“Whiting wouldn’t talk?”
“Whiting couldn’t talk,” the redhead replied. “She was shot dead as I pulled up in front of her place.”
“I don’t believe it! They wouldn’t—” Rourke halted abruptly, reached for his drink.
“Somebody did.”
“Who?” The reporter put his glass down empty.
“I didn’t get a good look at him. It was getting dark out there.”
“Murder!” It was an exclamation although Rourke’s voice was a bare whisper. Then, “I never thought they’d go this far. But why kill Cathy Whiting? How could she hurt them? She’s not even involved.”
The readhead said, “It’s just possible Whiting knew where Myra Rainey is — and your friends found out that she knew.”
“But she told you over the phone she had no idea,” the reporter protested.
“That’s what she told me, Tim. Which means either she lied or she found out afterward.”
“But how...?”
“Tim, I hope you’re not this stupid when you’re on a story. Try maybe Myra phoned her.”
“And them told whoever killed her? Come on, Mike.”
“Suppose,” said Shayne, “her call was heard. There are such things as wire taps, you know. But hadn’t you better report to your principals?”
“You’re damn right. Where’ll you be, Mike?” After draining his glass to the dregs, the reporter stood up, lean and lank as a beanpole.
“Right here. I’m hungry.”
“You’ll hear from us. And don’t take off without leaving a message with Pat at the bar.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Shayne replied. “Give my regards to Carl Dirkson and the kingpin.”
After ordering, Shayne wrapped a fist around a double Martell on the rocks and tugging at an earlobe, considered the case on which he had so recently been hired. Thanks to his close friendship with Rourke, he had known about it ever since the newsman’s original story appeared in the paper that employed him.
It was the last installment of an eight-part expose of corruption in the Miami area, centering on the building and loan industries that had sparked the problem. It had pilloried the practices of developer. Carl Meadows, revealing him as a builder of shoddy houses, as a flagrant rigger of stock in his own corporations, as a landlord capable of loan-sharking his tenants when they had the misfortune to fall behind in their rents, as a consorter with shady underworld characters in shady resorts and, finally, as a cruel and immoral individual in private life who had left a wake of human wreckage behind him.
There had been talk of a Pulitzer for Rourke when the series appeared — talk which was quickly silenced when Meadows, through his attorney, Allen MacRae, slapped a five-million-dollar suit for criminal libel on the News, citing publisher Roy Latimer, editor Carl Dirkson and by-lined reporter Tim Rourke as co-defendants.
Although Rourke was known to take both, a drink and a woman off the job, on it he was a scrupulously honest, careful and gifted journalist with vast experience and intimate knowledge of Miami, Miami Beach and all of surrounding Dade County. Aware of this, like Tim himself, his co-defendants were not especially worried over the lawsuit throughout its preliminary stages and postponements...
...until, only thirty-six hours earlier, they learned that Myra Rainey, Meadows’ former secretary and chief defense witness, had dropped out of sight.
It was shortly after this that Mike Shayne was invited into the case. Dirkson and Tim Rourke had prevailed upon the publisher to bypass the police for the time being, on the grounds that the opposition might conceivably be unconnected with Myra’s disappearance and that to call in the police would be to inform them of the fact.
The redhead had gone along with this reasoning until he heard the shots and found Cathy Whiting’s body in the house both girls had shared. He had called in Chief Will Gentry’s men in blue because, with Cathy’s murder, all reason for pretense was gone.
If the other side was not behind the killing, they would inevitably learn about it, and-about the dead girl’s roommate’s disappearance in short order.
When his food arrived — a 24-ounce top sirloin, charcoal black outside and blood rare within, accompanied by a baked potato adrip with butter, onion rings, bacon, mushroom caps, French rolls and a chef’s salad — Shayne ate it thoughtfully, considering what options were open to him for further investigation.
The obvious move would be to question the murdered girl’s friends, acquaintances and co-office workers — Cathy had been employed by a major insurance firm as a secretary — as to her words and behavior during the last few hours and days of her life. Perhaps, buried under the inevitable slag-heap of routine, might lie some clue to Cathy’s killers and/or her housemate’s whereabouts.
Unfortunately, this move would be obvious to the police as well — and they were far better prepared than the redhead to conduct such a blanket investigative chore than any lone operative, however gifted and lucky.
Shayne had a hunch he was going to need all the luck he could find in this one.
Like all investigators who deal on occasion with the seamy side of society, the redhead operated through that strange, seldom acknowledged form of swap and barter known as information... you owe me one, I owe you one, collection time coming up, what do you hear about...?
Most successful police work is the result of information, whether from above or underground. Without their paid informers, every metropolitan police force in the world would be virtually out of business in short order.
Shayne had his own roster of insiders, of odd characters knowledgeable in ways and means of which the bulk of society knows nothing. So, as he ate, he pondered whom he could turn to for swift results, both in the matter of Myra Rainey’s disappearance and Cathy Whiting’s murder. Somebody had to know something. But who and where?
Darlene, the pretty young brunette who had served Shayne his dinner, came to the booth with a portable phone and knelt to jack it in.
It was Tim. He said, “We’re at a dead end. Get over to Mr. Latimer’s office as soon as you can, Mike.”
“Five minutes,” the detective assured him.
When Shayne left, he was only half aware that a thickset young man at the front-door end of the bar put down a barely touched highball and rose to follow him. Nor did he note the grey Mercedes that trailed him discreetly through the thickening early evening traffic.
III
Four men were seated around the broad teakwood table in the publisher’s offices atop the new Daily News, building. At its head was News publisher Roy Latimer, short, chunky, with the features of a non-Ethiopean gnome. On his right, with legal papers spread out in front of him, was balding James J. Lowman, top attorney for Latimer’s battery of lawyers. Opposite Lowman sat shirt-sleeved Carl Dirkson, spectacles pushed high on his forehead, and Tim Rourke.
Shayne slid into the chair next to Lowman, who looked at him blankly as if he were not quite sure the detective was actually present.
Roy Latimer said, “Mr. Shayne, I am told you found the Whiting girl’s body. What in hell happened?”
The publisher had a football quarterback’s voice — high pitched, with a rough cutting edge calculated to be audible above the roar of any crowd. Now and then, he interrupted the detective’s concise account of the Coconut Grove killing with quick questions, more often to the point than not.
When Shayne finished, Latimer turned to Lowman, who had sat silent throughout, said, “Where does that leave us, Jim?”
The attorney shook himself as if to awaken from a trance, breathed deeply, then replied, “Up the creek without a paddle, I’m afraid. Whiting was our sole remaining lead to Myra Rainey. If Myra fails to show when the trial starts Monday, we’re deader than mutton.”