“An entire fifth, if my memory serves,” Shayne agreed drily. “I assure you I hurried out the next day and stocked up with cheap bourbon. Your favorite. Old Outhouse.”
Rourke said, “Ah,” fondly, and smacked his lips in anticipation, and Lucy giggled and Shayne slowed for the traffic light at Flagler Street and then drove on and made a right turn and a left turn to draw into the curb at the side entrance to his hotel on the north bank of the Miami River where he had maintained a second-floor bachelor apartment since either of them had known him.
They got out and went in a side door and up a single flight of stairs that by-passed the lobby, and past the elevators to a door which opened into the shabby suite which both his visitors knew so well.
Entering in front of them, Shayne switched on the ceiling light with a wall switch and tossed his hat on a rack beside the door in passing. He headed straight for the kitchen on the right, saying, “Set out the bottles, Tim, and I’ll get a pitcher of ice. You want Benedictine to settle those champagne cocktails, Lucy?”
“I don’t want to settle them,” she protested. “What a horrible thought Can’t I have a C and C instead?”
“Now what in hell,” asked Rourke wonderingly, “is a C and C? I’ve heard of B and B’s, but…”
“A C and C is Michael’s own private receipt… for a sidecar when he hasn’t any lemons. And he never does.”
“Cognac and Cointreau,” guessed Rourke, going toward the liquor cabinet on the wall near the kitchen door. “So that’s what he plies his women with? Lucy, I would never have suspected…”
The telephone on the center table in the living room interrupted him. Both he and Lucy turned to look at it accusingly. Neither of them did anything constructive and it kept on ringing until Shayne came in from the kitchen with a tray that had a pitcher of ice cubes and various sized glasses.
The telephone continued to ring while he set the tray on the table beside it. He picked it up and said, “Mike Shayne,” into the mouthpiece.
A woman’s voice came leaping over the wire, shrill with fright and hysteria: “Mr. Shayne! You’ve got to stop Ralph. He’s got a gun and he’s going to kill Mr. Ames.”
“Is that Mrs. Larson?”
“Yes. Of course. Didn’t you hear me? Don’t you understand? Ralph is like a raving maniac. He’s on his way to the Ames house now. You’ve got to stop him.”
“Have you called the police?”
“The police? No. I don’t want him arrested. Can’t you hurry and stop him?”
“Where does Ames live?”
“It’s Northeast One-Hundred and Twentieth Street. Near the Bay. I don’t know the street number, but…”
Shayne said, “I’m on my way.” He dropped the instrument on its prongs and whirled to face the other two who were standing in the center of the room looking at him with open mouths.
“Call the cops, Lucy. Emergency. Get a radio car out to the Wesley Ames residence on Northeast Hundred and Twentieth Street near the bayshore. Ralph Larson is on his way out there with a gun and he’s got a hell of a head start on us. Come on, Tim.”
He was trotting toward the door as he ended, and he jerked it open and went out hatless. Timothy Rourke was close behind him as he pounded down the hallway to the stairs and down to the side entrance. He ran around to the driver’s seat of his parked car and the reporter slid in beside him as he turned on the ignition. He grimly made a screaming U-turn in front of oncoming traffic, made a sweeping right turn on a yellow light at the first intersection, and gunned the heavy car viciously to catch a green light at the Boulevard and straighten out northward on the long run to 120th Street.
Timothy Rourke sat tensely beside him, leaning forward with both hands clasped over his knees, his lips moving in a mumbled prayer while Shayne picked holes in the traffic, weaving from the inner lane to the center and outside, using his horn angrily and alternating with brakes and accelerator to hit the traffic lights as they changed color up the Boulevard.
“You don’t have to get there in nothing flat,” muttered Rourke plaintively. “Better if we make it all in one piece. Lucy will have called the police. If there’s a patrol car cruising nearby they’ll be in time to stop the fool.”
“If there’s a car close,” Shayne agreed grimly. “If not he’ll practically be there by this time. He was halfway there before we started.”
“But he won’t be making eighty through traffic the way you are. Goddamn it, Mike.” Rourke shuddered and closed his eyes as the redhead cut in front of a car on his left and slid through a hole that should have taken the paint off both sides of his car but somehow didn’t.
“Keep your eyes closed,” Shayne advised him cheerfully. “That’s Seventy-Ninth ahead. If I can hit that light…”
He did hit it a moment after it changed to red, but side traffic hadn’t begun to move and he went through the intersection unscathed. Traffic was thinner north of Seventy-Ninth, and Rourke forced himself to relax and he asked wonderingly, “What in hell happened to trigger Ralph off tonight? I thought you had it all set with Dorothy…”
“I thought so too. She didn’t say over the phone. Just that he had a gun and was on his way to kill Ames. Goddamn woman probably changed her mind,” he grated. “Threw it in his face or something. Know what kind of car Ralph drives?”
“N-no. Blue with a white top, I think. One of the new compacts. I can’t tell one from another.”
They passed 110th Street doing eighty-five and Shayne took his foot off the gas and said, “We’ll know soon enough. If the cops are already there and got him, let me handle it, Tim. Jail is the best place for him until he cools off.”
He touched the accelerator lightly again to maintain a speed of forty as he approached 120th, braked sharply and swung to the right on a two-lane street that dead-ended against the western shore of Biscayne Bay a few blocks ahead. There were no tail-lights ahead of them. Scattered houses were lighted on either side of the street, large estates that appeared calm and peaceful at this early evening hour.
“I think it’s on the end at the right.” Rourke was sitting erect scanning the houses as they passed. “I was here at a party once several years ago. I remember there’s a stone wall and wide entrance gates.”
The last house on the right was a large mansion at the end of a short drive through an arched gateway behind a high stone wall. The driveway and a large paved parking area in front was brilliantly lighted by two glaring floodlights mounted well up at either end of the house.
Two cars were in sight as Shayne swung into the driveway. A black Cadillac sedan stood under the porte- cochere and a blue and white compact was parked directly behind it. Lights blazed from the lower front windows of the house, and the front door opened and the figure of a man disappeared inside and the door slammed shut just as Shayne swung in behind the compact.
He cut his motor and leaped out, and heard a loud shout and something that sounded like a crash from inside the house as he sprinted toward the front door.
It opened inward onto a large square living room that was brilliantly illuminated like a stage setting.
A man lay on his side ten feet in front of the door, struggling up to a sitting posture, his mouth ludicrously open although no words were coming out, and pointing a trembling finger toward the stairway at the rear.
A silver tray lay on the floor in front of the stairway, and there were broken glasses and bottles strewn around it. A small, white-coated figure was running up the stairs as Shayne lunged in through the front door with Rourke close behind him, and he disappeared at the top and Shayne heard a door slam loudly on the second floor.
Shayne ran toward the stairs, skirting the broken glass and bottles, and mounted as fast as he could with Rourke pounding close at his heels.
Half-way down a wide carpeted corridor at the left the white-coated man was pounding a small fist on a closed wooden door while he ineffectually twisted the knob with his other hand. A printed “Do Not Disturb” sign hung from the knob. He turned a frightened, brown, Puerto Rican face over his shoulder to look toward Shayne as the redhead reached the top of the stairs, and he jabbered something in Spanish while he continued to pound on the door.
Shayne reached him in four long strides and clamped a big hand on his shoulder to thrust him aside from the door, then drew back and lowered his shoulder to drive his weight at it.
Before he could make a lunge a muffled shot sounded beyond the closed door. Shayne hesitated momentarily and then hit the door with his shoulder.
