Killers from the Keys (2 page)

He caught her wrist before she reached the target, and swung her away from him violently. “Get out before I turn you over my knee and spank you.”

She stood very still, quivering with wrath and with a dazed, hurt look on her overpainted young face.

Then she spat, “Don’t you ever come near me or I’ll have Ralphie cut you up in little pieces.” She swung away and marched out as disdainfully as she could in her scuffed loafers, and Shayne followed her to the door of his inner office and leaned against the frame as she stamped past Lucy without a glance at her and slammed through the outer door.

“Do a fast burn with Sloe Burn,” chanted Lucy with her gaze fixed on the closed door through which Miss Esther Piney had disappeared. Then she said, “Oh, Michael!” and began laughing helplessly.

He didn’t join in her merriment. He said sternly, “Control yourself and get in here with a deodorizer or something. Next time you close up an oversexed swamp-cat in my office I’m going fishing for a week.”

2

MICHAEL SHAYNE’S NEXT visitor was also a female who wanted to hire him to locate a missing man for her, but there the resemblance ended.

Mrs. Renshaw from Illinois was a cool, poised woman in her late thirties, beautifully groomed from the top of smoothly waved platinum hair to the tips of smart spike-heeled shoes. Her features had a chiseled sort of fragility about them, and her blue eyes were almost opaque with an impression of on-the-surface coloration; yet with all her outward trappings of sophisticated assurance, Shayne received an immediate impression of tremendous inner tension the moment Lucy ushered her into his office.

He stood up gravely and repeated, “Mrs. Renshaw,” and moved around his desk to move the chair recently vacated by Sloe Burn so that it faced him more directly, and took her cool, long-fingered hand in his after she stripped off one white, openwork glove and offered her hand to him.

The sudden, convulsive pressure of her fingers on his confirmed the impression that she was a seething mass of raw nerves behind her calm facade. Standing close in front of him with shoulders resolutely back and firm chin tilted slightly so that her eyes looked directly into his, she said with clipped mid-western directness: “You don’t know what a relief this is, Mr. Shayne. I’ve so dreaded coming to your office. But now, I’m glad I found the courage to come.”

Shayne put his other big hand over hers in his palm and pressed it warmly. He said, “Private detectives are pretty much like other professional people, Mrs. Renshaw, despite popular fiction and television.”

She lowered straw-colored lashes over her blue eyes, and the intense rigidity went away from her posture. Her fingers relaxed their convulsive grip on his, and he released her hand and went back to his chair while she seated herself on the edge of hers and folded her hands carefully in her lap.

With a faint smile she said, “I don’t read much popular fiction and almost never watch TV. No, Mr. Shayne. My dread arose from a recent personal experience that has been quite… horrible.”

Shayne said, “Tell me about it if you wish. I know most of my competitors in Miami, and if one of them has gotten out of line…”

“Oh, no. Not in Miami. In Chicago. But I had better start at the beginning, hadn’t I?”

Shayne settled back in his swivel chair and got out a pack of cigarettes. He held the pack toward her with lifted eyebrows and she shook her head a fraction of an inch and said, “I don’t smoke, thanks.”

“I will, if you don’t mind.” Shayne lit a cigarette and asked, “What is the beginning?”

“It’s my husband, Steve, Mr. Shayne. He’s in Miami and in terrible danger. If I could only find him… get him to face up to it and come home and seek the protection of the law which he fully deserves…” Her face went to pieces suddenly and she lowered her head and sobbed convulsively while her hands writhed together in her lap.

“My husband isn’t a bad man. Steve’s weak, perhaps… but not bad. He didn’t really do anything so terribly wrong. Nothing that he should be punished for.” She lifted her head abruptly and looked at him with tears streaming down her cheeks. “He didn’t do anything wrong at all. Just got in with the wrong crowd and gambled more than he could afford… and then when those crooked gamblers had won all his cash, it was
they
who urged him to gamble on credit. He told me all about it, Mr. Shayne. Poor Stevie! He actually thought they were being kind-hearted and generous to him… giving him a chance to win back what he’d lost.

“It wasn’t until he was in ’way over his head that he finally realized how cleverly they had trapped him. They cut off his credit suddenly and demanded payment. My husband isn’t a wealthy man, Mr. Shayne, but he has a fine position of trust with a Savings and Loan Association, and they callously suggested he could get the money there if he couldn’t raise it elsewhere.

