Killers from the Keys (7 page)

8

BACK-STAGE, Ralph Billiter looked down contemptuously at the frightened man clinging to him and demanded, “Whatsa matter, huh? What’re you running from?”

“Two men… looking for me… I guess,” panted Shephard. “Miss Piney was telling me about them being here the other night, and then… they showed up just now. If you can show me how to get out the back way and around to my car in the parking lot…”

“Sure.” Ralph tucked Shephard’s arm in his and led him back to a wooden door opening out into the night behind the squat building. “What they want with you, you reckon?” he asked interestedly.

“They want my money,” Shephard chattered. “That’s what they’re after. But it’s my money.” He took a deep breath of the night air and sought to draw his arm away from Ralph’s. “I’m all right now, and I thank you. I’ve watched you dance with Miss Piney, and I’ve wanted to tell you how good I think the two of you are together. Please thank her for me and tell her that I will try to contact her later tonight. Assure her, if you will be so kind, that I really meant what I said tonight.”

Ralph Billiter kept his grip on Shephard’s arm and tightened his fingers bruisingly on the Midwesterner’s flesh. “I’ll walk you around to your car… be sure you get away all right. The Pink Flamingo, huh? Ain’t that just a piece down the road?”

“Yes. It’s a motel.” Shephard did not protest further as Ralph guided him along a path beside the building leading to the brightly lighted parking area. The young man’s muscular strength was reassuring, and Shephard clung to him thankfully.

“You got the money there?”

“What’s that?”

“All the money you been talkin’ about. That you been tellin’ Essie you’d give to her was she to go off with you.” There was a sudden throbbing note of anger in Ralph’s voice that penetrated the alcoholic haze surrounding Shephard, and at the corner of the building, just before they reached the lighted area, he paused again, uncertainly.

“I have the utmost respect for Miss Piney,” he said in a high-pitched, quavering voice.

“I know,” said Ralph brutally. “You been sleepin’ with her an’ you like it.” His big hand slid up Shephard’s arm to his shoulder and he shook the slighter man vigorously. “Where’s yore parkin’ ticket?”

“Right here.” His teeth chattered and his hand trembled as he got the numbered ticket from his pocket.

Ralph took it out of his hand and marched him forward into the floodlighted area. The attendant was returning to the canopied entrance from parking a car, and Ralph intercepted him with the ticket. “We’re leavin’. What kinda car you got?” he demanded of his companion.

“It’s a dark tan Chevrolet.”

The attendant looked at the number on the ticket and went away. Ralph pulled Shephard back against the building and they waited until the dark tan Chevrolet came around from the lot and pulled up in front of them. Ralph gave him a little shove around in front of the car, and Shephard circled it to get in the driver’s seat. As he settled himself behind the wheel, Ralph opened the other door and slid in beside him. “Drive on to yore motel,” he ordered between clenched teeth. “I gotta hankerin’ to see all this here money you been promisin’ Essie. She’s my woman, Mister, and don’t you forget it.”

Shephard said, “I’ll ask you to get out right now. I have no intention…”

“Drive on outta here,” said Ralph. His big hand came out of his pants pocket with a conch shell in it that had been laboriously sharpened to a needle-like point. He slid it carelessly across his lap so the tip touched Shephard’s side. “This here’s what we call a persuader down on the Keys where I come from. You want it in yore guts, or you gonna drive on?”

Shephard looked down at the vicious shell in fascination. “That’s what you and Miss Piney use in your dance, isn’t it? They look terribly dangerous to me on stage.”

Ralph grinned and moved his hand slightly. The tip of the shell went through the fabric of Shephard’s coat and into his flesh just beneath the rib-cage. He gasped with pain and shrank back against his side of the car, and Ralph said again, “Drive on outta here.”

