Thirty minutes later, Shayne stood at a window in the front room of the apartment. He wore a white toweling robe belted at the waist as he stared out on the evening that had just darkened. The hot TV dinner was on a kitchenette counter, forgotten. Shayne had a fresh drink in his hand. Burns and Singleton. Singleton and Bums. There was a tie no matter how a man looped it.
Okay, swampland is for sale, Tiener South is buying. It’s a multi-million dollar deal, hush-hush. Singleton is not involved. But Singleton is in a position at Tiener South to hear about the pending swamp sale. And Singleton is on a downer, his wife has died, he’s lost his zip, he has decided to hang up the straps.
Singleton has been doing okay financially all of these years at Tiener South, but suddenly here is an opportunity to pad a nest so deep a man doesn’t even have to think about Social Security.
Singleton puts out a feeler to Brooks, gets a nibble, puts out more, gets a bite. Brooks is a very legit outfit, very up-and-up, but not above placing cash in a safety deposit box for choice tidbits of information.
Did Brooks know they had a Tiener spy inside their organization, a man who had been keeping Tiener South abreast of Brooks’ interests for years, asks Mr. Singleton.
Impossible!
Not at all, says Mr. Singleton. Try Mr. Burns. Mr. Singleton was in a position at Tiener South to know that Mr. Burns was in a position at Brooks to feed Tiener South anything they wanted to know about Brooks — for a cash remuneration naturally. Mr. Singleton had been assigned to some of the feeds.
“Oh, Christ, no wonder we’ve lost out on some deals!”
“That information costs extra, of course — or I call Mr. Brooks, himself, in the morning and inform him...”
“No, no, Mr. Singleton. Your information is valuable. We’ll take care of you. If Mr. Brooks should learn that we have allowed a spy to penetrate — well, we could all be on food stamps tomorrow!”
Shayne lit a fresh cigaret, drew deeply on it, continued to stare out of the window without seeing anything.
But what if Singleton had been an honest working man all his years, loyal to Tiener South, contented with a nest egg accumulated through diligence, intelligence, gradual advancement? Why did he have to be a Bad Guy?
And what if Burns was his opposite number at Brooks? What if both were exactly what they seemed to be on the surface? What if each was a real estate expert, knew the name of the other because of the similarity of their business, but that was where it ended? What if Bums and Singleton had met on a few occasions, but were not acquainted?
And then — what if this spy — counterspy — business was all something a detective was manufacturing because a newspaper business writer had suggested the possibility?
Shayne dipped to his right to dump cigaret ashes into a lamp table tray and the bullet whined past his ear. Shattered window glass sprayed him.
VI
Mike Shayne rolled to his right with the crack. He spun into the lamp table and sent the lamp flipping to the carpeting as he plastered himself against the wall. The shade bounced from the lamp, but the base and bulb remained intact, the bulb coating him in its garish light.
He sucked a deep breath, glanced down his front. The white toweling robe glittered here and there. Splinters of glass protruded from the loose fabric.
He blinked cautiously, testing. They seemed okay — no slivers of glass embedded. But there was a spot that tingled high on his left cheekbone. He touched the spot with a fingertip. Glass — and the fingertip was stained red.
Across the room, wall plaster had split in thread-like jagged lines. There was no definite pattern. Only a center point where all the cracks began, made by a large bullet hole in the wall.
The main light switch was on the other side of the shattered window. Shayne went down on hands and knees and moved gingerly through the glass below the window edge. It was unlikely the sniper was still hanging around out there in the night somewhere. He probably was tracking fast. But Shayne wasn’t making a second offering as a target.
He slid a hand up the wall and snapped out the light in the room. He realized that if the sniper did happen to be rooted, the light blinking out was the tipoff to failure. But the sniper was going to know anyway within a few hours because he was going to have an angry redhead on his tail.
Shayne eased to the window opening, looked outside. The night was warm, quiet. There was scattered light. Down below, people were stirring, clusters were forming. The sound of the gunshot had attracted attention. Far in the distance, there came the wail of a siren. Someone already had called the cops.
The detective padded back to his bedroom. He had left the bathroom lights on and the door open. The light spilled into the bedroom, cast an eerie glow. He shrugged out of the toweling robe, dropped it in a heap, padded naked into the bath. Arching forward slightly, he studied his face in a huge mirror. A tiny triangle of glass protruded from his cheek. A trickle of blood had inched down from it.
He plucked the triangle out, dropped it in a wastebasket, got out a plastic bottle of medical alcohol, daubed the skin break. He cleaned away the blood and slapped on a Band-Aid.
He dressed, thoughts clicking fast as he speculated. Someone obviously didn’t want him poking into the double murder. But if a sniper was going to float around the city this balmy night, taking shots at everybody who was investigating, he was going to be a busy gun. Will Gentry probably had at least five detectives working on the case — and twenty in reserve.
So the investigation itself hadn’t brought out the sniper. Anybody who killed and left bodies in full view would expect an investigation. Therefore the reason for the window blast went deeper. Somebody had jangled a nerve somewhere. Somebody — perhaps just bumbling along — had turned up a stone that exposed supposedly concealed worms. And since a private eye had been a target for the killer/sniper, it seemed logical to figure the eye had kicked over the stone.
Who had the shamus scared? Brooks and Associates? Or Tiener South? They were the only territories he had penetrated thus far.
Brooks had acquired the swamp. There was undisguised pleasure at Brooks. Morgan had tabbed the transaction a coup. True, one of their employees had been found dead on that land, but that’s where the tie seemed to end. Burns hadn’t even been working on the swamp project.
On the other hand, Morgan had gone icy at the suggestion Brooks might have made the acquisition via inside info from Singleton at Tiener South.
Was that suggestion a worm? Had speculation on the part of a private detective sent messages crackling along the hot line inside Brooks and Associates? Had the word gone out — knock off Shayne before he pursues this speculation? He’s dangerous to us!
Shayne took a moment to fantasize the image of an unknown dictator inside Brooks barking out the order. Then he yanked up his trousers, zipped them closed and concentrated on Elizabeth Stewart at Tiener South.
He took a shoulder rig and a .45 from a bureau drawer, shrugged into the rig, checked the .45 and jammed it into the holster. Elizabeth Stewart had made a dash to a parking lot telephone. Had it been to tell someone about a red-haired private detective who was aggressive, abrasive and had to be stopped before he got started?
Stopped from doing what? Investigating the murder of a Tiener South employee?
Or stopped because he had asked about Burns over at Brooks and Associates, had even suggested that Burns might have been a spy for Tiener South?
Shayne put on a coat, returned to the living room, snapped on the lights. A gentle breeze wafted through the shattered window. But no one waiting to take a second shot was outside now. People had grouped around a police patrol car below. The two patrol boys were braced against the car, asking questions, looking around, gesturing with arms.