Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 40, No. 4, April 1977

Everybody involved in the criminal libel suit wants missing witness Myra Rainey, including the Miami redhead. But the going doesn’t get really rough until Myra’s roommate is murdered in her home.

I

Shayne had just pulled his Buick to a stop in front of the old pine mansion when the shots blasted the quiet of deepening twilight on the palm arcaded street. There were two of them, a couple of seconds apart, followed by a wildly discordant chorus of birdlife already nested in for the night to come.

But no human sounds followed their shattering impact. No shouts, no screams, no moans.

The detective’s right hand slipped inside his jacket to grip the butt of the big Colt .45 in his shoulder rig. He sat there, waiting, as the second hand on the dashboard clock made two full circuits of the illuminated dial.

Still nothing.

He was in the very oldest part of Miami, where fine antiquated houses were all but masked from the street by the jungle growth of tropical foliage that had grown up in the near-century since they were built. But there were houses, however widely separated, in Coconut Grove, and surely, he thought, there should be some audible or visible reaction to the twin detonations that had shattered the twilight quiet.

But there was none he could hear or see. Even the birds ceased their clatter when the shots’ echoes faded and were still.

Mike Shayne got out of his car and closed the door silently behind him! With his right hand hovering close to the heavy automatic, he crossed the street slowly and walked up a brief gravel driveway, largely overgrown with grass that served to muffle his footfalls.

It led past the large house on his right, through whose windows no light glowed, widened into a turnaround parking area at the rear of the dwelling, went on some forty feet to a former coachhouse-garage that had been converted into a small out-residence. There lived Cathy Whiting, the young woman he had driven out to see.

Two cars were side by side in the parking area — a three-year-old Pinto and a grey Mercedes that looked new. The redhead halted his progress long enough to lay a hand on the radiators of both vehicles. They were both warm, but not unreasonably so for the temperature, which lingered in the low seventies.

The redheaded detective judged that the shots had come from the small separate dwelling that was his destination. He had set up the interview via telephone from his office that afternoon, after considerable research had rewarded him with the knowledge that Cathy Whiting was the apartment mate of Myra Rainey, the young woman whose whereabouts Shayne was seeking.

“I don’t know what I can tell you,” Cathy Whiting had said over her office phone, “but come on out about seven if you think it might help you. I’m worried about Myra, too.”

So here Shayne was, on the dot, to be greeted by the sounds of gunfire. He studied the smaller house. Somewhere, in its interior, a dim light glowed — too dim to create interior visibility through the windows. The front door was shut.

Shayne drew his automatic and put thumb to the safety catch before crossing the turnaround area. The unnatural stillness, following the double eruption of the shots, caused the hackles at the nape of his neck to stiffen. Then, silent as a large redheaded cat, the detective slid swiftly toward the rail-less porch that fronted the small dwelling.

Taking a deep breath, he punched the doorbell.

The twilight stillness was again shattered without warning after a brief period of silence. A window beside the door was smashed abruptly and the barrel of a gun was thrust through it, pointed at the detective and fired twice more.

The flashes all but blinded him, the shots themselves were deafening at such close range that he could feel the draft created by the bullets themselves. Had not the infinitesimal time-gap between the breaking of the window pane and the shots been sufficient for Mike Shayne to plunge face downward on the porch floor, he would have had his head blown off.

He lay prone, feigning death or unconsciousness, then inched himself over with infinite care to cover the front door should his would-be assassin emerge. By the time he was sitting upright, a door slammed at the rear of the little house and, casting caution aside, Shayne scrambled to his feet and circled the out-dwelling, automatic at the ready...

...only to stumble into, a barbecue pit in the back yard that caused him to fall to his hands and knees.

This time, the door slam sounded from the front of the house, followed by the thud of sprinting footsteps on the gravel of the parking area. Realizing he had been effectively flummoxed, the redhead completed his circuit of the little house in pursuit.

A car motor roared to life as he raced past a brick chimney. By the time he regained a view of the lot, the Mercedes was taking the turn into the driveway on two wheels with rubber in screaming protest.

Mike Shayne did not send a bullet after it. The chance of scoring a tire-hit on a receding object in motion in that dim light was about one in two million. He went on around to the front door, which now hung open, and walked in.

Cathy Whiting — Shayne judged it was she by the C.W. monogram on the breast pocket of the lavender sports shirt which contrasted pleasantly, even in the semi-gloom of the house interior, with her chrome yellow shorts — lay on her back in the little living room. What had been her face was a pudding of blood and bone and brains and hair and shredded flesh.

From a framed photograph on a table beside the small sofa, Cathy Whiting had been a very attractive young woman. In the picture, she stood with an arm around an exceedingly comely brunette against an outdoor background. The brunette Shayne recognized from other photographs he had seen as Myra Rainey.

With a sigh, he pulled out a handkerchief after holstering his handgun, picked up the telephone and dialed Homicide. Then he got out of there and walked back to his car through the near-night.

As he did so, he received an answer to one factor that had especially puzzled him — the lack of any reaction to the sounds of the shots, apart from the birds in the trees. The over-and-undergrowth of tropical vegetation in this oldest part of the city was so dense that it must have blanketed the detonations.

The redhead had heard the shots because he was in front of the old house, with a clear acoustical alley. But across the street was a lot, vacant except for the all-encroaching palms and palmettoes.

Mike Shayne did not linger to greet the police, although he heard the faint whine of a siren as he drove eastward toward South Bayshore Drive. He had no desire to be put through even a cursory examination at this point in a case where things were evidently hotting up.

The redhead had been called into it less than twenty-four hours earlier, although the case itself was almost a year old. Only within the span of the last two days, however, had it erupted into possible criminal action, with the disappearance, voluntary or compulsory, of Myra Rainey.

II

Tim Rourke looking as usual like a famine victim, awaited the detective in their regular rear booth at The Beef House. As Shayne took the seat opposite, the star reporter for the Miami Daily News looked up from his half-empty boilermaker with an expression that combined hope with acceptance of the worst.

“Well...?” he said.

“Well... nothing.”

“Whiting wouldn’t talk?”

“Whiting couldn’t talk,” the redhead replied. “She was shot dead as I pulled up in front of her place.”

“I don’t believe it! They wouldn’t—” Rourke halted abruptly, reached for his drink.

“Somebody did.”

“Who?” The reporter put his glass down empty.

“I didn’t get a good look at him. It was getting dark out there.”

“Murder!” It was an exclamation although Rourke’s voice was a bare whisper. Then, “I never thought they’d go this far. But why kill Cathy Whiting? How could she hurt them? She’s not even involved.”

The readhead said, “It’s just possible Whiting knew where Myra Rainey is — and your friends found out that she knew.”

“But she told you over the phone she had no idea,” the reporter protested.

“That’s what she told me, Tim. Which means either she lied or she found out afterward.”

“But how...?”

“Tim, I hope you’re not this stupid when you’re on a story. Try maybe Myra phoned her.”

“And them told whoever killed her? Come on, Mike.”

“Suppose,” said Shayne, “her call was heard. There are such things as wire taps, you know. But hadn’t you better report to your principals?”

“You’re damn right. Where’ll you be, Mike?” After draining his glass to the dregs, the reporter stood up, lean and lank as a beanpole.

“Right here. I’m hungry.”

“You’ll hear from us. And don’t take off without leaving a message with Pat at the bar.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Shayne replied. “Give my regards to Carl Dirkson and the kingpin.”

After ordering, Shayne wrapped a fist around a double Martell on the rocks and tugging at an earlobe, considered the case on which he had so recently been hired. Thanks to his close friendship with Rourke, he had known about it ever since the newsman’s original story appeared in the paper that employed him.

It was the last installment of an eight-part expose of corruption in the Miami area, centering on the building and loan industries that had sparked the problem. It had pilloried the practices of developer. Carl Meadows, revealing him as a builder of shoddy houses, as a flagrant rigger of stock in his own corporations, as a landlord capable of loan-sharking his tenants when they had the misfortune to fall behind in their rents, as a consorter with shady underworld characters in shady resorts and, finally, as a cruel and immoral individual in private life who had left a wake of human wreckage behind him.

There had been talk of a Pulitzer for Rourke when the series appeared — talk which was quickly silenced when Meadows, through his attorney, Allen MacRae, slapped a five-million-dollar suit for criminal libel on the News, citing publisher Roy Latimer, editor Carl Dirkson and by-lined reporter Tim Rourke as co-defendants.

Although Rourke was known to take both, a drink and a woman off the job, on it he was a scrupulously honest, careful and gifted journalist with vast experience and intimate knowledge of Miami, Miami Beach and all of surrounding Dade County. Aware of this, like Tim himself, his co-defendants were not especially worried over the lawsuit throughout its preliminary stages and postponements...

...until, only thirty-six hours earlier, they learned that Myra Rainey, Meadows’ former secretary and chief defense witness, had dropped out of sight.

It was shortly after this that Mike Shayne was invited into the case. Dirkson and Tim Rourke had prevailed upon the publisher to bypass the police for the time being, on the grounds that the opposition might conceivably be unconnected with Myra’s disappearance and that to call in the police would be to inform them of the fact.

The redhead had gone along with this reasoning until he heard the shots and found Cathy Whiting’s body in the house both girls had shared. He had called in Chief Will Gentry’s men in blue because, with Cathy’s murder, all reason for pretense was gone.

If the other side was not behind the killing, they would inevitably learn about it, and-about the dead girl’s roommate’s disappearance in short order.

When his food arrived — a 24-ounce top sirloin, charcoal black outside and blood rare within, accompanied by a baked potato adrip with butter, onion rings, bacon, mushroom caps, French rolls and a chef’s salad — Shayne ate it thoughtfully, considering what options were open to him for further investigation.

The obvious move would be to question the murdered girl’s friends, acquaintances and co-office workers — Cathy had been employed by a major insurance firm as a secretary — as to her words and behavior during the last few hours and days of her life. Perhaps, buried under the inevitable slag-heap of routine, might lie some clue to Cathy’s killers and/or her housemate’s whereabouts.

Unfortunately, this move would be obvious to the police as well — and they were far better prepared than the redhead to conduct such a blanket investigative chore than any lone operative, however gifted and lucky.

Shayne had a hunch he was going to need all the luck he could find in this one.

