Barnes had to agree, but it didn’t seem to make him happy.
Shayne checked out of the motel and drove back to Miami, where he picked up I-95 and crossed the bay on the Julia Tuttle Causeway. Barnes was waiting. Inside, Barnes identified himself and they were told they would find their patient in the accident ward.
But Dee Wynn was gone.
The bed he had been in was the way he had left it, with the sheets tumbled and the pillow on the floor. Of the other two patients in the four-bed ward, one was almost completely wrapped in bandages, being kept alive through tubes. The other, a young black in a head bandage, was watching a game show on a portable television.
“What happened to the patient who was here?” Shayne said, motioning at the empty bed.
The black returned reluctantly to the real world. “You say something?”
Barnes turned down the TV and Shayne repeated the question.
“Oh, he went chasing off. He had a cast on his leg, but that didn’t bother him after the first time he fell down. Things to do, man, he couldn’t lie around in bed all day.”
“When was this?”
“Today show was still on.”
The floor nurse, who had just come on shift, was unable to help. Wynn’s clothes were gone. All this was extremely upsetting to everybody, because he had managed to slip out without paying his bill.
Barnes had stood out of the way, letting Shayne ask the questions. Outside, he said abruptly, “Mike, now we’re going in to talk to Painter.”
They were standing on the asphalt in bright sunlight. He had put on dark glasses, and Shayne looked at his reflection in them.
“Why? He didn’t know Wynn was here, so he won’t know he’s missing.”
“Sometimes I’m willing to go outside the book,” Barnes said. “Not today. This is Miami Beach, and we have the home court advantage. I can’t go in and report this secondhand.”
From the way Barnes was standing, Shayne could see that if he turned to walk to his own car, the gun would come out, and other cars would be called to escort them. His name next to the sum of $80,000 in Geary’s book had made that difference.
“I don’t have anything to tell Painter except that the guy said he was in the back seat of Geary’s car when it happened, and there was a second car. He was drunk that night, and he was very drunk when he told me. That’s all there is.”
“Not quite, Mike. It came in as I was leaving. An old guy was found drowned in a canal off the Trail. He was out there alone, fishing and drinking whiskey. And he wasn’t able to pull himself out because one leg was in a cast.”
Chapter 12
Shayne wasted the next few hours.
They met Painter at Jackson Memorial. The cold-room attendant pulled out a drawer of his big filing cabinet and showed them a corpse. Shayne said bleakly, “That’s Wynn. He tried to do business with the wrong man.”
The medical verdict was definite, death by drowning. There was more than enough alcohol in his blood to explain why he had lost his balance and fallen in. The props were in order-a half-empty bottle of blended whiskey, a fishing rod snagged in the reeds, claw marks on the bank. His car was nearby.
“Now why would he rush out of the hospital to go fishing?” Shayne said. “And he told me he drank nothing but good-label bourbon.”
“A lush like that,” Painter said. “When it’s a choice between cheap whiskey and no whiskey-”
Shayne shrugged and turned away.
“It may interest you to hear,” Painter went on, “that two of my men, not by doing anything tricky or spectacular, just by ordinary, unspectacular, slogging police work, have come up with a witness who says Max Geary may not have gone off that cloverleaf unassisted. I’m going to ask you now if you have any statement to make, beyond the nonstatement you gave me yesterday, and I urge you to think carefully before you answer.”
“No statement, Petey. Is that all?”
“It is by no means all. I’ll remind you that Geary was expecting something to happen to him. Remember what he told the nurse? That if he met with further violence she should go to the police and reveal that it was Mike Shayne who beat him up? Naturally I did some checking this morning, and I guess you really were in San Francisco the night it happened. I want to nail that down, because it doesn’t take long to fly from California to Florida nowadays, and where Mike Shayne is concerned, I don’t just check, I double-check. But let’s say it stands up. That doesn’t rule out the possibility that you hired somebody to drive the second car. I’ll keep picking away at this, I warn you. That’s my technique.”
And so it went. Shayne managed to remain patient, waiting for Painter to wear himself out.
“You’ve got a protective coating,” Painter said at one point. “You think you can make your own rules, and go your own way, and you’ll never be called to account. I’ve talked to dozens of people, and they all keep coming back to the same thing-Mike Shayne, what dirty tricks do you suppose he did for that eighty thousand dollars? And new things keep cropping up. Dee Wynn now. That was skillfully done, and this time you don’t have the excuse that you were in San Francisco.”
“You wouldn’t know Wynn’s name if I hadn’t told Barnes.”
“You didn’t tell him a hell of a lot, did you? You knew we’d find out you had an ambulance ride together, and it’s always good to get your version in first. He was rambling, you couldn’t pin him down to anything. Sure. I don’t mind admitting, some of your actions still don’t seem to make a hell of a lot of sense, but you can be counted on-you never do things the simple and easy way.”
“What’s your theory, Petey? I really would like to know.”
“I don’t believe in theorizing. You know that about me. I go by what I see with these eyes.” He pointed to them. “Some kind of battle is going on here. Three casualties so far, if you count Geary. Tough it out, Shayne. You against the world. Keep it up, boy, and that casualty list won’t stop at three. But as long as you refuse to tell me anything, how can I help you?”
He gave his mustache its quick double flick. “I have information that a new three-man group is being recruited. The target? Mike Shayne, again. Fifteen hundred apiece is available, if they bring their own gun.” He had been saving this; he watched Shayne closely to see how he would take it. “But you’re Mike Shayne, I forgot. They can’t intimidate you.”
“Who’s doing the recruiting?”
“I don’t know that. Just that the word is around, and I thought, in fairness, I ought to pass it along. We’ve locked horns in the past, and there hasn’t been much good feeling on either side. That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t distress me considerably to hear you’d been shot by hired killers. I’ll be glad to provide you with protection. A two-car escort, around the clock. But naturally I want something in return. Start with the eighty thousand from Max Geary.”
“No bodyguard, please, Petey. They can be dangerous. Who’s your source?”
“Confidential. I protect my informants. They know that. It’s essential to the relationship.”
“Soupy Simpson?”
“Simpson?” Painter said, a little too innocently. “Didn’t we have to bust him for possession? I think he’s in Atlanta.”
“No, he’s back. Thanks for the warning. Can I go now?”
“Who’s stopping you? If you refuse my offer of a bodyguard, all I can do is advise you officially to step carefully.”
Following this advice, Shayne took more than his usual precautions leaving the hospital grounds, but that was to make sure none of Painter’s men were behind him. Even for seasoned professionals, it is never easy to kill somebody who knows they are looking for him. A surprisingly high percentage of professional murder contracts are never paid off. The price is high not because of the danger-few professional killers are ever apprehended-but because of the frustration and the waiting time.
Shayne went onto the East-West Expressway at Twelfth Avenue and kept changing lanes, varying his speed and watching the mirror. Leaving the expressway at the airport exit, he found an inconspicuous public phone. Before getting out of the car, he tapped a recessed spring on the inside door panel, and a. 38 Smith and Wesson dropped into his hand. He still had the. 45, but the Smith and Wesson was a handier weapon. He concealed it in his sling.