He said, “Sit down at my desk and call each of these numbers I’ve marked. Ask for Ned Baker on the first one. Don’t talk to anyone else. If you get Ned tell him you’re — oh — Edith Lane. Anything that doesn’t sound too phony. Ask him if he has a flashlight camera, and tell him you’ve got a job coming up tonight, and ask how much he’ll charge to be on call between seven and ten o’clock to go some place and take a picture. Don’t tell him what the picture will be. But hell, you know what I mean. want to know whether he goes for the job or not.”
“You’re trying to locate the man who took that picture of Wanda Weatherby and Mr. Flannagan,” Lucy said with her usual efficiency.
“Right. It’s the sort of thing you might go to a private dick for. Most of them in Miami wouldn’t touch such an assignment, but the three I’ve marked might not be too scrupulous.” He stepped away from the desk and opened the second drawer of the filing-cabinet and took out a paper cup and a bottle of cognac.
Lucy dialed a number and asked to speak to Ned Baker, After a moment she said, “I see. No. I won’t leave my name. I’ll try later in the week.” She hung up and said to Shayne, “Mr. Baker is in Washington on business.”
“I didn’t like Ned much for the job anyway,” he told her. “Try the next number I checked. Ask for Jed Purly.” He took a sip of cognac and sauntered over to the window overlooking Flagler Street, gazed down at the busy midday scene, and listened to Lucy dialing the second number.
She said, “Mr. Purly? My name won’t mean anything to you, but this is Edith Lane. Do you have a flashlight camera you could use tonight?” She listened briefly, then said, “I see. The thing is, Mr. Purly, I’m not positive I’ll need you tonight, but I expect to. Yes. To take a picture?” Her voice thinned a little. “What do you care, if you’re getting paid for it? I thought that was what private detectives were for. What will your fee be? That’s right. I’ll want you to be handy where I can telephone you between seven and ten and give you instructions. How much? That seems awfully high. Well — why don’t I call you later this afternoon when I’m sure? Yes. Good-by.”
She hung up and said to Shayne, “Mr. Purly is one private detective who hasn’t too many scruples. He’ll do the job for a hundred dollars and no embarrassing questions asked.”
Shayne nodded soberly. “Jed would be my choice. But try the Worden Agency, too. Ask for Peter Enright.”
Lucy dialed the number, got Mr. Enright, and began the same routine. But the tenor of her routine changed swiftly to the defensive as she apparently began avoiding direct answers to pointed questions. She said finally and stiffly, “Very well. If you don’t want my business, I certainly won’t force it on you.”
She hung up and turned to Shayne with flushed cheeks. “He was downright insulting. Wanted to know who had recommended him for the job, who was I and what references I could give him and whether I wanted divorce evidence or what.”
Shayne chuckled. “Good work, angel. That gives us only Jed Purly — if Wanda did use a detective instead of ringing in some friend. You run on to lunch. I’ll drop in on Jed before he gets away from his office.”
Chapter eighteen
THE PURLY DETECTIVE AGENCY was only three blocks down Flagler in a three-story walk-up. The office was on the second floor, between an insurance agent and a mailing-service. The door opened and a tall, angular female stepped out as Shayne approached. She was adjusting a narrow-brimmed straw hat on her gray hair, and Shayne stopped to ask, “Is Purly in?”
She said, “Yes,” with a rising inflection. “I’m on my way to lunch. If it’s something you think he’ll need me for—”
“Oh, no,” Shayne assured her heartily. “I just want to see Jed on a personal matter.” He went on and opened the door, entered an empty anteroom, and crossed it to a half-open door on the other side marked Private.
Jed Purly was a short, fat man with a fringe of grizzled gray hair that ran around the base of his moist, pink scalp. He was leaning back in a swivel chair behind a bare desk with his feet propped on it, watching with interest a small black spider swinging on a filament from the ceiling light fixture.
He turned when Shayne entered, arched sparse eyebrows, and said, “Come in, Mike, my boy. Would that be a Black Widow, you suppose?”
Shayne grinned and said, “If she is and bites you, bite her right back, Jed. That’ll teach her but good.” He lowered one hip to the desk and asked casually, “How’s business?”
“Not bad. I do pretty good on the crumbs big shots like you can’t be bothered with.” Purly clasped his hands across his stomach and blinked benignly. “Sumpin I can do for you?”
“A favor.” Shayne took out a cigarette and put flame to the end.
“Always glad to co-operate,” Purly assured him affably. “What kinda favor, Mike?”
“Some dope on one of your clients.” Shayne gave it to him straight, watching his face keenly beneath lowered lids. “Wanda Weatherby.”
Jed Purly sighed and ran a palm slowly across his forehead, looked at the moisture on it, and said absently, “Hot as hell in here. Ain’t that the dame that got bumped last night?”
Shayne nodded. “How many jobs did you do for her?”
“Never heard her name till I read it in the paper this morning,” Purly told him promptly.
Shayne’s nostrils Hared. He took a long drag on his cigarette, blew out a cloud of smoke, said, “You’re lying, Jed.”
“That’s no way to talk.”
“It’s the way I’m talking, I haven’t time to horse around.”
Purly shrugged almost imperceptibly. “Pretty busy, myself.”
Shayne ground out his cigarette and stood up. He said, “Go right ahead with whatever you were doing. I won’t bother you while I look through your files.” He moved around the desk toward a wooden filing-case in one corner.
When he was two feet beyond the man in the swivel chair, Jed Purly spoke thinly. “That’s far enough, bud.”
Shayne stopped and looked over his shoulder as the chair creaked. Purly had a Bulldog.32 Ivor Johnson in his hand. His face remained outwardly placid, but a network of bluish veins showed in his cheeks. “I read the papers. All the time I’m reading the buildup they give you. You got Will Gentry and his cops in your hip pocket, and when you’re not spitting in Chief Petey Painter’s eye over on the Beach, you’re catching the slugs from some torpedo’s gat in your teeth and chewing ’em up for breakfast. Sure, I read plenty about how tough you are in the papers, Shayne. Miami’s one-man crime-buster, by God! But you don’t walk into Jed Purly’s office and push him around.” Jagged yellow teeth showed between thin lips in a snarl, and his eyes were venomous. “One slug in the belly will spill your guts just like any ordinary guy.”
Shayne stood very still, watching Purly coolly over his shoulder. He said, “Wanda Weatherby was murdered last night, and I think you’ve got the evidence right here to convict her murderer. Don’t be a fool. If you don’t give it to me, you’ll eventually give it to the police.”
“Suppose I say I haven’t?”
“Then I’ll have to call you a liar again,” Shayne said wearily. He turned slowly, keeping his hands in plain sight, expostulating. “This isn’t the way to play it, Jed. That Weatherby stuff is dynamite right now. I know you’ve been sitting up here this morning figuring the angles — now that she’s dead. But I’m telling you there aren’t any angles.”
“You’re telling me?” sneered Purly. His voice shook with anger and with the frustrations of years, but the round muzzle of the gun remained implacably trained on the redhead’s mid-section. “That’s funny. Right now I’m doing the telling. Do you get that, shamus? For once in my life—”