So Lush, So Deadly

the meantime, it would last him a few years. He didn’t even take a toothbrush with him. He didn’t take his guitar. I think he wanted to cut himself loose from everything in his past.”

“Did you see him go?”

“Neither of us did, and he didn’t leave any farewell note. He was here one night and the next morning he was gone. We haven’t been too close lately. He thought I was selling out, and I am. I think there’s a certain basic minimum, and if you can’t come up to that minimum you’re in trouble.”

“How about women? Did he have affairs?”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“Do you happen to know his mother’s last name?”

Brady looked surprised. “Dotty may but I sure as hell don’t. Why?”

“About a third of the people who drop out of sight take their mother’s names,” Shayne explained. “It’s less of a break. And it isn’t too easy to switch off their old personalities and switch on new ones. They keep the same habits and still do many of the same things. So I’ll need to know some more about him.”

The nuts were gone. With nothing to occupy his hands, Brady kept changing position and running his fingers through his hair. Shayne made notes as he talked, wishing he could find some excuse to pull off the dark glasses and see what was going on behind them.

He asked abruptly, “When did you get the gun?”

Brady started. “That’s right, you talked to Petrocelli. Dotty had it. It’s just a.25, to protect her cash. Petrocelli got a lot less truculent when I showed it to him.”

“Did you actually see that five thousand, Brady, or did she just tell you it was missing?”

“She told me. But I believe her.”

“I’m wondering if she hopes to get some evidence to use in a divorce action. Do you think it’s a possibility?”

Brady stared at him for a moment. “Anything’s possible. I do know that she wants very much to stay out of the papers.” He read an imaginary headline. “‘Robbed by Husband, Says Textile Heiress.’ She’d hate that. At the same time, I think she may really want him back. She’s not a happy woman, or a stable one. I guess that’s obvious.”

Shayne closed his notebook and stood up. Brady went across to Mrs. De Rham’s stateroom and knocked. When she answered weakly he went in.

He was back a moment later. “His mother’s maiden name was Sealey. If you find him, Dotty wants you to give him a message. She’s restoring him to her will, and she’ll think about putting some of the Winslow stock in his name.” He shrugged. “Seriously.”

Out on deck, the girl on the next boat called over cheerfully, “Another sunshiney day. Is Mrs. De Rham any better?”

“A little,” Brady said shortly.

CHAPTER 8

After leaving the marina, Shayne arranged to meet his friend Tim Rourke, the gangling crime reporter on the Daily News. Rourke had recently published a series of articles about the Miami hippies, and while he was collecting material he had lived among them for a few days. They were hospitable and unsuspicious. Their dreaminess and apathy and the jargon they used continually had nearly driven him crazy by the time he left.

He met Shayne in a bar near the paper, bringing tear sheets of the articles.

“Only a loony would think he could hide around Jennings Park,” Rourke said after Shayne explained what he wanted. “It’s the most conspicuous place in Dade County.”

“He may not want to hide,” Shayne said. “There’s a chance he took the money to make sure she’d send somebody after him.”

“Of course the captain might be right. He could be dead. That would make a better story.”

“I don’t think he’d dead,” Shayne said slowly. “I think Brady knows exactly where I can find the guy. But what’s his object? Does he want to get De Rham to come back to take over responsibility? God knows.”

He opened the folder to look at the tear sheets. Rourke said, “You can’t read in this light, Mike. The main thing to remember-the real hippies, the Diggers, the boys and girls who really want to quit, have all hitched their way to New York, where they can do it in style. If you want to get publicity for shunning publicity, you go to the center of the communications business. Our Miami operation is still a little half-hearted. If the hippy life begins to wear thin the kids can get a haircut and go home. They’re just putting one toe in the water to see how it feels.”

He summoned the bartender. “Another shot, Pete, and then I’ve got to get back. One other thing I ought to tell you, Mike. You remember the Dirty Angels, the motorcycle boys.”

“I thought they were dissolved.”

“The club was dissolved. They got evicted from their building and most of them lost their cycles. Three of the top guys went to jail, and I think they’re still there. But the rank and file took off the black leather jackets and put the swastika armbands in the back of their bureau drawers and looked for a new kind of action. You’d be amazed what a difference it makes when you go barefoot instead of wearing stomping boots. While I was hanging around Jennings Park I’m pretty sure I saw a couple of familiar faces. They had designs painted on their cheeks with food coloring and they were handing out flowers. But don’t believe it.”

“Yeah,” Shayne said impatiently.

“Just a small piece of information. If you remember the Angels, they never believed in nonviolence.” He took his shot of whiskey in a gulp. “Call me if you want anything.”

The Jennings Park area of Southwest Miami is a district of cheap luncheonettes and rundown rooming houses. The park itself is a dusty square of broken asphalt, dotted with broken benches. Until the hippies moved in, it was used mainly by old men from nearby rooming houses. Now it was filled with bearded boys and unkempt girls, a few wearing sandals but most barefoot. From behind, and occasionally even from in front, it was hard to tell the males from the females. There were Indian headdresses and Hindu robes.

By the end of the afternoon everybody appeared to be high. One of the contentions in Rourke’s Daily News series was that there was far less marijuana and acid consumed in Jennings Park and the surrounding blocks than the participants wanted people to think. They had quickly become a tourist attraction. By early dusk the sidewalks around the park were jammed with middle-aged people in colorful sports attire, slung with expensive cameras. There was always a heavy concentration of cops.

Shayne circulated, looking at beards. His sleeves were rolled up and he was carrying his jacket over his arm. Whenever someone asked him for money he supplied some, and waited until the conversation was well under way before he brought out his photographs. The usual response was a smile and a sad shake of the head. Whenever he caught a glint of recognition he sauntered on, turning after a moment to watch the person he had been talking to and see what he did.

It was nearly dark. He was in a luncheonette, eating an undercooked and overseasoned burger when a barefoot girl with straight hair, in jeans, short-sleeved jersey and sunglasses, came in from the street and headed straight at him.

“You’re going to buy me a burger,” she said flatly.

“It’s not very good,” Shayne said. “Why not finish mine?”

She gave him a shocked look before deciding that the correct thing would be to accept.

“How about the coffee?” Shayne went on, grinning slightly. “I only had a couple of sips.”

She hesitated, then added sugar and began to drink it, standing up at the counter. Her only concession to the middle-class standards she was running away from was to turn the cup and drink with her left hand, from the opposite rim. Shayne paid the check and they left together.

“You people,” she said. Now that she was outside in the sun, she took off her shades and peered up at him from beneath an untidy fringe of brown hair. “Why don’t you stay in your own part of town? Are we harming anybody?”