Shephard put the light sedan in gear and drove around in a circle to the exit. Ralph settled his hulking body more comfortably in the seat beside him and spoke in a voice that was chilling in its casual and irresponsible menace, “Killin’ a man ain’t nothing to me, Mister. I’d done it before this except Essie kept on sayin’, ‘Wait an’ lessee does he really have all that money he claims to have.’ You reckon she ever had any thought of goin’ off with an old goat like you?” Ralph laughed jeeringly. “Hell, ever’ time she come back from layin’ with you we laughed an’ laughed about how you was in bed.”

“I don’t wish to discuss Miss Piney with you.”

“We’ll discuss her, awright. She’s my woman, like I told you, an’ any money she gets outta you belongs rightly to me. These here men that’re chasin’ you, now. Just who might they be?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t.” Shephard slowed the light sedan as they neared the intersection to the well-travelled Trail. “If you’ll get out here,” he said hopefully, “I’ll give you all the money I’ve got, and I promise you I won’t ever come back to see Miss Piney again.” He pulled off to the side and looked at Ralph hopefully. “I assure you I didn’t realize she was your… ah… woman.” He gulped sadly. “She was so young and I thought she liked me.”

“How much money you got?” demanded Ralph truculently.

Shephard squirmed in the car seat to remain as far removed from the needle-sharp conch shell as possible, and got a thick wallet from his hip pocket. He opened it and took out a sheaf of bills which he pressed into Ralph’s hand. “There’s several hundred there, I think. You can see it’s all I’ve got.” He displayed the empty wallet. “Will you please get out, now, and let me go on? I promise you I’ll leave Miami immediately and never see Miss Piney again.”

Ralph riffled the bills contemptuously. “A few hundred bucks? You gotta do better’n that, Mister. All this big talk you been givin’ Essie about going off to some island an’ livin’ the rest of yore lives.” He laughed harshly. “Drive on to that motel of yours an’ dig out the rest of it.”

“But I tell you that’s all I’ve got left. I’ve been spending a great deal…”

“Nuts to that.” Ralph moved the conch shell menacingly close again. “You think I’m a pure fool to swallow a story like that? How you gonna get outta town tonight if you got no money left? Drive on, goddamit, and we’ll take a look in yore cabin. I gotta get back for our dance act.”

Shephard trembled in an agony of fear and dispiritedly pulled onto the highway in the direction of the Pink Flamingo. Ralph Billiter was something completely outside the orbit of his experience. There was a cold and predatory sort of ruthlessness about him that shocked Steven Shephard to the very core of his civilized being.

Neither of them spoke again on the short drive down the Trail to the motel turn-off. Then he tried once more to divert the young man from his purpose.

“I tell you it’s a sheer waste of time to search my cabin for more money. If I did have any, I wouldn’t leave it there with that manager sneaking around and peering in the windows all the time.”

“Keep on drivin’,” said Ralph implacably. “Could be it ain’t in the cabin like you say. But you’ll tell me awright when we get there an’ settle down cozy. ’Cause you know what, Mister? This here little ol’ conch shell ain’t tasted no fresh blood for a long time now. An’ it gets a-thirstin’ and a-throbbin’, an’ I can
feel
it in my hand just achin’ to get inside yore hot guts an’ let the blood run out. So you’ll tell me, Mister. I got no never-mind about that.”

There was a nightmarish quality to the situation that made it all seem completely unreal to Steve Shephard as he guided the sedan down the winding road to the motel. This couldn’t be happening to him. Not after all his careful planning, the months of preparation and the agony of indecision that had culminated in that final moment of triumph which had led him down the long road southward to this sordid and unglorious ending.

Yet it was happening to him. It was real. And this was the end of the trail. He knew it with awful certainty as they reached the end of the road and the arc of cabins was in front of them. He let the car roll up to a halt in front of No. 3, and he shivered uncontrollably as he cut off the motor.

There was silence all about them suddenly. There was a light over the motel office, and several of the cabins were lighted. But Shephard knew there was no help there. There was no help for him anywhere. Ralph’s big hand held him firmly by the wrist, and he offered no resistance as they got out of the car and went to the door of the cabin together.

