“That’s what fooled me. You went to bed with a cold.”
“Don’t try to change the subject,” she said in a determined nasal voice, and gestured with the. 45. The muzzle hole was pointed squarely at Shayne’s chest, and she was squeezing the grip so hard with both hands that he knew the handle safety wouldn’t be operating.
She risked a sideward glance at Deedee and exclaimed, “Why, you’re as naked as a jaybird under that thing!”
The barrel of the. 45 twitched back at Shayne and held steady. “Mister, you just go on holding still while I call the police. If you’ve got an explanation, I don’t want to hear it.”
Shayne started to speak and she repeated, “I don’t want to hear it!”
He said in a conversational tone, “If you squeeze any harder, it’s going to go off. I’m standing still. I intend to go on standing still. Call the cops, by all means. But listen to me a minute first. My name’s Michael Shayne.”
“No, it’s not.”
“I’ll show you my license if you’ll let me take it out.”
“I’m not as foolish as I look. Hold still, you!” she said as Deedee started to move. She pawed out blindly for the phone, upsetting the vaporizer. “I’ll tell you why I know you’re not Michael Shayne. I saw Shayne on TV about one minute after I rode up with you in the elevator. So much for that story.”
“That was a tape,” Shayne said. “They taped it this afternoon. The phone’s just back of your hand. Yeah, right there. Did the Mike Shayne you saw on TV have one arm in a sling?”
“Yes-s,” she admitted. “It was quite a coincidence, I thought.”
“Don’t dial for a minute,” Shayne said as she put the phone on her lap. “I traded that TV interview for some information. I’ve been looking for a missing girl, and here she is.” He pulled the mattress cover aside to reveal the long whip mark across Deedee’s thighs. “They’ve been keeping her upstairs in 9-C, and they locked up her clothes so she couldn’t run away. They showed up at the door before I could get her out. We came down like Batman, which I don’t ever want to have to do again. I’d like to show you the license.”
After a moment, she said reluctantly, “Move your hand a half inch at a time.”
He turned slowly and unbuttoned his hip pocket. Removing the little leather folder, he flicked it open and extended it across the foot of the bed.
“Not so close,” she said. “I’m farsighted.”
He pulled it back slowly until she nodded. He put it away and she aimed the gun somewhere else, to Shayne’s relief.
“I guess that’s who you are, then. Who’s she?”
“I haven’t found out her name yet. You’ve heard about white slavery?”
“Oh, yes-sure. Is she one?”
Shayne nodded gravely.
The woman put the gun aside and pulled back the covers. “Still and all, regardless of how she makes a living, we don’t want her to run around town in her birthday suit, do we?”
She picked a dressing gown off the back of the nearest chair, then changed her mind and went to the closet, from which she took a much tackier garment of dark blue terry-cloth.
“Never mind returning it unless you want to, Mr. Shayne. It’s outlived its usefulness. And I don’t want my name to appear publicly in this in any way.”
Shayne assured her she could count on his discretion. Deedee shrugged into the robe, which was several sizes too large.
“Maybe I can find a pair of slippers you could put on, honey,” the lady said.
“She’s all right barefoot,” Shayne told her. “I’ll look out and see if the coast is clear, anyway,” the lady offered, going to the door. “I could even go down in the elevator with you, if you can wait till I take out the curlers.”
“We’ll be all right now,” Shayne said. “Which way to the stairs?”
She pointed. After they went out she stood in the doorway watching them. Then, with a deep sigh, she turned back into her crowded apartment. The door swung shut behind her.
CHAPTER 10
“And just what is white slavery, may I ask?” Deedee said haughtily on the fire stairs. “If it’s what I think it is-”
Shayne grinned. “Ask your parents.”
“That’s a laugh. First I’d have to find them. What are you going to do with me?”
“What do you think I ought to do?”
She looked at him suspiciously, to see if he was serious. “Why, let me go, as soon as I answer the rest of your questions. I’m going to cooperate a hundred percent. You don’t want to have me arrested. All that red tape, Mr. Shayne, I know how busy you are-”
She trailed off when he failed to reply. Several more times on the way down she tried to continue the subject, but the grim set of his mouth discouraged her. Between the fourth floor and the third, she began to feel dizzy and told him she had to stop and sit down. He ignored her. She pulled his arm in hard against her breast.
“I’m about ready to flop! Honestly and truly. I don’t get enough exercise.”
Shayne still didn’t slow down.
They passed the first floor and continued to the basement. She went on revolving even after Shayne had stopped, reeling back in to clutch him with both hands, the robe flying. He put her aside, opened the door and looked out carefully.
The cinderblock corridor was dimly lit by forty-watt bulbs. Hearing footsteps, Shayne let the door swing nearly shut as a man in work clothes, carrying a mop and a pail, came out of the elevator, left mop and pail in a storage closet and entered another room. Through the open door, Shayne could hear TV voices, the sound of screeching tires, then gunfire. A baby was crying.
He pulled Deedee into the corridor and motioned to her to open a door. She did so. He felt for the light switch and turned it on. It was a storeroom, jammed with bikes, baby carriages, cots and luggage, with three windows high in the back wall.
“What was Jake going to do?” he asked. “Wait to see what happened?”
“Uh-huh. In case you didn’t show up, he’d have to lay a few bills on the cops, to keep everybody happy.”
“Where is he?”
“I guess in his car.”
Shayne snapped his fingers twice and she said hastily, “A new air-conditioned DeSoto, and it’s double-parked at the dead end if he didn’t move it. I’ll show you exactly where. Believe me, Mr. Shayne, I’m cooperating right down the line.”
He put out his hand. “Let’s have the robe.”
She pulled it together defensively. “I won’t try to get away. I won’t budge an inch.”
He continued to hold out his hand. She made a pleading face, but her sense of realism won. “Aah!” She shrugged out of the robe and gave it to him.
“Maybe I’ll walk out of here like this and get a taxi.”
“They’re scarce around here,” he said.
He looked into the corridor. The door of the superintendent’s apartment was still open. He hesitated. He didn’t want any trouble while the raiding party was still in the building.
“O.K., I’m going out the window. When I get out, turn off the light.”
“And what if somebody comes in for a baby buggy or something?”
“Hold still. They’ll think you’re a statue.”
He kicked a trunk into position beneath one of the windows and pulled out the screen. Pushing his cast ahead of him, he pulled himself up and out. The light winked off behind him.
He went around the building. Protected by a screen of low-growing shrubs, he spotted the DeSoto where Deedee had said it would be parked. There was a figure at the wheel.
After a moment’s reflection, Shayne returned to the back of the building and stepped down off the embankment onto the strip of hard sand at the water’s edge. He walked on to the canal, came back up on the embankment and approached the DeSoto from behind.
He pulled open the door on the passenger’s side and slid into the cool interior. The man at the wheel swung around.
Shayne left the door open slightly so the dome light would stay on and they could look at each other. Jake Fitch was swarthy and unshaven, with bushy eyebrows which almost met over a meaty nose. His forearms were hairy, and heavy black hair tufted out of the neck of his shirt, his ears, his nostrils. He was wearing a blue linen cap with some kind of insignia.