Michael Shayne's Long Chance (11 page)

Shayne and Lucile followed the guide between close-ranked tables which were occupied by a few indefatigable patrons. He led them to a small table in the second row from the platform and seated them just as the two quadroons finished their mad dance to a mild spattering of applause.

Concealed overhead lights glowed as the girls scampered down a runway and off the stage. The waiter was standing deferentially beside Shayne’s chair.

Shayne raised his red brows quizzically. Lucile said, “I’ll take a Tom Collins.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well—yes. I do know what a Tom Collins is,” she said, and for the first time since Shayne had met her she appeared embarrassed.

“Two Tom Collinses,” Shayne said.

The waiter nodded stiffly and turned away.

The overhead lights faded out and the yellow spot came on again as a tall, statuesque blonde glided up the runway followed by a smiling lad.

A burst of applause greeted the blonde and her youthful companion. Stringed instruments made plaintive cries as she took the boy’s hand and began crooning a song about being just a mother to Tommy.

Shayne looked at Lucile. Her head was turned from the stage and she was apparently absorbed in an intricate mosaic pattern decorating the table. She said, “I’m going to protect my stomach tonight.”

“The same act you saw before?” Shayne asked.

“With variations,” she murmured. “Last time it was an old man and a young girl.”

“Then we won’t look,” Shayne agreed.

After a long delay, the waiter came with their drinks. The orchestra hit a wailing crescendo, and Shayne turned his head to see the tall blonde running off the stage, naked except for a pair of shoes.

The waiter set tall drinks on the table. Lucile said, “I want to see Henri Desmond.”

“I’ll give him your message as soon as he can be located, Madame,” the man said.

The lights stayed on and the platform was lowered by a hidden mechanism. Another low stage rose slowly into view with a ten-piece Negro orchestra beating out a dance tune. Half a dozen scattered couples from the nearly empty dining-room got up to dance.

Four of the six couples were men past fifty, accompanied by very young girls, none of them past the age of consent. Lucile said, “Those kids are the hostesses. I wonder how they manage to do their school work after a night here.”

“What’s the rest of the layout?” Shayne tasted his drink and set it down. “It’s worse than I expected.”

“You should have ordered something else,” she murmured. “You didn’t have to—”

“Anything in this joint would have tasted the same. What else do you know about it?”

“This is the public part, of course. Over there beyond the orchestra are the restrooms. You go through those doors into halls leading to another room like this in front, only smaller.”

“And more intimate?” Shayne grinned at her.

Lucile did not smile. “The restrooms open off the halls,” she went on solemnly. “It’s fixed that way, Henri said, so the common tourists won’t notice selected customers slipping into the other room during the course of the night. They simply go to the restrooms and don’t come back.” She lifted her glass and drank half of the faintly greenish liquid, making a wry face as she set it down. “I didn’t know gin ever tasted like this stuff does,” she complained.

“You’re just used to a better grade. You don’t have to drink it, you know.”

“I held my breath to keep from tasting what I did drink,” she said.

“What’s upstairs?” Shayne asked abruptly.

“Rooms,” she told him succinctly. “For hire by the hour, or longer—if you’re interested.”

“I’m not.”

Lucile pouted and said, “I was afraid I would be perfectly safe with you.”

Shayne looked at her, his eyes twinkling. “You work awfully hard at trying to fill the role of a wild woman.”

She tossed her brown curls. “I’m not a high-school girl.”

Shayne’s grin spread. “How old are you?”

She said, “Twenty-six,” defiantly.

Shayne arched his ragged red brows. “I don’t believe you, but I’ll make a note of it.”

Lucile said, “I wonder what’s keeping Henri?”

Shayne’s finger tips drummed impatiently on the table. He muttered, “You don’t suppose Henri saw me and was scared off?”

“I shouldn’t think so.” She pushed her chair back and said, “Excuse me. You entertain Henri while I’m gone—if he comes.” Her voice was decidedly thick.

“Where are you going?” Shayne demanded.

She said, with an attempt at severity, “A gen’leman never asks a lady that ques’ion.”

He watched her cross the room and go through the door marked
Ladies.
He lit a cigarette and puffed on it as he moodily wondered if Lucile could be 26. She looked much younger. She was pretty swell, clear thinking and straight talking. He caught himself wishing he had met her under other circumstances.