Like all investigators who deal on occasion with the seamy side of society, the redhead operated through that strange, seldom acknowledged form of swap and barter known as information... you owe me one, I owe you one, collection time coming up, what do you hear about...?

Most successful police work is the result of information, whether from above or underground. Without their paid informers, every metropolitan police force in the world would be virtually out of business in short order.

Shayne had his own roster of insiders, of odd characters knowledgeable in ways and means of which the bulk of society knows nothing. So, as he ate, he pondered whom he could turn to for swift results, both in the matter of Myra Rainey’s disappearance and Cathy Whiting’s murder. Somebody had to know something. But who and where?

Darlene, the pretty young brunette who had served Shayne his dinner, came to the booth with a portable phone and knelt to jack it in.

It was Tim. He said, “We’re at a dead end. Get over to Mr. Latimer’s office as soon as you can, Mike.”

“Five minutes,” the detective assured him.

When Shayne left, he was only half aware that a thickset young man at the front-door end of the bar put down a barely touched highball and rose to follow him. Nor did he note the grey Mercedes that trailed him discreetly through the thickening early evening traffic.

III

Four men were seated around the broad teakwood table in the publisher’s offices atop the new Daily News, building. At its head was News publisher Roy Latimer, short, chunky, with the features of a non-Ethiopean gnome. On his right, with legal papers spread out in front of him, was balding James J. Lowman, top attorney for Latimer’s battery of lawyers. Opposite Lowman sat shirt-sleeved Carl Dirkson, spectacles pushed high on his forehead, and Tim Rourke.

Shayne slid into the chair next to Lowman, who looked at him blankly as if he were not quite sure the detective was actually present.

Roy Latimer said, “Mr. Shayne, I am told you found the Whiting girl’s body. What in hell happened?”

The publisher had a football quarterback’s voice — high pitched, with a rough cutting edge calculated to be audible above the roar of any crowd. Now and then, he interrupted the detective’s concise account of the Coconut Grove killing with quick questions, more often to the point than not.

When Shayne finished, Latimer turned to Lowman, who had sat silent throughout, said, “Where does that leave us, Jim?”

The attorney shook himself as if to awaken from a trance, breathed deeply, then replied, “Up the creek without a paddle, I’m afraid. Whiting was our sole remaining lead to Myra Rainey. If Myra fails to show when the trial starts Monday, we’re deader than mutton.”

He picked up a ballpoint and began to doodle on a sheet of scrap paper in front of him.

“You have no clue to this capper’s identity, Mr. Shayne?” the publisher asked.

The detective said, “All I saw was the back of his head as he drove off.”

“You didn’t get his license number?”

“No way.”

“What do you propose to do?”

Shayne spoke quietly. “I propose to find other leads to the Rainey girl’s whereabouts. I’ve only been on the case one day.”

“What if they’ve killed her, too?” Latimer asked. His questions came like bullets.

“Then I’ll find her body, if it still exists. If she’s been trash-compacted or tossed into the ocean, I’ll find out.”

“That could take time,” the publisher reminded him, “and time is what we’re damned near out of. This is Thursday night.”

“I’m aware of it, Latimer. But my deadline record is not too bad.”

“I’m aware of that, Shayne.” The publisher ran a hand over his balding head, turned to his attorney, added, “What if Shayne does find evidence that Rainey is dead? Will that help us?”

Again James Lowman seemed to shake himself out of a trance. He said, “It should help — at least toward getting a further postponement out of Judge Garvey.”

“Cathy Whiting’s murder won’t do that?” Latimer asked.

“Not unless we can tie it in with Myra Rainey’s disappearance — and thus far I have heard nothing that suggests hard evidence.”

Latimer turned to his editor and star reporter on the opposite side of the table, said, “Carl, I expect you to use the full resources of the News either to find Miss Rainey or to link her apartment mate’s murder with the lawsuit. If Shayne needs help, give it to him. That’s all for now, gentlemen.”

He rose and strode from the room, a worried but still cocky little Napoleon of a man. James Lowman stood up, rather unsteadily, the detective thought, and assembled the papers in front of him for transfer to his attaché case. As he did so, several sheets slipped to the carpet and the redhead picked them up and returned them. Lowman nodded his thanks and Mike Shayne joined Tim and Carl Dirkson, who were walking toward the door.

When they passed into the hall toward the elevators, Shayne heard the attorney say, “Operator, I want you to get me...”

The number Lowman requested was inaudible as one of the elevator doors clanged open.

“What do you think?” Carl Dirkson asked the redhead.

“I think Jim Lowman is dead on his feet.”

“He’s got a hell of a rep for this kind of case,” Tim Rourke suggested. The elevator halted at the third floor, the city room level. “Coming in, Mike?” the reporter added.

“I don’t think I’ve got time,” Shayne replied. He rode on down to the lobby, with its photomurals of the best News photographs and its slowly revolving world globe in the center. Outside, the doorman was getting out of a black Coronado.

Shayne said, “Is this Mr. Lowman’s car, Dave?”

“He just called for it. He’s coming down now, Mr. Shayne.”

“Thanks, Dave.” The detective slipped a fivespot into an unreluctant hand, winked and went on to the parking lot, where his own Buick waited.

Although it might have been caused by indigestion or any number of other malaises, Lowman’s behavior puzzled Shayne. He had an intuitive feeling that it lay rooted in brass-chill panic. He had all but smelled the aura of fear as he bent to retrieve the spilled papers.

From his newsmen friends’ elevator comments, Lowman’s trancelike behavior was not usual. This buttressed the redhead’s intuitive assumption that the attorney’s abstraction had been brought about by fear. Question — what did James Lowman have to be afraid of? Two — if he was in panic, did said panic result from news of the murder of Cathy Whiting?

Mike Shayne determined to find out...

IV

The most direct avenue of approach, he decided, would be to follow the attorney home and ring his doorbell shortly after his arrival, a confrontation for which the redhead felt far from prepared. On the other hand, if he followed Lowman and the lawyer did not drive directly home, Shayne would at least know where else he was going.

When Lowman pulled out of the News parking lot, the detective waited out a slow ten-count, then followed him discreetly, sliding into the light night traffic a half dozen cars behind. Shayne knew that the well known attorney lived in the opulent area across Indian Creek. He was therefore surprised when Lowman turned south instead of north when they reached an artery.

Two of the intervening cars took the north turn, three headed south after the attorney’s car — and one of them, the redhead saw, was a sleek grey Mercedes as it slid past a battery of bright sodium lamps.

The last time he had noticed such a car was when it took the driveway turn on two wheels, fleeing the scene of Cathy Whiting’s murder. A frown creased Shayne’s forehead as he let another car pass him to widen the pursuit gap. The odds against its being the murder car were a good hundred to one. Still...

One of the cars between the Eldorado and the Mercedes peeled off onto a side road, then another. The driver of the Mercedes let the other intervening car pass him... and then the one in front of that took a left turn to be followed by the last of the cover vehicles.

It was shortly after this that James Lowman must have become aware of the fact that he was being followed. From a dignified fifty-five miles per hour, the Cadillac suddenly spurted ahead. By his own speedometer, the redhead saw that it was going sixty-five, seventy-five, then eighty-five miles per hour.

The Mercedes held its own, as did Shayne’s Buick. All intervening cover was gone, the highway was empty save for the three of them — but evidently the man in the Mercedes, his attention focussed on the car ahead, was unaware that he, too, was being followed. The redhead eased off just a bit, keeping only the Mercedes in view.

A couple of miles further on, in thickening traffic, both cars ahead began to slow down. The detective kept pace with them, barely managed not to pass a right turn around a tree masked corner as the taillights of the foreign car turned off. It was Shayne’s turn to corner on two wheels.

The byway was ill-lighted, its darkness further increased by an arcade of lofty palms that virtually shut out the night sky. Neither the Mercedes nor the Eldorado was in sight. The detective cruised it slowly, both ways, noting the name on the corner sign as he got back to the highway — Las Palmas Drive.

He drove back to the city’s heart battling a mounting sense of frustration. Somewhere behind him, he again heard the mournful whine of distant police sirens.

Flagler Street was still bright as day when the detective emerged from the small parking lot behind his office. Over the past fifteen years, the once relatively quiet thoroughfare had become the main drag for the half million Cubans Miami has absorbed since Castro came to power in their native land.

The sidewalks were crowded, the kiosk coffee hot as hell, the conversation-table explosively high. But the big redhead enjoyed the sometime vitoperative, always vivid vitality of the round-the-clock scene.

Letting himself into his two-room office, Shayne used Lucy Hamilton’s monitor board to put in a call to James Lowman’s residence, which was listed in the directory. To his surprise, the attorney answered.

“Just wanted to be sure you got in safely,” the detective told him. “I had reason to think you were followed.”

“By whom?” Lowman countered.

“By a grey Mercedes that looked very much like the car I saw fleeing the Whiting killing earlier this evening,” Shayne replied.

“You’ve got to be kidding!” The attorney’s previously apathetic voice now sounded like the crack of a whip.

“I assure you I’m not.”

There was long silence from the other end of the line, then, “Shayne, are you sure?”

“Just as sure as you are.”

“What does that mean, Shayne?”

“It means,” said the detective, “that I followed your pursuer and you south from the News building this evening — and that you suddenly became aware of your tail. At least you upped your speed from fifty-five to eighty-five.”

“That was because I changed my mind and decided to get back here for reasons I shan’t go into.”

“You must have run all the way home,” the redhead told him.

“You are insolent, Shayne.”

“Good night, Counsellor,” said the detective. “Better check the locks on your doors and windows, just in case.”

“Shayne...”

There was a hint of urgency in Lowman’s voice that made the redhead wonder if he weren’t about to hear either an appeal for help, a revelation — or perhaps both.

“Yes, Mr. Lowman?” he said when the silence had gone on a little too long.

“It’s nothing, Shayne. Goodnight.”

The lawyer hung up.

Shayne cradled his instrument and pondered the attorney’s strange behavior that evening. During the meeting, it seemed to the redhead that Lowman had been in something close to a state of shock. Nor had his behavior since been outwardly rational — heading south toward an unknown destination, shaking pursuit and then winding up at the northern end of the city.

And what had he been about to reveal via the telephone, only to change his mind?

The detective went to the inner office, switched, on the lights, dug into the bottom drawer of the green metal file and came out with the bottle of Martell he kept on hand for just such occasions — or for no occasion at all. He got ice from the mini-freezer in the corner, made himself a stout cognac on the rocks, put his feet up on the desk and lit a cigaret, further pondering the case.

