A Redhead for Mike Shayne

7

After leaving Papa’s Place Shayne got in his car and glanced at his watch indecisively. A little after twelve o’clock. Tony’s was only a few blocks away, closer than his own office. Timothy Rourke would probably be waiting for him at Tony’s with a couple of drinks already inside him. On the other hand, Shayne hadn’t even checked with his office that morning. Lucy Hamilton would be furious even though there might not be anything important on the agenda. She had known he was going on that warehouse stake-out last night. She would have read a brief account of the affair in the morning paper…

He sighed and started his car and turned around the first corner toward Tony’s. Sometimes Lucy was a trial. She mothered him, damn it. She worried about things when there was absolutely nothing to worry about. He’d call her from Tony’s, he decided, else she was very likely to start phoning all over the city trying to locate him.

Tony’s was a small, unpretentious, roast-beef and steak house not far from the News office. There were no tablecloths on the wooden tables, and if you ordered a very dry martini you got straight gin on the rocks. Their shot-glasses were honest measure with no false bottoms, and it was the kind of joint where the hard-worked waiters were happy to place a bottle of your favorite beverage on the table and leave you to do your own pouring and your own totting up of the bill. Most of the luncheon customers were habitués, and while there were no Men Only signs hung out, there was a severely masculine atmosphere about the place which effectively discouraged female customers.

Two bartenders were busy behind the long mahogany bar when Michael Shayne walked in out of the glaring sunlight. He stopped for a moment and glanced down the line of standing men (bar stools were considered too effete for Tony’s clientele) without seeing Tim Rourke.

The elderly beer-bellied bartender nearest him caught his inquiring glance and jerked his head toward the row of booths at the rear.

“Last booth at the back, Mike. Tim Rourke and a broad.”

Shayne raised his ragged red eyebrows incredulously. “A broad, Jimmie?”

“A dish,” Jimmie amplified with a broad wink. “A real dish.” He moved closer and added in a conspiratorial whisper which could be heard only half the length of the bar, “Lushing it up on cognac, she is, on account of that’s her favorite detective’s favorite juice. How do you like them apples?”

Shayne grinned and said, “It’s okay by me if Tim can afford to pay for them.” He turned to an enclosed phone booth behind him, stepped inside and closed the door. He dropped a dime in the slot and dialled his office, and his secretary’s warm voice came lilting over the wire, “Good afternoon. Michael Shayne’s office.”

“It’s barely afternoon,” he protested. “You make it sound…”

“Michael! Where have you been all day?”

“Over at Beach Headquarters trying to explain to Petey Painter why I didn’t sit quietly with my hands folded last night and get my head blown off.”

Lucy said, “I read about it in the paper. You might have called to say you were all right.”

“I’m always all right, Angel. You know that. Anything important?”

“Oh, no,” she told him airily. “I’ve just been putting off prospective clients… turning down commissions. Are you coming in?”

“After I’ve had lunch at Tony’s. With a broad,” he added.

“A what?”

“A dish. Right now she’s waiting for me in the rear booth lushing it up on cognac on account of that’s her favorite detective’s favorite juice. How do you like them apples?”

There was a pause, then Lucy asked severely, “Just how drunk are you, Michael?”

“Not too, but give me time,” he told her cheerfully. “Tim’s buying.” He hung up and went out and down the length of the room to the rear booth where Timothy Rourke and a red-haired young lady of striking beauty sat opposite and so engrossed in each other that neither of them noticed his arrival.

She was in her thirties and well-fleshed in an exceedingly feminine sort of way. She had shoulder-length, flame-colored hair, and smooth, intelligent features that were lightly and beautifully tanned. Her generous mouth looked as though it would smile easily and unreservedly, and her large brown eyes sparkled with a happy zestfulness that held no hint of coquetry.

She wasn’t actually beautiful, Shayne decided as he stood at the end of the booth looking down at the two of them. That was just a first, fleeting impression. When you looked again you saw something else beneath the surface beauty and far more important. It made you glad you had paused to look a second time, and made you want to keep on looking.

