Dead Man's Diary & A Taste for Cognac (11 page)

Shayne looked at her for a moment, then slowly emptied his glass and set it down. He picked up his cigarette and hat and said, “Thanks for the drinks. I never give out any stories. Tim Rourke knows that.” He got up and strode to the rear of the bar.

Joe sidled down to join him and Shayne said, “I could use another shot of that. And I’ll pour my own.”

Joe got a clean beer glass and set a tall bottle on the bar before Shayne. He glanced past the detective at the girl sitting alone in the booth, but didn’t say anything.

The label on the bottle read: MONTERREY GRAPE BRANDY,
Guaranteed 14 months old.

Shayne pulled out the cork and passed the open neck of the bottle back and forth under his nose. He asked Joe, “Got any more of this same brand?”

“Jeez, I dunno. I’ll see, Mr. Shayne.” He turned away and returned presently with a sealed bottle bearing the same label.

Shayne broke the seal and pulled the cork. He made a wry face as the smell of raw grape brandy assailed his nostrils. He said angrily, “This isn’t the same stuff.”

“Says so right on the bottle,” Joe argued.

“I don’t give a damn what the label says,” Shayne growled. He reached for the first bottle and poured a drink into the empty beer glass. Keeping a firm grip on the bottle with his left hand he drank from the mug, rolling the liquor around his tongue. His gray eyes shone with dreamy contentment as he lingeringly swallowed the brandy, while a frown of curiosity and confusion formed between them. “Any more of the bar bottles already open?” he asked.

“I don’t think so. We don’t open ’em but one at a time nowadays. I’ll ask the barkeep.” Plainly mystified by Shayne’s request, Joe went to the front of the bar and held a low-voiced conversation with a bald-headed man wearing a dirty apron that bulged over a potbelly.

The bartender glanced at Shayne, then waddled toward him. He looked at the two bottles and asked, “Whassa trouble here?”

Shayne shrugged his wide shoulders. “No trouble. Your bar bottle hasn’t got the same stuff that’s in the sealed one.”

The hulking man looked troubled. “You know how ’tis these days. A label don’t mean nothin’ no more. We’re lucky to stay open at all.”

Shayne said, “I know it’s rough trying to keep a supply.”

The bartender regarded Shayne for a moment with his pale, puffed eyes. “You’re private, huh? Ain’t I seen you ’round?”

“I’m private. This hasn’t anything to do with the law.”

“If you got a kick about the drink, it’ll be on the house,” the bartender said magnanimously.

“I’m not kicking,” Shayne told him earnestly. “I’d like to buy what’s left in this bottle.” He indicated the partially empty one which he had moved out of the bartender’s reach.

The man shook his head slowly. “No can do. Our license says we gotta sell it by the drink.”

Shayne held the bottle up and squinted through it. “There’s maybe twenty ounces left,” he calculated. “It’s worth ten bucks to me.”

The big man continued to shake his head. “You can drink it here. Forty cents a shot.”

“Maybe I could make a deal with the boss,” suggested Shayne.

“Maybe. I’ll find out.” He waddled around the end of the bar and preceded Shayne to an unmarked door to the left of the ladies’ room. Shayne saw Myrna Hastings still sitting in the booth, watching him.

The bartender rapped lightly on the door, turned the knob, and motioned Shayne inside.

Henry Renaldo was seated at a desk facing the doorway. He was a big, flabby man with a florid face. He wore a black derby tilted back on his bullet head and an open gray vest revealed the sleeves and front of a shirt violently striped with reddish purple. He was eating a frayed black cigar that had spilled ashes down the front of his vest.

The bartender stood in the doorway behind Shayne. He said heavily, “This shamus is kickin’ about the service, boss. I figured you might wanna handle it.”

Renaldo’s black eyes took in the brandy bottle dangling from Shayne’s fingers. He wet his lips and said, “Okay, Tiny,” and the bartender went out.

Renaldo leaned over the desk to push out his right hand. “Long time no see, Mike.”

Shayne disregarded the proffered hand. “I didn’t know you were in this racket, Renaldo.”

“Sure. I went legal when prohibition went out.”

Shayne moved forward, set the bottle down with a thump, and said mildly, “This is a new angle on me.”

“How’s that?”

“Prewar cognac under a cheap domestic label. Monnet, isn’t it?”

“You must be nuts,” Renaldo ejaculated.

“Either you or me,” Shayne agreed. “Forty cents a throw, when it would easily bring a dollar a slug in the original bottle.”