Ralph pushed him roughly inside and switched on the overhead light. His lips curled in a sneer as he looked about the drab interior of the room.

“Been spendin’ a lot of money have you?” he jeered. “Not on this place, you ain’t. So, where you keepin’ it all, Mister? I figger on cuttin’ you up good if you don’t tell me quick where is it at.”

Shephard stood in the middle of the room with his back toward his tormenter. The sound of an approaching car came through the open door, and Ralph pulled it shut firmly.

With his back still turned and without moving, Shephard said slowly and sadly, “All right. You’re welcome to it. Little good it’s done me.”

His shoulders were slumped in utter defeat and he took two shambling steps forward to open the refrigerator door. He stooped and reached inside to get a long loaf of French bread, and he straightened up, clutching it to his breast convulsively.

He turned slowly, and there were tears trickling down his cheeks. He held the loaf of bread out toward Ralph Billiter and said, “Take it. And leave me alone.”

Ralph looked at the loaf of bread in complete and moronic puzzlement. “What kinda foolishment is this here? I didn’t come for no hunk of bread, Mister.”

Steven Shephard looked down sadly at the loaf of bread in his outstretched hands. He turned it slowly so a slit all along the bottom of the loaf was apparent, and the glazed look of resignation on his face suddenly changed to one of fierce hatred. He twisted the long loaf in his hands, breaking it apart and revealing that it was hollowed out and stuffed solidly with greenbacks which fluttered in the air as he threw both ends of the loaf toward the ceiling.

“There it is! Beautiful green stuff!” The words escaped him with pent-up shrillness and he threw his head back and began to laugh hysterically, maniacally.

Ralph Billiter said, “My Gawd A’mighty!” and dropped to his knees, grabbing up handfuls of the bills and staring at them, dropping those and scrabbling about the floor to gather more handfuls.

Steven Shephard stood beside the refrigerator with his head thrown back and kept on laughing shrilly and thinly.

The cabin door burst open behind Ralph on his hands and knees practically wallowing in the green harvest.

Baron McTige was in front, and a tall man wearing a black suit was right behind him. They plowed to a stop just inside the door, and Steven Shephard stopped laughing.

He threw out his arms and said, “Welcome, gentlemen. Help yourselves. There’s plenty for all.”

9

IT WAS NO GREAT surprise to Michael Shayne when Timothy Rourke slouched up to their table just after the dinner dishes had been cleared away and the waiter was serving coffee and ponies of cognac in lieu of dessert. The Silver Crescent was one of Shayne’s favorite spots for a leisurely dinner when he and his secretary had a slack evening, and the reporter had an instinct for turning up after food was out of the way and the more serious business of drinking was about to begin.

Tall and emaciated, and wearing a shabby, unpressed suit, Rourke put his hand on the back of Lucy’s chair and gazed down at her fondly. “You get more beautiful every day, honey. When are you going to get tired of waiting for Mike to pop the question, and start making other dates? I’m always available, you know.”

“Sit down, Tim.” Shayne jerked his head at the waiter. “A bourbon on the rocks. You’ll have to take your place in line, Tim. Lucy’s spare time is already spoken for. Tell him about your latest conquest, angel.”

She laughed softly with genuine amusement as Rourke sat down between them. “He was funny, Michael. Stop glowering about him.”

“There’s this fellow Eye from Chicago,” Shayne explained acidly. “He was practically wallowing all over Lucy when I just happened in to my office this afternoon and broke it up. That reminds me, Tim. Have you heard any rumors that the Syndicate figures it’s safe to send an Enforcer to Miami to do a job?”

Timothy Rourke shook his head. “Have you?” he countered blandly.

“Yeh.”

“What’s the story, Mike?” The reporter’s bony fingers trembled as he slopped a little water from Shayne’s glass into the bourbon and ice cubes the waiter set before him but his deep-set eyes were bright with awakened interest.

