The Homicidal Virgin (2 page)

Downstairs, he stopped at the desk with his bag and told the clerk, “I won’t be around during the nights for a few days, Pete. I may give you a phone number later where I can be reached if it’s important.”

With a suggestion of a leer, Pete let his knowing eyes rest on the hulaed sport shirt and the most aggressive jacket the detective owned, and said, “Sure, Mr. Shayne. Would a call from Miss Hamilton… would that be what you’d call important?”

Shayne said, “If I do give you a number… it’ll just be for your use… to pass on messages to me.”

Pete said, “Sure, I get it, Mr. Shayne,” and as the redhead turned away to cross the lobby, he called out in a low voice, “Have fun.”

Shayne grinned back over his shoulder and said, “This is strictly business, Pete.”

He had already parked his car in its stall in the private garage behind the apartment hotel, and he waved down a passing taxi outside the hotel and got in.

He gave the driver the name of an inconspicuous, middle-class hotel on a side street in the Northwest section between Miami Avenue and the Boulevard. It was a hotel he knew by reputation only as catering to low-income tourists and natives seeking hotel service at moderate weekly rates.

There was no doorman when he paid off the cab in front, and he carried his suitcase into a square lobby with a few wilted potted palms and half a dozen shabby lounging chairs. A bored bell-captain came out of his cubicle in the center to take his bag, and a prissy little man behind the desk looked at him incuriously as he signed a registration card:
Mike Wayne, 1270 Riverview Avenue, Bayonne, N. J.

“I can let you have a nice room with eastern exposure for twelve dollars, Mr. Wayne?” The clerk looked at him expectantly.

“How much of the twelve is for the exposure?”

“Ah… nothing really. That is, if you’d like something cheaper, I have one on the third floor for ten. Or…
“

Shayne made an expansive gesture. “Let’s shoot the works on your eastern exposure. Only be a few days.”

The clerk nodded and slid a key across to the waiting bellhop who had been summoned from the rear by the captain. “Take Mr. Wayne to eight-six.”

His guide was a short youth with chubby cheeks and a long, sharp nose. He took Shayne’s bag to double elevators at the rear where an attractive colored girl waited outside an open cage, and they went up to the eighth floor and to a clean and unexpectedly pleasant room with double windows on the east that just cleared the top of adjoining buildings so that a strip of the eastern part of Biscayne Bay and the shoreline of Miami Beach were visible from them.

The boy opened a window and checked the bathroom while Shayne waited patiently. Shayne got his wallet out of his hip pocket and asked, “Can I get a bottle from Room Service?”

“No liquor in the hotel, sir.” The boy paused, his pale blue predatory eyes on the bulging billfold from which Shayne was in the act of extracting a ten. “There’s a liquor store a few doors up the street. I’ll be glad to get what you want.”

Shayne slid the bill out and handed it to him. “A fifth of cognac. Monnet or Martel… or Courvoisier. And a pitcher of ice.”

The lad said, “Right away,” and went out.

Shayne hung his jacket in the closet and checked the desk to see if there was a supply of hotel stationery on hand. There was. He opened his suitcase and began transferring its contents to two bureau drawers, carefully putting the shoulder-holstered pistol on the bottom wrapped in an undershirt where it would certainly be found and reported the first time his room was cased after he went out… if he judged the hotel correctly.

The bellboy came back with a fifth of Martel, a pitcher of ice, and offered Shayne some dollar bills and silver in change. The redhead waved it aside casually said, “That’s okay.” He started to open the bottle and added, “Join me in a small drink?”

“I better not,” the boy said regretfully. “I don’t go off till six.” He started toward the door and Shayne stopped him with one big hand in the air. “What’s the chance getting some sort of action in this dump?”

The boy paused halfway to the door and considered the redhead carefully. “What sort of action? You want a woman…”

Shayne swept his hand downward in a disdainful gesture. “I’ll do my own hustling. Any games running? Friend of mine in New Jersey stayed here last month said he got a fair break.”

The lad’s eyelids shifted downward. “Whyn’t you talk to the night clerk? That’s Dick. Comes on at six. He might know something.”

Shayne said, “Thanks, I will.” The boy went out and Shayne got two glasses from the bathroom and poured a couple of fingers of cognac in one, put ice cubes in the other and filled it with water.

He set the two glasses side by side on the desk, sat down and composed a letter on hotel stationery:

Dear Miss Smith:

You will be surprised to receive this letter after you see that your ad didn’t appear in the
Daily News.
This is what happened.

