Murder in Haste

Chapter Eleven

No one had to identify this man for Shayne. The redhead knew it had to be Fred Milburn. He died on the oily floor before the prison doctor could reach him. He was a small, nondescript-appearing man, with a slight build, a thin face and what in life had probably been an unassuming manner. No doubt his manner changed when he had a gun in his hand.

One of the guards pulled a master switch cutting off the power to the machines. Another ordered the men to come to attention beside their benches. They stood up, one by one, without hurrying. They didn’t look at the guards or the dead man, and in fact didn’t appear to be looking at anything at all. Shayne recognized one or two, but they had pulled back behind an invisible curtain.

A bell clanged, and the prisoners turned at another command and walked off in single file. The warden frowned when he noticed Shayne.

“Goddammit, did I give you permission to come in here? This is great, just great. Nobody pays any attention to what I say in this place.”

The redhead stared down at Milburn, his eyes hooded. After a second he met the warden’s look.

“Fine. I’ve got other things to do.”

He started to turn, but the warden made a quick movement. “Oh, no, you don’t. You barged in here and asked to see one of my people, and before the message could get to him, he was stabbed. Now you think you can walk out without answering any questions? And tell your friends on the newspapers what happened? No, sir. It won’t be as easy to get out as it was to get in.”

Shayne exchanged a look with Lieutenant Wing.

Wing said, “I’m out of my jurisdiction, Mike. Somebody else is going to be asking the questions.”

“And you’re going to be answering them, too,” the warden told Shayne. “Believe me! This is no goddam joke.” He took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. “Well, let’s break the news to the sheriff.”

The dead man was left lying where he was until the sheriff arrived with two carloads of helpers. Shayne was taken back to the waiting room outside the warden’s office. There he finished his pack of cigarettes, listened to the clacking of the secretary’s typewriter, and went back patiently over everything he had been told by Norma Harris and Rose Heminway. The lines on his face were deeply etched.

The sheriff was a pleasant fat man named Woodrow Wilson Smith, with a politician’s smile which he showed Shayne briefly as he came into the waiting room with the warden and a small crowd of assistants.

“Might as well come in, Mike,” he said. “We’re going to be using the warden’s office. I know you don’t want to hang around any longer than you have to.”

He waved Shayne to the chair he had occupied earlier. He himself took the warden’s chair, and one of the young men with him opened a notebook. The sheriff gave the redhead another friendly smile, apparently not seeing a man but a potential vote.

“I won’t start firing questions at you, Mike,” he said. “You and I have always got along fine, and I hope we can keep it that way. Why don’t you just tell me in your own words how you happened to want to talk to this fellow Milburn, and then we’ll take it from there.”

Shayne went over what was now familiar ground, and the young man wrote it down in shorthand. At the end, the sheriff rewarded him with a smile that was even more brilliant than the one he normally wore.

“I like the way you organize things, Mike,” he said. I wish more people had that gift. A few small points. When Chief Painter was here last week, if Milburn admitted that he and Sam Harris were mixed up in shenanigans up in Alabama the night of the big bank job, well, that’s a terrific piece of news, front-page stuff. Painter’s no recluse, as far as publicity’s concerned. Why didn’t he spring it right away?”

Shayne spread his hands. “I gave up trying to follow Petey’s reasoning about ten minutes after I met him.”

“You don’t think there’s a chance he found out something different? Milburn and Harris were friends. Maybe they were working together on the big one. I always did think it was screwy, one man handling something that size. And then the dough.” His smile disappeared and he leaned forward. “Mrs. Sam Harris found Milburn for you. I don’t like to cast reflections on any lady, but it seems to me she might be thinking more about what happened to that good bread than about what’s going to happen to her husband. So this occurred to me when you were talking, Mike. Maybe she wanted you to lean on Milburn a little, so he’d cut her a slice?”

“There’s nothing to that, Woody,” Shayne said, without showing the irritation he felt. “I wouldn’t be seeing Milburn alone. Joe Wing was going to be with me.”

He was silent while Sheriff Smith studied him, working his lips in and out. The sheriff said, “Now don’t take offense at this, Mike, because as far as I know now we’re all working the same side of the street. But Joe Wing and myself, we’ve been talking this over, and I think we’re in agreement. We think you’re telling the truth as far as you go. But we both have a sneaking suspicion that you don’t go quite far enough.”

