Brett Halliday

Nice Fillies Finish Last

CHAPTER 1

TIM ROURKE sneaked another look at his hole cards. Satisfied, he took a long pull at his warm highball.

“I think I’m going to raise that five dollars.”

It was two-thirty A.M. on a pleasant January night, in Rourke’s Miami apartment. The ice cubes had given out around midnight, but his guests weren’t letting that interfere with their drinking. Judge Benson, on Rourke’s left, always much too optimistic at this time of night, contributed five chips, on the theory that a miracle could happen on the final card. Ad Kimball, a sports writer on the Miami News, folded. So did the next man, a canny cabdriver named Schwartz. Michael Shayne, the big redheaded private detective, counted out ten blues and said calmly, “See that and raise you five.”

Rourke squinted down at his friend’s open cards. He couldn’t see much there except a pair of threes. The lanky reporter was well aware that, after the amount of whiskey he had packed away, he was in no condition to weigh the odds. That didn’t mean he was going to let himself be panicked by a small pair.

“And five more,” he said.

The phone rang. Ad Kimball picked it up as the dealer flipped a seventh card, face down, to the four players still in the game. Rourke gathered up his down-cards and looked at them carefully. He was pleased to see that he had a third ace to go with the two aces and two kings he already had. A full house, by God! By concentrating hard, he managed to look serious but not elated.

Kimball said, “Somebody named Joey Dolan, Tim, calling collect from Pompano Beach. Do you want to take the charges?”

“Dolan!” Rourke exclaimed. “Damn right. Good friend of mine. He feeds me tips on the harness horses up there, and he generally knows what he’s talking about, too.” He pushed ten blue chips from his dwindling stack into the middle of the table. “I’m still high man on the board. High man bets ten bucks.”

Shayne saw him and raised him another ten, and at that point Rourke’s mood changed abruptly, for the worse. Apparently the redhead, who was the luckiest poker player Rourke had ever run across, was going to beat him out of the first halfway decent pot he had had a chance at all evening. It cost him another ten dollars to make sure. Grinning, Shayne turned over a second pair of threes to go with the two he had showing.

Rourke made a disgusted sound and took the phone.

“What’s the matter?” Joey Dolan’s voice said, aggrieved. “If you didn’t want to talk to me, all you had to do was tell the operator.”

“What did I do, groan?” Rourke said. “That wasn’t meant for you, Joey. I just dropped fifty clams on a full house, aces and kings. Got beat with four measly little threes. Does that sound fair?”

“Oh, poker,” Dolan said. “I didn’t know what for a minute.”

“Yeah, and it’s not nearly as satisfying as losing money on the trotters, which gets you out in the fresh air. What have you got for me, Joey, anything good?”

“Maybe,” Dolan said. “It could be so good I don’t like to chatter about it on the phone. Can you come up?”

“Like when, around dinner time tomorrow?”

“No, no. Immediately if not sooner. Be worth it to you, Tim. Excuse me, my throat’s dry. Time for a small nip.”

Rourke had known Dolan for years without ever seeing him sober, whether at two-thirty in the morning or two-thirty in the afternoon. He heard a faint gurgle as liquor went out of a bottle and into Dolan.

“Dust gets into everything out here,” Dolan complained. “But you can’t pave a racetrack, can you? The horses wouldn’t like it.”

His voice faded, and when it came back it was much too loud. “The seats they put in these phone booths! Unless you’ve got the hind end of a robin, it’s hard to stay on. Tim, this could be it. It really could be it.”

“Glad to hear it,” Rourke said. “But what’s wrong with telling me on the phone? It’s an hour’s drive, if I felt like driving, And I don’t, frankly.”

“I’ll need some cash. What do we do, usually? I keep my ears open around the barns, I hear about a hot horse and I pass it on. You buy two ten-buck tickets across the board, one for you, one for me. How about the information I gave you lately, it stood up pretty good, didn’t it, buddy?”

“Damn good. Hold on a minute!—Deal me out the next hand,” he called to the poker table.

Mike Shayne stood up, stretching. “We’re breaking up, Tim.”

Rourke protested, but the players who were still at the table were settling with the banker. Shayne, as usual, was the big winner.

Rourke returned to the phone. “The bums are running out without giving me a chance to get even.”

“Don’t let them walk away with all your cabbage, Tim. I’ll need about—oh, five or six hundred ought to cover it.”

“Joey, be serious. Those four little threes cleaned me out. I’m in the red at the bank and I don’t get paid till Friday. I don’t say I couldn’t raise it, but they’ll have to know what it’s for. I know you’re not trying to fast-shuffle me, but to them you’re nothing but a name.”

“OK,” Dolan said sadly. “I’ll tell you what I think, only Jesus, I hate to.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I think somebody’s trying to beat the twin.”

“The twin double?” Rourke said in disbelief. “Come on.”

“Yeah,” Dolan insisted. “That pool has been running close to two hundred G’s most nights. That’s something to shoot at. I have a pretty good idea how one of the races tomorrow night is going to turn out. One of the twin-double races, and the horse is a long shot. Tim,” he said impatiently, “are you in or not? Because if you don’t want to bankroll me, I’ve got to make some more phone calls. I want to start spending money as soon as it’s daylight.”

“You still haven’t told me what you need five hundred for.”

“To spread around. The twin double, that’s four races, thirty-two horses, thirty-two drivers. I want one other winner out of those thirty-two, and with any luck at all I can find one. If I don’t, we can forget the twin and bet on that long shot and cover expenses, more than cover expenses. I can’t guarantee anything, but the odds! What we’ll get is maybe an even-money chance to break into the twin-double payoffs, and about the lowest they ever pay is a couple of hundred to one. Look. If you’re going to borrow from some jerk who never heard about the twin double, you’ll have to explain it.”

“Wait till I get my drink.” Rourke reached out and Shayne gave it to him. “Go ahead.”

“Say somebody has the winning horse in the ninth, all things being equal, no accidents, no interference. For one reason or another, Joe Doakes in the grandstand never heard of the horse, and it stands to go off at phone-book odds. All right. You can win a nice bundle on him, but if you bet any real dough, you’ll shorten the price. Not only that. Joe Doakes is going to look at the tote board and see that something’s cooking. The company line has the horse at, say, seventy-five to one. When you make your bet, all of a sudden the win pool takes a big jump and the price drops to fifty. Uh-oh. So there’s stable money going in on the horse, is there? Everybody in the grandstand rushes to get aboard. The horse wins. When you go to the cashier’s window, you find he’s only going to pay you a crummy ten spot for a two-dollar bill.”

“I know that, for God’s sake,” Rourke said.

“So what you do, you put your money in through the twin double, where it doesn’t ruin the odds. You locate another winner in the twin-double races. Two winners out of four is all you can honestly hope for, because you know what harness racing’s like, it’s full of surprises. You wheel your two winners with all the horses in the other two races. That costs you a hundred and twenty-eight bucks to get one winning two-dollar ticket. But if a couple of those winners were long shots, you can cash in your two-buck ticket for upwards of ten grand. And those long odds stay on the board so Joe Doakes don’t know what’s happening to him.”

“That’s what you think is going on tomorrow night?”

“Considering the circumstances,” Dolan said, “I’m practically ninety-nine percent certain, and that’s why I think a five-hundred-buck investment is reasonable—it could pay off in real dough. Here’s what I want to do. Most of the guys I know in the barns, swipes and caretakers, they’re like me—when something like this comes along, they’ve got to let it go half the time, because they don’t have any betting capital. I’ll mouse around. You can keep a secret from the racing secretary, but you can’t keep a secret from the guy who rubs the horse, and that’s the guy I’m going to be dealing with. I may not have to spend the full five hundred. God, Tim! I don’t mind horses, but I’m getting a little tired of cleaning up after them. If I got one-tenth as much attention as these trotters and pacers, I’d never say a cross word to anybody. Of course it’s true I can’t go a mile in two minutes. I’m getting too old for the rat race, Tim. I’d like to eat filet mignon for breakfast, for a change. Wear a necktie. I’d like to own one TV set before I die.”

Large sums of money had begun dancing through Rourke’s head. “If this works, I’ll buy you a color set and a hi-fi. Have a drink, Joey, I’ve got to confer with some guys.” He covered the mouthpiece. “Mike, loan me five hundred bucks.”

Shayne looked at him quizzically, his ragged red eyebrows coming together. “I heard part of that. The betting windows aren’t open at this time of night, so what’s your rush?”

“He’s been explaining it. He’s got one winner in the last four races and he’s got to spend some money to get a second. This is no nickel-and-dime stuff. I’ve known him for years, he’s reliable. Come over here—I don’t want to yell.”

Grinning skeptically, Shayne dropped onto the arm of a chair beside him. The reporter lowered his voice.

“He’s talking about the twin double. Remember the bus driver last month who hit that for a hundred and seventy-eight thousand bucks? An exception, granted, but be conservative. Say you only take out ten or twelve grand—”

Dolan’s voice said anxiously, “Tim, don’t give them any details. The fewer people know what we’re doing, the better. Plus something else. We’ve got some ugly boys in this business, when they want to be, and they aren’t going to be crazy about somebody like us squeezing in. I don’t want to worry you; you’re perfectly safe. I’m the one I’m thinking about.”

“I appreciate that, Joey,” Rourke said. “But this character here is a skeptic, from way back.” He covered the mouthpiece again. “Mike, I’ll pay you back double your money in twenty-four hours. If anything goes wrong, I’ll give you fifty out of every paycheck till we’re square.”

“If it’s that good,” Shayne said, “I might take a piece of it myself. Let me talk to the guy.”

Rourke held the phone out of reach. “Oh, no, this is my contact, damn it. You have that obnoxious habit of asking intelligent questions. You can take the wind out of people’s sails faster than anybody I ever saw. Just because I happen to be temporarily short of cash—Joey,” he said into the phone, “I’ve got a small problem, but nothing I can’t take care of. Where do I meet you?”

“Make it at Sweeney’s,” Dolan said. “That’s a cafeteria across from the backstretch. Take Atlantic Boulevard and turn off on Judson Road, you’ll see it. Tim, you’re positive you’ll be there? Because this is the kind of shot that comes along once in a lifetime. If I muff it, I’ll just have to relax and coast from now on, and it’s all downhill.”

“I’ll be there,” Rourke assured him. “I know plenty of people who’ll loan me money on my IOU, without a lot of hemming and hawing.” He checked his watch. “Not much traffic this time of night. I should get there between three-thirty and a quarter to four.” He hung up.

“Ad,” he called to Ad Kimball, who was about to leave. “Don’t go yet. I’ve got a proposition.”

“I know, you want me to help you bust the twin double. Tim, you’ve been working too hard. You’re starting to crack up.”

“People win the twin double every night, for God’s sake. Why not me? Judge,” he said to Judge Benson, “you have an open mind. You know nobody makes any real dough unless they’re prepared to take a few chances.”

“Sorry, Tim,” the judge said. “I have a hard enough time persuading my wife to let me play poker. It wouldn’t be smart to compound the felony.”

When Rourke looked hopefully at Schwartz, the cabdriver told him, “Only creeps bet on the twin, in my book. That’s an amateur’s bet. I thought you had more sense.”

The others also turned him down and said good-night, leaving him alone with Mike Shayne. Avoiding his friend’s eye, Rourke stood up jerkily, his lanky frame opening like a carpenter’s rule.

“I’ve still got a few friends around town. The trouble’s going to be to get it in cash. Did you see what I did with my car keys?”

Shayne laughed, took out his wallet and started counting. “You could probably raise it, if you made up a good enough pitch. A dame in trouble, something like that. But sooner or later they’d find out what you wanted it for. That’s a good way to lose friends.”

“Mike, you bastard,” Rourke said, racking the bills and putting them in his pants pocket. “What did you have to scare me like that for? Listen, let’s make it a syndicate, and I’ll owe you two-fifty. Anything we clear we’ll split down the middle.”

Shayne shook his head. “A straight loan, Tim. I can think of better ways to get rid of money than trying to pick four winners in a row.”

“You don’t pick four.” Rourke scribbled an IOU. “You pick two, and bracket them with all the horses in the other two races. And of course you get say a twenty-dollar bill on each of your two winners, in the regular pool, and if only one of them comes in, you’ve got your investment back right there.”

Under the even gaze from Shayne’s gray eyes, this sounded less plausible than when Joey Dolan had told it to him on the phone, and all at once Rourke wondered if he was making a fool of himself. Was it possible that this was nothing but a scheme to hustle him out of five hundred dollars? Dolan wouldn’t turn in an expense account on how he spent the money. What if he didn’t really spend it at all? It was true enough, as Schwartz had said, that people who put money into the twin double were usually hunch-players, whose idea of a sensible way to pick the winners was to use the first four digits of their social-security number. Dolan’s tips had always been good, but that was the classic confidence-game technique, setting the victim up for the real take. What would Rourke do if Dolan called for another five hundred in the morning? And another five hundred in betting money? Shayne could be right, Rourke thought. He should have played it cool and asked for a little more proof. Money didn’t grow on trees, even in this climate.

“Mike, you wouldn’t consider driving up with me, would you?” he said hopefully. “See how it sounds. If you don’t think it’s on the level, blow smoke through your nose or something and I’ll keep the dough in my pocket.”

“Now I know you’re nuts,” Shayne said. “I’ve got things to do tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I keep forgetting you’re not as young as you were,” Rourke said, swaying. “I can remember times when you’d stay up three nights running, but the years take their toll, don’t they? Dolan did say there might be a certain element of danger. I mean, with this amount of scratch involved, they won’t look kindly on a couple of strangers. The more slices, the smaller each slice. But there’s probably not too much to worry about. At this stage, how would anybody know what we had in mind?”

“True,” Shayne agreed gravely.

Rourke put a cigarette in his mouth and fumbled for his lighter. He had trouble bringing the flame and the end of the cigarette together. He threw the lighter away and caromed off a chair on the way to the mantlepiece for the keys to his Ford.

“I guess I shouldn’t have taken that last drink,” he mumbled, running his words together. “But don’t worry, I’ll get there. That heap of mine just about handles itself.”

He was putting some of this on, but the truth was that he didn’t look forward to the drive alone. The Sunshine State Parkway had been engineered to eliminate all forms of distraction, and he often came close to falling asleep on it even in daylight, when he was fully awake to begin with.

Shayne watched his helpless-drunk act, unimpressed.

“What a faker,” he commented. “All right, we’ll go in my car.”

CHAPTER 2

THE GROOMS AND HOT-WALKERS had finished cooling out the horses that had raced in that evening’s program. After putting their charges away for the night, they had gone to bed themselves. In another hour or so, a new set of grooms and trainers would arrive for breakfast, but at the moment Sweeney’s Cafeteria, across the street from the one-mile training track at Surfside Raceway, was all but empty. An attendant or two dozed behind the steam tables. Four or five customers, including Rourke and Mike Shayne, were scattered about the brightly lit dining area.

The big clock over the cash-desk said five minutes to four, and there was still no sign of Joey Dolan. Shayne had brought a pint bottle of cognac, which not only helped keep them awake but improved the taste of the thick, bitter coffee.

“What do you say, Mike?” Rourke asked. “Give him ten more minutes?”

“That’s up to you,” Shayne said. “This is your excursion. I have nothing to do when I get back except sleep, and I can do that any time.”

“I’m sorry. From the way he sounded on the phone, I thought we could count on him.”

“Oh, I’m glad I came, Tim. Otherwise I never would have got to know Sweeney’s, which is undoubtedly one of the really great cafeterias of the Eastern seaboard.”

“Will you lay off, Mike? I said I was sorry.”

Shayne poured another slug of cognac into his coffee. “What kind of guy is this Dolan?”

“Christ, Mike, if you’d asked me yesterday, I would have told you he was one of the pleasantest, best-adjusted people I know. It always seemed to me that he lived pretty much the way he wanted. How many people can you say that about? He probably averages one shave every couple of weeks. He has a little goatee—it tends to fade into the background when he hasn’t shaved for awhile. He changes his socks whenever he feels like it, and that isn’t often. If he’s broke at mealtime, he goes over to the trailer area and sits down to dinner with practically anybody. He’s more in tune with horses than anybody I know. I mean—somebody like Ad Kimball will work from past performance form and bloodlines and all that crap, but Joey just looks them in the eye and finds out how they feel. I always figured that the only reason he needed cash was to keep the sherry flowing. And now it turns out that he wants to own a TV set! He wants to hit big, like the rest of us. That’s the result of the publicity about those mammoth twin-double payoffs lately. I’m disappointed in him, but at the same time, if he’s really onto something, I’m not going to refuse to get in on it.”

He sighed. “Let’s wait till a quarter after. I wish I knew where to look for him, but I don’t. He could be anywhere.”

“You say he’s a sherry-drinker. How did he sound on the phone?”

“Normal,” Rourke said. “He gets a buzz going before breakfast and keeps it going all day. He always knows what he’s doing. Damn it, will you stop looking at me like that? Maybe somebody came along with a half gallon, and he killed it and forgot about his appointment with me. It doesn’t sound like him, that’s all. Or maybe he got the financing from somebody else before we got here. Or maybe I’m all wrong about the guy and he was trying to hustle me. When he looked in the window and saw I’d brought somebody, he changed his mind and sneaked away. But it would really surprise me. More coffee?”

Shayne made a face. “What do you think I am, copper-lined?”

The revolving door squeaked, and Rourke swung around hopefully. A shaky old man in rumpled khakis took a check out of the dispenser.

“Dolan?” Shayne said.

The reporter shook his head. One of the attendants drew a cup of coffee and slid it across the counter to the old man. He carried it to a table in both hands. One of the bows of his horn-rimmed glasses was held together with adhesive tape. His white hair was neatly parted.

“I know who he is, though,” Rourke said. “What’s his name? Goldy something.”

The old man lowered his face toward the coffee, not trusting his trembling hands to lift it off the table. Rourke waited a moment more, then went over to him. After taking a deep gulp, the old-man sat back and began fitting the frayed butt of a cigarette into a filter holder.

“My name’s Tim Rourke,” Rourke said. “I met you the other night with Joey Dolan.”

“Ah, yes,” the old man said. “Pleased to encounter you again, Mr. Rourke. Rinngold Rutherford.” He waved at a chair. “Perhaps you might be interested in a pacer in the fourth. The trainer owes me a favor. I saved him from drowning as a young boy. He informs me in confidence that the horse is ready. It will cost you a five-spot.”

“Sounds pretty good,” Rourke said. “What would you think about a jolt of something in your coffee?”

“I know I’d like it,” Rutherford said simply.

“Then come over and join us.”

Rourke carried his cup for him. Rutherford acknowledged the introduction to Shayne with an old-fashioned bow.

“It is a privilege. I know your reputation, of course.” He sat down between them and murmured as Shayne produced the cognac and poured a large dollop into his cup. “I see that you have excellent taste in brandy. Mr. Rourke and I have been talking about a 2:03 pacer in the fourth tomorrow evening. This evening, I suppose, as I see it is after four o’clock in the morning. This is a horse I can recommend with confidence. I’ve clocked him myself. The stable personnel are unanimous. They believe they have a winner.”

“We’ll talk about that in a minute,” Rourke said. “Meanwhile, have you seen Joey?”

Rutherford took a tiny sip of coffee and breathed in deeply, his eyes closed. “Marvelous. Makes the Sweeney Java really quite drinkable. Yes, I was talking to Joey earlier tonight.”

“When?” Rourke said. “He told us to meet him here at three-thirty.”

Rutherford slid his glasses down his nose and focused on the big clock. “Joey Dolan is not one of the world’s most punctual men. Still, there’s nothing to be gained by being annoyed with him. Joey is Joey. At his age, he’s unlikely to change the habits of a lifetime.”

He pursed his lips in thought, then opened them to take another swallow of coffee. “I, too, you understand, am not a slave to the clock. I consider it no friend of mine. Joey has recently fallen on hard times, and he has been forced to accept a position as hot-walker for the Domaines. He was walking a filly who did quite badly in the sixth, I’m afraid. Finished well out of the money. After he brought her in, we shared a bottle and a few reminiscences. By that time it must have been—oh, two.”

“Then what?” Rourke prompted as the old man’s attention wandered.

“Then he went to bed. We parted behind the Domaine barn. Joey is strongly averse to spending money for a mattress in the bunkhouse, and so am I. The climate is generally salubrious, and even the most luxurious hotel can’t provide its guests with a bed that is more comfortable than a pile of loose straw, especially if you are lucky enough to finish the evening reasonably well oiled.”

“What condition was Joey in?”

Rutherford took another sip of the loaded coffee. “Joey always manages to navigate, and his observations never make anything but excellent sense. However, if you have driven all the way from Miami to meet him, it would be unfair to conceal that, when Joey and I said good-night, he was floating. His plan was to bed down on a cot in the Domaine tack-room. This was strictly against the rules of that stable, Mr. Larry Domaine being one of the most persnickety owners in the business, but Joey has this wonderful indifference to rules. He opened a window and floated through. He urged me to accompany him, but I felt obliged to turn down the invitation.”

His hand was now steadier, and he was able to raise his cup without bending to meet it. “I don’t know how long it’s been since I tasted such a splendid coffee royal. Truly superb. After leaving Joey, I found a comfortable corner in another stable, but I had scarcely fallen asleep when, I’m sorry to say, that they rousted me out. Yes, the inhuman bastards rousted me out. I was tempted to join Joey at Domaine’s, but common sense told me to think about it over a cup of coffee. I have a business connection with Mr. and Mrs. Domaine. I cash tickets for them from time to time, and the condition of the relationship is that I have no contact with any of their facilities or people.”

He finished his coffee, tilting his cup at a steep angle to be sure he had it all. “About that pacer in the fourth. Did I mention that my usual fee is five bucks?”

Shayne took out a five-dollar bill. Folding it lengthwise, he slipped it under his own coffee cup.

“Wake Dolan up and tell him Tim Rourke is waiting for him. Can you get into the tack-room?”

“As far as that goes,” Rutherford said, his eyes on the bill. “At this time of night nobody’ll bother me. I take it you aren’t planning to pay me in advance?”

“No.”

“Then you can expect me in five minutes.” He paid for his coffee and went out. Rourke said slowly, “Joey phoned me at around two-thirty, Mike. If he went to bed in the Domaine barn at two—”

“Rutherford’s not that good a witness, and he’s not wearing a watch. You’d better get the name of that pacer he’s talking about, or I have a feeling the trip will be wasted.”

“He sold me a horse the last time I saw him,” Rourke said gloomily. “It finished seventh.”

The counterman called that he had just brewed a fresh urn of coffee. Rourke went for two more cups. This time the coffee tasted more like coffee.

Rutherford came through the revolving door, and headed straight for them. His hands were fluttering again.

“I apologize for keeping you waiting,” he said, sitting down.

Shayne emptied a water glass and poured him a straight shot of cognac.

“Thank you,” Rutherford said. “Much as I enjoyed that coffee royal, the coffee does tend to blur the impact.” He emptied the glass in one long ecstatic swallow. “That is grand liquor, Mr. Shayne. Well, Joey wasn’t there. His cot was set up. He had a feed bag stuffed with straw, which he was going to use as his pillow. And the funny thing was—his toothbrush was there on the beam. Joey is no fanatic about most things, but he definitely makes it a fetish to brush his teeth practically every night, no matter what time he goes to bed. He not only wasn’t in the tack-room, he wasn’t in the Domaine barn at all. I looked in two other barns where he has privileges. He wasn’t there either. I don’t know what to make of it. If he changed his mind and decided to sleep elsewhere, why didn’t he take his toothbrush?”

“When you were talking to him, Goldy,” Rourke said, “did he say anything about tomorrow night’s twin double?”

Rutherford looked from Rourke to Shayne. “Do you mean to say that Joey Dolan got you up here at four A.M. to sell you a winning combination in the twin double? That Joey. A conception of such scope wouldn’t even occur to anybody else. It’s breathtaking. But if Joey doesn’t show up, and it certainly looks as though he’s not going to, give me another drink and a few minutes with pencil and paper, and I may be able to block out some suggestions for you.”

“I don’t think so, thanks,” Rourke said.

“In that case—”

He cleared his throat and tugged at the end of the five-dollar bill beneath Shayne’s coffee cup. Shayne lifted the cup, and the bill disappeared into the pocket of Rutherford’s khaki shirt.

CHAPTER 3

TIM ROURKE expected a certain amount of needling from Shayne on the way back to Miami. But when he started to apologize, his friend merely said, “You saved yourself five hundred bucks. Forget it.”

“I just wish I knew what happened. He certainly wasn’t stone-cold sober when I talked to him, but I can’t see him passing out somewhere when he had something as big as this on the fire.”

“Tim, you weren’t hitting on all cylinders yourself. It’s obvious. By the time he got to the bottom of the bottle, he’d forgotten all about how easy it is to get rich betting the twin double. You’re lucky it turned out this way. Wheeling all the horses in two races runs into money. You’d make out better in the long run if you concentrated on improving your poker game.”

“My poker game’s all right,” Rourke said defensively. “I hardly ever catch four of a kind to beat a full house, that’s all.”

He stared moodily through the windshield at the wide strip of concrete that was flowing rapidly backward beneath their wheels. “‘Some ugly boys in this business.’ That’s one of the things he said on the phone, and I can’t get it out of my head. I wish Rutherford hadn’t mentioned that toothbrush.”

Shayne snorted, and Rourke said nothing more. In the morning, after too little sleep, he showed up for work with a headache, an unpleasant taste in his mouth, something wrong with his nervous system, and the feeling that Shayne, as usual, had been talking sense. They had wasted a few hours, but it hadn’t cost him any money.

He was writing a series of articles on payoffs in the construction business, a perennial subject he had handled so often that he could do it justice without being fully awake. He worked steadily until noon, getting through a pack of cigarettes and innumerable cups of coffee, occasionally making a phone call to check a name or a reference.

A youthful reporter at the next desk wrenched a sheet of copy paper out of his typewriter and asked if Rourke had any aspirin. Rourke shook his head. “What’s the matter, headache?”

