Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 44, No. 4, April 1980

Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 44, No. 4, April 1980

The Golden Buddha Caper by Brett Halliday (ghost written by James M. Reasoner)

I

Mike Shayne bought the early morning edition of the Miami Daily News at the corner stand a block from the Tamiami Coffee Shop.

“Don’t bother with the change, Carl,” he told the blind newsdealer. “That’s only a one spot.”

“Thank you, Mr. Shayne. How are things with you these days? You haven’t been by for awhile.”

“Short vacation, Carl. I went down to Key West for a little fishing with a friend of mine, Pete Foley.”

“Any luck?”

“A little,” Shayne told him. “We went for tarpon and then drifted out in the gulf stream for a few days after broadbills. Pete and I landed a 150-pound beauty. But you should have seen the one that got away. He was a monster!”

Carl laughed. “When I was a kid and could see, the biggest ones always got away.”

Shayne quickly changed the subject to cover his slip. “How’s the wife?”

“Ailing a little, complaining a lot, but that’s the way it goes when you’re married, Mr. Shayne. We get along. How’s a big redheaded fellow like you escaped matrimony so long?”

Shayne chuckled. “Just lucky I guess.”

“One fine day your matrimonial luck is going to run out, Mr. Shayne.”

“I’ll be past tomorrow,” Shayne promised Carl and went along to the Tamiami.

He settled in a booth and ordered ham and eggs, hot biscuits, a side of hash brown potatoes and told the pretty Cuban waitress who usually waited on him, “Keep the coffee coming.”

“Where is it you have been lately?” the waitress asked in careful, nearly unaccented English. “Me and our cook, George, have missed you.”

Shayne grinned. “I’ll bet. Tell George I’d like those eggs over easy, and you’d better bring me a glass of orange juice to start. How have you been, Dolores?”

“Muy bueno, Señor Shayne. Very good. It is the next week when Ramon and I finally marry. He has received the promotion and a raise.”

“Good for Ramon,” Shayne said. “Give him my congratulations, will you?”

“That I will do, Mr. Shayne,” Dolores said. “I will squeeze the oranges for your juice myself.”

“Thank you,” Shayne said and unfolded his copy of the Daily News.

He read Tim Rourke’s column first. Shayne’s reporter friend was deploring the rise of street crime in the seedier sections of Miami and Miami Beach and praising a system of neighborhood patrols being organized by some of the young men in those sections.

Shayne chuckled. Tim he knew would get a blast about that from Chief of Police Will Gentry who had the professional’s dislike of anything resembling citizen vigilante action.

“Damn it, though,” Shayne muttered to himself. “Somebody has got to look after these elderly people getting mugged just about every time they venture out into the streets.”

He wished the young citizens’ patrol luck.

Shayne read his morning paper as he did just about everything else, in a hurry, scanning heads and subheads, snatching a vital paragraph here, another there, scanning the obituaries. But one head deep in the paper caught his full attention.

TAIWAN’S GOLDEN BUDDHA COMING TO UNITED STATES

Later Shayne would try to explain to Lucy Hamilton, his long-time secretary, confidante and alter ego, why that particular article alerted him.

“I suppose the word golden did it,” he told Lucy. “With people buying gold bars as if they were pancakes as an inflation hedge and rumors going around that the OPEC oil sheiks are thinking of taking gold instead of dollars for their damned oil, it couldn’t miss catching my eye.”

“I take it, Michael, you still refuse to believe there is such a thing as Extra Sensory Perception?” Lucy said with a mischievous glint in her eyes.

Shayne stretched lazily. “Do you know what I’m thinking right now?”

“You want me to mix drinks.”

“Bullseye. Now is that or is it not E.S.P.?”

“It is not,” Lucy said. “Call it telepathy if you wish. Now if you knew I’m not about to mix the drinks...”

“Got the message.” Shayne grinned. “It’s my turn.”

“Over and out,” Lucy said. “Out to the kitchen and hit me lightly.”

That morning, after his breakfast at the Tamiami Coffee Shop, Shayne drove to his East Flagler Street office wondering what the new day would bring. After a week’s vacation something interesting, he decided, should be on his desk. The last two cases the big detective had worked before leaving for Key West had been dull and routine.

Dull and routine paid bills, and that was good. But tracing an absconding bank official to the gaming tables of Reno and Las Vegas, and finding a man’s missing wife honeymooning in Acupulco instead at the bottom of Biscayne Bay hadn’t been the sort of challenges Shayne liked.

“Hello, fisherman,” Lucy greeted him when he reached his office. “You look bright and bushy-tailed this morning. You forgot to call in yesterday.”