Killers from the Keys (9 page)

“… one set of prints all over the cabin from the past few days don’t match the dead man’s prints. Same prints on the death bottle, with some fresh blurred ones on the neck… probably made by the killer… that can’t be identified. No wallet or identification of any kind on the body.”

Yager said, “Might as well get him to the morgue,” and they all moved back out of the way while two ambulance attendants went inside with a stretcher and emerged a few minutes later with a sheet-swathed body on top of it. Gentry stopped them as they moved to the back of the ambulance, and said gruffly, “Let’s have a look.”

They had turned the corpse over on its back, and when the sheet was pulled down under the bright light, the man’s thin and sallow face showed unmarred by the savage blows that had crushed the back of his head. They had wiped the blood from his face and his eyes were peacefully closed. There was a somber look of sadness on the flaccid features that brought sharply to Shayne’s memory Sloe Burn’s words that afternoon: “…
the other was thin an’ sorta sad… dressed up in a black suit like a preacher…
” and he asked sharply, “Is there a matching suit coat or jacket in the cabin to match those dark trousers?”

“Just one light suit hanging in the closet as it came from the cleaners,” a young officer told him.

“Mean something to you, Mike?” Gentry rolled an unlighted cigar from one corner of his mouth to another, motioning for the body to be placed in the ambulance.

“It might. That description I gave you this afternoon… one of the two men who were looking for Tucker at the Bright Spot tonight… remember it?”

“The Preacher?”

“Except it can’t be The Preacher if Little Joe Hoffman was squaring with us. Mind if Tim and I look inside, Will?”

“Go ahead. Before we seal it up.” Gentry and Yager turned away toward the motel office where a couple of men were checking the records and going through the missing manager’s living quarters.

Shayne and Rourke stepped inside the cabin and the detective said, “He was lying face down in that blood with the back of his head bashed in, and a bloody whiskey bottle beside him. The refrigerator door was standing open as it is now, and the only other thing that isn’t here now is two halves of a long loaf of French bread lying on the floor right there. Gentry tells me the loaf had been hollowed out with maybe a wad of money stashed inside. They found three hundred-dollar bills still crammed in one end.”

Timothy Rourke stood beside him with his hands thrust deep into trouser pockets, his tall thin body hunched forward and his nose seeming to sniff the air while his deep-set eyes roved slowly about the room, taking in everything there was to see, and coming to rest finally on the framed photograph on the bureau.

Watching him carefully, as he had often before watched the reporter view a murder scene, Shayne thought he noted a sudden intensification of interest in the glittering eyes as they studied the photograph.

“That’s Renshaw’s wife, all right,” he told Rourke. “Makes the Fred Tucker alias pretty certain. Same woman was in my office this afternoon.”

Rourke glanced over his shoulder at a plainclothesman standing just outside, and said, “Nice looking pair of kids. It always gets your goat, goddamit, when you think about the wives and the innocent kids left behind…” He paused in his generalization to turn on Shayne abruptly as he appeared to do a double-take. “You said three hundred-dollar bills stuffed inside a loaf of bread?”

“I didn’t see them myself. The loaf was broken in half and was lying on the floor. You know how I never touch anything at a murder scene until the cops get here,” he went on righteously.

“About an eight-buck a day room,” muttered Rourke. He slouched forward, stepping over the pool of drying blood, and leaned over the bureau, peering out through the dirty pane of glass at the darkened window in the next cabin about ten feet away. “Was anybody in Number Two when it happened?”

“I don’t think so. No car in front.” Shayne moved to one side slightly, to more effectually block the interior of the cabin from the detective’s view outside.

The reporter continued to lean forward and peer out the window, and now his hands were out of his pockets and were hidden from Shayne’s view in front of him. Long association with Rourke on many cases in the past gave Shayne an instinctive warning that the reporter was up to something which he didn’t want discussed in front of the police.

The look of bland satisfaction on Rourke’s face when he turned back, and the fact that all three front buttons of his jacket were tightly fastened were all Shayne needed to verify his suspicion, and it didn’t really require a fleeting glance at the bare top of the bureau to tell him that Rourke was boldly walking off with the photograph that had been there.

