Wing looked at him narrowly. The phone rang and Wing picked it up. He listened for a moment.
“Did you contact the bartender?” There was another pause, and he said, “Keep trying Rourke. Get a key from his superintendent and pull him out of bed if you have to.”
Hanging up, he turned back to Shayne. “The poker game story seems to check, and for your sake I hope those witnesses haven’t had any coaching. Pappas, the bartender, thinks you made Three Deuces around eight, but he didn’t have you under observation every minute you were there. He gave us some leads, which we can’t check out till tonight. You could save us some trouble, you know, Mike. Isn’t it a fact that you left the Three Deuces sometime around eight-thirty and drove to Painter’s apartment house at the other end of the Beach?”
Shayne’s eyes glittered. He uncorked the cognac bottle and refilled his glass. “Why would I do a thing like that?” he said gently.
“That’s what I’d like to have you tell us. It has to be connected in some way with these calls you’ve been getting from Mrs. Heminway. And don’t give me one of those know-nothing looks. Painter left her house shortly after eight and went home to pick up something at his apartment. Heinemann was driving him. Mrs. Heminway says he asked her to postpone seeing you. What is all this, just a coincidence?”
“I don’t go out of my way to see Petey,” Shayne said, drinking. “I see him often enough as it is. Now what about these searching looks I keep getting from Heinemann?”
Wing hesitated. “All right, and God knows if I’m doing the right thing. You could be milking me, to find out how much we know. A few minutes after Painter went upstairs, Heinemann heard a gun go off down the block. He went to see who was shooting. As he went around the corner he got a quick glimpse of somebody running across the street with a gun in his hand. You’ve just heard him say that this person was your size and build, with red hair. Then he was rapped from behind. He woke up with a bad headache. He was lying in the foyer of one of the apartment buildings, tied up and gagged. An old dame from Painter’s building found him.”
Shayne rolled the cognac around in his mouth and swallowed it, following it with a sip of ice water. “That’s pretty flimsy, Joe. Heinemann caught a fast glimpse of somebody who looked vaguely like me, and you mobilized the whole force and stayed up all night. What’s so important it can’t wait till morning? If you’re going to tell me, don’t dole it out a crumb at a time.”
The room was quiet while Wing made up his mind.
“If that’s how you want it, Mike. I don’t like to do it this way, because I’ve seen Painter try it and it never worked with him. I’ll give you one last chance. Cooperate, starting now, or we take you in and book you for resisting arrest.”
“I haven’t resisted arrest.”
“You will, Mike. You will.” The ice cubes were making too much noise in his glass, and he put it on the table. “We can hold you longer than twenty-four hours if we work at it. I don’t know how long will bother you. You’ll miss your appointment with Mrs. Heminway, for one thing. We’ll be working while you twiddle your thumbs. You tend to stick out of a crowd, Mike. Maybe somebody else saw you in Painter’s neighborhood at ten minutes to nine.”
Shayne felt absently for a cigarette. “Somebody finally shot the little Napoleon?”
“It’s no laughing matter,” Wing said.
“I’m not laughing.” Shayne’s lighter flared. “But I’m not crying, either.”
Wing leaned forward, his fingers tightly laced. “Where is he, Mike?”
“How should I know?” Shayne said irritably. “Nobody appointed me Painter’s guardian, and if they did I’d refuse the appointment. You know how I feel about the little bastard. But it’s finally beginning to dawn on me that Painter’s missing. Who saw him last?”
Wing answered reluctantly, “The same old lady who found Heinemann. They came down in the elevator together and he had his gun out. She saw him drive off very fast in his Cad.”
“That bus sticks out of a crowd as much as I do,” Shayne said. “Even when he’s not playing the siren. Use some of the orthodox police methods Petey’s always talking about. You ought to be able to find it.”
“We’ve found it,” Wing said heavily. “We found it on a secondary road off Route 9 about fifteen miles north of the city. But Painter wasn’t in it.”
Chapter Four
Shayne smiled grimly. “You have my sympathy, boys. I’m all broken up. How are you going to get along without him?”
“Mike—” Wing said dangerously.
Shayne held up his hand. “All right, let’s call it a tragedy, and I’ll try to take it seriously. But I’m not too surprised. He isn’t the most popular man in town. And there’s one orthodox police method he doesn’t use — he keeps things secret from his own staff. Sooner or later that’s bound to lead to trouble. Is this all you’re going to tell me?”
Wing started to drink, but put the glass down. “At about twelve minutes to nine, a call came into headquarters. It was Painter, sounding very hopped up and happy. He wanted an ambulance, he wanted me, and he wanted a general pick-up call on Michael Shayne. He told the duty sergeant to cover the causeways and the main exits from town. He said something jumbled about breaking and entering, and assault. The sergeant didn’t get all of it. But one thing he did get — Painter wanted you, Mike, and I wouldn’t say that all he wanted was to find out if you had anything good in the Daily Double at Hialeah.”
Shayne rubbed the reddish stubble along his jaw. “Who was the ambulance for — Heinemann?”
“No, the sequence is wrong. Painter heard the shots while he was talking to headquarters. He seemed to be in his usual health when the old lady saw him a minute or so later, so he didn’t want the ambulance for himself. God knows who he wanted it for. Unless we’re completely off on the timing, he made the call from his apartment. I got the super to open it up. There was no indication that anybody had been there who was sick or hurt.”
“Funny,” Shayne said thoughtfully.
“And there’s something else that’s funnier. You know how neat the bast — Painter is. It’s a pathological thing with him. The place was presentable enough when I saw it, a lot neater than the way most of us live, but — well, for one thing, the books on the shelves weren’t lined up the way they usually are. When Painter sees a book a little out of line, he can’t sit still until he dresses it up. There were other things. He subscribes to a couple of magazines — Time, Reader’s Digest, and he always has them laid out on the coffee table just so, in chronological order. And you can stop grinning, Mike. We all have our quirks.”
“Some have more than others,” Shayne said.
“I don’t deny it. The layout was neat enough, but the dates were all higgeldy-piggeldy, October before June and so on. I’m wondering if he had a fight with somebody.”
“This would be a fight that Painter won,” Shayne said skeptically.
“That’s prejudice,” Wing snapped. “Maybe he caught somebody going through his apartment. He carried a gun. Maybe he sapped the intruder to make him hold still while he ran downstairs to find out about the shots. While he was gone, the man came to and straightened the room before he left. Don’t ask me why. If you have any better explanation to offer, I’m all ears.”
“Don’t look at me,” Shayne said. “I can’t explain anything.”
“You can’t or you won’t?”
Shayne smiled. “It amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it, Joe? You’ve told me a few secrets, and now you expect me to tell you a few in return. But it doesn’t work out that way. Petey Painter has always been a mystery to me. Some of the time he seems fairly bright. Some of the time he seems to have an IQ of minus fifty. He’s a pain in the behind all the time, but I don’t need to tell you that. Logic? I gave up expecting that from Petey long ago.”