Dead Man's Diary & A Taste for Cognac (15 page)

He heaved himself up painfully from his chair and gritted his teeth against a wave of physical weakness. He looked around for his hat, then remembered he had lost it in the fracas at Renaldo’s. He went out bareheaded, thinking the cool night air would feel good on his head.

Dick frowned and shook his head, but his eyes showed admiration and amazement when Shayne crossed the lobby. Shayne pushed his swollen lips into the semblance of a grin and he waved a derisive hand at the clerk. He got in his car and drove to Second Avenue.

The Crestwood was a small, moderately priced hotel, and the night clerk was a thin-chested little man who tried to conceal his hostile amazement when Shayne showed his battered face at the desk. He shook a blond and scanty-haired head and said, “I’m afraid—”

“I don’t want a room,” Shayne assured him. He showed his badge and said, “It’s about a guest of yours, Miss Myrna Hastings.”

“Oh—yes,” he stammered. “Room 305. She isn’t in. There’s been—”

“I’m the guy who telephoned you about an hour ago. Can you describe the men she went out with?”

“I’m afraid I can’t, sir. You see, I didn’t notice their faces.”

“Could one of them have been holding a gun on her?” Shayne demanded harshly.

The clerk began to tremble, and his voice shook when he said, “I really don’t know, sir. I—Do you think something has happened to her?”

“Do you know whether they came in
after
she got her key and went up, or were they waiting?”

“I—really don’t know. I didn’t see them come in after she got her key, but I’m afraid I can’t swear whether they were upstairs waiting for her or not.”

Shayne turned away and went to the elevator. It was run by a young Negro boy who stood very stiff and straight, but he couldn’t control his popping black eyes when they saw his face.

Shayne asked, “Do you remember the girl in three-o-five?”

“Yassuh. I knows the one you mean. Checked in jes’ today.”

“Do you remember her coming in late tonight and then going out again almost immediately?”

“Yassuh. That’s what she done. I ’members it.”

Shayne got out his wallet. “Now try to remember exactly what happened,” he said quietly. “Did you bring her down in the elevator with two men?”

The boy’s eyes rolled covetously toward the five-dollar bill. “Yassuh. I sho did. Ra’t after I’d done taken her up.”

“How long afterward?” Shayne prompted. “Did you make many trips in between?”

“Nosuh. Not none. I ’member how ’sprised I was when I stopped at the thu’d floor on the way down an’ foun’ her waitin’ with them two gen’mans, ’cause I’d jes’ took her up to three on mah way up.”

“Are you sure of that? You didn’t take them up
after
you took her up?”

“Nosuh. How could I when I’d done taken ’em up pre’vous?”

“How much previous?”

“’Bout ten minutes, I reckon.”

“Did you notice anything peculiar about the way either of them acted when they came down together?”

“How d’yuh mean peculiar?”

“I’m trying to find out whether
she wanted
to come down with them or whether they
made
her come.”

The boy chuckled. “I reckon she liked comin’, all right. She was sho all hugged up to one of ’em. The skinny one, that was.”

“Can you describe them?”

“Wal, nosuh. Not much. One was skinny and t’other weren’t. I reckon I didn’t notice no more.”

Shayne said, “You’ve earned this.” The bill exchanged hands and he went out. He had learned something, but he didn’t care much for it.

His next stop was at the
Miami Daily News
tower. The early hours of the morning were the busiest for the staff of the afternoon paper. Shayne found Timothy Rourke in one corner of the smoke-hazed city room pounding out copy with one rubber-tipped forefinger of his right hand, while the thumb of his left hand was poised and ready to shift for capital letters and shift lock.

Rourke looked up at Shayne and uttered a startled oath. He laughed raucously at the sight of Shayne’s face and said, “I’m not the beauty contest editor. You just go down that hall there—”

“You go to hell,” Shayne said bitterly.

“Michael!” Rourke drawled the name disapprovingly. “Such language in a newspaper office. Did he get his little face scratched?”

“It’s all your damned fault for sicking that female onto me,” Shayne rasped.

“My
fault? My God, don’t tell me a female did
that.”

Shayne lowered himself onto a corner of the desk and asked, “How well do you know Myrna Hastings?”