Henry Renaldo was beginning to wheeze heavily. “What’s it to you, Shayne? Stooging for the Feds?”

Shayne shook his head. He lifted the bottle to his lips, let the cognac gurgle down his throat, then murmured reverently, “Monnet. Vintage of ’26.”

Renaldo started. Fear showed in his bulging eyes. “How’d you—” He paused, taking the sodden cigar carefully from his lips. “Who sent you here?”

“I followed my nose.”

Renaldo shook his head. He said huskily, “I don’t know how you got onto it, but why jump me?” His voice rose passionately. “If I pass it out for cheap stuff, is that a crime?”

“You could make more selling it by the bottle to a guy like me,” Shayne told him casually.

Renaldo spread out his hands. “I gotta stay in business,” he wheezed. “I gotta have something to sell over the bar to keep my customers. If I can hang on till after the war—”

Comprehension shone in Shayne’s eyes. “That’s why you’re refilling legal bottles?”

“What other out is there?” demanded Renaldo. “Government inspectors checking my stock—”

“All right,” Shayne interrupted, “but let me in on it. A case or two for my private stock.”

“I only got a few bottles left,” the big man said.

“But you know where there’s more.”

“Go make your own deals,” Renaldo said sullenly.

“Sure. I will. All I want is the tip-off.”

“Who sent you here?”

“No one. I dropped in for a drink and got slugged with Monnet when I ordered domestic brandy.”

“Nuts,” sneered Renaldo. “You couldn’t pull the year of that vintage stuff. I don’t know what the gimmick is, but—”

A rear door opened and two men came in hastily. They stopped dead in their tracks and stared at the redheaded detective seated on one corner of Renaldo’s desk. One of them was short and squarish with a swarthy face and a whiskered mole on his chin. He wore fawn-colored slacks and a canary-yellow sweater that was tight over bulging muscles.

His companion was tall and lean with a pallid face and the humid eyes of a cokie. He was bareheaded, and wore a tightly belted suit. He thinned his lips against sharp teeth and tilted his head to study Shayne.

Renaldo snarled, “You took long enough. How’d you make out, Blackie?”

“It wasn’t no soap, boss. He ain’t talkin’.”

“Hell, you followed him out of here.”

“Sure we did, boss,” Blackie said, whining earnestly. “Just like you said. To a little shack on the beach at Eighteenth. But he had comp’ny when he got there. There was this car parked in front, see? So Lennie and me waited half an hour, maybe. Then a guy come out an’ drove away, an’ we goes in. But we’re too late. He’s croaked.”

“Croaked?”

“S’help me, boss. He was croaked. Lennie an’ me beats it straight back.”

Renaldo said sourly to Shayne, “Looks like that fixes it for both of us.”

Shayne said, “Give me all of it, Renaldo.”

“Can’t hurt now,” Renaldo muttered after a brief hesitation. “This bird comes in with a suitcase this evening. It’s loaded with twenty-four bottles of Monnet 1926, like you said. It’s prewar,” he went on defensively, “sealed with no revenue stamps on it. All he wants is a hundred, so what can I lose? I can’t put it out here where an inspector will see it, but I can refill legal bottles and keep my customers happy. So I give him a C and try to pry loose where there’s more, but he swears that’s all there is and beats it. So I send Blackie and Lennie to see can they make a deal. You heard the rest.”

“Why yuh spillin’ your guts to this shamus?” Lennie rasped. “Ain’t he the law?”

“Shayne’s private,” Renaldo told him. “He was trying to horn in—” He paused suddenly and shot a suspicious look at the detective, his heavy jaw dropping. “Maybe you know more about it than I do, Shayne.”

“Mebbe he does.” Lennie’s voice rose excitedly.” Looks to me like the mug what come out an’ drove away, don’t he, Blackie?”

Blackie said, “Sorta. We didn’t get to see him good,” he explained to Renaldo. “But he was dressed like that—and big.”

All three of the men looked at Shayne, studied him closely.

“So that’s how—” said Renaldo slowly and harshly. He jerked the cigar from his mouth and asked angrily, “What’d you get out of him before he kicked off? Maybe we can make a deal, huh? You’re plenty on the spot with him dead.”

Shayne said, “You’re crazy. I don’t know anything.”

“How’d you know about the 1926 Monnet?” Renaldo demanded.

“Like I told you. I dropped in for a drink and knew it wasn’t domestic stuff as soon as I tasted it.”

