Murder Spins the Wheel (9 page)

He was sitting across from her, their knees almost touching. He took her free hand and made her meet his eyes.

“We’ll be there in a minute,” he said. “Listen to me without saying anything.”

The cop at the end of the wagon leaned forward. “Shut up back there. No talking.”

Shayne nudged Steve, who was slumped beside him, his face a mask of dejection. When he didn’t react at once Shayne nudged him again. He started.

“What do you mean, shut up?” he shouted at the cop. “This is supposed to be a democracy!”

Lee joined in, the cop roared at them both, and all the prisoners but Shayne and Betty began to sing defiantly, “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty—”

Under cover of the clamor Shayne went on quietly, “Don’t say anything to anybody about Vince. I want to find out what happened. I can’t do that if we’re tied up in jail. If it’s just drunk and disorderly I think we can get out in a couple of hours.”

She started to say something but he forestalled her. “How drunk are you?”

“Pretty,” she said weakly. “You hit that cop, didn’t you? You took his nightstick.”

“Yeah. Not only that, I didn’t drown Vince. When his body comes up we can find out what went wrong. The way the cops are going to look at it, you were together in a locked cabin, you had a fight and cracked his skull.”

Her eyes widened in protest.

“The way you’ve been waving bottles around,” Shayne said, “they’ll think it figures. I know it didn’t happen like that, but I have other things to go on, things they don’t know about. They’ll figure you put him in his scuba outfit and tipped him out of the window. It was just bad luck that he got tangled up in the ladder. You’re ideal for this, Betty. No money for high-powered lawyers, no connections. The heroin angle makes it bad. They’ll jump at it. I don’t think they can make it stick, but it could mean a pretty rough year and a half.”

She swallowed painfully. “I didn’t—”

He patted her knee. “Just take it as it comes.”

He opened his mouth and bawled with the others, “Land of the Pilgrims’ pride—”

They were still shouting and singing when they arrived at the police station. Their pictures were taken again as they emerged from the wagon. One of the photographers exclaimed, “It’s Mike Shayne!” and ran for a phone.

Inside, they were lined up and booked. Shayne was the only one to ask for a phone call, and for a moment he didn’t think he was going to get it. He called his friend Tim Rourke, the crime reporter on the
News,
and told him where he was and what lawyer he wanted.

“What did you do this time, Mike?” Rourke said happily.

“Let me see,” Shayne said. “It’s drunk and disorderly to begin with. Then inciting to riot, resisting arrest, striking a police officer, vandalism and malicious mischief. I may have left out one or two.”

“And you only need
one
lawyer?” Rourke asked.

Shayne laughed. “I’ve got things on the fire, Tim, so get moving.”

Shayne, Steve and the other boy in their party were taken to the open drunk tank, jammed with its usual Saturday evening crowd. Some were already asleep, several were fighting, an old man was sobbing in the corner. Others were sitting around hopelessly, on benches or on the floor, waiting for time to pass. The boy who had come with Steve and Shayne hung back at the grated door and seized the attendant’s arm.

“I want to make my phone call.”

“You had your chance,” the cop said surlily. “Inside.”

The boy held onto the grate and kept the door from closing. “I’m Tom Pike! You’ve got to—”

The nearby prisoners crowded around and joined the protest, and finally the attendant took Pike back to the phones.

“His old man’s the judge,” Steve told Shayne. “It might help.”

Shayne found an unoccupied section of bench. Presently Pike was brought back, looking subdued. He wouldn’t speak to Steve, and stayed at the gate, holding the grating.

Over the next half hour the quarrelsome prisoners began to quiet down, rousing up whenever the gate was opened and new arrivals were admitted. The smells accumulated. Shayne had been in worse jails, and he used the interval to go back to the beginning of the attempt on Harry Bass and sort out what he knew and what he didn’t know. The second category, as usual at this stage, was much larger than the first.

The dozing drunks reared up again at a disturbance in the corridor. Peter Painter strode around the corner, surrounded by a group of police officials. The news of Shayne’s arrest had taken longer to reach him than the redhead had expected.

The chief of detectives was wearing an immaculate white linen dinner jacket, a red carnation in the lapel. He was beautifully shaved, brushed, and powdered, and his little quirky mustache was at its best. A gloating smile played across his lips as he searched among the disreputable drunks for his old enemy, who had beaten him so often, Michael Shayne.

