Read Online Nice Fillies Finish Last by Brett Halliday - Free Book Online

finally on Number 17 and signed in.
    Even when people use a false name at a motel—and Shayne assumed that the name on the card for No. 18 didn’t belong to a real person—they usually give their true license number. He had no trouble locating the car belonging to the guest in Room 18—a black, well-maintained Mercedes, with red-leather upholstery. The car itself, the care it had been given, the low mileage, and the accessories on the dashboard all denoted money. Shayne had a feeling he was going to want to ask the owner of the Mercedes some questions. He found the hood-latch and pulled it, then raised the hood and un-snapped the distributor cap, after which he removed the rotor. Putting the crucial little part in his pocket, he replaced the distributor cap and closed the hood. Then he moved his Buick into an open slot beside the Mercedes. Some months before, Shayne had been hired to find and bring back the runaway wife of a telephone-company official. He had spent a week looking for her, another week persuading her to return. His client showed his gratitude by having a phone installed in Shayne’s car. This had doubled Shayne’s effectiveness, and he didn’t know how he had ever functioned without it. He dialed local information and was given the number of the Fort Lauderdale hospital. Yes, he was told a moment later, they had just admitted an emergency case by the name of Timothy Rourke, and they would see if he was allowed to answer the phone. In another moment a woman’s pleasant voice said, “Emergency, Mallinson.”
    “I’m calling about Mr. Rourke,” Shayne said. “My name’s Michael Shayne.”
    “Mike Shayne,” she said. “Yes, indeed. We’ve been having a discussion here on the subject of phoning you. He’s insistent, isn’t he?”
    There was a small clatter.
    “Mike!” Rourke’s voice said. “Hey, you ought to see the nurse they gave me. You know those thin white nurses’ uniforms, what they do for ordinary women? My God, you ought to see the effect on this one! Wonderful figure, wonderful legs, a neat little pair of ears. On top of everything else, green eyes! You know how I react to green eyes. They enfeeble me!”
    “You sound a little high,” Shayne said, amused. “What are they prescribing for you?”
    “I prescribed it for myself on the way over. That was a sensational idea about taking a taxi, Mike. Whenever we saw a saloon I sent the hackie in for a double martini to go. Now everybody feels I ought to have something to eat. I’m resisting.”
    “How are you otherwise?”
    “Hell, I’m in great shape. They tell me they put in eighteen sutures, but that’s impossible. The main thing was those goddamn cactus needles. They had to yank them out one at a time with tweezers. Mike, where are you? What happened with Thorne?”
    “I’ll tell you later. If you want to do something useful, put in a couple of calls. I’ve got the license number of a black Mercedes. I’d like to know who owns it.”
    “Let’s have it. Baby,” he said to the nurse, “take this number.”
    Shayne gave him the number from memory. “Another thing, and this you’ll have to work through Will Gentry or somebody on the cops in Miami. I want to know the story on the Guys and Dolls billiard parlor on South East Sixth Avenue in Lauderdale. A fat man at the cigar counter. What’s his gimmick?”
    “Got it,” Rourke said promptly.
    “Call me back. If the car phone doesn’t answer, try the Golden Crest Motel in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, on A-l-A. Room 17, and the name I’m using is Petersen.”
    He repeated the room number and hung up. He thought for a moment with his hand on the phone.
    He had recently made a large investment in electronic equipment, which he used only when absolutely necessary. It seldom lived up to the claims made by the manufacturers, and he had noticed long ago that private detectives with the biggest inventory of bugs and recorders soon came to rely on them instead of using their