“I ought to take you into partnership,” Shayne growled. “I’d do less guessing if I had your sources of information.”
“It’s a reporter’s job to get around,” Rourke admitted modestly. He emptied his glass and reached for the bottle.
“Lay off. We’ve got things to do.” Shayne came out of a brown study. A look of grim alertness supplanted the bemused expression which had clouded his face since Rourke announced the disappearance of Helen Stallings’s body from his office.
“Such as what?” Rourke asked.
“A look-in at Arch Bugler’s place.”
“Not me,” Rourke stated flatly. “You don’t drag me into anything else. Not tonight.”
“We’ve got to learn all we can about Helen Stallings.”
“You’ve got to. I’m having another drink.” Rourke wrapped long, thin fingers around the bottle.
Shayne made no move to interfere, but he talked fast. “Don’t you see we’ve got to pick up a lead somehow? You don’t want it known that you left a dead girl unreported, do you? We’ve got to find out where she went when she left home at noon. Someone doped her to keep her from talking. Whoever killed her knew she was doped and unable to talk to me — else why would she have been killed? There wouldn’t have been any need to throttle her if she had already talked.”
“Your logic is perfect,” Rourke agreed. “I’ll bet you my grandmother’s wig you catch the guy, Mike. Give me a ring when the lead is ready.”
Shayne snorted angrily. “This case hasn’t even got hot.” He took the bottle from Rourke’s lax fingers and dropped it into his coat pocket, then wadded up the newspaper sheets and rammed them into the other, got up and grabbed his hat from a hook.
Rourke smiled sweetly and waved to him as he stalked from the booth.
Shayne had never visited Arch Bugler’s Miami Beach establishment. He knew the approximate location, and he saw the red neon sign half a block away: Bugle Inn.
Cars lined the curb in front. Expensive, sporty models that proved Arch Bugler wasn’t playing to a piker clientele.
Shayne nosed his battered convertible between a Rolls-Royce and a Packard. A high wall of pink coral rock surrounded three sides of the sprawling structure, running down to the beach at the rear. Bronze latticework gates were set in the wall, opening inward to a flagged path under an arched canopy leading to the front entrance. A uniformed doorman stood stiffly in front of the high bronze gates.
Sauntering toward the doorman, Shayne lit a cigarette.
A hot glint came into his eyes when the man stared at him suspiciously, then swung the gates shut and stood solidly in front of them.
Shayne stopped a foot from the doorman. His chin was level with the man’s eyes. He stared at him for a moment and then said, “Well?”
“I’m sorry, sir. White ties are required, sir.”
“I’m not wearing one.”
“I have strict orders, sir, to admit no gentlemen except those in formal attire.”
“I’m here on business — to see Arch Bugler.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I have strict orders.”
Shayne said, “Nuts.” He caught the man’s braided tunic and jerked him aside. The man whistled shrilly as Shayne shouldered the gates open.
Two men appeared from the other side of the wall and got in front of him. One of them exclaimed, “Jeez, it’s the dick from Miami,” and stepped backward. He had a big nose and a chin that fell away to nothing — the man who had trailed Shayne from his apartment hotel earlier in the evening.
The other bouncer was taller than Shayne, his shoulders inches broader. He had a flat face and a square head fastened onto his torso with no neck between. He scowled darkly and growled, “Outside.”
Shayne drove his fist into the middle of the man’s flat face. The force of the blow rocked him back on his heels, smashing a rubbery nose and thick lips that had been smashed before.
The smaller man sucked in his breath sharply and hit Shayne with a blackjack, saying softly, “Grab him, Donk.” Shayne staggered sideways, and the big man stepped in, caught his elbows, and pinioned them behind him.
“Outside,” the chinless man panted, “and keep it quiet, Donk. This is the bozo the boss said not to let in.”
Shayne’s head lolled limply as he was given the bum’s rush through the bronze gates. The blackjack had been swung expertly and should have knocked him out, but the redhead was tough. His legs were not functioning very well and a black cloud obscured a bright moon, but he clamped his teeth hard, doggedly hanging on to consciousness.
“Down to the corner of the wall, Donk,” the smaller man directed in a vicious undertone. “There’s a cab pulling up — They’ll think he’s just a drunk being bounced.” With Donk propelling him from behind, Shayne was rushed along the sidewalk to the north wall of the Bugle Inn property. Half a dozen unoccupied water-front lots separated the wall from the next building. The vacant space was thick with a growth of scrub palmetto.
Donk paused when he reached the end of the wall, and his companion ordered, “Drag him out in the middle of the clearing and we’ll work him over. He dodged me once tonight, but this time he won’t do no dodgin’.”
Strength was flowing into Shayne’s legs and awareness to his brain, but he let his feet drag in the sand until the chinless man ordered, “This is far enough. Nobody’ll notice us from the street. Is he out?”
“Acts like it.” Donk let go of Shayne’s elbows. The detective sprawled forward limply into a matted growth of pin-edged palmettos. “Yep,” Donk said with a faint note of regret, “he’s out cold. You shouldn’t orta hit ’im so hard, Johnny.”
“He’s supposed to be tough. Wouldn’t surprise me none if he was possumin’.” Johnny kicked Shayne in the ribs. Shayne gave no sign that he felt it.
“Turn ’im over,” Johnny ordered, “and I’ll stomp him in the face good. Arch said for us to work on ’im if he tried to crash the gate tonight.”
Donk bent down and got a hold on Shayne’s shoulder to turn him over. Shayne came half erect and drove his head into Donk’s belly with the force of a battering ram.
Donk grunted and stumbled back over a clump of sharp palmettos.
Shayne whirled and lunged at Johnny, ducking a vicious downswing of the blackjack. He drove his forearm against Johnny’s Adam’s apple, which protruded at a point where his chin should have been, and the smaller man went to his knees clawing at his throat.
Shayne grabbed the blackjack from his lax fingers and whirled to meet Donk’s lunge.
The larger man parried a blow with his forearm and laughed happily. He smashed a left to Shayne’s stomach and straightened the detective up with a looping right to the chin when he jackknifed forward. Shayne swayed backward with his feet seemingly rooted in the sand, his angular face turned up to the moon and the stars.
Donk planted himself and put two hundred and forty pounds behind a piledriver right to the detective’s unprotected jaw.
Shayne’s senses swam lazily into a mist of nothingness. The moon and the stars were again blotted out.
Johnny came to his feet still gasping and sputtering. “By God,” he chattered huskily, “it takes you to cool off the toughies, Donk.”
“He wasn’t so tough,” Donk disclaimed modestly. “When I give ’em the ol’ one-two they mostly stay down.”
Johnny picked up his blackjack and shoved it in his pocket. “We’ll leave him lay there,” he decided. “When he comes up for air he’ll be all outta the notion of seein’ the boss.”
The two men strolled off leaving Shayne quiescent, face downward in the soft sand.
For a long time Shayne lay still. Presently he stirred to get his face out of the sand. His breathing became stertorous, mingling with the swishing sound of waves flowing gently on the shore. He made two efforts to sit erect before achieving results, then linked his arms around his knees and shuddered with nausea.