“But that was…” Shayne tried to cut in on the flow of words, but she rushed on:
“And another time there was the body in your secretary’s bedroom. You didn’t have any moral qualms about lugging his corpse down the fire escape and loading it into your car.”
“But Lucy was in deadly danger that time,” Shayne pointed out angrily. “If the cops had found the body there…”
“And it’s my little girl who’s in deadly danger this time,” she interrupted him. “It’s not your secretary… or you. It’s Vicky. I wish to God now I hadn’t ever telephoned you,” she went on viciously. “I could have done something. Thrown it out the window, maybe. Anything would be better than just to leave him lying there. But I’d listened to Brett telling all his stories about you and what a great guy you were, so now I’m stuck with you. I don’t suppose you’d even be willing right now to walk out of this room and forget you ever saw me,” she ended forlornly. “Let me try to figure out something for myself.” Shayne compressed his lips and got up and strode across the room and stopped in front of a mirror to look at his reflection curiously.
The hell of it was… there was so much truth in what she was saying. Certainly, justice would not be served by leaving the body in the bedroom and having Vicky and her mother crucified by the public press. He had taken matters in his own hands in the past without any inner qualms about the legality of his actions.
But, as she pointed out so scathingly, that had been when he was endangered… or someone close to him like Lucy.
Is that the kind of selfish guy you really are, he asked himself in the mirror. When the chips are really down, haven’t you got the guts to do for someone else what you wouldn’t hesitate to do for yourself? Have you been kidding yourself all these years? Kidding Brett and the public to the point that a woman like this thinks you will come to her help, and entrusts her daughter’s future to you… and you refuse because it’s too much trouble and might get you in bad with the cops?
Looking at himself in the mirror, he knew he wasn’t that kind of selfish guy. He had just got complacent and lazy these last few easy-going years. He’d been riding on his reputation and collecting big fees that involved no personal danger and little real difficulty.
He grinned at the mirror suddenly, and his reflection grinned back at him, looking a dozen years younger and a dozen years more reckless than he remembered himself looking for a long time.
A trace of the grin still lingered on his face as he turned back toward the sofa and said very gently, “You sit tight here for Vicky to call. If she does… tell her to sit tight wherever she is until I see if I can work an angle or two.”
5
“Do you mean…? Oh, thank God, Mike. You are going to help.” She came to her feet with a rush, her face transfigured with newborn hope, both hands outstretched.
He caught her hands and held them tightly. “I’m going to see what I can do. That’s all I can promise right now. If I hit it lucky and things work out right, we may be able to keep your daughter out of this mess. If she calls before I get back, just tell her to stay put and not do anything foolish until you call her.”
“I know you can do it,” she breathed. “I know everything will be all right.”
“Just leave everything as it is,” he told her, releasing her clinging hands. “Including that whiskey bottle,” he ended half jocosely and half seriously. “From the looks of it you’ve had plenty during the time you’ve been in this room.”
“It wasn’t full when I got here, Mike,” she defended herself. “He must have had a couple of drinks. And maybe Vicky had one or two while she was waiting for me. She does take a drink now and then.”
He shrugged and went to the coffee table to pick up the parking stub he had found in the dead man’s pocket, studied it a moment and then placed it in his own pocket. He picked up the four sheets of paper and folded them carefully while she watched him, and she exclaimed impulsively, “Can’t we tear her note up, Mike? Isn’t that dangerous evidence to have around? If anything does go wrong, I’d prefer to tell the police I killed him. It’s in her handwriting, and…”
Shayne said, “That’s why I intend to keep it… in case something does go wrong. I’m not going to destroy evidence in a homicide, Carla. I may tamper with it or twist it a little bit, but that’s as far as I’ll go.”
He started to go out, then turned back slowly, looking down at his big hands and flexing them indecisively. Gloves were something men just didn’t have on tap in Miami. He said, “Would you let me have a pair of your stockings, Carla?”
“My stockings?” Instinctively she glanced down at her nylon-sheathed legs. “Do you mean…?”
“I mean a pair of stockings,” he told her patiently. “Old ones are all right.” He grinned faintly at the look of bewilderment on her face. “In the olden days the ladies used to give their knights a garter to wear when they went out to joust for them. I prefer a pair of nylons.”
She wet her lips and returned his grin with an uncertain smile. It was evident she hadn’t the faintest idea what he was driving at, but she turned obediently and knelt beside the closed overnight case on the floor. She unsnapped it and opened the lid, straightened up with a pair of fresh stockings still in the cellophane envelope in which they had been purchased. “Are these all right?”
“Just fine.” He shoved them into his pocket and patted her cheek.
He then turned to the door decisively. “I shouldn’t be long. Not more than fifteen or twenty minutes. Lock the door and don’t let anyone in until I come. I’ll knock twice and then three times.” He went out without looking back at her.
The long corridor was empty, and he stood there for a moment, looking up and down the length of it and tugging gently at his left ear-lobe. It ended in a doorway on his right about twenty feet away, plainly lettered EXIT. That would be the stairway. Eight flights of stairs down. He grimaced and turned to the left, strode down the hall and around the corner to the bank of passenger elevators.
The car was empty when it stopped for him. It went down to the lobby without stopping and he stepped out into the large, brightly-lighted room still busy with the coming and going of guests even at this late hour.
Shayne moved among them and made a careful circuit of the room, glancing casually at the face of every man he encountered who was standing or sitting alone, and worked his way around to the entrance to the cocktail lounge without seeing a familiar countenance.
The bar stools were half-filled and most of the small tables were occupied, with two white-coated waiters serving drinks, and Shayne moved slowly toward the unoccupied portion of the bar, blinking his eyes to accustom them to the dim light in such strong contrast to the lobby.
One man sat alone at the extreme end of the bar nursing a tall glass of beer. There were at least a dozen empty stools between him and the next customer, and Shayne paused only a moment before moving over and sliding onto the stool beside him.
He was a stocky man with regular, good-natured features, wearing a dark suit, white shirt and black bow-tie. He glanced aside curiously as the rangy redhead sat beside him, and a smile spread over his big face and he said heartily, “Mike Shayne, himself. Buy you a drink?”
He lifted a finger to beckon the bartender before Shayne could reply, and told him genially, “Set out a bottle of cognac for my friend, Jack. It’s on the house. What are you drinking these days, Mike? Is it still Martel?”
“Martel is fine,” Shayne agreed. “Cordon Bleu, if it’s handy.”
“Well, now,” said John Russco, pretending to hesitate and be taken aback. “I did say it was on the house, but that stuff runs into money. Okay, Jack,” he ended resignedly to the waiting bartender. “Nothing is too good for Mike Shayne.”
“Call it a bribe, John,” Shayne told him in a low voice. “I may be just about to do you and the hotel a hell of a big favor.”