Brett Halliday

Million Dollar Handle

Chapter 1

The woman Ricardo Sanchez was hoping to intercept drove a shabby cream-colored Dodge, beginning to show rust at the seams. Which was eccentric of her, because in Ricardo’s opinion she should have been able to afford a much newer car. Charlotte Geary was her name. She played golf three or four times a week. This was one of the days.

Through the iron bars, he could see the exit of the basement garage. His pants were already ripped. He was holding a brown paper bag containing a hero sandwich and two oranges—lunch, theoretically—and he had a closed knife in one fist. It was a cool, pleasant morning, and couples from the big hotels further down the Beach were out strolling. Ricardo was given some curious looks. He had all the necessary muscles, an abundance of black hair. He knew he was conspicuous, standing in the sunshine on Collins Avenue in his ripped pants, boots, dark glasses, his tightest T-shirt. This was the wrong part of town; he was clearly no tourist. It wouldn’t take a psychiatrist or a mind reader to know he was up to something.

Deciding to make the attempt another day, he looked at his watch and started off. At that moment, the car appeared out of the garage.

The top was down, and Mrs. Geary, as usual, was wearing wraparound shades, her hair in a bright scarf. For her age, which had to be in the forties—and with a grown-up daughter, it had to be in the late forties—she was a great-looking woman. She looked like a model for something expensive.

Ricardo snapped the knife open and gave his bare leg a good scrape, taking off the top couple of layers of skin. Mrs. Geary came out at him with her blinker going. As she began the turn to go north on Collins, he stepped into her path.

His timing was a tick off. All he was trying for was a graze, but she turned more sharply than he expected, and her fender gave him a good thump. He went backward, waving both arms like a basketball player trying to draw the charging foul. His bag went flying. He made a complete pivot, hit the fence and slipped to the sidewalk.

The woman swerved over the center line. Recovering, she rocked back and came to a stop with one wheel off the pavement. She leaped out and ran toward him. Her hair had broken loose from the scarf.

“Are you all right?”

“I think so,” he said uncertainly.

But Ricardo was obviously not entirely all right. He stared down at his bloody leg.

“Oh, dear, oh, God, I didn’t see you.” She patted the air with both hands. Her breath came out in a long shudder, and she retrieved one of the oranges and stuffed it into the paper bag. “Listen, how badly are you—I thought I ran into a tree. Stay there, I’ll call an ambulance. Don’t try to get up.”

Ricardo made a scornful noise with his lips. “Are you kidding? Give me a minute. This is no big deal.”

The doorman from the apartment building above the garage ran out. Mrs. Geary called to him, “He stepped right in front of me. Call Mount Sinai—”

“No, no,” Ricardo said from the sidewalk. “I haven’t been in a hospital since I was five days old.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“It’s just a scrape. Afraid I got blood on your car.”

He rolled onto one knee and came to his feet. She jumped to help, but he was already up. A group of passersby had collected around them. Ricardo flexed each leg and did a comedy exercise to show that nothing was broken. As a matter of fact, the place that hurt worst was the point of his spine.

“It was my fault more than yours. I didn’t look where I was going.”

“Your leg—”

“Messy-looking, isn’t it? But I think I’ll live.”

“You ought to have it looked at. My insurance will cover it.”

“I’m not getting involved with anything like that,” he said earnestly. “You know how those sharks operate. If they ever have to pay anything, they cancel the policy.” He took a step on the bad leg and grunted.

“You see?” she said. “Getting knocked down by a car is no laughing matter.”

He tried another step, and conceded. “What you could do, is drop me off at the dog track. They’ve got a first-aid station. If the doctor isn’t there yet I can bandage it myself.”

“Certainly. Anything.”

The doorman helped him hobble to her car. He backed into the front seat and used both hands to swing the injured leg in after him. Mrs. Geary ran around to get behind the wheel.

“The dog track—you mean Surfside?”

“Yeah, that’s where I work.”

“That’s a coincidence. My husband owns it.”

“Are you Mrs. Geary?” Ricardo said, surprised.

“Indeed I am. Look, you’re going to need something to soak up the blood.”

She folded her blue scarf lengthwise. He pulled the rip in his pants back to the seam, and she worked the scarf in under his leg and tied it. The bloody abrasion was on the inside of his thigh. He had selected the spot after considerable thought. She seemed to be breathing more quickly by the time she was finished. Her hair was a soft russet color, long and cleverly cut. Probably she spent too much time in the sun. It had given her skin a leathery texture, but it was the very best leather. She wore a bra, of course. That was a necessity at her age. But she was slimmer and more supple, and generally in better shape, than most of the girls his own age. He didn’t think he could talk her into his scheme unless he could make physical contact, and the idea had made him a little queasy. Now he was beginning to think that it wouldn’t be hard to take, at all. He wished she would take off her shades so he could see her eyes. Eyes were important to Ricardo.

They jounced back onto the street.

“I don’t know why I said Max owns the track,” she said. “I own the same number of shares, for tax reasons, but that’s not the same thing, is it? He’s the man, he’s in charge. I hardly ever go near the place.”

“There’s no doubt in anybody’s mind that Max Geary’s in charge of Surfside.”

Geary was away at the moment, which was why Ricardo had picked today. That was unusual during a meeting. Geary decided everything, down to the number of ounces in the drinks and the size of the type in the performance charts. He was one of the first to arrive in the afternoon, one of the last to leave at night, after the take had been verified and loaded at gunpoint into the armored car.

“I mean, Jesus,” Ricardo said, “the boss’s wife. Lucky I didn’t try to get witnesses and sue you.”

“You wouldn’t have to sue. Put in a claim.”

“No, seriously. A friend of mine, he was in an accident and the lawyers got hold of him. He finally got a settlement, something like ten thousand bucks. The lawyers got half. And if you add up all the hours, not just in court and the lawyers’ office but sitting around dreaming, he could have made more money at Surfside leading out dogs. And nothing was really wrong with him, so he felt like a shit.”

“I don’t know what’s got into me lately. I’ve been driving like a crazy person.”

They were approaching the Kennel Club, with its huge sign: “Sensational Surfside.” When the track was built, in the early ’30s, the surrounding land had been jungle, but the great hotels had been pressing northward, year by year, and now the dog track blocked their way like a cork in a bottle. Real estate people thought dog tracks should be located on cheap land at the edge of the Glades, not here on one of the most expensive strips of sand in the world. The grandstand looked across the backstretch fence to open ocean. The only trouble was a shortage of parking. The track owned the blocks on the other side of Collins, between Collins and Indian Creek, but on big nights the parked cars spilled into the streets of Bal Harbour, to the annoyance of the rich retired white people who had houses there. Geary’s answer to complaints was that dogs had been running at Surfside before Bal Harbour had any houses or streets.

They pulled up at the clubhouse entrance.

“I’ll come in with you,” she said, starting to get out.

“No! Believe me, if I walk in with Mrs. Geary, the guys will be heckling me about it five years from now.”

“Then I’ll wait. One look at that leg and they’ll give you the afternoon off. I’ll drive you home.”

“No,” Ricardo said again. “I’ve got a couple of projects going, I mean betting projects, and I have to be on the scene.”

“I thought you didn’t care about money.”

“I care about it, but I want to make it my way, without any lawyers.”

After closing the car door he stayed there for a moment, looking down at her. “Thanks for the ride, Mrs. Geary. Next time I walk past your driveway I’ll be ready to jump.”

“Call me and tell me how you are.”

He had started away. He gave her a quick look, but because of the damn dark glasses there wasn’t much he could see.

“All right, sure.”

She was watching him, and he limped more than necessary. The scrape was beginning to hurt, and the blood had made its way through her loosely tied scarf and was running down his leg. He wished he could have thought of some easier way to make the lady’s acquaintance. Here they were, living in the same city, part of the same business, but their worlds didn’t intersect. Ricardo’s family had reached Miami from Cuba when he was nine. The schools had caught him young enough so he spoke English with hardly an accent. His father, a manufacturer in Havana before the upset, had become an automobile salesman, selling mainly to Cuban friends who had managed to get out with money. Everybody had to have a car in this country, and he had done well. He had his own AMC dealership now, life insurance, investments, a three-bedroom house in Hialeah; he voted regularly, watered the lawn regularly, paid his bills within ten days, and had American flag decals on his car windows. In Ricardo’s view, he was a little too satisfied with what he had accomplished. He had money, sure, but all around him, though he chose not to see them, were people with money.

While still a senior in high school, Ricardo got a job as a Surfside dog boy, parading the dogs and then retrieving them after the race and taking them back to the kennel. The pay was ridiculously low. With a syndicate of fellow students, including one girl who was good at math, he began to bet. The dogs were supplied by twenty-five contract kennels. Soon Ricardo knew them by sight, and how they had performed in their previous races. He listened to handlers and trainers. His friend worked out a simple computer program and fed it to the high school computer. By the end of the first meeting they were making money, though not enough to justify the work that went into it. Ricardo was the only one who stayed interested. When the others went off to college, Ricardo, after a terrific fight with his father—he still lived at home, but he and his parents didn’t have much to say to each other anymore—took a full-time job as assistant kennelmaster. That meant precisely what it said. He did everything the kennelmaster didn’t want to do himself.

The doctor, a third-year medical student, put on a tight bandage and told Ricardo he was a lucky son of a bitch. Hardly anyone came out of a head-on collision with an automobile without more damage.

“Next time get the license number.”

“I know, and get a lawyer. I prefer to work for my money.”

Dee Wynn showed up at the lockup kennel after most of the afternoon’s dogs were already in. He was an old dog man, and until Ricardo, he hadn’t kept an assistant for more than a month at a time. But Ricardo listened to his stories and stayed out of his way when he was drinking, which these days was most of the time. He shaved infrequently, and one of his upper front teeth was missing. His blue jeans were so stiff with dirt and grease that they could have stood up by themselves. He was the only snuff-dipper Ricardo knew.

“Rick the spic,” he said amiably, breathing out fumes. “Keep at it and you are bound to win. How many animals missing?”

“Just four, Mr. Wynn, from Tip-Top.”

“Well, if they don’t get here in a minute and a half, I say we scratch those dogs, much as the racing secretary don’t like scratches.”

He wavered into his office, rooting in his ass to get at the itch that lived there. He took the pint out of his back pocket and stood it on the desk, clearing a space among the litter of undone paperwork.

The Tip-Top station wagon slowed to a stop outside the delivery chute. Ricardo signed for the dogs and walked them across the scales and into cages. The new arrivals stirred up the kennel, and everybody began to yap and complain. Ricardo stepped outside.

“Dee’s pissed that you’re late again,” he told the handler.

“Yeah, well. They’re always so damn slow loading. Can you cool him down?”

“He’ll forget it. He’s loaded. Big surprise. What about the new bitch? What’s she been going?”

The handler dropped his voice a notch; this was classified information. “Tell Me True. That leg action, oh, my, you know she’s going to go. Worked a thirty-one seventy, feeling nice and saucy this morning. Kennel thinks we’re going to win some money on her.”

Ricardo locked in. Now, for the next two hours, he and Dee Wynn would be alone in the receiving kennel with ninety-six dogs.

He went to look in at Tell Me True, who had drawn the number-two position in the opening race. She was listed as red, but she was darker than red, with a blaze on her chest. Her brisket was unusually deep, running back in that sweet greyhound curve to no stomach at all. She stood quietly on her toes, tongue lolling, looking at him intelligently, as though she could guess what was going through his mind.

He had already handicapped this race, but now he made an adjustment. Including Tell Me True, there were three standout entries. The favorite, who had finished out of the picture in his last three starts and had been dropped into slower competition, looked like a sure winner. He was starting from the rail, and he always opened fast. But he liked to run wide on the turns, and he would be jammed and bumped. There had been a heavy sea fog in the night, and the track would be slow-to-moderate until it dried out fully. This dog performed well under such conditions. Ricardo made his calculations again. He looked into the office; Dee was nodding. Ricardo went to an equipment locker, opened a small box under some dirty rags, and armed himself. Later, when he was removing the identifying tags, he touched the favorite lightly on the hindquarters with a palm needle. The syringe was short and squat, with a half-inch plunger; the needle protruded between his middle fingers. He was being watched by the blank eye of the closed-circuit TV, but the camera was behind him, fixed in position over the door to the weighing room.

The dogs settled down. Ricardo put a new stack of records on the stereo. Customers had begun to appear on the other side of the big window, peering in hopefully to see which of the dogs looked like winners. Dee Wynn stayed in the office, sipping and moving papers. Ricardo could hear the leadout boys horsing around in their locker room on the other side of a thin partition. The paddock judge and the scale clerk were talking dogs. Ricardo listened, but it was the usual guesswork.

He muzzled the eight dogs for the first race and brought them out. They were weighed again, and the paddock judge checked their ear tattoos and the color of their toenails against his Bertillon card, and released each dog to his leadout boy for his number blanket.

With nothing to do for a moment, Ricardo watched the changing odds on the big board in the infield. The canned bugle sounded. The boys led the dogs out for the first parade of the matinee.

“Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer called, “the greyhounds are on the track.”

Ricardo stepped into the open.

His beard, or betting agent, was a flamboyantly dressed black named Billy, halfway up the grandstand. A vacant seat next to him was stacked with cross-referenced programs and computer printouts, window dressing to explain why he won more bets than ordinary people. He had a girl with him, to guard his files while he was inside at the windows. The little clique that was always around him left him alone when he was working, but trooped inside with him, hoping to learn his secrets. He was a fancy bettor, hard to copy. He sometimes bet a race a dozen ways, and the machines would be locked by the time the kibitzers perceived that all the crazy bets were keyed to the same two numbers. He was known as Binoculars Billy, because he liked to check his figures against the liveliness and general tone of each dog as it came out of the paddock. What he was really doing, of course, was watching Ricardo.

Ricardo unwrapped a piece of gum. That was the two dog. He put his hand in his left pants pocket—the six. Then he touched the rail lightly—the four. That combination of signals meant that he wanted Billy to box three dogs in the quinella. If any two of those three finished first and second, regardless of order, he would have a winner.

The crowd made more noise on the first race than any other. The sapling, Tell Me True, was caught rocking when the box sprang open, and she came out late. She went to the outside on the turn, but overtook the field in the backstretch. She went wide again on the far turn and finished fourth. Of his other two picks, the six dog won the race on the inside, laughing, but number four had trouble and was never in contention. Ricardo had lost $400.

He lost another $400 on the sixth. Then, in the eighth, he wheeled the number one dog and scored for $1700. He ended the afternoon $900 up, twenty-five percent of which would remain with Billy.

Chapter 2

Dee only left his office once, to go to the bathroom, and Ricardo had to wait till after the last race to call Mrs. Geary.

“Oh, this is Ricardo,” he said when she answered. “From this morning?”

“Of course. How’s the leg?”

“Pretty good, I think, Mrs. Geary. It stiffened up on me, but the doctor said to expect that. What I’m calling about, did you find my wallet, by any chance?”

“No. You mean in the car?”

“I had it in my hip pocket. I hope to hell it didn’t jump out when I hit the sidewalk, because I had a few hundred bucks in it and I doubt if it would still be there.”

“I’ll go down to the garage and look.”

“You don’t have to do that now. When it’s convenient, and I’ll give you a ring tomorrow.”

“It won’t take more than a minute. Give me your number and I’ll get back to you.”

He stayed in the booth, and picked up in the middle of the first ring.

“Success,” she said, out of breath. “Right under the front seat.”

This was no surprise to Ricardo, as he had put it there. “Lucky! It’s got my driver’s license, so can I come over and get it? You could leave it with the doorman if you’re going out.”

“No, I’ll be home. You know where I live. There’s blood on the sidewalk.”

He told her to expect him in twenty minutes. He washed off some of the dog smell and combed his hair carefully. He drove a beat-up Ford sedan, almost as unprepossessing as Mrs. Geary’s Dodge. He would be looking around for something better soon. He parked across from her apartment house, which was neither the crummiest building in Miami Beach nor the most elegant; somewhere in between. There was a pool, of course, in spite of the fact that the Atlantic was only a few steps away.

The doorman had been alerted, and waved him through. Mrs. Geary was wearing a dress instead of slacks and a sweater. Without the protection of the dark glasses she looked like somebody else, younger in some ways and older in others. She had seemed sure of herself outdoors. Here, in artificial light with her real eyes showing, she looked surprisingly breakable. Ricardo told himself to dig in his heels and go slow.

“Hi,” she said. “I nearly didn’t recognize you without your shades. Come in.”

He remembered to limp slightly. There was a man in the living room, soft, bald, wearing a three-piece suit. He was shaped like a pear, and his skin, too, was pear-colored, yellow with rosy patches. An architect’s rendering of a hotel was spread out on the coffee table, kept from rolling by ashtrays at the corners. He started to struggle out of the embrace of the low sofa, but gave it up as too difficult.

“Harry Zell,” Mrs. Geary said, moving her hand. “This is Ricardo, from the track.”

The man’s handshake was damp.

“Well, Charlotte,” he said. “I’ve got investors to see. Do you want me to leave this stuff?”

“No, take it, Harry, please. If Max saw it when he came back, you know how he is, he’d scream.”

“I keep hoping he’ll change.”

“Max? Change? He’s about as changeable as a brick.”

Zell moved the ashtrays and the drawing rolled up. There were others beneath it. Ricardo didn’t want to peer too closely, but they seemed to be interior scenes in the same dream hotel. All the men looked rich, all the women beautiful. Zell fitted everything into a metal tube. There was a small tic beneath one eye, a sharp vertical line between the eyebrows, though it was a salesman’s face, like Ricardo’s father’s, and it should have been smiling.

After he left, Ricardo pointed at the table where the drawings had been.

“We keep hearing rumors. Is it true you’re going to tear down the track and put up another stupid hotel?”

“Over Max’s dead body.” She picked his wallet off a side table and gave it to him, with a flourish of make-believe trumpets.

“Da-da! I resisted temptation and didn’t steal any of the money. Now I’m going to claim a reward. Don’t turn right around and leave. Have a drink with me.”

Ricardo looked a little uncomfortable. “O.K., I guess. I don’t usually, after a matinee, because somebody has to be sober in that kennel.”

“Is Dee drinking as much as ever?”

“Not that it’s so much, Mrs. Geary, it’s just steady. By the end of the twelfth race he can’t tell one end of a dog from the other.”

“Vodka and tonic? I’ll make it weak.”

“Mostly tonic.”

While her back was turned and she made the drinks, he sneaked a look into his wallet. Behind the transparent window where people are supposed to carry pictures of their girls or their grandchildren, he had a photograph of two men and a woman, naked, so tangled that you had to look closely to see what they were doing. He had bought it that morning, knowing she was sure to open the wallet. As she came around, she caught him checking. She smiled faintly, and he buttoned the wallet quickly into his pocket.

“Yeah, thanks,” he said, taking the drink. “But I’ve got to watch the time. I’m due back at quarter to six.”

“I’ll see that you get there.”

They sat across from each other and she raised her glass. “Tell me about your afternoon. How did you make out?”

“I beg pardon?”

“You said you had some bets you were working on.”

“I guess I did, but that wasn’t very smart of me. We aren’t supposed to bet. Of course everybody does, one way or another.”

“I won’t give you away.”

“I hope not! But before we stop talking about this hotel, what I don’t see—any time anybody asks for money, and I don’t mean just the people like me who do the dirty work, the kennels are always trying to get bigger purses, the story Mr. Geary gives them is that he can’t afford it. I shouldn’t be saying this, probably—”

“Go right ahead, it gives me ammunition for the next domestic skirmish. I won’t quote you.”

“We’re only open four months. The other eight the building just sits there. Taxes, insurance, upkeep. One thing about the hotel business, they’re open the year round. I heard the offer was five million.”

“Not all in cash. In fact, not much in cash.”

“But if he’s really just breaking even, why doesn’t he jump at the idea? That’s valuable real estate. So I thought I’d ask you.”

“Whether it’s true the track’s not making money? Ricardo, I can’t tell you. I own forty percent, my daughter Linda owns twenty. Together we have the power to walk in and demand to see every scrap of paper in the office, but we’ve never dared. We talk about it a lot.”

“I thought you’d be sure to know. Aren’t you secretary, or something?”

“Supposedly. The accountant brings me the tax returns with a little x where he wants me to sign. There’s never much tax due, which may not mean anything. We already pay that huge percentage, night after night, and the government won’t bother us if we lie a little. All I can say is, if Max is taking any money out, I don’t see much of it. I’ve had the same household allowance for six years, forget about inflation. I think it’s insane not to sell, while the market is high. But Max isn’t rational on the subject. He doesn’t like what’s happened to Collins. He hates those vulgar hotels. The deal would be complicated, and he doesn’t trust Harry Zell. But there’s something deeper. He’s been running that track since he was twenty-five. He took it away from some very tough people who inherited it from Al Capone—”

“I didn’t know Capone had anything to do with Surfside.”

“Oh, yes. Max cleaned them all out and made dog racing respectable, and that makes him an important man in Miami. He goes to dinners and gets to eat on the dais. He’s been mentioned for Senator, not too seriously, but he’s been mentioned. If he sells out to Harry, he won’t be a prominent sportsman anymore, he’ll be a middle-aged man with notes and debentures and stock that add up to five million dollars. And of course he’s hopelessly sentimental on the subject of dogs.—Ricardo, it occurs to me that this is your suppertime. I can make you some scrambled eggs.”

“I’ll eat something at the track.” He took a sip of the drink. Then he took a long breath and held it. Gripping the glass hard and looking at the bubbles and not the woman, he said, “Mrs. Geary, would you be interested in making a quarter of a million dollars?”

She had been about to pour more vodka, and the neck of the bottle rang against the glass.

“What are you talking about?”

“Not a quarter of a million just once. A quarter of a million a year, from now on.”

Now he looked at her. Her hand was at her throat, and he thought she looked frightened.

“Ricardo,” she said, almost in a whisper, “I think you’d better—”

“No, wait, don’t throw me out yet. All afternoon, I’ve been wondering. Should I, or shouldn’t I? I believe in luck. When something lucky happens, you can’t just back away from it, you have to push it. When will I get a chance like this again? You own forty percent of one of the biggest dog tracks in the country, and that car you knocked me down with is six years old and should have a ring job. That’s ridiculous. How much do you know about pari-mutuel betting?”

“That’s Max’s department. I cook and vacuum and clean the oven.”

“Which must get kind of—”

“Sometimes.”

A look went with this exchange, and Ricardo sat back and began talking less desperately.

“The thing to remember, Mrs. Geary, is that you aren’t betting against a roulette ball or a pair of dice, you’re betting against everybody in the grandstand, and that includes people who stick pins in the program or bet on the dogs with the cutest names. There’s no way you can win at a casino because the house cuts a piece out of every play. At the dogs—eight dogs in a race—bet at random, and you ought to average one winner every eight times.”

“I see that.”

“But the pool doesn’t pay back the full amount. A seventeen-percent bite—it doesn’t seem like much, but that’s on every race. Figure it out in dollars. Say the customers bet a hundred thousand on the opener. The winners get eighty-three. They dig for seventeen thousand more, and bet another hundred. They get eighty-three. See what I mean? Eight thousand people show up on an average night, and they bet about thirty bucks apiece. They brought two hundred and forty thousand in betting money. They go home with thirty thousand. That’s not seventeen percent, it’s close to ninety.”

“Ricardo, I never had the illusion that anyone could win in the long run.”

“You win if you can do seventeen percent better than the schmucks, if you know seventeen percent more about the dogs. And that’s hard. I try to bet three races a program. I’ve got a guy who buys tickets for me. You wouldn’t know him, probably, but he’s a well-known sight at the track. A big winner can’t hide, so we decided to do it right out in front. He does his betting in platforms and big hats, and on a cool night he’ll wear a light fur. If anybody can beat that seventeen percent, it ought to be me and Billy. I know the dogs by their nicknames. When the chart says the track’s fast, I know how fast, because I’ve felt it. A little dampness in the air can slow a dog down by a second, and that’s fourteen lengths. I don’t do any picking at all the first two weeks, until I know the racing pattern. Some dogs are going to start slow and finish fast. Some go wide on the straight and cut inside on the turns. Once they set the pattern they stick to it. I know what the kennelmen are up to. They’re always trying to get a fast dog in a slower class, and so on and so forth.”

She was beginning to seem more interested. “Are you saying that even you can’t—”

“I beat it,” Ricardo admitted, “but not by much. I was ahead fourteen thousand last year.” He looked at his watch. “Damn it, I’ve got to go.”

“Not yet! It’s a long way from fourteen thousand to a quarter of a million.”

He stood up, leaving his unfinished drink on the table. He had timed this carefully.

“If I don’t get back, it’s all academic, because I won’t have the job.”

“Ricardo, it’s unfair. I’m practically rigid.”

“Can we get together tomorrow?”

“No, that wouldn’t be so good. Max will be back. We’d better make it tonight after the racing.”

“Here?”

“Well—no. On account of the doorman. I’ll pick you up.”

This was another delicate moment, and Ricardo looked at the floor.

“How I do with the guy who does my betting, we meet at a motel, to be on the safe side. If you go first and rent the room, I’ll call from a box and get the number. Then we won’t have to be looking over our shoulder all the time.”

He pulled up suddenly. “Don’t get the wrong idea,” he said, to make absolutely sure that she did. “I mean, we need a place to talk for half an hour—”

“Heavens,” she said lightly. “Considering that I’m old enough to be your grandmother—”

He left it at that, and named an unromantic chain motel on Biscayne Boulevard, near the North Bay Causeway. They shook hands, rather formally. Ricardo was so anxious to get out without breaking the bubble that he forgot to thank her for the wallet and the drink.

Everything seemed to be clicking nicely. By the same token, he didn’t want it to be too easy; that would be equally unlucky.

Alone in the elevator, he said thoughtfully to himself, “I don’t know.”

Chapter 3

The movement of dogs through the kennel had been carefully choreographed, with a new parade every seventeen minutes. Ricardo kept them moving without thinking about it consciously. Dee left the kennel area once or twice, perhaps to place bets. Sometimes he did, sometimes he didn’t. It was all very careless and haphazard, and whenever he seemed to show an interest in a dog, Ricardo stayed out of that race.

Tonight he sent Billy only one signal. A standout dog had been sneaked into one of the marathon races. They bet him to win, and he won going away.

He called the motel after clearing the dogs for the last race, and he was told there was no one named Geary registered. She hadn’t showed up!

“Check again, will you? G-e-a-r-y.”

“Oh, Geary. Yes, in nine.”

He was laughing when he walked in. “You decided to come. I was afraid you might think it was all too wild.”

She had changed back into slacks and sweater, to make it obvious that this wasn’t the usual motel date. They were going to be talking dogs, and after they finished, they would go to separate houses. For the same reason. Ricardo had a bucket of fried chicken. She had brought the vodka bottle, however, and there was a faint sparkle of danger in the air.

“I’m starving,” he said. “Dee, as usual. I had to do both jobs, and I didn’t get time to eat. Do you want some chicken?”

“No, I had supper. Shall I make you a drink?”

“I guess so, but I’m not much of a vodka drinker.”

“I never used to be either, but it seems to go with the role.”

It was motel ice and straight vodka, an extremely dry martini. She smoothed the fabric of her slacks and smiled nervously.

“You were in the middle of telling me something.”

“Yeah, how to make money on the dogs. Dee’s always telling stories about the old days. To slow a dog down then, all you had to do was overfeed him or fill him with water or sandpaper his toes. Dee used to do it himself, he doesn’t mind telling you. He shot them up or he stuck a hunk of ginger up their backside. It was worth doing when they were betting against bookies. Nowadays, with the machine, you can’t win a fortune on one race because the more money you feed in, the more it shortens the odds. And the track gives pretty good protection against crooked owners or trainers. If a dog varies more than two pounds, it’s an automatic scratch. They’re in isolation two hours before post time, and the only people allowed in the kennel are trustworthy guys like Dee Wynn and myself.”

“Did you say ginger? He wouldn’t do anything like that now, would he?”

“Well, anybody who drinks as much as he does is a hard person to handicap. He lays off between meetings, and he can’t keep himself in whiskey year-round on his Surfside salary. He’s careless, is the trouble. There was a dog last year won at a good price, fifteen or something, at about a second and a half faster than his best previous time. He was obviously hopped up—obviously. I don’t know what Dee used, some drugstore amphetamine, but that dog was so high you could spot it from the grandstand. So the judge asked for a urine sample. We have a little rig we use, put it on the dog and give him a little squirt of electricity. Dee was so drunk he could barely stand up, but he switched samples and turned in the wrong urine.”

“Ricardo.”

“I know it sounds funny, but it was so damn crude! Doping’s a felony, and if that sample hadn’t turned out to be clean, I think I know who was elected to get it in the ass. Not Dee. The Latin kennel boy, Ricardo Sanchez. O.K. Last summer I took a backstretch job at Pompano, the harness track. Those horses work all twelve months, and they get tired. They need all kinds of medication to keep them in racing condition. The state and the track don’t have any incentive to keep up with it. They take the same bite whether a race is crooked or honest. So the guys who develop the medicines are always one step ahead of the guys who figure out ways to test for the medicines. You said something about Al Capone. We’re still protecting against Capone. A cousin of mine works at Pompano. He’s just my age, and he showed me a suitcase full of twenty-dollar bills. They use two basic shots. The slow one is a tranquilizer they call Sleepy Time. It was introduced last year, and the great thing about it is that it lasts exactly three hours, to the minute. Give it at six, at nine it’s gone. The dog’s temperature is normal. Nothing in the urine or blood or saliva.”

“That’s fantastic.”

“In the standard tests. The State Testing Lab hasn’t even heard about it yet. The speed-up shot is a vitamin-hormone mixture. That does show up, so you have to be careful with it.”

“But these are for horses.”

“Which are bigger than dogs, right. So I rented a schooling track in Broward County and worked out the dosages. I hate to say it, but before I got it right I killed two dogs. With the bomb, you use half a cc in a sugar solution. It doesn’t change the dog’s whole personality. With the right kind of competition, a fourth- or a fifth-place dog has a shot at first. And that’s what I’m talking about. You don’t try to win every race. When you do win, you win at good odds. At Pompano, the shots are administered through the trainer, usually. There’s no point in taking that kind of chance except in the right situation. When it happens, he wants to make sure, and there’s a tendency to overdose. So there’s already talk, and that’s bad. Using these two shots, with the run of the lockup kennel, I could hit the Double Q three times a week. But that would be dumb. I’d have to hire somebody to cash those big tickets, and that’s where most of the horse schemes have fallen apart. I want to be invisible. I won’t stop betting on class and form. I told you I bet about three races a program, and that’s all I can handle. After I make my picks, I’ll slow down one dog and speed up another. Not by much! Four or five lengths. The regular Q odds are good enough. A lot of the time something surprising will happen, and I’ll lose. That’s fine. All I’m trying to get is a little more edge, and average about three thousand a night.”

She looked disappointed. “I was keyed up for a bigger number than that.”

“Mrs. Geary, some arithmetic. Three thousand times ninety, times two—the winter meeting, the summer meeting. Five hundred and forty thousand. Forty thousand of that for Billy. A quarter of a million for me, a quarter of a million for you. Tax exempt. Year after year.”

He was speaking evenly. He still hadn’t tasted his drink, as though he suspected it might have been doctored by some of the additives he had just told her about. Mrs. Geary was sitting far forward, flushed and excited.

“I must say it all sounds very plausible. What do you need from me besides my blessing?”

“It can’t be done as long as Dee stays as kennelmaster. He’s too much of a slob. He’d spoil it in a week.”

“Then that’s our first problem, because Max is definitely not going to fire him.”

“Transfer him. Or he’s old enough to retire—give him a drinking pension.”

She shook her head. “Hopeless. They’re old drinking buddies. They go all the way back.”

“This would be a way to keep the track and stave off that real estate thing.”

“You don’t understand about Max. He really believes what he says about honest racing. I don’t know what he’d do if he found out Dee was switching urine samples—maybe just warn him. But I think if you checked you’d find that happened on one of the nights when Max was away. If I could arrange this, I would, but I’d be scared even to mention it. He’d blow me out of the room.”

“He can’t really believe in that honesty crap.”

“He does, though. Once the dogs are on the track they only know one way to run, and that’s all-out. Greyhounds are more honest than people.” She waved her hand. “I’ve heard it so often.”