The newspaper does not run ads like yours, but my girlfriend that works in the advertising department opened your letter and read it and instead of turning it over to her boss as she was supposed to, she put it in her bag instead and gave it to me at lunch. So I’m the only one that knows about it and you won’t get any other answer but this.

I think I can fill the bill
if the price is right.
You can reach me at this address any time after nine or ten p.m. Hoping to hear from you,

Very truly yours,

Mike Wayne.

He fortified himself with a long drink of cognac before reading over what he had written, and even at that he shuddered as he came to the end. But he folded it resolutely and sealed it inside a hotel envelope and addressed it to Jane Smith at her Miami mail drop, and then settled back in an easy chair with his feet up on the windowsill overlooking the Bay to take alternate sips of cognac and ice water while he waited for it to be six o’clock so he could go down and confer with the night clerk to start establishing the new identity of Mike Wayne from Bayonne, New Jersey.

By the evening of the third day Michael Shayne had established himself in the routine of the hotel as a regular who was casually accepted by the staff and the other regulars. He left his room promptly each morning and dropped his key at the desk, did not return until nine or ten in the evening when he would be greeted amiably by the night clerk and given the room number in which the game was running that night.

It was a cozy stud-poker set-up, presided over by three residents of the hotel who moved it from one of their rooms to another each night. They played for table stakes with an initial buy of a hundred dollars worth of chips required in order to sit in, and it was a smooth operation designed to milk moderate sums from a succession of suckers as painlessly as possible.

Shayne discovered that much about the game the first night he sat in—the first evening after he checked in. He quickly identified the three regulars as professional gamblers who knew their business, and the two other players who were being set up for the kill. He played his own cards carefully and aloofly while the fat man from New York on his left was efficiently relieved of almost two grand. From conversation around the table it developed that the fat man had been carefully set up for the kill during the preceding three or four evenings, having been allowed to win moderate amounts each evening until he was thoroughly convinced that the game was honest and that
they
were the suckers ripe to be taken.

And it was an honest game so far as Shayne could ascertain. Within the legal definition of honest poker, that is. They didn’t appear to be using marked cards or doing any manipulating. Such crude methods weren’t needed, of course, with three experienced men playing as a unit against one sucker. By one of them raising lavishly on nothing while one of his partners obviously had the winning hand, the outsider was whip-sawed time after time into losing large pots in which he had no business whatsoever.

It was a familiar enough pattern for such a game, and Shayne cynically won a succession of small pots and stayed put of the big ones, noting that it was the other floater’s third night for being allowed to win, and with a certain admiration for the finesse displayed by the three professionals.

The fat man wasn’t present the second night, but there were two new players to take his place, and all four of the outsiders were allowed to win moderately.

When Shayne sauntered up to the desk at nine-thirty on the third evening, Dick turned to a pigeonhole behind him and withdrew Shayne’s key and a large bulky white envelope. He leaned across the desk and spoke rapidly, “Funny thing this evening, Mr. Wayne. Along about seven a woman called to ask was you in. I told her you never was here before nine. About ten minutes later this chick comes in and asked for you. I can’t swear it was the same one that had just phoned, but I’m pretty sure it was the same voice. When I told her you wouldn’t be in till nine, she slid a ten-spot across to me and started askin’ all these questions. What you looked like, how long you been here, what do you do… all that. You never had told me not to answer questions, so I took her money and told her what she wanted to know. One thing in particular she pushed me hard on.”

Dick paused to snicker. “This’ll kill you. She wanted most special to know if you was a cop. That’s one thing I did tell her flat you wasn’t.” The clerk snickered again, and then added anxiously, “If I did anything wrong…”

“You did just right, Dick.” Shayne got a five from his wallet and flipped it across to avid fingers.

“Gee, thanks, Mr. Wayne. So she left this here envelope for you and made me promise you’d get it the moment you came in.” He passed the thick, sealed envelope across to Shayne.

Words were typed on the front and Shayne read them quizzically. MIKE WAYNE in capital letters, and the message:
Don’t unseal this until you walk outside and stand under the light. Then tear it open and remain in plain sight while you read it.

Shayne grinned at the clerk who he was sure had read the curious message, and said, “That’s a dame for you. Always playing games.”

He turned back with the sealed envelope in his hand, went out to stand on the sidewalk under a bright overhead light. Several cars were parked nearby, any one of which might contain someone watching him.

Deliberately he tore off one end of the envelope and shook the contents out. There was a folded sheet of square paper similar to the one on which the original advertisement had been typed.

