“Probably. That’s why I’ve got to get there first.” Shayne looked down sombrely at the girl’s lax body again. She was fully clothed except for her feet which were shoeless, and her nylon-clad legs were drawn up in tight vees against her thighs, indicating the agony of her death throes. From his position Shayne could see the sole of her stockinged left foot, and his eyes narrowed as he stared at it from across the room.
“Painter and Erskine will be sore as hell,” Rourke began, but Michael Shayne wasn’t listening to him. He was moving forward slowly, staring intently at the body, and Rourke watched in open-mouthed amazement as he dropped to his knees beside the corpse again, and began tugging the hem of her white dress up over her knees to expose bare white thighs.
“For Christ’s sake, Mike!” he exclaimed in revulsion. “You said she’d been dead for three hours.”
Shayne disregarded him, exposing the snaps of her garter-belt and clumsily unfastening them from the top of her left nylon.
Rourke continued to watch in angry perplexity while the detective stripped the stocking down off the cold flesh and free from her foot. Then he peeled a small square of yellow cardboard from the instep and stood up, looking down at it broodingly.
“What in hell is that, Mike?”
“It looks like the torn half of a claim check,” Shayne told him casually.
Rourke swallowed hard and his gaze darted about the room. “You think that’s what the murderer was looking for?”
“It’s a good guess.” Shayne dropped it in his side pocket and went back briskly to the window where he peered out again.
“Coast is clear,” he announced. “They’re going around the corner headed downtown.” He turned back, tugging Rourke’s own automatic out of his hip pocket, holding it carefully by the corrugated handgrip. He looked down at the gun bleakly for a long moment while Rourke watched him uneasily, and then dropped it on the floor.
“I’m going to make a trade with Will Gentry,” he announced, “but you don’t have to tell him, Tim. That’s your gun on the floor, by the way. Don’t touch it. I think it may very well have the murderer’s fingerprints on the barrel. Blurred, maybe, but they should be able to get enough for comparison with any prints they can pick up here.”
“Whose prints, Mike?”
Shayne shook his red head maddeningly. “I don’t think you should know. Just be sure that they get prints from it, and check them against what they find here.”
“But it’s my gun, Mike. How shall I tell Will it got here?”
Shayne paused a moment, tugging at his ear-lobe while he considered this.
“Tell it to him this way, Tim. That I used your car this evening, and after he and Erskine left my apartment, I told you to be careful handling your pistol because I thought the barrel of it might carry the fingerprints of the man who stole Peralta’s emerald bracelet. Then say you brought it with you when you came up to see Felice, and dropped it on the floor when you saw her lying there. That should cover up pretty well.”
“Yeh,” said Rourke unhappily. “For you, maybe. If the murderer’s prints are on it, I’m going to be ’way out on a limb.”
“Why, no, Tim.” Shayne smiled happily. “You’ll be the man of the hour. Reporter’s gun identifies murderer,” he declaimed loudly. He walked toward the reporter. “You got it straight, Tim. Call in as soon as I leave, but stall as much as you can when they get here to keep them off Peralta. There’ll be a certain amount of protocol involved anyway, with Painter insisting on handling the Beach end. It should give me plenty of time.”
“Time for what, Mike?”
“To wrap things up and maybe get my hands on the other half of this claim check.” Shayne stopped in front of Rourke who stood stubbornly in front of the closed door. His face was deeply trenched and his gray eyes were bleak. “And maybe find Lucy,” he added as though she were a casual afterthought.
Timothy Rourke wet his lips and dropped his eyes before the redhead’s hard gaze. He nodded unwillingly and stepped aside to let Shayne go out, and muttered, “Good hunting.”
Shayne went past him and hurried down the stairs. A little knot of interested onlookers had gathered across the street while the patrol car was there, but they were dispersed now and the last of the laggards were turning into the cocktail lounge for a nightcap and to discuss the queer affair of two drunkards getting out of a parked car to knock each other out cold in the street.
No one noticed Shayne slip out of the house and hurry back to the Boulevard and Rourke’s car with the key in the ignition where the reporter always left it. He got in and started the motor and drove south toward the Causeway to Miami Beach.
THIRTEEN
The Jai Alai Club on South Miami Beach was, like Las Putas Buenas on the Miami riverfront, almost exclusively patronized by a Spanish-speaking clientele, but there the resemblance ended.
The Jai Alai Club was quiet, well-run, and orderly. There was a small bar, it is true, but it dispensed mostly cerveza. There were two well-patronized billiard tables in front, and ranged along the wall toward the back were a series of small tables where chess, checkers and card games were quietly enjoyed by players who could toy with a single glass of beer for an hour without being noticeable.
It was eleven-thirty when Michael Shayne walked into the Club. Both billiard tables were in use, and most of the tables toward the rear had occupants.
Shayne walked back past the bar slowly, noticing that most of the patrons were middle-aged and well- dressed, and that none of them did more than glance at him incuriously as he passed by.
A middle-aged and very fat Cuban sat with an alert young companion at the last table in the rear. They weren’t playing any game, nor did they have drinks in front of them. Shayne paused beside their table and said, “I am looking for Senor Alvarez.”
The fat man looked up at him genially, though his eyes were cobra-bright. “Your name, Senor?”
“Michael Shayne.” The rangy detective automatically removed his hat, showing the shock of red hair that was his trademark in the city.
The young man leaned forward and said something quickly and earnestly to the older man in Spanish. He nodded and said, “You are expected, Senor. The first door on the left.”
Shayne went to the first door on the left and opened it. A slender, dapper, brown-faced man sat alone at a table in the center of the small room. He had sensitive, intelligent features, and very even, white teeth which he showed in a pleasant smile when he recognized his visitor. “Mr. Shayne.” His voice was clipped and betrayed no trace of an accent. For many years before the advent of Castro he had been employed as Cuban correspondent and feature writer for one of the American wire services, but his laudatory accounts of the revolutionary policies had earned him disfavor and he had been recalled soon after Castro took over.
His resignation had followed, and he had established himself in Miami as the center of a conservative, pro- Castro group, which utilized every means in its power to combat the growing anti-Castro sentiment in the United States that was constantly being fomented by the right-wing press.
Shayne had met him twice in the company of Timothy Rourke, who had known him intimately for more than a decade, and he had formed a high opinion of his intelligence and his personal integrity. Now, Alvarez stood up to lean across the table and shake hands warmly, “How is our good friend, Timothy Rourke?”
“Tim’s fine.” Shayne sat down and began without preamble, “I need some straight information fast. Do you trust me enough to answer some pertinent questions without asking why?”
“I think I trust any friend of Tim Rourke’s,” Alvarez told him gravely.
“I know that you’re closely in touch with the Castro supporters here. What do you know about the activities of Julio Peralta?”
“Peralta is a question-mark, Mr. Shayne. I do not trust him.”
“He is working for Castro. Using his own money to buy arms to ship over for the movement.”
“Is he, Mr. Shayne?”
“Isn’t he?” Shayne asked in astonishment.