Shayne looked around at the Beach lieutenant, who said, “A couple of things don’t add up, Mike.”

The sheriff went on, “The warden here makes a suggestion that’s a little emotional, but it does express one point of view. He thinks we ought to put you in the hole on bread and water and see if we can brainwash you. He doesn’t mean that literally, but I’m vetoing the whole approach. I wouldn’t say that brainwashing Mike Shayne would be one of the easiest jobs in the world. You’re going your own way, regardless, and let’s hope it turns out all right in the end. But I want to say a couple of things.”

“Only a couple, Sheriff?” Shayne said, his eyes narrowing.

“Only a couple, and I think Joe will go along with both of them.” He touched his index finger. “The dough. A recovery fee from the insurance company is legitimate loot, and if regular police officers like us aren’t allowed to collect, that’s our hard luck. But don’t try to hold onto more than the legitimate fee, Mike, or we’ll make some real trouble for you. Point two is Painter.

“You’ve got a grievance there, and I’m not the one to say that it’s not justified. When it was just between the two of you, the rest of us could sit back and enjoy it. But this thing makes a difference. A guy has been killed. If he was actually dumb enough to go robbing with Sam Harris he was due to spend the rest of his natural life in the can. But he was a human being just the same, and somebody murdered him.”

“I appreciate that,” Shayne said crisply. “What were you going to say about Painter?”

“Just don’t let your feelings lead you astray. That’s all. You can go now if you want to. We’re going to check back to the Sam Harris defense and get the details on those Alabama stickups. And we’re going to be working on the stabbing. We’ll take these guys one at a time and hammer them. Between you and me I doubt if we get anything, but we’ve got to try it. That’s what we’ll be doing.” He looked at Shayne sleepily. “What will you be doing, Mike?”

Shayne smiled. “I’ll be making some phone calls.”

“That’s logical. Who are you going to be making these phone calls to?”

“My client, for one. After that I’m not sure. But I’ll check in with you or Wing if I find anything.”

The sheriff started to speak, but he made a disgusted gesture and sat back. “You’d better go now, Mike, before I’m tempted to go back to the warden’s suggestion. Check in promptly. There’s going to be some strong heat on this, and we don’t want to learn about something when we see it in the papers.”

“You’ll be the first to know,” Shayne said, standing up. He asked Wing, “Where are you going to be, Joe?”

“Out here, for the time being. I’ll leave word where I go. And I want to second what Woody just said. If Milburn passed any information along to Painter, and it looks as though he did, that makes Painter just as hot. We don’t want to find him with a knife in him.”

“Let’s look on the bright side,” Shayne said. “Maybe they’ll use a gun.”

“Now Mike,” Wing said uneasily.

Shayne’s grin disappeared as he went out through the waiting room. Outside, he stopped on the front steps of the forbidding building, his eyes cold and deadly. This made twice. His unknown adversary had failed with Rose Heminway and succeeded with Milburn. Shayne promised himself that there wouldn’t be a third time.

He drove carefully, making sure that nobody assigned to him by Sheriff Smith was on his tail. Coming into downtown Miami, he found a parking place, ate a hasty sandwich at a drugstore, bought cigarettes, changed a dollar into dimes and shut himself up in an outdoor phone booth. He tried Rose Heminway’s number first. There was no answer. He dialed the other number she had given him — the nursing home. He asked if Mrs. Heminway was there visiting her father.

“I think I saw her come in, sir,” a pleasant voice told him. “I’ll ring the floor nurse.”

He repeated his question to another voice — less pleasant, as nurse’s voices are likely to be — and a moment later Rose was on the line.

“Mike! I didn’t want to leave the house before you called, but Father gets nervous if I’m not on time.”

“How is he?”

“Just the same. But one of these days I know he’s going to say hello when I walk in. He keeps trying.”

“Is there a place there where we can talk?” Shayne said. “I want to go over a few things.”

“I’m sure we can find a place, Mike. If there’s anybody in the waiting room we can go outside.”

