Blue Murder

CHAPTER 14

Shayne was eating breakfast off a plastic tray when word arrived that the necessary moves had been made, and he was a free man. Sergeant Gus Neihart was still on duty. He told Shayne, with obvious sincerity, that he was sorry to see him go.

The arrest-blotter was chained to his desk. Shayne reversed it and read the name of the arresting officer in his case: Francis Beatty.

“A little thing I’ve got to take care of,” he said, and went into the squadroom.

This was a low-crime precinct and a low-water time of day. Four on-duty cops were sitting around doing nothing in various ways. Beatty was stirring coffee. The spoon clattered in the cup as he saw Shayne.

“About that rabbit punch you gave me,” Shayne said. “I used to go in for returning those things, but I’ve got a different policy now.”

The door of the metal locker beside Beatty was partly open. Shayne gave it a powerful kick. Beatty swung around, his hand going to his gun. A chair scraped and one of the others sprang to his feet. The door clanged open, and shut again.

“But I’ll remember your face,” Shayne said. “I don’t think you ought to be a cop, and I hope I can do something about it. We’ll meet again. It’s a small town.”

On the front steps, he stretched and took a deep breath of reasonably uncontaminated air. He had phoned for a cab, but it hadn’t arrived.

A red Volkswagen beetle was parked against the opposite curb. Shayne gave it a second look, and saw a bearded youth asleep with his head on the wheel. It was Lester, who had wanted to help Shayne with his electrical trouble the night before.

The dashboard radio was playing softly. Shayne crossed the street, reached in and turned it off. The abrupt silence woke Lester up.

“Michael, hey, we meet again. You know I didn’t believe any of that stuff you told me last night?”

“I had that feeling.”

“I mean, stealing skin-flicks, that’s a first. Then the goddamn guns started banging away. My girlfriend tells me I ought to mind my own business, but it’s time people started helping other people, or we’ll all go to hell in the same basket, don’t you agree?”

“I thought you went home early.”

“No, I just moved the car and snuck back. Man! The fire engine got there before the fire started, did you notice? I had a ringside seat for the whole event.”

“Then maybe you can tell me what happened to a couple of dozen cans of film.”

“Absolutely. The fuzz loaded everybody up and took off, with the sirens wailing, needless to say, and this little drunk with white hair came up and started to get in the bus. I tried to tell him he was going to get booby-trapped, but do you know he waved a revolver at me to scare me? And he scared me! I try not to argue with irrational people. He turned on the ignition key. Boom. Then he wanted some help, but I decided to draw the line, and I went around back and made a citizen’s arrest of the film.”

Shayne got in the front seat beside him. “Lester, as a rule I have a low opinion of people, but sometimes they surprise me. How much will it cost?”

“I thought ten bucks a can would be about right? Then a couple or three of us could go to Mexico for the winter.”

“It’s a deal,” Shayne said, taking out his wallet. “Where do you have it?”

Lester pulled the hood release. “Right here. Take your time. I want you to be satisfied.”

Shayne went to the front of the car and raised the hood. Except for the extra tire and a few tools, the interior space was crammed with film cans, each can labeled with a sticker giving its title and reel number. He went through the cans quickly, stacking them like poker chips: Sally, Friends and Neighbors, Delinquent Venus. But Domestic Relations, the Gretchen Tucker picture, was not included.

He lowered the hood and returned to Lester. “Were those the only cans in the bus?”

“Yes, why?” Lester said, alarmed. “I hope you’re going to take them off my hands, because if you don’t what the hell will I do with them?”

“No, you’ve got a buyer. I left my car at the Warehouse. Can you drive me?”

Lester agreed. Shayne went back inside the station house to cancel his cab, but it was already on the way. He took out a bill to leave for the driver, but after looking at Sergeant Gus Neihart, put it back in his pocket.

“No, he’d never get it.”

“Shayne,” Neihart said, “one of these years you and I are going out in the alley and shed some blood.”

Shayne waited for the driver outside and paid him. As he started back to the VW, a car pulled into the no-parking zone and Nicholas Tucker jumped out.

“Shayne! I was afraid I’d missed you.”

“Did your wife call you?”

It was an effort for Tucker to take in the question. His political image required him never to appear in public unshaven, without a necktie, but neither of these items had been taken care of this morning. He was wearing the same clothes he had worn all night, and the linen jacket was smudged and wrinkled. He took off his planter’s hat and wiped his forehead.

“Did Gretchen call me. No, I haven’t had a word. Did you learn anything out of that Donnybrook last night?”

“Somebody else ended up with the film. But I finally have something to trade with, and I may be able to pry some information out of a few people who’ve been ducking questions. I’m hoping you can tell me what Barnett Pomeroy thinks he’s up to.”