Her strong, well-shaped left hand lay on the table between the two of them, palm upward, with the fingers curved up slightly to disclose untinted but beautifully polished nails. Just beside her hand stood a shot-glass with a trace of amber liquid in it, and an uncorked bottle of Monnet stood a little to one side. Timothy Rourke’s left hand gripped a bourbon highball and the fingertips of his right hand caressed her wrist gently where two blue veins showed clearly beneath the white skin. Rourke was leaning far forward and peering up into her face, and saying laughingly but vehemently, “But I have got etchings up at my place, Molly. I got the damned things in self-defense a long time ago when the unpleasantly suspicious brother of a girl I was trying to make insisted on coming up with her one night to see for himself. It worked, too,” he chuckled. “Next time he let her come back by herself.”

“And so you laid her, Timothy?” Her voice was serene and full-throated and happily amused. “How nice… for her. But that was a long time ago, and you’re certainly not trying to make me.”

“But I certainly am” he argued indignantly. “It wasn’t that long ago. What makes you think…?”

She had turned her head as he was speaking, and she looked up at Michael Shayne. Her full lips curved in the easy and unreserved smile Shayne had expected to see on them, and she said gently, “We have an eavesdropper, Timothy. There being a dearth of keyholes for him to peek through.”

Rourke turned his head slowly with a pained expression on his thin face. “Go away,” he groaned. “Come back another day. I’m trying to convince Molly that my intentions are strictly dishonorable and that I’m not a man to take no for an answer.”

Her eyes held Shayne’s steadily and speculatively during the period that both of them spoke, and she appeared not to hear Rourke’s voice. She was saying something to Shayne alone, she was establishing a bond, there was a shared intimacy in her look that set off a warning bell deep inside the redhead.

He sat down beside her and said, “Molly? I didn’t know girls were called Molly any more.”

Rourke sighed and said gloomily, “Molly Morgan, Mike. I don’t have to tell her who you are.”

“I know,” Shayne said. “I’m her favorite detective and she’s lushing it up on my favorite juice. Are you, Molly? Lushing it up, I mean.” He reached for her almost empty glass and the open bottle and poured the glass full.

She said happily, “I’m three drinks ahead of you if that’s what you mean. Go ahead and catch up,” she added generously. “It’s always more fun that way.”

Shayne said, “Thanks,” and lifted her glass to sip from it. Sitting beside her as he was, he couldn’t look into her eyes any more. But he could feel her body warmth and he could smell her.

Timothy Rourke sighed and closed his eyes tightly for a long moment, then he lifted his glass and drank from it deeply, holding it to his mouth until the last drop was drained from it. Then he set it down with a dull thud, opened his eyes wide and smiled happily and unexpectedly across the table. “You know something, Mike?”

Shayne asked, “What?”

“This little girl… Molly Morgan… she’s really on the ball, Mike. She knows things you and me never dreamed of knowing. You follow me, Mike?” He rested his elbows on the table and clasped the fingers of both hands together, making a bridge to rest his pointed chin, and glared across the table at his old friend.

Shayne said lightly, “I don’t think I follow you. Most girls do, of course. Know things you and I never dreamed of knowing. We’re built differently, if you come right down to it.”

As he spoke he was acutely conscious of Molly Morgan sitting close beside him, of the unashamed aura of sexuality emanating from her, enveloping his senses, penetrating to the innermost recesses of his being.

“Oh hell, Mike,” said Timothy Rourke plaintively, “I didn’t mean that there kind of thing. You don’t know who Molly Morgan is, do you?”

