She took another fierce drag on her cigarette, trying desperately to marshal her thoughts, and then stiffened in terror at the sound of a light knock on her door.
This time she didn’t leap gladly to her feet to open it. She sat immobile and stared at the door.
Who was standing in the hall? Did she dare take a chance? Could she possibly brazen it out? Was it someone looking for him? Had he been followed? Did anyone know he had come here tonight?
The knock wasn’t repeated, but in a moment she heard a small clicking sound and she watched in wide-eyed, petrified terror while the door was pushed open.
Then a hotel maid walked in calmly. She was an elderly, gray-haired woman carrying neatly folded towels over her arm. She seemed surprised to see the woman on the sofa, evidently believing the room unoccupied when her knock went unanswered, and she hesitated a moment, saying apologetically, “Pardon, Ma’m. Check your bathroom and turn down the bed?”
And she began walking toward the closed bedroom door.
Time stood still. She was approaching the door stolidly. She would turn the knob and open it…
And she could do nothing to stop her. She was absolutely paralyzed. Her vocal chords refused to answer her will. She wanted to scream at the woman… throw her glass at her… stop her before she reached that door.
She could do nothing. She sat mute and staring with a fixed smile on her face.
The maid had her hand on the knob. She was turning it. In a second it would be too late to stop her.
A high-pitched squeal of agonized protest came out of her constricted throat. The maid turned her head questioningly, holding the door slightly ajar.
She said, “No!” and the word came out throatily and strong. She suddenly found herself on her feet advancing toward the woman and making frantic gestures with her hands.
“Don’t… you mustn’t… she heard herself stammering. “The towels are all right. I can make my own bed down.” She reached firmly for the doorknob and the maid released it, stepping back, her lined face showing bewilderment and then a sudden sly understanding.
“All right, Ma’m. Just as you say, Ma’m.” The maid tilted her nose and sniffed and retreated across the room, went out the door with silent dignity and closed it with what was not quite a slam.
She stood with her back defensively against the closed bedroom door, and then began to shake with hysterical laughter. The old fool thought she had a man in her bedroom. That’s what she thought.
Well, dear God, the maid was perfectly right. She did have a man in her bedroom. A dead one, but a man for all that.
Her hysteria went away as swiftly as it had come, and the imminent danger of her position became clearer to her than before. The maid was safely routed, but who would be next? A bell-boy coming for the empty tray? A repairman who had a report that her air conditioner was not functioning properly? She couldn’t stand guard here against all of them. Suppose the hotel were to catch on fire? Suppose… suppose…?
This wouldn’t do. This wasn’t like her. She wouldn’t give way to panic.
She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t.
No. She would sit down and calmly take a drink and assess the situation. There must be something she could do. Some way out. If she could just get him out of here. Let his body be discovered somewhere else. Any place else except her hotel suite.
She sat down and drank from her glass, not too calmly, it is true, but with puckered brow and her thoughts beginning to mesh again.
How had he found her here in Miami? Did anyone else know he had come to her room, or that he had traced her to this hotel and planned to see her? What sort of identification did he have on him?
In other words, if she could discover some way to remove his body and have it found elsewhere… how likely was it that he could be traced back to this hotel suite?
She emptied her glass and set it on the table and got to her feet. Those questions needed answering, and some of the answers might be in her bedroom.
She went to the door and opened it unhesitatingly and stood on the threshold looking down at him. He lay on his side exactly as he had fallen with five. 25 caliber bullets in him. His back was toward her from where she stood, and she could see no blood in evidence.
She walked around him, frowning, and crouched down in front of him. There wasn’t much blood. Just a wide, reddish stain on the front of his yellow sport shirt. If his jacket were buttoned together in front there would be nothing to show the cause of his death.
Her fingers were steady as she began checking the insides of his pockets. A pack of cigarettes and book of matches with a Hunt’s Tomato Sauce Recipe in his shirt pocket. Both outer and inner breast pockets of his jacket were empty. So was the left side pocket. There was a square of cardboard in the other side jacket pocket, and she rocked back on her heels to study it.
It was a parking ticket from the hotel parking lot. There was no time stamped on it. Just a numbered ticket for a parked car.
Thoughtfully, she replaced it in the pocket where she had found it. So he had driven a car to the hotel? Alone? Or with a friend who was waiting downstairs in the lobby or cocktail lounge? Someone who might already be getting impatient and wondering why he was taking so long.
It was impossible to tell.
His right hip pocket was empty, but there were some bills and silver in the right side pocket of his slacks. Two fives and three ones and a quarter and a dime.
She returned the money, and then had to roll him over on his back to explore the other two pockets. His body was limp and it rolled easily, seeming curiously weightless. She wondered if bodies were always so easy to roll about.
There was only a crumpled handkerchief in his left pocket, nothing in the side one. No wallet. No identification of any sort. Of course, there were laundry marks, she realized. And fingerprints. But those normally took some time to check out.
And what she needed was time.
Time to think. Time to make plans. Time to set up defenses against the possible repercussions of his death.
She glanced at the small pistol lying beside his body and decided it might as well remain there. It could not be traced to her.
Fingerprints?
Probably not, but better be sure. She picked it up in her bare hand and rubbed the smooth surfaces carefully. Not with a handkerchief as fools were always doing in books, thus making it evident that fingerprints had been removed, but with her fingers so there would be smeared prints left, but with no recognizable pattern.
Then, satisfied that there was no more to be done in the bedroom, she arose and went back to the sitting room, thinking deeply.
She poured herself another, very moderate drink, added the rest of the soda, and faced her problem.
She needed help.
She needed that corpse out of her bedroom… and fast.
And she didn’t know a single soul in Miami to whom she could turn for help.
All sorts of wild ideas went through her mind as she sat there drinking slowly, her eyes narrowed to slits while she considered the problem.
Go down to the lounge and pick up a complete stranger, make a play for him and invite him up, and then explain to him that she had a peculiar aversion to going to bed in a room with a corpse and if he’d get rid of the body she’d be happy to oblige?
You’d have to pick your guy damned carefully. Find one who had a lot of guts and not too much respect for the law, and who knew his way around Miami and had some experience in disposing of corpses.
That was a pretty big order. To just go down to the lounge and spot such a guy and entice him up.
Then an idea took hold of her. And it began to grow. And the more she considered it the less unfeasible it became.
As a city, Miami was noted for many and various things. There was its climate, the luxury hotels, the white sands of its bathing beaches, the beautiful race tracks, the tropical foliage… and there was a private detective named Michael Shayne.
