Shayne looked at him in surprise. He quickly added a mocking half-grin to make the surprise seem less real.
Painter said, “I see you know nothing about it. Of course not. Did you expect anything else, Sanderson? Frankly, I didn’t.”
“Refresh my memory,” Shayne said.
“I’ll tell you what little I know, so you’ll know precisely what gaps I want filled.” He moved around the table and sat down, tipping into balance on the back two legs of the chair. “My relations with the Bureau of Narcotics are currently not too good. We had a difference of opinion a few months ago. They thought I had something to do with the failure of a raid they had hopes for. Actually they bungled the affair themselves from start to finish. Well, I’ve had a tip from my own sources. This one I’m keeping to myself. When I’m ready for an arrest I’ll hand it to those slewfeet on a silver platter. They’re the experts on drugs, they think. Everybody else is nowhere.”
“Are you going to tell me about it?” Shayne said.
“Without interruptions,” Painter replied. “The tip comes from an export-import man who’s been feeding me information for years. He heard from connections in France that five hundred thousand dollars worth of heroin was on its way to Miami. That’s a retail figure, of course. Thanks to efficient police work, we have the drug problem under control here. It can’t be eliminated entirely, considering the comings and goings of travelers from New York and the Caribbean. All of a sudden heroin has become surprisingly simple to procure, excellent heroin at a non-panic price. I know that the shipment left Nice during a ten-day period in October. I cabled the French police to check hotel registrations. One of the Miamians who was visiting Nice at the time was Harry Bass.”
“Harry has nothing to do with narcotics,” Shayne said flatly.
“As a regular thing, of course not. He wouldn’t have public opinion behind him on it, which is unfortunately the case with bookmaking. But as a one-shot, to meet a sudden demand for capital? I wonder. The profits are enormous, and they can be realized immediately. We’re putting pressure on all our stoolies to find out about it, but it’s being handled very cleverly. We had our first break this afternoon. Sanderson, you tell him. He might not believe me.”
Sanderson said, “It’s second or third hand, Mike. Just a rumor that one of the big bookies is behind it.”
“I don’t pretend to have all the answers,” Painter said. “How about Steve Bass? Is he a pusher?”
Shayne ground out his cigarette on the floor. “This is all news to me.”
“Now Shayne,” Painter said pityingly. “The steno is taking this down. That statement’s absurd on the face. There are too many coincidences here.”
“Harry’s an extremist on the subject,” Shayne said. “He won’t do business with anybody who comes anywhere near narcotics.”
Painter teetered on the back two legs of his chair. “That kind of operator will always make an exception if the price is right. And how about you, Shayne? Your principles have a way of bending when there’s money involved.”
Shayne put both hands flat on the table. A pulse in his forehead was beginning to beat dangerously. “You think I’ve been going in for smuggling heroin?”
Sanderson put in, “Chief, maybe we ought to get back to that kid who was missing from the boat. Shayne says-”
Painter stopped him with a movement of his hand. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Shayne’s.
“If Harry Bass and Al Naples have a heroin deal going, they need a contact, somebody with a tough veneer to keep the small boys in line, somebody who can go back and forth with parcels without stirring up the narcotics people. I’m an admirer of your footwork. I may not be able to pin it on you. But I can make you stand still for this assaulting-an-officer rap, and that’s the deal I’m offering. A clean bill of health, in return for which you tell me everything you know on the subject of the Basses, senior and junior, Al Naples and his boat and half a million dollars worth of uncut heroin.”
Shayne came to his feet “You little pipsqueak, I wouldn’t give you the time of day! If I’m going to be slammed for hitting a cop, I think I’ll compound it.”
“Sanderson!” Painter piped.
Shayne picked up the bottle of red ink with one swipe of his big paw. Neither Sanderson nor the stenographer moved to stop him. As Shayne’s arm cocked, Painter shrank away from the blazing look in his eyes, and his chair went over backward.
The door opened and Tim Rourke and Harry Halstead, Shayne’s lawyer, came in.
“Captain Rourke of the U. S. Cavalry,” Rourke announced. “Hi, Mike. Been hitting cops again, have you? Where’s Painter?”
14
Shayne put the bottle of ink on the table and dusted his hands. Painter scrambled to his feet.
“You heard that, Sanderson!” he cried. “You heard him threaten me.”
“I did,” Sanderson said gravely. “And he called you a pipsqueak. That’s going to count against him.”
Painter darted him a suspicious look. “Well, I guess we’ve got enough on him already,” he said grudgingly. He glanced up at his big redheaded nemesis. “But if I was disposed to be lenient before, forget it. You want to do this the hard way. OK, that’s the way we’re going to do it.”
The wall phone rang. The stenographer answered.
“For you, Chief,” he said. “The lab.”
Painter came out from behind the table to take the phone. He listened for a moment, his face darkening. “OK,” he snapped, and hung up with a clatter.
“What did they do, test the end of the hypodermic needle?” Shayne asked. “What was it, granulated sugar?”
“Shut up,” Painter said with a vicious look.
Rourke laughed. He was long, thin and disheveled, with an offhand manner which concealed his loyalty to his friends and a passionate dedication to his profession. He waved a big envelope at Shayne.
“The trouble you get yourself into when I’m not around! Wait till you see these pictures. They’re the hottest thing since Sodom.” He slapped the envelope on the table. Picking up the stick of marijuana, he sniffed it. “Mike, you’re branching out.”
“Put that down!” Painter snapped. “That’s evidence.”
Halstead, a gray-haired, sleepy-looking man, observed, “Something you found in my client’s pocket?”
“No-o,” Painter admitted, “but if you think there aren’t various other things we can hang on him, you don’t appreciate the situation. Who let you in here, anyway?”
“To be candid, Peter,” Halstead said, “we had to pull some strings. It seems that one of the boys you picked up is Judge Pike’s son. That greased the skids a bit.”
“Shayne’s in for more than drunk and disorderly, counselor,” Painter said. “You can have young Pike. You can’t have Shayne until we get a medical report on Sergeant Maguire. That won’t be for twelve hours.”
Halstead smiled. “Tim?”
The lanky reporter slipped a sheaf of glossy five-by-eight photographs out of his envelope. “This is the sort of art that sells papers,” he said happily. “You missed the Sunday deadline, Mike, but you and your friends are going to be all over pages one, two, three and the split page on Monday. Believe me. I took one fast squint at the movie film, and I’m going to recommend that we pick out a few of the least lurid frames and use them as stills. I’m volunteering for the assignment. I don’t like to volunteer for anything usually, but I know I’ll enjoy this.”
He slid several photographs across to Shayne. Having been present on the scene, the redhead already knew that the girls at the party hadn’t been unduly hampered by clothes. Rourke pointed out one of Lee, her blouse unbuttoned all the way down, flourishing a gin bottle.
“We’ll have to paste a little strip of tape across that to keep the post office department off our necks. We’re a family paper.”
Shayne laughed. “That photographer deserves a combat ribbon.”
“I didn’t hear him complaining,” Rourke said. “Now I want to show you a sequence of three shots featuring
