Nice Fillies Finish Last (6 page)

SHAYNE HAD SEEN what was coming and tried to break out of the skid. But his right front tire had blown and the Buick was out of control. There was a searing pain in his left arm, a flare of lights, and that was all he knew until he heard a siren. More time passed before he could move his head.

He was lying face down in the sand. He had sand in his mouth and sand in his eyes. He rolled painfully and came up on one elbow. Some ten yards away, a familiar-looking car hung on the embankment with its front end pointing toward the highway. An accident, he thought. Then, recognizing the car as his own, he sat up the rest of the way.

Bathers were running up to find out how many people had been killed. Shayne must have been unconscious several minutes, for a police car with a blinking red eye on its roof had already pulled up in the open lane. The big refrigerator truck had been brought to a halt well down the road. A uniformed trooper swung over the slack cable and came toward Shayne.

He wanted to be on his feet by the time the cop reached him, but he had to stop to rest on one knee. Then he clenched his teeth hard and stood up. He grunted when the cop asked if he was hurt, and fumbled out his detective’s license.

“I thought I recognized you,” the cop said. “Wait, I want to talk to you. Where are you going?”

Without answering, his head down, Shayne continued to plod through the sand. The tide was in. At the water’s edge he waded in without taking off his shoes. He nearly pitched head forward when he stooped down. Then he scooped up a double handful of salt water and splashed it in his face. By the time he started back, dripping, he knew that he wouldn’t need the ambulance that had pulled up behind the police car on the highway.

The cop had his notebook out. “Not that I give a damn, but when the lieutenant spots your name, he’ll want to know if this is tied in with something you’re working on. That better be my first question.”

“Give me a minute,” Shayne said. “How many vehicles do you have in this?”

“Just the two, yours and the semi.”

“No black four-door Ford sedan, a couple of years old, Florida plates?”

“No. What did he do, cut in on you?”

“Yeah, he thought he had time to get back, but at the last minute I guess he got rattled. It wasn’t the truck-driver’s fault.”

“In other words,” the cop said carefully, “and I’m only asking because I know what the lieutenant’s going to want to know, nobody tried to pile you up?”

Shayne shrugged. “I never saw the driver before. About fifty, short grayish hair, a nice tan. There won’t be any marks on his car.”

“It’s not much,” the cop said, “but I’d better call it in.

He went up the embankment. A small man with a mustache, carrying a briefcase, edged up to Shayne.

“My name’s Ross Gilmore,” he said. “Attorney-at-law. I happened to see this, and you’ve got a sweet liability action here against that truckdriver for tailgaiting. Now’s the time to line up your witnesses. I’m prepared to—”

“Get lost,” Shayne said.

The man recoiled a step, but he went on trying. “It’s no skin off him, you realize—the insurance company will have to pay it.”

Shayne gave him a look that sent him back up to the highway. An intern from the ambulance was looking around for bodies. A second police cruiser arrived, and the cops who came in it began to get the traffic moving. A phone seemed to be ringing somewhere. Shayne was returning to normal slowly, but he still had a considerable distance to go. After the fifth or sixth ring, he realized that the sound was coming from his wrecked Buick.

His front door was jammed. To reach the phone he had to go in through the back, while the ringing continued. Finally he succeeded in snatching it up.

“Yeah?”

“Michael!” his secretary, Lucy Hamilton, said. “I was about to give up. What does that guarded ‘yeah’ mean? Is somebody with you?”

“Wait a minute.” Shayne’s head was hammering. He sank back into the rear seat, which was canted upward at a sharp angle, and waited till his breathing was more regular. “Go ahead, angel.”

“Do I hear a siren?” she said, alarmed. “Michael Shayne, tell me what’s happening!”

“What makes you think anything is?”

“When I hear a siren and you’re around, nine times out of ten it has something to do with you. Are those
waves?”

“Those are waves, and I’ve just been in wading with my shoes on. All right, angel, I’ll stop being mysterious. I just smashed up the Buick. No, I’m OK,” he said as she started to speak. “I landed in some nice soft sand, and so far the cops are being friendly. Nobody’s offered me a drink yet, though,” he added.

