“How did you get back from Palm Beach?” demanded Painter.
“Has Petey started running your department?” Shayne asked Gentry.
“He’s interested in your movements tonight from another angle, Mike. Better give it to him straight.” He took out a fresh cigar, examined the wrapper carefully, then lit it.
Shayne said, “I hitchhiked back from Palm Beach. The plane was a few minutes late and it was almost one o’clock by the time I got my bag and got out of the terminal. Happened to be an old fellow there who was driving down here, and I hooked a ride with him. It was almost two when he dropped me off on the outskirts of town.”
Gentry nodded and told Painter, “I don’t believe Shayne need be any further concern of yours on the kidnaping. If you’ve checked with National Airlines and know he actually rode as far as Palm Beach, he couldn’t possibly have been in that wrecked car.” He gave Shayne a despairing look and puffed on his cigar.
“What kidnaping?” Shayne asked with innocent interest. “That’s the second time I’ve heard it mentioned. What wrecked car?”
“Painter has been sucking wind ever since an eyewitness testified he saw you crawl out of a wrecked car on Thirty-sixth Street and slip away at one o’clock,” Rourke broke in.
“Who was the witness?”
“A character named Chick Farrel,” Painter informed him.
“Oh, Chick?” Shayne lit a cigarette and looked at the reporter over the match flame. “I get it now. That’s why you asked a while ago if Chick had it in for me. Anyone can see he was lying. I was in Palm Beach at one o’clock; and thank you for establishing my alibi,” he ended mockingly to Painter.
“Farrel may have been mistaken,” Painter admitted unhappily. “But what about this job? Shayne certainly had time to pull it off just the way I described.”
Will Gentry turned to the Medical Examiner as he came from the death room carrying his satchel. “How about it, Doc? Give us the T.O.D.”
The M.E. was bald-headed and brisk. He said, “Not less than forty-five minutes nor more than an hour and a half.” He looked at his wrist watch. “Two o’clock is the best I can do.”
“Wait a minute, Doc,” Shayne said. “Will you testify that the man must have been dead by two-thirty?”
“Absolutely.”
Shayne said, “Thanks,” and turned to Painter. “What time does Henry say I came into the lobby?”
“He claims it was two-forty-five,” Painter admitted, “but if I were running this investigation I certainly wouldn’t accept that as gospel.”
“Since you’re not running the investigation,” Will Gentry rumbled, “hadn’t you better run along and look for some kidnapers?”
Rourke snickered. Peter Painter’s face flared red. A manicured forefinger shook with impotent rage when he pointed it at Gentry and said, “I acknowledged in the beginning that Farrel might be mistaken as to Shayne’s identity, but I’m convinced his reason for making such a mistake was that he confidently expected the man with Gerta Ross to be Shayne. I’m also convinced that Shayne’s shenanigans tie in with the Deland kidnap pay-off and I shan’t sleep until I prove it.” He went stiffly from the room and slammed the door behind him.
“Does he think Chick Farrel is mixed up in a kidnaping?” Shayne asked incredulously.
Rourke shook his head. “Chick happened to know the dame in the wreck. Painter knows it couldn’t have been you with her, but he’s grilling Farrel trying to establish some connection between you and the blonde kidnap-murderess.”
Shayne sighed and said, “I wish someone would bring me up to date.”
Will Gentry pursed his lips around the cigar and looked balefully at Shayne. He gave a grunt of disgust and disbelief, got up and started toward the death room with a firm stride. He stopped, turned, and said casually, “There was a big fire out on West Thirty-eighth Street a little after two o’clock. Two-story frame house burned down.”
“Anybody hurt?” asked Shayne with interest.
“Not by the fire. But there was a funny thing. A Negro’s body was found in the basement garage by firemen. Face was all torn up-like he’d tangled with a meat chopper.” Gentry hesitated, moving his cigar across his mouth to the other side, then added, “They found part of a whisky bottle with bloody, jagged edges lying close by.” He turned and went on to the bedroom.
“Whisky bottle?” Shayne called out. “It’s a good thing I’m a cognac drinker or they’d be hanging that on me, too.”
“Now why the hell,” asked Rourke when Gentry’s bulky body disappeared into the room, “did he take time out to tell us about that?”
Shayne said, “You never know about Will,” and reached for the bottle.
Chapter Nine
After Gentry’s men had taken pictures and measurements in the bedroom, fingerprinted the entire apartment, and carefully documented the possessions of the dead man, they departed, taking Slocum’s body with them.
Shayne and Timothy Rourke remained on the couch. When Gentry followed his men out of the bedroom he looked tired and harried. Shayne got up, went into the kitchen and put ice cubes and a small quantity of water in a tall glass. He returned and poured cognac in with the water and ice, sloshed it around to mix it, and handed it to Gentry.
He said, “Drink that down, Will, and tell us what you found out in there.”
“Not much of anything, Mike,” he said quietly, belching out a cloud of smoke from a freshly lit cigar. “The dead man appears to be Leonard Slocum, minor executive of an oil firm, recently transferred here from Mobile, Alabama. Contents of his wallet and suitcase are about what you’d expect from a man in his position. No fingerprints in the apartment except yours, his, and another set, probably the maid’s. The vase could be the death weapon. It’s heavy enough, and a man could get a pretty good grip on the neck of it, but the Doc doubts it. More likely the barrel of a heavy gun. Slocum’s prints are on the vase, but they could have been pressed there by the killer as a silly kind of blind after he’d wiped his own prints off. Doc is testing the blood on the vase to see if it’s Slocum’s-or yours, Mike,” he ended solemnly.
Shayne nodded. “What else?”
“Not much,” Gentry sighed. “A few drops of blood on the carpet in here leading to the front door. Didn’t that vase use to stand on the shelf by the door?”
“For years,” Shayne told him. “If someone knocked and Slocum answered the door and was attacked, he could’ve grabbed it to defend himself.”
“Or the killer could have grabbed it to use on him,” Gentry countered. “He may have been attacked right there in the bedroom, by someone who entered with a key and surprised him in bed.”
“What about the blood drops leading to the door?”
“If the killer got slugged he could have dropped those as he went out. Slocum’s about your size, Mike. How many people in Miami knew he’d be sleeping in that bed tonight and that you wouldn’t?”
“Not many.”
“Slocum isn’t the type of man to have many enemies here. Besides, he’s a stranger. On the other hand, Miami is lousy with mugs who’d like nothing better than to knock you off. By the time the killer swung a couple of times and bashed in Slocum’s face, he might not have known the difference.”
Shayne didn’t argue with him or point out several inconsistencies in this theory. At the moment he was quite happy to have the police go on thinking Slocum had been killed as a result of mistaken identity. He wished he could think so, but too many things pointed to Perry and Senator Irvin, with himself as the innocent instigator.
“Why did you come back to Miami so fast?” asked Gentry casually.
Shayne grinned and it hurt his swollen lip. “Didn’t you like the story I told Painter?”
Gentry set his glass down and got up to go over to the coveralls and socks which Shayne had discarded. He bent over them and studied them for a moment, then went back to his chair. “Some garage mechanic has been wearing those coveralls, and there’s old grease on the bottom of your socks.”