Blue Murder

CHAPTER 3

Both sides of Balfour Drive, between Collins Avenue and Indian Creek, were lined with cars. Shayne pulled out of the parking area and turned toward Collins, and as he did so, a flicker of movement in the front seat of one of the parked cars caught his eye.

He parked on Collins, in an open slot blocking a fire hydrant, and started back on foot, on the general theory that it would be useful to know who was watching his client’s building, preferably without being seen himself. There were too many streetlights. Before he could cross the street, he heard the slap of sneakers behind him, and turned.

A determined-looking woman was jogging toward him. She was a touch overweight, her black hair tied in a ribbon. Shayne smiled slightly and stepped out to block her.

“That looks like fun. Can I join you?”

She came down to a walk. When Shayne stayed in her path, she halted and glanced around, hoping to find that she wasn’t alone on this quiet block with a big, ruggedly built, red-haired stranger.

“Were you speaking to me?”

Shayne said pleasantly, “I’ve been thinking I ought to get more exercise. That’s a great way to do it. But I’m too chicken to go out alone. I worry about what people think. Seriously, let me keep you company. I’ll stay two feet away.”

“Actually, I prefer to run by myself.”

He sidestepped when she tried to edge past him.

“You ought to pick up your feet more and come down on your heels. You can give yourself shin splints that way. Let me show you.”

“I don’t need any coaching, thanks. Anyway, I’m about to go in.”

“My God, it’s hard to meet women in this town!” Shayne exclaimed. “What’s everybody so uptight about? What do you think I want to do, rape you?” He gave her a closer look. “And that might not be such a terrible idea. I don’t think I’ve ever raped anybody in a sweat suit.”

She took a backward step, her hand to her heart.

“O.K.,” Shayne said, laughing, and took out his wallet. “Let’s try it this way. I’m a private detective, and somebody’s sitting in a parked car down the street. I’d like to see who it is without scaring him too much.”

“Michael Shayne,” she said, reading his name from his license. “Why didn’t you say so? I thought you were making fun of me. Most people think people who run at night are ridiculous. I should care! I sleep better. All right, but try to keep in step.”

They set out at an easy jog, elbow to elbow. He had told her she looked as though she was having fun. The truth was, she looked as though she were being tortured.

“Don’t you feel conspicuous?” he asked.

“Not any more. There are more of us each day. Goodness, if I stopped doing things because of public opinion—”

“Come down on your full foot. Don’t clench your fists.”

“Like this?”

“Better.”

The sidewalk had been built at a time when there were still pedestrians, but tonight, except for Shayne and the young woman, it was empty. They came abreast of the car he wanted to look into. It was a cream-colored Dodge, with dealer plates, fenders that had been bashed in and pounded out and repainted. Shayne caught the first three numbers of the license — 576. A muscular young man was hunched over the wheel, his chin resting on his folded forearms. He had yellow hair cut shorter than was usual among persons his age. He was wearing wraparound dark glasses.

After jogging another thirty feet, Shayne’s companion said in a low voice, “People who run at night are ridiculous? I think people who wear shades at night are ridiculous.”

“He’s hiding.”

“Who is he? I live next door to that building. Should I be nervous?”

“Pay no attention. Do you know your neighbor Nick Tucker?”

“By sight. Somebody gave a coffee for him last year and I got to shake his hand, lucky me. I liked her better than him. He jogs, by the way, and that’s the only nice thing I can say about him.”

They continued to Indian Creek, then north to the Harbour Way and back to Collins, where Shayne stopped beside his car. He thanked her.

“You’ve got a good pair of lungs,” she commented, “along with everything else. If you’re in the neighborhood, I’m usually out at about this time. You’re right, it’s better with two people.”

She jogged off, clenching her fists again.

Shayne went up the front steps of the house on Vicenzo Island, which Frankie Capp had been able to buy, at a nice price, from the widow of a man who had been machine-gunned from a powerboat as he sat on his front terrace. A number of lights were on inside. Shayne rang the chimes twice. Nobody came.