Then his thoughts reverted to Margo. She had been pretty swell, too. He grinned, recollecting what Margo had told Lucile about him. He couldn’t repress a feeling of guilt for having approached Margo under false pretenses. Still, it hadn’t been all false—not after he met and talked with her. How would it have turned out?

He sternly swung his thoughts into another channel. Joseph Little would probably be arriving soon. It would be a lot easier to face him if he could hand over his daughter’s murderer. He went over the story Lucile had told about Evalyn and Henri. Would a man like that kill out of jealousy? Shayne didn’t think so. But Evalyn—a woman scorned was a different proposition. The brutal battering of the victim was a likely indication of furious rage. One or two blows with the death weapon in strong hands would have sufficed. In weaker hands it was different, and Barbara Little’s killer must have struck time and time again—even, perhaps, after the job was done.

Shayne came out of his meditation and looked at his wrist watch. Lucile had been gone a long time. He glanced around the room, scowling heavily. He watched the
Ladies
door, but it remained closed. He remembered that the door led not only to the restrooms but on to the private floor show beyond.

Had Henri seen him, recognized him as he came in with Lucile? Was Henri Barbara Little’s murderer and intent on getting rid of any evidence against him by holding Lucile—maybe murdering her, also? He clenched his fists and discovered that his palms were wet with sweat. It had been 15 minutes since Lucile left the table.

He scraped his chair back and got up, saw Lucile’s green handbag on the table, and picked it up. He circled the orchestra to the closed door leading to the ladies’ restroom.

Opening the door, he found that it led into a narrow hall about 15 feet long. A curtained doorway at his right had the word
Ladies
in silver letters above it. He stopped and called, “Lucile,” in a loud voice.

A Negro maid thrust her head out. She rolled her eyes and asked, “Was you callin’, Mister?”

Shayne said, “I wondered if my girl was all right. Is she sick?”

“Whut girl?”

“The one who came in here about fifteen minutes ago, wearing a green dress and green shoes to match this bag.” He held up the suède handbag.

The Negress shook her head. “Ain’ no girl in heah. Ain’ been no girl in heah wearin’ no dress lak dat.”

Shayne’s eyes glowed hotly. He swung around and started toward the end of the hall.

A burly man stepped into the hall from a side door near the end. Hulking shoulders strained the seams of a gray suit. His face was pock-marked, his jaw heavy and set, his eyes small.

He put his hands on his hips and confronted Shayne. “Whatcha doin’ here? Comin’ out the ladies’ room?”

“I’m looking for a girl. She’s wearing a green dress.”

“She ain’t here,” the man grated. “Beat it.”

The grooves in Shayne’s cheeks deepened. “Where’s Henri Desmond?”

He heard footsteps in the hall behind him as the man growled, “He ain’t here neither.”

Shayne turned to look at the man sauntering toward them. He wore a double-breasted blue suit, a black fedora, and round-toed black shoes. He might as well have worn a sign saying
Plain-Clothes Dick.
He looked past Shayne and asked, “Trouble, Bart?”

“This here guy,” said Bart, “claims he’s lookin’ for a dame that’s got lost.”

The dick stopped five feet from Shayne and looked him over coldly. He unbuttoned his double-breasted coat and opened it to give the redhead a flash of his city badge. “Better not start anything in here, bud.”

Shayne laughed shortly. “Did Denton send you?”

The dick jerked his thumb back over his shoulder and said, “Beat it.”

Shayne hunched his shoulders and turned back to Bart. “I’m headed this way.”

“That’s private,” Bart said. “’Less you got a special card.”

Shayne took a step forward.

The burly man stepped back and said, “Okay, buddy,” in a resigned tone.

The dick came up behind him swiftly as he reached for the doorknob. He felt the muzzle of a gun boring into his left side. The dick said, “You better not—”

Shayne whirled and knocked the gun down with his left forearm while his right fist made a short arc to the dick’s jaw. As the man went down, pain struck savagely at the base of Shayne’s right ear. His knees gave way, and the bottom fell out of the world.

SHAYNE FOUND COMING BACK FROM THE DEAD a disheartening and painful process. It was a lot easier to remain in the void where there was no pain, no physical discomfort. Each effort of his mind to return to consciousness brought unendurable agony, and he swam again into oblivion. Why should he encourage consciousness of the mind when his body was dead?