“That he could
steal
it.” She spat the word out with venomous contempt. “You can imagine what that did to a man like Steve. Honestly, Mr. Shayne, he’s one of the most honest and upright men who ever lived. He was flabbergasted at first. He laughed at them. He simply couldn’t believe they were serious. But they warned him that they were. They threatened reprisals… not only physical danger to him, but they threatened his family also. Me and our two children. They warned him that if he went to the police for protection none of us would ever be safe again.

“It was the Syndicate, you see. Perhaps you don’t realize how things are in Chicago. Crime and gambling and all that is completely organized. They have a regular army of what they call ‘enforcers’ and they are actually above the law in Chicago. Most people don’t realize it, but it’s as bad as it ever was back in the Capone days.”

Shayne nodded slowly, his trenched face bleak. “I have a pretty good idea how things are in Chicago. We’ve managed to avoid that sort of thing in Miami, but it’s a constant struggle to keep the Syndicate from getting a foothold. So your husband told you this, Mrs. Renshaw?”

“About three weeks ago. We sat up and talked most of the night. I blame myself for what happened. Steve wanted me to take the children and get out of town fast. I have relatives in California where I could have gone. He thought he could throw them off the track and join me later. But I was a fool, Mr. Shayne. A self-righteous, trusting, goddamned
fool!

“I shamed Stevie into staying in Chicago and facing it out. I couldn’t
believe
that the local police weren’t capable of protecting us. It seemed utterly insane to me for us to run away and hide from underworld forces, no matter how well organized they were. I urged Steve to defy them to do their worst. And they did. The very next day, Mr. Shayne.”

Mrs. Renshaw dropped her eyes and her voice dropped to a whisper. “We have a lovely daughter twelve years old. She was coming home from school when a car drove past on a street corner and a container of acid was thrown at her and two friends who were walking home together. It burned… one side of Marcia’s face badly, and spattered her two innocent companions. That’s the sort of fiends he has against him, Mr. Shayne. How can you fight that? What can a decent person
do?”

Shayne shifted in his chair and avoided her gaze. He said, “I get the picture, Mrs. Renshaw. What did your husband do?”

“He disappeared. Without telling me he was going. I would have gone with him. I would have taken our children and disappeared with him, but I’d failed him before and he didn’t trust me again. He left me a note explaining what he was doing… that if he left his job and simply vanished, he thought they’d give up and leave him alone. Because if he no longer had his job, you see, there was no way they could hope to force him to pay the gambling debt, and he was convinced they would see reason and leave us alone thereafter.”

“Was he right?” asked Shayne grimly.

“In a way. We haven’t been molested since. Though I’m convinced our house is continually watched, and I suspect the Syndicate has a tap on our telephone. That’s why… when Steve telephoned me from Miami three days ago… I cut him off fast. Even so, he had time to tell me they had trailed him here and he was remaining in hiding in hourly danger of his life. You must find him for me, Mr. Shayne, before they do. Before the Syndicate’s murderous ‘enforcers’ locate him. I can convince him to go to the police for protection. I know I can. Steve will listen to me. He’s like a frightened little boy. He just isn’t thinking straight. He’s no match for them. He’s had no experience in this sort of thing. He
can’t
go on this way.”

“You didn’t tell the police about his call?”

“He made me promise not to. He’s utterly terrified of what the Syndicate will do if we dare go to the police.”

“What did he tell you?” demanded Shayne sharply.

“Simply that he is using the name of Fred Tucker down here. He would have said more but I… I’m afraid I cut him off because I’m afraid our telephone is tapped.

“Well, first I went to a private detective in Chicago to solicit professional assistance. I felt so inadequate to come down here alone and attempt to find Steve, and thought I needed the advice and aid of someone who knew about such matters. I know how corrupt the city police are in Chicago, but I thought a private detective would be different. Still, I thought such a man might decline to help me find Steve if he knew he was bucking the Syndicate by doing so, and before I consulted him I decided that I would not tell him the truth.

“I didn’t know anything about how to find a reliable detective in Chicago, of course, nor did I know anyone I could ask, and so I picked the name of a detective agency at random out of the yellow pages. He advertised that divorce cases were his specialty, with a line about tracing ‘erring spouses’… and I had already decided that was how I should represent myself… as a wife whose husband had deserted her.

“I confess I was appalled by the appearance and manners of the man when I met him in his office, but he did appear competent and didn’t ask too many probing questions, and assured me that he had many contacts in Miami which would make it a very simple matter to locate my husband.