He unfolded it and read:

You are being observed every moment. Remain in plain sight while you read this. Then hail the first empty cab that comes along. Get in and have him drive to the Boulevard and out to 79th Street and across the Causeway. You will be followed all the way. Go to the corner of Lime Road and Beach Plaza Place and let the cab go. A blue and white Plymouth sedan is parked at the Northeast corner. Get in and get a further message and the car keys from above the left sun vizor.

Jane Smith

Shayne refolded the sheet of paper and stuffed it back into the white envelope. He slid it into his right coat pocket and looked up the street for an empty cab. He stood there impassively, his rangy figure outlined in the bright overhead light, for several minutes before a cruising cab pulled in to the curb in answer to his signal. He got in and directed the driver, “Over to Biscayne and across the Seventy-Ninth Street Causeway.”

He settled back sideways in the corner and watched the street behind him with interest as the cab pulled away. A car that had been parked just beyond the hotel entrance eased out from the curb behind them and followed eastward toward the Boulevard.

Shayne relaxed and lit a cigarette, a wry smile curving his lips as he went over the typed instructions in his mind.

Jane Smith was playing it cagey, all right. Up to this point she was taking no chances of being confronted and identified. By having him open the envelope while she watched from a parked car, she had eliminated any possibility of him communicating with a confederate by telephone or otherwise. It was pretty cute figuring and indicated a certain amount of experience at this sort of thing or a devious mind that had read a lot of E. Phillips Oppenheim.

He was comfortably conscious that another car was keeping a sedate and careful distance behind them as they sped up the Boulevard and east across the winding causeway. At the eastern end, he leaned forward and told the driver, “The corner of Lime Road and Beach Plaza Place. Know where it is?”

“Just about. I can find it okay.”

Shayne settled back with another cigarette and let the driver find the intersection. It was in a quiet, residential section of palm-lined streets and middle-income homes, devoid of traffic at this hour. As the driver pulled in to the curb and stopped, Shayne noted the headlights of another car pull in half a block behind them. He got out and paid the driver, waited under the corner streetlight until the cab disappeared, and then strode around the corner to a blue and white Plymouth.

He slid under the steering wheel and felt above the sun vizor for another folded sheet of paper and a set of car keys. He groped along the instrument panel until he found the map light and turned it on, and read Jane Smith’s second message.

You are still under constant observation. If you have followed instructions thus far, drive to Collins and proceed south to the Palms Terrace Hotel. Stop at the entrance and give your keys to the doorman. He will give you a parking ticket. Go straight through the lobby into the Crystal Room. Sit at an empty table and order a drink and drink it slowly. If I have not sat at your table and accosted you by the time you finish a second drink, you will know that I do not trust you on closer scrutiny and shall not approach you at all.

In that case, leave the Plymouth in the hotel parking lot and forget about me.

Jane Smith

P.S. It will be useless to try and trace me through the Plymouth. It is stolen.

Shayne grinned wryly as he put the key in the ignition and turned on the headlights. He was developing a very definite admiration for Jane Smith and her devious methods. She had coppered every bet thus far, setting the situation up with admirable efficiency so she could turn aside at any moment without the slightest chance of a finger being put on her.

As he drove southward on Collins followed by the car that had been behind him all the way from Miami, Shayne wondered what Jane Smith was like and whether she would come to his table in the Crystal Room. If it was she who was doing the tailing, she would be behind him at the hotel, and would enter the cocktail lounge after he did. On the other hand, she might already be there, waiting for him to appear, having turned the tailing job over to someone else. He hadn’t seen whether the driver of the car behind him was male or female. Perversely, he had tried not to see. It was a lot more fun this way, and as he drove southward through the languid warmth of the semi-tropical night Shayne suddenly admitted to himself that there hadn’t been near enough fun in his life in recent years. He had been letting himself grow old, by God. Maybe not old, but certainly stodgy. Going along in a routine groove, accepting mundane assignments and carrying them out competently.

And now all at once Jane Smith had made him feel young and adventurous again. He looked forward eagerly to sitting alone at a table in the Crystal Room, sizing up the females present and speculating whether this one or that was Jane Smith—and whether she would make herself known to him or not.

No matter how this affair turned out, Timothy Rourke had at least done this much for him—and Shayne was properly grateful.

He sat very erect and felt a tingle of anticipation travel down his spine as he turned off Collins and slowed in front of the brightly lighted entrance to the Palms Terrace.

A smartly uniformed doorman snapped the door open for him and asked deferentially, “May I have it parked for you, sir?”

Shayne said, “Please,” and handed him the keys, receiving a numbered parking ticket. He didn’t look behind him at an arriving car as he went into the hotel lobby and spotted the neon-lighted entrance to the Crystal Room across at his right.