“If I talked to him—”

“No, Ricardo. He has a reputation with newspapermen, people like that—friendly, happy, easygoing. That’s his public face, and of course he’s in public most of the time. In private, he can be very mean. I’m sorry to say he’s one of the old Miamians who’s not happy about the Cuban emigration. You’d be off the payroll so fast…”

She stood up to get ice. “You realize I’m tremendously excited by the idea. I think it’s time I had some money of my own. If we could think of a way to get Dee fired—”

“No point in that unless I get the promotion.”

“Aren’t there days when he’s too drunk to notice what you’re doing? Couldn’t you work around him?”

“Too risky, too sloppy. It’s bad enough now to have to work around that camera.”

He saw no reason to tell her that he was already doing what she suggested, speeding up or slowing down an occasional dog, and why cut the management in on it? But this way was haphazard and unsatisfactory. And he had to pass up some of the best opportunities. When he did have a chance to use the new medicines, as in the opening race that afternoon, he could feel a temptation to increase the dosage, or to hit all eight dogs and bet big. That was what he was trying to avoid. All he wanted to do was put it on a business basis. Out of the total handle, twelve percent to the track, five percent to the state, half of one percent to Ricardo Sanchez.

“You look crushed,” she said. “I’m sorry. I wish I could hold out hope, but after twenty-three years of marriage I know the man pretty well. Plus the fact that—well, you’re very good looking, and Max is—”

He looked up at that. “What do you think we ought to do, then?” he said after a considerable moment. “They won’t charge us any more if we use the bed.”

“So tonight won’t be a total waste.”

“Something like that.”

He had chicken fat on his fingers, but he thought it would look too cold-blooded if he went to the bathroom to wash. She touched his face lightly. He put his head against the front of her sweater, pulling her in. Was that right? It seemed awkward. He worked the sweater out of the slacks, and kissed her stomach, wondering how he was going to get out of this.

His hands were as heavy as rocks. After a time she began to move in his arms, pushing forward against his mouth.

Then she broke away from him and went silently to the bathroom. He gulped the vodka martini like a prescription, fixed the bed, took off his clothes, and fidgeted.

When she came out of the bathroom, naked, they met and kissed, and he thought for a moment it was going to be all right.

But it turned out to be impossible for him. There had been too much talk about money. She was surprised, because it didn’t fit the scenario, but she was nice about it, in fact extremely nice, almost motherly, although her procedures were anything but.

“This never happened before,” he said in a low voice, without adding that he had never before been in bed with a woman her age.

“Do you want me to work some more?”

He turned away, his forearm over his eyes. “Not now.”

“I’ve been very much—on edge,” she said. “I’m sure you noticed. I’ve felt very hollow inside. With Max and me, for a number of years, there hasn’t been anything. A couple of men I play golf with, my age and older. It never involved a motel. I was too aggressive. I’m sorry.”

He sat up. “You were too—no, it’s the other way around. The whole thing is my fault. I planned it.”

“Planned what?”

“The accident. Everything. Your car didn’t make that blood. I cut myself before you hit me. But I didn’t know you’d be like this.”

“Like what?”

“A person.”

That wasn’t quite it, but it was the best he could do. Without her clothes, she wasn’t the wife of the president of Surfside. If she had been flabby or bony, he would have had no problem. The contrary was true. She was one of the nicest-looking women he had seen.

They talked for an hour, needing no help from the vodka bottle. He began to think they should try again, but she told him to sleep and she would visit him the first thing in the morning.

He was asleep when she knocked. He let her in. He was erect, they were both happy to see, and he stayed that way. It was satisfactory to them both. He went out afterward for coffee and rolls, and they stayed in bed until he left for the track. She was a big surprise to Ricardo. There was something to be said for age and experience, after all.

They met frequently after that, and the lovemaking not only continued good, it became better. They hardly ever talked about his plan, because they both had come to accept the fact that nothing could be done about it as long as her husband was alive and running the track.

Chapter 4

Michael Shayne, the well-known private detective, was coming back to Miami after a nationwide chase that had ended in a twenty-four-hour vigil in the hills above San Francisco. He was wearing the same clothes he had started out in. His only luggage was an over-the-shoulder flight bag.

As he came out of the terminal, a voice said, “There he is.”

A photographer stepped in front of him and began taking pictures, which surprised Shayne; he hadn’t expected the California action to make the Miami papers. Two Miami Beach detectives closed in.

“Glad we didn’t miss you, Mike,” one of them said, a fat-faced veteran named Jamieson. “Painter wants to talk to you.”

“I hardly ever talk to Painter if I can help it.” Shayne and Peter Painter, the Miami Beach Chief of Detectives, had made all kinds of trouble for each other over the years, and Shayne usually tried to stay out of the pompous little man’s jurisdiction.

“Nevertheless,” Jamieson said.

“I haven’t shaved in three days,” Shayne said, rubbing his jaw. “I need a little maintenance.”

“It has to be right away, that’s what the man told us. He’s having a press conference, and he wants to be fair, give you a chance to deny everything first.”

“What did I do now?”

“And he went on to say,” Jamieson said, “don’t answer that kind of question. He wants to be the one to break it to you.”

“What did he say after that?”

“To use the handcuffs if we had to.”

“Yeah, that would make a better picture.” He called to the photographer, “Do you know what this is all about?”

The photographer grinned. “Just that this time Painter must think he really has something.”

“I’m too tired to argue,” Shayne said. “My car’s in the garage. I’ll follow you in.”

Jamieson said quickly, “No, Mike. No. You’re coming with us. He wants to make sure you actually get there. And you know he’s got a point, based on experience.”

A Beach patrol car was parked ahead of the taxis, the kind with a grating separating the front and back seats, and no inside handles on the rear doors. Jamieson’s partner opened a door, playing it broadly. He bowed and swept a welcoming arm toward the car’s interior.

“Be our guest.”

Shayne stood still. Two uniformed sheriff’s deputies were nearby, watching. That made a total of four, not counting the photographer, who was presumably neutral.

“Welcome to Miami,” Shayne said.

As he ducked to get in, the photographer took another picture. The detectives used their siren to get through the Forty-second Avenue lights and onto the expressway. Now that Shayne was successfully caged, they were even less talkative. Jamieson said only one thing, as they came off the causeway into Miami Beach. “Want a piece of advice?”

“Not from you, Jamieson.”

“Naturally you’re going to do it your way.”

“It’s too late to change.”

The detectives posted themselves on the sidewalk before releasing Shayne, and kept close beside him as they walked him upstairs, into Painter’s office. The walls were crowded with pictures of the chief of detectives having his hand shaken by politicians, making arrests, posing with entertainers at the Beach hotels. The man himself remained planted in his chair, his hands spread on the desk as though ready to spring at his visitor. Before going into police work he had been a Marine captain, and he had kept the manner. He had put on some extra weight around the middle, but he kept it sucked in hard and sat very straight, to make the most of what height he had. His executive armchair was cranked up as high as it would go.

“They didn’t have to shoot you to get you to come in and answer a few questions. You’re mellowing, Shayne.”

Shayne sat down. “I’m trying to think what crimes I’ve committed lately. I can’t remember any in Miami Beach.”

Painter squinted at him. “How does extortion sound?”

“Serious.”

“I believe it’s serious.” Painter checked the time and said briskly, “I’ve set aside fifteen minutes, and I don’t want to keep our media friends waiting. I’m hoping to make the six o’clock news. Suppose you start by telling me why Max Geary paid you that money.”

“Geary?” Shayne said, puzzled. “What money?”

“Now here we’ve been talking for exactly thirty seconds, and you’re already asking questions. This time I’m doing the asking. What did you have on him?”

“On Geary? Past tense? You mean he’s dead?”

“Yes, you’ve been away, haven’t you. Very conveniently timed. If you really don’t know, he totalled his car at two o’clock Tuesday morning. The blood test showed straight bourbon. He was starting home from the track and just made it out of the parking lot, went off the cloverleaf and piled up on Alton Road. Made a very nice bonfire. They got the foam truck from the track, but he was pretty well singed by the time they got him out.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Shayne said somberly. “I used to like Max. He’s been getting a little hard to take lately, boozed up most of the time. I’ve never been one of his regular customers. I never had him for a client.”

“No, I wouldn’t say this was the regular detective-client relationship.” Painter gave his narrow mustache a quick flick in opposite directions. “Now I want to hear you say it. You never took a penny from him, legally or otherwise. You don’t know what I’m talking about. You let him buy you a drink now and then, but that’s as far as it went.”

“It seems to me I usually paid for the drinks. Aren’t you forgetting something? You haven’t given me the warning.”

“You don’t need that, for Christ’s sake. But all right. You’re entitled to have a lawyer present, and anything you say may be used against you. Now answer the goddamn question.”

“This isn’t boot camp, Petey. Look at it from my side of the desk. You went to the trouble of finding out where I was and what plane I was coming in on. You sent two guys out to grab me, and you made sure a photographer was there to get a picture of Mike Shayne being busted, or of Mike Shayne breaking somebody’s jaw. Now you tell me to waive my constitutional right to keep silent until I’m confronted with some evidence. Go to hell.”

Painter’s lips tightened, but he tried to speak evenly. “What happened the last time I asked you to come in and talk about something? You were gone for four days. And when you finally surfaced, you had the guy we were supposed to be looking for. You made us look bad, and not by any means for the first time, I’d like to point out.”

“If we’re thinking about the same case, there was a deadline and I couldn’t stop to explain it to you in advance. Petey, come on. Extortion is a bad label to hang on a private detective. It might give my clients the idea that it’s a mistake to trust me. You’ve got something connecting me with Geary, or with the dog track. It has to be more than a rumor but it can’t be much more or you’d be convening a grand jury. What is it? If you don’t want to tell me, I’ll try to catch your press conference on TV.”

He leaned forward to get up. Painter clamped his lips more tightly together, took a small notebook out of the central drawer, and spun it across the desk.

It was so small it fitted easily into the palm of Shayne’s hand. The leather cover was charred, but it is hard to burn a tightly closed notebook, and this one had come out of the fire in time for the writing on the inside to be legible. Shayne turned the pages slowly. There was nothing on them but a long list of names, dollar amounts and dates, going back six years.

“You found this on Geary?”

Painter was watching him closely. “Not right away. He was wearing it in a kind of money belt, around the upper part of his leg, under his underwear. Also two folded thousand-dollar bills, emergency money, and a safe-deposit-box key. The book was tucked back in under his balls, so it wouldn’t show. Skip the early pages. Start at the end and read backward.”

The last entry had been made the previous weekend, the name of a Miami lawyer against the sum of $1500. A flake of charred paper drifted to the floor.

“Tiny writing,” Painter observed. “If you’re having trouble I can give you a magnifying glass.”

Shayne turned a page, and his own name came out at him: Mike Shayne, $3000. He met Painter’s eyes. His old adversary gave him a tight smile.

“Don’t be embarrassed. Read on. You’re in distinguished company.”

Shayne returned to the book. He recognized most of the names that recurred at regular intervals. Before Christmas every year there were a dozen that didn’t appear at other times. There were a few police officers among the regulars, the majority leader at Tallahassee, several other Senators and representatives, a zoning official, a building inspector, the head of a Teamsters local. Some of the earlier Shayne entries gave his full name, some only his initials.

“This is dynamite,” he observed. “Are you in it?”

“I am very definitely not in it,” Painter snapped. “That’s a payoff list. I’ve never taken a payoff in my life.”

“Maybe that’s what makes people think you’re a little inhuman,” Shayne said. “How far have you got with this? Who’s Wolf? Five thousand.”

“He used to be the state’s tax man at Surfside. From the Division of Pari-Mutuel Wagering. Most of the Tallahassee people have something to do with allocating racing dates. There’s an ex-director of the Board of Business Regulation, a chief inspector, some racing judges. There are also a few cops there, I’m sorry to say, and one of the things I’m going to announce is their immediate suspension without pay.”

“Ben Wanamaker? Is that the guy on the News?”

“Sports editor. How far back have you got? Turn the page.”

“Tony Castle!”

“I thought you’d be interested. For eight thousand, and that’s annual. He’s not supposed to have any mainland connections anymore. That’s what I get from the FBI, and I still like to think they know what they’re talking about.”

Castle’s true name was Castalogni. At one time he had been an important figure in the Miami criminal world, but as a result of an investigation run by Tim Rourke of the News, using leads provided by Shayne, he had considered it prudent to get out of the country. The payments from Geary had started the following year. He owned a casino in the Bahamas, and as far as Shayne knew, he had never been back.

“And what does Castle do, if anything,” Painter said, “to earn that eight thousand a year? It’s one of the things I’m hoping you’ll tell me.”

“It baffles me, Pete. But I seem to have my own problems here.”

“You do, don’t you?” Painter said with immense satisfaction. “A little crude, Shayne. Some of those teenage fans of yours are going to be painfully surprised.”

“Crude? Not necessarily. Because why would Geary keep a payoff book?”

“For his own protection, obviously.”

“How does it protect him? There’s something peculiar about it. What do you get for a total?”

“Two hundred and ten thousand the last year. You don’t exactly take care of that by dipping into the petty cash. Your own three-year total, not that I’m telling you anything, is eighty thousand, an impressive figure. Now I’m going to repeat my initial question: What did you do to deserve it?”

“If he died Tuesday, I’m not the first person on the list you’ve asked that. What do the others say?”

“Most of them are saying it’s a damn lie.”

“And with Geary dead, that leaves you with no witness. Are you releasing the whole list?”

“Selected names. I’ve been having an argument with the state’s attorney. I’ll be candid with you, Shayne. I’ve often tried being candid with you, and I’ve usually ended up regretting it. However. One school of thought is advocating just the course of action you mentioned—impanel a grand jury, subpoena everybody, if they deny receiving any money from Geary, indict them for perjury. But could we make it stick? Probably not. So now we’re leaning toward media exposure, and letting the legislature handle it. Make it an investigation of the whole dog-racing picture, not just Surfside. Maybe end up with a revamp of the entire racing scene, dogs and horses, which is long overdue, in my opinion. But I kind of hate to see it go that way.”

“The name Painter would drop out of the story after the first day.”

“Interpret it that way if you like,” Painter said kindly. “But the person I want to get my fingernails into is Castle. All these bureaucrats, these petty union officials—they’re minor league. Most people don’t know this, but I’m thinking about retiring. If I could bring in Tony Castle, it would be a nice capper to my career. That’s why I was so determined to talk to you before the publicity.”

“You’re talking to me.”

“I notice an interesting pattern in those payments you got. I’ll take the book back now, if you don’t mind.” Shayne slid it to him. “Three thousand regularly on the twenty-fifth of each month. Suddenly they drop to one thousand for a few months, and then stop altogether. Several months later they begin again, and continue to the present. You and I have had our little fallings-out, and some of them, regrettably, have been reported by your friend Rourke in the press. But I’ve always known that sooner or later you’d slip, and I’d nail you. I’m not vindictive!” He raised a finger. “You’ve expressed your scorn and contempt for me openly and often, but that’s one of the unfortunate byproducts of public service. As far as I’m concerned, you’re free to say what you like and think what you like. But that cuts both ways. I’m entitled to freedom of speech too. I happen to believe that your free-wheeling methods, your disregard for the legal niceties, have had a lot to do with the decline in respect for constituted authority in this city—”

Shayne said impatiently, “I think you’re a horse’s ass and I’ve never concealed it. What has that got to do with this?”

Painter was thrown slightly off-stride. “You’ve made me lose track of what I was about to say. If you can keep a civil tongue in your head for one minute, and remember that maybe the other fellow has some feelings. You know where I’d like to see you. In jail, with your license revoked. Be that as it may! I’m willing to work with you for the common good. And this time, by God, I’m talking from strength! Your name on that list would be enough. But I’ve got something else and I’m going to tell you about it right now.”

“All right, Petey. That’s enough of a buildup.”

“Just wait one minute and you may not be quite so flippant. What is your impartial observer going to conclude when he looks at that sequence of payments? Three thousand, three thousand, one thousand, one thousand, nothing, three thousand. Well, maybe Geary was temporarily short of funds. He had to go on paying those other guys, but you’ve got money in the bank from all those huge fees you’ve been drawing down from gullible people. So Geary came to you and said, Mike, I’m a little short, what do you say, ease up for a couple of months. And you went along with it because as I say, you don’t have to scrimp and scrape on a city salary. And when the winter meeting was underway and his income picked up, you went back to your old arrangement. That’s the way it looks. But I know different!”

“Petey, you get more long-winded every day.”

“Then I’ll come right to the point. People know you’re one of the high-priority items in this office, and when they hear about anything where your name is involved, they bring it to me. In October of last year, the third month you weren’t getting your slush, I was told that a nurse at Jackson Memorial had a Mike Shayne story I might want to add to the collection. That’s out of my bailiwick, but I made arrangements to see her. Geary was in the hospital—mugged outside the stadium after a Dolphins game. According to the official version, he was drunk, and when the man with the knife asked him politely if he had any change, he put up a fight. Broken nose, bruised larynx, concussion. I have her notarized statement, with two witnesses, and I’ll give it to the papers if you decide that’s the way you want to play it. The statement is as follows. Getting long-winded, am I? She was the night nurse on duty. He called her over and grabbed her wrist and told her it wasn’t some junkie who did this, it was no less a celebrity than Michael goddamn Shayne.”

Shayne regarded him steadily.

Painter gave his mustache another little flick, and went on. “An argument about money, and Shayne went out of control. Kicked him. Banged his head on the pavement. Left him there bleeding. King Kong stuff, and Geary was too scared to take it to the cops. But he wanted the nurse to make note. If anything happened to him, if he ended up on the obit page under suspicious circumstances—”

“Wait a minute. Are you wondering if that crash he died in was an accident?”

“No, that’s open and shut, as far as that goes. Hold the interruptions. I’m almost finished. He wrote her a check for three hundred dollars. I’ve got a photostat of that canceled check, with the right date on it, the night when he’d been beaten up and he was supposedly too drunk to hold a pen.”

“This is all bad news.”

“Not to people who don’t make a practice of beating up drunks. Not to people who don’t take high five-figure payoffs. I’ll tell you what I did a few days later. Geary was home, getting over his concussion. I told him it was silly to be scared of a private detective who was on the skids anyway. I pleaded with him to give you to me for assault with intent to kill. I couldn’t get anywhere with him. He maintained that he didn’t have any recollection of who mugged him, or of talking to the nurse.”

“I think I see your theory, but you’d better tell me anyway.”

“Obvious on its face!” Painter was enjoying himself. “He was trying to get out of that regular payment, and you gave him a taste of the law of the jungle. After that you’ll notice he was always prompt. So that’s the situation, and I can’t begin to tell you what satisfaction it gives me. My first impulse, my first impulse was to walk out and lay the entire sordid story in front of the press, and lick my lips while they crucify you. If there was ever any bastard who deserved it, it’s you. But what does it amount to, after all? A little petty extortion. True, as you said yourself, that’s a bad tag for somebody in your dubious profession. You’d probably have to move to a different location, but I assure you, after a couple of weeks we’d stop missing you. It took me a sleepless night to come to this decision, but I’m going to give you a chance to unhook.”

“If I tell you everything I know.”

“You’ve got it.” He ticked a fingernail against the desktop. “Frankness, Shayne. I want complete openness and frankness and candor. In return, nothing will be said publicly about the nurse’s statement or the canceled check. And I’ll go one long step farther. I don’t like to make deals, I never have, but that’s the way the world seems to be organized. If you can deliver Tony Castle to me for a felony prosecution, I’ll suppress that eighty-thousand-dollar payoff. I’ll have to wave the book, but I won’t let it leave my hand. I don’t have to release all the names, I can get away with that. I want to make sure I don’t injure any innocent parties, and so on.”

“All you want right now is a promise?”

“And a few morsels to show good faith. As I keep saying, I don’t have a great deal of time. I’m not asking for immediate miracles, as far as Castle’s concerned. I’ll let you have a couple of weeks. But before I go out to face the TV cameras, I want to know what’s been going on over there at the Surfside Kennel Club.”

Shayne shook his head. “It’s too open-ended. Any time you aren’t satisfied with my performance, you can always call another press conference—you don’t know how you overlooked it the first time, but all of a sudden you’ve noticed my name on the list.”

“Sure—I’ve got something to hold over you for a change, and I’m not so saintly that I don’t like the feeling. No more stalling, please. A simple answer to a simple question. Three thousand bucks a month from Max Geary. For what?”

“I’d like to think about it for two minutes.”

“No more time. What’s there to think about? You’re in a jam this time, baby, and you’ve got one way out.”

“I always hate to have people say that,” Shayne said, standing. “It makes me feel crowded.”

“Who cares how you feel? You’ve got no choice in the matter.”

“I can always tell you to screw yourself.”

Painter dodged back, as though Shayne had swung at him. “You won’t do that.”

“I just did it.”

“You’re out of your mind! Alienating me is not in your own best interests, believe me. I’ll have no recourse except to include your name with the others I intend to announce, and make the nurse’s affidavit part of the record. Go ahead and deny it. How many of your friends will believe you?”

“I haven’t denied it. I don’t have to plead until I’m charged with something.”

Painter’s mouth opened and closed. “Come now, Shayne—”

“Unless you want to book me.”

“Not yet! Not yet! There are people on that list who were involved in the day-to-day operations, and I’ll make them the same offer I made you. They’ll cop, don’t worry. All I need is one living witness, just one, and you’ll be out of my hair for a long time to come. You may be surprised by the public reaction. I think you’ll find that the general beer-guzzling public will be delighted to learn that Mike Shayne is on the take, like everybody else.”

“Do your duty, Petey.”

“More sarcasm. And after I leaned all the way over backward, tried to give you a break—”

Shayne walked out on him.

Chapter 5

A taxi took Shayne to the airport, where he picked up his car. He snapped on the dashboard radio, and left it on while he drove back into the city, using the East-West Expressway as far as Twelfth Avenue. He was tuned to a station that repeated ten minutes of news at the turn of each hour, and broke into the music for bulletins whenever anything big came in. The music faded abruptly and the broadcaster’s voice gave Shayne another version of the news he had just heard from Painter.

His car phone buzzed as he turned into his basement garage. It was Tim Rourke, one of Shayne’s oldest friends, a crime-and-corruption reporter on the News. Shayne told him he was putting his car away, and to call him upstairs.

The phone was ringing when he walked in. He dropped his flight bag on a chair, brought out the Martell’s and poured. He gave the brandy a quick swirl and drank, while the phone continued to insist on an answer. He made himself a sandwich and took that and his glass to the phone.

“Yeah, Tim?”

“I’ve got a story to write,” Rourke said briskly. “Did you hear about Painter’s press conference?”

“I caught the radio flash. I had a pretty useless conversation with him before he went on—he showed me the book.”

“We’re using a picture of that pickup at the airport. Jesus, Mike, you look like a Mafia hit man.”

“That was the idea.”

“Mike, quickly—what about this eighty G’s?”

“How did Painter report it?”

“He gave it the full treatment, naturally. Played it for melodrama. He hasn’t been getting much ink lately, and he’s hungry and thirsty. He used big easel cards to make it simple for the TV audience. You had a card of your own. Of course everybody knows about the great Shayne-Painter feud, but he didn’t gloat, certainly not. Sad, a little disappointed, maybe. That nurse’s statement hurt.”

He paused for a comment, in case Shayne wanted to make one. Shayne said nothing.

“Mike, the minutes are ticking. The man at the front of the room is screaming for copy. Give me an angle, will you? Painter said he deliberately held up the announcement until you got back from the Coast, to give you a fair shake. And you didn’t yell frame-up. You yelled for a lawyer.”

“What else could I do?”

“Yeah, but Mike. Think of the way it looks. Payoffs to politicians, inspectors, cops, a couple of union guys. And then Mike Shayne, three thousand bucks. Mike Shayne again. Three thousand bucks. Shayne, Shayne. Mike, throw me a piece of meat. What was that, some kind of retainer? Geary thought somebody was doping his dogs, or something? If that’s what it was, say so, for Christ’s sake, and I’ll do my best to sell it.”

“The price is a bit high for that, eighty thousand over three years.”

“What was it, then? I know there’s an explanation, I think I know you that well. But I need some indication of which way to go.”

Shayne kneaded the bridge of his nose. “Tim, I don’t know what to tell you. I’ve been up three nights in a row. He sprang this on me without any preparation. I couldn’t think of any marvelous way to handle it then, and I still can’t.”

“Let me ask you this. Are you covering somebody?”

“That might be a good thing to suggest. No, better not, Tim. It’ll only lead to more trouble in the long run. I can ride this out. If they subpoena me, I’ll stand on the privilege against self-incrimination.”

“Mike! Dummy! As far as the public’s concerned, that’s the same as an admission of guilt.”

“I realize that,” Shayne said gloomily. “But who would have supposed Max was writing it all down? I still don’t think it makes sense.”

Rourke said nothing for a long moment. “I was hoping for more than that.”

“Go ahead and write the goddamn story. What else can you do? It’s news. I’ve had a run of good luck. I’m not going to start whining when it suddenly turns sour.”

Rourke called to somebody, “In a minute, in a minute.” He came back: “The first denials are coming in. The politicians are using the standard out—campaign contributions. Wolf, the tax guy, says flatly that he never took a dirty penny.”

“Do you believe him?”

“Hell, no,” Rourke said angrily. “This is Geary’s under-the-table book. Why would Wolf’s name be down there if he wasn’t being paid off? He says he and Geary had differences when he was working the track. Bad fights. Geary put on pressure and got him transferred. And then, for purely vindictive personal reasons—this is Wolf talking—he put his name down on the grease list. If he had a heart attack and dropped dead, that would be his bequest from the cemetery—labeling Wolf as a thief.”

“Not bad for the spur of the moment. It might save his job. They need people up there who can think fast on the phone.”

“My point is, Mike, if you want to go that route, you have to get in with it fast, and stick to it. Any weaseling and you’re finished.”

“That may be good public relations advice, Tim, but I’m not going to take it. I’ve decided to see how it goes. How about your sports man, Wanamaker?”

“We’re admitting he took the money. Most of it was petty stuff through the PR department—a couple of junkets, they picked up the tab for two weeks in the Bahamas. But that adds to your problem. A News man is involved. Mike Shayne is involved, and that’s the same Mike Shayne who’s fed considerable hot information to his friend Rourke across the years. We can’t quibble on this. We’ve got to hit hard, to clear our own skirts. I’m signing the story, and unless I have something from you I have to write it Painter’s way, as much as it pains me. What did he offer you in that conversation? You can give me that, at least.”

“To leave me out of it altogether if I told him everything I know about Surfside. I can’t trust Painter to keep that kind of bargain. He’d leak it, and blame it on somebody else in his office.”

“One direct question. Did you beat up Geary in that parking lot?”

“Tim, until I get some legal advice, I can’t answer any direct questions, even from you, even off the record. I’m more than a little foggy right now, but I think I understand the situation. Painter thinks this is going to destroy my business. He may be right. But it won’t kill me. I’m sick of all the people in this town who’ve been waiting around hoping to see me fall on my face. I may have to get out of Miami. Seriously, is that such a tragedy? Your editorial page has to maintain that this is God’s earthly paradise, and anybody who thinks otherwise is a Communist sympathizer. I was really impressed with San Francisco—it’s a great town. Maybe I’m due for a change.”

Again, in spite of the usual afternoon pressures in the News office, Rourke let a few seconds tick past.

Shayne broke the silence. “Just write it straight. If you try to qualify it you’ll make it sound worse. Now I’ve got to get some sleep.”

He broke the connection. After finishing his makeshift meal, he set the alarm radio for seven and fell asleep at once. He was awakened by the seven o’clock news.

It was still bad. The Teamsters local had voted to stand behind its president, who was down in Geary’s book for a total take of $24,000. The state legislature had been so indignant about the disclosures that they had transacted little business that afternoon. A memorial service for Max Geary, arranged before the story broke, was to take place at Surfside that night, between the fourth and fifth races. The Miami Beach mayor, a United States Senator, a rabbi, a monsignor and several show business personalities were scheduled to pay tribute to the dead sportsman. And Norma Culhane, the Jackson Memorial nurse who had given Painter his affidavit tying Shayne to Geary’s beating, had been located and questioned. Her replies had been taped.

“‘Mr. Geary was holding my wrist that hard. He’d taken a drop or two, certainly, but I wouldn’t say he was rambling or anything like that. He didn’t dare speak to the police about it because they’re all of them as crooked as a hairpin, those are his words. That the beating was done to him by Michael Shayne, and he spelled it for me, with the y, to fix it in my recollection. That Michael Shayne had spoken to him in a threatening manner. I don’t condone all this violence, this giving and taking of bribes. I know the old saying that it takes two to tango, but my own feeling is that Mr. Geary was forced by threats to pay out those amounts of money. I attend the dog races myself, and I believe Mr. Geary always did his best to provide the public with an honest race for their money.’ That was Miss Norma Culhane, speaking on the steps of Jackson Memorial. Now back to Brad Walker at WCBN. Brad?”

Shayne snapped it off, so hard that the knob came loose in his fingers. He threw it across the room, and listened to it bounce. A shower, a shave, clean clothes and a drink helped hardly at all.

After taking his Buick out of the garage, he double-parked and picked up a News on Twelfth Avenue. He read Rourke’s story before moving off. Rourke had warned him it would be damning, and it was. There was a boxed front-page editorial on declining moral standards in the city, the inescapability of corruption in an atmosphere where everybody, presumably with the exception of newspaper publishers, was out for the fast buck. The only remedy suggested was continued vigilance and reform in the system of allotting racing dates. Perhaps four dog tracks in one metropolitan area were too many. The sports page carried a statement by the ex-sports editor, Wanamaker, admitting that he had been guilty of bad judgment in accepting gifts and hospitality from Mr. Geary, but denying that this had affected in any way the paper’s coverage of the sport. Another story described in detail the Surfside security system, the twenty trained security guards, the closed-circuit TV, the tattoos, the two-hour quarantine and the postrace testing by trained veterinarians. Whatever money had passed between the late Max Geary and those on his secret payroll, the public could rest assured that when the dogs sprang out of the starting box, all eight of them sincerely wanted to overtake and devour that synthetic rabbit.

Shayne tore out the list of Geary’s payees and studied it again at dinner. He ate without hurrying, but also without being aware of what he was eating.

The “full” signs were up in Surfside’s own parking lots, and Shayne had to park well to the south of the track, near Harding Park, and walk back. Geary would have been pleased by the turnout. As Shayne paid his way in, the greyhounds were being called onto the track for the third race. The floor was already littered with a drift of uncashed tickets. A covered stage had been erected across from the grandstand, a little off-center so it wouldn’t block the view of the board, which was draped with black bunting. Above the morning-line odds for the next race, lights said: “Surfside Kennel Club Honors the Memory of a Great Sportsman.”

Shayne bought a program and opened it to the page listing the Surfside officials, from Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell Geary, Owners, through the racing secretary and safety director and director of mutuels, the judges and chief clerks, down to the announcer and lure operator and kennelmaster. There was another list of state racing officials, under the Board of Wagering and the Board of Business Regulation. Shayne compared the names with those he had torn out of the News, and found little overlap.

When Surfside was expanded and modernized some years before, to meet the competition of the new tracks across the bay, a huge inside auditorium, the Hall of the Greyhound, had been added, with a theater-sized screen and twenty smaller TV screens along both walls. Here, in chilly weather, bettors could eat and drink at one of the many bars and snack bars, place their bets and watch the races without ever seeing a living dog. Even tonight, with the temperature in the high sixties, there were more customers in the auditorium than in the grandstand or clubhouse. On the innumerable monitors, the speakers scheduled to eulogize Max Geary were about to take their places. Several of the promised dignitaries, including the Senator, had discovered engagements that kept them elsewhere. Here in the murky auditorium, few people were paying attention. The betting windows were closed for the time being, but with eight races left on the program, there was much work to be done.

Shayne went through to the escalators, passing a sign saying, “No Public Admittance Beyond This Point.” The executive offices and racing control were on a long suspended deck, hung from the grandstand roof. The front wall was almost all window, a long double-pane strip starting a foot above floor level and ending at the ceiling. No one was using Geary’s office. Leaving the door slightly ajar, Shayne turned down the volume on the public address outlet so he could hear anyone approaching, and went past the desk. The closed-circuit monitor was set on automatic, clicking from one location to another every twenty seconds. There was a two-drawer file, locked. On the other side of the track, a rabbi was in the midst of the opening prayer. Finding nothing of interest, Shayne moved on.

