Murder Spins the Wheel (5 page)

“What new connections, Rose?”

“I can’t tell you everything. There’s a limit to how much trouble I want to get him into.”

“Did he have a gun?”

“Never! He was very snooty about people who went in for that kind of thing.”

“Do you know anybody named Pedro Sanchez or Tom Pond?”

She groaned. “Oh, no.”

“Does that mean you know them?”

“I met Pete once. I didn’t know he was in town. I have to stop talking now. I think it was all right to tell you about Mrs. Naples—you could have picked that up from any number of people. But I want to ask you a favor.”

“You don’t want me to tell him I’ve talked to you?”

“That’s right. I could have made you promise before, but I don’t pay too much attention to promises any more. I hope you won’t tell him. He divides the world into rats and non-rats, and I don’t want him to put me in with the rats. I’d like to wish things would have a happy ending. At the same time I’m pretty sure they won’t.”

She blew her nose into a Kleenex and said brightly, “That’s my big drawback. I take myself seriously.”

Shayne wanted to reassure her that happy endings sometimes happen, but in Vince Donahue’s case he didn’t think that one was likely. Reaching out, he brushed the point of her breast very lightly with his thumb,

“You’re a damned attractive girl, Rose.”

“No, I’m not.”

He left her crying into her Kleenex. He collected some dirty looks on the way out.

7.

RETURNING TO HIS CAR, SHAYNE called Harry Bass’s number. The line was busy. He drove south and tried the number again after several blocks. When he found it still busy, he turned off Collins Avenue onto 71st Street, leading to Normandy Isle.

There was no answer when he rang Harry’s doorbell, though the lights were still on in the house. He tried the door. It was locked.

After ringing again he walked along the porch to look into the front hall. The phone there was off the hook. Apparently Harry had been taken to the hospital for X rays.

He returned to the Buick and started off. But he kept the wheel over and circled back into the turnaround. Something had caught his eye as he was leaving: one of the compartments of the two-car garage, which had been open before, was closed now. Taking a flashlight, he went between the house and the garage and shone the light through the duty side window of the garage. One car was a little Volkswagen. The other was Doc Waters’ sleek black Thunderbird.

Frowning, Shayne went around the house and up on the flagstone terrace that overlooked the golf course. This side of the house was dark. Suddenly the beam from a flashlight as powerful as his own hit him in the eyes.

Doc Waters’ voice said, “The hardworking shamus. I might have known you’d look in the garage.”

“Get that light out of my face,” Shayne said evenly.

After an instant Waters turned off the flashlight. As soon as Shayne’s eyes adjusted he saw that the bookie was leaning back against the house in a chair without arms, with a rifle across his knees.

“How’s the investigation coming?” Waters said sarcastically.

“It’s coming. Where’d they take Harry?”

Waters hooted. “They didn’t take him. He went. Shayne, you’re going to be surprised. Nobody around here can lay their hands on that kind of cash on a Saturday night, so Harry got on a plane and went to New York.”

“Yeah, I’m surprised,” Shayne admitted after a moment’s silence.

He came up on the terrace. Seeing what looked like an array of bottles on a low table, he turned on his flashlight and found that one of them was the same bottle of cognac he had been drinking from before. He emptied the watery dregs of a highball from the only glass, and poured a drink. Then he turned off the flashlight and sat down on the stone balustrade.

“What shape was he in?” he said.

Waters waved. “Hell, it takes more than a bump on the head to stop old Harry. The doctor and that babe, they both told him to go to bed, but Harry knows his obligations. I’ll say that for him. And why not, for Christ’s sake? What else does he do for that two percent? It’s his own damn fault that he’s short. If you knew the businesses he’s been putting dough into lately! He owns a piece of a bank! Did you know that? I don’t mean the kind of bank where you go down and open up the vault when you feel like it. He’s a stockholder. He has to wait till nine A.M. Monday morning like anybody.”

“Who’s he seeing in New York?”

“We’ve got to keep some secrets, Shayne. It’s just up and back. You know these jets. Whoosh! They were going to try to get him on a nine-thirty flight. The babe drove him.”

Shayne drank, not liking this. Harry shouldn’t be walking around.

“Who’s the rifle supposed to be for?”