He had been here before, and he knew that in Capp’s absence the house was protected by a German shepherd, trained to slobber on its owner’s hand and to tear out anybody else’s throat. Shayne returned to his car for a.38, which he stuck in his belt. He looked for a window that would be easier to force than one of the doors. Through a slit beneath a jammed blind, he was able to see into the living room. Somebody had already shot Capp’s dog. No longer dangerous, its front legs protruding stiffly, the animal lay in an unnatural position near the middle of a white rug, which would have to be cleaned.

Shayne found a smashed bedroom window. He raised the sash and pulled himself in. He went first to the living room to look at the dog. It had been shot through the head twice at close range and must have been dead before it hit the floor.

The phone clanged. Shayne picked it up and grunted.

“Yeah?”

“Capp,” a man’s voice said. “What the hell? Do you want me to sit here and turn purple?”

“Something came up. How soon can you get over?”

The voice, already high, rose a notch. “Are you drunk? By any chance are you putting me on? Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. You call me.”

The line went dead. Shayne weighed the phone thoughtfully before dropping it back.

He looked around, trying to get the feel and smell of the room. Something had happened here besides the shooting of a dog. A chair had been knocked over. He set it on its feet. He swiveled slowly, turning through a full 360 degrees. There was a dark patch on the arm of one of the upholstered chairs. He touched it with his finger; it was damp.

Various small things were disarranged. A glass-topped coffee table was out of square. He found a spattering of fresh blood along a baseboard, on the opposite side of the room from the dead dog.

Turning on lights as he went, he looked through the house. In a utility room, a washer-dryer was humming and clicking. It was on the drying cycle, with some minutes to go, and contained only two bath towels. There was a game room, with a refrigerator full of beer, a pool table and a dart board. Capp had been showing movies here. The screen and projector were still out — a portable roll-up screen and an expensive two-turret projector, capable of handling both thirty-five and sixteen-millimeter film. There was no film in the projector, or as far as Shayne was able to discover in the next ten minutes, anywhere else in the house.

The bathroom and main bedroom got most of his attention. He was looking for some sign of a woman’s presence. Capp was unmarried, and Shayne had seen him in restaurants and nightclubs with a changing succession of girls. The girls, over the years, had remained the same age — between eighteen and twenty-two — while Capp himself was getting older. They remained slim; Capp put on jowls and his waist thickened. They never smiled. They were hardly ever heard to speak.

But if they had slept in this house, they had left few traces. Shayne found a shower cap in the bathroom, a box of Tampax, pills to combat menstrual tension. In the bedroom he turned up one black bra but no other women’s clothing, and only men’s cosmetics. There was a huge bed under a ceiling mirror. The bedspread was disarranged, as though someone had been rolling about on it after it was made.

Headlights crossed the windows and a car turned into the driveway. From a window in the unlighted kitchen, Shayne watched Frankie Capp lean out of the front window of a Cadillac and blink an electronic gadget at the garage, causing the door to slide up out of the way. He was alone in the car. He backed partway into the garage, dismounted and sidestepped past the car.

Shayne heard the trunk hatch come up. It banged shut a moment later. Capp reappeared, finished garaging the car and lowered the overhead doors.

Shayne waited inside the kitchen door. Capp came out of the garage, dangling a wet towel. He seemed exhausted. Shayne heard him sigh as he slid his key into the lock.

“Going to be O.K.,” Capp assured himself aloud, and turned the key.

Inside, the long slanting bar of the police lock slid out of its socket. Capp came in. Shayne stepped in front of him and hit him in the chest with the heel of one hand. Capp went back against the doorframe with a whoosh of surprise.

“Where’ve you been, Frankie?”

“Shayne,” Capp whispered when his breath returned.

He smelled of insect repellent instead of his usual after-shave. He made a quick sideward move, but Shayne was on him before he was out the door and whirled him back and around. Capp sawed with both arms as he went across the kitchen. He went down, falling awkwardly with his legs tangled. Shayne pulled the.38 out of his belt and slapped him with it, hard.

Capp gave a yelp of pain. His eyes rolled.