Shayne told her to expect him in half an hour. He spilled a handful of dimes on the shelf, opened a little black book and began to dial. The day bartender of a Miami Beach bar answered. Shayne gave his name and asked several questions. He hung up and tried another number. In the next ten minutes, he used up his dimes and went back into the drugstore to change another dollar.

In Shayne’s early years as a detective, when he could work on several cases at once, getting up early, driving hard all day, never going to bed till the bars were closed, he had picked up a wide acquaintance in that twilight world where people live by their brains and their connections, working desperately hard at not working in the ordinary daytime sense. Gamblers, promoters, finders, ten-percenters, they looked on a nine-to-five job with as much distaste as a stretch in jail. The two things they had in common was that they needed money and they kept up with the news that doesn’t get in the newspapers. They spent most of their waking hours in public places, their ears open.

Many were still friends of Shayne, though he no longer saw much of them since he started spending evenings with Lucy Hamilton, and many owed him small favors. He had no power or control over them, as cops usually have over their stool pigeons, and there were only two reasons why they gave him information — they liked him, and if it was useful to him he paid well for it.

His fifteenth or sixteenth call was to a man named Kinky Kincaid, a stag-party talent agent. The ringing of the phone interrupted Kinky’s afternoon nap in a three-dollar-a-day hotel. He had trouble understanding who was on the line.

“Spain?” he said blurrily. “Shayne. Mike, how are you, boy? If this is a business call, I hope I can help you because I’d like to get my wrist-watch out of hock. What time is it, anyway?”

Shayne told him. He said more alertly, “You want to know about Painter?”

“Damn right,” Shayne said, surprised. “Do you have anything?”

“I’m so broke these days I can’t even buy my own paper, but I read about it over somebody’s shoulder and I said to myself, ‘Uh-oh.’”

“Why did you say that, Kinky?” Shayne said patiently.

“Wait till I get a cigarette. I’m hung-over from here all the way to Key West. Where are you, Mike? Maybe you could give me a piggy-back ride to the neighborhood saloon and buy me some medicine.”

“Sorry, Kinky. I’ve got a date at the other end of town. I have to do this by phone. Get your cigarette.”

A moment later Kincaid’s voice continued, “That’s better. It’s still not good. You’re really interested in what happened to the bum? I didn’t think you cared.”

“I’m on a case,” Shayne said briefly. “It seems they’re connected.”

“He never gave me no personal trouble, but when a cop gets in a jam it gives me a warm feeling inside, like I just had my first shot of the day, you know how it is, Mike?”

“I know just exactly how it is. Where is he, Kinky?”

“Did I say I know where he is? I’m not that kind of source, Mike, and you know it better than I do. I give you these little items, and you put them together with the other little items you get from other people, and you end up with a big fee and your name in the papers, and more power to you. Only this time maybe my item’s not so little. I was debating about taking it to the cops, and then I thought what did they ever do for me?”

“Kinky,” Shayne said. “Just give me the news.”

“Okay, sure. I was on the Beach last night. I don’t know when, in the neighborhood of nine but I can’t be sure because I had to raise some quick dough and I’m without a timepiece at the moment. I was trying to promote a party later on in the week with some Midwest guys I happen to know. And here’s where the thing comes in. I know these guys, whenever they’re in town they look me up, and it seems funny they didn’t get in touch with me before. Too busy, maybe? They’re at the St. A. this time, and I see them in the lobby.”

“The St. Albans?” Shayne said quickly.

“Nothing but the best. Big Jack Klipstone and Mac something, I don’t know his last name, and they’re with two others. But they’ve got no time for their old contact Kincaid. Strictly. Every other time they’ve been in town, they always had plenty of time for me and the broads. They tell me ‘Later, later,’ and they walk past like big business men on the way to a board meeting.”

“Yeah?” Shayne said when he paused.

“Just taking a drag. What would you do in my shoes, Mike? I always like to know about these things because you never know when they might come in handy. I fake a quarterback sneak for the elevators, but I drift out the side door instead and I get around front in a hurry. I see my party of four get in a new Drive-Urself Chevy and head north. I get in my own Chevy, twelve years old, and I head north. After a while they park out in motel country. I park. And I’m very, very careful, Mike, I don’t have to tell you, because these guys I don’t want to know I’m up to any monkey business. The minutes go slow because I’m so nervous. My stomach starts to ache.

