Mike Shayne sat there and waited.
“This citizen is named Julio,” Millie said. “Julio Sanchez.” She pronounced it Hooo-leo in the Spanish way. “He’s got a dozen killings on his head for sure, maybe a lot more that I don’t know about.”
“I don’t suppose you’ll testify to the State’s Attorney about those?” Shayne said ironically.
“I’ll testify to nothing,” she told him. “Even if I was willing there’s folks in this town would kill to keep me off the stand and away from a Grand Jury. You know who I am, so you know why.”
“Then how do we hang this Julio?” the detective asked.
“You hang him for killing Paul,” she said. “I’ll give him to you like I said. His marks are on Paul’s body and clothes. Besides that, I’m going to give you absolute proof that he killed Paul. Hanging proof, Mike Shayne.”
“I don’t suppose you turned honest citizen and want to do your duty by the Law,” Shayne said. “This big yen to cooperate with the cops wouldn’t stem from fear for your own neck, would it?”
“You know damned well it would, Mike. Now that he’s killed Paul, whatever the reason, I probably have to be the next name on his list. That’s why I want him out of the way and you know it. I can’t very well go to the cops myself, not with my record in this town. You were already in this thing. Paul was waiting here for you to show up when he was killed. So I decided to wait for you and give you Julio.”
There was a moment when they were both silent. Then she went on.
“Besides, Paul was my partner,” she said then in a different tone. “He was a fool, but we were together a long while. Long enough for the honeymoon to wear off.” She seemed almost to be talking to herself then. “I swear I was kind of fond of him still, in spite of everything. I owe it to him to see that Julio hangs. I swear I owe at least that much to Paul and I pay my debts.”
Again a long silence.
Then: “Well, let’s get this show on the road. Stand up Shayne. Real easy now. We’re getting out of here. I’ll tell you which way to go and how to behave, and I’ll be right in back of you with this cannon pointed where it can blow out your kidneys or break your back if you even think wrong. You get me?”
“I get you,” Shayne said. “Only one thing, Millie. If I’m going to take this Julio, I need my own gun.”
“You leave your rod lay right where it is,” she commanded harshly. “If and when you need a roscoe, Mike, I’ll see that you get one. Now step along out, big man.”
X
Millie Love had the gun and there was nothing Mike Shayne could do about it. He certainly didn’t like this one. Here she told him she was going to give him this Julio — a murderer many times over and a powerful and dangerous man — and then wouldn’t let him have his own gun. Shayne began to wonder who was about to be given to whom.
“At least bring it along,” he said and indicated his own forty-five on the ground. “When I need a gun, I can do a lot better with my own than with one I’m not familiar with. You carry it, if you don’t trust me now. Give it to me later.”
“Get on with it,” was all she said.
“If the cops find Paul,” he tried again, “and my gun near him, they’ll think I did him in.”
“That’s your worry, not mine,” Millie Love said. “Anyway the fuzz are your friends. When you bring in Julio they won’t bother you about Paul. They’ll have their killer.”
That much was true enough — if he could bring in Julio without a gun.
“I’m not going to say it again,” she said. “Get going, Mike?”
They went in Mike Shayne’s own car. Millie Love might have her own parked nearby, or she might have walked up to the old railroad yards from the Friendly Rest Home. It was only about a mile.
Millie got in the back seat where she could keep Shayne under the gun.
“Just drive where I say,” she ordered. “I’m taking you to Julio’s place. Believe me, you couldn’t get in by yourself. Not in a million years. He has friends to warn him and stop you while he cuts out.
“If they see me bring you under the gun, though, nobody’ll bother us. They know me. When we get inside, you go ahead and take him. I’ll show you where he has money hidden. Jewelry and papers and stuff to tie him to the old folks he killed. You can take a suitcase full of evidence to your pal Gentry.”
“Why would a killer keep that sort of stuff?”
“Because he’s a fool,” she said. “Because he feels safe. Why shouldn’t he? All this time the Law never came near him. If he hadn’t killed Paul, he would be safe now.”
“Suppose I don’t take him,” Shayne asked to see how she would answer. “Suppose he takes me? What about you then?”
“I brought you to him under the gun, didn’t I? He won’t know I’m not on his side. Besides I’ll still have the gun. You and Julio are both big men, Mike, but I never yet seen any man was bigger than a gun.”
“You play both ends against the middle, don’t you?” Shayne said as he drove. “You’re like this Julio. You figure you can’t lose either way?”
“I’m not like Julio,” she said. “I think things out where he just hopes and guesses. I think with my brain, but Julio does it with his gut. You going to play it my way, Shayne, or do I let you have it in the back of the head right now? Make up your mind!”
Mike Shayne was doing a lot of fast thinking. He had to decide how much of her story to believe and how much had to be reinterpreted. On the surface, what she had told him this night could be true. At least he figured some of it was. He was trying to think ahead of her and fill in the other parts correctly. His life depended on his ability to do it. He was under no illusions about that.
“I’ll go along with you, Millie,” he said. “Put the gun away. We’re in the middle of town. If I wanted out, all I have to do is crash this car into something. You’re going to have to be honest with me though.”
“I have been honest, Mike.”
“Most of your story I buy. Only one thing I have to know. You know you could have given me my gun and an address, and ~ I could get to this Julio if he had an army guarding him. You aren’t coming along to protect me, but because you have to be there when I take him. Why?”
“You’re so smart, you tell me.”
“I’ll trade you for the truth, Millie. I think this guy Julio has something you have to get your hands on before the Law shows up. That’s why you have to be there when I take him.”
Millie Love said nothing.
“Okay then,” Shayne said. “I’ll make a deal. I don’t care what you want. Evidence against you and Paul for something, I suppose. I’ll help you get it, but I want one thing in return. I want to know if Julio killed a man named Sam Willison, and I want to be able to prove it. Deal?”
She burst into laughter. “So that’s why you came into this and got Paul killed. My God, Mike! For a nothing like that Willison! Yeah, Julio killed him. He forced him to eat a whole bottle of pills. He was so scared of Julio he wouldn’t say no even if it killed him.”
“Thanks,” Shayne said bitterly. “How do I prove it?”
“Julio was a worse fool than you could believe,” she said. “He kept a diary. It’ll be there in his own writing.”
XI
Julio Sanchez lived in the central section of the City of Miami proper which had come to be called Little Havana since the great air lift migration of Cuban refugees had poured literally hundreds of thousands of Spanish speaking people into the metropolis. Most of the new arrivals were respectable, ambitious and hard working men and women who were both an asset and a credit to the community.