Pay-Off in Blood (3 page)

The
Seacliff
Restaurant in downtown Miami was big and brightly lighted, and did a heavy business in early dinners with a special, low-priced children’s menu which attracted family groups.

At this hour of the evening, the rush was over and not more than a quarter of the tables were occupied. There was a long row of booths along the right-hand wall as you entered, opposite the bar on the left, and Shayne and his companion found the third booth empty.

Shayne slid into the seat facing the entrance, and Dr. Ambrose sat opposite him. A waiter spread two huge menus in front of them, but Shayne pushed his aside and said, “We’re just having some drinks.
A sidecar for me.
With Martell, and go easy on the
cointreau
.
Harvey’s Bristol Cream for you, Doctor?”

Dr. Ambrose looked uncertain.
“A small sherry perhaps?”

Shayne nodded to the waiter and reassured the doctor. “That’s what you were drinking at my place. Relax.” He grinned across the table at the fidgety, plump little man who had removed his spectacles and was cleaning them nervously with his napkin. “It shouldn’t be long now.” He looked at his watch. It was nine twenty-five.

“I hope not,” murmured Dr. Ambrose fervently. “I confess I’m nervous. I’ve never done this sort of thing before. If you weren’t here to give me moral support, I don’t think I could possibly have gone through with it.”

“Still time to change your mind,” Shayne suggested.
“If you duck out fast.
I’ll stay here and let your man brace me. Could be I might get your stuff back without you paying the bastard a dime.”

“Oh, no,” shuddered Dr. Ambrose. “I… I’d never feel safe again.”

“Have it your own way.” Shayne settled back with his shoulder-blades against the back of the booth while the waiter placed a brimming cocktail glass in front of him and a smaller glass of darker fluid in front of the doctor.

Shayne tasted his drink and found it good. Despite his apparent nonchalance, he was keyed-up to the limit and his hooded gaze suspiciously studied each new customer who entered the restaurant. It was so easy for something to go wrong with a deal like this. From long experience, Shayne realized this fact much better than the doctor. Twenty grand was a pretty fair hunk of cash even in these days of inflation, and a man who would stoop to blackmail was not exactly a trustworthy type in Shayne’s book.

However, the doctor had chosen well in setting the time and place for the pay-off, and Shayne had to admit to
himself
that he had been smart to insist that the redhead accompany him. It should go off all right… if both of them were playing it straight and were prepared to make a fair exchange. Knowing that Michael Shayne was sitting in on the deal
should
keep the blackmailer in line. And he didn’t think the doctor would be fool enough to try and pull a fast one without the full amount of money in the envelope.

A lone man came through the doorway from the street and paused near the upper end of the bar. He was bareheaded, with a crew-cut, and a smooth, unlined face. He wore a light tan sport jacket over a white sport shirt that was open at the throat, and there was really nothing about his appearance to distinguish him from any one of a dozen or more tourists who had entered since Shayne and Dr. Ambrose had sat down.

Yet, to Michael Shayne there
was
a difference.
An almost indefinable aura of excitement about him.
A tightness of the muscles.
A feral, searching gleam in the blue eyes
that were
just a little too cold, just a little too inhuman.

He moved forward slowly, hands lax at his sides, glancing inside the first two booths with studied indifference as he moved.

Shayne drained his cocktail glass and put it down and waited. The man stood beside their booth and looked at him. He said, “Shayne?” and the redhead nodded.

“I’m Michael Shayne.” He slid out of the booth, standing for a moment, towering at least four inches over the bareheaded man.

He said pleasantly, “I guess maybe you two have got business together,” and moved backward slowly to an empty spot at the bar, keeping his gaze fixed on the pair.

The man sat in the seat just vacated by Shayne. He paid no further attention to the watchful detective. He said something which Shayne couldn’t hear across the table to the doctor, and Dr. Ambrose nodded and reached inside his coat pocket to withdraw the long, white envelope he had shown Shayne at his apartment.

