Dolls Are Deadly

5

“Get Bill Martin on the phone, please, angel,” Shayne said.

“The private detective?” Lucy asked incredulously. “He’s your competition.”

“I resent that. He’s a rank newcomer, just hung out his shingle. I’m not even sure he can handle a tailing job.”

Lucy riffled through the phone book indignantly. “I get the complete picture now. Two people brought you voodoo dolls today. In fact, Mr. Henlein brought you two. But you wouldn’t even give him time to tell you about them-just hustled him out to be killed. However, when a pretty woman-a wholly lovely one-comes in with only one doll, you turn over heaven and earth to protect her.” She dialed the number with unnecessary vigor and handed the receiver to Shayne.

“You’re not being logical, Lucy.”

“That wasn’t a requirement when you hired me.”

“It’s just because Henlein was murdered,” Shayne said evenly, “that I’m getting someone to keep an eye on Clarissa Milford. And I’m not turning over heaven and earth to do it. I’m merely hiring Bill Martin who, as I said, doesn’t rate very high in the profession anyway.”

He stopped and spoke into the phone. “Hello, Bill? This is Shayne. I’d like you to do a little job for me-if you have time.”

“I’ve got plenty.” Martin had a boyish voice, too placating, too enthusiastic. “That is,” he amended, “I’m pretty rushed, but I’ll do it for you, Mike. What is it?”

“Protection. Around the clock-until further notice. And you’d better carry a gun.” Shayne held out his hand for the piece of paper Lucy, the perfect secretary, had anticipated he’d want, and read into the phone an address in the remote northeast section of the city. “Better start now. She’ll be getting home soon.”

“Righto, Mike. Until further notice. Thanks, Mike.” Typical of a young comer, he mentioned Shayne’s first name too often.

The redhead hung up and reached for his hat. “Call Tim Rourke and ask him to meet me at Swoboda’s at exactly quarter to eight tonight. And, angel-” He ran a hand thoughtfully over his lean jaw-“Tim was telling me the other day about a transistor recorder, pocket size. I don’t remember the trade name, but he’ll know what you mean. It’s a new import from West Germany. Tell him to come loaded with that.”

Lucy nodded, then said, “Take me, Michael. I’ve heard so much about Madame Swoboda.”

“Sorry.” Shayne shook his head. “Two women are all I can handle tonight.”

“Two?”

“The Madame and Clarissa. But don’t look so hurt. Maybe I’ll take you next time. How do I know it’s a fit place until I look it over?”

“Don’t think I’ll buy that, Michael Shayne! After all the joints you’ve lugged me in and out of-”

“Can’t risk it any more. You’re too good a secretary.” He grinned, bent down and pressed a firm kiss on the bridge of her nose, directly between her eyes. At the door he turned. “Why don’t you take in a movie?”

“Maybe I will. And a new gentleman friend too.”

Shayne stopped at The Angus, grabbed a quick meal of rare steak and brandy, got into his car and turned toward the Miami River and Southwest Sixth Avenue.

At a little before quarter to eight, he drew up in front of a ramshackle house that had once been painted yellow. One side was propped on stilts precariously bedded in the Miami River, the roof shingles were damp and mildewed, and the stone sidewalk leading from the curb to a small railed porch was muddy and, in places, gave under his weight as he walked up to the door.

Several cars, some with out-of-state licenses, were parked in front and across the street. Among them he recognized Rourke’s beat-up coupe. Yet from outside there was little evidence that the house held visitors. Except for a dim bulb in the front hall and a diffused green glow coming from beneath one of the drawn drapes, no light showed.

Shayne paused for a moment on the small porch, his nostrils flaring, trying to place a sweet, indefinable odor. The front door was of heavy pine, with a stained glass transom through which light from a yellow bulb shone.

A small card above the bell read Walk in in letters crudely penned with black ink. Shayne turned the handle of the door and opened it. Inside, the odor was stronger.

