He turned away and Gentry made a movement to follow him. Shayne’s hand closed down tighter on his friend’s shoulder.
“Don’t go, Will. You’ve got to help me.”
They stood like that until the door closed after Painter, then Shayne’s hand relaxed and slid away.
“How long will it take him to make that ballistic test?”
“Half an hour.” Gentry looked at him steadily. “Why, Mike? You’re not afraid of what it will show, are you?”
“God help me, I am.” Shayne gritted his teeth angrily, then spread out his hands. “There’s no time to go into the details-but I switched barrels in those two pistols. I thought my gun had killed Grange. If the Marco gun killed him-I’m done for, Will.”
“You damned fool. You goddamned fool.”
“I know.” Shayne jerked his head around. “I deserve anything you say. I didn’t kill Grange. You believe that, don’t you?”
“Yes. I believe that. But why-?”
“Never mind anything else.” Shayne gripped his arm. “I’ve got to have a few hours to clear myself. How many ballistics experts are there on the beach force?”
“Why-only one. Lonnie Judson.”
“You personally acquainted with him?”
“Sure. He used to work with me.”
Shayne was dragging Gentry toward the phone.
“Call your friend Lonnie Judson before Painter has time to get there with the pistol. Get him away from the office somehow. Tell him anything. Have him go home with a case of smallpox. Anything to stay out of Painter’s way. Do this one thing for me, Will, and I swear to God I’ll have Grange’s murderer by five o’clock this afternoon.”
“I can’t do that, Mike. I’m an officer of the law, and Painter’d know.”
“Will, for God’s sake, you know how Painter feels toward me. If that pistol shows-he’ll have me behind bars, and I won’t get out. You know me, Will. You’ve got to do it.”
Gentry sighed and said, “You do have a way of making it tough on your friends, Mike.”
He lifted the receiver and called Miami Beach headquarters while Shayne went back to pour himself a drink and do some concentrated thinking.
Gentry left the telephone and said, “Lonnie thinks I’m nuts, but he owed me a favor. He’ll be home and in bed by the time Painter gets there. That’ll mean Painter will bring the gun over to my office for-”
“Stall him,” Shayne said impatiently. He set down his glass and absently poured Gentry a drink. “Didn’t you ever get anything on those hoodlums you fished out of the Tamiami Trail canal?”
“Them? Oh, yeh, I forgot to tell you. Ex-cons paroled from Raiford last month. The car was stolen.”
“Raiford? Paroled last month?” Hope shone in Michael Shayne’s eyes. “Remember Whitey Larson? Used to work for Marco and got sent up for rolling a drunk for his winnings.”
Gentry rubbed his chin. “I just remember the name.”
“He was paroled from Raiford last month, too. Any way you could find out whether Whitey and those other two were friendly while they were doing time together? Whether they got paroled at the same time?”
“Sure. I could call the warden.”
“Do it.” Shayne shoved him toward the telephone. “Charge it to my phone. I’m either going to earn a fee on this case, or I’ll be in a spot where I won’t have to worry about telephone bills.”
It took Gentry some time to get through to the warden of the state penitentiary at Raiford. After he was connected, it didn’t take long to get the information he wanted.
“You hit it on the head,” he told Shayne when he hung up. “Whitey and the others were close pals-all three of them worked in the laundry for months, and they were paroled at the same time.”
“That,” said Shayne soberly, “must mean something. If I can just figure out what it means I may dodge the chair yet.”
Gentry grabbed him by the arm and pushed him down into a chair.
“You’re holding out too much on me. It’ll do you good to spill some of this-clear it up in your own mind. What’s the straight on those birds that were drowned in the canal?”
Shayne gave him the story succinctly.
“You might as well have the rest of it,” he went on when Gentry asked what they thought he had gotten from Grange that was so valuable.
“Right now, I’m guessing they were after the info Grange was holding out on Thomas. I was balled up at first because the only thing I took from Grange was a lady’s handkerchief, and I thought they were after that.”
“The one you gave me to analyze?”
“Yeh. I had a crazy hunch there might be a message on it, or something. It belonged to Marsha Marco.”
Gentry sighed out loud and shook his head.
“This gets more mixed up all the time. Marsha Marco. How does she figure?”
“She’s the key to the whole damned thing. She either killed Grange-or knows who did it,” Shayne explained.
He sucked in his breath sharply. “I lifted that pistol out of Marsha’s room. I was being, oh, so goddamned cagey.” He groaned and lifted a haggard face to stare at his companion. “I deserve anything I get. I’ve messed around with evidence before, Will, but always in the ultimate interests of justice. This time, I was positive I knew the killer, and I was trying to throw the law off the track, and incidentally save myself from a frame.”
“All right,” Gentry said impatiently. “Forget that part of it. What have you got now?”
“A God-awful headache!”
“Why not pick up the Marco girl?”
“That’s where we’re stymied. Marsha Marco has disappeared. She may not even be alive right now.”
“What makes you think that? She’s probably hiding out.”
“If she killed Grange, she’s just the type to suicide over it. If the killer knows she recognized him — he may have taken care of her. The hell of it is, I’ve only a few hours to fit all the pieces together. As soon as Painter tests that pistol-”
“Maybe it isn’t so bad,” Gentry offered consolingly. “You’re just guessing that the pistol you got from the Marco girl’s room killed him. If it didn’t-”
“But I can’t take that chance,” Shayne pointed out somberly. “If I’d only had brains enough to get you privately to make a test-but how the hell was I to guess? There was my gun lying by Grange’s body, jammed after one bullet had been fired. And I knew it had been taken from here that evening by a man who had worked up a first-class hate against me, and who planned to meet Grange that night. Good God! can you blame me for reading it was a perfect frame-up-and for doing what I could to protect myself?”
“I don’t blame you,” Gentry admitted. “But it’s going to look black as hell to a jury, Mike. You’ve been on the wrong end of a lot of publicity the past few years. You’ve encouraged the newspapers to paint you as black as their headlines. You’ve held out the inside stuff that would have cleared you on a lot of angles.”
“Sure, sure. That’s water under the bridge now. It was smart publicity while it lasted. And it’s been fun.”
Briefly, Shayne let his wide mouth stretch into a grin.
“I’m not finished yet, either. Here we are sitting around weeping crocodile tears over my demise. Hell, I’ve still got a few hours. I’ve broken tougher cases in less time.”
He got up and strode back and forth.
“We’ve got to find that Marco girl,” he muttered. “You can help me on that. Get out a general alarm over the radio. I’ll lose a slice of money if you find her, but this thing has gone beyond monetary considerations. And I wish to God I could locate Larry Kincaid. My gun places him at the scene of the crime at about the time it was committed. He and Marsha Marco must both know something. Either one of them might have killed Grange. And I can’t cover Larry any longer. The only way I can get clear is to square the whole thing up. Put the Jax police on his trail, Will. They might pick up something. I’ve wasted a day playing a goddamned fool when I should have been thinking of my own hide. Larry wired his wife from Jax yesterday morning. Wait a minute and I may be able to get the exact time the message was filed. It’ll be a slim lead, but-”