“No story yet.” Shayne emptied his pony of cognac into the cup of hot coffee in front of him and took an appreciative sip. “After Lucy and I take in the show at the Bright Spot, I may have something for you.”

“The Bright Spot?” Rourke choked over his drink and rolled his eyes at Lucy. “You’re taking her to that den of iniquity? Now look, Mike…”

“Oh,
Tim”
she broke in impatiently. “I’m a big girl now. You’re always encouraging Michael to keep me wrapped up in swaddling clothes.”

“What’s so special about the Bright Spot?” Shayne demanded impatiently.

“In the first place, she’ll be the only decent woman in the place. But that’s okay as long as she’s with you. Oh, hell, Mike! I realize Lucy won’t be particularly shocked by the spectacle of fair young maidens being debauched all over the joint. But they got a new dance team there that’s setting the town on its ears. This, I don’t think Lucy will go for… and I can tell you, young lady,” he went on fiercely to Lucy, “this isn’t any question of swaddling clothes. It’s plain commonsense for you to stay away from an exhibition like that.”

“Like getting a fast burn with Sloe Burn?” she asked innocently.

He threw up his hands in disgust. “My God, Mike! Don’t tell me you’ve been there.”

“Have you?”

“Last week. Listen. Those two uninhibited kids from the swamp country have got something that does queer things to civilized people.” He shook his head determinedly. “I’m serious. You know I’m all in favor of light-hearted sex, sin and such. But their dance act goes deeper than that. It’s elemental lust spelled out right there on the stage in front of you. It’s goddam frightening,” he went on strongly. “Sure, we’ve all got these obscure impulses deep inside us. But centuries of civilization have taught us it’s safer to keep them hidden away deep inside. When you see them coming up to the surface all around you… when you feel yourself erotically fascinated and sinking down into the same abyss… it just ain’t healthy.”

Michael Shayne’s face showed honest puzzlement. “Are they really that good?”

“That good… or that bad,” Rourke assured him somberly. “You remember the motion picture,
Fantasia?
The primeval slime. The tortured writhings and gropings in obscene depths that symbolized primordial life. All right. That was beautifully and intelligently done. You were fascinated and obscurely repelled, but you weren’t revolted. It’s dangerous to be fascinated
and
revolted. That’s what I felt at the Bright Spot. And that’s what I saw on the faces of people all around me.”

“How do a couple of illiterate kids from the Keys manage to convey what you’re describing?” Shayne asked, puzzled more than ever by his friend’s vehemence.

“Because you feel it’s actually what is inside of
them,”
he replied flatly. “They’ve still got the stench of the swamp’s effluvia in their nostrils. They’re closer akin to the waddling crocodiles and the slithering water moccasins that you
know
were their childhood playmates than they are to civilized human beings. Their sex-play on stage is brutal and sadistic and… bestial. That’s the word I want. And the hell of it is, you find yourself responding to the savage rhythms they create. Hell, it isn’t sex-
play
that they give you,” he went on angrily. “It’s the primordial lust of male for female… female for male.”

Rourke paused to toss off his drink, his thin face flushed and his eyes feverishly bright.

“I went around the next day to talk to both of them off-stage, thinking there might be a story I could do. Because I, like you, wondered how a couple of illiterate kids from the Keys had managed to work up an act like that. And they hadn’t. That’s the answer. They don’t even know they’re doing it. It isn’t planned for effect at all. Purely unconscious. Off-stage, Sloe Burn is a self-conscious sexy brat with over-developed physical charms and a childishly irresponsible sort of amorality. She chews gum and giggles happily if you compliment her on the dance. Her partner is a loutish moron with muscles.” Rourke shook his head slowly and lapsed into brooding silence.

Shayne glanced across the table at his brown-eyed secretary, and lifted his ragged red eyebrows. “Still want to go with me, angel?”

