Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Annual, No. 3, 1973

A chief of police and a called-in IRS man took McKeever. Shayne took a jet. He slept all the way to Miami, where Lucy Hamilton was waiting for him inside International Airport.

There was a certain set to Lucy’s greeting smile, a certain glisten in her eyes, a certain grip of her hand on his bicep as they walked that alerted Shayne.

“Okay, Angel, spill,” Shayne said.

“I have a surprise for you.”

“I know.”

“Salvadore is waiting in the car in the parking lot.”

Salvadore Aires shook Shayne’s hand perfunctorily. He looked grim. “I’ve got to get this off my mind, Mike.”

“Shoot, pal.”

“Melody Deans and I had a thing going. I wanted to marry her, but she said nix. I’d already had five wives, which wasn’t much of a recommendation for marriage. But she’d take a trip with me. She wanted to see Madrid. We could spend a few days, weeks, months, however it worked out. I said, ‘Hell, yes, why not?’ So we planned to meet here, go on together, except—”

“She showed up with a half million dollars,” Shayne finished for him. “She laid it all out for you at the party.”

“I couldn’t believe it, Mike. For the first time in my life I wasn’t sure how to handle something. We finally agreed to wait until morning, hash it over again. I wanted time to think. Somehow I had to separate Melody from that money, the people associated with it.”

“Then she was killed.”

“They didn’t have to kill her, Mike,” he said, sounding as if he was in a well. “They were going to get their money returned. But they were too quick for me and when — when I saw her dead on the sidewalk, smashed the way she was, I panicked. I felt sure they either knew about me or would find out. I ran. Some people — you, for instance — might not be frightened by the thought of having mobsters eyeing you. I am.”

“They didn’t kill her, Sal.”

“Then who did?” He sounded totally mystified.

Shayne lighted a cigarette and went over the entire case. He’d have to do this, at least in part, three more times, once for Painter, once for Albert Deans, and once for Gentry. But Salvadore Aires seemed entitled too.

When he had finished, Salvadore breathed, “God, a couple of punks...” It was all he said.

“If it hadn’t been Bastone, it would’ve been somebody else, eventually. Melody Deans made her death bed the second she made her turn from Philadelphia to Miami Beach.”

The Name of the Game Is Tape by Dan J. Marlowe

The best part of the caper was, nobody would ever know. Nobody, that is, but a very curious cop with an idea.

* * *

Broad-shouldered Carl Robey, detective sergeant of the Midland police force, shifted position uneasily on the roll of canvas in the storage room of the huge, semi-darkened supermarket.

“This is crazy!” he rasped to his detective partner, James Thompson. “Three nights you’ve had me in here for nothing now. This stakeout is a joke. Wherever you’re getting your information from, it’s all wet.”

Thompson, younger and slimmer, frowned in the darkness.

“Hold on a little longer, Carl,” he said softly. “I know I’m right about this. I have everything but the date. They’ll be along.”

Robey’s snort was distinctly audible. “You won’t get me in here another night, Jimmy,” he warned. “This is slower going than sitting in your apartment watching you add sound on sound to a pre-recorded tape. You know I don’t have the patience—” He broke off abruptly as a whirring noise made itself heard above the sound of his voice. He surged up to his knees, his big hand dropping on his partner’s shoulder and tightening.

“Diamond cutter on glass,” he breathed. “You were right, Jimmy. They’re coming through the side window. I’ll cover the front.” Moving with a speed surprising in a man of his bulk, he disappeared into the shadow of the store aisles, a bulldog flashlight in his left hand and a .38 police special held firmly in his right.

Thompson remained flat on the canvas, alert for the revealing tinkle of the removed square of glass. It was followed by the rasp of the catch being slipped off, and the squeak of the opening window. A series of grunts indicated the progress of the first man through it, and when he heard the third solid thump of heels hitting the floor, Thompson rose and moved cat-footedly to a more advantageous position.

“Let’s get to the safe,” a hoarse voice whispered.

The area of the room under the opened window was bathed suddenly in the glare of Carl Robey’s flashlight.

“Don’t move!” the big man snapped. Thompson flicked on his own light. Caught in the pinpoint crossfire of the flashlight beams, three white faces stared at the dark figures behind the dazzling brightness. “Turn around,” Robey ordered. The men complied slowly. “Hands over your heads and palms flat against the wall,” he continued. In the glare of the flashlights half a dozen hands crept up the wall. “Okay, Jimmy. Cuff them. I’ll call the desk.”