This Is It, Michael Shayne

Chapter Three

Shayne remained standing and kept a wary eye on the gun. “You aren’t playing this very smart, Gannet.”

“I’m playing it my way,” he said, regret in his tone as he leaned forward with the gun pointed at Shayne’s midriff.

Miss Lally stopped sobbing and wiped her eyes. With the light coat clutched in her arm, she retrieved her glasses, smoothed her disheveled hair with her fingers, and attained a measure of prim dignity the instant she slid the glasses in place, in spite of her crouched, undignified position.

The man who had shoved her into the room looked even less intelligent than Mart. He was beginning to recover from his surprise at seeing Shayne, and muttered hoarsely:

“I didn’ know you had comp’ny, Chief. You told me if the Morton dame stuck her nose in we was to give her the works.”

“It’s okay, Henry,” Gannet assured him, “if you’re right about Miss Morton sending this woman here.” He kept his eyes on the redhead as he spoke, then asked, “Is he right, Shayne?”

“I sent Miss Lally in here to look around,” he answered.

Miss Lally started to rise from her knees and Shayne went over, took her hand, and pulled her to her feet

Henry started toward him with a muttered oath. Shayne stepped swiftly in front of her to face Henry, balanced lightly on the balls of his feet, his upper lip curled back and baring his teeth. His right hand was balled into a big fist against his thigh. “Try shoving somebody nearer your size this time,” he said happily.

Henry stopped, glanced at Gannet for a signal, and the gambler said, “Close the door first, and take him if he wants it that way,” with a gentle sigh of resignation.

Henry turned to close the door. As he swung back Shayne saw the glitter of brass knuckles from his right hand and stepping in fast, hit him hard on the jaw before he completed the turn.

He heard a cry of warning or of terror from Beatrice Lally. His first surprise blow sent Henry reeling and, enraged by the knuckles, he drove three more jolting blows against the man’s chin. Henry slumped against the closed door, and as he slowly sagged to the floor Shayne delivered a left, a right, and another left, and was only vaguely aware of the smothered oaths and sounds of a struggle behind him. Henry’s knees gave way and he slid to the floor, a grotesque figure with his heavy shoulders supported by the door and his head hanging limply forward.

Shayne whirled around with both hands clenched, stopped and stared in disbelief, then his mouth twitched into an appreciative grin at Beatrice Lally standing behind Gannet’s swivel chair. Her coat covered Gannet’s face and neck, drawn tight by the sleeves which she was inexorably twisting and tightening while the gambler groaned and gasped for air.

Two swift, long-legged strides carried Shayne to the desk, where he twitched the wildly waving automatic from Gannet’s hand. “Better let him come up for air now, Miss Lally,” he said, forcing the grin from his face as she released the sleeves and stepped back.

Shayne had the loaded clip out of the gun and in his pocket and was ejecting the cartridge from under the firing-pin when Gannet finally clawed the garment from his head. His face was flushed and his breathing hard. He massaged his thin neck with a thin hand, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly.

“I-thought he was going to shoot you when you hit that man,” faltered the girl. “I didn’t know what to do.”

“You did all right,” Shayne told her, grinning. He laid the empty automatic on the desk. “If Miss Lally hadn’t thought fast, you might have plugged me, Gannet.”

“Am I-supposed to thank-her for that?” he gasped.

“You could do worse,” Shayne told him dryly. He turned to look at the recumbent Henry, who was beginning to groan, trying to lift his square, hairy hand to his pulpy face. “Another paper-doll cutter,” he muttered, turning back to Miss Lally, who had retrieved her coat once more and was attempting to smooth out the twisted wrinkles in the sleeves. “What did you find out in the gambling-room? And why did that gorilla jump you?”

“It’s quite evident they reopened the gaming-room only this evening,” she said, ignoring Gannet’s presence, and speaking in her normal low, assured voice. “I was moving about talking to people as you told me to when I ran into Carl Garvin. I tried to avoid him, but he recognized me and asked in a rather loud voice if Miss Morton was with me. I tried to shush him, but he had been drinking. Then that man interfered.” She pointed to Henry, who now had both hands to his face and moaned spasmodically.

