Dolls Are Deadly (3 page)

“I’ve caught ’em eight feet long,” Sylvester bragged. “Those big ones can eat a man’s leg off.” He moved drunkenly, taking the fish from the hook and packing it in ice, a necessary precaution, since the flesh of a barracuda spoils more rapidly than most other tropical fish.

“Got a feeling you’re going to do all the fishing that’s done today, Mike,” Slim said. “We started drinking too early, I guess. Fishing just seems like too much work.” He started singing in a hoarse and off-key voice.

Shayne put his troll bait out again. They were well out to sea with the smooth flow of the Gulf Stream around them, and Miami an unreal wonderland vanishing in the afternoon haze. The others were quieter now. Had the calm of the open ocean finally penetrated their overstimulated senses, or had the abandoned holiday mood been put on partly for Shayne’s benefit, to make him feel at ease because Sylvester had practically forced them into allowing him to join their party?

The redhead played another barracuda and lost him, then landed a good-sized grouper. When Sylvester came over to take it off the hook he rose, saying casually, “I’ve had enough for a while.”

He sauntered along the deck, went down three steps and entered the cabin, where he walked over and lifted the hatch on the engine housing. The new engine looked powerful. As Sylvester had said, it had been dirtied and smeared with oil. It took close inspection to tell that it was new. The redhead looked down at it for a long time, his gray eyes thoughtful.

At a chorus of shouting outside, he closed the hatch, turned away from the engine and went up on deck. They were all on the port side, craning to look ahead at another boat coming into view. Sylvester held a pair of binoculars on her.

“She’s a Cuban!” he yelled.

Vince, still at the wheel, headed toward the approaching boat. At the change in direction, Sylvester came alive, set down the binoculars and picked up his drink in an unsteady hand, liquor slopping over the sides.

“Not that way,” he shouted. “Fish no good that way. I take you to better place.”

“Let him alone, Silvy,” Ed said. “Vince is a frustrated mariner at heart. Just wants to take us for a ride. And who knows, might be some
señoritas
on the boat if she’s Cuban.” He laughed boisterously. “I’d rather fish for
señoritas
than fish for fish.”

“What is that—fustrated?” Sylvester asked.

“Frustrated.
Means wants to do something, but don’t get a chance.”

“Ho!” The little Cuban laughed loudly, pounding one thick, hairy hand on his leg. “I know wha tha’s like. When I walk on Collins Avenue and see the girls. All the girls I can’t have… Lettim alone then.”

Vince brought the
Santa Clara
in close, deftly heeling to port beside a thirty-foot power boat named
La Ballena.

“The Whale!” Sylvester yelled. “Cuban whale!”

The ocean top in the Stream was flat as a table.

From
La Ballena
came wild Cuban music. On deck, a girl clad in short red shorts and the suggestion of a red bra was rhumbaing, her inky hair flying, her teeth, eyes and earrings flashing. A young, dark man sat on the rail watching her and shouting encouragement in Spanish. As the music increased in tempo, her movements grew more abandoned. Then, abruptly, the record player stopped. Inertia kept her moving for a moment in the new silence, then she too stopped, looking up startled at the nearness of the
Santa Clara.

Two older men who had fish lines out, looked around.

“You folks fishin’ or funnin’?” Ed shouted.

“A little of both,” the taller man said.

“Is there any difference?” his companion asked.

Although the men did not look alike, they both had full, loosely-put-together faces and their eyes, despite the bantering words, held a certain flint. They wore light, broad-brimmed Panama straws and spoke with a slight accent.

“Why don’t you join us,
señores?”

The girl leaned on the rail smiling, her coal-black eyes with dilated pupils resting with frank feminine appraisal on Shayne.
“Si,
why don’t you?” Her low, throbbing voice had a strong Spanish accent.

“I don’t rhumba,” Shayne said.

“You
don’t have to.” Her dewy eyes framed in black lashes almost reached across to him. Her breasts swelled above the red bra. Unexpectedly, she pursed her full lips into kiss-shape and leaned toward Shayne. After a moment she withdrew, humming almost silently, and moved in a slow nautch-like dance, her hips swaying provocatively, the muscles in her diaphragm moving sinuously in the bare space between the skimpy bra and the short shorts.

“I’d sure like to come aboard,” Ed said regretfully, “but I promised the old lady I’d be home tonight—with fish. And I haven’t done any fishing, except in Demerara.”

