She giggled. “Do you realize I feel much better? I’m like that. I sort of press a button and count three and I’m normal again. Vince-he disappears on me all the time.” She looked puzzled. “What time is it?”
“About ten-thirty.”
She nodded. “He’s out rambling. Rambling and looking and trying to hustle some poor chick out of a couple of bucks. How good a friend of his are you?”
“I can take him or leave him.”
“He owe you some money?”
Shayne grinned. “Betty, you’re a mind reader.”
“Oh, that doesn’t make me such a wonderful guesser,” she said modestly. “He owes all over town. I’ve made him some loans myself. I’m a receptionist, I drag down pretty good money. When he starts paying off you know who’s going to be first in line, yours truly. And I’m supposed to tell people that’s going to be soon.”
“I hear he’s been making it with his boss’s wife. Why does he need money?”
“She doesn’t have too much you can cash in on.”
Shayne drank from the bottle again. “How long’s he been gone?”
“I didn’t even know he was! My trouble is, I get disgusted and I drink too fast and forget to eat anything. Things don’t look so screwed-up after a couple of drinks. And all of a sudden I’m out like a light.” She drank off her Scotch and held out the glass, confident that he would get up and fill it for her. “Sometimes I wake up somewhere else and I don’t know how I got there. What a feeling! I know I ought to eat, but ugh. We adjourned in here with those two nice bottles of Johnny Walker, compliments of Mr. and Mrs. Al Naples. Still wrapped up in tissue paper, like presents. What I wanted to do was go to bed, but Vince has been a flop in that department lately. So we opened the Scotch.”
Shayne handed her a new drink. “He’s on junk, isn’t he?”
She nodded slowly. “The person I’m in love with. I’m not like some people. I don’t jump in the hay with anybody. Before Vince moved up to H that was the one thing I didn’t like about him, the way he would do it with anybody. I don’t include Mrs. Naples. He has to make a living, I grant him that. But I was brought up different and I’m not about to change.”
Her mind skipped. “For instance, the minute you walked in I knew you’d be gentle. Those shoulders of yours. You look tough, but you’re not, are you? I like the way you get me drinks without making a big deal out of it. You don’t know how tired I get of these boys. I’m ready for somebody more mature.”
Her eyes misted over. “We’d be great! I know just the things I’d like to do with you.”
She was beginning to move about excitedly and she was breathing more quickly. She slid forward so her knees touched his.
“But I’m not going to do them!” she said, her eyes shining with excitement. “So never mind asking me. Because I love Vince! I don’t believe in cheating on the guy you love, with all his faults. But how I’d like to!”
He took hold of her knee to hold it still. Her flesh was cool and smooth under his hand, and she moved her leg between his so his hand slid along it. Using both hands, he closed her knees firmly.
“Betty, you and Vince came in here and locked the door. You made yourself a drink. What did he do?”
“What do you think he did?” Little lines of tension gathered around her eyes. “Why do they have to do it? Do you know? Shoot themselves full of that crap and pull out of the human race? I get a kind of-you know”-she seemed embarrassed-“sexy feeling when he puts in the needle, and what good does it do me? I know he’s going to be nodding in thirty seconds. What could I do but get stinking?”
“When was this, Betty, about seven or eight?”
“What’s the point of all the questions? We both know what happened. They sold him a bad bag. They cut it all the way down so it didn’t give him much of a charge. He woke up sick and he had to get dressed and go out looking for somebody with five or ten bucks so he could hunt up a connection and get himself right again. You want some advice about how long to wait? You know better than that. He could walk in this minute, or he might be gone a couple of weeks. That’s what it is with a junkie.”
“There’s a watchman on duty,” Shayne said. “He says nobody’s passed him.”
“A watchman? Don’t be dense, honey. He dozed off. Get me another drink. One more, and then I’m going to eat those baked beans if they strangle me.”
“And Vince didn’t get dressed,” Shayne went on.
He went back to the closet. One section was labeled “Hers,” the other “His.” He pulled a lightweight blue blazer off a hanger. It was longer, more narrow and more rakish than Al Naples’ clothes.
Betty said, “He was sick, he didn’t wear a jacket. Now you’re going to stop being polite? I’ll pour my own drink.”
She misjudged the corner of the bed and went headlong on the crumpled blue sheets. Shayne sorted through the slacks until he found a pair that was too long for Al Naples, with tapered legs into which the older man could never have forced his heavy thighs.
“And he forgot his pants,” Shayne said. “His shoes must be here somewhere.”
Betty groaned. “Why does he do those things? He’s always been so wild-”
“No, this was fairly intelligent,” Shayne said, “and maybe somebody else thought it up for him. He cooked his shot and put it in his arm, and he probably let out a groan to make you think he was getting a jolt of the real thing. It was probably only sugar. He knew you’d knock yourself out with the Johnny Walker as soon as he closed his eyes. And that’s what happened. He hung his clothes in the closet so they wouldn’t get wrinkled. Then he went out the window.”
Shayne pulled the sliding window open as far as it would go. A narrow rope ladder was fixed to two cleats beneath the sill.
“Yeah,” Shayne continued. “He wouldn’t want to dive because somebody might hear the splash. The south shore of Normandy Isle is about an eighth of a mile away. He didn’t have to hurry. The door was locked and no one would bother you. He could swim back half an hour later, unfasten the ladder and let it go. Then he’d dry himself off, get back in bed and give himself a real shot of heroin. He’d be in the clear all the way.”
Betty stared at him, the uncapped whiskey bottle in one hand. “Where is he, then?”
“Probably still in the bay, don’t you think?” Shayne said.
“Vince?” She gave a high giggle. “You’re so wrong. He’s a marvellous swimmer. He could swim to Palm Beach and back.” Her face changed. “Unless somebody-”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Shayne said.
He took the bottle out of her hand and drank from it. He gave it back and left her on the bed, looking after him with a dazed expression.
11
In the other room Steve was on his hands and knees, loops of loose film around his neck and across his back.
“I can’t find either end!” he cried. “It’s a nightmare.”
“It has to be there somewhere,” Shayne said.
“You promised you’d help me!” the boy called after him as he let himself out.
The other girl was waiting on deck for him. She was still barefoot, but she had put on a blouse, a skirt and lipstick. Her hair was up in a knot in back, and with her elbows out and her small breasts poking against the front of her blouse, she was shaping the knot and driving pins into it.
“Well?” she said.
“Well what?”
“I want to get you a drink and start over.” She jabbed in the last pin. “There. Now I look a little more civilized. Did I tell you my name? It’s Lee Ewing, and I know it was silly to jump on your back that way. What’s your name?”
“Mike Shayne,” he said abstractedly, listening.
He tried to get around her, but she sidestepped, putting herself between him and the gangway. “You don’t have to go. I want to tell you how that happened. I couldn’t see why for once two people couldn’t do something