Rourke grinned up at him and said, “Not as well as I’d like to. Or, is she that sort of a gal? Of course, she’s not a blonde, but maybe I’d want to—”

“Cut it, Tim,” said Shayne wearily. “I’m up to my neck in murder, and God knows what-all. What do you know about the gal?”

Rourke looked into Shayne’s somber eyes. “Not much, Mike,” he said seriously. “She brought a note from a friend of mine on the
Telegram
in New York. I took her around and introduced her to a few people and places this afternoon. She found you at Renaldo’s, huh? Sorry I couldn’t make it.”

“She found me, all right,” said Shayne grimly.

“What’s doing, Mike?” His eyes glittered and his nostrils began to twitch like a bloodhound’s on the scent. “I wondered when Will Gentry called me about her tonight, but—”

“Do you know if she’s known in Miami?” Shayne interrupted.

“I don’t think so.” Rourke leaned far back in his swivel chair and gazed excitedly into Shayne’s puffed eyes. “She said it was her first trip, Mike.”

“Has anyone else called you for her address, Tim?”

“Only Gentry. Is it a story, Mike?”

Shayne’s gray eyes brooded, looking away from him, roaming around the room. He and the reporter had been friends for a long time, and he had given Rourke a lot of scoops in the past. He indicated the typewriter and asked, “Busy on something?”

Rourke pushed his chair back. “Nothing I can’t give the go-by, Mike.”

Shayne said, “I could use some help in your morgue.”

Rourke sprang up and led the way back to a large filing room guarded by an elderly woman. She was knitting a pair of bootees, and her wrinkled mouth was tilted in a smile.

“I’m interested in John Grossman,” Shayne told Rourke.

“The bootleg king?” They walked past the woman and Rourke stopped between a double row of filing-cases. “He’s the guy who is back in town on parole.”

“When did he get back?” Shayne asked.

“Three or four days ago. I tried to interview him, but he wouldn’t give out anything for publication. All he wanted was to go down to his lodge on the Keys and soak up some Florida sunshine.”

Shayne said, “I want to go back to his arrest by the Feds in June, 1930.”

“We’ve got a private file on him. It won’t be hard to find.” Rourke checked a card index eagerly and swiftly, then went to a file at the back of the room. He came back with a bulging Manila envelope and emptied it. He started pawing through it, Shayne close beside him and watching.

“Here’s the trial,” said Rourke. “It was a honey. With Leland and Parker representing him and not missing a trick. Here you are: June 17, 1930. Federal agents nabbed him at Homestead on his way in from the lodge on the Keys.” He spread out a large clipping.

“I remember it now,” Rourke said. He chuckled. “They had the income tax case all set but had been holding off, hoping they could hang a real charge on him. They thought he used his lodge to receive contraband shipments from Cuba, and they raided it several times, but never found any evidence. This time they thought they had him for sure, with a red-hot tip that he was expecting a boatload of French stuff. They kept a revenue cutter patrolling that section of coastline day and night for a week.

“Here’s the story on that.” Rourke turned his burning slate-gray eyes on Shayne, then flipped the pages back to a clipping dated June 16. It was captioned: CUTTER SINKS BOOTLEG CARGO.

“I covered that story. I rode the cutter three nights and nothing happened. After I was pulled off on the night of the fifteenth they encountered a motor craft creeping along without lights just off the inlet leading to Grossman’s lodge. They tried to make a run for the open sea, and bingo! the revenue boat cut loose with everything she had. There was a heavy sea running, the aftermath of a hurricane that blew hell out of things the day before, and they never found a trace of the boat, cargo, or crew. After that fiasco they gave up and decided they might as well take Grossman on the income tax charge.”

“Wait a minute,” Shayne said. “How bad was that hurricane?”

“Plenty bad. That’s really the reason I missed the fun. The cutter had to run for anchorage on the thirteenth, and she couldn’t put out again until the fifteenth on account of the storm.”

“Then that strip of coast wasn’t being patrolled the two nights before the sinking?” Shayne mused.

“Nope. Except by the elements.”

“And that rum-runner might have been slipping out after discharging cargo, instead of being headed in.”

Rourke stared at the redheaded detective. “If the captain was crazy enough to try and hit that inlet while the hurricane was blowing everything to hell.”

Shayne said gravely, “I think I know the captain who was crazy enough to do just that—and succeeded.”