Those of the prisoners who were still awake stared at him sullenly, with open hostility. Those who didn’t know who he was were offended by his dinner jacket. A drunk near Shayne made an obscene suggestion about the carnation and Shayne laughed.

“Shayne!” Painter exclaimed triumphantly as his eye lighted on the big redhead, lounging between a sleeping derelict and a young delinquent in a dirty T-shirt and tight jeans.

Shayne stood up lazily and stretched. Steve watched anxiously from farther down the bench. Shayne winked at him and sauntered over to the grate. Painter’s pungent after-shave lotion could be smelled clearly among the other smells in the tank.

Painter’s smile broadened. “This is a night I’ll remember,” he said, and signed to one of his entourage to unlock the gate.

The officers around Painter were grinning except for Bob Sanderson, a lieutenant who had grown gray and drawn trying to keep the department functioning in spite of his chief’s mistakes. His hands deep in his pockets, he refused to meet Shayne’s eye.

“In here,” Painter said, indicating an interrogation room off the corridor. “Not that I’m superstitious, but I’ve solved some hard cases in this room. Sanderson, have you got the stuff the boys found on the boat?”

He took a manila envelope out of Sanderson’s hands and led the way. The interrogation room was cold and bleak, furnished only with a metal table, a typewriter, and several folding metal chairs. A pen, a blotter and a bottle of red ink waited on the table, as a reminder that the room’s main purpose was to produce signed confessions. The walls were unadorned cinderblocks, painted white. The single light, a harsh, powerful ceiling bulb, made even Painter look sallow and weary.

Painter let Sanderson and a stenographer into the room and shut the door on the others. He made a complete circuit of Shayne, to get an all-around view. Shayne’s shirt had dried on his back, but his pants were sodden and uncreased. Painter bent down and announced with glee, “No socks!”

Shayne let him enjoy his moment. It wasn’t often that Painter had a chance like this, and he meant to exploit it to the full. Shayne moved out one of the metal chairs and sat down. Sanderson gave him a cigarette and lit it for him. Painter alighted on the corner of the table, arranging his black trousers carefully.

“Organization,” he said with a chortle. “It pays off every time. My men have standing orders to let me know of anything involving Michael Shayne, no matter at what hour of the day or night. I confess this is one time I hesitated. It meant putting a very lovely lady into a taxi and sending her home alone. She was piqued, and she may refuse to see me again. But it’s worth it. The sight of you in that drunk tank has rewarded me a hundred times over.” His eyes hardened. “Shayne, I wouldn’t be surprised if this finishes you in this town.”

He lit his own cigarette after fitting it into a long holder. From long experience with the preposterous little man, Shayne knew that he had to let him crow for a time. In the end, if nothing happened to ruffle his feathers or make him lose his shaky hold on his temper, he might be willing to shut up and listen to something he hadn’t heard from his own men. He would have to be told about the robbery of Harry Bass and the drowning of Vince Donahue. Shayne had often concealed facts from Painter in the past, but there had also been times when he had had to forget his personal feelings about the man, to force him to behave in a semi-reasonable way.

“Three girls, three guys,” Painter said, still chortling. “I wonder which one was yours. That Betty’s really stacked, didn’t you think so, Sanderson?”

Sanderson went on smoking impassively, looking at the floor.

“She’s afraid she’s getting fat,” Shayne said.

“Nonsense,” Painter snapped. “Just right. Not my type, of course, too raucous, for one thing, but I can see how she’d appeal to someone with your limited background. Enough liquor and gage will cover a multitude of small imperfections, won’t they? I’m told that after one or two reefers all women tend to look about the same.”

He picked a brown cigarette butt and two unsmoked sticks of marijuana out of the manila envelope and laid them on the table. Then he went back into the envelope for a hypodermic needle.

“God, the headlines,” he commented. “Mike Shayne, rough-and-ready private eye! A drunken sex party on Al Naples’ boat! Mary Jane and horse! Semi-nude babes! Blue movies! This is one time I’m going to enjoy the morning papers. And it won’t be all text. It was pure luck a
News
photographer was hanging around when the call came in. We haven’t run off that sixteen-millimeter stuff yet. The boys looked at a few frames and they tell me it’s an adult-education course in various types of fornication, none of it what the statutes define as exactly normal. What’s wrong, Shayne? Usually by this time you’re trying to bluster your way out of it.”

