8
Shayne rose early the next morning, showered, shaved, dressed and ate breakfast and, twenty minutes later, was striding through the downstairs lobby to the door. He stopped suddenly, turned back to the desk, picked up the phone and dialed Sylvester’s home.
Mrs. Santos answered, her voice tired and worried. No, Sylvester hadn’t come home or called and she didn’t know where he was. Shayne pronged the receiver, made for the door again and long-legged it to where he had parked his car the night before.
The gray Buick was parked a few cars behind it. The redhead passed, then whirled impulsively and stared boldly for half a minute at the man behind the wheel. He didn’t recognize the face but he would again, undistinctive as it was. The man was about average height with straight black hair thinning a little on top, and lidless eyes, like a snake’s. His skin had that peculiarly dry look which comes as the result of a bad case of acne at puberty. He wore a wilted seersucker suit and no hat. Under Shayne’s gaze, he shifted uneasily, lifting one hand to wipe self-consciously at his long upper lip. The hand was thin and bony, with big knuckles and visible veins.
Shayne waved genially, wryly amused at the startled and defensive look the gesture brought, turned and strode to his own car.
Speeding along Biscayne Boulevard, he turned east to the Causeway leading to the Beach. The morning was already hot. Sun beat on the road, making a mirror of it and intensifying the vivid flower colors along its edge. There was no wind, Spanish moss hung stiffly from the trees.
Through the rear-view mirror Shayne kept an eye on the tailing Buick, realizing suddenly that a green car which had pulled out from the curb too when he left his apartment was holding close behind the Buick. Was it possible that, this morning, he had two tails?
He crossed the Causeway and turned south, the two cars still with him, finally pulling in the parking lot at the head of the long slip where Sylvester’s boat was moored. Most of the other boats were already out, leaving the Santa Clara almost alone.
Near her on the wharf, a tall man was bent over, concentrating on something. As Shayne strode closer he recognized him as Slim, the lazy one from Philadelphia, who had lain on his back all day without doing anything more energetic than tilting a rum highball. He was the do-it-yourself man whose hobby was mechanics, according to Sylvester. This morning he had a different hobby. He was cleaning a fish.
He looked up from the mess of blood and guts as Shayne’s shadow fell across him. “Oh, hello, Mike.”
“Good morning. Is Sylvester around?”
“No, he’s down the coast somewhere. Be gone a day or two, he said.”
“What did he do, walk?” Shayne eyed the Santa Clara.
“Nope. Got a lift.”
“Boat or car?”
There was an instant’s hesitation before Slim said, “Car.”
“What did he go for?”
“There’s a boat he wanted to look at.”
“How come?”
“I think he’s considering a trade.”
“What’s the matter with this boat? You boys just put a new engine in her, didn’t you?”
“Turned out to be a dog.”
“Since yesterday?”
Slim shrugged and went on scraping his fish with the thoroughness of a good Dutch housewife.
“I thought the engine sounded pretty good,” Shayne persisted.
“Doesn’t develop the speed it ought to. Sylvester said his old one was faster. Sylvester’s hell for speed.”
“How’d he know? You boys never let him let it out?”
“He did, I guess. When we weren’t with him.”
“Yesterday he was telling me how good it was.”
“That was yesterday. Today he didn’t like it. You know how these Portuguese are.”
“He’s not Portuguese. He’s Cuban.”
“Same difference.”
Shayne was silent. The only sound was the rasping of Slim’s heavy knife against the fish scales. Without looking up, Slim said, “This is that grouper you caught yesterday. Hope you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Want a piece of him?”
“No.”
“Got to thinking-” Slim seemed to feel it necessary to explain-“it’s kind of silly to be down here in the world’s fishing paradise and never eat any fish. So I came down this morning to get this one. I’ll clean it up and have the chef at the hotel cook it for me.”
“It’s a pretty big fish.”
“I’ll need it. Some of the boys are coming in to play poker this afternoon. Fish and beer and poker-that ought to be a good combo, hull?”
“Pretty good.” Shayne frowned down at the bloody mess on the wharf planks. “You know, they’d clean it for you at the hotel as well as cook it, if you asked them.”
“Yeah, but I’ve got a thing about fish. I got to know they’re cleaned good. Never eat ’em unless I clean ’em myself.”
“That’s a lot of blood from one fish.”
“It’s a big fish.”
“It’s still a lot of blood.”
Slim shrugged, still not looking up. “I wouldn’t know. I heard groupers are running bloody this season.”
“Hogwash! A grouper’s a grouper, this season or any other.”
“Maybe you’re right.” The knife kept scraping. The scales spattered.
Shayne shot his half-smoked cigarette irritably into the water. A black depression was growing within him. “I think I’ll go aboard for a minute.”
Slim looked up for almost the first time since the redhead had come. “O.K. Help yourself.”
Shayne stepped across and prowled around the cockpit, cabin and deck. It was the same as last night; everything was in place. He leaped from the gunnel back to the dock and then, looking back, he noticed that the coil of rope on the deck forward had no anchor attached to it.
“Where’s the anchor?”
Slim had finished cleaning the fish and was lowering a bucket on a rope over the side of the dock to get water to sluice away the blood and fish offal that was already attracting flies. “Anchor ring needed a weld. Somebody picked it up for the fix after we came in last night.”
Had the anchor been there when he looked over the boat last night? Shayne couldn’t be sure.
As Slim moved in from the dock edge with the bucket of water, Shayne stepped in ahead of him, took off his hat and mopped his forehead. The handkerchief slipped from his hand and landed in the fish blood.
“Too bad,” Slim drawled as Shayne bent to pick it up. “Better throw it away. It’ll smell like hell of fish.”
“It’ll wash out.” Shayne folded the handkerchief so the blood was inside and returned it to his pocket.
Slim tossed the water forcefully from the bucket onto the bloody planks and turned back to dip up some more.
“Funny how things go,” Shayne said. “I ran into Ed last night.”
“Yeah? Where?”
“Seance. At Madame Swoboda’s.”
Slim laughed shortly. “Yeah, his wife goes for that stuff. Sometimes she drags him along.”
“You ever go?”
“Once, for kicks. There weren’t any.”
“You staying at Ed’s hotel?”
“Yeah. Blue Grotto.”
“What about Vince?”
“He’s at the Mirador.”
“What’s his last name?”
“Becker.” Slim gave him a probing look. “Why you so interested all of a sudden?”
“I’m not sure I am, yet.” Shayne turned abruptly and started walking back to his car. “See you around.”
“O.K.” Slim sloshed more water on the wharf.
Before starting the motor Shayne sat staring off over the water, his gray eyes bleak, his face deeply trenched. His feeling of depression had not abated, and now a slow fury grew within him. He thought of Sylvester’s neat cabin and of his love for the boat and a lump choked his throat. Still… there was nothing rational to go on yet.
He gunned the engine and moved out into the traffic stream headed for the Causeway to Miami. His two tails stayed with him, but they were the least of his worries now. On Biscayne he slammed on the brakes in front of a just-opened bar, parked and went in. He ordered a Hennessy from a pale and disinterested-looking bartender, downed it in one gulp, strode to a phone booth in the rear and scanned the yellow pages of the directory. Only a few blocks away, he found a medical laboratory run by a William Fox.