If Myra Rainey did not appear to testify for the defense, Roy Latimer, along with his co-defendants, would lose the case in all probability. Faced with a seven-figure adverse verdict, plus court costs and penalties, the vital little publisher might well have to sell his newspaper to keep afloat.

If the defense could tie Cathy Whiting’s killing to the case, they might get a sorely needed continuance. Shayne decided that this was the point he should concentrate his investigation upon. What investigation? He hadn’t got off the ground yet.

He finished his brandy and cigaret simultaneously, decided to go home and get some sleep and began his real investigation under way in the morning. He had only two days and two nights remaining. He hoped to hell it would be enough time.

He turned off the lights, locked up, walked downstairs and out the back door to the little rear lot where he had left his Buick. It was no longer alone in the twelve-slot parking area. There was a grey Mercedes blocking the Flagler Street exit less than sixty feet away.

Caught in the open, Shayne did the only thing he could think of — he went into a spin, crouching and straightening, changing course but actually moving at a near-sprint toward the only cover available — that of the Buick.

The first bullet whizzed past him, cutting a brief air-hole in the exact spot his head had occupied a split second earlier. The second shot was another miss by inches, as was the third. The fourth bullet, aimed low, took the heel cleanly off his left shoe — but by that time he had gained the shelter of his car and had unholstered his Colt .45.

At such short range, his ambusher’s long-barreled target pistol would have little or no advantage over the automatic. In fact, Shayne’s heavier slugs might well do the more damage.

The redhead managed to draw two more shots by raising his head, then ducking quickly, and a third lift drew no response at all. Shayne could just see the left shoulder and the left portion of his would-be killer’s head protruding beyond the rear of his car. He seemed to be engaged in putting a fresh magazine into his weapon.

Mike Shayne took careful aim, holding the Colt with both hands, resting his elbows on the hood of the Buick. He wanted merely to nick the exposed shoulder of his overconfident opponent well aware that even a full shoulder wound at that distance with the Colt could well be fatal.

He wanted this killer alive.

But just as Shayne squeezed the trigger, his target leaned forward and down, evidently to jam the fresh clip into place. Result — the detective’s heavy .45 slug caught its target full in the side of the head, causing him to pitch forward on what was left of his face.

The redhead uttered a four-syllable word of frustration as he holstered his gun and moved toward the corpse he had just created out of living man.

V

Miami Chief of police Will Gentry sat behind his desk, chewed on the end of a dead perfecto. The stubble of white beard on his lower face, the tousled state of his white hair, usually well groomed, revealed the length of his working day.

“Dammit,” he growled at Mike Shayne, seated across from him. “I should have guessed you were involved. Why didn’t you stand by after calling in the Whiting woman’s murder?”

“I had to report to my client, Chief,” said Shayne, “and you know better than to question me on that.”

A gleam lightened the glower in the burly Police Chiefs expression. He leaned back, removed the cigar, said, “I not only know better, Mike, I know all about it. Hell, man, I recommended you to Roy Latimer.”

The redhead managed not to blink, uttered a dry, “Thanks, Chief.”

“But now,” Gentry, went on as if Shayne had not interrupted, “I’m beginning to wish I’d negatived you. This was one night when I was planning to turn in early.”

“Sorry.” The detective tried hard to look sympathetic.

“I suppose you’ll want to know what we’ve got oh the bodies. I can tell you right now, it’s not much. This latest victim of yours was a hit man — name of Mac Straka. Originally from Detroit. A record as long as your arm.”

“Any idea what brought him to Miami?”

“Sure — we’ve both got a damn good idea. But don’t ask me who paid his fare. You know and I know they never work through direct contact.”

“What about Cathy Whiting?” Shayne inquired.

“So far, probably less than you have. At least you talked to her.”

“On the phone — and only to set up our meet.”

Gentry shook his massive head. “It puts you one up on us. Mrs. Fowler — that’s her landlady, the owner of the big house — is flying in from Bermuda sometime tomorrow. Maybe she can help.”

“What’s the b.g. on Whiting, Will?”

The Police Chief shrugged, eyed the dead cigar, said, “Just what we picked up in her place. From Summit, New Jersey. Rutgers graduate. Catherine Gibbs secretarial school. Been down here about a year. No criminal record.”

“Will,” said Shayne, “do you have any scam on why this Meadows-Latimer lawsuit should erupt into murder?”

“If I did, do you think I’d be turning you loose, Mike?” Gentry replied. “I’m hoping you’ll save the taxpayers some of their hard-earned money.”

“You’re a hard man, Chief.”

“And you’re not a funny one, Mike.” The Police Chief eyed his chewed-up cigar with distaste, dropped it into a wastebasket, said, “Now, what have you got for me?”

“All I’ve had time to do since I got on this one is run down Cathy Whiting, sit in on a meeting at the News and get into that shootout outside the office.”

Quite deliberately, he omitted all mention of his tailing Attorney Jim Lowman, of the latter’s strange behavior and apparent panic. If Lowman ever found out Shayne had sicced the cops on him — and he almost inevitably would — Messrs. Latimer, Dirkson and Rourke would be out one private detective, and Mike Shayne would be out of one job.

This one, he wanted to see through even more than usual, if only for the sake of clearing his friend, Tim Rourke.

“All right, Shayne.” The growl was back in Chief Gentry’s voice. “Get the hell out of here. And, please — no more corpses after working hours.”

The redhead rose, placed his right hand over his heart, said, “I’ll try, Chief — honest Injun.”

“Out!” This time, it was a roar.

It was well after midnight, and the detective went home and to bed. There were no further alarms during that night...

Shayne woke up early the next morning. After shaving and showering, he felt halfway human, and a hot cup of instant coffee, laced with a generous slug of Martell, took him the rest of the way. The early day was cool and sunlit and traffic was still light as he tooled the Buick southward toward Coconut Grove. When he turned off South Bayshore Drive, the hands of his wristwatch indicated exactly seven twenty-eight.

He wanted another look at the scene of Cathy Whiting’s slaying the evening before.

A single uniformed policeman sat behind the wheel of a black-and-white on the street outside, where the detective had parked the evening before Shayne pulled in behind him, got out and approached him from the driver’s side.

“Hello, Shayne. You’re up early.” The driver, who had evidently been watching him via the rearview mirror, was a man the redhead knew.

“Hello, Ryan,” said the detective, pushing his snapbrim grey fedora back on his head. “Anyone mind if I take a look around inside?”

“I’ll have to call it in,” said Ryan, activating his communicator. He asked the question and, after a few brief seconds, the box squawked, “Captain Sturgis says he can look his fool red head off — but just took, not touch.”

“You heard?” the patrolman asked with a sardonic smile.

Shayne nodded.

“Just to remind you,” Ryan went on, “the whole house in back has been photographed and dusted. You put a finger on anything, and the boys’ll know it.”

“Capiche.” The detective flipped a hand and turned in at the brief driveway. He heard the squawkbox sputter behind him and Ryan called, “Hey, Shayne — the captain says to keep an eye out for a contact lens he dropped in there somewhere last night.”

“Tell him where he can put it,” the redhead called back.

Shayne paused on the porch of the converted out-building behind the larger dwelling to study the broken front window through which the shots had been fired at him during his previous visit. At the time, he had known it was a close call, but his adrenals had been up and he had kept moving. Now, considering the narrowness of his escape, he felt a shudder the length of his spine.

It had been a very near thing.

Carefully using a handkerchief to avoid fouling up any fingerprints, even though Ryan said the whole place had been dusted, the detective went on inside.

The chalked outline of the late Cathy Whiting’s body was marked on the floor, some of it drawn over the ugly stain of the girl’s blood, now turned almost black. Traces of print dust were visible on tabletops, window sills, artifacts, light fixtures. Thanks to the angle of the early morning sunlight, the interior of the little house was unexpectedly bright.

What in hell was he looking for? He honestly did not know.

VI

There was but a single story with room for two bedrooms, a bath, a living room with dining area and a kitchen. All were in considerable disarray after being rifled by Captain Len Sturgis’ Homicide crew. He paid more attention to Myra Rainey’s bedroom than to Cathy’s — it was easy to identify it via the monograms, stationery, initialed objects.

Shayne took his time but found nothing.

Back in the living room, he glanced around again, did a double take as the slant of the sunlight caused something to glitter on the front wall just beside the door, just above the telephone table. The detective walked over, stooped, squinted at it. It was a telephone number — seven digits — scrawled on the wall itself with an old-fashioned graphite pencil, whose trace had picked up the sunlight.

All around it were other phone numbers — the calendar page was literally covered with them. Since they were in different handwritings, Shayne judged both girls had the habit of writing numbers on the nearest available surface. An untidy habit, perhaps, but one that indicated a life lived without fear or concealment.

Most were in ballpoint, a few in eyebrow pencil, fewer still in graphite. These, especially that which reflected the sun, seemed to be the most recent. At any event, they were scrawled over other numbers. Pulling out ballpoint and notebook, Shayne wrote them all down. There were eleven of them.

Since the Homicide Bureau undoubtedly had them, too, he did not know exactly what use he could make of them. Still... the police would be following other routines before tackling such drudgery — which reminded Shayne that he had yet to put out feelers through his private information channels, something he had meant to do the night before.

On the way back to Flagler Street, he stopped for breakfast at a diner made from an actual Pullman Dining Car on the old Eastern Shore Railroad. It featured white linen tablecloths, blossoms in bud vases, quality china and flatwear, excellent cuisine and service right around the clock, with prices to match.

There, Shayne ordered a thick grilled ham steak, a trio of shirred eggs in sherry, toasted French rolls with sweet butter and a beautifully browned hillock of hashed brown potatoes. The coffee was rich and black and bitter.

Refreshed, he drove to his office, which Lucy Hamilton was in the act of opening for the day. She held the outer office phone in her hand, said, “Hello, Michael. She hung up.”

“Who, Angel?” He removed his hat and scaled it accurately onto its usual hook on the hat-tree in the far corner.

“She didn’t say. She asked for you. I said you hadn’t come in yet. She hung up. You came in.”

“Damn!” said the detective. Then, at the quick concern on his secretary’s pretty face, “Don’t worry, Lucy — it wasn’t your fault.”

