another time when he had a concussion. It was a freak accident-a dead branch fell off a tree when he was out hunting. He didn’t seem to be too badly hurt. But then somebody said something he didn’t like-nothing important, just a remark-and he went haywire. It took three of us to haul him off the guy before he committed a murder. That time there wasn’t any doctor around.”
She shivered. “I’ll certainly tell him. Did Harry say anything about-” She stopped. “I don’t know what I’m trying to say. But something’s been eating at him the last few weeks. He’s under some kind of strain. Well, I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”
Shayne put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it with the dashboard lighter as he went down the driveway. He stopped after turning onto North Shore Drive and put on the dome light, to check a road map for the quickest way to the Florida Christian campus. After putting away the map he waited another moment, smoking thoughtfully. Then he made up his mind and headed for the causeway.
5
Using the phone he had recently had installed in the front seat of the Buick, Shayne called the Accident Investigation Unit of the Miami police. After being shuffled from one extension to another, he was finally connected with Squire, the sergeant he had met at the wreck of the stolen Dodge.
“Glad you called, Mike,” Squire said. “You dropped a couple of remarks I want to follow up on. There were two guns in the car, and one of them had been fired. Chief Gentry thinks you ought to come in and tell us what you know.”
“I’d like to do it on the phone, if that’s OK,” Shayne said. “I’m still working on it. Here’s what happened. I had to pull up sharp to keep from hitting a Cadillac which was on fire. When I got out to see what I could do, I was jumped. A Negro was lying in the street. I didn’t have time to check him for bullet holes. This was on Normandy Isle, in Painter’s jurisdiction, and that makes it tricky. You know how I don’t get along with Painter. When you talk to him you’d better not tell him where the information comes from.”
Squire chuckled. “He’d probably arrest you for setting fire to an automobile.”
“Yeah. Since I saw you I’ve found out a little more. The guys who bushwacked me had just held up Harry Bass, and I’m told it was a very nice score. Maybe you better not mention that to Painter either. Harry won’t report it, and you know how Painter can complicate the simplest things.”
“This doesn’t sound too simple to begin with, Mike,” Squire said. “If it was up to me I wouldn’t tell Painter anything. God knows I’m not impartial on the subject. The Chief said to pass on what we have if you cooperated, and you seem to be cooperating more than you sometimes do. There was no important dough in the wreck. No luggage. Just a couple of hundred bucks personal cash in the guys’ pockets. They were both from St. Louis. Pedro Sanchez and Thomas J. Pond, Jr. Sanchez was carrying a pass book in a St. Louis savings bank, with one entry, a deposit of ten thousand bucks, dated last Thursday. We’re sending their prints to Washington, and that’s all. Mike, I still think you ought to come in.”
Shayne put him off, thanked him for the information, and then settled down to some fast driving.
Florida Christian was twenty-five miles from Miami, on the edge of the Glades. There was little traffic on the Trail, and Shayne made good time. He had been here often to football games, but that was all he knew about the institution. The stadium, of course, was the principal structure on the campus, a huge bowl illuminated by a necklace of lights. Shayne circled around it in widening arcs until he found a brightly-lighted two-block section that functioned as a downtown.
He cruised slowly, made a U-turn and came back, stopping when he saw two husky undergraduates, one wearing a football sweater. He called them over. He was right in assuming that they could tell him where to find Johnny Black. Black was a Lambda Phi. The Lambda Phi house was the third building from the end of fraternity row. Fraternity row was the first street to the right.
This being Saturday night after the last game of the season, the Lambda Phi’s were having a party. The house was big and rambling, with white columns and a screened-in porch. Shayne went all the way in, passing several clumps of young men and girls, before asking for Black.
“He’s here somewhere,” the boy he spoke to told him, “but where? Hold this.” He handed Shayne his beer can, cupped his hands around his mouth and called, “Johnny!” in a piping voice not intended to penetrate the din. He turned back with a mock shrug. “You’ll just have to look.”
Shayne went on. Somebody was playing a guitar in one room. In another there was a beer keg, but the Lambda Phi’s and their guests were using empty cans as mugs, holding the triangular punched opening under the spigot. Shayne asked several more youths for Johnny Black. They all assured him that Black was present, and to keep looking.
In the library, a room with a fireplace, numerous athletic trophies and leather furniture, he saw his first old grad. He was a short, nearly rectangular man, with a broken nose and receding hair. Alarm stirred in his eyes as they met Shayne’s. He had his back to a wall covered with framed photographs of football teams, and he wasn’t socializing with anybody.
Shayne went on asking for Black. Having seen him only from a distance on TV, in a football helmet, he knew he wouldn’t recognize him here. Presently the broken-nosed man made up his mind and came toward him. One of the teeth at the front of his smile had a corner missing.
“I’m Bus Colfax,” he said, putting out his hand, “and I’m trying to decide if I know you. Didn’t you use to line-back for the Packers?”
“Mike Shayne,” the redhead said, shaking hands. “Which Packers?”
Colfax laughed heartily. “Which Packers! That puts me in my place, all right. After all these years I ought to know an ex-pro when I see one. Can I use my influence and get you a beer? That’s what the kiddies are drinking, not that I don’t have a couple of pints of rotgut in the car. Which will it be, Mike?”
“Neither right now, thanks. I’m looking for somebody.”
Colfax laughed again. “Isn’t everybody?”
A dark girl with bangs almost down to her eyelashes came up through the haze.
“Excuse me,” she said to Shayne. “Are you the one who was asking for Mr. Black?”
Shayne told her he was, and that his name was Michael Shayne.
“Would you mind telling me what you wanted to see him about? If you’re a sportswriter he’s not giving any interviews.”
Shayne grinned down at her. “How about autographs? Tell him we have some mutual friends, and I’ll only take fifteen minutes.”
The girl looked doubtful, but brushed her hair back from her eyes and went away.
Bus Colfax had audited this exchange closely. “For three or four weeks at this time of year,” he said with sympathy, “they’re kings. You have to study their moods, play on their weaknesses and back out when you leave the room. But the minute they sign, they’re property like everybody else. That’s the way I console myself.”
He looked around quickly, shed his bantering manner and became all business. He tapped Shayne lightly on the forearm with the rim of his beer can.
“Shayne, I won’t make a guess at what club you represent. That would give away who I consider our chief competition. I’m down from the Warriors. I don’t have to tell you that I wouldn’t be here if we didn’t want the boy. I’m ready to spend money to get him. Frankly, I can’t give him the sky. Play it close to your vest, keep throwing in blue chips and maybe you’ll end up with Johnny Black on your roster, at some astronomical bonus figure which is sure to leak to the press. Then all the other All-Americans get a highly inflated idea about how much he’s worth. Or there’s the other possibility, that I’ll end up with Johnny Black at a similar figure, and you’ll end up sucking hind tit, with nothing to show for your expense account.”
Shayne was beginning to see a way to handle Johnny Black. He looked thoughtful.
“I see what you mean, but I don’t have much leeway.”
“You don’t realize how much leeway you’ve got,” Colfax said joyfully. “All you are is the man on the spot, and what the people in the front office don’t know won’t keep them awake nights. If you got here an hour later, I could already have inked the kid, and vice versa. Maybe we can save ourselves some headaches and save our clubs some dough. We both need a quarterback. That’s why we’re here. I don’t have to read your mind to know you could use a
