The Hotaire was a small bar on Miami Avenue a few blocks north of Flagler. Rourke was resting his bony frame against the bar when Shayne entered. He smiled blandly and lazily lifted his hand in greeting as Shayne approached and he straightened up to join him.
“What you been doing, Mike?”
“Trying to earn an honest dollar.” Shayne caught the proprietor’s eye, ordered drinks, and led the reporter to an empty booth. “What’s new with you?” he asked when they were seated opposite each other.
“Nothing. When your call came I was sitting in Gentry’s lap waiting to hear if you’d made that contact Will’s men messed up at the Golden Cock.”
“So he told you about that,” Shayne muttered.
“Will felt plenty bad about it,” Rourke assured him earnestly, “after you explained how you were trying to work some bird for information. You could’ve told me what you were up to at the apartment,” he went on in an injured tone, “and I would have left without having to be slapped in the face.”
Again Shayne was suspicious that Rourke was laughing up his sleeve, although his face was deadly serious and his voice sounded sincere.
A waiter brought a double shot of cognac and a double rye and water. Shayne paid him and waited until he went away to say impatiently:
“Okay. The way you guys were acting, I didn’t know how else to get rid of you so I could move if the guy called.”
“What happened after you left the Golden Cock? Will said you were going back to your place,” Rourke explained ingenuously, “and wait for the man to call again. Did he?”
“Gentry knows whether he did or not,” Shayne growled. “With his tap on my line did he actually think I was going back to wait for another call?” He lifted his glass and drank half the liquor, set the glass down, and studied the reporter’s face intently. “Look, Tim, do you want to help me break the Morton case? Or do you want to play around with Gentry while he tries to?”
“I walked out of his office to meet you here, didn’t I?” Rourke’s voice was gently reproachful.
“Okay. What did you think of Sara Morton as a person? Forget about her professional ability.”
“She was a tough baby inside and out, and plenty on the make for a fast dollar. She came up the hard way and intended to stay up, no matter what it took to do it.”
Shayne twisted his glass round and round while he considered this information, then asked, “How’d she play it?”
“Both ends against the middle,” said Rourke promptly. “You got something special on your mind, Mike?”
“Beatrice Lally claims she turned down twenty-five grand from Leo Gannet.”
“Sure. That’s what I mean. That’s a hunk of money, but la Morton was regularly pulling down from two to four times that much annually. If she walked out of Miami without a story, word would get around fast that she was slipping. Pretty soon there wouldn’t be any fifty or hundred grand income. Why kill the goose for one small piece of a single golden egg?”
“I see how that would work.” Shayne’s expression cleared. That was one thing that had bothered him about Harsh’s story. He hadn’t been able to reconcile Miss Morton’s turning down money from Gannet and at the same time trying to extort a similar sum from Harsh. Now he thought he understood. The Harsh story was a sort of sideline she had happened upon while pursuing the real story that had brought her to Miami, the one involving Gannet. There would be no loss of prestige in dropping the Harsh story, but failure to expose Gannet’s racket would be a blow to her reputation.
“She must run on to a lot of stuff around the country that various guys would pay to keep out of the headlines,” said Shayne. “You heard any rumors about anything like that?”
“Nobody gets very far in the newspaper business playing that way,” Rourke told him emphatically. “You may play certain things down in a story, or suppress them, but you don’t take money for it. Not and keep Morton’s reputation year after year.”
“All right. But I may make you eat those words. Do you know Carl Garvin?”
Rourke’s slaty eyes showed surprise. “Sure. I run into him now and then.” He grinned and added, “Morton and Garvin got along just like that,” holding up both index fingers and moving them apart the full length of his arms.
“Why?”
“She worried him. Garvin’s not a newspaperman. Just a glorified office boy for her syndicate. He’s probably a tenth cousin to a vice-president. He sits on his lazy butt and draws a fair salary for clipping an occasional story and rewriting it over the wire. I think he took a journalistic course in some swanky eastern college, and do those guys ever think they know their stuff,” he added with heavy sarcasm.
“What control did he have over Morton?” Shayne asked. “What she did in Miami and what she wrote?”
“Damned little. He was afraid she’d upset the status quo by sending out stuff so hot the syndicate would begin to wonder why he’d been sitting on it. Nominally, a job like his carries the responsibility of clearing syndicated stories, but I doubt whether Morton ever showed her stuff to Garvin.” He grinned again and added, “By refusing to co-operate he could have slowed her down some.”