She lifted a firm chin. “More than ever. If you insist on going. I want to be right there beside you, Michael, if something like that is going on.”

Rourke groaned loudly. “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said.”

Shayne’s gaze was fixed on Lucy’s face. “I heard you, Tim. Lucy’s just too young and innocent for any of it to penetrate. Why don’t you stick around here with Tim, angel?” He glanced at his watch. “I’m expecting someone to meet me there around ten o’clock.”

“Little Joe Hoffman?” Rourke inquired with interest.

“How’d you hear about that?”

“I’ve got some lines out around town. I thought he was keeping his nose clean these days… particularly on this side of the Bay.”

“That’s what I want him to tell me,” Shayne growled. He beckoned to a waiter for the check and added with assumed casualness, “You two have fun, and see she gets home by midnight, Tim.”

She said sweetly, “I’m sure Tim has other plans, Michael.” She pushed back her chair and stood up. “Meet you in the foyer in a couple of minutes.”

Rourke grinned and turned his head to watch her thread her way between the tables toward the rest-room. “You’re not going to get rid of her tonight, Mike. So I’ll tag along if you don’t mind a threesome.”

Shayne said, “I was going to ask you. So if I get diverted at the Bright Spot, you look after her.”

“Sure.” Rourke nodded soberly and they both got up and strolled toward the foyer together to wait for Lucy to join them.

When they arrived at the Bright Spot, the large parking lot was already at least three-quarters full. Shayne stopped in front of the canopied entrance where an attendant waited to take his car, and got a numbered parking ticket from him. The three of them went into a brightly lighted entrance hall with a hat-check cubicle on the left and a service bar at the right. There were no stools at the bar, and no loungers, only three white-jacketed waiters with trays for drinks to take inside.

At the end of the hall was an archway opening into the large dim-lit room with a stripper working under a spotlight at the far end of it. A burly, impassive-faced man wearing a tuxedo stood in the archway as they approached. The sight of Lucy Hamilton between the two men didn’t bring a welcoming smile to his face, but he turned and snapped his fingers for a captain. Shayne stopped beside him, peering into the dark interior. “We’ll take a booth,” he said, “and I’m expecting another man to join us. The name is Shayne.”

“Yes, Mr. Shayne.” From the other’s tone he didn’t know whether he or his name had been recognized. The maitre d’ went on smoothly, “I’m sorry all the booths are reserved. A nice table for four…” He turned to the captain who came hurrying up.

Shayne said, “One of the booths is reserved for us.” He took Lucy firmly by the arm and pushed past the tuxedoed figure toward one of half a dozen vacant booths on the right-hand side of the room.

The captain followed them hurriedly, saying, “All the booths are taken, sir. I’m sorry, but…”

Shayne stopped in front of one that had a large RESERVED sign on the table. He helped Lucy sit down, picked up the cardboard sign and handed it to the captain. He said placidly, “The name is Shayne. Squeeze in, Tim. Don’t forget the name, Captain. I’m expecting someone to join us. And if Sloe Burn isn’t busy at the moment, tell her to come around and we’ll buy her a drink.”

The captain hesitated, half-confused and half-belligerent. He glanced over his shoulder at the maitre d’ and received a curt nod from that individual. He said stiffly, “Miss Burn is due on stage in ten minutes. I’m afraid you have to wait until after her dance.”

Shayne said, “Give her the message anyway. Tell her Mike Shayne.” He sat down beside Lucy where he could look out through the narrow aperture and see the stage clearly. The stripper had got down to a garter-belt and brassiere, and she was leaning over sideways displaying a lot of extremely well-fleshed buttocks as she unsnapped the top of a black net stocking. He let his gaze drift over the rest of the room as his eyes became slightly adjusted to the dim light, and advised Lucy cheerfully, “Keep your eyes on the platform, angel, and it won’t be too hard to take.”

