know what a relief this is, Mr. Shayne. I’ve so dreaded coming to your office. But now, I’m glad I found the courage to come.”
Shayne put his other big hand over hers in his palm and pressed it warmly. He said, “Private detectives are pretty much like other professional people, Mrs. Renshaw, despite popular fiction and television.”
She lowered straw-colored lashes over her blue eyes, and the intense rigidity went away from her posture. Her fingers relaxed their convulsive grip on his, and he released her hand and went back to his chair while she seated herself on the edge of hers and folded her hands carefully in her lap.
With a faint smile she said, “I don’t read much popular fiction and almost never watch TV. No, Mr. Shayne. My dread arose from a recent personal experience that has been quite… horrible.”
Shayne said, “Tell me about it if you wish. I know most of my competitors in Miami, and if one of them has gotten out of line…”
“Oh, no. Not in Miami. In Chicago. But I had better start at the beginning, hadn’t I?”
Shayne settled back in his swivel chair and got out a pack of cigarettes. He held the pack toward her with lifted eyebrows and she shook her head a fraction of an inch and said, “I don’t smoke, thanks.”
“I will, if you don’t mind.” Shayne lit a cigarette and asked, “What is the beginning?”
“It’s my husband, Steve, Mr. Shayne. He’s in Miami and in terrible danger. If I could only find him… get him to face up to it and come home and seek the protection of the law which he fully deserves…” Her face went to pieces suddenly and she lowered her head and sobbed convulsively while her hands writhed together in her lap.
“My husband isn’t a bad man. Steve’s weak, perhaps… but not bad. He didn’t really do anything so terribly wrong. Nothing that he should be punished for.” She lifted her head abruptly and looked at him with tears streaming down her cheeks. “He didn’t do anything wrong at all. Just got in with the wrong crowd and gambled more than he could afford… and then when those crooked gamblers had won all his cash, it was they who urged him to gamble on credit. He told me all about it, Mr. Shayne. Poor Stevie! He actually thought they were being kind-hearted and generous to him… giving him a chance to win back what he’d lost.
“It wasn’t until he was in ’way over his head that he finally realized how cleverly they had trapped him. They cut off his credit suddenly and demanded payment. My husband isn’t a wealthy man, Mr. Shayne, but he has a fine position of trust with a Savings and Loan Association, and they callously suggested he could get the money there if he couldn’t raise it elsewhere.
“That he could steal it.” She spat the word out with venomous contempt. “You can imagine what that did to a man like Steve. Honestly, Mr. Shayne, he’s one of the most honest and upright men who ever lived. He was flabbergasted at first. He laughed at them. He simply couldn’t believe they were serious. But they warned him that they were. They threatened reprisals… not only physical danger to him, but they threatened his family also. Me and our two children. They warned him that if he went to the police for protection none of us would ever be safe again.
“It was the Syndicate, you see. Perhaps you don’t realize how things are in Chicago. Crime and gambling and all that is completely organized. They have a regular army of what they call ‘enforcers’ and they are actually above the law in Chicago. Most people don’t realize it, but it’s as bad as it ever was back in the Capone days.”
Shayne nodded slowly, his trenched face bleak. “I have a pretty good idea how things are in Chicago. We’ve managed to avoid that sort of thing in Miami, but it’s a constant struggle to keep the Syndicate from getting a foothold. So your husband told you this, Mrs. Renshaw?”
“About three weeks ago. We sat up and talked most of the night. I blame myself for what happened. Steve wanted me to take the children and get out of town fast. I have relatives in California where I could have gone. He thought he could throw them off the track and join me later. But I was a fool, Mr. Shayne. A self-righteous, trusting, goddamned fool!
“I shamed Stevie into staying in Chicago and facing it out. I couldn’t believe that the local police weren’t capable of protecting us. It seemed utterly insane to me for us to run away and hide from underworld forces, no matter how well organized they were. I urged Steve to defy them to do their worst. And they did. The very next day, Mr. Shayne.”