“He asked Mr. Garvin if he meant Sara Morton and he said he did, and that I was her secretary. Then that man grabbed my arm and pulled me away. Said Mr. Gannet wanted to see me in his office. He hurt me,” she ended in a hurt, girlish tone, sliding the glasses off and looking up at Shayne with round, naked, and sooty eyes.

Shayne grinned briefly and jerked his red head meaningfully at the groaning man, then asked gravely, “Who is Carl Garvin?”

“He’s the local office manager of the syndicate Miss Morton works for.”

“Is Garvin a regular here?” Shayne demanded of Gannet.

Gannet had stopped massaging his scrawny throat and it was as red as a turkey’s wattle. Venom replaced the soft glow in his eyes, and he snarled, “Ask him yourself.” One hand moved toward a row of buttons on his desk as the other picked up the gun.

“Don’t touch that button, Gannet,” Shayne grated. “And don’t count on the gun. It’s empty.” He was thinking swiftly, deciding that Mart and Henry were the only gorillas on duty, feeling certain of it when Gannet’s fingers stopped short of the buttons.

“Who gave you the go-ahead to reopen this evening?” Shayne demanded.

“Nobody gives me the go-ahead, shamus. No she-reporter from New York can tell me whether I open up or stay closed. The Morton dame can go straight to hell,” he exploded, and the venomous anger he had stored up behind his soft voice and limpid eyes burst out in damning expletives against Miss Morton.

Shayne looked down at him with a grin intended to further infuriate Gannet, who had established a reputation for remaining calm, no matter what the provocation. The gambler’s face was growing dangerously red. Shayne shrugged his wide shoulders and turned to take Miss Lally’s arm.

“We are walking out of here, Leo,” he said. “Down the front stairs. If you’re as smart as I always thought you were, none of your boys will try to stop us.”

Henry pulled himself up on wavering legs as they started to the door. He squinted at Gannet through swollen eyes, staggered aside, and Shayne opened the door. They went out and down the corridor to the wide front stairway.

Shayne glanced down at Miss Lally’s bespectacled face as she moved primly beside him and said, “You act as if this were all in a night’s work. That was a darned good tackle on Gannet.”

“I’ve been Miss Morton’s secretary for ten years,” she told him. “Since I was nineteen. I’ve encountered hoodlums of that type before. Do you think his reopening the gaming-rooms tonight is an indication that he knows she’s dead and can’t bother him any more?”

Shayne squeezed her arm for silence as they reached the bottom step, where entry to the upper floor was blocked by a velvet rope and guarded by a dapper young man with sparkling black eyes and a thin black mustache.

He had been looking up at Shayne’s incongruous apparel with an expression of horrified disbelief. Shayne grinned and lifted his hand airily, saying, “Leo sent me down to show his dame to her car.” He closed one eye in a slow wink and the young man unhooked the rope.

In the foyer others looked at them curiously, but no one interfered. They went past the doorman without a glance and down the driveway to his car, where Shayne left her to open the door for herself and hurried around to make a fast getaway.

When he turned south on Ocean Drive and was speeding toward the Venetian Causeway he referred back to her question.

“It would have been fast work for Gannet to get things opened up and running in the short time that’s elapsed since Morton was murdered. Still, it’s a good bet.”

“But he could have known beforehand,” she pointed out.

“Yeh,” said Shayne absently.

“We know he tried to bribe her to leave town. And then those threatening letters began coming-”

“Which Leo Gannet didn’t send her,” he said irritably. “He’s a businessman and might arrange to have her rubbed out, but he’d never pull that sort of Dick Tracy stunt.”

“Why not? It seems to me that would be the smart way to do it, to make people like you-people who know him-think he didn’t.”

Shayne didn’t answer at once. He was thinking back to Gannet’s behavior. Losing control and showing an outsider his true nature was unprecedented insofar as he knew. “Crooks like Gannet aren’t so devious,” he muttered. They rode swiftly and silently for a while; then he slowed for the toll booth, fished out the right change, and stopped to pay it.