At the same time, Crew-cut reached inside his inner coat pocket and withdrew a similar envelope. For a moment the two men regarded each other thoughtfully across the table, and then simultaneously they exchanged envelopes.

Shayne leaned back with his elbows behind him on the bar supporting his weight, his right hand dropping casually into his coat pocket, which sagged under the weight of his revolver.

Both men had turned slightly toward the wall, shielding their envelopes from view, and were tearing them open. If anything was going to happen, now was the moment for it.

A long thirty seconds passed while each of them carefully inspected the contents of the other’s envelope. Then they turned back toward each other and both of them nodded. The churning stopped in Shayne’s stomach and his muscles relaxed, but he didn’t take his hand off the gun in his pocket.

The two men at the table each turned back the lapel of his coat to pocket his envelope.

At that precise moment, a flash-gun exploded with brilliant white light a few feet up the bar from Shayne. He jerked his head to catch a glimpse of a wiry, young man with lank, black hair, lowering a press camera with a flash attachment. It was only a glimpse, because he turned and ran for the door as he lowered his camera. Shayne could have shot him, but didn’t. Shayne had seen that face before.

He stood very still with his big hand bunched around the butt of the .38 in his pocket, and looked at the booth.

Dr. Ambrose and Crew-cut sat exactly as they had sat a moment before, each with a long, white envelope half inside his coat pocket. Both their faces were turned toward the fleeing photographer, mouths slightly open and a look of blank surprise on both faces.

The tableau held for a long moment and Shayne waited tensely to see if something would explode between them.

It didn’t. They turned back toward each other and each pocketed his envelope. Shayne pushed himself away from the bar and strolled forward, getting two dollar bills from his pocket to drop on the table in payment for their drinks.

He asked, “Ready to go, Doc?” and Dr. Ambrose nodded and looked at him in agitation and said, “Yes, it’s… all right. But I… did that man take a
picture?”

“It looked that way,” Shayne said cheerfully. “God knows what for.
Maybe you and God, huh?”
He transferred his gaze to Crew-cut.

The man shook his head and appeared honestly puzzled. “Not me. I swear I never saw him before.”

Shayne shrugged and stepped back so Dr. Ambrose could get out. “If you’re all set,” he said indifferently, “I don’t see it matters.” He took hold of the doctor’s arm and walked firmly to the door with him without looking back. They had driven to the restaurant in the doctor’s car, and it was parked half a block away.

Shayne led him rapidly toward it in the cool night air, and asked, “Get what you wanted?”

“Oh, yes. Why did you
do
that, Mr. Shayne? How did you arrange it? In the name of heaven, why? I hoped tonight would be the end of this affair. I certainly don’t want…”

Shayne stopped beside the doctor’s late-model sedan and pulled the door open. “I’d get going, if I were you. I didn’t arrange anything,
goddamit
.”

“But that photographer.”
The doctor hesitated, half in and half out of his car.
“If you didn’t have him there… who did?
Why would anybody want a picture of
us?”

Shayne said, “I don’t know. For a moment, I thought maybe it was your idea. You
not knowing
who your blackmailer was and all.”

He waited stolidly, but Dr. Ambrose merely got in behind the steering wheel, shaking his head in a puzzled manner. “I can only hope there are no repercussions. Mr. Shayne… ah… I will expect a bill from you for your services.” He turned the key in the ignition and drove away.

Michael Shayne stood on the sidewalk looking after his departing car with anger building up inside him. Damn Tim
Rourke
, anyway! What in hell was the matter with the reporter? He’d never pulled a stunt like that on Shayne before.
Goddamit
! If he wanted a picture of the blackmail pay-off for reasons of his own, why in hell hadn’t he warned Shayne in advance? That photographer might easily have got himself shot. Shayne’s finger had been tight on the trigger when he whirled, after the flashbulb went off.

He turned and strode away through the night toward his hotel on the north bank of the Miami River, still boiling with rage at Timothy
Rourke
.