“I’m convinced now, Mr. Shayne, that he has connections in the underworld and that he somehow put two and two together and realized that my erring spouse was really the man on whose head the Syndicate has put a price. I think that was why he was eager to take my case and didn’t even demand a retainer in advance… just travelling expenses. A lot of little things happened on the trip down that made me suspicious of him. He’s not a nice man, Mr. Shayne. He frightens me, and now I’m terrified that he will find Steve before the police do.”

“What is his name?”

“Baron McTige, he calls himself. He is uncouth and ruthless, and, I’m convinced, utterly amoral and predatory.” She paused, and Shayne saw her hands clenching themselves together in her lap. “We flew down together, you see, because I insisted on coming with him even though he insisted he could handle the matter alone. And when we arrived yesterday he… he made the most outrageous proposals to me, Mr. Shayne, and revealed his true colors for the first time. I… discharged him from the case, though he had the audacity to sneer at me and inform me that I had a legal obligation to pay him whatever fee he wished to demand after he found Steve. And he’s here in the city now, tracking him down, Mr. Shayne, for the sole purpose, I’m sure, of fingering him to the Syndicate, if he succeeds.”

“Who suggested you come to me?”

“No one. Well, that is… it
is
funny, really, but McTige actually gave me your name. It was on the plane coming down and I suggested that perhaps he should get in touch on arrival with a competent local detective who would know more about where to look for Steven. This was while he was still trying to keep in my good graces, and he said that if we should decide we needed help that one of the best detectives in the country had an office in Miami, and he mentioned your name. And this morning in desperation I did make some inquiries among local people and discovered how well-known and respected you are… and I just made up my mind to come to you and lay my problem in your lap. Please, Mr. Shayne, you will help me, won’t you?”

“I’ll try,” promised Shayne. “Describe your husband.”

“Steve is forty-two,” said Mrs. Renshaw precisely. “And he looks just about that age. Weight one hundred fifty-six; height five feet ten inches, and he walks with a little bit of a stoop which, curiously, gives one the impression that he is taller than he actually is. Clean-shaven, brown eyes, and brown hair that is getting a little skimpy in front.” As she gave the physical description one had the impression that each word was memorized and was being repeated by rote.

“Do you have a picture of him?”

“Baron McTige has two, which I foolishly gave him. He refused to return them to me yesterday when I told him I no longer wished him to look for Steve.”

“What about personal habits? What sort of places would your husband be likely to frequent?”

“I simply can’t imagine, Mr. Shayne. Actually, Steve is very shy and retiring. Particularly with women. He had absolutely no vices… outside of gambling.” She broke off, biting her lower lip. “He’s very retiring, and modest in his spending habits. Dresses ultra-conservatively, and just detests spending money on clothes for himself. Why, I’ve actually had to drag him down to a store to replace a forty-dollar suit that had grown shabby after two years wear. I just don’t know,” she said slowly. “I guess I just don’t know very much about Steve, do I, Mr. Shayne?”

“Was your husband attractive to women?” Shayne asked bluntly.

“In a nice sort of way. I always thought he aroused their maternal instincts.” She paused a moment, then added uneasily, “Particularly in younger women. I could never really understand Steve’s attraction for them. But there was a sort of gallantry about him that was somehow pathetic, I guess. Something that had to do with a father fixation, perhaps. If I were a psychoanalyst perhaps I could give you a Freudian term for it.”

Shayne said dubiously, “None of this is very helpful, Mrs. Renshaw. If your husband does follow the behavior pattern you anticipate, he can easily make himself indistinguishable from a hundred thousand other retired, or semi-retired, tourists in Miami.”

“I know,” she murmured with downcast eyes. “That’s what I pointed out to Baron McTige. But he seemed so positive he’d be able to manage.” She lifted blue eyes which appeared to have gained new depths since she had entered his office.

“They say you can accomplish anything in Miami, Mr. Shayne. Please help me find Steve before the Syndicate does. About your fee, Mr. Shayne. From the very beginning I felt there was something peculiar about Baron McTige waiving a retainer. I feel I should have sensed the fact that he had personal reasons for taking the case. So, under the circumstances,” she told him with a wan smile, “I’d feel very much better about everything if you’ll permit me to pay you a substantial retainer.”

Shayne said, “I’ll be completely frank with you, Mrs. Renshaw. I’m not a knight on a white charger, but I do detest and abhor the Syndicate and will do anything in my power to keep it from gaining a foothold in Miami. Frankly, I’m delighted to have a chance to get in their way, and my fee will depend entirely on how things work out. Leave your Miami address with my secretary, and I’ll be in touch with you tomorrow at the latest.”