“The hell of it is,” he said, “if we don’t come up with Myra Rainey before the trial, he might just do it, too.”
“I don’t believe Meadows has Rainey.” Shayne repeated his thinking on the subject, concluded, “I hear they’ve imported another hit man — this one from K.C. They wouldn’t do that if they already had Rainey. You can make book on that.”
“I hope you’re right,” Latimer did not sound convinced. Then, leaning across his desk, “Shayne, for God’s sake, find, that girl!”
“I’ll find her,” the detective promised with an assurance he did not feel.
“You need money?” Latimer asked. Shayne shook his head. The publisher reached for a desk telephone, told the switchboard girl, “I want to talk to Ryan Akanian”... “No, I don’t know where he is”... “Try the San Antonio Sentinel. They should know.”
“Do you think it’s wise?” the redhead asked.
“What? To let him know I’m onto him?” Latimer frowned, ran a well-manicured hand over his face, then said, “Maybe you’re right, Shayne.”
He picked up the phone again, said, “Jeannie, cancel that last call.” Then, to Shayne, “It’s always wiser to hold a card in the hole. Even if it’s not an ace.”
The telephone rang. Latimer picked it up, listened, handed it to the detective. “For you.”
It was Lucy Hamilton. She said, “Michael, I’ve got a lead.” She sounded pleased, excited.
“Good girl. What is it?”
“One of those don’t answer numbers finally did. It belong to a Mrs. Michaels. Her apartment is next door to the one Myra Rainey is using for a hideout. They’re old office buddies or something. Anyway, she says Myra will be glad to talk to you. Myra is using her for a phone drop.”
“Good work, Angel — what’s the address?”
It was in one of the older portions of the city, not too far from the address at which Cathy Whiting had been murdered. Paint was peeling from the two-story apartment building behind a row of ragged palms. The granite doorsteps were eroded in shallow dips thanks to the pressure of millions of footsteps over the long decades since its erection.
In his elation over at last having a lead to the missing Myra Rainey, Shayne was almost there before he realized that he was again being tailed. His first thought was that the new button man import was following him, but he quickly dismissed the thought as absurd.
Not even Peter Luce could move that fast.
A professional hit man heeds time to case the object of his attention, to learn his ways and select a moment and place for the execution. Even if he is briefed, he must check out the information given him.
The detective thought of shaking whoever was driving the blue Olds that clung stubbornly to his tail — another sign of non-professionalism — then decided to hell with that. If Myra Rainey was in the apartment building, she was not going to be there long. If she wasn’t...
Myra Rainey was not there. Mrs. Michaels, a stout maternal type beneath a hard shell of powder and lipstick and liner and eyebrow pencil and long artificial lashes, appeared both-embarrassed and distressed.
“Right after I hung up, Mr. Shayne, I heard the door of the apartment next door close, I didn’t think anything of it. I was cooking Myra a casserole and I wanted to take it to her. When I knocked on her door, she didn’t answer. When I went in, she was gone.”
“Have you any idea where, Mrs. Michaels?”
Mrs. Michaels shook her head. There were tears in her pale blue eyes. She said, “That poor girl is scared half out of her mind. We used to work together in the same office before I quit to manage this building.
“She was crying when she came here the other night. The next apartment was vacant, so I put her up there. Such a dear, sweet person. But when she heard about her roommate being shot, she went all to pieces. I couldn’t believe it when I heard it over the evening news...”
There was more — a great deal more — before Mike Shayne could get her to admit him to the apartment next door. She followed on his heels as he entered it and looked around.
It was sparsely furnished, a single with bath, kitchenette and Murphy bed. A solitary opened suitcase sat on the threadbare sofa revealing a small jumble of clothing, running mostly to reds and browns. The detective remembered them from her photographs, Myra Rainey was a brunette.
“Did she have a car?” he asked.
Mrs. Michaels nodded again. “It was a cute little M.G. She let me drive it to market — a great help...”
Going to a window, Mrs. Michaels looked out, said over her shoulder to the redhead, “It’s gone now.”
She pulled back inside and Shayne looked out, noting the open space where it had stood in a row of half a dozen other modest vehicles.
The glittering chromium nose of the Olds that had followed him protruded just beyond the corner of the apartment house it was parked across the street. Clumsy, clumsy, clumsy... the detective thought, pulling his head back in.
Then, turning to Mrs. Michaels, “You have no idea where she might have gone?”
The manager shook her lavender-topped head, said, “The only other place she mentioned was the little house in Coconut Grove — and she said she didn’t dare go back there because she knew she’d be killed. I’m sure she never...”
Mrs. Michaels was off on another marathon monologue, in the midst of which the redhead beat a hasty retreat after interrupting the river of words to thank her for her help.
Outside, the detective ignored the Olds and its driver. While Mrs. Michaels gushed, he had decided upon a course of action where the clumsy tail was concerned. He drove toward Ingraham Highway, taking a, quick turn around a blind corner after a long half mile, cut through an alley and a supermarket parking lot and was ready and waiting to pursue his pursuer as the latter drove past.
Shayne wanted to see what the unknown would do, where he would go, once he realized his quarry had vanished.
The detective followed the Olds cautiously, employing all the considerable shadowing skill at his command. He kept other cars between them, dropped back, picked up speed, not letting the driver ahead know he was being followed instead of following.
He actually turned off onto a side street as the Olds was braked to a halt in front of a public telephone booth on the sidewalk. While the man made his call, the detective turned around and was ready to take up the pursuit once again. He might not be able to tell where his tail had come from, but he intended to find out where he was going.
It was a man, a thick-chested man of medium height, clad in a loud black-and-white hounds-tooth tweed jacket. That much he was able to catch through a break in the row of cypress trees that lined the sidewalks.
The man got back into the Olds, took off, and Mike Shayne followed, continuing to play it cute. Sunset lay behind them and glowed in Shayne’s rearview mirror as they headed toward Biscayne Bay, turning south once again as they reached a by-road flanked by a series of once-opulent estates currently run halfway to seed.
The Olds entered a right hand driveway between two tall rows of ragged hedge. The redhead cut his engine as he approached and coasted the Buick squarely across the front of the road, blocking all passage. Sliding over the front seat of the Buick, he got out on the passenger’s side in time to see the Olds vanish inside a garage at the far end of the short driveway.
Shayne walked toward it, checking the .45 in his shoulder rig to make sure it was cocked and ready. It was an old garage, too old to have electronic doors. When the stocky men came out and reached to pull down the door, the detective was right behind him and checked his move.