he had left Shayne’s office.
Lucy was going to look very accusing about this. Even so, the redhead had no regrets for having refused aid to the hoodlum. The world would have one less law-breaker in it, that was all. However, Shayne did have an absorbing curiosity as to what lay beneath the surface. Who had killed Henlein and why? Those two little dolls didn’t add up to mob murder-unless something novel had been added to mob methods in Miami lately.
He turned sharply at a raucous sound. Sylvester lay prone on the bench under the starboard rail, his toes up, his wide mouth open and snoring.
“Sylvester’s out,” Slim called to Vince. “You’ll have to take us all the way in. Can you make the channel?”
“I think so. I’ve watched Sylvester do it.”
The sun was lowering now and the slanted afternoon light seemed to have a quieting effect on the three men. Ed took out a deck of cards and began playing solitaire. Slim, huddled in the cushions, stared glassy-eyed at the wake the boat left. The Santa Clara, gunning for the Beach under Vince’s able handling, passed a boat which had run up its tuna flag. There were girls on it, but no one on the Santa Clara was showing any wolf-strain now. They all seemed tired, as though relaxing after a strenuous day of sport, which was a little peculiar, considering they hadn’t roused themselves to any effort more enervating than pouring a drink. Even the rum couldn’t account for all their lethargy. Sylvester had downed the biggest part of it.
As the boat sliced through the less tranquil waters near the Beach, the men stirred. Ed retrieved his bonito from the ice box and was holding it, ready to go ashore, when Vince cut the engine twenty feet out and let inertia carry them to the pier. Shayne and Slim jumped off and made the fore and aft moorings fast and put out the rubber-tire fenders.
They stood for a moment on the dock, then shook hands with Shayne-all except Ed. “My hand’s fishy,” he said apologetically. “You know, sometimes I wonder why I ever bring fish home. My woman won’t clean them. She makes me do it and if there’s anything I don’t like, it’s cleaning fish. For two cents I’d throw it back.”
“It’s sure been nice, Mr. Shayne,” Vince said.
“It was nice of you to let me barge in.”
“Not at all,” Slim assured him. “Any time.”
They hesitated, glancing over at Sylvester. “You think he’ll be all right?”
Shayne nodded. “I’ll carry him into the cabin. He’ll sleep it off.”
The three men started down the dock, waving back at Shayne, who was standing tugging at his left earlobe. They were friendly all right, as Sylvester said. Weren’t they a little too friendly? Or was he too suspicious? He shrugged. That’s what a lifetime of poking your nose into other people’s crimes would do for you.
Still, something was bothering the redhead. It was connected in some way with the big fish Ed was so unenthusiastically carrying away. No, not that fish, the other one. The barracuda Ed had swapped to the Cubans.
Suddenly, he had it. Barracuda was the fastest spoiling fish on the coast. And they didn’t have any ice on La Ballena, as proven by the fact that they had borrowed a bucket of cubes from Sylvester for their drinks. Without ice to hold it, the barracuda would be unfit to eat by the time they made port in Cuba. Had the Cubans known that-they must have! — and accepted the fish just out of a Latin sense of politeness, because the charter crew on Sylvester’s boat had been so eager to be friendly? Or was there another reason?
A policeman moved into sight from around the dock shed. The three men had taken no more than a dozen steps from the boat. As the young cop, walking purposefully, came toward them, the men seemed to falter infinitesimally in their stride. Then Vince and Slim moved out a little ahead of Ed who was carrying the bonito and with what appeared to be studied casualness, put themselves on either side of him, almost as though they were a bodyguard. They kept moving in a sort of inverted V, came abreast of the policeman and passed him. Without giving them a glance, he continued in his positive stride straight to Shayne at the dock edge.
“You Michael Shayne?”
The cop’s youth and truculence rubbed Shayne the wrong way. He nodded sourly.
“Peter Painter wants to see you.”
Shayne took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one, flipping the match into the water. “Suppose I don’t want to see Peter Painter?”
“It don’t make any difference what you want. When a guy’s found murdered with your address in his pocket, you’re involved, brother.”
“Don’t ‘brother’ me! Half the people in greater Miami carry my address in their pocket.”
“But half the people ain’t murdered. Henny Henlein was.”
“What does Painter want me to do? Send flowers? It would be a pleasure-to Henny’s murderer.”
The cop blinked uncertainly. “You hadn’t ought to talk like that. You’re in a bad enough jam as it is. And you’re not helping yourself by keeping Painter waiting.”
Shayne took a deep drag on the cigarette and blew out smoke. “Maybe you don’t know how things are between Peter Painter and me. There’s nothing I’d rather do than keep him waiting-and vice versa.”
The policeman stared at Shayne with the look of a boy who had been sent on a man’s job. “Come on now, Mr. Shayne. I’ve got a job to do.”
Shayne growled, “Why didn’t you put it that way in the first place? Where’s Painter?”
“On Washington, right off Alton-where they found Henlein’s body. Painter won’t let them move it till you get there.”
“Flattering of Petey to call me in on consultation. All right, tell him I’ll be there, after I’ve put my friend where the mosquitoes won’t get him.” He turned abruptly and stepped onto the boat.
When the policeman did not move, Shayne added, “Or would you rather make a real pinch and take me in handcuffed?”
“Of course not, Mr. Shayne.” Now that he saw that the redhead was not going to be difficult, the policeman’s manner changed. He looked toward Sylvester, saying mildly, “He looks like he’s dead.”
“Livest dead man you ever saw. Put your fingers in his mouth if you don’t believe me. But count them first.”
Scooping Sylvester up in his arms as though he were a half-grown boy, Shayne carried him down the companionway steps into the cabin and laid him on a bunk. He’d have a talk with Sylvester tomorrow, after the Cuban sobered up.
He tossed the cigarette butt into the water as he strode up the dock to his car with the young officer. “How’d you find me? I know my office didn’t give out.”
“Painter put out an alert on your license number. The squad boys covering this area reported your car parked here.”
Shayne grunted. “The master criminologist at his devious best.”
By barreling his car all the way between lights, Shayne arrived in a dead heat with the policeman. Except at the near end where a few condemned houses still stood, the street was a pile of rubble where buildings had been razed preparatory to putting up a multiple-unit apartment building. Toward the middle of the block a mound of earth, removed in the process of replacing a water main, covered half the street. Across from it a line of cars was parked-two black police cars, the photographer’s Jaguar and Peter Painter’s lime-green coupe. In front of the mound of dirt two policemen stood guard to deflect the morbidly curious.
Shayne parked and strode toward the dirt pile. Painter, a small, slender man with sharp eyes and a thin black mustache, scowled and caressed his mustache with his thumbnail.
The redhead stopped, looking down at the lifeless body of Henny Henlein. Blood had seeped from a wound in his chest, staining his pin-striped coat. Around his neck, incongruously, was a hangman’s noose. A few feet away a snub-nosed pocket gun with a walnut handle lay in the dirt.
Shayne stooped over the body. There was no question but that the bullet which had killed Henlein had been fired at close range. The hole in his coat was marked with powder burns. The noose around his neck was made out of common clothesline and was tied in the same hangman’s knot as the noose around the neck of the tiny voodoo doll Henlein had brought to Shayne’s office.
“All right, Shayne,” Painter said, making his voice weary, “what’s your involvement in this?”
“What makes you think I’ve got any?”
Painter’s eyes flared. “Because it’s just the kind of cockeyed murder you’d have something to do with. Look at