“What sort of guy is Garvin? Personally, I mean.”
“A bit of a high-flyer. Lives on the Beach and moves with the society crowd over there. Going to marry some rich dame, I’ve heard.”
“Burton Harsh’s daughter,” Shayne supplied casually.
“Yeah?” Rourke emptied his glass.
Watching him closely, Shayne saw no indication that the reporter connected Harsh’s name with the Morton case. “Then you don’t know much about the man’s character?” he said.
“Very little,” Rourke acknowledged. “But I came here to get in on a story, Mike. So far all you’ve done is pump me. You got any new angles?”
“I’m starting right now,” Shayne promised. He stood up and took a handful of coins from his trousers pocket, picked out several, said, “Order us a couple more drinks while I make a phone call.”
He consulted the directory and found a Carl G. Garvin listed with a residence address on the Beach. The phone rang twice and was answered by the cultured voice of an elderly woman:
“Hello.”
“May I speak to Carl?” Shayne said.
“My son isn’t in,” she said, “but I expect him soon.”
“Could you tell me where I might find him?”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know. May I take a message? Or perhaps have him call you?”
“This is Timothy Rourke,” Shayne said. “Tell Carl I’ll get in touch with him tomorrow.”
She said she would be happy to, and Shayne hung up, went out to consult the directory again, and called another Miami Beach number.
A man’s voice answered with a polite “Good evening-Red Barn.”
“I want to talk to Mr. Carl Garvin. Have him paged upstairs.”
“Please hold on. I’ll see if I can locate Mr. Garvin.”
Shayne held on, scowling through the glass door of the booth and wondering what in hell he was going to say to Garvin when he answered.
A new voice said dubiously, “I believe Mr. Garvin is in the manager’s office at the moment. Is the matter important enough to-?”
“Sure,” Shayne cut in swiftly, a tingle coursing down his spine with the knowledge that his hunch had been right. “Switch me to Leo’s private wire.”
After a few clicks and a buzz, Leo Gannet’s sanctimonious voice said, “Yes?”
“Let me speak to Carl Garvin.”
“Garvin left thirty minutes ago. Sorry, but-”
“I’ve got to find him,” Shayne said urgently. “This is a friend of his and I’ve got some money that belongs to him. I promised to see him tonight, but I got tied up-” He let his voice trail off and listened hopefully.
His hunch paid off. “I-see. You must be the one-” He paused, then said, “Did Mr. Garvin have a definite appointment to meet you tonight?”
“Not definite.”
“The reason I asked is that when he left here I was under the impression he was meeting someone who owed him money,” Gannet went on in his deep, resonant voice. “In fact, I expect him back in an hour or so. If you do see him, tell him I’ll be here until four o’clock.”
“I’ll do that,” Shayne promised blithely. He hung up and went back to the booth, slid into the wooden seat opposite Rourke, and shook his head sadly:
“It was a bum steer, Tim. I’m afraid I dragged you down here for nothing.”
“That’s all right.” Rourke took a drink from his refilled glass and asked, “Did you happen to hear the midnight newscast?”
“No. Why?”
“I thought maybe you hadn’t,” said Rourke casually, “or you wouldn’t have made that crack about breaking the case while Gentry tried to.”
Shayne had his glass halfway to his lips. He held it there and stared at the reporter for a moment, grated, “Give, Tim,” and downed a long drink of cognac.
“You’ll get some credit,” Rourke assured him generously. “It was your tip that put Will on the right track.”
“Give,” he said again.
“Ralph Morton. If they haven’t picked him up yet, they soon will. Remember, you told Will to look for Sara’s good-for-nothing husband.”
The strained tightness went out of Shayne’s face. “Glad my tip helped. What about Ralph Morton?”
“I went down to our morgue after I left your place and dug up an old picture of Sara Morton’s husband,” Rourke explained happily. “We showed it around the Tidehaven, and sure enough, the doorman and one of the elevator operators identified him as a man they’d seen around the hotel about six o’clock.”
“So?” Shayne waited with lifted brows, noting the exultant expression in the reporter’s eyes.
“Then we were in luck. Covering the fourteenth floor, we found a guest who went down the corridor from his room at six-fifteen and saw Ralph Morton pounding on his wife’s door and calling for her to open up. He said the man was obviously drunk, and he hurried past so as not to get mixed up in any trouble, but he’s positive of the identification.”