He tugged at his left earlobe, frowned at nothing a long moment, then said, “Angel, I want to talk to Homicide. Len Sturgis, if he’s in.”

The redhead went into his own inner office, sat behind his desk, lit a cigaret and waited for Lucy’s phoned summons. It came within a minute, in Captain Sturgis’ voice, saying, “Sturgis here, Mike. Something on the fire?”

“Maybe,” Shayne replied. “Len, when you ran through the Cathy Whiting place, did you check for a phone tap?”

“Hold on — I’ll find out.” The detective could hear the big captain’s deep voice talking into a desk communicator. Then, “Sorry, the boys didn’t get around to it last night. I’m sending a wire-tap crew out there right away. You think there was a patch?”

“I’d like to find out,” the redhead replied. “Thanks, Len.”

“Do me a favor,” said the Chief of Detectives. “Next time you find a body, stick around till we get there.”

“I’ll try,” Shayne promised.

He had Lucy dial Jim Lowman’s office. The attorney came on almost at once. “You’ll have to get here fast,” he said. “I’m due in Superior Court at ten o’clock.”

Before he left, the redhead handed Lucy the page of wall telephone numbers copied in his notebook. “Ring them,” he said.

“What do I tell them if they answer?”

“Tell them I want to talk to them — that is, if they’re female. Tell them I’ll call them back. Got it?”

“I’ve got it.” Lucy’s expression became dangerously demure. “If a man answers, hang up.”

“That’s it, Angel.” The detective kissed the top of her dark head before leaving.

It was nine-forty-one when Mike Shayne walked into the quiet opulence of the law offices of Macintosh, Lowman and Parkes in a spanking new chrome and dark glass skyscraper overlooking the bay. Lowman’s secretary came out promptly and escorted him along a carpeted corridor to the attorney’s private suite.

“Mr. Lowman is expecting you,” she said as she opened the door.

“I know.”

During the brief drive across town, the detective had been digesting what he had learned and tried to rationalize his extrapolations. They were based on a slender roster of facts, but instinct, backed by long experience, gave him a strong sense of assurance.

He felt certain that Myra Rainey was not in the hands or under the control of Carl Meadows. If she were, the murder of Cathy Whiting made no sense. In a very real sense, the redhead blamed himself for the tragedy, although Cathy would probably have had to die anyway.

Shayne now suspected that his arrival outside the Coconut Grove out-building had been spotted by whoever was in the little house with Whiting — probably, if not certainly, the now defunct button man, Mac Strada. She had been wasted because she knew where Myra Rainey was hiding, and her killer knew she knew it. Evidently, he had considered it more important to prevent Cathy Whiting from giving the information to Shayne than obtaining it for his principal or principals.

Of course, if Cathy’s phone had not been tapped, this theory would be set back on his heels. The hit man had to be sent there because it was known the redhead would be arriving at seven o’clock. There had to have been a tap on the line somewhere.

It was also possible that Strada had obtained the information before Shayne’s arrival and then wasted the girl to keep her from passing it along to the detective. He devoutly hoped not.

The strange behavior of attorney James Lowman was the next item on Shayne’s agenda, and he had resolved on settling this via face-to-face confrontation. He took a deep breath as the secretary stood aside to let him enter.

The attorney’s office, like the foyer, was impressive. Three walls lined with floor to ceiling shelves of white leather-bound law tomes letted in gold leaf. Rich carpeting, furniture of leather and-or mahogany, a fourth wall that was all picture window with a panorama of the bay and Miami Beach on its further shore with its cestellated row of magnificent resort hotels.

The only item missing seemed to be James Lowman, who was nowhere in evidence.

Mike Shayne finally found the attorney curled up in a foetal position behind the masking rectangle of his broad desk. Understandably under the circumstances, the redhead thought he, too, must have been shot. But there was no blood seepage anywhere.

Kneeling, with his head close to Lowman’s, the detective heard faint, hoarse breathing. He noted the cyanosis of the lips as he rose and reached for a desk phone, said, “Better call the paramedics, somebody. Mr. Lowman has had an attack.”

VII

Mike Shayne was glad to get away from the stricken attorney’s offices within half an hour. Lowman’s physician was a highly reputable specialist in cardiac cases, and the detective was satisfied that the lawyer’s attack was both genuine and not induced by any outside agency — physically, at any rate.

The question plaguing Shayne in re Jim Lowman was — had his attack been triggered by something connected with the Meadows-Latimer libel case?

The lawyer had been obviously shaken up last night — at the time, the redhead judged his condition was caused by word of Cathy Whiting’s murder. Which raised another point...

Even though Lowman was not a criminal attorney, it seemed unlikely to Shayne that he should not be familiar with at least reports of violence. He was too old and too obviously experienced a man. There had to be some other reason why news of the girl’s murder should have hit him so hard.

A couple of other questions that remained unanswered — one was the cause of Lowman’s strange drive after leaving the meeting with Roy Latimer, Carl Dirkson, Tim and Shayne himself. Two, why had the driver of the Mercedes — presumably the late Mac Straka — followed the attorney?

Add a query as to what Lowman had been briefly on the verge of revealing when the redhead called him the night before, and there were five big X-for-unknowns Shayne had hoped to resolve in the now-cancelled interview.

His next stop was at the office of Roy Latimer in the Daily News Building. The chunky little publisher received the detective at once in a smaller office of his top-floor suite, nodded when informed of Lowman’s attack and said, “His office just called.”

Then he leaned back in his teakwood desk chair, eyed Shayne thoughtfully for a long moment, said, “What was your impression of Jim’s behavior last night?”

“My impression was of a very disturbed man,” the redhead replied.

Latimer nodded. “So you felt it, too. I never saw him so shaken up.”

Mike Shayne went on to describe the attorney’s subsequent odd behavior, concluding with the shoot-out in his office parking lot following the call to Lowman at home.

“We ran the Cathy Whiting murder story, of course,” said Latimer. “The boys were cut up over your not giving them a news beat, but I told them to soft-pedal your connection with us. You’re sure this Mac Straka was the man who killed Whiting?”

“Hell, I’m not sure — but I doubt anyone sending out more than one hit man in a grey Mercedes.”

There was more talk. Latimer seemed almost relieved at the attorney’s collapse, saying, “We’ve already moved for a postponement of the trial. They’ll have to give it to us now, of course. But I don’t want you to let up for a moment, Shayne. Not with violence and murder involved.”

“I agree.”

“Any progress on the Rainey girl?”

“Not enough to talk about — yet,” the redhead replied.

“Well, I guess that’s it for now — unless there’s something else we can do for you.”

“There is. I’d like to use a private phone for a few minutes.”

The publisher nodded toward a partly open door, said, “Be my guest. And thanks for coming in.”

The door led to a small conference room. Shayne picked up a non-switchboard telephone, dialled a number. He asked for Bertha Thompson and, when she came on the line, identified himself and said, “How about lunch?”

“Business or pleasure?” she countered.

“Both, I hope.”

They met in the twilight dark lounge bar of the Seminole Room on Biscayne Boulevard. Bertha was a medium-short, broad-bodied woman with a well constructed broad-cheeked face. The dress she had on — she never wore pants suits — was simple but expensive, to the knowing eye. She swung a large tan-leather shoulder bag in her left hand as if it were a tiny tote-bag.

Bertha Thompson was sole proprietor of her own C.P.A. firm in Miami and was reputed to be the most efficient tax and costs accountant between Tampa and Key West. The redhead had once managed to save her from a vicious male chauvinist frame-up that would have cost Bertha her hard won license earned some six years earlier.

Since, there had been other favors, both ways...

When they were seated over her vodka Martini and Shayne’s Martell on the rocks, she said, “I heard about old man Lowman just now.”

“You hear everything,” the detective told her.

“If I don’t, it’s not for lack of trying.” She lifted her glass. “Here’s to crime, Mike-baby.”

They drank, then ordered luncheon. When the waiter had departed, Bertha rested both elbows on the tablecloth and said, “Between you and me, I’m not surprised Jim Lowman cracked up. He was carrying a hell of a load.”

“In what way?”

Bertha paused to marshal her thoughts. Then, “He was leading the defense battery in the Meadows-Latimer thing, you know — of course you do, since you’re on it. The inside is, Meadows was leaning on Lowman — real heavy.”

“With what?” Shayne asked.

Bertha opened her hands and shrugged, her not unhandsome if too-square face a question mark.

“Who knows for sure?” she countered. “Could be some past corner he cut for a client. Could be a few income tax shavings. Could be something more personal, if you dig, Shayne.”

The detective thought it added up. Lowman’s behavior had made him suspect something of the sort. The fact that he found himself not only in the position of having to double-cross a client but of being controlled by a murderer could account for his reaction to Shayne’s word on the Cathy Whiting killing.

He said, “But, dammit, Bertha, where in hell did Carl Meadows get the bread to throw his weight around so heavily? I thought Tim’s expose and the prosecutions that followed wiped him out.”

“Characters like Carl Meadows always seem to be able to get their hands on some loot,” she replied. “But it’s a good question, Mike. Let little Bertha see what she can find out.”

The luncheon arrived then. Able trencherman that he was, Shayne found himself hard-pressed to keep up with his companion. Bertha waded through the four-course meal as if food were about to go out of style permanently. A large plate of thick puree mongole was the first casualty. It was followed by a larger casserole of sliced pheasant and mushrooms in cream and butter sauce laced with Bordeau, an avacado salad and a rich glazed strawberry-and-cream custard tart. Coffee and liqueurs followed, with the redhead confining himself to cognac as usual.

There was no more talk of the case during the remainder of their luncheon. Not until Shayne escorted Bertha to her car, a smart, expensive little Seville, did she lay a hand on his arm and say, “Call me this evening, Mike — and thanks for a marvelous lunch. A gal’s got to keep her figure from falling away to a mere framework of skin and bones.”

The redhead half-grinned crookedly and shook his head as he waved farewell. Then he turned, and got in the Buick, which a uniformed attendant had just driven up to the en-driven up to the entrance.

Mike Shayne’s next move was to drive to a quietly plush restaurant-cabaret called The Golden Onion on Biscayne Boulevard. Although it was not officially open until the cocktail hour, it served during the day as the office of manager-part owner Lou Manning. It was Manning the redhead wanted to see.

