Murder and the Wanton Bride

16

Even though he was driving a rented car which Shayne trusted they didn’t know about yet, he realized he couldn’t afford to hang around Miami Beach very long if he expected to stay out of jail and wind up the case. But he did have one more stop to make on this side of Biscayne Bay, and the faster he wound up his business here, the better off he’d be.

Accordingly, he drove sedately away from the Park Plaza, made two turns in as many blocks and pulled into the curb less than half a block from the Chez Dumont restaurant.

He got out and walked to the marquee where he turned in, finding the small foyer empty of waiting diners at this late hour of the evening. The dining room beyond the foyer was only half-occupied, and there was no velvet rope guarding the entrance. But the maitre d’ was there, and he smiled welcomingly at the tall redhead and inquired suavely, “One... for dinner?”

Michael Shayne shook his head and said, “I’m after some information.” He opened his right hand to show the maitre d’ a folded ten-spot. “About a customer of yours who got himself killed last night after dining here.”

“A customer of ours, M’sieu?” The head-waiter’s expression indicated horrified disbelief. It implied that the exclusive clientéle of the Chez Dumont simply were not the type to get themselves mixed up with anything as sordid as that. Yet his fingers closed over the ten-dollar bill and it disappeared as if by magic.

“A man named Carson,” said Shayne. “It happened right down the street about eleven o’clock last night as he was leaving here. You must have read about it in the papers.”

“That one?” The maitre d’ spread out his hands. “No name was given for the body, nor was it said he had dined here.”

“He’s been identified as Walter Carson,” Shayne told him. “From out-of-town. He had a nine o’clock reservation last night. I want to know whether he ate alone, whether anyone spoke to him while he was at dinner, whether he made any telephone calls from here during that time.”

“Mr. Carson? But yes.” The maitre d’ turned from Shayne to a small stand on his left and thumbed back through a list of reservations for the previous night. “From Denham, no? The dinner reservation was requested by mail in advance. For nine o’clock. Table number thirty-eight. You wish to consult the waiter who served him?”

Shayne said, “Please.”

He stepped back into the foyer and lit a cigarette and waited a few minutes until the maitre d’ reappeared with a placid-faced, middle-aged man who walked as though his feet hurt him.

Yes, he remembered the customer at table thirty-eight who had sat alone for almost two hours and left a tip amounting to exactly fifteen percent of the dinner check. No, he hadn’t recognized him from the picture of the corpse in the morning paper, although he now readily agreed it might well have been the lone customer who had ordered one dry martini and insisted on telling a stale joke about the mixing of martinis, had gone on to sweetbreads à la financière and crêpes suzette, and had lingered at the table overlong for the amount of the tip he had finally left for the waiter.

No, he had seen no one approach the customer at number thirty-eight during dinner or speak to him, and he was not aware of any telephone calls being made or received during the two hours Mr. Carson had been at his table. Of course, he could not state with certainty that the diner had not left his table to make a phone call during that time. Mr. Shayne would have to understand that Chez Dumont was understaffed and the waiters were overworked and had to take care of many customers during a two-hour period.

Shayne did gravely accept that fact, and because he suspected that none of his original ten dollars would find its way from the maitre d’ to the waiter, he transferred another five from his wallet to the not-reluctant hand in front of him, and hurried from the restaurant not more than ten minutes after he had entered it.

He reached his rented car without incident, pulled away toward the County Causeway, taking care to avoid a route that would take him past the Park Plaza Apartments.

Once across the Bay without being stopped, Shayne sighed with relief and drove south on the Boulevard to Third Street, where he turned right for a block and a half.

He parked in front of an inconspicuous bar on the right-hand side of the street, and went in.

It was dimly lighted and tobacco smoke hung heavy in the long narrow room, and there were three men on stools at the far end of the bar clutching shot-glasses of whiskey in front of them. All three were young and sharply-dressed, with deceptively placid faces which turned to survey Shayne when he entered as though all three were activated by some sort of remote control.

There were half a dozen tables in the rear beyond the bar, and one of them was occupied by five men playing cards. They all wore hats pushed back from their foreheads, and none of them looked at Shayne or spoke in a voice loud enough to be heard as they dealt cards around the table and picked up their hands to study them.

The bartender had a thin face and not much chin, and a yellow, jaundiced complexion. He was hunched on a stool behind the bar, and he got down slowly as the detective stopped at the front of the bar, made a vague swipe at the mahogany in front of the redhead with a dirty bar-rag and husked, “What’ll it be, Mister?”

Shayne rested both forearms on the bar and said, “Cognac. With ice water for a chaser.” He looked at the array of bottles behind the bartender and added, “That Hennessy will be fine.”

He waited until a shot-glass was filled in front of him, and a glass with one cube of ice and filled with water stood beside it. Then he said, “Where’s Joe tonight?”

“I dunno. You a friend of his?” The bartender picked a toothpick off the bar and chewed on it ruminatively.

