Dolls Are Deadly

12

“Yes, Michael,” Lucy said softly.

Shayne drove the next question hard. “Was it the way I thought?”

“Yes, They grappled where you told them to, at the end of the wharf by the boat. The body was-Sylvester’s body was knifed and weighted down by the Santa Clara’s anchor, as you guessed.”

“Did Painter report on the three suspects I described to him?”

“Yes. They’ve all been questioned.”

“Did he hold them?”

“No.”

“Why didn’t he?”

“‘No proof,’ he said. ‘No motive.’”

“What does he want? Has he got to see it happen?”

“Wait, darling,” Lucy said gently, “there’s more.”

“Let’s have it.”

“It’s interesting, and disturbing. When Painter checked on the three men he discovered they had all been under observation by his office. They’re criminals of record, and they’ve all served time, but they checked in at the police station like good boys when they arrived, the way the rules say. They’re here on a vacation, that’s all-”

“According to Painter!” Shayne put in angrily.

“I know. But this is what I thought so curious. They arrived in Miami at about the same time and from different parts of the U. S. Yet they’ve been inseparable since.”

“What criminal records do they have?”

“They’re all ‘syndicate’ men, but there’s nothing to show that they ever worked with each other before, or even knew each other.”

“What are they working at here?”

“Apparently nothing. Painter had them watched for a few days, thinking they had a job lined up. But they just go fishing, that’s all. Painter thinks they’re setting up a time-and-place alibi here for something that’s happened or is going to happen somewhere else.”

“Sylvester wasn’t somewhere else,” Shayne said bleakly. “Neither was Henny Henlein. And Clarissa and Dan Milford aren’t either.”

“You think it’s all connected?”

“I’m not sure. It seems to be.”

“He was such a good little man,” Lucy said, as if Shayne had spoken only of Sylvester. Indignation at the violence that had been done to his friend had never been buried far beneath Shayne’s words.

“I’ve got to go now, angel. I’ll keep in touch.”

The redhead hung up, fished for another coin and dialed Peter Painter.

“I’ve just talked to Lucy,” he said when the Detective Chief answered. “She told me what you reported about Sylvester and our three prime suspects.”

“What else do you want to know?”

“Have any of the three contacted De Luca since they’ve been here, or hobnobbed with any of his hoods?”

“No, not to our knowledge-and I think we’d know. They’ve kept their noses clean in this town. Fishing, just fishing.”

“Has your office dossiers on them? What about their back-home specialties?”

“Just a minute. I’ve got it here.” Shayne heard the rustle of papers. “The one signed on the hotel register as Collins from Philadelphia-he’s from Philly all right-is known there as Tony ‘Slim’ Rizzo. Stolen-car racket. Served three stretches when he was younger, but now has connections. Used to be good at working on engines. He’d do the work himself, remodel and resell-”

“That’s enough. What about Vince Becker?”

“In Arizona he’s Joe Arminetti. He’s got a boatyard on Cougar Butte Lake. A front for a race-wire room. Also in slot machines and numbers.”

“Can he handle a boat?”

“That’s his sport. Yes.”

“Ed Woodbine?”

“Slug Murphy in Detroit. Ed ‘Slug’ Murphy, labor slugger and union organizer. You know what kind of unions.”

“Any of them ever known to do any fishing before?”

“Not as far’s I know.”

“What about Ed’s wife?”

“She is. He’s married to her, that is. Edna Appinger, an old-time con woman.”

“Lucy says you didn’t hold any of them.”

“What am I going to hold them on? There’s no police pick-up on them from anywhere. And, like I say, they’ve kept their noses clean here.”

“Except for that little item of murder.”

“The fact that they had been chartering Sylvester’s boat”-Painter’s voice rose-“was enough to bring them in for questioning. It certainly isn’t enough to book them for murder. We’ve gone over their persons, their cabanas and the boat. They’re all clean.”

“The wharf wasn’t clean,” Shayne said grimly, “where Slim Collins gutted the fish.”