VIII

Behind a hail-fellow well-met facade that made Lou an ideal front man for his restaurant lurked a photographic memory and ability to keep a secret. Over the years, the restaurateur had become an unoffical message center for denizens of the lower upper-world and upper underworld.

As he pulled into the Onion’s near-empty parking lot, Shayne figured it a 99-to-1 bet that Manning would know exactly what the connection was between Jim Lowman and Carl Meadows. Getting the information out of him, of course, would be something else.

“Come on in, Shayne.” The restaurateur’s broad, suntanned face lit up in a smile that made the whole office glow. “Glad you got here. I’ve been trying to reach you but that girl of yours keeps telling me you’re out.”

“Well...?” The detective let that one hang while he considered Manning’s motives in trying to reach him.

“Okay — so you are out. Have a smoked — a real honest-to-God Havana.” The restaurateur pushed a half-empty box of gold banded perfectos across his desk toward Shayne, who declined as he sat down.

“Okay, Lou,” he said. “You want to talk to me? I want to ask you a couple of questions.”

“That figures.” Manning nodded as he lit up his own cigar. “You go first.”

The detective pushed his hat back again, tugged his earlobe, said, “You heard about Jim Lowman?”

“About his attack.” Manning nodded again. “I also heard you were there.”

“I found him on his office floor,” said the redhead. “I’d like to know what put him there.”

The restaurateur blew two perfect smoke rings before replying. Then he said, “Maybe he ate too much. Maybe he smoked too much. Maybe he keeled over because you were coming to see him.”

“Negative, negative, negative,” said Shayne. “Come on, Lou — why was he afraid of Carl Meadows?”

“Old stuff, Shayne.”

“But not too old for the statute of limitations.”

“Only two crimes have no time limit,” Lou Manning said. “Murder and cheating on the Federal income tax. Take your pick.”

Shayne ran a thumbnail along the line of his jaw, then nodded. Like other men of mild habit, he supposed the stricken attorney was capable of killing in self defense. But not of a murder that would leave him legally culpable. That left only tax evasion. He said, “Thanks, Lou — now it’s your turn to ask the questions.”

“Not a question, an invitation. Peter Luce wants to see you — at your earliest convenience.”

The redhead’s left eyebrow rose half an inch. Peter Luce, officially retired from the fish freezing business that was his nominal source of livelihood, remained the unofficial czar emeritus of the Organization for all Florida south of Tampa Bay. If he wanted to see Mike Shayne, it meant the underworld was involved in some way with the Meadows-Latimer libel suit.

But what way?

Deciding there was only one answer to that question, Mike Shayne rose, thanked Manning for the information and headed for his Buick. It took him forty minutes to reach the gates of Peter Luce’s driveway off the Trail.

From its gilded cast-iron gateway to the furthest stretch of the mesh steel barrier that surrounded the twenty acres of landscaped grounds, the former fish freezer’s estate had been literally carved out of swampland. Set amidst impenetrable semi-tropical jungle, it was in effect an island impervious to invasion by water.

A perfect place of retirement for a man who had racked up more than his share of violent enemies during a lifetime of dealing with and inside of organized crime.

The young man who met Shayne at the gate and rode with him to the house itself was fair haired with a mod cut and clad in a costly blue denim leisure suit with enough patches for an old-fashioned quilt. He looked like a university student or recent graduate and, the detective judged, probably was.

Another attractive young man awaited them under the porte cochère of the mansion. Shayne got out and his companion slid behind the Buick’s wheel, drove it smoothly around a corner as the detective and his new escort-entered the large house.

Impressive was the best word the redhead could come up with — huge hall framed by a divided staircase leading to a balcony above. Costly rugs on the floor, costlier tapestries on the walls, costly black walnut furniture against the walls, a wrought-iron chandelier. Young man No, 2 led the detective softly through to a French window opening onto a flagged terrace overlooking rich gardens, a fountain and a porticoed swimming pool in the rear.

Here, at a glass-topped table, Peter Luce sat.

His hair was silver, his leathery face seamed, his body skeleton lean beneath the pale blue jumpsuit that covered it limply — but the dark eyes crackled with vitality, the white teeth gleamed like polished ivory in the afternoon sunlight as he rose to greet his visitor.

Peter Luce — nee Pietro Luccini.

“How kind of you to come!” The voice was soft as silk with just a faint undertone of sandpaper. “Sit with me and enjoy a drink.”

Before Mike Shayne could reply, another young man appeared bearing a tray, put a vermouth cassis in front of Peter Luce, a Martell on the rocks in front of the detective. Luce lifted his glass in a decorous salute, the redhead did likewise. Neither spoke further until the tumblers were again on the glass top of the table.

“Mr. Shayne,” Luce said, leaning back in his chair, “I wish to thank you for saving us the trouble in a certain — shall we say delicate? — matter.”

Shayne nodded. As long as Luce was willing to carry the conversational ball, the detective was quite willing to permit him. He was certain he had not been summoned here merely to receive thanks for the removal of button-man Mac Straka from the living scene.

“I feel that we owe you for it.” A pause, then, “As you probably know, Mr. Shayne, with the passage of time, our business grows more and more respectable.” And, as the redhead nodded again, “If there are occasional — regrettable necessities, they occur in other businesses as well. You follow me, Mr. Shayne?”

Once again, Shayne nodded.

“It is a part of our job to see that solution of these occasional regrettable incidents does not get out of hand. It is up to us to control such sad affairs.”

This time, when Luce paused, Mike Shayne spoke. “You are telling me, Mr. Luce, that you knew nothing about the importation to Miami of the capper called Mac Straka.”

“No, Mr. Shayne.” This accompanied by a firm head shake. “I did not say that. Of course, we knew of it.”

“But Straka was brought in without either your approval or control.”

“Ah, Mr. Shayne.” Again the dazzling smile. “You understand me perfectly.”

“Very well,” said the detective. “What is it you wish me to do?”

IX

The dark eyes bored into Shayne like twin laser beams from a face that was suddenly a mask of concern. The soft voice said, “We want you to take care of yourself, Mr. Shayne.”

There was a message here. The detective puzzled over it briefly, then stabbed. “Another unauthorized import?”

A slow nod. “Exactly, Mr. Shayne. A gentleman from Kansas City. He may be here in Miami now. We were not given the time of his arrival.”

“Thank you, Peter Luce. How will I know him?”

A shrug. “We do not have further details — yet. If you should feel you need protection...”

It was delicately phrased. The detective made his refusal polite. “I’ve survived this far. With all due respect, I feel I do better alone.”

“As you wish.” Luce accepted his turn-down without visible reaction. Then, “But there is always the undeterminate factor of fortune.”

“Let us hope good luck continues.” Shayne raised a hand with the fingers crossed.

Luce nodded, both men drank. Putting down his glass, the redhead said, “Mr. Luce, I hate to impose on you further, but there is a question I must ask.”

Peter Luce made a think-nothing-of-it gesture.

“Who the devil is backing Carl Meadows? I thought he was bankrupt.”

“I fear you will have to ask Mr. Meadows that in person, Mr. Shayne.”

“You don’t know?”

“We should very much like to find out. Perhaps, if, as you say, you are lucky, you will discover that for yourself. In that case, we very much wish you would allow us the information. It is information that could be of value to us.”

“If I am satisfied that divulging it will not hurt my client, Mr. Luce.”

“Of course.” The slow nod again. Peter Luce finished his aperitif, the detective his brandy. The interview was ended.

Shayne drove back to the office on Flagler Street. Lucy made a face at him as he entered, after a moment put the phone back in its cradle.

“Any luck?” he asked her.

She sighed with a pleasing swell of sweatered bosom, said, “So far, I’ve got a dry-cleaner lady, three males and seven d.a.’s. One of the males tried to date me.”

“What did I tell you to do if a man answered?” the detective reminded her. Luce wrinkled her nose at him again as she began dialling again, using a ballpoint to save her fingernails.

Shayne went inside his private office and dug out the, Martell. Thus far, the case made him feel as, if he were, caught in a giant electric blender. Round and round and around, with jolts of violence at irregular intervals. He was considering ways and means of getting at Carl Meadows when the desk phone rang, causing him to jump and slop brandy on the desk blotter.

It was Bertha Thompson. She said, “You owe me a drink, Mike. Feel like buying me one?”

“Any time, sweet.”

“Like how about now?”

Bertha was already at the Prince Gustav when Mike Shayne arrived. This time she joined him in a brandy on the rocks. She said, “Mike, let’s get smashed.”

“You go ahead,” he told her. “Better leave me out, though. I seem to have a problem following my footsteps.”

“Problems are my meat and drink. Hell, problems are my loving business, Mike.”

“I’m afraid this isn’t your kind of a problem,” Shayne assured her. “Now — to what do I owe you the honor of this drink?”

“Business — always business!” Bertha essayed a pout, failed to make it with her good humored face, said, “Ever hear of a man named Jake O’Reilly?”

“The factor?” He nodded. “Don’t tell me he’s angeling Meadows.”

“I don’t have to. You must told me.” A pause for a sip, then, “He’s the one.”

Mike Shayne thought that over, frowned, said, “That doesn’t tell us too much, does it? Like, whose money is Jake using to bankroll Meadows?”

“Come on, Mike, do you think I’m a dunce? I wouldn’t lay that on you to con a free drink. No, I got hold of Jake’s C.P.A. and... well, he owes me a favor.”

“Good girl. Who is it?”

“Ever hear of Ryan Akanian?”

“Let me think.” Shayne frowned into his cognac. The name was familiar but its connotations eluded him... until he thought of Roy Latimer, which made him think of newspapers. Then he had it.

“A media mogul — with a chain of TV and radio stations and newspapers in the Southwest?” he countered.

Bertha nodded, said, “It gives one to think, doesn’t it, Mike?”

“It does indeed.”

The afternoon was latening by the time the detective got back to Roy Latimer’s office. When Shayne informed him that Ryan Akanian was bankrolling Meadows, the News publisher slammer the flat of both hands down hard on his desktop.

“I should have known!” he exclaimed. “The son of a bitch is trying to force me to sell out through that damned libel suit.” He got to his feet and began pacing the carpet.

“You know him?” Shayne asked.

“I must have attended half a dozen publishers’ conventions with that bush-headed punk,” Latimer exclaimed. “I’ve heard he was a rapacious bastard, but he always seemed friendly enough to me. Why, that little...”

