“On the contrary.” Gordon considered his cigar with approval. “I’ve got a job for a private dick. One that can keep clammed and isn’t too thick with the local police.”
Shayne said, “I’m listening.”
Gordon blew a lazy smoke ring and asked, “Want a drink?”
“Call your shots,” said Shayne. He stretched out his long legs and looked out the window at the palm-fringed shore of the Beach beyond the shimmer of Biscayne Bay.
Gordon called, “Bring in a couple of setups, Dick.”
They both smoked in meditative silence. Shayne heard the clink of glasses through the open door on the left. From where he sat he could see into the open bathroom which led off to the right. The outer surface of the door opening inward to the bathroom was a full-length mirror which reflected the interior of another connecting bedroom on the other side of the bathroom.
The lights were on in the inner room, and a woman was sitting before a low vanity making up her face. Her back was toward the bathroom, and Shayne contemplated the reflection with idle disinterest. It was a youthful back. The curve at the base of the woman’s head was youthful, and the dark bobbed hair had a sheen.
A sleek youth came through the other door with a tray bearing two Tom Collins setups. Glossy black hair grew low on his forehead. His complexion was pasty, and his nose was beaked. He was foppishly dressed. He looked as though he might have enjoyed pulling the wings from flies when he was a child-as though he might still enjoy it. There was a slight bulge just in front of his left armpit. He set the tray on the table with a furtive glance at Shayne, hesitated, and then went out as silently as though he walked on tiptoe.
Gordon mixed the drinks with care and handed one to Shayne. They both drank from the frosted glasses. Gordon asked, “How big an outfit do you have?”
“I work alone.” Shayne frowned at his glass. “But I have plenty of good men on the string I can call in when I need help.”
“I noticed,” said Gordon, “that you don’t have an office listed in the telephone book.”
Shayne shook his head and didn’t say anything.
“You’ll need all the men you can get for this job I have in mind,” Gordon went on.
“I’ll get all I need.” Shayne drained his glass and set it down. The girl in the inner room had turned her head and was leaning forward putting an earbob in her left ear. He could see her reflected profile and it was startlingly beautiful. Clean-cut, classic features with an indefinable air of hauteur which didn’t quite ring true.
“You’ll have to get on it right away,” Gordon was saying. “It’s pretty damned important.”
“Then,” Shayne suggested, “let’s get down to brass cracks.” The girl had turned her head and was putting on the other earbob. Shayne had a hunch she knew he was watching her through the reflection.
“Here it is.” Gordon emptied his glass and thumped it down. “A man named D. Q. Henderson is due in town in the next few days. Today, perhaps. He may be traveling under a different name. I want to know the minute he hits Miami.”
“How’s he coming? Where will he go when he gets here?”
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t be hiring you if I knew the answers.”
Shayne rubbed his bony chin thoughtfully. “It’s a big order. Tell me more about the man. There are two railroads, a couple of airplane lines, several boats, and a lot of highways bringing people into this man’s town every day. And a lot of them hitchhike, and others come on their private yachts.”
“You can disregard the last two you mention,” Gordon told him thinly.
“Which doesn’t help a hell of a lot,” Shayne grunted. The girl had arisen and was moving toward the bathroom untying the sash of her silken negligee. Her eyes were demurely downcast, and he felt she was putting on an act for his benefit. Inside the bathroom she dropped the negligee from her shoulders, and he had a glimpse of brassiere, brief pants, and white flesh before she closed the door softly.
Seemingly unconscious of the direction and intent of Shayne’s gaze, Gordon said suavely, “If you don’t feel that you can handle the job, say so and quit wasting my time.”
Shayne said, “Mother of God! Do you expect me to meet every incoming tourist and ask him if his name is D. Q. Henderson?”
Gordon’s eyes lost the expressiveness of two marbles. His gaze was remote, yet it had a probing quality. Shayne dredged up a grin with some difficulty, remembering the eyes of a captive Gila monster he had once seen.
He stiffened when Gordon’s hand slipped inside his coat, and relaxed when the hand came out bearing some folded papers. Gordon sorted the papers over and handed a small but very distinct photograph of a spare, middle-aged man, with a high forehead and a clipped mustache.
“There’s your man.”
Shayne studied the photograph. “I can have copies made. Is he likely to disguise himself and try to slip in? In other words-does he know the finger is being put on him?”
“Mr. Henderson,” Gordon told him, “is one of the best-known art critics in the United States. He’ll not be after any publicity, but I don’t think he’ll try to slip in.”
Shayne nodded glumly. “It’s a job. I’ll put some good men on it right away. And that’ll cost you plenty.”
“How much?” Gordon’s hand went inside his coat again. This time, Shayne didn’t stiffen. Gordon laid a flat wallet on the table and looked at Shayne with heavy eyebrows lifting in a straight line toward the roots of his hair.
“I’ll take a grand for a retainer.”
Gordon’s eyebrows stayed up in a straight line across his forehead. “I’m not hiring you to bump the President.”
Shayne stood up and said, “What the hell? This isn’t piker stuff. You’re wasting my time.”
Gordon stood up, too. His face was unsmiling, square-cornered. “You’re pretty tough.”
“Tough enough.” Looking past Gordon, Shayne saw the sleek youth lounging in the inner doorway with a look of greedy hope on his face. Thin fingers were clawing toward the bulge under his left arm.
Shayne turned his back on the young man. His lips came back from his teeth wolfishly, and he said, “I’ve changed my mind. It’ll be two grand.”
Gordon began to smile. It was a curious and complicated process. His lips spread open and the upper portion of his face seemed to lift away from mouth and jaw, making not unpleasant crinkles in the hard flesh.
He said, “You and I’ll get along,” and lifted two one-thousand-dollar bills from his wallet.
Shayne accepted them without emotion. He had Henderson’s picture in his left hand. “Let me get this straight. You don’t want this guy hurt or detained? You want him tailed as soon as he hits town-and word sent to you?”
“That’s it.” Gordon went toward the door. “I don’t want him bothered at all except I don’t want him to communicate with anyone in Miami until I have a talk with him.”
Shayne lit a cigarette and muttered, “It would help a hell of a lot if I knew where he was likely to go when he arrives.”
Gordon stared at him for a moment, then came to a decision. “Henderson will likely register at a hotel first. He might not. He might go directly to the Beach or stop to telephone the Brighton residence over there. That two grand is to keep him from doing that.”
“Why the hell didn’t you say so at first?”
When Gordon opened the door without replying, Shayne went on. “The Brightons? Rufus Brighton? That’s where they had a murder last night.”
“So it is,” Gordon agreed curtly. He was holding the door open.
Shayne went out, saying, “I’ll be around when I need more expense money.”
Gordon stood in the doorway and watched him go down the hall. He closed the door when Shayne stopped at the elevators and pushed the button.
In the ornate lobby, Shayne turned to his right from the elevators and went into a cubbyhole of an office with no sign on the door. He said, “Hello, Carl,” to the fleshy man who sat behind a littered desk.
Carl Bolton was the house dick on duty. He was bald, and had a pleasant, vacuous face. He leaned back and lifted a pudgy hand. “Hi, Mike.”