“He explained about that. The blood was on the wharf when he came down to get the fish. He didn’t want to make any more mess than necessary, so he cleaned his fish where the other blood was-fish blood, he assumed.”

“And you bought that?” Shayne asked icily.

“In the absence of motive or any other incriminating evidence, yes,” Painter flared. “We bought it.”

“How much blood do you think a fish makes?”

“I didn’t see it.”

“I did.”

“Then round up some other evidence to go with it, and maybe you can make something out of it.”

“I’ve been under the vague impression that was police work.”

“We’ve made our investigation. We’re satisfied.”

“Did any of your men,” Shayne asked acidly, “notice that a new engine had been put in Sylvester’s boat? And, if they did, did they ask themselves why? Or where a poor Cuban got the money? Or if he didn’t get the engine himself, who got it for him? And dirtied it up to look like an old one?”

“Look, Shayne, if you knew all these things why didn’t you tell me this morning?”

“I had trouble getting you to listen to what I did tell you. Your three hoodlum vacationers put that engine in Sylvester’s boat. Sylvester thought it was because they liked him.”

“Maybe it was. You’ve been shamusing for so long you’ve forgotten that the milk of human kindness does run in the veins of some people.” Painter laughed dryly.

“Is that why you have a tail on me? To protect me-out of kindness?”

“I haven’t, you egotist. You asked me that before. What do I care where you go? Just keep out of the way of police department investigations.”

“I’ll do better than that. You can sit back in your swivel chair and wait while I do your job for you.”

Shayne hung up, his gaunt face bleak and deeply trenched.

Three men, engaged in different and unconnected criminal operations, had come to Miami at the same time from three different parts of the country, had chummed up and pretended to go fishing and had murdered Sylvester. One of the men, conveniently, was an expert mechanic and he had put a new engine in Sylvester’s boat; another was adept at handling a boat. Shayne had seen him bring the Santa Clara to berth with nearly as sure a touch as Sylvester’s. The third, genial Ed Woodbine, seemed to have served no function as yet.

Things seemed to funnel from diverse directions to one point-Madame Swoboda. Ed Woodbine had attended a seance; Clarissa Milford and Henlein had both received voodoo dolls.

Shayne stepped on the starter abruptly and turned south toward the Miami River and the last decaying house on a moldering street.

The gray Buick held a wary distance behind him, passing as he parked in front of Swoboda’s. It didn’t come back. Shayne stepped out of his car to the deserted street and strode toward the rotting yellow house.

By daylight it looked even more precariously placed than it had the night before. The stilts which supported it on the river side were sagging and covered with slimy moss. One piling had split and, in a makeshift effort to keep the house still standing, someone had bound it with rope. The rope stretched and creaked as the water lapped at the piling.

This was the only occupied house on the block. The others, in only slightly more disrepair, stood empty, condemned, their windows gaping and broken, eyeless, in a sort of mute envy of the flicker of life which still existed around them.

The redhead strode back, took a. 38 from the glove compartment of the car and dropped it into his side pocket, then again crossed the sinking flagstones with an animal litheness at variance with his bony height. Though the sign beside the heavy pine door still read Walk in, he pushed the button.

Nothing happened. He flattened his thumb on the bell button and held it there. Finally the door was opened by Madame Swoboda. Her ebony hair lay smooth and shining in a long pageboy bob and her skin was ivory white against it. The gray, black-lashed eyes looked even more beautiful in the light of day than they had last night.

When she recognized Shayne, her face stiffened. “What do you want?”

She made a quick move to close the door but Shayne blocked it and stepped inside.

“This is-illegal!” She was seething. “I’ll have you thrown out!”

Shayne moved his eyes over her body. She was wearing a trim tweed skirt and a blouse which, though severely tailored, accented the sexy swell of her breasts, her narrow waist and the exciting curve of hips and thighs. Except for that intense femaleness, however, she looked like any girl on her way to the supermarket, or perhaps to a golf game. Her appearance today was so far removed from what it had been at the seance table that it was hard to believe she had been the “mystic channel” through which messages had flowed from the “other world.”

