For a moment, Peter Painter was too stricken to move. Then he sprang to his feet like a jack-in-the-box.
“Me?” he exclaimed in a smothered tone. “Why… you… you…” His throat moved convulsively.
“Yes, you,” Shayne said wolfishly. “You’ve forced my hand-so take it.”
“You’re crazy,” Painter sputtered. “You-you’ve lost your mind.”
Behind Shayne, Timothy Rourke laughed aloud. “Crazy like a fox,” he exulted. “Oh, my sweet grandmother! This is one for the book.”
Shayne disregarded his friend’s whooping merriment. He kept his face set in solemn lines.
“I’m sorry, Painter.” He sounded very convincing. “That’s the hand I’m playing. You would have witnesses.”
“But I-” Painter sank back into his chair. “You’ll never make it stick, Shayne. God knows, I didn’t phone you.”
“That’s what you say.” Shayne shrugged and sat down. “You’ve shot off your mouth too often about hanging something on me to hope anyone will believe you didn’t grab off this chance to do it.”
Slowly, the bewildered expression cleared from the chief’s face.
“I get it,” he snarled. “You know goddamn well it wasn’t me. You’re bluffing-hoping I’ll back down.”
“I don’t give a damn whether you back down or not,” Shayne clipped out. He leaned back easily and crossed his legs. “Without a shred of real evidence against me, you were all set to try me in the newspapers. All right, I’ll play that way. These boys are just itching to get out of here and make some headlines.”
“And how!” Rourke burst out. “Is that the way it’s going to lie, Painter?”
“Lie!” he roared. “That’s the word, all right. Now wait.”
The tip of Painter’s finger trembled as he caressed his mustache.
Rourke stood with a hand on Shayne’s shoulder, pressing down. Shayne’s hands were on the chair arms, pressing up.
“No use going off half-cocked,” Painter went on. “You boys certainly don’t believe Shayne’s absurd accusation.”
“We’re not writing our opinions,” Rourke told him sharply. “We’re reporting facts.”
“That,” said Shayne, settling back again, “is all you’ve got to worry about, Painter. The mere facts. Just because I tried to save you embarrassment by not naming you as my anonymous telephone caller at once-”
“You know damn well it wasn’t me-”
“I’m taking an oath that it was. If you want anyone to believe you’re clean-dig up the man who called and prove he wasn’t you.”
“And in the meantime Shayne will be languishing in your bastile working up a swell case for false arrest,” Rourke reminded Painter.
Painter’s dark face was livid with wrath. In a choked voice he warned, “I’m going to get you, Shayne. If it’s the last thing I do on this earth, I’m going to hang one around your long neck that you won’t wriggle out from under.” Shayne’s bland gaze was fixed on the toes of his number twelve shoes stretched out in front of him.
“In the meantime I’ll be chasing down murderers and turning them over to you so you can stay on the public payroll.”
The reporters were becoming bleary-eyed from switching astounded gazes from Shayne to Painter.
“How about it?” one of them demanded irritably. “Does the suspicion of murder charge stick against Mike?” Painter ground his white teeth. His black mustache trembled upward when he snarled, “Not officially. If I release him, you won’t need to print-”
“What’s just occurred here,” Shayne put in swiftly for Painter. “Nope.” He shook his head and shot a warning glance at the newsmen. “Play the whole thing down, boys. Just say that I explained my presence at the murder scene to Mr. Painter’s complete satisfaction by identifying the voice that called me over the telephone.”
“Wait,” Painter protested. “That won’t do. You haven’t identified the voice. If you print that and it later gets out that you accuse me-” There was a tremor of panic in his voice.
“It might smoke someone out,” Shayne explained patiently, “if you didn’t do the telephoning. If the culprit reads the story, then he’ll figure he’s got to get rid of me in a hurry. That ought to bring him out into the open, and maybe I’ll get knocked off in the process-which should be a happy prospect for you, Painter.”
Peter Painter shook his head dubiously.
“I still don’t like-”
“To hell with what you like. You’ve stuck your neck out.”
Shayne stood up abruptly and turned to the row of reporters.
“I’ve never given you a wrong steer, boys. I’ve got a hunch this is something big, though I haven’t a goddamned idea what it’s all about. If you play this down tonight, you’ll be cutting yourselves in for a whale of a story later. Crack down, and I’ll leave you all in the lurch on the blow-off.”
He turned back to Painter and demanded, “Where’s my car?”
“I had one of the men bring it in,” Painter told him stiffly.
He pressed the buzzer on his desk and when a cop stuck his head in, said tersely, “Take Mr. Shayne out and give him the keys to his car. We’re not holding him.”
Disappointment spread over the cop’s heavy face. He snorted, then clumped down the hall ahead of Shayne. At the desk, Shayne recovered his keys and went on to his car which was parked outside.
The moon was overhead, dipping to the west, and the breeze of earlier night had died away. A smug grin replaced the scowl Shayne had worn on that last trip across the causeway.
As he drove with his left hand on the wheel, he fumbled in his pocket and pulled out the lacy handkerchief which he had picked from the dead man’s hand. He shook it out under the dashlight and saw there were no initials on it. Lifting it close to his nose, he drew in a deep breath and his nostrils caught an elusive, delicate fragrance. He thrust it back in his pocket and pursed his lips in a tuneless whistle.
He was in the middle of something-and didn’t know what it was.
He wondered, irrationally, whether the white-haired man in Marco’s office had escorted Marsha Marco straight home from the casino-and whether she had stayed at home.
Making the turn at Thirteenth Street into Biscayne Boulevard, on the mainland, he heard a newsboy shouting on the street.
“Detective held for playboy murder! Read all about the beach murder! Miami detective charged with shooting Harry Grange!”
Shayne stopped and bought an early morning edition of the Miami Herald. He spread it out on the steering wheel and stared morosely at a picture of himself in the middle of the front page. The cops and the handcuffs were plainly in evidence, but the picture of their prisoner was not flattering.
He grunted and folded the paper on the seat beside him, drove on down past Flagler Street and pulled up at the curb by the side entrance of his apartment-hotel.
A sedan with New York license plates was parked at the curb just in front of him.
A man got out of the front seat as Shayne locked the ignition and got out. He was short-legged and squatty, with a black felt hat pulled low over his face. He loitered forward on the sidewalk until Shayne stepped up on the curb, then moved to intercept him, saying hoarsely, “It’s him, Marv.”
A blunt automatic showed in his right hand. Shayne stopped and glanced over his left shoulder at the car. The muzzle of a sub-machine gun was pointed out through the rear window at him. He stood still and said, “Okay, boys. I wasn’t expecting you so soon.”
The squatty man motioned toward the sedan with his automatic. “Crawl in the front seat.”
“You can take everything I’m carrying right here,” Shayne argued mildly.
“You’re goin’ for a ride with us.” The voice was raspy.
Shayne said, “Okay,” and walked over to climb into the front seat of the sedan.
The squatty man followed him to the other side and got behind the wheel.
As the starter whirred, a silky voice spoke quietly from the rear seat. “Keep looking straight ahead and don’t try to pull any funny stuff.”
“I’m not in a humorous mood,” Shayne assured the unseen speaker.
The motor roared and they slid away from the curb, straight across the bridge over the Miami River and south on Brickell Avenue to Eighth Street, where the driver swung west and drove at a moderate speed out on the Tamiami Trail.