Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 8, No. 6, May 1961

He decided to walk. He strolled about, looking in shop windows, enjoying the invigorating out-of-doors, and he returned in half an hour, famished. He entered directly into cascade tea room and he saw her at once and he stopped short as though hit.

He had moved from bright sunshine into small-bulbed dimness and as she stood there before him she seemed almost unreal. She was facing the street and her features were clear to him as the light of the sun caught at her piled-high taffy-gold hair like a nimbus. Her eyes were enormous, sheer blue and clear beneath sweeping graceful eyebrows; her face, smooth-skinned and lightly tan, was heart-shaped, the cheekbones high, the cheeks slightly hollow, the chin coming to a delicate point; her nose was tiny and imperious with small flaring nostrils; her mouth was full, curved, sensuous, and glistening, insouciant and somehow cruel. She was tall, deep-chested, long-legged, and full-figured, and as she came toward him erect and carriage high, she smiled with gleaming, even, high, white teeth.

“How many please?” There was the soft nuance of Southern accent. The voice was resonant, musical, and pitched low.

“Beg pardon?” said Blinney.

“How many please?”

“Well, there’s just me...” He said it diffidently.

The smile broadened and there was a quiver at the nostrils. “Well, sometimes a party may be expecting others...”

“No, I’m not expecting anyone. Just me.”

“This way, please.”

She turned and he followed her, observing the movement of the rounded hips, looking at the full calves of her legs that narrowed to slender ankles. She wore a simple white short-skirted dress with a tight gold belt, sheer white stockings, and white high-heeled shoes. She led him to a booth, laid a menu in front of him, inquired, “Is this all right?”

“Yes, thank you.”

She waved to a waitress and went away.

Oscar Blinney, for the first time in his life overwhelmingly affected at the sight of a woman, found, nonetheless, that his appetite was unimpaired. He ordered orange juice, ham and eggs, and coffee, and for dessert, a second order of ham and eggs and a second cup of coffee. Then he paid his bill, tipped the waitress, nodded to the hostess, and departed.

He wandered through the streets of Miami Beach. He nibbled at drinks at various dim-lit bars and made no response to flirtatious eyes. He went to a movie. He came out of the movie and went to Club Columbo and watched the strippers. Some of them were quite beautiful, all of them salacious; he remained unmoved, unaffected, lonely, and alone.

He went back to the hotel, took off his clothes, lay out on the bed. He could not shake the image of the tall golden-haired girl in the white gold-belted dress.

He dozed.

II

Evangeline Ashley was going to her lover. She was going to her lover, William Grant, known as Bill, who lived on the second floor of a semi-fashionable apartment house on a semi-fashionable street, its curbs lined with parked cars, in a semi-fashionable neighborhood.

She arrived there at twenty minutes after eleven, giving no heed to the parked cars one of which was a sleek black Cadillac with a thick dark man seated at its wheel. She ran up one flight of wooden stairs and knocked upon a door marked 2A.

“Who is it?” said Bill Grant.

“Eve,” said Evangeline Ashley.

“What the hell!” said Bill Grant and opened the door.

“Surprised?” said Evangeline Ashley.

“Knocked right on my fanny,” said Bill Grant. “Don’t you believe in calling?”

“It’s your night off, isn’t it?”

“So suppose I wasn’t home?”

“Then I’d know you were out cheating, you ill-begotten son. Pour a drink for little Eve.” He went lithely, gracefully, to a liquor cabinet, poured bourbon and added soda, and brought it to her. “Do you cheat on me?” she said.

“You bet I do,” he said.

“Don’t ever let me catch you.”

“Nobody catches me when I cheat.”

She drank of her drink, set it away, slipped out of her coat, took up the glass, and went to a divan. She drank again and placed the glass on an end-table. “Come here by me,” she said softly.

“Take your time,” Grant said.

“I’m burning,” she said.

“It’ll keep,” he said.

She took up her drink again. “What have you been doing?”

“When?”

“Now. Before I came.”

“Watching TV.”

“Very exciting.”

“Baby, I get my excitement when I’m not home. Home, I take it easy. What about Senor?” he said.

“The hell with Senor,” Evangeline said.

“Baby, you’re just begging for trouble, aren’t you?”

“What’s the matter? Are you afraid?”

“I’m afraid of nothing, and you know it.”

“Are you afraid of Senor?”

“The hell with Senor.”

“That’s what I said. So why are you bugging me with Senor?”

He gulped bourbon again. “Because you got a good thing there. Why spoil it?”

“For you I’d spoil anything.”

“Sure. You spoil it with Senor and you spoil it for me too, you stupid fool. Suppose he decided to come visit you tonight?”

“So what?” she flared. “What am I? A prisoner? A slave? So I went for a walk, so I went to a movie, so I went out for a drink, so I went to a girl friend.” She subsided. “Come over here to me, Billy-boy.”