“What kind of fish, pop?” the dark young man asked brashly. “Maybe in Cuban waters we catch some different kinds which she never taste.”

“Don’t matter which kind,” Ed said.

“All right. You want fresh bonito? Very good baked in oven with onions and peppers around him.” The young man had the same black, untamed eyes and heavy accent as the girl.

“I don’t think she ever had bonito.” Ed turned to Shayne. “What you going to do with your fish, Mike?”

“I don’t want them,” the redhead said.

“O.K.,
amigo,”
Ed called. “We’ll swap you a barracuda or a grouper.”

“No need to swap. We give you the bonito.”

“No,” Sylvester insisted. “Swap is fair.”

“I would love the barracuda,” the girl said.

“Good. The barracuda then.” The young man grinned. “It is more favored in our country than in yours.”

“Your mother can cook it for us, Jose,” the girl said. “She has most good recipe for barracuda.”

Sylvester laughed thickly and clapped Shayne on the shoulder. “Tha’s what I like about these boys. Every time we go out we make new friends.” He lurched toward the Cuban boat and Shayne grasped his arm to keep him from falling.

The boats were close, rising gently on the swell. The young man extended his hand and grasped Sylvester’s. They braced themselves and pulled, and slowly the boats drew together.

“Hey,” Sylvester yelled, “now I can’t let go to get the fish.”

The girl laughed, looked at Shayne and languidly stretched her arm toward him. The redhead took her slim, brown hand in his own big one.

“You can let go now,” she said softly to Sylvester.

Shayne felt her fingers tightening and loosening in his grasp, and the warmth flowing from her flesh.

“It is a marriage,” she said, “of the moment.”

Shayne smiled. It was a good moment.

Sylvester returned with the barracuda and handed it across, then took the bonito. It was a plump fish, a good ten pounds. Ed bore it away to put it on ice. The taller of the Cuban men leaned close and dropped a handful of cigars aboard the
Santa Clara.
“Good
Vuelta
leaf Havana. You like.”

“Is time to part,” the girl said sadly.

“Uno momento,”
the young man called. “Our ice all melt. You have enough to spare for our drinks till we get back to Cuba?”

“Si.”
Sylvester weaved to the table, grabbed the ice bucket and lifted it across into the hands of the young man. “Keep it. The bucket too.”

“Gracias, señores.”

Certainly there had been nothing but good will and friendly feeling expressed on all sides here. Still, something about Sylvester’s gift of the ice cubes troubled the redhead. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but it was there—a nagging little inconsistency.

The girl squeezed Shayne’s hand convulsively and then released it, letting her fingers trail lingeringly across his palm as the boats drifted apart. When the chasm between them was a boat’s width she blew him a kiss.

The engine of
La Ballena
started and, with it, the music blared forth again. The girl moved her nude shoulders and wheeled her bare knees in the nautch-like circle that carried her hips along in a seductive rhythm. As the space between the boats widened, she swirled toward the center of the deck and started again on the mad, compulsive rhumba. The music grew fainter with distance but the dance grew wilder, her movements more unrestrained. Suddenly, the young man leaped toward her and took her in his arms. They kissed in the hot, bright sunlight, her body still moving sensually against him. The tempo of the music quickened. Still holding the kiss, he moved her backward to the companion-way which led below.

On the
Santa Clara
all but Vince, who was at the wheel, had been watching. Sylvester sighed heavily. “It took him a long time. Even I—fus-trated—whatever you call it—and at my old age, would have done it sooner. And you, Michael Shayne—” he poked an unsteady finger at the rangy redhead—“would have done it on the first note.”

“Michael Shayne?” Ed repeated quickly. He looked at Shayne, as did Slim and Vince, from the wheelhouse. “You mean,” Ed said with no unsteadiness in his voice, “you’re Michael Shayne, the private detective?”

“The same,” Sylvester said proudly. “My friend, he is famous everywhere.”

“Well, I’m damned!” Ed smoothed his angel’s halo of graying hair. “Miami’s best-known detective on our boat. Wait’ll I tell the folks back home.”

“Better keep it under your hat,” Slim advised. “They’ll think your wife put him on your tail.”

“My friend, Mike, he does not tail.” Sylvester straightened with drunken dignity. “My friend, Mike, he
heads
the big cases.” He roared loudly at the pun.

“Like murder and such?” Ed asked, adding recklessly, “We’ve drunk to everything else today. Let’s have a drink to murder!”