“Where are you?” she demanded urgently.

“North of Lauderdale, but I really am OK. A sore shoulder’s about all. A guy knocked me off the highway with a piece of very damn good driving. He had everything figured to the inch. It was like a harness race for a minute. He didn’t wait around to be congratulated, but I think I’ll know him when I see him again. Which I have a feeling I will.”

“Is he the same one who put Tim in the hospital?”

“No, but it’s connected. I don’t know how or why. Tim’s been right about everything so far. He was right about the twin double and right about Joey Dolan. I’m beginning to take more of a personal interest in how this turns out.”

“Michael!” she wailed. “It scares me when you get that note in your voice. I suppose there’s no use asking you to be careful.”

“I’m always careful,” Shayne said, grinning.

“You are? Well, I’ve had two phone calls. Do you want me to tell you about them now, or wait till you recover?”

“I’m recovered. I can’t go anywhere until the cops are finished with me.”

“The first was from the insurance company you’re supposed to be working for. I did what you told me to. I said I didn’t know where you were, which was true, and you’d call them in the morning. I don’t think they liked it.”

“Too bad.”

“And I had a very odd anonymous call, collect from Pompano Beach. Well, anonymous—he gave the operator the name Mr. Jones, but I’m quite sure it wasn’t his real name. I took it down in shorthand, as much as I could get. I’ll give you the high spots first. When I told him you weren’t in, I had a hard time keeping him from hanging up. He was quite skittery. I finally persuaded him to leave a message, and what he wanted to tell you was that he talked to Dolan early this morning, he thought around three.’”

Shayne scraped his chin with his thumbnail, frowning. “That would be after Dolan called Tim.”

“Yes, but he’d been drinking, Michael, both then and when he talked to me. He said Dolan had a half-empty bottle of sherry. It wasn’t very good sherry, naturally, and Jones said it had a funny kind of raw taste. Dolan was very excited. He said—let’s see—he said he’d had a wonderful piece of good fortune, and if it paid off, he’d be rich enough to spend next summer in Ireland. But he was worried about something. He kept saying you had to take chances if you didn’t want to end your life in the gutter. He told Jones to listen carefully, in case anything happened. He was supposed to meet somebody in the Belle Mark Apartments in Miami, and he told Jones to write that down, the Belle Mark Apartments. He stood there while Jones did it.”

“Where did this happen?” Shayne said, still frowning. “He wouldn’t say. He said it was a good thing Joey made him write down the address, because when he woke up this morning he’d forgotten all about it. He had a splitting headache, which he thinks may have been from whatever gave the sherry that funny taste. When he heard Dolan was dead, he felt in his pockets and found the paper. I asked him why he didn’t tell the police, and he gave a strange laugh. From what Tim told me, the police wouldn’t follow it up anyway, would they?”

“Probably not. Why did he call me?”

“He said something about seeing you at Sweeney’s last night. I take it that’s some kind of bar or cafeteria. Maybe he only talked to someone who saw you. Apparently it’s known that you and Tim were supposed to meet Dolan and he didn’t show up. I said I knew you’d want to talk to him. He said, ‘Why?’ very nervously. I tried to convince him that trained investigators are able to see things that ordinary people overlook, and if he wanted to keep it anonymous, he could call back when you were in and go on using the names Jones. He said no, you’d trace the call, and then before I could tell him that calls can’t be traced, he got excited and said he didn’t want the same thing to happen to him that happened to Joey, and bang, he hung up. I’m sorry, Michael. I’ve been thinking of different ways I should have handled him.”

“Forget it. We’ve finally got a concrete lead, and believe me, we needed it. What impression did he make on you?”

“It’s a funny thing, Michael, it seemed to me he was trying to hide his identity by pretending to have more of an education than he actually did. Part of the time he seemed drunk, part of the time sober. Southern. Sure of himself and very anxious, by turns. This is all no help, I know.”

“Did you look up the apartment house?”

“The Belle Mark—yes, it’s on Ninety-sixth Street, in Miami Shores. I think that’s a high-rent district. I don’t know for sure.”