Waters, embarrassed, reversed the rifle and leaned it against the house. “I don’t know what to expect. Naples is giving a party to celebrate the big win. He wants me to be guest of honor. That’s what you call a sense of humor. First he busts me, then he wants me to get plastered with everybody in the St. A. standing around with a big grin on their face. And I’d have to make believe I enjoyed it. We’re supposed to have ice water in our veins, that’s what it says in the books. Ten o’clock, he said,
with
the cash. What’ll he do when I don’t show up? Send a couple of characters out looking for me? I don’t know
what
he’ll do. I know what he did in the old days, but has he changed? Seriously—what have you come up with, if anything?”

“Nothing conclusive,” Shayne said, picking his words. “But I begin to get the feeling that these stickup guys were after more than the dough.”

“What do you mean?” Waters said, worried. “If you take Harry’s word for it, they walked away with two hundred big ones. That would make it worthwhile.”

“First they beat you with a horse and a football player. Then they doubled the take with an armed robbery. Maybe it doesn’t stop there. What if the real object was to show that you and Harry can’t handle a big hit any more?”

“Thanks,” Waters said bitterly. “As if I didn’t have enough on my mind.”

Taking out a little plastic container, he shook a white tablet into his hand and swallowed it with a mouthful of club soda. “Tranquillizers,” he explained. “But I’ve got to go easy. You can’t gobble these things like potato chips. Want a theory? I’ll give you a theory. Maybe Harry stuck himself up. Think about it. He’s Daddy Warbucks around here. He’s supposed to keep a reserve. But he’s been getting so goddamn legitimate! The idea of that much cash lying around not earning interest, it would make him sick to his stomach. When you go legit you start thinking about those things. You put it in stocks or in real estate. He’s
got
it, understand. He’s not like me, I’m hurting and I don’t mind saying so.”

“You think he packed some phone books in a suitcase and paid somebody to set his Cadillac on fire and crack his skull with a gun?”

“Put it like that,” Waters admitted, “and it sounds hard to believe.” He added whiskey and ice to his glass of soda, rattled the icecubes and drank. “But look at the background. The small fry around town have been getting restless. It’s not only me. They want him to pay attention to their problems, and not be tied up with real-estate lawyers all the time. He’s getting shaky and he knows it. I put in a call for funds, which I have every right to do. He knows I’m just getting on my feet after the shellacking I took in the Caribbean. He has to get up that dough or questions will be asked. Burning up a Cadillac is a small price to pay. And who says he was knocked cold?
He
says. Anybody can stagger around and pretend to have a headache. The doctor? You know how doctors are. They don’t get paid to tell you you’re not sick.”

“I’ll keep that on file,” Shayne said skeptically. “Nobody ever told me what happened to you in the Caribbean.”

“I was flimflammed,” Waters said simply. “They asked me to come in and set up a casino, teach them how to run it. Eighteen months later, when the house was beginning to run in the black, they changed the goddamned government and nationalized me. No revolution or anything, just a couple of different colonels, and I see now it was in the back of their minds all along. I had to pay through the nose before they let me off the island. The State Department wouldn’t lift a goddamned finger. I got out with an extra suit of underwear, that’s about all. I had to hock my right ball, practically, to get back in the business of booking bets.”

Shayne drank thoughtfully. “Do you think Naples has any ideas about getting active again?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him. He’s used to running things. Back in Chicago, when he said jump, they jumped. Maybe he misses that. He’s got a stable of horses, a hot-looking wife, a boat. But is it enough? All I know is, if Harry and Al ever really tangle, I want to be somewhere else.”

“What happens if Harry doesn’t come back with the money?”

“He better,” Waters said blackly. “Now don’t quote me—” He interrupted himself and drank, then felt for the container of tranquillizers. “Well, I know you’ll probably quote me, but Harry knows as well as I do that if he can’t lay that cash on the line there’s going to be a little revolution right here in Miami. He’s getting so slow! Six months ago he would have dropped the points on Florida Christian, he would have spotted the play on Ladybug and laid it off. You can’t do that without communication, and communications around here have been getting terrible. When that babe went to work for him, that’s when I date it from. Four and a half percent from a savings and loan, he thinks now, is better than twenty percent in something illegal. All of a sudden some things go and some things don’t go. I’m tired of it, and I’m not the only one.”

Leaning forward, Shayne put his empty glass on the table. “I think it’s about time for me to talk to Naples. Before I forget it, have you run into a kid named Vince Donahue?”

Waters had been about to feed himself a tranquillizer. Slowly and deliberately, he put the cap back on the container, put it away and reached for the rifle. Shayne was on top of him before the barrel was all the way around. He pivoted, lifting, and twisted the weapon out of the bookie’s hands.

