Murder and the Wanton Bride

3

“Now wait a moment, Shayne. Take your time and think about this carefully. I wouldn’t want you to get out on a limb on a thing like this.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t, Petey.”

“I mean it, Shayne. I’m giving you every chance to come clean.”

“To come clean on what?”

“On this man’s identity. I warn you that you’ll be obstructing justice if you withhold any information.”

Shayne shrugged his wide shoulders. “I never saw him before. It’s that simple.”

Peter Painter straightened his slight body stiffly and appeared to strut standing still. “Will you take your oath that you have never seen this man before?”

Shayne said, “If I were under oath, which I’m not, I would answer the question like this: To my knowledge, and so far as memory serves me, I do not recall having seen him before.”

“That’s equivocating, Shayne.”

The big redhead shrugged impassively. “Have it your own way.”

“You’re not prepared to swear you’ve never seen him before?”

“Are you?” Shayne shot at him.

“Am I what?”

“Prepared to swear you never saw him before?”

“I’m asking the questions, Shayne.”

“And I’m answering.”

“Not responsibly, you’re not.”

Shayne’s gray eyes glinted with anger. He compressed his lips and reached slowly for a cigarette, looking away from Painter and up at the night sky with an audible sigh.

Peter Painter’s body quivered with anger and his voice figuratively stamped its foot as he snapped:

“Well, answer me.”

“Answer what?”

“My question.”

“I didn’t hear any question,” said Shayne patiently.

“I asked if you are willing to swear you never saw this man before?”

“Hell no,” exploded Shayne. “Maybe I passed him on the street this evening. Maybe I saw him at Hialeah ten years ago. How in hell do I know? Just how goddamned silly can you get standing out on a street corner at midnight?”

There was an almost inaudible snicker from the men surrounding them, and Painter turned to glare around at them before thumbnailing his mustache again and turning back to say:

“Let’s try it this way. Even though you can’t recollect seeing him before... who is he?”

Shayne said flatly, “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know who he is?” There was a faint smirk in Painter’s voice.

“I don’t?”

“You haven’t the faintest idea of his identity... can’t even hazard a guess?” The smirk was more pronounced.

“I can’t even hazard a guess.”

“Then how do you explain this, Shayne? How do you explain the fact that we found this newspaper clipping folded up in the dead man’s inner coat pocket?” Painter dramatically produced a clipping from his pocket and thrust it forward under Shayne’s eyes.

The private detective took it and glanced at the heading:

He recognized it instantly. It had appeared in the Tribune some three months previously and was an inaccurately garbled account of one of his cases, written by a Tribune reporter whom Shayne had never met and verging perilously close to libel in its implication that Shayne’s gun was for hire to anyone with the price and for any killing that could be covered with even the faint cloak of legality.

He handed it back to Painter disgustedly. “I can’t help it if he’s one of my fans.”

“But how do you explain him having it carefully folded in his pocket tonight when he was murdered?”

Shayne said, “You’d better ask him.”

“You’re equivocating again.”

Shayne smothered an obvious reply and stolidly folded his arms, puffing on his cigarette and screwing up his eyes as smoke trailed upward past them.

“Well, aren’t you?” demanded Painter after a moment.

Shayne said, “No,” and let it go at that.

“I’ll give you one more chance to come clean, Shayne.” Painter took a small sheet of paper from a memo pad from his pocket and showed the redhead the penciled notation on it. Shayne looked down impassively in the bright light and read the words aloud:

“Michael Shayne. Bank of Bay Biscayne Bldg. 9:00 A.M. sharp. Jan. 8.”

He started to comment that the adddress was wrong, to remind Painter that his office was in the Biscayne Building in Miami instead of the Bank of Bay Biscayne Building, but he held his tongue when he recalled that was one of the many errors in the Tribune story that Painter had just exhibited. He shrugged and kept his arms folded and said, “So what?”

“This was folded inside the clipping in his pocket. Positive evidence that he had a definite appointment with you at your office tomorrow morning at nine o’clock. Perhaps you haven’t seen him before. Perhaps you are telling the truth about that.” Painter’s tone indicated that he felt this was a remote possibility but was determined to be fair.

“Just give me his name, Shayne. That’s all. His name and what the appointment was about.”

Shayne said, “There wasn’t any nine o’clock appointment. Not to my knowledge.”

“Perhaps your secretary made it for you.”

“Not Lucy Hamilton.” Shayne shook his head decidedly. “Not for nine o’clock in the morning. She knows damn well I never reach the office until nine-thirty or ten.”

“But if it were an emergency? If he couldn’t come any other time? Mightn’t she do it then?”

“She might. But she would certainly warn me beforehand so I’d be there to keep it. And she didn’t.”

“Perhaps it slipped her mind.”

Shayne shook his head obstinately. “Things like that don’t slip Lucy’s mind. We had dinner together tonight and I remember mentioning to her that I might not be in until noon tomorrow. That certainly would have reminded her.”

A sharply indrawn breath hissed through Peter Painter’s set teeth. “You don’t mind if I call her tonight to check the truth of your statement?”

Shayne unfolded his arms and both of his fists doubled up at his sides. His seething anger broke into the rumble of his voice as he told Painter: “I don’t mind you phoning Lucy any time, but I do goddamned well mind you standing here and calling me a liar.”

Painter took an involuntary step backward, glancing sideward for reassurance from the half dozen of his own men surrounding him.

“I warn you that you’re obstructing justice, Shayne. Identification of this corpse is of paramount importance. If I find out later that you’re holding out information for some devious purpose of your own I swear I’ll have your license.”

Shayne looked down at him contemptuously and didn’t reply.

“For the record, Shayne. What are you working on now?”

Making a visible effort to control his anger, Shayne said: “It’s none of your damned business, and you know it, but for the record... I’m not working on anything right now.”

“I want the name of every client who might have some bearing on this murder.”

Shayne said, “My clients don’t go around committing murders. But I’ll ask around tomorrow and if any of them did the job I’ll be happy to tell you about it. And if I turn up anything else that might help, I’ll let you have that. In the meantime, I’m going home.”

He turned away, but Peter Painter moved swiftly to get in front of him.

“Not so fast, Shayne. I don’t want you coming around tomorrow trying to cover up by saying you’ve just thought of something. You’re not going to get by with that. Give me all the information you’ve got tonight. Right now. You know how important an identification is in a case like this. Don’t think you can hold out and then make a grandstand play later on by solving the case with private information that you’ve had all along. You’ve, by God, pulled that stunt in the past, and don’t think I don’t know it.” The voice of the slender chief of detectives was reedy and shaking with wrath.

“You claim you don’t know anything about this man, so don’t try to horn in later. I won’t stand for it. Get back to your side of Biscayne Bay and stay there.”

Shayne’s fists were bunched by his sides again, but he looked down at the enraged little man and said pensively, “It was your idea for me to come over. God knows I don’t like the stink of your inefficiency in my nostrils.” He turned away, growling, “Where’s Matson?”

“Stay right here, Matson,” ordered Painter sharply. “I have other things for my men to do besides chauffering you around, Shayne. Try walking... or spend some of your money for a cab.”

Shayne stopped with his back to Painter and to the other Beach cops. He stood for a moment with his back to them, big shoulders hunched forward a trifle, legs widespread and planted firmly as though they refused to carry him forward in response to Painter’s suggestion.

Then he moved away from the spotlights without looking back, walked stolidly down the street in search of a cruising taxi to take him back across the Causeway to Miami.