In the main control room, the lure operator was leaning forward, arms folded, over the long arm of the notched rheostat. The track announcer glanced around as Shayne looked in. Recognizing Shayne, he brought the front legs of his chair down with a thump. The TV technician and the chart writer, young men with nearly identical drooping mustaches, were laughing about something. The laughs faded instantly.

All twelve closed-circuit screens on the big console were working. Nothing was moving in the lockup kennel. A few late arrivals were still clicking through the turnstiles. Lines of impatient bettors had already formed at the sellers’ windows.

Shayne nodded and passed on.

He caused a similar stir in the judges’ box. There were six men here. He recognized none of them. If they hadn’t watched Painter’s press conference, in which Shayne’s name had figured prominently, they had seen clips of it later. Quick looks were exchanged. What was Shayne, the recipient of $80,000, doing here?

Shayne moved on to the VIP lounge. This was a big room, comfortably furnished, with its own bar and serving pantry. Tonight, of course, it had been used by the dignitaries now on the infield platform. The TV monitor showed the same scene that could be watched by looking out of the windows, but the sound was choked down to a whisper. The rabbi’s prayer was finished at last, and his place at the mike was taken by an official of the Dog Racing Association. Shayne found that the bar stocked his brand of cognac, and he poured himself a shot. He looked at the dog pictures on the wall, and was at the big window, drinking, when the door opened behind him and one of the men from the judges’ group came in. He was breathing rapidly, as though he had come a much longer distance.

“I need a drink. I can’t listen to that crap.”

He had a manila envelope under one arm. He put it on the bar while he poured whiskey, and when he sat down, laid it on the couch beside him. Behind dark-rimmed glasses, he blinked continually.

“I don’t know if this was such a hell of a good idea, Shayne, showing up tonight, but if you want to know something, I was thinking about calling you.”

“I don’t place you,” Shayne said.

“I’m Lou Liebler. And I don’t mind telling you, I’m getting a little edgy.”

“We all are,” Shayne said. “Max surprised a few people. There are some things that shouldn’t be put in writing. What was he trying to prove?”

“I can’t figure that one out.”

He drank, put the glass down, touched the envelope, scratched under his jaw, and reached for the glass again. If he had been any more nervous, he would have been flying.

“Liebler, sure,” Shayne said, remembering the name from the program. “You’re here looking after the interests of the State of Florida.”

“Correct. And when the state’s interests clash with my interests, I try to work out a compromise. Do you want to give me a general statement of where things stand at this point?”

Shayne studied his cognac. When he was satisfied with it, he drank.

“The difference is,” he said carefully, “people are going to be watching now. Changes have to be made. New shares all around.”

“Ouch. Well, I won’t say we didn’t expect it.” Liebler gestured at the monitor, on which a fat TV comedian, very much in earnest, was extolling Max Geary’s selflessness by citing the charity drives he had headed, as well as many small, unpublicized acts of kindness and generosity. “Not all that generous, I didn’t think. But without that big piece off the top, Max’s piece, there’s going to be more for everybody.”

“We don’t want to get involved in a war.”

“I’ll go along on that,” Liebler said, his eyes jumping from Shayne to the monitor, and then back to Shayne. “I’m a confirmed pacifist. At the same time, I know what I’m entitled to.”

The most interesting thing about this conversation so far was that Liebler’s name hadn’t been one of the ones in Geary’s book. Painter had identified only one name from the Wagering Board.

“What about Wolf?” Shayne said. “Is he going to be reasonable?”

“I wouldn’t like to be the one to put it to him, but he must be shaking and shivering today. Frankly, I was surprised at the size of his number.”

“Didn’t he have this job before you?”

Liebler gave him a quick look, which might have been slightly tinged with suspicion. “Al Wolf. Yeah. And when his transfer came through, he recommended me to replace him. For which I couldn’t thank him enough.”

“Can he hack the publicity?”

“I don’t see why not, if he keeps his mouth shut.”

Again Shayne thought about what he was going to say before he said it. “That’s what I wanted to check up on. If Painter had anything else to go with that little black book, he wouldn’t be handling it this way. He’d be after indictments. He’s hoping to get the hysteria going, so somebody’ll panic and they can turn him around.”

“Ah-ha,” Liebler said, relieved. “That explains why you didn’t want to postpone this conversation. If you’re worried about me, don’t be. Painter? He doesn’t impress me. Definitely bush.”

“Can we count on—you know who I mean, I always forget his name—”

“Fitz?” That would be Fitzhugh, the racing secretary. “He’s all right. He did say something about grabbing the next plane for Costa Rica”—Liebler laughed—“but I talked him out of it.”

Shayne finished his cognac, and went for more. As he passed the couch, he picked up Liebler’s envelope. The tax man stabbed after it, but Shayne moved it out of reach.

“What’s so important it had to come with you?”

“Hell, Mike. You know—it’s understandable.”

Shayne opened the envelope at the bar. It contained a diagram of the wiring in the auditorium and the control deck, and three minute-to-minute timetables, each starting at 7:30, when the betting machines opened. “Seven-thirty, restaurant. Seven-fifty, john. Seven-fifty-three, PR. Eight-o-six, phone, main level. Eight-ten, bar. Eight-sixteen, TV lounge, moving about. Eight-thirty-six, control room, outgoing phone call, monitor switches. Eight-forty-one, own office. Eight-forty-three, Fitz’s.”

“Do you blame me?” Liebler said. “Every day that goes by, we’re losing money. Max probably thought he was justified to keep it to himself, but damn it, there are times when you need a little mutual trust. I’m not trying to move in and take over. Don’t get that idea. It just occurred to me there was one weakness in the setup. A beautiful thing otherwise, but if anything happened to Max, the cash flow would dry up overnight. And he was drunk most of the time at the end. Drunks get careless.”

Shayne returned the papers to the envelope and tossed it back to Liebler. “What happened to the Tuesday money?”

“He had it in his dispatch case, six thousand, thereabouts. Burned up, more than likely.”

Shayne brought the cognac back. “Now I’m going to ask you to be patient a little longer, Lou. Let the dust settle.”

“I’m in agreement, but… Fitz is worried about the widow. If she sells, that’s it, and what’s to keep her from selling?”

“Selling what, the track?”

“Haven’t you heard that Harry Zell wants to put a hotel here?”

“That deal’s been hanging fire for years.”

“Because Max kept turning it down, and he can’t turn it down when he’s dead. All right, it wouldn’t be finalized until the end of the meeting. Twenty-one racing days left. We ought to be taking advantage. I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking in terms of my old age. Twenty-one days. Put that in utility bonds, and it’d be a nice thing to tack onto the pension.”

“I want to enjoy my old age as much as you do, Lou. I don’t want to be in jail or dead.”

Liebler started. “In jail—well, that’s a chance you take, but where does dead come into it?”

“Lou, you’re naive.”

“Keeping just to me, personally, I’m essential. It can’t be worked without me.”

Shayne laughed. “All over the state they’re reading that story, and everybody’s going to get the same idea. If the Surfside pad is that big, I want to get on it. You can’t really think there’s nobody else in the civil service who would like this assignment. I’m not trying to lean on you. Maybe you really are as trustworthy as you say you are.”

“Geary investigated me thoroughly. Did he ever have any complaints?”

“He considered you a replaceable part. When I said we were going to make reallocations, I didn’t mean you’d be cut. But don’t get any ideas about taking more than your share.”

“I’m satisfied,” Liebler assured him. “But the point I’m making, who can be satisfied with zero? I just want to get functioning again.”

“I’m hesitating,” Shayne said, “and I’ll tell you why. Painter didn’t announce the full list. Tony Castle is on it.”

“Who?”

“Castle. That shows you’re new in Miami. He used to consider this his town, and people who disagreed with him sometimes ended up with their heads and their bodies in different canals. If Castle is in on this, it’s smart to go slow.”

“I don’t see what you mean. What role would he play?”

“That’s what I’m hoping to find out. He has a casino in Nassau, and he gets along so well with the authorities there that he likes to stay put. He wouldn’t be part of a Miami deal unless the money was very good.”

“Nassau?” Liebler said thoughtfully. “I heard that’s where the money came from for the renovations.”

“The theater?”

“The whole thing. They stripped everything out and started with the shell.” He looked more closely at the TV monitor. “That guy up there now, waving his arms. He’s one of the ones wouldn’t loan Max a dime. A mortgage? Don’t be stupid. Surfside’s not making any money, so how would you pay it back?”

“I don’t like surprises,” Shayne said. “I didn’t know Castle was getting these payments, and I don’t know how he’s likely to react now that they’ve stopped. He doesn’t know his name was in the book. He may think it’s safe to come back with a few friends. With guns. You want to get back to normal. So do I. The sooner I get a clear picture, the sooner it’s going to happen. So work on it, Lou. Don’t stick your neck out, but ask around. I want everything you can get on his financing. Will Wolf talk to you?”

“He may be too scared.”

“Try him. One other thing. The beating that put Geary in the hospital. I can’t ignore that. The nurse sounded a little too goddamn believable. Check the dates. Anything you can give me about what was going on at the time, so I can have at least a half-assed alternative.”

Liebler was nodding. “I’ll get on it. I wouldn’t be feeling this pressure if I didn’t have a horrible hunch that the track’s going to be sold out from under us any minute. Mike—the daughter, Linda. She’s the one who’s been pushing the sale. Charlotte, the widow, I get the impression she’ll go with the strongest wind. Here’s what I was thinking. Strictly from the point of view of a return on invested capital, keeping the track open doesn’t make sense. But if you went to Linda and said, ‘Look, there’s more money here than shows on the books, and it’s the best kind, the kind you don’t pay taxes on.’ I couldn’t do it, but maybe you could, you don’t have that much to lose. And if you want to get started right away, you’ll find her in the clubhouse bar, unless I’m mistaken. She wouldn’t take part in the ceremony, but she wouldn’t stay home and miss it. She’s a character. Doesn’t have many dates, if you know what I mean.”

Shayne looked at him, and he said hurriedly, “Don’t get sore. Just trying to contribute. All I’m saying, she might listen to you. I didn’t say you had to go to bed with her. When she starts talking about money, which she’s sure to, tell her there are other kinds of money besides Harry Zell’s. Those big sums in her Daddy’s book—where did they come from? Not out of general admissions, that’s for damn sure.”

On the TV monitor, the speakers were changing. Liebler kept touching his empty glass, then quickly withdrawing his hand, as though it had burned him. He had apparently decided not to allow himself any more whiskey.

Chapter 6

It cost more to get into the clubhouse than the grandstand, but compared to competing forms of entertainment, the price was still low. Drinks were a dime more, and the seats were more comfortable. There was a window selling $100 wheels and boxes.

When the bartender brought Shayne the drink he had ordered, Shayne said, “Linda Geary. Can you point her out to me?”

“Bound to be here somewhere.” He looked around. “Down there in the corner box. Aren’t you Mike Shayne?”

“I’ll have a statement on that after I talk to my lawyer.”

“Smart man. You got the only way to beat the house odds, that’s own a piece of the wheel.”

The speakers eulogizing Max Geary were running out of things to say, and the bettors were getting restless. Taking his drink, Shayne moved through the crowd to get a better look at Geary’s daughter. A man was beside her. He stood up, and Shayne saw that it was Harry Zell.

Shayne circled, intercepting Zell at the top of the aisle. He looked as though he was mourning something, but probably not the dead race-track owner. As soon as he saw Shayne his expression brightened drastically, going all the way back to normal without passing through any intermediate stages. Then he remembered the context, and he looked sharper and slightly hostile.

“We’ve been hearing about you.”

“Let’s not talk about it, O.K.?” Shayne said. “I’ve been standing here thinking what a great spot for a hotel.”

Zell looked at him suspiciously. “You’re touching a nerve, you know that? I’m trying to figure out how that payoff book fits in with the way Max always refused to listen to my presentation. No track, no payoffs. Look at all the money he’d save.”

“That’s true, Harry, but if he sold out to you, what would he do with his evenings? It’s funny, I don’t think I ever saw Mrs. Geary here before tonight. Have you got her signature yet?”

“We’re negotiating,” Zell said abruptly. “Excuse me, I’m getting a lady a drink.”

“I’ll take it down to her. What’s she drinking?”

“Scotch. But I’m the one she sent for it.”

“We’re all supposed to be grieving for a dead benefactor, not talking real estate with the benefactor’s daughter. For the first few days, the survivors should be thinking about higher things, and I don’t mean a high-rise hotel. Bow out, Harry. I’ll take it to her.”

“God knows I can’t stop talking about it. It’s been dragging on so goddamn long.” He came up to Shayne’s level, and said in a lowered voice, “How do you stand on the question, dog track or hotel?”

“I can’t get excited about it. Harry, you’re in the business, you ought to know. Who put up the money to rebuild? Was it Tony Castle?”

Zell stepped back, to bring Shayne’s face into better focus. “Max hated those people, with a passion. Castle? What is this?”

“To be honest with you, I’m feeling my way. I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes. With Max dead, the situation is going to be different.”

“Is it? I hope so. This is definitely the queerest deal I was ever involved in. Tell Linda I had to make some phone calls.” He smiled suddenly, with what seemed to be real warmth, going back to his usual business manner. “Friend or foe, Mike? I wish I knew.”

He moved off at an angle, his big head down. Shayne worked his way back to the crowded bar and ordered a Scotch and water, which he took to Linda Geary’s box. The infield ceremony was ending, ahead of schedule because of the missing speakers. The crowd came to its feet for the final prayer, led by the rosy-faced monsignor.

Linda accepted the glass without looking at Shayne. Shayne studied her while the benediction echoed out of the PA outlets. Her cheeks were wet. She was a tall girl with long straight hair to her shoulders. She had her father’s nose and slightly protuberant eyes. She would have been handsomer weighing twenty pounds less. Her clothing was disarranged in various small ways, as though to show that she knew she was plain and too heavy, and there was no point in bothering. Her blouse was partly out of her skirt, and a button was missing.

Her lips were trembling when the prayer ended. “I think I’m sorry the bastard’s dead.”

She turned. Seeing Shayne instead of Harry Zell, she reared back, her face darkening.

“You killed him, you bloodsucker,” she cried, and threw the drink at Shayne.

One of the ice cubes caught him under an eye. “What did I do, get the wrong brand of Scotch?”

They had the full attention of the nearby box-holders. Shayne saw a waiter looking their way, and he signaled for another drink. She tried to get past him into the aisle, but he blocked her.

“Harry gave me a message for you.”

“All right, what?”

He sat down, his knees high. The mourners were beginning to file off the stand. One of the politicians helped Charlotte Geary down the steep stairs. Shayne said nothing, and after a moment’s puffing and flouncing, Linda sat down beside him.

“Well, damn it, what’s the message?”

“I only said that to get you to stop blocking the sightlines. He has to make some calls, and he asked me to carry your drink. What makes you think I had anything to do with killing your father? I thought the idea was that he took care of that himself.”

“You’re enormously sure of yourself, aren’t you?” The waiter handed in the new drink. She seized it and drank. “You and the rest. Hasn’t it struck you that maybe you overdid it a little? You killed the goose. Now no more of those golden eggs.”

“I’d say there are still a few money-making possibilities. Even if Harry’s deal goes through, and it seemed to me he was looking a little pessimistic. How much do you know about the way your father did business?”

“Me?” she said bitterly. “His only child? I’m the PR girl. I handle the press passes and get the puffs in the papers. Of course I’m also a minority stockholder, so what aspect of the business did you have in mind?”

“Were you surprised to hear he was paying off that many people?”

The Scotch had soothed her slightly. “Oh, somewhat, I guess. I knew about it in general. That was his excuse for keeping me on a dollar-a-week allowance, practically. To get any money at all out of the King of Miami Dog Racing, I had to go down on my knees and sing “Swannee River.” Everybody else was getting rich out of Surfside, but not Max Geary, and God knows, not Max Geary’s daughter.”

“Then why didn’t he sell?”

“Because he was an idiot! A stubborn, sentimental idiot! He got his back up and he wouldn’t listen. He was the world’s most infuriating man, and what the hell am I talking to you about him for?”

“Because you think there’s a chance you might be able to use me.”

She swung around, her eyes still moist and nearly overflowing. “What do you mean, use you?”

“Why is Harry having such a hard time smiling tonight? What did your mother do, stall him?”

“How did you know that? It only happened two hours ago. Oh, yes. Dog racing was so important to Max. Surfside is his monument. She can’t bring herself to sign it away before his body is cold. Of course that’s not the real reason. The real reason is lust, and in case you didn’t hear me, I’ll spell it for you. L-u-s-t. Do you know what it means? It’s a word you hardly ever hear anymore.”

“I know what it means, but how does it connect with dog racing?”

“It’s intimately connected with dog racing. Not that I blame her too much, except that it’s just so—I don’t know, so humiliating. And so damn inconvenient right now. Max always had girls on the side, even when we were months behind on the electric bill. But Mother? Another man? Never. Do you want to look at him?” She reached around and took a pair of binoculars off the rail. “Can I borrow these? All right, at the front of the paddock. He’s younger than I am, for goodness’ sake.”

Two men were standing together at the front of the enclosure, watching the dogs being made ready for the fifth-race parade. One, resting against the rail, was in his sixties, with a deeply lined face and thin hair, the prim mouth of a snuff-user. He directed a stream of tobacco juice onto the track and drank from an open Coke bottle. Shayne adjusted the focussing knob. The liquid in the bottle was too pale for Coke.

The young man at his elbow was built like a jai alai player, slight but muscular. He put a stick of gum in his mouth and moved back toward the kennel, with the ease and sureness of someone who knows precisely where he is and what he is doing.

“Good-looking kid,” Shayne commented, returning the binoculars.

“Oh, smashing. Poor Mother has been playing golf and doing the housework all these years, and that doesn’t prepare you for real life. She didn’t have a chance. Honest to God,” she burst out, “if I told you how we had to cut corners and make do while that ocean of payoff money was pouring out month after month… And then to have to listen to this hypocrisy, this bullshit about the money he raised for the Boy Scouts. They wanted me to get up on that platform in a black dress, with a little lace hanky so I could touch my eyes when they said something especially affecting. But not me. I wouldn’t have any part of it. So he got plastered, so his car got away from him. I knew it was going to happen. I even knew it was going to happen in just that way.”

The bugle sounded, and the dogs left the enclosure.

“I know what people thought of him. A maudlin, sloppy old bore. Do you know he never used to take more than one or two sociable drinks before we enlarged? Before we added the quote Hall of the Greyhound, unquote? The scale of everything changed. A bigger handle. Ten drinks for Daddy a night instead of two. We had to do it. The washrooms—my God, they were foul. We had to put in hurdle races. That just about killed Max, all by itself. Because when the good old boys in Kansas course their greyhounds, they don’t make them jump over sawed-off broomsticks, do they? Honest, traditional dog racing isn’t enough in this day and age. It has to be fancied up. You don’t watch the dogs, you watch the TV.”

The marshal lifted each dog’s chin and tweaked its blanket, to make it look like a winner, when the caller announced its name and weight. The numbers were dancing on the tote board.

“Oh, God,” Linda said, weeping. “When I was about seven he used to take me hunting and fishing. Those were the great times. When his trouble began, he didn’t even know I was alive. I’m the unluckiest person. Look around you. Everybody’s got a fistful of bills. The kennelmaster’s an old friend of mine, I do his betting for him. I thought I could piggyback on his bets and come out ahead, but I can’t even seem to do that. Whenever he tells me he has something that’s absolutely sure, that’s the night I can’t spare more than a few lousy bucks. It’s a money-making machine, but I’ve never been able to get it to perform for me.”

At the rate she was drinking, she would need another Scotch in a minute. Shayne waved at a waiter. She blew her nose hard.

“I thought I owed it to Max’s memory to get drunk tonight, but now I don’t think it was such a good—” She turned suddenly, and her hand closed on Shayne’s arm. “That’s a divine muscle. Is that what you used to put Max in the hospital? Or a baseball bat?”

“Would you like an explanation of that?”

“Oh, never mind, I don’t think I’d believe it. I know he was impossible sometimes. I had enough fights with him myself. I threw a platter of chicken at him once. Shayne, I need some help.”

“What kind?”

“I think it was tetrazini, what difference does it make?”

“I mean what kind of help?”

“Not psychiatric. Maybe the kind of help you could give me with that hard right arm. Go back a few minutes. You asked me a question, and now I think I’ll answer it. How much did I know about the business? Thanks,” she said to the waiter as he passed in a drink. “Officially, not a hell of a lot. But unofficially—well, I made it a point to nose around, because some day all this was going to be mine, was the idea. None of the dog people pay any attention to me—I’m part of the wallpaper. And one of the things I’ve found out, one of the major things, is why he paid you three thousand a month.”

“He had every reason to keep that confidential.”

“He thought he was keeping it confidential. I pieced it together.”

“I think you’re trying to bluff me, Linda. Tell me your theory.”

“No, I don’t think I will. You play this game all the time. I’m new at it. I don’t want to hear you tell me how wrong I am. Because I know, and you’d better believe it. And this gives me a little muscle, even though I’m really only a frail girl. I think I’m going to hire you, Shayne, you corrupt son of a bitch. Mike Shayne, yeah! But I’m not going to pay you any money. I couldn’t afford your fees. This time your fee is going to be silence.” She put her finger to her lips. “Do me a favor, and I won’t explain that three thousand to the cops, or the newspapers, or the state’s attorney.”

Shayne continued to look at her steadily, and she went on, “I’m in a position to lay you waste, will you admit that?”

“Probably, if you have any evidence at all.”

“Pooh, evidence. I don’t need it. I’m the daughter. Do you want to take a chance? Go ahead. You may think you’re in trouble now, but wait till I’m done talking.”

“Who do you want me to work on, the kid in the kennel?”

“Exactly. His name is Ricardo Sanchez, and I’ll give you five days to get him off the track and out of Miami. Am I wrong in thinking that’s the kind of work you do?”

“I’ve done it,” Shayne said shortly. “But it can backfire. If your mother gets the idea you’re persecuting him, you’ll be worse off than you are now.”

She touched his arm again, this time running her palm along its full length to the wrist. “You can control that. I like competent people, and I have a feeling you’re competent. They’ve got an apartment in the Fanchon Towers. She rented it for him. Mother and I don’t have those long girl-to-girl talks anymore, and I had to follow her one night, which made me feel very crummy. I kind of sympathize with the old girl, but you have to admit it’s grotesque. He’s completely uneducated. Just because he has that great smile and that neat little Cuban ass.”

“You want to break it up for her own good, so she won’t be hurt.”

“So she won’t change her mind about selling Surfside! For the last year we’ve been conspirators. How were we going to make that drunken madman listen to reason? Then all of a sudden, a hundred-and-eighty-degree switch. North to south, uptown to downtown. And why? So she can make her Latin boyfriend racing secretary, or something even more grand, general manager, whatever his heart desires.”

“Has she definitely said she won’t sell, in those words?”

“She sent back Harry’s purchase agreement, with no explanation. But I know the explanation. It’s that Cuban stud, who no doubt is giving her the first satisfactory humping of her adult life. Get something on him,” she said viciously, “and if there’s nothing to get, invent something. But I know that look, the sassy way he moves. There’s larceny there somewhere. Talk to his Cuban girlfriends and find out what he does when it’s siesta time in the barrio. And then pound him with it! Catch an outgoing bus, Ricardo, or that Latin American ass will end up on a slab.”

“You really want to go that far?”

“I want you to break it up, and break it up fast, and don’t tell me how you did it if it embarrasses you. In five days. Oh, she’ll sell eventually. No other move makes sense. But I want that Cuban to be a thing of the past before there are any loose piles of cash lying around.”

The woman they were talking about was still huddled with the mayor and other dignitaries in the infield. From this angle, the pool beyond, set in loose blue gravel, looked like a dog biscuit. The dogs were yipping in the starting box.

The announcer cried, “And heeeeere comes Speedy.” The artificial rabbit, a two-foot length of spring steel wrapped in sheepskin, with bright inflamed eyes, whipped around the turn, releasing the lid of the starting box. The dogs poured out.

“Dee!” Linda cried in alarm. “Dee Wynn. What’s the damn fool doing?”

The older man Shayne had seen in the paddock had wandered out on the track. He was wavering, holding the Coke bottle the way a tightrope walker uses his pole, for balance. The pack pounded hard toward the turn. These first moments were the most important part of the race, for in three races out of four, the dog that leads at the first call will go on to win. The bettors in the clubhouse boxes were yelling encouragement to the dogs they had money on, addressing them not by name but by number.

“Go back, Dee!” Linda called. “Oh, my God. Dee, go back, you’ll be massacred—”

Suddenly, the old man realized that in a moment he and eight charging dogs would be contending for the same stretch of track. He gestured with the half-empty bottle.

The announcer, above on the control deck, had seen him. “Dee—leave the track.”

The kennelmaster hesitated, and made the wrong choice. The lure operator was leading the dogs by forty feet. He came back on the rheostat handle, and the lure slowed. In a moment the leading greyhound was only a few lengths behind it. Wynn jumped toward the infield. A yell went up. He was a half step from safety, in the air in the middle of his final bound, when the lure arm struck his ankle. Both legs flew up, the bottle went sailing, his arms flailed like an off-center windmill, and he came down hard on the seat of his pants. It was a spectacular spill.

And an instant later the dogs were on him.

The board flashed: “No Race. No Race.”

The pack split. A few dogs continued after the rabbit, which was now far ahead around the turn, but the others wheeled and broke, and two headed back toward the starting boxes. The lure folded inward and disappeared.

The announcer was calling, “No race. No race. The fifth race will be rescheduled later in the program, hold your tickets, ladies and gentlemen, hold your tickets.”

The decoy, a replica of the lure with the same startled eyes, was leaping up and down behind the wire screen, further distracting the dogs. Some turned in and allowed themselves to be captured. Others were already past.

Usually an aborted race is greeted with resentment from the customers, especially those whose dogs are leading at the moment the sign is flashed, but Wynn’s fall had been so wildly comic that everyone was laughing.

“You cretins,” Linda cried furiously. “Can’t you see he’s hurt?”

She pushed past Shayne. Wynn was still down on the track, his legs splayed, supporting himself on his hands, while the handlers and dogs raced around him. He felt the need to spit. His mouth worked, and a stream of juice jetted out halfway to the paddock entrance.

“You see such wonderful backwoods types here,” a heavily jeweled woman said in the box above Shayne. “I mean, it’s America, isn’t it?”

Chapter 7

Shayne finished his drink and went back to thinking about the Geary family and his own problem. Security men helped Wynn to the paddock, hopping on one leg. New greyhounds were called out, and again the numbers began to move on the board.

A waiter brought Shayne a folded note. It was crudely lettered, in block capitals: GOT SOMETHING FOR YOU, $$ INVOLVED, MEN’S LAV, B LEVEL GRANDSTAND. SIXTH RACE. IMPORTANT BE THERE.

The sixth race was next; there were seven minutes until post time. Shayne refolded the note and tapped his knuckles with it. He stood up, leaving the glass on the rail. He read the note again, standing. It didn’t fit in with any of his various guesses, and he already knew that unless he was extremely careful with his next few moves, something much worse than being knocked down by a mechanical rabbit and trampled by dogs was likely to happen.

At the gate into the grandstand area, he had his clubhouse ticket punched so he could get back without paying a new admission. Instead of trying to make his way through the great cavern between the grandstand and the theater, he went outside to the terrace between the stand and the track. The greyhounds were being introduced. At the far end of the terrace, he went back up one tier, stopping just after reentering the betting room.

The lines were snaking up to the windows. This was a beer-drinking crowd, and to make access easier during periods of heavy use, the entrance to the men’s room in the far corner was an open archway, reached by passing a double baffle. A notice had been posted on the outside partition.

Shayne stopped a woman returning to the grandstand. “Could I borrow your glasses? A guy’s buying some tickets with my money, and I think he’s trying to stiff me.”

“Oh, dear, you’re going to change the eye-setting. But I don’t guess it would be Christian to refuse.”

Shayne focussed on one of the betting lines, and lifted the glasses slightly to get the small sign at the men’s room entrance. It had been printed in the same block capitals as the note: CLOSED. USE OTHER FACILITIES.

He returned the glasses. “Thanks. If you want a winner, bet some money on the six dog.”

“Six?” she said breathlessly. “Are you sure?”

“It’s a tip from the kennel.”

She turned back to the windows, feeling for money. Shayne returned to the grandstand and stepped along an empty row until he spotted a stringy old man sitting alone with a hot dog and a plastic glass of beer. He was wearing a battered, broad-brimmed straw hat with a sweat-stained band.

Shayne sat down beside him. “Evening.”

“Evening.”

“I wanted to ask you if that hat is for sale.”

The old man’s eyebrows lifted. “This old hat?”

“I’ve got a dog in the next race,” Shayne explained, “and I’ve got a nice little bundle riding on him. The last two times he won for me, I was wearing a big straw just like yours. Not that I’m superstitious, but I’ll give you ten dollars for it.”

The old man cackled. “Oh, no, you’re not superstitious. Ten dollars is a sight more than it’s worth.” He removed the hat, exposing a bald, freckled skull. “Reckon I won’t get me a sunburn from these mercury lights. It’s a seven and three-eighths, and it’s given me good service.”

Shayne paid him and put on the hat.

“Don’t fit too bad,” the old man observed. “Now if I was a gambling man, I’d ask for the number of that dog. But you can’t bet dogs on the Social Security, unless you’re a pretty sorry damn fool. I come out here to pay my fifty cents and watch the show. Good luck to you, son.”

Shayne returned to the betting room, headed for the glow of one of the stand-up bars, and ordered whiskey. Nobody lingered here. The drinkers ordered, drank up, and left. In a moment or two Shayne had worked himself into a spot at the end, from which he could watch the closed men’s room from beneath the brim of the big hat. If somebody was inside waiting to meet him during the sixth race, sooner or later he would have to come out.

“And heeeere comes Speedy.”

The lure came around, and the greyhounds broke from the box. The bartender, a fat man in the concessionaire’s white and orange uniform, yelled at the nearest TV screen, “One-four-seven. Come on, one-four-seven.” A trifecta bettor, one of those foolish people who think they can guess which three dogs will come in first, second and third, in that order. The crowd noises, very loud at first, died to a whisper, building up again to a roar as the dogs came into the stretch. The six dog won by a length. The bartender had placed two of his dogs in the top three, but Shayne’s casual pick had spoiled the bet for him.

The crowd drifted back to the betting arena to see the race replayed. It seemed just as tense the second time, and even a shade more real. Shayne ordered a fresh drink and turned to the next page in his program.

Presently another eight dogs circled the track, this time starting from the backstretch and running nine-sixteenths of a mile. At the end of that race, the seventh, a man came out of the men’s room. His skin was the color of light chocolate. A gold hoop, the size of a half dollar, swung from one ear. He was hatless, his black hair close to his scalp in overlapping ringlets. He was wearing Adidas running shoes, and he was very loose.

Shayne’s head was down, much of his face screened by the brim. The man with the ear hoop walked toward the monitors, stopping beside a heavily built man who was studying the morning line for the upcoming race. He wasn’t comparing numbers with his program. He was merely staring.

After a quick exchange, the smaller man returned to the men’s room. Shayne moved out into the crowd. When the man at the monitor turned, Shayne turned with him. After a close look at his clothes and the way they hung, Shayne stepped in close from behind and slipped one hand around his waist, encircling him brusquely and covering the gun in the clip-on belt holster against his right hipbone. With his other hand, Shayne kept him from twisting.

“Are you Arthur Jacobs?” Shayne asked softly.

“No, you got the wrong guy.”

“Let’s take a walk.”

The man tried to stomp on Shayne’s instep. Swinging him on one hip, Shayne lifted him clear of the floor.

“And let’s try not to disturb people. They’ve got their minds on the next race.”

Shayne walked him to a phone booth and put him in, coming part of the way in with him and holding him with his knees and one elbow while he pulled the gun, a .32 automatic. Then he eased up and let him slip down on the half-seat. Shayne didn’t know him, but he knew others like him. He had red-veined eyes and a muddy complexion. People who lead ordinary lives would have been terrified or sputtering, but apparently this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened to him.

“I tell you you’re making a mistake.”

“What’s the gun for?”

“In case I get lucky and win some of their money. I don’t want to get hijacked.”

“Just another ten-dollar bettor? What dog won the last race?”

“I was watching that one. Nothing looked good to me.”

“Everybody else has a program. Not you. Take everything out of your pockets and put it on the shelf.”

“Is that what this is, a stickup?”

