“I know all about that,” Gentry told him heavily. “But answer me this one question honestly, Mike. What would you have done if Painter had asked you nicely to stay out of the Peralta case?”
Shayne hesitated. “I expect I would have told him to go to hell. Why shouldn’t I take on a case he’s messed with for three weeks? Who the hell is he to tell me…?”
“That’s what Mr. Erskine is here to tell you, Mike. But before we get into that… have you seen Lucy or heard from her this evening?”
“Not since I left the office about four o’clock.”
“She was trying desperately to get in touch with you… I guess while Painter had you locked up. That’s the one place she wouldn’t think to try.”
“What did Lucy want?”
“She finally phoned me about eight o’clock, Mike. She talked fast and then the connection was broken before I could ask any questions. She said she was all right and would keep on being all right, if you’d stop trying to recover the Peralta bracelet. But that she wouldn’t be all right if you refused to lay off.”
“My God!” Shayne’s face was suddenly angry. “You don’t think that Painter…”
“No,” said Gentry scathingly, “I don’t think that Peter Painter would kidnap your secretary and threaten her with harm just to frighten you off. But this thing has ramifications, Mike. Mr. Erskine here is from the State Department in Washington. Painter sent him to me after your run-in this afternoon, to see if the two of us could pound some sense into your thick head.”
“Wait a minute.” Shayne’s face was deeply trenched and very grim. “What about Lucy? What have you done about her?”
“What can we do about her? I checked your office and her apartment. Both are in perfect order. Looks as though she closed up the office with her usual efficiency, but there’s no sign at all that she ever got home. Ashtrays clean… everything tidied up the way I’d expect Lucy to leave it in the morning.”
“What’s all this pressure from various sources to lay off the Peralta bracelet?” demanded Shayne.
“That’s what Mr. Erskine is here to tell you. What Painter should have explained to you this afternoon if you would have listened.”
The telephone rang at Shayne’s elbow. He scooped it up and said, “Shayne speaking,” and listened a moment before holding it out to Gentry. “For you, Will.” He sank back and picked up his drink moodily while the chief took the instrument and said, “Yes.”
He finished the cognac and took a sip of ice water while Gentry held the phone to his ear and listened. He finally said, “I got all that. Mike Shayne’s here now. I’ll probably bring him in.”
He leaned over the detective’s long legs to replace the telephone, and commented morosely, “You do have a way of getting around, don’t you, Mike?”
“What was that?”
“Just a report on a little ruckus in a river-front bar.” Gentry went back to sit on the sofa. “Place called Las Putas Buenas.”
Erskine sat up alertly and spoke for the first time since Shayne had entered the apartment. “That’s one of their meeting places, Chief Gentry. We’ve had it under surveillance for some time.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Gentry grimly. “My sergeant reports that about half an hour ago a big drunken redhead blustered into the place and started a fight with a couple of customers who were quietly minding their own business. He broke the arm of one of them, trying to drag him into the men’s room for some unknown purpose. Then he locked himself in and got away from the infuriated mob by jumping out a window into the Miami River where it’s about waist-deep. I thought your shoes looked pretty muddy for coming out of a swimming pool, Mike.”
“Good heavens!” exclaimed Mr. Erskine in earnest dismay. “You have stirred up a hornet’s nest, Mr. Shayne. If you were recognized…”
“He was recognized, all right,” said Gentry flatly.
“Look, Will.” Shayne spoke very quietly and disregarded Erskine. “I dropped into that bar for a nightcap, and ordered one drink for myself and one for a gal who sat beside me and whom I didn’t even look at. Two men came up behind me while I was quietly drinking my brandy. They held pig-stickers on either side of me at my gut-line. I didn’t see their faces, but from their voices one was Spanish and one wasn’t. They told me to walk back to the rest-room. Which I did. I slammed the door on one of them and broke his arm. Then I went out the window and away from there fast. Are you going to arrest me for that?”
“I don’t know yet. I think maybe I will.”
“What the hell is this all about?” demanded Shayne, fiercely. “Should I have sat there and let them spill my guts all over the floor?”
“You should not have ventured there in the first place,” Erskine told him severely. “If you had heeded Chief Painter this afternoon, all this could have been avoided.”
“All what?” Shayne’s voice was harsher than before.
Mr. Erskine put the tips of his fingers together precisely in front of him and blinked at Shayne behind his hornrimmed glasses.
“Julio Peralta is a dangerous Communist conspirator, Mr. Shayne. We have a long dossier on his affiliation with various subversive organizations over the years, both in this country and in Latin America. He was one of the architects and the principal financial backer of the Castro revolution, while cleverly remaining in the background, and left Cuba before Castro took over on the pretense that he was a refugee from the Communistic forces which he had helped into power.
“In Miami, he has played a double role among the various Cuban factions who are feverishly plotting to extend the Communist conspiracy to other Latin American countries and those patriotic groups who are appalled by the turn events have taken in their war-torn country and are determined to overthrow the tyrannical Castro government and bring peace and prosperity back to their land.
“Our government… your government, Mr. Shayne… is not asleep during this crisis, as so many people mistakenly assume. Julio Peralta has been under constant and careful surveillance by our counter-espionage agents since the first day he settled in Miami. We have dedicated and expert operatives planted in his camp who furnish daily reports of his activities, and whose presence he does not remotely suspect. For the past few months there has been a vast build-up of the most modern munitions to equip a trained expeditionary force that is being gathered in Cuba now under the leadership of Russian officers.
“It is only a matter of days before we will be ready to swoop down and confiscate this vast store of arms and arrest the ringleaders, including Peralta. But these are anxious days, Mr. Shayne, and a very delicate balance must be maintained. The slightest intimation of their danger to the conspirators could easily wreck all our carefully laid plans. Thus, it was a great misfortune from our viewpoint when the Peralta bracelet was stolen two weeks ago.
“Ironically enough, I should add, it was just as great a blow to the Communist conspiracy.” Mr. Erskine smiled thinly and his eyes gleamed owlishly behind his glasses. “They wanted nothing in the world less than to call police attention to Peralta, his household and his associates. Someone blundered when the theft of the bracelet was even reported to the police, and Peralta quickly tried to rectify that mistake by requesting Chief Painter on the Beach to drop the investigation at once… even going so far, I believe, as to assure the insurance company that a claim for loss would be waived.
“Naturally, however, as an energetic police official, the Miami Beach Chief of Detectives was loath to give up the effort to recover the stolen bracelet. At that point, I stepped into the picture. You can readily see that we, no less than Peralta and his fellow-conspirators, did not want the boat rocked by any overt prying into Peralta’s affairs, interrogating his servants, and so forth. They must be made to feel that they are wholly in the clear… that there is no danger whatsoever of official interference… in seeking to solve the loss of a paltry emerald bracelet.