The other reporter, whose name was Mehlmann, was leaning forward, very pale, his head on both fists. “Headache and gut-ache. Every time I go into that goddamned morgue, I can taste it the rest of the day.”

“Don’t let MacMaster know you feel like that,” Rourke said, “or he’ll see to it you catch every morgue story as long as you work here.”

“Don’t I know it,” Mehlmann agreed. “This is the third time in ten days. If I get one more wood-alcohol poisoning, I may drink a pint of paint-remover myself. I damn near covered this one from the facts on the police blotter. But it’s just as well I talked to the morgue people. The stiff had a copy of last night’s Surfside Raceway program in his pocket. That gave me my lead.”

Rourke’s swivel chair squeaked as it came around. “Did they identify him?”

Mehlmann checked his copy. “Joseph Dolan.” Looking up, he saw Rourke’s face. “What’s the matter, Tim?”

Rourke was on his feet, clutching the corner of his desk. “Where was he?”

“In a hallway on Fifth Street. Did I miss something? I only gave it three paragraphs.”

He held out the yellow sheet of copy paper, but Rourke waved it aside. “I don’t want to see the damn story. Tell me what happened.”

“I didn’t really go into it, Tim. Apparently he went to sleep where they found him. No identification, no money. A little chin beard, five or six days’ stubble everywhere else. He’d been picked up for vagrancy a couple of years back, and they had his prints. Two other bums were found dead in that neighborhood within the last week—damn fools made the mistake of getting drunk on methanol, wood alcohol. Somebody broke into a hardware store a while back, and the cops think that’s where the stuff came from. They did an autopsy on Dolan. It was methanol, all right, maybe not in pure form. Naturally everybody figured this was more of the same. When a dead man hasn’t shaved for a week, of course there’s not much pressure. Tim, does the name Dolan mean something to you?”

“Damn right,” Rourke said grimly. He stood there for another second, gripping the corner of his desk. Poor Joey, he said to himself. He should have been satisfied with small bets and an easy life. He should never have started dreaming about big money. Somebody had read about the two wood-alcohol deaths, and had thought he could drop Dolan in a hallway and no questions would be asked. But Tim Rourke had some questions, by God. He made himself a promise. By the time he was finished with this, whoever had done it would be very sorry.

His lips set, he strode to the sports side of the city room. Ad Kimball, working on his selections for the races that evening, looked up as Rourke stopped beside him. He put his head in his hands and groaned.

“I’d almost forgotten I was sick,” he said. “Then you have to come along and remind me. Have you ever tried reading a race chart with a hangover? After about two minutes, that small print starts squirming around like beetles.”

“Come over and talk to MacMaster with me,” Rourke said. “I don’t want to explain things twice.”

“Why? I don’t talk to city editors unless I have a good reason.”

Rourke picked up the phone on his desk and asked for an outside line, then dialed Michael Shayne’s number. Lucy Hamilton, Shayne’s brown-haired secretary, told him her boss was working on something on Miami Beach.

“Have him phone me at the paper if he calls in, will you, Lucy?” Rourke hung up and told Kimball, “Bring those programs. We’re going to be talking about horses.”

MacMaster, the city editor, was a bald, cold-eyed man who chewed on a dead cigar as Tim Rourke told him about the phone call from Dolan, the fruitless trip to Surfside Raceway, Dolan’s mention of danger and his death in Miami a few hours later.

“Spell it out,” MacMaster said. “You think somebody killed him?”

“All I know,” Rourke said, biting off his words in a disgusted voice, “is that I gave up on him last night. I let people persuade me that he’d made up this twin-double fantasy to con me out of five hundred bucks. I don’t know if I was right or wrong. It seems to me I’ve got to find out.”

“OK,” MacMaster said. “Your hunches pay off about fifty percent of the time, and that’s good enough for me. I don’t have to tell you what the cops are going to say. They’re going to say, ‘Get the hell out of here and stop bothering us.’”

“The hell with the cops. They go by the law of averages. Here’s a guy with a vagrancy record. He looks like a bum and smells like a bum. He never owned a TV set or subscribed to the Reader’s Digest. Probably he never paid an income tax in his life. He has wood alcohol in him, and the law of averages says don’t give it another thought. I need some more facts before I talk to the cops. I want to go up to the track and ask some questions about those twin-double races.”

“Kimball,” MacMaster said.

The sports writer started. “Yeah?”

“What do you think of Rourke’s idea?”

“That somebody fed this bum wood alcohol because he found out about a scheme to beat the twin? Tim knows what I think. I think it’s ludicrous. Sure, thousands of people buy twin-double tickets every night. So far there’s always been at least one winner, and there can be as many as a couple of hundred. If I understand what Tim’s trying to say, he thinks that two of the four races tonight are fixed. I know,” he said to Rourke as he started to interrupt. “‘Fix’ is the wrong word. Let’s put it this way. Some person or persons unknown have reason to believe that two of the horses entered in the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth races are reasonably certain to win. Is that better? All right. If this was absolutely certain, and if Dolan knew what they were up to and threatened to give them away, in which case they would stand to lose a large sum of money, of course they might kill him. But murder’s an extreme way to handle the problem, it seems to me. In the first place, nothing is absolutely certain in harness racing. In the second place, why would it occur to Dolan to give them away? All he’d want would be to cut himself in on it. This would lower their payoff a little, but not too much. A twin-double investment takes capital. Say without Dolan there would be twenty winning tickets. With him there would be twenty-one. That wouldn’t make enough of a difference to justify a murder.”

MacMaster took his mangled cigar out of his mouth and looked at it for a moment. “Unless what Dolan found out would get them in legal trouble, or in trouble with the track. It’s worth a try. How are you coming with your picks for tonight, Kimball?”

“I’m down to the ninth race, and that’s the tough one.”

“Look at those last four races again with Tim’s theory in mind,” MacMaster said. “Dolan went to sleep in the Domaine barn, and let’s assume that the Domaine horses figure in it, whatever it is. I admit the chronology is a bit muddy, but if he climbed in the window at two and climbed out again at two-thirty to call Tim in Miami, he probably didn’t have a sudden inspiration as he was falling asleep. He must have seen something, or heard something, or somebody told him something.”

Kimball shrugged. “Just remember I’m no clairvoyant.” Seating himself on the corner of the desk, he began studying the entries. After a moment Rourke could see that he was becoming interested. He looked up a point in the Trotting Association Year Book.

“Christ, there are millions of possibilities. The Domaine stable has horses entered in the sixth and the ninth. Both of them raced at Yonkers last summer, and I’d better check the Yonkers programs to see what I can find. In the ninth they’ve got a mare, My Treat, an in-and-outer. She’s always had good potential, but she’s never delivered. If those are the crucial races, the sixth and the ninth, there’s one overlap. It wouldn’t strike you unless you were looking for something like it. A guy named Paul Thorne is driving in both races, and he used to work for the Domaines.”

“What do you know about him?” Rourke said.

“He’s young, tough, probably a little crazy, very competitive. He’s number two in the driver standings. The fans love him, because he always gives the impression of being out to win, and he doesn’t care how he does it, ethically or otherwise. He has a few horses of his own, but he’ll drive for any stable that pays his fee. Some people have started betting on him every time he goes out, which drives down the odds on his horses, and he’s been having trouble getting work. He’s always in hot water with the stewards, who want drivers to be gentlemen and move over when somebody wants to get by. He’s just waited out a fifteen-day suspension. If you want me to do some guessing, I’d guess he might be open to a deal.”

“Good,” MacMaster said. “That’s where you’d better start, Tim. Now what about these Domaines? What are they, husband and wife?”

“Yeah, and they’re in a different category from Thorne. It’s a big stable, with plenty of money behind it. There’s a stud farm and a training stable, and they’ve turned out a few champions, big money-winners. It’s a racing outfit, not a betting outfit.”

“I’ve never known a rich man who minded getting richer,” Rourke said.

“You’ve got a point,” Kimball admitted. “I don’t know Larry Domaine, but I know people in his tax bracket. They wouldn’t turn down a chance at a big win, and especially if the Internal Revenue Bureau didn’t know about it. But would they take any real risks, like murdering somebody? You can look him up in the clips, Tim. I think he won a chess tournament last year. He’s a cold fish, from his looks. The wife is gorgeous. You see her picture every now and then.”

Mehlmann, the reporter who had the desk next to Rourke’s, called, “Phone, Tim.”

“That may be Shayne,” Rourke said. “He knows about this, Mac, and there may be too many angles for me to check out by myself in one afternoon. Would the paper put up a small retainer, if I can get him?”

MacMaster considered briefly. “OK, up to two hundred bucks.”

Rourke returned to his own desk and picked up the open phone. “Rourke.”

Shayne’s voice said, “Lucy told me to call you.”

“Mike, listen. Joey Dolan’s been found dead. Naturally I feel lousy about it. I’m going up to the track to see what I can find out.”

“What did he die of?” Shayne said.

Rourke related what he knew about Dolan’s death, and his suspicions about how and why it had happened. Shayne listened quietly.

“Ad Kimball’s just been handicapping those races,” Rourke went on, “and we’ve got a good jumping-off point. Dolan used the ninth race as an example when he was talking to me, and the Domaines have horses going in the ninth and the sixth. A driver named Paul Thorne, who used to work for them, is driving both races. We’re wondering if the deal is for Thorne to win one and the Domaine horse the other. What I plan to do is barge in and ask a few questions and see how they react. The Mike Shayne technique, in short. I’m going to start with Thorne. But Kimball says he’s a menace, if not slightly out of his head, and I doubt if I can handle him if he doesn’t want to be handled. Would you be able to come along, Mike? After we see Thorne, we can split up. There’s a lot of ground to cover and not much time. MacMaster says he’ll give you a retainer. I won’t mention the figure. It’s small. But maybe in the process we can come up with a couple of winners.”

“Afraid I can’t help you, Tim,” Shayne said. “I have people to see myself.”

“Hell!” Rourke said; he had been counting on Shayne. “Couldn’t you postpone it?”

“Can’t be done. I’ve been called in on that jewel robbery in the Fontainebleau last month. Diamonds insured at a hundred thousand, and I get fifteen percent if I can turn them in. As of this moment, it looks easy.”

“Of course,” Rourke said. “MacMaster’s only authorizing two hundred bucks, and compared to fifteen G’s that’s nowhere.”

“Yeah, there’s quite a difference,” Shayne said. “Something like fourteen thousand eight hundred.”

“And who is Joey Dolan, after all? A wino. A bum. He couldn’t find a niche for himself in the affluent society, and who cares?”

“That won’t get you anywhere, Tim,” Shayne said mildly. “After thinking about it, I can see how a smart manipulator might think he could beat the twin double. But murder doesn’t make sense.”

“We don’t know enough to say! As far as the cops are concerned, I know he’s already a statistic. They’d be surprised to hear that only yesterday he was a human being. But I happen to know that Joey never drank anything but sherry. It was his way of protecting himself. He would no more take a drink of wood alcohol than you would, Mike. I mean it. It would have to be at least half sherry, camouflaged in a sherry bottle. That means that whoever gave it to him knew his habits.”

Shayne said, “Maybe he stuck to sherry when you were around, but you know drunks as well as I do. You’ve got a rosy-tinted picture of the life this guy led—no office hours, no rent to pay, no butt-kissing, hundreds of friends. But be realistic, Tim. The happy-go-lucky bum is a myth.”

“I liked him, goddamn it.”

“Sure. Just don’t turn him into a hero or a saint. Even if you’re right about what happened, you know you’ll have a hell of a time proving anything, don’t you? I’ve got to go now, Tim. I have a date with a guy who’s going to put me in touch with somebody who knows what the boys are asking for the diamonds. If I don’t show up, he’s going to look for some other go-between. I don’t feel like throwing away fifteen thousand bucks because you’ve been kidding yourself about some picturesque rummy.”

Trying to keep his temper, Rourke commented that Shayne would have taken a different attitude when he was starting out in business. In those days he hadn’t looked for easy jobs, and the wealthier his clients were, the less time he had for them. Shayne answered sharply and the reporter blew up. Ever since he had heard about Dolan’s death, he had been spoiling for trouble.

“If that’s the way you want it, Mike,” he said. “From now on let’s assume we don’t know each other.”

He slammed down the phone and felt for cigarettes. He didn’t need any help from Mike Shayne. He could get along perfectly well by himself.

CHAPTER 4

ONLY ONE OF THE HORSES Paul Thorne owned was in its stall, and Thorne himself, Rourke was told, was rarely around at this time of day. All the stablemen had different ideas of where to start looking for him. Maybe the racing secretary’s office.

Thorne wasn’t there. A driver who was waiting in the anteroom thought he might be at the smithy. The blacksmith reported to Rourke that Thorne had been there and gone. If he wasn’t at the vet’s or in the driver’s shed or out timing a horse on one of the training tracks, Rourke had better ask his wife. If he left the track on a day when he was scheduled to race, he usually told her where he could be reached.

Rourke was given directions to the Thornes’ trailer, in a large, disorderly trailer park beyond the double-decked bunkhouses. He knocked on the door, waited, knocked again, and was about to give up when the door opened and a pretty young woman looked out. Her hair was in curlers, and Rourke’s first impression was that she was naked. With a spurt of relief, he saw that she was wearing a bikini. Without 20/20 vision he might not have been able to find it.

“Looking for somebody?” she said in a high voice.

Rourke pulled himself together. “You must be Mrs. Thorne. My name’s Tim Rourke, and I’m from the Miami News. We want to do a picture story on one of the two or three top drivers here, to give the public an idea of what goes on behind the scenes. Your husband’s the obvious choice, but I’ve got to clear up a few things before I can give it the go-ahead. I’m supposed to phone the paper and let them know right away.”

“Golly,” she said, impressed. “He had to go downtown and I don’t expect him back before like five. If there’s anything I could do?”

She let the door swing open a little more. She was holding a martini. All in all, she was one of the most pleasant sights Rourke had seen in weeks. Probably he wasn’t in as much of a hurry as he had supposed. He quieted his conscience by telling it that she would undoubtedly allow herself to be pumped about her husband. She might even tell him more than Thorne would himself.

“Maybe you could give me some background, at that.”

She gave a little giggle as he stepped into the darkened interior of the trailer. It seemed very crowded. Every flat surface had something on it—pots of African violets, copies of Better Homes and Gardens, china dogs. Rourke told himself to be careful not to make any sudden moves or he would be sure to break something.

“You’ll have to excuse the way the place looks,” she said. “On a hot day I just let the dirt collect. Why not start right off by calling me Win, Mr. O’Rourke?”

“Rourke, without the O,” he said. “My friends call me Tim, and I know we’re going to be friends. You’re sure I’m not interrupting anything?”

“What’s there to interrupt? This is the quiet time of the day, not that the joint ever really swings, and I was sitting around doing my nails and relaxing with a weak martini. I think there’s one more in the pitcher if you’re interested. What the hell? Live dangerously. I get more compliments on my martinis.”

Rourke told her he never turned down an offer of a martini, and watched her pour. She was in her middle twenties, with slanting blue eyes and a mouth that had been made up recently, probably while she was deciding whether to let him in. She was a little plump, but Rourke, still dazzled by all the pink and brown flesh-tones, didn’t feel critical. She had a mole on one side of her navel, a surgical scar on the other; both, he thought, were equally attractive.

“Isn’t it hot?” she said.

She waved him to a couch. As he sat down it moved unsteadily beneath him. Probably it changed into a double bed at night. She had tilted the slats of the Venetian blinds to keep out the sun. A small refrigerator purred quietly in one corner. She gave him a martini and frowned down at herself.

“Gee, on second thoughts, I get so used to padding around with next to nothing on I forget how it looks. I’ve got a terrible reputation with the neighbors already, but what I tell Paul is, if a bikini’s OK on the beach with thousands and thousands of people, what’s wrong with it at home? But I mean, I don’t know you, do I? I think I better put something else on. You know, I stood there at the window for the longest time? I couldn’t decide to go to the door or not. Paul has these rules about letting in salesmen when I’m alone in the house, but I didn’t think you looked like a salesman. It’s all right to let reporters in. What the sports pages say about a driver is important, money-wise. You can’t stay in the business and not cooperate with the press. Right at this point Paul’s career could use a good write-up, believe me.”

She opened a narrow metal closet, still talking, took out a flowered dressing gown and shrugged it on, belting it in tightly at the waist. “And these things in my hair. Ghastly. That was the real reason I didn’t let you in right away, after I decided you weren’t peddling vacuum cleaners, probably.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Rourke said. “I’ve seen women in curlers before.”

“I bet you have. You’re not married, are you?”

“No.”

“I can almost always tell.” She drained her martini, crunching a piece of ice between her strong white teeth. “People think eating ice cubes is a disgusting habit, but I like to. They have that nice potent flavor.”

Unfastening the scarf around her head, she began to strip out pins and rollers. “Finish your drink, it’s mainly ice water. I’ll make us another batch as soon as I get myself looking human.”

The ice-cold martini got to Rourke very fast. One of the things that made him a good reporter was an ability to listen while people talked, and with Win Thorne he could see that all he had to do was hope that the gin held out.

She was humming the title of a popular song while she brushed her shoulder-length black hair.

“Now I feel better,” she said, turning. “I’m going to take the bull by the horns. Paul’s just right for this story. He looks great in photographs. I don’t want to tell you your business or anything, this is only a suggestion, but what you could do is go to the film patrol—they take movies of every race—and look at some of the highlights of his best drives. Even when you know they turned out OK, they can still make the hair stand up on your head. He’s a lunatic sometimes! I think I know what’s bothering you, though. That last suspension.”

“It’s been bothering me a little,” Rourke said.

“I knew it! Paul doesn’t mind all the trouble he gets into for rough driving. The slobs who bet on the driver and not the horse, they like to think he’s going to break his neck, if he has to, to get home in the money. Horserace bettors as a class, Tim, you can have them. He gets suspended for bumping and fighting in the paddock or interference, and it’s all to the good. But this fifteen-day rap was for betting against himself. That harms him with the fans, and I hope you won’t have to mention it in the story. You understand that everybody does it, because why should you pass up a race when you’re driving a dog yourself that doesn’t have a chance, and there’s a stick-out horse going against you, maybe at a good price? But the stewards take this holier-than-thou attitude.”

Meanwhile, she was making more martinis, measuring by eye and going light on the vermouth. “Besides,” she added, “he never admitted it. They don’t have to prove anything. They just get a report from somebody who doesn’t like him, and there are lots of drivers who don’t like him because they’re scared of him. And snick”—she made a throat-cutting gesture—“out of competition for fifteen days.”

Rourke held out his glass and she filled it, smiling. She brushed back her hair with the hand that held her glass.

“One thing about these trailers, they’re the right size for two people if they like each other. If they don’t, it’s murder.” She touched the dial of a small radio. “Do we want some music? No,” she decided.

“Didn’t Paul start out driving for the Domaines?” Rourke said.

There was a slight check to her movements. She returned the pitcher to the top of the refrigerator. She sat down, crossed her bare legs, and arranged the wrapper carefully.

“Why, yes. Sure. But you know how they make you do when you drive for one stable. They have these plans for the horses and they tell the driver, certain ways to rate the horse, where they want him to make his move. And you know that didn’t sit so hot with Paul. He has to be in charge all the way. And like every big stable, they’ve got their share of dogmeat horses, and he had to take what they gave him. That hurt him in the standings. He thought he’d do better as a catch driver. And he did do better. For a while he did fine. He bought a few horses. There was one big roan gelding, Don J. Oh, what a lot of horse! Earned nearly twenty thousand for us, let alone what we made betting on him, and I began to think in terms of having a few dollars in the checking account for a cushion. We put a down payment on a house in town, a quarter acre with our own dock, and then Don J. went into the rail and we had to shoot him. And Paul had forgotten to send in the insurance! He’d bought a couple of weanlings from the Domaines’ farm, cost an arm and a leg, and all they’ve done since is eat and take medicine. I personally think Domaine stuck him. Then a couple of bets went sour, and that’s why we’re still living out of a trailer. This last fifteen days without a cent coming in—”

She shuddered and took a long swallow of her martini, to kill the taste of being out of money.

“I suppose he’ll have to be careful about what he bets on for a while,” Rourke suggested.

“He better be careful, or I’ll pick him apart with my fingernails.” She touched the radio dial again, pulling her hand back without turning it on. “I’m not going to tell you he’s stopped betting, because that wouldn’t be human nature.”

“Off the record,” Rourke said. “About all I know about harness horses is which end you feed them at. Granted that Paul’s an expert, and if he’s driving in a race himself, he has something to do with how it turns out, but how can he be sure?”

“He can’t be. But you aren’t betting against the odds, honey, you’re betting against the public. They don’t know anything. All you have to do is fifteen percent better than the public, to beat the tax bite, and you’ll make out OK. Honestly, when you came in I didn’t think I was going to end up giving a lecture.”

“What about the twin double?” Rourke said carelessly. “I suppose he steers clear of that?”

“I wish he did! He gets inspirations, like anybody, and so far he hasn’t even come close. Like the last time, when we were drinking tap water instead of Beefeater martinis, that was all because of a twin double. He thought it was in the bag. We hocked things to get in on it. They’re still in hock, I’m sorry to say. Oh, he has the gambling fever. Finish your drink and I’ll give you another before it gets too watery.”

Rourke looked at his watch. “I have to be going in a minute.”

“Oh, pooh. I’ve been trying to think what I could tell you about Paul that you could use, if you do the story, and I’ve just had a flash.”

She brought the pitcher over. She was beginning to wobble, Rourke noticed. He drank up, to be ready with an empty glass. She went off balance all at once, as though a heavy truck had crashed into the side of the trailer. She ended up partly on the couch and partly on Rourke. Somehow she had managed not to spill any martinis.

“Wow!” she said. “What happened? I don’t have to get off for a minute, do I? Give me time to adjust.”

“If you’re comfortable,” he said. “The only thing is, these trailers are about six inches apart, and I don’t know what Paul would think if he—”

“Don’t worry, he really won’t be back. He’s got a deal on the fire. I came over here to give you a drink. Where’s your glass?”

She put the pitcher on the floor after pouring. He had the martini glass in one hand and nowhere to put the other except on her hip. He could feel the outlines of her bikini beneath the smooth dressing gown. She wriggled a little to settle herself.

“What I was going to say,” she said comfortably. “About Paul and dames. He’s a good-looking guy. That lovely build. When he comes into the stretch going for a little gap between two sulkies, using his whip and yelling bloody murder, his cap usually off by that time—well, it makes me weak in the knees to think about it. All I have to say is, I’m not the only one. I’m reconciled to the fact. I mean he’d be a hit with the fair sex even if there wasn’t the money angle to it. But they not only want to get in the back seat with him, fast, they want him to whisper the name of some horse in their ear afterward. See what I mean? The public never thinks about that kind of problem. How does it strike you as an angle for the story?”

“I’ll think about it.”

She was moving more than necessary, he thought. If he was going to get anything significant out of this girl, he had better hurry up. He tried to think what questions Mike Shayne would ask.

“Uh—does Paul do any driving for the Domaines any more?”

“Sometimes. One of their horses won’t behave for anybody else. They aren’t enemies or anything.” She pulled back a little to get his face into focus. “Why are we harping on the Domaines all the time, honey?”

“I just thought when you were talking about the twin double—why wouldn’t it be a smart idea for a big stable to compare notes with some driver who was theoretically independent? Figure two of the races, and you’d have a headstart.”

“You can tangle yourself up in knots if you try to be too smart. All you want to do is beat that fifteen percent. You know what I like about you, Tim? Now don’t laugh. No muscles. Most of the guys around here think all they have to do is ripple their biceps a few times and they’re in.” She touched the side of his face. “I like people who can talk about current events and like that. I bet it takes plenty of brains to be a reporter.”

“Sometimes I wonder,” Rourke said. “For example, I ought to be finding out about that suspension of Paul’s. Maybe it’s the gin. Maybe it’s the way you look in a bikini. I can’t think of any more questions.”

“Didn’t I tell you about that suspension? It was made up out of thin air. He was betting on a Domaine horse, speaking of coincidences, and the judge caught him with the ticket on him in the paddock. He just happened to pick it up off the ground, but would they believe him? No, he’s made monkeys out of them too many other times. There’s more gin, but I feel so lazy, don’t you? Everybody at the track gets up at the crack of dawn, and that’s why I think it’s OK to start drinking around lunchtime—it’s like late afternoon for ordinary people. Honey, Paul’s your best bet for this story, so why waste your time looking for anybody else? Stick around. I want you to say yes, because, boy, do we need that favorable exposure right now. What I’d like you to do—you’ll be interviewing other people about him, then come back and get our side of it. Paul has a funny habit of getting under different people’s skin. Look at him the wrong way and the next thing you know he’s in orbit. He goes around at about two hundred and eleven degrees all the time, one degree more and he boils over. There’s a reason for that. It’s not so bad being poor when you don’t see anybody else but other poor people. But in racing half the people don’t have a cent and the other half are rolling. Honey, stay where you are. I want to get some music.”

One of her bare arms slid around his neck and pulled him forward. The kiss she gave him tasted of gin and vermouth, with a faint tang of olives. The couch slipped, as though threatening to come open by itself. Her tongue moved against his. She groped for his hand and put it inside her wrapper. His fingers were cold from the martini glass, and she shivered as they touched her stomach.

He was trying hard to be objective. He knew she was hoping to delay him, and he knew she wasn’t as drunk or as taken with him as she wanted him to believe. He wondered if the questions about the twin double had made her suspicious, if she was trying to pin him down until her husband showed up. Still, he didn’t like to be rude. Against his will, he was responding to the movements of her tongue. His hand was in contact with the bikini. Mike Shayne, he knew, would stand up without ceremony at this point and dump her on the floor, but he had long ago faced the fact that he wasn’t Mike Shayne. She gasped something against his mouth and he felt her hand on his, directing him to the tiny hidden zipper.