“Are you ready to listen yet?” Shayne asked calmly.

“To your usual lies and evasions? No, I’m not ready to listen! Because I’ve got you this time, my corner-cutting friend! I’ve got you by the short hairs, and I’m going to heave the book at you, I kid you not! Dear God, have I been waiting! I knew that sooner or later you’d slip in a big way. Sure, everybody likes to relax and let down their hair now and then, but don’t you think this was overdoing it a little? The marijuana, the heroin, there’s the crowning touch. Something in the Bible, I forget how it goes, about how if you hang on long enough your enemies will be delivered into your hand.”

He clenched his fist slowly. Opening it again, he picked out an imaginary crushed insect, and crunched it between his small white teeth.

“You’ll never learn,” Shayne said. “You’ve tried that before, and it always gave you a bellyache.”

“But not this time,” Painter said smugly. “I don’t underestimate you. You’re the luckiest son of a bitch on the face of the globe, and I don’t deny that you have a certain dramatic flair. By lowering yourself to their level you’ve captured the allegiance of a few so-called gentlemen of the press. ‘Bums of the press’ would be a better name for them. As for the great moronic gum-chewing public, you can do no wrong. Maybe you can convince
them
that you were working on a research project tonight, trying to get at the sources of teen-age delinquency.” He leaned toward the unruffled redhead, and all at once his sharp little face became nasty. “The fact remains, whether or not you were smoking rope or screwing three girls at a time, you hit a police officer! You employed your usual method, violence, to resist arrest. My men were investigating a complaint from an influential taxpayer. You and your friends met them with a barrage of broken bottles. When Sergeant Maguire asked you to come along with him peacefully, you broke his jaw.”

“I thought I heard something crack,” Shayne said mildly. “Petey, will you simmer down? Maguire should have been kicked off the force years ago. He was about to kill a girl with a nightstick. If you’re surprised to hear that, you’re more out of touch than I think.”

“Maguire’s character and record, good
or
bad, have nothing to do with anything,” the angry little man snapped. “He’s a police officer. He was making a legal arrest. From the nature of his injuries, it’s fairly certain that you hit him with something harder than a fist. Unluckily for you, this time we have a witness you’ll have a hard time impeaching. The
News
photographer saw the whole thing and has given us a conclusive statement. I haven’t seen his pictures, but I know what they’ll show. You’re going to prison! And I’m delighted it’s on such an appropriate rap.”

“My lawyer will be showing up in a few minutes,” Shayne said, succeeding in keeping his temper. “I’ve got work to do.”

Painter smiled malevolently. “Not tonight, Shayne. Tonight you’re going to be our guest in the drunk tank. Oh, we’ll have the usual bleeding-heart army on our doorstep tomorrow morning, I have no doubt, but there’s a mountain of red tape to get out of the way when somebody slugs a police officer and sends him to the hospital. Don’t count on being back in circulation before the end of the afternoon.”

The redhead’s ragged eyebrows drew together. “Petey, I can see how your version appeals to you. But if you’ll give it one minute’s thought you’ll realize I was an extra wheel at that party. Did you talk to the watchman?”

Sanderson looked up, interested. “Was there a watchman on the dock, Mike?”

Painter broke in. “Never mind answering that. You don’t have to teach us the rudiments of police procedure. We’ll cover that in the morning.”

“I can see why you don’t want to cover it now,” Shayne said. “If he tells you I’d only been on the boat for half an hour you’d have to do some thinking. I know how hard that is for you.”

Painter started to speak, but Shayne decided it was time to raise his voice. “There were five people in the party when I got there, three girls and two boys. The third boy is dead. His name’s Vince Donahue. He’s the
Nugget’s
captain. I’m working for Harry Bass, and the reason I have to get out right away—”

“If you think you’re
going
to get out, you’re out of your mind.”

“The reason I have to get out,” Shayne repeated, raising his voice even more and speaking to Sanderson as much as to Painter, “is that Harry’s on the loose with a concussion. He has a bad temper and something to be mad about, and I want to get to him before he does anything that can’t be reversed.”