“If you think so, yell for security. Somebody may hear you.”

“Yeah, and get myself shot in the ear with my own gun. I know the rules.”

He shifted to get to his pockets. When his wallet came out, Shayne thumbed it open.

“A Miami address. Angelo Paniatti. Funny I don’t know you. O.K., Angelo—a quick explanation.”

“Explanation of what? I paid admission. I don’t like people standing this close to me. We’re using the same air.”

Shayne slapped him with the wallet. When he tried to get up, Shayne held him in place and slapped him again. He was blocking the doorway, but the walls of the booth were glass, and some of the people streaming past must have seen what was happening. But as Shayne had remarked, they had more pressing things on their minds. The betting machines would be locked in another two minutes.

“The guy with the ring in his ear,” Shayne said. Angelo started another evasive answer, but Shayne’s expression stopped him.

“With the ring in his ear. All I know, his name’s Pedro. Pete, they call him.”

“What do you specialize in, Angelo?”

“This and that, whatever turns up.”

“You didn’t finish your pockets. There’s one more.”

Angelo put his hand on the outside of his jacket pocket. “Just some bills and junk. Mail.”

Shayne said patiently, “I know you’re not used to going one on one, without guns. Take it out, or I’ll slug you with something harder than a wallet.”

Angelo dug in the pocket and brought out a sheaf of glossy three-by-five prints, all of them of Shayne.

“About six hundred bucks in the wallet,” Shayne said. “I hope I’m wrong, for your sake, but this is beginning to look like a hit.”

“A hit?” he said, his voice rising. “What are you talking? I’m small scale. Burglary’s the most I ever—Ask anybody. You know the Miami cops, they’ll tell you.”

“This is between you and me, Angelo. We don’t need arbitration.” He threw the automatic’s slide, putting a round under the hammer, and jammed the muzzle against the man’s throat. “Why are you carrying my picture, in three sentences or less.”

Angelo squealed, a high note that cut through the echoing babble. Shayne didn’t think they could continue this much longer.

“All I know is,” Angelo said, “all he told me, he wanted to talk business where you wouldn’t be bothered. I was supposed to stand at the door and not let anybody in.”

“They’re paying six hundred for that?”

“I wondered, sure, but I didn’t think he’d do anything major here with this many people.”

“It’s the best place for it. Who’s he working for?”

“That’s all I know! A policy of mine, don’t ask too many questions.”

“Who else is in there with him?”

“Nobody.”

A voice behind Shayne said, “What’s going on here?”

It was one of the security guards, an off-duty Miami Beach detective, supplementing his city salary.

“Mike Shayne? Now what?”

“Nothing much,” Shayne said. “This is Angelo Paniatti, and he’s been ejected from every dog track in Massachusetts and Florida. He’s been buying up Double Q tickets. You take over. I don’t have time to process him.”

He walked away.

He crossed to the men’s room and went on to the exit, some forty feet further. Here, too, the open archway was blocked by an arrangement of baffles, two overlapping wooden panels. Inside the first, Shayne dropped to his knees on the filthy floor, got rid of the big hat and edged around the next panel.

The long gang lavatory was brightly lighted, and Shayne moved forward carefully. No feet showed in any of the stalls. He kept moving until he saw a pant leg and the striped Adidas shoe, at the sinks. He brought his legs up under him and went in at a bound, the .32 in his fist.

Pedro, no longer expecting anybody, was combing his tight hair, bending forward to admire his reflection in the mirror. Shayne was on him before he could turn. His skin was extremely smooth, his eyes brown and soft. Shayne jabbed the automatic against him and he fell back with a groan. Shayne grabbed him around the neck, in the mugger’s position, and whirled him so they both faced the closed stalls.

But Angelo had lied to him. Before the movement was complete, one of the doors opened and a second man came barreling out, a wide figure in workingman’s clothes, pumping hard. He was armed with a more imposing weapon than Shayne’s, a .45 that looked as big as a cannon. He fired it from chest level. It not only looked like a cannon, it made a bang like a cannon. A mirror shattered. Clearly Shayne couldn’t use Pedro as a shield; his colleague intended to shoot Pedro out of the way, and then shoot Shayne.

Shayne took a quick stutter step toward the moving man and threw Pedro at him. Pedro skittered across the tiled floor, sawing the air, and the two men collided hard. Both went down. Shayne kicked at a head, but missed. Pedro continued to slide, ending up against the urinals. There was another heavy hammering explosion. The shooter was up on one knee, his face contorted. That was the last shot he meant to miss. Shayne, still off balance, snapped a shot from five feet. He was firing at the man’s body but the bullet went high, striking him in the forehead.

It was the only place a small-caliber gun would have stopped him. The .45 continued in an upward arc and went sailing. The man clutched at nothing and went forward on his face.

Pedro, still on the floor and groggy, fumbled with a knife. Shayne extended his arm and shouted, “Hold it!”

He retrieved the .45, then came in on Pedro, kicked the knife out of his hand, and swung the heavy gun, checking it an inch from Pedro’s head.

“Say it fast. When you shoot one, they let you shoot the second one free. Who sent you?”

Pedro shook his head. The heavy hoop in his ear swung and glinted. Shayne picked him off the floor and slammed him against the urinals. He pulled him back and did it again.

“This is no fucking joke. It’s trouble for everybody. Who are you working for?”

Pedro spat in his face and tried to bring up his knee. Shayne hit him with the .45, taking a little off the swing because he didn’t want to kill him yet. Metal crunched against bone.

The off-duty policeman who had broken in on Shayne’s questioning stepped in with his gun out. Angelo was behind him. Shayne had never been popular with the Miami Beach force, and now, after Painter’s press-conference charges, he was fair game. The cop looked at the body.

“It’s all over,” Shayne said. “Put it away.”

He was speaking calmly, but the cop had already started a sequence of movements that could only end with the gun being fired. He was in a tight crouch, his shoulders forward, the gun in both hands. Shayne had seen cops in that position before, and he didn’t hesitate. Gunfire was the only answer for gunfire. He fired at the long neon tube overhead. It exploded with a quick spurt of escaping gas. Glass pattered down. Shayne went to one side in the sudden darkness, and knocked against Pedro, who had a second knife or had managed to recover the first one. Pedro struck out, raking Shayne’s shoulder.

“Kill him!” Angelo yelled.

For an instant Shayne’s moving figure was outlined against the light from the betting room, and another shot was fired. And then he was through the baffle. He checked, seeing a security man coming toward him. Because of the crowd, Shayne didn’t believe there would be any more shooting, but he stopped believing that when the cop pointed his gun and fired.

Again Shayne went into the men’s room at a crawl, much faster than the first time. He was beginning to get pain from the knife wound.

He found the dead man and dragged him back through the baffle. The people behind him were moving cautiously, remembering that he was the one with the .45. He heaved the body up to a standing position and walked it out.

The crowd had finally realized that something dangerous was happening, and was draining toward the exits. The cop was standing ten feet away, still in the grip of the shooting hysteria. Having fired his gun once, he wanted passionately to fire it again.

The track announcer was calling, “And going into the backstretch it’s Josie S. on the inside—”

Shayne lifted the body so the feet were clear, and ran at the cop. Unnerved by the shattered face and the rotating arms, the cop tried to go two ways at once, and stumbled. Shayne released the body with a yell, and jumped at the escalator.

Several customers were riding up from the ground floor. Shayne, a frightening sight himself by this time, swung out on the strip between the two staircases and slid to the ground floor.

A security guard was running to warn the others at the turnstiles. Shayne made the opposite turn, away from the gate. He wrenched open a door—“Press, Public Relations”—and walked in, colliding with Linda Geary.

She recoiled, and said accusingly, “You got blood on me.”

“That’s because I’ve got blood on me,” Shayne said. “It’s nice to meet somebody for a change who isn’t waving a gun.”

She stared at him, brushing at the blood on her hands. “For heaven’s sake, what happened?”

“I’ve been shot at and knifed, and don’t ask me why because I don’t know. Your cops think the only way to stop me now is to kill me, so will you lock the door and tell them you’re lying down with a headache?”

“There’s no lock on the door. Who shot at you?”

“I’d say they’re professionals. That’s all I have time for.”

Blood was dripping off his fingertips. He put the .45 in his belt and worked his jacket off his injured shoulder. Linda made a small distressed sound.

“Do you think your father was murdered, Linda?” Shayne said.

“No!” She raised a hand as though she thought he was about to hit her. “Murdered! He was drunk, he went off the road—”

“Maybe somebody was parked there waiting, and nudged him off. Did he believe in using his seat belt?”

“The car made an awful noise when he didn’t.”

“It was sitting out there in a dark parking lot all evening. Sprinkle a few pints of gas on the motor, and it’d be sure to catch on fire. That might explain why everybody seems so tense.”

He was using his ripped shirt to sponge off the blood. The knife blade had gone deep into the muscle, and had probably touched bone. Linda had the back of her hand to her mouth.

“It’ll look better when it’s sewn up,” Shayne told her. “You know your way around this place. What about emergency exits?”

“I’m sorry,” she said faintly, “but I have to—”

She plumped into a chair, her face very pale. After a moment she gave her head a hard shake. “And I’ve been complaining this job was so dull. You’d better have some water.” She waved toward a closed door. “But don’t expect any needlework from me. I’m no good at that kind of thing.”

This group of offices had its own small washroom. Leaving the door open. Shayne filled the basin. When the water turned red, he emptied it out and ran more.

Linda pushed to her feet. “Do I have to watch? You do that and I’ll check something. Don’t go away.” When Shayne looked around at her she said hastily, “I hired you to take care of that Cuban. You can’t do that if you’re full of holes. Trust me.”

He let her go. Five minutes went by. When she came back, he was sitting on the corner of a desk, bare to the waist, a towel knotted around his upper arm. Some of her color had returned.

“I had a quick Scotch,” she explained. “Very therapeutic. My God, Shayne—you’re as scarred as a redwood.”

“Always room for one more.”

She gazed at him, blinking her prominent eyes. “You’re a—magnificent-looking man, do you realize that? I’m sorry I threw a drink at you. Who would have realized, with your shirt on—”

“I accept the apology, Linda, and I’d like to be moving. What’s going on out there?”

“They’re running around looking for a crazy killer, and it seems they have a body to prove it. You didn’t tell me you killed somebody.”

“Linda, there were three of them, two guns and a knife. I have something to work on now, and I’d like to keep it rolling. In an hour or two, if nobody looks in here in the meantime, I can probably walk out and surrender. But then I’ll be tied up for at least twenty-four hours, which is how long it takes to pick up after something like this. If I’m out in the open, they’ll try again. This time I’ll be better prepared.”

“I was thinking we’d go in my office and push the desk against the door and talk. Daydreaming again. You need something to wear. I’ve got a raincoat that won’t fit you, but let’s see.”

She went into one of the offices, and brought out a tan coat which she draped around his shoulders. He moved the .45 from his belt to the side pocket.

“I’m Max Geary’s daughter,” she said. “They wouldn’t shoot me, would they?”

“I hope not, Linda. If you see any guns, lie down fast. Get down on the floor.”

“I’ll feel so silly. Walk with your knees bent so you don’t look so damn tall.”

She stepped out by herself first, then looked back and nodded. The only security uniforms in sight were at the extreme front of the building. Linda took the sleeve of the raincoat, then found his arm and steered him. The announcer’s cry seemed far away from here, echoing from one hard surface to another. She hurried him around a corner to a door under a red cross.

“Big night for Surfside,” she said as they went in. “I’ve got another casualty for you.”

A nurse and a dark young man in uniform were rolling Dee Wynn onto a stretcher. The kennelmaster was wearing a long splint immobilizing his left leg. He talked in a steady murmur, waving a hand as though brushing off flies. The ambulance that was usually parked at the end of the homestretch, beyond the starting box, had been backed up to the entrance, which gave onto the track. They slid Dee in and came back to Shayne.

“A little argument about money,” Linda said. “He’s ambulatory, but we’re going to be paying his medical expenses, so give him a ride, will you?”

The young doctor twitched the raincoat aside and looked at the blood-soaked towel. “We’d better put a dressing on that.”

“Let’s go,” Shayne said. “The sooner I get out of this clip joint—”

“You can’t blame it on Surfside, and you know it,” Linda said. “Clip joint, really.”

Shayne shook off the man’s hand when he tried to help, and climbed into the ambulance. Dee Wynn raised his head to see who was with him.

“What happened to you, friend, get knocked down by a rabbit?”

The greyhounds for the tenth race were being called from the paddock. Its bell clanging, the ambulance rolled out on the track, and through the gate.

Chapter 8

“Do you know anything about racing dogs?” Wynn’s hand kept waving, breaking the rhythm occasionally to scratch his crotch. “I know you don’t. I know all the dog people in this county. People claim they know dogs. They studied the tout sheets, and they know enough to steer clear of the fancy bets. They talk like a chart writer. But you can’t know dogs until you’ve coursed them. Made some good money coursing in the old-fashion days. Dogs that wouldn’t run on a race track for doodly-shit, they’d win for you every time in a wheatfield, coursing a real jackrabbit. And when they get catched, those big buck rabbits, they’ll let out a screech like a baby. If you wasn’t standing right there at the bob wire, you’d think a live human baby was squealing out there in the stubble. People from the East would get sick to their stomach. But to a dirt farmer, rabbits are the worst varmints alive, and that squeal is music. You ought to go out there sometime and get in on a real old-fashion roundup, where we’ll stampede five or ten thousand jacks into a wire pen and club them to death with sticks. In Abilene, Kansas. The United States Challenge Cup pays as high as three thousand dollars for a winning dog. I never came close against the big Kansas kennels. The way I made out was the side bets. Had a big lop-eared fawn bitch one year, earned close to ten thousand. She never cared to win by more than a point. She’d keep a length ahead of the other dog, to tease him, like, and make him suffer more when he lost. I trained her in the slob, to strengthen the leg muscles. Nobody fools with that kind of nicety anymore. What happened to your arm?”

“Knifed. What happened to your leg?”

The waving hand stopped for an instant.

“Cracked a couple of anklebones, they tell me. They give me a shot and I’m not feeling a thing. I slipped, that’s all in the world it was. A simple slip. That spic bastard said I could make it—he’s after my job, looking for ways to embarrass me. I wanted to get out and talk to the widow. They think that was an accident, don’t they? Sure they do. That was no accident. He thought he could run a dog track honest, old Max. All that bullshit—the man who took dog racing away from Al Capone. Oh, yes, we had many a discussion on the subject. You can’t run a dog track honest, there’s too much temptation, and you’re a damn fool to try. I’m laying here talking with an ankle that’s smashed, you might say, and the reason it don’t hurt me is modern science. I couldn’t walk on it, you know, but I could tell you stories about greyhounds that broke a leg in a race and finished on three. They want to run, you know. They’ll rip the leash out of your hands. Well, do you think a medical doctor is the only person can administer a needle? We didn’t use needles so much in the old days. When we wanted to stop them by a couple of lengths, we’d put a rubber band around a toe. They don’t like that. And the rubber band’s going to break or rub off before the race is over, so there’s nothing to show. Or you wedge in a little pebble. Cinch up the muzzle strap. All kinds of flapping tricks. With a dog that’s known as a good-breaking dog, you want to take off a couple of blinks in that first sixteenth. And that drops you a class, and gets you a better price the next time out.”

“What makes you think it wasn’t an accident?”

“I been getting these spells. One leg just folded up under me, at a bad time.”

“No—Max Geary.”

Dee raised his head to peer at Shayne in the dim shifting light.

“I was in the back seat. I was waiting for him to come out, but he was taking his time about it, and I slipped off to sleep. I wanted to consult him. I’ve got an assistant, name of Ricardo, and I think he’s been wigwagging somebody in the stand. Not that I oppose putting a little spell on a dog when it’ll do him some good. I need something to carry me between meetings. The price of good bourbon! I think too much of my kidneys to drink anything younger than four-year-old. I can remember in Prohibition—yes, sir, I date all the way back—even then I wouldn’t drink none of that rotgut. People could go blind drinking that stuff. Rotgut was the name of the first dog I ever owned. I favor an ugly name for a dog. Give them a pretty handle like Lovely Evening, and the damn-fool public will bet on the name and beat the price down on you. But Max, he didn’t hold with tampering. I got to spit.”

“We’ll be there in a minute.”

“I got to spit now,” Dee said moistly. “If you don’t spit when you got to, it gets in your system and poisons you.”

He lifted his head. “Hand me that pillow slip.”

Shayne took the pillowcase off the second bed. Dee unloaded into it, wadded it up and pushed it under the mattress.

“And he was making it, too,” he said, lying back. “Max. He was running honest and he was making a nickel. That’s when the ticks began eating on him. The politicians. That’s what I call them—ticks. They suck themselves up, and they suck themselves up, until they bleed you white. The only way to get rid of them is to burn them off. And Max got so bitter about it. That’s when he modernized, to get back his dates. Hurdle races. He had many an argument with himself before he put in those hurdle races. And the Hall of the Greyhound. The Hall of the TV is more like it. Gourmet French dinners. Those are hunting dogs out there, coursing dogs. I listened to those stuffed shirts talking tonight, and it made me want to puke up. What those dogs are going after is meat! Meat for the table! We buy our meat nowadays in the Piggly-Wiggly, wrapped up in plastic. I’ll tell you what I think about that—you say you’re interested—”

“I’d like to get back to Max’s accident.”

“I’m telling you something, mister. You know the yell when the dogs break? You don’t hear that yell at the horse tracks. Only reason a horse is running, there’s a man on his back giving him a buzz with a battery. A dog runs because he’s a chaser. A killer. The crowd knows that. They’re yelling for their dog to catch the rabbit and bring him home for supper. A dog’s no good until he’s been schooled on live hares. Sometimes you’ll get a dog that can run but he won’t chase. So you put a rat in a tin can and hang it around his neck. A hole in the can so the rat can bite your dog in the neck, and he’ll bite and bite until the dog is near crazy. Then you let the rat go, and the dog will be on him in a flash, and from that minute on he’s over his namby-pamby ways.”

“You were asleep in the back seat of Max’s car. When did you wake up?”

“You wouldn’t expect me to sleep through, would you? Crash, bang. Then the big whoosh. And that’s all I saw because my big ambition in life, if you want to know, is to stay alive to enjoy the end of it.”

“Did you see the papers today? If Max was so honest, where did he get the money to pay off those people?”

“You don’t know dogs, and you don’t know business. What do you think? He had accountants. What looks like a profit to you or me, they’ll take that figure and move it from here to there, and presto Caruso, it’s a loss. All kinds of ways, like the different ways to slow down a dog. Gypsy ways, we call them, though the only gypsies in dog racing are in England and Ireland. We got an Irish dog in the Classic tomorrow night—no, the night after—and that’s why we call it the International. One hundred thousand in augmented purses. Don’t worry, we got it. It’s in escrow, is the expression they use. One of the things the gypsies would use was a touch of wintergreen. You could tell a wintergreened dog by the bald patches where it took off the hair. Or a piece of chewing gum under the tail. I wouldn’t do nothing like that to a dog.”

“Do you know the name Tony Castle?”

At that the hand stopped moving and fell to his side and gripped his thigh.

“The medicine’s wearing off. I need some more medicine. Nurse!”

“Did Castle loan Max the money for the renovations?”

“Ask the accountants. What have you got in that pocket, a bottle? Because now’s the time! Finish it up. They’ll take it away from you. I been in hospitals before.”

When they pulled up at St. Francis a moment later, Dee was holding his leg with both hands and moaning and complaining. Shayne got out by himself and walked into the emergency room.

“Is Dr. Almani still on nights?” he asked a nurse.

“I think so. I’ll have them give him a call.”

Shayne sat on a bench while the young resident unwrapped Dee’s leg and prepared him for X ray. Before they were ready for Shayne, Rashid Almani came in—a slender, olive-skinned Pakistani who was preparing for a career in forensic medicine after he returned to his native country. His teeth flashed when he saw Shayne on the bench. Shayne had spent ten days in this hospital the previous summer, after a car chase that had ended with three vehicles wrecked and Shayne the only participant still alive.

“Michael! You’ve been staying too healthy. I’ve missed our talks.”

“I’ve got something to talk about now. Can we use this side room?”

“Surely.”

Shayne closed the door after they went in. He sat on the examining table while Rashid looked at the wound.

“It went deep. Lie down, Michael. We have some work to do here.”

“I want to arrange something first. Didn’t you say you’re going home fairly soon?”

“In two weeks. I am looking forward to it, and I’m not looking forward to it.”

“Maybe you’ll be willing to do something for me. I had to shoot somebody, and that always leads to lots of questions. You know Painter.”

“That self-righteous man. I listened to the radio news.”

“I want to be in such bad shape that he can’t get in to talk to me. Besides a knife wound, a gunshot wound in the leg. A .45-caliber slug, from a distance of two yards. It smashed the main legbone, and you had to do some major stuff to put it all back together. I’m under heavy sedation. Totally out of the picture for the next couple of days.”

“That would be breaking various hospital regulations. I assume you are asking me to do this because it’s important?”

“I think so.”

“And those who knifed you, or who caused you to be knifed. They will believe that you are now harmless.”

Shayne had forgotten how quick the Pakistani was. “That’s the main thing.”

Rashid considered. “I think I will do it, but you must allow me to go through certain motions. There is so much paperwork. If I admit you for a smashed leg, I must treat you for that. And that way there will be less lying. No one will X ray you to see if it truly happened. When you wish to leave, we can take off the cast. I have been wondering all evening how you would prove the falsity of that listing.”

“What listing?”

“Your name among the other payments by the dead man, Geary. A difficult problem.”

Shayne looked at him. “Rashid, are you serious? You don’t think Geary paid me that money?”

“I consider it highly unlikely. Are you a blackmailer? No, certainly not. Do you take bribes? I would doubt it very much. Are you a political go-between? Why should you accept such disagreeable low-paid work? A fixer of dog races?”

Shayne laughed. “Rashid, do you realize that you may be the only person in Dade County who gave me the benefit of the doubt?”

“The story was carefully designed to convince. The question then becomes, is it a forgery by the police?”

“I saw the book. I don’t know Geary’s handwriting, but it looked legit.”

“Then Geary himself, for some private reason, mixed your name in with the rest. He is dead. How do you find out what was in his mind? Indeed, a most difficult problem. So if I can help you with a small deception, I am happy to do so. You are losing blood, Michael. Is there anything else?”

“Yeah. Call WCGN. That’s the news station. Tell them Mike Shayne has been treated at St. Francis emergency for wounds incurred in the gunfight at Surfside. Give them some technical details about what kind of cast you put on. That ought to do it.”

Chapter 9

Frieda Field was in her late twenties, trim, blackhaired. She was the widow of a private detective, killed a few years before as a result of not having been quite careful enough. Frieda had decided to continue the agency, and with occasional help from Shayne, she had managed to do fairly well in a business where women usually type the letters and answer the phones. Shayne started using her because he had worked with her husband, and continued because she turned out to be very good. She also became one of his best friends.

He called her as soon as Rashid finished with him. The phone in her apartment didn’t answer. He was considering whom to get instead, when she walked in, in a long dress and silver earrings, with a pint of cognac, not one of the medicines dispensed in even the best-run hospitals. She kissed him.

“I heard it on my car radio. Mike, when there are three of them, and they all have guns and all you have are your fists, what’s wrong with waiting for reinforcements? You don’t have to prove anything. I’ll still like you.”

“I didn’t know there were three. I only knew about two, and I thought I had one of them taken care of. I’ve been trying to call you. I’ve got a job for you. Martell’s, I see. Get some glasses.”

She went to the bathroom and came back with two tumblers. “How bad is it, Mike? That radio announcer makes a big point of sounding semihysterical, but I didn’t think you’d be up to cognac tonight. This was for tomorrow. They aren’t letting anybody in to see you, supposedly. That was to discourage Painter?”

“I couldn’t take that guy twice in twelve hours. But the news you heard was a little exaggerated. True, they were shooting at me, but everybody missed.”

She looked at the cast on his left leg, running all the way from ankle to hip. “You didn’t do all that just to get out of talking to Painter.”

“Only partly.” He drank some of the cognac, and waited for the pleasant explosion. “See if you can tell me what the radio said.”

“Mike Shayne, implicated in dog track scandal, seriously injured in gunfight in Surfside men’s room. At St. Francis’s, leg smashed. There was a statement from the Surfside safety director, some Italian name, but he didn’t say much. What’s the bandage on your arm, more window dressing?”

“One of the guys had a knife, and he didn’t miss. Did you bring a gun?”

“A gun. I think I’m beginning to see. No, I hardly ever bring a gun when I visit somebody in the hospital. I have one in the car.” She stood up and looked down at him seriously. “Are you really up to this, Mike?”

“I think so, but I’m not going to try to prove it to you by doing pushups. It has to be tonight, Frieda, not tomorrow. Right now they’re feeling dumb and mad. That’s when mistakes happen. Somebody sent three men after me. That costs big money and he won’t be happy it fizzled. Now they have to go back and tell him they blew it. He may think they didn’t try hard enough, and it could be dangerous, depending on who the guy is. They probably have another payment coming, on completion, and they won’t get that. When another job comes along, they’ll be passed over. So when they hear I’m lying in a hospital bed, after a hard operation, won’t it occur to them that hospitals are easy places to walk into? Maybe they can correct their mistake and skip all the hassle.”

“That’s enough. I’m persuaded.”

She went for her gun. Rashid stopped in a few minutes later.

“I’m a little worried, Michael. You know it will be bad publicity for the hospital if anything goes wrong. Two of them left out of three. Are you sure you can handle two?”

“They’ll only use one. Attendants don’t walk around a hospital in pairs.”

“How would he get the number of the room?”

“Call the switchboard and say he’s sending over flowers. That’s not classified information.”

“Well, this is your profession, after all, and you know these people. I’ll tell the duty nurse on this floor to be busy somewhere else. I will watch the stairs, and give you a telephone ring when—if—someone appears. And if there is more than one, I will be very official and ask what they are doing here.”

“Rashid, stay out of it. Frieda and I will both have guns. If I had any serious doubts I wouldn’t have brought her in.”

That wasn’t entirely true. Frieda had made it clear from the start that if she was going to be working as a private detective, she couldn’t expect special treatment because she was a woman. At first that had been hard for Shayne to accept, but they had been in some dangerous situations together, and she had behaved with extreme coolness. He now trusted her completely.

Rashid nodded and left the room. Shayne had been put in a room in the accident wing, in a bed that was rigged to be used by a patient in traction. There were rotating pulleys overhead, and two on the facing wall. When Frieda returned, they made up the bed with pillows to look like an anesthetized man, and ran a line through two of the pulleys, ending in a noose on the floor.

Then they turned off the lights and began the wait. Fifteen minutes later, the phone tinkled a warning. “All right?” Shayne said quietly.

“Ready. You make the first move.”

Shayne had one end of the rope doubled around his hand and elbow. He braced himself for the pull. He was listening intently, but he couldn’t hear Frieda breathing.

A heel scuffed on the cork floor of the corridor. The door handle turned, and a figure entered.

“Mike?” a man’s voice said cautiously. “Asleep?” Shayne was already in motion. The noose tightened around the man’s leg, and Shayne’s weight jerked him off his feet. Frieda slammed the door and stepped out with her gun. The light flashed on.

It was Tim Rourke. Only his shoulder blades were still on the floor; everything else was airborne.

“Now we know it works,” Shayne said.

He came forward, and Rourke’s legs returned to the floor.

“What the hell?” he said weakly when he had his breath back. “I guess I was lucky it wasn’t a gun trap.”

“Let’s get that rope off,” Frieda said. “We’re expecting somebody.”

Rourke loosened the loop. “Guinea pig—that’s what friends are for. Christ, I thought the building collapsed.”

He came jerkily to his feet. He was a tall, bony figure whose long arms and legs often seemed to be following programs of their own.

“I see you’re walking around, Mike,” he said. “That can’t be too good for you after… No, I get it, I get it. Dawn breaks in the East. That diagnosis was for the bad guys. You’re really in good health.”

“More or less.”

“Can I stay and watch? I haven’t had a decent eyewitness story in months.”

“If you sit still and keep quiet.”

“I can sit still. I don’t know about quiet. I’ve got three thousand questions, and they’re fermenting. Who are we waiting for?”

“I don’t know,” Shayne said shortly.

“Mike, did you knock against something?” Frieda said.

“Yeah. Tim, get the end of the rope. You can help pull.”

“I brought you a bottle, but I see you’ve already got one. Can I take a drink once in a while?”

“Quietly.”

After they reset the snare, Rourke had trouble settling down. His little movements made Shayne aware that time was passing, and that the real dawn would soon be breaking. He heard the bottle being opened, and Rourke breathing out after drinking. There was enough light from outside for Shayne to see that he was being offered the bottle. He drank and handed it back.

Rourke continued to fidget. Shayne was about to tell him to wait somewhere else when he heard a faint noise in the corridor. This time there had been no telephone warning. Shayne’s grip tightened.

The door opened very fast. As Shayne went backward he caught a glimpse of a slender figure wearing hospital whites. A gold hoop swung from one ear.

The noose tightened, and he heard a head hit the floor. The light came on.

“Watch it,” Shayne told Frieda as she advanced. “That’s close enough. He has a knife.”

Cognac was gurgling out of the open bottle. Rourke, nearly all the way down, was holding the rope desperately with both hands.

“Mike, get the bottle.”

Shayne turned the bottle right side up. “You got him. Just hang on.”

“That’s not so—easy.”

At the opposite end of the line, Pedro was thrashing wildly. He was completely off the floor, suspended by one ankle. Each convulsive movement jerked Rourke up and down. With Frieda’s help, Shayne lashed the rope to the bed. Then he stepped in close and kicked their prisoner in the neck. The agitated movements stopped and the knife clattered down.

“Is that the same man?” Frieda asked.

“Yeah. The guns were to make me stand still so he could use the knife. Now it’s time to break some news. Tim, pay attention.”

Rourke was jacking himself erect, fingering his spine. “That’s the first real exercise I’ve had in months. Like hooking into a goddamn marlin.”

“Shut up, Tim,” Frieda said. “Mike has something to tell us.”

“I’m now denying that I took any illegal payments from Max Geary,” Shayne said.

Rourke’s head came forward. “What do you mean, what do you mean? If they weren’t illegal, what were they?”

“I never received them. Now let’s sit down and see if we can make any sense out of this.”

Frieda said, “What do we do with this one, leave him hanging?”

Pedro was quieter, the white orderly’s shirt falling around his shoulders. His face was already noticeably darker. His breath came in gasps.

“He can listen. Pray if you want to, Pete, but not out loud. You’re in trouble, you know that.”

Shayne shifted the pillows to the head of the bed. Rourke prowled around, keeping well away from the dangling man, but unable to hold still.

“Mike, say that again. Eighty thousand bucks. Two, three thousand every month. Are you telling us that book was a fake?”

“You saw it. What did you think?”

“We didn’t get too good a look. He just flashed it and riffled the pages. But I want to tell you, if you weren’t taking, you’re the exception. The union guy, that was real cash and I can prove it. Wanamaker, on the paper. That’s what I came over to tell you. Officially he’s still claiming those gifts were made out of pure friendship, but I got the story at dinner. How about that beating in the parking lot outside the stadium? You must have had some good reason for that.”

“I assume it happened,” Shayne said, “but I didn’t do it. Either the nurse is lying or Geary lied to the nurse. Painter saw a three-hundred-dollar check with the right date on it, and that makes it look as though Geary planted the story to cover the person who actually gave him the beating. But it wouldn’t mean anything much unless he was killed later. Then I’d look like the killer. But why? I had nothing against the man.”

“Why in God’s name didn’t you say so this morning?” Rourke demanded.

“I knew you wouldn’t believe me. What did you think, Frieda?”

She said quietly, “I thought you were paid the money, but not for any of the obvious reasons. I knew you’d tell me when you got around to it.”

“There’s a Pakistani doctor here. He’s the only one I’ve run into who didn’t automatically assume I was guilty. And I haven’t figured that out yet, because he doesn’t know me nearly as well as you guys.”

“If I’d known this, I might have written a different lead,” Rourke said. “I still don’t see why you didn’t—”

“All you could say was that Mike Shayne was yelling foul, like everybody else. Be honest, Tim. I’ve given you a flat denial. Do you believe me right now?”