“I’m Mike Shayne.” The redhead lifted the shot-glass and drank half its contents, took a sip of ice water. “Tell Joe I was in. Tell him I left a message for Whitey Buford.”

The bartender had stiffened when Shayne mentioned his own name. Now he licked his lips and darted a quick glance down the bar toward the trio of young punks who were watching and listening. He said, “I dunno if I can reach Joe.”

Shayne said, “You’d better. And fast.” He glanced at his watch. “Tell him this. There’ll be a message waiting for Whitey Buford from Belle Carson at Conway’s Grill in exactly half an hour. Eleven-twenty. Tell Joe Mike Shayne said so. And tell Joe that if Whitey isn’t there to pick it up at exactly eleven-twenty, I’ll be in to have a talk with Joe tomorrow.”

He tossed off the rest of his drink, turned and walked out of the bar without paying for it. The bartender did not protest.

Shayne turned north at the next corner and drove a dozen or more blocks before he turned right again. He was in one of the older residential sections of Miami, where the houses were more than a quarter century old, well-spaced with wide lawns and the size that houses used to be built before inflation had its way.

Mostly, now, these two and three-story structures that had been an aid to gracious living in the early part of the century had been cut up into efficiency apartments or turned into rooming houses, but here and there among them a mansion had survived as an entity, and it was in front of one of these that Shayne drew up next.

There was a long concrete walk back between double rows of carefully trimmed hibiscus bushes, steps leading up to a white-pillared front porch and double doors with a nightlight burning above them.

Shayne pressed the button and waited a long time before the door opened and a man peered out wearing a black velvet smoking jacket, well-pressed slacks and leather slippers. He had square-cut, craggy features and leonine gray hair, and twinkling blue eyes which surveyed his late visitor with a look of amused condescension.

He gestured with a curved meerschaum pipe and drawled, “Michael Shayne, by all that’s holy. The dean of private eyes. Come in, Mr. Shayne.”

“Said the spider to the fly.” Shayne’s voice was hard and his gray eyes were bleak as he stepped into a wide hallway leading back the length of the house and a full two stories high. “This is business, Melrose. Not a social call, I warn you.”

“Since you weren’t invited to my house socially, Mr. Shayne, you don’t surprise me at all.” His host’s voice was deep and pleasant. He closed the front door behind Shayne and motioned toward fringed portiéres on the right. “However, I trust you will join me in a nightcap in my study.”

Shayne preceded him into the large square room. A fire of driftwood was crackling in a fireplace flanked by bookcases containing massive legal volumes, and there was a wide, bare desk at the right with a swivel chair behind it. There were also comfortable, leather-upholstered chairs on each side of the fireplace, and on the left was a well-stocked bar complete with its own ice-maker and gleaming glasses of crystal.

“I was just indulging in a nightcap, Shayne,” said Melrose’s voice behind him. “I hope you’ll join me. There’s some rather fine brandy here.” He circled behind Shayne to the bar, produced a dusty bottle that had been distilled in Napoleon’s time. “Straight, isn’t it? With ice water on the side? And no fancy snifter to get in the way of real drinking pleasure?”

Shayne stood in the middle of the floor and said, “Hold it, Melrose. I’m particular whom I drink with.”

Morton Melrose paused with an old-fashioned glass in his left hand and the bottle of ancient brandy poised in his right. He lifted iron-gray eyebrows and said softly, “So, Mr. Shayne?”

“So,” said Shayne harshly. “I’m just a messenger boy tonight, Melrose. Don’t pour that drink while you’re under illusions.”

“I seldom am,” said Attorney Melrose complacently. “Under illusions, I mean.” He tilted the bottle and let amber liquid flow into the glass. “You have a message for me?”

“For a man named Whitey Buford,” said Shayne. He extended his left hand to accept the glass, lifted it to pleasurably sniff the bouquet arising from the aged brandy.

Melrose said, “I don’t believe I know the gentleman.” He moved from behind the bar to the fireplace and one of the comfortable chairs there with a highball glass and an ashtray beside it.

Shayne said, “Perhaps not. On the other hand, I suggest there’s a possibility you may be able to contact him. After all,” he went on smoothly, “Buford is an escaped con suspected of having fifty thousand bucks stashed away in Miami. Who other than Morton Melrose is likely to have a pipeline to him?”

“Who, indeed?” agreed Melrose, his blue eyes glinting with an emotion that might have been anger or might have been amusement.

Shayne said harshly: “There’ll be a message waiting for Whitey Buford from Belle Carson at Conway’s Grill in exactly...” He glanced at his watch, “... eighteen minutes from now. Eleven-twenty. That’s all.” He lifted his glass and said, “Here’s how.”

Melrose lifted his own glass and sipped from it as Shayne downed the cognac. He said softly, “If you care to elucidate...?”

Shayne said, “I don’t.” He set the empty glass down on Melrose’s desk, turned and walked out of the study.

