“I don’t know whether he is or isn’t,” Wilde snapped. “Frankly, I’d just as soon you turned up his corpse as not. But I’ve got to know, so I can get on with the deal one way or another. Cottrell’s pressing me hard to finalize the thing.”
Shayne sat up a little straighter and his left thumb and forefinger tugged at the lobe of his ear. “Would that be Copey Cottrell?”
“That’s right. The big hotel tycoon from Las Vegas.”
“Hotel tycoon” was a new way of describing Copey Cottrell, Shayne thought. In his book, Copey was a vicious racketeer who had victimized Nevada businessmen for too many years, and the thought of him infiltrating Miami Beach, with his pressure and trigger boys and his sleek, streamlined modern racketeering methods, was nauseating to the detective.
“Here’s a publicity still of Felton.” Wilde held out a glossy print. It showed a lean, lined, weary face beneath straight black hair lashed with grey at the temples. “All my people are good news copy. You can get the rest of the dope on Felton two doors down the hall. We’re using this whole half of the floor for office space during my broadcasts here at the Beach. Ask for Pinky Reach.” He paused, murmured, “Beach — Reach,” and chuckled to himself. “I’d take you down myself, but I’ve got to get out to Eglin Field early tomorrow a.m.”
As if on signal, an inner door opened into the large sitting room and one of Wilde’s myriad preoccupations strolled into the room. This one was a willowy brunette, wearing russet slacks and an eye-catching halter of the same color. She undulated languidly close to Homer, regarding the redhead with a speculative, heavy-lidded glance, and said throatily, “I’m sorry, Colonel — I didn’t know you had anyone here.”
“Colonel?” Shayne echoed in mild surprise. “Reserve?”
Homer Wilde flicked lint from his sleeve with a modesty as nonexistent as the imaginary speck of white on his clothing. “Oh,” he said, “the boys up in Washington threw me a bone for entertaining the fellows overseas.”
He chuckled again and reached lazily for the girl, drawing her casually into the circle of his arm. “Honey,” he said, “you better start watching your step. I just put Mike Shayne on the payroll. Mike, meet Monica Mallon, the purtiest little thrush this side of the Black Hills. You know, they always told me there was gold in them thar mountains.”
“Mike Shayne?” The girl’s lustrous dark eyes widened. “The famous private detective? Just to check up on me?”
Homer guffawed and squeezed Monica while he winked at Shayne. “Among other things, honey. Don’t worry, chick — I’ve hired Mike to find Ben.” And, his mirth falling away, “That reminds me, Mike — hadn’t you better get cracking?”
There was, to Shayne, a distinctly unhealthy aura about the whole Wilde setup as he had seen it thus far — a definite sense of wheels within wheels, of things-aren’t-what-they-seem. He said bluntly, “I’m not on your payroll yet, Wilde. I don’t like the smell of this job.”
Homer Wilde’s mouth opened. His expression moved swiftly from disbelief, to alarm, to entreaty. For a moment, the redhead feared he was going to burst into tears. “But, Mike,” he wailed, “I need you! I can give you more of my time as soon as I get my writers gassed up and going on next week’s show in New York. Tonight’s show really broke my blisters. These Miami broadcasts are always brutal. But if you’ll only start looking for Ben Felton now...”
He paused, then went on with, “It’s this way, Mike. Ben walked out of this hotel yesterday morning and vanished into thin air. He didn’t even leave a note, he hasn’t called, he hasn’t wired — and I’ve never been out of touch with the guy more than an hour or two at a time in over ten years. Now, of all times, when I need him more—”
Shayne grinned crookedly. “You really want him found?” he asked. “If you do, the police are your best bet. I’m not your boy.”
“But, Mike,” said Homer, “five hundred a day, plus expenses, and a bonus if—”
“Just about what you pay your office boys in TV, isn’t it?” said the redhead. “You can take your job and shove it!”
As Mike strode to the elevator, a pale, weedy young man passed him, going toward Wilde’s suite. Shayne, still amused at memory of Wilde’s astonishment, scarcely noticed the young man’s stare. He drove back to his apartment in a glow of smug self-satisfaction.
II
Upon Shayne’s arrival at his office the next morning, Lucy gave him one look and cried, almost tearfully, “Mike! You insulted him — I just know you did. I’ve seen that look in your eye before, and—”
“What’s it like, Angel?”
“It’s mean, and sort of conceited,” she said. “If I—”
Mercifully, the telephone rang. Lucy grabbed it and said, “Michael Shayne’s office. Just a moment, I’ll see.” She turned back to Shayne. “It’s a Mr. Harry Tyndale calling from New York. He says he—”
“Well, I’ll be...” Shayne cut her off and took the phone.
“Thank God I caught you!” came the hearty, familiar voice. “Mike, you’ve got to get up here right away. There’s a one-o’clock plane. I’ll have you met at La Guardia. I can’t talk over the phone, Mike, but it’s a real jam — a rough one.”
Shayne looked at the clock on the wall. It was ten twenty-eight. He said, “I’ll be on the one o’clock, Harry.”
Harry Tyndale was one of the nicest guys Shayne had ever met — and one of the richest. A rare combination. The redhead had pulled him out of an attempted shakedown the previous season in Miami and they had become firm friends after it was over. If Harry Tyndale said it was a “real jam,” Shayne knew it must be all of that.
Boarding the Super-Constellation two-and-a-half hours later, Shayne took a seat next to the window. Just before they took off, a pale, weedy young man slid into the seat beside him and said, “Mike Shayne, isn’t it? I’m Greg Jarvis, part of Homer Wilde’s zoo. Didn’t I see you leaving his suite last night?”
“Maybe.” Shayne was none too pleased. A private detective, unlike a TV star, is not pleased with a fame that makes his face known to too many people. But it took more than curtness to check Jarvis’ garrulity.
“I’m one of the writers,” he gabbled, “and, brother, is that a rugged assignment! Homer is Nero and Simon Legree rolled into one large, economy-sized package.”
He launched into an eloquent dissertation on the obnoxious professional character and obscene personal habits of his employer. Shayne listened fitfully, when he wasn’t almost dozing, until, without warning, something happened that caused him to forget Homer Wilde and his companion’s complaints alike.
A jet-plane came blasting out of a cloudbank, directly in front of them, less than a mile ahead. Shayne barely heard Jarvis stop in mid-sentence to utter a terrified, “Jesus Christ!”
With the planes approaching one another at a rate exceeding the speed of sound, there were but fractions of a second in which to prepare for the deadly collision that seemed inescapable. But somehow, in those fractions of splintered time, the jet slid downward, out of sight beneath them, and was gone.
Shayne slowly unclenched his fists and looked down at the red lines his nails had cut into his palms in so brief and deadly a moment. He again became conscious of Jarvis’ voice in his left ear.
“...people wonder why we have trouble putting together sensible material for TV. Well, that stupid jet’s the answer — just like this air-wagon we’re riding in. The unities have been kicked all to hell and gone.”