“No,” said Shayne carefully. “I haven’t the slightest idea.” But I know what she is, his racing thoughts were telling him. And she knows I know. We’ve got this man-and-woman thing between us…

“For one thing,” said Timothy Rourke, pausing to hiccough and then speaking with great distinctness, “she’s one of your pet peeves. A newspaper gal. She’s a feature, by-lined writer for a newspaper syndicate who’s down here in Miami to pick our brains clean and go away with a series of syndicated articles that will explain to all the stupid newspaper readers in the United States just exactly what all this Cuban mixup is about, and which one of the seventeen warring factions is right, and just what action our esteemed president and our State Department should take to fix everything up hunky-dory in Latin America and restore the proper image of Uncle Sam to the poor, downtrodden masses of peons…” Rourke paused and then grinned sweetly and muttered, “Oh, hell, Rourke. Get off your soap-box. What I’m trying to tell you, Mike. She’s great. That’s the word for Molly. She’s been around. She knows what the score is.”

He paused and looked up gravely at a waiter who stood at the foot of the table looking at his empty glass. Rourke shoved it toward him, muttering, “Sure. A refill. And whyn’t you bring Mike Shayne a glass of his own so he and this bewitching young lady won’t have to share a loving cup together.” The waiter smiled and went away, and Molly Morgan said clearly and decisively, “But I don’t mind sharing a loving cup with Mike Shayne.”

“There you got it, Mike,” Rourke warned him. “She’s after you, boy. Picking your brain, that’s what she’s doing. Know when she took fire this morning and insisted on meeting you? When she found out about that Russian Lenski, that’s when. That it, Molly? A Lenski twelve-oh-seven, didn’t you say?”

Shayne turned his head slowly and found Molly Morgan looking at him with worried eyes and slightly parted lips. She looked suddenly like a little girl who has been caught eating the wrong dish of ice cream at a birthday party. She shook her head slowly and her voice sounded almost tearful as she supplicated, “Timothy is telling it all wrong. I saw that picture in the paper a few days ago and I wondered. It looked like a Lenski to me, but I wondered what one of them could possibly be doing in Miami. When I mentioned it to Timothy this morning, just casually, he told me about your experience last night, and so I wanted to meet you and talk to you about the possibilities. If the Cubans are bringing Russian weapons into this country, I wonder which faction and why.”

Shayne held her gaze steadily while she spoke. When she ceased, he asked coldly, “Where did you run into a Russian Lenski before?”

“In Paris, I think it was. Two or three years ago. I was covering a meeting of high NATO brass and they had a complete display of Russian armaments. That particular automatic pistol was pointed out as having been terribly effective during the Hungarian affair.”

The waiter came with a fresh highball for Rourke and an extra shot-glass which he set in front of Shayne. Shayne pushed it over in front of Molly and refilled his glass and set the bottle over for her to pour her own if she wished.

He scowled down at his own drink and welcomed an irrational feeling of antagonism that was beginning to build up inside him against Molly Morgan. She had no business being so damned smart and so damned sexually attractive at the same time. One or the other was fine. A man could understand that and cope with it.

He hunched his big shoulders forward and said coldly, “I don’t see that a couple of Russian pistols turning up in Miami is anything to get excited about.”

“But Timothy said it was absolutely new, Mike. Mightn’t that be very important? If it’s part of a larger shipment of arms, I certainly think our C.I.A. should be informed and given an opportunity to trace it down.”

“The C.I.A.” snarled Shayne. “Those bunglers? I wouldn’t trust one of those cloak-and-dagger boys…”

“Oh, stop it, Mike.” Molly put her hand on his forearm and squeezed it tightly. “Just because some mistakes have been made in the past, you mustn’t condemn them out-of-hand. I happen to know Eddie Byron very well, personally. He heads the entire operation here in Miami.”

“And I happen to know the unholy mess they’ve made out of the Cuban situation ever since Castro came into power,” said Shayne hotly. “Keep your Eddie Byron out of this.”

“He isn’t my Eddie Byron,” she retorted.

“Hey, you two.” Timothy Rourke spoke softly from across the table. “What’s the C.I.A. got to do with this?”

“I just don’t want them messing into my personal affairs,” Shayne said hotly. Without looking toward Molly, he reached over with his left hand and firmly removed her hand from his arm.