Rourke reached for the cognac. “No, goddamn it. I think you’re trying to fake me. Not for the first time, either. I think you’ve got some surprise up your sleeve. You want me to put a slant on tomorrow’s story so it’ll have a certain effect on certain people unknown to me. I’m not complaining—what good would it do me? I know your pattern. I get to hear about it after everything’s all buttoned up.”

“I’m not that much of a mastermind,” Shayne said dryly. “I admit I wanted to get an effect with your piece today. I wanted people to think, ‘Hey, Tim Rourke, he’s been flacking for Shayne for years, and even Rourke thinks that this time his old buddy has been caught with his hand in the jam.’”

“I may be a little slow, but why would you want that?”

“Use some imagination. Imagine that when Painter sprang this on me, the whole thing was a total surprise. Imagine that I can’t explain it any more than you can. I tried telling Painter, but there was my name on the list, in Geary’s writing, in black and white. All right. There’s only one way to disprove that kind of thing, and that’s from inside. Obviously the real takers would talk more freely to a co-conspirator than to a detective trying to find out where the money really went. So I went out to the track tonight. I walked around, trying to look like the man Max Geary was paying three thousand a month for something or other, surely discreditable. Nobody seemed to find it hard to believe. It was a funny business—I tried every remark two ways before I said it. And I didn’t get much. The state tax guy, Liebler—and his name isn’t even on the list—was afraid I was going to take over and cut everybody else out. Linda Geary, the daughter, told me to behave or she’d tell everybody what I did for the money. That was a hard one to handle. I asked her to tell me, because I wanted to know myself, and then she was the one who refused to answer.”

The upside-down man began whimpering a little, and Shayne said, “I’ll be getting around to you in a minute, Pete.”

“Do you want him to hear all this?” Frieda said.

“Sure, it’ll scare him more. He’s through and he knows it. He won’t be reporting to anybody.”

The hanging body twisted and convulsed. A strangled voice said, “Put me down, man.”

“Are you going to talk to us?”

“I have to, you know man.” It was a lilting Caribbean accent, with a rising inflection.

“O.K., we have a realist here. Lower away, Tim. Stand by to fly him again if he gives us any trouble.” Rourke picked at the knot. It loosened all at once and Pedro came down in a heap. He sorted himself out and sat up with a long sigh.

“You know you people are bastards.”

“Are we?” Shayne said. “Maybe you’re feeling so sorry for yourself you didn’t hear what I said. I want you to understand it. This isn’t the ordinary hit. Usually when you go out to kill somebody, they know why. I don’t. And that changes things. You’ve tried twice. You lost both. I have to expect a third try, with new people, and they may be a little better at it. So I need some answers.”

“You were lucky.”

“I was lucky,” Shayne agreed. “But you were sloppy too, Pete. You should have taken a couple of days and researched it.”

Pedro’s moving glance stopped on the cognac bottle.

“Do you want a drink?” Shayne said. “Take one.” Pedro lowered the level of the cognac by a half inch. As he put the bottle back, Shayne caught his wrist and jerked him to his feet.

“Hold his arm, Tim. I don’t think he realizes we’re serious. Pedro, take hold of the top rail of the bed.” Rourke forced his hand down on the bed frame. Shayne reversed the .45 and brought the butt down hard on his fingers. He yelled.

“This is the floor where they bring the accidents,” Shayne said, “so they’re probably used to yells in the middle of the night. You can’t go back with an alibi, Pedro. It’s time for you to look for a new career.”

Pedro was holding his mashed fingers, hopping. “You didn’t give me no chance, man. Tony Castle.”

“I was beginning to think it had that look,” Shayne said. “You probably need more cognac. Take as much as you like. We have another bottle.”

Pedro drank.

“Take a couple of days, man. Careful, careful. Get a shooter who knows how to shoot. Had to be tonight. Got it at noon.”

“From Castle himself?”

“His own hand. Enormous honor.”

“Now the price.”

“One thousand dollar. Not so much, you know, for so fast. You think this is the way I like? In Florida—very crazy, you know. But you not say no to Mr. C. You say yes.”

“Did he tell you where to find me?”

“At dog track, yes. He had pictures, envelope of pictures. Some younger than you are now. And he say to me this one thing. He was wanting to do it long time now. Now he has excuse.” He opened his hand. “I think fingers broken, Mr. S. Hurt.”

“We’ll have them set for you. But it’s too soon to stop talking.”

“Is all, I swear it on the name of the Holy Virgin.”

Rashid, the Pakistani doctor, stepped in. “Somebody heard a shout.”

“Yeah, we’ve got a man here who doesn’t know who he ought to be scared of most.”

Pedro said urgently, “Mr. S. Mr. C. in Nassau, you in Miami. I tell you, believe me. But is all I know.”

“Are you on his payroll full-time?”

“No. Now-and-then jobs.”

“Did you ever do anything else for him in Florida?”

“Once, I and Angelo, you know. We follow a man here one week and when everything is right, we beat the shit out of him.”

“A man named Max Geary?”

“I believe.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Rourke said.

“And you didn’t know what that one was all about either?”

“He make Mr. C. angry some way. My fingers.”

Chapter 10

Rourke started to say something, but Shayne cut him off.

“If it’s a question, save it. I want Pete to concentrate. I haven’t decided yet what we’re going to do with him.”

“You’re going to let me go,” Pedro assured him.

“I don’t think we can do that,” Shayne said seriously.

The pain was getting worse. After a time Shayne gave him permission to go to the bathroom and soak the hand in cold water. He sat on the toilet seat with his head on the washbasin.

“Angelo. You want to know about Angelo? I know the phone number, the phone number is all. Mr. C? He has big office, big shining desk. You go in. Sit down. He says what he wants. Work out, he says. Don’t get caught, but if you do forget who sent you. Mr. S., if he know I talk to you, he send fellows after me and they dead me dead. Before he do that, I want you get him. I do want that.”

As he moved his head, the hoop rang against the porcelain.

“Don’t talk for a minute,” Shayne said. “I’m beginning to get an idea.”

In a moment more: “O.K., let me have the hoop.”

Pedro clapped his hand to his ear. “That twenty carat gold. That my lucky thing.”

“Maybe it’ll bring us all luck. Take it off.”

“Mr. S.—”

Shayne took out the .45. “Or I’ll shoot it off.”

Pedro began fumbling with the catch. He couldn’t do it with one hand, and Frieda came in to help.

Shayne called to Rashid in the other room, “Do you happen to have a cadaver lying around?”

Rashid laughed. “A cadaver? We do, yes, several in the freezer for the anatomy classes. I think one is being defrosted for tomorrow.”

“Would the students mind if they had to work on a body without one ear?”

“An ear!” Rourke exclaimed.

“We can cut off one of Pete’s,” Shayne said, “but I don’t think it’s necessary. Castle wouldn’t recognize it, but he ought to recognize the earring.”

“I see it!” Rourke said. “Mike, that’s without a doubt one of the grisliest ideas you’ve ever come up with. You’re going to cut an ear off a corpse and send it to—”

“Yeah, with Pete’s earring in it. I think it may work. Castle’s grandfather was Sicilian. That’s the kind of message a Sicilian understands—a lot more personal than a phone call.”

Pedro had been following this with quick turns of the head. “Yes!” he said. “You are genius, Mr. S. I gladly give you the earring, though I had it from my sixteenth birthday. He will think I am dead. I go to New York. I thought I would like to do that sometime.”

“Not right away,” Shayne said. “Rashid, I want to ask another favor. I’d like to have him disappear for a few days.”

“I can do that,” Rashid said thoughtfully. “A broken back, perhaps.”

“Wait!” Pedro cried.

“It won’t be necessary to break the actual back. A body cast, a shot every six hours to help against the pain.”

“Blessed Virgin,” Pedro moaned.

“He can use my bed,” Shayne said.

“No, for Jesus’s sake! Somebody else may come to dead Mr. Michael Shayne. Please. The fingers first. Then some faraway room.”

Rashid and Pedro left. Shayne asked Frieda if she would like a few days in the Bahamas.

“If you can take it over tomorrow, we can be sure it’s delivered. There’s an eight o’clock breakfast flight. ‘From Mike Shayne—Personal.’ Put a note inside—‘Stay out of Miami,’ something like that. Hire somebody off the street to take it in, and be very careful about that part. Now let’s do some guessing. When he sees my name on the wrapper, what’ll he think?”

“That’s it’s been booby-trapped,” Frieda said. “He’ll give it to somebody else to open.”

“I think so. Then Castle can’t wrap it up again and pretend he never got it. His people will know I’m making it a personal thing, and he’ll have to do something about it or lose respect. That’s the way they act in the movies, anyway, and he probably goes to the movies like anybody else.”

“Can I talk now, Mike?” Rourke said. “Ever since his name came up I’ve been choking on this.” He came around to the bottle. “I got it from Wanamaker. He was doing a story on the big concession empires—you know, the companies that sell hot dogs and beer at the stadiums and ballparks. He queried Sports Illustrated on it, and they said they were interested. And there are some tricky angles. Two or three outfits have everything locked up, nationwide. There’ve been rumors about mob connections, and that’s what Wanamaker was trying to develop. J. T. Thomas has the Surfside business. Wanamaker went all the way back and found out that J. T. Thomas—not the man, he died in the twenties, but the company—may have put up some of the cash Geary used to get control in the first place. Going even farther back, he found a reference to a couple of characters who were involved in a power fight inside the Thomas company. One of the names still rings a bell—Tony Castagnoli.”

“That’s been pretty well hidden.”

“It had to be, because Geary has been selling purity all these years. The concession deal is very one-sided, I mean one-sided against the track, according to Wanamaker, but hard figures are almost impossible to get. So he took it to Geary, to confirm or deny. Geary asked him not to pursue it, and offered him a phony research project that would pay a few hundred more than he’d get from Sports Illustrated if they bought the story, which they probably wouldn’t because all he really had was some twenty-five-year-old rumors. Well, if you can prove you never got any Geary money, you’ll help everybody else on the list. Wanamaker can claim he went on those trips in the best tradition of investigative reporting, to get close to the victim so he could cut him down. And the paper might buy it, and give him the job back. So if there’s anything he can do to help, he’ll work his ass off, and from the way it looks to me, you need all the help you can get.”

After immobilizing Pedro, Rashid returned to saw the cast off Shayne’s leg.

“That mended quickly,” he said. “A triumph for Western medicine. As for the arm, if you are going to do much moving, it will be better in a sling. I assume that for you the night is not over.”

“If you wake people up after midnight, they know it’s important. Don’t forget the ear.”

“It’s waiting. A nurse saw me insert the hoop, and she gave me a look of real horror. What is the sinister Asian up to now? I assured her it was merely one of the out-of-the-ordinary things that happen when Michael Shayne is a patient here.”

The ear was wrapped in three layers of foil. Frieda accepted it with a grimace.

“I once had an offer to be office manager of an insurance company. Clean, respectable inside work. Sometimes I wish I’d said yes.”

Rourke was late for his middle-of-the-night radio show. Electing to continue with Shayne, he called in to tell them to give the guests another drink and put on a discussion he had taped the previous week with several Beach call girls and their dispatcher. Shayne was silent as they drove south on Collins, past the procession of gaudy hotels. He had accepted Rashid’s offer of a sling, and he was steadying the wheel with the back of his hand. Rourke glanced at his friend from time to time, but said nothing.

Shayne double-parked outside the Miami Beach police station. Rourke went in with him. The night sergeant looked at them with that special wariness Miami Beach cops always reserved for Shayne.

“I thought you were supposed to be in the hospital with a gunshot wound in the leg.”

“It was a knife wound in the arm,” Shayne said. “That station never gets it quite right. I want to talk to the guys who handled the Geary crash. Are they working?”

The sergeant, hesitating, glanced from Shayne to Rourke. “I guess that’s information the public’s entitled to have. Yeah, Parker and Hamzy. They’ll be off in half an hour if you’d like to stop back.”

“Find out where they are and we’ll meet them. Just a couple of questions—I was away when that happened.” The dispatcher put a call on the air. There was no immediate reply.

“I know those guys,” Rourke said. “Sleeping.”

The dispatcher kept trying, and finally a voice answered, giving the cruiser’s location.

“We’ll meet them at Lummus Park,” Shayne said. Shayne and Rourke arrived first. The cruiser pulled in and Shayne walked around to the driver’s side. Hamzy was a plump youth with glasses who had been on the force for less than a year. Parker, at the wheel, was the veteran.

“Shayne?” Parker said. “They didn’t say it was you. We have an unwritten rule in this department, I don’t know if you know about it, that we don’t put ourselves to extra trouble where Mike Shayne is concerned.”

“That’s all right. We just want to find out if you know anything about a dispatch case with six thousand dollars in it. Turn off the motor and talk to us.”

Parker came out of the car at once. “What dispatch case? Where?”

The porches of the family hotels on the other side of the avenue were still brightly lighted, although the guests who usually sat there had long since gone to bed. Shayne perched on the seawall.

“Relax,” he told the younger cop, whose hands were flying. “The chances are very good that it burned up in the fire. Even if it didn’t there’s no reason we can’t work something out.”

“Work it out with me,” Parker said, “not the kid. To begin with, we don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You realize that today I’m in no position to make moral judgments. And Painter has his own theories—he won’t want to listen to mine. At the same time, it’s just as good not to let rumors get started. Then the money gets harder to spend. You can’t take an ordinary vacation without people making remarks, especially if the bills are a little singed.”

Hamzy’s hand jerked, and to prevent it happening again, he put it in his pocket.

“I know Geary had that dispatch case when he left the track,” Shayne said, “but nobody else has mentioned it, and there’s no reason it has to be in Tim’s story tomorrow.”

“No reason whatever,” Rourke said, “and besides, I don’t know what you’re talking about, either.”

Hamzy took his hand out, made it into a fist and said hotly, “I don’t like this hinting! Let me tell you—” His partner put a hand on his arm, and said quietly, “Why don’t we let Shayne finish?”

Shayne said, “Do you think it’s possible there was somebody in the back seat, who was thrown clear?”

“The car would be rocking coming off the embankment. It turned over when it hit the palm tree. Geary had his belt on, which had the effect of keeping him inside. But we didn’t see anybody—did we?—and you have to remember that the way that fire was burning, it was bright as daylight.”

“But if you were busy picking up money—”

“Goddamn it!” Hamzy burst out. “Just because we’re cops does that mean we don’t have any rights?”

His partner looked at him in amazement. “Boy, you’ve got a lot to learn.”

“Don’t bicker,” Shayne said. “You’ve got to go on living together. The suggestion’s been made that there was another car in the accident.”

Both cops looked at him, and Parker said, “Are you talking about deliberate?”

“That’s what I’m talking about.”

“Meaning homicide,” Parker said softly. “Which would take it out of our hands.”

“That’s the way it seems to be going. I want to hurry it up. A vague recollection of a couple of taillights, moving too fast. Does it begin to come back? You didn’t say anything to anybody, it wasn’t that definite. You did some quiet detective work in the neighborhood, and turned up a witness who remembers hearing a first crash, like two cars colliding, before the big one.

“And who is this witness?”

“That’s it. The witness refuses to become involved.”

“It could be Mike Shayne,” Parker said, “but we don’t want to use that name because of that unwritten rule in the department. Somebody who couldn’t get to sleep that night. I think we can swing it, don’t you, Hamzy?”

“If you think we ought to. But what’s the point?”

“I don’t see the point either, but you know we’re just beatmen, not thinkers.”

Chapter 11

A theory was beginning to take shape, but there were still many blanks. Until Shayne could fill them in, he decided to take a few ordinary precautions. Instead of returning to his own apartment, he drove south on One, and picked a motel where his car couldn’t be seen from the road. He slept for three hours, had a quick breakfast in the coffee shop, and got on the phone.

He woke up the real estate editor of Rourke’s paper, and after apologizing for that, asked if there was any truth in the rumors about Harry Zell, the developer. Shayne had heard his business was about to fold.

“That’s nothing new, Mike. It’s always about to fold. He’s been in some terminal jams, and he always came out smelling of roses. I don’t know where his Surfside deal stands, now that Geary is dead. God knows Harry could use a winner. At the same time, it might be a cash drain, so nothing’s simple.”

“If you were giving advice to an investor—”

“I’d tell him to cross the street when he sees Harry coming. But I always give that advice about Harry, and some of my friends hate me for it. I’m not predicting anything. He’s had some dazzling successes when the phone company was just about to shut off his service. What can I tell you about operators like Harry? Most of the time they aren’t using their own money. In a typical office-building deal, they can’t get the mortgage commitment until they get a lease from the main tenant, and the tenant won’t give them the lease until they have the mortgage. So what they contribute is confidence. People have to be confident they can put it together. And Harry has lost some of that.”

“Who are his big creditors, banks?”

“Banks, yes, but he can’t get real money at the prime rate anymore. He’s in pretty deep with factors. C. and W. is the main one, and the vigorish there is brutal. Twenty percent and more. In other words, loan-shark money. They make loans to people the banks won’t let in the door.”

“What does C. and W. stand for?”

“Probably nothing. Charlie and Wilbur? I don’t know.”

“Can you find out?”

“I’ll try, Mike. If I get anything I’ll give it to Tim.”

More phone calls, to Rourke, to the sports editor, Ben Wanamaker. After several unsuccessful attempts, Shayne located Bobby Nash, a dog track owner. The Nash track was dark at present because Surfside, again, had been awarded the valuable middle dates. His father, now dead, had been a contemporary of Geary’s, and had been through the same kind of early trouble.

“I don’t know if I ought to be talking to you, Mike,” Nash said. “But I probably can’t catch anything on the phone. Just don’t try to put the bite on me, because I’m a poor man. Ask anybody. Ask IRS.”

“I’ll tell you in a minute why I’m calling,” Shayne said. “Can I ask a couple of general questions first?”

“Go ahead. That doesn’t mean I’ll answer them.”

“Were you surprised at the names on Max’s payoff fist?”

“Surprised?” Nash made a bitter sound. “In most cases, for obvious reasons, not at all. That statement is not for quotation. I’m surprised Max thought he had to write it down. To be frank with you, the one name that really surprised me was yours. My father used to think highly of you. I seem to remember you did a couple of jobs for him—straight jobs for a straight fee, agreed upon in advance. So surprised is too mild a word. Mystified would be better.”

“Thanks,” Shayne said. “What effect do you think this is going to have on dog racing?”

“On dog racing as a whole? I hope we can survive it. Everybody’s going to want to wipe the mud off his boots, and you know who they’re going to try to wipe them on. Max is out of the picture. The rest of us aren’t. I’ve just had my first report from Tallahassee. Two investigations in the works. Two separate committees, public hearings, possibly televised. I’ll be called. There’s no way it can be avoided. I’ll be asked questions that may be mighty hard to answer.”

“You don’t think the questions will be confined to Surfside?”

“We’re all in the same boat. Our security measures are much the same. We use many of the same people. We deal with the same unions, the same politicians, some of the same cops. If they ask me did I ever pay you, Mike Shayne, any money, I can say absolutely not. That one is easy. A couple of seasons back, I had a kennel situation I was going to bring you in on, but we straightened it out without calling in outside help. That’s just the sort of thing these inquiries are going to rake up. All I see ahead is trouble.”

“I think I may have thought of a way to get you off the hook.”

“Is that so,” Nash snapped. “What’s it going to cost me?”

“This would be barter. I need the loan of some equipment and a couple of technicians.”

“What kind of equipment?”

“I want to tie some of your closed-circuit cameras into the Surfside system. Would that be possible?”

“Complicated, but not impossible. I’ve got a full setup sitting here doing nothing. Now tell me why.”

“If I could answer that, I wouldn’t have to do it. I’m somebody else who’s going to be asked questions under oath, and not just by an investigating committee. By a grand jury. Don’t know and don’t remember—those are the two answers they don’t like to hear. Sometimes it’s the small man who didn’t cooperate who gets the longest term.”

“But we all know it’s the best legal system in the world. So cooperate, Mike. Why not? Geary’s dead. Nobody’ll blame you.”

“No, I’ve got to do it another way. If I can blow the whole thing open, there may be enough fallout so they’ll forget about me. There was a hell of a lot of money loose up there. Apparently Geary himself was taking six thousand a night.”

“Six thousand!”

“And that would be six thousand times what?”

“One hundred and eighty programs a year. That’s the million-dollar handle we’re always hoping to hit. You don’t mean out of the cash register? Here in Miami?”

“Where else?”

Nash waited a moment. “Mike, when I was trying to decide whether to take this call, I called my lawyer. He said absolutely not. But my old man was almost always right about people, so I’ll trust you to take this for what it is, which is guesswork. I’ve had a theory about the Surfside concessions. Assume that somebody’s involved in an illegal business, making good money. He can’t spend it freely because he hasn’t paid taxes on it.”

“Are we talking about Tony Castle?”

“Mike, Tony Castle would fit, but I’m not giving you facts. I’m giving you a supposition. Suppose that such a person or group of persons bought control of a concessions company and made a deal with Surfside and similar operations. Pick a figure. Say that if Geary put his concession business out to bid, he could get a contract for three million. Instead, he negotiates a contract with J. T. Thomas for four. That soaks up the track’s profit, but who cares? The extra million will be paid back somewhere offshore. Castle—if you want to use Castle as an example—could take it out of the skim from his Nassau casino. There’s no income tax in the Bahamas. Geary would set up a company and sign a service contract with the casino, so it would look legitimate. Do you follow me, Mike? Castle washes a million dollars of illegal money in Florida. Surfside doesn’t earn a profit, and so doesn’t owe the United States any income tax. Geary gets the million tax-free in the Bahamas. One of those lovely deals that benefit everybody.”

“Then why is Castle’s name in Geary’s book?”

“I didn’t know it was. It shouldn’t be.”

“Painter’s holding it back, to keep the story alive another day.”

“That’s in character. But I’m not trying to explain everything, Mike. If I understand your idea, you want to lay down enough smoke so people will forget to ask you about that three thousand a month. Castle is still a big name in Miami. If you bring in his head, you’re home free. The trouble is, he’s got sense enough to stay out of Miami.”

“Everybody makes mistakes. Yeah—I’d like his head. He put a team on me last night, and as far as I can tell, the contract is still open. But I don’t want to narrow this down to one man. I really want to take the lid all the way off. It’s like stopping an oil-well fire with dynamite. One bang, and it’s over. And of course I’d want everybody to know that I couldn’t have done it without full cooperation from Mr. Bobby Nash.”

“Who was delighted,” Nash said more happily, “to help expose the rascals who are threatening the integrity of the sport. Cameras? You’ve got them. But we’d better get together so you can tell me exactly what you need.”

Shayne arranged to meet him later, and continued to work through his calls. He took on a Spanish-speaking private detective named Gonzales and told him to go to work on the Surfside assistant kennelmaster, Ricardo Sanchez. Then he called Rourke again to see if he had heard from Frieda.

“She just hung up, Mike. I gave her your number, and she’s probably calling you now. I’ll get off the line.”

The phone rang the instant the line was open. “Michael,” Frieda said. “I’m in Castle’s casino. I’ve been playing roulette. So far I’m two hundred ahead, and I think it’s a good omen. The box was just delivered, and everybody’s behaving according to the script.”

“You’re being inconspicuous, I hope.”

“They welcome the public. Of course it’s a little dead right now, but I’m with some friends I made on the plane. We’re all drinking Bloody Marys.”

Her voice changed, becoming completely serious.

“Which isn’t the reason I’m calling, is it? I hired a boy to hand the box to the doorman and run like hell. Your name seems to be known down here. The doorman gave it to another flunky, and when he carried it in to Castle, he was holding it as though he knew there was something bloody inside, like an ear. I think Castle had already heard the news from Miami. He’s had people coming and going. A long pause after the box went in. Then three new men arrived from somewhere outside the casino, at a fast walk. I’d better get back now, because I can’t see the door of the office from here.”

“Sounds very good so far. Do you have a car?”

“Yes, but the parking is murder. If he leaves in a hurry I may not be able to get out in time to see where he goes.”

“To the airport, I hope. Do what you can, and go easy on the tomato juice. Don’t forget you’re outnumbered.”

“I’m aware of that, believe me.”

Shayne called Rourke back to report that the ear had been delivered, and to ask him to stay at his office phone so Frieda could call if she had more news. Then he called the Miami Beach police and was put through to his one friend on that force, a black detective named Barnes.

The identification had just come in on the man Shayne had shot in the Surfside men’s room. He was from California, and had earned a long list of demerits there, mainly for robberies with violence. The other two men involved in the skirmish, Shayne was told, hadn’t stayed around to give an explanation of themselves. One had been tentatively identified as a local problem named Angelo Paniatti.

“And that takes off some of the pressure,” Barnes told him, “but Painter still wants to hear it from you. When he couldn’t find you at the hospital he broke a perfectly good cigar into three pieces. I know he’d appreciate it if you stopped in.”

“That would just be a replay of yesterday,” Shayne said, “and we both have better things to do with our time.”

“Mike, about this sudden turnaround by Parker and Hamzy, this second car they think they remember. It turns out you and Tim Rourke were in asking for them last night. Is this just to get Painter thinking about something else, or is there anything to it?”

“I have a witness, of sorts. I don’t know whether to believe him or not. It might help to have a cop along when I talk to him again. Can you meet me in the St. Francis parking lot in about twenty minutes? He should be waking up just about now.”

Barnes had to agree, but it didn’t seem to make him happy.

Shayne checked out of the motel and drove back to Miami, where he picked up I-95 and crossed the bay on the Julia Tuttle Causeway. Barnes was waiting. Inside, Barnes identified himself and they were told they would find their patient in the accident ward.

But Dee Wynn was gone.

The bed he had been in was the way he had left it, with the sheets tumbled and the pillow on the floor. Of the other two patients in the four-bed ward, one was almost completely wrapped in bandages, being kept alive through tubes. The other, a young black in a head bandage, was watching a game show on a portable television.

“What happened to the patient who was here?” Shayne said, motioning at the empty bed.

The black returned reluctantly to the real world. “You say something?”

Barnes turned down the TV and Shayne repeated the question.

“Oh, he went chasing off. He had a cast on his leg, but that didn’t bother him after the first time he fell down. Things to do, man, he couldn’t lie around in bed all day.”

“When was this?”

“Today show was still on.”

The floor nurse, who had just come on shift, was unable to help. Wynn’s clothes were gone. All this was extremely upsetting to everybody, because he had managed to slip out without paying his bill.

Barnes had stood out of the way, letting Shayne ask the questions. Outside, he said abruptly, “Mike, now we’re going in to talk to Painter.”

They were standing on the asphalt in bright sunlight. He had put on dark glasses, and Shayne looked at his reflection in them.

“Why? He didn’t know Wynn was here, so he won’t know he’s missing.”

“Sometimes I’m willing to go outside the book,” Barnes said. “Not today. This is Miami Beach, and we have the home court advantage. I can’t go in and report this secondhand.”

From the way Barnes was standing, Shayne could see that if he turned to walk to his own car, the gun would come out, and other cars would be called to escort them. His name next to the sum of $80,000 in Geary’s book had made that difference.

“I don’t have anything to tell Painter except that the guy said he was in the back seat of Geary’s car when it happened, and there was a second car. He was drunk that night, and he was very drunk when he told me. That’s all there is.”

“Not quite, Mike. It came in as I was leaving. An old guy was found drowned in a canal off the Trail. He was out there alone, fishing and drinking whiskey. And he wasn’t able to pull himself out because one leg was in a cast.”

Chapter 12

Shayne wasted the next few hours.

They met Painter at Jackson Memorial. The cold-room attendant pulled out a drawer of his big filing cabinet and showed them a corpse. Shayne said bleakly, “That’s Wynn. He tried to do business with the wrong man.”

The medical verdict was definite, death by drowning. There was more than enough alcohol in his blood to explain why he had lost his balance and fallen in. The props were in order—a half-empty bottle of blended whiskey, a fishing rod snagged in the reeds, claw marks on the bank. His car was nearby.

“Now why would he rush out of the hospital to go fishing?” Shayne said. “And he told me he drank nothing but good-label bourbon.”

“A lush like that,” Painter said. “When it’s a choice between cheap whiskey and no whiskey—”

Shayne shrugged and turned away.

“It may interest you to hear,” Painter went on, “that two of my men, not by doing anything tricky or spectacular, just by ordinary, unspectacular, slogging police work, have come up with a witness who says Max Geary may not have gone off that cloverleaf unassisted. I’m going to ask you now if you have any statement to make, beyond the nonstatement you gave me yesterday, and I urge you to think carefully before you answer.”

“No statement, Petey. Is that all?”

“It is by no means all. I’ll remind you that Geary was expecting something to happen to him. Remember what he told the nurse? That if he met with further violence she should go to the police and reveal that it was Mike Shayne who beat him up? Naturally I did some checking this morning, and I guess you really were in San Francisco the night it happened. I want to nail that down, because it doesn’t take long to fly from California to Florida nowadays, and where Mike Shayne is concerned, I don’t just check, I double-check. But let’s say it stands up. That doesn’t rule out the possibility that you hired somebody to drive the second car. I’ll keep picking away at this, I warn you. That’s my technique.”

And so it went. Shayne managed to remain patient, waiting for Painter to wear himself out.

“You’ve got a protective coating,” Painter said at one point. “You think you can make your own rules, and go your own way, and you’ll never be called to account. I’ve talked to dozens of people, and they all keep coming back to the same thing—Mike Shayne, what dirty tricks do you suppose he did for that eighty thousand dollars? And new things keep cropping up. Dee Wynn now. That was skillfully done, and this time you don’t have the excuse that you were in San Francisco.”

“You wouldn’t know Wynn’s name if I hadn’t told Barnes.”

“You didn’t tell him a hell of a lot, did you? You knew we’d find out you had an ambulance ride together, and it’s always good to get your version in first. He was rambling, you couldn’t pin him down to anything. Sure. I don’t mind admitting, some of your actions still don’t seem to make a hell of a lot of sense, but you can be counted on—you never do things the simple and easy way.”

“What’s your theory, Petey? I really would like to know.”

“I don’t believe in theorizing. You know that about me. I go by what I see with these eyes.” He pointed to them. “Some kind of battle is going on here. Three casualties so far, if you count Geary. Tough it out, Shayne. You against the world. Keep it up, boy, and that casualty list won’t stop at three. But as long as you refuse to tell me anything, how can I help you?”

He gave his mustache its quick double flick. “I have information that a new three-man group is being recruited. The target? Mike Shayne, again. Fifteen hundred apiece is available, if they bring their own gun.” He had been saving this; he watched Shayne closely to see how he would take it. “But you’re Mike Shayne, I forgot. They can’t intimidate you.”

“Who’s doing the recruiting?”

“I don’t know that. Just that the word is around, and I thought, in fairness, I ought to pass it along. We’ve locked horns in the past, and there hasn’t been much good feeling on either side. That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t distress me considerably to hear you’d been shot by hired killers. I’ll be glad to provide you with protection. A two-car escort, around the clock. But naturally I want something in return. Start with the eighty thousand from Max Geary.”

“No bodyguard, please, Petey. They can be dangerous. Who’s your source?”

“Confidential. I protect my informants. They know that. It’s essential to the relationship.”

“Soupy Simpson?”

“Simpson?” Painter said, a little too innocently. “Didn’t we have to bust him for possession? I think he’s in Atlanta.”

“No, he’s back. Thanks for the warning. Can I go now?”

“Who’s stopping you? If you refuse my offer of a bodyguard, all I can do is advise you officially to step carefully.”

Following this advice, Shayne took more than his usual precautions leaving the hospital grounds, but that was to make sure none of Painter’s men were behind him. Even for seasoned professionals, it is never easy to kill somebody who knows they are looking for him. A surprisingly high percentage of professional murder contracts are never paid off. The price is high not because of the danger—few professional killers are ever apprehended—but because of the frustration and the waiting time.

Shayne went onto the East-West Expressway at Twelfth Avenue and kept changing lanes, varying his speed and watching the mirror. Leaving the expressway at the airport exit, he found an inconspicuous public phone. Before getting out of the car, he tapped a recessed spring on the inside door panel, and a .38 Smith and Wesson dropped into his hand. He still had the .45, but the Smith and Wesson was a handier weapon. He concealed it in his sling.

He punched a handful of dimes out of the change dispenser hanging from his dashboard, took them to the booth and began hunting for Simpson, a heroin user who made a dangerous living fencing stolen goods and occasionally selling out one of his thieves to the police. Shayne located him at a bowling alley in southwest Miami.

“Mike Shayne? You’re hot, baby. You got your name on a bad list.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I hear they’re trying to sell another contract on you. But after last night it ain’t moving so fast.”