Shayne caught him as he tipped and worked the keys out of his side pocket. He sorted out the garage key first. After using it to unlock the garage, he turned on the overhead light and opened the Cadillac’s trunk.

There was nothing inside except the usual tools and the extra tire, and twelve bottles of good burgundy. The carpet was damp in places. Shayne put his head down and sniffed. There was a brackish, faintly fishy smell.

Capp had removed something from the trunk before coming into the house, and Shayne stayed in the garage until he found it — an inflatable swimming pool mattress folded in quarters. The fabric was wet and gave off the same brackish smell as the trunk carpet.

Capp had lifted himself to his elbows, and was waiting for strength before he tried anything else. His breath whistled. Having already gone through the medicine cabinet, Shayne knew what was in it. He brought a small bottle of spirits of ammonia and moved it back and forth under Capp’s nose.

Capp batted his hand away. “You scared me. Jumping out like that.”

“I’m glad your heart’s in good shape. I want you to live a long time after I put you in jail. You didn’t answer my question. Where’ve you been?”

Capp’s eyes closed down. “I haven’t answered stupid questions in years. Keep poking your nose into my business and you’ll lose it, you’ll lose it. Somebody’ll bite it off for you.”

Without hurrying, Shayne took out the.38 again and gave him another hard slap. At this point, Capp’s reflexes were very slow. He saw the gun coming but all he managed to do was blink. He even blinked slowly.

Shayne let him think for a moment, then dragged him to the bathroom, where he pushed him into the shower and turned on the cold water. Capp lay under the icy stream, bleating, while Shayne went through his wallet.

He was carrying nearly fifteen hundred dollars in cash, including three hundred-dollar bills tucked in with his driver’s license, numerous credit cards, a rack of condoms, a glossy photograph of a sex act forbidden by most religions, and finally, a ruled sheet torn from a small notebook. A penciled notation said: “M. (from LA) — Rm 14, Modern Motel. After 8.”

Shayne transferred this to his own wallet. In the shower stall, Capp was blubbering. Shayne turned off the water, pulled him out and let him have another sniff of ammonia. The force of the water had knocked off his hairpiece.

“You look better bald,” Shayne remarked. “Watch closely, Frankie. See if you can tell how I do it.”

He tore one of the hundred-dollar bills in bits and flushed them down the toilet. Capp came up on his elbows again.

“That’s money!”

“You can spare it,” Shayne assured him. “I’ll ask you once more. Where’ve you been? It doesn’t have to be true. Make up something.”

“I went swimming. It’s a hot night.”

“Good. Now are you ready for a second question? Where’s Gretchen Tucker?”

Capp pulled a towel off a rack and blotted his face. “Am I supposed to know her?”

Shayne tore up another hundred-dollar bill and dropped it in the toilet.

“Will you cut that out,” Capp complained. “Gretchen Tucker. I’m trying to think. Who’s she?”

“The wife of a United States congressman, and she’s the wrong kind of person for you to fool with, Frankie. You want to stay with what you know.”

Capp used the edge of the washbasin to pull himself erect and managed to stay on his feet to confront his bedraggled image in the mirror.

“I don’t know the lady, but go ahead, pound on me some more. I’ve got an Italian name. They weren’t thinking about people like me when they wrote the Constitution. The Italians hadn’t come yet.”

He walked out of the bathroom ahead of Shayne, stopping short when he saw the dog. He breathed, “You killed him.”

“Did I?”

Capp said softly without turning, “I won’t forget this. He’s been with me a year and a half. I liked that mutt.”

“A real killer, I hear.”

“Vicious. But with me, so goddamn playful.” He collapsed into a chair. “Still sort of rubbery. If you want me to make any sense, get me a drink. A large Chivas. It’s been a long day.”

Shayne found a glass and filled it with Scotch. He poured a cognac for himself. Capp drank thirstily and breathed out in a shudder.

“Do me a favor. What’s happening in town? You wouldn’t shoot my dog and slap me with a pistol unless you thought I broke some ordinance or other. What is it this time? Come on, Mike, for Christ’s sake, it’s only a game.”

