“I don’t think so.” He stood inside the door looking down at the corpse. “Can that pistol be traced to you… or your daughter?”
“No. I’m positive it can’t.” She laughed nervously. “Actually, I got it from an actor who had lifted it off the set of a movie… one of the prop guns.”
Shayne muttered, “There might be fingerprints,” and reached down to pick it up and rub it between his big palms much as she had done an hour previously. Then he slid it into the man’s coat pocket and said, “Let the police try to figure out why he’s carrying the gun that killed him.” He straightened up and glanced around the room. “I wonder if there’s an extra blanket or anything.”
She hurried past him toward the closet door, murmuring, “There often is… on a shelf.” She opened the door and stood on tiptoes, then turned back with a folded blanket in her arms. “It has the name of the hotel on it.”
“Can’t be helped. I won’t leave him wrapped up in it.” He took the blanket from her, shook it out so it was folded double, and carefully spread it across the body, covering it from head to toe. Then he knelt down and rolled the man over carefully so that he was enclosed like a cocoon in the blanket. The body was beginning to stiffen with rigor mortis, so it was quite easy to manipulate.
Shayne stood up and checked his watch. It was exactly nine minutes since he had parted with John Russco in the hotel basement. “Time to get this show on the road,” he said casually and turned to her where she stood in the doorway watching him with fear-distended eyes.
“There’s nothing for you to worry about,” he told her quietly. “Just stay here and drink the rest of that Scotch and wait for Vicky to telephone you. Tell her to check out of wherever she is and come back here and pretend none of this happened. Go on about your normal routine. The wedding will be tomorrow. Act exactly as you would have acted if this hadn’t happened. You may read in the paper about an unidentified body being found in Miami. I hope he can’t be traced here. Even if the police come knocking at your door asking questions… you just don’t know the answers. There’s not even a drop of blood here on the rug where he’s lain. Deny everything. Don’t identify him even if they should force you to go to the morgue to look at him.
“Good luck to you, Carla. And good luck to Vicky. I hope she has a long and happy marriage. Now… stand out of the way and open your door for me.”
She stood there on the threshold of the sitting room gazing at him. “Will you be in touch with me, Mike? Will I see you again?”
“Better not. Though I’d like to… under different circumstances.” He tossed her a wide smile. “In Hollywood, maybe. Next month… or next year? If you happen to run into Brett out there… tell him I’m still holding up my end in Miami… but this is one case I don’t think he’d better write up in a book.”
He turned away from her, leaned over and picked up the blanket-wrapped bundle of stiffening flesh in his arms and turned back to the sitting room.
She was waiting by the outside door with her hand on the knob. She smiled faintly as he approached, opened the door and leaned out to look up and down the hallway. Then she drew back and nodded reassuringly to indicate that the coast was clear, and drew to one side to let him pass through with his gruesome burden.
He stepped out into the wide, well-lighted corridor and she silently drew the door shut behind him. He turned in the direction in which he had left the open elevator waiting for him, and walked swiftly toward it, praying that no late-comers would suddenly turn up around the corner.
He reached the door numbered 804 and gazed blankly at the closed doors of the service elevator across from it. He had left them standing open, with the HOLD button pressed down to hold the cage at that floor.
Now it was gone.
6
He stood there in the lighted hallway awkwardly holding the blanketed burden of stiffening flesh in his arms, staring stupidly at the closed doors of the service elevator. It couldn’t be gone. He had pushed the right button to hold it, just as Russco had showed him.
There was no indicator above the closed doors to show where the cage was now. There was an electric button in the frame beside the doors and he pushed it hard in the hope that it might, somehow, open the doors and show the cage waiting. But the doors remained obstinately closed and there was no sound to indicate that pressing the button had any effect on the mechanism at all.
He couldn’t just stand there with a dead man in his arms waiting. Someone might turn up at any moment. And time was running out on him. He’d told Russco fifteen minutes.
He’d better get the corpse back inside 810. Then he might get down in time to catch Russco… find out what had gone wrong with the elevator… start out all over again.
He turned back with his burden, but was halted by the sound of voices just around the corner toward the regular elevators.
People were coming. There was no time to make it to 810 unobserved. He whirled and deposited the corpse on the floor against the wall and beside the elevator door. Then he straightened and wiped sweat from his face, moved to place himself in front of the dead man and conceal him from view as best he could, just as a young couple came around the corner and started toward him.
They were still about forty feet away, and he fumbled for a cigarette in his shirt pocket while he watched their somewhat erratic progress with narrowed eyes.
They were both apparently quite tipsy. The dinner-jacketed young man had his arm tightly about the girl’s slender waist and she had her face pressed against his shoulder and was giggling loudly while he half-supported her with his head bent over her blonde head.
Shayne made himself lean nonchalantly back with his shoulder blades against the wall while he lighted his cigarette and waited tensely for them to notice him and start wondering what he was doing there with the queer bundle on the floor behind him.
His luck held.
They stopped at a room three doors down the corridor and the young man fumbled to get a key in the lock, got the door open and half-carried the girl inside. The door closed behind them and neither had so much as glanced in his direction.
At that precise instant there was a whirring sound and a couple of metallic clicks behind the elevator doors and they slid open in front of him.
A little gray-haired man almost fell out of the elevator. He was very drunk and his tie was askew and a pair of pince-nez dangled from his neck on a black ribbon and he blinked near-sightedly as he fumbled for his glasses, and demanded querulously, “Whas-a-matter here. Funny kin’ elevator f’r a swanky joint like this. Rode me righ’ down th’ cellar, thas what. Don’ wan’ cellar. Wan’ th’ lobby.”
Shayne caught his arm and dragged him out into the corridor, turning him roughly so he faced away from the dead man. “You got the wrong elevator,” he explained cheerfully. “Down this way.” Half-carrying and half-pushing the little man, he rushed him down the carpeted hall and around the corner to the bank of guest elevators. He propped him against the wall and pushed the DOWN button, then trotted back around the corner hoping to God the empty cage would still be waiting for him this time.
It was. He scooped up the body and dragged it inside, pushed the lower button with a B above it, and heaved a long, heart-felt sigh of relief as the doors closed and they started down. He looked at his watch and saw that almost seventeen minutes had elapsed since he had parted with Russco.
When the cage stopped and the doors opened he saw John standing across from him with his hand on the doorknob frowning down at his watch. He looked up and said, “I’d just about given you up, Mike.”
“Some drunk stole my elevator and took a free ride,” Shayne grated. “Car outside?”
“Ready and waiting.” Russco opened the door and pretended to avert his face so he wouldn’t see what Shayne was carrying as the redhead went past him.