He squeezed her left hand reassuringly on the padded seat beside him, and told the white-jacketed waiter in the doorway, “Two cognacs with water on the side, and a bourbon and water. And don’t mix any of them. I like to see what I’m paying for in a dump like this.”

The waiter made a notation on his pad and went away. Lucy asked in a small voice, “What do men
see
in that, Michael?”

Shayne said indifferently, “A lot of smooth, white flesh.” He nodded toward Tim Rourke who was peering around his side of the partition. “Ask Tim.”

“I’m not watching the stripper,” protested Rourke. “I’m voyeuring. My God, there’s one couple three tables away…”

Shayne increased his pressure on Lucy’s hand. “I didn’t want you to come.”

“I can stand it. After all, a woman likes to know what really interests men.”

The waiter came with a tray to serve their drinks. Immediately behind him was a short, thin man with a beak-like nose and very heavy black eyebrows that made an almost solid line between his eyes. He wore a yellow and green plaid sport coat. He looked genuinely harassed and worried, and he spoke excitedly in a high-pitched voice:

“Jeez, Mr. Shayne, am I glad to see you. I just got the word a little while ago and I hurried right over because I didn’t want you to think I wouldn’t be more than pleased to say hello again. You know. It’s been a long time, huh? So, how’re tricks?”

Shayne said, “Sit down, Joe. You know Tim Rourke… of the 
News.”

“Yeh, sure. That is, well, I heard of him plenty. Hi-ya, Tim.” He slid down into the booth beside the reporter, and Shayne went on smoothly, “And this is my secretary. Little Joe Hoffman, Lucy. I appreciate your coming, Joe.”

“No trouble at all. Glad to oblige any time. Nothing to drink for me, thanks,” he told the waiter who stood by with empty tray.

Shayne said, “I want a straight answer to a straight question, Joe.”

“Sure, Mike. You know me.”

“Where’s The Preacher?”

“What’s that, Mike?” Little Joe Hoffman seemed completely taken off balance by the question. He wrinkled his forehead and his brows met solidly over the bridge of his prominent nose. “I guess I don’t follow you.”

“The Preacher,” Shayne repeated patiently. “Your pal from back in Chicago before you ducked out on the Syndicate. I know he’s in Miami, and I know what he’s here for. So give him a message from me.”

“But wait a minute, Mike. I don’t get you. The Preacher, sure. We were teamed up for awhile in Chi. But here in Miami? Unh-uh, Mike. You got your wires crossed.” He shook his head solemnly from one side to the other. “I can’t get a message to him, Mike.”

“Why not? Even if he hasn’t looked you up, you know whom he would go to for help on a job here.”

“Why not, the man asks me?” Little Joe screwed up his face and looked in amazement from Rourke to Lucy. “Because The Preacher’s dead, that’s why.”

“Don’t lie to me, Joe.”

“I wouldn’t lie to you, Mike.” The little man with the big nose was almost crying. “He’s dead, that’s what. Six months ago. Sure. Eight months maybe. I and some of the boys chipped in for flowers.”

Outside the booth the five-man combo was beating it up to a frenzy while the stripper went into her finale. Inside the booth was flat silence.

It was interrupted by Sloe Burn’s sudden appearance in the opening. “Mister Shayne! They told me you was here. I’m scared something bad’s happened to Freddie. Ralph, too, maybe. It’s right on time for our dance number and he ain’t back yet. I don’t know what’s happened.”

Shayne got to his feet and caught the distracted girl by the wrist. “Tell me about it.”

“Freddie was here tonight… about an hour ago. And them two other men came… the ones I tol’ you about. I slipped Freddie out back fast an’ told Ralphie to take him back home. Then I come back to my table, but they never showed up no more. So I guess maybe they did 
see
 him, and maybe went out and caught Ralphie taking him away or somethin’. I just don’t know. He said the Pink Flamingo, so I called there awhile ago an’ the man said there wasn’t no Fred Tucker there… an’ never was registered there. So I’m bad scared.”