“The damn fool thinks he’s helping me!” Tucker burst out. “May the Lord protect us from our friends. I never realized what a wild man he can be when he’s drinking. Never mind that. I just had a call from the airport police. Somebody saw a woman being forced into a car in front of the motel. There’s a letter addressed to me, and they want me to come out right away. I was hoping I could take you, so we can talk on the way.”

“I’ll meet you. I want to get my car.”

Tucker wanted Shayne to go with him, but he lost the argument. Shayne needed the time to plan his next moves.

The two cars separated at the corner. Tucker turned north toward the airport expressway. Lester and Shayne, in the little VW, had more lights to contend with, but it was early and there was little traffic. Lester, refreshed by his nap, wanted to discuss the battle he had witnessed, but a look at Shayne’s face discouraged him. At the Warehouse, he pulled up beside Shayne’s Buick and helped transfer the film from his trunk to Shayne’s.

Shayne paid him. “Enjoy yourself in Mexico.”

“I want to. But I know she’s going to keep nagging at me about how I got this bread. That’s my prediction.”

Shayne was only a few blocks from the Expressway. It was 8:25 by the time he reached the airport.

He found Tucker in the motel lobby, surrounded by a knot of police officers. During the short journey from the city, Tucker had convinced himself that he was actually the Nicholas Tucker who was a member of Congress, favored to win the nomination for governor, a man with a glistening future. He had put on a necktie. He still needed a shave, but his clothes seemed to hang on him properly again.

He was listening to a police lieutenant. Seeing Shayne, he signaled with a raised forefinger. When that finger went up in a restaurant, waiters jumped. He excused himself from the others.

“Doesn’t look too good, Mike. She was here, apparently, but—”

As normal as he had seemed from a distance, his eyes betrayed him. They looked through Shayne instead of at him. “I think I knew it would end in something like this. But I kept hoping. The hell of it is, I don’t even know what I’m sorry about.”

Will Gentry, Miami Chief of Police and one of Shayne’s oldest friends, came into the lobby. He was stockily built and moved with authority. He had a gruff manner and a kind of directness and candor that was surprising to find in someone who had managed a big-city police department — in many respects a political job — with complete success for twenty years.

“I didn’t know you were working on this, Mike.”

“Since last night.”

“Excuse me, Congressman,” Gentry said. “We’ll get less repetition if I can talk to Shayne privately for a minute. There isn’t much more you can do right now. They’ll get you some coffee.”

Tucker nodded stiffly. “I have some phone calls. Don’t disappear, Mike.”

Gentry took Shayne to a sofa in an unused corner of the lobby. “I need a fast fill-in, and I can’t get it from him. I think he’s hoping to keep this small, but it’s going to be impossible. The media people will be swarming all over us in another ten minutes, and the more we can get accomplished before they get here, the better. So talk to me.”

“I’ve been making headway,” Shayne said, “but there’s a long way to go. Tell me what happened here, and I’ll try to tell you where it fits.”

“At seven fifty,” Gentry said, “a call to the emergency number downtown, a man’s voice. I wish we still taped those calls, but you remember they cut it out of the last budget. He only had a minute because he was catching a plane, and he didn’t want to get involved. Every time I hear somebody say that, the less I like it.”

“Well, you can see his point. He can buy the Miami papers to find out if it’s serious. He wouldn’t want to be called back to testify for anything minor.”

“You defend him,” Gentry said. “I can’t. He said he wasn’t registered here, and he made a big thing of it, so maybe that means he actually was — we’re checking everybody. He saw two guys come out of a room with a woman and put her in a car. ‘Put her in a car.’ Forcibly, is the idea. There was blood on her face. A big car, a Caddy or a Lincoln, with Florida plates.”

“I suppose this woman was a blonde?”

“Yes, indeed. High heels, glasses, good looking, nicely dressed. We got the identification from stuff in the room. It was definitely Mrs. Tucker.”

“Any description of the men?”

“He said they looked like hoodlums. I guess he meant hoodlums in the movies. Most of the hoodlums you and I know look like ordinary people. One of them had a beard. The other had had some trouble and was wearing a face bandage.”

“That’s interesting,” Shayne commented. “I knocked out some of Frankie Capp’s teeth in the middle of the night. Frankie’s one hoodlum who looks like a hoodlum even without a bandage.”

“I like that,” Gentry said. “If we could put Frankie Capp away for kidnapping, I’d retire happy.”

“Yeah,” Shayne said skeptically. “Get a call out on him. I want to talk to him about something else. But don’t expect him to confess. Anybody can put on a bandage. The town’s full of good-looking blondes. Good-looking brunettes can turn themselves into blondes by coloring their hair or wearing a wig.”