When he had the car going sixty again he said, “I want to hear more about Sara Morton’s husband. And if I don’t show up soon Will Gentry’ll have a radio pickup out for both of us,” he added grimly.

“Oh, I’d forgot about-”

“I’d like to keep you away from the police tonight,” he cut in, “if I can swing it. This place I’m taking you to is my secretary’s apartment. Miss Lucy Hamilton. She’ll give you a drink and bed you down on the studio couch, but I want your promise not to leave her place for anyone or anything until you hear from me.”

“I’ll do whatever you say,” she agreed meekly. “But-why are you going to so much trouble, Mr. Shayne? You didn’t even know Miss Morton.”

“Have you forgotten she retained me to take the case if she was murdered tonight?”

“That torn bill? I wonder what she meant by sending you that. It’s no good without the other half, is it?”

“She had the other half clenched in her hand when she died,” he told her in a tight-jawed mutter that was almost a low growl.

Miss Lally drew in her breath sharply and wilted against him, sliding her glasses off and letting her hand fall laxly in her lap. “I can hardly realize it yet,” she sobbed. “It doesn’t seem real. At first I felt dazed, but now when you speak of her being dead it seems you must be talking about someone else. Some stranger. N-Not M-Miss Morton. She was so vitally alive.”

Shayne put his arm around her shaking shoulders. He had wondered how long her self-control would last, and was surprised that the inevitable reaction had been so long delayed. He drove to the mainland with one hand on the wheel, not saying anything, and when he stopped in front of Lucy’s apartment she sat up, blew her nose, and wiped her eyes. “I’m all right now,” she said. “It’s just that all at once I-”

“You’ve been terrific,” he told her warmly, giving her shoulder a final squeeze before removing his arm. He got out and looked up at the windows of Lucy’s second-floor front apartment. Enough light showed through the drapes to assure him she was not asleep.

“Come on. Miss Hamilton is still up,” he said, opening the door for her. “I’ll go up for a drink, and if you feel like it you can fill in the gaps I’m still vague about.”

He was gentle with her crossing the walk and going up the steps, sensing that she couldn’t see without her glasses; and in the lighted vestibule he again had the impression of a chubby childishness about her, the misty eyes and the round blue collar hugging her white neck.

He frowned as he pushed the button, then grinned fleetingly when the buzzer sounded instantly, as though Lucy waited with her finger on the answering button in her apartment.

Lucy was in the open doorway wearing a sheer dressing-gown over blue silk pajamas. Her hair was tousled and a frown of surprise or dismay flitted across her smooth brow when she saw Miss Lally.

“Michael! You might at least have let me know. I was almost ready for bed,” she said.

“It’s okay, angel,” he said. “This is Miss Lally. Miss Lally, Miss Hamilton. She needs a drink and a place to sleep tonight where the cops won’t bother her,” he went on swiftly, herding them into the room, without giving them a chance to acknowledge the introduction. “And make it fast on the drinks. I have to be moving.”

“Of course, Michael. How do you do, Miss Lally, and what would you like to drink?” She smiled a welcome, added chidingly, “You don’t have to be rude, Michael.”

“Please call me Beatrice,” Miss Lally said with a wan smile. “Could you-do you have the makings for a daiquiri?”

“With the lemon juice already squeezed,” Lucy said and disappeared through the open archway into the kitchenette.

Shayne invited the girl to sit on the couch and pulled a chair up to sit facing her. He took out a package of cigarettes and after lighting one for each of them he asked abruptly, “You say Miss Morton’s husband is in Miami and called you at the Tidehaven this morning?”

Her mouth twisted in a grimace of disgust. “He wanted to see her at once-wanted to know when she’d be in. I didn’t tell him,” she said defiantly. “I hung up on him.”

Shayne rubbed his jaw thoughtfully, vaguely conscious of a stubble of beard. “Do you know where he’s staying?”