“Where’s the money coming from?”

“All I know, from out of town, but I’ll keep listening. Where can I reach you, and how much is it worth?”

“Don’t just listen,” Shayne said. “Ask. Say you’ve got a shooter you take a percentage on, and you don’t want to recommend it to him unless you know what you’re getting him into.”

There was a moment’s silence. “Man, if it was anybody else I’d laugh, but I think I like it from you. I do know a guy. He’s so stupid he never heard of Mike Shayne. But it’s kind of risky to me personally, you know? You’ll have to come up with a good number.”

“One thousand.”

“Mike, I think,” Simpson said hesitantly, “I think we’re in business. You pay me, and the guy pays me. It could make a very nice middle. How much do I get up front?”

“Nothing. It’s an automatic fee if I live five days.”

Startled, Simpson laughed. “Nice. That way I won’t feel tempted. But I’ve got to live through those five days myself, so put a hundred in the mail? Then I’ll have something to fall back on.”

Shayne heard his car phone. He agreed to Simpson’s suggestion, and got back in time to catch the call. “Mike?” Rourke said. “Did Frieda get you?”

“I’ve been tied up with Painter. What happened?”

“Castle pulled out at about four o’clock. She got to the airport in time, but he went in a private plane. Lear jet, two-engine. Naturally he wouldn’t want to travel with ordinary tourists. I’m at International, but no private Lear has shown up here yet. There are too many possible airports.”

“I’m not ready for him, anyway. Is she coming back tonight?”

“Maybe. She’ll call again. She found out where Geary stayed when he was in Nassau. There was a girlfriend, apparently, which may be where the money went. Frieda’s going out to talk to her.”

“Do you have a phone number?” Shayne said quickly.

“No, she’ll call me. She said she knows she’s in enemy country. She’ll watch the rearview mirror. She wanted to know how things are going here, and I told her fine. Was that the right answer?”

Shayne was kneading the bridge of his nose. “People keep telling me things. Forget about Castle for now. He has to come to us.”

“I wish he’d come over in a smaller plane. Those Lears can carry a dozen people. All right, I’ll go back to the office and start calling airports.”

The Nash dog track was only a few blocks away. Bobby Nash was waiting in his office, and as soon as Shayne arrived he called in a burly, bearded young man named Dave.

“Dave’s our resident brain,” Nash said. “But I’m beginning to think I was too fast about saying yes, Mike. This could backfire, and damage the whole industry.”

“There’s a chance of that,” Shayne said. “Geary was crooked, Surfside was crooked, therefore it follows that all the other owners and all the other tracks are crooked. But too many people have money tied up in the business. You’re part of the tourist draw, and the tax take is enormous. We’re dealing with large matters here—murder, conspiracy, large-scale corruption. If we put on a good enough show, maybe including one or two deaths, I think we’ll see a big rush to put the lid back on and get back to normal.”

“Deaths,” Nash said thoughtfully.

“All you can do is hope.”

“Dave and I have been talking, and there are going to be problems. I mean from the technical end.”

Given his general hairiness and a pair of big-lensed glasses, not much of Dave’s face was showing, but as much as Shayne could see seemed friendly. His belly was held in by a wide belt with holsters for various tools.

“The closed-circuit cables are in channels in the walls,” he explained. “You can’t run a duplicate system without tearing everything out.”

“I’m thinking in terms of substitutions,” Shayne said. “Take the lockup kennel. There’s one camera there now. Leave it where it is, but cut it off. Hide another somewhere else in the kennel, and tie it into the regular circuit.”

“Why not?” Dave said. “In a duct, a light fixture. I know where we can get some two-way mirrors. Then the picture coming into the monitors is taken from a completely new angle. But the kennel guys don’t know that. Yeah. It would help if we had a wiring diagram. Then we could cut directly into one of the main feeds.”

“I think I can get you that. Can you tape the closed-circuit picture and play it back later?”

“No problem, depending on the size of their video machine. With ours, we can store twelve hours of action without changing tapes. You mean replay over the regular outlets?”

“The same way they replay a race after it’s over.”

“Simple as throwing a switch. Everything goes into the mixing console. Of course closed circuit is black-and-white, and the track cameras are color. You’ve got four of those working. They’re usually fixed, on an automatic swivel, but turn them loose, and you can film anything. Store it, edit it, mix it up, play it backwards. Hey, this is going to be great.”

“Let’s think in terms of ten cameras. How much time will you need?”

“To hide everything? Days. How much time do we have?”

“Between two A.M. and seven tomorrow morning.”

“Then it won’t be perfect. You’ll just have to arrange enough excitement so nobody looks real close.”

At Surfside, across the bay in Miami Beach, racing was well underway by the time Shayne and Dave had talked through the problem. Shayne would be shaping events, but he knew he couldn’t control them. He had to be ready to move in unexpected directions. He kept throwing out ideas. Dave, sometimes using diagrams or referring to the actual equipment, told him whether or not he thought they would work. If the answer was no, he explained why, and Shayne was sometimes able to come up with a modification. Dave had a rough working knowledge of the Surfside system, but in some cases he would have to wait till he saw the physical layout.

Nash arranged a forty-eight-hour floater policy with his insurance agent, to cover the borrowed equipment. Shayne left them dismantling cameras and preparing an inventory. Nash was still wavering between awe at the scope of Shayne’s proposals, and worry about all the possible things that could go wrong.

Shayne had fallen behind on his phone calls. Surprisingly, it was the sports editor, Wanamaker, who had turned up a link between Tony Castle and C. and W. Factors, which had loaned several bushels of money to Harry Zell. The Cuban detective who had been following Ricardo Sanchez reported that Sanchez had arrived early at the kennel, where without Dee Wynn he would be fully occupied for the next couple of hours, and the detective was about to have a drink with a cousin, who worked at the Pompano Beach harness track. Rourke had had no further word from Frieda.

Surfside’s phones had been put on the Centrex system, with automatic switching and a different number for each extension. Shayne dialed the number given for Public Relations. Linda Geary answered.

“You big ugly redhead,” she said hoarsely. “Where have you been all day? Why didn’t you call me? What are you up to, damn it?”

“Working on Sanchez. One or two other things. I’m going to need a little sponsorship. Can you arrange for me to have the run of the track tonight after everything closes?”

“For what nefarious purpose?”

“You don’t really want to know. You want to be able to deny you had anything to do with it.”

“Translated, that means you want to bug the kennels, and prove Ricardo is shooting up dogs. That shows nice professional enthusiasm on your part, Mike, but it won’t be necessary now. I’m calling you off.”

“Why?”

“I decided there was no point in going through third parties. I barged in on Mother with blood in my eye, and told her in no uncertain terms that unless she went ahead with the sale, and did it today, her guy was going to get the same working-over Daddy got, and from the same source—Mike Shayne. That drained the blood out of her face, I must say. She wants that boy with his limbs in working order. Hell, I don’t begrudge the old girl her little adventure. I wouldn’t mind a piece of that myself, not that she’s offering to share the good fortune. And she signed, Mike! She signed like a woolly lamb. We’ll finish the meeting, and then the wreckers take over.”

“What did she sign, exactly?”

“A purchase agreement. Harry’s been carrying it around in his briefcase for a long time. Surfside Kennel Club, your name will shortly be Harry Zell’s Palace.”

“When did this happen?”

“The ceremony took place about half an hour ago. Don’t be too disappointed now, Mike. You’ll have plenty of other chances to hector people.”

“Sometimes it’s harder to cut me off than it is to put me on.”

She said more sharply, “Remember, Buster, I’m holding a sledgehammer. That’s not my style, usually. Usually I whimper and beg. But it worked so well with Mom—she crumpled, she fell apart!—I’m going to see how it works with you. Lay off, or the full truth about your eighty thousand dollars from Surfside will be in all the papers and on all the news shows. You are talking to the lady who knows.”

“I hear you, Linda.”

“Stop in. I’ll buy you a drink on the expense account.”

“Maybe tomorrow night.”

“Look for me at the clubhouse bar.”

Shayne broke the connection gently enough, but then he banged the meaty side of his fist against the wall of the booth. After a long moment, he dialed another Surfside extension, the control tower. He asked for Lou Liebler, the tax man.

Liebler said carefully, “Too much going on here, I can’t hear you. I’ll call you back from another phone.”

When they were connected again: “Mike, we need a face-to-face. All that money flowing both ways and we’re not tapped in on it.”

“We may be fairly soon. Did you find out anything about Geary’s financing?”

“One or two things, but should we talk about it on the phone?”

“It’s high percentage nobody’s listening.”

“Well—I did better than I expected without a subpoena. During the renovations, the books show a series of advances from a New York company I never heard of. Some of those notes are still outstanding. Some have been paid off by transfers of stock.”

“Tell me that again,” Shayne said, frowning.

After Liebler repeated it: “Anything to connect the New York company with the Bahamas, or with Castle?”

“No, but there’s this. It’s from Wolf, in Tallahassee. It has nothing to do with tax matters—he stumbled on it. You know Geary was always going back and forth to Nassau, and it seems he had a whole second life there, house on the beach, boat, woman, different lifestyle. And Wolf says that the woman was planted on him by Castle, to find out where he was getting his extra money.—Mike?” Shayne must have made some sound. “Is it helpful, I hope?”

Shayne was gripping the phone hard. This was the woman Frieda had heard about, and decided to question.

“Thinking,” he said. “Hold on a minute.” But whatever was going on in Nassau, there was no way he could influence it from here, and he went on: “I want you to arrange something for me, Liebler. I’m as anxious as you are to get the flow started, but I can’t just walk in and wave a magic wand. I have to pinpoint it. I can do that mechanically if I have the run of the place for a few hours. I think early tomorrow morning would be the best time—very early, so I won’t be bothered.”

“I’ll meet you anyplace you say.”

“You’re a hard-working man, Liebler. You need sleep. I never like to have people looking over my shoulder. When two people know a secret, it stops being a secret. Nothing for you to worry about financially. I’m increasing the size of your cut by a third, and the same for Fitzhugh. Tell him. Is everybody out by two o’clock?”

“Pretty close, usually. There’s a watchman.”

“I need a key, and I need that wiring diagram you were carrying around, and I want Fitzhugh to talk to the watchman so he’ll be expecting me. Tell him I’m checking the TV security, late at night so nobody’ll know about it. That should be good enough cover. And tomorrow night—money, Liebler. More than usual, to catch up after our little vacation.”

Chapter 13

Shayne looked up the address of the Fanchon Towers, where Ricardo Sanchez had been living since making the acquaintance of Charlotte Geary. After finding a parking place, he unlocked the trunk of the Buick, then unlocked a metal box welded to the floor, and picked out a small transistorized unit three quarters the size of a cigarette package. It came equipped with suction cups, and contained a microphone and transmitter, capable of broadcasting at good fidelity an eighth of a mile.

The building, a new one, was still renting; according to the small print at the bottom of the vacancy notice, it was a Harry Zell venture. It was wedged onto a sliver of land at the edge of Little River Canal, and it was clearly outside the financial range of anyone trying to live on a Surfside salary. There was a vestibule, a locked inner door. Shayne picked his way through. Upstairs, he rang the bell, and getting no response, began working on the simple lock.

He stepped in and felt for the light switch. The light came on before he found it. Mrs. Geary was already there, and like so many other people in the last day and a half, she was pointing a gun at him.

“It’s you,” she said. “He’s not here. You’ll have to beat him up some other time.”

Shayne closed the door. “I don’t want to beat him up. I want to ask him how he can afford to pay the rent here.”

“I pay three quarters of it. That’s fair.”

Shayne turned on another light. It was a one-room apartment with a small kitchen alcove, a smaller terrace and a splintered view of the Bay and the lights of Miami Beach. The carpet had probably come with the apartment, but there wasn’t much furniture, and little to show that anyone lived here. A low lamp table at the end of a convertible sofa was the logical place for his microphone.

He turned. He had studied Mrs. Geary’s face through field glasses the night before, and she had looked drawn and strained. She couldn’t have slept much since, and her eyes were red, as though she might have been crying. But she was slender and moved well, and without the marks of fatigue she would have been a good-looking woman.

“If you aren’t going to shoot me with that, put it away,” Shayne said. “This isn’t that kind of problem.”

“I’m not so sure. There was shooting last night, some of it done by you, I understand. The animals are fighting over the meat.”

“Does he keep any booze here?”

“He doesn’t drink much, only to celebrate something. This has been good for me because I was beginning to need those martinis.”

Shayne sat down within reach of the lamp table. He waved at her, but she stayed on her feet, the gun pointed at the floor.

“Don’t make yourself too comfortable. Have you talked to Linda?”

“Briefly, on the phone.”

“Didn’t she tell you you’ve been discharged?”

“She was never my client.”

Mrs. Geary looked surprised. He explained, “Before I take on a client, we have a clear agreement on what I’m expected to do, and how I’m going to be paid. Linda assumed she hired me, but she walked away before I said yes or no. I’m not too interested in rearranging your private life. If it works, great. But you don’t look as though you’ve been enjoying it much lately.”

“Oh, God.” Dropping the gun into her purse, she sat down facing him, squinting slightly, her knees tightly together. “If you aren’t working for my loving daughter, what are you doing breaking into Ricardo’s apartment?”

“I’m working for myself. Maybe you can help me.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“So I’ll lose interest and quit. I don’t want any more trouble. Last night was close enough. I didn’t understand that at the time, and I still don’t. I don’t know who’s going to be pointing a gun at me next. You, for Christ’s sake. Why do you even own a gun?”

“It was Max’s. All right, instead of shooting, let’s talk. You begin.”

“First you wanted to sell. Then you didn’t. Now you do, Linda tells me.”

“I seem to be rather changeable.”

“You must have reasons, Mrs. Geary. What were they this time?”

“Because I’m scared! I want a comfortable, uneventful life.”

“Does Ricardo know about the latest switch?”

“Not yet.”

“Is that why you brought a gun?”

“No! Mr. Shayne, if you want to ask any factual questions, go ahead, but leave my feelings out of it. I felt something about Max, maybe not grief, but definitely something. I’m not over it. Why don’t you ask about money? That’s what you’re really interested in.”

“I didn’t know it showed. O.K. It’s your track now, and you have a right to sell it. But you can see why the people on Max’s slush list, including me, aren’t too happy about that. We won’t get any grease out of a hotel on the site. Somebody will, but different people. Let me negotiate for you. I’ll get you a better deal than Max had. There’s money there, Mrs. Geary. How much, I don’t even like to guess. Why don’t you forget about being honest and poor, keep the track open, give Ricardo a promotion to kennelmaster, and see how much we can squeeze together? Try it for a year.”

“I was actually thinking of doing just that. Mr. Shayne, although I don’t see why I would need your assistance. I would find it too strenuous, I’m afraid.”

“You wouldn’t have to go near the track. I’ll bring you a suitcase of money a couple of times a month.”

“Surfside’s a gold mine, I suppose! Do you really think that? After all those huge payoffs, there was nothing left for the owners. Really—you’re talking to the secretary-treasurer.”

“So Max never told you how he was doing it?”

She laughed. “In the first place, I don’t believe he was doing anything illegal. If he was, I didn’t see any of the money. Can I persuade you to go now, please? Ricardo has a very low flash point. I want you to be gone by the time he gets here.”

“I’d like to meet him.”

“There’s no point in that! Honestly. He can’t tell you anything about Max’s secrets, if he had any. Ricardo is down at the working level, the dog level. And there’s nothing you or anybody else can say or do to make me change. It’s too late. It’s done!”

“That still leaves a lot of loose ends. What do you think of the suggestion that your husband’s death may have been murder?”

“I don’t know what to think! I know so little—” She looked down at her clenched hands. “But I hope it isn’t true. I want it to be Max’s own fault. He always claimed he could drive better after a fifth of whiskey, and I hate that kind of masculine bragging! He deserved it. I know that kind of drinking is a way of committing suicide—but I don’t want to discuss it. You’re trying to confuse me. Isn’t there some way I can appeal to you? Ricardo has a lot of the old-fashioned Cuban ideas. I don’t want anything to go wrong with this. I’m all—keyed up. I’ll say something I shouldn’t—”

“About what, Mrs. Geary?”

“I don’t know why I said that. I wash my hands! I am no longer the majority owner of a stupid dog track, providing the working class with low-cost excitement in the open air, except for those eccentrics who prefer to stay inside and watch television. Very soon I will receive a check from Mr. Harry Zell, and I have no intention of staying in Miami, the city my late husband did so much to shape. Good-bye, all of you.”

The doorbell rang.

“That’s—” She looked at her watch. “No, it’s too early.”

Shayne had the transmitter out of his sling by the time she reached the door. She checked through the peephole.

“Oh, dear.”

Hurrying, Shayne couldn’t make the suction cups grip on the underside of the lamp table. The door opened. A Miami plainclothes detective was standing outside.

“This where you had the break-in?”

His chin was drawn down, and he seemed very angry about something. She turned swiftly, and Shayne straightened. The transmitter stayed in place for an instant, but fell silently to the carpet.

“I dialed the emergency number when you—”

The cop had some kind of grievance to work off; he was mad at everybody tonight. Mrs. Geary retreated, more and more agitated.

“You see, I heard a noise at the door, I wasn’t expecting anybody—”

“Which one of you is Sanchez?”

She looked helplessly at Shayne, who came forward and said angrily, “I’ll take care of this clown. Hold it right there. Nobody invited you inside.”

“All I want is an explanation. What were you doing upstairs? What’s wrong with the intercom? And don’t give me that tough-guy shit, because I am fed up with this goddamn job and with this goddamn city. I’ve had it!”

“It’s really nothing to get worked up about,” Mrs. Geary was trying to say, but Shayne rode her down.

“You can’t go halfway with these guys, or they’ll settle in and drink your liquor and expect a ten-dollar tip when they leave. I know the type, believe me. Out,” he said to the cop, with a gesture. “I don’t like your manner. You’re on the public payroll, goddamn it. We pay your salary. The tax payers. Now pick up and get out of here.”

He put a little head fake on the cop. The cop went with it, and Shayne slapped his shoulder with the heel of his hand.

The response was automatic. He was crowding the cop, and the cop had to crowd him back, bringing his hand up between them to push Shayne off. Shayne’s heel caught and he crashed to the floor, taking the lamp table with him. The lamp blinked out as it hit the floor.

Mrs. Geary ran between them. “That’s enough! I’m waiting for Mr. Sanchez. I have a key, I’m a friend of his. This is Mike Shayne, the detective—”

“Oh, Shayne, is it?” the cop said.

Shayne yelled from the floor, “Goddamned if I let anybody get away with that. These rednecks are getting worse by the mouth. Don’t even know how to ask a civil question.”

“I’ll ask a few when I get you to the station,” the cop said.

“You’re going to bust me? Fine. I know a lawyer who specializes in false arrest. He’s gotten some very nice settlements.”

He had the transmitter in the palm of his hand. He moistened his fingertips, and rubbed the moisture onto the suction cups. When he set the table upright, he left the transmitter adhering to its underside.

“That’s it, break up the furniture. What do we need with hurricanes when we’ve got the police force? Where did they find you, boy, up in the piney woods? If I had the use of both arms—”

“Let’s go, private detective.”

They continued to trade remarks down the corridor and into the elevator. There Shayne’s manner changed.

“You did me a favor,” he said with a laugh. “That woman had me pinned down. She wanted me to spend the night and I’ve got other plans. Thanks.”

The cop was still making twitching and brushing movements with his hands. “Second thoughts? It isn’t that easy. I’m going to write you up and you’ll have the rest of the night to sober up and cool off.”

“If you want an apology, I apologize.”

“I want blood,” the cop said, shaking. “You don’t hit a police officer on duty and then say, ‘Oops, sorry, I take it back.’ I don’t care who you know.”

“I’m working,” Shayne said reasonably. “I’ll stop in tomorrow and explain it to you.”

“Like hell. I’m setting this schedule.”

Without shifting his weight, Shayne clipped him on the side of the jaw, hitting him again as he started his slide. When the elevator door opened, Shayne levered him onto one hip and ran him outside. Finding the parked police car, he slid the cop behind the wheel and walked away, coming back after a few steps because the cop’s upper body had fallen against the horn. After rearranging him, Shayne went to his own car, which was parked on the opposite side of the street, a block and a half away.

He turned on the radio receiver and put on the headset.

The reception was fine. He heard the woman in Sanchez’s apartment moving about restlessly. Once, very close to the transmitter, she said aloud, “Damn, damn, damn. Ricardo, my dear, what am I going to do about you?”

She made one phone call, to a friend or a relative. She was sorry, she said, but she couldn’t accept the invitation. There was too much going on here. After much shuffling and vacillation, she had decided to sell the track. She couldn’t trust anybody to run it for her—they all seemed to be thieves. Some shady dealings of Max’s had come to light. It was a tense and difficult time.

The police car’s headlights came on. Shayne slid down so his silhouette wouldn’t show against the windshield.

When the car went past, he checked with Rourke, then with Dave, Bobby Nash’s technician. Dave had everything and was ready to move as soon as Surfside turned off the lights.

A badly bruised green sedan turned into the tenant’s parking area. As it passed under an overhead light, Shayne saw that the driver was Sanchez. He watched for the car of the Cuban detective and blinked his lights when he saw it. The Cuban double-parked and came in beside him.

“Nothing much,” he told Shayne. “I think he’s using chemistry on the dogs. Mrs. Charlotte Geary rented this apartment. He’s a serious, hard-working kid, and he wants to make money.”

“I’ve got a transmitter up there,” Shayne said. “There’s an interesting conversation coming up, but I can’t stay for it. I want to switch cars.”

He explained the equipment. The recorder was tied into the receiver; it was voice-actuated and needed no attention. But he wanted the Cuban to use the earphones, and Shayne would call him at intervals to get a summary.

He heard Ricardo’s voice.

“Oh, Charley, it went so smooth. So easy. I only touched three dogs but they did what I told them.”

Mrs. Geary, muffled but still distinct: “How much did you make?”

“Eighty-five hundred in three hours of racing. Of course we’ll have minus nights, too, but they’ll average out. You’ve got to keep telling me one thing, honey: Don’t get greedy.”

One boot hit the carpet, then the other. He blew like a horse.

“I better grab a shower. That sixth race, I sweated a pint.”

“I’ll do that, you don’t have to. You smell fine. Ricardo, baby—”

A moment later, it began. Shayne passed the headset to the Cuban, and switched off the tape recorder.

“Let’s respect their privacy. Don’t forget to turn it back on when they start talking.”

“What I predict,” the Cuban said, putting on the earphones, “he’s going to do it quick the first time, because he’s twenty-two years of age and he just won a couple of bets, and he’s going to do it again, and take a goddamn hour. And I’m going to sit here listening to all the slurping and groaning. What a job. Watch my car on the fast curves, Mike. She has a tendency to chatter.”

Chapter 14

Ricardo had recently read the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears to his four-year-old niece. At first everything in that story was too hard or too soft, too much or too little, too big or too small, and then finally it was just right. It had made him think of his new lady. Always before, they had been younger than he was, and too something or other—too lazy or too busy, too shy or too selfish. With Charlotte, it was just right. And not only that, it was getting better all the time. He separated from her slowly. She tried to hold him.

“Charley, you’re the world’s best. Just no comparison. When the meeting’s over and I don’t have to do all that chartwork, let’s work up to twice a day. Do you want to go away somewhere? Brazil?”

She put her face against the hollow of his shoulder and followed him as he rolled. Then she sighed and pulled back slightly so fewer surfaces overlapped. But her mouth was still against his shoulder, and he didn’t hear what she said.

“What, honey?”

“You aren’t going to like what I have to tell you.”

He pulled back another fraction of an inch. Her eyes were still closed.

“You met somebody else. You decided to join the nuns.”

“I’m selling Surfside. Now darling, don’t jump. I had to do it. We’ll have quite a nice bit of money. Brazil, of course, anywhere. I know what you think about marriage, but I hope we can get a house—”

The hammering subsided slowly, and he was able to speak. “I don’t believe this.”

“I’m not strong enough, Rick.”

He had moved completely apart from her now. “Max paid out that money. You had nothing to do with it.”

“Nobody else knows that. I’ll be subpoenaed.”

“What’s a subpoena? A piece of paper. Get a good lawyer. You aren’t the first wife who signed the tax returns without reading them first. This thing at the track is just getting started! Eighty-five hundred in three hours. And the beautiful thing about it—absolutely without risk.”

“Absolutely without risk,” she repeated. “You see, I don’t believe that.” She sat up, pushing back her hair. “And if you’re caught, I’m part of it, aren’t I. I protect you and we divide your winnings. People know about us already. Linda, damn her, hired Shayne, the private detective. He’s a clever, ruthless man.”

“He may be all that,” Ricardo said, “but he isn’t allowed in the lockup kennel.”

“I wouldn’t be sure of anything with that man. He’s an outlaw now, and he smells money. I’m afraid of him. You and I are no match for that kind of person.”

“You tell me exactly what you’re afraid of. I’ll tell you exactly how we deal with it.”

She was off the bed now. She went to the refrigerator and took out the ice and the vodka. She said without turning, “It’s a waste of time. I already signed.”

He stood up slowly, again feeling the pounding in his temples. “When?”

“Over coffee and brandy, in Zell’s office, two hours ago. I’m sorry. I’ll try to make it up to you.”

“How?” he shouted. “You don’t realize what we’ve got going. I put three years into that, and there it is, finally. If we take it easy, if we don’t push it, it can go on and on and on. And you threw it away—”

“I had to.”

“Why did you have to? Why didn’t you talk to me first? What about all those things you’ve been saying to me in bed? What was it, bullshit to keep me contented?”

“No! I want to be with you all the time.”

“And slip me a twenty under the tablecloth so I can pay the check. Didn’t you ever hear of machismo? We don’t like to take money that way.”

“I thought you might get a job at another track—”

“I explained it to you! I’d have to spend ten years cleaning up turds, and why would they give me my own kennel even then? It’s working! And because you were scared for an hour or two—scared of a private detective—why aren’t you scared of me? Don’t you know about Cubans? Hot-blooded. We want to have some say about the conditions of life. We don’t like to take twenties from middle-aged women.”

She was breathing quickly. “I beg you—”

He shouted again and came at her. He could hardly see through the pink haze. He was going to smash this woman’s face…

Dropping the glass, she ran past, striking out at him. His fingers slipped on her bare shoulder. Things spilled out of her purse. He stopped short when he saw that she had a gun.

“Be careful!” she warned. “I’m perfectly calm.” That was untrue; the gun was shaking badly. “I won’t have it, do you hear? I won’t have you hit me. You stand there, and let me get dressed and out of your life.”

“Charley,” he said, confused.

“I had a decision to make, and I made it. I haven’t made many decisions in my life, but by God I made that one.”

The haze receded, and Ricardo saw her more clearly. “A gun,” he said softly. “Sweetheart, we’ve just been fucking. They don’t go together.”

He put out his hand, and the sight of this beautiful naked woman pointing a gun at him seemed so unlikely that he was convinced she would hand it to him.

“Don’t!” she screamed. The gun was all the way out between them, and it was pointed at his crotch, naturally. “I’ll try not to kill you. But I’ll hurt you badly if you come another step.”

He lowered his hands. “You really are scared of me, aren’t you? That’s funny, because I love you, for Christ’s sake.”

“You do not. Liar. You planned it all in advance, for the money. You told me.”

“To start with, sure. If I go across the room and sit down, will you point that at the floor or someplace? I feel tender right there.”

After a moment she brought the gun back in to her chest. “I’m not naive enough to believe—”

“Charley, I wouldn’t hurt you. Jesus, seeing that look in your eye—you were one second away from pulling that trigger.”

“One half second.” She lowered the gun the rest of the way. “And then I would have been in a real mess.”

“How much is he paying?”

She bit her lip. “The overall price is two and a half million. I know that’s not as much as—”

“Two and a half! Two and a half! It was five last week.”

He studied her. Various counters began clicking, and he said quietly, “You think I killed Max.”

Her eyes darted over the room, never fixing directly on him.

“Sure you do,” Ricardo said. “You think I racked him up and set him on fire. You see it on TV all the time. The young buck with a hard-on. The wife in menopause. The husband with all the money. And with us, it wasn’t just the savings account and the insurance. We had a real plan. We couldn’t do anything about it as long as he was alive. And now that I think of it, the night of that accident, you had the pip, such as it is these days, and stayed home to go to bed early. You don’t know where I was at two in the morning.”

“That’s true, I don’t.”

“But that wouldn’t be enough to make you sell for two and a half. What else?”

“Oh, there’s more! I’ve known all along that you did it, and I didn’t care, why the devil should I? I would have done it myself if I’d had the courage. I thought of it long before you came on the scene, my friend! It was all right as long as it was just my mind. The sex was all right tonight, wasn’t it?”

“Super.”

“It could have gone on, I think. But we’re talking about it now, and that’s always a bad idea. You still have almost a month. You can make quite a tidy sum. Keep the whole thing. Then if you ever feel like taking me to dinner you can pay the check with your own twenty dollars and feel manly! Take me to Brazil and you can buy both tickets.”

“Maybe it was a bad idea to start, but we’ve started, so finish. What did Harry say, sign or he’d turn your boyfriend in for murder?”

“And do you think I wouldn’t go too? We all know about wives and husbands and lovers. The wife and the lover do it together. Oh, Ricardo, it’s so awful.”

He shook his head. “Charley, I’m sorry to say you’ve been conned. You were already sure I did it, and Harry Zell worked on you for a few minutes and ripped off two and a half million bucks. I’d better know exactly what he told you, for my own protection.”

“He got what he wanted, my signature. He won’t do anything now.”

“But why should I trust Harry Zell? He’s as slippery as a trout, you can tell that by looking at him.”

He made a move to get up. She had begun to put on her bra. She dropped it and snatched up the pistol again.

After a moment he sat back and said, “Whatever he had, I see you believed him.”

“A deposition,” she said reluctantly. “A statement, in writing, signed and notarized. I’m not a child.”

“Who made it?”

“Dee Wynn.”

“Wynn!”

She finished fastening her bra and reached for her blouse. “I know. Invariably drunk at that time of night. An unreliable witness. But I believed it, Ricardo, and so would a jury, I think.”

“Tell me.”

“He fell asleep in Max’s car. He heard the seat-belt buzzer but he couldn’t wake up. Max kept groaning and mumbling that everybody was cheating him. He jerked getting started, and then he kept swinging in great out-of-control arcs. Dee was trying to sit up and tell him to call a taxi or let somebody else drive. Then he heard a car behind them, accelerating. He sat up finally as they went off the bank. And it was your car, Ricardo. Your license plate and your car.”

“Now if the bastard said I was driving—”

“You were driving,” she said. “He had a good glimpse through the side window. The Cuban, Ricardo Sanchez. He was thrown out when the car turned over. Nothing he could do about Max, the fire was too hot, and the next morning, to make sure he hadn’t imagined it, he checked your car. And there it was, a freshly banged fender. But he was scared of what you might do, so he didn’t say anything to anybody.”

“Scared, hell. He wanted to see what he could milk it for. Now is that all? Is there anything else you’re holding back?”

“Isn’t it enough?”

The answer to that was obvious. It was more than enough.

“Are you just going to sit there grinding your teeth?” she said after a moment. “Say something.”

Ricardo had to think. Needing help, he made himself a drink. Charlotte, too, picked up her dropped glass and used the bottle after he finished. A mixture of emotions—fear, anger, regret—had carried her this far, but now she was crying. It irritated him.

“He put his watch on the table and gave me five minutes. Darling, all I could think was that even this way, with this hanging over us, it’s better than before, when we didn’t know each other—”

“Is it?”

He bit off the words, rattled the ice cubes and drank, forcing himself to keep drinking until the glass was empty.

“God, I hate that stuff.”

He dressed quickly, went through her purse and took all the cash and the gun. Without saying anything more or looking at her again, he left the apartment.

Chapter 15

The night security man came to tell Shayne there was a phone call for him. It was already after three, and they had only planted one of the Nash cameras. Unless they could work more swiftly, they would have to settle for a less ambitious program.

“You can take it in the PR office.”

It was the Cuban detective, using Shayne’s own mobile phone.

“I haven’t figured out how to use this phone and chase at the same time,” the Cuban said. “I’ve got a tape you’re going to want to hear.”

“Where are you?”

“On the Beach, at Forty-third, a big oceanfront condo. Sanchez is inside, and he has a couple of friends with him. How do you want to do this?”