“I guess there’s nothing here for us,” Rourke made his voice dissatisfied as he reached Shayne’s side. “Let’s get out and let ’em lock it up.”

They stepped out with a nod to the detective who was on duty outside, and saw Gentry coming toward them from the office.

“Any dope I can print on the missing manager that might help you find him?” Rourke asked loudly.

“Some you can print and some maybe you better not,” Gentry told them. “Name seems to be Peterson, and one of my men remembers a couple of Peeping Tom complaints from out here the past two months. So our man’s got a photographic darkroom fixed up in the back with pictures that look like they’ve been snapped through the windows of these cabins at night. Camera with infra-red attachment that caught poor devils when they thought they were safe in the dark inside. That
could
be his reason for taking off… if he had reason to believe something had happened in Number Three to bring the police around.”

Shayne said honestly, “Could be, Will. I didn’t know Tucker’s cabin number when I got here, and I asked at the office. Told him it was police business to get it out of him fast.”

“Impersonating an officer,” grunted Gentry sourly. “Some day, by God, Mike…”

“On the other hand,” argued Shayne, “unless he had some idea what I was going to find in Tucker’s cabin why would he anticipate a police investigation?”

“Who ever knows why a guy with a guilty conscience suddenly takes it on the lam? This dancer friend of Tucker’s or Renshaw’s at the Bright Spot, Mike. I think you better come along and we’ll have a talk with her.”

“Sure, you go on with him,” urged Rourke. “I got to get back to the paper and file a story.”

“What about Mrs. Renshaw and getting an identification?” asked Shayne as Rourke shambled away toward his car with his arms clasped tightly across his chest.

“You think she can identify the dead man as her husband?”

“I doubt it,” said Shayne honestly. “Your fingerprint boys say he isn’t the man who’s been occupying the cabin. But there are a lot of things we don’t know about this setup, and a positive denial from Mrs. Renshaw would be something.”

“All right. Let’s get her down to the morgue to take a look. Where is she?”

“Uh…” Shayne scowled and snapped his fingers. “I don’t know, Will,” he confessed. “I had Lucy take down her Miami address when she left my office.”

“Call Lucy and find out. She’ll remember, won’t she?”

“Oh, she’ll remember all right.” Shayne turned back. “I’ll telephone her right now from the office.”

In the motel office, a detective put the telephone up on the counter for Shayne, and he dialed Lucy Hamilton’s apartment. He stood and let the telephone ring seven times before dropping the instrument back and going out to tell Gentry disconsolately, “Lucy doesn’t answer, Will. I don’t know how to get hold of Mrs. Renshaw.”

“Hell of a detective you turned out to be.” Gentry ostentatiously looked at his watch. “Where is Lucy this time of night?”

“She was at the Bright Spot with me,” Shayne explained patiently, “with Tim Rourke. When I found out there might be trouble here, I took off fast, and told Tim to see she got home. You heard him when he turned up.”

“As I recall it, he said, ‘I sent Lucy home okay.’ So, where is she?”

“How do I know?” Shayne pretended elaborate nonchalance though he was secretly worried. “I imagine Tim put her in a cab. She might have decided to stop off any one of a dozen places on her way home. I haven’t got any strings on her, Will.”

“You should have,” grunted Gentry. “All right. Let’s see what we can find out at the Bright Spot.” He turned to his chauffeured car, but Shayne caught him by the arm and suggested,

“Why don’t you ride with me and have your driver follow us a few minutes later? The kind of dive that is, they’re not going to spread out the red carpet for the chief of police.”

“It’s outside my jurisdiction,” snapped Gentry. “Besides, I don’t want a red carpet… just information.”

“Which you’re a hell of a lot more likely to get if you roll up unobtrusively with me, instead of in an official car.”

Gentry said ungraciously, “I think I’m being rooked somehow,” but he told his driver, “I’m riding over to the Bright Spot with Mr. Shayne. Give us about ten minutes, and then park in front and wait for me.”

The driver nodded and saluted. Will Gentry walked back with the redhead and got into the front seat of the sedan that was still parked directly in front of the motel office. Shayne settled his rangy body under the wheel beside the chief and started the motor.