It was as if the words were prophetic. Vince had the radio tuned in to a station in Miami. The local news was on. Shayne had been hearing the droning voice only as background sound, then suddenly the newscaster’s words jumped acutely into his consciousness.

“…
the body of Henry ‘Henny’ Henlein, behind a pile of dirt at the site of the excavation on Washington. Henlein has a long criminal record, has been arrested many times, but never convicted on a major charge. A certain mystery surrounds the slaying. Death came apparently as a result of a gunshot through the heart, but around the neck of the body there was a piece of rope—a noose tied in a hangman’s knot. It has not yet been determined…”

Vince cut the radio off and there was only the muted roaring of the new engine as it thrust the
Santa Clara
through the empty expanse of water toward the Beach.

Shayne stood very still in the silence after Vince snapped off the newscast, three vertical lines deepening in his forehead.

He lit a cigarette and walked to the rail, tossing the match overboard into the water. So, after all, Henlein’s fear had been justified. He had been murdered precisely as he had been afraid he would be—and within hours after he had left Shayne’s office.

Lucy was going to look very accusing about this. Even so, the redhead had no regrets for having refused aid to the hoodlum. The world would have one less law-breaker in it, that was all. However, Shayne did have an absorbing curiosity as to what lay beneath the surface. Who had killed Henlein and why? Those two little dolls didn’t add up to mob murder—unless something novel had been added to mob methods in Miami lately.

He turned sharply at a raucous sound. Sylvester lay prone on the bench under the starboard rail, his toes up, his wide mouth open and snoring.

“Sylvester’s out,” Slim called to Vince. “You’ll have to take us all the way in. Can you make the channel?”

“I think so. I’ve watched Sylvester do it.”

The sun was lowering now and the slanted afternoon light seemed to have a quieting effect on the three men. Ed took out a deck of cards and began playing solitaire. Slim, huddled in the cushions, stared glassy-eyed at the wake the boat left. The
Santa Clara,
gunning for the Beach under Vince’s able handling, passed a boat which had run up its tuna flag. There were girls on it, but no one on the
Santa Clara
was showing any wolf-strain now. They all seemed tired, as though relaxing after a strenuous day of sport, which was a little peculiar, considering they hadn’t roused themselves to any effort more enervating than pouring a drink. Even the rum couldn’t account for all their lethargy. Sylvester had downed the biggest part of it.

As the boat sliced through the less tranquil waters near the Beach, the men stirred. Ed retrieved his bonito from the ice box and was holding it, ready to go ashore, when Vince cut the engine twenty feet out and let inertia carry them to the pier. Shayne and Slim jumped off and made the fore and aft moorings fast and put out the rubber-tire fenders.

They stood for a moment on the dock, then shook hands with Shayne—all except Ed. “My hand’s fishy,” he said apologetically. “You know, sometimes I wonder why I ever bring fish home. My woman won’t clean them. She makes me do it and if there’s anything I don’t like, it’s cleaning fish. For two cents I’d throw it back.”

“It’s sure been nice, Mr. Shayne,” Vince said.

“It was nice of you to let me barge in.”

“Not at all,” Slim assured him. “Any time.”

They hesitated, glancing over at Sylvester. “You think he’ll be all right?”

Shayne nodded. “I’ll carry him into the cabin. He’ll sleep it off.”

The three men started down the dock, waving back at Shayne, who was standing tugging at his left earlobe. They were friendly all right, as Sylvester said. Weren’t they a little too friendly? Or was he too suspicious? He shrugged. That’s what a lifetime of poking your nose into other people’s crimes would do for you.

Still, something was bothering the redhead. It was connected in some way with the big fish Ed was so unenthusiastically carrying away. No, not that fish, the other one. The barracuda Ed had swapped to the Cubans.

Suddenly, he had it. Barracuda was the fastest spoiling fish on the coast. And they didn’t have any ice on
La Ballena,
as proven by the fact that they had borrowed a bucket of cubes from Sylvester for their drinks. Without ice to hold it, the barracuda would be unfit to eat by the time they made port in Cuba. Had the Cubans known that—they must have!—and accepted the fish just out of a Latin sense of politeness, because the charter crew on Sylvester’s boat had been so eager to be friendly? Or was there another reason?