On the right of a small entrance hall was a sliding door, tightly closed. On the other side an open arch was half-blocked by a desk behind which a middle-aged woman wearing brown, horn-rimmed glasses sat guard over a green cash box and a pad and pencil. Over the pad stood another crudely inked card, saying Messages.

“To the other world?” Shayne nodded toward the card.

“To the departed,” the woman affirmed in a voice as unctuous as an undertaker’s. “If this is your first time here I’d better tell you that we allow few questions-inside.” The faint pause before the last word and the drop in her voice gave full and relevant value to it. However, the reverence with which she pronounced the next words, “That’ll be five dollars,” took away some of the effect.

Dropping a five on the desk, the redhead walked past her into the next room. It was furnished like a doctor’s waiting room except that there were no magazines. The furniture consisted of benches on which three people might sit with only small discomfort, and straight wooden chairs. A round pine table in the center was bare except for an incense burner from which the sickening odor of sandalwood emanated. The only light came from a green-shaded lamp.

Shayne spotted Tim Rourke seated alone on a bench, bent over, his lean legs widely separated. His thin hands twirled his hat between his legs while he stared at the floor. Shayne’s eye flicked past the baggy coat pocket where the recorder might well be concealed, to Tim’s belt buckle which doubled for a crystal microphone.

On another bench Clarissa Milford sat, wedged between a man and a woman, probably her sister and brother-in-law, for the man wore a black mourning band on one sleeve. Clarissa gave him a faint nod of negation, and Shayne walked past her without speaking and sat down beside Tim Rourke.

The reporter’s emaciated face stretched into the thin smile he might give a stranger; he nodded slightly and went back to twirling his hat.

Putting a cigarette to his lips, Shayne spoke behind his hand in a barely audible voice and without looking at Tim. “You set with the pick-up?”

“Yeah.” Rourke’s lips hardly moved. “What you want taped?”

“The whole seance.”

Rourke nodded and Shayne fell silent. Where, he wondered, was Clarissa Milford’s husband? Since Dan Milford was the one who really believed in the seances, it was a little curious that tonight he should not be here. In the weighted silence, he studied Clarissa’s benchmates.

Her sister, Mabel, sat stiffly as if she were so tightly corseted that her spine was held rigid. Her shoulders were square and her wrists, where they showed below the sleeves of her black dress, were thin and bony. Her brown, straight hair was pulled back severely into a bun-not the chic bun Clarissa wore, but an old-fashioned braided twist. Had it not been for a formation of bone around the eyes and a fleeting expression at the mouth, Shayne would have found it hard to believe that the two could be sisters.

The man with the mourning band on the sleeve of his light gray suit looked shorter than Mabel. Except for the grim set of his mouth, Percy Thain would have been innocuous looking, but bereavement, rage and rebellion against the tragic death of his son were apparent in his face and in the bleak lifelessness of his eyes.

At ten minutes to eight two other couples entered-tourists, judging from their spruce vacation clothing-and, in their wake, another couple. Shayne’s knobby fingers massaged his left earlobe.

The man was the balding, angel-haloed man called Ed whom he had met on Sylvester’s boat that afternoon. His wife was about what Shayne would have expected; middle-aged and showing it, dumpy but trying to conceal it with tight corsets and high heels.

Above the white sport shirt Ed’s face loomed raw and burned. The fringe of hair was smoothed and stuck down with water, and he was chewing a thick cigar, perhaps one the Cuban had dropped on the Santa Clara as an afterthought. The belt holding his trousers circled below his pot-belly obscenely, but his suit was made of soft flannel and looked expensive.

Ed glanced casually around the dimly-lit room, doing a slight double-take when his eyes met Shayne’s. He nodded curtly and led his wife to one of the hard-backed benches.

