Nice Fillies Finish Last

CHAPTER 7

Michael Shayne moved his car to the Golden Crest parking lot. On the way to the office, he checked the number of the room Thorne had entered; it was number 18. A woman with thick-lensed glasses was ready for him in the office. She greeted him cordially and slid a registration card across the counter.

“A room?”

“I think my wife already phoned in a registration,” he said. “She’s having her hair done in Lauderdale. Mrs. Petersen of Miami.”

“I don’t think we’ve had any registrations in that name.”

She began to flip through registration cards, Shayne watched for Room 18. When it turned up, he put his finger on it. The signature was hard to read upside down. It seemed to be Marian Sellers, or Sailers.

“That looks like it,” he said.

“No, sir. That’s an Orlando party.”

Shayne took his finger away, having made a mental photograph of the license number on the card. The woman completed her search and shook her head.

“It doesn’t seem to be here.”

“She likes to take care of these things,” Shayne said, pulling his earlobe. “One room’s as good as another, as far as I’m concerned, but she has strong ideas about what’s right and what’s wrong. Well, I ought to know what she likes by now. I know she’ll want to be on the balcony, so we won’t be bothered by cars. As close to the ocean end as possible, but we’d better not be right over the cocktail lounge.”

The woman made several suggestions. He settled finally on Number 17 and signed in.

Even when people use a false name at a motel-and Shayne assumed that the name on the card for No. 18 didn’t belong to a real person-they usually give their true license number. He had no trouble locating the car belonging to the guest in Room 18-a black, well-maintained Mercedes, with red-leather upholstery. The car itself, the care it had been given, the low mileage, and the accessories on the dashboard all denoted money. Shayne had a feeling he was going to want to ask the owner of the Mercedes some questions. He found the hood-latch and pulled it, then raised the hood and un-snapped the distributor cap, after which he removed the rotor. Putting the crucial little part in his pocket, he replaced the distributor cap and closed the hood. Then he moved his Buick into an open slot beside the Mercedes. Some months before, Shayne had been hired to find and bring back the runaway wife of a telephone-company official. He had spent a week looking for her, another week persuading her to return. His client showed his gratitude by having a phone installed in Shayne’s car. This had doubled Shayne’s effectiveness, and he didn’t know how he had ever functioned without it. He dialed local information and was given the number of the Fort Lauderdale hospital. Yes, he was told a moment later, they had just admitted an emergency case by the name of Timothy Rourke, and they would see if he was allowed to answer the phone. In another moment a woman’s pleasant voice said, “Emergency, Mallinson.”

“I’m calling about Mr. Rourke,” Shayne said. “My name’s Michael Shayne.”

“Mike Shayne,” she said. “Yes, indeed. We’ve been having a discussion here on the subject of phoning you. He’s insistent, isn’t he?”

There was a small clatter.

“Mike!” Rourke’s voice said. “Hey, you ought to see the nurse they gave me. You know those thin white nurses’ uniforms, what they do for ordinary women? My God, you ought to see the effect on this one! Wonderful figure, wonderful legs, a neat little pair of ears. On top of everything else, green eyes! You know how I react to green eyes. They enfeeble me!”

“You sound a little high,” Shayne said, amused. “What are they prescribing for you?”

“I prescribed it for myself on the way over. That was a sensational idea about taking a taxi, Mike. Whenever we saw a saloon I sent the hackie in for a double martini to go. Now everybody feels I ought to have something to eat. I’m resisting.”

“How are you otherwise?”

“Hell, I’m in great shape. They tell me they put in eighteen sutures, but that’s impossible. The main thing was those goddamn cactus needles. They had to yank them out one at a time with tweezers. Mike, where are you? What happened with Thorne?”

“I’ll tell you later. If you want to do something useful, put in a couple of calls. I’ve got the license number of a black Mercedes. I’d like to know who owns it.”

“Let’s have it. Baby,” he said to the nurse, “take this number.”

Shayne gave him the number from memory. “Another thing, and this you’ll have to work through Will Gentry or somebody on the cops in Miami. I want to know the story on the Guys and Dolls billiard parlor on South East Sixth Avenue in Lauderdale. A fat man at the cigar counter. What’s his gimmick?”

“Got it,” Rourke said promptly.

“Call me back. If the car phone doesn’t answer, try the Golden Crest Motel in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, on A-l-A. Room 17, and the name I’m using is Petersen.”

He repeated the room number and hung up. He thought for a moment with his hand on the phone.

He had recently made a large investment in electronic equipment, which he used only when absolutely necessary. It seldom lived up to the claims made by the manufacturers, and he had noticed long ago that private detectives with the biggest inventory of bugs and recorders soon came to rely on them instead of using their intelligence, connections and common sense. But he needed to know what was happening in Room 18, and there was only one way to find out.

He unlocked his trunk, and then unlocked a metal box that was welded to the floor under the carpet. He took out a simple transistor amplifier, the size of a silver dollar. Upstairs, he let himself into the room he had rented, and clamped the amplifier to the wall that Room 17 and Room 18 had in common. In theory, the wall would act as a sounding board, permitting the amplifier to pick up any sound in the next room above a whisper. Sometimes it worked, but this seemed to be one of the times when it didn’t. He could hear voices, but they weren’t clear enough so he could distinguish any actual words.

He freed the suction cups that held the device to the wall and moved it to a new spot, avoiding nail heads and the seams where the panels of plasterboard came together. A woman’s voice, fuzzy and distorted, rasped suddenly, “Stay where you are, or I promise you-”

A man’s voice interrupted her; Shayne thought it was Thorne’s. “Dear sweet Jesus, what a day. First my wife waves a knife at me, and I have to take it away. Now you. I make a small pass and you yank out a goddamn. 38. Of course, I know it’s not loaded. You aren’t the type to be walking around carrying a loaded gun.”