A policeman moved into sight from around the dock shed. The three men had taken no more than a dozen steps from the boat. As the young cop, walking purposefully, came toward them, the men seemed to falter infinitesimally in their stride. Then Vince and Slim moved out a little ahead of Ed who was carrying the bonito and with what appeared to be studied casualness, put themselves on either side of him, almost as though they were a bodyguard. They kept moving in a sort of inverted V, came abreast of the policeman and passed him. Without giving them a glance, he continued in his positive stride straight to Shayne at the dock edge.

“You Michael Shayne?”

The cop’s youth and truculence rubbed Shayne the wrong way. He nodded sourly.

“Peter Painter wants to see you.”

Shayne took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one, flipping the match into the water. “Suppose I don’t want to see Peter Painter?”

“It don’t make any difference what you want. When a guy’s found murdered with your address in his pocket, you’re involved, brother.”

“Don’t ‘brother’ me! Half the people in greater Miami carry my address in their pocket.”

“But half the people ain’t murdered. Henny Henlein was.”

“What does Painter want me to do? Send flowers? It would be a pleasure—to Henny’s murderer.”

The cop blinked uncertainly. “You hadn’t ought to talk like that. You’re in a bad enough jam as it is. And you’re not helping yourself by keeping Painter waiting.”

Shayne took a deep drag on the cigarette and blew out smoke. “Maybe you don’t know how things are between Peter Painter and me. There’s nothing I’d rather do than keep him waiting—and vice versa.”

The policeman stared at Shayne with the look of a boy who had been sent on a man’s job. “Come on now, Mr. Shayne. I’ve got a job to do.”

Shayne growled, “Why didn’t you put it that way in the first place? Where’s Painter?”

“On Washington, right off Alton—where they found Henlein’s body. Painter won’t let them move it till
you
get there.”

“Flattering of Petey to call me in on consultation. All right, tell him I’ll be there, after I’ve put my friend where the mosquitoes won’t get him.” He turned abruptly and stepped onto the boat.

When the policeman did not move, Shayne added, “Or would you rather make a real pinch and take me in handcuffed?”

“Of course not, Mr. Shayne.” Now that he saw that the redhead was not going to be difficult, the policeman’s manner changed. He looked toward Sylvester, saying mildly, “He looks like he’s dead.”

“Livest dead man you ever saw. Put your fingers in his mouth if you don’t believe me. But count them first.”

Scooping Sylvester up in his arms as though he were a half-grown boy, Shayne carried him down the companionway steps into the cabin and laid him on a bunk. He’d have a talk with Sylvester tomorrow, after the Cuban sobered up.

He tossed the cigarette butt into the water as he strode up the dock to his car with the young officer. “How’d you find me? I know my office didn’t give out.”

“Painter put out an alert on your license number. The squad boys covering this area reported your car parked here.”

Shayne grunted. “The master criminologist at his devious best.”

By barreling his car all the way between lights, Shayne arrived in a dead heat with the policeman. Except at the near end where a few condemned houses still stood, the street was a pile of rubble where buildings had been razed preparatory to putting up a multiple-unit apartment building. Toward the middle of the block a mound of earth, removed in the process of replacing a water main, covered half the street. Across from it a line of cars was parked—two black police cars, the photographer’s Jaguar and Peter Painter’s lime-green coupe. In front of the mound of dirt two policemen stood guard to deflect the morbidly curious.

Shayne parked and strode toward the dirt pile. Painter, a small, slender man with sharp eyes and a thin black mustache, scowled and caressed his mustache with his thumbnail.

The redhead stopped, looking down at the lifeless body of Henny Henlein. Blood had seeped from a wound in his chest, staining his pin-striped coat. Around his neck, incongruously, was a hangman’s noose. A few feet away a snub-nosed pocket gun with a walnut handle lay in the dirt.

Shayne stooped over the body. There was no question but that the bullet which had killed Henlein had been fired at close range. The hole in his coat was marked with powder burns. The noose around his neck was made out of common clothesline and was tied in the same hangman’s knot as the noose around the neck of the tiny voodoo doll Henlein had brought to Shayne’s office.

“All right, Shayne,” Painter said, making his voice weary, “what’s your involvement in this?”

“What makes you think I’ve got any?”

Painter’s eyes flared. “Because it’s just the kind of cockeyed murder you’d have something to do with. Look at that noose! It didn’t kill him. His neck isn’t even bruised. It was hung on him
after
he’d been killed. It’s a symbol, or a threat, or a message to someone.”