“But what’s personal about a shipment of Russian guns?” she expostulated. “It seems to me the patriotic duty of every American citizen to cooperate with our government…”

“I’ll take care of my own patriotism,” Shayne said coldly. “What’s personal about this is that I want to get my hands on those guns if any of them are available. And I expect to,” he added grimly, “if I’m allowed to go about it my own way without interference. Do you know what a dozen of them would be worth on the open market, Tim?”

The reporter shrugged and hazarded, “A thousand bucks?”

“Multiplied by six, at least.”

“Six grand,” said Rourke evenly. “Hell, Mike! You’ve got six grand.”

“That’s not the point. I’ve got a living to make. I don’t get a check from Washington each month, paid out of taxpayers’ money the way those fancy-pants boys do.”

He was conscious of Molly moving on the hard seat beside him, drawing farther away toward the wall, and he heard her cool voice telling Rourke, “This cognac doesn’t taste so good any more, Timothy. Might I have a good clean drink of American bourbon and branch water to wash a bad taste out of my mouth?”

“Sure.” Rourke chuckled hollowly and signalled to the waiter and gave the order. Then he leaned back and sighed and clucked reprovingly. “Get off your high horses, both of you. You just happened to step on one of Mike’s pet peeves, Molly.”

She said, “I’m very sorry. Should I apologize?” and her voice was laden with venom.

Shayne turned his head and looked at her bleakly. “You’re awfully sure of yourself, aren’t you, Molly Morgan? You’ve been twitching your butt and trading on your sex appeal for a long time, haven’t you?”

She regarded him steadily, her full upper lip curling a trifle and her nostrils distended. “And you’re God here in Miami, aren’t you, Mike Shayne? Good Lord! When I think how I looked forward to meeting you. I was practically in a tizzy when Timothy brought me here today. You know something, Big-Shot? You make me slightly sick at my stomach. I don’t think I’ll bother with that drink after all, Timothy. If Mr. Shayne will be kind enough to let me out of here where it smells better.”

Shayne said, “With the greatest pleasure, Miss Morgan.” And he slid out to the aisle and stood up while she moved past him and stalked angrily to the front of the restaurant. Timothy Rourke craned his neck over the back of the booth to watch her departure, and he whistled softly and murmured, “She sure enough does twitch that thing. Watch her go.”

Shayne sank back on the bench and exhaled a long breath. “You know how these self-important females get my goat, Tim. Just because she writes her guff under a by-line for some lousy syndicate…”

Timothy Rourke turned back, shaking his head wonderingly. “You know what’s the matter with you, Mike?”

“Sure, I know,” Shayne said roughly. “It makes my ass tired when a bitch like that starts telling me what my patriotic duty is.”

“Nuh-uh,” Rourke shook his head sagely. “She scared the pants off you, Mike. You were falling for her like a ton of bricks, and that’s what scared you. My God, I could practically feel the heat waves all the way across the table when you sat down beside her. She’s got a lot on the ball, that gal has, Mike. She’s one of the top foreign correspondents in the country, and she hasn’t gotten up there just by twitching her butt, you can bet on that.”

“It’s helped her along the way,” Shayne growled. The waiter brought the drink Rourke had ordered for her and looked confused when he saw the two men sitting alone.

The reporter said, “That’s okay. I’ll drink it. Want to order, Mike?”

Shayne said, “Cold roast beef sandwich on rye.” He poured another shot-glass of cognac and warmed it slowly between his palms.

“How well do you know her?” he demanded suddenly.

“Molly? I just met her this morning when she dropped into the office. But I’ve been reading her stuff off and on for years. She’s been in Miami about a week interviewing Cuban refugees and trying to get a line on things over there.”

“And in another week she’ll have the whole mess all figured out and neatly categorized, and she’ll go back up north to write a series of articles which will then become the basis for our future foreign policy.”

“She’ll probably do just that.” Rourke grinned widely. “Forget her, Mike. I think she’ll stay out of your way while she’s here.”

Shayne nodded and said, “I hope so,” knowing it to be an untruth when he said it.