The attorney did not move from the fireplace to accompany him. Shayne let himself out into the cool of the night, went down the walk briskly to his car and drove away.

He turned south again and crossed Flagler Street, turned right on the north bank of the Miami River and drove westward for more than a dozen blocks into a cluttered section of riverfront docks and boathouses. He stopped in front of a rickety three-story frame structure on a corner that backed up to the river with second and third-floor balconies overlooking the sluggish stream with a wooden dock at the rear and small boats moored to it.

Light showed from about half of the double row of upper windows in front, and there was a bar-room and grill on the ground-floor at the left of the entrance. A jukebox was playing loudly in the bar-room, and Shayne could see the bar was crowded as he hesitated just inside the front door for a moment. On his right was a closed door marked PRIVATE.

It opened soundlessly as he stood there and a fat woman looked out at him. She was middle-aged and her hair was dyed raven black, with straight bangs across the forehead of her moonlike face. She wore a sequined black dress that was belted in the middle as tightly as her barrel-like torso would allow, and she poised daintily on preposterously tiny feet encased in black velvet slippers with rhinestone buckles. There was a prominent dimple in each bulging cheek and in the center of her chin as she smiled coquettishly and exclaimed, “Shamus Shayne his own-self! It’s been a long time since you came visiting to see Sadie.” She stood aside and motioned him into the room with a bare arm the thickness of Shayne’s calf. Her eyes were steely-blue and didn’t reflect the smile on her face.

Shayne stepped past her into a small, unpleasantly hot room, cluttered with Victorian furniture and knick-knack shelves. A round, marble-topped table in the center of the room held a whiskey bottle and two glasses. Two straight-backed horsehair chairs were drawn up at opposite sides of the table and one of them was occupied by a small, thin-faced Mulatto who regarded Shayne with unblinking dislike through beady black eyes.

Fat Sadie closed the door firmly behind Shayne and waddled to the other chair where she sat down. She said, “Pull up a chair, Redhead, and you can drink out of the bottle.”

Shayne shook his head and said, “I’ll take a rain-check, Fat Sadie. If you’ve got a guy named Whitey Buford stashed away upstairs, better get rid of him. He’s dynamite.”

“Now you know Sadie’d never rent a room to anybody that Mike Shayne says is dynamite. Would I, Quirk?” She appealed coyly to the Mulatto across from her.

He licked his tongue out to move the tip of it carefully between dry lips. His beady eyes were fixed on the detective’s face with the reptilian animosity of a Gila Monster. He settled back slightly in his chair and slid a coffee-colored hand into the right-hand pocket of his sharply-creased slacks. He asked in a silky voice, “You want I should cut him for you, Fat Sadie?”

“You sit where you are, Quirk. Shamus Shayne and I are old buddies. He knows I run a nice quiet place here.”

Shayne said flatly, “I know that any punk on the lam heads for Fat Sadie’s when he’s close to Miami and looking for a cheap hideout. I’m telling you to pass the word around.” He looked at his watch. “Whitey Buford has got just twelve minutes to get to Conway’s Grill and pick up a message from Belle Carson. If he isn’t there at eleven-twenty, there’s going to be hell to pay in Miami.”

Fat Sadie said petulantly, “But suppose I don’t know Whitey Buford... and I don’t. You can’t blame me...”

Shayne said, “It’ll be your tough luck if he isn’t there to pick up the message at eleven-twenty.” He started to turn away from the table, but the coffee-colored man opposite Sadie came to his feet and moved toward him, saying pleasantly, “I just know I got to cut him up some, Fat Sadie.” His hand came out of his pocket and there was a clicking sound and the light from an overhead chandelier glinted on six inches of steel.

Sadie frowned and the dimples disappeared in her cheeks. She said sternly, “Now I told you. Quirk...”

But his breath came in sibilantly and he moved with cat-like swiftness to get between Shayne and the door.

The redhead stood flat-footed, not looking at him or the knife in his hand, but telling Sadie, “If you can’t handle him I’ll have to do it for you?”

“You an’ who else, Mister Redhead?” hissed the Mulatto, crouching and bending forward while the glittering blade moved in an intricate pattern in front of him.

Still without looking in his direction, leaning forward at the waist to stare down into Sadie’s eyes, Shayne threw his body sideways and slanting downward beneath the dancing blade. His shoulder struck the Mulatto’s knees and they went to the floor together with both his hands gripping the wrist and elbow of the arm that held the knife, and twisting hard.

There was a sharp snapping sound and a shriek of pain and the knife clattered to the floor and Shayne swung to his feet leaving the Mulatto cringing on the floor with a broken forearm.

He told Fat Sadie coldly, “It’s only ten minutes now. Conway’s Grill. A message from Belle Carson.”

He stepped contemptuously over the writhing body on the floor, opened the door and went out into the hall and then out into the Miami night.