And then she pushed away suddenly, her lithe body in rapid fluid motion. Twisting, she was up in an instant, pulling her wrapper together. The belt had come off, and was probably somewhere beneath Rourke. She gave him an urgent frown. The drinks had slowed his reactions, and he was still frozen in a disordered position when he heard the door open. That released him. He came forward in a partial crouch, his face serious, as though he and Mrs. Thorne had been discussing foreign policy or some other important question.

CHAPTER 5

ROURKE LOOKED UP out of the corners of his eyes. The man in the doorway had come in without knocking, and it stood to reason that he was probably Paul Thorne, who had been described to Rourke more than once as being a dangerous, violent, impulsive man. He was wearing a knit shirt, and the biceps the reporter had also been told about were out there in plain sight, bulging from the short sleeves. His neck was a short, solid column, seemingly made of something more unyielding than ordinary flesh. Against the bright sky his features were indistinct. He stepped on into the trailer, which at once became seriously overcrowded, and closed the door. Now his face took shape. He would have been exceptionally handsome if his eyes hadn’t been too small and too close together. There was a mean glint in them that sent a shiver down the back of the reporter’s neck. Thorne looked from his guest on the couch to the empty martini pitcher on the floor, and on to Win, who, in the half second she had been given, had somehow managed to look cool and indifferent, a little bored.

“We were hoping you’d be back early, Paul. Mr. Rourke here is from the Miami News. They want to do a feature story on you. Isn’t that great? You’re just in time, he was getting impatient.”

Without saying a word, her husband picked her up by the waist in his huge hands and slammed her against the stainless steel partition separating the living area from the tiny kitchen. Her lips writhed, she was suddenly ugly. She slid into the kitchen, snatched up a butcher knife and whirled.

“Don’t do that again.”

Thorne laughed. He wasn’t as large as he had looked in the doorway, but he moved with the power and grace of a jungle animal. One of his front teeth had been broken and not yet repaired.

“What have you got on underneath?” he demanded.

“Don’t be stupid!” She flicked the robe open and gave him a glimpse of the bikini. “I’ve got my bathing suit on, or doesn’t that prove anything?”

“You didn’t think I’d be back for a couple of hours. You knew I’ve got a busy afternoon. What are you on, about the fourth batch of martinis?”

“I offered him a drink! Why not? What’s wrong with being friendly with a reporter? You don’t need favorable publicity, do you? What was I supposed to do, spit in his eye?”

Rourke had checked his clothing and decided it would do no harm to try to get out without any broken bones. He sat forward, and the couch lurched underneath him.

“Three’s a crowd,” he said with a nervous laugh. “I’ll wait outside. Call me when the argument’s over.”

“This won’t take a minute,” Thorne said without turning his head. He took a step toward his wife and put out his hand. “Handle-end first.”

She made a stabbing motion at his outstretched hand. “Handle-end, hell. Right below the belly button, if you come any closer. Don’t you know how to behave? What kind of story do you want him to write about you anyway?”

“I don’t need any help from the goddamn newspapers! You bitch, let’s have that knife before I—”

“I’m supposed to hang around all day doing housework, is that it?” she cried. “How much housework is there in a twenty-eight-foot trailer? And where have you been, may I ask? I don’t suppose you’ve been bouncing around in a motel with anybody, have you? Of course not. She’s too busy helping out in the hospital. The nurses are so overworked, Lady Bountiful has to come in and change the flower water.”

“Shut up, damn you. That’s over and you know it.”

“Do I?” she screamed, dancing forward. “And you never really cared about her, did you? You were just in it for the money, to squeeze a few horses out of her before she got sick of you. You lying bastard. You saw her again last night. Don’t you think I know that perfume? I ought to by now. Those damn little cigars she smokes?”

“I said to shut up.”

“And what if I feel like having some sex in the middle of the day? Tim’s not like you. He’s got a little consideration for the way a person feels.”

Her husband kicked out at her ankles. As she dodged back he feinted at her with one open hand.

“And he wants to know about the twin tonight,” she cried. “And did you use to drive for Domaines. What did you want me to do, turn him loose in the barns?”

He feinted at her again and as the knife came up his other hand came up beneath it. He caught her wrist and with a quick wringing motion shook the knife out of her fingers. She kicked at his groin with one bare foot. He jabbed her almost playfully in the jaw. It was more of a push than a blow, but it dropped her to the floor without a sound.

Rourke, having finally forced the couch to let him go, was on his way to the door. He was fumbling at the knob when Thorne swung around and cuffed him lightly. Rourke stopped trying to open the door.

“I hate like hell to slug a woman,” Thorne said ruefully, “but you don’t know Win. You may think she was fooling with that carving knife.” He shook his head. “She would have stuck it in me if I’d given her the chance. It’s happened before. She punctured one of my lungs. She probably soaked up quite a few martinis, didn’t she?”

Rourke straightened his tie. “We only had a couple. She was telling me about that accident you had. What was the name of the horse? Don J.”

Thorne tossed his head in a way that made Rourke think of a spirited horse. “Don’t remind me. Things were just beginning to break right for me when that happened.”

Rourke motioned at Thorne’s unconscious wife. “We’d better do something about her.”

“Aah,” Thorne said. “It’s a policy of mine—bat them around now and then, it’s the one way to keep them in line. She’ll be OK.”

Reaching out suddenly, he pulled Rourke off balance and sent him spinning into the interior of the trailer. Rourke crouched, watching warily to see what came next.

“I don’t pretend to be any great brain,” Thorne said. “I’m trying to figure something out, and it may take a minute. You’re a reporter, she said. From the News.”

“I’ve got a press card if you want to see it.” Rourke knew he was sweating, but he didn’t want to show Thorne how nervous he was by wiping his face. “We want to run a piece about what actually happens in the course of a race, how you get the most out of a horse, the things you have to look out for, and so on.”

“What was that about the twin?”

Rourke smiled weakly. “Just talk. It happened to come up.”

The flesh around Thorne’s little eyes contracted and he yelled, “Goddamn it, what do you mean, drinking my gin and necking around with my wife?”

Rourke tried to look surprised and amused. “Was that what you thought when you came in? No, no. You’re barking up the wrong tree. She had a bit too much to drink and she tripped. That’s all in the world that happened.”

Thorne sneered. “I happen to know that kid. Am I supposed to be blind, that I don’t notice the top button on your pants is open? The only thing that surprises me, she didn’t have the radio on.”

He moved toward Rourke, completely filling the space between the furniture. The contest, Rourke could see, was going to be strictly one-sided. Thorne outweighed him by forty pounds, and it had been years since Rourke had had any exercise except pecking at a typewriter.

“If you try to get back at me by putting something lousy in the paper,” Thorne said, “I’ll come after you, and I’ll find you, don’t worry. I can’t let you get away with feeling my wife just because you work on a paper. Win wouldn’t like it and she wouldn’t understand it. We’ll make up, but there’s got to be blood and a couple of teeth on the floor when she conies out of it, or she’ll think I don’t give a goddamn.”

His eyes narrowed, and all at once Rourke realized that he was only using his wife as the pretext. Rourke had made the mistake of asking about the twin double, and Thorne was going to see to it that he didn’t ask any more questions until after the payoffs. That look didn’t mean the kind of friendly punch in the head he had given his wife. It meant a beating.

Rourke took a deep breath and rushed him, butting as hard as he could at the point where his rib cage came together. It was like running into a wall. Rourke reeled back as Thorne’s left fist came around. It connected with, his ear and his head rang like a bell. He snatched up the butcher knife and threw it blindly at Thorne. Whirling, he cleared Win’s unconscious body in one bound and hurled himself at the long window over the stainless steel sink. A row of cactus plants was lined up on the sill, and Rourke carried them with him as he went through in an explosion of shattered glass, his eyes closed, arms up to protect his face. He bounced off a tank of bottled gas and landed in the dirt in a welter of glass and sash and broken pots.

He rolled, came to his feet, and darted away between trailers. The emergency flow of adrenalin that had helped him through the window continued to carry him for a moment, but there was blood in his eyes and he could hardly see. He made a right-hand turn, realizing abruptly as the first wave of pain hit him that he wouldn’t be going much farther under his own steam. His one chance was to lose himself in the jumble of trailers, perhaps crawling underneath one to rest till he felt better. Then he could work his way back to the highway and see if some kindly motorist would take him to a doctor.

He stumbled and went down, his head still ringing from Thorne’s blow. He forced himself to his feet and kept going, at a dogged, shambling half-run.

Then a solid figure loomed in front of him and he collided with Mike Shayne.

CHAPTER 6

MICHAEL SHAYNE had walked into the lobby of the St. Albans Hotel in Miami Beach at two o’clock exactly, the time fixed for his appointment with the go-between who had promised to bring him one step closer to the recovery of stolen diamonds worth $100,000. The man was late. Usually this wouldn’t have bothered the detective. People in the go-between’s position often have trouble making up their minds. But today, after waiting only ten minutes, Shayne phoned the insurance company and told Mort Friedman, the man he was dealing with there, that his contact had failed to appear. He would call in, probably, and Shayne asked Friedman to set up another date for the following day.

“Make it later this afternoon, Mike,” Friedman said. “This whole thing is very jumpy.”

“I won’t be available,” Shayne said briefly. Friedman wanted to know why. Shayne replied evenly that something else had come up, Friedman made an acrid comment on that, and before the conversation was over Shayne concluded that he had possibly lost a valuable retainer.

Leaving the Beach, he crossed the bay on the Julia Tuttle Causeway and picked up the northbound expressway in Buena Vista. Shifting onto the Sunshine State Parkway at the Golden Glades interchange, he continued north, holding his speedometer needle steady at ten miles over the speed limit. He was swearing to himself. Rourke, he knew, had a special nose for certain kinds of trouble. His way of working up a story was to walk in, ask leading questions, and see what happened; and more often than Shayne liked to remember, what happened was that he ended up flat on his back hollering for help. One of these days, the redhead promised himself, Rourke was going to get into some stupid jam and find that Shayne had packed a bag and taken his secretary to New York to see a few of the new shows, leaving no phone number where he could be reached.

Shayne left the monotonous parkway at the Pompano Beach interchange and began following signs. The turns to Surfside Raceway were well marked. The closer he came to the track, the surer he was that something had gone wrong. He shouldn’t have let Rourke go alone.

The big, sprawling plant was quiet, apparently almost deserted in the hot afternoon. He locked his Buick and left it at the edge of the almost empty parking area, and plunged into the stable compound on foot.

Finding Paul Thorne’s stalls, he awakened a sleeping groom, who told him he had seen Thorne going off toward the trailer park, probably to take a nap, which was the sensible thing to do at this time of the day. Going in among the trailers, Shayne was in time to see the gangling body of his friend come hurtling through the narrow window of a trailer, his arms windmilling. He lurched away. The redhead spat out his cigarette and set off after him at a hard run.

He had left a trail of blood. Catching a glimpse of him as he staggered between two trailers, Shayne sliced into the tangle and cut him off. The reporter, in worse shape than Shayne had ever seen him, floundered a few more steps and collapsed against him. His coat and shirt had been cut to ribbons. He was only wearing one shoe. There were a dozen long slashes on his face and hands, but the blood made it hard for Shayne to tell which ones were serious. His face was a grotesque mask. His breath was loaded with martinis.

“Mike?” he said weakly. “You’re on the Beach somewhere, earning fifteen G’s. You’re not here.”

“What’s going on?” Shayne demanded. A heavy sedan halted at the edge of the trailer park. A burly uniformed figure leaped out and called, “Thorne! Thorne! Come here.”

A powerfully built, man in a sports shirt stepped out of the trailer with the smashed window. Rourke made a plucking gesture at Shayne with one of his bloody hands.

“Mike, it’s true. They’re trying to pull it off. The twin. Everything we thought. That means Joey Dolan was no accident.”

A fat woman in a playsuit, her forearms dredged with flour, opened the door of the nearest trailer and looked at Rourke with horror. The reporter sat down. “I’ve had it,” he said.

Shayne whipped out his bill clip and peeled off a dollar, which he handed to the woman. She took it automatically. “Get him a towel soaked in hot water,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

He returned to the Thorne trailer at a fast walk, approaching it from the kitchen end. Looking up at the broken window, he gave a short awed whistle. The opening couldn’t have measured more than two feet one way and ten inches the other, and he couldn’t believe Rourke had forced himself through it without being greased.

He pulled up in the lee of the trailer, his ragged eyebrows together and his eyes wary.

“Beating up on your wife again, I hear, Thorne,” the cop said. “People can’t take a nap with all the yelling and screaming. Well, you know what we told you, any more trouble of any kind and you’re through here, you’re through and no kidding. This time I’m turning you over to the sheriff’s office.”

“What crap,” Thorne said easily. “Who complained, Pruneface next door? Beating up on Win! Hell, man, we disagree sometimes, but she’s more likely to beat up on me than I am on her. Win, baby!” he called. “Come out here and tell the man.”

“You aren’t going to get out of this,” the cop said with satisfaction. “Look at that goddamn window. What did you do, throw a bottle through it?”

Shayne hesitated only briefly. He didn’t know what had happened, but he knew they didn’t want Thorne to be tied up by the sheriff for the rest of the day.

He stepped out and came up to the two men, breathing hard. “I’m afraid he got away. I damn near had my hands on him for a second, but he was too slippery. He had a car waiting. I only got the first two numbers of the license—seven, eight. Christ!” He gave a sudden hoot of laughter. “When I saw him come crashing through that window!”

“You saw somebody jump out the window?” the cop said.

“Yeah, and I thought at first it was a case of the husband walking in at the wrong time, but then why would the guy have a getaway car all set, with the motor running? Did he get away with anything much?”

Thorne looked at him, thinking. “I haven’t had a chance to check,” he said slowly. He turned angrily on the cop. “Honest to God, this is typical of you people. If you hadn’t been so fast to jump to conclusions, I might have caught him.”

A disheveled but very good-looking young woman in a wrapper, barefoot, the side of her jaw swollen, appeared in the doorway of the trailer.

“Win!” Thorne said, alarmed. “Are you OK?”

“I’m—not sure.”

Now that they had their cues, they had no trouble manufacturing a story. A small, vicious-looking hoodlum had forced his way into the trailer waving a gun. He took her purse and then, liking her looks, tried to throw her down on the sofa. She was struggling with him when Thorne walked in. The cop looked from one to the other suspiciously, obviously sorry that Thorne was off the hook, and made no objection when Shayne excused himself.

Rourke was where Shayne had left him, bleeding into a towel.

“How in God’s name did you get out that window?” Shayne asked. “It’s about big enough for a midget.”

“Don’t ask me,” Rourke said bleakly. “I shut my eyes and sailed through.” He looked down at the blood-soaked towel. “I must look like a pound of raw hamburger. But if I hadn’t made it, I’d look a lot worse. He was fixing to clobber me. I don’t mean because I was making time with his wife. Because I was interested in tonight’s twin double. He said he’s got a busy afternoon. Tail him. See where he goes.”

“Sure, as soon as I get you to the doctor.”

“I can get myself to the goddamn doctor!” He started to get up, thought better of it and sat back. “Going to rest here a minute first. Take off.”

Shayne looked up at the fat woman, who had returned to the doorway of the trailer. “Is there a hospital around?”

“There must be one in Lauderdale, anyway. I can look in the book. Does he want an ambulance?”

“Call a taxi.” He grinned at her. “There’s an angry husband not far away, and we don’t want any sirens.” She disappeared.

“Go on, damn it,” Rourke said, looking up from the towel to find Shayne still hesitating. “If you’d come with me in the first place, this wouldn’t have happened. I haven’t won a fistfight from a guy that big in years. Mike, for God’s sake! As soon as he gets clear, he’s going to start moving. This may be the only chance we get. Don’t waste it.”

“OK,” Shayne said curtly. “Call me on the car phone so I’ll know where you are.”

He turned on his heel and stalked off. He had known something like this would happen. But from now on Rourke was going to have to get out of his own jams.

Seeing activity in front of the Thorne trailer, he pulled up abruptly and waited until the cop drove off. In a moment Thorne came out and headed for the barns, going straight to the stalls where he kept his horses. He emerged a moment later wearing a necktie and a light sports jacket, which probably meant that he had to keep an appointment somewhere else, as no one wore neckties here in the daytime.

Shayne went for his Buick. He wheeled it around near the end of the grandstand, where he could see any cars coming out of the compound. Thorne made it simple for him, appearing in a long red convertible with the top down, an easy car to follow. Shayne dropped out of sight until he heard the convertible whoosh past with Thorne getting everything the motor was able to give him in that gear.

Shayne had the Buick in motion as the convertible crossed the Seaboard Air Line tracks, heading south. At Sunrise Boulevard Thorne signaled for a left turn, and Shayne dropped back, letting a Volkswagen pass. The Volkswagen driver had trouble deciding which way to go, and Thorne was out of sight by the time Shayne made the turn. He built up his speed, taking chances in the thickening traffic, and came up with the convertible again as it waited for the light to change at the Route 1 intersection.

Shayne moved up close, following without difficulty as Thorne entered Fort Lauderdale. Thorne was clearly impatient, consulting his watch constantly, crowding slow-moving cars and racing the motor when he was stopped by a light. On S. E. Sixth Avenue, near Twenty-fourth Street, he swung into a parking slot. Without dropping any coins in the parking meter, he headed for a doorway between two stores. A sign over the door said, “Guys and Dolls, Billiards.”

Shayne snapped his fingers silently. The only opening he could see was an illegal one in front of a fire hydrant. He pulled in and left a Miami News card under his windshield wiper. The billiard room was over a men’s clothing store, directly across from a medical block. Shayne crossed, went up one flight and into a dentist’s waiting room. A bell sounded as the door opened, and a teen-aged girl with bands on her teeth looked up from a magazine. Shayne went to the window. When a middle-aged nurse came in, he gave her a quick look at his license and said quietly, “Police business. We’re expecting a stickup.”

“A what?” the girl in the braces said excitedly.

The redhead said, “Please sit down.”

He spoke in a quiet voice that carried authority. She obeyed instantly.

The dentist joined the nurse in the doorway. “There won’t be any shooting?” he said anxiously.

“I hope not,” Shayne said without turning.

The billiard room, some twenty or thirty feet away, was brightly lighted with fluorescent lamps. Only one table was being used. Paul Thorne was talking earnestly to a fat man in a blue linen coat at the cigarette and candy counter. The fat man listened, his lips going in and out. Presently he took a cigar box out of the glass case, opened it and counted out a dozen or so bills. Shayne couldn’t read the denominations, but the total was large enough to require a second count. Thorne counted it a third time.

Shayne nodded to the dentist and the nurse, and went out without further explanation. He was back in his Buick and had moved into double-parking position by the time Thorne returned to the convertible.

Thorne reversed and went north again on S. E. Sixth Avenue, turning right instead of left on Sunrise Boulevard, toward the ocean instead of the raceway. Reaching the ocean drive, he went north. Halfway to Pompano Beach, on the outskirts of Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, his brake lights flared and he made a sharp turn into a double-decker motel called the Golden Crest. Shayne pulled into a gas station. While his tank was being filled, he watched Thorne leave his convertible in a depressed parking area and go up the outside steps to a room on the second floor.

Facing the door, he ran a comb through his long hair, which had been tossed about in the open car, tightened the knot of his necktie, brushed a wisp of hay off the sleeve of his jacket, and checked his fly. Then he tried the knob. Finding the door unlocked, he walked in.

CHAPTER 7

MICHAEL SHAYNE moved his car to the Golden Crest parking lot. On the way to the office, he checked the number of the room Thorne had entered; it was number 18. A woman with thick-lensed glasses was ready for him in the office. She greeted him cordially and slid a registration card across the counter.

“A room?”

“I think my wife already phoned in a registration,” he said. “She’s having her hair done in Lauderdale. Mrs. Petersen of Miami.”

“I don’t think we’ve had any registrations in that name.”

She began to flip through registration cards, Shayne watched for Room 18. When it turned up, he put his finger on it. The signature was hard to read upside down. It seemed to be Marian Sellers, or Sailers.

“That looks like it,” he said.

“No, sir. That’s an Orlando party.”

Shayne took his finger away, having made a mental photograph of the license number on the card. The woman completed her search and shook her head.

“It doesn’t seem to be here.”

“She likes to take care of these things,” Shayne said, pulling his earlobe. “One room’s as good as another, as far as I’m concerned, but she has strong ideas about what’s right and what’s wrong. Well, I ought to know what she likes by now. I know she’ll want to be on the balcony, so we won’t be bothered by cars. As close to the ocean end as possible, but we’d better not be right over the cocktail lounge.”

The woman made several suggestions. He settled finally on Number 17 and signed in.

Even when people use a false name at a motel—and Shayne assumed that the name on the card for No. 18 didn’t belong to a real person—they usually give their true license number. He had no trouble locating the car belonging to the guest in Room 18—a black, well-maintained Mercedes, with red-leather upholstery. The car itself, the care it had been given, the low mileage, and the accessories on the dashboard all denoted money. Shayne had a feeling he was going to want to ask the owner of the Mercedes some questions. He found the hood-latch and pulled it, then raised the hood and un-snapped the distributor cap, after which he removed the rotor. Putting the crucial little part in his pocket, he replaced the distributor cap and closed the hood. Then he moved his Buick into an open slot beside the Mercedes. Some months before, Shayne had been hired to find and bring back the runaway wife of a telephone-company official. He had spent a week looking for her, another week persuading her to return. His client showed his gratitude by having a phone installed in Shayne’s car. This had doubled Shayne’s effectiveness, and he didn’t know how he had ever functioned without it. He dialed local information and was given the number of the Fort Lauderdale hospital. Yes, he was told a moment later, they had just admitted an emergency case by the name of Timothy Rourke, and they would see if he was allowed to answer the phone. In another moment a woman’s pleasant voice said, “Emergency, Mallinson.”

“I’m calling about Mr. Rourke,” Shayne said. “My name’s Michael Shayne.”

“Mike Shayne,” she said. “Yes, indeed. We’ve been having a discussion here on the subject of phoning you. He’s insistent, isn’t he?”

There was a small clatter.

“Mike!” Rourke’s voice said. “Hey, you ought to see the nurse they gave me. You know those thin white nurses’ uniforms, what they do for ordinary women? My God, you ought to see the effect on this one! Wonderful figure, wonderful legs, a neat little pair of ears. On top of everything else, green eyes! You know how I react to green eyes. They enfeeble me!”

“You sound a little high,” Shayne said, amused. “What are they prescribing for you?”

“I prescribed it for myself on the way over. That was a sensational idea about taking a taxi, Mike. Whenever we saw a saloon I sent the hackie in for a double martini to go. Now everybody feels I ought to have something to eat. I’m resisting.”

“How are you otherwise?”

“Hell, I’m in great shape. They tell me they put in eighteen sutures, but that’s impossible. The main thing was those goddamn cactus needles. They had to yank them out one at a time with tweezers. Mike, where are you? What happened with Thorne?”

“I’ll tell you later. If you want to do something useful, put in a couple of calls. I’ve got the license number of a black Mercedes. I’d like to know who owns it.”

“Let’s have it. Baby,” he said to the nurse, “take this number.”

Shayne gave him the number from memory. “Another thing, and this you’ll have to work through Will Gentry or somebody on the cops in Miami. I want to know the story on the Guys and Dolls billiard parlor on South East Sixth Avenue in Lauderdale. A fat man at the cigar counter. What’s his gimmick?”

“Got it,” Rourke said promptly.

“Call me back. If the car phone doesn’t answer, try the Golden Crest Motel in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, on A-l-A. Room 17, and the name I’m using is Petersen.”

He repeated the room number and hung up. He thought for a moment with his hand on the phone.

He had recently made a large investment in electronic equipment, which he used only when absolutely necessary. It seldom lived up to the claims made by the manufacturers, and he had noticed long ago that private detectives with the biggest inventory of bugs and recorders soon came to rely on them instead of using their intelligence, connections and common sense. But he needed to know what was happening in Room 18, and there was only one way to find out.

He unlocked his trunk, and then unlocked a metal box that was welded to the floor under the carpet. He took out a simple transistor amplifier, the size of a silver dollar. Upstairs, he let himself into the room he had rented, and clamped the amplifier to the wall that Room 17 and Room 18 had in common. In theory, the wall would act as a sounding board, permitting the amplifier to pick up any sound in the next room above a whisper. Sometimes it worked, but this seemed to be one of the times when it didn’t. He could hear voices, but they weren’t clear enough so he could distinguish any actual words.

He freed the suction cups that held the device to the wall and moved it to a new spot, avoiding nail heads and the seams where the panels of plasterboard came together. A woman’s voice, fuzzy and distorted, rasped suddenly, “Stay where you are, or I promise you—”

A man’s voice interrupted her; Shayne thought it was Thorne’s. “Dear sweet Jesus, what a day. First my wife waves a knife at me, and I have to take it away. Now you. I make a small pass and you yank out a goddamn .38. Of course, I know it’s not loaded. You aren’t the type to be walking around carrying a loaded gun.”

“Make any more stupid moves,” she said, “and you’ll find out exactly how loaded it is.”

“What happened to sex all of a sudden? When did it start getting so disgusting?”

“Paul, you know as well as I do. This has to do with money and nothing else. Sex is out. Out. I hope that’s emphatic enough to penetrate those thick layers of stupidity. I saw the skyrockets go off when I mentioned the word ‘motel.’ It’s the safest place I could think of to meet. This isn’t exactly a safe thing we’re doing, and we have to be careful. True, this particular motel room contains a double bed, but it isn’t going to be used. Get that through your head. Sit down and I’ll put this away. It makes me nervous, I might pull the trigger. Did you raise the money?”

“That’s the smallest of my problems. That gun really annoys me. Why can’t you trust me?”

“Perhaps because I know you. Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that there might be one or two women in the world who didn’t find you attractive? Who are repelled by you?—Don’t do it, I’m warning you.”

There was a slithering sound, followed by a thump. Shayne listened intently.

“You’re an animal,” the woman panted. “Worse than an animal. You disgust me. You disgust me. Let go of me.”

There was another hard thump, and the woman gave a low cry.