“No. But I think he saw her this afternoon. I was typing in the other room. The bathroom door on my side was closed and I didn’t consciously listen. In fact, I typed fast and tried not to listen when I heard a man’s voice. He was angry and talking loud and I thought it was Ralph.”

“But you couldn’t swear it was Morton?”

“No.” She hesitated, closed her eyes, and opened her purse, reached in for her glasses, and put them on. “I wouldn’t want to swear to it, Mr. Shayne,” she said, looking at him levelly.

Lucy came in with a tray, her brown eyes reflecting the gay smile on her lips. “Here they are. I hope-oh!” She saw Miss Lally’s glasses, recovered swiftly from the shock, and resumed: “I do hope the daiquiri will taste right.” She set the tray down without adding, “Beatrice,” as she had intended. She handed Shayne a triple cognac and a glass of ice water. “So you can guzzle and go.” She laughed, then carefully lifted the brimming daiquiri glass and passed it to Miss Lally. “You’d better take a big swallow before it spills.”

Miss Lally took a big swallow while Lucy picked up her water and cognac mixture, generously iced, and sat down on the edge of the couch.

“Did you succeed in reaching Miss Morton, Michael?”

“Yeh. But too late,” he said morosely. “She was murdered a couple of hours before I got to her. Miss Lally has been Sara Morton’s confidential secretary for ten years.”

Lucy said, “Oh! How terrible!” Miss Lally’s hand trembled violently and her drink sloshed over the rim and onto her dress.

Lucy grabbed a cocktail napkin from the tray and pressed it on the wet spot. “Michael and I are so accustomed to reaching for a napkin when we need one-” she began apologetically.

“Miss Lally’s upset and nervous,” Shayne broke in. “We had a few bad moments, and you can thank her for the bullet I didn’t get in my back. Talk to Lucy as much as you can tonight,” he went on, turning to the girl. “Tell her everything-about Miss Morton, your work with her, the assignment she was working on in Miami.” He finished his drink, chased it with ice water, and stood up. His face was gaunt, and his eyes stared bleakly over Lucy’s head, not seeing the fear on her face.

“Take good care of her, Lucy, and stay right here with her in the morning until you hear from me.” He turned and strode to the door, opened it, hesitated briefly, then said, “I’ll call you when I can, but I expect to be moving fast. And don’t worry.”

In his car, Shayne made a U-turn and drove back to the Boulevard, drove south past Bayfront Park and Flagler Street to a right turn on Southeast First. He parked at the side entrance of his apartment hotel, got out, and went through a short hall to the lobby.

The night clerk, a thin, precise little man with pale blue eyes, began beckoning him with rapid crooks of a forefinger and urgent jerks of his head. Shayne was striding toward the desk when he was intercepted by Edwin Paisly, who jumped up from a chair near the elevator.

The young man’s face was strained, and a single lock of damp blond hair hanging down his forehead seemed, oddly, to give a disheveled look to his entire appearance. He got in front of Shayne, and when the redhead didn’t stop he walked backward, saying excitedly, “Mr. Shayne, I have to talk to you. I’ve been waiting and waiting. Really, Mr. Shayne-”

“Sit down over there and take it easy while I have a word with the clerk,” Shayne growled, stepping aside and going past him without slowing. Over a period of years Shayne had learned to judge by the night clerk’s expression whether his important news concerned a blonde or a brunette. The utter lack of any secretive and knowing look in John’s pale eyes told him now it was neither.

“I been waiting to catch you when you came in,” he said. “They told me I wasn’t to tell you, but if you’re dodging them as I know you want to sometimes I knew you’d like to know.”

“What?” Shayne asked patiently.

“They’re waiting up in your apartment-that reporter friend of yours and the big dumb-looking cop that comes here sometimes. It was him that said I wasn’t to tell you they were up there.”

Shayne smothered a grin at his description of Will Gentry, Miami’s chief of police. He said, “Thanks, John. I’m not dodging them, this time, but you never can tell when a tip like that may keep me out of jail.” He turned and crossed the lobby to where Paisly sat slumped in a chair in a far corner. “Didn’t Miss Morton show up for the dinner date?” he asked.