“I’ll be right over. If he leaves before I get there, stay on him.”

Shayne stopped at the kennel and told Dave, the closed-circuit technician from the Nash track, to do the VIP lounge installation next. Outside, the streets were deserted. Shayne ran the lights, and arrived less than five minutes after taking the Cuban’s call.

“I almost lost him, Mike. He was headed south, so I took a chance and cut over to the Eighth Street area. I was lucky—he passed me going the other way, two guys with him. About the same age, I’d say. They’ve been inside—oh, eight minutes. Tape’s ready to run if you want to hear it.”

“Yeah.”

Shayne put on the earphones. While he listened to the exchange between Ricardo and Mrs. Geary, he took a pint of cognac from the glove box, offered it to the Cuban and then drank himself.

“What the hell?” he said. “A deposition?”

He listened for another moment. Without waiting for the tape to conclude, he whipped off the earphones and checked his .38.

“We’d both better go in.”

The Cuban pointed. Three figures came out of the condominium and walked, without hurrying, to a parked car.

“Don’t lose him,” Shayne said. “If he goes home, do some more listening.”

Ricardo’s car, an ancient sedan with a damaged front fender, moved off. Shayne slid out and crossed to the condominium.

Security was one of the main selling points in these hastily built, overpriced buildings, and Shayne found the night doorman in his office off the vestibule, his mouth, ankles and wrists taped.

Shayne ripped the tape off his mouth. The man gasped, “A stickup.”

“Three guys?” Shayne said. “I saw them leaving, I thought I’d check. Does Harry Zell live in this building?”

“In the penthouse. They took my house keys. Do you think that’s whose place—”

“Don’t report this until I find out. Harry’s got strange ideas. He may not want people to know he’s been robbed. If I need help I’ll call you.”

The doorman called after him. “Tell him I tried, but they climbed all over me.”

Shayne rode the elevator to the top. There was only one door, and it was closed and locked. Shayne worked on the lock until it opened for him.

The boys had left the lights on. Every bulb in the place was burning. This was Zell’s office as well as where he lived, and his house architect had been given an open budget and instructions to go for effect. The main room was circular, with a desk the size of a wading pool. The lights ran on overhead tracks. The telephone console was nearly as elaborate as the one on the Surfside control deck.

Harry Zell was tied to a high-backed leather chair, his mouth taped. He made small protesting noises as Shayne walked in, putting away his lock-picks. The developer had been working when the Sanchez group surprised him. Papers and a big ledger were spread out in front of him.

“You’re up late, Harry,” Shayne remarked. “While other people are sleeping or playing, you’re adding up figures. Do you ever ask yourself if it’s worth it?”

Zell’s big face was running with sweat. He worked his shoulders and made more of the mouselike noises. Shayne helped himself to one of Harry’s excellent cigars.

“I’ll give you a hand in a minute. I want to look around first. Impressive office, Harry. I like it.”

The wall safe was open. Papers and folders were scattered on the floor beneath it. Shayne gathered everything up and took it to the desk. There was a locked three-drawer file. Sanchez hadn’t bothered with that. Going to the helpless figure in the executive chair, Shayne felt his pockets until he found the one with the keys. He unlocked the file and worked through it quickly, removing folders for C. and W. Factors, Surfside Kennel Club and Max Geary.

Zell had stopped struggling, and watched sadly as Shayne pulled up a chair and settled down. He sighed heavily once. Shayne looked up.

“That bad, Harry?”

Zell shrugged with his eyebrows.

All Shayne wanted was an outline, not evidence that would convince a jury, and he had most of it by the time the long cigar had burned down to his knuckles. He stubbed it out in an ashtray filled with a long evening’s cigarettes.

“People have been telling me you were hard-up, but I didn’t know it was this bad. Time to make it a two-way conversation, Harry. You’ve been patient.”

He loosened a corner of the adhesive tape and yanked it off. Zell groaned.

“Are you going to report this?” Shayne said.

“Report it? They took every penny I had, my jewelry—”

“I doubt if they cleared cab fare. You haven’t paid your secretary in three weeks.”

“But I’ve been careful to keep up my theft insurance, and I have a very good inventory. Are you going to untie me?”

“The cops can do that. I want to be gone when they get here. I’ve had too many run-ins with cops lately. I’m told Mrs. Geary signed some kind of paper tonight for two million and a half. A steal. I don’t seem to find it.”

“You don’t seem to find it. I put it in the safe. If it’s not there now, somebody probably stole it.”

“I don’t know why, it would have no cash value. Something else I don’t seem to find—Wynn’s deposition.”

After a moment Zell said quietly, “Where do you stand in this, Shayne?”

“I’m looking out for myself, like everybody. My situation is this. If it stops here, I’m through as a private detective. I don’t expect that to bring tears to your eyes. You’ve got troubles of your own. Probably Miami will have just about as much violent crime as it does now, but I won’t enjoy retirement, and I have one slim chance of avoiding it. I need a big name. I wish yours was big enough, because here you are, gift-wrapped. But bankrupt, you’re nobody, and how you’ve stayed out of the bankruptcy court this long I don’t understand.”

“You don’t know anything about it,” Zell said, irritated. “That’s the way we do business.”

“Surely not everybody. I wish I could bring in an accountant and turn him loose, but I don’t have time. I’m looking for the name Castle. You don’t have a file on him.”

“Tony Castle? Why should I? I’ve borrowed money from him, but what’s wrong with that? He has it to lend, I pay him big interest, but he does me a service. I don’t go there unless I can’t get it anyplace else.”

“There’s a slight difference. When you can’t pay back a bank, they don’t come looking for you with bats.”

“Bats,” Zell said with scorn. “Forget that Godfather stuff.”

“Maybe they don’t use those methods anymore. From the look of these books, all we have to do is wait a few days and find out. Harry, we’ve got interests in common. Give me Castle. Tell me what you know about Castle and Surfside. If I can make a big enough stink they’ll close the track and Mrs. Geary will have to go through with the sale. And if Castle’s in jail, he won’t be sending his boys around to collect.”

“Tony Castle will not be in jail. Not in my lifetime. I don’t buy this sanctimonious crap about your reputation, Shayne. You think you’re going to cut yourself a slice of a very big melon. Let me tell you, Max was the only man who knew the word. So forget it. That’s over. It was sweet, but it’s over. Trouble? Trouble’s no novelty for me, and something good always happens before the third-act curtain. I don’t mean a miracle from on high. I mean I make it happen. I’ve still got a couple of deals I haven’t tried.”

“I have a tape of a conversation between Mrs. Geary and Sanchez, in which she explains why she changed her mind. Now, with the deposition missing and Dee dead—”

“Dead?”

“He was drowned fishing,” Shayne said, watching him. “How much did you pay for his statement?”

“Too bloody much,” Zell said through tight lips.

“Harry, I think your best bet is to work with me, throw mud at everybody, keep the story alive. Stall. You’ll have the deal in two months.”

“Two months,” Zell said with a shrug. He indicated the papers on the big desk. “Do you think those people will wait two months?”

Shayne took out a Swiss army knife and snapped out the main blade. “I don’t usually work like this, but as I keep telling you, I’m pushed for time. I know you didn’t give the boys the combination until they scared you a little. I think I have to try it. I’m getting tired of people who say no.”

Zell rotated as Shayne approached. Shayne darted the knife blade upward, a whisker-length from Zell’s nose. The pear face seemed to break apart into globules.

“Don’t!” he squeaked. “I can’t tell you anything about Max’s swindle. All I know for sure, he had one. Castle tried to find out but he never could. I’m telling the truth! And watch out for your woman. The Field woman. They’ve got her.”

Shayne touched the point of the knife to Zell’s throat and picked out a bubble of blood. “Tell me about that.”

Zell’s head was pressed back hard. “That’s all I know, Mike! You’ll hear from him.”

Shayne made a new move with the knife and asked another question, then still another. Zell went on babbling that he really and truly didn’t know, and his terror was so intense that Shayne decided to believe him.

“You must have money banked somewhere,” he said. “Clean it out and go. This is out of control.”

He left the lights on and the door unlocked. Downstairs, he told the doorman: “Harry says to notify the police now.”

Chapter 16

The call came at two the next afternoon.

After leaving Zell, Shayne bought food at an all-night supermarket and returned to Surfside. He called the Cuban detective, who reported that Sanchez had dropped his two companions and had then gone back to his own apartment. He called Mrs. Geary’s name as he went in, but she had left. He tried to phone her, but either she wasn’t home or she wasn’t answering the phone.

Shayne told him to knock off and be back on the job at eight in the morning. Dave, working faster and with more confidence, had tied in three more cameras. Shayne worked with him, and they finished the installations a little after daybreak. Dave promised to return by midafternoon.

They had carried several cans of paint, a ladder and drop cloths to the VIP lounge. Shayne painted the outside of the door and left the ladder in the corridor blocking the entrance, with a sign: “Fresh Paint.”

He holed up in the lounge. He slept for a few hours, letting his wristwatch alarm awaken him for the news. He used an electric razor in the bathroom, ate a cold breakfast and went back to the phone, taking quick reports from Rourke, Wanamaker and the Cuban. He gave Rourke his Centrex number, and after that left the phone open for incoming calls.

It was a long morning.

Rourke called from the paper. Someone had just called, and said that Frieda Field had told him this was the way to contact Shayne. What did Shayne think, should he give him the Surfside number?

“Of course not,” Shayne snapped. “When he calls back, find out where I can call him. Then get the hell out of the office and stay out. Tell them you’re sick, and make it convincing, Tim, because I don’t want anybody to be able to reach you. Don’t go to any of your usual bars. Pick one you’ve never been in before. Call me here every half hour.”

“It sounds very gripping. Can you spare a minute to tell me what’s going on?”

“They’ve got Frieda.”

“Frieda!” Rourke exploded. “Who has, Castle?”

“So I’m told. I probably shouldn’t have sent her to Nassau, but I didn’t think it was that risky.”

“This was a local call. Does that mean he’s in Miami?”

“We’ll know in a minute.”

“Shit. That’s lousy. How are you going to handle it?”

“I can’t let them set the conditions. They have to come to me.”

“But Mike, you can’t just let—”

“She’ll be all right,” Shayne interrupted. “That’s the way I’m betting. Unless they keep her in good health she’s no use as bait.”

“The way you’re betting!” Rourke said incredulously. “What if you lose?”

“If I lose,” Shayne said, speaking slowly and distinctly, “I’ll take a couple of weeks off and feel very bad.”

“Mike, I remember a time when you would have put a gun in each pocket—”

“Maybe I’m getting realistic. This guy has unlimited funds and good Miami connections. If he sets something up and invites me to come get her, what are the odds that I’ll walk out alive? And what good would that do anybody? Tim, I’ve been stuck here half the night and all morning. The TV picture’s on without the sound, so nobody’ll wonder who’s using the room. Nothing to do but think about this. And there is absolutely no other way. To make it anywhere near even, I have to do the arranging. Now I’m going to hang up so we can move it along.”

“Realistic, sure! I see that. In the old days, you didn’t stop to think about the odds. You did it. You got some sensational results that way.”

Shayne clicked off.

Ten minutes later Rourke called back and gave him a local number, hanging up without saying anything more. Shayne took a quick turn around the room. Below, the sprinklers were out, watering the track. He dried the palms of his hands, sat down at the phone, and dialed.

“Shayne,” a man’s voice said flatly.

It was slightly guttural, but otherwise neutral. He waited, and so did Shayne, as though they were groping toward each other in a dark room.

The voice spoke again. “We want to talk to you.”

“Who’s we?”

“I’m going to play you a tape. This is a voice you’ll recognize.”

After a click and a soft whir, Frieda said clearly and cheerfully, “Mike, I wrote this out first, and they studied it and talked about it, to be sure I wasn’t sending you any hidden messages. I made a mistake in Nassau. There’s nothing I can do about it now. They’re going to give you some instructions, and they want me to tell you that if you don’t do exactly as they say, they intend to kill me, and I believe they mean it. I’ve told them I’m sure you’ll do the intelligent thing.”

“Do you want that played again?” the voice said when she finished.

“I get the idea. Now the instructions.”

“At four o’clock exactly, be on the West Flagler extension, on the other side of Eight Twenty-six. Drive two miles and leave your car. Come in on the Fontainbleau Golf Course. Somebody will meet you on the seventh tee. Don’t bring anybody with you. No helicopters, no police cordons. We have two-way radio communication, and if there’s any hitch at all, the girl will be dead. Bang, bang. Dead. Don’t be carrying a gun. Wear a tight shirt and tight pants. Any questions?”

“Is that you talking in person, Tony?”

A pause, then: “I’m only taking questions about where and when.”

“I hope you won’t stick to that,” Shayne said easily. “You’re making a big assumption here. Frieda’s a good friend, and I’d hate to have anything happen to her. But I’d hate to have anything happen to me, too, if you see what I mean. That’s what she meant when she said she knew I’d do the intelligent thing.”

“Only a good friend,” Castle said. “Don’t give me that. I’ve had you scouted.”

Shayne grimaced. “I didn’t say I wasn’t coming, but you have to talk me into it. I heard Frieda’s voice, but you could have taped it in Nassau. Is she here?”

“Meet me and we’ll discuss it.”

“Too one-sided, Tony. I see how you figure. If she’s important to me, I’ll drop everything and come. I’ve been having this same argument with a friend of mine. Be reasonable. If I don’t come, you’ll kill her. What happens if I do come? You’ll kill her.”

“She isn’t that important.”

“Of course she is, Tony. She knows your name and where you do business. If we’re going to trade, that’s one thing. I have something you want, you have something I want. Let’s work it out.”

The connection was broken. His face grim, Shayne dialed the number again. It rang a dozen times before it was picked up.

He continued as though there had been no interruption. “From your point of view a golf course is a good place for a meeting. From my point of view it’s terrible. To get any protection I’d need a couple of National Guard companies. This isn’t an ordinary kidnapping situation, I leave fifty thousand in a phone booth and you put Frieda in a taxi. I can’t forget that less than forty-eight hours ago, some people of yours were shooting at me. Incidentally, I’m sorry about sending you that ear. That was childish of me, and I know you won’t forget it unless I can make this deal very attractive.”

“What do you have to deal with, Shayne?”

“I know how Max worked the scam.”

“Yeah?”

“We can do a division that will make sense for both of us. If it goes on this way, it’s going to get out of hand and there won’t be anything for anybody. One more thing. It isn’t in your interest for Harry Zell to go under. Unless we can close down this publicity, that’s inevitable. These are big areas, and I’m glad you’ve decided to talk. But before I agree to a meeting place, I want you to fix something so I can be sure Frieda won’t get hurt. I won’t make any suggestions. You don’t trust me, and I don’t blame you for that. I’ll leave the details up to you.”

That was a long speech, and he wasn’t even sure Castle was still on the line. The silence continued for another moment.

“Let me think about it,” Castle said finally, and Shayne relaxed.

“And four o’clock is too soon,” he said. “I’m calling from Tallahassee. If there’s no commercial flight I’ll charter a plane. When you get a plan worked out, call Tim Rourke. I’ll check with him as soon as I get in.”

“I think I’m beginning to like your attitude.”

“That’s good, because this time you seem to be holding the high cards. I want to keep you friendly.”

“Friends,” Castle said skeptically. “But I do business with plenty of people I don’t like. I hold the high cards, right, and my price is going to be high, so be ready for it. If I have to throw Zell to the alligators, there are compensations. I won’t lose a hundred cents on the dollar, by any means. Make it as soon as you can.”

Shayne hung up, and went back over the conversation again. He was gambling more than money this time, and partial success wouldn’t be enough—he had to win all the way.

He dialed the PR office on the ground floor. A secretary answered and he asked for Miss Geary.

“Shayne!” Linda cried. “What the hell kind of private detective are you? You’re supposed to report in.”

“I don’t follow you,” Shayne said in a puzzled tone. “I didn’t think I was working for you anymore. Your mother changed her mind and decided to sell.”

“She’s changed back! Or has she? Frankly, I’m not too sure. Apparently she thinks the papers she signed don’t mean anything. Shayne, can you help me resolve this?”

“Possibly, Linda. I’ve been as confused as you by all the about-faces, but I’ve learned a couple of things, which I’m afraid will have to be made public.”

“Such as?”

“That Ricardo Sanchez influenced the outcome of two races last night by medicating the dogs, and he took home eighty-five hundred.”

“Whee.”

“I’m thinking about calling a press conference, and I’d like to have it at Surfside. That’s your department. Don’t clear it with anybody—just announce it. Will you do that?”

“This is the night of the International.”

“I know. Get it on the six o’clock news and you’ll build up the crowd.”

“Are you under the impression I’m trying to do a good PR job here? I’m interested in one thing, closing the place down.”

“This may do it.”

“Then I’ll be glad to make the necessary calls, lover. Burn, Surfside, burn. Where do you want it, the VIP lounge? No, some idiot decided this was a good day to paint.”

“I’d like to make it a production. Is there any reason I can’t use the theater?”

“None at all. Then if you want to replay those races, that can be arranged.”

“You’re getting the right spirit. Have you seen Zell?”

“He’s in shock. I don’t understand it. Usually in a crisis he twitches around giving off static, but he’s strangely calm. What will be, will be, kind of thing.”

“He’ll want to be here.”

“I’m sure of that.”

Three more calls, and Shayne’s preparations would be complete. Soupy Simpson, Painter’s informer, was relieved to hear from him.

“I thought I’d lost you, Mike. And lost that thousand bucks, which I badly need. You didn’t play golf today, I hope?”

“Who told you about the golf course?”

“My guy. The one I was telling you about. They call him Ha-Ha. A moron, but he claims he’s hit people.”

“Who else is in it?”

“One pro from up North, who happened to be here on vacation, and one local. I know what he looks like, but that’s all. I guess he’s good. He came recommended.”

“I’m changing our arrangements, Soupy. I’ll give you that thousand at midnight tonight. Of course to do that I have to be in a condition to count money. Come up to Surfside an hour before post time. Buy a grandstand admission, and wait near the ten-dollar windows in the main hall.”

The next time Rourke checked in, Shayne told him to keep his head down until after the six o’clock news, then to come to Surfside, pick up Soupy Simpson at the betting windows, and bring him upstairs to the VIP lounge.

“Simpson, Mike? I hope you don’t think you can trust him?”

“I’ve got him sewed up, I think, unless they hear about it and outbid me. Be careful with him. People are going to be watching for me to show up, and I don’t want them to know I’m already here.”

“Anything more on Frieda?”

“I bought some time. Hell, he runs a casino. He won’t do anything on impulse. He’ll make the percentage move.”

“I sincerely hope so.”

With difficulty, Shayne restrained himself from slamming the phone down. “It’s going to be a tough couple of hours. You can help by keeping your ideas to yourself.”

When six o’clock arrived, Shayne watched the local news with the sound down to a whisper. His press conference announcement was the night’s top story. Without waiting for the remainder of the news, he called Painter. The little chief of detectives was sputtering.

“Press conference! I’m the one who should be calling the press conferences.”

“Not a bad idea,” Shayne said. “We can do it together. You keep telling me I ought to cooperate more. It’s finally beginning to dawn on me that maybe you’ve got something.”

“Over your depth this time, are you?” Painter said with satisfaction. “I knew the day would come. But cooperation is a two-way street. Give me a little preview.”

“You deserve that, Petey. I have a tape for you. It’s a conversation between Mrs. Charlotte Geary and a Cuban who works in the Surfside kennel. They discuss the fixing of dog races, and the death of Max Geary. Apparently the second car in the accident belonged to the Cuban. He and Mrs. Geary have been having a clandestine affair.”

“Now you’re giving me news I like to hear.”

“But I want to remind you that no defense lawyer would let this tape be played to a jury. A deposition is mentioned. The person who made it is dead, and the deposition has disappeared. But don’t be discouraged. I’m trying to get some corroboration. I think I can do it if you keep to a timetable I’m going to give you.”

“Cracking the whip, as usual. How you love it.”

“I have to use the whip on you, Petey. It’s the only way I can get you to move. The timing on this is important. You recognize my car. It’ll be parked in Max Geary’s slot in the executive parking strip outside the Surfside clubhouse entrance at eight-fifteen. Don’t look for it before then because it won’t be there. I’ll have somebody in the front seat to play the tape for you. There’s enough there to justify an arrest, but let them run the International Classic first. That will be over at eight-forty. Don’t wait longer than that, or our guy may run. He’ll be working in the lockup kennel. He may have somebody with him, or maybe not, but the thing to do is bust everybody you find in the kennel. Then tell the security man not to admit anybody else, including the racing secretary, the owner or any of the state officials. He’s probably an off-duty detective—most of them are—but if there’s any doubt about it, leave your own man there. I want to emphasize this. I don’t want anybody in that kennel to interfere with the dogs or destroy evidence. This is important.”

“Give me credit for some sense,” Painter said irritably. “This is going to interrupt the racing. The customers won’t like that.”

“I’ll try to think of a way to keep them entertained. I’m hoping the first arrest will start things unraveling. We have to play it by ear.”

“You want me to commit myself publicly, in front of ten thousand people, most of them voters, and after that you’ll play it by ear? Not good enough, Shayne. You want me to go in there blindfolded, while you control the spotlight. The rationale of a press conference is that you make an opening statement and open yourself up to questions. What is this statement going to contain? After you tell me that—right now—I may have some questions for you myself.”

“The press conference is a bluff, Petey. I didn’t expect you to be smart enough to spot it so soon. I don’t have anything yet except that taped conversation. But the guy I’m after doesn’t know that. I’m hoping to force him to make a move.”

“The guy you’re after. Are you going to break down and give me his name?”

“Didn’t I already tell you? Tony Castle. He shouldn’t be here in Miami, but he is. Bring as many men as you like. We can use them.”

Painter still wanted to be told more. Shayne explained, patiently, that there was little else he could tell him now. If at any time Painter thought he was being double-shuffled, he could call his men together and leave, and see it replayed on TV the following morning. With the inevitable misunderstandings and repetitions, all this took twenty minutes, but Shayne didn’t rush it, knowing that after he hung up there would be nothing to do but wait.

Chapter 17

He heard Rourke’s voice at the door saying cautiously, “Mike?”

Moving the painter’s ladder, Shayne let them in. Simpson was as loose as a puppet, in the relaxed phase of his twice-daily cycle.

“Still alive, I’m glad to see,” he said approvingly. “And do stay that way, Mike.”

“If I live through the next couple of hours I should make it,” Shayne said.

“I had a quick call from Ha-Ha. He only had time for one word—Surfside. So I want you to stay right in this room, Mike, and keep away from the window.”

“I may have to do some moving around. I want you to spot them for me.”

“Mike, I’d rather not do that, if you don’t mind. I like it better behind the scenes.”

“We’re going to be using closed circuit,” Shayne said. “Dave, time to go to work.”

Dave, the electronics technician, was on the couch, leafing through Playboy. He stood up, yawning and scratching.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you, Mike. What do we do when the Surfside people don’t want to let me take over their console?”

“We reason with them,” Shayne said. He took the .38 out of his belt holster, checked the cylinder, and shifted it to his sling.

“Oh, God,” Soupy moaned. “I didn’t know I was getting involved in anything like this.”

“Think of money, Soupy.”

He led the way to the master control room, passing the judges’ box. Lou Liebler was lighting a cigarette when he looked around and saw Shayne. He nearly set fire to his eyebrows.

“Say—Mike. Got a minute?”

Shayne made a circle with his thumb and forefinger. “Everything under control, Lou. Talk to you later.”

The console engineer had just arrived, and was arranging his working aids: cigarettes, crackers, cheese, a bottle of Gatoraid and a paperback mystery. He looked around.

“And who is this bearded gnome? Dave? Welcome aboard. Now you can find out how a professional works.”

“We seem to be hijacking your dog track,” Dave said apologetically, “so move over.”

“Hijacking,” Shayne said from behind him. “That’s too strong a word. We’re just going to add a few touches. Still, you heard him. Move over.”

The technician started to get up as Tim Rourke and Soupy pushed in. “Who are you people? Who authorized this?”

“I didn’t know who to ask,” Shayne said. “Do you know what I mean by a citizen’s arrest? A citizen sees a crime being committed, and instead of ducking he steps up and arrests the guy, and if he’s lucky he doesn’t get his head shot off. We have reason to believe that crimes of a serious nature are being committed here. Watch the kennel monitor for a minute.”

The technician looked from face to face, then at the bank of closed-circuit screens. All of them were alight, and most of them busy. He swung around at once. “Somebody switched locations!”

“Dave and I did that,” Shayne said, “but the kennel people don’t know we’re getting a new angle.”

The screen showing the interior of the kennel was crosshatched with lines. This was the ventilator grill, concealing the second camera. Amateur handicappers were already gathering behind the glass on the clubhouse side. That entire wall was glass, to convince the bettors that Surfside had nothing to hide. The wide-angle lens distorted dimensions, and when Sanchez walked in front of the hidden camera he seemed to be lopsided and moving with a slight list.

“Keep watching,” Shayne said. “Soupy, slide in here.”

Two of the pictures showed the main turnstiles, a third the corridor to the clubhouse escalators. Early arrivals were beginning to dribble through.

“Concentrate,” Shayne said. “For every one you spot there’s an additional hundred bucks.”

The track’s safety director, a squat Italian named Lou D’Alessio, came blasting in.

“What, may I ask—”

The engineer watching the monitors said suddenly, “Lou, take a look at this.”

In the kennel picture, Sanchez was facing the hidden camera, looking down at something in his hand. The hand was screened from the watchers outside, and also from the regular closed-circuit pickup, which had been cut off and was no longer transmitting. As he changed position, they could see he had a small hypodermic syringe.

“Tape it,” Shayne said.

D’Alessio pushed closer. “What’s the bastard think he’s doing?”

Sanchez reached into one of the cages, as if to check the dog’s identifying tattoo. Injecting the medication took only an instant. The syringe was hidden in his fist when he closed the cage and moved on.

Dave reversed the tape and replayed it. “We didn’t get the needle.”

“Be ready for it the next time,” Shayne said.

The safety director turned. “This is very, very serious. You don’t know how serious this is. That dog is in the Classic.”

Shayne blocked him. “Leave him alone for now. Somebody has to handle the dogs.”

“You don’t understand. He’s fixing the Classic. People are going to be betting on that race.”

“And most of them, as always, are going to get screwed. Let’s stay calm and quiet and see what else happens.”

“I’m responsible for security at this track.”

“You’ve been doing a lousy job at it. Soupy’s looking for three gunmen. Let’s lower our voices. We don’t want to distract him.”

D’Alessio growled. As he pushed forward, with an arm raised, Shayne went beneath the arm and caught him about the chest.

“Soupy, he’s carrying a gun. Get it, will you?”

“Me?”

“You’re nearest. It won’t bite you.”

Shayne could feel the excited ticking of D’Alessio’s heart. He let him go after Soupy reached in and pulled his gun.

“You’ve been busy with pickpockets and breaking up fights,” Shayne said. “Your security here is a joke, except that I wasn’t laughing when one of your uniforms shot at me a couple of nights ago, in the middle of a crowd. I can’t be objective about that, but I’ll try to overlook it if you’ll keep out of our way. Under the counter would be a good place.”

“You don’t mean it. I’ve got too much to do.”

“I mean it. This is an outside audit. We don’t know who’s involved and who isn’t.”

The announcer arrived next, a leathery-faced person who had been calling dog races since adolescence. He was surprised to see the crowd, and more surprised to see D’Alessio on the floor, knees under his chin.

“Lou? What are you doing down there?”

“Resting, what do you think I’m doing? Making myself promises.”

“Well,” the announcer said, looking around, “I’m going to need some elbowroom. I’ve got to familiarize myself with the dogs.”

They rearranged themselves, and he squeezed in. Shayne ended up at the windows, and Rourke passed him a pair of binoculars. They were at the end of the suspended deck, and through a window in the side wall he could look into the paddock and see the loading dock on the far side of the lockup kennel. Wagons from the contract kennels were parked in a separate enclosure. Beneath, he could see all of the clubhouse and three-fifths of the grandstand.

“Soupy, any luck?”

“Mike, I’m beginning to see spots, not people. Ha-Ha has his hair in a ponytail—he ought to be easy. But I haven’t seen him. Beach detectives, though, the whole bunch is here. And there’s my good friend Peter Asshole Painter.”

Shayne checked the screen. The inward flow was increasing. He saw the chief of detectives talking to one of his plainclothesmen near the turnstiles. He moved away, and Shayne followed him onto the next screen. Dave’s changes had disturbed the sequence, so when Painter left that picture in the top row, he appeared next in one along the bottom. He went to the kennel and joined the group looking in.

Dave, behind Shayne, grunted. “Yes, yes, stick it in him.”

After a moment he moved to the viewing window and reran the tape he had just made. “Got the needle this time, Mike. Nice and clear.”

The grandstand was filling up. Soupy leaned forward on his hands, his eyes skittering from screen to screen. Thinking he saw one of the three men, he followed the figure off the screens into the clubhouse. Using Shayne’s binoculars, he picked him up as he came into the bar area.

He shook his head. “A ponytail, but not Ha-Ha.”

Rourke and Shayne exchanged a look. “So many ifs in this thing,” Rourke said. “If that press conference announcement spooked Tony and he went back to Nassau—”

“That wouldn’t be masculine. Then I could tell people I drove him out of Miami twice. No, they’ve got to be here. If we don’t locate them I’ll get up on the stage and let them take a crack at me. Painter’s men and Lou’s men can cover the exits.”

D’Alessio heard that. “If you think I’m going to do anything helpful you’re crazy.”

Time passed. Shayne kept track of Painter. When he stopped near one of the security phones, Shayne looked up the number on the Centrex card and dialed. Painter looked to see who else was nearby. When the phone beside him went on ringing he picked it up.

“Shayne! Why do I always say yes to these things? This isn’t police work, it’s amateur night. I’ve got sixteen men here, and damn it to hell, I shouldn’t have done it. I feel like a damn fool. If this is a diversion, to collect the police in one place so you can pull something somewhere else—”

“It’s not that,” Shayne said, “but I told you I can’t guarantee anything. I want to make a small change. We haven’t spotted our guys yet, and I’m beginning to wonder if they’re outside looking for my car. What did I tell you, eight-fifteen? Move it up half an hour. I’m parked down from the Deauville. You can be back in plenty of time for the Classic.”

Painter’s face didn’t show in the monitor, but from the way he was standing, it was clear that he was examining the changed instructions for hidden explosives.

“I’ve gone this far,” he said finally, “might as well go the one extra step. But if this doesn’t work out, you’d better take a long airplane trip and forget to come back.”

The announcer was calling the daily double, the evening’s first opportunity for a big-number payoff. The dozens of small screens around the track, and the full-size one in the theater, showed the morning line odds. When the windows opened to receive actual bets, the numbers began to change. Jerome Kern tunes came from the loudspeakers. The big clock on the tote board continued to move forward.

Soupy said, “Got to take a break. My eyeballs are falling out. I don’t suppose you guys have anything stronger than cigarettes?—No, I didn’t think so.”

The leadout boys, having given their dogs a second weighing, were bringing them into the paddock. Sanchez walked to the rail, where he coughed into his fist. Shayne lowered the binoculars, thinking.

When the race started, nobody in the control room except the caller looked at the dogs. Soupy was moving from screen to screen. Dave, with the Surfside engineer at his elbow, monitored the film patrol screens, sending the action out through the main feed and simultaneously into the video box for taping. Shayne, at the window, was combing the clubhouse, looking for people who, like himself, were looking at the crowd, not at the race.

Painter gathered three men, and Shayne followed them off the screen. When they returned, three races later, Painter was walking with more purpose, swinging his arms. With an extra fanfare, the dogs for the big International race were about to be paraded. Sanchez appeared, an unlighted cigarette between his lips. This time, instead of watching Sanchez, Shayne was searching the grandstand, looking for a pair of binoculars trained on the paddock.

“Got him,” he said. “Tim, come here. Four aisles from the end, up about twelve, thirteen rows. A black in a big white cap.”

“I see him.”

The first dog reached the marshal and was announced. The black put his binoculars away.

Shayne emptied his wallet. “Get downstairs fast and pick him up when he comes in. Get in line with him and bet the same number.” He looked around. “Anybody else want to get in on this?”

Soupy groaned. “Just my luck, you catch me with a couple of fives.”

Dave threw in two hundred.

“Lou?” Shayne asked the safety chief. D’Alessio snapped, “You not only want me to be party to a fix, you want to rope me in on it. Some ethical sense you’ve got there.”