Rourke raised his brows quizzically. “You’ve got something up your sleeve,” he accused.

Shayne nodded. “It adds up. Tim, I’m willing to bet there was a boatload of 1926 Monnet unloaded at Grossman’s lodge while the hurricane was raging. And it’s still there some place. Grossman was arrested the seventeenth, before he had a chance to get rid of any of it, and he left it there while he was doing time in Atlanta.”

Timothy Rourke whistled shrilly. “It’d be worth as much now as it was during prohibition.”

“More, with the country full of people earning more money than ever before in their lives.”

“If your hunch is right—”

“It has to be right. How long do you think a man could stay alive floating around the ocean in a life preserver? “

“Couple of days, at the most.”

“That’s my hunch, too. From the fifteenth to the seventeenth might not be impossible. But the hurricane struck on the thirteenth and fourteenth. Take a look at your front page for June 17, and you’ll see what I mean.”

Rourke hurriedly brought out the
News
for June 17. On the front page, next to the story of Grossman’s arrest, was the story of the sensational rescue of Captain Samuels which Shayne had already read in his apartment. Rourke put his finger on the picture and exclaimed. “I remember that now. I interviewed the Captain and thought it miraculous he had stayed alive that long. Captain Thomas Anthony Samuels. Why, damn it, Mike, he’s the old coot who was found murdered tonight.”

Shayne said soberly, “After selling a case of Monnet for a hundred bucks earlier in the evening.”

“He was the only survivor of his ship,” Rourke recalled excitedly. “Then he and Grossman must have been the only ones who knew the stuff was out there.”

“And now Grossman is the only one left,” Shayne said flatly. “Keep this stuff under your hat, Tim. When it’s ready to break it’ll be your baby.” He turned and hurried out.

Shayne didn’t reach his apartment again until after three. He took a nightcap and went to bed, fell immediately into deep and dreamless slumber.

The ringing of his telephone awakened him. He started to yawn, and pain clawed at his facial muscles. He got into a robe and lurched to the telephone. It was a little after eight o’clock.

He lifted the receiver and said, “Shayne.”

A thick voice replied, “This is John Grossman.”

Shayne said, “I expected you to call sooner.”

There was a brief silence as though his caller were taken aback by his reply. Then: “Well, I’m calling you now.”

Shayne said, “That’s quite evident.”

“You’re horning in on things that don’t concern you.”

“Cognac always concerns me.”

“I’m wondering how much you found out from the Captain before he died last night,” Grossman went on.

Shayne said, “Nuts. You killed him and you know exactly how much talking he didn’t do.”

“You can’t prove I was near his place last night,” said Grossman gruffly.

“I think I can. If you just called up to play ring-around-the-rosy, we’re both wasting our time.”

“I’ve been wondering how much real information you’ve got.”

“I knew that would worry you,” Shayne said impatiently. “And since you know Samuels was dead before I reached him, the source of information you’re worried about is the logbook. Let’s talk straight.”

“Why should I worry about the logbook? I’ve got it now.”

“I know you have. But you don’t know how much I read about the
Mermaid’s
last trip before you got it.”

“The girl says you didn’t read it any.”

Shayne laughed harshly. “You’d like to believe her, wouldn’t you?”

“All right.” The voice became resigned. “Maybe you did read more than she says. How about a deal?”

“What kind of deal?”

“You’re pretty crazy about Monnet, aren’t you?”

“Plenty.”

“How does five cases sound? Delivered to your apartment tonight.”

Shayne said, “It sounds like a joke—and a poor one.”

“You’ll take it and keep your mouth shut if you’re smart.”

Shayne said disgustedly, “You’re rolling me in the aisle.” He hung up and padded across the room in his bare feet to the table, where he poured a slug of Portuguese brandy. The telephone began ringing again. He drank some of the brandy, lit a cigarette, and went to the phone carrying the glass. He lifted the receiver and asked curtly, “Got any more jokes?”

The same voice answered plaintively, “What do you want?”

Shayne asked, “Why should I deal with you at all? I’ve got everything I need with Samuels’s description of where the stuff is hidden.”

“What can you do with it?” the murderer argued.

“The Internal Revenue boys could use my dope.”

“And cut yourself out? Not if I know you.”

“All right,” Shayne said irritably. “You have to cut me in, and you know it. Fifty-fifty.”