“Yeah! And the plaice stunk!”
“Chloroform?”
The boy looked confused again. “I don’t know. What’s chloroform smell like?”
Shayne ignored the question. “How’d you two get inside, Ralph?”
“Well, Ren has these tools. I don’t know what you call them, but they work in door locks. Only we didn’t need them. The door wasn’t locked!”
“Un-huh. Okay, you’re inside and you find a passport, an airline ticket, and—”
“We didn’t find nothing like that, man!”
“But Melody Deans came awake while you were there.” It was a question.
Ralph’s eyes jumped, lighted up for a moment, then died.
“Y-yeah,” he said.
He suddenly sounded very frightened again, and the redhead plunged, “You two threw her from the balcony because she recognized your brother.”
Ralph clamped his lips, remained silent, but he wouldn’t look at the detective now. He began to quiver.
“Ralphie?” Connie said from somewhere behind Shayne. Her voice was soft, held a pleading note. “Tell him you didn’t do it.”
“Shut up!” the boy screamed.
Shayne holstered the .45 and caught a handful of — Ralph’s long hair, yanked him up on his feet.
“Melody Deans recognized your brother,” he repeated in a voice that grated, “and he panicked. He knew she had tough friends in Vegas. He knew he could end up in a desert grave if she said the right Word to the right people. What he didn’t know was that she was on the run and was going underground.”
Ralph looked totally confused.
Connie moved around Shayne, put herself between the boy and the detective. She took Ralph’s face in her hands, tilted up his head. “You’re in trouble, lover,” she said. “Big, bad trouble. But I’ll pick up the pieces, put you back together again — if you’ll let me.”
He broke. He sagged. “Connie-baby,” he said, grasping her biceps, “help me.”
“You turn in your brother to this cop,” she said.
“I’m not a cop,” said Shayne.
Connie Norton turned slowly, stared hard at him. Her eyes danced to the coat bulge.
“Then you’re going to have to kill the both of us,” she said.
“But I’m going to call the cops,” the detective said.
The police listened, rousted Renfro Bastone from his motel room, then took everyone to headquarters, where a call was placed to Peter Painter in Miami Beach.
“Let me talk to Painter,” Shayne said. “I can explain it quicker.”
Painter snarled, “And just who the hell are these Bastone brothers, Shayne? I never heard of them!”
Shayne grunted. “You got a smell on the money, Painter?”
Painter snorted. “Tell me what area of Canada your friend Salvadore Aires might disappear in, and I’ll have a smell!”
“Letting Sal leave town was dumb,” Shayne said. “But he wasn’t carrying treasure. He’s got his own treasure chest, and it’s loaded.”
“Nobody,” Painter seethed, “would walk away from a cool half million dollars, Shayne.”
“And anybody could be attracted by it,” the detective countered. Then he said, “Okay, Painter, here’s a cop. Tell him what you want done with the Bastones, I’ll be seeing you — unfortunately.”
“Shayne...”
He heard the yell as he passed the phone to a detective. He ignored it.
IX
It was early Thursday evening when his plane put down in Las Vegas. He found Max Wallace at the newspaper office.
“Little early for you to be out of bed, isn’t it, Wallace?” he said.
The newspaperman cocked an eyebrow, pulled the goatee in a moment of silent contemplation, then said, “You’re testy, friend.”
Shayne shuffled. He felt out of sorts with the world.
“The Bastone brothers are in jail in San Diego,” he growled.
“That right?” Wallace said, cocking an eyebrow.
Shayne reviewed the arrests. Wallace listened. Then the newspaperman said, “Okay, the Bastones are in jail. But it doesn’t finish it, does it? You’re still hot. What’s the pitch?”
“There’s a missing half million dollars, a dead woman here neither of the Bastones killed, and I’ve got a friend who is in trouble.”
Wallace nodded thoughtfully, sat back in the chair behind the typewriter. “Well, we’ve had an interesting little tidbit turn up here too. Flora Ann-Perkins left an estate. One of McKeever’s men turned up a checkbook and a tin box in her apartment. The checkbook showed a balance of $3,150. Inside the tin box was $2,500 in cash, a savings deposit book showing $49,700 in an account — and a will. If the will stands up, the single beneficiary is one Harold Wilson McKeever, cop-detective.”
Shayne grunted, his thoughts whirling. He grabbed the lobe of his left ear with the fingers of his right hand.
“Who’s McKeever’s superior?” he asked bluntly. “What kind of cop is he?”
Wallace lifted an eyebrow again. “Chief Amster, and he’s A-1. A tough man. Why?”
“Are he and McKeever pals?”
“They’re both long-timers here. Cops come, cops go. Not Amster and McKeever.”
“But are they pals?”
Wallace frowned. “Outside the station?” He hesitated. “I’d say no. They work together like meshed gears, but off-duty... well, Amster is married, got a batch of kids. He’s got his home life while McKeever, a bachelor... well, hell, Shayne, they don’t roam in the same circles, you know what I mean?”
“McKeever roamed with Flora Ann Perkins, huh?”
“Christ, nobody can figure that one! I mean it’s a surprise! McKeever, the cop, and Flora Ann, the hustler! What the hell, it’s—”
“What’s McKeever saying?”
“Nothing! He’s clammed. Aw, he’s probably laid it out for Amster, but—”
“I want him,” Shayne said, standing abruptly.
Wallace looked up. He sat without moving. His eyes were bright and filled with questions. But all he said was, “You came back here, Shayne, to get somebody. You came into this office a few minutes ago, sniffing and quivering like a hound dog on the track of a strong scent. What I want to know is where did you pick up that scent, and what the hell is that scent?”
“I picked it up right here, pal, last night. McKeever knew Renfro Bastone had been in Miami Beach. At first, I figured Painter, the detective on the case down there, had told him. McKeever said he had had a call from Painter. With Bastone being from here, it seemed natural that Painter would bring up the guy. But later I remembered that there was a helluva strong chance Painter didn’t know about Renfro Bastone. I got tipped to his brother, Ralph, by a money-hungry beach boy, one of these kids who doesn’t volunteer anything unless there’s a buck in it. It didn’t figure the kid had gone to Painter. Cops don’t pay. Still, there was a chance he had.
“So I tried to get Painter on the phone, couldn’t. Then I got sidetracked by the Bastones showing in San Diego. Finally, after rounding up the brothers, I did talk to Painter — and he’d never heard of either of them! So how did McKeever know Renfro Bastone was in Miami Beach? Maybe he was down there, huh? Spotted Bastone? And if he was down there Monday night, early Tuesday morning, how come?”
Wallace used the telephone on his desk, dialed a number, then said, “Bryant? Hi. Max Wallace here. Hey, is McKeever around? Naw, I don’t want him. But check the duty roster for me, will you? I need to know what days off he has. Some guys are planning a little surprise bash for him next week.”
Wallace waited, drumming fingernails against the typewriter, then said, “Wednesday and Thursday next week? Let’s see, you boys are on a rotation schedule. That’d mean he had Tuesday and Wednesday off this week, right?”