Pay-Off in Blood

possession in readiness for the pay-off.

It was all damned confusing… particularly to a man with a few broken ribs and two lumps on his head so tender that he didn’t dare try to put a hat on.

Shayne said, “I just don’t know, Tim. I’m beginning to get a crazy glimmer of an idea, but let’s let it lie until we sit down with Will Gentry and talk it over. He may have the whole goddamned answer right there for us… just from a set of fingerprints. Let’s go see. If you think you can make it all the way to his office without another drink to sustain you.”

“I can make it fine,” Rourke assured him, draining his glass and setting it on the table with dignity. “I got a good night’s sleep,” he added virtuously. “I didn’t go tomcatting around with some dame whose husband swings a mean sap.”

Shayne summoned up a wry smile and said, “Very, very funny, Timothy Rourke.” He went to the door and held it open and they went out together.

As they went down the corridor toward the elevator, Shayne said, “I forgot to ask about last night at the doctor’s office. What happened?”

“Nothing much. I got Painter and he came over himself and strutted around. I don’t think he believed either Belle or me one damned bit, but what could he do?”

They stopped in front of the elevator door and Shayne pushed the button. “Any fingerprints?”

“Nothing. Just the Doc’s and Belle’s… where they should have been. I took her home after Petey let us go,” Rourke added with a slow grin. “You made quite a hit with her, Mike. Really bowled her over with your masculine approach, as a matter of fact.”

The elevator door opened and they got in. Shayne grinned reminiscently, “I bowled her over, all right. She’s a lot of woman.”

“Damn right she is. Think she was carrying a torch for the doc?” Rourke added casually.

Shayne considered this with interest as they crossed the lobby. “You read it that way?”

“I dunno. If so, she’s in the market for another man this morning. I think you could take over, Mike.”

Shayne said, “That’s something to think about,” and they got into Rourke’s car at the curb.

CHAPTER TEN

Miami’s Chief of Police, Will Gentry, looked up from his littered desk with a faint smile on his blunt features when the redheaded detective and the reporter entered his private office. He removed the soggy butt of a black cigar from his mouth and rumbled, “I thought you’d show up this morning, Mike. What’s this thing at the Bayside Hotel last night?” He lifted a typewritten sheet of paper from a pile in front of him, glanced at it and dropped it back.

Shayne ruefully touched the lumps on his head and then pulled up a straight chair into which he eased himself with a grimace. He said, “I’ve also got a few busted ribs that don’t show. Did anything come from a shakedown of the room, Will?”

“Not a thing. Not even a partial fingerprint… except a few of yours.”

Shayne said, “I was afraid of that, Those boys know the score. I’ve got a physical description that I’ll turn over to I.D., Will. I’d say it’s a professional extortion ring, and there must be a record, but maybe not in Miami. The Boss sounded distinctly midwestern.”

“Does it tie in with Doc Ambrose?” demanded Rourke, settling his elongated body in a chair beside him.

“Yeh. In a damn funny way.” Shayne spoke directly to Gentry, “Has Painter briefed you on that?”

“Yeh. I’ve got it here.” Will Gentry put the cigar back in his mouth, drew in happily and then exhaled a cloud of black smoke. “He asked for a check on your hotel, Mike. We got a clean bill of health on you from the desk clerk for eight o’clock to eleven last night.”

Shayne said, “Fine. Just between the two of us, Will, I’m not all that clean, but I’d just as leave Petey keeps on thinking so for a time.” He hesitated, frowning and tugging at his left ear-lobe. “You better know how it went, Will. It may shift over to this side of the Bay. In fact, it started here in Miami last night.

“Tim sent Ambrose to see me last evening.” He went on to swiftly fill in the salient details of their meeting and the subsequent blackmail pay-off at the Seacliff, not omitting the picture shot in the restaurant by George Bayliss.

“I know Ambrose left the restaurant in his car not later than nine-forty with a thick, white envelope in his pocket, containing documents that were worth twenty grand to him. He was shot in his own driveway, on the Beach, about thirty minutes later… and the envelope was missing when his body was found. I told Painter this much, though I didn’t admit standing by for the pay-off.”

Will Gentry grunted noncommittally.

“When I got back to my hotel from the Beach,” Shayne went on, “a couple of torpedoes were waiting for me in the lobby. They took me for a ride to room Four-Thirty at the Bayside Hotel.”

He graphically described the meeting and the way it turned out. “That’s why I’d like to get a line on Jud and Phil and the Boss,” he ended morosely. “With just a little bit of a trifle of an edge on my side next time.”

Will Gentry looked baffled. “It doesn’t make sense. Who got the money, if he didn’t? You say Ambrose was perfectly satisfied with the contents of the envelope he got in exchange.”

Shayne said, “I’ve got one faint hunch. It doesn’t help us much, but it does add up to the only possible motive I can see for the doctor’s murder.”

He paused a moment to clarify his thoughts. “The Boss is a professional blackmailer… with some sort of an organization which includes at least Jud and Phil. Maybe Crew-cut, too, who didn’t look like a hood at all, but would fit in better as a liaison man. Suppose he normally handled the pay-offs… the actual collections. So he’d have the stuff ready to trade with Ambrose while the Boss waited in the hotel room to set it up.

“But he jumps the gun, phones Dr. Ambrose on his own and sets it up for nine-thirty. He gets the cash, all right, but now, by God, he’s on the spot. When the deadline passes at midnight and the Boss starts putting further pressure on Ambrose, the doctor will naturally tell him to go to hell. So it behooves Crew-cut to get the stuff back into his own hands, if he wants to go on living. So he follows Ambrose home and kills him and gets the envelope back.” Shayne spread out his hands. “He’s in the clear with twenty grand. The doctor is dead, and all the Boss can do is take out his frustration on the first private detective he can get into his hotel room under a couple of guns. Can you buy that?”

Gentry agreed, “It makes sense that way.” He swung his attention to Timothy Rourke. “That picture you had Bayliss take might be important. Got a print of it with you?”

Rourke shrugged unhappily. “I’m sorry it wasn’t my idea at all. Someone else hired him to do the job.” He repeated the story George Bayliss had told Shayne earlier. “The only person we can figure who had any use for a picture was Dr. Ambrose. The others didn’t need a picture of him. They knew whom they were blackmailing. But, if he did arrange it, certainly the guy who handed the fifty bucks to George would report it to the police after learning that Ambrose had been murdered.”

“Maybe he has… to Painter,” suggested Shayne. “Would you check with him and find out, Will? Without giving it away that I saw the picture being taken?”

Gentry nodded and lifted a telephone on his desk. Both men settled back and lit cigarettes while he conferred with the Chief of Detectives on the other side of Biscayne Bay. He hung up, shaking his bullet head. “Nothing like that has come in. Painter did shake the Seacliff down, of course, and has already got word about a flash-bulb going off at about nine-thirty. He doesn’t know why, and can’t connect it with the pay-off… which he still doubts took place,” he added to Shayne. “I think he’d like to prove you sent Ambrose home from your hotel with the money intact… followed him and killed him for it.”

“He and the Boss both,” muttered Shayne. He shook his head very slowly, because a sudden motion still started bells ringing inside his skull. “How about the gun found beside the body?”

Gentry said, “He didn’t mention it. He did say, though, that he wanted more talk with you this morning, and, if I happened to see you, I was to tell you to call him.”

Shayne said, “So you’ve told me.” He hesitated, and then said slowly, “If Ambrose did arrange to have Bayliss