“Everybody’s jumpy tonight,” Shayne observed. “What were you going to do, blow a hole in me because I asked a simple question? If you don’t ask questions you don’t get any answers. Something’s happened to your sense of proportion.”

Waters sneered at him. “It’s my experience that certain people only listen when a gun’s pointing at them. All I was going to suggest, don’t mention Donahue’s name to Naples. The kid’s in the sack with the wife a couple of afternoons a week, according to my information.”

“What does he do mornings?”

“That’s all for now, Shayne,” Waters said wearily. “Talk about slow—those pills really slow you down. I’m going to put the phone back on the hook. Harry’ll be calling pretty soon. Why not wait for the call?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You know you’ll just stir things up? Al’s sure to be plastered and he’s a fast man at flying off the handle. The last thing Harry wants is Al Naples on his neck. He likes this quiet life.”

Shayne unloaded the rifle. Swinging it by the barrel, he brought it down hard on the balustrade, breaking off the hammer.

“What do you think,” Waters said in his mournful tone, “that I’d shoot you in the back, and let Harry explain what you’re doing on his lawn? I was about to make you an offer. Don’t you even want to hear it?”

“Keep it brief.”

“Twenty-five G’s,” Waters said, “to go out and get drunk.”

Shayne tossed down the useless rifle. “I thought you said you were broke.”

“I am broke! I’ll write you an IOU. I’m good for it.”

Shayne laughed. “Take another pill, Doc.”

“That’s the trouble with people,” Waters commented, without sounding surprised. “If you don’t have cash in your pocket, nobody trusts you.”

8.

MICHAEL SHAYNE PULLED UP at the St. Albans, a huge wedding cake of a hotel, standing between Collins Avenue and the ocean. The doorman stepped forward smartly with a half salute.

“Oh, it’s you, Mike,” he said, dropping his hand. “How you doing? Park it for you?”

“Can I leave it here in front so I can take off in a hurry? No more than ten minutes.”

The doorman saw no reason why not. Shayne moved farther along the approach drive and left the Buick beside a No Parking sign. He put his hand in his pocket when he came back, but the doorman waved him away.

“Hell, Mike. Do I ever tip you?”

Inside, Shayne checked with the bell captain and tried several bars and supper rooms before locating the Al Naples party in the Mozambique Room on the roof. The decorations, of course, were tropical, and there was a Latin band and a circular bar where the bartenders were kept busy putting together elaborate rum drinks. Al Naples was pointed out to Shayne, a stocky man in a dinner jacket, with grizzled hair which he wore in a crew cut. He was enjoying himself. He was at a round table for twelve, only partially occupied; some of his guests were dancing.

Shayne knew one of the men at the table, a well known ex-major leaguer who was now selling insurance. The women were all younger than the men, or looked younger at this distance. Naples was standing between two chairs. He concluded a joke with a bray of laughter that carried easily to Shayne, on the far side of the crowded room, then dropped his cigar in an ashtray and weaved out onto the dance floor, where he cut in on a handsome black-haired woman in a low-cut dress.

Shayne ordered a drink and waited for Naples to return to his table. Naples was an awkward but vigorous dancer. When the music stopped he ran into friends on the way back to his table. There he rearranged his guests according to his ideas of where they ought to be sitting, ordered more drinks and took over the conversation. Shayne could see he was going to be a hard man to interrupt.

Finishing his drink, he called the maitre d’ and produced a bill. A phone was plugged in beside Shayne and a waiter, instructed to say that Doc Waters was calling, carried a second phone to Naples’ table. Naples gave his braying laugh and picked up the phone.

“About time, Doc. Where’s my dough?”

“This isn’t Doc,” Shayne said. “I’m calling for him. I have a message.”

Naples laughed. “He’s having trouble scraping it up? Well, well. Who is this?”

“The name’s Shayne,” the redhead said. “We thought you ought to know. There’s an argument. Some people think he ought to hold payment until a few things are cleared up.”

The good humor faded out of Naples’ voice. “Until a few things are what?”

“You don’t want to talk about it on the phone.”

“I don’t want to talk about it period! I want Doc to get over here with that bundle, or I want him to tell me exactly where and when. Where are you?”

“At the bar.”

“Where?”

He looked across the room. Shayne held up the phone to identify himself.

“I’ll be goddamned,” Naples said. Then abruptly: “Come on over and I’ll buy you a drink.”

