The police car slowed and pulled in behind him, and Shayne sat fuming behind the wheel of his car while the officer got lazily out of the right side and strolled forward to lean his elbows on the door at Shayne’s right. He had a big paunch, and a seamed, weather beaten face, and he was chewing a big wad of gum as rhythmically and placidly as a contented cow working on her cud. As he leaned on the door, Shayne demanded impatiently, “What the hell is it, Officer? I’m in a hurry to keep an appointment.”
“Noticed you was in a hurry all right. Wondered right away where at was the fire.”
“For God’s sake,” said Shayne, wonderingly. “I wasn’t doing over twenty-five.”
The policeman nodded gravely. “We clocked you the last two blocks. Forty-two you was making by our speedometer.”
“Then you’d better get your damned speedometer checked,” snapped Shayne. “Step aside, for Christ’s sake, and let me get along.”
“Resistin’ arrest, huh?” grated a thin voice at his left elbow. A long arm snaked in past him to turn the ignition key in the lock. The driver of the police car had come up on Shayne’s left. He was thin and hatchet-faced and spoke with a sneering, Georgia drawl. “You ain’t goin’ no place. Mister. Speedin’ is a right serious offense here on Miami Beach. We loves our children, Mister.”
Two limousines sped past in the same direction as he spoke, both chauffeur-piloted and both doing fifty or more miles per hour. Shayne motioned to them with a big hand and growled disgustedly: “Then why aren’t you after those two? They’re driving twice as fast as I was.”
“Right now, we got you,” Hatchet-face told him. “I say we take him in for resistin’ arrest, Geely,” he went on, speaking past the detective to his gum-chewing partner on the other side.
Shayne slumped back against the seat and looked from one to the other in irritated amazement. “What the hell are you two clowns trying to prove?”
“Resisting arrest, sure enough,” agreed Geely, placidly. “Threatening an officer to boot, I reckon.”
“Wait a minute, damn it!” exclaimed Shayne, controlling his anger as best be could. “There’s some mistake. We’re all in the same racket, for God’s sake.” He reached for his wallet to show his credentials, but as he drew it out, Hatchet-face leaned forward without warning and slapped him viciously with the back of his left hand, while Geely exclaimed, virtuously, “Bribery, by God. Now you are going in for sure.”
Michael Shayne sat very still with his half-opened wallet in his hand. There were four white marks on his left cheek from Hatchet-face’s fingers, and that lanky individual had stepped back hastily and drawn his service revolver after slapping him. Shayne’s gray eyes blazed and the lines in his gaunt face became deep trenches as he sat quietly and fought for self-control.
Geely quietly seated himself beside him on the front seat and closed the door. He interrupted his gum- chewing long enough to say, heavily, “Put your bribe-money away, Mister, and get this heap moving. Turn right at the next corner and back to the police station. You foller along,” he directed his companion. “Resisting arrest and attempted bribery.”
Hatchet-face holstered his gun and swaggered back to the patrol car. Michael Shayne replaced his wallet with shaking fingers. He put both hands on the wheel and sat there for a moment, fighting the most overpowering anger he had ever known. After a moment, and without looking at Geely, he said hoarsely, “Maybe you know what you’re doing, but, by God, I’m telling you…”
“I’m telling you,” said Geely, placidly, “to drive to the police station and no more monkey business less’n you want my sap on the other side of your face from where you already got slapped.”
Shayne drove to the police station without speaking again. He was followed closely by the official car, and Hatchet-face pulled up beside him when he parked behind the station.
Shayne opened the door to get out and felt a steel band snapped around his right wrist. Geely opened the door on his side and stepped out, tugging urgently on the links of chain binding his left wrist to his prisoner.
Michael Shayne clamped his teeth together hard and slid over to follow Geely submissively. Hatchet-face sidled up beside him as they went around the walk to go in the front, and he held his gun half-drawn from its holster as they mounted the steps and went inside, three abreast.
