Hastily, Shayne peered into the front seat of the coupe. One of Harry Grange’s limp tanned hands lay on the seat close to his thigh. A blur of white showed under the lax fingers.
Shayne pulled a lacy, feminine handkerchief from under the dead man’s hand as the noise of the siren died from a crescendo to a low moan.
He slid the handkerchief into his coat pocket and stepped back to make a quick search around the car. His eye caught the gleam of moonlight on blued steel lying on the ground just under the running board.
He picked up a. 32 automatic. The retracting carriage stood partially back, showing that it had been jammed after being fired.
The wail of the approaching police siren came nearer as he held the muzzle of the gun to his nose and caught the acrid odor of burned powder.
Hurriedly he examined the weapon, looking for-and finding-a small nick in the wooden butt.
The pistol which was missing from his drawer had an identical nick in the butt.
He didn’t have time to think. The police car was fast approaching the rutted turnoff from the pavement.
He whirled to face directly south, drew back his arm and threw the pistol overhand with all his strength into the thick palmettos.
He turned at the screech of brakes and watched a red-spotlighted police car lurch into the ruts directly toward him.
Shayne stepped into the headlights as uniformed officers swarmed out of the riot car before it reached a full stop.
Chapter Four: THE CHIEF OF DETECTIVES
Peter Painter, dynamic chief of the Miami Beach detective bureau, led the squad of uniformed men.
Painter was a head shorter than Shayne. His wiry, compact body was garbed in a double-breasted Palm Beach suit, and, with a turned-down creamy Panama covering his sleek black hair, he looked, as always, as though he had just been turned out by a competent valet.
His black eyes flashed in the headlights when he recognized Shayne. He peered past the redheaded detective at the other car and asked brusquely, “What’s going on here?”
“Murder.”
Shayne shrugged and jerked his thumb back over his shoulder, then took a deep drag on his cigarette.
Two motorcycle cops and a Miami Herald press car roared up, swayed into the dead-end street.
Painter contrived to give the appearance of strutting even while his gray sports shoes bogged through the deep sand on his way to the car. He peered in at the body of Harry Grange.
Shayne stood full in the headlights while Painter issued crisp orders behind him, and an ambulance sped up with the Miami Beach medical examiner.
Painter bogged back to stand in front of Shayne. Painter’s breathing was audible. He twitched a tan-bordered handkerchief from his breast pocket and touched it to his lips. He had small hands and feet, thin, mobile lips with a black, threadlike mustache running straight across the upper one.
He replaced his handkerchief so that the edges peeked out of his pocket before saying, “All right, Shayne. Why did you kill Grange?” His voice was metallic, biting.
“Sorry to disappoint you. I didn’t.”
Painter nodded to uniformed men on each side of Shayne.
“Shake him down.”
Shayne obligingly lifted his elbows out while they went over him thoroughly for a weapon.
After a time they stepped back and announced, “He’s clean, Chief.”
“Let’s have your story, Shayne,” Painter grated. “And it had better be good.”
A Herald reporter with flaring nostrils and popping eyes was standing close by, scribbling down notes as Shayne told the precise truth. Painter waited until he ended, then asked in a tone which would have been ominous from a bigger man, “Do you expect me to believe that?”
“I don’t give a goddamn what you believe,” Shayne whipped out.
Painter’s black eyes snapped past Shayne to the medical examiner who had completed his examination.
“What do you find, Doc?”
“Not much. The bullet ranged upward through the brain. Small caliber-probably a thirty-two. Within the last half hour is the best I can do on the time.”
“It took me exactly nineteen minutes to get here,” Shayne said quietly.
“Look, Chief, can’t you give me a statement,” the pop-eyed reporter exclaimed. “I’ve got to phone my story in to catch the early edition.”
Painter rubbed the tip of his right forefinger slowly back and forth along his beautifully trimmed mustache. With chin lowered and eyes raised to Shayne, he asked curtly, “You’re positive it was Grange who called you?”
“That’s the name he gave me when I insisted-but he didn’t sound like Grange.”
Painter said gravely to his men, “Put the cuffs on him. I’m holding him on suspicion of murder.”
The reporter’s nostrils quivered. “Can I quote you on that, Painter?”
“Yes,” the chief snapped.
“Hey, hold it a minute, willya!” the reporter appealed to the burly cop who reached for Shayne’s wrist with handcuffs ready. He yelled at his photographer who was snapping shots of the death car and body. “C’mere, Joe, and get a shot of the cops snapping bracelets on Mike Shayne.”
Shayne lit another cigarette and asked grimly, “Wouldn’t you rather have one of me groveling on my knees to Painter?”
“Naw. This’ll be swell, just reach the cuffs out toward his arm-and you on the other side there! Grab him like you’re afraid he’s gonna make a break for it.”
Shayne submitted mildly while the cops demonstrated their lack of histrionic ability and the reporter got a pose which satisfied his sense of dramatic values. Photographer and reporter then fled to the press car, to find it stuck in the deep sand when the motor roared. Wheels spun and sand flew until two burly policemen and the two newsmen lifted it easily onto the pavement.
Shayne laughed.
Painter whirled around to order him into the back seat of the squad car, handcuffed to one of the cops, and they waited until the body was loaded into the ambulance. While they waited, Shayne said quietly:
“I suppose you know you’re making a damned ass out of yourself, Painter.”
Painter, in the front seat of the squad car, deigned to turn his head. He snapped back, “I’ll worry about that. You’ve had plenty of warning not to pull any rough stuff on my side of the bay.”
“What brought you to the scene Johnny-on-the-spot?”
“An anonymous phone call. Said a man was being murdered.”
“And by God you can’t see it was a frame?” Shayne asked incredulously. “Hell, Painter, while you’re satisfying a personal grudge against me, the murderer is getting away.”
“I’ll hold you until a better suspect pops up,” Painter told him complacently. “You’ll have a chance to prove your story about the telephone call, of course.”
The ambulance was backing out, and the driver put the police car in reverse, rocked it to get traction in the deep sand.
Shayne didn’t say anything more. He was quiet all the way to police headquarters where they took him out and created a mild sensation among a couple of lounging reporters in the outer office by leading him through, handcuffed, to Painter’s private office in the rear.
Both reporters knew Shayne, and they trotted back in loose-jawed amazement, but Painter turned them away at the door of his office, ordered the cuffs removed from Shayne, and went in with him alone, closing the door.
“Why didn’t you let the boys come in?” Shayne grinned at his captor.
Painter stiffened and didn’t answer. He sat officiously erect in a swivel chair behind his desk.
Shayne dropped into a chair opposite the tidy, polished oak desk and said cheerfully, “You’re laying yourself wide open, Painter. I’m warning you.”
“I’m not at all convinced of that.”
Painter looked pleased. He brushed his mustache with the tip of his forefinger.