He took her full weight. One of her rollers scraped his face.
He pivoted, walked her back into her room, and kicked the door shut. He felt her stiffen in his arms before he had her as far as the bed. She wrenched herself away and looked at him in horror.
“If you scream,” he told her, “I’ll knock your teeth down your throat. I mean that.”
“I can’t stand the sight of…”
Rather than say the word, she fainted again. He guided her down onto the bed. Inside the baggy pajamas, her body was firm and well muscled.
He picked up the phone and gave the operator a number. She reported no answer. After two more attempts, while the unconscious woman sprawled on the bed continued to breathe raspingly, he located Tim Rourke at a bridge game in Bal Harbour. Rourke had recently discovered the narcotic pull of this game. He played it erratically but with passion, sometimes losing half a week’s pay in one all-night session. He kept claiming that his luck was about to improve, that it couldn’t continue this bad, and that meanwhile he was meeting a lot of very bright people.
“Tim.”
The tone was enough. They had been friends for years and had been in and out of various kinds of trouble. Rourke answered quietly. Shayne picked up the woman’s hotel key and read the room number.
“Right away.”
“My friends here won’t like it,” Rourke said. “Bridge is a four-handed game. And there’s a lady who I think may be getting interested in me; so will you guarantee that it’s important?”
“Do you remember Keko Brannon?”
“Yeah?”
“What if that wasn’t a suicide?”
“Be right there,” Rourke said hastily. “Don’t disappear.”
Putting the phone back, Shayne found the woman on the bed staring up at him, her mouth still open. Shayne took out his wallet and showed her his license, but her eyes didn’t leave his face. She made a whimpering sound.
“Through no fault of my own,” Shayne said, “I happened to be in the room across the hall when a bomb went off. A woman was killed. I didn’t kill her. I’ve just phoned a friend of mine, a reporter on one of the papers. I’ll explain everything when he gets here. Right at this moment, I don’t want to tangle with the Miami Beach cops. Some of them are halfway intelligent, but people expect them to be stupid, so they make you repeat everything a dozen times. The truth is, there isn’t much I can tell them.”
“I can’t stand the sight of blood.”
“Then close your eyes,” Shayne told her. “Did you hear one word of anything I just said?”
“Are you Michael Shayne?”
“Yeah, is that good or bad?”
“I’ve heard so many conflicting stories. You’re supposed to be so… I don’t know, so…”
Her hand came up and touched her curlers.
“Where are you from?” he said.
“New York. I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth. I’m down on vacation. I’m a phys ed teacher. Booker T. Washington Junior High.”
“That’s nice. Do you have anything to drink here?”
She came up on her elbows. “I don’t drink. You probably think it’s funny that someone in my business has this thing about blood. But if one of my girls skins her knee, I’m likely to keel over. I shouldn’t even be talking about it. If you’re going to be staying here — and it seems you are — will you please, please, rinse off your shoes?”
“In a minute.”
He went to the door and listened to the commotion outside in the corridor. Checking rooms, Lindholm and his people had found the dead girl. Shayne turned.
“They may be banging on the door in a minute. Then again they may not. We were all pretty excited. I need a shower; and don’t try anything, because some of my pleasantest memories are of beating up lady gym teachers.”
“Phys ed,” she said. Looking determinedly away so her gaze wouldn’t be drawn to his bloody shoes, she said, “Go ahead, I won’t yell for help. I’m not that easy to beat up, as a matter of fact.”
He moved the phone to the end of its cord and left it on the floor where he could see it from the bathroom. He didn’t close the bathroom door or that of the shower stall.
“I’ve seen naked men before,” she called. “It isn’t that big an experience.”
He soaped up quickly and rinsed off. He came out a moment later with one of the skimpy hotel towels knotted about his waist. The woman had removed the curlers, wiped off her face cream, and put on lipstick.
She wasn’t bad looking, Shayne observed. She laid two crumpled cigarettes side by side on the bedside table. Her eyes flicked to Shayne.
“I can guess how tense you feel; and if you’d care to join me in a joint…”
“But you don’t believe in drinking.”
“These are better for you. They really are.”
She lit one and passed it to him after filling her lungs. She breathed out luxuriously.
“That feels so good. This is my first trip to Miami Beach; and it hasn’t been so marvellously exciting, frankly. If you don’t know anybody… People are basically shy; and when, like me, you’re not much of a boozer…”
Shayne was at the door, listening, his eyes slitted against the smoke. She had already lit the second joint.
“Of course to get the full benefit, you’re supposed to let go — sorry, you want to think; go right ahead, I understand.”
He kept checking the time. Rourke in a hurry was a menace in an automobile, and Shayne hoped that all the other drivers between Bal Harbour and the St. Albans would see him coming and get out of the way. He began pacing about the room.
The woman on the bed, crossing and uncrossing her ankles, said finally, “I wonder if I ought to be so trusting. You could be a total impostor. And even if you’re genuine, how do you think you’ll get out of here without any clothes on? With the corridor swarming with fuzz? I think you’ll have to spend the night and hope they won’t be looking for you in the morning.” She added thoughtfully, “And I hardly know you.”
“I have a change of clothes in my car. Tim Rourke’s going downstairs to get it for me in return for the inside track on a very big story. Thanks for the pot. I needed it. She was lying to me some of the time; but by the end, I was actually beginning to like that girl.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about; but I’ve been pretty good about not asking questions, haven’t I?”
“You’ve been fine.”
“What I’m wondering is — will anybody believe any of this when I get back to New York?”
There was a knock on the door. Shayne opened it carefully and admitted Tim Rourke, a tall, bony individual with the more usual type of cigarette in his mouth. As was often the case with Rourke, he looked as though he had spent several days in the same clothes. He walked in eagerly, his head thrust forward at the end of his long neck.
“Are you involved in that thing across the hall?”
“I’ve just been washing off the blood.”
“Please,” the girl on the bed said faintly.
Shayne waved at her. “Introduce yourself. She’s been very hospitable, but she hasn’t told me her name.”
“Jane.”
Rourke sniffed the air. “Hospitable is the word. Here I went to the trouble of bringing you some booze. What was that on the phone about Keko Brannon?”
“I wanted to get you here fast; so I used the hottest name I had. All I know is what two people told me. What have you got — whiskey?”