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couple of movie tickets, and walked out.”
    Shayne said, “That’s a down payment on my integrity, Angel.”
    She looked at him blankly and said, “Oh?”
    “That’s right. There’s fifty grand more if I can conjure up evidence to convict his son-in-law of murder.”
    “You mean… last night? But you said that was suicide, Michael.”
    “It is… officially.” Shayne shrugged and said, “Sit down and take a letter of agreement. If Paul Nathan is the louse Armbruster thinks he is, maybe I will hang a murder rap on him.”
    “Whether he’s guilty or not?” Lucy asked matter-of-factly as she sat down across the desk from him and opened her shorthand pad.
    “Hell,” said Shayne harshly, “we know he isn’t guilty. Start it out: Mr. Eli Armbruster, and get his address on the Beach. Dear Sir: Confirming our conversation of this morning…”

 
CHAPTER FOUR
     
    W hen Michael Shayne entered Will Gentry’s private office at police headquarters a short time later, the Miami Chief of Police was seated behind his desk with the well-chewed stub of a black cigar in his mouth, studying some typed reports in front of him. He was a burly, red-faced man, and he lifted a beefy hand to welcome the redhead, muttering absently, “Just a minute, Mike, while I finish this.”
    He continued to scowl down at the sheet in front of him, working his lips to move the soggy cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.
    Shayne pulled a straight chair a little closer to his desk and eased his rangy body down into it. He got out a cigarette and lit it in silence, leaned back comfortably to let thin, grayish smoke roil slowly out of both nostrils.
    Will Gentry grunted and pushed the paper aside. “I see you were Johnny-On-The-Spot again last night, Mike. How the hell do you manage it?”
    “I know the right people. Go visiting them at the right time.”
    “Yeh,” snorted Gentry. “That apartment house of Lucy’s! What’s she got that attracts violence?”
    Shayne grinned and said, “Don’t blame her. She doesn’t even know the guy.”
    “Neither does anyone else it seems.” Gentry slammed the flat of a big hand down on the papers in front of him. “A name, that’s all we’ve got.”
    Shayne looked at him alertly. “You haven’t been able to trace Robert Lambert at all?”
    “Nary a trace. No wallet. No identification. No papers. Every stitch of clothes in the apartment is practically new, without a laundry mark or dry cleaner’s tag.”
    “Fingerprints?”
    “Nothing on file here. We’ve sent them to Washington… should have a preliminary report this afternoon. No Robert Lambert listed in the directories here and none in Jacksonville where he gave a phony street address when he rented the apartment.”
    “And no bereaved wife turned up to claim the body?”
    “That’s what we’re waiting for… if Lambert is his name. You interested, Mike?” Gentry asked the question casually, removing the cigar from his mouth and studying it intently as though he didn’t know how it had got there.
    Shayne said, “I’m interested. To the extent of a whopping retainer.”
    “Old Eli, huh? He threw his weight around here and threatened, by God, if the police force couldn’t do anything he’d go to the one man in Miami who could.” Gentry permitted himself a sour smile. “So it’s your headache, Mike.”
    “The old man is dead-set on making out a case against his son-in-law.”
    “He’s dead-set on hanging a frame around the poor guy’s neck,” Gentry retorted angrily. “You going to do his dirty work?”
    Shayne leaned back and stretched his long legs out in front of him, tugging thoughtfully at his earlobe. “I’m in business for hire, Will. Right now I’ve been retained by Eli Armbruster to make a thorough, complete and unbiased investigation of the circumstances in which his daughter met her death last night. Any objection to that?” His voice was slightly edged, challenging.
    “Hell, no. Go to it. The