At first the steady thrum of the rotor helped Shayne arrange a picture in his mind, but almost at once the picture began to spin. There were too many pieces still missing.
Jackie said, “Judge Kendrick was lying, wasn’t he, about Sam Rapp threatening to kill him?”
“Yeah. That was my idea. Sam’s outgrown that kind of thing, but it gives me an excuse to get him out of bed and see if he wants to be more responsive than he was the last time I talked to him.”
“Mike, do you understand any of it?” she asked helplessly.
“Not much, but it’s coming.”
“I feel like-oh, calling the whole thing off. That man on the phone is on the same side I am-against the bill! There’s nobody on my committee who knows how to blow up a car. They’re most of them ministers!”
“We still have five hours. That’s everybody’s deadline.”
“Well.” She sighed. “I know you don’t want me to go with you to see Sam. I know it’s no use telling you to be careful. But I’m responsible for getting you into this.”
Her lipstick had worn away during the scene in Judge Kendrick’s office and she hadn’t renewed it. She looked tired and tense. Opening her bag, she glanced with loathing at her reflection in the mirror.
“I’m not used to staying up all night. Mike, whatever you do, be sure to come back and wake me in time for the vote.”
As they came in over Tallahassee airport, Shayne went up to talk to the pilot, a tanned youth named Gene Salzman. Shayne had him drift slowly over the parking lot while Shayne looked for the markings and the buggy-whip aerial of state police cars.
“Take her down, Gene.”
“Then what, Mike? Am I through for the night?”
“I wish I knew. No, stick around. I’ll put two hundred on top of what you’re getting from the News.”
“You don’t have to do that. I’m on double-time after midnight.”
After they landed Shayne stayed out of sight while Jackie scouted the public rooms in the terminal, looking for highway patrolmen. She sent him an all-clear signal and he joined her.
“Get a cup of coffee while I call Rourke.”
Tim Rourke had taken a room at the Prince George, the hotel near the capitol. His room didn’t answer, and Shayne had him paged. In a moment he was on the line.
“Mike, good buddy. Fireworks. Surprises. Where are you?”
“At the airport, and I can’t talk now. Do you have a car available?”
“Yeah. But Mike-”
“Later, Tim. I’m dropping Jackie Wales in front of the hotel as soon as I can get there. I want you to follow her and see where she goes. Be careful. It won’t be easy this time of night.”
“Easy? It won’t be possible. I’m not a hundred per cent sober. There’s no traffic on the streets at all. How do you suggest-no, wait a minute. An idea. A mutual friend of ours is in town. Yeah, I’ll take care of it. Let me tell you one thing?”
Shayne checked to be sure Jackie was still in the coffee shop. “Hurry.”
“Just the headline. You know the doctor she brought in to watch the medical examiner. They both agreed on what killed Maslow-too much smoke on top of too much booze. Mike, he’s a hack, this second doctor, a party man with a soft patronage job in the V.A. hospital. And before he talked to the gentlemen of the press, he was closeted for fifteen minutes with Judge Kendrick, who may or may not have brainwashed him.”
“I’ll think about it,” Shayne said. “If you leave the hotel, tell the desk where you’re going.”
“No reason to leave the hotel, Mike. They’re keeping the bar open for me.”
Shayne hung up. Jackie met him outside the coffee shop. “I’ve just tasted a horrible cup of coffee. Can we go? I can’t keep my eyes open much longer.”
He sent her to the parking lot for his rented car. When she drew up at the curb he crossed the sidewalk hurriedly.
“Keep inside the speed limit,” he told her. “I don’t want to talk to any cops.”
After driving in silence for a time she said doubtfully, “Not that I really understand that business with Judge Kendrick, but isn’t it your idea that whoever was talking on the phone is now going to try to eliminate Sam Rapp?”
“More or less.”
“What I’m worrying about, would he have to do it in person?”
“Nobody arranges murders on the phone anymore. He has until ten A.M., so there’s no real hurry. I’ll be there in time if the cops don’t hit me on the way.”
A half-block short of the hotel she stopped and got out. Shayne slid over behind the wheel.
“Get some sleep. I’ll wake you at nine.”
She kissed his cheek lightly before closing the door. “Mike, dear, you know you can be rather impressive at times.”
He gunned the motor hard getting away.
The Skyline Motel was built to a standard U-shaped design, with two-story wings embracing a swimming pool. Shayne parked and started for the office to get the number of Sam Rapp’s room.
A Venetian blind on the second floor, jolted from within, emitted splinters of bright light. Shayne stopped. He heard a thud, and a door opened.
He stepped in under the balcony. There was a stamping of feet almost directly above his head, and a voice growled, “Will you cut that out, Rapp? Quit that. You’ll be o.k. What do you want-a concussion?”
“Get my hands on the bitch-” Rapp panted.
“You heard me, you heard me. I hate to cream an old man, so watch it.”
There was a violent flurry of movement, a grunt, a scrambling sound. Shayne moved toward the stairway. Then he heard a sharp ringing slap and Sam’s voice: “Goddamn women! You give them everything you have, and they still want blood.”
“Don’t moan about it,” Lib Patrick said coldly. “You got your money’s worth.”