The fulminations continued for a full eleven minutes by the clock on the wall before the dynamic little publisher subsided. Then he flung himself back in his chair, looked at the detective gloomily.

“The hell of it is,” he said, “if we don’t come up with Myra Rainey before the trial, he might just do it, too.”

“I don’t believe Meadows has Rainey.” Shayne repeated his thinking on the subject, concluded, “I hear they’ve imported another hit man — this one from K.C. They wouldn’t do that if they already had Rainey. You can make book on that.”

“I hope you’re right,” Latimer did not sound convinced. Then, leaning across his desk, “Shayne, for God’s sake, find, that girl!”

“I’ll find her,” the detective promised with an assurance he did not feel.

“You need money?” Latimer asked. Shayne shook his head. The publisher reached for a desk telephone, told the switchboard girl, “I want to talk to Ryan Akanian”... “No, I don’t know where he is”... “Try the San Antonio Sentinel. They should know.”

“Do you think it’s wise?” the redhead asked.

“What? To let him know I’m onto him?” Latimer frowned, ran a well-manicured hand over his face, then said, “Maybe you’re right, Shayne.”

He picked up the phone again, said, “Jeannie, cancel that last call.” Then, to Shayne, “It’s always wiser to hold a card in the hole. Even if it’s not an ace.”

The telephone rang. Latimer picked it up, listened, handed it to the detective. “For you.”

It was Lucy Hamilton. She said, “Michael, I’ve got a lead.” She sounded pleased, excited.

“Good girl. What is it?”

“One of those don’t answer numbers finally did. It belong to a Mrs. Michaels. Her apartment is next door to the one Myra Rainey is using for a hideout. They’re old office buddies or something. Anyway, she says Myra will be glad to talk to you. Myra is using her for a phone drop.”

“Good work, Angel — what’s the address?”

It was in one of the older portions of the city, not too far from the address at which Cathy Whiting had been murdered. Paint was peeling from the two-story apartment building behind a row of ragged palms. The granite doorsteps were eroded in shallow dips thanks to the pressure of millions of footsteps over the long decades since its erection.

In his elation over at last having a lead to the missing Myra Rainey, Shayne was almost there before he realized that he was again being tailed. His first thought was that the new button man import was following him, but he quickly dismissed the thought as absurd.

Not even Peter Luce could move that fast.

A professional hit man heeds time to case the object of his attention, to learn his ways and select a moment and place for the execution. Even if he is briefed, he must check out the information given him.

The detective thought of shaking whoever was driving the blue Olds that clung stubbornly to his tail — another sign of non-professionalism — then decided to hell with that. If Myra Rainey was in the apartment building, she was not going to be there long. If she wasn’t...

Myra Rainey was not there. Mrs. Michaels, a stout maternal type beneath a hard shell of powder and lipstick and liner and eyebrow pencil and long artificial lashes, appeared both-embarrassed and distressed.

“Right after I hung up, Mr. Shayne, I heard the door of the apartment next door close, I didn’t think anything of it. I was cooking Myra a casserole and I wanted to take it to her. When I knocked on her door, she didn’t answer. When I went in, she was gone.”

“Have you any idea where, Mrs. Michaels?”

Mrs. Michaels shook her head. There were tears in her pale blue eyes. She said, “That poor girl is scared half out of her mind. We used to work together in the same office before I quit to manage this building.

“She was crying when she came here the other night. The next apartment was vacant, so I put her up there. Such a dear, sweet person. But when she heard about her roommate being shot, she went all to pieces. I couldn’t believe it when I heard it over the evening news...”

There was more — a great deal more — before Mike Shayne could get her to admit him to the apartment next door. She followed on his heels as he entered it and looked around.

It was sparsely furnished, a single with bath, kitchenette and Murphy bed. A solitary opened suitcase sat on the threadbare sofa revealing a small jumble of clothing, running mostly to reds and browns. The detective remembered them from her photographs, Myra Rainey was a brunette.

“Did she have a car?” he asked.

Mrs. Michaels nodded again. “It was a cute little M.G. She let me drive it to market — a great help...”

Going to a window, Mrs. Michaels looked out, said over her shoulder to the redhead, “It’s gone now.”

She pulled back inside and Shayne looked out, noting the open space where it had stood in a row of half a dozen other modest vehicles.

The glittering chromium nose of the Olds that had followed him protruded just beyond the corner of the apartment house it was parked across the street. Clumsy, clumsy, clumsy... the detective thought, pulling his head back in.

Then, turning to Mrs. Michaels, “You have no idea where she might have gone?”

The manager shook her lavender-topped head, said, “The only other place she mentioned was the little house in Coconut Grove — and she said she didn’t dare go back there because she knew she’d be killed. I’m sure she never...”

Mrs. Michaels was off on another marathon monologue, in the midst of which the redhead beat a hasty retreat after interrupting the river of words to thank her for her help.

Outside, the detective ignored the Olds and its driver. While Mrs. Michaels gushed, he had decided upon a course of action where the clumsy tail was concerned. He drove toward Ingraham Highway, taking a, quick turn around a blind corner after a long half mile, cut through an alley and a supermarket parking lot and was ready and waiting to pursue his pursuer as the latter drove past.

Shayne wanted to see what the unknown would do, where he would go, once he realized his quarry had vanished.

The detective followed the Olds cautiously, employing all the considerable shadowing skill at his command. He kept other cars between them, dropped back, picked up speed, not letting the driver ahead know he was being followed instead of following.

He actually turned off onto a side street as the Olds was braked to a halt in front of a public telephone booth on the sidewalk. While the man made his call, the detective turned around and was ready to take up the pursuit once again. He might not be able to tell where his tail had come from, but he intended to find out where he was going.

It was a man, a thick-chested man of medium height, clad in a loud black-and-white hounds-tooth tweed jacket. That much he was able to catch through a break in the row of cypress trees that lined the sidewalks.

The man got back into the Olds, took off, and Mike Shayne followed, continuing to play it cute. Sunset lay behind them and glowed in Shayne’s rearview mirror as they headed toward Biscayne Bay, turning south once again as they reached a by-road flanked by a series of once-opulent estates currently run halfway to seed.

The Olds entered a right hand driveway between two tall rows of ragged hedge. The redhead cut his engine as he approached and coasted the Buick squarely across the front of the road, blocking all passage. Sliding over the front seat of the Buick, he got out on the passenger’s side in time to see the Olds vanish inside a garage at the far end of the short driveway.

Shayne walked toward it, checking the .45 in his shoulder rig to make sure it was cocked and ready. It was an old garage, too old to have electronic doors. When the stocky men came out and reached to pull down the door, the detective was right behind him and checked his move.

“I think,” Mike Shayne said, “you and I had better have as little talk.”

The man in the checked sports jacket gasped and turned around, his arms automatically rising above his shoulders. But surrender was not in the thickset man’s plan. Instead, he locked his hands and brought both of them down hard on the wrist of the redhead’s gun hand, the while aiming a hard kick at the detective’s shins.

Neither blow found its mark Shayne leaped a foot backward, causing houndstooth jacket a double-miss, then brought up his right hand in a roundhouse blow that laid the flat of the heavy Colt automatic hard against the left side of the thickset man’s head.

He went down like a felled ox. Shayne rolled him inside the garage and brought the door down, wedging it firmly in place with a piece of wood. He judged his erstwhile pursuer would be but of action for some time to come.

Then, holstering his weapon, he walked up a narrow path to the house beyond.

X

The path ended at another hedge, a low one, beyond which a brief stretch of badly manicured lawn covered a slight rise to the rear of the house. A row of French windows glittered a vivid reflection of the sunset behind him. Shayne thought of walking around to the front door, then thought, To hell with that! and pushed one of the windows open.

As he entered the sun room behind them, a resonant baritone said, “For Christ’s sake, Shayne — don’t you ever knock?”

It was Carl Meadows, silver haired, newly shaven, one of the few men the detective knew who could carry a considerable paunch and still look trim and vital. His striped slacks looked expensive, as did the blue-and-white Shantung sports shirt above them. A platinum wristwatch with diamond inserts glittered at the detective.

If he was bankrupt, Carl Meadows had to be the most costfully attired bankrupt in the redhead’s knowledge.

Seater opposite him, fox-red of hair and complexion, wiry as a sculptor’s armature, was Meadows’ attorney, Alan MacRae, “Slimy Mac” to the legal profession for his genius at slipping his clients through legal loopholes other attorneys missed.

MacRae said, “That’s breaking and entering, Shayne.”

“But obviously without intent to commit burglary,” the detective replied. “How about trespassing instead?”

“Knock it off, fellows,” said Meadows. “Help yourself to a drink, Shayne.” This with a nod toward a well equipped cellaret on a sunporch corner. Then, “As a matter of fact, I’ve been trying to convince Mac we should contact you.”

“Thanks, Meadows.” Shayne helped himself. There was no Martell, so he settled for a belt of Napoleon on the rocks. “Is that why you put that dog on my tail?”

Meadows sighed. “I’ve been against that from the first, as has Mac.”

The attorney nodded. Mike Shayne said, “Then who...?”

Meadows opened his mouth to reply. MacRae gestured him to silence, said, “Let me tell it. Shayne, I don’t know whether you are aware of it or not, but my client is not entirely alone in his desire to obtain deserved retribution from the Daily News.”

“If you mean Ryan Akanian, I already know.”

Meadows slapped a thigh, said, “I told you, Mac. You’ve got to get up mighty early in the morning to get ahead of Mike Shayne. Yes, it’s Akanian. He wants to pick up the News for a song. But...”

A pause and again MacRae took over. “We don’t like Akanian’s methods. We don’t believe this violence is helping our case. Even if it proves legally defensible, it can’t help but create a climate unfavorable to us before a jury.”

“What do you want me to do?” Shayne asked.

“We want you to go to Akanian, tell him to call off his dogs before anyone else gets killed,” said Meadows.

“Why don’t you go see him yourself?” said the detective. “I’m not your bird dog.”

Meadows and MacRae looked at one another and sighed. The attorney said, “Don’t think we haven’t tried. But once committed to a course of action, Ryan is... well, hard to change.”

“Ruthless is the word,” said Meadows. “Shayne, he scares us.”

The redhead said, “What I don’t understand is how the murder of Cathy Whiting helps your case.”

Another exchanged look between the two men, then, from Meadows, “That’s what we’ve been trying to tell Akanian. He insists there’s no way the Whiting murder can be connected with our case.”

