Pay-Off in Blood

“He came to my apartment about eight-thirty. Damn it, Petey,” Shayne went on impatiently, “I’m willing to cooperate, but I want some idea of what I’m walking into. When was he killed?”

“A few minutes after ten o’clock, the best we can place it.” Painter thumb-nailed his mustache and peered up at Shayne’s rugged face suspiciously. “That mean anything to you?”

Shayne looked at his watch. It was shortly after eleven o’clock. He said truthfully, “It could mean a lot… if the time is right. Any witnesses to swear to it?”

“The next door neighbor noticed his car turn into the driveway a few minutes after ten. He didn’t think anything of it until about half an hour later when he took his dog for a walk and noticed the car still standing here in front of the closed garage, headlights still on and engine running. He also noticed the overhead light on inside the car, indicating that a door had been left open. He came over to investigate. Dr. Ambrose was lying beside the open left-hand door, shot once through the heart. Now, what does that mean to you?”

Shayne said, “He was being blackmailed. He had an appointment to make a twenty grand pay-off at the Seacliff Restaurant in Miami at nine-thirty. If he kept that appointment, it looks as though he drove straight here without any stops along the way.” He paused briefly and then said, “At my place he showed me a thick white envelope which he said contained twenty thousand dollars. Did you find it on him?”

Painter shook his head. “Nothing like that at all.”

Shayne said quietly, “Then he must have kept the appointment at nine-thirty and got rid of it.”

“Now wait a minute, Shayne. Why did he come to you in the first place?”

“Tim sent him. He had a crazy idea of hiring me to go along as a sort of bodyguard while he made the blackmail pay-off.”

“It wasn’t crazy at all,” retorted Rourke. “Sounded like a lot of sense to me. Nobody was likely to start anything with you backing his play. Damn it, Mike! Didn’t you go with him as I asked you to?”

Shayne looked at his old friend expressionlessly. “You know how I feel about blackmail and paying them off,” he growled.

“But I asked you as a personal favor…”

“Let me get this straight,” Chief Peter Painter broke in importantly. “You claim you refused to help him, Shayne?”

“I told him, goddamit, that I could lose my license by aiding and abetting blackmail. I told him I considered it immoral and unethical,” Shayne added truthfully and righteously. “I also warned him that it never worked. That no blackmailer was ever satisfied, but always came back for more. I advised him to refuse to pay, and to go to the police for protection.”

“Mike!” protested Rourke, aghast. “You let that innocent, little guy go off alone to meet a blackmailer with twenty grand in his pocket?”

“It certainly doesn’t sound like you or your methods, Shayne,” commented Painter suspiciously.

“He got my goat with his holier-than-thou attitude,” said Shayne angrily, and, again, truthfully.

“I asked him what he did when a woman came to him needing an abortion desperately just because she’d made one tiny mistake in the past. Know what he said?”

“Being a reputable physician,” said Painter with unction, “I’m sure he would have refused.”

“Exactly,” Shayne blazed at him. “He washed his hands of the whole thing. All right. I happen to be a reputable private detective. I want nothing to do with blackmail pay-offs. I told him so.”

“Mike,” groaned Rourke again. “If you’d listened to me…”

“How did he react to that?” interrupted Painter.

“He insisted on going through with it.”

“Did he?”

Shayne said, “When he left my place at about nine-fifteen he was headed for the Seacliff Restaurant to keep a nine-thirty appointment with his blackmailer.” He chose his words carefully as he spoke, saying the exact truth, though certainly not the full truth.

“Who was he meeting?” demanded Painter.

“He refused to tell me. As a matter of fact, he insisted he didn’t know the man’s identity. I don’t know whether he was holding out or not,” Shayne continued truthfully. “He didn’t want me to interfere either before or after the pay-off, and claimed that all he had was a telephone number… which he also refused to turn over to me.”

“He told me the same thing,” muttered Rourke. “When he came to me about it, I advised him the same way you did, Mike. But he was determined to make the pay-off tonight and end the affair. I thought he would be safer accompanied by you than going it alone. That’s why I sent him over to your place. And you turned him down cold, Mike?” Rourke’s voice was troubled, wondering. “Even when I told you the way I was indebted to him? That’s what sticks in my throat. That’s what I’ll never forgive you for. If you’d done as I asked, damn it, he might not be lying here dead.”

“What do you think that has to do with it?” Shayne demanded angrily. “If he made the contact and passed on the money…”

“But we don’t know he did,” Rourke pointed out. “When you refused to help, maybe he decided not to chance it alone. If he came home carrying that money with him, it would have been a perfect motive for murder.”

Shayne said, “That’s theorizing. It couldn’t take him an hour to drive from my place here. The timing is right to indicate that he made the contact at nine-thirty, and then drove here.”

Peter Painter was listening restlessly to the irritated exchange between the two men who had always been the closest of friends. Now he decided it was time to assert his authority.

“You claim he refused to tell you who was blackmailing him, Shayne. What was he being blackmailed for? What did he expect to receive in return for his twenty thousand dollars tonight? That might be very important.”

“He refused to tell me that either. Just that he was in a particularly vulnerable position as a doctor, and that the information could ruin him both socially and professionally, if it became public knowledge.”

“Do you know what was being held over him, Rourke?”

“No,” the reporter confessed reluctantly. “He told me just about the same as Mike says he told him. Something that was worth twenty thousand bucks for him to keep quiet. And he wasn’t a wealthy man. Look at his home here. It’s not worth more than twenty-five, and I happen to know it’s mortgaged to the hilt.”

“He told me that, too,” said Shayne quietly. “That he’d taken out a second mortgage on his home to raise the money.”

“Yes, well…” Peter Painter lightly brushed his mustache with the back of his thumbnail again. “Can you prove that you didn’t accompany him to the Seacliff Restaurant, Shayne?”

“Do I have to prove it?” The redhead’s voice was bland.

“You very well may. I don’t take anything you tell me on faith, Shayne. Indeed, I wasn’t aware that you were quite so ethical as you pretend to be.” His voice became thinly sarcastic. “It’s nice to know that you value the trust imposed in you by the State of Florida so highly, though I must say there have been times in the past when I have doubted it.”

Shayne said easily, “You’ve just got a mistrustful nature, Petey. Check with the desk clerk at my hotel,” he went on generously. “He’ll tell you I came in at eight o’clock completely pooped and ready for bed, and that I didn’t leave the hotel until shortly after eleven when Tim Rourke phoned me to meet him here.”

“I’ll check with him, all right,” Painter promised. “Both of you stick around.” He swung about on his heels as one of his homicide squad approached, and moved out of earshot where they had a low-voiced colloquy.

Rourke stepped a couple of feet aside from Shayne at the same moment, and turned his back, hunching his thin shoulders to light a cigarette.

Shayne started toward him, and then held himself back. This was not the time or place for confidences. He had sold Peter Painter on the idea that he hadn’t accompanied Dr. Ambrose to the pay-off, and he wanted to keep him sold. The less Rourke knew about it, the better for all concerned.

CHAPTER FIVE

Peter Painter moved into the group surrounding the doctor’s body, effectually screening it from Shayne’s view,