“A girl at the Hotel Gloria wants to put him in jail. She gave me a reason, but it didn’t sound good enough. If he’s getting started on a habit, a jail sentence might break it up.”
“You’re wrong.”
Seeing Vince as little as she did, she shouldn’t have been that sure, Shayne thought, but he let it go.
“If you want to be helpful,” he said, “go to bed soon, take the phone off the hook and keep your husband occupied. I don’t want any conversation between him and Harry Bass before tomorrow.”
He nodded and walked away. She called after him anxiously, “Be careful what you say to him. He’s so touchy.”
10
The moment Shayne stepped on the planking of the pier a voice spoke from the doorway of the boathouse.
“Wait a minute there, mister. Where do you think you’re going?”
A short, muscular man, wearing a blue boating cap pulled over his eyes, stepped out of the doorway and put himself between the detective and the bay.
“Is this private down here?” Shayne asked.
“Damn right it’s private,” the man said belligerently. “It’s a private island, practically. This is a private dock, private boats, and that’s a private party. No crashing tonight. I’m making no exceptions.”
“I’m not interested in the party,” Shayne said mildly. “I just want a couple of words with Donahue.”
“No exceptions. If you want to leave a message for him I’ll see that he gets it.”
“The trouble is, I didn’t bring a pencil,” Shayne said.
He gave the bill of the man’s boating cap a hard yank, jamming it down over his eyes. The man groped out with one hand while wrenching at the cap with the other. Shayne spun him around and sat him down hard in a wooden arm chair, which rocked back on its rear legs and came to rest against the front of the boathouse.
When the watchman forced his cap up from his eyes, he found the powerfully built redhead towering above him, his gray eyes cold in the dim light from the interior of the boathouse.
“Well, hell,” he said weakly. “If you’re going to get hard about it.”
“Who are you working for?”
“Various ones. Captain Donahue tonight, he gave me a ten-spot to keep out the crashers. He says every time he gives a party the whole public piles in on him. But I didn’t undertake to get my face bashed in for ten bucks. A good big man can always take a good little man, and you can tell him that if he asks you.”
“How long have you been sitting here?”
“Right along. And there wasn’t no big rush of people. You’re the first.”
Shayne took out his cigarettes and shook one out for the other man. In the flare of the lighter, the watchman’s face was alert and inquisitive. The redhead closed the lighter after starting a cigarette himself.
“I’ve been looking for Donahue all over town. Has he been aboard all evening?”
The watchman, like most people in solitary jobs, was glad to have a chance to talk. “They all have, the whole kit and kaboodle, and by the sound of it, they ain’t going to be leaving under their own locomotion. It’s been going on since the cocktail hour. And they were soused then. Captain Donahue, he had a breath on him you could start a swamp fire with. That’s why I didn’t feel like putting up more of a scrap. Why spill any blood when he won’t know the difference anyway? So go ahead.” He waved his cigarette. “Go on in.”
Shayne breathed out smoke. “What time do you mean by the cocktail hour?”
“Say half past five? And you know they’ve got young girls in there? I’m no puritan myself, I like a snort as well as the next man, but one thing I do hate to see is a girl soused under the age of twenty-one. They don’t know what they’re doing. They keep pouring it down, and the next thing you know-one more unwed mother. Now I’m not going to say for sure that’s what’s been going on, but if you go by the screeching they surely to goodness ain’t been playing scrabble.”
“Did the noise keep you awake?”
“That’s not the problem. I suffer from insomnia. That’s why I hire out for night work.”
“Would you be willing to take an oath,” Shayne said, “that Donahue’s been on that boat every minute since five-thirty?”
“I would,” the watchman said promptly, adding in alarm, “What do you mean, an oath? I never took an oath in my life.”
Shayne left him worrying about it. The first boat was a great mahogany monster from Newport, Rhode Island. The next berth was empty. Then came a fifty-foot ketch, and finally the Nugget, which sounded more like the name of a gambling house than a boat, out of Chicago, Illinois. Al Naples was not a man to go cruising in anything small. The Nugget sat high in the water, and underway probably carried a crew of three. Shayne went up the gangway. Most of the lights were on except on the stern. When a girl laughed, Shayne went in that direction.
“Do that some more,” a voice said in the darkness.
Coming around the curving end of the deckhouse, Shayne smelled the harsh, penetrating reek of marijuana. He saw a glowing spark at shoe top level.
“Vince?” he said.
There was a light fixture on the jutting overhang. Shayne found the switch, on the cabin wall near the companion-way. His foot touched something soft and a girl’s voice said, “Watch where you’re walking.”
The light flashed on. Two girls and a man were lying on the deck amid pillows and scattered clothing. One of the girls, thin and tired-looking, sat up and blinked. She was wearing a thin gold necklace and toenail polish but nothing else. At first she seemed angry, but her expression changed as she took Shayne in. Her pout changed to a whistle.
The man was lying on his side, mixed up with the second girl, whose face was hidden under a tangle of blonde hair. This girl gave no indication of knowing that a light had been turned on or that a stranger was watching. The man was Vince Donahue’s age, but unlike the descriptions of Donahue Shayne had been getting, he was pudgy and out of condition. He was untanned, his skin the color of the underside of a trout. His eyes were so glazed they seemed to fasten on Shayne’s by accident.
“That light, man, it’s murder.”
The girl slipped her naked foot inside the leg of Shayne’s pants and scraped her toenails against his calf. “Come on down. We need some new blood.”
Moving only his arm, the young man held out a brownish cigarette with a friendly smile. “Throw away that tobacco. Don’t you know that cigarettes can kill you? You’ll like this. It’s top quality.”
“I wouldn’t deprive you,” Shayne said. “As you were, everybody.”
He turned off the light, separated his leg from the girl’s foot and went back the way he had come. There was a patter of bare feet on the deck behind him. The girl leaped on his back like a jockey.
“No fair! You can’t show up like that and then just walk out.”
He pried her loose and forced her off his back, trying not to hurt her. She had little breasts and sharp hipbones, and gave off a dry, baking heat, like an open oven.
“I’m Lee Ewing,” she said. “I’m feeling left out so why don’t we-? Come on, please. Steve’s inside trying to straighten out the movies. It’s honestly OK. You don’t want me to turn into a dried-up old maid, do you?”
He took one of her wrists in each huge hand and made her hold still. “That’s the last thing I want. But business before pleasure. I just got here. Put on a few clothes and we’ll start over.”
“And just have to take them off again? I don’t see the sense-all right,” she said quickly, “I know people don’t like girls to make the first move.”
He released her wrists and she padded off toward the stern. Opening the nearest door, he entered a brightly lighted room. A youth with an unkempt shock of black hair-fully dressed, Shayne was glad to see-was pawing through a tumbled heap of movie film. There was a projector beside him, a small screen on the wall. He didn’t notice Shayne.