That was his only trump card.
Blurred, grayish light pressed against the living-room windows. Shayne’s half-closed eyes stared as objects in the room swam into cloudy view out of the darkness. There was the desk near the door, the filing case for which he had no use. Sleepily he recalled that a man had died on the floor just inside the threshold, and at his left was the studio couch on which he had slept that first night while he hid Phyllis from arrest in his bedroom.
That was a long time ago.
The strident ringing of the telephone brought him to his feet. He reached it in two long strides.
Tommy said, “There’s a messenger boy on his way up, Mr. Shayne. He acted funny. Said he had a letter to deliver to you personally and wouldn’t leave it at the desk. I gave Joe the wink to stall him in the elevator while I called you.”
Shayne said, “Good work, Tommy,” and hung up.
He took his gun and went to the door, unlatched it, and left it open a crack. The elevator doors clanged in the hall as he pressed back against the wall beside the door. He held the cocked gun in his right hand.
Footsteps approached his door and stopped. There was a light, hesitant knock.
Shayne said, “Come in.”
Nothing happened for a moment. The immediate response appeared to have startled the messenger. Then the door was cautiously pushed open and a peaked face peered in.
Shayne gave a snort of disgust and lowered his gun. The boy was about nineteen, thin and ill clad, with a limp cap pulled low on his pimpled forehead. His teeth chattered when he saw Shayne’s grim visage and the gun in his hand. He gave a violent start and almost dropped a white envelope clutched in one grimy hand.
Pocketing the gun, Shayne said, “Come on in,” and closed the door.
“Gee, Mister,” the lad whined, “what was you pointin’ that gun at me for? I ain’t done nothin’.”
“I was expecting someone else,” Shayne explained, and held out his hand for the letter. “That for me?”
“Is your name Shayne?” The boy looked around the room with bulging eyes and ejaculated, “Gee, looks like you been settin’ up all night.”
Shayne took the envelope from his lax fingers. “Where’d you get this?”
“Feller give it to me on the street while ago. Give me a buck to deliver it an’ get a answer.” The boy strode insolently past Shayne to the table and clutched a cigarette which extended from the opened pack. He struck a match to it and wandered to the windows to peer out while Shayne tore the envelope open.
“Gee, you got a good view here,” the boy said, his back toward Shayne.
Shayne was turning a blank sheet of paper over and over in his big hands. He scowled and looked inside the envelope again, but there was nothing more inside. He turned on the light and held the blank sheet up to it to make certain he wasn’t missing any trick writing.
The paper was completely blank.
Shayne asked angrily, “What’s the gag?”
The boy whirled around with a bewildered expression on his face. “What kinda gag? I was s’posed to get a answer.”
“Do you know what was in the envelope?”
“Nope. I sure don’t. It was all sealed up.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“Down on Flagler.” He gestured vaguely out the window and as he did so, a spasm of coughing shook his thin body. “I slep’ in the park an’ was wonderin’ could I find a joint open where I could get a cup of Java when this guy walks up to me an’ ast me did I wanta make a buck. Did I wanna make a buck!” An attempt to laugh choked him again, and he finally sputtered, “He gimme that an’ tol’ me to deliver it to you personal and get a answer.”
“What did he look like?”
“I dunno. Sorta medium, dressed good, but I didn’t see his face so good,” he ended defensively.
“Where are you supposed to meet him to give my answer?”
“Same place… right there on Flagler.”
Shayne said, “I don’t get it.”
“Me neither, Mister. Gee, I dunno. Is anything wrong?”
“Maybe I’m nuts,” Shayne told the boy, scowling heavily. “Go on back and tell him that’s my answer.”
The youth’s jaw sagged. “Did you say you’re nuts, Mister? You want I should tell him that’s what…”
“It’s as good as any. Go on. Tell him that.”
The ragged boy edged toward the door, watching Shayne with round, frightened eyes, darted out and ran down the hall.
Shayne waited until he heard the elevator stop and start again. He then raced down the hall to a stairway and down to a side entrance. He stepped out on the sidewalk and checked his speed, sauntering toward the corner around which was the main entrance to the apartment building.
He heard the roar of a motor as he neared the corner. A sedan shot past in low gear, careened north on Third Avenue. The license plate was splashed with mud and was indecipherable.
Shayne ran around the corner and into the lobby. Tommy blinked and looked at him with excited eyes.
“Gee, Mr. Shayne,” he said breathlessly, “something awful funny just happened. That kid that went up to your room… he came down, and when he went out a guy grabbed him and threw him in the back of a car that was parked in front of the door. It dashed away like a bat out of Bimini.”
“Yeh. I saw it,” Shayne said absently. His eyes were on the lobby clock and the time was five forty-five. “Keep on keeping your eyes open, Tommy,” he grinned, and went to the elevator.
In his apartment he hesitated about taking another drink and decided against it. He studied the envelope and blank sheet of paper, but they told him no more than they had before. He yawned and rubbed his hand over a sprouting stubble of red whiskers.
Deciding that a shave might refresh him, he stripped to the waist and went into the bathroom, lathered his face and shaved, then doused cold water over his head and torso.
Still stripped to the waist, he went to the kitchenette and put on a percolator of coffee to brew, turning the gas low under it.
In the bedroom he took out a clean shirt and undershirt. As he pulled the undershirt over his head he stepped to the window and let the shade up all the way to allow the morning light to stream into the room.
Before he could pick up his shirt there was a spanking sound on the pane of glass above his head. Glass clattered and broke into pieces around his feet. His muscles went lax and he slithered to the floor in a heap before the window.
Glancing upward at the opposite wall he saw a lead bullet flattened in the chipped plaster above his bed, about head high. He wriggled upward cautiously and peered over the window sill.
Directly across the street he looked at the windows of a three-story building. A dingy lace curtain fluttered out of an open window almost directly opposite his own. All the other windows were closed.
Hunching along the floor to the door of his bedroom, he ran out and grabbed his coat, buttoned it up over his undershirt and sprinted out the door and down the stairs to the lobby.
He grinned at Tommy’s sleepily startled face and waved to him as he ran swiftly through the deserted lobby and across the street.
The small, ornate lobby of the hotel opposite his own was deserted except for an alert clerk. He was a severe young man with nose glasses and a receding chin. He was startled when Shayne barged in and demanded harshly:
“Has anybody checked into one of your front rooms in the last couple of hours?”
“May I ask why you want to know?” the clerk asked in a cold, authoritative tone.
Shayne pounded a hard fist on the desk and growled, “Somebody just took a pot-shot at me from about the middle room on the second floor facing south.”
“A shot? At you? But I’m sure…”
“Which room has just been rented?” Shayne reached across the desk and caught the clerk’s shoulders in a hard grip. “Goddammit, man, don’t argue with me.”
“The… ah… number two-sixteen,” the clerk chattered.
Shayne released him and ran to the elevator, ordering, “Bring up a key,” as he ran. He stepped into the waiting elevator and said, “Two… and make it fast.”