“How about the girl, Mrs. Beatrice Meany?”
“Her? She was drunk as a coot when I got there. Passed out cold in bed.”
Shayne took a long drink while the Sergeant was talking. A deep scowl trenched his forehead. He said, “You’d better start looking for Groat’s body,” and hung up.
He sat down and his gray eyes brooded across the room. He sat for a long time without moving. Lucy came in and perched on a corner of the desk. She wrinkled her nose disapprovingly at the glass at his elbow. “I don’t see how you ever solve a case the way you stay tanked up all the time.”
Shayne laughed shortly, picked up the glass, and emptied it. “Always glad to oblige by removing the offending article. I’m going to have to get awfully drunk to figure this one out.”
“I listened in on your conversation with the Sergeant,” she admitted. “Do you think someone at the Hawleys’ killed Groat?”
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised, angel.”
She frowned, her eyes thoughtful. “I can’t understand why the Hawleys wouldn’t be eager to see Mr. Groat, and find out about Albert’s death. Most people would.”
“The whole thing is screwy,” he told her moodily. He chucked the empty glass into a drawer. “I’m going out to lunch. Go out whenever you want to.” He got up and stalked to the door.
Lucy intercepted him by saying, “Cunningham hasn’t called yet. Maybe I’d better stick around until you get back.”
“Be sure to find out where he’s staying. I could use a line on him.”
It was only a short walk from his office to that portion of Camp Street once known as “Newpaper Row,” where there were a number of small restaurants still frequented by members of the fourth estate.
He tried Henri’s first, because he was fairly certain of finding Roger Deems there at noon. Henri was famous for a drink of his own concoction called a Lafitte, and long custom had conditioned Deems’s stomach to coping with a couple of them every day before lunch.
Shayne went down three concrete steps from the sidewalk and into a long room with a bar along one side and booths lining the other. Half a dozen men were at the bar, and some of the booths were occupied.
He saw Roger Deems’s saturnine face at once. He was long and loose-jointed, a sports writer for the Item, and an old-timer in the city. He was leaning forward with both elbows on the bar, looking down with a melancholy expression at a highball glass half full of a greenish and bilious-looking mixture.
Shayne went over to him and said, “You don’t have to drink that thing. I’ll buy you something decent.”
Deems cocked one eye at him and said, “I love ’em, Mike. Mixture of rum and gin. Very healthy. Know what a Lafitte reminds me of, Mike?”
“Juicy green worms run through a wringer,” Shayne told him. He held up two fingers and Henri brought a double shot of cognac in a big-topped glass.
“That’s why I love ’em,” Deems said. He sighed and lifted his glass, emptied it, and shuddered the length of his lanky frame. “Got anything for me, Mike?”
Shayne warmed the big glass between his palms. “Nothing right now. Do you know a guy named Joel Cross?”
“Good ol’ Joel. The literary light of the fourth estate. I’m proud to say, suh, I have the honor of his acquaintance.” He turned his head and called to one of the men sitting in a booth behind him. “You’re being discussed, Mr. Cross.”
A stocky, sandy-haired man with a bristly, reddish mustache and a square, aggressive face said, “Hi, Deems.”
Deems waggled a long forefinger at him. “Don’t know what you’ve done now, but here’s a hellhound on your tail. The sleuth of the Everglades. Wherever you hid the body won’t be good enough once he starts sniffing.”
Joel Cross had been smiling, but now a curious mask of hardness replaced the smile on his face. His lips tightened and his jaw jutted. He said something to his companion in the booth in a low tone, then got up and came toward them. He held his shoulders consciously squared and walked with a precise stiffness that was almost a strut. His voice was thin and metallic. “Who’s taking my name in vain?”
“Mr. Shayne.” Deems jerked a thumb toward the detective.
Cross said, “I’ve heard about you.” He held out a square hand. The flesh was hard and cold. He was a head shorter than Shayne, but his shoulders were as broad and he was built solidly.
Henri set another greenish drink in front of Deems and laid Shayne’s change on the counter. Shayne gathered up his change and said to Cross, “I don’t want to interrupt you, but I have something I’d like to talk over with you.”
Cross said, “You’re not interrupting anything. There’s a vacant booth in the back.” He went toward it, his heels hitting the floor hard before the soles came down.
Shayne picked up his drink and followed him, slid in opposite the feature writer for the Item, and asked, “Drink?”
“I never touch the stuff.” Cross’s bristly mustache lifted slightly. “Are you on a case?”
“Sort of. I’m interested in Jasper Groat’s diary.”
Cross peered at Shayne.
“What about it?”
“Is the stuff any good?”
“It’s terrific. Raw, elemental emotion. It wasn’t written for publication. That’s why it’s good. We’ll publish it as is — no editing.”
“Do you have it?”
Cross didn’t answer at once. He coddled his mustache, first on one side, then the other. “I had to look it over to see if it was worth what Groat wanted,” he said cautiously.
“How much was that?”
“What’s your interest?” Cross parried.
“I have an idea a lot of people are going to be interested after reading the announcement in the Item.” He hesitated a moment, then added, “Frankly, I’d like to know how much it would cost to keep it unpublished.”
Cross stiffened, his eyes suspiciously alert. “I’m afraid you don’t understand the newspaper business, Shayne. That diary is a scoop of the first magnitude. You can’t measure the intrinsic value of something like that to a paper.”
“I’d like to have a look at it,” Shayne said idly.
“You can read it in the Item.”
“I mean a preview.”
Cross shook his head emphatically.
“It can’t be done.”
Shayne took a drink of cognac and asked, “Do I understand that you’ve made final arrangements with Groat?”
“I don’t know why our arrangements with Groat should interest you.”
“I’m not at liberty to explain my interest right now. One thing you can tell me: If Groat should disappear — if he should die suddenly before you see him again — have you the legal right to publish his diary?”
“What is this?” Cross demanded. “Where is Groat?”
“Don’t you know?”
“I haven’t seen him since yesterday.”
“You haven’t answered my question,” Shayne reminded him.
“I’m not going to answer it, Shayne.” Cross was bristling all over. “I’ll give you the same answer I gave that shyster, Jake Sims, a little while ago. He phoned me at the office to ask me the same question. I don’t think it’s any of your business.”
Shayne mused, “Jake Sims… Well, it’s nice to have met you, Cross,” and got up. He went back to the bar to rejoin Deems. Joel Cross returned to his seat in the booth where his friend waited.
Deems asked, “How’d you get along with friend Joel?”
“Not too well,” Shayne admitted.
“He’s a cold-blooded number,” Deems said cheerfully. “The kind who’d take a notebook with him on his honeymoon to record his bride’s emotions for a true-confession magazine.”