Rourke went out, counting bills. Shayne watched the white cap move to the crosswalk. On the betting room monitor, Rourke materialized beside him and slipped into the same $100 Win line. The black remained at the window longer than most, but Rourke was able to get his money down before the bell clanged. He was back in the control room, blowing, as the dogs hit the first turn.

“Number four.”

The four dog, an Irish red brindle bitch named Elegant, had been listed at 14 to 1. The price had been driven to nine in the last minutes of the betting. She was running third, a yard in from the rail. In the back-stretch, the two front-runners ran out of gas, and she sneaked between them.

“And it’s Elegant coming into the stretch,” the caller shouted, “Drizzle by a length, H’s Choice third, and it’s Elegant, it’s Elegant to the wire, Elegant wins it, H’s Choice second—”

Elegant’s well-wishers in the control room had been urging her on silently, in sign language, but as she crossed the line three lengths ahead of the opposition, Soupy was unable to suppress a joyful cry. The caller snapped off his mike.

“Everybody shut up. The track isn’t supposed to care who wins.”

The “Official” sign was flashed, and Rourke went off to cash the tickets. The winning bitch was separated from the rest, and led to the finish line for the pictures. The others, in the paddock, were having their muzzles and blankets removed. Painter and his two men conferred with the security man at the kennel entrance. After a moment, they were admitted.

On the track, Mrs. Geary was presenting Elegant’s owner with a trophy and a check. Linda, perhaps a little drunk, was stage-managing the photographers.

Another ceremony was underway inside the kennel. Shayne and the others watched it on the closed-circuit. The police came out, bringing Sanchez. Shayne had already dialed the security phone at the entrance, holding up for the last digit. He dialed that now.

When the security man answered, he asked for Painter.

Painter sounded pleased with the world. “You came through for once. We found a couple of needles on him. He did a fast toilet-flush, but not fast enough. We have a pint bottle of something that looks like gin, but I doubt if that’s what it actually is. I take back some of the things I’ve been thinking. Catch you committing a felony, that’s the way to get some cooperation out of you.”

“Don’t leave yet. You’ll be missing a lot. Is everybody out of the kennel?”

“He was working alone. As soon as I get him booked, I want to see that those dogs get every conceivable test there is.”

“Let me talk to him for a minute.”

The little man’s head shot forward, the reflex that showed he feared he was about to be blind-sided. Before he could speak, Shayne explained, “I want to push him while he’s off balance. He can’t be as cool as he looks.”

“All right, but enunciate, so I can hear both ends.”

He offered the phone to his prisoner. “Mike Shayne wants to talk to you, and I’m going to listen.”

When Sanchez took the phone, Shayne said. “I taped your conversation with Mrs. Geary last night, Ricardo. I’ll pause three seconds while you think about that. One. Two. Three. Now I want to ask you about that left front fender.”

Through the binoculars, Shayne saw him swallow. “You taped—”

“You’ve already had your three seconds. You’ll have to explain that fender to Painter. Try it on me first.”

“It always gets so banged out here,” Ricardo said. “Everybody gets so damned drunk. Three times in the last two months. Dee saw it and made up the story. He wasn’t riding in Geary’s car that night—he just saw a way to make money.”

“Your car would be easy to jump-start. If you parked it at midnight, somebody with a coat hanger, Mrs. Geary, for example—”

“No.”

“You don’t think she’s capable of knocking her husband off the road?”

“She couldn’t start a car without a key. She doesn’t have the faintest idea what’s under the hood.”

“I’ll let Painter have you, then. I don’t think you’ll fall apart.”

Hanging up, Shayne reached over the announcer’s shoulder and picked the mike out of his hands. “Now for the main event. Give me room.”

He opened the switch. “Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention. The management regrets to announce that no more wagers will be accepted tonight. Sellers, lock your machines. I repeat, lock your machines.”

Chapter 18

Out on the track, the Irish owner, a bony lady with a fresh Miami sunburn, had completed her trilling remarks and was having her picture taken once more with the lean bitch that had won her $35,000. Mrs. Geary, who clearly wasn’t enjoying the role, stared bravely at the flashbulbs.

“Soupy, this screen and this one,” Shayne said, pointing to the monitors covering the approaches to the kennel. “Look hard. I know those guns are here somewhere.”

“Getting kind of strung-out, man,” Soupy said weakly, passing his hand in front of his eyes. “I looked at nine thousand faces—”

Nothing showed on the kennel monitor but cage doors and shadows. At the mixing console, Dave looked around, and Shayne nodded.

Dave started a tape of dog noises, barks, scratches, whines, recorded earlier when the evening’s dogs had begun to arrive, and looped onto a second tape recorder so it would play continuously. He plugged in a videotape cassette. He and Shayne had made this in the empty kennel, early that morning, using the regular kennel camera before it was disconnected. He fed the sound into the public address system, the picture out to the thirty-five small screens and the big screen in the theater. The barking was too loud, and he brought it down so Shayne’s voice could be heard more clearly.

“I’m Michael Shayne, talking from the Surfside kennel. You’re all dog-lovers. That’s why you’re here. So I know you’ll be interested in what I’m about to show you. We’re going to do some back-and-forth cutting, and it may look a little ragged. Don’t expect a network production. We’ll cut now to a shot taken on this spot earlier this evening.”

The screen went blank. Dave had the kennel tape on the screening monitor. Coming to the segment he wanted, he cut it to half speed and fed it into the outgoing circuit. The master screen on the console, and all the screens scattered about the track, showed Ricardo Sanchez’s lopsided figure walking between the three-high tiers of cages.

“Stop it right there,” Shayne said into the public address mike.

The action froze. Sanchez had taken his fist out of his side pocket and was checking the syringe level. The needle-point caught the light. Sanchez was hunched slightly. In real life a slim, athletic youth, he was turned by the distorting lens into a misshapen dwarf. It was a sinister picture, the embodiment of every dog bettor’s secret fear. The vast crowd had formed in clusters beneath each screen, motionless, staring. Shayne watched at the outside window. Anyone moving from one cluster to the next would be isolated, easy to spot from above. The security man at the kennel entrance left his post to look at one of the hanging screens in the ground-floor cafeteria.

“This man’s name is Ricardo Sanchez,” Shayne said. “He is in charge of the lockup kennel because of the death of the regular kennelmaster. Mrs. Charlotte Geary is paying the rent on Ricardo’s new apartment in the Fanchon Towers. I’ll have more to say about that later. When this scene was taped, he was about to check one of the dogs entered in the International Classic, the favorite, I think, who got off fast and died in the backstretch. Don’t expect a refund on your losing tickets, anybody. If you’ll think about it a minute, you’ll see it’s impossible.”

A rumble began to rise from the crowd, like a dog’s growl. Shayne signaled to Dave.

The taped action resumed, at half speed. Sanchez reached into the cage, smiling slightly. To every bettor except the fortunate few who had backed the winning bitch, it was a wicked smile. Dave cut back to the prepared tape of Shayne in the kennel, talking into a hand mike.

In the flesh, Shayne was still at the side window, shading his eyes from the overhead light. On the screen, he was saying: “A few nights ago we had a memorial service for Max Geary, who took this track away from the gangsters and built it to the point where tonight they were hoping for the first million-dollar handle. Too bad they won’t get it. Maybe next year, if the dogs are still running. For years, Max tried to run an honest swindle. The State of Florida ripped off its usual five percent of every dollar bill—and I hope everybody here understands that if you bet twelve races a night, you’re paying that five percent twelve times. You all have pencils—do your own multiplying. Max had to pay an under-the-table tax for his racing dates. He had to pay to keep the inspectors off his back. When the plant began to deteriorate and he wanted to clean it up, nobody would loan him any money. So he went to a man named Tony Castle, which is short for Castagnoli. One of those bad people who used to hang around racing in the old days. Castle already had a piece of the Surfside concessions—”

And suddenly, while his own voice continued to boom through the PA outlets, Shayne understood how Castle and his men had got by Soupy without being seen.

“Soupy,” he said urgently. “Look at the bars, the sandwich guys.”

Soupy gave him a surprised glance, and began to study the interior monitors. Now that he knew what to look for, Shayne immediately saw a cream-colored panel truck parked at the end of the line of kennel vans and station wagons. He put the binoculars on it. The company name—J. T. Thomas—was written on its side in the same script used on the workers’ uniforms. One of these workers was coming off the ramp now, pushing a delivery dolly piled with cartons. He was heavily bearded, with glasses. The uniform was of dirty white with orange piping, a cocked orange-and-white hat. Shayne lost him for a moment. He came into view again at the glassed-in end of the kennel. The crowd there was all looking one way—up at Shayne’s face on the hanging screen.

His arm moved, in a hard sideward throwing motion. An instant later, there was an explosion in the kennel.

Shayne came around fast and punched the cutoff.

“Pick up the kennel camera,” he told Dave.

On the closed-circuit screen, nothing showed but billowing dark smoke. Dave put it into the feed.

“I see one,” Soupy said excitedly, pointing at a screen showing the long sandwich counter under the projection booth in the Hall of the Greyhound. “You owe me a hundred bucks. At the beer pulls.”

Shayne took the public address mike. “Painter. Pick up the phone at the kennel.”

When he saw the chief of detectives beginning to move, Shayne dialed that number again. It was ringing by the time Painter got there. Shayne handed the phone to Soupy.

“Give him the guy’s description and tell him to pick him up. Then keep looking. There are two more.”

“Giving directions to Painter,” Soupy said. “I’ll love that.”

A lick of flame appeared in the cloud of smoke pouring out through the kennel’s smashed wall. On the closed-circuit screen, dogs were leaping down from the broken cages. The concessionaire’s dolly had been turned over by the force of the blast, and the big cartons were scattered. The man who had been pushing it came out of the crowd. Shayne grabbed Rourke’s shoulder and pointed to the white-and-orange cap.

“Going into the cafeteria, see him?”

They picked him up on the cafeteria monitor. Instead of turning toward the betting hall and the theater, he went toward a side door that would take him back to the loading dock and the service entrance.

Using his elbow, Shayne opened a path to the door. Lou Liebler jumped in front of him. Shayne knocked him aside.

He ran down the moving escalator. The crowd was still magnetized in clusters beneath the screens, and he was able to move quickly to the next escalator, getting a glimpse of Painter’s men closing in on the theater sandwich counter. The wide ground-floor corridors were completely deserted. He saw Linda coming out of an unmarked door. She looked startled. He hit a closed exit gate with his shoulder and burst through.

He looked one way, then the other. Two Surfside workers were running toward the foam truck, parked in its own bay to the right of the entrance. Shayne was there first, and it started for him at once. He backed it out and wheeled.

The kennel and service entrance were at the extreme end of the long structure. He depressed the gas pedal to the floor. He came into the access driveway as the J. T. Thomas truck entered from the opposite end.

Shayne held to the middle of the two lanes. The truck roared directly at him. Shayne was swearing savagely. He held the wheel steady with the weight of his left forearm, and fumbled the .38 out of the sling.

He fired through the windshield, aiming downward. One of the truck’s front tires blew. The truck swerved into some shrubbery on the left of the driveway, and came back, out of control. Shayne pulled the wheel hard. He struck the van just back of the front door, and was thrown forward into the windshield.

For an instant, pain took him elsewhere. When he came back, the driver of the van, still wearing the perky white-and-orange cap, was out and running. He vaulted onto the loading dock, stumbling briefly. Before he recovered, Shayne would have had a shot, but his .38 was somewhere on the floor.

He had blood in his eyes. He stepped down.

The sky was filled with the excited barking of dogs. In the control room, Dave was playing the kennel loop, to go with the action on the screens.

The rear door of the van had popped open. Frieda Field was on the floor, tightly gagged. She had twisted around and was trying to roll to the door.

He helped her sit up. “Are you O.K.?” With a movement of her head, she urged him to go after the driver. He started to work at the knot holding her wrists, but she kicked him away.

“All right. I’ll be back.”

Inside, the crowd remained intent on the screens, which showed a fixed view of the interior of the burning kennel. Shayne sent one of Painter’s plainclothes-men to release Frieda, and picked up a phone. When the control room answered he asked for Rourke.

“I saw him come back in,” Rourke said. “We’re tracking him. He’s at the sellers’ windows. Looking outside. In that cap, he’s easy to follow. Mike, I think it’s Castle.”

“With a beard?”

“He’s been gone a long time. Moving. Stopped again. Painter has two of Soupy’s guys. Shall I let Painter have this one, or do you want him?”

“I don’t like to be selfish.”

“He can’t get away, all the exits are covered. No, there he goes! There he goes, Mike. Heading for the grandstand.”

“Swing one of the overhead cameras. Pick him up when he comes out, and put it on the screens.”

Rourke shouted to somebody. Having decided to let the police make the capture, Shayne moved to where he could watch on the screen. The sound was cut off abruptly. Now he could hear the frantic barking of the real dogs in the kennel. The main film patrol camera, which filmed the start and finish of each race, swung completely around and began to scan the nearly empty grandstand. That picture replaced the kennel interior on the screens. The camera held on one of the gates into the betting hall. A bearded man in the concessionaire’s uniform came through.

“There he is,” Rourke’s excited voice said over all the outlets. “The man in white. It’s Tony Castle. Who just bombed the kennel, killing some high-priced racing greyhounds. Wanted for conspiracy to commit murder. Be careful. He may be armed. Let the cops do it.”

The camera followed the hurrying figure down the steeply pitched aisle. The foam truck Shayne had been driving had been disentangled from the wrecked van, and was being brought in to lay foam on the fire. It stopped beside Shayne, and he stepped up onto its bumper so he could see over the crowd. Castle was taking the steps dangerously fast, two and three at a time. But that aisle led nowhere except to the paved terrace in front of the grandstand. Shayne caught a flicker of movement and color. The big gate in the corrugated fence behind the starting box was beginning to swing. Another J. T. Thomas man in orange and white appeared for an instant in the opening, then slipped out of sight.

“Everybody stay back,” Rourke’s voice clamored. “The man is dangerous. Watch it on TV.”

Two track workers brought the foam jet around to bear on the burning kennel. Shayne pulled one of them aside, body-checked the other, and slid behind the wheel. Without stopping to cut off the foam, he came about and headed for the paddock fence, bracing himself so he wouldn’t be sent into the glass a second time. He hit hard, hung for an instant and went through, rocking. The foam hose whipped behind him, spraying the infield, the track, the knots of people on the grandstand lawn. He had a straight 150-yard run. The crowd was yelling him on, as though they had tickets on him.

Castle, at the far end of the straightaway, went over the rail, landed running, and headed for the gate. He was beginning to labor like the tranquilized dogs on the backstretch in the Classic. Shayne groped behind him, and his fingers fastened on the hose. He followed it to the nozzle and brought it up and around. The foam jetted straight in the air for an instant, then arched outward in front of the truck, and struck the gate before Castle reached it, knocking it shut. Shayne adjusted his aim slightly. As Castle turned, a gun in his hand suddenly, the powerful jet caught him in the chest and tumbled him backward.

Shayne slewed to a stop and jumped, landing on Castle with both feet.

They rolled together. Breaking free, Shayne stamped at Castle’s gun hand. Ignoring the pain in his arm, he pulled Castle up by the front of his uniform and slammed him against the gate, shaking the gun loose. Shayne kicked it away.

The two men stood looking at each other. Castle gasped for breath. The cocky hat had been knocked off. A few strands of gray hair were plastered across his skull. The wet uniform had picked up some of the track dirt as he rolled. He had fattened up, as well as adding the beard, since Shayne last saw him. Shayne would have passed him on the street without a glance. Sometime in the last seven years, he had become an old man.

“Mike Shayne,” Castle breathed. “You were in the kennel.”

“We videotaped that last night. A man of your age shouldn’t be running around like this. You ought to be sitting in a deck chair watching seagulls.”

“With a mint julep,” Castle said. “It was that goddamn ear you sent me.”

Painter ran up, breathing hard. “Is that Castle? That’s not Castle. What happened to him?”

“He’ll look more dangerous in clean clothes,” Shayne said. “Tony, one question before the lawyers take over. What was your name doing in Max Geary’s payoff book?”

“A decoy, the same as yours.”

“What?” Painter demanded. “What are you trying to say? Shayne never got that eighty thousand dollars?”

“I did my best to tell you,” Shayne said. “And it was Tony’s men who gave Max that beating. I have one of them on ice, and I think he’ll be glad to testify.”

Castle showed emotion for the first time. “You cut his ear off and he’s alive!”

Shayne laughed. “Tony, you’re as much of a mark as the two-dollar bettors in the stands. This is personal now. Just you and me. Explain that payoff book.”

Castle shook himself inside the foam-soaked uniform. His shoulders straightened.

“I don’t like you, Shayne. Give me that gun back, I’ll shoot you right here in front of everybody. But you made it a man-to-man thing with that ear, and you outplayed me. I had the girl today, and you sat tight and made me make the moves. That took balls. So you deserve this. Max borrowed two million from me. I didn’t expect him to pay it back. I expected to take over the track and sell it at a good markup to Harry Zell. But every payment came in on time. I wanted to know what kind of angle he was working, because if it worked at Surfside, it would work anywhere. Not just the dogs, the horses. That would run into real money. But he didn’t want to go shares. So I pressed him a little, put him in the hospital to think it over. And he worked out a way to protect himself. Here was the problem. How does he stop me from beating his head in again? He could file a statement with a lawyer, to be turned over to the state’s attorney if the boys started hitting and hit too hard. But with no other evidence they couldn’t extradite me, and you know I wouldn’t come back on my own. A one-day story in the paper, and then the lid would go on. So he came up with this. Mike Shayne’s another matter. Put your reputation on the line, and he knew you’d keep at it till you had all the answers. As I have reason to know, from seven years back. So he told me. If he died funny, Shayne would be named as a big taker. I backed off fast.”

“Did you kill him?” Painter said.

Castle turned slowly. “I gave Shayne an answer because he earned it. Who are you?”

“You’ll learn who I am, believe me,” Painter said, dancing.

Castle made a quick, contemptuous turn, and started toward the grandstand. Painter skipped after him. He snapped his fingers at two detectives, who closed in on Castle and made it an official arrest.

Chapter 19

Painter dropped back to get in step with Shayne.

“I didn’t get all of that. Geary was stealing?”

“I guess you could call it that,” Shayne said wearily. “First I want to see about Frieda, and then I’ll meet you in the control room and we’ll check on something.”

Passing under the first of the hanging screens, he looked up and saw himself and Painter, at the foot of the grandstand. Most of the customers from the theater had drained back, and were swirling about on the lawn and the track, in a threatening mood. The foam truck, trying to get back to the kennel, was blocked. “Let it burn!” someone shouted.

Painter said uneasily, “This could get out of hand. A lot of whiskey and beer has been sold here tonight. Maybe you’d better get back on the PA and tell them what’s happening.”

A group of dissatisfied bettors had surrounded an usher, shouting. He wasn’t much of a symbol, but he was all they had. A plastic chair sailed out of the grandstand. Two security guards rescued the usher, and then were surrounded themselves. A fat drunk began hitting one of the guards with his program.

Shayne’s stride lengthened. He pushed to the escalators and walked them upstairs. Another crowd, equally ugly, had gathered at the foot of the escalator to the tower deck. The security man was fingering the flap of his holster.

“Keep that gun out of sight,” Shayne snapped.

In the control room, he told Dave to throw the tote board onto the screens. He picked up the mike.

“This is Shayne again. Some of you may have missed what happened. Tony Castle has been arrested. A couple of things haven’t been explained. One of them is who murdered Max Geary.”

The word “murder” caught the crowd, and they began to come about. The noise subsided. Shayne glanced at the closed-circuit monitors, and saw the same thing happening inside. He switched off the mike momentarily and spoke to Dave. The big film-patrol camera came all the way around to point to the control room window, where Shayne was standing. When he had that image in the console, Dave put it on the feed to the screens.

“There’s an idea up here,” Shayne continued, “that it may be risky to blow this open. If you find out how you’ve been robbed over the years, you’ll tear the place apart and trample people. But think about it. How many people here tonight are regulars? Audience participation time. Hold up your hands.”

He nodded to Dave, who threw one closed-circuit picture after another onto the outgoing feed.

“Now,” Shayne said, “how many ended up last season ahead of the machine?”

He laughed as the hands came down. “Right. This isn’t a place to win money. You come to get out of the house and have a few beers. I’ve spotted a few winners, but they weren’t betting from form charts. Max Geary was one. The kennelmaster, Dee Wynn, was another, and that’s another murder we’ve got to explain. You saw Ricardo Sanchez with the needle. I located his betting agent, and I’m glad to say I managed to get some money down. How much did those tickets of mine pay, Tim?”

“Fifty-eight hundred.”

“Fifty-eight hundred,” Shayne repeated into the microphone, “and that looks like the only money I’m going to clear out of this. I took it away from those of you who bet on one of the other seven dogs. Don’t throw chairs, please. You’ve been taken, as usual.”

A beer can came flying up out of the crowd and rattled against the control room window. Painter said uneasily, “Shayne—”

“But tonight we gave you your money’s worth. An explosion and fire. Dogs burned to death. You saw a chase with a foam truck, which I think is a first. In a minute I’m going to give you an explanation of a mammoth swindle, and who knows, there may even be more action. Now I’m going to demonstrate something. Watch the tote board. Those of you who are inside, stay where you are and we’ll put the board on the screens for you. I want every seller in order, starting at the north window, to unlock his machine and punch out ten tickets.”

He looked at the betting hall monitors. “First window at the north end, the ten-dollar quinella. I want ten tickets on the one-two combination. Go.”

The seller at that window activated his machine. He punched the ten button, the one and the two. The tickets spewed out. The house had now accepted a $100 bet that the two inside dogs in the next race would finish either first or second, it didn’t matter in what order. On the big board across the infield, the odds changed in the quinella pool.

“That machine is working,” Shayne said, and called the next.

Again the figures jumped. Shayne worked down the row. Coming to the first window in the $10 win series, he called for another ten tickets. Nothing changed on the board.

“That may be the one we’re looking for,” Shayne said. “Seller, is your machine producing tickets?” On the monitor, the seller gave an affirmative wave. “Now try ten more.”

Again, no change. The crowd murmured.

“You’re getting the idea,” Shayne said. “Two hundred dollars just came in that window. Twenty tickets went out. But nothing registered on the board. Ordinarily, with all the windows working at once, you’d never see it. It’s a simple scheme. Any pari-mutuel track can work it. Geary did the wiring when the track was renovated. All he had to do was cut into the line from that one ten-dollar window to the main circuit, and install an on-off switch. The switch could be anywhere in the building, built into an ordinary light switch, a TV set, a telephone. Pick up that telephone, and one ten-dollar window would cut out of the pool totals. The money would keep coming in, the tickets would keep going out, but as long as the switch was off, none of the transactions would be included in the total handle. He was careful about it. I’ve heard the figure six thousand a night. The window machines, individually, would all tally. As soon as the sellers checked their receipts against their own machine totals, they’d clear the machines and go home. The only people who knew the track had a surplus were the three who handled the main count. Max Geary. Fitzhugh, the racing secretary. Lou Liebler, the state’s tax man. Now Dave, if you’ll swing that camera a couple of degrees to the north, we’ll see that sterling police officer, Chief of Detectives Peter Painter, entering the judges’ box to make a double arrest.”

Painter straightened his necktie and went out.

Shayne went on talking while the camera moved to the next window. Liebler and Fitzhugh were conferring in the back of the brightly lighted box.

“I can’t give you the dialogue,” Shayne said as Painter entered. “‘Fitzhugh? Liebler? You’re under arrest.’ That’s about it, unless they try to shoot their way out. No, they’re white-collar people. Incidentally, if Linda Geary is listening, will you come to the control room, please? Now we’ll continue. What Geary was doing, in effect, was adding one point to the regular seventeen-percent bite. He kept his two collaborators on fees. He was the only one who knew the location of that switch. When he died, they tried to find it. They had wiring diagrams, and Liebler had been keeping a minute-to-minute schedule of where Geary was and exactly what he was doing during betting hours. They narrowed it down to the VIP lounge, but they still couldn’t find it. We’re going down there now. When we walk in, we’ll be picked up by a closed-circuit monitor. This is an extra one I installed last night, behind a two-way mirror. There won’t be any sound, but I’ll come back and explain. Don’t throw any chairs while I’m gone.”

Painter, after playing his TV scene, had given the prisoners to his detectives for processing. Shayne, passing, took a sour look from Liebler.

“How in God’s name—I pulled that place to pieces.”

“Careful, Lou.”

“I’m not worried. I’d like to see you prove anything.”

Linda was coming up the escalator. Shayne met her at the top.

“Linda, what’s that room on the ground floor down from the PR office? I saw you coming out of it.”

“Room? Oh, that’s all storage. Trash, old programs, tickets.”

“Let me have one of your hands.”

She started to extend a hand, but thought better of it and put it behind her.

“I won’t wrestle you,” Shayne said. “I just thought it might smell of gas.”

“Gas.”

“Burn, Surfside, burn. When you said that, I thought it sounded like a good slogan. If the track burns down, your mother will have to sell. I think the trash in one of those rooms is gasoline-soaked. I think there’s an incendiary device set to go off sometime early tomorrow morning.”

She yelled and struck out at him. He caught her hand and smelled it.

“Hard smell to get rid of. Peel off another man, Petey, and let Linda show him.”

She covered her face with her hands, her shoulders shaking.

Entering the VIP lounge where he had spent the day and part of the previous night, Shayne pointed out the two-way mirror among the bottles behind the bar.

“There’s no reason to monitor this room usually, but I didn’t know which way this was going to go. I was thinking I might inveigle Castle up and have a conversation.”

He poured a glass of cognac, lifted it to the crowd watching him through the hidden camera, and drank.

“I saw one of the timetables Liebler was keeping on Geary. Geary liked to keep moving. He probably hit every department two or three times in the course of the night, and naturally he kept dropping in here to talk to his very important guests. He was a big drinker. He had a drinker’s kidneys. He was always excusing himself to go to the john. And that’s where he put the switch. Underwater, at the bottom of the tank. If somebody like Liebler was listening, he’d hear the usual splash and the usual flush. The water would run out of the tank, exposing the switch, Geary would reach in and throw it, and the water would come back and cover it. There’s a timer, to throw the ten-dollar window back into the system after it’s been out exactly fifteen minutes. I disconnected that so we could check the machines.”

He opened the washroom door. Inside, Charlotte Geary lay face down on the floor. An empty glass had rolled beneath the wash basin, amid a scattering of pills.

“Call first aid,” Shayne said urgently. “The list by the phone.”

He pulled her over and checked for a pulse. Her face had the bluish tinge of souring milk. On his knees, Shayne forced her mouth open roughly and began to blow into it hard. He heard Painter at the phone, asking for a resuscitator and a stomach pump. Presently he established his rhythm, and he kept it going until the doctor from the first aid station ran in and took his place.

He watched the doctor work for a moment. Painter swept up the pills and returned them to the bottle.

“I guess this one is obvious. When she saw us arrest the Sanchez boy—”

“No, it’s my fault. I had to make a public announcement that they were sleeping together.”

“Move, Shayne, will you? You’re blocking the TV. The crowd’s quieter, and we might as well give them something to look at and keep it that way.”

“Petey,” Shayne said slowly, “I think you’ve just come up with something.”

“What?”

“That’s been transmitting all night. If it’s still in the video machine—”

He rode the escalator to the control room, taking the last few steps at a run. Harry Zell, the developer, had joined the technicians and the announcer. He was leaning carelessly against the console.

“Get away from there, Harry.”

Zell looked around and down, stabbed the Erase button, and holding his finger on it, pulled a gun with his left hand.

Shayne’s hand came out of his pocket holding a handful of change. He threw it at Zell. At the same moment, Dave fell off his stool against Zell’s knees. The announcer hit him with the loose mike, swinging it like a bolo. Zell’s finger was forced off the button. Shayne joined the group and pried the gun loose.

“Finally. Something we didn’t catch on closed circuit.”

“We’re still shooting through the window,” Dave said. “We have it for replay.”

Shayne recovered the fallen mike. The fat man, panting and bleeding, seemed to have lost weight in the last moment. Shayne told Dave to pull the VIP lounge closed-circuit tape. In a moment it was running on the main monitor; nothing showed but the empty room.

“Speed it up. Cut back in every four or five minutes.”

The picture blurred. The third time Dave came back, Harry Zell’s great moon face filled the screen. He was at the bar, pouring.

“Let the customers see this,” Shayne said.

Dave backed off and came into the scene again. Shayne explained who Zell was, and what he so desperately wanted. Zell was looking directly at the camera, smoothing his hair. He turned to hand Charlotte Geary the drink.

Painter entered. “What’s this? I don’t get it.”

“Freeze it for a minute,” Shayne told Dave, and went on, talking both to Painter and into the mike. “You probably know Harry’s been trying to buy the track so he can put up a hotel here.”

“I read the papers.”

“But what the papers haven’t printed is that this deal is really crucial. I went through his books last night, and from the way it looked, unless he can slap on some fast Band-aids, the state’s attorney is going to want him for embezzlement. Not only that. He’s in hock to Tony Castle through a factoring firm, and has been for years. If he goes bust, owing Tony a bundle, he’s afraid Tony will do something unbusinesslike, such as kill him. Harry, if you want to contradict any of this—”

“You’re telling it.”

“I tried a little experiment last night, and I think I can say that Harry isn’t one of those people who enjoy physical pain. He screamed like a rabbit being caught by a greyhound. He probably screams that way when he cuts himself shaving. Everything turned on whether Max Geary would accept his offer for Surfside. Max refused. We know why—he had a diamond mine here. But his wife and daughter didn’t know about the diamonds. Zell thought that if Max was out of the way—”

“Come on,” Painter said. “I know who killed Geary. The boy, Sanchez. Dee Wynn saw him.”

“Did you believe that identification? He needed a name to make it saleable. And when he told Harry he saw Ricardo, Harry bought.”

“Shayne, are you telling me that Harry Zell stole Ricardo’s car—”

“Well, maybe not. Sanchez may be right—the bumped fender had nothing to do with the accident. Wynn saw the fender, and dreamed up the rest of it.”

“After leading me to believe that that was a murder—”

“It doesn’t matter. What we’re going to get Harry for is the murder of Dee Wynn.”

“Hold on. Sanchez was named in the deposition. He’s the logical man.”

“I had a detective following Ricardo all day. He went various places, but he never saw Wynn.”

“But why would Zell—Wynn would make a better witness alive.”

“From talking to Wynn, my guess would be that his price tag was something like twenty thousand. That wouldn’t be impossible for Sanchez—he could get it from Charlotte Geary or work it off in a few weeks in the kennel. But I really mean that this is one promoter who doesn’t have a dime. He might be able to raise twenty thousand from some trusting Shylock on a two-hour loan, but after he paid Wynn he had to get the money back in a hurry, and Wynn went into the canal.”

Zell continued to collapse inside his expensive clothes. “I deny this,” he said weakly.

“So after all the fixing and doping and stealing,” Shayne said, “what it comes down to is a real estate deal. Sanchez worked fast last night, and recovered the deposition and the purchase agreement. The deal was off again, after being off and on, off and on. But who’s the sole owner of Surfside if Mom and Pop are both dead? Linda, and she’s the one member of the family who always wanted to sell. All right, back to taped action.”

The scene in the VIP lounge began to roll. Harry Zell and Mrs. Geary, drinks in their hands, went on arguing until Mrs. Geary’s head wobbled and she fell back in her chair. Zell dragged her into the washroom and scattered the pills. He smeared the glass with a towel to blur the fingerprints and came out, smoothing his hair.

In the control room, Zell was mumbling. At a word from Shayne, Dave took the tape off the feed and substituted the live pickup from the VIP lounge. Mrs. Geary’s hand lifted and she sat up, blinking. Shayne heard a cheer from the crowd.

“So that’s one murder less,” Shayne told Zell. “It still leaves you with problems.”

The fat man peered at Shayne. “Well, somebody’s going to put a hotel here sooner or later. It’s so logical.”

“That was Harry Zell,” Shayne said into the mike. “The cops have some straightening up to do now, and I think the rest of the Surfside meeting will be canceled. But don’t be too gloomy. The Flagler season starts in three weeks. If there’s anything you missed or you didn’t understand, you can go home now and see it on television.”

He handed the mike to Painter and went to the escalator. Frieda was riding toward him. Shayne didn’t wait, but went down to meet her.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19