The Pink Flamingo Motel was less than two miles from the Bright Spot, and Shayne remembered having seen the sign on the highway pointing off to it. When he arrived minutes later, there were not more than ten cars parked in front of cabins, indicating occupancy. Only three cabins showed lights inside. In the exact center of the half-moon of cabins was a red neon light that said OFFICE, and the word VACANCY beneath it.
Shayne braked to a fast stop in front of the light and jumped out. Inside was a small room with a breast-high counter across it. There was a man behind the counter with bushy hair and a wizened face. His eyes looked slyly evasive as he held his head cocked slightly on one side with only the top of his shoulders showing above the counter. Shayne strode up to him and demanded, “Where is Fred Tucker?”
“Tucker? Why you asking?” The eyes glittered with more than ordinary interest and the manager’s tongue flicked out to wet his thin lips.
“Police business.” Shayne made his voice harsh and authoritative. He flipped open his wallet to flash his private license, and Peterson glanced down at it and then slyly upward to Shayne’s face. “Number Three.”
Shayne started to turn, paused to demand over his shoulder, “Why did you deny he was here over the phone half an hour ago.”
“Because he asked me to when he checked in.” Peterson made his voice a servile whine. “No law against that, is there, if a man wants privacy?”
Shayne went outside and glanced at the numbers on the cabin doors. No. 9 was next to the office on the right, and No. 8 beyond it. Shayne strode around the arc to Number 3. A late model, light sedan stood in front of the cabin. Light streamed out through an unshaded window. Shayne knocked loudly on the door.
He twisted the knob when there was no response. The door opened and he stepped over the threshold and saw the body of a man lying on the floor at the foot of the bed. He wore a white shirt and dark trousers, and lay face down in a pool of blood. The back of his head was smashed in like an eggshell. A blood-smeared whiskey bottle lay on the floor a couple of feet from his head.
Shayne’s experienced first glance told him the man couldn’t possibly still be alive, but he instinctively leaped forward and knelt beside the body. He touched his shoulders first, and then put his knuckles against the flesh of his cheek. There was body warmth still beneath the surface, but not the warmth of life. The man had been dead for half an hour perhaps.
Shayne sank back on his haunches and looked down broodingly at the corpse. He looked to be above medium height, and thin for his age. His dark brown hair was matted with blood in the back. Shayne didn’t attempt to move the man’s head so he could see his features clearly, but without doing so it was plainly evident that he was clean- shaven.
Where then, was the newly-grown mustache that Sloe Burn had mentioned as a characteristic of her Freddie?
Still kneeling beside the body, Shayne patted both hip pockets without finding a wallet, and wormed his hand successively into each side pants pocket and found them empty. He got to his feet slowly and looked about the room without seeing a discarded jacket. There was a light tan summer suit on a hanger inside the open closet beyond the end of the bed, with a closed brown suitcase sitting beneath it.
His brooding gaze went on around the room and was arrested by a framed photograph on the bureau. It was a picture of Mrs. Renshaw and two small children. A younger Mrs. Renshaw than the woman who had visited his office that afternoon, but unmistakably the same woman. He studied it for a long moment, and then turned his head slowly to look all about the rest of the room.
There was no sign of a struggle. The faucet dripped monotonously in a sink in the far corner, and there was a two-burner gas plate on an oilcloth-covered table to the right of it, and on the left the door of a refrigerator stood open. It was an old refrigerator, and the open door was causing it to run loudly. From where he stood, Shayne could see a carton of eggs and a bottle of milk on the top shelf. Below were two avocados and a quarter pound of butter in a chipped saucer, and there were half a dozen oranges on the bottom.
On the floor, halfway between the dead man and the refrigerator, were the two halves of a long loaf of French bread that had been roughly torn apart.
Outside, Shayne heard a car start up and pull away hastily. He strode to the open door and stepped out. The car had come from behind the arc of cabins, and it swung around the side of No. 1 as he stood there, and into the winding road leading out to the Trail.
Shayne watched its taillights disappear among the palmettos, and then stalked back to the motel office. It was empty when he entered this time. There was a bell on the counter with a card in front of it that said, “Ring for Manager.” Shayne hit the top of it sharply with his palm three times, and it made a loud, pinging noise, but nothing else happened.
There was a hinged wooden flap at the end of the counter. Shayne lifted it and went around behind where there was a telephone on a shelf. He lifted the receiver and dialed Chief Will Gentry’s home telephone number.
The chief, himself, answered.
“Mike Shayne, Will. Got a pencil?”
“Sure, Mike.”
“I’m at the Pink Flamingo Motel… off the Trail, west.”
After a pause, Gentry said, “And…?”
“I’ve got a dead man in Cabin Number Three. The occupant of the cabin is registered as Fred Tucker, Will.”
“Hell. That goddamned Syndicate…?”
Shayne said, “Maybe. But it doesn’t look like a Syndicate kill. Also… there’s a couple other things.” He sighed unhappily. “I thought you’d want to look at it yourself, Will.”
“Stay right there.”
“Of course. Don’t I always when I turn up a body for you? See you.”
Shayne hung up the telephone. He hesitated and then opened a door leading into a corridor behind the office. It was lighted by a ceiling bulb, and he followed it back to a door opening into what was evidently the manager’s living quarters. The room was lighted, and Shayne stood in the doorway without entering. There was an open suitcase on the bed with some shirts and underwear in it, which looked as though it had been abandoned by the owner in his haste to get away. The top bureau drawer sagged open, and from where Shayne stood he could see it was empty.
He turned away from the open door and followed the corridor back to a rear exit with a carport. It was empty now, and tire tracks through the sand led around the rear of the cabins. Shayne pulled the door shut behind him and trudged through the sand, following the tracks around to the side of Cabin No. 1, where they circled to join the paved road leading out through the palmetto hummocks to the main highway. He stopped at this point, convinced that the car he had seen round the row of cabins and disappear had been driven by the bushy-haired motel manager.
The wail of a siren came faintly through the night from the Tamiami Trail, and then it lingered away to silence as the patrol car turned off on the side road toward the motel.
Shayne turned and walked slowly back to No. 3. He stood outside the open door, his rangy figure bathed in the light from inside as a radio car came up fast from the palmettos and braked to a stop in front of him. A uniformed policeman leaped out of the far side of the car and came around through the headlights toward him. The driver got out more slowly.
The first officer was young and appeared excited. He stopped in front of Shayne and asked truculently, “You report a murder?”
Shayne jerked his head toward the open door and said, “Inside.”
The driver was older and more phlegmatic. He said, “Hold it, Johnny,” as the other started to rush inside the cabin. He stopped beside the redhead, sighing gustily. “Mike Shayne, huh? We got it over the radio. Don’t mess anything up, son,” he advised his younger partner mildly. “Leave that for the dicks.”
“I just wanted to see for sure.” Johnny stood outside the door peering inside curiously.
“If Mike Shayne says there’s a stiff, there’s pretty sure to be a stiff. In fact it’s a pretty good bet there’ll always be a stiff where this guy turns up. That right, Shamus?”
Shayne said, “Somebody has to find your bodies for you.”
“Sure. Or make ’em for us? Ha-ha.” The officer told his younger colleague, “If you’re through gawkin’, Johnny-boy, get on the radio and confirm it. What’s his name and who killed him?” he asked Shayne
