Free Dolls Are Deadly by Brett Halliday Page B

the Santa Clara Shayne slammed into his car and drove swiftly to a waterfront area, inhabited mostly by Cubans. He parked in front of a two-story wooden tenement, went up two steps and pressed the bell button under the name that read Sylvester Santos.
    A little, ample-bosomed, gray-haired woman wearing a pink-flowered housedress came to the door, her fleshy arms protruding from the short sleeves. Her face looked drawn, but her worried brown eyes kindled with pleasure when she recognized the redhead.
    “Michael Shayne!” Her full lips spread in a welcoming smile and she stood aside. “Be so good to come in, Mr. Shayne.”
    Shayne walked into an apartment as neat and shipshape as Sylvester’s boat, the woman following him, talking volubly.
    “You look for my husband, no? Well, I tell you. He came home maybe one half hour ago, then go out again. To look for you, he say. But now you look for him. Mr. Shayne, what is the matter? These days I am most unhappy.”
    “Why does Sylvester look for me, Mrs. Santos?”
    “He does not say. He says nothing to me but to talk of his new friends who are so good to him. But I do not like these new friends, Mr. Shayne. He is now drunk with them all the time and it is not like Sylvester to drink so much. Every day he comes home drunk and goes to bed dead. But tonight he comes home drunk and bleeding. One eye is black, and blood is on his face from fighting. I have to wipe it off and the cuts are deep. This is not like Sylvester, to fight—”
    “Did he say he was in a fight?”
    “No, but I can see he has been beaten and his clothes torn.”
    From the way Sylvester had been staggering around the deck this afternoon, his fight might have been only with the Demerara. Perhaps he had gotten up too quickly and fallen on his face a few times, or maybe he had been jackrolled on the way home. If that had happened it would explain why he had left home to look for his friend, “the detective who heads only the big cases.”
    “What does Sylvester say about his new friends?” Shayne asked.
    She shrugged elaborately. “Only that they are so good to him. But I think they are drunk bums, Mr. Shayne, good only to get my husband drunk and in trouble and to spoil his health.”
    “May I use the phone, Mrs. Santos?”
    “Sure. Help yourself. You’re good man.”
    Shayne dialed and got his answering service. There had been no calls. Then he phoned Lucy and learned from her that Sylvester had not tried to reach him at her apartment either.
    “How about a moonlight drive, angel?”
    “Why, Michael, I’d love it,” she said huskily. Suddenly, her voice changed. “Except that I know from past experience that your moonlit drives usually end up at some place like the morgue.”
    “Nothing like that tonight, Lucy. This will be sheer romance. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.”
    He hung up and walked back to Mrs. Santos, who had seated herself in an old-fashioned wooden rocker.
    “Will you have Sylvester phone me when he comes in, no matter what time of night it is?”
    “Sure, Mr. Shayne. Be glad to.” She wiped her perspiring forehead with the back of her hand.
    “And don’t worry,” he said. “Sylvester will be all right. Just like he was before, when these new friends go home.”
    “Bueno,” she said. “I hope so.”
    Lucy was ready when Shayne rang her apartment bell. “Won’t you come in, Michael?”
    “Sorry, I can’t, angel. Let’s get going.”
    “Not even for a spot of Hennessy?”
    “Not even for Hennessy. I’ll take a brandy-check, though.”
    She closed the door and fell into step beside him. “What’s the rush? Is the moon waning?”
    “Time is. It’s nearly midnight and I want to get out to Clarissa Milford’s before she goes to bed.”
    “You’re taking me with you to see another woman? I thought you said on the phone this was sheer romance.”
    “It is, for me. You’re the chaperone.”
    “Oh, good! Just what I’ve always yearned to be.”
    As Shayne