“OK,” Thorne said. Shayne heard the metallic sound of a revolver being broken. “Yeah, it’s loaded! How do you like that?” There was a faint whine in his voice. “You were really going to shoot me. I didn’t know you thought I was that terrible. Well, you made a mistake, baby. If you’d said please instead of pulling a gun, I wouldn’t make a point of it. Now I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. You’re going to take off your clothes, all your clothes, and give me fifteen minutes of your valuable time. And if you don’t take them off yourself, I’ll take them off for you. Things are going to get torn.”

He swore abruptly. There was the sound of a ringing slap.

“And don’t try biting again, either,” he said. “You’re making it tougher for yourself. You didn’t bring a suitcase. Say I rip off that jacket or whatever you call it. How are you going to walk out of here?”

Something else went over. The struggle had moved to the bed, only inches from the amplifier, which was picking it all up. This wasn’t a token resistance; the woman was really fighting, and Shayne knew she wasn’t likely to win. She was taking deep shuddering breaths.

“It’s going to hurt,” Thorne said cheerfully. “But you’ll enjoy that, won’t you?”

Shayne decided this had gone far enough. He reached for the phone, which rang loudly before he could touch it. He picked it up and Rourke’s voice said happily, “Interrupting anything, Mike?”

“Get off the line, Tim,” Shayne snapped. Rourke broke the connection with a bang and Shayne rattled for the switchboard while the struggle in the next room continued. When a voice answered he said, “I’ve got a complaint about the racket next door in eighteen. I’ve been driving all night and I’m trying to get some sleep. There’s a real brawl going on in there. If you can stop it, OK. If not, I’m calling the sheriff.”

He put the phone back without letting the switchboard girl answer. The woman on the bed in the next room was making frantic, stifled sounds as though Thorne had his hand over her mouth. The phone rang in that room. The noises continued. It rang again.

“The hell with you, Jack, whoever you are,” Thorne grated. “We’re busy.”

The phone rang a third time, and Shayne hammered on the wall with a heavy ashtray.

“Will you shut up in there?” he shouted.

The noises subsided gradually. The fourth ring was longer than the other three.

“What’s the matter with you?” Thorne said. “You rented the room. Answer it.”

There was a click as the phone was picked up. The woman’s voice said faintly, “Yes?”

She listened in silence while the switchboard girl passed on the complaint.

“I’m sorry,” the woman said more strongly. “I’m afraid we’ve been inconsiderate.” She laughed musically; Shayne thought she was carrying it off very well. “Absurd as it may sound, my husband has been teaching me some new exercises. I can’t get the hang of them. They take more of a sense of balance than I seem to possess. I didn’t realize we were disturbing anybody. Hold on a moment.” To Thorne, in a steely voice, she said: “Is it over, really over, or should I ask her to notify the police?”

The bed jangled as Thorne got up. “Hell with it,” he mumbled. “Don’t pull any more goddamn guns on me, that’s all.”

The woman resumed. “I am sorry. We’ll be quieter. Would you relay our apologies?”

Shayne heard the phone go back on its cradle. Thorne made some remark, but he had moved back to the dead spot and his words were muffled.

The woman said clearly, “You incredible fool. I was under the impression that this had a certain importance, that whether it works or not made some slight difference to you.”

She too moved. Shayne lost her. He shifted the amplifier to a new position. That was no better, and he moved it again. Still he couldn’t succeed in picking up more than an occasional word or phrase: “… meet here at midnight to divide…”, “… if you take care of the favorite…”, then a longer snatch: “… take ten tickets apiece. Our, payoff should be better than eighty thousand, forty apiece. With two long shots out of four…”

That was the woman talking. After that Shayne heard nothing but mutters till they said good-bye.

“I wish it hadn’t happened this way,” she said coldly. “Things were already complicated enough. Once a bastard, always a bastard.”

Shayne heard Thorne’s parting word clearly. It was obscene.

Watching through the closed Venetian blinds, Shayne saw Thorne’s red convertible roar away from a drag-race start. The door of No. 18 opened again a moment later. Shayne put the amplifier in his pocket and waited at the door until he heard the sound of the Mercedes’ starter. He went down the outside flight of stairs while the woman continued to wear down her battery. He glanced at her briefly as he passed, then turned back after a few steps and listened critically.

“You don’t seem to be getting gas,” he said.

CHAPTER 8

“THAT’S SLIGHTLY OBVIOUS, isn’t it?” she said curtly without looking up.

She continued to grind away at the starter. Her voice was clipped and pleasant, without the abrasive quality it had picked up on the way through the amplifier. The resilience of women often surprised Shayne, and this one didn’t look as though she had just come close to being raped by a harness-racing driver in a motel room. She didn’t wear a hat. Her hair, which was ash-blonde, was cut in an intricate and casual style, down almost to her eyes on one side. Her eyes were dark, carefully but not excessively made up. It was a cool, lovely face, with well-marked cheekbones and a proud mouth. Her body was slender. She was wearing a pale rose suit. Like the Mercedes, it had clearly come a long way and cost a good deal.

“Move over,” Shayne said agreeably. “I used to have a Mercedes. I remember you had to catch it just right.”

She gave an explanation of well-bred annoyance. “It always starts.”

She shifted across and Shayne slid behind the wheel. He ground the starter with his foot all the way down, a listening expression on his face. “I doubt if you’re getting any spark.”

He pulled the hood-latch. Getting out, he raised the hood, which concealed him from the woman in the front seat. He took off the distributor cap and dropped in the rotor, closed the hood and returned to the wheel. This time, of course, the motor started instantly.

“Magic!” she exclaimed. “I had visions of tow-trucks and baffled mechanics and standing around in garages the rest of the afternoon. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

“Seems to be OK now,” Shayne said, listening to the quiet purr of the powerful motor, “but let it idle for a minute. We’ve met, haven’t we? Don’t you have something to do with the harness track over here?”

“I watch the races occasionally.” She gave her watch a covert glance. “It seems to be running beautifully. Again, I certainly do thank you.”

“I can’t remember who introduced us,” Shayne went on. “I thought they said you had your own stable. What I was thinking—if you’d called a garage, they would have charged you twenty-five bucks or so to answer the phone. And how many mechanics around here have ever looked under the hood of a Mercedes? They have a hard enough time keeping up with Ford and General Motors.”

She reached for her bag. “Forgive me. I didn’t—”

“No!” Shayne said hastily. “That’s not what I meant. I have a soft spot in my heart for anybody who owns a Mercedes, and I wouldn’t take any money for a favor like this. But I just can’t seem to pick a winner at Surf-side. My wife has been giving me a hard time. The minute I recognized you—I still can’t think of your name, but it’s on the tip of my tongue—I thought maybe you had a horse you can give me.”

She considered a moment. “I don’t know what harm it would do.” She looked at her watch again, openly this time. “You might take a small flier on My Treat, in the ninth.”

Shayne’s eyes opened. “In the ninth! Listen, thanks for the tip, I appreciate it, but whenever I hear about anything good in a twin-double race, it starts me going on a pet project of mine. I know you’re in a hurry, but give me a minute. I’ve worked it all out. If you only had one other winner—one other winner—in the other three races, you could clean up. I’ll explain it to you. You wheel your horses with all sixteen entries in the other two races, at a cost of a hundred and twenty-eight bucks. And the point is, you don’t drive down the odds! That’s the beauty of it.”

He was trying to unsettle her, and to judge by the look on her face, he had succeeded. At that moment the phone rang stridently in his Buick. It was an unexpected sound, coming from a parked car, and her hand jerked.

“That’s the call I’ve been waiting for,” Shayne said. “I want to tell you more about this twin-double idea. It’s sensational.”

He turned off the ignition and took the key with him. Leaving both front doors open, in the Mercedes and his own car, he answered his phone.

“Mike,” Rourke’s voice said when Shayne said hello. “Can you talk?”

“Briefly.”

“That license number you gave me. I had Lucy do the phoning on it while I checked the billiard parlor. It’s registered to Mrs. Claire Domaine.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“Now we’re beginning to move, right? I’ve got to get out of this goddamn hospital before you wrap it all up by yourself. The billiard parlor. Guys and Dolls—what a corny name. It’s all prettied up, they tell me, bright lights, coke machines, no spittoons, so they can get the local family business away from the bowling alleys. Pretty soon there won’t be a place left where a guy can go to get away from women. The thing about it, the manager still does some loan-sharking on the side. His name’s Pudge Temkin, or Tomkin, if it matters. Now am I allowed three guesses?”

“One should be enough, Tim.”

“OK. Is Paul Thorne borrowing betting money for tonight and paying Shylock interest on it?”

“That’s the way it looks.”

“Then why don’t we spoil his bet for him and get him into real trouble? After all the blood I’ve lost, I have no charitable feelings about the guy. Mike, they’re giving me some crap about changing the dressings and keeping me for observation. Can you come over and serve them with a habeas corpus or something so they’ll let me out? I’ve got something I want to tell you. Thorne’s wife made some kind of crack about Paul and a nurse’s aide. The ball was going back and forth pretty fast right then, and I didn’t get much of it. But my friend Miss Mallinson, the cute nurse I told you about, sneaked me out the list of women who do volunteer duty here—Uh-oh,” he said abruptly. “I’ve got to hang up. Head nurse. She thinks I ought to be more helpless.”

Shayne put the phone down thoughtfully and returned to the Mercedes. While he was talking to Tim, the woman had slid back behind the wheel.

“I’m terribly, terribly late,” she said pleasantly. “And I’m afraid I haven’t time to discuss your betting system. If I may have the key?”

Shayne went around and got in beside her. “I’ll give it to you in a minute. First I’d like to ask for a little cooperation. My name’s Mike Shayne.”

She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “Cooperation?”

“You’ve probably gathered that I’m interested in the twin-double operation you have underway, and I’d like you to tell me how many people are mixed up in it besides you and Paul Thorne.”

She laughed lightly. “I think you’re out of your mind.”

“I’ll give you a piece of advice,” Shayne said wearily. “When you use a motel for a meeting place, don’t go in your own car. If you do, don’t put your own license number on the registration card. They never bother to check. Now let’s talk about horses, Mrs. Domaine. What about My Treat, the one you just gave me? What do you guess the opening odds are likely to be?”

“Twenty to one at least. Your name’s Shayne? It’s a good tip, Mr. Shayne. A three-year-old mare, and not many people know how much she’s improved lately. The driver will be offered a bonus for a win. I don’t know what your object is, but be satisfied with that much. If you’re too greedy, you may end up with nothing at all.”

“You don’t realize how vulnerable this is,” Shayne said patiently. “A professional handicapper was told there might be something fishy about the last four races tonight. He looked at the horses and drivers, and the name of Paul Thorne jumped out at him. Half an hour ago Thorne borrowed a sum of money from a Lauderdale loan shark, before meeting you at a motel. None of this is hard to figure. It must mean he’s pretty confident you have a winning combination.”

She leaned forward, and for the first time Shayne felt that he had her attention. “From a loan shark? You mean one of those people—”

“Yeah,” Shayne said. “Twenty percent a week, and if you can’t make the payments, two or three thugs come to see you with baseball bats. One of those people.”

“You followed him?”

“A red convertible with the top down is easy to follow.”

She went on drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. “Exactly what are you proposing?”

“I want to know the names of all the horses, all the drivers, how much money is tied up in it, and the terms of the split. I have enough of a handle now so I think you have to tell me. I can go to the racing secretary with what I have—the loan-shark transaction by itself might be enough—and he can either scratch a few horses, beginning with all of yours and Thorne’s, and give Thorne a twenty-four-hour suspension. Or he can let it go ahead and, after it’s over, give every horse a thorough going-over, and look hard at all the people who show up at the mutuels office with winning twin-double tickets. That way he may be able to come up with some permanent suspensions and maybe a criminal prosecution.”

She sighed. “Perhaps we’d better take you in, Mr. Shayne, but you’ll have to be satisfied with a single ticket. At a guess, it might bring you in about four thousand dollars, if everything goes according to plan.”

“How many people would have to approve it?” Shayne said. “You can use the phone in my car.”

“I wouldn’t dream of using the phone in your car,” she said. “Give me an hour or two, tell me where I can reach you, and I’ll phone you the combination we recommend.”

“That’s not enough,” Shayne said stubbornly. “How could I be sure it was the real combination? I want some facts I can check.”

She shook her head firmly. “No, that would be unwise. You’ll have to take a chance, along with the rest of us. I can’t guarantee anything. I really don’t think you’ll go to the racing secretary and talk yourself out of four thousand dollars. I have to go now. Give me your phone number.”

Shayne weighed the ignition key in one hand. “Do you know a stableman named Joey Dolan, Mrs. Domaine?”

“Yes. We’re good friends.”

“Has anybody told you he’s dead?”

That jarred her. Shayne had broken news of this kind to enough people over the years so he could be fairly sure that her surprise and shock were real. She pressed her knuckles against her mouth and shook her head slowly. “Oh, God. When?”

“He was found in a doorway in Miami this morning. They did an autopsy on him. He’d been drinking wood alcohol.”

“Joey wouldn’t drink wood alcohol!” she said sharply. “I saw him last night when he came in from walking one of our horses. He was the same as he always was. Exactly the same.” She checked herself abruptly. “Are you a policeman?”

“I’m a private detective,” Shayne said.

“Oh, that Mike Shayne. I would have expected you to be more—” She checked herself again. “Did you know Joey?”

“A friend of mine did, and he doesn’t believe Joey would drink wood alcohol either, unless somebody who knew him laced his bottle of sherry. We think Joey found out about this twin-double swindle, but why that meant he had to be killed we don’t know. It would have been simpler to buy him off with a winning ticket. Any comment, Mrs. Domaine?”

She breathed in and out slowly, her eyes moving. “I think I’ll stop talking now, if it’s not already too late. You’re a clever man, Mr. Shayne. Please get out.”

Shayne reached over to the steering post and inserted the ignition key. “I’d like to think of a way to put some pressure on you. Does your husband know about this motel setup?”

“You’ll have to ask him.”

“I suppose that means he does know. Give me time, I’ll think of something else.”

He went back to his Buick. Mrs. Domaine looked across at him through the lowered window, her eyes unfriendly.

“Did you sabotage my motor so it wouldn’t start?”

“What do you think?”

She turned the key, came back with a jerk, reversed and joined the stream of traffic heading for Fort Lauderdale. Shayne considered his next move briefly. He didn’t like the way this was developing.

He backed out, waited for an opening, and made the turn. The first thing he had to do was confer with Rourke. He felt for a cigarette. He was caught behind a long trailer that was trundling its cargo of refrigerated meat southward at the steady speed of thirty miles an hour. As soon as he saw a chance to pass, he swung over into the left-hand lane, accelerating sharply. Another car, he saw in the mirror, was making the move behind him. A light sports car approached rapidly from the opposite direction, at a speed well over the limit. Shayne would have time to get back, but he could already see that the car on his tail would be cutting it close.

He put the pedal all the way down. The powerful Buick overtook the truck and swerved back across the double line. He kept the pedal down, to leave a large enough gap for the second car, a black four-door sedan. The damn fool was still coming, he saw, trying to pass them both.

Shayne touched his brakes lightly, to alert the truck driver. His unconscious mind was figuring an equation involving his own car and three others, moving at various rates of speed, and he didn’t like the answer he was getting. The sedan pulled even. He glanced at the driver, who had a grizzled head, a weather-beaten face and an excited expression. Shayne came down hard on his brake. He had to slow down fast, to let the sedan in, but if he slowed down too fast, he was sure to be rammed by the truck. The interval between Shayne’s Buick and the truck narrowed, then held. For an instant he thought his calculation had worked. But the driver of the sedan cut in too sharply, much too soon. Shayne swerved, scraped past one utility pole and smashed a fender on the next, and then the truck hit him from behind.

The Buick skidded across the highway, through the retaining cables and dropped heavily down the six-foot embankment to the beach.

CHAPTER 9

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 truckdriver’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.”

CHAPTER 10

“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.

CHAPTER 11

IN FORT LAUDERDALE, Shayne dropped Domaine and Mrs. Moon at a cab stand, then found the hospital and parked.

A bosomy woman in a large hat presided at a desk in the reception room. By keeping her hat on, she showed that this wasn’t what she did for a living, in fact that she didn’t have to work at all unless she felt like it. She had a small card file, which she fingered when Shayne told her he had come to see Timothy Rourke. She said brightly, “No visitors, I’m sorry.”

“He’s seeing visitors,” Shayne said. “I talked to him on the phone a half hour ago, and he said to come over. Will you call the floor and find out?”

She gave him a quick scrutiny. Clearly he couldn’t be made to go away by pretending he wasn’t there.

“I hate to,” she said. “The nurses just about take your head off, which is funny considering that we’re only trying to help.” She picked up the phone and asked for the nurses’ station on the third floor. “Reception,” she said firmly. “An inquiry about the patient in 325, Timothy Rourke. He’s listed on my card as a No-Visitors, but someone here insists that’s a mistake.”

She listened, said, “I see,” and hung up. She reported to Shayne: “The patient’s asleep at the moment. If you’d care to take a seat, and if he wakes up before visiting hours are over—”

“Who’s his doctor?”

She glanced at the card. “Dr. Greenberg, but doctors are even harder to get hold of than nurses. You can try at the desk.”

The switchboard girl tried to locate Dr. Greenberg for him, and told him presently, “He’s not in the hospital at the moment, but if you’d take a seat—”

Shayne’s face was grim. He went back outside and around a corner to the emergency entrance, large double doors opening onto a low dock. They were marked NO ADMITTANCE. He pushed them open and walked in. Finding the fire stairs, he went up to the third floor. In 325, a private room, a heavily bandaged patient was sound asleep, propped up on two pillows and snoring peacefully. Shayne recognized his friend by his long nose, almost the only feature not covered with bandages. His hands were concealed inside great gauze mittens.

“Come on, boy, wake up,” Shayne said. “Tim!”

He shook the reporter’s shoulder. Rourke’s long snore turned into a half-growl and a whistle. He exhaled violently, making a sound like a honking goose, then the snoring resumed.

“Goddamn it!” Shayne said, shaking him hard. “Wake up!”

“Just what do you think you’re up to?” an icy voice demanded from the door.

Shayne turned. A trim, green-eyed nurse was regarding him furiously. Shayne snapped his fingers, trying to remember the name Rourke had mentioned on the phone.

“Miss Mallinson.”

“Yes, and what do you mean by barging in here and manhandling my patient?”

“I’m just trying to wake him up. What kind of shot did you give him, anyway?”

Advancing, she drove him away from the bed. After adjusting the sheet over Rourke’s chest, she listened approvingly to his snores, as though admiring their musical quality.

“He needs that sleep badly,” she said. “We didn’t have to give him anything. He fell asleep by himself.”

“I want to talk to him for a minute. He can go back to sleep afterward. He won’t object.”

He tried to get around her.

“Keep this up,” she said pleasantly, “and you’re going to hear a scream that’ll raise the hair on your head.”

“Fine. That might wake him up.”

“We have five male nurses on this floor. Together they might be able to handle you. You’re Mr. Shayne, aren’t you? Well, seriously. This kind of sudden deep sleep is the usual reaction after an accident like his. I know he was rattling away like a machine gun when you talked to him, but he was exhausted. He lost pints and pints of blood, and anybody as skinny as that doesn’t have it to spare. We persuaded him to eat something, which neutralized the alcohol, and he went off like that.” She snapped her fingers. “I was just as glad, to tell you the truth. He’d been keeping me on my toes. He’s impossible, isn’t he?”

“Didn’t the bandages slow him down?”

“Not as much as you’d think. I tried to keep out of reach, but he’s sneaky.”

She blushed slightly, and Shayne tried a different approach. “If he calls you after the bandages are off and asks you to have dinner with him, will you go?”

She evaded his eyes. “Oh, people act a certain way in the hospital, but when they get out it’s different. I don’t think he’ll call me. I’d go, certainly. I wanted to be mad at him but I couldn’t, he was so funny. And I liked the way he behaved when the doctor was sewing him up.”

Shayne absentmindedly poked a cigarette into his mouth, taking it out again when she looked at him severely. He leaned on the foot of the bed and looked at his sleeping friend.

“Tim and I have known each other a long time, Miss Mallinson. He was on a story when he got hurt. It may turn out to be a big one. He wouldn’t fall asleep in the middle of it, regardless of how much blood he’d lost, or how many stitches he’d had taken. Reporting isn’t just a business with him. It’s the way he exists.”

Suddenly, trying to explain why the Tim Rourke he knew so well couldn’t have fallen asleep at a time like this unless he had been drugged, Shayne realized what the reporter had meant when he said Dolan couldn’t have drunk wood alcohol. It wasn’t in character. Shayne’s cigarette came out again. He put it between his lips without lighting it.

“It’s more than a newspaper story,” he went on. “A friend of his has been killed. This is tied in with some harness races tonight, and if we can’t find out who did it before the races are over, I don’t think anybody ever will. When Tim talked to me on the phone, he said he had something to tell me. He knew I was on my way. He wouldn’t go to sleep when he was expecting me any minute. I mean it.”

“To my certain knowledge,” she said firmly, “he took four aspirins and nothing else. Dr. Greenberg doesn’t believe in anything but local anesthesia for minor surgery unless a patient insists, and Tim’s insisting was all in the opposite direction.”

“If that’s so, there won’t be any harm in waking him up. He talked to a man before he was hurt. I need to know what he found out. He wanted me to get him out of the hospital, but I’ll discourage that. I can see he’s in no shape to be turned loose.”

She hesitated, and Shayne went on, “And if you do yell for those male nurses, I can guarantee that Tim will be disgusted with you when he hears about it.”

“The rules say specifically—”

“Tim Rourke doesn’t believe in that kind of rules and I doubt if you really do either.”

“Well, if somebody’s been killed,” she said miserably, “I suppose that would make it an emergency. I just hope this isn’t a trick.” She turned toward the bed, adding, “Anyway, those male nurses are never around when you need them.”

She tapped the side of Rourke’s nose smartly with two fingers. “Tim. Tim Rourke. Wake up.”

His next snore broke into three snorts. His eyes stayed closed. She took his shoulders in both hands and gave him a hard shake. He groaned, and at the end of the breath it turned into another snore. She looked across the bed at Shayne.

“I know he wasn’t given anything but aspirin.”

“Your security isn’t that good. The woods around here are full of people who want him to sleep through till tomorrow.”

“You don’t seriously mean that somebody could walk in off the street—”

“I walked in off the street,” Shayne reminded her. “Nobody stopped me.”

She shook the reporter again, with her full strength. His head bounced off the pillows, but he didn’t wake up.

“I’m afraid you’re right,” she said slowly. “I think I can tell you what he wanted to talk to you about. I got him a list of nurses’ aides from the hospital auxiliary. I had to turn the pages for him because of the bandages. And he gave a loud grunt halfway through. I put the list back but I can get it again.”

“What about waking him up?”

She bit her lip, looking down at the slumbering reporter. “First we’ll have to find out what he was given. It’s going-to be hard to make Dr. Greenberg stand still long enough to listen. The conservative treatment would be to let him try to come out of it by himself, and Greenberg is the most conservative doctor on the staff. You’ll have to get a policeman to tell him it’s a murder case.”

“The cops don’t know anybody’s been murdered,” Shayne said. “If you think doctors are hard to convince, you ought to try cops sometime. First, I need some more facts.”

There was a sound at the door.

“Sorry,” a woman’s voice said. “I just wanted the tray.”

Shayne swung around, recognizing the voice. Claire Domaine, in a blue nurse’s aide uniform, was in the doorway. Her hand went to her throat when she saw Shayne. Her eyes jumped from his face to the tray on the table beside the bed. They jumped back to Shayne at once and past him, but that quick involuntary movement had already told him why his friend Rourke was so determined not to wake up.

CHAPTER 12

SHAYNE LOOKED at the tray. There were two stale pieces of buttered toast on it, sliced into triangles. A plastic yellow soup bowl was half-filled with a dark clear soup, probably bouillon. There was an empty cup and a metal teapot. As far as Shayne knew, Rourke had never drunk tea in his life. That left the bouillon.

Shayne stepped in front of the tray as Mrs. Domaine started for it.

“Call Dr. Greenberg,” he said to Miss Mallinson. “And who’s the head of the hospital? Get him in here fast.”

There was a partially filled aspirin bottle on a side table. He poured out the tablets, rinsed the bottle with stale water from the carafe on Rourke’s bedside table, and carefully filled it with soup from the plastic bowl. Miss Mallinson watched incredulously.

“You mean she put something in the food?”

“We’re going to analyze it and find out.”

Mrs. Domaine gave a kind of shudder, her shoulders rigid. She said in a small voice, without looking at Shayne, “Can I talk to you?”

“You not only can,” the detective said, putting the bottle in his shirt pocket, “you have to. You also have to start telling the truth. You’re in a jam, Mrs. Domaine, and it’s not the kind of jam you can get out of by spending some of your husband’s money.”

“Everything I told you was the truth.”

Shayne snorted. “It was like hell. What did you give him? If it was anything serious, you’d better not waste any time.”

“It wasn’t lethal, for heaven’s sake!” There was a note of irritation in her voice. “I used a few sleeping pills. It was a barbiturate, but mild, and he didn’t drink much. He may have a headachy feeling when he wakes up, but that’s all.”

Miss Mallinson cried, “You don’t think you’re going to get away with this, do you?”

“There’s only one way she can get away with it,” Shayne said. “That’s by changing her clothes and coming out with me and explaining various things.”

“I won’t be through for another hour,” Mrs. Domaine said.

“You’re through now. In fact, you’re through at the hospital. You’ll have to find another way to spend your afternoons. Miss Mallinson will see to that. Meet me in the parking lot in five minutes. Five, not five and a half.”

She gave him a frightened look. When she was gone, Miss Mallinson said urgently, “How do we know she wasn’t lying? What if she really gave him something stronger?”

Rourke was smiling in his sleep, as though he was dreaming about something pleasant.

“She couldn’t risk lying,” Shayne said. “It would be different if she’d been able to wash the bowl. This way we have her and she knows it.”

“I was trying to persuade him to take a couple of pills myself,” Miss Mallinson said doubtfully. “I know what Greenberg would say if I told him—let him sleep.”