Behind her, several pieces of expensive-looking luggage were stacked against the wall.

“Going some place?”

She bit her lush lips. “It’s no concern of yours!”

“I’d hate to lose you just as we’ve become acquainted.” The redhead walked past her into the waiting room and sat down on one of the hard benches. His big hand patted the seat beside him invitingly.

After a moment’s hesitation, she came over and sat down. “Now,” she said coldly, “why did you force your way in?”

“It’s the brute in me. Do you admire brute strength, like D. L.?”

“Is that cryptic remark supposed to mean something to me?”

“You know D. L., of course.”

“No, I don’t.” She widened her round gray eyes and accepted the cigarette he offered, keeping them fastened provocatively on his face and leaning closer than necessary while he lit it. “What do you really want with me?”

“Besides the obvious, I’d like to know who set you up here and why.” He was aware of the warmth of her thigh.

“You asked me that before,” she said shortly, “and I told you I set myself up. And the reason is apparent.”

“Not to me. Let’s come at it from another direction, then. What was the meaning of those numbers on Jimsey’s tape at last night’s seance?”

“Tape?” Her face was blandly innocent. “Do you mean the message from ‘outside’?”

“Let’s drop the act. It was a message all right-from inside! It was information in some sort of cabala. What was the message? Who was it for?”

“In numerology there is a mystic meaning to all numbers.” Her voice was rarefied. “What those particular numbers meant, I do not know. I am only the-magnet which attracts the spirits. The person for whom the message was meant would know.”

“Since the voice was supposed to be from the spirit of the boy, Jimsey, the message was meant for his parents, the Thains. Did they understand?”

“Of course.”

“I don’t think they did. I think those numbers were incorporated in Thain’s message for someone else. I want you to tell me who it was.”

“I wouldn’t know. Different people attend my seances every night. Except for a few regulars I don’t know any of them.”

“Where did you get the numbers?”

“They came to me in my trance.”

“Now look.” Shayne’s voice hardened. “You didn’t say anything in what you call your ‘trance.’ Those messages were prepared beforehand on tape, and both you and I know it.”

“Well,” she took a deep drag on her cigarette, “what of it? I give them a good show. They get their money’s worth in entertainment.”

“They get more than their money’s worth. You could charge more. Why don’t you?”

“Because I’m not greedy,” she snapped.

He held her with his eyes. “I think you are-for everything.” He saw the rise and fall of her breasts beneath the silken blouse. Slowly, she moved one hand and rested it on his knee. The pressure was light, but he could feel the warmth of her tapering fingers.

For a moment Shayne wondered-would Dan Milford, or any man, resist her female appeal? Had he been too ready to believe Dan Milford’s assertion that he loved only his wife?

With a curious detachment, he saw that the roots of her hair were light and her skin too creamy for the ebony hair. Evidently Madame Swoboda had reversed the usual process and dyed her naturally blond hair, black.

Experimentally, he pulled her over, pressing a hard kiss on her lips. They pulsed. Her breathing quickened and Shayne felt her hands creep across his chest, her nails digging through his shirt.

It might have been the creak of a board in the moldering house, or because she opened her eyes to look beyond his shoulder into the opened doorway of the darkened seance room. Or perhaps it was a sixth sense of animal preservation that the redhead had acquired during a lifetime of professional sleuthing.

In a single burst of action he was out of her arms, crouched with one knee on the floor and his gun in his hand.

The two guns spoke at nearly the same instant, their combined echoes breaking flatly in the barren space.

The bullet aimed at Shayne went over his head and splintered the plastered wall. Shayne’s shot was precise. The man who had come from the dimness of the seance room heeled back as the bullet drove into his rib casing. The gun dropped from his hand, and both hands pressed hard over the spreading blood.