“I’m using the TV interview to get a message to the girl,” Shayne said. “I still don’t know. I had the feeling she was reading her lines from cue cards.”
“I’ll go with you,” Rourke offered. “I’ve got both arms.”
Shayne shook his head. “She’s skittish enough as it is. But I think I’ll look the place over before dark. Did you get any leads to people who knew Langhorne?”
Rourke felt in all his pockets and produced an envelope on which he had jotted down a list of names and phone numbers. Replenishing his cup from time to time, Shayne worked his way down the list. The general feeling among Langhorne’s friends was that he had been frugal about things he regarded as unimportant, and lived within his income. He had been well liked, and he would be missed.
A new nurse came in as he hung up after the final call. She was stout and red-faced, with a mustache, muscular forearms and a fierce baritone.
“Miss Manners says you won’t eat, you won’t let yourself be bathed, you’re refusing medication. Very well, Mr. Shayne. You want to be fed intravenously, is that it?”
“As a matter of fact,” Shayne said, swinging his legs out of bed, “I was just checking out”
CHAPTER 8
From the TV studio Shayne drove to Buena Vista. Shifting was his main problem. He had to hold the wheel with his knees while reaching awkwardly across to the gear panel with his right hand.
He was wearing a light yellow pullover. Dr. Baumgartner’s multipurpose cast was surprisingly light, but so bulky that the nurse had had to slit the left sleeve before she could get it on him. He was carrying it in a full sling, with the knot in front where he could reach it in a hurry.
He checked the number written on his cast and found the address the girl had given him. It was one of a line of apartment buildings, concrete and glass slabs. A sign in front announced that a few efficiency apartments were still available, all with terraces. After parking the Buick, Shayne fished in his side pocket for the watch he usually wore on his left wrist. It was ten minutes to six. The news program for which he had taped an exchange of questions and answers would go on in another ten minutes.
There was no doorman. He checked the apartment directory. The 9-C slot was empty.
He was standing at the locked inner door, a key in his hand, when a lady in a flowered dress came in from the court. He gestured ruefully with the key.
“It can’t be done with one hand,” he said. “When you turn the key, you can’t turn the knob. When you turn the knob, you can’t turn the key.”
“Oh, let me!”
She used her own key and held the door for him. He thanked her and they rode up together. She left the elevator at eight. Shayne went on to nine and looked for 9-C. Here, too, there was no name over the buzzer. He checked the time again; it was a minute after six. If a TV set had been on inside the apartment, he would have heard it through the poorly fitted door. He rang the bell.
There was no answer, and he went to work on the door. He had his regular assortment of lock picking equipment, but for most of it he needed two hands. He forced a succession of flexible shims between the latch and the metal strike-plate, building up the pressure slowly until the latch came back. Then he held the shims with the hook, shifted hands carefully and turned the knob. The hook shifted, digging a long splinter out of the wood.
He entered and turned on the light.
He was surprised to see a room with no curtains or carpets. There was a three-quarter bed, but no other furniture. Even the bed, a simple box spring and mattress, had no bedding except for a cotton mattress cover. There were two naked pillows.
There were signs that the room had been used, however-a filled ashtray on the floor by the bed, several crumpled tissues marked with lipstick, a pack of chewing gum, two empty glasses. Shayne picked up one of the glasses and sniffed at it. It smelled of gin.
Bothered by the gouge he had left in the doorframe, Shayne unwrapped a stick of gum. He found the splinter on the floor. After chewing the stiffness out of a small piece of gum, he pressed it into the raw scar, then pressed the splinter on top of that. Hearing sounds farther down the hall, he let the door click shut.
He snapped off the light and faded out to the little terrace. After a wait of several moments, he came back, turned on the light again and continued his inventory of the almost empty apartment. In the kitchen there was a saucepan, a teaspoon, two dime-store mugs, a jar of powdered coffee, in the bathroom medicine cabinet a jar of aspirin, a single toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste.
He returned to the main room, his forehead furrowed with concentration. He could kill two hours in a neighborhood bar, or go back to his Buick and do some more phoning. Or he could depart completely from the girl’s instructions and wait here. Making up his mind abruptly, he took one of the pillows from the bed, turned off the ceiling light and went out to the terrace.
Here he discovered the cramped little apartment’s single virtue. The terrace, though not much larger than a seat on a Ferris wheel, had a view across the bay to the strange and interesting shapes of the tourist hotels along Miami Beach. He closed the glass double doors and lit a cigarette. After smoking it, he flicked the butt over the concrete railing and watched its long downward arc end in the water. Then he sat down on the floor, jamming the pillow against the wall behind him.
His wrist was aching. Time went slowly.
At a little after seven he was lying on his back on the concrete, his wrist supported on the doubled pillow, when he heard a key being inserted in a lock. He sat up hurriedly. A door in the apartment opened. The ceiling light came on and two barred rectangles of light fell onto the terrace floor beside him.
“Home sweet home,” a man said hoarsely. “What a pad. With his dough he could do better.”
He was answered by the same voice Shayne had heard on the phone, the voice of a young girl. “His wife keeps him penned up, practically. He gave me a hundred to buy a couple of chairs, but you know me, Jake. There don’t seem to be enough minutes in the day.”
She laughed. The man said, “How about a little fresh air in here before we pass out?”
Shayne shifted his weight. Footsteps approached the terrace door. He fingered the outline of the short scalpel under its thin coating of plaster and made ready to jump. The door opened. He saw a hand and arm.
“Deedee baby,” the man said, turning back, “start getting ready, will you? We’ve got time, but let’s not slice it too close.”
“I said eight on the dot,” the girl replied, “and all about how I’d buzz if it was O.K. to come up, so what are we worried about?”
“Because this is Mike Shayne,” the man said. “He can make you some fast moves. One against three last night, and you’ll notice he won.”
“Now you’re getting me all goose-bumpy again! Right after you put a couple of hours into calming me down. This is going to blow up on us, I know it. I just know it. I told you how he was on the phone. He smelled something.”
“He was woozy, kid. He just came out of the anesthetic. Now shut up unless you want a mouthful of knuckles. Get undressed.”
“Jake! Golly, that’s what I don’t like-all the way down. Couldn’t I keep on my pants?”
“No, you couldn’t keep on your pants. That’s not the idea. Will you hurry it up? I want to get out of here.”
“You want to get out of here,” she said. “I can understand that, because I want to get out of here.”
There were sounds that might have been made by a girl undressing. On the terrace, Shayne eased himself to his feet, cradling the cast in his good arm to quiet the throbbing.