“Will you watch him?”

“I’ll say I’ll watch him. Like a hawk. Tell Mrs. Domaine that if I ever see her again in this hospital, I’ll scratch her eyes out.”

Shayne went downstairs and out through the regular waiting room, giving the volunteer at the desk a pleasant nod. She remembered him and dropped her ballpoint pen.

Mrs. Domaine joined him in the parking lot immediately, hurrying to beat his deadline. He took her to her husband’s Cadillac. She stopped short when she saw the car.

“That’s who you’re working for,” she exclaimed. “I’m beginning to understand.”

“He loaned me his car,” Shayne said, opening the front door for her. “I’m not working for him. What are you beginning to understand?”

“Never mind. I had a wild idea for a minute.”

He got in. She took a comb and other equipment out of her shoulder bag, and checked her appearance. She didn’t like what she saw.

“After what’s happened, I know I don’t have any right to ask, but I’d feel so much better if I could put you into some kind of perspective. If you aren’t working for my husband—”

Shayne considered. “Joey Dolan was a friend of Rourke’s. Dolan may have been as delightful a character as everybody tells me. I don’t know, I never met him. When I first heard about what happened, I didn’t think he’d been murdered. I do now. Rourke’s paper is paying me a small retainer.” He gave her a savage grin. “If you want to offer me any money to find and convict Dolan’s killer, go ahead. By money I mean money, not a chance to hit the twin double.”

“Maybe I will,” she said, and made a vague gesture. “I have to explain, but I don’t know where to begin.”

“At the beginning would be a good place,” he said. “Take one thing at a time. If you want a drink, there’s a bottle of bourbon in back. It’s good bourbon, as you probably know. Or you can wait till we get to a bar.”

“I need a drink now,” she said. “Badly.”

Turning, she came up on her knees and reached across for the bottle. Shayne waited until she poured and downed a slug of undiluted whiskey. Then he backed out of the parking slot.

“That’s better,” she said, sitting back. “How did my husband come to lend you his car? No, I withdraw the question, but it does seem funny—he’s particular about who touches it. All right. At the beginning. I came straight to the hospital from the conversation I had with you at that horrible motel. I could have begged off, I supposed, but I thought I’d better go ahead with the routine as though this was a routine day. Paul Thorne had told me that a Miami reporter named Rourke had been trying to pump his wife, and Paul had thrown him through the window. Paul knew I was due at the hospital, and he assumed that was where Rourke would end up. If he wasn’t badly enough hurt to stay out of our hair, I was supposed to call Paul and let him know. So he could come in and finish the job, I suppose was the idea. I found Rourke, and he was as high as a kite. Win Thorne told him a lot, apparently. No one was paying any attention to him, but if he got out, he was sure to ruin everything. My Treat would be scratched, no one would ever know who gave Joey Dolan that wood alcohol. And that wasn’t my only motive, though you probably won’t believe it—if Paul ran into him again, he would practically kill him. I haven’t been sleeping well lately, and I had some pills in my purse. I was afraid somebody would say my name when I came in with the tray but nobody did. He didn’t want to eat at first, and he finally took a few spoonfuls of soup to convince them he was well enough to be discharged. He went to sleep holding the spoon. My God, I hope I never have to do anything like that again.”

“You must really be hungry for that money,” Shayne commented.

“Is that what you think?” she said carelessly.

Shayne, meanwhile, had been looking for the right kind of bar, with booths and not many cars parked in front. He turned onto S. E. Twelfth St. and pulled up almost at once.

“We’re going in here,” he said. “I don’t like to talk to you in public, but I’m expecting a phone call. I want to know a lot more than I do now when we come out. I’m willing to listen as long as it takes.”

He took the key out of the ignition switch and went on, “I meant it when I said you have to talk to me. I have enough now to make a stink in the papers. Once it gets that far, it has to go the rest of the way, and the least that can happen is that you and your husband and Paul Thorne, and possibly Franklin Brossard, will be kicked out of harness racing. That’s why your husband loaned me his car—he wanted to make friends. Why he was willing to put himself into Paul Thorne’s hands, God knows. Well, I’m open to any reasonable compromise. Think about it, Mrs. Domaine.”

“I have thought about it. I’m quite aware of my predicament, I assure you.”

He looked up all around. The bar was just right, fairly noisy, with several empty booths. The corners of her mouth were down, but even so she was probably the best-looking woman who had had a drink there in weeks; there was a flurry among the unattached males at the long bar. Shayne pointed her at an empty booth and stopped at the wall phone.

He dialed his office number in Miami and paid the toll. When the answering service cut in to say that Mr. Shayne was out, he gave them the number of the phone he was calling from, to be passed along to Miss Hamilton when she phoned in. Then he told the bartender his name and ordered a double cognac and a double bourbon.

“Do you want it straight?” he asked when he reached the booth.

“I’d better have soda in this one,” she said. “The last one’s still burning.”

Shayne relayed this to the bartender and carried the drinks himself. He took half his cognac in one swallow, following it with a pull of ice water.

“Before you start talking,” he said, “I’d better tell you that when you and Thorne were in Room 18 at the Golden Crest Motel, I was in Room 17, and I used this listening device.” He showed her the little amplifier. “These are supposed to pick up whispers in a room eighteen by thirty. They aren’t that good. But Room 17 is on the right as you go in. You may remember that the bed in your room is against that wall.”

She stared down at the little gadget in horror. The color that had drained out of her face suddenly came back with a rush. She closed her eyes.

“Yeah,” Shayne said bleakly. He moved a glass swizzle stick between the cognac glass and the water glass, and pushed the glasses together. “Here’s the bed, here’s the wall, here’s the pickup. The reception was fine. That’s why I don’t like these bugs and I try not to use them. Everybody’s entitled to a certain amount of privacy. I’m the one who had the switchboard phone you, and I think you’ll remember that the call arrived in the nick of time. I’m also the one who hammered on the wall.”

“Thank you,” she said in a strangled voice.

“You’re welcome.”

Instead of pouring her small glass of whiskey over the ice in her highball glass, she drank it straight. It burned her throat and started her coughing. Shayne went back to the bar for more bourbon. She had stopped coughing by the time he returned.

“You have a way of springing things,” she said. “That’s your business, of course, and I’d probably better save my indignation for Paul Thorne. I really am grateful for that phone call. I suppose some private detectives might have let it go on in the hope of finding out something. There’s one thing I don’t believe came up in the conversation. I gave Joey Dolan a pint of sherry last night.”

Shayne leaned forward. “When?”

“Late.”

She took out a package of little cigars. Shayne lighted one for her and started a cigarette of his own.

“You’ll want to know about my evening,” she said, “I left Paul a message to meet me in Palm Beach soon after the last race. I worded it so it was clear that I wanted to talk about horses and nothing else. I broached the twin-double idea, and he was very excited about it. He showed none of that compulsive amorousness he went in for this afternoon. I’d been worrying, to the point where I took a pistol with me. I suppose you heard our argument about the pistol.”

“Yeah.”

“But he was too full of money possibilities to have anything left over. We drove for a while, talking, and came back to the track in separate cars. Joey and an old man named Rutherford were sitting on bales of hay outside our barn. I joined them. Joey was a wonderful talker when he got going. He had no prejudice against people with money.” She said this seriously, looking down at the ash on her little cigar. “I went into the office for more sherry when theirs ran out. I kept several pints of Joey’s brand in the desk, as an emergency supply. Joey knew he could always fall back on me if he had to. It gave him a sort of security.”

“Did Thorne see you give him the sherry?”

“He came past while we were talking. Yes, I think it was just as I was bringing out the bottle. He didn’t stop. There was no love lost between him and Joey.”

“How drunk was Dolan?”

“Not too. At that time of night his way of talking was always a little more extravagant, but he was in full control.” She picked up her whiskey. “And speaking of degrees of drunkenness, I’d better start pacing myself. I know what you’re trying to do with all this bourbon. You’re succeeding.”

She poured the whiskey into the tall glass, added soda and took a long drink.

“If Dolan was in a position to spoil this twin double—I don’t know why he would want to, or how he’d go about it—is Thorne capable of killing him?”

“Yes,” she said simply. “I’ve been turning something over and over in my mind since you first threw this at me. Paul has no use for people like Joey—they’re an affront to him, in some way. Once when he was driving for us, something went wrong that he thought was Joey’s fault, and Paul knocked him down and kicked him around the barn. It was obvious to me that Joey had it in for him from then on. I always thought he had something to do with that accident, when Paul’s big money-winning horse was killed.”

“What about Thorne’s trotter in the sixth tonight?”

“Joey spotted that. Paul needs a big win, and Joey’s idea was that we should bet the horse heavily as the machines opened, which would shorten the odds. At three to one, say, Paul couldn’t hope to take out enough to solve his problems.”

“Everybody knows he has problems?”

“I think that must be common knowledge.”

“Did you have anything to do with getting him fired from your stable, Mrs. Domaine?”

“Will you stop calling me Mrs. Domaine? It sounds so hostile. My name’s Claire.”

“All right, Claire. Now that you’ve had a chance to think about your answer, do you want me to repeat the question?”

“The answer is maybe. Indirectly. He was always brushing against me so our fields would overlap, making innocent little remarks that were loaded with double meanings. It made me uncomfortable. I think Larry caught some of it. He would have had to do something about it if Paul had stayed, and it was easier to loan him some money and encourage him to move out. Paul wanted to do that anyway. Maybe that was even the reason he kept trying to get under my skin. He may have sized Larry up and decided that was the best way to raise the necessary capital. He’s shrewd about some things.”

“It never went any further than those remarks and minor contacts, Claire?”

She met his look without flinching. “You listened to what happened in the motel. You know how I feel about him. I despise him.”

“I know how you felt about him this afternoon. You didn’t want him to make love to you. You brought a gun with you, but you didn’t use it.”

“He took it away from me!”

Shayne nodded. “I’ve taken guns away from one or two women, but I don’t try it if I’m sure they’re going to pull the trigger. I’ve been wrong on occasion, I admit. That whole scene in Room 18 was crackling with emotion. I don’t know exactly what kind. People have been killed for a lot less than eighty or a hundred thousand bucks, but I know now that there’s more to it than money, a lot more. Do you know anybody who lives at the Belle Mark Apartments?”

It was abrupt, and he could have got the same effect by throwing a drink in her face. But she recovered quickly.

“What brought that up?”

“I’ve been told that Joey Dolan visited somebody there last night. It must have been just after you gave him the pint of sherry.”

She put her cigarillo carefully in an ashtray. She seemed puzzled. “One of our drivers has an apartment there, I believe. Franklin Brossard. It’s in Miami Shores, isn’t it? I dropped him off there once. But why would Joey, at that time of night—no, it’s fantastic. If they wanted to meet, why go all that way?”

The bartender called Shayne’s name from the heel of the bar. Turning, the redhead saw the dangling phone.

“There’s my call. Another drink?”

“Yes, please.”

He signaled the bartender for another round, and was glad to hear Lucy Hamilton’s voice when he went to the other end of the bar, picked up the receiver and said hello.

“Michael, I think I have something, but first you have to answer a few simple questions. Number one, do you have a headache, even a slight one?”

Shayne grinned. “Not yet, angel. The way this is going I may have one when I wake up tomorrow morning. What’s your second question?”

“Don’t joke! I can tell by the noises that you’re in a bar, which doesn’t surprise me. But someday I hope to convince you that the thing to do after you have an accident is to see a doctor. You can have a mild concussion and not realize it.”

“I saw a lot of doctors when I called on Tim,” he said, “but they were all busy.”

“Was he all right?”

“Sleeping like a baby.”

“Sleeping? When I talked to him, he was all wound up and giving off sparks. If he went to sleep, it must be more serious than he told me.”

“I had the same idea,” Shayne said. “It turns out they gave him some sleeping pills. What’s the news?”

“Well, I’ve been to the Belle Mark. The pictures were no problem. Mr. MacMaster, that ogre at Tim’s paper, wasn’t nearly as growly as he usually is with me. They’d already taken a shot of Joey Dolan in the morgue—very gruesome. The picture of Thorne was in his racing clothes, from a racetrack program. That’s what I consider a really handsome man.”

“Everybody out here seems to agree.”

“I don’t think he’d wear well, though. He has a discontented look around the mouth. I found the apartment house, and I thought my best bet would be to go straight to the super. I said I was working for you and showed him the pictures and asked if he recognized anybody. He thought I was trying to trap him. I offered him ten dollars, and that made him even more suspicious. I looked at the names in the lobby, but none of them meant anything to me. You probably want me to boil this down?”

“Take your time, angel. I’m always interested in your methods.”

“Now you’re being sarcastic. I took the pictures to the nearest supermarket. They didn’t mean anything to the clerks, but a lady in the checkout line thought she recognized Thorne. I had to go up to her apartment and have coffee and a really enormous piece of chocolate cake. By that time I thought this was wish-fulfillment on her part—Thorne’s the kind of man that kind of woman has daydreams about. Not at all. She’d ridden up in the elevator with him a few times. He gives off some kind of very potent electricity in an enclosed place, it seems—she was still throbbing when she told me. She thought his name was—let me see, it’s an unusual one and I wrote it down—Brossard. That’s whose apartment he went into. He had a key. She checked the directory downstairs, being a fan of strong, dark-haired, discontented-looking young men. Franklin Brossard. Then she had another piece of cake and thought about it some more, and said she really wondered if she hadn’t seen Mrs. Domaine in the elevator, too. The picture I had was a woman’s page publicity shot, and she couldn’t tell for sure. The woman she was thinking about was blonde and slender and startlingly well dressed. I accumulated some information about her shoes and perfume, but that probably wouldn’t mean anything to you. My friend never saw her with Thorne.”

Shayne was pulling his ear, looking across at Mrs. Domaine, who was staring moodily into her drink, prodding at the ice cubes with one finger.

He said slowly, “That might fit. Brossard is a Domaine driver and he could have loaned Thorne his apartment. Were you able to get any approximate dates?”

“Oh, Michael!” Lucy said in dismay, after a tiny pause. “I knew there was something I didn’t ask her. It’s elementary, isn’t it? She said she hadn’t seen either of them lately. I don’t know if that means one month or six. I have her phone number. I can call her and get right back to you.”

“It may not matter,” Shayne said abstractedly. “I’m having some drinks with a well-dressed blonde, and I guess you could call her slender. I don’t know about her shoes and I haven’t noticed how she smells. But I asked her about the Belle Mark and she nearly dropped her drink. Let’s see what she does when I ask her how long ago she stopped meeting Paul Thorne there.”

CHAPTER 13

CLAIRE SMILED ruefully as he slid into the booth. “I’ve been getting more and more apprehensive. You look like a matador ready for the kill. Who was that on the phone?”

“My secretary.” He lit a cigarette, not to heighten the suspense but because he wanted a cigarette. “She’s been showing photographs to tenants at the Belle Mark. It seems that you and Paul Thorne have both been seen using the elevator.”

Claire’s face crumpled and she made a low sound. “You make it sound so easy. A simple matter of showing some pictures in an apartment house. I thought I was being so careful! I suppose I could deny it and say it’s impossible, but I won’t. Do you want to ask questions, or hear it in my own words?”

“Just tell it to me, Claire. I take it for granted you weren’t meeting him there to talk about harness horses.”

“No.” She stubbed out her smoldering cigarillo. “If I put it into words, maybe I’ll feel better about it. There hasn’t been anybody I could talk to. Joey Dolan would have listened. I think he might have understood. Last night I came close to telling him, but in the end I couldn’t make him pay for the sherry by listening to my tale of woe. Oh, dear, I don’t know how Joey got into this. I must be trying to put off telling you how I came to find myself in bed with Paul Thorne.”

“People find themselves in bed with other people all the time,” Shayne said. “You can have coffee if you don’t want another drink.”

“Another drink, by all means.”

She had a piece of Kleenex tightly balled in one fist. With an effort that was visible to Shayne, she unclenched that hand and began to shred the Kleenex while he called the bartender.

“You’ve met Larry,” she said. “He’s one of the most intelligent persons I know. He’s kind and generous and proud, in the good sense of the word. He comes of a family that has always tried to live honorable lives. There was a senator, a Confederate general, an ambassador, a famous merchant, and all their portraits are on our dining-room wall. I usually sit facing the Confederate general, in his full dress regalia, who died at Chancellorsville. Larry trusts me absolutely. That’s why what happened seems so abominable. Sometimes I can hardly persuade myself that it actually did happen.”

She tasted her new drink the instant the bartender put it down, and waited till he walked away.

Shayne said, “Your husband’s kind and decent and rich, and you can’t stand him. Is that what you’re saying?”

“No! If it was that way, I wouldn’t feel so awful. I don’t love him, whatever the word may mean. He knows that, and he’s willing to accept it. I was engaged to a man who was killed in a plane crash when he was flying south to marry me. We had hotel reservations in Nassau for our honeymoon. It took me a while to get over it. Larry was exceedingly nice to me. After we were married—well, what went on afterward has a bearing, but you’ll have to take some of it for granted. You’re not a marriage counsellor, after all.”

“Nobody’s ever accused me of that,” Shayne said gravely.

“Damn it, are you laughing at me, by any chance? Maybe it is funny, but I didn’t do any laughing at the time, I can promise you. To Larry the physical side of marriage wasn’t important, so I found other things to occupy me. I like horses. I think they like me. From the first day I showed up in the stable, Paul Thorne assumed I was available, the restless young wife of a middle-aged rich man. I won’t deny I was restless. Any self-consciously virile person like Paul would be able to guess the cause. He set out to get me. I know that’s what he did, because he told me so afterward. He planned it like a military engagement.”

After another swallow of whiskey, she said quietly, “And he won. It was at a moment when I had faced some hard truths about my marriage. It may sound immoral, but I never regretted the fact of what happened. I would regret it very much if Larry knew about it, because I know it would hurt him. What I regret is that it happened with Paul Thorne. That was unforgivable.”

Shayne started to speak. She put her hand out quickly and touched his wrist. “What connection can my stupid sex life have with Joey’s death? I can’t believe it has any. But now that I’ve started, I can’t just say we went to bed together but I didn’t enjoy it. It’s not the full truth. I came to know him quite well, much too well. People think he’s a lucky driver, but he’s too tense to be really lucky. Other drivers get away with things that get him into serious trouble. He wants to win too badly. It shows. He grew up on a Georgia hill-farm, desperately poor. He wanted to punish me for being married to a man who owned three hundred horses and could buy hundreds more any time he felt like writing a check. He borrowed the key to Brassard’s apartment. I felt—it’s hard to say in words—that it would be terribly unjust if I didn’t have a tempestuous love affair once in my life—Now you’re laughing at me again.”

The corners of the detective’s mouth quirked slightly. “Go ahead, Claire.”

“Do you know, it really is better to tell somebody. Maybe it isn’t as tragic as it seemed at the time. Fifteen minutes after I was alone with him, I knew that all he wanted to do was humiliate me. I don’t think he considered me a person at all. I told him I realized I’d made a mistake, which there was no point in repeating. But I’d written him a letter, like a fool, and he said he would stop seeing me when it suited him and not before, unless I wanted my husband to know about it. So my tempestuous love affair began.”

“How long did it go on, Claire?”

“Oh, for months. Months and months and months. Only two, I suppose, but it seemed like a century. I knew I had got into it by my own foolishness, and I had to take my punishment. Sex to Paul was like a horse race. He went all out to win. One day I discovered I was pregnant. Paul had fooled me, in a way I won’t go into. He was delighted! Planting his child in the straight line of inheritance from General Lawrence Domaine of the Army of Virginia—he thought it was uproarious. When I had a miscarriage, he nearly killed me. I had to run my car into a telephone pole to explain how I got those bruises. After that he wanted money. He wouldn’t believe I didn’t have any to give him. He worked out a plan for a fake burglary—I was supposed to give him my jewelry and other things, and tell the police I’d been robbed. I wouldn’t do it. And then it turned out that he’d only been bluffing about sending that letter of mine to Larry. He was afraid of Larry, I think, in spite of his talk. I don’t mean personally, but of what he represented. I finally told him it was over, and made it stick. He’d started his own stable by that time, and he didn’t need me to work out resentments on.”

“Your husband never found out about it?”

“Heavens, no. I began worrying again after Paul’s horse was killed and he began needing money so badly. I was afraid he might decide the hell with everything, if he was going down he’d take Larry and me with him. I’m still a little afraid of that, but I don’t know what to do about it. When this twin double prospect came up yesterday I couldn’t tell Larry I was scared to have anything to do with Paul. As far as Larry’s concerned, I hardly know him.”

She looked down quickly at her drink. “Mike, none of this has been exactly easy. Would you give me one crumb of information in return? How did you know about the Brossard apartment?”

“I had an anonymous phone call. Joey was uneasy about going there last night, for some reason, and he told somebody before he left.”

“I don’t understand it at all. Paul probably hung onto his key, but why would he want to confer with Joey? Why there? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Neither do a lot of other things.”

“Well, I don’t feel quite as sunk as I did before I told you. If somebody murdered Joey, I want him caught, and if the only way I can help is by getting up in court and saying what I’ve just said to you, I’ll do it. I won’t like it, but I’ll do it.”

“How about an owner named Mrs. Moon?” Shayne said. “Is she part of your deal?”

“She doesn’t even know about it unless Larry’s told her. They’ve been fairly thick lately.”

“Yeah?”

“Not like that! He’s been teaching her to play chess and so on. She has a horse in the ninth tonight, which nobody considers a threat.” She rattled the ice in her drink thoughtfully. “I did hear that Paul Thorne—but it couldn’t be anything.”

“That Paul Thorne what?”

“Oh, that a car like his was parked outside her house late one night. But there are other red convertibles in Florida.”

“Would Paul doublecross you tonight if he could make any money out of it?”

“Of course. Even if he didn’t make any money, for fun. But I don’t see how it’s possible.”

She said that emphatically. Nevertheless, Shayne thought she looked doubtful.

CHAPTER 14

CLAIRE LOOKED at her watch. “Larry’s going to know I’ve had some drinks. He thinks I’m drinking too much lately, and he’s probably right. But sometimes it seems necessary. Mike, none of this really surprised you, did it, about Paul and me?”

“I was listening in on your fight in the motel. Ex-lovers shoot each other more often than total strangers.”

He watched her put things in her bag, his eyes cold and appraising. She touched up her lipstick.

“I told Paul I didn’t have any money,” she said, “but that’s not strictly true. I just didn’t have the kind of money he needed. What are your fees?”

“They vary. In your case, to prove that you didn’t put wood alcohol in Dolan’s sherry and somebody else did, I’ll charge you two thousand bucks.”

She looked at him briefly. “That’s a bargain.” He settled with the bartender and drove her back to the hospital parking area, where she shifted to her Mercedes. Shayne watched her pull out, after a quick wave. Then he went into the hospital reception room and asked the switchboard girl if she could locate Miss Mallinson.

Visiting hours were over for the afternoon and the volunteer in the large hat had gone home, leaving the professional staff to run the hospital. Miss Mallinson came out of the elevator, pert and trim in her white uniform.

“Everything’s fine, Mr. Shayne,” she said. “I’ve been stopping in every five minutes. His pulse is normal. His respiration is the same, deep and regular.”

“You mean he’s still snoring?”

“He is certainly still snoring. He may be coming out of it, I’m not sure. The last time I was in he tried to grab me, without waking up.”

Shayne grinned. “That sounds normal, too.”

“But in all those bandages, honestly, it’s impractical.”

“When do you go off duty?”

“An hour ago, but they’re always after us to put in overtime, so I said I’d stay. I thought I’d better keep a personal eye on him. I couldn’t explain the situation to anybody else.”

Shayne thanked her for taking such an unprofessional interest in his friend, and told her he’d call in for news every couple of hours.

He had a feeling now that he had most of the facts he needed, though he still had ho idea who had killed Joey Dolan, or why. He knew from experience that if he didn’t worry about it, the facts would rearrange themselves without help from him, until in the end a pattern began to emerge. He bought two hero sandwiches and a pint of Courvoisier, and had a quiet, solitary picnic in an ocean-front park he had passed on the way in. As he finished the last of the second sandwich, he sat up straighter, and said, “Sure!” to himself in a soft voice.

He lit a cigarette, then let it dangle unheeded from one corner of his mouth. It was a guess, but a guess that seemed to fit. By the time the cigarette burned down he had outlined a course of action that would show whether or not he was right.

He drove to Joe’s Auto Body, on Route 1, where he identified himself as the owner of the smashed Buick. He unlocked the trunk and made a careful selection of tools and equipment. He locked up carefully and returned the keys to the proprietor.

Twenty minutes later he was being waved into one of the big parking lots at Surfside Raceway. It was seven-thirty, a half hour before the first race, but the lots were filling up fast. He paid his admission and bought a program. The grandstand and ramps were already swarming with horse-players, most of them studying their programs to see what looked good in the daily double, a combination bet on the first two races. Sulkies were coming out from the great paddock barn, where all the horses that were to work tonight had been gathered under the supervision of the paddock judges. Railbirds with binoculars watched as the horses were put through fast warmup sprints under the brilliant 1500-watt lights.

Shayne asked directions, found the administration building and the racing secretary’s office, and introduced himself to the racing secretary, a short, florid man with heavy glasses, named Granby.

“I’m doing a job for an insurance company,” Shayne said, without mentioning that the insurance company he was actually working for was more interested in jewels than in horses. “At this stage I don’t want to say anything more, if that’s all right with you. You film all your races, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” Granby said. “Nowadays we get it on tape, not film. It’s faster. You can run it off two minutes after the race is over.”

“I don’t have the date of the one I want to look at. One of Paul Thorne’s horses was killed in it.”

Granby’s glasses glinted. “No problem. Is this something that can be handled without publicity, Mr. Shayne?”

“We hope so. I can’t promise anything.”

After looking up the date of the race, Granby took Shayne to a projection room, found the spool he wanted, threaded the tape into a projector and ran it off at blinding speed, without dimming the lights. Halfway through he cut the lights and slowed the tape to a normal speed.