Shayne left the phone on the bar. Naples had started a fresh cigar by the time Shayne reached his table. He gave Shayne’s hand a quick shake without getting up.

“Move it over, honey,” he told the dark-haired woman beside him, the one he had danced with. “Mrs. Naples, Mr.—what did you say your name was?”

“Shayne.”

“Mr. Shayne. This is my baby’s birthday,” he explained. “That’s what the party’s about. You don’t want to be introduced to everybody, all that horse sh—” He caught himself with a look at his wife. “I’m trying to cut out the profanity, but it’s a habit, you know?” He waved at the waiter. “What are you drinking?”

Mrs. Naples had moved down to make room for Shayne between herself and her husband. Shayne told the waiter to bring him another straight cognac, with water on the side. “Oh, you’re
Mike
Shayne,” Mrs. Naples said with interest. “You recovered some stolen jewelry once for a friend of mine, and she said you could put away
gallons
of cognac and never turn a hair.”

“If that’s a compliment,” Shayne said, “thanks.”

“Oh, that’s not all she said,” Mrs. Naples told him, sparkling.

In age, she fell almost exactly between Al Naples and Vince Donahue. Shayne could see a network of lines at the corners of her eyes, not quite concealed by careful makeup, but she was still a striking woman. The low-cut dress showed off both a first-class figure and a first-class diamond necklace.

“Baby,” Al Naples said, leaning forward to speak across Shayne. “Turn around and talk to Stupid. This is one of those things you better not listen to. They think we pulled a fast one on them with the horse, how do you like that?” He laughed with satisfaction. “What do you want me to do, Shayne, send Doc to night school? He’s supposed to be a pro. Where I come from, when somebody outsmarts you, you don’t whine about it. Let him sweat.”

The waiter slipped Shayne’s drink deftly onto the table. The redhead picked it up.

“He’s sweating,” he said. “This comes at a bad time for him. He had to call on Harry Bass, and Harry went into the sock for two hundred grand. Then somebody stuck him up and he lost it.”

Shayne was watching Naples closely. His surprise seemed real. He took the cigar out of his mouth and gave another of his sudden hoots of laughter.

“You people seem to have a lot of crime down here.”

“And there’s a theory around that the stickup was your idea.”

Naples’ manner became more careful. “What crap.”

“I agree, but you can see how they figure.” Shayne revolved the wineglass between his fingers. “You put a lot of thought into setting up your mare this afternoon. The same kind of planning went into this stickup. Naturally Harry and Doc are wondering if it was part of the same deal.” He was addressing himself to Naples, but from the tension in Mrs. Naples’ bare tanned shoulder, he knew she was listening. “When you were the big man in Chicago, did anybody ever rob you?”

“You mean personally? Hell, no. There was one nut once, he wanted to get his name in the papers. When they checked up on him, it turned out he was on parole from the booby hatch.”

“That’s what I mean,” Shayne said. “It’s the same with Harry. You don’t stick up Harry Bass in Miami unless it’s one of two things. Either you don’t give a damn or you want to make the Number One man look bad.”

The ball player, returning from the dance floor, put his hands on Shayne from behind. “Mike! You look great. The climate agrees with you.”

Naples spoke the ball player’s name coldly. “We’re talking.”

“Al, I didn’t realize!”

He patted Shayne’s shoulder and moved out of earshot.

Naples sighted at the redhead over his long cigar. “I’ve been hitting the booze ever since the third race, and I’m half-smashed. I want you to come right out with it so I’m sure I get it.”

“Sure,” Shayne said, still twirling the cognac glass. “What part of it didn’t you understand?”

“Will you drink that drink, for Christ’s sake, or put it down? Why would I want to make Harry look bad? He’s my type of guy.”

Shayne drank off half his cognac. “I don’t know how much you’ve seen of him lately. He’s got a new girl and a new car and he’s been investing his money. He bought into a bank, for one thing. Some of his people don’t like it.”

“Why not buy a bank?” Naples said, puzzled. “There’s good dough in banks. I’ve got thirty percent of a bank in Indiana.”

“They think he’s losing interest in breaking the law. According to Doc, that’s the feeling all over town. The idea is that this would be a good time for somebody to move in and take over.”

“Don’t look at me,” Naples said. “I’ve got a suite with a terrace. I sit out on the terrace and watch the sea gulls.”

Shayne grinned skeptically.