“You always were a suspicious bastard. It sounds pretty authentic to me. And there’s more, a long letter that definitely points a finger at Frankie, now that I think of it.”

“People have been trying to hustle and flimflam me all night,” Shayne said, “and I’m getting a little leery. This would be mild, compared to some of the performances I’ve been watching. All these people are actors. Was there any mention of luggage? I’m thinking of a suitcase large enough to hold six or eight cans of movie film.”

“Right. Now how’d you know that? A carrying case — our man on the phone thought it might be a cat or a small dog. Movie film? What kind of movie?”

“I haven’t seen it. Again, anybody can take an empty film can and stick on a label.” He stood up. “Let me see the letter. Then it may be time to start pressuring people. If I can find them,” he added.

“Who besides Capp?”

“A girl, Maureen Neal. She’s been staying at the Modern Motel and driving a Hertz Thunderbird. She has a friend named Peter something. I especially want to get my hands on him. He’s driving a Dodge, dealer’s plates, and the first three digits are five seven six. Did you hear what happened to Barnett Pomeroy? He’s a congressman from Illinois, a friend of Tucker’s.”

“The bomb in the VW?”

“Yeah, and if they’re finished with him at the hospital I want to know where he is and what he’s doing. Then somebody named Pussy Rizzo, from Los Angeles, and two friends. We’ve got them cold on a heavy felony rap, and they may want to cooperate with us. Again, we have to find them first.”

Gentry had been making notes. “That leaves a few points unexplained.”

“More than a few, Will. I’m expecting a call from Tim Rourke, which may shed some light.”

“What about Tucker? Do I push him?”

“No, let him alone.”

“For some reason I can’t warm up to the guy. He’s always onstage.”

As a matter of fact, Shayne thought that Tucker was playing his role well. He was in one of the sit-down phone booths with the door ajar, sipping black coffee from a container. He showed his fatigue not by slumping, but by holding himself unnaturally erect. When Shayne approached, he brought the conversation to a close and came out of the booth.

“I have a choice, Mike. I can cancel all meetings and pull out of the race, which will please certain people, or I can carry on as if nothing has happened, until we find out what precisely has happened. I have a breakfast appointment with people from upstate. I’ve decided to keep it. She left a letter, did Gentry tell you? It makes painful reading. He’s agreed to withhold it from the press for the time being. Can you think of anything else I ought to tell you now?”

“Has your wife ever mentioned anybody named Peter? About her age, a few years younger. Good shoulders. I’d say he’s lifted a lot of iron. Five nine, about a hundred and sixty pounds.”

“Here in Miami? We know a Peter in Washington, but he’s ten years older, and definitely not a weight lifter. Her brother’s name is Peter, but we haven’t seen him in years. Is he part of this ghastly movie?”

“I don’t know much about him. I ran into him last night.”

“Well,” Tucker said awkwardly.

He told Gentry where he could be reached, nodded to them both and walked off stiffly. He checked after a few steps, and came back.

“Find her,” he said in a choked voice. “Please. I want her back. I didn’t know this last night. The hell with everything else!”

Shayne said nothing.

“That’s what I mean about being onstage,” Gentry said as Tucker walked away again. “Does he mean it?”

They left the lobby. A reporter cornered Tucker as he was getting into his car. Tucker gave him a strained smile.

“No comment now, Jerry. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Just a minute. Congressman—”

Tucker drove off, waving.

“What name did she use when she signed up for the room?” Shayne asked Gentry.

“That’s it. It wasn’t her room. The letter explains it. It’s registered to a man and wife from Ohio, but they used a phony address. We called Cleveland, and there’s no such street. It wouldn’t be the first false registration here this year. The guy next door heard them get up early — five o’clock, daylight — use the john and so on and pull out.”

Two of Gentry’s men were in the room. Both beds had been used. There was an open suitcase and a light raincoat on the foot of one bed, overflowing ashtrays, crumpled tissues and other debris, an ice bucket, a portable typewriter.

“Any drugs?” Shayne asked.

“In a zipper bag in the suitcase. A good supply of prescription barbiturates. A tin of hashish, miscellaneous pills, who knows for what, all the colors of the rainbow. The letter was in the raincoat pocket. Just skim through it, Mike. I have the feeling there are things we ought to be doing.”

He gave Shayne a fat envelope, addressed to the Honorable Nicholas Tucker at his campaign headquarters. It had been stamped with triple postage and sealed, but not mailed.

“Written on this typewriter?”

“It seems so. There’s a floating capital A. Tucker identifies the typewriter as his wife’s.”

Shayne sat down and began reading.

Shayne looked up. A cop was at the door.

“Mike, your car phone.”

“Yeah.”

There were only a few more lines.

The signature was a single typed initial: “G.”