“Good work,” Shayne said with admiration.
Rourke’s eyes looked puzzled at the note of genuine pleasure in Shayne’s voice. “Sure it’s good work,” he said stubbornly.
“With Ralph Morton tagged for the job,” Shayne went on happily, “I suppose Will won’t bother about checking Edwin Paisly.”
“Paisly?” Rourke frowned over the name, then grinned and said, “Oh- la Morton’s current heart-throb.”
“Do you know him?” Shayne growled.
“I remember running into him once at the Golden Cock when they were having cocktails. As a matter of fact, Will did check on him. Seems he had a dinner date with her at seven and he sat around waiting for her like a good little boy until around nine-thirty. He called her at the hotel to find out why she hadn’t come, and the cops answered. They invited him over, but he didn’t accept.”
“I know about that. Who is he?”
“I don’t know anything about him except that when Morton introduced him that time she said he was an actor, but neglected to mention any roles he’d played. I imagine she picked him up and brought him to Miami to gigolo her around. She has a reputation for having handsome young men escorts. She had one a few years ago she’d gotten out of some sort of shady deal and was reforming him,” he ended with a grin.
“He’s another one with an alibi from seven o’clock on,” Shayne muttered. “If we could prove Miss Morton didn’t know her watch was an hour slow when she wrote that note to me-they’d all three have alibis.”
“I don’t know what three you’re talking about,” the reporter admitted, “but Ralph Morton is the boy who is really up the creek without any alibi.”
“That’s all to the good,” Shayne said cheerfully. “And if it’s true, it’ll earn me ten grand just like that.” He snapped his fingers loudly and hurried on: “Now I can afford to buy you another drink.” He beckoned to the waiter and got out his billfold.
When the waiter came over he said, “Bring Mr. Rourke anything he wants to drink. Nothing for me.” He laid a bill on the table and got up.
“What’s your hurry, Mike? Don’t you think it’s a little late to keep that date with Bea now?” He grinned and added, “I imagine she and Lucy are sound asleep by now.”
Shayne stopped in mid-stride and turned back to the grinning reporter. “What gave you the idea she’s at Lucy’s?”
Rourke shrugged his thin shoulders. “Where else would you drop her off while you came to your apartment, knowing the cops would probably be there? You must have some sort of hex on Lucy to get her to take in your other women and then lie about it. She denied everything when I called and asked to speak to Miss Lally.”
“My secretary never lies,” Shayne told him with a scowl. “She also goes to church on Sunday, is kind to her aged mother-and I’m going to get her an unlisted number so my idiotic friends won’t bother her with their gags.”
He turned and strode out and down the block to his car, got in and drove directly to the Boulevard, then north to Lucy Hamilton’s apartment.
It was well past midnight and the neighborhood was quiet, the windows dark, and Shayne sat behind the steering-wheel for several minutes before deciding to go in instead of telephoning to make certain Miss Lally was still with Lucy.
He went in and pushed the button for three long, steady rings before the buzzer released the door latch. Sweat was streaming down his face when he grabbed the knob and went in and up the stairs.
Lucy’s pajamaed and robed figure was outlined in the doorway, and he saw that she was looking past him with stony eyes as he approached. Her body stiffened when he put his hands on her shoulders, and she stepped back, folded her arms across her breasts.
“So you didn’t bring her back with you,” Lucy said in a cool, detached voice, while burning anger replaced the stony stare in her brown eyes.
Shayne went in and closed the door, demanded harshly, “Didn’t bring who back?”
“That Lally woman! Your dear Beatrice. The next time, Michael Shayne, that you-”
“Hold it, Lucy, for God’s sake,” he groaned. “What do you mean? Isn’t she here?”
“You should know,” she spat at him.
“Why should I know?” He caught her shoulders again and shook her roughly. “What’s this all about?”
She ducked away from him. “She went to you fast enough when you whistled. Oh, no, I wasn’t to come. And that nasty-nice smile of hers when she told me coyly you’d warned her particularly not to tell me where you were meeting her.”
Shayne sank down on the couch and asked hoarsely, “What happened, Lucy? Where did she go?”
“Where you told her to, of course-and the minute she hung up the receiver after you telephoned. Wild horses wouldn’t have held her-and practically telling me to my face she was-”
Shayne reached both arms out and pulled her down beside him. “Get hold of yourself, Lucy. This is serious. I didn’t phone her to come anywhere. Tell me exactly what happened.”