He got up and paced restlessly up and down the room. He should, of course, take the kidnap notes to Will Gentry at once-throw the entire resources of the police department into the search for her and her abductor.
But he knew he wasn’t going to do that. Once the alarm was out, Lucy’s life wouldn’t be worth a plugged nickel. Alone, he could accomplish exactly as much as the police department. Which was exactly nothing.
Yet he knew he had to try. He couldn’t just sit and wait for the autopsy report. He was already positive in his own mind that the finding would be murder. There was no other possible reason for Lucy being snatched.
If there were only some point of departure. Some end that he could pick up with a faint hope of unravelling the knot.
He stopped his restless pacing, got the two notes out of his pocket and read them both again. The one point of contact was the bum who had delivered the notes to the Shamrock bartender. Let’s see, now. He came in with a ten-dollar bill that he broke by buying a boilermaker. That would be about eighty cents in a place like the Shamrock. Another dime for the phone call to Western Union. And three dollars left behind to pay the messenger. That left the guy six dollars profit from the transaction.
Wait a minute, though! Where was the man who had given him the notes and the ten-dollar bill while he was in the barroom? It stood to reason they must be complete strangers. The only safe way to handle a thing like that was to cruise around and pick up a man off the street who had never seen you before and couldn’t possibly put the finger on you if he were apprehended. So, how would you know you could trust such a bum to carry out his part of the bargain and spend three of the precious ten dollars to get the notes delivered?
The obvious answer was that you wouldn’t trust him. Not completely. You’d take him to a joint like the Shamrock and send him inside with explicit instructions, and you’d go in behind him and unobtrusively have a drink at the bar while you watched him call Western Union and made sure he left the money and notes behind. Or, at the very least you’d hang around outside to be sure he carried out your orders.
Shayne had his coat on and was headed toward the door by the time he got that far in his theorizing.
The Shamrock was still open when he got there the second time. The same bartender was still listlessly on duty, and now there were five bar-stools occupied, two of them by women who were giggling with three men eager to buy them drinks.
The bartender recognized the redhead, and glanced inquiringly toward the bottle of cognac behind him. Shayne nodded and the man poured out a drink and remembered to put a glass of water beside it. He leaned his forearms on the bar and asked, “You get a line of that fellow you was asking about?”
Shayne shook his head. “That’s why I’m back. To see if you can remember another damned thing about him that might help.”
“Sorry, Mister. I told you all I could the first time.”
“Something else has occurred to me. How busy were you at the time he was in here? Take your time and think back carefully,” urged Shayne. “Was business light or heavy?”
“Medium, sorta, I guess.” The bartender wrinkled his forehead. “About that time of night we get a pretty good crowd. Regulars, mostly.”
“I remember you said that,” Shayne encouraged him. “So, maybe you might have noticed a stranger that came in about the same time the bum did. Stayed for a drink or two while he was here, and then went out after he left.”
“See what you mean,” mumbled the bartender, wrinkling his forehead deeper and half-closing his eyes in deep concentration. “Another guy keeping an eye on him, sorta, to make sure he called Western Union and the notes got left with me?”
“That’s it exactly. Keep this up and I’ll get you a detective rating on the police force.”
Obviously pleased, the man continued his effort to concentrate while Shayne sipped at his drink and waited hopefully. Finally, he shook his head. “It just don’t come. I been thinking back hard, but it just don’t come, Mister. There was a pretty good crowd in here. Some that I never saw before. But I don’t recollect any one of ’em paying any particular heed to this bum.”
“Keep on thinking,” Shayne urged him. “Here’s a couple of descriptions.” He described Charles first, ending, “You’d have noticed him for sure. Two front teeth freshly knocked out and the side of his face split, with probably a bandage on it.”
The man shook his head decisively. “I’d remember him for sure. Nobody like that.”
Shayne said without much hope, “Try these two on for size.” He described Harold Peabody and Marvin Dale as best he could, realizing as he did so how commonplace both were, and how unlikely to arouse any particular notice from a busy bartender.
When the man again shook his head regretfully, Shayne finished his drink briskly and shoved a five across the counter. “Thanks for trying. Let’s take one more crack at it from another direction. You said the fellow was maybe twenty-five or thirty and needed a haircut. Wearing a ragged coat and hungry-looking. How hungry-looking?”
“Jeez, I dunno.” The bartender waved his hands vaguely. “You know how it is. Just in a manner of speaking, I guess.”
“What I mean,” said Shayne carefully, “is whether he looked like a man that needed a square meal more than a flop for the night. We know he walked out of here with about six bucks,” he explained. “I’m trying to put myself in his position and guess what direction he’d head in. With six bucks to spend. More liquor?” Shayne shook his head slowly. “He could have got that right here as well as some place else. Food… or a flop?”
“With six dollars, he could buy both right here on Miami Avenue,” the bartender told him. “Plenty places up the street he could fill his belly for a buck or two. Beds for a dollar up.”
Shayne nodded grimly. He knew it was hopeless. From the beginning he had realized it was useless to hope he could trace the man after he walked away from the Shamrock with a boilermaker under his belt and six dollars in hand. But he still had to try. There were empty hours of the night still stretching out in front of him, and he’d be happier doing something instead of sitting at home waiting for another day.
So, he tried.
He left his car parked in front of the Shamrock and took the east side of Miami Avenue first, working his way northward for six blocks, stopping at every hole-in-the-wall eating or drinking joint, stubbornly climbing up one or two flights of stairs at every cheap hotel, repeating his queries over and over again and getting the same negative replies.
Six blocks north, he crossed to the west side and worked his way back, passing the Shamrock on the opposite side of the Avenue and continuing south to Flagler. There, he went to the east side again, and back to the Shamrock. It was full daylight by the time he completed the full circuit, and all the bars and eateries were closed.
It was still much too early to do anything else, so he turned to the right on Fourth Street and continued his canvas of the rooming houses on the south side of the street for three blocks, and then back on the north side across the Avenue for three blocks and then back on the other side to his parked car.
It was after seven o’clock when he got behind the steering wheel again and drove back to his hotel. His face was gaunt with exhaustion and his eyes red-rimmed with lack of sleep, and he had accomplished exactly nothing.
But he had tried.
Back in his own room, he walked past the cognac bottle on the center table into the small kitchen and put a teakettle of water to heat. He measured six heaping tablespoons of finely ground coffee into the top of a dripolator, waited beside the stove until the water boiled, and poured the top of the drip-pot full. Then he went into the bathroom, shedding clothes as he went, shaved carefully and took a stinging hot shower, following it with the coldest water that Miami offered.
Then he sat down in the livingroom with a mug of strong black coffee and waited for his telephone to ring.
11
He dressed in fresh clothes while he waited, and when the telephone finally did ring it was Will Gentry as he anticipated.