“If you don’t want to talk about Mrs. Tucker, how much do you know about dirty movies?”

“Movies?” Capp said, apparently surprised. “Not a hell of a lot. But I don’t talk about business, you know that about me. If you talk about business to people who don’t like you, it gets back to Internal Revenue. Are you working for Tucker?”

“Yeah, he’s mislaid his wife. We thought you might be able to help.”

“Much as I’d like to. Seriously — you bust into somebody’s house and shoot their dog. Is that any way to get cooperation? All I want of you right now is to stay out of my toupee. I want to hit the sheets. Tell me what you’ve got. Maybe I can explain it.”

“She was seen in your car, at the toll station on the causeway. And the thing that irritates Tucker most is that she was laughing.”

“Who’s your witness, Tucker?”

“A friend of his.”

Capp grinned. “Laughing, was she? Awful. There ought to be a law against it. Women go for you, don’t they, Mike? A private detective, you’ve killed people. That turns on a certain kind of chick. I get some of the same kind of thing, I’m not ashamed to admit, but with me, it’s ninety percent acting. But they don’t know that. I haven’t fucked her yet. Tell the congressman. Experience tells me it’s a matter of days. She’s panting.”

He went on talking, and Shayne watched him put his picture of himself back together, a man who knew the rules and understood how to bend or evade them. He had beaten Shayne twice, once badly, and it was clear from his tone that he thought he was going to beat him again.

Shayne discovered, after all, that he couldn’t drink Capp’s cognac. He broke in.

“Where’s she living?”

“I don’t call her. She calls me.”

Shayne stood up. “I’m wasting your time. One thing I ought to tell you. Every now and again Tucker reminds himself that he ought to be worrying about her. But when he’s talking about politics I think he sounds more sincere. Whatever you’ve got, you may not be able to squeeze much out of it. Put the price too high and he’ll write her off as a bad debt.”

“He’s a lousy human being,” Capp agreed. “I don’t know how you stand to work for him.”

Shayne flipped him his wallet. “You’ve been lucky, Frankie. This time I think you’re pushing your luck. Tucker has connections that may be too strong for you, not just here but all over the country. He’s an investment. Those backers will hang onto him as long as they can.”

“This is a threat?”

“Not exactly. I’ll be watching you. I want you to go right on doing what you’re doing, because this time I don’t think I can miss.”

“You don’t know shit, Mike — remember I said that. Tucker’s a politician. Don’t believe everything he tells you.” He croaked with laughter. “Man, are you in for surprises.”

“I’ll try to prepare myself. If you stay in Miami, we’ll see each other again.”

“Why shouldn’t I stay in Miami? It’s where I live.”

They were facing each other across the body of the dead dog. Capp nodded in that direction.

“I’m going to make you sorry you did that.” Shayne turned and went out. After starting his Buick, he gunned the motor and took off with a scream of tires. His phone buzzed beside him. He flipped the switch.

“Call you back.”

At the corner he double-parked, latched the door silently and ran back, not jogging now but running. The phone was ringing inside Capp’s house as he approached the broken bedroom window. He was in time to hear Capp say hello.

“You shouldn’t call me here,” Capp said harshly. “Did you ever hear of a guy named Mike Shayne? He’s working for Tucker, and that means we start being careful. Don’t say anything! Get up the goddamn money and I’ll be in touch with you!”

The phone banged down.

Shayne backed off as Capp came into the bedroom. A light was turned on. Seeing the disheveled bed, Capp swore and his face twisted. He lifted the mattress, exposing a plywood bedboard, and felt beneath it.

Whatever he was looking for wasn’t there. He straightened slowly.

“Shayne,” he whispered. “I’ll kill the bastard, I’ll kill him.”

He was facing the mirror, as though to check his own reactions. He had been about to light a cigar. It snapped in his fingers. Suddenly he swept everything off the bureau, and threw the broken cigar at the mirror.

“I’ll kill him.”

On his way to the bar for another drink, he changed course and kicked the dog’s body so hard that he lifted it off the floor.

“And you were supposed to be so quick. You phony.”