Chapter one
Michael Shayne’s gray eyes were bleak, his face was set in gaunt lines, his bushy red brows were drawn together over a vertical furrow which had deepened during the past two months. He dumped the last of the junk from the steel filing cabinet into a huge cardboard box. The battered oak desk was cleared of a useless accumulation of papers and what-not, and the small first-floor apartment which had served him as an office for nine years was littered with boxes and wastebaskets, waiting for the trashman.
The spacious corner apartment on the floor above, where he had spent many happy months with Phyllis, was vacant, awaiting new tenants.
Shayne stood in the middle of the muss and rumpled his bristly red hair. Lying atop one of the boxes was a short piece of rubber hose which he had snatched from a girl’s mouth: the Lenham case. A fake kidnap note that had sent a woman into screaming hysteria was torn to bits in the wastebasket: the Hanson case. A pile of telegrams, scribbled notations, the blackjack wrested from Pug Myers that stormy night down on the Florida Keys — relics which had once held such deep significance were now mere rubbish.
There was a butcher knife which he had picked up from the floor of Phyllis Brighton’s bedroom after finding Mrs. Brighton in bed with her throat slit. The knife was sticky with human blood that night, but now it shone clean and keen-edged lying beside the rubber hose in the box marked for a scrap heap.
Shayne’s eyes kept going back to the knife. It marked the beginning of something that was ended.
He swore savagely and swept up a glass of cognac from the desk, took a deep drink and chased it with ice water. It was Monnet cognac, his last carefully guarded bottle. He had been saving it for a special occasion. Well, this was a special occasion. His suitcase was packed. He was saying good-by to Miami, giving up everything he had built over a period of nine years.
He said, “To hell with it,” aloud. He emptied the glass and poured another drink from the squat bottle, then held the bottle up to the light. A little better than half full. Might be enough to get drunk on, if he weren’t sure he would never be able to get drunk again.
The wall telephone shrilled as he set the bottle down. He turned to glower at the faithful instrument which had brought him so much good news and so much bad news during the years.
He lifted the glass of cognac and carried it to the west window, ignoring the insistent ringing of the phone. His right thumb and forefinger gently massaged the lobe of his left ear as he stood gazing at the bright sheen on the gray-purple waters of Biscayne Bay. It was noon, and trade winds waved the fronds of coco-palms and sent tiny ripples shimmering across the water.