Free The Private Practice of Michael Shayne by Brett Halliday Page B

she’ll get thrown out of a swell joint like that when she starts shaking her butt around the lobby.”
    Shayne repressed a chuckle of genuine amusement, thanked the woman, and drove around to Biscayne Boulevard to the magnificent hostelry overlooking the bay.
    Inside the ornate lobby he went directly to a little cubbyhole office and opened a plain wooden door. He said, “Hi, sweetheart,” to the fat, vacuous-faced, bald man who sat at a desk puffing on a cigar.
    Carl Bolton made a half-hearted movement toward getting up, and extended a pudgy hand.
    “Hello, Mike. You do get yourself in the goddamnedest messes.”
    Shayne said, “Yeh,” morosely, and lowered one hip on a corner of the house detective’s desk. “Do you know a mug named Chuck Evans?”
    “Should I?”
    “He’s a cheap tout that’s been hanging around the race tracks all winter. It seems he knocked off a winner a few days ago, and I heard he’d moved in here to get rid of the dough fast. See if you’ve got him, Carl.”
    Carl Bolton said, “Half a mo’,” and went out.
    Shayne sat on the desk swinging one long leg back and forth until the house dick came back with a slip of paper in his hands.
    “We’ve got an Evans, J. C. and wife. They checked in day before yesterday. Number three-sixty-two.”
    Shayne said, “Let’s go up? Got a pass-key?”
    Bolton nodded and they went out into the lobby together, across a thick rug to the elevators and up to the third floor.
    Bolton knocked on the door of 362. He waited for a response and when none came he knocked again, loudly.
    Shayne stood by with knobby hands in his pockets while Bolton fitted the pass-key into the lock and opened the door.
    The fat man took a step inside and yelled, “Holy hell! Would you look at that?”
    Shayne stepped past him into a hotel bedroom that looked as if a miniature hurricane had romped in from the Gulf Stream and had its way, then romped out again.
    Bureau drawers were open and clothes strewn over the floor. Bedclothes were draped on chairs and the thick innerspring mattress had been pulled half off the double bed, the ticking slashed and the padding pulled out in gobs.
    Shayne walked over to a low vanity dresser where new and obviously expensive lingerie had been dumped on the floor in piles, and began pawing through the stuff. Behind him, Bolton demanded peevishly, “What the hell’s the meaning of this, Mike? You don’t seem none surprised.”
    “I’m not.”
    He went on poking into half-emptied drawers, a deep frown creasing his forehead.
    “Who done it?” Bolton demanded belligerently. “And who’s goin’ to pay for the damage?”
    “Maybe you can collect from your guests,” Shayne suggested, “if they ever show up again.”
    “What are you lookin’ for?”
    “I wish to God I knew. A handkerchief, maybe.” Shayne turned away in disgust. “To hell with it. Let’s go down to the office and try to check and see when this was pulled.”
    They locked the door and went down to the office where Carl Bolton went into a huddle with the management and Shayne withdrew into a deep chair where he was on the verge of dropping off to sleep when Bolton came to report.
    “It looks like maybe the Evanses haven’t been back since going out early last night. The night clerk and none of the elevator operators noticed them come in or out. They must’ve carried their room key off with them. Nobody saw or heard anything,” he ended defeatedly. Shayne shook himself awake and sighed.
    “Somebody probably borrowed Chuck’s key. Here’s a lead that might get you somewhere.”
    He described Passo and Marv, mentioning particularly Marv’s silky-smooth voice.
    “The clerk or some of the bellhops might have seen those two come in. It would have been somewhere around midnight—not later than two.” He got up and stretched, rubbed his eyes. “If Chuck Evans does show up, I’d hold him, Carl. And give me a ring, will you?”
    Bolton said, “Sure, Mike,” and