“Some bastard ruined my beauty sleep to report an automobile accident out on the Trail.”
“So-?”
“It was the goods, all right. The bodies have been brought in, and a wrecker is getting the car up now. One funny thing about the accident, Mike. The driver was alone in the front seat, and there was one man in the back. He drowned cuddling a typewriter.”
Shayne lit a cigarette and spun the match across the room toward a cuspidor.
“That is funny,” he conceded. “Mostly when two men are riding in a car, they’re both in the front seat.”
“Yeh. I’ve got a hunch about it. Looks to me like-”
“Skip it. I don’t suppose you’ve got any dope on the men or guns yet?”
“Not yet. I think they must be new in Miami. The car had New York plates.”
Shayne nodded casually. “Let me know if you get anything.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out the frilly square of linen, tossed it across to Gentry. “Can you see any good reason why that might be worth murder?”
The detective chief picked it up and turned it over and over.
“Looks like some dame’s handkerchief.”
Shayne leaned forward tensely.
“I wish you’d have your bright boys put it through every known test for secret writing or stuff like that, Will. It’s probably a crazy idea-” He leaned back and tugged at the lobe of his ear. “-But I’ve got to know.”
“Sure. Anything else on your mind, Mike?”
Shayne got up, but Gentry detained him by asking, “What’s it all about?”
“I wish to God I knew, Will. I don’t. I’m trying to play sixteen different hunches.”
Gentry cleared his throat and rustled the newspaper in his hands.
“It says here that you positively identified the voice that called you over the phone to come to the beach.”
Shayne nodded absently.
“That’s bait. We’ll see what comes after it. I wish you’d leave any messages at my hotel, Will.”
Gentry said he would do that, and Shayne went out.
In his car, he drove to Fifth Street where he turned to the right for a few blocks, into the oldest residential section of the Magic City and parked in front of a two-story, gabled frame house set back in the center of a large lawn shaded with magnificent old trees. A neat sign on the lawn said: HOUSEKEEPING APARTMENTS TO LET.
Shayne went up the walk to a sagging front porch that needed paint, and pressed the button. A dumpy woman with stringy black hair and a fat, dark face came to the door.
Shayne tipped his hat back and said, “Hello, mamma. Is Chuck Evans in?”
“It’s you, Mr. Shayne.” Mamma Julie shook her head. “Chuck hit it lucky at the track a few days ago. You know how those heels are. My place wasn’t good enough as soon as he got in the money. He pulled out to one of the fancy hotels. Him and that cheap little bitch that’s been keeping him all winter.”
“Do you know which hotel?”
“I’m not sure. Seems like I heard him talking about the Everglades. That Belle, she don’t know how quick she’ll get thrown out of a swell joint like that when she starts shaking her butt around the lobby.”
Shayne repressed a chuckle of genuine amusement, thanked the woman, and drove around to Biscayne Boulevard to the magnificent hostelry overlooking the bay.
Inside the ornate lobby he went directly to a little cubbyhole office and opened a plain wooden door. He said, “Hi, sweetheart,” to the fat, vacuous-faced, bald man who sat at a desk puffing on a cigar.
Carl Bolton made a half-hearted movement toward getting up, and extended a pudgy hand.
“Hello, Mike. You do get yourself in the goddamnedest messes.”
Shayne said, “Yeh,” morosely, and lowered one hip on a corner of the house detective’s desk. “Do you know a mug named Chuck Evans?”
“Should I?”
“He’s a cheap tout that’s been hanging around the race tracks all winter. It seems he knocked off a winner a few days ago, and I heard he’d moved in here to get rid of the dough fast. See if you’ve got him, Carl.”
Carl Bolton said, “Half a mo’,” and went out.
Shayne sat on the desk swinging one long leg back and forth until the house dick came back with a slip of paper in his hands.
“We’ve got an Evans, J. C. and wife. They checked in day before yesterday. Number three-sixty-two.”
Shayne said, “Let’s go up? Got a pass-key?”
Bolton nodded and they went out into the lobby together, across a thick rug to the elevators and up to the third floor.
Bolton knocked on the door of 362. He waited for a response and when none came he knocked again, loudly.
Shayne stood by with knobby hands in his pockets while Bolton fitted the pass-key into the lock and opened the door.
The fat man took a step inside and yelled, “Holy hell! Would you look at that?”
Shayne stepped past him into a hotel bedroom that looked as if a miniature hurricane had romped in from the Gulf Stream and had its way, then romped out again.
Bureau drawers were open and clothes strewn over the floor. Bedclothes were draped on chairs and the thick innerspring mattress had been pulled half off the double bed, the ticking slashed and the padding pulled out in gobs.
Shayne walked over to a low vanity dresser where new and obviously expensive lingerie had been dumped on the floor in piles, and began pawing through the stuff. Behind him, Bolton demanded peevishly, “What the hell’s the meaning of this, Mike? You don’t seem none surprised.”
“I’m not.”
He went on poking into half-emptied drawers, a deep frown creasing his forehead.
“Who done it?” Bolton demanded belligerently. “And who’s goin’ to pay for the damage?”
“Maybe you can collect from your guests,” Shayne suggested, “if they ever show up again.”
“What are you lookin’ for?”
“I wish to God I knew. A handkerchief, maybe.” Shayne turned away in disgust. “To hell with it. Let’s go down to the office and try to check and see when this was pulled.”
They locked the door and went down to the office where Carl Bolton went into a huddle with the management and Shayne withdrew into a deep chair where he was on the verge of dropping off to sleep when Bolton came to report.
“It looks like maybe the Evanses haven’t been back since going out early last night. The night clerk and none of the elevator operators noticed them come in or out. They must’ve carried their room key off with them. Nobody saw or heard anything,” he ended defeatedly. Shayne shook himself awake and sighed.
“Somebody probably borrowed Chuck’s key. Here’s a lead that might get you somewhere.”
He described Passo and Marv, mentioning particularly Marv’s silky-smooth voice.
“The clerk or some of the bellhops might have seen those two come in. It would have been somewhere around midnight-not later than two.” He got up and stretched, rubbed his eyes. “If Chuck Evans does show up, I’d hold him, Carl. And give me a ring, will you?”
Bolton said, “Sure, Mike,” and trotted after Shayne when he started for the outer door. “Don’t be so damned tight with your info, Mike. You know more about this than you’re giving out.”
“That’s the hell of it,” said Shayne irritably. “I don’t. You know I’ve never held out on you, Carl. If I turn anything up that’ll help you on this mess, I’ll let you know.” He went out into Miami’s bright mid-morning sunlight and got in his car. He thought suddenly of the money he had collected from Marco last night. He took out his wallet and examined the bills. They were still damp. He wiped each bill carefully with a linen handkerchief, laying them separately on the seat to dry. Then he drove slowly to the First National Bank where he deposited them.
Back in his car, he headed it toward the beach, using the County causeway.
He stopped at a drugstore on Fifth Street and looked up an address in the telephone directory, then drove straight to an ugly, two-story stucco house on a palm-lined street two blocks from the ocean.
He went up the walk briskly and rang the bell. After a short interval the door was opened by a thin-featured middle-aged woman wearing a white apron over a black silk dress. She looked at Shayne suspiciously and asked, “What do you want?”