Painter was right about this anyway. The noose had probably been put around the hoodlum’s neck to let someone know that he had been murdered by the same person who sent him the voodoo doll. It was like a signed card saying, “I did it.” But who was it meant for? And why had Henlein been shot instead of strangled or stabbed? The other doll had had a pin through its chest. Had two people sent dolls to Henlein?

“Any other clues on him?” Shayne asked casually, wondering why Painter had not mentioned the voodoo dolls before this.

“Yes, a good one. Your name and address. What’s your connection? Who killed him?”

The redhead fastened his gray eyes quizzically on Painter. “I wouldn’t know. Do you? Or is that question too personal?”

“He had your address,” Painter sputtered.

“As I told your bright young man when he came crowding me, so do half the people of greater Miami. My newspaper publicity pays off. Maybe he was going to call me, but the guy with the gun interfered.” He gave Painter a wicked grin. “And now, if you’ll excuse me—”

Shayne turned slowly, expecting Painter to produce the little dolls at any moment for a surprise effect and start his grilling all over again.

Painter did step in front of him, but not to produce any dolls, merely to sound a belligerent warning. “Don’t get sarcastic with me, shamus. You’re not above the law and my office is going to be watching you close on this. You give me the ghost of a reason and I’ll have you down to headquarters so fast it’ll make your teeth rattle. So now, just give me the facts. What’s that noose doing around Henlein’s neck?”

“How do I know? Maybe he always wears it. Look, Petey, I’ve got other things to do.”

“Such as what?”

“It’s none of your damned business.” Shayne stepped around Painter and strode down the road to his car.

He slammed the door decisively, made a U-turn to head south on Alton Avenue, and sped toward the McArthur Causeway which led to the city of Miami. Once there, he stopped at the first bar he came to on Biscayne Boulevard, ordered a double brandy, carried it to a phone booth and dialed the
Daily News.
He asked for his old friend, Tim Rourke, and after a moment the veteran reporter’s voice came lazily over the wire.

“Hi, Mike. What’s new?”

“That’s what I called to ask you.”

“Nothing much. A murder over on the Beach. A hoodlum—”

“I know about that. What else?”

“God, you’re jaded. What do you want, a massacre?”

“Just some information—about that woman down by the river who’s been holding séances the last month or so. Her name’s Madame Swoboda.”

“Yeah. She’s quite a tourist attraction. I’ve been going to do a story on her for the paper.”

“Does she sell voodoo dolls?”

“By the hundreds. Also conjure candles, love potions and goofer dust.”

“What the hell is goofer dust?”

“Graveyard soil. I don’t know what it’s good for, but I can find out if you want some.”

“Don’t bother. If I ever do, I know where to get it free.” Shayne finished the brandy. “One thing more, Tim. Henny Henlein was working for De Luca. Any reason you know why D. L. might want him under six feet of goofer dust?”

“Can’t think of any. From what I hear, Henny was the ideal muscleman. He followed orders and he couldn’t think.”

“Maybe he began to
try
to think.”

“Don’t know why he should. D. L.’s supposed to be a good boss, as gangsters go. Even pensions ’em off—if they live that long.”

“Maybe he decided to save money on one pension.”

“Henny wasn’t old enough to be retired. And anyway, the loan racket’s booming.”

“Do you think Henny got out of line and tried a speculation on his own?”

“I don’t know. I’ll keep an ear to the ratline though, and let you know if I hear anything.”

“Thanks, Tim. I’ll see you soon.”

Shayne hung up, waited a moment, then raised the receiver, dropped in a coin and dialed his office number. It was after hours and he expected to get his answering service, but was pleasurably surprised to hear Lucy Hamilton’s voice come musically over the wire.

“Michael Shayne’s office.”

“It’s the man himself, in person. Has anything happened since I left?”

“Has anything happened, he asks! Has anything
not
happened. The police have been calling. That man with the little dolls has been murdered—”

“I know about that. Anything else?”

“Anything else! Yes, there is something else. You should have taken that poor man’s case when he asked you to. Then maybe he wouldn’t be dead now. You’re just as involved as if you
had
taken it, because he had your address in his pocket—”

“I know,” Shayne interrupted, “but he didn’t have the two dolls.”

“Of course not.
I’ve
got them.”

“What for? Are you starting a private eye business of your own?”

“No, but he came back again after you’d left, to try and talk you into changing your mind about helping him, and left the dolls with me because I seemed interested, which is more than you did. He seemed glad to get rid of them, though he was nice about it. He said he didn’t want to put the curse on me. I convinced him the curse was only dangerous for the person it was originally meant for—”