The cabin door burst open behind Ralph on his hands and knees practically wallowing in the green harvest.
Baron McTige was in front, and a tall man wearing a black suit was right behind him. They plowed to a stop just inside the door, and Steven Shephard stopped laughing.
He threw out his arms and said, “Welcome, gentlemen. Help yourselves. There’s plenty for all.”
9
It was no great surprise to Michael Shayne when Timothy Rourke slouched up to their table just after the dinner dishes had been cleared away and the waiter was serving coffee and ponies of cognac in lieu of dessert. The Silver Crescent was one of Shayne’s favorite spots for a leisurely dinner when he and his secretary had a slack evening, and the reporter had an instinct for turning up after food was out of the way and the more serious business of drinking was about to begin.
Tall and emaciated, and wearing a shabby, unpressed suit, Rourke put his hand on the back of Lucy’s chair and gazed down at her fondly. “You get more beautiful every day, honey. When are you going to get tired of waiting for Mike to pop the question, and start making other dates? I’m always available, you know.”
“Sit down, Tim.” Shayne jerked his head at the waiter. “A bourbon on the rocks. You’ll have to take your place in line, Tim. Lucy’s spare time is already spoken for. Tell him about your latest conquest, angel.”
She laughed softly with genuine amusement as Rourke sat down between them. “He was funny, Michael. Stop glowering about him.”
“There’s this fellow Eye from Chicago,” Shayne explained acidly. “He was practically wallowing all over Lucy when I just happened in to my office this afternoon and broke it up. That reminds me, Tim. Have you heard any rumors that the Syndicate figures it’s safe to send an Enforcer to Miami to do a job?”
Timothy Rourke shook his head. “Have you?” he countered blandly.
“Yeh.”
“What’s the story, Mike?” The reporter’s bony fingers trembled as he slopped a little water from Shayne’s glass into the bourbon and ice cubes the waiter set before him but his deep-set eyes were bright with awakened interest.
“No story yet.” Shayne emptied his pony of cognac into the cup of hot coffee in front of him and took an appreciative sip. “After Lucy and I take in the show at the Bright Spot, I may have something for you.”
“The Bright Spot?” Rourke choked over his drink and rolled his eyes at Lucy. “You’re taking her to that den of iniquity? Now look, Mike…”
“Oh, Tim” she broke in impatiently. “I’m a big girl now. You’re always encouraging Michael to keep me wrapped up in swaddling clothes.”
“What’s so special about the Bright Spot?” Shayne demanded impatiently.
“In the first place, she’ll be the only decent woman in the place. But that’s okay as long as she’s with you. Oh, hell, Mike! I realize Lucy won’t be particularly shocked by the spectacle of fair young maidens being debauched all over the joint. But they got a new dance team there that’s setting the town on its ears. This, I don’t think Lucy will go for… and I can tell you, young lady,” he went on fiercely to Lucy, “this isn’t any question of swaddling clothes. It’s plain commonsense for you to stay away from an exhibition like that.”
“Like getting a fast burn with Sloe Burn?” she asked innocently.
He threw up his hands in disgust. “My God, Mike! Don’t tell me you’ve been there.”
“Have you?”
“Last week. Listen. Those two uninhibited kids from the swamp country have got something that does queer things to civilized people.” He shook his head determinedly. “I’m serious. You know I’m all in favor of light-hearted sex, sin and such. But their dance act goes deeper than that. It’s elemental lust spelled out right there on the stage in front of you. It’s goddam frightening,” he went on strongly. “Sure, we’ve all got these obscure impulses deep inside us. But centuries of civilization have taught us it’s safer to keep them hidden away deep inside. When you see them coming up to the surface all around you… when you feel yourself erotically fascinated and sinking down into the same abyss… it just ain’t healthy.”
Michael Shayne’s face showed honest puzzlement. “Are they really that good?”
“That good… or that bad,” Rourke assured him somberly. “You remember the motion picture, Fantasia? The primeval slime. The tortured writhings and gropings in obscene depths that symbolized primordial life. All right. That was beautifully and intelligently done. You were fascinated and obscurely repelled, but you weren’t revolted. It’s dangerous to be fascinated and revolted. That’s what I felt at the Bright Spot. And that’s what I saw on the faces of people all around me.”
“How do a couple of illiterate kids from the Keys manage to convey what you’re describing?” Shayne asked, puzzled more than ever by his friend’s vehemence.
“Because you feel it’s actually what is inside of them,” he replied flatly. “They’ve still got the stench of the swamp’s effluvia in their nostrils. They’re closer akin to the waddling crocodiles and the slithering water moccasins that you know were their childhood playmates than they are to civilized human beings. Their sex-play on stage is brutal and sadistic and… bestial. That’s the word I want. And the hell of it is, you find yourself responding to the savage rhythms they create. Hell, it isn’t sex- play that they give you,” he went on angrily. “It’s the primordial lust of male for female… female for male.”
Rourke paused to toss off his drink, his thin face flushed and his eyes feverishly bright.
“I went around the next day to talk to both of them off-stage, thinking there might be a story I could do. Because I, like you, wondered how a couple of illiterate kids from the Keys had managed to work up an act like that. And they hadn’t. That’s the answer. They don’t even know they’re doing it. It isn’t planned for effect at all. Purely unconscious. Off-stage, Sloe Burn is a self-conscious sexy brat with over-developed physical charms and a childishly irresponsible sort of amorality. She chews gum and giggles happily if you compliment her on the dance. Her partner is a loutish moron with muscles.” Rourke shook his head slowly and lapsed into brooding silence.
Shayne glanced across the table at his brown-eyed secretary, and lifted his ragged red eyebrows. “Still want to go with me, angel?”
She lifted a firm chin. “More than ever. If you insist on going. I want to be right there beside you, Michael, if something like that is going on.”
Rourke groaned loudly. “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said.”
Shayne’s gaze was fixed on Lucy’s face. “I heard you, Tim. Lucy’s just too young and innocent for any of it to penetrate. Why don’t you stick around here with Tim, angel?” He glanced at his watch. “I’m expecting someone to meet me there around ten o’clock.”
“Little Joe Hoffman?” Rourke inquired with interest.
“How’d you hear about that?”
“I’ve got some lines out around town. I thought he was keeping his nose clean these days… particularly on this side of the Bay.”
“That’s what I want him to tell me,” Shayne growled. He beckoned to a waiter for the check and added with assumed casualness, “You two have fun, and see she gets home by midnight, Tim.”
She said sweetly, “I’m sure Tim has other plans, Michael.” She pushed back her chair and stood up. “Meet you in the foyer in a couple of minutes.”
Rourke grinned and turned his head to watch her thread her way between the tables toward the rest-room. “You’re not going to get rid of her tonight, Mike. So I’ll tag along if you don’t mind a threesome.”
Shayne said, “I was going to ask you. So if I get diverted at the Bright Spot, you look after her.”
“Sure.” Rourke nodded soberly and they both got up and strolled toward the foyer together to wait for Lucy to join them.
When they arrived at the Bright Spot, the large parking lot was already at least three-quarters full. Shayne stopped in front of the canopied entrance where an attendant waited to take his car, and got a numbered parking ticket from him. The three of them went into a brightly lighted entrance hall with a hat-check cubicle on the left and a service bar at the right. There were no stools at the bar, and no loungers, only three white-jacketed waiters with trays for drinks to take inside.