“Okay. Forty-five minutes. You come alone with the money. Northeast 64th Terrace where it deadends against the Bay. You got that?”
Shayne said, “I’ve got it.” He looked at his watch. “In exactly forty-five minutes. The east end of 64th Terrace against the bayfront. I expect you to be alone, too.”
“Sure. This is a strictly private deal, Jones.” Duclos chuckled nervously. “You don’t bring the money… tell the dame she’s S.O.L.”
Shayne said, “I’ll tell her,” and hung up. He looked across with a reassuring grin at the woman who was leaning toward him eagerly.
“Everything’s okay. All I’ve got to do is deliver ten grand to him in three-quarters of an hour.”
“Can you get the rest of it together, Mike? In that short time?”
“No trouble at all.” He waved a big hand reassuringly. “Relax. Take another drink now. Everything’s going to be okay.”
“I don’t think I… want a drink right now,” she said tremulously. She got to her feet, smoothing down her dress self-consciously. “Could I… go to the little girl’s room?”
Shayne said, “The bathroom’s right there.” He pointed to a closed door at the back next to the bedroom, and sat rigidly with his forehead furrowed while she went inside and closed the door tightly behind her.
Then he leaned forward and picked up her handbag where she had left it sitting beside her chair, unsnapped it and hurriedly rummaged inside.
His hand came out holding a hotel room key with a metal tag attached and the number 810 stamped on it. He dropped it into his pocket, closed the bag and replaced it on the floor where it had been.
When she came out of the bathroom, he was leaning back blandly smoking a cigarette and studying the ceiling through the blue smoke that twirled upward.
She sat down diffidently in her chair and hesitated, and then said in a small voice, “Forty-five minutes isn’t very much time, Mike… if you’re going to get all that money together.”
He grinned at her and said, “I made a telephone call while you were in the bathroom. I’m expecting a call back… and everything will be set.”
She said, “Oh,” and then happily, “I guess I will have another little drink before I go.”
Shayne said, “Sure. Make it a big one, if you like. Nothing for you to worry about now.” He hesitated and added thoughtfully, “I think you’d better sit tight right here, Carla, while I make this contact. I don’t expect anything to go wrong, but you’d better be here where I can reach you, if anything does. Keep Vicky out of it altogether.”
She said, “All right. But you let me know?”
“I’ll come straight back.” He looked at his watch and muttered, “I expect a call right back.”
At that instant his telephone rang. He grabbed it up and said, “Mike Shayne,” into the mouthpiece.
As he had expected, Timothy Rourke’s voice came over the wire, bubbling with exultancy, “Got it, Mike. Hit it on the head, by God. Our boy is really on the wanted list. Want me to give it to you over the phone?”
“No. I’d rather stop by and pick it up,” Shayne told him. “You’ve got all of it, huh?”
“Plenty.”
“Fine. Where’ll I meet you in ten minutes?”
“How about my place, Mike? I’m at the office now, but I’m bushed.”
“Right. I’ll be along in about ten minutes.” Shayne hung up and said, “That was easy. He’s got the whole nine grand waiting. All I have to do is pick it up and deliver it to your friend. I should be back here inside of an hour.”
He got up as he spoke, opened a drawer of the table and lifted out a short-barrelled. 38 which he dropped into a side pocket She watched him with wide, troubled eyes and said fearfully, “Do you think there’s any danger?”
“It’s always dangerous to make a deal with a blackmailer. Don’t worry. I can take care of myself.”
“I know you can.” She got up swiftly and pressed herself close against him, looking up into his face with shining eyes and parted lips. “I’ll be waiting right here for you, Mike. I’ll be praying to God that nothing goes wrong.”
He lowered his head and kissed her lips firmly. “Leave everything to me and don’t worry.” He patted her shoulder, grabbed his Panama and hurried out.
13
Timothy Rourke was slouched back comfortably on a sagging sofa in the disordered sitting room of his bachelor apartment when Shayne entered ten minutes later. He had a highball glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and he grinned cheerfully at the detective and waved toward a bottle of bourbon and another glass on a table beside him. “I’m clean out of cognac, but this isn’t bad stuff in a pinch.”
Shayne said, “I’ll skip the drink, Tim. What’s the story on our dead man?”
Rourke pointed proudly to a folded newspaper on a chair under a lighted reading lamp. “Read it for yourself in the Montgomery paper. I picked up that copy after checking out a shorter version we ran on Friday from the wire report. We didn’t use that picture, but I’d seen it when it came in and that’s how I recognized it in the Duclos house.”
Shayne sank into the chair and unfolded the Montgomery paper to a front page story headlined: BLOODY BANK ROBBERY.
Beneath was a two-column cut showing the head and shoulders of the dead man he had last seen in the trunk of a Ford car. It was captioned: Killer Believed Drowned.
The story was datelined Eureka, Alabama, the previous Thursday. The lead paragraph read:
“Late today the sun-laden somnolence of this peaceful farming community was shattered by blazing guns and bloodshed which erupted in the wake of the armed robbery of Eureka’s only bank.” Shayne laid the paper aside and reached for a cigarette. “Why don’t you give me the facts, Tim, and save me the trouble of wading through the literary effusions of a small-town reporter?”
Rourke grinned widely. “Don’t blame the guy. He doesn’t often get a chance to see his immortal prose spread over the front page of a big city daily. Here it is in a Rourkian nutshell:
“Just before closing time two guys walked into the only bank on Eureka’s Main Street, population two thousand, where there were half a dozen customers. They got in line and waited until the guard locked the front door and drew the shades on the windows. Then they pulled guns and announced it was a stick-up. They made everybody lie flat on the floor, including the single guard whose gun they lifted.
“All except one teller, a young fellow named Harvey Giles. They handed him a croker sack and ordered him to fill it with all the big bills available. He was scared stiff and did so, gathering up about forty thousand according to a later estimate. Then they ordered Giles to carry the sack out of the bank in front of them, telling the others that if anybody moved or turned in an alarm they’d shoot their hostage.
“The whole deal went off like clockwork, and they went out the front door and started across the street toward a get-away car at the curb with a woman driver behind the wheel and the motor turning over.
“They evidently kept their guns out of sight and no one paid any attention until they were almost to the car. Then a fool vice-president came running out the door of the bank waving a Banker’s Special he
had grabbed up, and started shooting. One of them shot back… our friend Al there, according to the report… and killed the V.P.
“Then they jerked open the front door of the car and shoved the teller inside, and threw the money bag in the back seat and started to jump in themselves when… whoosh! Away went the getaway car down the street with the money and Harvey Giles inside.
“By that time the bank alarm was sounding off and citizens were running for guns, and the two deserted bandits grabbed a parked car and took off in the same direction as the money car on the highway leading to Montgomery, about twenty miles away.
“By that time a deputy sheriff had got himself organized and took off after them on an eighty-mile-an-hour chase that lasted about five miles until the lead car failed to straighten out on a curve leading to a bridge over the Eureka River, went through the guard rail and about forty feet down into the flood-swollen stream. There was at
