And then there’s the sound of a key in the door lock. Again no sweat, for McKeever had come prepared. In the beginning, he had figured on allowing Melody Deans to retire, then sliding into her room and slapping a chloroform patch on her face. Now he scrambles behind the door, pouring chloroform on the run, and he smacks the patch against her face the instant she is inside the suite.
Then he gets lucky and discovers money in a bag purse. Rolls of money. All in denominations he’s never seen before. McKeever cuts with loot, returns to Las Vegas. He’s bothered by the fact that Renfro Bastone seemed to have been tailing Melody Deans too. What did it mean? McKeever is nervous. Was Bastone dangerous to him? If Bastone returned to Vegas cop might have to do something about him.
But an even more disturbing thing happens. Melody Deans is killed in Miami Beach. And suddenly there are police and private investigations. Somebody, police or private eye, is going to get to Flora Ann Perkins. Flora Ann must be silenced and is.
The only trouble is, Flora Ann leaves a ghost to haunt. She leaves a will. Who would think a hooker would leave a will? On the other hand, it figured. By day, the hooker worked for a law firm; she would be aware of the value of wills. But damn Flora Ann Perkins. She had pointed a finger from her death bed, placed McKeever in a precarious position. And he had been sweating. He had been sitting in his little cubicle at police headquarters, munching a sandwich without tasting it, trying to figure when and where to run with a half million dollars when more trouble had walked in.
McKeever eyed Shayne and Wallace. A sudden glimmer of hope appeared in his eyes. “A three-way split of a half million bucks wouldn’t be too bad.”
But all McKeever saw was stony stares. The glimmer blinked out.
A chief of police and a called-in IRS man took McKeever. Shayne took a jet. He slept all the way to Miami, where Lucy Hamilton was waiting for him inside International Airport.
There was a certain set to Lucy’s greeting smile, a certain glisten in her eyes, a certain grip of her hand on his bicep as they walked that alerted Shayne.
“Okay, Angel, spill,” Shayne said.
“I have a surprise for you.”
“I know.”
“Salvadore is waiting in the car in the parking lot.”
Salvadore Aires shook Shayne’s hand perfunctorily. He looked grim. “I’ve got to get this off my mind, Mike.”
“Shoot, pal.”
“Melody Deans and I had a thing going. I wanted to marry her, but she said nix. I’d already had five wives, which wasn’t much of a recommendation for marriage. But she’d take a trip with me. She wanted to see Madrid. We could spend a few days, weeks, months, however it worked out. I said, ‘Hell, yes, why not?’ So we planned to meet here, go on together, except—”
“She showed up with a half million dollars,” Shayne finished for him. “She laid it all out for you at the party.”
“I couldn’t believe it, Mike. For the first time in my life I wasn’t sure how to handle something. We finally agreed to wait until morning, hash it over again. I wanted time to think. Somehow I had to separate Melody from that money, the people associated with it.”
“Then she was killed.”
“They didn’t have to kill her, Mike,” he said, sounding as if he was in a well. “They were going to get their money returned. But they were too quick for me and when — when I saw her dead on the sidewalk, smashed the way she was, I panicked. I felt sure they either knew about me or would find out. I ran. Some people — you, for instance — might not be frightened by the thought of having mobsters eyeing you. I am.”
“They didn’t kill her, Sal.”
“Then who did?” He sounded totally mystified.
Shayne lighted a cigarette and went over the entire case. He’d have to do this, at least in part, three more times, once for Painter, once for Albert Deans, and once for Gentry. But Salvadore Aires seemed entitled too.
When he had finished, Salvadore breathed, “God, a couple of punks...” It was all he said.
“If it hadn’t been Bastone, it would’ve been somebody else, eventually. Melody Deans made her death bed the second she made her turn from Philadelphia to Miami Beach.”
The Name of the Game Is Tape
by Dan J. Marlowe
The best part of the caper was, nobody would ever know. Nobody, that is, but a very curious cop with an idea.
Broad-shouldered Carl Robey, detective sergeant of the Midland police force, shifted position uneasily on the roll of canvas in the storage room of the huge, semi-darkened supermarket.
“This is crazy!” he rasped to his detective partner, James Thompson. “Three nights you’ve had me in here for nothing now. This stakeout is a joke. Wherever you’re getting your information from, it’s all wet.”
Thompson, younger and slimmer, frowned in the darkness.
“Hold on a little longer, Carl,” he said softly. “I know I’m right about this. I have everything but the date. They’ll be along.”
Robey’s snort was distinctly audible. “You won’t get me in here another night, Jimmy,” he warned. “This is slower going than sitting in your apartment watching you add sound on sound to a pre-recorded tape. You know I don’t have the patience—” He broke off abruptly as a whirring noise made itself heard above the sound of his voice. He surged up to his knees, his big hand dropping on his partner’s shoulder and tightening.
“Diamond cutter on glass,” he breathed. “You were right, Jimmy. They’re coming through the side window. I’ll cover the front.” Moving with a speed surprising in a man of his bulk, he disappeared into the shadow of the store aisles, a bulldog flashlight in his left hand and a .38 police special held firmly in his right.
Thompson remained flat on the canvas, alert for the revealing tinkle of the removed square of glass. It was followed by the rasp of the catch being slipped off, and the squeak of the opening window. A series of grunts indicated the progress of the first man through it, and when he heard the third solid thump of heels hitting the floor, Thompson rose and moved cat-footedly to a more advantageous position.
“Let’s get to the safe,” a hoarse voice whispered.
The area of the room under the opened window was bathed suddenly in the glare of Carl Robey’s flashlight.
“Don’t move!” the big man snapped. Thompson flicked on his own light. Caught in the pinpoint crossfire of the flashlight beams, three white faces stared at the dark figures behind the dazzling brightness. “Turn around,” Robey ordered. The men complied slowly. “Hands over your heads and palms flat against the wall,” he continued. In the glare of the flashlights half a dozen hands crept up the wall. “Okay, Jimmy. Cuff them. I’ll call the desk.”
“Who talked?” the tallest of the men facing the wall cried out passionately. “I’ll kill the— Who talked?”
“You talked, Jeff,” Thompson told him, deftly slipping three pairs of wrists into the three sets of handcuffs he had brought along. “All right, Carl. Make your call.”
When the last of the paper work had been completed and the prisoners processed and the lieutenant’s congratulations duly savored, Carl Robey cornered his partner in the station-house locker room.
“All right,” the gray-haired man said grimly. “Give. Before I go out of my feeble mind trying to figure it out. How did you know they were planning to knock that particular safe over? And why three sets of handcuffs, instead of two or four?”