It was hard to believe this granite-visaged man and the jovial, drunken Ed on the boat this afternoon were the same, and hard to conceive of Ed’s being interested in the occult. His wife might have forced him to come, but in spite of his wry claim this afternoon that his wife made him clean the fish he caught, he didn’t seem like a man a wife could dominate.

Three other tourists, all women, entered, gave everyone the stranger’s smile and sat down. Apparently in this society neither conversation nor introductions were in order. And curiously, though the out-of-towners were almost certainly in Miami on vacation and at Madame Swoboda’s only for amusement there was no laughing or talking. It might be the atmosphere, or the fact that they were about to explore, however shallowly, something they did not understand, which cast a pall of solemnity over them.

Another couple entered, and finally a lone woman, thin-faced and gray, clutching a large black bag. She, like the Thains and Clarissa Milford, looked like a regular. There was nothing of the vacationer about her.

At two minutes to eight the woman in the hornrimmed glasses picked up the cash box and walked down the hall. In less than a minute she was back, standing in the doorway.

“You may come in now.” Her voice was rarefied.

She stepped across the small hallway as the crowd rose, opened a pair of sliding doors and held a heavy black velvet curtain aside to allow them to file in.

Except for a pale green light emanating from a round ball, the room was dark. At the far end of a large oval table, the dim form of Madame Swoboda sat erect in an armless chair, hands flat on the table in front of her, one on either side of the green ball. The light shone up eerily into her face, emphasizing the caverns of her eyes and her high cheekbones. Her large, black-lashed eyes were open, fastened unblinkingly on a distant point ahead. She seemed already in a trance, unaware that anyone had entered.

She wore a silver shawl crossed over her bosom, which emphasized her full breasts, and a tiara-like circle on her ebony hair from which silver gossamer material fell in soft folds to her waist. Her features were regular, her skin clear and fair, her face beautiful and tantalizing. Yet underneath, despite her apparent removal from the world of reality, there was that fire Clarissa Milford had described. She was vital and earthy.

Behind her was a closed, unadorned cabinet between windows draped, like the sliding doors, from ceiling to floor in heavy black velvet. No sliver of light came through.

She remained motionless as they felt their way around the table, pulled out chairs and sat down. Shayne managed to sit beside Ed, his fishing companion of the afternoon. Mabel Thain was on the other side.

When quiet had settled, Madame Swoboda spoke, her voice weirdly monotonous in the dark: “Once more we journey… together we reach out… in unison we call…” The timbre of her voice was deep, intriguing, sexy, with only a faint, indefinable suggestion of a foreign accent.

“For those new among us… link your own thumbs. Link the little finger on each hand with that of the person beside you. The circle travels, never ending… Wait… wait… wait. The dead are inarticulate.”

There was a faint rustling as they found each other’s hands. Then a deep quiet settled in. Shayne was aware of Ed’s slightly damp fat finger on his right, and Mabel Thain’s thin, dry one on his left.

Again Madame Swoboda spoke. “For the success of our journey I repeat, three times, the Ninety-eighth Psalm: He hath done marvelous things. His right hand and His holy arms hath gotten Him the victory… He hath done marvelous things. His right hand and His holy arms hath gotten Him the victory… He hath done marvelous things. His right hand and His holy arms hath gotten Him the victory… ”

Silence crept in again, silence with a weighted, brooding quality. It might have been phony as a district attorney’s pity, except that forces reaching out from this dark room had, in some way and to some degree, been responsible for the death of one person today and were threatening at least one other.

The dim light shone up into Madame Swoboda’s still face. She had closed her eyes, the long lashes resting sootily against the white cheeks. As Shayne watched, she shivered violently once and then was quiet. The circle at the table held.

After a time she said, “I have sent your messages.”

Another silence. The room was filled with breathing. Finally, from somewhere high in the room a man’s voice sounded. It had a curiously metallic quality: “Sharon… I am here. I have your message… My marriage was a mistake. It was you I loved and wanted…”

A woman’s voice came next through the darkness, softly and incoherently, describing the Great Beyond. She addressed a man called Bill. After her, came another voice tiredly reiterating, “I am happy,” and addressing no one.

