“I have part ownership of a property a land company’s offering to pay one million dollars for, that’s what there is about me. I know what makes you tick, beard or no beard, and I hear you ticking.”
“Baby!” Sims exclaimed. “One million bucks! This is news to me. You mean to tell me you have a buyer for Gaspar?”
She gave a silvery laugh. “The reason you don’t own a white convertible of your own is that you’re such a lousy liar.”
He pulled up his blue knitted sports shirt absentmindedly and scratched his stomach. “One, comma, zero zero zero, comma, zero, zero zero. One million bucks. I honestly didn’t hear one word about it. Who would tell me?” Reaching back into his hip pocket, he pulled out an envelope and rapped it on his knee. “I don’t have the funds to hire a private eye. Kitty wants me to give her one of those no-contest decrees. Be polite and get the hell out. You know the bitch-she can’t understand why I want to be nasty when she’s being so civilized, not asking for alimony. Hell! I’m the aggrieved party. I’m the one who ought to get the alimony! She laid your old man, and got paid off with a big one-fifth of his property. One-fourth now. And you tell me that may be worth something in the way of real dough.”
“Hank, men don’t get alimony.”
“That’s going to be changed! She’s got a good job. It begins to dawn on me that I may be unemployable. I know the courts won’t see it my way-they’ve been paying off the wives for too many years. This has to be under the table. Before I sign any papers she’s going to give me a three-year contract. I’ll be her personal-affairs consultant, I’ve got it all worked out. Monthly payments for thirty-six months.”
“Why tell me?”
Opening the envelope, Sims whipped out several sheets of stiff white paper, folded in three. “Just giving you the background. I’ve been tailing the kid. What a crummy thing to do, really. But I had to. It never occurred to me to get any photographs of her in bed with your old man. All right. She’s been going to a certain room in the St. Albans Hotel on the Beach.” He unfolded the papers and slapped them on the table. “And that room is registered to a certain fiance of yours named Francis X. Shanahan, believe it or not, and why should I care if you don’t believe it?”
“Frank-”
“Baby, I checked and I double-checked. I’m like you-I didn’t think it made sense. I thought at first he was loaning a friend of his the key. But when I saw him go into that room on three separate occasions when my wife was inside.” He stabbed at his eyes with his spread fingers. “With these two eyes. He’s a hustler, we know that. Kitty likewise. Well, nobody’s going to hustle me if I can help it. Maybe it isn’t sex. Maybe she’s helping him with his legal research. But it sure looks like sex, and all I’m interested in is the way it looks.”
“Hank, it’s fantastic.”
“I knew you’d say that, which is why I brought along these affidavits.” He shuffled them apart so he could read the signatures. “Robert Truehauf, bellman. Emory J. Sedge, assistant night manager. Helena Csern-Czerniewicz. I can’t pronounce it. Maid. All notarized. Testifying to the occupancy of said premises on said dates and so on-I put it in my version of legal language, probably got it all wrong.”
He poked one of the sheets in front of Barbara and jabbed it with his forefinger. “One time it was all night, anyway till the night man went off shift. All there in black and white. Do you know what you’re looking at, baby doll? You see words. I see dollar signs.”
Shayne, in the tree house, took out an envelope and a pencil and made a quick note.
Barbara snatched the affidavits and threw them at Sims. The corner of one of the stiff pieces hit him in the eye.
“You’re a dirty, crawling person.”
“Dirty?” he said, gathering his sheets and returning them to the envelope. “Crawling? And did I ever have any chance to be different?”
Barbara gave a sudden shriek of laughter which ended in a sob.
“Hell, Babs,” the bearded man said in embarrassment, “I didn’t know it would hit you that hard. I go on the theory that when I’m dying of cancer I want the doctor to tell me. What’s so surprising? You knew he’s a tomcat. He’s always been a tomcat. He’ll always be a tomcat, as long as he has the strength.”
“Shut up! Get out!”
“I’m on my way. I didn’t do this the way I rehearsed it, which is what generally happens. Hell, honey, I know you won’t agree with me now, but I’m doing you a favor. Why be a tackling dummy all your life? If you want somebody’s hairy chest to cry on, mine’s available.”
She threw a coffee cup at him.
“I’m better than nothing!” he shouted. “That’s all I’m saying!”
She went at him with both fists. He tripped on the bunched edge of the carpet and went down. Snatching up the cognac bottle, she hurled it at him. Shayne heard the crash, but she must have missed his head because he came to one knee a moment later and seized her around the waist.
Eda Lou, alarmed, was getting down from her stool to help. But the battle seemed to be over, or at least its nature had changed. Barbara was holding Hank’s shaggy head against her stomach.
“Hank?” she said faintly. “What are you doing?”
Eda Lou changed her mind and came back to the stool. She listened at the mouthpiece for a moment, then stepped up on the stool, reversed the amplifier and put the bell mouth against the screen.
“SIMS, YOU CRUD, QUIT THAT AND GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!” she bellowed.
Shayne had the rheostat all the way up, straining to catch the strangled exchange of dialogue. The sudden roar of the bullhorn almost blew off the top of his head. Barbara and Hank froze.
Shayne’s hand shot toward the rheostat, and at that moment an alien noise, very close, penetrated the static in the earphones. He started to turn, but before he could bring his head all the way around he was hit, very hard, from behind.
chapter 14
The bullhorn went on roaring in his ears. He was trying hard to yell when he lost consciousness.
His first impression was that the Key had blown up around him. He was out of contact with the ground for a time, and then he was plunging down into the crater through a hail of flaming debris. He came to rest at last, and after an unknown period of time he began the long climb back.
When he opened his eyes, the brightness was so painful that he closed them again.
He tried to move. Nothing happened, and he thought at first that his nerve centers were still blocked. Then he discovered that his ankles were bound together and his wrists were lashed behind his back. He was gagged.
He told himself his name and profession. After making that effort he had to rest. Then he told himself where he was. He was on one of the Middle Keys, Key Gaspar. He had been slugged with something hard and jagged. He put his mind to that for a moment. It was unimportant, except that at this stage he had to clear up each confusion before moving on to the next. The nature of the pain suggested something long and narrow, like a spike. He opened his eyes again, and found himself looking directly into the sun. If the sun was up, he had to hurry.
He twitched forward. The earphones and binoculars were gone. The tin can full of cigarette stubs had been knocked over, and stale butts and ashes lay all about him. He twisted so he could look through the hole in the floor. The climbing spikes had been pulled out of their holes and lay scattered about in the long saw-grass at the foot of the tree. In the old days of the buccaneers, prisoners had been either killed or marooned. Though he had been left alive, Shayne had been marooned in a tree house twenty feet in the air.
Arching his back, he was able to see out through the broken wall. The Moorish house, unshaken by the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that had taken place in Shayne’s vicinity, stood where he had last seen it. The surface of the ocean beyond was flat and unoccupied. There was no sign of life anywhere.