Shayne stared at him queerly and reached for the phone. "I'll be damned if I know," he muttered, "whether Lucy mentioned her by name to me or not. If it was Mary Barnes instead of Nellie Paulson-"
He gave Lucy's number and waited. Again, the telephone rang several times before Lucy answered. And again her voice sounded queerly strained when she said, "Yes? What do you want?"
"Mike, angel. Listen carefully and think before you reply. Did the girl who brought the note from me tell you what her name was?"
"Why-you told me, Michael. When you called me on the phone before she got here. Don't you remember? You said Nellie Paulson would be along-"
"I know I did," he interrupted harshly. "But now I'm asking you if she corroborated that."
"I-wait a minute. I'm trying to think. N-No. Not directly, I think. I just assumed from what you said that- She did have a note from you."
"I know," said Shayne wearily. " 'Bye." He hung up and told Gentry, "She didn't say anything to Lucy that proves it either way. I'll be damned if I don't believe she was Mary Barnes all along. I've had a feeling about her- that she didn't fit into the badger game technique-"
"Then why did the scar-faced man positively identify her as Nellie Paulson?"
"Don't forget that we now know he isn't Paulson,"
Shayne objected. "God knows who he is, but he doesn't fit the Jax police description. So maybe he didn't even know Nellie by sight. Maybe that's why he thought the girl who ran out of three-sixteen was Nellie. If he knew Nellie had that room-went up there looking for her and saw a blonde girl running out, he'd naturally assume she was Nellie. Now we're beginning to get somewhere."
"Where?" demanded Gentry sardonically.
"I don't know for sure." Shayne's grin was wryly abashed. "But the girl's story all falls into place if you accept her as Mary Barnes instead of Paulson. Damn it, I had a feeling from the beginning she was telling methe truth and wasn't half as crazy as Nellie Paulson is supposed to be."
"So now everything's just perfect-since you decided your judgment of her wasn't at fault."
"Everything's perfectly wrong," snapped Shayne. "I wasn't half as worried when I thought scar-face was hunting Nellie Paulson with a gun. Girls who pull stunts like her badger game pretty damn well deserve whatever they get. But if it's Mary Barnes he's after? Why the devil don't your men pick him up. Will? They've had his description for a couple of hours now."
"They will. Eventually. If he tries to move around. While you're blaming the Force, Mike, don't forget it was you who failed to make sure she'd stay put at Lucy's when you had the chance. Chew on that while you think about what may happen if she meets up with that forty-five."
NINETEEN: 11:34 PM
Patrolman Cassiday had been a full-fledged member of the Miami Police Force less than a month. He was a well-set-up young man who filled out his new uniform snugly. A veteran of the Korean War who had rebelled against the humdrum of a garage mechanic's job after coming back, he was pleased with his new job and extremely proud to wear the uniform and to wield the authority that went with it.
Cassiday's beat was Miami's Bayfront Park. He walked the winding, palm-shaded paths in steady strides, chin up and eyes alert for any sort of mischief a policeman should put a stop to.
It was like walking a guard post in the army, and snatches from the General Orders often fled through his mind as he paced along:
"To walk my post in a military manner… always on the alert.. that takes place within sight or hearing…"
Of course there was nothing much of a criminal nature taking place in the well-lighted park at night, and that's why a rookie cop always drew the beat. But you never knew, Cassiday kept telling himself sternly. Anything could happen in the park at any time.
Those two men with their heads close together on the bench around the turn-they might be desperate gunmen checking their final plans for holding up the First National Bank in the morning. That blowsy old woman who tottered in front of him, wheezing as she walked and leaving a thick smell of stale beer behind her-what if that were a clever disguise to throw off suspicion while she carried out her cunning plan for kidnaping the mayor's young daughter whom she had lured into the park on some pretext?
In the meantime, until some of these hoped-for events happened, the young patrolman strode his post sternly and alertly, secretly amused to see the way young couples sprang apart at his approach, began talking loudly about inconsequentials, pretending not to notice his uniform as he passed, then melted back into one soHd lump in the shadowy darkness behind him as soon as he was ten paces away.
In the beginning, less than a month ago, Cassiday had paused often in his patrol to speak gruffly to such young couples, who hung their heads in abashed silence at his tone. Innocent love-making on a park bench was all right, and he had orders it was to be tolerated up to a point, but how was a young patrolman to know when that point was reached? It was safer by far, he had judged sternly, to nip such little affairs in the bud with a word of warning before they had a chance to go too far.
But that was weeks ago. Before he had met Ann Schwartz. Now he walked his beat as alertly as before, but with much more tolerance for the kisses and caresses under a Miami moon.
Ann Schwartz was a dark little Jewish girl, with elusive laughing eyes, lush breasts and a softly yielding body. He had first met her at a party at his brother-in-law's house two weeks before, and from that day onward his thoughts were all of Ann as he walked the park at night.
Sure she was Jewish, but so what? he argued happily with himself. She didn't really take her religion seriously. She wasn't kosher. She ate bacon with her eggs just the same as any good Catholic, and seemed to have a real yen for all kinds of shell fish.
That kind of Jewish didn't matter if a couple were in love. And he and Ann were. They had decided that the second night he dated her. She wasn't any more wrapped up in her religion than he was in his. A man could go to Mass occasionally, he thought, and his wife could go to a synagogue. Why not? At home it wouldn't matter. Not after the lights were out at night and a man was in bed with Ann.
Tolerance, that's what the world needed more of, he told himself wisely, looking the other way as he saw a dark mass off on the grass beneath a coconut palm writhe in a peculiar fashion. Three weeks ago he would have halted and rapped out a stem warning that would have brought the shame-faced young couple to their feet and out of the park in a hurry, but tonight he looked the other way and even smiled foolishly as he thought how it would be to writhe in the grass beneath a palm tree with Ann.
Not that she was that sort of girl at all. Not with any fellow except the man she was going to marry. But how did he know that couple back there weren't engaged, too? So, why should he interfere?
He pushed his peaked cap back on his forehead as he strode on, looking upward at the faint moon and feeling a great warmth of youth and vitality in his loins. Tomorrow was his night off and he was going to her home in Coral Gables to meet her family. He wasn't worried about the meeting. He felt he knew them already from Ann's ready descriptions of them. He would wear his new double-breasted orlon suit, he decided, with a white shirt and maybe a black tie to give the right sort of impression of sober conventionality in front of her parents.
The rippling water of Biscayne Bay was silver in the faint moonlight on his left through gaps in the shrubbery. Farther out, he could dimly see the riding lights of a few yachts anchored in the bay.
He turned sharply away, threading between double rows of palms whose fronds met over his head, heading westward now toward the end of his beat where there was a call-box for his hourly report.