Shayne entered the Miami News City Room a short time later. The reporter’s eyes were placidly closed and his partially open mouth emitted a rhythmic snoring sound despite the loud clatter of teletypes and the rattle of typewriters filling the room.
Shayne crossed to Rourke’s corner with a grin, nodding greetings to other reporters who hailed him, pulled up a straight chair in front of the attenuated, sleeping figure and sat down. He lit a cigarette and said quietly, “Tell me about the Peralta thing, Tim.”
Rourke’s cadaverous features twitched. His mouth closed, then opened again into a wide yawn. One eyelid lifted cautiously, but he made no other movement.
“Go ’way,” he muttered. “Information desk’s outside.”
Shayne settled himself more comfortably as Rourke closed his eyes again and opened his mouth in a pretense of continuing to snore. The detective said nothing, but reached in a sagging side-pocket of his Palm Beach jacket to lift out a full pint of bourbon. He broke the seal and uncorked the bottle and leaned forward to gravely hold the open bottle under Rourke’s nose. The thin nose twitched and bloodless lips opened greedily. Shayne tilted the bottle and let a couple of ounces dribble into the open mouth.
He took the bottle away and said, cheerfully: “First course. What’s on the Peralta case, Tim?”
Rourke closed his lips and worked them in and out, opened both eyes this time and said warily, “Nothing new. You got an angle?”
Shayne shook his head. “A phone call from Peralta to see him this afternoon. You heard anything at all on it?”
Rourke sighed and dropped his heels off his desk. He sat up and reached for the pint bottle, lifting it deftly from Shayne’s lax grasp. He tilted it to his mouth, let it gurgle for a time, and set it on the desk in front of him. “Not a thing on it since the snatch, Mike.” His deep-set eyes glittered brightly in their hollows. “You got ideas?”
“Trying to pick some up before I see him,” explained Shayne. “Was it your story?”
“Only a follow-up. Human interest stuff. There was plenty of that with Laura Peralta cooperating on the cheesecake angle. How that dame loves to show her legs. Guess she’s damn tired of hiding ’em behind Julio’s millions.”
Shayne took a drag on his cigarette and frowned. “Former show-girl, isn’t she?”
“Right out of Minsky’s.” Rourke took another sip from the bottle and firmly corked it. “You see those first shots she gave the boys that morning?”
Shayne nodded. “X marks the spot.”
“Only the important spot in those pix was a Y and it didn’t need inking in.” Rourke chuckled obscenely. “You think there’s a deal in the making?”
“I don’t know. Fill me in on the actual job. Sort of amateurish, wasn’t it?”
Rourke shrugged. “I dunno. Call it that if you want, but a pro couldn’t have done better. There the bracelet was, lying on top of her bureau, where she’d tossed it the night before. There was a ladder up to her window with the screen cut out. No fingerprints. No clues. No nothing.”
“Did she always leave it lying around?”
“Only when she was too tight to bother with the big wall-safe in the sitting room between her room and her husband’s. After this happened a couple of times in the past, her maid had standing orders from Julio never to leave the room at night until she’d seen the bracelet locked up.”
“And?”
Timothy Rourke shrugged cheerfully. “Your guess is as good as mine. Which is that the maid was more afraid of Laura than of Julio. Her story is that her mistress threw a couple of slippers at her that night when she wanted to lock the thing up, and that, when she went in to knock on Julio’s door to inform him, he couldn’t be wakened. My guess is she didn’t try very hard.”
“So the maid knew the bracelet was left out that night?” said Shayne, thoughtfully.
“Right. And a lot of other people might have guessed it would be if they saw Laura staggering home. Petey Painter put the maid through the wringer plenty, so why not ask him?”
“I will. The burglar didn’t arouse Mrs. Peralta?”
“Hell,” said Rourke, disgustedly, “a whole herd of elephants wouldn’t have aroused her from the one she had hung on, from what I gathered.” He reached for the bottle and took a long swig, grimaced and glared at the amber fluid remaining. “Nasty stuff,” he muttered. “Responsible for nine-tenths of the troubles of modern civilization, according to statistics.”
Shayne grinned and reached out his arm to take the bottle for a short drink. He said: “Here’s to more and bigger troubles,” and then went on:
“The ladder at the window. Was that just fortuitously left around?”
“Brought in for the job. One of those sectional affairs made of light metal. Aluminum or magnesium or something. You see them advertised under Army Surplus bargains in the Sunday papers. They don’t bill them that way, but might as well advertise them as Second-Story-Worker Specials.”
Shayne said, “Give me a quick run-over on the rest of the household.”
“A batch of other servants I don’t know about. You can be sure they all knew about Laura’s propensity for hanging one on and leaving her emeralds lying around. Then there’s Julio’s secretary, whom you’re just going to love; a governess, whom you’re probably going to lay; and the two Brats.” He gave the final word a capital B and reached for the bottle again.
Shayne ran knobby fingers through his hair and said: “Come again.”
“Edwin and Edwina. Julio’s first-born, and the best positive proof of the degeneration of the species I’ve run into for a long time.” He waved Shayne’s speculative glance aside with a long thin hand and shook his head stubbornly. “I’ll not deprive you of the pleasure of meeting them first-hand.”
Shayne looked at his watch and asked a final question:
“Know what firm carried the insurance?”
“Not a firm. A man named Hamilton Barker is the adjuster who’s handling the claim. He refused to talk to me about it. In fact, there was a lot of hush-hush on the whole thing.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I’m not sure. It was a feeling I got at the time. Circles within circles. Peralta himself was most uncommunicative. Didn’t want the servants interviewed, and insisted I get all my information from Painter. You know how Painter is when he takes over a case personally.”
“Yeh, I know.”
“Of course,” Rourke admitted judicially, “Peralta may have good reasons for not wanting reporters digging in too deep. There was that matter of the cyanide and the two Boxers.”
“What was that?”
“Happened about a week before the bracelet was snatched. All I could get was hints and evasive answers, and it wasn’t even officially reported to the police, so far as I could learn. Well, hell, they were his dogs and his kids.”
“You mean the kids poisoned the dogs?” Shayne asked incredulously.
“That’s the way I pieced it together. I tell you they’re precocious.”
“You think the death of the dogs had any bearing on the robbery?”
“Well, it did set things up pretty nice for the ladder job. The dogs did run loose at night.”
“You think that’s why Peralta clammed up? Because he suspects the kids engineered the snatch?”
“Hell, Mike. They’re only about ten years old. But I don’t know, at that. They’re a couple of enterprising youngsters.”
“You think Petey has any such suspicions?”
“Who knows what Petey suspects? Frankly, I doubt that he even knows the dogs were poisoned. I told you it wasn’t even reported when it happened. I ran onto it by accident.”
“Give me a run-down on Julio Peralta. Seems to me his name turns up in the papers frequently.”
“Yeah, and he doesn’t like it. He’s one of those rich Cubans who got out with their cash before Castro came in. He was educated in this country. Harvard, I think, and had a sort of reputation as an international playboy some years ago. Married New York money and settled down in Cuba a dozen years ago… all cozy with Batista. That’s where the twins came from. His wife died giving birth, and about five years ago he married the present Mrs. Peralta. Laura’s quite a lush dish.”
