“So he got the plate and you don’t even have a negative?” said Shayne in disappointment.
“That’s right. I only took the one shot… as you know.”
“So there it is, Mike,” Rourke said eagerly. “What does it mean? Who wanted a picture of whom?”
“From the way George tells it, it still could have been Ambrose who arranged it,” growled Shayne. “The blackmailer knew who he was, all right, but he insisted he didn’t know the identity of the man blackmailing him.”
“What good would a picture do him? You said he looked in the envelope and was satisfied with what he got in exchange for his twenty grand. Seems to me that ended it as far as he was concerned.”
Shayne said, “It would seem so.” He drank black coffee and tugged at his left ear-lobe.
“You’ve got something else I don’t know about,” challenged Rourke with bright-eyed intensity.
“Yeh.” Shayne gingerly touched the two lumps on his head. “Plus two or three busted ribs. But they don’t add up to anything either.”
“What happened after you headed home from the beach?”
Shayne shook his head. “I’ve got to see Will Gentry just as soon as I get some clothes on. Come along and sit in, and I’ll just have to tell the story once.” He drained his mug and got to his feet. “Make yourselves at home. There’s more coffee and there’s liquor. I’ll get dressed.”
He went into the bedroom and dressed slowly, and when he returned to the living room Timothy Rourke was sitting there alone with a half-empty glass of bourbon and water. “What did you think of our young friend, Mike?”
“You know him better than I. What did you think?”
“He made it sound straight enough.” Rourke frowned down thoughtfully at his glass. “I don’t know. George has always got his eye out for a buck. Would that picture be worth anything to anybody?” he ended abruptly.
Shayne considered that for a moment, very carefully. The Boss knew, if he accepted Shayne’s story as the truth, that someone had double-crossed him by making a prior arrangement to meet Dr. Ambrose and collect the pay-off. Someone in his own organization most certainly. Someone who knew Ambrose had the cash ready for delivery that night and had telephoned the doctor on his own, setting up the meeting at the Seacliff.
The trouble with this theory was that Crew-cut had delivered the incriminating documents to Dr. Ambrose in exchange for the money.
How could he have got his hands on them? If the Boss were to be believed, he had expected to meet Ambrose between ten and midnight to make the exchange. This implied that he had the blackmail material in his possession in readiness for the pay-off.
It was all damned confusing… particularly to a man with a few broken ribs and two lumps on his head so tender that he didn’t dare try to put a hat on.
Shayne said, “I just don’t know, Tim. I’m beginning to get a crazy glimmer of an idea, but let’s let it lie until we sit down with Will Gentry and talk it over. He may have the whole goddamned answer right there for us… just from a set of fingerprints. Let’s go see. If you think you can make it all the way to his office without another drink to sustain you.”
“I can make it fine,” Rourke assured him, draining his glass and setting it on the table with dignity. “I got a good night’s sleep,” he added virtuously. “I didn’t go tomcatting around with some dame whose husband swings a mean sap.”
Shayne summoned up a wry smile and said, “Very, very funny, Timothy Rourke.” He went to the door and held it open and they went out together.
As they went down the corridor toward the elevator, Shayne said, “I forgot to ask about last night at the doctor’s office. What happened?”
“Nothing much. I got Painter and he came over himself and strutted around. I don’t think he believed either Belle or me one damned bit, but what could he do?”
They stopped in front of the elevator door and Shayne pushed the button. “Any fingerprints?”
“Nothing. Just the Doc’s and Belle’s… where they should have been. I took her home after Petey let us go,” Rourke added with a slow grin. “You made quite a hit with her, Mike. Really bowled her over with your masculine approach, as a matter of fact.”
The elevator door opened and they got in. Shayne grinned reminiscently, “I bowled her over, all right. She’s a lot of woman.”
“Damn right she is. Think she was carrying a torch for the doc?” Rourke added casually.
Shayne considered this with interest as they crossed the lobby. “You read it that way?”
“I dunno. If so, she’s in the market for another man this morning. I think you could take over, Mike.”
Shayne said, “That’s something to think about,” and they got into Rourke’s car at the curb.
CHAPTER TEN
Miami’s Chief of Police, Will Gentry, looked up from his littered desk with a faint smile on his blunt features when the redheaded detective and the reporter entered his private office. He removed the soggy butt of a black cigar from his mouth and rumbled, “I thought you’d show up this morning, Mike. What’s this thing at the Bayside Hotel last night?” He lifted a typewritten sheet of paper from a pile in front of him, glanced at it and dropped it back.
Shayne ruefully touched the lumps on his head and then pulled up a straight chair into which he eased himself with a grimace. He said, “I’ve also got a few busted ribs that don’t show. Did anything come from a shakedown of the room, Will?”
“Not a thing. Not even a partial fingerprint… except a few of yours.”
Shayne said, “I was afraid of that, Those boys know the score. I’ve got a physical description that I’ll turn over to I.D., Will. I’d say it’s a professional extortion ring, and there must be a record, but maybe not in Miami. The Boss sounded distinctly midwestern.”
“Does it tie in with Doc Ambrose?” demanded Rourke, settling his elongated body in a chair beside him.
“Yeh. In a damn funny way.” Shayne spoke directly to Gentry, “Has Painter briefed you on that?”
“Yeh. I’ve got it here.” Will Gentry put the cigar back in his mouth, drew in happily and then exhaled a cloud of black smoke. “He asked for a check on your hotel, Mike. We got a clean bill of health on you from the desk clerk for eight o’clock to eleven last night.”
Shayne said, “Fine. Just between the two of us, Will, I’m not all that clean, but I’d just as leave Petey keeps on thinking so for a time.” He hesitated, frowning and tugging at his left ear-lobe. “You better know how it went, Will. It may shift over to this side of the Bay. In fact, it started here in Miami last night.
“Tim sent Ambrose to see me last evening.” He went on to swiftly fill in the salient details of their meeting and the subsequent blackmail pay-off at the Seacliff, not omitting the picture shot in the restaurant by George Bayliss.
“I know Ambrose left the restaurant in his car not later than nine-forty with a thick, white envelope in his pocket, containing documents that were worth twenty grand to him. He was shot in his own driveway, on the Beach, about thirty minutes later… and the envelope was missing when his body was found. I told Painter this much, though I didn’t admit standing by for the pay-off.”
Will Gentry grunted noncommittally.
“When I got back to my hotel from the Beach,” Shayne went on, “a couple of torpedoes were waiting for me in the lobby. They took me for a ride to room Four-Thirty at the Bayside Hotel.”
He graphically described the meeting and the way it turned out. “That’s why I’d like to get a line on Jud and Phil and the Boss,” he ended morosely. “With just a little bit of a trifle of an edge on my side next time.”
Will Gentry looked baffled. “It doesn’t make sense. Who got the money, if he didn’t? You say Ambrose was perfectly satisfied with the contents of the envelope he got in exchange.”