At last, a child’s thin voice sounded, first far away, then coming closer. “Mother… Daddy… At last I have gotten through to you. It is so far. For two hours and thirty-six minutes I have traveled… through the forty-eight outer worlds…”

Mabel Thain breathed, “It’s Jimsey!” and tightened her grip on Shayne’s finger.

On his right, Ed stirred restlessly, the grip of his little finger loosening, then tightening. What, Shayne wondered again, could be the attraction here for this man who seemed to be only a pleasure-bent tourist? If he had come to please his wife, or only for casual amusement, why the tension? On the other hand, what kind of mystically inclined person drank hundred-and-fifty proof rum, drooled idiotically at a girl doing a hooch dance on a Cuban boat and put a dirtied-up, souped-up engine in Sylvester’s fishing boat?

The child’s voice continued: “I am well… and happy… but when I lay dying Friday night, I spoke your name eight times…” A blue light wavered across the ceiling, then disappeared, “Mother… Daddy… Good-by.”

Madame Swoboda sighed, sat quietly for a long moment as though all strength had left her, then shivered and opened her eyes.

“That is all.” Her voice had a deep, unworldly timbre. “The spirits are tired. The seance is over.”

She rose quickly, passed through the sliding doors, walked down the hall and disappeared. The lights went on, two dim yellow bulbs in a wall fixture. Everyone blinked against the sudden light, released each other’s fingers a little sheepishly, scraped back their chairs and got to their feet. Shayne looked at Ed. His lips were moving soundlessly, his brows knit in concentration.

Ed rose finally and pushed through the low-voiced crowd to reach his wife at the other side of the table. Shayne caught Tim Rourke’s cynical eye, then moved between the stragglers to intercept Ed and his wife, who were pushing with the others to the door.

Clapping Ed on the back, the redhead said, “So we meet again. You never can tell where a tourist will turn up in this town.”

“Or a detective,” Ed retorted. Turning to his wife, he said, “Dear, this is the detective I was telling you about who was on the boat today. Mike Shayne. Mike, meet the wife.”

“It’s a pleasure, Mrs.-”

“Woodbine.” She poked Ed playfully. “Didn’t you even tell Mr. Shayne your last name?”

“We were all on a first name basis,” Shayne said. “It was only by accident that Sylvester happened to mention my name. Where are you folks staying?”

A quick glance passed between the man and woman, then Ed said openly, “Blue Grotto Hotel. Know it?”

“Very well.”

“At one of the cabanas,” Mrs. Woodbine said. “Number sixteen. Come and see us, Mr. Shayne.”

“Maybe I will. Thanks. How did you enjoy the seance?”

She shrugged matronly shoulders. “It’s something to do-I get so tired of canasta-but I don’t think I can ever drag Ed here again. He was bored stiff.”

Shayne said, “Maybe if you feed him bonito again it’ll put him in the mood.”

“Bonito?” She looked genuinely puzzled.

“I started to bring a fish home, honey,” Ed explained, “but I couldn’t face cleaning it, so I gave it away.”

She sighed in exasperation. “You fish all day and then give away what you catch! It makes more sense to play canasta.”

Ed shrugged and winked, probably thinking of the Demerara he had consumed that afternoon, then took his wife firmly by the arm and faced her toward the door, asking, a little brusquely, “What are you doing here, Mike? Casing the joint?”

“You might call it that.”

“As far as I can see, it’s harmless. I don’t go for this out-of-the-world stuff, but the Madame puts on a good show. If this is what they want, they get their money’s worth.” He propelled his wife to the door.

The desk in the arch next to the waiting room was now covered with voodoo dolls, boxes of pink, red, black and white candles, labeled Success, Love, Death and Immortality, small bottles holding Goofer Dust, amulets attached to bracelets and necklaces, and a stack of occult literature. People were crowding around the desk to buy souvenirs from the woman in the horn-rimmed glasses. The prices, Shayne noted, were not exorbitant.