“He’s right on that,” MacRae agreed. “But it creates a bad court climate.” He shook his head.

“What do you want me to do to him?” the detective asked. He was amused by this turn of events. Also, he wanted to know where Akanian could be reached.

“Make him listen to reason, Shayne. Then, maybe we can get this thing settled.”

“Where do I reach Akanian?”

“The Royal Pineapple,” said MacRae. “The Presidential suite.”

Mike Shayne finished his brandy and left. As he recrossed the lawn, he pondered the unreality of the scene just behind him. Were Meadows and MacRae playing a game or were they really as worried and bewildered as they seemed? Why had there been no query as to the fate of the thickset man in the houndstooth sports jacket? Above all, what on earth was their motive in requesting him to visit Ryan Akanian?

Good questions all — but where were the answers? Nor had there been mention of Myra Rainey. Why not? This made it a full quartet.

Shayne considered releasing the garage door so the thickset man could get out. Then he decided against it. No sound came from within, so the detective assumed his follower was still unconscious. The piece of wood was still in place. The redhead got into the Buick, started it and drove off.

He was not followed this time.

When Shayne reached the approach of South Bayshore Drive, he pulled over, parked and used the car radio-telephone to call Roy Latimer. When he told the News publisher that MacRae had hinted at a willingness to settle the case, Latimer snorted and said, “To hell with that. If they’re chickening out now, we hit them all the harder.”

Shayne repeated their request that he visit Ryan Akanian, and Latimer told him to go ahead. “See what you can make of him,” the publisher said. “What about Myra Rainey?”

“Dead ended again,” the redhead replied. “You got anything on her?”

“Negative, Shayne. But Mrs. Fowler, the landlady, got in him was there when she landed. She claims to know nothing about any of it. She’s with the police now for what it’s worth.”

“I might drop by her house later. I have the damnedest feeling about that place — that we’ve been missing something all along.”

“Could be, I suppose,” said the publisher. “But you’d better take a crack at Akanian first.”

“If he’ll see me. He’s probably well barricaded.”

Before resuming his drive, Shayne called the Royal Pineapple. He did not get through to the newspaper owner, but a secretary — male — informed him that his call was expected and that Mr. Akanian would receive him at 8:30 that evening.

Curiouser and curiouser, he reflected a la Alice in Wonderland. The date allowed him ample time for dinner, so he headed for The Beef House again, parking in the space behind it.

XI

Tim Rourke was in his usual booth and Shayne slid onto the opposite bench. The lanky reporter was picking at the remnants of a large platter of spare ribs and sauerkraut, with a boilermaker, two thirds empty, alongside.

“You talked to the Fowler broad?” the detective asked when laconic greetings had been exchanged and a double Martell and steak sandwich had been ordered.

Rourke shrugged, toyed with his tumbler, said, “If you could call it that. At the airport. She gave us a little speech — a set piece. Len Sturgis had his boys there and they whisked her away for questioning.”

“Why? She can’t be a suspect.”

“For b.g. info on the Whiting kid — I’ve got a hunch, too, that they’re looking for Myra Rainey.”

“Figures,” said Shayne. “How long ago?”

The reporter looked at his wristwatch, said, “About two hours back. A little less, actually.”

“Then she’s probably still at Headquarters,” the redhead thought out loud. “What did she tell you?”

“That she hardly knew, the girls well. Says she went to college with Myra’s mother and was glad to rent them the smaller house. Said they were fine girls, good tenants. Couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to kill either of them. She cut short her Bermuda trip when she heard the news. Said she was very distressed.”

“Understandable.” Shayne nodded. “Anything else?”

“Not much.” Rourke hesitated, then, “She did give me her phone number. Said it was unlisted. The tip was, if there were further interviews with the press, she’d prefer to conduct them over the phone.”

“What was your impression of her, Tim?” Shayne took a hearty belt of his double Martell.

“Forty-ish, blonde, good enough looking. She’s a double divorcée and not hurting for money.”

“And she said she didn’t know the girls well?”

“That’s what she said.” The reporter shrugged again.

“You don’t believe her?”

“Mike, at the moment, I have no opinion either way. Are you onto anything?”

Shayne gave his old friend a concise account of his day’s activities. Rourke’s eyebrows rose.

“You’ve got another button man after you?” Tim shook his head. “For Christ’s sake, be careful. I didn’t get you into this to be wasted.” A pause, then, “A damn shame you didn’t catch up with Rainey.”

“I will, Tim.”

His steak sandwich arrived, steaming hot and redolent of its own rich juices. Before he tackled it, the detective said, “By the way, what’s the Fowler woman’s number?”

Rourke got out his notes and gave it to Shayne. Something rang a gong in recent memory. A number — scrawled in pencil on the wall of the girls’ cottage — a number whose glitter had caught his eye when it reflected the sun’s light that morning. There could have been a variety of legitimate reasons for the Whiting-Rainey pair to have Mrs. Fowler’s unlisted number.

But the houses were so close that a loud whisper should be communication enough. And the landlady had told the press t the airport that she was not close to the girls. Somehow, the redhead thought, it didn’t quite being true.

A call from Carl Dirkson got one reporter on his way to follow another lead. Shayne finished his steak sandwich with a second double Martell, then paid his tab and departed for the Royal Pineapple, one of the newest Miami Beach hotels.

He was passed on by three separate underlings, two male, one female, before being ushered into the presence of Ryan Akanian, who received him on a glassed in terrace of his imposing suite.

From Roy Latimer’s fulminations against the rival publisher, Mike Shayne was expecting to meet a small, wiry, nervous Napoleon type, another little monarch of all he surveyed. Instead, Ryan Akanian was tall — perhaps an inch taller than the detective — and burly. His slacks and. shirt looked off-the-rack in contrast to the tailored elegance the redhead had imagined.

The only similarity between preconception and reality was that both versions of Ryan Akanian were visibly nervous. This was revealed by the way in which the publisher kept running a hand over the left side of his head, and by the mound of half-smoked cigarillos in the large crystal ashtray at his elbow.

The tall man rose from an armchair to greet the detective cordially, had a drink bought for him, explaining apologetically, “I’d join you if I could. Unfortunately, I’m not allowed.” Shayne nodded his sympathy, said, “I gather Meadows and MacRae informed you I wanted to see you. Incidentally, I am here with my client’s knowedge and approval.”

Akanian nodded slowly, studied the detective as he sipped his drink. When Shayne put his glass down, the big publisher said, “I’ve heard of you, of course. That’s why I allowed you this visit. Your reputation has spread to far more than Miami.”

Shayne shrugged, said nothing, until Akanian added, “To what do I owe this honor?”

The redhead moved to the attack. “We have just discovered that you’re the man who’s bankrolling Carl Meadows. My principal seems to feel there is a question of ethics involved.”

“Ethics schmethics!” Akanian exploded. “The newspaper game is dog eat dog like any other business.”

“Up to and including murder?”

The publisher snorted, said, “How the hell do you think Al Capone got to Chicago? Back in the Twenties, Hearst and Colonel MacCormick were battling it out and the going got rough. It was Hearst’s circulation manager who went to Johnny Torrio and asked for some likely boys to keep the Examiner on the streets. So Torrio imported a few New York guns. Capone was one of them.”

“Then you condone the Cathy Whiting killing?” the redhead asked softly.

“Shayne,” said the publisher, “I wish to hell I’d never got into this tug of war with Roy Latimer. He’s really a nice little man. I’ve got nothing against him personally. And now, with violence erupting...” He let it hang.

“Why did you become involved?” the Shayne inquired.

“The way Meadows presented it to me, it looked like too good an opportunity to pass up. I’ve been hunting for a Southeastern property for years to round out my chain of newspapers. This looked like a ripe apple, just waiting to be plucked.”

“So why stay involved?” the detective pressed.

“I’m in too deep. With men like Meadows and MacRae, it’s not so easy to pull out. Having that poor girl killed the way they did — hell, she hadn’t done anything...”

He shook his head, his lips pressed tight.

Shayne said, “Meadows and MacRae claim they had nothing to do with it.”

“Those bastards! My God, Shayne, do you think I’d knowingly risk compromising a lifetime of empire building by ordering a cheap shot like that.”

“Button men are not cheap these days,” the detective reminded him.

“I’m not joking!” Anger flushed the publisher’s face. “And I didn’t order anyone killed or even threatened.”

“Somebody did.” The redhead got to his feet. “I wonder who it could have been.”

Mike Shayne walked off the terrace and out of Ryan Akanian’s suite, battling his own erupting temper. Somebody was behind the threats that had caused Myra Rainey to go into hiding. Somebody was behind the capper who had slain Cathy Whiting, who had twice nearly killed Shayne and finally been killed by the detective.

Somebody, he decided, was going to pay through the nose.

Waiting for the down elevator from the publisher’s lofty terrace suite with its view of the Bay and the city beyond, the detective took a series of deep breaths to restore his composure.

It occurred to him that this strange business of the visit to Ryan Akanian might have been a setup for the new hit man in town, He felt his hackles rise again as he waited in the basement garage for the attendant to bring his Buick around. All at once, he felt exposed, naked to the world in that shadowy underground area.

As he waited, the telephone number he had seen on the cottage wall that morning rose again in his mind’s eye to plague him. There was a public pay phone against the garage wall, almost at his elbow, and the detective decided to try it before his car came around.

Shayne dialed the seven digits, listened to the electronic chimes that revealed he was dialling a toll number. Then the operator came on to request twenty-five cents, which Shayne paid. The call was put through.

After seven rings, a feminine voice said, “Hello?”

“Who is this?” he asked. Somehow, it didn’t sound like the voice of the Mrs. Fowler Tim Rourke had described to him.

“Who is this?” came the counter.

“Mike Shayne. I’ve been trying to get in touch with Myra Rainey for the last few days.”

“Mike Shayne... the private detective?”

“Right. I’m working for Roy Latimer, the Daily News publisher. We want to—”

She interrupted him, saying, “This is Myra Rainey, Mr. Shayne. Can you get out here right away? I’m afraid.”

That was all. She hung up before he could answer.

XII

Mike Shayne drove to the quiet street in Coconut Grove a good deal more rapidly than the law allowed. He was not tailed this time, nor did anyone interfere with him in any way when he reached the old pine house. He drove past it until he found a driveway two hundred yards further on. There he turned in, cut his lights and, after a few moments, backed the Buick out in darkness, idled it silently forward to park a mere fifty yards from the fine old pine dwelling house.