“Here we are. This is the finish of the fifth race. The one we want is the sixth.”

The camera held on the finish line until all eight horses were across, then cut abruptly to the tote board for the official order of finish and the payoff prices, then cut again to a new field of eight horses following the starter around the turn. Shayne, slouching in an armchair with an unlighted cigarette in his mouth, watched the horses come up in line, then leap forward as the starting car folded its great wings and shot away.

“Thorne’s in the number-three slot,” Granby said over the whir of the projector. “Driving Don J. A pretty horse, very spirited horse. Three-year-old, great blood line, he had all the makings of a free-for-aller. His best time for the mile was 2:04 on a half-mile track. He’s going in a Class A race here for the first time. He went away at three to one, as I recall. He’s fourth there at the turn. That’s Star Music, a Domaine horse, ahead of him.”

A new camera picked up the horses as they rounded into the backstretch. The tape’s fidelity was very good, but the total absence of sound made the action seem unreal. The accident happened at almost the exact second when the camera on the next tower took over. Star Music drifted away from the rail going into the turn. Thorne was using his whip as he tried to brush Don J. through on the inside, along the rail. Suddenly his horse veered sharply to the right. Star Music bounced and went into a gallop, and the inner wheel of Star Music’s sulky struck Don J. on the leg. There was a moment’s tangle and Don J. veered back, breaking clear, and went into the rail.

Granby stopped the tape and reversed it. The horses and sulkies retreated around the track in a rapid blur.

“I’ll go through it again in slow motion,” he said. “We understood that Thorne was underinsured on the horse. He didn’t put in any complaints of dirty driving. Accidents do happen and we came to the conclusion that this was one of them, though we’ve learned to give anything involving Thorne an especially close look. After Star Music broke there’s too much dust to see clearly. We lose the continuity when we switch cameras.” The horses were moving back in the right direction again, slowly and painfully. “What apparently happened, as we reconstructed it, was that a shaft buckle broke as Thorne went for the opening. The shaft dug into the dirt and pitched the horse to the outside. The Domaines had had trouble with Star Music breaking. Brossard was driving him. An excellent man, one of our veterans, but he couldn’t hold him. The shaft broke as Don J. hit the rail. You can see the end for a second. There.” He stopped the projector. Thorne’s horse froze on the screen at the moment of impact. The broken shaft could be seen beneath the rail. “Then the splintered end whipped up and went into the horse’s belly. That might have been enough. He also broke both front legs. Thorne broke three ribs, cut open his head to the bone and damaged his spleen. We noticed a falloff in attendance while he was in the hospital. Frankly, he’s one of our biggest drawing cards, which is why he only pulled a three-week suspension this last time. I thought he ought to be set down for good. The stewards didn’t see fit to agree with me. Do you want me to run it through again?”

“You don’t have any pictures of what happened after he went through the rail?”

“No, the cameras follow the race. I don’t get you. Thorne was out cold.”

“Could the shaft have been cut or weakened in some way before the race?”

“Possibly,” Granby said guardedly. “It was examined, of course, but it was pretty well smashed up.”

Shayne looked closely at the screen. “Let me see the next couple of frames.”

Granby advanced the tape slowly, in short jerks, watching the detective. Shayne held up his hand and stared at the screen. Several figures were running toward the track from the backstretch. The one in the lead had a short goatee. Joey Dolan had worn a goatee, Shayne had been told.

He moved his hand and the tape resumed. After a moment he stood up, partially blocking the screen, on which the remaining horses moved slowly around into the home stretch.

“Thanks,” he said. “You’ve been a great help. I’ll let you know if there’s anything else.”

“Do that.”

Shayne left him rewinding the tape, his face carefully impassive.

The first race was half over. Unlike the one Shayne had just watched, this was taking place at normal speed, to the accompaniment of a deafening din from the stands. Ignoring the straining horses, the big redhead pushed through the crowd, aiming at the ramps leading to the clubhouse. Suddenly his eye was caught by a white turban in the throng pressing against the low fence, on the asphalt apron at the far end of the grandstand. The horses thundered past while a powerful voice on the public-address amplifier called the order of finish. A fat man next to Shayne bounced up and down, waving both arms and yipping with excitement.

“Thirty to one! Look at those figures. Look at that payoff, will you? And the only reason I had him, he’s got the same first name I do, Ronald. What do you think of that?”

“I think it’s great,” Shayne said. “Do you mind if I borrow your binoculars for a minute?”

The fat man whipped the strap over his head. “You can borrow my pants if you have any use for them, buddy. He pulled out ahead the second you stopped here. I don’t claim you did it all by yourself, but you helped.”

Shayne steadied the binoculars and brought up the focus. The white turban he had spotted in the crowd turned into a head bandage. The nose unquestionably belonged to Tim Rourke. What in God’s name was he doing here?

He handed the binoculars back to their owner and returned to the apron in front of the stand, keeping his eye on Rourke’s bandage, which had begun to move toward the lower betting level. He overtook his friend at the edge of the seats.

“Tim!”

Rourke turned. Miss Mallinson was with him, looking as supple and radiant in a sweater and skirt as she had in a nurse’s uniform.

“Been looking for you, Mike,” Rourke said briskly. “How many redheaded racing fans do you think there are here? Thousands.”

“Tim, my God, why aren’t you in bed?”

“I had a little nap, I feel greatly refreshed. I didn’t feel like waiting for the regular discharge, so I went over the goddamned wall. Sandra helped me.”

“Not willingly,” she said. “I practically had to carry him.”

“Only at first,” Rourke insisted. Wobbling suddenly, he sat down in an empty seat. “I can’t convince Sandra I deserve a Tom Collins. Somebody has to hold the damn glass for me, and she won’t. Get me one, will you, Mike?”

“A Tom Collins!” the nurse said helplessly. “Mr. Shayne, do you know any secret way to handle him?”

Rourke grinned up at his big friend. “Mike, sit down. I’ve got something important to tell you.”

Shayne moved a program to the next seat and sat down beside him. The reporter said, “Win Thorne, that’s Paul Thorne’s wife, was hinting around that her wandering husband had something going with a nurses’ aide at the hospital. Well, there was I, flat on my back. They were putting in stitches and slapping on butterfly bandages, but I didn’t let it stop me. I found out—”

Shayne broke in, “That Mrs. Domaine is a nurse’s aide. That’s yesterday’s news, Tim. Now you can go back to bed.”

“I told you he knew,” the nurse said.

Rourke’s face, or as much of it as was showing, fell. “Damn it,” he muttered. “One of these days I’m going to get somewhere ahead of you. Not by staying in bed all afternoon, I admit. Well, so long as I’m here, I think I’ll take a crack at the twin double. How about you?”

“First I’m going to take a crack at Mr. and Mrs. Domaine. Will you be serious for a minute? How do you really feel?”

“I really feel lousy,” Rourke admitted with a growling half-laugh. “They stuffed my head with cotton before they fastened the top back on. Sandra’s going to take care of me, aren’t you, baby?” He put one hand, with its great gauze mitten, clumsily about her waist. “She’s never seen a harness race, can you imagine? She’s not only one of the swingingest dolls in the place, she keeps taking my pulse. I think that shows she likes me.”

“It shows I don’t think you’re well enough to be out of bed,” she said severely.

“Maybe we could arrange something,” he said with a leer. He lowered his voice and asked Shayne seriously, “How’s it coming?”

“It’s coming,” Shayne said shortly. “Things are beginning to make sense, but proving anything is going to be tough. One of the toughest. Somebody gave Dolan a bottle of sherry, but how are we going to get an admission that there was wood alcohol in it? Well, it’s possible, but it’s going to take a lot of manipulating. You sit here and I’ll be back in an hour or so. If you see anybody you know with a pair of binoculars, borrow them.”

“I’ve got a pair in the car,” Rourke said. “I’ll send Sandra for them, if I can get her to stop taking my pulse.”

A flamboyant young woman separated herself from the crowd going up the aisles and bent down to take a closer look at Rourke. She was wearing a tight striped dress, slashed low in front. Shayne had seen her before, wearing a flowered wrapper, in the doorway of Paul Thorne’s trailer.

“Cut yourself?” she inquired pleasantly. “What I’ve got to do, if people keep dropping in for cocktails, is put a back door in that trailer.”

Rourke made no move to introduce her. “Hi. Nice to see you again. He didn’t knock out any teeth?”

“Don’t remind me.” She waggled her lower jaw, to make sure that everything worked, and gave a little giggle. “I ought to be sore at you. I don’t mind about the broken window, we’re covered, but all those little pots of cactus. No kidding, I grew those plants from seed, you may not believe it, and pow! I don’t see how you squeezed through, frankly, unless you used a shoehorn. All that stuff about doing a feature story for the paper—that was a load of crap, wasn’t it?”

“Not really,” Rourke said weakly.

“Oh, I don’t blame you! One excuse is as good as another. I thought it was kind of sweet.”

She fluttered her fingers at him, smiled at Sandra and Shayne, and walked away.

“Be in this general area so I’ll know where to find you, Tim,” Shayne said hurriedly, and went after her.

Behind him he could hear Rourke beginning to explain to Sandra that the girl was wrong about his motives. She had thought he was interested in her, but he had really been working on a story.

“I’m sure,” Sandra said skeptically.

Shayne overtook Mrs. Thorne at the rail. She looked up at him questioningly.

“You remember me,” he said. “I didn’t think Tim would want to have it get around that he’d been thrown through a window by a jealous husband. I told the cop he was a burglar.”

“Oh, sure. I’m a little nearsighted. Paul didn’t throw him out, he dived.”

“Even so,” Shayne said. “Let me buy you a drink.”

“I’d like a drink,” she said. “But I’m under strict orders from Paul since this afternoon. Don’t talk to anybody I don’t know.” She gave him a slanting look. “And I don’t know you, do I?”

“Sure you do,” Shayne said easily. “I’m an old family friend.”

“Oh, yes, now I remember. But I’d better take a rain check on the drink. I don’t want to forget what horses I’m supposed to be betting on.”

The drivers for the second race were now parading their horses while the public-address announcer called their names.

“There’s Paul now,” she said. “I know he can’t pick me out of the crowd, even with his marvelous eyesight. Boy, did I have a hard time getting him to say he was sorry he socked me.” She gave Shayne another quick slanting look. “I don’t know what Rourke told you was going on when Paul walked in—”

“Tim’s a very discreet guy.”

“Well, nothing really was, no matter what Paul thought. I guess you’d better run along now, though, because every time I open my mouth I put my foot in it; Paul’s definitely got a point there. If he’d tell me the whole thing, I mean all the ins and outs, I might be able to fake it better. But the safest thing to do when anybody mentions horses is to shut up.”

“Do you do his betting for him?”

“Natch. If he couldn’t trust me, who could he trust? But don’t try to pump me by standing there looking big and rugged and sexy. That’s going to get you nowhere.”

Shayne grinned down at her. “I’m probably the only person in this crowd who isn’t trying to pick a winner. I’m trying to pick a loser. What I’d like you to tell me is how you knew your husband was sleeping with Mrs. Domaine.”

She put a hand against his shoulder to steady herself. “Dawn begins to break. You’re a detective.”

Shayne took out his license and gave her a quick look at it. “My name’s Michael Shayne. My client doesn’t want me to broadcast who he is, but in this situation it’s probably pretty obvious. For now, we want to keep everything quiet. There might be some money in it.”

“Never mind the money,” she said bitterly. “This I’ll give you free. If Domaine wants to divorce her, I couldn’t care less. She’s older than Paul is, you know. The poor bastard never had a chance. She dazzled him with that Mercedes. Those little five-hundred-dollar suits. Paulie had to admit afterward that she’s nothing to rave about between the sheets. Skinny as a beanpole. It’s the accessories, you know? You peel off the wrappings and there’s nothing there. No feeling.”

“I suppose you know about the apartment.”

She nodded toward the track. “And there the son of a bitch goes. Brossard.”

Shayne looked at the track. The horses were coming past the grandstand at the end of their first half mile, led by a big powerful bay. Shayne recognized the driver as he flashed by. The last time Shayne had seen him, he had been cutting in sharply to force Shayne off the highway above Fort Lauderdale.

“And why do you think he lent Paul his apartment?” she said. “He’s been trying to get me in the sack with him for the longest time. Ugh. He’s about ninety years old, repulsive. He thought I’d be so mad that Paul was banging an owner’s wife that I wouldn’t care who I got my revenge with. Well, hell, I believe sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, but give me credit for some taste. I told the creep to stay away. I guess I hurt his feelings. You wouldn’t think a character like that would have feelings, but apparently he did. Paul thinks he killed his horse. Don J. No, I take that back. I’m not supposed to talk about horses.”

“How do you mean, Brossard killed him?”

“How should I know? He’s been in the business for ages. He knows the tricks. Now will you look at that?” she exclaimed as the horses came around into the stretch. She cupped her hands to her mouth. “Drop dead, bum! Just luck, Brossard! What did you do, buy everybody off? Boo!”

Brossard came on to win by two lengths.

“There’s one consolation,” she said as the winning numbers went up. “Paul told me to put twenty bucks on him. But he’s so finky I can’t yell for him. Honey, I’ve got to go down by the paddock, in case Paul wants to sneak me a message. If you want to know anything else, tomorrow when Paul’s out exercising horses would be the best time. Look for the trailer with the broken window.” She laughed suddenly. “I was supposed to be passed out on the floor when it happened, but I opened one eye when I heard the crash. That Rourke. My God—if they had that event in the Olympics he would have won the gold medal.”

CHAPTER 15

MOLLY MOON was sitting at the clubhouse bar, erect on a tall stool, giving off a hard glitter, much like the diamonds at her wrists and on her fingers. Seeing the tall redhead as he came in, she said something to the man she was with and left her drink on the bar. “Michael,” she said with satisfaction, taking his arm. “I stayed alert and got to you before anybody else did. That shows I still have my youthful reflexes.”

“Are the Domaines here?” Shayne said.

“Yes, but you’re going to give me a few minutes first.”

She nodded to a headwaiter, who took them to a small table and removed a RESERVED sign after they sat down.

“A very few minutes,” Shayne said. “Not that you couldn’t tell me quite a bit if you wanted to, but I don’t think you want to.”

“Bourbon on the rocks,” she told the waiter. “Cognac,” the redhead said when the waiter looked at him. “A glass of ice water.”

The clubhouse was extremely crowded and noisy. The patrons here seemed as harassed as those in the grandstand, in spite of being able to pay the added tab and a higher price for their drinks.

“This is no place for confidential murmurs,” Mrs. Moon said, “but lean closer and I’ll tell you something.” She gave him a blinding smile. “God, but I like big rangy men. I like other kinds too, though, so don’t take it too personally. Can you hear me?”

“Barely.”

“The ninth race,” she said. “I haven’t been paying attention to this pipe dream of Claire’s, because the odds against hitting the twin double are purely fantastic. It’s hard enough for me to figure one race at a time, let alone four. But there’s so much juice in the air! Everybody’s behaving so abnormally. Larry loaning you his Caddy, for example. That was no light gesture. He won’t even let his wife drive that car.”

The waiter set down their drinks. She started working on hers right away.

“You said you’d try to be here at seven,” she went on. “He’s been on pins and needles ever since, wondering why you didn’t show up. You wouldn’t notice it unless you knew him. He’s smiling more than usual, a lot more. With Larry that’s always a bad sign.”

Shayne was giving her his full attention. “What’s he scared of?”

“If you want me to guess, he’s worrying about Paul Thorne, who’s a hard man to handicap. If you and Thorne should tangle—” She looked speculatively at the breadth of Shayne’s shoulders. “Who would take whom, I wonder? And how many trees would be uprooted?”

“I don’t have much time, Mrs. Moon,” Shayne said impatiently. “Has Domaine given Brossard the plan for the race?”

“I guess. I saw him in the paddock. The thing I wanted to tell you—God knows if there’s anything to it—is that my trainer took me into one of the stalls and told me if I wanted to make some money to put a wad on my own horse in the ninth. Fussbudget, I told you about her. He wouldn’t say why, but he doesn’t go that far as a rule, and he had a smug look around his chops. I told Claire and Larry. There’s still time to call it off, or hedge. They stiffened at first, but then they decided I was kidding, which I’ve been known to do. I’m worried. A lot seems to be riding on this miserable twin. Too much, and I don’t mean money.”

“If you don’t mean money, what do you mean?”

She shrugged helplessly. “I wish I could tell you. Maybe its only a matter of face, or prestige. Maybe Larry didn’t want to let her do it and she made him. Certainly it was a dumb move. There’s more going on in that marriage than meets the eye. They aren’t a relaxed couple at the best of times, but tonight they’re both wound up to the point where, if things don’t go according to schedule—and how often does that happen?—there’s sure to be fireworks. Mike, would you be a good sweet man and tell me what your role is in this?”

“Why should I?”

“I thought you’d say something like that. Well, I may be making a mistake, but what the hell? Claire’s carrying a gun in her bag.”

“Is that so?”

“You think I’m imagining things, do you? I saw it! She knows I’m an old friend of Larry’s, an old and good friend. What if my trainer’s right? What if Fussbudget wins? She’ll think Larry and I arranged it to make her look foolish, and it wouldn’t surprise me if somebody gets shot. I don’t want it to be me, and I don’t want it to be Larry. I’m being melodramatic, but why else would she bring a gun to the races? You tell me.”

“Mrs. Moon, are you having an affair with Paul Thorne?”

Lines like brackets appeared around her mouth. “Exactly what do you mean by that?”

“Does that mean the answer’s no?”

“Damn right the answer’s no! You’d do better to put that question to Claire. I admire the man’s looks, but I would no more let him—Have you ever looked at his fingernails? He has too much of a horse smell for my taste.”

Shayne finished his drink impassively.

She put both hands on the table and said quietly, “All right. But will you please not tell Larry? That was a rather low blow, my friend. I shouldn’t have sounded quite so horrified. It’s nothing important, but if Larry heard about it, it would offend his esthetic taste, as it offends mine, in a way. I’ve been a friend of Larry’s since before he married Claire. As soon as they break up, I intend to take a very cold aim and see if I can bring him down. That’s no secret. I’ve given him fair warning. You can go now. I’ll pay for the drinks.”

“They’re on me,” Shayne said with a grin.

“You could be quite nice if you weren’t such a bastard. I really looked bad on that one, didn’t I?”

The crowd was drifting back from the betting machines. Shayne spotted Domaine, at a circular table with his back to the track, studying a program. Claire, beside him, was smoking one of her little cigars, looking coldly elegant, untouched by the common passion of the people around her. Shayne stood still, which set up a slight eddy. It caught her attention. He moved his head toward the door. She frowned and nodded, then laid her half-smoked cigar in an ashtray and spoke to her husband.

Shayne returned to the betting gallery, which was feverishly lighted by the great neon signs: CASHIERS, SELLERS, $10 COMBINATION, $2 STRAIGHT. Would-be bettors at the ends of the lines ducked from one line to another, trying to find one that was moving fast enough so they could get their money down before the bell clanged. Claire sauntered out after him, not hurrying. Faint lines around her mouth showed her tension.

“Is Tim Rourke all right?” she said urgently. “I called the hospital and they acted very strangely. They said they couldn’t give out any information. Why? What’s happened?”

“They probably couldn’t find him. As a matter of fact, he’s here. He doesn’t feel so hot, but not because of the pills you gave him. Can you get away for awhile?”

“Away?”

“Yeah. I need some help. It’s too complicated to go into. What about the Moon horse in the ninth? Has that made any change in your plans?”

“No. Larry thinks she’s trying to be funny. Paul knows the horse well and says there’s nothing to worry about. How long would I have to be gone?”

“Maybe an hour.”

She thought and nodded. “I’ll tell him I ran into some friends, and they want me to watch the next few races with them. We’re getting on each other’s nerves. I’ve done everything there is to do. Larry’s going to buy the tickets.”

“Is it OK for him to buy them himself?”

“For the first half. Other people are lined up to make the exchange before the eighth and collect when it’s over, if all goes well.” She held up her crossed fingers. “Mike, at dinner all of a sudden Larry started talking about things we did together when we first knew each other. He actually seemed quite sentimental, and I don’t know how to explain it. He’s taken a half-humorous tone with me for a long time, as though I’m a barely competent actress he’s watching on the stage. At one point he took my hand. He doesn’t do that kind of thing when we’re by ourselves, let alone in a public restaurant. Molly Moon turned several different shades of pink. She has designs on my husband, I believe. Probably she’d be a better wife for him than I am. And the really surprising thing—don’t ask me to explain it—is that he’s started worrying about letting me meet Paul alone at the motel after the races for the payoff. Why don’t we put the money in the mail? Well, for one thing it’s riskier. Paul would yell bloody murder if we made a change in plans this late. He’d suspect something.”

“Sure. He’s got that loan shark on his neck. That was probably a twenty-four-hour loan.”

“Larry doesn’t know about that. Why should he suddenly decide that Paul’s too flakey and unpredictable to deal with face to face? It didn’t bother him last night or this afternoon.”

Shayne worried his earlobe. “Let’s see how it develops. Do your best to look casual.”

When they returned to the clubhouse, the horses in the third race were scrambling for positions on the rail at the first turn. Mrs. Moon was back at the bar, working at a new drink. Everybody else was watching the horses, but she watched Shayne, her eyes hard, her mouth unsmiling. Larry Domaine took his binoculars down for an instant to smile at Claire when she slid in beside him. When the race was over, she said something to him and he nodded.

“I got quite a meaningful look from Molly Moon,” Claire told Shayne when she joined him. “She doesn’t like me, I fear. Where are we going?”

“Now don’t jump. To the Golden Crest Motel. I’ll explain on the way.”

They went down the long ramp and along the apron in front of the stands, passing in front of Rourke. Win Thorne was pushing off from the paddock rail as they came past. She looked from Shayne to Claire, who had briefly dazzled her husband in spite of being so thin. She made some comment under her breath.

“I’ll tell you what I’m planning to do,” Shayne said after helping Claire into her husband’s Cadillac. “It won’t work if Domaine insists on making the payoff by mail, but let’s go ahead with it anyway. You may have to tell him there’s a loan shark involved, and Paul’s insisting on getting the money tonight. I’ve still got a key to room 17. We’re going to plant a mike under the bed in your room and run a wire through to a recorder, so when you and Thorne start talking we can get the dialogue on tape. I want to work out your end of it beforehand, so we’ll get the kind of statement we want.”

“Mike, do you think Paul killed Joey?”

“I think it’s possible.”

He turned toward Fort Lauderdale, and they drove for a time in silence. She glanced at him, starting to speak, then turned abruptly to look out the rear window.

“Mike,” she said excitedly, “somebody’s following us!”

CHAPTER 16

ADJUSTING THE MIRROR, Shayne picked up a pair of headlights. He put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it with the dashboard lighter, watching the headlights and the speedometer as well as the road ahead. There wasn’t much traffic, and in a moment he was doing eighty, without strain. The headlights behind him stayed the same size in the mirror. He zoomed past a slower car; the headlights followed. He slackened speed, and the car behind him kept the interval.

“Let’s not worry about it,” he said. “We have the speed to lose him, but we don’t want any trouble with the troopers. I’ll take him through town.”

“It’s a cab,” she said, peering back. “A Yellow Cab. That’s good, isn’t it? You’ll be able to tell when he’s not there.”

“An experienced cabdriver can be a hard man to shake. Turn around, Claire, and let me handle it.”

He made the turn toward the ocean. Instead of continuing across Route 1, he turned north again and led the taxi into Pompano Beach. He drifted up to a green light, then accelerated hard as the light changed and went through on the yellow. At the next corner he cut through a gas station, sliding past a car drawn up at the pumps, shot into a parking area in front of a shopping center, down a lane between parked cars and out by a different exit.

“I think that does it,” he said, watching the mirror.

He turned another corner, tires squealing, then another, and slipped into the first open parking space. He cut his lights and waited.

“Who could it be?” Claire said anxiously.

“I don’t want to find out,” Shayne answered.

Turning on his lights, he drove to the beach and took A1A south to the motel. He kept one eye on the mirror, saying nothing.

Parking, he reached into the back seat for the paper bag containing the tools he had taken out of the locked chest in his Buick. He also brought out the bourbon bottle. He held it up to the light to check the level of the whiskey. It was still a third full.

Claire had gone ahead to unlock Room 18.

“God, that was a ride,” she said after he closed the door and turned on the lights. She looked around at the anonymous furniture, the big double bed and the blank TV screen. “Mike, all of a sudden I don’t like the idea of being alone in here with Paul Thorne. I wish there was a connecting door we could unlock.”

Shayne emptied the paper bag on the bed. “I brought your husband’s bourbon so you can give him a drink. If you’ve got forty-odd thousand bucks to give him, he shouldn’t make any trouble. Who knows? He might even relax for a minute. It won’t last, but maybe while he’s counting his money and having a drink with a lovely woman, he’ll forget how mad he is about being a poor hill boy surrounded by glamorous people who inherited their dough, if that’s the main thing that’s been bugging him.”

“Fine,” she said. “He’s relaxed. Now what do I do?”

“Now you ask him, in a very friendly way, about Joey Dolan. What we’re doing here, Claire, is testing a theory. I’ve only exchanged one sentence with Paul Thorne, and I may have figured him all wrong. But I’ve heard a lot about him, and it seems to me that if he killed Dolan, and did it so ingeniously that he can’t be touched for it, he’ll want to brag about it to somebody.”

He moved the TV set out from the wall. Using a small brace and bit, he began to drill through the baseboard, nearly flush with the floor.

He went on, squinting to keep cigarette smoke out of his eyes, “And I think you’re the one person he’ll want to brag about it to. In a way, this should make you even. Be thinking about how to bring up the subject. We’ll run a rehearsal on the way back to the track. After winning all that money, you’ll be excited, naturally. You were scared for a while, but now you’re pleased with yourself, pleased with the horses, pleased with Thorne.”

“I hope I can say it so he believes it.”

