“Do you think she’s paying blackmail?”
“The idea’s entered my mind,” Loring said dryly.
“Can you make any guesses about what kind of hold a blackmailer could have on her?”
Loring held up imperceptibly, and from many years’ experience with all kinds of clients, Shayne had a feeling that for the first time in this phone conversation he wasn’t going to be told the truth.
“I don’t, Mike. But she’s a complicated and unusual woman, my god-daughter, and it wouldn’t be anything routine.”
“In other words, not sex?”
“I don’t think they take sex that seriously, or that’s my impression. I think you can find out if anybody can. Don’t hesitate to be tough if you have to be, she may respond to that. You’re not supposed to know about the transfer of funds. That would come under the head of meddling in her private affairs, and she has an exposed nerve on the subject. She’s asked me to recommend a private detective and I’m recommending you. She has to take it from there.”
There was a doubtful expression on Shayne’s rugged face as he listened. He had questions to ask, but he decided to look at the set-up first. He went over the names and places, and they arranged about terms.
After hanging up, he lit a new cigarette and smoked it all the way through, leaning forward against the wheel. The bullet hole in the windshield swam into focus, a small circle surrounded by a network of radiating cracks. According to Loring’s description, Mrs. De Rham wouldn’t be likely to fire at him with a heavy-caliber pistol, but she didn’t sound exactly relaxing, either.
He threw the cigarette into the street and started the motor.
CHAPTER 4
Michael Shayne was a big man, but the main impression he conveyed was competence rather than simple physical strength. He was obviously a man who could take care of himself in any company. His red hair was lightly touched with gray at the temples. There were deep lines in his face, put there by his years in an active and dangerous profession, but otherwise his appearance was almost unchanged from the time when Joshua Loring, as a lawyer for a large insurance company, had testified for him in the jury-tampering case and saved him from jail. That had been in the early days, just after Shayne set up in Miami.
He found the Sunrise Shores Marina and boarded the Nefertiti III, where he was met by a pleasant, glassy-eyed young man who gave his name as Paul Brady. Mrs. De Rham was asleep, he said, she had fallen asleep drinking martinis, and he advised Shayne to try again a few hours later.
Leaving the marina, he began hitting the nearby bars, looking for the Nefertiti’s ex-captain. At the end of the afternoon, after finally finishing with the cops and the newspapermen and TV crews, Shayne had downed several belts of cognac, had stood in a shower for some time, letting the warm water dissolve the tensions that had accumulated over the last few days, and then had stepped out dripping to call the girl and ask her to dinner. He was wearing a dark blue summer-weight suit and one of the few neckties in this part of town. But Shayne had a way of blending with any background, and when he entered a big, noisy bar called Riley’s he didn’t seem out of place.
This was a new kind of waterfront bar, catering to the crewmen who worked on the big pleasure-boats moored in nearby marinas. He ordered cognac and sipped it deliberately, waiting for the bartender to look his way. When the man caught his eye Shayne called him over.
“I’m looking for a guy named Petrocelli. Do you happen to know him?”
“They come and they go,” the bartender said. “I don’t know names. Another brandy?”
Shayne nodded. When the man came back with the Martell’s Shayne went on, “He’s not working now, but he came in on a New York boat that’s berthed at the Sunrise Shores. A fifty-thousand dollar job. Who would I ask?”
“I wouldn’t know what to advise you.” He motioned at the drinkers along the bar. “Nine-tenths of them transients. When the owner says go, they go.”
He brought back change from a five. Shayne waved it away.
“Think about it. Somebody must know.”
He finished his cognac while the bartender moved up and down the bar, giving no sign of thinking about anything. But after a time he spoke to someone at the far end, and a man pushed off and came toward Shayne. He was red-faced, with anxious eyes and a too-ready smile, and looked like a small political wheel.
“What’s your fellow’s name again?”
“Petrocelli. I just want somebody to point him out for me. Can I buy you a drink?”
“Scotch and water.”
Shayne signaled. “My name’s Mike Shayne. It’s nothing too urgent. Just a few questions.”
“Shayne?” the man said, less edgily. “I knew you looked familiar. I’m in marine supplies. I deal directly with the captains, working out of my hat, so to speak, on commission. Do you have the name of his boat?”
“Nefertiti III.”
The bartender brought his scotch and water and he drank half of it before setting it down, as though afraid that Shayne would take it away if he failed to deliver.
“I know the Nefertiti. Nice boat, I wouldn’t mind owning her myself. I heard they paid off their captain so I decided to offer my services, if they needed anything, and there are things they’re bound to need, coming off a thousand-mile cruise. And good Christ! If they’d had a dog aboard they would have set him on me. That rarely happens. Yachtsmen as a rule are friendly people, they have to be, living in each other’s laps the way they do. Some queer with long hair came out of the cabin yelling, ‘Get off this goddamn boat,’ and so on and so forth. I won’t say it’s the first time it ever happened, but I’m not going to pretend I like it. I’m not selling magazine subscriptions or anything of that nature. Things they need, things they’ll have to buy anyway, and from not having any overhead I can give a good discount, fifteen percent off list, five percent to the captain is my usual policy. Well! He could have asked me politely, but he used profanity on me. I drop an occasional damn or hell myself, but he used the whole gamut of four-letter words. I mean! He was pretty well zonked.”
He gave himself more whiskey. “As I say, I do know the Nefertiti.”
A tall dark man in a T-shirt, drinking beer beside Shayne, said, “What’s this Petrocelli’s first name?”
“Raphael.”
“And you want somebody to point him out?” He finished his beer, his Adam’s apple working. “I’ll point him out for you.”
He put down his glass and straightened. He was very tall, six foot six or seven, but he didn’t carry enough weight for his height. A man wearing a captain’s cap and cruising clothes was standing near the jukebox with a pretty dark girl in a very short skirt. The tall man made his way to him and flicked his shoulder. He looked up. The tall man nailed him with an ungainly right to the point of the jaw.
“That’s one way to point somebody out,” Shayne observed.
“I don’t know him,” the commission man said. “I see him around. Quite a mouth on him when he’s loaded, and loaded is the only way I see him.”
Petrocelli had gone backward, keeping his feet but making a complete turn so he hit the jukebox with his shoulders. The record skipped a few grooves.
The girl gave a little scream. “Jerry, you cluck, what do you think you’re doing?”
The cap had been jolted to the back of Petrocelli’s head. He had handsome features, very dark skin, even white teeth. There was a roll of fat above his belt, and he looked out of condition. One arm was tattooed.
The crowd shifted, leaving the floor clear between the two men. Petrocelli shook his head hard.
“What was that about? Will somebody tell me?”
The tall man, posing briefly before and after each blow as though having his picture taken, hit him twice in the stomach. The blows were given away long before they landed.
Petrocelli offered no defense. He made a puffing sound each time. Realizing finally what was being done to him, he made a fist and swung up at the taller man. He was hit in the face with a short punch which rocked him back against the jukebox again. He began to slide.