Kitty was laughing as Shayne drove away, leaving Rourke and the girl arguing on the sidewalk. She sobered abruptly.
“I don’t know what I’m laughing about.”
“There’s still time to change your mind,” Shayne said. “Brad’s the only one we really talked about, and I think he can be handled. But what about the other two? Shanahan’s been practicing criminal law all his life. There isn’t an angle he doesn’t know. And there’s the woman-if she wanted to be vindictive she could be a worse threat than the other two combined.”
“All I want is one little sliver of beach and a right of way,” Kitty said. “I won’t bother her. Why should she want to bother me? I know I’ll be all right if I can get past Wednesday. She has lifetime use of the house, and I’m paying my share of the taxes. It might be different if she had children, but she doesn’t, and if she and Frank ever actually do get married I doubt if they’ll start raising a family. Can you see Frank getting up for the two A.M. feeding? I can’t.”
But the thoughtful look stayed on her face as Shayne crossed the Miami River and turned left along the River Drive. Following directions, he turned off at Curtis Park and continued north on 23rd Avenue.
“Mike, I don’t know how you usually do when you stand guard, but I’m not going to allow you to spend the night in your car. I have a spare bedroom. We’re both grown-up people.”
She glanced at him swiftly. He gave her a humorous look in return.
“It’s true I’ve had to spend a certain number of nights in a car. I never do it unless I have to. Around three in the morning the time tends to drag.”
“Mike, could we do it like this? Come up with me first and make sure there’s nobody there. Then go back down and drive away. There’s a fire escape. God, I hate to ask you, because there’s nothing filthier, but could you come in that way?”
“Why?” he asked bluntly. “The best thing to do when you have protection is to publicize it. Let everybody know you have a bodyguard and we won’t have any trouble.”
She smiled ruefully. “I was really thinking of my ex-husband, though he’s not quite my ex-husband yet. He’s been making all sorts of difficulties. He may have hired a private detective to keep tabs on me, it wouldn’t be out of character. If you go in with me and don’t come out again, it would be just one more complication, one more thing I’d have to explain.”
She was silent for a moment. “Maybe I just ought to phone Barbara and tell her I’m willing to do the cowardly thing and sign her damn sales contract. I’m no Joan of Arc. But then the rest of my life I’d wonder if I could have bluffed them out of it!”
“If you want to find out if they’re really bluffing,” he said, “call Barbara and tell her you’re leaving town tomorrow, and to keep an eye on your place while you’re gone. Then if they want to do anything about it, they’ll have to do it tonight.”
She turned to him. “You’d be willing to-”
“Sure. I owe somebody for that tank of air. I don’t like to let that kind of debt pile up.”
“Oh, Mike.” She hugged his arm. “Am I glad Tim Rourke put me onto you.”
She pointed. “That one.”
Shayne pulled up in the unloading zone in front of a modest apartment house on 28th. Kitty said, “One other thing we ought to settle before we get out. Your fee. Tim said to offer you two hundred dollars and see what you said.”
Shayne grinned at her. “Give it to the Red Cross. If this works out so you can keep your place, let me come down and dive sometime. But next time I’ll bring my own air.”
“I’d feel better paying you,” she said doubtfully, “but if I’m going to spend two weeks in a New York hotel I’d better accept. You really are quite a nice man, Mike.”
Shayne unlocked the glove compartment, unlocked a steel box inside it and took out a short-barreled. 38 revolver and a box of ammunition. He loaded the gun quickly while Kitty watched.
“I never thought I’d be reassured by the sight of a gun,” she said. “I really hate the damn things.”
Shayne dropped the. 38 into his jacket pocket. Kitty unlocked the door in the inner lobby and they rode upstairs in the automatic elevator. Her apartment was on six. Shayne entered first, the gun in his fist.
He listened a moment, then switched on the lights. He checked the apartment thoroughly before telling her to come in. There was one moderate-sized bedroom, another very small one. The dining area was at one end of the narrow living room, and the kitchen was only large enough to hold a single person at a time. The furniture and pictures were inexpensive, but they had been chosen with care.
“It’s not the Fontainebleau,” Kitty said lightly.
The kitchen window gave onto the fire-escape landing. Shayne freed the anti-burglary bolts on each side, lowered the top sash and looked out.
“Do you agree about the fire escape?” Kitty said from the doorway, sounding worried. “Don’t do it if you think it’s silly.”
“It may not work but it’s not silly. You’re the bait. Let’s see if we catch anything.” He closed the window, shot the bolts into the prepared sockets and drew them up tight. “Put the front door on the chain. I’ll be back in five minutes. I don’t want to park nearby.”
“All right, Mike. I’ll call Barbara and have everything ready so when you come back we can do some serious drinking.” She came in close against him. “It’s a comfort having you around. I’m beginning to realize I was on the point of coming unstuck.”
She pulled him in hard. Coming up on her toes, she kissed the corner of his mouth, then let him go.
He heard the chain clank into place as he went to the elevator. He had a cigarette in his mouth when he emerged from the building. Stopping on the sidewalk, he lit it deliberately. There was no movement on the block, but as he snapped the lighter shut, something pulled his eye to the facade of the building across the street. This was another apartment building like Kitty’s, dating from the same period and faced with the same parti-colored brick. He adjusted his sideview mirror before getting into the Buick. The little glint he had noticed came again, appearing and vanishing in a dark fourth-floor window.
The window was up four or five inches from the bottom, in spite of the fact that the squat bulk of an air- conditioning unit protruded from the next window, surely part of the same apartment if not of the same room. Binoculars, Shayne thought. That would explain why the window was raised, so the dirt and smears on the pane wouldn’t distort the image.
After getting behind the wheel, he turned on the dome light and consulted a road map, unfolding it and folding it again so the unseen watcher, if there was one, would be sure to see it.
Accelerating rapidly, he drove away.
At the next corner he joined the traffic on 17th Avenue, drove two blocks and slid into a parking slot near the YMCA. He strode rapidly back to 27th Street, the street before Kitty’s. Reaching a point which he judged to be about even with the back of her apartment building, he struck in between two buildings and across a paved yard.
The lowermost flight of the fire escape leading to Kitty’s window on the sixth floor was a vertical iron ladder, held in place by a counterweight, beyond the reach of even a professional basketball player. He tried the back door. It was locked.
Before going to work with his lock-picking equipment, he checked the next building, a twin to this one, with the same number of stories and a common wall. The back door was warped and had failed to latch. Shayne entered and rode the elevator to the top floor. A final flight of stairs took him to the roof.
He went cautiously to the front coping and looked over, careful not to let his head show in silhouette against the sky. The fourth-floor window which had been open before was now closed. There were still no lights in that apartment. Shayne waited another moment. When he saw the red glow of a cigarette or a cigar, he crossed the roof to the intervening wall and swung over to Kitty’s building.
There were eight floors, which meant that he had two kitchen windows to pass. No one was home in the top-floor apartment. A light was on in the window below. There was no way to get by without being seen. He clattered down the iron treads without trying to muffle his footsteps.
A woman was slicing onions at the counter in the little kitchen. She stared at him, her lips parted. The onion had made her cry but behind the tears her eyes were frightened.
“I forgot my key,” Shayne said loudly. “It’s really O.K.”