Shayne ran a wire through the hole to the next room. After tying in a small button microphone, he screwed the microphone to the underside of the bed, ran the wire down the leg of the bed and pressed it out of sight against the edge of the wall-to-wall carpeting. Then he pushed the TV set back into place. Claire was sitting in the single armchair, smoking a small cigar while she watched.

“Mrs. Moon tells me you’re still carrying that .38,” Shayne said. “Let’s see it.”

He put out his hand. After a moment’s hesitation, she took it out of her bag and gave it to him. “I suppose it was a stupid idea,” she said. “It didn’t seem to impress him much this afternoon.”

“You were lucky, Claire. When there’s a gun in a quarrel, the odds are good that it’ll go off. That wouldn’t have solved any of your problems.”

After ejecting the cartridges he clamped one of them into a small portable vise he had brought with the other tools.

“Get me a cake of soap from the bathroom.”

He pried the slug out of the cartridge case and pressed the cartridge down hard on the soap. The sharp rim drilled out a neat core, which he trimmed and tamped down.

“You don’t have to go to all this trouble, Mike,” she said. “I can leave the gun in the car.”

“No, you had it this afternoon, and if you don’t have it tonight, he might wonder why not. Don’t rely on just one approach. Friendliness may not work. If it doesn’t, try getting him mad.”

“That won’t be hard.”

“Don’t just accuse him of killing Joey. Make fun of him for doing it in such a fruity way. Poison’s a woman’s weapon. If you get him mad enough to remember your gun, I don’t want it to be a gun that shoots real bullets.”

He prepared three blank rounds and reloaded the .38, spinning the cylinder to bring the first blank in under the hammer. He gave it back to Claire.

Then they picked up the room, putting everything Shayne had brought, except the bourbon, back in the paper bag. Claire cleaned the ashtrays. He looked around a last time, to be sure they hadn’t forgotten anything, then turned off the lights and, going to the window, looked down at the parking strip. He swore under his breath.

Claire came over beside him. “What is it?”

“A Yellow Cab, that’s all. It could be a coincidence, but I doubt it, somehow.”

“Where?”

“Not out in front. Up next to the gas station.”

She took a quick breath. “Are you sure it wasn’t there when we came?”

“No. But we’d better play percentages and assume it’s the same cab that was following us before.” He drew on his cigarette slowly. “It must be somebody who knows about this motel. After we lost him in Pompano Beach, he came past and saw the Cadillac.”

Her hair brushed against Shayne’s shoulder. He could hear her breathing softly. Her perfume was sharp and somehow disturbing.

“It can’t be Thorne,” he said. “He couldn’t leave the track. I think his wife saw us leave. If that’s who it is—” He swore again. “He’s going to suspect we’ve been bugging the room. That’s not a specialty of mine, but he won’t know it. He’ll be on his guard. He might even refuse to meet you here at all. So there goes a good idea down the drain.”

A spark of light appeared as the driver, in the front seat of the cab, pulled at his cigarette.

“I wonder if you’re thinking the same thing that I am, Claire,” Shayne said.

“I can’t think at all,” she said desperately. “My brain isn’t functioning.”

He turned toward her in the darkness. “See if you can get it to function. Try to think of some other reason why we might be spending half an hour alone in a motel room.”

He could feel her breath on his face. After a moment she said softly, “It’s functioning, Mike.”

“It could have happened like this. I called you out of the clubhouse and said I had to talk to you alone. I knew you hadn’t checked out of this motel. When we got here—yeah, this would fit—I held the bottle of bourbon up to see how many drinks were left. It might be fairly convincing, if you look a little disheveled when we walk out. If I’m wearing some of your lipstick.”

“Mike, good heavens. I don’t mean it’s such a horrifying thought. It’s just such a change of subject.”

Shayne laughed. “I’m not suggesting that we actually do anything. I just think we ought to put on a small act. Give me your lipstick. I’ll see what I can do in the dark.”

“No, you couldn’t make it look authentic, Mike. I have no objection to kissing you. I might even enjoy it.”

She took the lapels of his coat and came in against him. “But I have a funny feeling. This whole thing is window-dressing, isn’t it? The microphone, the questions you want me to ask Paul. Eighteen thousand people saw us leave the track. You pulled out of the parking lot as though you had all the time in the world. And you weren’t really trying too hard to lose that cab, were you? That was more window-dressing.”

Shayne put an arm around her lightly. “Claire, will you trust me?”

“I don’t know,” she said in a muffled voice. “Here we are, in a motel room with the lights out. Of course we’re making love. What else could we be doing? But how is that going to help?”

“I can’t tell you yet,” Shayne said. “You’re right, there’s a certain amount of sleight-of-hand in this, but that goes for everything else. Everything’s faked. Nothing’s the way it seems. Dolan wasn’t killed because he blundered onto a betting scheme. He didn’t go anywhere near the Belle Mark last night. Your husband didn’t loan me his Cadillac because he was sorry Brossard ran me off the road. And that’s the way it goes, all down the line. This whole twin-double deal is a hoax. Take my word for it, and do what I tell you. You have to talk to Thorne alone and ask him those questions about Dolan, and if I told you everything I’ve found out and everything I guess, you couldn’t make it look real. I hoped that all the dodging around we did in Pompano Beach would convince you. It’s true, I was a bit slow at the crucial turns, but I didn’t think you noticed.”

“I didn’t. I just had a kind of prickly feeling.”

They were still standing together, with Claire clinging to him in the dark as though she had to hang onto something or she would slide to the floor. Footsteps approached along the outside gallery. She froze until they passed.

“I’m in a breakable condition right now, Mike,” she whispered. “But I have to trust you. I don’t have any alternative. Tell me one thing. Do you think I poisoned Joey?”

“Hell, no.”

“Truthfully? Because you might think that the only way I could really close the door on Paul Thorne, so he’d never bother me again, would be to win a big sum of money for him. He still has that stupid letter I sent him, and if he feels pressed enough I know he’ll use it. Not for any rational reason, just for the pleasure of smashing me. Would I let an insignificant drunk like Joey stand in my way?”

“Yes, Claire,” he said seriously. “I think you would.”

She slipped her arms around his neck. “Then we’re really on the same side?”

“It looks that way, doesn’t it?”

Her wrists locked and she pulled his face down. Her mouth opened to his and they came together hard. She made a small sound of surprise and alarm, as though she didn’t know what to make of what had happened.

“Mike, I’ve been so frightened.” She kissed the corners of his mouth. “Now I have something I can count on. Mike, hold me. Tighter.”

His embrace tightened, but he could hear a clock ticking inside his head, the same clock that operated the time announcements on the big number-board in the infield at the track. They had wasted too much time in Pompano Beach. The twin-double betting must have closed and the sixth race was underway. If Paul Thorne won it, the machinery would be in motion.

She went on kissing him, and it seemed for a moment that the clock would stop. The bed was only a step from the window. They turned together, without words. Her knees struck the edge of the bed and she sank down on it, drawing him after her. Her mouth and tongue never left him. Her hard, frozen surface had splintered into a thousand fragments, and it might never be put back together again. The jacket of her suit had opened. She was far from skinny, he found; the people who thought so were out of their mind. Her hand was inside his shirt, moving against him.

An instant more and they would have reached a point from which there would be no turning back. Then a siren wailed on the highway. It had nothing to do with them, but it brought the outside world into the motel room for long enough so Shayne heard the ticking again. This time it was coming from his own watch. He turned his arm and looked at the time.

“Please, Mike,” Claire whispered. “I want you to. I know it’s unfair. I don’t mean anything to you. But if you were inside me for a moment, I think I could get through the rest of this awful night. I’ve kept myself—so separate from life. All at once I feel—”

He said gently, “We have to get back. We have to do everything exactly right, or there won’t be one chance in ten thousand of finding out what happened with Dolan.”

“Ten minutes. Five.”

He kissed her and began to move away. She held on.

“Mike, I’ll try to do what you told me, but it’s going to be so scarey. Even without any bullets in the gun. Everything’s changed. I was so blithe about it this afternoon—I thought all I had to do was show the gun to him and he’d start being sensible.” She let him go, her hand sliding along his arm. “Six hours ago I thought I could take care of myself. Up to that point I always had. One kiss from you, and I turn into the kind of female who throws herself at men to get them to take over her problems.”

Shayne smiled in the darkness. “We came pretty close there for a minute.”

“Didn’t we? It crossed my mind that there was really only one way to get the after-lovemaking look, and that was to make love. The next thing I knew I’d stopped thinking. You do everything so well. I knew this would be no exception.”

She pulled him down and kissed him lightly. “God, my life’s a mess.”

“I think it may be less of a mess after the dust settles,” he said. Reaching out, he turned on the bedside lamp. “How much of your lipstick do I have on?”

She looked him over critically. “Mike, none!”

Rolling over, she took out her lipstick and used it on herself, then kissed him carefully. The result satisfied her.

“Now you look like a satyr. You’ve been kissing a married woman in a motel, you scoundrel.”

She stood up, brushing the wrinkles out of her skirt “Well?” she said, pivoting. “Have we been using the Golden Crest Motel for immoral purposes, or not?”

“You look as elegant as always,” he said with a grin. “Even your hair doesn’t need combing. Be combing it anyway when we go out. We’ve suddenly realized how late it is, and we had to throw our clothes on in a rush.”

He pulled off his necktie and waited for her by the light switch. She touched his face quickly.

“You’re a comfort, Mike. I feel enormously better. I meant everything I said on the bed, but at the same time naturally I’m glad I didn’t succeed in taking advantage of you. I would have worried afterward. I don’t know anything about you! Except that you’re quite a guy.”

He snapped off the light, then took her hand and walked quickly to the outside stairs. The Yellow Cab hadn’t moved. Claire was laughing, taking rapid steps in her tight skirt, trying to comb her hair with her free hand.

“Whoa! Not so fast, darling. If I break a leg, we will be in trouble.”

“Damn it,” Shayne said between his teeth, but loudly enough to be heard in the gas station. “They’ll be sending out search parties in another few minutes.”

“Relax,” she told him laughingly. “Everything’s under control. Nobody’s that interested. Mike, baby, do something about camouflaging that lipstick.”

“Oh, God.”

When he reached the Cadillac he turned the fender mirror so he could see what had to be done. She passed him a Kleenex from the front seat, and he scrubbed at the reddish smears on his cheeks and chin.

“What kind of lipstick do you use, for God’s sake? This just makes it worse. I’ll hit the men’s room after we get back.” He added soberly, “We shouldn’t have done this, Claire.”

“Why, darling! Who suggested it, after all?”

He started the motor and came back fast. He cramped the wheel, bent forward angrily, and didn’t glance at the cab on the way out.

CHAPTER 17

SHAYNE DROPPED Claire at the clubhouse entrance and put the Cadillac in its old place in the parking lot. When he came out of the men’s room after washing off the lipstick, the crowd was roaring and the public-address announcer was calling the order in which a field of trotters was rounding into the stretch. This was the eighth race, Shayne discovered from the board as he came out on the ramp. He was back just in time. He waited till the horses completed their stretch run, turned, and came jogging back toward the paddock, blowing. Then, as the crowd patterns changed, he began looking for Rourke’s head bandage.

“Mike, I was afraid you wouldn’t get here,” Rourke said, as Shayne came up to him. “I saw you and the Domaine dame take off in that big Cad. Sandra tells me Mrs. Domaine’s the one who put sleeping pills in my soup—and I didn’t want to drink that soup, you may recall,” he told the nurse. “You made me. Mike, what have you been doing? Putting on pressure?”

“I put on a little. How’s the twin-double investment?”

“Going according to plan, according to plan. Things are getting tense.”

The nurse was on the edge of her seat, clutching her bag. “I had no idea harness racing was so interesting, Mr. Shayne. The picture the horses make coming around that turn!”

“And especially when it’s your horse that’s out in front,” Rourke said.

“I see you’ve got binoculars,” Shayne said, taking them. “You had a ticket on all the horses in the eighth?”

“That’s what we decided. Thorne’s trotter took the sixth, very well behaved, didn’t work up a sweat. Paid us lucky bettors $54 for two. I had ten bucks on the nose, besides all the twin tickets on him. I cashed that $10 ticket for $270, and that gives us our capital.”

“Who do you mean by us?”

“Me and Sandra. You didn’t want in, and I’m not cutting you in when we’re three-quarters of the way home. I had Thorne’s trotter wheeled in the first half, and that brought us out of the seventh with sixteen live tickets.”

“It’s complicated, isn’t it?” Miss Mallinson said.

“It’s not complicated at all!” Rourke insisted. “What the hell, I’ll explain it again. Thorne’s trotter was Number Three. We combined Number Three with every horse in the seventh—eight separate tickets at two bucks apiece. But that would only give us one live ticket at the end of the half, to turn in for our pick, in the eighth and ninth. So we bet that same combination sixteen times. Cost $256. What’s hard to understand about that? The Number Two horse won the seventh. All right, we had sixteen tickets that said Number Three and Number Two, and we traded those in for two sets of tickets combining My Treat, the Domaine horse in the ninth, with all the horses in the eighth. The Number One horse just won the eighth. So now we have two tickets that are still live—Number One in the eighth and Number Four in the ninth, and if Number Four comes in, baby, we’ve cracked the twin double!”

“I’ll believe it when it happens, Tim. You know it isn’t good for you to get excited.”

“One ticket is yours and one’s mine. How can you be so calm?”

Shayne swung the binoculars toward the clubhouse, thumbing the focusing knob as he hunted for the Domaines.

“Too bad I couldn’t bring you up to date before you spent all that money, Tim,” he remarked. “One or two things have changed.”

“I knew it!” Rourke exclaimed after a stunned silence. “My Treat isn’t going to win.”

“Let’s say I wouldn’t bet any money on it.”

“But I already have!”

The nurse stroked his shoulder, as though gentling an excited horse. “It’s only money, Tim.”

“Only!” he said, outraged.

Shayne picked up Larry Domaine’s table. The crowd shifted and he saw Claire, as lovely as ever, her face composed and self-assured, showing nothing but pleasure in her youth and good looks and good fortune. She didn’t look like the same person who had been on the bed with Shayne at the motel. Shayne’s arm was joggled and he lost her briefly. She was smiling at her husband when he picked her up again. Domaine turned his head. Shayne might have missed it if he had been half a dozen tables away, but through the binoculars there was no mistaking the fact that Domaine was angry. The painful little line over the bridge of his nose gave him away, and there was a sparkle in his mild pale eyes.

Moving the binoculars, Shayne saw Mrs. Moon at the same table. She was talking to people nearby, laughing in her usual glittering way.

After a brief fanfare, the hard metallic voice of the public address called out, “The pacers for the ninth race are on the track.”

Shayne turned to watch them pass the grandstand. The horse Paul Thorne was driving, Famous Son, was small and shaggy, with a mean look, and didn’t seem fast. Thorne was applauded; in addition to winning with his own trotter, he had had another first and a third. My Treat, the Domaine mare being driven by Brossard, had a long, pretty stride. Mrs. Moon’s Fussbudget, a medium-sized, undistinguished-looking roan, was listed at eighteen to one on the board. The lights blinked as more money was bet on the other horses, and the odds on Fussbudget lengthened to twenty. Famous Son was the favorite, at five to two. My Treat was getting new backing from people who went by a horse’s looks rather than its record. It was now fourteen to one.

“I’m going to use the glasses to watch the clubhouse,” Shayne said. “You watch the race and tell me what’s happening. I’ll see how they react. Keep an eye on Fussbudget.”

“This is one hell of a time to tell me to keep an eye on Fussbudget,” Rourke said. “We could have protected ourselves by taking one ticket on her and one on My Treat. I’ll have to report back to the hospital when this is over. I’m in agony.”

“I don’t think you’re in agony at all,” Miss Mallinson said. “I think you’re enjoying every minute of it.”

The public address cried, “The marshals call the pacers!” Two girls on ponies, in fake cowgirl outfits, began lining up the sulkies in the back stretch behind the starting car, a long white convertible supporting a wide folding gate. As the car moved toward the turn at ten miles an hour, the drivers brought their horses’ heads up to the gate and the announcer called, “The field is in the hands of the starter.”

A moment later: “The field is in motion!”

The car gained speed gradually. Bettors hurried back from the galleries. A yell arose, the starter shouted “Go!”, the gate folded in and the car swooped away. Shayne checked the final odds and swung his binoculars to the clubhouse.

Excited people lined the railing. Everybody who had stayed for the last race had money on it, and a handful still held valid tickets in the twin double. This group was close to hysteria, seeing visions of one of the rich payoffs that had been making headlines lately. The Domaines and Mrs. Moon had risen, Domaine between the two women. Claire’s clenched fists were pressed hard against her breast as she watched the rush for the turn. It was obvious to Shayne that she thought the whole course of her life would be determined by the outcome of the race.

“It’s Speedy Lad at the turn,” the announcer called. “Famous Son is second, Hurricane Edna on the rail, Painted Lady is fourth, then it’s My Treat, Fussbudget. Fussbudget moving up. Now it’s Speedy Lad, Famous Son—”

Rourke said prayerfully, “Come on, My Treat. Move.”

“Don’t talk to the horses, talk to me,” Shayne told him.

Of the three people he was watching, Mrs. Moon was screaming advice to her horse, Claire stood rigid and silent, Domaine watched the track with a faint smile. He glanced down at his left hand, where he held a stopwatch. Without hurrying, he took off his pince-nez and raised his binoculars to watch the horses go into the turn coming out of the backstretch.

“My Treat’s got an opening,” Rourke said. “There’s a cranny there she can get through. She’s coming out. She’s going to take that next horse. There she goes.”

Shayne heard the rattle of hoofs through the crowd-roar and turned to watch the horses come past the grandstand. Thorne had lost his cap. His long black hair was flying in the breeze. He was using his whip. The head of his horse, Famous Son, came abreast of the leading driver. The horse in first place was beginning to fade.

The announcer called, “And now it’s Speedy Lad, it’s Famous Son, Painted Lady is third—

Claire was pressing her fingertips against her temples. Domaine still had his binoculars up. He was no longer smiling.

“I can’t stand it,” Rourke moaned. “What’s the matter with that driver? Come on, My Treat! Get going, will you, Brossard? He’s relaxed! He doesn’t care if he wins or not! Well, finally. He’s brushing her now. That’s right, sweetheart, go. No—Painted Lady’s carrying her out, Mike! The driver’s lost a rein.” He howled. “She squeaked past, My Treat barely squeaked past. That was nice driving, but God it was close.”

In the clubhouse, Domaine had taken the binoculars down and snapped his pince-nez back on. His eyes were narrow. Mrs. Moon seized his arm in her excitement.

The announcer called, “Going into the backstretch, it’s Famous Son first, then it’s Speedy Lad—”

“My Treat’s fourth,” Rourke said, “coming up fast on the outside. Fussbudget’s still hanging in there, damn her. It’s those four horses. Hey! Hurricane Edna broke. Pulled to the outside. Thorne’s whipping Famous Son again.” He said suddenly, “They bumped! Thorne wobbled, collided with Speedy Lad—I don’t know what happened. Maybe he did it deliberately to let My Treat through—”

The crowd was roaring insanely. Claire had her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide, but Shayne couldn’t see enough of her face to gauge the expression. Domaine was smiling again.

Rourke said, “They’re both out of the race. That was a rough piece of driving, Mike. Thorne and the other horse are out of it, their equipment is jammed together. And there goes My Treat!”

The announcer: “Now it’s My Treat first as they come into the stretch, it’s Fussbudget, it’s Painted Lady third by two lengths—”

“Thorne’s out of his sulky,” Rourke said. “His horse is dragging him.”

Domaine’s binoculars, Shayne saw, weren’t aimed at the front-running horses, but at Thorne. His front teeth were bared.

“Brossard’s trying,” Rourke said. “I’ll say that for him. He’s whipping his horse. Fussbudget’s coming up fast. My Treat is tiring. Now they’re neck and neck. Mike, we’re going to lose! Fussbudget’s past. Running strong. My Treat’s all done. She’s laboring.”

The announcer: “And now in the stretch it’s Fussbudget by a length, it’s My Treat second, it’s Painted Lady. Coming down to the wire it’s Fussbudget, it’s Painted Lady, it’s My Treat. Fussbudget wins it by two lengths, Painted Lady is second, My Treat third—”

Mrs. Moon, in the clubhouse, was jumping up and down, necklaces and bracelets flying, her hair wild. Claire was rigid again, but it seemed to Shayne that her eyes were shining. An odd expression moved across Domaine’s face, an expression of satisfaction and triumph. By the way they looked, they all three had a winner. Domaine raised the binoculars and looked off toward the turn, where Thorne had fallen. His lips came back again, showing his teeth.

Rourke moaned. “What the hell happened? She quit in the stretch. Half a furlong to go. I’ll never come that close to winning a twin.”

Shayne pulled out the key to Room 17 at the motel, the room he had rented that afternoon. “Stop thinking about money, Tim. Now the important things start happening. This is the Golden Crest Motel, on the ocean, between Pompano Beach and Lauderdale. Go there right away. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”

“Jesus, will you look at that payoff,” Rourke groaned as the unofficial twin-double winner was flashed—6 and 8, pays 22,717.80. “Twenty-two thousand bucks. You knew about Fussbudget and didn’t tell me. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive you.”

The apron was jammed with homeward-bound horse-players, that vast majority with no winnings to collect from the cashiers. Shayne vaulted the rail onto the track. The official sign was up on the board and the horses had turned and were coming back. He kept close to the rail. Fussbudget turned toward the judges’ tower to have her picture taken. A guard shouted at Shayne; the redhead lengthened his stride. At the gap leading to the paddock, he ducked back under the rail and waited.

When he saw Franklin Brossard bringing in My Treat, he went under the rail again and grabbed the curved bar over Brossard’s sulky wheel. The horse felt the drag on the sulky and stopped at once.

“Take your hands off my bike,” Brossard said evenly.

“I want to talk to you, Frank. Do you recognize me? You crowded me off the road outside Lauderdale this afternoon.”

Brossard glanced at the paddock judge, who was watching like a vulture, his eyes hooded. Moving nothing but his right wrist, Brossard flicked the point of his whip across his body at Shayne. The redhead was waiting for it. He came up fast, let the whip wrap itself around his forearm, and pulled. He grabbed Brossard’s wrist as it came across. Brossard’s body was as tough and resilient as a twist of bridge cable, but balancing as he was on the precarious little seat, his feet up in the foot-brackets, he had no leverage.

The judge shouted, “Get your sulky out of the gap!”

Brossard’s mean eyes glittered at Shayne. “OK, tough guy. I’ll meet you in front of the Domaine barn as soon as I get a swipe to tend the horse.”

“We’re doing this my way,” Shayne said. “Don’t try to hurry your horse or I’ll pull you out on the ground.”

Two uniformed Pinkertons ran out of the paddock.

“Any trouble, Frank?” one of them said.

Brossard spat a mouthful of tobacco juice into the dirt. Without replying he flicked the reins and the horse began to move. Shayne let go of Brossard’s wrist but kept a firm grasp on the bar. The big paddock barn was emptying. They went through at a walk. In the stable area, horses under blankets were being led around the walking circle. In front of some of the stalls, grooms worked on tack or washed bandages. A fluttery old man stepped out from under an overhanging shed roof, under a wrought-iron sign reading, “DOMAINE,” and took My Treat by the head harness.

“Baby doll,” he said sadly, “you lost me a five spot.”

Brossard swung down stiffly, rubbing the grayish stubble on his lantern jaw. “Your name’s Shayne, right? I didn’t make it an issue out there on the strip because I don’t know if Mr. Domaine—”

The rest of his breath came out in a puff as Shayne’s fist hit him above the belt buckle and dumped him backward against the shed rail and over it into the dirt. Shayne vaulted the rail after him. Brossard kicked out viciously, grazing Shayne’s kneecap, then shifted balance and came up at a slant, his folded arms protecting his face from a sudden jerk of Shayne’s knee, and tried to butt the detective in the stomach. Shayne caught his bristly chin in both hands, went backward a step, then dug in, brought his hands up and spilled Brossard back against the stall door. For an instant the driver hung there, and Shayne pumped a hard right against the side of his head, dropping him. He rolled, shook his head to clear it, and came to his feet with a short club that had a leather thong looped from one end, apparently some kind of instrument used to control horses. He was still groggy from Shayne’s right, and he moved in slow motion, like the horses Shayne had watched on tape in the racing secretary’s office. Shayne chopped at the big muscle of his arm and picked the club out of his numbed fingers.

A man came running across the wide dirt road from another stable. Shayne looked at him, the club in his hand. He stopped abruptly at the rail.

“Inside,” Shayne said to Brossard. “You’re going to tell me some of your boss’s secrets, and it’s too public out here.”

The driver gave him an evil look and went into the tack-room. Shayne followed.

“Take off your boots,” he snapped. Brossard looked surprised. “What do you mean, take off my boots?”

Shayne rapped the back of his knees with the club and Brossard sat down abruptly on the floor. He had lost his cap in the fight. Without it, he looked older.

“The Pinks are going to be along in a minute, and if you think you’re going to break my toes or anything—” Shayne slammed the door and locked it. He made a menacing gesture with the hardwood club and Brossard started pulling at his boots. Shayne picked up the first one that came off, turned it upside down and shook it. A twin double ticket fluttered out.

“That’s where I thought you’d be carrying it,” he said. “I didn’t see any pockets in those silks.”

“I thought I’d keep it for a souvenir,” Brossard sneered, “but if you want it that much you can have it.”

“Six and four,” Shayne said, reading the numbers on the ticket. “Six and eight was the winning combination. Who’s the four horse?”

Brossard looked at him curiously. “My Treat. The Domaine mare, for the love of God. Is that the reason for this punch in the belly? You thought I was faking it in the stretch?”

“She ran out of steam awfully fast.”

“You never saw that happen with a horse? I didn’t expect it with this baby, but she had that close scrape in the backstretch and I guess she didn’t have nothing left. The way she was fading there, I was lucky to bring her in third. But they don’t pay off in the twin on thirds. Give me my goddamn boot.”

Shayne tossed it to him and he yanked it on angrily. He came to his feet, brushing straw and dirt off his pink pants.

