A siren began to cry. Anne scratched frantically at the catches of her seat belts. Shayne helped her. After she left the front seat he searched the car. Then he searched Gregory.
“No gun,” he observed.
“Which is lucky for you,” Anne said.
Gregory was trying to sit up when a highway patrol car, its siren dying, pulled in. A highway patrol captain jumped out, his revolver drawn.
“You gave yourself away with that radio call, Shayne,” he announced. “All we had to do was look for a helicopter. You’re under arrest.”
“Shayne’s under arrest?” Anne said bitterly. “Brace yourself, my dear man. You have a few surprises in store.”
CHAPTER 16
Shayne was in no hurry now.
The highway patrolmen wanted to book him for attempted bribery and assaulting a police officer with a Cadillac steering wheel. The county sheriff had questions to ask about a dead man named Ramon Elvirez, found in the grass at the edge of the airport. Then a report came in connecting Shayne with another man, considerably more important, who had been shot to death in a gynecologist’s office. When the state attorney arrived, a tall, gray-haired man with a superficial resemblance to public prosecutors on television, Shayne suggested that everybody collect in a central place, perhaps the bar of the Prince George, and determine who had primary jurisdiction.
Nobody wanted to do it that way. Tim Rourke called the Miami chief of police, a close friend of Shayne’s, and had him talk to the Tallahassee chief of police and the state attorney. Gradually the contending parties came around. Shayne gave them a list of people who could contribute information, and city policemen were dispatched to bring them in.
Sam Rapp, Boots Gregory and Al Luccio arrived with lawyers, obviously under instructions not to utter a single word. Luccio, dark, pudgy, and balding, had shaved with an unsteady hand. His face was crosshatched with cuts.
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” he told his lawyer, and coming up to Shayne, said in a low voice, “If you can swing the vote, Mike, it’s worth twenty G’s.”
“But have you got twenty G’s?” Shayne said. “In cash, not in markers.”
Luccio’s face twitched expressively. “We ought to have a little conference, you know? Sign now, pay later.”
“Al, do what your lawyer tells you. Sit down and shut up.” Lib Patrick and Jackie Wales came in together, both looking great, in their different ways. Jackie pulled up short, seeing the size of the gathering.
Lib remarked, “At least these cops gave me time to get the junk out of my hair. Thanks for holding off. They picked Sam up at the bank at 9:05.”
“Coming out or going in?”
“Coming out.” She drew a deep breath. “It’s such a great feeling.”
“That last half hour must have been pretty tense.”
“You know it.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to cost you some money, even so. You tried to do too much.”
She shot him an alarmed glance and hurried to Sam’s table. Shayne said something quietly to Jackie, who went out to the checkroom and returned with a manila envelope.
Judge Kendrick was the last to arrive. He stumped in, gave Shayne a hot, hard look which Shayne returned, and saying nothing, sat down at a nearby table.
Shayne had lost some of his edge during the long altercation, and he was bringing himself back with a cup of coffee laced with cognac. The barman had been awakened and sent to bed. Two waitresses from the coffee shop were distributing breakfasts and drinks. As soon as that was finished Shayne asked them to leave.
He sat on one of the tables and took another sip of his aromatic coffee.
“I want to thank the distinguished counsellors for letting their clients attend,” he said with a grin. “This isn’t a hearing. It’s an information session, and I hope we’ll all learn something before it’s over.”
The room was silent. He glanced at his watch.
“Nine forty-five. I’ve been in town twenty-four hours. Here’s a partial list of the crimes that have been committed in that time, all but a few of them by people in this room-bribery, blackmail, more bribery, kidnapping, extortion, robbery, assault, arson, and murder. We’ve got a jurisdictional tangle. We’ve spent a couple of hours trying to sort things out, but the more we talk about it, the worse it seems to get. Somebody’s obviously going to end up in a court of law, but first we have to agree on what actually happened. This is a political town, and before we finish our coffee I suppose we’ll make some deals. Counsellors, are you paying attention?”
They were. They had refused food and drink, and were sitting forward in their chairs, ready to jump.
“The big thing everybody has to understand,” Shayne went on, “and I don’t think I’ve convinced the state attorney of this yet, is that what we have here is a confidence game. A very good confidence game that worked, and it’s one of the few things nobody’s going to be charged with. Boots.” Shayne had waited till Gregory was about to take a sip of coffee, and he spoke sharply. Some of the coffee sloshed over.
“What?”
“Am I right in believing that you’re the new owner of the Regency Hotel in Miami Beach?”
Gregory glanced at his lawyer. “What about it?”
“Sam Rapp put a certified check in the bank about an hour ago. Would you mind telling us the amount of that check?”
The lawyer considered, and nodded. “The tax stamp makes it a matter of public record.”
“Seven-hundred-and-fifty thousand,” Gregory said. “Cash over mortgages. It’s a six-million dollar property.”
“Well, you got stuck,” Shayne said. “It may mean you’ll have trouble meeting your legal fees, but that’s your lawyer’s problem. We have an expert on Miami Beach real estate values with us. Tim, how much is the Regency worth?”
Tim Rourke, at the end of the bar, looked into his highball. “If the bill passes,” he said judiciously, “I’d say about six million. That old ballroom would make a nice casino. If the bill doesn’t pass, about forty-nine cents.”
“That may be a little high,” Shayne said. “The next question goes to Judge Kendrick. As of this moment, what are the bill’s chances?”
“After what happened last night and this morning?” the judge snapped. “We’ve been given a very convincing demonstration of hoodlum methods and hoodlum morality. The bill is dead.”
“Then that’s about it. But don’t complain about hoodlums, because the non-hoodlums haven’t done too well either. Of course we know now that the bill never had a chance. That was the con.”
He was watching Anne Braithwaite. She sat forward to look narrowly at Boots. Gregory hadn’t reacted yet, it would take a little more time.
“I’ve been at the Regency at the height of the season and seen nothing but free riders in the lobby,” Shayne said. “But don’t feel sorry for Sam-he’s had free rent all these years. Things get to look old-fashioned fast in Miami Beach. Even if you sunk a million bucks in renovations-”
“With a million,” Sam put in, causing his lawyer to stir uneasily, “you could barely get started.”
“And even then you couldn’t count on bringing the customers back. When you’re paying out more than you take in, it’s hard to find a buyer. The smart move would be to go bankrupt, but Sam had a position in town and he couldn’t do it that way.”
“It was never that bad,” Sam observed amiably. “Still, I’m not denying it’s nice to unload.”
“Now I have to say a few things about Lib Patrick,” Shayne said. “She’s really the heroine. I don’t think she’s killed anybody. She’s had a live-in arrangement with Sam for seven or eight years. It isn’t a job, so there’s no retirement plan. It isn’t a marriage, so there’s no social security. Lib has to face the fact that Sam is likely to die first, and he’s not really a rich man. That may surprise you, Boots. But at a certain point a half dozen years ago, Sam had to make a choice. He could go on taking the top man’s cut, and go on battling and conniving and scything the young kids down before they got big enough to be dangerous. And what kind of life is that? So he resigned the money and settled for the reputation, and he’s been enjoying himself ever since. Am I right, Sam?”