Lying stretched out on the floor in a semicoma, each resurgence to reality made his head a solid mass of pain circled by constricting bands of flame.

But there was something else. Something urgent. He couldn’t quite get hold of one thought before it frayed away and was replaced by another one. He kept seeing a girl’s face. First she was Lucile, then she was Margo. The girl was beckoning to him, her lips parted and her eyes sad with perplexed entreaty. Two girls who trusted him, and he was letting them both down.

He set himself for the final struggle. He knew it wasn’t going to be easy. He was pleasantly conscious of his own strength and determination as he grappled with the tenuous edge of reality. One strong wrench and he would be back.

He became conscious of the hard floor and of an unbearably bright light overhead which made it impossible to open his eyes. He was aware of voices, voices that were like hammers, pounding against the constricting bands around his head, producing a vicious ringing inside that made the words unintelligible.

Then he heard his own name spoken, and it was as though a brazen gong clanged against his brain, and he could hear again.

“—Mike Shayne don’t know when to lay off.” The voice was heavy, strangely familiar to Shayne.

“Why not get rid of him? I don’t see—”

“We can’t do that, Rudy. Not with things like they are. That’d mean getting rid of the girl, too. And it still wouldn’t take the pressure off the other murder. We got to fix it to clean things up so the investigation’ll stop right now.”

Shayne recognized the voice as Captain Denton’s. And Denton had called the other man Rudy. That would be Rudy Soule.

“I’m not worried about an investigation. I’ve paid out plenty for protection and I mean to be protected.” Soule’s voice was thin and silken. The men seemed to be very close, not more than 15 feet away.

Shayne lay quiescent, listening intently, and the pain subsided to a dull throb at the base of his ear.

“We’re in this together, Soule. You don’t know Shayne when he gets started. He’s hell on wheels.”

“There’re ways to stop him.”

“I tell you another murder won’t do right now—not one hooked up with the Margo Macon killing. Shayne’s got friends in this town. He wouldn’t be fool enough to come here without turning over what he’s got to some of them.”

“You don’t mean Chief McCracken?” This was a new voice, one with a twangy whine.

“Shut up,” Soule commanded. “What do you think he’s got, Dolph?”

“That’s what I want to know!”

“Who steered him here?”

“That fellow named Drake, maybe. The one Henri brought here before he got picked up by Quinlan.”

“Maybe you’re making a lot out of nothing,” Soule scoffed. “He might’ve just dropped in for a place to bring the frail for a thrill.”

“Shayne don’t just drop in,” Denton said viciously. “See if you can wake him up, Bart. If you hadn’ve hit him so damn hard—”

“I didn’t hit ’im hard,” a surly voice protested.

The man moved, dropped to his knees behind Shayne. “I know a li’l trick. Seen it worked in Chi onct. If a guy’s still alive it’ll bring him up sure.”

Shayne forced his eyes open and sat up slowly. Bright overhead lights pierced his eyes with lances of fire. A surge of pain nauseated him and everything whirled in a blur. He gritted his teeth and kept his eyes half open until the room swam into focus again.

The burly man called Bart rocked back on his heels with a grunt of satisfaction. “What’d I tell yuh? I didn’ hit ’im no more’n easy-like.”

Shayne forced his face muscles to form a grin. He said, “Hello, Captain,” to Denton, who was leaning forward in a straight chair beside a desk.

Dolph Denton’s face was ugly with wrath. He said thickly, “You asked for it, shamus.”

Shayne’s gaze went on to the man sitting behind the desk. Rudy Soule had a thin, arrogant face with high cheekbones and a wispy black mustache. He looked immaculate and cool in white flannels and a pale-yellow sport shirt. His eyes were half hidden by drooping lids and he appeared faintly amused.

Henri Desmond regarded Shayne sullenly from a lounging position against the wall behind Soule’s desk. He shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other as Shayne looked at him.

Shayne said to Denton, “You’re the one who’s worried.” The small room held only the desk and three chairs. There was no sign of Lucile Hamilton. Shayne drew his legs up to sit crosslegged and was pleased to find that they worked. The throbbing had stopped at the base of his ear, leaving a steady, annoying ache.