“Make any more stupid moves,” she said, “and you’ll find out exactly how loaded it is.”

“What happened to sex all of a sudden? When did it start getting so disgusting?”

“Paul, you know as well as I do. This has to do with money and nothing else. Sex is out. Out. I hope that’s emphatic enough to penetrate those thick layers of stupidity. I saw the skyrockets go off when I mentioned the word ‘motel.’ It’s the safest place I could think of to meet. This isn’t exactly a safe thing we’re doing, and we have to be careful. True, this particular motel room contains a double bed, but it isn’t going to be used. Get that through your head. Sit down and I’ll put this away. It makes me nervous, I might pull the trigger. Did you raise the money?”

“That’s the smallest of my problems. That gun really annoys me. Why can’t you trust me?”

“Perhaps because I know you. Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that there might be one or two women in the world who didn’t find you attractive? Who are repelled by you? — Don’t do it, I’m warning you.”

There was a slithering sound, followed by a thump. Shayne listened intently.

“You’re an animal,” the woman panted. “Worse than an animal. You disgust me. You disgust me. Let go of me.”

There was another hard thump, and the woman gave a low cry.

“OK,” Thorne said. Shayne heard the metallic sound of a revolver being broken. “Yeah, it’s loaded! How do you like that?” There was a faint whine in his voice. “You were really going to shoot me. I didn’t know you thought I was that terrible. Well, you made a mistake, baby. If you’d said please instead of pulling a gun, I wouldn’t make a point of it. Now I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. You’re going to take off your clothes, all your clothes, and give me fifteen minutes of your valuable time. And if you don’t take them off yourself, I’ll take them off for you. Things are going to get torn.”

He swore abruptly. There was the sound of a ringing slap.

“And don’t try biting again, either,” he said. “You’re making it tougher for yourself. You didn’t bring a suitcase. Say I rip off that jacket or whatever you call it. How are you going to walk out of here?”

Something else went over. The struggle had moved to the bed, only inches from the amplifier, which was picking it all up. This wasn’t a token resistance; the woman was really fighting, and Shayne knew she wasn’t likely to win. She was taking deep shuddering breaths.

“It’s going to hurt,” Thorne said cheerfully. “But you’ll enjoy that, won’t you?”

Shayne decided this had gone far enough. He reached for the phone, which rang loudly before he could touch it. He picked it up and Rourke’s voice said happily, “Interrupting anything, Mike?”

“Get off the line, Tim,” Shayne snapped. Rourke broke the connection with a bang and Shayne rattled for the switchboard while the struggle in the next room continued. When a voice answered he said, “I’ve got a complaint about the racket next door in eighteen. I’ve been driving all night and I’m trying to get some sleep. There’s a real brawl going on in there. If you can stop it, OK. If not, I’m calling the sheriff.”

He put the phone back without letting the switchboard girl answer. The woman on the bed in the next room was making frantic, stifled sounds as though Thorne had his hand over her mouth. The phone rang in that room. The noises continued. It rang again.

“The hell with you, Jack, whoever you are,” Thorne grated. “We’re busy.”

The phone rang a third time, and Shayne hammered on the wall with a heavy ashtray.

“Will you shut up in there?” he shouted.

The noises subsided gradually. The fourth ring was longer than the other three.

“What’s the matter with you?” Thorne said. “You rented the room. Answer it.”

There was a click as the phone was picked up. The woman’s voice said faintly, “Yes?”

She listened in silence while the switchboard girl passed on the complaint.

“I’m sorry,” the woman said more strongly. “I’m afraid we’ve been inconsiderate.” She laughed musically; Shayne thought she was carrying it off very well. “Absurd as it may sound, my husband has been teaching me some new exercises. I can’t get the hang of them. They take more of a sense of balance than I seem to possess. I didn’t realize we were disturbing anybody. Hold on a moment.” To Thorne, in a steely voice, she said: “Is it over, really over, or should I ask her to notify the police?”

The bed jangled as Thorne got up. “Hell with it,” he mumbled. “Don’t pull any more goddamn guns on me, that’s all.”

The woman resumed. “I am sorry. We’ll be quieter. Would you relay our apologies?”

Shayne heard the phone go back on its cradle. Thorne made some remark, but he had moved back to the dead spot and his words were muffled.

The woman said clearly, “You incredible fool. I was under the impression that this had a certain importance, that whether it works or not made some slight difference to you.”

She too moved. Shayne lost her. He shifted the amplifier to a new position. That was no better, and he moved it again. Still he couldn’t succeed in picking up more than an occasional word or phrase: “… meet here at midnight to divide…”, “… if you take care of the favorite…”, then a longer snatch: “… take ten tickets apiece. Our, payoff should be better than eighty thousand, forty apiece. With two long shots out of four…”

That was the woman talking. After that Shayne heard nothing but mutters till they said good-bye.

“I wish it hadn’t happened this way,” she said coldly. “Things were already complicated enough. Once a bastard, always a bastard.”

Shayne heard Thorne’s parting word clearly. It was obscene.

Watching through the closed Venetian blinds, Shayne saw Thorne’s red convertible roar away from a drag-race start. The door of No. 18 opened again a moment later. Shayne put the amplifier in his pocket and waited at the door until he heard the sound of the Mercedes’ starter. He went down the outside flight of stairs while the woman continued to wear down her battery. He glanced at her briefly as he passed, then turned back after a few steps and listened critically.

“You don’t seem to be getting gas,” he said.