The trooper was looking for Shayne. He seemed surprised to find him talking on the phone in the back seat of the wrecked car.

“That’s fine, Miss Hamilton,” Shayne said, to let her know he was being overheard. “Do you remember the Mercedes you looked up for Tim?”

“Of course. Mrs. Domaine’s.”

“That’s a husband and wife operation. And didn’t Tim mention another name?”

“Paul Thorne?”

“Yeah. Go to the head of the class, angel. I want you to check with MacMaster. You’ve met him—the
News
city editor. See if he can dig up some pictures of those people, and get a shot of Dolan if they don’t have one already. Take the pictures to the apartment building and show them around. Spend some money if you have to.”

“Then should I come back to the office?”

“Call in first. I may be able to meet you there. If I can’t, I’ll leave a number with the answering service where you can reach me.”

“All right. And Michael, will you
please
be careful?”

“I sure as hell intend to try,” the redhead said, smiling, and put down the phone.

The cop said in a worried voice, “Seriously, Shayne—if somebody tried to kill you here, why not tell us about it? We might be able to do something.”

“The truckdriver had a good view. What does he think happened?”

The trooper shrugged. “The guy in the Ford cut in too soon, but as you say, maybe he got rattled. Nobody took his license number.”

“How about a wrecker for the Buick?”

“It’s on the way. And there’s somebody up there in a Cadillac wants to talk to you. He says his name is Larry Domaine.”

Shayne gave him a sharp look. “How long has he been there?”

“Just a couple of minutes. I’m supposed to tell you that because of the legal aspects, the thing for you to do is report in to the hospital and have them take a look at you. If you want to go in a private car, that’s up to you. A Cad’s more comfortable than an ambulance. We’ll look after your Buick for you. If you have anything valuable in the car, you’d better take it with you. It’ll be at Joe’s Auto Body, on One, just off Oakland Park Boulevard.”

Shayne thanked him.

“Hell,” the cop said gloomily, “so many of these things nowadays you get to know what to do. At least nobody was killed in this one. Honest to God, sometimes I think we ought to go back to the horse and buggy.”

He returned to the highway to continue with the post-accident routine. Shayne brushed sand off his clothes and ran his fingers through his bristling red hair. That was all he had time for. He looked at his watch. He had looked at it, he remembered, just before starting to go around the refrigerator truck. Twenty-five minutes had passed. He would be interested to find out how Mr. Larry Domaine had known what had happened so soon.

He climbed the embankment and stepped over the cables. A black, gleaming Cadillac of one of the vintage years waited across the road near an open-air stand selling seashell jewelry. Both lanes of the highway were working again. When a gap appeared, Shayne hurried across. A man stepped out of the Cadillac to meet him.

“You’re Mike Shayne, of course,” he said. “Thank God you weren’t hurt.”

He shook Shayne’s hand while the redhead looked him over curiously, matching him against his cool, lovely, blonde wife. He was in his fifties, thirty pounds overweight. His color was high, but not from being out of doors. He was wearing pince-nez, the first pair of those old-fashioned glasses Shayne had seen in years. His white hair was abundant and too long, especially over the ears. His clothes were very good: a black-and-white checked sports coat, fawn-colored slacks, beautifully polished Italian boots.

“I really goofed,” Domaine said regretfully. “If anything serious had happened to you, I would have been just about ready to give up. I’m responsible for this accident, Shayne. I can see I have some explaining to do.”

“NOBODY GOT the guy’s license number,” Shayne said. “You didn’t have to admit it.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Domaine said. “Get in and let me give you a drink.”

He opened the back door for Shayne, holding his hand under Shayne’s elbow in case he needed help. A woman in the front seat looked at the big redhead with unconcealed interest. Expensive tweeds hung loosely from her rangy frame. She was probably in her middle thirties, Shayne thought. She had too-bright lipstick and snapping black eyes. She was crackling with energy, much of it sexual.

“My friend, Mrs. Moon,” Domaine said, following Shayne in. “Mike Shayne, the Miami detective.”

