had picked him up hadn’t known, of course, about what had happened inside the bar earlier. They didn’t know he was already boiling with anger because no official cognizance had been taken of the unprovoked attack on him.
So, all right. So, the thing now was to get out of jail. Meek and submissive, that was the ticket. Until he got free. After that-well, he thought maybe he’d be around Brockton for a short time at least, and chances were he might run into the two cops again under more propitious circumstances.
The thought invigorated him enough that he temporarily lost his caution and sat up suddenly.
A groan escaped his lips before he could repress it. Sledgehammers began pounding inside his skull, and his neck and shoulder muscles on the right side were a mass of agonizing pain.
He stayed sitting up, head held askew in the only position that wasn’t sheer torture, gritting his teeth and moving it a tenth of an inch from this side to that to work some of the stiffness out.
No wonder the guy was called Mule. Probably nicknamed that by some other victim whom he had kicked around.
Shayne fretfully began wondering what and why again, then sternly stopped that guessing game and concentrated on massaging the soreness out of his neck. Because it couldn’t be anything but a guessing game until he accumulated a few facts to go on.
He thought about his brown-haired secretary instead. Lucy Hamilton in Miami-expecting his return last night. He remembered the one faintly plausible hypothesis for the affair that he had come up with last night. If it was a new case that someone didn’t want him to work on, he’d been effectively prevented from taking it all right. At least for one night. But he wasn’t lying in the morgue yet, the victim of a hit-run driver. That was one consolation.
He found a crumpled pack of cigarettes in his pocket and lit one. He was smoking his third and had worked the stiffness out to a point where he could turn his head a couple of inches in both directions when a sad-faced turnkey came down the corridor with the breakfast Brockton jail served its guests for free.
There was an aluminum pie-plate with a thick piece of tough fried ham and a mound of boiled grits with meat fat poured on top. And a slice of bread. And there was a big aluminum mug of muddy coffee so sweet that it set Shayne’s teeth on edge.
These were slid through a small hole in the bars at floor level by the turnkey and Shayne sat on the edge of his bunk and thanked him as though it were a serving of crisp bacon, fluffy scrambled eggs, golden toast and steaming black coffee.
The turnkey was obviously unused to such fulsome gratitude, and he rocked back on his heels with a snaggle-toothed grin.
“Ain’t no Waldorf Astoria, but ain’t nobody never starved tuh death here yet. You that tough private shamus they was talkin’ about from Miami?” He regarded Shayne with open-mouth interest.
“Not so tough,” Shayne told him wryly. “Pass the word along, huh? Maybe I thought I was till I tangled with those two boys of yours last night, but they sure as hell taught me different.”
Snaggletooth chuckled delightedly. “Brockton ain’t so such-a-much fer a fact, but I reckon our police force does stack up purty good. Burke and Grimes, now, they sure ain’t a pair to take no foolin’ when they goes to make a pinch.”
“You’re telling me,” said Shayne fervently. He gingerly picked up the aluminum pan and balanced it on his knee after trying a sip of the liquid in the mug. “What’s the routine here in Brockton? How soon can I pay a fine and get out?”
“City judge sits downstairs at nine. Them that’s got sense and pleads guilty gen’ally gets out fast.”
“How much,” asked Shayne humbly, “do you think my fine will be?”
The turnkey considered this judiciously. “Way I heard it, you socked Grimes good. Dependin’ how drunk you was, I reckon. An’ how Judge Grayson’s liver’s actin’ up this mornin’. Fifty an’ costs, maybe, if he feels good. I gotta go now.”
“Thanks for everything,” Shayne called after him. “Any chance of me getting in first to see his honor I’d appreciate it.”
He gagged over a spoonful of the lumpy grits as Snaggletooth disappeared. How To Win Over Turnkeys and Influence Judges by Michael Shayne, he thought disgustedly. But right now Snaggletooth would be spreading the news that the tough private eye from Miami had more than met his match in the Brockton police force. That he was penitent and submissive after a night in one of their cells.
All right, he told himself angrily. Keep it up. Be penitent and submissive if you don’t want to spend thirty days eating hawg and hominy.
And-it paid off for once. Snaggletooth appeared at his cell-door a few minutes before nine o’clock jingling a huge brass ring with keys strung on it. His features were still sad, but it was a jovial sort of sadness.
“All out for the honorable butt-kissin’ court. Take yuh down first, huh, tuh see how Hizzoner feels this mornin’.”
Shayne said, “Fine. Thanks,” with more heartiness than he felt.
He came out of the small cell with a faint sigh of relief as the door opened, waggled his head cautiously backward and forward as he followed his jailer down a short corridor to stairs leading downward.
The early morning hearings conducted by Judge Grayson were quite informal. There was a small anteroom at the rear of police headquarters with a desk and a swivel chair behind it, and one straight chair drawn up at one side. The judge sat behind the desk with crossed American flags behind him. A bored clerk sat beside him with pen poised over a large, open ledger. Standing stiffly at attention along one wall, in uniform, were the two traffic officers who had arrested Shayne the night before.
The judge was a sallow-faced, balding man who was sucking carefully on a long black cigar as Shayne was ushered in. The turnkey spoke Shayne’s name and withdrew.
The detective glanced anxiously at the two officers as he entered. The younger one, Burke, he assumed, was drawn up very stiffly with folded arms, and he glared at Shayne as though he had never seen him before and hoped never to see him again.
His red-faced companion was not quite so obviously at attention. He had a bulbous nose, and a network of tiny red veins showed in his cheeks, and Shayne was happy to detect the trace of a human twinkle in his eyes. There was a slight swelling on his upper lip which Shayne supposed had resulted from contact with his fist the night before, and he played it by ear by nodding solemnly to the judge and then turning impulsively aside to Officer Grimes and saying:
“I must have been crocked last night, Sergeant. Buy you a drink to make up for it if I get out of here with the price of one.”
Grimes grinned momentarily, but the clerk was reading the charges against Shayne aloud in a sing-song voice, and the detective swung back to listen to them solemnly.
“Over-time parking… Drunk and Disorderly on a public street… resisting arrest… How say you, Michael Shayne?”
Shayne looked down at the judge and said, “I plead guilty, your Honor.”
Judge Grayson leaned back in his swivel chair and judicially placed the tips of five fingers against the tips of five other fingers beneath his chin. “Any extenuating circumstances?”
Shayne hesitated and gulped once. He lowered his eyelids and said humbly, “I’m afraid I had one too many to drink, your Honor.”
“I see. I understand you are a licensed private detective in the State of Florida.”
“Yes, your Honor.”
“Is it your habitual custom to drive your automobile while under the influence?”
“No, sir.”
“Yet you were attempting to do so last night when Officer Burke intercepted you.”
Michael Shayne drew in a deep breath and lifted his eyelids to look squarely at the judge. “I will always be thankful that he did, your Honor. I congratulate Brockton on their diligent and alert police officers.”
“Very well.” The judge’s voice was peremptory, but Shayne felt he had scored a point. “Brockton is a community of children and of homes. We like to think of ourselves as a friendly community, but we do love our children. Ninety-five dollars and costs,” he told the clerk. He looked past Shayne to the doorway where the next offender was being ushered in. “Next case.”
Grimes and Burke disappeared while Shayne was paying his fine and receiving his wallet and other
