Shayne freed the girl. All of a sudden, he relaxed. He watched the girl slide away from him. She went to the single window, sat with her hips pressed against the sill. She wore a thin blouse, a faded blue skirt that was taut across good thighs. Her shoes were scuffed flats. Her survey of him now was a combination of wariness, curiosity and animosity. She sat braced with her blonde head cocked slightly and the blue eyes alert. She looked twenty-three, certainly no more.
Shayne holstered the .45 and gathered the scattered papers on the bed. He stuffed the papers inside the briefcase and zippered it shut.
“Hey,” said the girl.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve got a hunch about you. You ain’t no roller. You’re fuzz, eh? Yuh gonna bust me?”
“You got a mother and father, Lisa?”
“Sure, I got a mother and father. Whatcha think? And how do yuh know my name is Lisa?”
“Go home to them.”
“What for?”
“At least your closet will be in a solid wall.”
“You say,” she snorted.
IV
Mike Shayne clomped down the wooden stairsteps, not caring how many sleepers he awakened. The scrawny desk clerk stood out of range but cocked as Shayne hit the ground floor. The guy’s eyes were round. He didn’t blink. Shayne faked a motion at the man and the man leaped a foot. Shayne went on out of the building.
He stood in the damp night looking up and down the quiet street. The sidewalks looked deserted, but there were deep shadows along the walls of the buildings and the detective knew that scavengers could be lurking there, probably were. Human scavengers, waiting to pounce on an unwary victim.
A car whisked past him. He followed the taillights reflexively. The lights disappeared far down the street.
He hefted the briefcase, looked at it. He no longer was suspicious of the young blonde girl. He figured she had handed him a straight story. She’d been out looking for treasure wherever she could find it. A guy coming along a shadowed sidewalk, swinging a briefcase while lost in faraway thoughts was a ripe mark. A little mace in the face, a quick snatch, and a girl might have a fortune. Ninety-nine per cent of the time, however, like this night, she came up with nothing of value to her.
Shayne headed for his convertible. It was parked a block over and two blocks back along the street he had traveled while he had been trailing the computer expert.
He walked out near the curbing, keeping a sharp eye on the building shadows. There were stirrings in some of those shadows, the shuffling of feet, indrawn air, but no one leaped out at the large redhead.
He cut across the street and turned into the alley down which he had chased the girl. Alleys could be unhealthy paths this time of a dark, moonless, Miami morning, but they also could produce action. They could afford anyone who might be trailing a detective an opportunity to make his move.
Shayne figured he could be approached by Bell or one of his troops, or Boris Poskov might land on him. There was the possibility that Boris may have been trailing Haynes from the beginning, too. Boris could have wanted to make sure that Haynes was going to the point of rendezvous and that the Negro was going alone, not with some foreign shadow sliding along behind him.
Shayne’s scowl deepened and he shook his head. No good. Boris might be an expert at shadowing, but the detective couldn’t be trailed from the Haynes house into the downtown area at that hour of the morning without picking up the fact that he had an extra shadow, especially since the detective had been alert to the possibility.
But Haynes could have been near his rendezvous when he had been waylaid by the girl. Boris could have been tucked in an alley entrance somewhere nearby, viewed the snatch of the briefcase by the girl, the chase by a redhead. Boris could have taken up the chase. So where was Boris Poskov now? He should be moving in on a redhead who had the briefcase.
Shayne walked out of the alley unmolested. No one shouted at him or pursued. Where was everybody? Okay, maybe Boris had been left hanging. Maybe he still was sitting in a parked car somewhere on a side street waiting for Haynes to come along the sidewalk and pitch the briefcase inside the car. But Bell’s people should be around. Bell had said they would be. Bell would double cover everything possible.
Shayne moved along the sidewalk, keeping a sharp eye. This street was better lighted and there were no building shadows along the walk. There was traffic in the street, too, spread out, but cars were moving in each direction, some headlights extremely bright, others dim. Shayne expected one of those cars to wheel into the curbing beside him.
He walked on long strides. He felt as if he should be rid of the briefcase. It wasn’t doing the CIA or the Russians or anyone else any good while a private eye had it.
He approached the spot where Haynes had been sprawled on the sidewalk. Haynes was gone. There were a few scraggly loiterers, night people. They shuffled around as if they once had been part of a crowd, but now there was nothing to see.
Shayne moved on, then cut his strides slightly as he neared his parked convertible. The top was up against the wet of the night and the top made the interior of the car black. Someone could be lurking in that blackness. Shayne shifted the briefcase to his left hand, opening his right hand to swift movement to the shoulder holster. He angled across in front of the convertible and yanked open the door on the driver’s side. The dashlight produced no foreign bulk.
The detective grunted and flipped the briefcase on the seat. He got behind the wheel and reflexively reached under the seat. The other gun still was in its special rig. He sat for a few seconds in debate, lit a cigarette. He had afforded plenty of opportunity for approach. There had been none, and he now had to accept the probability that something had gone haywire with Bell’s people, that he had been alone in his shadowing of Haynes — or that, for some unknown reason, he was being given rope.
Shayne drove to his apartment hotel. No headlights came alive behind him to hang on him. He was scowling when he braked the convertible in the underground garage. He sat for a few seconds, drumming big-knuckled fingers against the steering wheel while he kept an eye in the rear view mirror. He was waiting for headlights or a man on foot to come down the garage ramp. No one showed.
He got out of the convertible, locked it, took the elevator up to his floor. The corridor was empty. He got out a key and opened his apartment door to blackness. He flicked a wall switch and light flooded the front room. He grunted. The room was empty, looked normal. He’d almost expected someone to be seated in one of the deep chairs, maybe a CIA man — or maybe a Russian goon with a huge gun in his hand.
The redhead sailed his Panama toward the couch, hefted the briefcase. He felt as if he was holding a potentially dangerous bomb in his hand. He wasn’t afraid of the bomb, but he didn’t need it either. What to do with it? Who did he turn the bomb over to? He wasn’t sure he would hand the briefcase to a stranger under any circumstances, even if the guy seemed to show proper CIA credentials. Maybe he’d just wait for Bell...
Shayne stared at the briefcase as he debated. Instinct was alive in him. He went into his bedroom and removed the mattress from the box springs of his bed. He removed the papers from the briefcase and spread them on the springs, then replaced the mattress and remade the bed. He pitched the briefcase into a closet, went to his kitchen, poured cognac into one glass and ran tap water over ice cubes in another glass. He took the drink to his favorite chair and sat. The phone could ring any minute.