”

“Oh, I don’t really think so, Mr. Shayne. You see, Tony is holding a gun under the table. The muzzle is trained straight at your gut.”

“I know,” said the redhead quietly.

Tiener almost looked surprised. “You’re not frightened?”

“He isn’t going to stiff me here. All that would do is wipe out your hideaway, make all your young friends leery of you — and bring the cops. None of which you want.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Shayne.” He nodded. “I do wish we could have become associated under different circumstances. I like the way you think.”

“Enough to trade?”

He cocked an eyebrow.

“Me for Tony?”

He laughed suddenly. It was a genuine burst this time.

“Hell, man,” said Shayne, “you traded Lou Crawford for Tony.”

“Well, I’ll be damned!” breathed Tiener. “You know about that, too? What the hell — have you been my shadow all these years?”

“I piece things together, Tiener. It’s my business.”

Tiener emptied the contents of the beer pitcher into his glass. He drank. “No, no trade, Shayne.”

“Because Tony suddenly has the gun trained on your gut?”

He finished the beer. “You’re something, Shayne! I do like you! Come on, let’s get out of here.”

“What if I don’t move?”

Tiener became cold and hard again. “Oh, you’re going to move, Shayne. Most men don’t like to die. Most men will squeeze out any breath they can grab, by any means. And you’re one of that kind.

“You can sit there and die. Or you can get up, we’ll all walk out of here, and you’ll be breathing in those next fifteen minutes from now, but you’ll be breathing. You may not be breathing fifteen minutes from now, but you’ll be breathing in those next fifteen, and you like that idea. It gives you a little more time to see if you can ourmaneuver me.”

Shayne and Tiener walked side by side out of the joint and down the sidewalk, Andrews trailing.

“Think he can hit me at this distance?” Shayne asked out of the side of his mouth.

“Oh, I think so,” Tiener said easily.

“He missed with a rifle.”

“I wish he hadn’t. You’ve complicated things for me.”

Shayne grunted. Last piece in place.

They moved along the sidewalk at a rapid pace, Tiener matching Shayne’s long strides. He plunked scruffy boots down in step with the detective. Shayne changed step. Tiener changed, shot him a side glance and a one-sided grin. Then he thumbed a squat, two-story stucco building and curved toward an entry that revealed steps. Shayne went up, Tiener immediately behind him, Andrews trailing. There was a short entry area at the top of the steps, then a closed door.

Tiener said, “Okay, now freeze, Shayne.”

The redhead stood rooted. Tiener moved around him, fished a ring of keys from a baggy pants pocket. He fitted a key in the lock and swung the door open. Reaching inside, he snapped on lamplight. Shayne saw a sparsely furnished but comfortable apartment living room.

Tiener faced him. He was stone again, his eyes brilliant. “One moment,” he said. He reached up and slid a hand inside Shayne’s coat, fingers closing over the butt of the .45.

Shayne knew Andrews was immediately behind him, probably still on the top step, the gun trained on his spine, but it was now or never. With Tiener’s hand removing the .45, the detective went down on his haunches hard and threw up his legs.

The sound of the shot triggered by Andrews was deafening and Shayne felt a stinging sensation across the top of one shoulder. Tiener yelled hoarsely as he was pitched over the redhead. It was a combination of surprise and pain.

Shayne rolled and went up on his knees. The flying Tiener slammed Andrews against the wall. Shayne shot forward from his knees and caught Andrews’ gun wrist as Tiener bumped down the stairwell. The detective jerked, pulling Andrews over him. He lashed upward with an elbow, that caught Andrews’ body and brought a grunt from the gunman.

He heard the clatter or the gun skittering across the floor, and then he whirled and flipped Andrews onto his spine. He came down hard with a knee against Andrews’ chest. Andrews writhed. Shayne looped a solid uppercut against his exposed jaw.

Andrews went limp. He twitched on the floor, but his lights were out. Shayne plunged down the stairsteps and slapped both big hands on Tiener’s shoulders. He yanked Tiener up and propelled him back up the steps, slammed him against the wall. Tiener was bleeding from a shoulder wound.

Shayne found both guns on the floor, scooped them up. Andrews was coming around. He sat up groggily. Shayne nudged him with a toe. “Inside!” he growled.

Andrews got to his feet, bobbed unsteadily. Shayne stuck the .45 against the back of Andrews’ head and pushed him forward into the apartment. He yanked Tiener from the wall and propelled him inside.

Tiener pitched to a wall, slammed his hands against it at the last second. He hung for several moments, then slowly twisted. He put his spine against the wall and slid down it to his haunches. His knees came up and he sagged, breathing harshly. The blood spot on his shoulder had widened.

Tiener was out of it. Shayne faced Andrews. The exmercenary was slumped in a deep chair, but he was swiftly regaining his senses. He knew where he was now, the situation. He pulled himself up slowly, eyes narrowed to buttons and hard. He was being very careful with his moves.

Shayne held the .45 loosely, wiggled it in reminder. “Call the cops, Andrews,” he growled.

Andrews stiffened. But his glance had gone beyond Shayne. His eyes widened abruptly. “Hey!”

Shayne whirled. Tiener had lifted his head. He was smiling. He also was drawing a derringer from a small packet in the side of his boot. Shayne brought the muzzle of the .45 up, steeled himself.

But all Tiener did was grin. “It’s finally finished for me, gentlemen.”

“No!” yelled Andrews as Tiener put the muzzle of the derringer into his mouth.

After the shot, Shayne stood frozen for several seconds, remembering Lisa Hume Montgomery’s forecast that her brother would die violently. Should he take his own life, it would be with a gun — just for the experience.

And he would have an audience!

Shayne cursed, then reached for the phone. It was time for the police. Then it was time he called Samantha to tell her the job was done.