At a touch on his arm, he turned.

“Mr. Shayne, someone has been following me.” Clarissa Milford stood behind him, her eyes wide and disturbed.

“I know. I hired him.”

“Then you must think I’m in danger!” she whispered.

“It’s only a precaution.” Shayne picked up one of the voodoo dolls and dropped a half dollar on the desk. Even without comparing this doll closely to the ones Henny Henlein and Clarissa Milford had gotten, he could tell they were all from the same lot.

“I’d like you to meet my sister and brother-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Thain,” Clarissa said with a complete change of voice. “This is Michael Shayne.”

Shayne nodded to Mabel, took Thain’s limp hand and looked down into brown, hostile eyes.

“The detective?” Thain turned to Clarissa. “What have you to do with him?”

“Oh, you know, Percy,” Clarissa said offhandedly. “It’s about that doll.”

“I see,” Thain said distantly. “I didn’t know you had gone to him.”

“I decided suddenly-”

“If it makes her feel better, Percy-” Mabel said placatingly.

Relations between the Thains and Clarissa seemed a trifle strained. Did Percy Thain believe Clarissa to be more involved in the hit-and-run death of his son than she admitted? And was she?

The Thains left with Clarissa, and Tim Rourke walked over. The sensation-seekers had thinned out, most of them gone. “I’m afraid we wasted our time,” Rourke said. “There’s no story here.”

Shayne ran a hand over his angular jaw. “I’m not so sure. You think it came through O.K. on your pocket recorder?”

“Such as it is, I’ve got it.”

“I’d like to run it through a little later and listen again.”

“What for?” Rourke asked sourly. “It’s gobbledegook. By the way, Sharon, the person the first message was addressed to, was that thin woman. I was sitting next to her. She shook like a leaf.”

“She must be a regular. Otherwise the tape couldn’t have been prepared.”

“It was about the only message that made sense.”

“Maybe,” the redhead said slowly, “the others made sense to someone.”

“What do you mean? All that gabble about the forty-eight outer worlds couldn’t make sense to anyone except another ectoplasm. Maybe you don’t get around in occult circles, Mike. It’s old hat. This kind of thing’s done every day. If it were a con game-But I don’t see any racket angle. The Madame puts on a good show and folks get their money’s worth.”

It was the same thing Ed Woodbine had emphasized, and precisely what Shayne himself was thinking. “They got more than their money’s worth. That’s what bothers me. At five dollars a performance and fifty cents a doll, she’s damn near losing money.”

Rourke scratched his head. “You think it’s set up as a front for something? Could be. But I don’t see what.”

“I don’t either. But I’ve had two frightened clients today with dolls that came from here, and one was murdered this afternoon.”

“You talking about Henny Henlein? You’ve been holding out on me, Mike.”

“I’ll give it to you as soon as it can be printed.”

Rourke looked at Shayne through narrowed eyes. “Are the dolls the only thing that’s worrying you?”

“No. There was a man here I’m curious about. I met him this afternoon on Sylvester’s boat. He’s a vacationist-but not the type I’d figure to shoot a tropical evening at Madame Swoboda’s.”

“Hell. Mike, I think you’re straining. People do things when they get to Miami they’d never think of doing anywhere else. Maybe the sun gets them. Or maybe they just get tired of fishing and an ectoplasmic evening seems like a good change. Or maybe they get tired of communing with their wives and decide to give the spirits a whirl.”

“I’d rather whirl a real body-even if it was my wife.”

“So would I,” Rourke said, “Especially if it was your wife.”

Shayne grinned. “Speaking of that, I think I’ll go and find out what Swoboda’s like without her astral body.”

“I’ll run along then. Want me to burn a pink Success candle for you?”

“I’m sure it’s not necessary,” Shayne said.