“Hey! Is it due to break?”
“It’s coming to a head fast. Get dressed and hunt up Will Gentry if you want some headlines. Don’t, for God’s sake, tell him I tipped you, but stick to him like a leech.” Shayne hung up and drove to Renaldo’s saloon.
Blackie jumped up nervously from his seat beside Renaldo’s desk when Shayne pushed the door open. He sucked in his breath and stared with bulging eyes at the result of his work on the detective’s face, while his hand instinctively went to his hip pocket.
Behind him, Lennie leaned against the wall with his hand in his coat pocket. Lennie’s features were lax and his eyes were filmed like a dead man’s. The left side of his pallid face twitched uncontrollably as Shayne looked at him.
Seated behind the desk, chewing savagely on a cigar, Henry Renaldo looked fearfully from the boys to Shayne. He said, “I don’t know what you’re up to, Mike. The boys didn’t much like the idea—”
Shayne closed the door and laughed heartily. He said, “Hell, there’s no hard feelings. I’m still alive and kicking.”
Blackie drew in another deep breath. He essayed a nervous smile. “We thought maybe you was sore.”
Shayne said gently, “You got a pretty heavy foot, Blackie.”
“Yeah.” Blackie hung his head like a small boy being reprimanded. “But you come bustin’ in with a gun, an’ Jeez! what’d you expect?”
“That was my mistake,” Shayne admitted. “I always run into trouble when I pack a rod. That’s why I’m clean now.” He lifted his arms away from his sides. “Want to shake me down?”
“That’s all right.” Renaldo laughed with false heartiness. “No harm done, I guess. The boys’ll forget it if you will.”
“Whatcha want with us?” Lennie demanded thinly.
“I need your help,” Shayne said bluntly. “I’ve run into something too big for me to handle, and after seeing you guys in action last night I think you’re the ones I need.”
“That’s white of you,” Blackie mumbled.
“I never hold a grudge if it’s going to cost me money,” Shayne told them briskly. “Here’s the lay.” He spoke directly to Renaldo. “I can put my hands on plenty of French cognac — same as the case you bought last night. And this won’t cost us a hundred a case. It won’t cost us anything if we play it right.”
Renaldo licked his lips. “So the old captain did talk before he died?”
“Not to me. I got onto it from another angle. Interested?”
“Why are you cutting us in?” Renaldo protested. “Sounds like some kind of come-on to me.”
“I need help,” Shayne said smoothly. “There’s another mug in my way and he’s got a couple of torpedoes gunning for me. I need a couple of lads like Blackie and Lennie to handle that angle. After that’s cleared up, I still need somebody with the right connections like you, Renaldo. I haven’t any setup for handling sales. You know all the angles from ’way back. And since you put me onto it in the first place I thought you might as well have part of the gravy. Hell, there’s plenty for all of us,” he added generously. “A whole shipload of that same stuff.”
“Sounds all right,” Renaldo admitted cautiously.
“I’m the only one standing in this other guy’s way,” Shayne explained. “So he plans to put me on the spot. I’ve got a date to meet him out in the country this morning, and I know he’ll have a couple of quick-trigger boys on hand to blast me out of the picture.” He turned to Blackie. “That’s where you and Lennie come in. I’m not handing you anything on a platter. This is hot, and if you’re scared of it just say so and I’ll find someone else.”
Blackie grunted contemptuously. “Lennie and me can take care of ourselves, I reckon.”
“That’s what I thought after last night. Both of you ironed?”
“Sure. When do we start?”
“Well, that’s it,” Shayne told Renaldo. “You sit tight until the shooting’s over. If things work out right we’ll do a four-way split and there should be plenty of grands to go around. I’m guessing at five hundred cases, but there may be more,” he ended casually.
Renaldo took his cigar from his mouth and wet his lips. “Sounds plenty good to me. You boys willing to go along?”
Both of them nodded.
Shayne said briskly, “We’d better get started. I’m due south of Homestead at eleven o’clock.” He led the way out to his car and opened the back door. “Maybe both of you will feel better if you ride in back where you can keep an eye on me.”
“We ain’t worryin’ none about you,” Blackie assured him, but they both got in the back seat while Shayne settled himself under the wheel.
In the rear-view mirror he could see the pair conferring together earnestly. Both sides of Lennie’s face were getting the twitches and his hands trembled violently when he lit a cigarette. He took only a couple of drags on it, then screwed up his face in disgust and threw it out.
Shayne said sympathetically to Blackie, “Your pal doesn’t seem to feel so hot this morning.”
“He’s all right,” Blackie muttered. “Sorta got the shakes is all.”
Shayne said, “He’d better get over them before the shooting starts.”
Lennie caught Blackie’s arm and whispered something in his ear. Blackie cleared his throat and admitted uneasily, “Tell you what. He could use somethin’ to steady him all right. You know.”
Shayne said, “Sure. I know. Any place around here we could pick up a bindle?”
“Sure thing,” Lennie said, violently eager. “Couple of blocks ahead. If I had two bucks.”
Shayne drove on two blocks and pulled up to the curb. He passed four one-dollar bills back to Lennie and suggested, “Get two bindles, why don’t you? One to pick you up now and the other for just before the fun starts.”
Lennie grabbed the money and scrambled out of the car. He hurried up the street and darted into a stairway entrance.
Blackie laughed indulgently as he watched him disappear. “You hadn’t orta give him the price of two bindles,” he reproved Shayne. “He’ll be plenty high in an hour from now on one. ’Nother one on top of it will pull him tight as a fiddle string. Like he was last night,” he added darkly.
Shayne said, “I want him in shape to throw lead fast. Those boy who’ll be waiting for me may not waste much time getting acquainted.” He lit a cigarette and slouched back in the seat.
Lennie came trotting back in about five minutes. His pinched face was alive and eager and his eyes glowed like live coals. He slid in beside Blackie and breathed exultantly, “Le’s get goin’. Jeez, is my trigger finger itchin’.”
Shayne drove swiftly south on Flagler, past Coral Gables and on to the village of South Miami, then along the Key West highway through the rich truck-farming section with its acres of tomatoes and bean fields stretching in every direction as far as the eye could see.
By the time they reached the sleepy village of Homestead with its quiet, tree-shadowed streets and its air of serene dignity, Shayne began to feel as though he were the one who had sniffed a bindle instead of Lennie. There was a driving, demanding tension within him. It was always this way when he played a hunch through to the finish. He had planned the best he could and it was up to the gods now. He couldn’t turn back. He didn’t want to turn back. The approach of personal danger keyed him to a high pitch, and he exulted in the gamble he was taking. Things like this were what made life worth living to Michael Shayne.
He drove decorously through Homestead and looked at his watch. It was a quarter to eleven. He stopped at a filling station on the outskirts of the village where the first dirt road turned off the paved highway to the left. He told Blackie and Lennie, “I’ll be just a minute,” and swung out of the car to speak to a smiling old man in faded overalls and a wide straw hat.