Shayne grinned and said, “It’s okay by me if Tim can afford to pay for them.” He turned to an enclosed phone booth behind him, stepped inside and closed the door. He dropped a dime in the slot and dialled his office, and his secretary’s warm voice came lilting over the wire, “Good afternoon. Michael Shayne’s office.”
“It’s barely afternoon,” he protested. “You make it sound…”
“Michael! Where have you been all day?”
“Over at Beach Headquarters trying to explain to Petey Painter why I didn’t sit quietly with my hands folded last night and get my head blown off.”
Lucy said, “I read about it in the paper. You might have called to say you were all right.”
“I’m always all right, Angel. You know that. Anything important?”
“Oh, no,” she told him airily. “I’ve just been putting off prospective clients… turning down commissions. Are you coming in?”
“After I’ve had lunch at Tony’s. With a broad,” he added.
“A what?”
“A dish. Right now she’s waiting for me in the rear booth lushing it up on cognac on account of that’s her favorite detective’s favorite juice. How do you like them apples?”
There was a pause, then Lucy asked severely, “Just how drunk are you, Michael?”
“Not too, but give me time,” he told her cheerfully. “Tim’s buying.” He hung up and went out and down the length of the room to the rear booth where Timothy Rourke and a red-haired young lady of striking beauty sat opposite and so engrossed in each other that neither of them noticed his arrival.
She was in her thirties and well-fleshed in an exceedingly feminine sort of way. She had shoulder-length, flame-colored hair, and smooth, intelligent features that were lightly and beautifully tanned. Her generous mouth looked as though it would smile easily and unreservedly, and her large brown eyes sparkled with a happy zestfulness that held no hint of coquetry.
She wasn’t actually beautiful, Shayne decided as he stood at the end of the booth looking down at the two of them. That was just a first, fleeting impression. When you looked again you saw something else beneath the surface beauty and far more important. It made you glad you had paused to look a second time, and made you want to keep on looking.
Her strong, well-shaped left hand lay on the table between the two of them, palm upward, with the fingers curved up slightly to disclose untinted but beautifully polished nails. Just beside her hand stood a shot-glass with a trace of amber liquid in it, and an uncorked bottle of Monnet stood a little to one side. Timothy Rourke’s left hand gripped a bourbon highball and the fingertips of his right hand caressed her wrist gently where two blue veins showed clearly beneath the white skin. Rourke was leaning far forward and peering up into her face, and saying laughingly but vehemently, “But I have got etchings up at my place, Molly. I got the damned things in self-defense a long time ago when the unpleasantly suspicious brother of a girl I was trying to make insisted on coming up with her one night to see for himself. It worked, too,” he chuckled. “Next time he let her come back by herself.”
“And so you laid her, Timothy?” Her voice was serene and full-throated and happily amused. “How nice… for her. But that was a long time ago, and you’re certainly not trying to make me.”
“But I certainly am” he argued indignantly. “It wasn’t that long ago. What makes you think…?”
She had turned her head as he was speaking, and she looked up at Michael Shayne. Her full lips curved in the easy and unreserved smile Shayne had expected to see on them, and she said gently, “We have an eavesdropper, Timothy. There being a dearth of keyholes for him to peek through.”
Rourke turned his head slowly with a pained expression on his thin face. “Go away,” he groaned. “Come back another day. I’m trying to convince Molly that my intentions are strictly dishonorable and that I’m not a man to take no for an answer.”
Her eyes held Shayne’s steadily and speculatively during the period that both of them spoke, and she appeared not to hear Rourke’s voice. She was saying something to Shayne alone, she was establishing a bond, there was a shared intimacy in her look that set off a warning bell deep inside the redhead.
He sat down beside her and said, “Molly? I didn’t know girls were called Molly any more.”
Rourke sighed and said gloomily, “Molly Morgan, Mike. I don’t have to tell her who you are.”
“I know,” Shayne said. “I’m her favorite detective and she’s lushing it up on my favorite juice. Are you, Molly? Lushing it up, I mean.” He reached for her almost empty glass and the open bottle and poured the glass full.
She said happily, “I’m three drinks ahead of you if that’s what you mean. Go ahead and catch up,” she added generously. “It’s always more fun that way.”
Shayne said, “Thanks,” and lifted her glass to sip from it. Sitting beside her as he was, he couldn’t look into her eyes any more. But he could feel her body warmth and he could smell her.
Timothy Rourke sighed and closed his eyes tightly for a long moment, then he lifted his glass and drank from it deeply, holding it to his mouth until the last drop was drained from it. Then he set it down with a dull thud, opened his eyes wide and smiled happily and unexpectedly across the table. “You know something, Mike?”
Shayne asked, “What?”
“This little girl… Molly Morgan… she’s really on the ball, Mike. She knows things you and me never dreamed of knowing. You follow me, Mike?” He rested his elbows on the table and clasped the fingers of both hands together, making a bridge to rest his pointed chin, and glared across the table at his old friend.
Shayne said lightly, “I don’t think I follow you. Most girls do, of course. Know things you and I never dreamed of knowing. We’re built differently, if you come right down to it.”
As he spoke he was acutely conscious of Molly Morgan sitting close beside him, of the unashamed aura of sexuality emanating from her, enveloping his senses, penetrating to the innermost recesses of his being.
“Oh hell, Mike,” said Timothy Rourke plaintively, “I didn’t mean that there kind of thing. You don’t know who Molly Morgan is, do you?”
“No,” said Shayne carefully. “I haven’t the slightest idea.” But I know what she is, his racing thoughts were telling him. And she knows I know. We’ve got this man-and-woman thing between us…
“For one thing,” said Timothy Rourke, pausing to hiccough and then speaking with great distinctness, “she’s one of your pet peeves. A newspaper gal. She’s a feature, by-lined writer for a newspaper syndicate who’s down here in Miami to pick our brains clean and go away with a series of syndicated articles that will explain to all the stupid newspaper readers in the United States just exactly what all this Cuban mixup is about, and which one of the seventeen warring factions is right, and just what action our esteemed president and our State Department should take to fix everything up hunky-dory in Latin America and restore the proper image of Uncle Sam to the poor, downtrodden masses of peons…” Rourke paused and then grinned sweetly and muttered, “Oh, hell, Rourke. Get off your soap-box. What I’m trying to tell you, Mike. She’s great. That’s the word for Molly. She’s been around. She knows what the score is.”
He paused and looked up gravely at a waiter who stood at the foot of the table looking at his empty glass. Rourke shoved it toward him, muttering, “Sure. A refill. And whyn’t you bring Mike Shayne a glass of his own so he and this bewitching young lady won’t have to share a loving cup together.” The waiter smiled and went away, and Molly Morgan said clearly and decisively, “But I don’t mind sharing a loving cup with Mike Shayne.”