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Brett Halliday

Dolls Are Deadly

1

Michael Shayne stared dreamily from his office window, his chair at a nearly impossible tilt and his big feet scuffing the desk top. A close-burning cigarette warmed the knobby fingers of his right hand. Four fingers of his other hand warmed a glass of Hennessy. The cognac was good for a while yet, but the hot end of the cigarette was getting uncomfortably close to his fingers.

He had three choices.

He could swing his feet to the floor so he could reach the ash tray on the desk. He could try flipping the butt in from where he sat. Or he could drop it on the floor. He pushed the burning end of the cigarette out from his fingers another sixteenth of an inch while he pondered the alternatives. The second choice was adventurous and the third was easy-but Lucy Hamilton, his petite, brown-haired secretary whose typewriter was busily going in the front office, wouldn’t approve of either.

Shayne decided to do it the hard way.

He took a sip from the glass, swung his long legs to the floor, reached to the ash tray and thumbed out the cigarette. A breeze from the open window sifted through his red hair. The breeze smelled of the sea and he thought of his little Cuban friend, Sylvester, out there on it somewhere, his party-boat solid under his feet, and nothing but clean air and sky and water around him. Sylvester had no troubles. His boat was paid for and he ran it where and when he pleased.

Shayne’s heavy brows quirked upward and his lips compressed as he indulged in a moment of rare musing. “When I was picking out a profession what in hell made me think I wanted to be a private detective? I should have been a charter-boat captain. Everything clean and pleasant-and safe.

The redhead took another pull at the cognac. It would be good on the water today. Hot and cold by turns, invigorating and restful-like a Turkish bath. All this and a fishing pole bending double while the reel made shrill music as a marlin hit the mackerel bait and ran it out two hundred yards for the first jump.

Shayne looked at his watch. Though it was not yet noon it was late to start out, except that it wasn’t entirely the sport that he went for. Just to be on the untroubled water was enough. He had been going out on Sylvester’s boat for years off and on, and though months would go by sometimes, when he went down again it was the same. Sylvester’s wide Cuban grin made him welcome and they picked up where they had left off. The little, round, uncalculating man with the shining black eyes was as refreshing as the salt spray. Childlike and honest, he had a loyalty to Shayne and a liking as deep as the ocean on which he made his living. His fisherman’s hands were calloused, but his soul was not.

Shayne made his decision and reached for the phone, then stopped midway. There was no use calling. If Sylvester’s boat had been chartered today it would be out already, and if it hadn’t the little Cuban would be only too glad to take it out at any hour for his old friend.