moves. And if something goes wrong this time I’m afraid-” She stopped and drank unhappily. “He’s proud of his teeth. He had caps put on last year and they’re absolutely perfect. The way he looks is the only real thing he’s ever had. And I can see how it’s going to end-with one person holding him and another hitting him in the face with brass knuckles.”
“How what is going to end?” Shayne asked.
She hesitated. “He’s running around with a married woman.” She searched his face. “Well, I started and I might as well finish. She’s staying at the St. Albans. Vince met her there at the pool. She must be thirty-five and she has loads of money. I saw her once and she’s not too bad-looking for somebody that old. I’m not jealous. Oh, I’m jealous, but I always knew I couldn’t have one hundred percent of Vince, even fifty-one percent. It isn’t the money that’s the big attraction this time. It’s who she’s married to. Would the name Al Naples mean anything to you?”
Shayne kept his face carefully blank. “I’ve heard of him. I’d say Mrs. Al Naples was somebody to stay away from.”
“But you’re not Vince, are you? She’s not the first married woman staying at the St. Albans that Vince has gone to bed with. But nothing like this ever happened before. The others were all married to-I don’t know-stocking manufacturers from New Jersey, who wouldn’t know what to do even if they found out. And they probably wouldn’t be too interested in finding out.”
The red-headed waitress stopped at the entrance to their booth, still trying. “Don’t trust him, Rose. Be smart for once in your life. The way he gets business is to keep his name in the papers. He’ll notify TV and radio and Life magazine. Big brave private eye rounds up dangerous teenage thug with his bare hands.”
“No, he won’t,” Rose said.
“And why do you care what happens to that bastard, after what he did to you-”
“I wasn’t married to him, after all. He didn’t make me any promises.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
“I wasn’t dumb enough to believe them. Please. You don’t know as much as you think.”
The redheaded girl flounced off.
Rose went on to Shayne, “Vince slept with her once, just once. She thinks that makes her the local expert on Vince Donahue. Everybody thinks I’m biased about him, but I know exactly what he’s like. You thought Grace was the one he’d go for, didn’t you? Yes, you did. You weren’t even going to ask me if I knew him. But she couldn’t give him what he needed. Everybody thought it was temporary with me. As I very well know, I’m not too terrific. I do all right in bed, but I can’t carry on a conversation about nothing, like some girls. And he told people it was just an in- between stand with me, the nice thing about it was that I didn’t make him work. That’s not why it happened. He needed somebody to listen to him who loved him. Who knew he was a heel in a lot of ways, but who loved him just the same. He told me about those other girls because he couldn’t boast about them to anybody else. And after a while he cut out the other girls. Well, I don’t want to fool myself. He’s like butter on a hot skillet, and he always will be. Mr. and Mrs. Al Naples-there was a combination I couldn’t beat. What would you call Al Naples? A mobster, I reckon. Vince couldn’t ever be that important himself, because you have to work your way up and he can’t stick to one thing that long. But he could get a tiny piece of it, do you see, Mr. Shayne? — through Naples’ wife.”
“How did she turn out?”
“She was very good,” Rose said without irony. “I mean sexually. She’d been so scared of her husband that she’d never had anybody before. Vince said it was like turning loose a skyrocket. They had some busy afternoons. Vince wasn’t exaggerating. I was in a position to know.”
“The more I hear about Vince Donahue,” Shayne said, drinking, “the less I expect to like him.”
“That’s the trouble with talking about him! I can’t explain him to you and I’m not going to try. I think the reason the sex part was so good with them, if you want me to go on, was that it was so dangerous. Naples almost walked in on them a dozen times. Boy! One time Vince had to hide in the closet. That sounds funny, but it isn’t so funny when you think that the husband’s Al Naples, and he used to murder people. They both knew what would happen if he caught them, and I couldn’t compete with that. So far they’ve been lucky, but there is such a thing as the law of averages.”
“And he can’t catch them together if Vince is in jail?”
“That. Other things, too.”
She finished her drink and shook her head when he looked at her to see if she wanted a refill. “I was so worried I tried to get him to stop seeing her. I never did that with any of the other women, doesn’t that prove I’m not really jealous? ‘Realistic’ is a better word. She gave him money to move out of here. He didn’t want to go, but I sort of made him. I thought if they had a place of their own to meet it might not be quite so risky. They can’t deliberately take chances. I told him not to tell me or anybody else his new address. He’s been making some new connections lately and I thought-well.”
“What new connections, Rose?”
“I can’t tell you everything. There’s a limit to how much trouble I want to get him into.”
“Did he have a gun?”
“Never! He was very snooty about people who went in for that kind of thing.”
“Do you know anybody named Pedro Sanchez or Tom Pond?”
She groaned. “Oh, no.”
“Does that mean you know them?”
“I met Pete once. I didn’t know he was in town. I have to stop talking now. I think it was all right to tell you about Mrs. Naples-you could have picked that up from any number of people. But I want to ask you a favor.”
“You don’t want me to tell him I’ve talked to you?”
“That’s right. I could have made you promise before, but I don’t pay too much attention to promises any more. I hope you won’t tell him. He divides the world into rats and non-rats, and I don’t want him to put me in with the rats. I’d like to wish things would have a happy ending. At the same time I’m pretty sure they won’t.”
She blew her nose into a Kleenex and said brightly, “That’s my big drawback. I take myself seriously.”
Shayne wanted to reassure her that happy endings sometimes happen, but in Vince Donahue’s case he didn’t think that one was likely. Reaching out, he brushed the point of her breast very lightly with his thumb,
“You’re a damned attractive girl, Rose.”
“No, I’m not.”
He left her crying into her Kleenex. He collected some dirty looks on the way out.
7
Returning to his car, Shayne called Harry Bass’s number. The line was busy. He drove south and tried the number again after several blocks. When he found it still busy, he turned off Collins Avenue onto 71st Street, leading to Normandy Isle.
There was no answer when he rang Harry’s doorbell, though the lights were still on in the house. He tried the door. It was locked.
After ringing again he walked along the porch to look into the front hall. The phone there was off the hook. Apparently Harry had been taken to the hospital for X rays.
He returned to the Buick and started off. But he kept the wheel over and circled back into the turnaround. Something had caught his eye as he was leaving: one of the compartments of the two-car garage, which had been open before, was closed now. Taking a flashlight, he went between the house and the garage and shone the light through the duty side window of the garage. One car was a little Volkswagen. The other was Doc Waters’ sleek black Thunderbird.
Frowning, Shayne went around the house and up on the flagstone terrace that overlooked the golf course. This side of the house was dark. Suddenly the beam from a flashlight as powerful as his own hit him in the eyes.
Doc Waters’ voice said, “The hardworking shamus. I might have known you’d look in the garage.”
“Get that light out of my face,” Shayne said evenly.
After an instant Waters turned off the flashlight. As soon as Shayne’s eyes adjusted he saw that the bookie