Mrs. Renshaw dropped her eyes and her voice dropped to a whisper. “We have a lovely daughter twelve years old. She was coming home from school when a car drove past on a street corner and a container of acid was thrown at her and two friends who were walking home together. It burned… one side of Marcia’s face badly, and spattered her two innocent companions. That’s the sort of fiends he has against him, Mr. Shayne. How can you fight that? What can a decent person do?”
Shayne shifted in his chair and avoided her gaze. He said, “I get the picture, Mrs. Renshaw. What did your husband do?”
“He disappeared. Without telling me he was going. I would have gone with him. I would have taken our children and disappeared with him, but I’d failed him before and he didn’t trust me again. He left me a note explaining what he was doing… that if he left his job and simply vanished, he thought they’d give up and leave him alone. Because if he no longer had his job, you see, there was no way they could hope to force him to pay the gambling debt, and he was convinced they would see reason and leave us alone thereafter.”
“Was he right?” asked Shayne grimly.
“In a way. We haven’t been molested since. Though I’m convinced our house is continually watched, and I suspect the Syndicate has a tap on our telephone. That’s why… when Steve telephoned me from Miami three days ago… I cut him off fast. Even so, he had time to tell me they had trailed him here and he was remaining in hiding in hourly danger of his life. You must find him for me, Mr. Shayne, before they do. Before the Syndicate’s murderous ‘enforcers’ locate him. I can convince him to go to the police for protection. I know I can. Steve will listen to me. He’s like a frightened little boy. He just isn’t thinking straight. He’s no match for them. He’s had no experience in this sort of thing. He can’t go on this way.”
“You didn’t tell the police about his call?”
“He made me promise not to. He’s utterly terrified of what the Syndicate will do if we dare go to the police.”
“What did he tell you?” demanded Shayne sharply.
“Simply that he is using the name of Fred Tucker down here. He would have said more but I… I’m afraid I cut him off because I’m afraid our telephone is tapped.
“Well, first I went to a private detective in Chicago to solicit professional assistance. I felt so inadequate to come down here alone and attempt to find Steve, and thought I needed the advice and aid of someone who knew about such matters. I know how corrupt the city police are in Chicago, but I thought a private detective would be different. Still, I thought such a man might decline to help me find Steve if he knew he was bucking the Syndicate by doing so, and before I consulted him I decided that I would not tell him the truth.
“I didn’t know anything about how to find a reliable detective in Chicago, of course, nor did I know anyone I could ask, and so I picked the name of a detective agency at random out of the yellow pages. He advertised that divorce cases were his specialty, with a line about tracing ‘erring spouses’… and I had already decided that was how I should represent myself… as a wife whose husband had deserted her.
“I confess I was appalled by the appearance and manners of the man when I met him in his office, but he did appear competent and didn’t ask too many probing questions, and assured me that he had many contacts in Miami which would make it a very simple matter to locate my husband.
“I’m convinced now, Mr. Shayne, that he has connections in the underworld and that he somehow put two and two together and realized that my erring spouse was really the man on whose head the Syndicate has put a price. I think that was why he was eager to take my case and didn’t even demand a retainer in advance… just travelling expenses. A lot of little things happened on the trip down that made me suspicious of him. He’s not a nice man, Mr. Shayne. He frightens me, and now I’m terrified that he will find Steve before the police do.”
“What is his name?”
“Baron McTige, he calls himself. He is uncouth and ruthless, and, I’m convinced, utterly amoral and predatory.” She paused, and Shayne saw her hands clenching themselves together in her lap. “We flew down together, you see, because I insisted on coming with him even though he insisted he could handle the matter alone. And when we arrived yesterday he… he made the most outrageous proposals to me, Mr. Shayne, and revealed his true colors for the first time. I… discharged him from the case, though he had the audacity to sneer at me and inform me that I had a legal obligation to pay him whatever fee he wished to demand after he found Steve. And he’s here in the city now, tracking him down, Mr. Shayne, for the sole purpose, I’m sure, of fingering him to the
