Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Annual, No. 3, 1973
The Las Vegas Courier
by Brett Halliday
(ghost written by Max Van Derveer)
She was sleek and smart and she loved a fast buck. Now she was dead and ugly and unmourned. Could Mike Shayne pierce a web of incredible danger and bring back her phantom killer?
I
Mike Shayne was abruptly wary without knowing why. The feeling came over him as he escorted his secretary, Lucy Hamilton, out the main door of the elegant hotel into the balmy early morning. He stopped to scrape something from the sole of his shoe, looking around as he did so.
The U-shaped Cassandra spread light. It was a towering structure of stark, modernistic architecture, the newest, glassy and fountain-prone hotel in Miami Beach. People were hustling in and out and around as if it were 1:20 in the afternoon instead of 1:20 of a Tuesday morning.
Polished cars pulled up to the main entry, the occupants greeted by the doorman in tails and top hat. Polished cars pulled away. No deep building shadows to conceal lurking purse snatchers, muggers, rapists, assassins, or any other antisocial grifter.
But Shayne smelled danger. He wished he was wearing his .45 as he took Lucy’s bicep in strong fingers and piloted her along the walk that flanked the hotel drive, his eyes busy.
“What’s the matter, Michael?”
At another time he might have chucked at the perception of the girl with the brown curls and lithe physical structure. The perception never ceased to amaze him. But at the moment his lone interest was in reaching his parked convertible. There was a gun stashed in a special compartment under the front seat.
“I’ve got that feeling, Angel,” he growled as they moved swiftly along, her heels clicking a rhythm.
Lucy glanced around. “Everything looks normal.”
“Doesn’t it?”
And then they heard the shrill scream above them.
Shayne reflexively shoved Lucy toward the strip of grass that separated the sidewalk and the Cassandra wall, turned and flattened himself in a high racing dive in the opposite direction.
He landed on the hood of a parked car. Flipping, he stared up at the spread-eagle body that was outlined against the star-filled sky. The body was up high yet, out from the row after row of wrought iron balcony railings. It seemed to be floating. Still, he knew the body was plummeting fast. He knew, too, it was the body of a woman.
A scream of terror trailed the descent, and then there was the horrible sound of splintering bones and gushing of innards squeezed through suddenly split skin.
The tepid night abruptly was quiet. Shayne sat up on the hood of the car. People had become statues. They were frozen out there.
He propelled himself from the car hood. Lucy came out from under a palm tree. She moved cautiously. “Michael?”
All hell broke loose. The statues came alive, shouted, shrilled, babbled and moved in. People rushed forward, then skidded to a halt as they saw what was on the sidewalk. It was not a pretty sight.
The expensively-dressed woman had landed on her back. She was spread and split, blood snaking along the blue of her dress. A thick substance spread from under her dark hair. Her face remained intact. It was screwed up in a combination of horror and pain.
“Michael?”
“Yeah, Angel.”
“We just met her an hour ago — in Salvadore’s suite...”
“Yeah.”
The dead woman’s name was Melody Deans.
II
Salvadore Aires was a Detroit multimillionaire. He was in insurance. He had the Midas touch too. Salvadore could look at an ancient and very dead volcano and it would spit valuable diamonds almost immediately.
About two years before, Shayne had successfully turned a trick for the insurance giant. It had saved Salvadore and one of his companies a bundle. But the two men could have met casually at a beach blowout and they would have finished the night together. The relationship between them was an instant thing. The large redhead liked Salvadore Aires. The lean, dark tycoon liked the Miami private investigator. It was why Shayne and Lucy Hamilton had gone to the party at the Cassandra.
“Just a small bash, Mike,” Salvadore had said over the phone. “Just a few friends stopping by; nothing really fancy.”
“The occasion?”
Salvadore Aires chuckled. “Hell, do I need an occasion, my friend? Okay, if I do, we haven’t seen one another in about a year.”
“I thought maybe you had found another wife,” the detective needled.
Salvadore’s laugh was a burst. He had had five wives. There would be a sixth. He liked having a wife. The only trouble was he liked other women too. He had the money and could make the time to humor his pleasures.
“Not yet,” Aires said into the phone. “Still roaming the field. But... well, you know, I’ve always got the eye open. Incidentally, how about Lucy? You think she’s susceptible?”
“You could ask her, pal.”
Another burst of laughter. “And get my head chopped off? No, thanks, friend. But bring her along, hear? There will be some very handsome, very eligible, gents present. Maybe she’ll discover there’s more to life than being a secretary-girl friend of an ugly redhead.”
Shayne’s grin spread across his Flagler Street office. “See you ’round ten.”
“Mike?”
Shayne had started to put the phone together. He jammed the receiver back against his ear, instantly alerted by what he thought was a sudden quality of urgency in the summons.
“Yeah?”
There was a pause; then another chuckle. “I’m in town for a few days of fun and games, Mike, that’s all. But... well, maybe I’ll have a surprise for you.” No urgency now.
Click. Salvadore had hung up. Shayne stared at the phone receiver for a couple of seconds before putting it in its cradle. His grin was huge again. Yes, sir, he liked Salvadore Aires.
The Cassandra suite was huge, expensive and crowded. Shayne recognized a few faces here and there. By pooling their dough, these people could buy and sell nations. They had one thing in common: money. It never hurt to mingle with the blessed. A guy never knew where his next thousand might come from.
Salvadore was a tall man, almost as tall as the detective, but where Shayne was huge across the shoulders, thick and hard in body and leg and long ago had given up fighting unruly red hair, Salvadore was a trim, slender man with a full head of perfectly groomed silver and brown hair, an almost-too-narrow face and greenish eyes that laughingly reflected merry independence.
He also wore a flashy white blonde on his left arm this night. The blonde had sauce, youth and cleavage in a pale pink gown that left no doubt about her physical attributes. Her name was Jo.
Mildly amused, Shayne wondered if Jo was to be Number Six.
“Whee,” breathed Lucy as Salvadore took Jo off to a cluster of four men in a corner. “She might as well be naked.”
Shayne chuckled. “Perhaps she is,” he said philosophically.
He pointed Lucy through open french doors and onto the small balcony. They were alone. Seventeen stories below them Miami Beach sparkled. Shayne swirled cognac and drank. Lucy sipped Seven-Up.
Then, behind them, Salvadore Aires said, “You in the mood for marrying, Lucy darling?”
When they turned, he was laughing softly. He had rid himself of the blonde bomb. Shayne noticed she was cornered by the four men now.
“Maybe,” countered Lucy. “You?”