“After driving four races in three hours, I just love a good brawl before I go to bed,” he said. He felt his long jaw. “You pack quite a right hand, mister. Jesus, I could understand it if you’d broke any bones when I ran you off the road, but I hear you didn’t even have to put on a bandaid.”

He took a cigarette from a pack on a shelf and looked for matches. He opened a drawer in a workbench and whirled with a pair of brass knuckles on his fist. Shayne had been watching his movements closely, and crowded him with the short club. Brossard gauged his chances. Sneering, he tossed the knuckles back in the drawer.

“Give me a light.”

Shayne ignored the request. “Did you know Joey Dolan told somebody he was going to the Belle Mark an hour or two before he was killed?”

Brossard’s eyelids twitched. He said hoarsely, “Did you say killed?”

“You didn’t think that was going to be called an accident, did you?”

“Damn right it was an accident! Joey was no ordinary rummy. He wouldn’t drink wood alcohol unless he didn’t know what he—”

He looked sharply at Shayne and clamped his mouth shut. Somebody outside rattled the knob of the locked door. Brossard went to the door, looked at Shayne for an instant, then unlocked the door and opened it. Two of the track Pinkertons were outside. One had a gun showing.

“Beat it,” Brossard said with a jerk of his head.

“They said somebody was kicking you around, Frank—”

“Any time anybody wants to kick me around, they’re welcome to try. Go back to sleep.”

He slammed the door and found a match. “You said Joey told somebody. What does that mean, you don’t know who?”

“If we lit enough fires under people, we could find out. You didn’t kill him, did you, Brossard?”

“Why would I want to kill Joey? I liked the guy. But I don’t like that crap about my apartment. It makes me wonder if somebody’s trying to frame me.”

“Does Paul Thorne still have a key to it?”

“You pick up things, don’t you, Shamus? He gave me back the key I let him have. That don’t mean he didn’t have another one made, cost him a quarter. I slept in the bunkhouse last night. Four guys to a room. That gives me three witnesses.”

“Is this the tack-room where Joey was going to sleep last night?”

“Yeah. I don’t mind, I let him, but nobody’s supposed to know about it. He gets out a cot and puts it away again before anybody shows up in the morning. That was the idea.”

“Did you pay for that twin-double ticket with your own dough?”

“Why not? Domaine’s not too bad a boss. Most of the time he leaves the stable alone. When he tells me to do something, I do it, and I don’t ask why. Today he told me he wanted to win with My Treat, and then he told me he’d heard that Thorne had a winner in the sixth. He didn’t have to draw a diagram.”

“You hadn’t heard anything about Fussbudget?”

“Does it look as though? The bastards have been hiding her. She never did a thing before tonight. We’ve been hiding My Treat, and it’s a piece of crummy luck that the office dropped both horses in the same race.”

“Domaine definitely wanted you to win with My Treat?”

“Christ, that was the object, Shayne. We’ve been bringing her along bit by bit. I raced her a couple of times when I had to fake her condition to get her past the vet. She was way below par, three or four seconds slow, at four lengths a second. That set up her classification. The next time out she was feeling feisty. I held her to fifth but next morning my shoulders were sore. Last time she was really ready but we were waiting for a twin-double race to turn her loose. I gave her a bad drive that time, went out on the rim with her and died on the last turn. Tonight I don’t know what. She just didn’t have it. All of a sudden it was like she was up to her knees in sand.”

“Did Mrs. Moon talk to you before the race?”

“Mrs. Moon!” His surprise seemed real. “Why should Mrs. Moon talk to me? Probably what you heard about was Mrs. Domaine.”

Shayne pulled at his earlobe. “What did she want?”

Brossard hesitated. “I wouldn’t tell you as a rule, but that thing about my apartment really bothers the hell out of me. She wanted me to pull My Treat. There are things going on around here I don’t want to know about. If you can figure them out, fine. The boss said win. The boss’s wife said lose, and she said she’d feed me five hundred bucks if I did. I didn’t say yes or no. Nothing like that ever happened before. No matter which way, I was behind the eight ball. You can’t win and lose both. Maybe now she owes me five hundred bucks. And maybe I hadn’t better try to collect, too, what do you think, Shayne?”

“What happened to Don J., Brossard?”

“Thorne’s colt? The one that was killed?” He took another puff on his cigarette and ground it out. “Let’s forget about Don J. That’s history.”

Shayne tossed the club onto the workbench with a clatter. “All right, so long as I know you killed the horse, I don’t care about the details.”

CHAPTER 18

TOO MANY PEOPLE had seen him in Domaine’s Cadillac, so after retrieving his brown-paper bag of tools, Shayne took a cab.

“The Golden Crest Motel on Al A. I’m in a hurry.”

He waited till they were halfway there before asking, “You didn’t make this same run earlier tonight, did you?”

“Hell, no,” the driver said. “I was too busy losing money. Do you know I went into the ninth with five tickets? Fussbudget,” he said with disgust. “Where did she come from?”

Shayne told him to let him out on the highway. He saw Tim’s rusted-out Ford, a few cars away from Claire Domaine’s Mercedes. He went up the outside staircase and tapped on the door of Room 17. There was no response. After a moment he tapped again, more impatiently, and the door was opened by Miss Mallinson. Her cheeks seemed flushed. She was smoothing her hair. Shayne shot a quick glance at Rourke, who was sitting back against the headboard of the bed, whistling softly. The bedspread was rumpled.

“Next time I’ll tell them to put you in a body cast,” Shayne said.

“I was feeling weak,” Rourke said innocently. “Naturally I lay down. What’s in the paper bag? Something to drink?”

“Be patient. We have work to do first.”

He found the wire he had snaked through the hole in the baseboard and tied in a little transistor speaker.

“—that you, Mike?” Claire’s voice said. “Mike. Please. I have to talk to you. Is it connected yet? Can you hear me? Hurry.”

Shayne straightened decisively. “Now listen to me, Sandra,” he told the nurse over Claire’s pleas from the little speaker. “Turn out the lights and wait at the window. The second you see a car come in from the highway, knock twice on the wall. If it’s a red convertible, knock three times.”

He snapped the spring lock on the door so he could open it from the outside and knocked on the door of Number 18. It opened and Claire came into his arms. He moved her out of the lighted doorway and closed the door. She was breathing shallowly and seemed close to hysteria.

“I can’t go through with it, Mike. He’ll kill me. I know it. I’ll be lying on the floor dead before you can get in to help me. He’ll be out of his mind with disappointment. I won’t have a chance to ask him about Joey, so there’s no point in it now. Don’t make me do it.”

She was pulling at the front of his shirt, looking up at him. “Stay with me. You ask him. He won’t know what he’s saying. He’ll blurt something out.”

Applying a slow, powerful pressure, he broke her grip. His eyes drilled into hers and made her listen.

“Are you sure he’ll be here?”

“Yes! He hurt his leg when he fell. Larry sent him a message in the infirmary. Mike, I told Brossard to lose! I thought of that loan shark Paul borrowed from, and suddenly it hit me—if Paul can’t pay, he’ll get some of the same treatment he’s been dishing out to other people. I’ll be free of him.”

“Brossard didn’t pull My Treat,” Shayne said impatiently, still holding her wrists. “What message did your husband send Thorne?”

“That he was sorry, and he’d advance him a thousand dollars in cash to pay off the loan. But I’m not staying unless you do too. I mean that, Mike.”

“You said you’d trust me,” Shayne said. “Goddamn it, trust me! It’s too bad it turned out like this, but we still have a chance to get him for Joey if he does enough talking. Don’t try to steer him. Just let him rave.”

There were three raps on the wall.

Shayne let her go and said hurriedly, “It’s going to be all right, Claire. Believe me.”

She stepped back, very pale. She said levelly, “Go ahead. I can take care of myself.”

Something final and deadly in her voice stopped him at the door. He let go of the doorknob and came back fast. “Claire, goddamn it, I wish you’d stop thinking for yourself.”

He wrenched her black bag off her shoulder. The long strap caught. He knew he had hardly any time. He yanked hard. Holding her off with one elbow, he took out her .38 and broke it. There were two live rounds in the cylinder, as well as the three blanks he had put there earlier. He swore savagely, shucked out the live rounds and spun the cylinder.

“Stop trying to get yourself killed.”

He thrust the gun back in her bag. Reaching the window in two long strides, he looked down carefully. Thorne’s red convertible, the top up, skidded into a parking slot. Thorne flung out of the front seat, leaving the headlights on.

“Tim,” Shayne said sharply. “Pay attention. Don’t come in unless I call you. Rap on the wall if you can hear me.”

Two quick raps answered.

Shayne heard Thorne’s clumping step on the stairs. Going quickly to the bathroom, he stepped into the shower stall and pulled the curtain across.

“Mike, please,” Claire said faintly from the bedroom.

The overhead outlet dripped cold water on Shayne. He tightened both faucets, but the drip continued. He heard the outer door open.

“Paul, don’t!” Claire cried.

There was the sound of a hard blow. “You think I’m going to hold still for this, you bitch?” Thorne shouted. “I want half.”

“Half of what?” Claire said suspiciously.

“Half the payoff! What kind of a jerk do you think I am?”

“There isn’t any payoff. You knew there was a chance it wouldn’t work. We always knew that.”

“Yeah!” Thorne said scornfully. “If the mare broke a leg or some other horse surprised us, OK. I’d have to pack up and run, and run a long way, but that was the chance I took when I borrowed from that guy. But this was no accident. This was planned. The trouble is, I know you. I know you all the way through.”

Claire had lost some of her fear of him, now that they were face to face. “There must be something behind this clamor,” she said with a return to her habitual coolness. “Some terrible suspicion is working in that pea-sized brain. You must think I told Frank to hold her in.”

“I know when Frank’s trying and when he only wants the grandstand to think he’s trying. He gave the mare a real heads-up drive. But the times! That was how you suckered me. That My Treat is no 2:04 pacer. I should have taken her out and timed her myself.”

“I timed her.”

“That’s what I mean! You timed her, and then you conned me into throwing away a thousand bucks I don’t have. You wanted to cut me up like confetti so I’d blow away. But I don’t blow so easy! How many winning tickets did you end up with?”

“If it gives you any satisfaction to think I rigged this, go ahead and think it. Larry says he’ll loan you a thousand, on your IOU. Out of the goodness of his heart, I don’t know why. Do you want it or don’t you?”

“Yeah, I’ll take the thousand. That’s not all I’ll take. Why didn’t you wait a couple of days to cash in? I’ll tell you why, kid. I didn’t get through high school, but that doesn’t make me a moron, either. You wanted to be sure I’d know what a genius you are. You wanted to rub it in that I’m dirt, nothing but dirt.”

“That’s exactly what I think you are. What’s rankling with you, Paul? That you killed Joey Dolan, and you’re no better off than you were before?”

“I didn’t!” he shouted. He repeated in a lower voice, “I didn’t kill Joey. That’s more your style. I’d guess he found out about Fussbudget, and that might have spoiled your nice little double-cross. You had to get back at me for walking out on you. First you set a world’s record for getting in bed with me—”

“Stop it.”

“And then when everything wasn’t just so—” He was starting to shout again. “What kind of a lay were you looking for? Some three-quarters pansy, who’d say may I, honey, do you mind, sweetheart? You drove me out of my head with your complaints, and when I couldn’t put up with that mouth any more and smacked you, what did it make me? A big dumb gorilla.”

“Paul, I’m warning you.”

“If you didn’t like the way I was, what did you sleep with me for?”

“You’ve always distorted everything, and you’re still at it. Here’s the thousand. Count it and get out of here.”

“You hated me from the word Go. You couldn’t be satisfied with getting me beat up and knocked out of the business, back to scratching for a living on that goddamn farm. Not you, not Claire Domaine who gets her picture in the paper. You could have used somebody besides Rutherford and I never would have known who was murdering me. But you wanted me to know. That was the main part of it.”

“What about Rutherford?” she demanded.

“Goldy Rutherford! I was there on the table getting my leg tied up, and the nurse says to the doctor, ‘Did you hear that Rutherford just cashed a winning ticket in the twin?’” And the doctor gives a big laugh. So does everybody. Even the mutuels office knows Rutherford is a Domaine beard. You’re on thin ice there, baby—they’re all wondering why you used somebody that obvious.”

“You’re mad. I haven’t talked to Rutherford since—”

“Since last night. Sure, sure. There are eight tickets still out. How many have you got?”

“Keep your hands out of my bag!”

A chair scraped and went over. Shayne tensed and took hold of the shower curtain.

“And here it is!” Thorne exclaimed. “Twin double, six and eight! Another twenty-two grand. So you didn’t have any dough on Fussbudget! Put that down.”

There was a hard thud. Then the sound came that Shayne had been waiting for. The gun banged, for an instant there was silence.

“Listen,” Thorne said, “I didn’t mean to do that, Claire. All I want is my split. Claire, baby, I wouldn’t shoot you. What did you have to bring a gun for, for God’s sake? I wouldn’t hurt you.”

There was no answer.

Thorne’s voice was suddenly uncertain, the voice of a shaken small boy. “I didn’t want to do all those things to you, Claire. I’ve got to go now. You understand why I can’t stay, don’t you? It was an accident, but people wouldn’t believe it. I’ll call a doctor. You’ll be all right.”

The door opened and closed.

Shayne stepped out of the shower stall. Claire lay on her side on the floor beside the bed. The gun was near her hand. She moved her head, and made a whimpering sound. Shayne saw the mark on her forehead where Thorne had hit her just before the gun went off.

Hearing a key scrape in the lock, he faded back into the shower. Footsteps entered the room.

“Good evening, darling?” Domaine’s voice said. “Having trouble?”

CHAPTER 19

THE FOOTSTEPS softly crossed the carpet.

“Larry,” Claire whispered.

“I see you’re still breathing,” her husband said. “That’s unfortunate. Did you think I was going to stand by and let you sleep with half the male population of southern Florida?”

There was a rustling noise, followed by a quick shot.

Shayne burst out of the bathroom and struck in a blur of motion, getting the gun in one hand and back-handing Domaine very hard with the other. Domaine went over the double bed and off it on the other side. Claire still lay on the carpet, frozen, her eyes wide with shock. There was a black powder burn on her forehead. She had just been shot by two men in succession, but it almost seemed that the one she was most afraid of was Shayne.

He gave her a warning look and went after her husband, who was coming to his feet. Another openhanded blow from Shayne sent him sprawling into the armchair.

“Goddamn it,” Shayne said in savage self-disgust. “I had you tabbed as a talker. I thought you’d want to torment her a little before you shot her.”

Domaine reached up, his hand trembling badly, and removed his pince-nez, which miraculously had stayed clamped to his nose after two blows. “I was in a hurry. She’s dead, of course?”

“Taking a .38 slug in the brain isn’t the best way to stay healthy,” Shayne said grimly. “I’m sorry it happened like this. She was a damn fine woman. Maybe we can get both you and Thorne for it. I’ll sure as hell try.”

“It was a gamble,” Domaine said without hope. “A fine woman! I used to think so before she betrayed me with a dirty redneck, without even a grammar-school education. She used to drench herself with perfume after one of their adulterous sessions, but she always came back smelling of horses. Nobody named Domaine has ever put up with that. I happen to believe in an old-fashioned concept called honor.”

“Why didn’t you divorce her?” Shayne snapped.

“Charging adultery? Naming Paul Thorne as correspondent? No, thank you. She was going to have his child! She was a whore!” He put his pince-nez back on. “It may be a morbid question, considering what has just happened, but how was she in bed, Shayne?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the detective said uneasily.

“You’ll be named, my big-muscled bucko! I’ll name you in court. The jury will understand why I had to kill her. The child Thorne planted in her miscarried, but what if she had conceived again from her connection with you?”

“It was a hell of a sneaky way to try to kill her,” Shayne said, “The jury may not be able to understand that.”

“What should I have done, surprised her in bed with Thorne at Frank Brossard’s apartment and killed them both with my great grandfather’s dueling pistols? I considered it. In my great grandfather’s day, a husband’s honor meant something. If he’d been arrested at all, it would have been the merest formality. New times, new methods. You did me a favor, you know, you and Claire, with that quick roll in the hay. I’ve got the cabdriver as a witness. Wiping off her lipstick as you came out. Checking your zipper to be sure it was closed. I saw that. I’d almost decided to forgive her, but to go off like that, with someone she’d known only a few hours, a private detective—it drove me out of my mind.”

Shayne looked worried. “I don’t think you’ll get away with it. I admit it won’t be very pleasant for me.”

“I’ll give you money,” Domaine suggested, more confidently. “Quite a bit of money. I slipped a winning twin-double ticket in Claire’s purse. We have to leave that for the police, to establish Thorne’s motive for killing her. I have two others. One I’ve already had cashed. I’ll give you the third. There won’t be any trouble, because the police will have a solution ready-made. Thorne thinks he killed her. He has no moral stamina. He’ll babble out a confession the minute a policeman taps him on the shoulder.”

“It’s risky,” Shayne said, rubbing his chin.

“In what way? Nobody else heard the shots, or we’d have company by now. Twenty-two thousand dollars, Shayne, and you’ll spare yourself some unsavory publicity.”

Shayne hesitated. “What bothers me is Joey Dolan. There might be a snag there. If anybody saw you—”

“You figured that out, did you? Perhaps you’re not quite as stupid as I thought. Set your mind at rest. I took pains not to be seen. Claire kept a few bottles of sherry for him, which she’d dole out one at a time—a real humanitarian. I poured out part of one bottle and filled it with wood alcohol, and he never noticed the difference. I picked him up in Claire’s Mercedes and took him for a ride, to use a fine old gangster expression. I told him I wanted to talk to him about my plans for the twin double. About our plans. He’d already passed out by the time I unloaded him in Miami.”

“We had a report he was going to Brassard’s apartment. What was that all about?”

Domaine chortled. “You don’t mean to tell me that some anonymous informant called your secretary?”

“How did you know that?” Shayne said, surprised.

“The anonymous informant, c’est moi! I faked the voice pretty well, if I say so myself. My late wife had alarmed me by telling me she’d been questioned by Michael Shayne, the detective, and I thought up this scheme in the time it took me to dial your office number. I wanted to get you out of the area, I even provided you with transportation. And nosing around the Belle Mark, I knew you’d come across traces of my wife and Paul Thorne. That was the one thing I needed, someone to give the police, the facts about the adultery in the first crucial moments after they found the body. I was almost aghast at my own cleverness.”

“So even if Dolan’s death is put down as a murder,” Shayne said slowly, “they’ll think Thorne did that one too.” He let a faint note of excitement enter his voice. “I think we might get away with it!”

“Of course we’ll get away with it. Who’s worried about Dolan? Nobody. My wife’s death should be a big enough story to blanket everything else. Sex, passion, a crooked twin double—the papers will lap it up.” He took out his wallet. “I was worried unnecessarily, I see. You aren’t the law-and-order fanatic I took you for. Here’s the ticket. Get somebody else to cash it for you.”

“OK, Tim,” Shayne said in his ordinary voice. “You can come in now.”

Domaine half-rose and looked quickly at the bathroom. “Tim Rourke? You can’t trick me that easily, Shayne. He’s in the hospital, with severe scalp and face lacerations. He couldn’t possibly—”

Tim Rourke and the nurse came in together. Domaine cowered back and gave Shayne a look of hatred.

“Damn you. Damn you.”

“Everybody tells me you’re a chess player,” Shayne said. “I play poker. This was what is known as a bluff.”

“I didn’t understand a damn word!” Rourke said excitedly. “Domaine’s the one who killed Joey? Why!”

Shayne went to the phone. “I think it’s about time we had a few cops. He killed Joey because Joey heard something last night, and saw the owner of the stable with a hypodermic syringe, giving My Treat an injection.”

“Yeah, but Mike—that comes back to what we’ve been saying. Why would he have to kill Joey? Why not just cut him in?”

“Domaine wasn’t stimulating the mare, to make sure she won. He was using a depressant, to make sure she lost. That’s the only way to explain what happened. Joey had no way of knowing what was in the syringe. When you see an owner doping a horse, you have to assume he’s out to win some money. If he wanted the horse to lose, he’d simply tell the driver. But Domaine wasn’t doing this for money. He was trying to kill his wife and her lover. Were you planning to get married to Molly Moon if it worked, Domaine?”

“No,” Domaine said stiffly. “If she told you that she was lying. My honor was at stake.”

“If that’s going to be your defense,” Shayne said dryly, “good luck with it.”

He picked up the phone and Rourke cried, “Mike, will you hold it one minute? He was tampering with a horse. How would that kill his wife and her lover?”

Shayne weighed the phone for an instant, and put it down. “His wife was sleeping with Paul Thorne. Most of that wasn’t her fault. I’m even beginning to think that Domaine, the great chessplayer, set that part of it up as well as the rest. He hammered her down until she couldn’t defend herself against a professional stud like Thorne. The psychiatrists will be talking to him, and we’ll ask them what they think. Once it was underway, she couldn’t break loose. Thorne saw the affair as a chance to start his climb in the world. How did Domaine find out about it? Maybe from Brossard. Maybe Win Thorne told him—she was anxious to break it up.”

He looked at Domaine for comment. A little smile had appeared on Domaine’s lips. He said coldly, “Go to hell, Shayne.”

“Look at him, Tim,” Shayne said. “This has its compensations. If the plan had worked, nobody would ever have known how brilliant it all was. It wasn’t Domaine’s fault that it didn’t work. One thing went wrong—Joey Dolan picked last night to sleep in the Domaine tack-room.”

“That’s absolutely all,” Domaine said softly. “Everything else went off like clockwork.”

“But what was the plan!” Rourke wailed.

“His great grandfather could have got away with a double killing in the heat of passion, but things aren’t that simple today. The first thing Domaine did was loan Thorne some money to start his own stable. That was to give the guy a taste of success so he’d miss it more when he didn’t have it. Domaine sold him a couple of lemons. Then Thorne’s one moneymaking horse was killed. Brossard was involved in that. So was Joey Dolan. I saw the film patrol and I couldn’t spot what happened, but I think Brossard will explain it to us as soon as he hears that the boss has been arrested for murder. After that, Domaine pulled a few strings and got Thorne suspended. By this time Thorne was in a serious financial jam, and he needed a big win. Domaine proposed an apparently sure-fire coup. Everybody thought it was a plan to beat the twin double. Actually it was a plan for a double murder. His wife had been doing his betting for him. I think originally all Domaine had in mind was to set up a winning combination and then lose with it by drugging his mare. But then Mrs. Moon told him about Fussbudget. He bought three tickets substituting Fussbudget for My Treat as the winning horse in the ninth race. An old man who is known as a Domaine agent cashed one of them. In the course of their affair, Thorne had given Claire excellent reason to hate him. Naturally he would assume that this was a deliberate scheme, worked out by her, to maneuver him into position so she could sandbag him. By using such an obvious agent, she had wanted to make him realize who was doing it to him. One thing we don’t know is how Domaine talked her into carrying a gun. She thought it was her own idea, but I doubt it.”

“Claire respected my intelligence,” Domaine said smugly. “She was always responsive to suggestion, bless her.”

“Domaine could be pretty sure what would happen if he could manipulate these two hopped-up people into a room alone. It almost happened this afternoon, even before Thorne thought he’d been double-crossed. It didn’t matter to Domaine which one turned out to be the killer, and which one the victim. At one point tonight he got cold feet and nearly called it off. If that had happened, we could never have nailed him for Joey’s murder. So I rigged up something with Claire to stir up his sense of honor again. I brought her here for an hour or so, and part of that time the lights were off. I couldn’t tell her we were really setting a trap for her husband, or she wouldn’t have been convincing in her scene with Thorne. I made her think the reason we came was to bug the room.”

“That surprised me, Mike,” Rourke said. “You’ve never gone in much for that crap.”

“Nothing actually happened,” Shayne explained to Domaine. “The lipstick on my face was put there for your benefit. I knew it had to be you in the cab.”

Rourke said, “But last night, Mike, I still don’t see why he had to drug the mare. He could have worked out something with Brossard.”

“He was looking forward to a big murder trial, either Claire’s trial for the murder of Thorne or Thorne’s trial for the murder of Claire. Everything had to be airtight. He couldn’t let anybody else in on it. Not only that, if Brossard hadn’t been trying, Thorne might have spotted it. As for Joey—tonight, if the killing had gone off on schedule, Joey would know that Domaine had been doping his horse to lose. They could take urine and saliva samples to prove it, and the whole careful fabric would start to unravel. So Joey had to be killed.”

“Who fired those shots?” Rourke said. “I couldn’t make out.”

“Thorne fired the first one. Then Domaine slipped in to make sure she was actually dead. She was still breathing, so he put the gun against her forehead and fired again.”

Miss Mallinson spoke for the first time. “Mike Shayne, how can you sit there calmly telling us about your clever trap? Oh, it was clever, all right! You got him to confess one murder by letting him commit another. I don’t understand you!”

“Well, you’re a nurse,” Shayne said wearily. “Take a look at the corpse.”

He lifted the phone and gave the switchboard the number of the Broward County Sheriff’s office. Claire Domaine sat up. As her face appeared above the edge of the bed, bruised and powder-stained, but unmistakably alive, Domaine crouched back in his chair and began to stammer.

“Wh—wh—wh—”

He leaped up suddenly, clutching his temples, and screamed like a horse, a shrill, penetrating scream that transfixed everybody in the room. He was rigid for a moment, then slumped to the floor in a faint.

“Mike, there’s a twin-double ticket on the bed!” Rourke exclaimed. “Six and eight! That’s the winner!”

Claire came shakily to her feet and looked down at her unconscious husband. “It’s Mike’s,” she said in a dead voice. “That’s his fee for catching the murderer of Joey Dolan.”

“You may have to twist my arm,” Shayne said, “but I think in the end I’ll probably take it.”

A voice on the phone said, “Sheriff’s office, Deputy Sheriff Swanson.”

Shayne’s grin faded. “This is Michael Shayne. I’m in Room 18 of the Golden Crest Motel on A1A. I have a killer for you.”

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19