The parking lot at the Bright Spot appeared completely full as they pulled up in front of the entrance, and the same parking attendant who had taken care of Shayne’s car a short time previously came around to his side and shook his head firmly as the redhead cut off his motor and started to get out.

He said, “I’m sorry, sir, but we’re full. If you’d like to come back in about an hour…”

From the man’s manner, Shayne couldn’t tell whether he was telling the truth or whether he had been advised that Shayne was not welcome at the club any more that night.

He unlatched the door and pushed it against the man’s body and slid out from under the wheel, and said flatly, “We’re staying. If you’ve got no parking space, leave it here until someone pulls out.”

“I can’t do that, sir,” the attendant protested. “You’ll have to drive away…”

Shayne started around the front of the car past him, and the attendant made the mistake of grabbing his arm and trying to pull him back. Shayne swung with the pressure and hit him behind the ear with his right fist. The parking attendant went backward and to the ground.

On the other side of the car, Gentry said happily, “So this is the way you roll up unobtrusively, Mike, and get the red carpet treatment. Next time I’ll try it my own way.”

Shayne strode around the front of his car and took Gentry firmly by the arm and led him under the canopy. The doorman pretended not to see them. He said grimly, “Let’s find out whether that was meant specially for us or not.”

They found out immediately. Inside the lighted hallway, the same burly tuxedoed man who had met Shayne before came hurriedly toward them as soon as he saw them in the doorway. He blocked their way and said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Shayne. Your party has already left.”

Shayne said, “But I’m back.” He saw two other tough-looking bouncers hurrying down the hall to flank the first one, and was conscious that Will Gentry had withdrawn slightly and stood to one side to dissociate himself with him, and he said flatly, “This isn’t a raid… yet. I don’t care what sort of exhibition you’re putting on inside. I came to talk to Sloe Burn. Send her out here or I’ll go in and find her.”

The man in the center of the trio said smoothly, “Miss Piney is indisposed. Just go away quietly, Shayne, and…”

Shayne hit him in the mouth with his left fist. He swung his right at the same time, and the second man ducked and caught it on his forehead. It jarred him off balance, and Shayne swung to his left in time to see a blackjack in the hand of the third man arcing viciously toward his head. He ducked his chin and hunched his left shoulder high and caught the leaded leather with stunning force on the upper muscle of his arm.

Then Will Gentry’s voice spoke in a conversational level behind him. “That’s enough, boys. Send Sloe Burn out here.”

Shayne turned and blinked uncertainly at Will Gentry who stood flatfooted and unruffled with a Police Positive in his hand.

His eyes were wild with rage, and he panted, “Let me handle this, Will. By God, I’ll…”

“Stand back, Mike.” Gentry remained completely in control of the situation and appeared to be enjoying it. His gun menaced the trio impartially, and he told them, “You may be outside city limits, but I can have a hundred men surrounding this dump within ten minutes. Do we talk to your dancer or don’t we?”

A new figure appeared in an open doorway beside the service bar and said coldly, “All right, you punks have caused enough trouble. Get back inside where you know how to take care of yourselves.” He was tall and urbane and unsmiling and he wore a conservative business suit. He went on earnestly to Will Gentry:

“I’m sorry the boys didn’t recognize you, Chief. They’ll be more polite next time. On the other hand, you’ll have to admit they had a certain amount of provocation… considering the company you keep. They had orders, you see, to throw this shamus out on his ear if he showed up around here again.”

Shayne growled a throaty epithet and started toward the owner of the Bright Spot with big fists clenched menacingly, but Gentry waved him back with his revolver and said sharply,
“This
time I’m handling things, Mike. We want to talk to Sloe Burn,” he went on. “About a homicide.”

“I’d like to talk to her myself,” the tall man told him angrily. “She and her dance partner have both ducked out and left me holding the bag with a couple hundred people inside who came to see them dance. That was right after Shayne was here and she talked to him the first time.”

“Where can I find her?”

“If I knew, I’d tell you, Chief. They just disappeared. I’ve got a man at her place, but she hasn’t showed.”

“What’s the address?”

“Southwest Third Street.” He gave the address. “If she’s in trouble with the law,” he went on slowly, “I want no part of her. Minute she shows her face around here again, I’ll notify your office.”