She gave Shayne her left hand, amid a jangle of bracelets. “Larry tells me they’ve been trying to kill you. You look like a hard man to kill.”

“Molly, I must say,” Domaine said with disgust. “What a grotesque sense of humor. He might have
been
killed. It’s nothing to laugh about.”

Mrs. Moon went on laughing with genuine enjoyment, deep in her throat. Shayne smelled whiskey, and saw a folding aluminum cup on the ledge above the dashboard.

“Apologize to him, Larry, so we can go somewhere and do some civilized drinking.”

Domaine pressed a button on the back of the front seat and a flat shelf snapped down. From a compartment beneath it, he took two more aluminum cups, a container of ice and a bottle of bourbon.

“I talked to one of the troopers,” he said. “They aren’t planning to give you the drunk-test?”

“No, everybody agrees that I’m the victim,” Shayne said.

Domaine poured a slug of bourbon, and Shayne told him to forget the ice. Mrs. Moon raised her cup to Shayne.

“To the survival of the fittest.”

Shayne emptied the cup and Domaine refilled it. “I don’t know where to begin. First, do you mind telling me who you’re working for?”

“That’s confidential,” Shayne growled.

“I expected that,” Domaine said, wincing. He brought one fat thigh up on the seat and hooked his foot beneath his knee. “I suppose you’ve been brought in by the powers-that-be at the track, in one way or another, to find out if there’s going to be any hanky-panky on the program tonight. And I want to emphasize to you that, to my positive knowledge, there has been no tampering with horses, no bribery of any kind, nothing in any way illegal. The reason for all the hugger-mugger is simple and obvious—so too many people won’t hear about it and want to get in on it.”

“Do you know what these crazy Domaines are hoping to do?” Mrs. Moon said. “They think they’re going to abscond with half the twin-double pool. Did you ever hear anything like it?”

“Molly, please,” Domaine said. “If you keep interrupting, I can’t explain this in orderly sequence.” He turned back to the redhead. “Molly’s an innocent bystander. We’ve been looking at a horse of mine she’s thinking of buying. When I heard about the accident, I wanted to drop her at a bar, but she insisted on coming, to see what Michael Shayne looked like. Try to ignore her.”

“Are there any of your horses in the twin-double races tonight, Mrs. Moon?” Shayne said.

She gave another caw of laughter. “A lovely little filly named Fussbudget, in the ninth. I love Larry and Claire dearly, but if I can spoil things for them, I assure you I’ll take great delight in doing it. And you know, I just might!” she warned Domaine.

“That’s one thing I won’t worry about,” he said dryly.

“Go ahead, Larry,” she said, drinking. “I’ll keep quiet.”

“You probably know quite a bit of this by now,” Domaine said to Shayne. “My wife makes the odds calculations in the family, and she’s actually become pretty good at it. Her theory is that it’s the one way left to beat the income tax. Winnings are supposed to be reported to the government, but in practice, of course, they hardly ever are. And why should they be? Taxes have already taken out an immense percentage. The money that comes out of the machines on one race, or most of it, goes back in on the next, and Uncle Sam takes that tax nibble every time. Excuse me—this is a mania of mine. She’s developed quite a shrewd streak, Claire. My horsemen don’t think she’s quite as naive as they did at first. To me beating the machines has always been an intellectual matter, like a chess problem. To her it has become a passion.”

“How rich are you, Mr. Domaine?” Shayne said.

Mrs. Moon laughed. “Now you’ve embarrassed him.”

Domaine took a sip of his whiskey and said stiffly, “I have a fairish amount of money.”

“Did Mrs. Domaine have property in her own name before you married her?”

Some of Domaine’s good humor left him. “No.” He removed his pince-nez. They were trembling. The dents remained on his nose. “After having your car shot out from under you, you are entitled to one or two rude questions. You have now used up your quota. My financial standing, or my wife’s before or after marriage, has nothing to do with any of this. Will we go on relief if we fail to win the twin double? No.”

“To say the least,” Mrs. Moon put in.