Everything had been beautifully set. Everything had gone off on schedule, without a hitch. A perfect blackmail pay-off… in front of a lot of people, none of whom suspected anything. Twenty thousand dollars in a sealed white envelope exchanged for the incriminating documents in a similar white envelope. Everybody satisfied, and the whole thing washed up.
Except for the photographer.
That might be a complication. And Shayne had agreed to accompany Dr. Ambrose tonight… as a favor to Tim
Rourke
… simply to see to it that there weren’t any complications.

He damned Timothy
Rourke
again as he approached the side entrance to his apartment hotel. He’d been all set for a quiet evening at home and an early jump into the hay when
Rourke
had intervened.

Shayne went in the side door and up the two flights of stairs, bypassing the lobby, seething with rage. He rammed the key into his door and strode to the center table and dropped his short-
barrelled
.38 into the open drawer before pouring four ounces of cognac into the waiting wineglass and drinking half of it.

The ice cubes had melted in the tall glass on the table. Shayne carried it into the kitchen and emptied the glass, put in more ice and fresh water. He sloshed it around to get it cool and drank off half the glass, then carried it back into the living room and asked Pete for Timothy
Rourke’s
home number. He listened to the telephone ring seven times at the other end of the line before hanging up.

Then he called the
News
and got the City Room, and was told that Mr.
Rourke
was not in and they didn’t know where he could be reached. Before the newspaper connection was broken, Shayne asked hurriedly, “Is George
Bayliss
around?”

There was a long wait while people checked. Then he was told that
Bayliss
was also out of the office, “Off duty,” so he was informed.

He held on doggedly and asked for George
Bayliss
’ home telephone number. He had to identify himself before he got it. Then he hung up and told Pete to try that number.

Again, he listened to the phone ring seven times without getting an answer. He slammed it down angrily, tossed off the rest of his drink and poured himself another.

He sipped the top off the glass so he could carry it without spilling any, and took it into the kitchen. He put water on to boil for the
dripolator
, methodically measured four heaping tablespoons of coffee into the top, and put a heavy iron frying pan on the stove with the heat turned high.

He tossed half a cube of butter into the pan, got out the pound of ground chuck and mashed it up in his hands, sprinkling both sides liberally with Lawry’s Seasoned Salt and working it into the meat with his fingers.

The coffee water was boiling, and the butter had melted in the frying pan and was sizzling and brown. He reduced the heat, mashed the pound of meat flat between his palms into a thick patty, and dropped it into the hot grease.

He poured the water into the top of the
dripolator
and drank half the cognac, got out a spatula and turned the gas flame high for a moment, then turned the hamburger and lowered the flame, and sipped at the rest of his drink.

He got out a dinner plate and slid the beautifully-browned-on-both-sides and still-red-in-the-middle hamburger onto it, carried it into the living room, and returned to get a mug of strong, black coffee.

He ate the entire pound of meat with gusto, washing it down with coffee, carried the empty plate back to the kitchen sink and poured another mug of coffee to which he added a couple ounces of cognac in the living room.

He settled back comfortably with a cigarette and the coffee royal, and let himself think blissfully about bed.

A good ten hours of shut-eye was what he needed. If it hadn’t been for Tim
Rourke’s
interference, he would have been asleep at least an hour ago.

He yawned widely and carefully forced himself not to think about
Rourke
. Tomorrow would be time enough for that.

He drained the coffee mug to its delectable dregs, got another cigarette going, and dragged himself to his feet. He turned out the living room lights and began shedding clothes on his way into the bedroom.

He was naked down to his shoes and socks when he reached the bed, and he threw back the covers and sat on the edge, unlaced his shoes and kicked off his socks.

He padded across to the window and opened it wide, went back and turned off the light and slid under the covers with a sigh of contentment.

The telephone beside his bed began to ring. It was an unlisted number which only a very few people very close to him had.

He dragged his mind back to awareness, groped in the darkness for the telephone and lifted it to his ear and muttered, “Hello?”

He came fully awake and mad as hell when he heard Tim
Rourke’s
voice saying urgently, “Mike! Listen to me, Mike.”