“I’m beginning to think this wasn’t a hell of a good idea and I ought to stick to my own racket when one of those big police department Caddies comes up Collins like a bat out of hell, the siren on full blast, nearly busted my ear drums. When I say it was going fast, Mike, I mean fast. I didn’t get much of a look at who was driving. He didn’t have no hat on, and he was kind of low in the seat, but it wouldn’t surprise me one damn bit if it was your friend and mine, Peter Painter.”

Shayne absently put a cigarette in his mouth. “What about the Chevy?”

“They took off after him, Mike, the four of them. They were running some chances, too, getting off from a standing start that way. They really goosed that buggy. They were over the double line half the time, and where they went from there I don’t know. This was too rich for my blood. My Chevy was outclassed, even if I wanted to get into competition, which I didn’t. So I came home. Is this worth anything?”

“Seventy-five bucks,” Shayne said promptly.

“Hey!” Kincaid said. “Where are you, Mike? I’ll come over on my hands and knees and pick it up in my teeth.”

“Stay where you are, I’ll send it over. That name was Jack Klipsjone? And Mac something? What are they doing at the St. Albans? Are they delegates to the Truckers convention?”

“Not exactly delegates, Mike. They’re part of Harry Plato’s circus.”

“Are you sure of that, Kinky?” Shayne said sharply. “They work directly for Plato?”

“You won’t quote me, I hope, I hope,” Kincaid said, suddenly cautious. “The other two I never saw before, but the word is that there’s a lot of beef in town because there’s some kind of hassle in the union, and that’s what they looked like. Hard boys.”

“You said from the Midwest. Where in the Midwest?”

“St. Louis, maybe? I never ask that type too many questions because they might think I’m trying to get personal.”

“This helps, Kinky. I’ve got a few questions about something else, and maybe you can pick up some more change. Put your mind back to the big bank job three years ago, the one they’re executing Sam Harris for. I wish I knew what happened to the take. That was a big score, according to all the publicity, but not much of it was found. Did any gossip about that come your way?”

Kincaid thought a moment. “I remember the guys were saying it looked like a stand-in. But it’s stale by now. You couldn’t prove it by me.”

“You mean set up from the inside?”

“You know, Mike — where the inside man guarantees no trouble and takes the large end of the cut. I do remember we thought it was kind of fantastic that there wasn’t any hints around about who maybe did it. I don’t mean who actually, who maybe. Usually you run into all kinds of rumors, and the conclusion we came to was that this wasn’t a pro job at all, but some do-it-yourself guy with ambitions. Then they picked up Sam Harris, who didn’t go with that picture.”

“There wasn’t any mention of somebody named Fred Mil-burn?”

“Milburn?” Kincaid said, puzzled. “The one Milburn I know is very smalltime. A delicatessen man. He wouldn’t be robbing no banks.”

“Did he ever do any work for the Truckers?”

“I don’t follow, Mike. The guy’s an ordinary heister, in and out. I think I did hear, though, that he did a few stickups with Sam Harris. Are you trying to tell me that Painter and that carload of goons last night and a bank job three years ago are part of one and the same thing? Harry Plato’s no angel, and that’s putting it mildly, but he’s got sense enough to steer clear of robbing banks, for God’s sake. He makes a pretty good living out of robbing the union.” He added hastily, “Don’t quote me on that, either.”

“Nobody knows I even know you, Kinky, so stop shaking. Think about it, and see what you can turn up. Can you give me a description of the other two guys in the Chevy?”

Kinkaid thought for a moment. “Can’t help you there, Mike. Klipstone was the one I was trying to get hold of, and I only got this fast blur of the others. Sports shirts, no ties. But they gave you the impression you wouldn’t want to disagree with them because it wouldn’t be good for your teeth. I could probably pick them out of a line-up, but you know as well as I do that I’m not going to do any damn-fool thing like that.”

“You don’t think one of them was a Cuban? Or a husky kid, about a hundred and seventy, thick jowls, thick neck?”

“Sorry, Mike. No cigar.”

“You’ve given me something to think about, Kinky,” Shayne said slowly, “and I’ll make that a hundred instead of seventy-five. If you go out, leave word where I can reach you.”

“I’m sure as hell not going out till I get that hundred.”

Shayne laughed and hung up.