“No. I waited another half hour after you and Miss Lally left, then called the hotel. I don’t think they rang her room at all, Mr. Shayne. Some man answered and demanded to know who I was and what I wanted with Miss Morton. He was frightfully rude, and I’m afraid I replied rather sharply. Then he said he was a policeman and that I should come to the hotel at once.” Paisly didn’t get up from the chair, but sat up stiff and straight. He had combed his hair back sleekly, and seemed restored to his former immaculacy.

“Did you go?” Shayne asked, staring steadily down at him.

“Certainly not.” Paisly’s dark eyes fluttered up to meet Shayne’s gray gaze, then turned away. “At first I considered it rank impertinence. Then I began wondering what was wrong. Do you think it was the police, Mr. Shayne? Will they arrest me for not coming at once as I was ordered? And what do you suppose is the matter?”

“I think it would be smart to get over to the hotel and find out,” said Shayne gruffly. “Tell them you were detained on the way.” His eyes didn’t waver as he waited for a reply, but Paisly’s upward glance never reached higher than the round neck of his polo shirt, and Shayne turned abruptly away.

Paisly leaped up and caught his arm. “There’s something else I’ve got to know. Why did Sara call in a private detective today?”

“That’s my business.”

“It’s mine, too,” said Paisly fiercely. “We’re going to be married in a few days-just as soon as her divorce is granted. Doesn’t that make a difference?”

“I think you’d better ask her,” Shayne told the frightened young man.

“Oh, no. I–I wouldn’t want to do that.” His slender, manicured right hand slid into his pocket and came out with a platinum money clip holding a thin sheaf of folded bills. He removed a C-note, saying, “I simply want to know what she consulted you about. I don’t expect you to betray any professional confidences, but I have a right to know if there’s some hitch in the divorce.”

“Go peddle your pennies somewhere else,” Shayne told him roughly.

Paisly reluctantly unclipped another C-note. “I’m a little short of cash just now, but”-he tilted his head slightly and gave Shayne a shrewd, man-to-man smile-“things will be different after we’re married. I’ll be perfectly frank and admit it means a great deal to me, Mr. Shayne. Sara is a lovely person, and I simply don’t believe I could stand it if anything happened to interfere with our marriage. I’m sure you know what I mean.”

There were certain delicate nuances here which Shayne didn’t quite comprehend. Paisly was trying to thrust the two bills into his hand while he babbled on. “No matter what Sara may have told you today I want you to understand that I truly love her. No matter what she suspects or what she may have told you today. Please accept this as a token payment, and I give you my word of honor to double whatever fee she offered you-after our marriage, of course.”

Almost unconsciously one of Shayne’s fingers closed over the bills Paisly was pressing against his palm. He frowned at them, only half hearing Paisly’s words as he went on intensely:

“Every bit of this came out of that secretary’s nasty mind. She hates me. She hates any man Sara looks at twice. If any man ever looked at Miss Lally she’d probably faint. And that makes her hate all men, don’t you see? So she’s taking out her hatred on me right now.” He fluttered slim white hands in exasperation.

“And she influences Sara so. In an unhealthy way, I’m sure. After we’re married Miss Lally must go, at once. I imagine she realizes that, so she has deliberately set herself to poison Sara’s mind against me. That is what she consulted you about-the divorce, I presume,” he ended uncertainly.

Shayne straightened the one finger holding the bills and they floated to the floor. “Where were you between six-thirty and seven tonight?” he asked abruptly.

He thought Edwin Paisly was going to cry. His mouth primped up and he said, “Oh, you! What does it matter where I was?” and his tone figuratively stamped its foot.

“It may matter a great deal,” Shayne grated.

“You’re supposed to be a detective,” Paisly snapped. “Find out for yourself, nosey.” He reached down and snatched the two bills from the floor and hurried out of the lobby.

Shayne debated a moment whether or not to follow him, decided against it, and took the elevator up to his apartment.