If, indeed, there was another button man on the loose, it seemed unwise to take needless chances.

He approached the house cautiously, hugging the thick undergrowth closely as he moved quietly toward the pine dwelling, slipping from palm bole to palm bole. The darkness, like the stillness surrounding him, could well have been cut with a knife.

The blinds of the house were drawn tightly, so tightly that no light, if there was light inside, escaped. The detective moved against its front, attaining the railed porch without making much noise. He kept his hand on the butt of his .45 as he moved.

But Mike Shayne made enough sounds to be heard. When he reached the front door with its brass knocker, a soft voice from just inside whispered, “Who’s there?”

“Mike Shayne,” he replied in matching tones. “I just called you, remember? Within the last half hour.”

The door was hurriedly unlocked after some fumbling, and the detective slipped inside. There was dim illumination from the rear of the dwelling, by which he could see that his admittor was a most attractive young woman in denims and a jersey that did justice to a willowy figure which included fine long legs.

“Thank God, you’re here!” She extended hand. “I’m Myra Rainey. I was afraid to let you in until you mentioned your call.”

After relocking the door for her, the detective offered her a cigaret, which was gratefully accepted. Shayne lit up himself as he trailed her to an inside den without windows but with a single lighted lamp whose glow was invisible from outside. He noted with approval the pert features of Myra’s tired face, crowned by a dark brown widow’s peak, the easy grace of her walk and posture beneath the nervousness revealed by her gestures.

“What should I do?” she said. “There was someone prowling around outside just before you called.”

“Well, there’s nobody now,” Shayne told her. “The first thing to do is to call the police — something you should have done when this thing got started.”

“I know,” she said, “But I... well, I was bewildered and frightened. Mr. Meadows and Mr. MacRae warned me about their partner. They said he was absolutely ruthless. So, when the phone calls began, I ran away and hid.”

“With Mrs. Michaels?” And, at her nod, “If you’d stuck around there a little longer, I’d have caught up with you. What made you bolt a second time?”

“The more I thought about what happened to Cathy, the more frightened I got. I just didn’t feel safe there — and I didn’t want Mrs. Michaels to get — hurt. So, when the street was empty, I took off.”

“What brought you back here, Myra?”

“It seemed the safest place — I mean, it must have been searched and everything. Who’d look for me here? Besides, Mrs. Fowler left me the key — in case of emergency.”

Shayne nodded. He could follow that thinking. He said, “Where’s the telephone, Myra?”

“Why?”

“I’m going to call the police.”

“Why — I mean, with you here?”

Shayne spelled it out for her. “A — they can give you a lot better protection than I can if anyone is out to get you. B — they want Cathy Whiting’s killer, and if you don’t come in, they might put you through the wringer for obstructing a Homicide investigation.”

As he followed the girl, he said, “How well did you and Mrs. Fowler know each other?”

“Gertrude Fowler? She and my mother were college sorority sisters. And she’s been awfully nice to Cathy and me, until...” She let it hang.

“Until what, Myra?”

“Oh, until all these awful things started to happen. Just because I told that reporter — Mr. Rourke — the truth about my boss. Then Gertrude took off for Bermuda and the threatening phone calls began.”

Mike Shayne nodded in the dim light of the main hall of the old house. Tim had been right about Mrs. Fowler delivering a set piece to the press and, probably, the police. Her reasons for taking a trip at just this time might, he thought, prove interesting.

He picked up the telephone in the dimly lighted hall. It was dead as mutton...

The detective took another deep breath. The instrument had worked perfectly when he called Myra Rainey from The Golden Pineapple aparking garage, not much more than forty minutes before. And there had been no intruders in evidence when he made his careful entrance to the old house.

Surely, if anyone had been out there then, a move would have been made against him. Which meant...

...that somebody was out there right now, somebody who had crippled their communications by cutting off the phone. His hand moved toward his left lapel.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Checking my cannon.” He suited action to words, added, “Just in case.”

“Why, Mr. Shayne? What makes you think—”

“The phone is dead.” He cut her off. “That’s what. Stay under cover while I reconnoiter.”

Myra subsided on a small settee in a corner. As he moved toward a front window, the redhead could hear her teeth chatter. Pulling the shade aside a fraction of an inch, Shayne peered out. A big car was drawn up, nose-in to the driveway. He could just make out a human figure behind the wheel.

At that instant, the car lights were turned on full, bathing the facade of the old house with their glare. Mike Shayne fired two snap shots, each followed by the tinkle of falling glass. One headlight and part of the windshield were out of action.

Then some sort of repeating weapon began firing at the house on half-automatic. Yelling, “Stay put!” at the terrified girl, the detective raced to the rear of the dwelling, plunged down the back steps and sprinted to the smaller house.

He recalled how, two nights earlier, he had been flummoxed by the hit man’s making a noise at the back door, then leaving by the front while he had the detective decoyed. But he did not quite make it undetected.

He was in the act of yanking open the front door when a rifle crashed its deadly message from the street end of the driveway. A steel jacketed message that tugged at his right shoulder as he crashed through the hinged barrier.

For a very good reason, this infuriated the redhead. He had paid close to two hundred dollars for this sports jacket less than two weeks before. Another bullet followed him inside, whining over his head to thud into the far wall and Shayne went to his hands and knees.

He made the telephone, sitting on the floor, dialed operator and waited, seemingly an eternity, until the voice replied. Two other bullets smashed into the little house before he got his message through to the Police.

Then, coming up into a crouch with gun still cocked and ready, Mike Shayne prepared to counterattack.

Swiftly and silently, he went to the rear door and on through, during a lull for reloading. He recalled the barbecue pit that had so nearly proved his undoing two nights earlier and slid into it.

When a dark form came around the corner of the smaller house, the redhead brought him down with a bullet in the knee, then rose and disarmed him. It was Carl Meadows, and he was out like a light. Shayne regarded him with distaste, then looked up just in time to see another shape emerge around the other rear corner of the building.

“Okay,” the detective said. “Drop the cannon. Nice and easy. Kick it over here. Okay. Now sit down and stay down.”

XIII

The dinner, served in Roy Latimer’s private dining room atop the News building, was strictly a stag affair. Shayne was there, of course, as were the three defendants in the now defunct criminal libel case. So also was Ryan Akanian, who had made handsome atonement to Latimer for his fall from grace.

Mostly, it was Mike Shayne who fielded the questions.

“I wondered about Myra Rainey not calling in the police. Len Sturgis’ Homicide boys dug out the reason. It seems, when she was a teenager, she got picked up for trying to shoplift an evening gown for a high school formal. Seems her mother wouldn’t let her wear a strapless, so she went out and took one.

“The parents asked the police to throw a scare into her, and they did their job a little too well. Rainey’s had copaphobia ever since.”

There were questions about Carl Meadows, who was recovering in a prison hospital ward from the shattered knee Shayne had given him, about Allen MacRae, who was languishing in the pen under impossibly high bail.

“They worked it together,” the detective told his small audience, “but my hunch is that Meadows was the idea man, Slimy Mac the how-to-do-it boy. Is that how it seemed to you, Ryan?”

The publisher nodded, said, “I still don’t know how I fell for such a flagrant con. Sheer greed, I guess. But I think you called it right, Mike. And, once again, I want to thank you for what you did the other night.”

“We all want to thank you. Mike.” Roy Latimer was on his feet, wine glass lifted. The toast was drunk and Mike, fingering the stem of his goblet, longed for Martell instead of another in the series of expensive wines that had accompanied the dinner.

“The one I don’t understand,” said Latimer, “is the Fowler woman. She doesn’t make sense to me.”

“She made sense by her own lights,” Mike Shayne assured his client. “She couldn’t turn down a luxury trip to Bermuda, which Meadows offered her because he wanted her out of town. She loved the island and he knew it. Once Fowler was there and learned about Cathy Whiting’s murder, she realized why she’d been lured away. So she figured the wisest course was to clam up and pretend she knew nothing about it. Which, in a way, she didn’t.”

“How are your friends at Headquarters taking that?” Roy Latimer asked Shayne.

“They’re sullen but not mutinous. After all, she didn’t actually do anything illegal. There’s no charge on the books for accepting a free trip to Bermuda.”

“What about Myra Rainey?” Carl Dirkson asked. “How is she taking it?”

“Right now she’s hitting bottom,” the redhead replied. “She’s still, sick about Cathy Whiting’s murder. She feels wholly responsible. But Myra is blessed with the resiliency of the young. My guess is that she’ll get over it — but probably not around here. She’s had a bellyful of Miami, and I can’t blame her for that.”

Roy Latimer looked puzzled. “You know,” he said, “I still can’t figure out why the Whiting girl was killed.”

“According to Meadows, before the police took him away, that wasn’t supposed to happen,” Shayne told him. “They had the apartment wire tapped and, as I thought, Myra did call Cathy to let her know she was okay and to find out what was happening. They sent the button man around to force her to tell them where Rainey was. They took it for granted she must know — which she didn’t.

“He was leaning on her pretty hard when I drove up and headed straight for the little house in back. He figured it was a trap and opened fire to keep her from talking to me — just about the way I figured it. Then he opened fire on me.”

“You were lucky, Shayne,” said Akanian.

Tim Rourke looked at the larger publisher, said, “I used to think that about Mike — but he’s survived too many scrapes like this to call it all luck. He’s quick, and he seems to have a sixth sense for impending danger.”

The detective said, “Whatever it is, I’m grateful for having it. But considering I heard the shots that killed Cathy, I was a damned fool to try and crash the house. I should have waited him out or called the police from my car.”

“You’re second-guessing yourself,” the reporter told him, “to say nothing of revealing unbearable modesty.”

“What’s the word On Lowman?” the redhead asked.

Roy Latimer put down his wine glass. “I’m told he’ll recover. It seems discovering what looked like mere legal chicanery had turned into murder was more than he could take. But he’ll never practice law again.” A pause, then, “Incidentally, Shayne, the paper is happy to express its gratitude, as are Tim, Carl and myself.”

The envelope he handed Mike Shayne was reassuringly thick. When he opened it later, he discovered fifteen thousand-dollar bills, ten more than the fee he had been promised.

On the whole, he felt he had earned it.