Naples admitted, “OK, when you’ve seen one sea gull you’ve seen them all. Since I was a kid I’ve been on the jump, and sitting still all of a sudden—you’ll find out when it happens to you, Shayne. I got a bang out of how I handled Ladybug this afternoon. But that’s as far as it goes. Do you know how much you’d have to pay me to take Harry’s job? You couldn’t pay me enough. The headaches, I happen to know. The doctor says with my blood pressure not to get excited. When you’re sitting where Harry is, you’ve got to stay excited nine tenths of the time.”

He sucked at his cigar. “So somebody held up old Harry. I’ll be f—” He swallowed the rest of the word, looking past Shayne at his wife’s shoulder. “They walked right up to him with their bare faces hanging out? I wouldn’t want to do that myself, unless he’s
really
changed.”

“They wore masks,” Shayne said. “They stopped him by setting fire to his Cadillac. They pistol-whipped his driver and chased Harry over a stone wall. They were a lot younger than he is, in pretty good condition. They caught him and knocked him around. I think I’ve known Harry as long as you have. Anybody who thinks he’s turned into a cream puff is making a big mistake.”

“It could be I agree with you,” Naples said. “Maybe I get tired watching sea gulls, but that don’t mean I want any kind of trouble with Harry Bass.”

“I’m glad I don’t have to argue with you. He took a bad beating, and he ought to be in bed right now, under sedation. Instead of that he’s out beating the bushes for two-day money. He couldn’t find it in Miami so he went to New York. I might have been able to talk him out of it if I’d been there, but I wasn’t. He’s got a hell of a temper, as you probably know. One thing a concussion does is take off the brakes, and I hope everybody handles him with kid gloves. Naturally he’s going to be wondering who did this to him. He’s sure to be in a half-haze and not thinking too clearly, but somewhere along the line, on the plane going up or the plane coming back, it’s going to hit him—is it possible his old friend Al Naples—?”

He drank the rest of his cognac.

Naples said, “Hell, he can take my blood pressure. I’ll let him bring his own doctor.”

Shayne said seriously, “I’d like to get you to agree not to talk to him tonight at all.”

“I’ll hide under the bed,” Naples said. “Will that do?”

“I’m serious,” Shayne said. “Harry doesn’t go in for nonviolence. If he makes up his mind that you did it to him, he may come looking for you with a gun in his pocket.”

“For Christ’s sake! Give him credit for more sense.”

“I come back to what I said before,” Shayne said. He took out a cigarette and reached past Mrs. Naples to get a book of St. Albans matches. After lighting the cigarette he leaned forward again to toss the match into the ashtray. She was half-turned toward a paunchy little man with a head like a dried apple, but Shayne saw the small signs that meant he and her husband had her full attention.

He said deliberately, “It’s either somebody like you, with experience and confidence, plenty of funds and plenty of muscle. Or it’s somebody young and wild, without sense enough to be scared. I’ll tell you a few things I’ve picked up. Two of the stickup men died in a car crash. Both of them come from St. Louis.”

Mrs. Naples’ shoulder made a slight involuntary movement. The redhead went on, “St. Louis is close enough to Chicago so you’d know people there, but not too close. A third man got away. The money got away with him, but we’re hoping to find his fingerprints in the wrecked car. I have a lead to a fleabag hotel called the Gloria. I have another lead to a football fix. There are indications that that was planned here at the St. A.”

“What do I know about football?” Naples said.

“All you need to know is somebody who knows the quarterback. Harry hired me to look for the dough. I took the job before I knew you were involved. If this ends in a killing, if I find out who robbed Harry and the man is killed, I’m in line for an accessory rap. That could be serious if it happens here on the Beach, where the cops don’t like me. So I’m on a peaceful errand. I hope everybody will make up. Thanks for the drink. I don’t suppose you have any soothing message you want me to give Harry.”

“Tell him he has my sympathy,” Naples said. “I’ve been through it myself. If you see Doc, tell him I’m waiting for my dough.”

Shayne pushed back his chair and stood up. “Harry can’t be back from New York before one, so enjoy yourself. After that don’t answer the phone and don’t go to the door. I hope I can head him off. Nice to have met you, Mrs. Naples.”

She started and swung around. “Going, Mr. Shayne? It was a pleasure to meet
you.”

The ex-baseball player made him stop and meet his new wife. Out of the corner of his eye, Shayne saw Mrs. Naples excuse herself and start around the dance floor toward the ladies room. He freed himself from the ex-ballplayer and his bride and took the elevator to the lobby.