“My God,” Domaine said desperately. “Here I’ve decided to make a full disclosure of our plans for tonight, and nobody wants to listen! We have a mare named My Treat, Mr. Shayne. For various reasons, some of them accidental, some carefully contrived, she is faster than her classification. She won’t be a champion, she’s unlikely to win any great sum in purses, but she’s going against slower horses tonight in the ninth, and, all things being equal, we think she’ll win.”

“Unless Fussbudget beats her out,” Mrs. Moon offered.

“I’ll make you a small side bet on that,” Domaine said. “Shut up now, Molly.” To Shayne: “Paul Thorne thinks he has a winner in the sixth. He’s driving a poorly behaved trotter, potentially very fast, which has broken gait and finished out of the money, well out, in five out of his last six races. Few people are likely to bet on him. Thorne has made some equipment change, some change in his training technique, and he’s confident that tonight he can keep the horse at the trot for the full mile. One of our stablemen spotted the improvement during the early-morning workouts and told my wife.”

“Would that man’s name be Dolan?” Shayne asked.

Domaine’s eyebrows rose. “You’re better informed than I thought. Dolan, yes, not that it matters. Very well. A horse in the sixth and one in the ninth—that gave Claire her inspiration. It meant combining with Thorne, and I was of two minds about that. In some ways the man is a menace.”

“Attractive as sin,” Mrs. Moon said.

“Do you think so?” Domaine said coldly. “A bit too much on the surface, I would have thought. Of course, Claire couldn’t confer with him in public. It would have been foolish to have him at our house. She decided to rent a motel room, a method she has used before, though never with Thorne. This worried me. I know him, you see; he used to drive for me. He’s quick, violent, conceited. I came close to forbidding it, or trying to forbid it—it’s not all that easy to stop Claire when her mind’s set on something. I decided to deal with the problem in another way. I have a driver named Franklin Brossard. You know him, Molly. He’s not in the first flush of youth, but he’s strong and reckless, and I’d back him against Paul Thorne any day. I sent him to the motel, without Claire’s knowledge. He was parked there when she arrived. After Thorne appeared and went to her room, Brossard loitered outside the door. Those motels are constructed of matchboard—if she’d had any trouble, Brossard would have heard it. But nothing happened. Thorne drove off. Claire’s car wouldn’t start. A large, rugged-looking redheaded individual—Brossard had seen him doing something to the motor earlier—got in with her. After a brief conversation, Claire ordered him to get out and leave her alone. Apparently the man refused. At this point Brossard phoned me for instructions. We assumed, you see, and I think the assumption was reasonable, that some gambler had got wind of the twin-double coup and was trying to hector Claire into giving him the details. I was dismayed. When Brossard offered to give the man a scare, I regret to say that I told him to go ahead. I had second thoughts at once, but there was no way I could call him back. As soon as Claire could get to a phone, she called to say that she’d had an encounter with a private detective named Michael Shayne. That frightened me more than a little. I don’t know if you’re married, Shayne?”

“No.”

“One of the first things you learn, if you want to make a success of marriage, is to temporize. When your wife puts this much thought and time and money into something, let’s hope, for the sake of domestic tranquility, that it bears fruit. I shouldn’t have allowed this to go this far. I’m sorry.”

“What does Claire do when she loses?” Mrs. Moon asked curiously. “Stamp and scream?”

“Certainly not,” Domaine said testily. “But ordinary conversation becomes difficult and I have to walk around the house on tiptoe, which I don’t enjoy. I didn’t intend to have this accident happen, Shayne; that’s all I can say. Neither did Brossard, actually.”

“The hell he didn’t,” Shayne said with a short laugh.

“No,” Domaine insisted. “He called me immediately. He was afraid someone had taken down his license number. I said I’d drive over at once and see what was required. Are you covered by insurance?”

“Car insurance,” Shayne said. “Nobody’s been willing to write me any life insurance yet.”

“From what I hear of your operations,” Domaine said, “I’d say that was a sensible precaution. I’m trying to convince you that there’s no point in telling the police the name of the other driver. As a matter of cold fact, Brossard would deny it. So would I, I suppose. But I want to make up for this stupid blunder by helping in any way I can. Let me loan you this car, for example.”

