Shayne said, “In that case I’m glad I didn’t take time for that extra cup of coffee I wanted.” He pulled a chair closer to the chief’s wide, uncluttered desk and sat down. “You know I promised Hogan I’d be in first thing.”
“Hogan exceeded his authority by permitting you to walk away from the scene of the crime last night,” snapped Painter. “You can’t just come over to the Beach and knock off our citizens at your pleasure, Shayne.”
Shayne said wearily, “Come off it, Painter. You know how things were last night. Hogan had a lot more important things to do than drag me in to make a formal statement. I’m here now, so what’s the fuss?”
“I’d like some factual evidence that last night’s killing was justifiable self-defense. All we have right now is an unsupported statement from you that the other man fired at you first.”
“Did Hogan mention the six bullet-holes in the wall of the office directly over the chair I was sitting in?”
“There was some such notation in his report.” Painter leaned back stiffly and brushed his pencil-thin black mustache with his left thumb-nail. “You want us to think you were staked out waiting for him to break into the warehouse and sat quietly in your chair while he fired six bullets over your head before you got off one of your own? Even on TV the noble private eyes don’t give a killer six shots to one. Did you have to get your gun out and load it before you started shooting back?”
Shayne reached in his pocket and got out the Russian pistol and put it on the desk in front of him. “That’s the baby that did it,” he said easily. “If you want to know the truth, I had exactly less than one second to get my shot off.”
Painter blinked incredulously at the strange-looking gun and shook his head. “What is it? A pocket bazooka?”
“That’s not a bad guess,” Shayne agreed. “Actually it’s Russian. A Lenski twelve-oh-seven. That’s twelve millimeters,” he added. “Fifty caliber by our standards.”
“Fifty caliber?” Painter leaned forward and poked at the gun with one fingertip to turn it so he could peer into the yawning muzzle.
“It carries a full load of twelve fifty-caliber bullets,” Shayne told him, “and is fully automatic and discharges six of them in less than one second. That’s what happened in the warehouse last night,” he added grimly, “while I was fooling around and getting set to shoot back.”
“Nonsense,” said Painter briskly. “It’s sheer impossibility. Something you dreamed up from reading too much science fiction and listening to too much Russian propaganda.”
“Not only that,” said Shayne, calmly disregarding the detective chief’s sarcasm, “but it’s something like twice as powerful as our Magnum forty-four. This funny-looking contraption,” he went on acidly, “is manufactured from some alloy that weighs a couple of ounces less than a standard Colt forty-five, yet is strong enough to withstand a muzzle velocity of nineteen hundred and eighty feet per second and a muzzle energy of more than two thousand foot pounds. Just to give you an idea of what that means… the thirty-eight you normally carry has a muzzle energy of two hundred and sixty-six foot pounds.”
“Where the devil do you get all this information about guns?” growled Painter.
“It’s part of my job to know all about guns,” Shayne lied to him happily. “You never know when some stray bit of information may come in handy. But the important thing is this, Painter.” He leaned forward seriously now. “So far as any records show, there has never been a Lenski twelve-oh-seven imported into the country. Where did our boy get hold of it for last night’s job?”
“Maybe he’s a Russian spy?”
“Knocking over our liquor warehouses?” Shayne smiled grimly. “I doubt it somehow. What did you get on him?”
“Nothing important.” Painter moved a sheet of paper in front of him and studied it. “Name was Miles Leiffer. Twenty-eight. Resident of the Beach. A punk. He’s been in and out of trouble since he was eighteen. Petty stuff. Not even armed robbery in the past. His known associates are all the same ilk. No tie-up with any gang such as the warehouse looters seem to be.”
“I’d like to know how a guy like that got hold of this Russian time bomb.”
“I’ll tell you one thing, Mike.” Painter was suddenly and excessively cordial. “Lots of stuff from Cuba is getting into circulation here nowadays. Refugees get over here broke and peddle anything they’re carrying for a few bucks to eat on.”
“I know. One more thing I didn’t mention about this little item is that it’s brand new. Still has traces of the original grease it was packed in at the factory for shipment overseas. You can tell by the fishy smell it has.”
“I know there’s something damned fishy about it. What kind of crap are you feeding me, Mike? Fish-grease, by God!”
“Ask any expert,” said Shayne calmly. “Get your own Sergeant Anderson in here. If he’s as good as I think he is, he’ll verify every statement I’ve made.”
“Anderson is one of the best ballistics men in the state, but I seriously doubt he’s that good,” fumed Painter. “We’ll see.” He pressed a button at the edge of his desk and spoke into an intercom, “Send Sergeant Anderson in here.” Then he leaned back and thumb-nailed his mustache again, and his black eyes glittered at the gaunt-faced redhead. “Suppose what you say is true, why worry about one gun? No matter how lethal it may be. We’ve got it out of circulation.”
“There’s one other little thing that bothers me.” Shayne pulled the folded newspaper from his pocket and pushed it across the desk under Painter’s nose. “Do you remember posing for that picture a few days ago?”
Painter glanced down at the paper and stiffened. He looked at it a long moment, and then slowly, seemingly unwillingly, transferred his gaze to the pistol in front of him. He wet his lips and muttered, “I see what you mean. I remember about that damned gun now. I asked Anderson what in hell it was, and he said he thought it was a Russian make, and he was going to try and look it up in some arms manual he has.”
“Two of them here on the Beach in three or four days,” Shayne pointed out. “Law enforcement is liable to get tough if many of those baby cannons get scattered around among your underworld.”
The door of the office opened and Sergeant Anderson stepped inside. He was a tall, bulky man, with snow-white hair and placid features. He lifted his eyebrows in surprise at the sight of the Miami detective whom he knew well, said, “You wanted me, Chief?” to Painter, then drew in his breath abruptly as he caught sight of the gun on the desk.
He said, “Another one of those, eh?” and glanced from the weapon to Shayne. “I admit I wondered this morning when I saw Hogan’s report in last night’s shooting. But he wasn’t very clear about it, and didn’t mention the type of weapon involved.”
Peter Painter cleared his throat unhappily. “Recognize it, Sergeant?”
“It’s known as a Lenski twelve-oh-seven. A Russian product, Chief. After reading up on it in the International Small Arms Manual, I experimented some with the one that turned up last Monday. My God! the penetration power that thing carries. I added three sandbags to my Ballistic Range before I even slowed it down.”
“Why wasn’t I given a report on the previous one, Sergeant?” demanded Painter in an ominous voice. “Goddamit, do I have to wait for a private dick from Miami to come in here and tell me what’s going on in my own town?”
“I wrote you a detailed report day before yesterday,” Anderson told him calmly. “Remember, when you first showed it to me I admitted I didn’t know what the hell it was, but promised I’d find out. If you don’t read reports from Ballistics how do you expect to know what’s going on?”