“Grab the other arm,” a voice said, “before we wake up the whole-”
Shayne returned to the parking lot. When he found a car with someone at the wheel, he got into the front seat beside the driver and snapped, “Let’s go. We had some trouble.” The driver hit everything at once, in a fluid series of linked motions, ignition, gas, lights. The quick dashboard glow showed Shayne a familiar face. It was Boots Gregory’s driver, still wearing dark glasses and a jaunty baseball cap.
He glanced at Shayne as the transmission meshed and said in surprise, “You’re not-”
Shayne’s fist exploded below the dark glasses. When he continued to twitch, Shayne hit him again, choosing the spot carefully, and then relieved him of gun, dark glasses and cap and tumbled him out on the blacktop. Putting on the shades and the cap, Shayne shut down the dashboard lights, backed out of the slot and around to the stairway leading up to the second level of rooms.
Three men moved Sam down the stairs. Sam was making them work. His hair was unbrushed and he hadn’t been given much time to dress-he was wearing nothing under his jacket, and no socks.
Shayne recognized another Gregory man, part of the commando unit that had tried to ship him out of Tallahassee the previous day. Shayne unlatched the car’s rear door from inside and they loaded Sam, none too gently. A big man with a badly cauliflowered ear got in front beside Shayne.
Shayne pulled the wheel hard, and smeared rubber on the pavement in his haste to leave the neighborhood. The transmission shifted for him. After turning the first corner with another scream from his tires, he stamped hard on the brake and the car shuddered to a stop.
He unlatched the door with his elbow, pushing it open to bring up the dome light. He picked the boy’s gun off his lap and swung around, thumbing back the hammer.
“I know you’re all going to hold still.”
“Mike Shayne!” Sam Rapp said.
Mixed with the surprise in his voice, there was a note almost of dismay. He stared at Shayne, and his look of disbelief and alarm, so unexpected at that moment, gave Shayne his first real hint of what was behind everybody’s peculiar behavior.
The man beside him had time to move his hand inside his coat before Shayne gave him his first look down the barrel of the gun. Sam swallowed an obstruction in his throat and was the first to speak.
“No shooting. Mike, I appreciate the thought, but will you be good enough to go home and take a couple of Seconal?”
“I take it you don’t want to collect their guns for me.”
“I don’t, frankly. These guys have been in trouble since they dropped out of third grade. Guns mean something to them. It’s like part of their manhood, know what I mean? You think it would be easy to take their guns? They wouldn’t let me.”
One of the men beside him growled deep in his throat.
Sam said, “Somebody’d get hurt. I want to die of cancer, like everybody else.” He raised his hands very slowly, not wanting to set anything off, and put them on the back of the front seat. “Mike, I thought I explained it to you. The wild old days are gone forever. There’s been too much shooting already, and that goes for both sides. Senators are skittish people, sensitive people. After they hear the morning news I wouldn’t want to bet which way they jump.”
“There won’t be any shooting,” Shayne said. “And if there is, it’ll all go one way. The boys understand that.”
“No, they don’t,” Sam insisted. “I’m sorry to say they’re not very smart. They work for Boots Gregory, and you know Boots-if there’s one chance in a hundred to foul a thing up, he’ll do it. If they come back without me and without any guns, why he’s likely to fly into a fury and slaughter them all. As much as I like Boots.”
Shayne scraped his jaw with the front sight of the revolver. “I don’t think you want to be rescued.”
“I wouldn’t mind being rescued, but not like this. There’s been too little communication between me and Boots. That’s what made all the trouble. We’ve got to call a halt before something bad happens. Sit down together with a drink and a cigar and figure out what’s to our mutual advantage.”
“Sam, did you kill Senator Maslow?”
Sam blinked slowly. “Ask me again after they vote.”
“One more point before I say goodnight. Listen to this carefully because I want to say it only once. Somebody called Judge Kendrick and threatened his life unless he votes against the bill. To make it more convincing, he blew up a perfectly good Lincoln and shot a deputy sheriff in the meaty part of the leg.”
“That’s what I was saying! Shooting deputy sheriffs is the wrong way to go about it. This close to the vote, it’s insane.”
“His voice sounded familiar,” Shayne said, “but I still can’t place him. Here’s the complication. Kendrick said you’d already threatened him. You promised to kill him if he votes against the bill, and here somebody else is promising to kill him if he votes for it. A problem. The guy’s best move now will be to knock you out of the way before the vote so Kendrick will have only one threat outstanding. Do you follow that?”
Sam’s fingernails had whitened. He said quietly, “I never threatened Judge Kendrick or anybody else.”
“I know that, Sam. It wasn’t Kendrick’s idea. I suggested it, to stir things up. You should have explained last night. I don’t want to be shot in the back while I walk away, so I’m going to gather up a few guns before I go.”
The man beside him twitched, and Shayne fired just wide of his ear. The bullet drilled a hole in the window.
“Don’t let that remark of Sam’s about masculinity bother you,” Shayne said. “You’re bringing Sam in, and that’s the main thing. You don’t have to tell Boots you’ve been gelded.”
He reached out, took the man’s wrist between a firm thumb and forefinger, and tugged it gently until it came out of his jacket. Then Shayne pulled the gun. He drew the other two in the same way. Starting the motor, he drove back to the motel.
The youth he had slugged was on his hands and knees between two parked cars. Shayne got out and heaved him into the back seat.
“He’s still a little groggy. Somebody else had better drive.”
After the men rearranged themselves inside the car and drove away, Shayne hunted up a trash container and dumped the four weapons. He was hot enough without them.