“I’ll try,” Shayne promised.
He had Lucy dial Jim Lowman’s office. The attorney came on almost at once. “You’ll have to get here fast,” he said. “I’m due in Superior Court at ten o’clock.”
Before he left, the redhead handed Lucy the page of wall telephone numbers copied in his notebook. “Ring them,” he said.
“What do I tell them if they answer?”
“Tell them I want to talk to them — that is, if they’re female. Tell them I’ll call them back. Got it?”
“I’ve got it.” Lucy’s expression became dangerously demure. “If a man answers, hang up.”
“That’s it, Angel.” The detective kissed the top of her dark head before leaving.
It was nine-forty-one when Mike Shayne walked into the quiet opulence of the law offices of Macintosh, Lowman and Parkes in a spanking new chrome and dark glass skyscraper overlooking the bay. Lowman’s secretary came out promptly and escorted him along a carpeted corridor to the attorney’s private suite.
“Mr. Lowman is expecting you,” she said as she opened the door.
“I know.”
During the brief drive across town, the detective had been digesting what he had learned and tried to rationalize his extrapolations. They were based on a slender roster of facts, but instinct, backed by long experience, gave him a strong sense of assurance.
He felt certain that Myra Rainey was not in the hands or under the control of Carl Meadows. If she were, the murder of Cathy Whiting made no sense. In a very real sense, the redhead blamed himself for the tragedy, although Cathy would probably have had to die anyway.
Shayne now suspected that his arrival outside the Coconut Grove out-building had been spotted by whoever was in the little house with Whiting — probably, if not certainly, the now defunct button man, Mac Strada. She had been wasted because she knew where Myra Rainey was hiding, and her killer knew she knew it. Evidently, he had considered it more important to prevent Cathy Whiting from giving the information to Shayne than obtaining it for his principal or principals.
Of course, if Cathy’s phone had not been tapped, this theory would be set back on his heels. The hit man had to be sent there because it was known the redhead would be arriving at seven o’clock. There had to have been a tap on the line somewhere.
It was also possible that Strada had obtained the information before Shayne’s arrival and then wasted the girl to keep her from passing it along to the detective. He devoutly hoped not.
The strange behavior of attorney James Lowman was the next item on Shayne’s agenda, and he had resolved on settling this via face-to-face confrontation. He took a deep breath as the secretary stood aside to let him enter.
The attorney’s office, like the foyer, was impressive. Three walls lined with floor to ceiling shelves of white leather-bound law tomes letted in gold leaf. Rich carpeting, furniture of leather and-or mahogany, a fourth wall that was all picture window with a panorama of the bay and Miami Beach on its further shore with its cestellated row of magnificent resort hotels.
The only item missing seemed to be James Lowman, who was nowhere in evidence.
Mike Shayne finally found the attorney curled up in a foetal position behind the masking rectangle of his broad desk. Understandably under the circumstances, the redhead thought he, too, must have been shot. But there was no blood seepage anywhere.
Kneeling, with his head close to Lowman’s, the detective heard faint, hoarse breathing. He noted the cyanosis of the lips as he rose and reached for a desk phone, said, “Better call the paramedics, somebody. Mr. Lowman has had an attack.”
VII
Mike Shayne was glad to get away from the stricken attorney’s offices within half an hour. Lowman’s physician was a highly reputable specialist in cardiac cases, and the detective was satisfied that the lawyer’s attack was both genuine and not induced by any outside agency — physically, at any rate.
The question plaguing Shayne in re Jim Lowman was — had his attack been triggered by something connected with the Meadows-Latimer libel case?
The lawyer had been obviously shaken up last night — at the time, the redhead judged his condition was caused by word of Cathy Whiting’s murder. Which raised another point...
Even though Lowman was not a criminal attorney, it seemed unlikely to Shayne that he should not be familiar with at least reports of violence. He was too old and too obviously experienced a man. There had to be some other reason why news of the girl’s murder should have hit him so hard.
A couple of other questions that remained unanswered — one was the cause of Lowman’s strange drive after leaving the meeting with Roy Latimer, Carl Dirkson, Tim and Shayne himself. Two, why had the driver of the Mercedes — presumably the late Mac Straka — followed the attorney?
Add a query as to what Lowman had been briefly on the verge of revealing when the redhead called him the night before, and there were five big X-for-unknowns Shayne had hoped to resolve in the now-cancelled interview.
His next stop was at the office of Roy Latimer in the Daily News Building. The chunky little publisher received the detective at once in a smaller office of his top-floor suite, nodded when informed of Lowman’s attack and said, “His office just called.”
Then he leaned back in his teakwood desk chair, eyed Shayne thoughtfully for a long moment, said, “What was your impression of Jim’s behavior last night?”
“My impression was of a very disturbed man,” the redhead replied.
Latimer nodded. “So you felt it, too. I never saw him so shaken up.”
Mike Shayne went on to describe the attorney’s subsequent odd behavior, concluding with the shoot-out in his office parking lot following the call to Lowman at home.
“We ran the Cathy Whiting murder story, of course,” said Latimer. “The boys were cut up over your not giving them a news beat, but I told them to soft-pedal your connection with us. You’re sure this Mac Straka was the man who killed Whiting?”
“Hell, I’m not sure — but I doubt anyone sending out more than one hit man in a grey Mercedes.”
There was more talk. Latimer seemed almost relieved at the attorney’s collapse, saying, “We’ve already moved for a postponement of the trial. They’ll have to give it to us now, of course. But I don’t want you to let up for a moment, Shayne. Not with violence and murder involved.”
“I agree.”
“Any progress on the Rainey girl?”
“Not enough to talk about — yet,” the redhead replied.
“Well, I guess that’s it for now — unless there’s something else we can do for you.”
“There is. I’d like to use a private phone for a few minutes.”
The publisher nodded toward a partly open door, said, “Be my guest. And thanks for coming in.”
The door led to a small conference room. Shayne picked up a non-switchboard telephone, dialled a number. He asked for Bertha Thompson and, when she came on the line, identified himself and said, “How about lunch?”
“Business or pleasure?” she countered.
“Both, I hope.”
They met in the twilight dark lounge bar of the Seminole Room on Biscayne Boulevard. Bertha was a medium-short, broad-bodied woman with a well constructed broad-cheeked face. The dress she had on — she never wore pants suits — was simple but expensive, to the knowing eye. She swung a large tan-leather shoulder bag in her left hand as if it were a tiny tote-bag.
Bertha Thompson was sole proprietor of her own C.P.A. firm in Miami and was reputed to be the most efficient tax and costs accountant between Tampa and Key West. The redhead had once managed to save her from a vicious male chauvinist frame-up that would have cost Bertha her hard won license earned some six years earlier.