chin bent upon his chest.
“If I say no, you’ll still want to know where the blood came from. Aren’t there certain conditions under which it might be better for you not to know the full truth?”
Shayne considered for a moment before asking, “Better for whom?”
“For you, for me, for everybody. Suppose I did kill somebody. You couldn’t cover up for me. Not legally or ethically. Your license carries a certain responsibility,” he went on in a strained, weary voice. “I’m asking you not to push me too far. That way, you’re in the clear to go ahead any way you want.” Rourke stopped pacing. His back was toward Shayne, and there was silence in the room for a full minute.
Shayne’s chair scraped back. He came to his feet saying, “All right, Tim. If that’s the way you want it. I’ll keep Gentry away from you as long as I can.”
Rourke turned and said, “Thanks. I guess-I might as well be going.” He started toward the door.
“I guess you’d better,” said Shayne grimly, “if you don’t want to answer any more questions,” but his rugged features softened at the look of abject misery on his friend’s face. “Have a nightcap before you go.”
“No, thanks. I-”
The telephone rang. Rourke paused on his way to the door. Shayne picked up the receiver.
Will Gentry said with barbed sarcasm, “Hope I didn’t interrupt your beauty sleep, Mike.”
“Oh, no,” Shayne assured him breezily. “I’ve practically given up the habit. What’s on your mind now?”
“I want you to come out and identify a dead man.”
“Who?”
“Stuff in his wallet says he’s a reporter on the Tribune named Bert Jackson,” Gentry growled. He cleared his throat significantly and added, “I just happened to remember that Rourke mentioned the name in your office an hour or so ago.”
Chapter Five
“That’s right. I believe he did,” Shayne said with deliberate indecision.
“If Tim is with you now, better bring him along,” the chief of police ordered curtly.
“If you need Tim, why don’t you call his apartment?”
“I have, but he doesn’t answer. You know where he is?”
Shayne glanced at Rourke’s back. He was moving slowly toward the door, and Shayne said truthfully, “Rourke was headed for home the last time I saw him. Where are you, Will?”
“On Northwest Thirtieth. Come out Okeechobee Road and turn right on Thirtieth.”
“Right away.” He hung up and said to Rourke, “They’ve found Bert Jackson’s body.”
Rourke’s hand was on the doorknob. He turned, nodded, and said, “Where?” without surprise.
“Out in the northwest section. Gentry remembered you mentioning his name in my office, and wants me to come out and identify him.”
“Let’s go,” said Rourke listlessly. “I’ll drop you there and go to Betty.”
“You’ll do no such damned-fool thing,” Shayne snapped. “You heard what I told Will. Stay away from this as long as you can. Beat it to some bar where you’re known and have a few drinks. They’ll be on your tail fast enough without your stepping up and asking for it.”
“But Betty will need me, Mike. I can’t just-”
“You’ll stay away from the Jackson house,” Shayne ordered more gently. He went over and clamped a big hand on the reporter’s thin shoulder. “Damn it, Tim, don’t you realize Gentry’ll eventually turn all this stuff up? Your friendship with the Jacksons, the fact that you and Bert have had a fight, your hunting through bars for him tonight? That doorman at the Las Felice will remember your asking about him there. Keep out of it. Make them come after you. I’ll get out there and see what’s what.” He rushed the reporter out the door and closed it.
Shayne long-legged it into the bedroom, stripping off his coat and shirt as he went, hurried to the bathroom and wet a hand towel, sopped it over the hairs at the back of his neck, soaped and washed his hands, then dried neck and hands on the way to a chest of drawers for a clean shirt.
In three minutes he was at the front door with his hat on. He lifted the slight sag, slammed the door hard to make the night latch catch, and hurried down the steps to the side entrance. Rourke’s car was gone, and he strode back to the tenants’ garage for his car.
Once on the Okeechobee Road with the Miami Canal shimmering with moonlight on his left, he stepped hard on the accelerator and did not slow until he passed the Seminole Village and began to watch for street signs. He swung to the right on 30th Avenue and a few blocks ahead he saw the spotlights of police cars and an ambulance. He pulled up behind them and got out.
Bert Jackson lay on his back in the weeds choking the gutter. Gentry nodded curtly as Shayne pressed in beside him. “Recognize him?” grunted the chief.
“It’s Jackson, all right. Legman on the Tribune. Hit-and-run accident?”
“Bullet through the back of his head,” Gentry told him, shifting the soggy butt of a black cigar to the other side of his mouth and rolling his puffy eyelids up to look somberly at the rangy detective. He spat out the cigar as a short man wearing thick spectacles rose from a squatting position beside the body. “What do you make of it, Doc?”
The police surgeon climbed up the shallow embankment and stood beside them. “Not much, Will. He has been dead several hours. Either side of midnight. Shot once directly through the back of the head with a small- caliber bullet. Twenty-two is my guess. Either a rifle or a long-barreled target pistol. Everything indicates he was killed elsewhere and dumped here sometime later.”
“We figured that,” said Gentry, “from the position of the body and tracks of a car that pulled off to the side. Would you say he was shot in the car that dumped him?”
“I can’t say, Will. It’s possible. But-there are a couple of curious aspects that’ll have to wait on a p.m.” The physician shook his round head and said mildly, “That’s all I can give you right now.”
“Here’s a funny thing, Chief,” said a Homicide man who squatted on the edge of the pavement going through the contents of Jackson’s pockets and cataloging them. He held up the brass key to a Yale lock. “There’s a regular key ring in his pocket, but this one was zipped inside his wallet. Funny place for a man to carry a single key. And it’s not a duplicate of any on the key ring. ‘Three A’ is the only marking on it. Might be the number of a room or apartment.”
Shayne went over to the officer and said, “What else did you find on the body?”
“That’s about all. Some loose change in a trouser pocket. Cigarettes and a book of matches from a Flagler Street bar.”
“Nothing else in his coat pockets?” Shayne persisted.
“A handkerchief, that’s all.”
“What are you getting at, Mike?” rumbled Gentry, stepping up beside Shayne. “What else did you expect to find on him? How well did you know Jackson?”
Shayne didn’t answer, but continued to stare down at the motionless body. “See if there’s a hole in the lining of the right-hand coat pocket,” he suggested, “where something could have slid through to the coat lining.”
The man squinted up at Shayne, frowned, then stooped again to explore the inside of Jackson’s jacket pocket. He turned the coat back to show his thumb protruding through a hole in the bottom of the pocket. “Here’s the hole,” he admitted, “but the coat isn’t lined. If anything went through it would fall out and be lost.”
Shayne’s face was grim, but he said lightly, “So we’ll never know what might have fallen through, will we?”
“What sort of hocus-pocus is this, Mike?” Gentry demanded impatiently. “What do you think is missing from his pocket-and why?”
“It was just an idea, Will,” Shayne told him. “Probably nothing to it at all. That hole is just about big enough for a key to slide through,” he added with a shrug.
Gentry took Shayne by the arm and drew him aside as two men bearing a stretcher came up to remove the
