door on your left, Mr. Shayne. Go right in.”
The second door on his left was simply lettered, PRIVATE. He turned the knob and went in without knocking.
There were four telephones on the big desk in the center of the big room. The man who sat behind the desk talking into one of the telephones was big enough to fit well into the setting.
He nodded his bullet head at the detective, spoke softly into the mouthpiece and listened for a moment, scrawled a notation on a pad in front of him.
Shayne sat down in a chair across the wide desk from him. Big Vic Cartwright replaced the telephone on its prongs and leaned his massive weight back in the swivel chair and clasped two hamlike hands at the back of a very thick and very short neck, and said genially, “It’s all right, Shamus. I’ll go quietly.”
Shayne said, “Somehow, I doubt that, Vic. How’s business?”
“So-so.” The right-hand telephone rang. He snatched it up and said, “No calls, Vergie.” He put it down and looked at Shayne benignly. “If it isn’t a pinch, what is it?”
“I need some information, Vic.” Shayne frowned and tugged at his left ear-lobe. “I’ve got a client who’s got his teat really in the wringer. He’s in deep. ’Way over his head, Vic, to at least a dozen boys around town where he’s established credit over the years. But he’s had a real bad run of luck and they’re clamping down. Now, he can’t possibly pay off a hundred cents on the dollar. On the other hand, he’s a good Joe and doesn’t want to welsh. So he’s dug up a pretty fair bunch of dough which he hopes will get him off the hook. Instead of going around and trying to make separate deals with each one of the boys, he turned the thing over to me to see if I could clear it all off the books for him.”
“How much?” demanded Big Vic.
“Altogether, they’re holding markers for a little over thirty grand. I’ve got eighteen thousand of his money to make it right.”
Cartwright shook his head sadly. “You know that ain’t kosher, Mike. This sucker expects a clean pay-off when he wins, doesn’t he? He’s always got it, hasn’t he? Fair and square, and cash money on the barrel-head. So now he comes crawling and wants a discount on his losses. You know that’s no decent way to do business, Mike.”
Shayne said flatly, “I know that the boys around town will be damned lucky to divvy up his assets. They either take a share… or nothing.” He hesitated momentarily. “I don’t expect to make a deal with you, Vic. But I’ve heard around town that when a guy gets in deep like this there’s a sort of collection agency that takes over. They’re the boys who can deal with this. If I can’t convince them to take the short end of the stick, then it’s no skin off my ass. All the rough stuff in the world won’t get them any more money than my client has already dug up. But I want to lay it on the line… and all I want from you is where I go to lay it.”
Vic Cartwright nodded and unclasped his hands from behind his neck. “Take your problem to Jess Hayden. If there’s that much cash involved, he’s probably already got the whole thing for collection. I don’t say you’ll get anywhere with him, Mike, but you can try.”
Shayne shrugged his wide shoulders. “That’s all I want.”
Cartwright opened the center drawer of the desk and looked at a pad. “Try the Splendide Hotel. Suite three- twenty. That’s out on Biscayne Boulevard…”
Shayne said, “I know the place. Three-twenty? Jess Hayden. Thanks, Vic. If he’s inclined to be reasonable, we can do business together.”
He got up and went out with a wave of his big hand. The Splendide was one of the newer and fancier gimcrack hostelries that had been erected during the Fifties as one of Miami’s answers to the mushrooming tourist facilities on the other side of Biscayne Bay.
Shayne had never set foot in the place before, and he felt a little overwhelmed by the rococo lobby, the squads of extravagantly uniformed bellmen hurrying about to fulfill every guest’s slightest desire, the bustle and confusion of a huge afternoon crowd representing the total population of the hotel which equalled that of a small city.
With the unerring sense of direction of a homing pigeon, Shayne made his way among them to a quiet corridor at the rear of the registration desk and to a plain wooden door that was marked SECURITY.
He knocked perfunctorily and turned the knob and entered a small office with an erect, white-haired man seated behind a cluttered desk. He was in his shirt-sleeves, wearing a neat bow tie, and was relaxed with his feet on the desk and a paperbacked novel in his hands when Shayne opened the door. He hastily dropped his feet to the floor and straightened up and slid the book down onto the chair beside him and said frostily, “This is a private office.” Then he opened his eyes wider and stared for a moment and said happily, “Mike Shayne, by God! What are you doing in a classy joint like this?”
Shayne said just as happily, “Parson Smith! Last time I knew, you were a bouncer down in a little waterfront bar. Well, well! Congratulations are indeed in order.” He leaned over the desk and offered his big hand, and Smith took it in a hard grip and told him with a wide grin, “Sometimes I wish I were back there, Mike. It didn’t pay as well, but things did happen. Life is just about as dull as dishwater around this place.”
Shayne said, “Maybe I can rectify that.”
“Wait a minute, now. The management frowns on what you and I might consider good, old-fashioned fun. But rest your feet, Mike,” he urged hospitably. “Drink?” He leaned forward to pull open a drawer, but Shayne forestalled him.
“Not right now, Parson. You’ve got a guest in Suite Three-twenty. Jess Hayden. Ring a bell?”
“Not… right off the bat.” Smith turned to his left where there was a large panel covered with an intricate arrangement of numbered dials and different colored arrows that looked to Shayne like the control board of a machine shop.
He twisted one arrow to point to a 3, used his forefinger to dial another number below the arrow, and relaxed proudly. There was a whirring noise from the back of the panel, and a moment later a white card popped up out of a slot in the desk in front of him. He picked it up delicately between thumb and forefinger, explaining with a grin, “Just a simple little system of electronics, Mike. Only cost a couple of hundred thousand to install and doesn’t get fouled up more than a dozen times a day. Let’s see what we have here.” He frowned and read from the card: “Three- twenty. Richard Dirkson. Three-Seven-One East Fifty-fourth Street, New York City. No luggage. Overnight bill paid in cash advance.”
Shayne said, “That’s my man. I’m going up there, Par-son.
“Expecting trouble?”
Shayne said, “There’ll be trouble if Mr. Dirkson is at home.”
“I’ll go along,” Smith said promptly.
“No.” Michael Shayne shook his red head and his eyes were hot. “What facilities have you got for a quiet arrest and out the back way to the hoosegow?”
“I’ve got six good men on duty, Mike. It’s my job to keep a thing like this quiet.”
Shayne said, “I know what your job is. Come along up behind me with a couple of men. But stay outside Three-twenty until I’ve had my time at bat.” His blunt forefingers strayed up to touch the lumps on his head that were now subsiding. “This is sort of personal.”
The Parson said, “I’ll give you two minutes.”
Shayne said happily, “Make it three.” He got up and strode out of the office without a backward glance.
An elevator was loading as he crossed the lobby. He got in and stood close to the door and said, “Three.”
His floor was the first stop and he got out alone. He glanced at arrows on the wall with numbers underneath them, and went swiftly to the right in search of 320. He knew Smith wouldn’t give him much more than his allotted three minutes.
He pressed the bell at 320 and stood flat-footed in front of the door waiting.
It opened and Jud stood there. He had a highball glass in his left hand, and his mouth sagged open slackly when he recognized the detective. Shayne saw Phil rising from a chair behind him with a sudden pleased look on his face.
Jud stepped back a pace and said, “Look who’s here!” He glanced over his shoulder at Phil who was coming forward, cat-footed. “Who d’yuh think we got for company, Phil?”
Phil’s hand snaked his big revolver from a shoulder holster and he held it laxly at his side, pointing downward. He said, “I see him, Jud. I guess he likes the kind of games we play.”