There were half a dozen policemen and a reporter for the Miami Herald lounging about a table with a greasy pack of cards in the anteroom. They all glanced up carelessly, and there was a moment of intense silence. Two of the cops knew Shayne well, and the reporter was an old friend.
He came to his feet with swiftly indrawn breath as he took in the trio. “Sweet Mother!” he ejaculated. “It’s Mike Shayne. Hey, boys…”
Geely and Hatchet-face marched Shayne past the table toward the desk sergeant in the rear while all the card players stared at the sight, and Shayne twisted his head to snarl a single sentence to the reporter: “Get Tim Rourke.”
Geely shouldered him forward roughly as he spoke, and Shayne set his teeth again and went with them in stony-faced silence to face the sergeant whom he had also known for years and who carefully avoided looking at him while he was officially booked for speeding, resisting arrest, and attempted bribery.
Shayne gave his name, address and occupation in a steady voice, demanded permission to telephone a lawyer and was told he could do that later. The reporter, Edwards, was loudly clamoring for a word from him and an explanation of the charges from the two arresting officers, but he was rudely shoved back and Michael Shayne was marched back through a dingy corridor and unceremoniously locked into a cell.
He stayed in the cell three hours. During that period he smoked all his cigarettes and worked hard at the job of accepting the situation philosophically. It was the most difficult thing he had ever done, but he knew from long experience that anger wasn’t going to get him anywhere. Nor, he conceded moodily, were mere innocence and outraged denials of guilt. He had been in the business long enough to fully realize that when the police decide to frame a man, there is nothing to prevent their doing so. The sworn testimony of two police officers in court would be accepted at face value by any judge or jury against the unsupported denials of a citizen.
He knew, too, that as soon as word of his situation got through to Timothy Rourke, the wheels would be set in motion to effect his release as swiftly as possible, and that Edwards would contact Rourke at once.
So there wasn’t any use wasting time thinking about that phase of it.
The one thing that remained as a possible subject for constructive thought was the single question: Why?
His arrest hadn’t been an accident. He wasn’t naive enough to accept that answer. He knew he had been driving less than thirty miles an hour when picked up, and even if Geely and Hatchet-face were two over-zealous eager beavers who had been attracted by that slight excess over the legal limit, their further actions after stopping him were proof enough that it wasn’t merely a routine traffic pick-up.
Orders from Peter Painter were, of course, the obvious answer. He had been on Alton Road nearing the Peralta address just prior to four-thirty when the incident occurred. If Painter had known the hour of his appointment, it would have been simple enough to have the two officers planted on Alton Road to pick him up on some pretext.
But again: Why? Why in the name of God should Painter go to such lengths to keep him away from Julio Peralta? True, he and the Beach detective chief had clashed often in the past, and Painter had more than once openly sought to prevent his practicing his profession on the Beach, but a phony arrest and faked charges were going far beyond anything that had happened before.
By the time two hours and a half had passed and Shayne had smoked his last cigarette, he had achieved to a fair degree the philosophical mood he sought. Painter (if it were indeed Painter behind it) had him where the hair was short, and that was that. He couldn’t, Shayne thought, hold him in jail more than a few hours. Rourke would see to it that bond was forthcoming, and Shayne resolved to circumspectly keep his mouth shut after he was released until he could do some digging into the whys and wherefores. There was the matter of the bad manners of Hatchet-face and Geely to be disposed of, but that could well wait until later.
Michael Shayne was lying stretched out at full length on the iron bunk with a folded mattress under him when a turnkey opened the door of his cell at seven-thirty.
Shayne swung long legs over the edge of the bunk and sat up, rumpling his hair and grinning. “Got a cigarette on you, Bud?”
“I don’t smoke and my name ain’t Bud and front and center with you,” the turnkey said surlily, holding the cell door open.
Shayne went out and down the aisle to a small, brilliantly lighted room where Timothy Rourke was pacing
