Pay-Off in Blood by Brett Halliday

him as he started to move on.
    “ Yeh ?”
    “Last night… did you get any inkling of what Doc Ambrose was scared of… what he was being blackmailed about?”
    “Not an inkle.”
    “Because, damn it, I still say he was a swell guy,” declared Rourke fervently. “Whatever he’d done in the past, don’t forget…”
    “I know,” Shayne cut in sardonically, “that he saved your worthless life a few years ago. I’m not forgetting that, Tim.”
    He swung away down the corridor, and pushed open a frosted door marked IDENTIFICATION DEPT.
    It took him fifteen minutes to give Sgt. Fillmore a careful description of the Boss and his two goons, Crew-cut, and George Bayliss’s rather vague description of the man he had encountered outside the Seacliff .
    The Boss and Jud and Phil were the only ones Shayne had any hopes about. Crew-cut, although probably a member of the same group, was less likely to have a police record, and the buyer of the plateholder was a completely unknown quantity at present.
    The sergeant promised to go through the M.O . files carefully and pull out anything he could find, which would go straight to Will Gentry’s desk, and Shayne left police headquarters feeling he had done everything he could in that direction.
    Rourke had driven him from the hotel, so Shayne walked the short distance back to his office on Flagler Street.
    Lucy Hamilton was at her desk behind the low railing across the reception room when he entered a few minutes after nine o’clock. She was reading the morning paper, and looked up with a frown at him. “How did you ever manage to get mixed up in a murder last night, Michael?” she demanded. “When you left here you swore that nothing could stop you from going straight home to bed.”
    “Is that what it says in the paper… that I got mixed up in a murder?”
    “It says you were questioned by Chief Painter in connection with the murder of a Dr. Ambrose on the Beach… and were released until your story could be checked.”
    She wrinkled her nice nose at him, and as he started to walk stiffly past her to the open door of his private office she suddenly caught sight of his head, and wailed, “What happened to your head, Michael? And why are you walking that way?”
    Without breaking stride, he said, “That’s what comes of getting mixed up in murder. Come in, Angel. I want to talk to you.”
    When she entered his office he was setting a bottle of cognac on his desk. He turned away to fit two sets of paper cups inside each other, and filled one pair from the water cooler. Turning back and setting the other two nested cups on the desk beside the bottle, he said cheerfully, “We haven’t got a damned thing on for today, have we?” He uncorked the bottle and poured out a couple of ounces of cognac.
    “One telephone call this morning, Michael. A sweet little old lady who’s worried about her son, Cecil.” Lucy gave it the English pronunciation. “Cecil, to you,” she added, using the long “ ee .” “Seems he got mixed up in some sort of unpleasantness last night and you’re to rescue him.”
    “ Uhn -uh.” Shayne shook his head decisively, forgetting to keep it easy, and winced with pain. He sat in the swivel chair behind his desk and took a drink and said judicially, “Let the Cecils of this world get out of their own jams. Besides,” he asked suspiciously, “how do you know she’s sweet or little or old?”
    “Because she sounded that way. Mrs. Montgomery. I promised you’d call her as soon as you came in. She did sound worried, Michael.”
    He said, “We’ve got other worries.” He leaned back and stretched out his long legs and contemplated the ceiling. “I want you to close up shop, Lucy. Go over to the Beach and check all the neighbors of the Ambroses . Make up some good cover story that’ll get you inside the houses, and get the inside dope on the doctor and his wife. You know… like you’re doing a survey for Better Homes and Gardens
    “What