“And you do realize, don’t you,” Mrs. Moon said, “that, by giving you a winner in the sixth and the ninth, he’s offering to let you in on the twin double?”

“Molly, you have no subtlety,” Domaine said. “Putting it that way turns it into a different kind of offer.” He poured Shayne more bourbon. “Needless to say, Shayne, I know I owe you something. Whatever you decide, I’m sure I can weather it, but if you find it necessary to mention Brossard’s name to the police, Claire will know I have given her a bodyguard. I would suffer for it. She often makes the point that she is a grown-up girl.”

Shayne drank slowly while the others watched him.

After a moment Domaine said, “You are somewhat irked, naturally. If this had happened to me, I know I’d be boiling. If you have any questions—”

“All right, let’s try a few,” Shayne said. “What happened when Thorne stopped driving for your stable? Did you fire him or did he quit?”

Domaine leaned forward slightly, to emphasize his willingness to cooperate. “We were getting ready to fire him. There was never any question about his ability, he was a natural winner. But we felt he was giving the stable the wrong kind of following. One day soon, I was sure he would do something really outrageous and irrevocable. Violence in Thorne is never far below the surface. I kept postponing a decision, as I didn’t want to give him any real cause for resentment. I was relieved when he told me he wanted to go off on his own. I even loaned him some money, which I never really expect to see again.”

“How much?”

“A few thousand. I’ve never pressed him for it. The truth is, the fewer dealings I have with that man the better I’ll like it.”

“Did you consider telling your wife to stay out of the twin-double deal with him?”

“Let’s say I considered it,” he said with a smile.

“How many other people are involved in it?”

A tiny frown appeared on Domaine’s forehead. “What do you mean by ‘involved’?”

“You know what I mean. Together you control two horses in the sixth and two in the ninth. Is that enough?”

“Not enough to be certain, of course. But that’s not the point. I think I’d know if Claire had made arrangements with any other owners or drivers, not that she tells me everything she does. I’ve made it clear that I don’t think of myself in that kind of role.”

“Thorne’s financing his share with loan-shark money,” Shayne said. “He can’t be as casual about losing as you can.”

Domaine’s frown deepened. “If he’s tried to bribe anybody or bring anybody else in on it, I pray he’s been careful. I don’t give a hang what happens to him, but this is precisely what I’ve been concerned about—by combining with him, to a certain extent Claire put herself in his hands.”

“What about Fussbudget, Mrs. Moon?” Shayne said.

The abrupt question made her jump. “Oh, hell. I was just needling Larry. My head trainer said she was feeling frisky this morning. That’s really all I know.”

“Is Brossard driving My Treat tonight?” Shayne asked Domaine.

“Yes, and that’s another reason I don’t want him arrested.”

“Does he know you want him to win the ninth and Thorne’s trotter to win the sixth?”

“He gets his instructions tonight. His post position in the ninth is number two. He’ll be told to tuck in behind the number-one horse at the first turn. There’s one other horse Claire is worried about—not Fussbudget, Molly. When that horse begins to make its move, Thorne expects to be in a position where he can move at the same time and carry him out. Brossard should take the lead at the five-eighths pole, and lead the rest of the way. I don’t know if he’ll be betting on himself. Probably.”

He waited for Shayne’s next question.

After finishing his drink, the redhead said, “All right, I accept your apology, Mr. Domaine, and I think I’ll take you up on the loan of your car. I have to make a quick stop in Lauderdale, and then get back to Miami.”

“This is generous of you, Larry,” Mrs. Moon said ironically, “and what do we do, hitchhike?”

“We take a taxi,” Domaine said. He put a warm hand on Shayne’s knee. “I’m glad you’ve decided to do it like this, Shayne. Will you be back this evening?”

“Sure.”

“I’m meeting Mrs. Domaine in the clubhouse for drinks at seven, if you’d care to join us.”

“All right, if I can.”

“I’ll be there,” Mrs. Moon said. “Maybe you can help me pick a few winners.”

She gave him a look that was frankly speculative. He returned it with one of his own, and was rewarded by a small stir of discomfort from Domaine. A few pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fall into place.