“Maybe.” Renaldo rubbed his pudgy hands together, went on suspiciously and deliberately: “But that didn’t spell out Monnet ’26. Now, my boys’ll keep quiet if—”

Shayne interrupted dispassionately, “You’re a fool, Renaldo.” He slid off the desk and his gray eyes were very bright. “Your boys are feeding you a line. It’s my hunch they messed things up and are afraid to admit it to you. So they make up a fairy tale about someone else getting there first, and you swallow it.” He laughed indulgently. “Think it over, and you’ll see who is really on the spot.” He turned toward the door.

Blackie got in front of him. He stood lightly on the balls of his feet and a blackjack swung from his right hand. Behind him Lennie crouched with his gun bunched in his coat pocket. His pallid face was contorted and he panted, “You don’t listen to him, boss. Blackie and me both can identify him.”

Shayne turned and said to Renaldo, “You’d better call them off. I’ve a friend waiting outside, and if anything happens to me in here you’ll have a lot of explaining to do.”

Renaldo said smugly, “If I turn you over for murder—”

“Try it,” Shayne snapped. He turned toward the door again, the open bottle of cognac clutched laxly in his left hand.

Blackie remained poised with the blackjack between Shayne and the door. He appealed to Renaldo. “If it was this shamus out there an’ the old guy talked before he passed out—”

A sharp rapping on the door interrupted Blackie.

A grin pulled Shayne’s lips away from his teeth. He said, “My friend is getting impatient.”

Renaldo said, “Skip it, Blackie.”

Shayne moved past the swarthy man to the door and opened it. Myrna Hastings stood outside.

“If you think—” she began.

Shayne said, “Sh-h-h,” close to her ear, took her arm firmly, and pulled the door shut. He slid the uncorked bottle of Monnet into his coat pocket and started toward the front with her.

She twisted her head to look back at the closed door and said uncertainly. “Those men inside—didn’t one of them have a weapon?”

“You’re an angel,” Shayne said softly, “and I was a louse to treat you the way, I did.” They went out through the swinging front doors of the saloon. He stopped on the sidewalk. “Keep on going and beat it,” he told her harshly. “I have things to do.”

Myrna looked up into his face and seemed frightened at what she saw there. “Something is wrong.”

Shayne shrugged and said, “Maybe this will be a case you can write up.” He looked into her eyes briefly, then turned and strode to his sedan parked at the curb and started to get in.

He didn’t hear her light footsteps following him, but he turned when she asked breathlessly, “Can’t I go with you, Mr. Shayne? I promise not to be in the way.”

Shayne caught her elbows in his big hands and turned her about. “Run along, kid. This is murder. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”

Shayne drove out Biscayne Boulevard and turned right on Eighteenth Street. A thin crescent moon rode high in the cloudless sky overhead, and the night was humidly warm. He drove slowly to the end of the street and stopped his car against a low stone barrier overlooking the bay front, turned off his motor, and sat for a moment gripping the steering-wheel. Light glowed through two round and heavily glassed windows in a squatty, square, stone structure at his left. It perched boldly on the very edge of the bluff overlooking the bay, and a neat shell-lined walk led up to the front door. He got out and walked up the walk.

The little house was built solidly of porous limestone, and its only windows were round, metal-framed portholes that looked as though they had been taken from a ship. The door had a heavy bronze knocker and the hinges and lock were also of bronze.

He tried the knob and the door opened inward. The narrow hallway disclosed a ship’s lantern with an electric bulb hanging from a hand-hewn beam of cypress. An open door to the right showed the interior of a tidy and tiny kitchen.

Shayne went down the hall to another door opening off to the right. The room was dark, and he fumbled along the wall until he found a light switch. When he flipped the switch, it lighted two wrought-iron ship’s lanterns similar to the one in the hall. He stood in the doorway and tugged at his left earlobe, looking down at the man lying huddled in the middle of the bare floor.

He was dead.

A big-framed man, his face bony and emaciated. His eyes were wide open and glazed, bulging from deep sockets. He wore a double-breasted uniform of shiny blue serge. The buttons were of brass and recently polished. His ankles were wired together, and the wire had cut deeply into his bound wrists.

Shayne went in and knelt beside the body.

Three fingernails had been torn from his right hand. This appeared to be the only mark of violence on his body, which was warm enough to indicate that death had occurred only half an hour or so before. Shayne judged that shock and pain had brought on a heart attack, causing death. The man was about sixty, and there was no padding or flesh on his bony frame.