Read The Private Practice of Michael Shayne for Free Online

your story, Shayne,” Painter grated. “And it had better be good.”
    A Herald reporter with flaring nostrils and popping eyes was standing close by, scribbling down notes as Shayne told the precise truth. Painter waited until he ended, then asked in a tone which would have been ominous from a bigger man, “Do you expect me to believe that?”
    “I don’t give a goddamn what you believe,” Shayne whipped out.
    Painter’s black eyes snapped past Shayne to the medical examiner who had completed his examination.
    “What do you find, Doc?”
    “Not much. The bullet ranged upward through the brain. Small caliber—probably a thirty-two. Within the last half hour is the best I can do on the time.”
    “It took me exactly nineteen minutes to get here,” Shayne said quietly.
    “Look, Chief, can’t you give me a statement,” the pop-eyed reporter exclaimed. “I’ve got to phone my story in to catch the early edition.”
    Painter rubbed the tip of his right forefinger slowly back and forth along his beautifully trimmed mustache. With chin lowered and eyes raised to Shayne, he asked curtly, “You’re positive it was Grange who called you?”
    “That’s the name he gave me when I insisted—but he didn’t sound like Grange.”
    Painter said gravely to his men, “Put the cuffs on him. I’m holding him on suspicion of murder.”
    The reporter’s nostrils quivered. “Can I quote you on that, Painter?”
    “Yes,” the chief snapped.
    “Hey, hold it a minute, willya!” the reporter appealed to the burly cop who reached for Shayne’s wrist with handcuffs ready. He yelled at his photographer who was snapping shots of the death car and body. “C’mere, Joe, and get a shot of the cops snapping bracelets on Mike Shayne.”
    Shayne lit another cigarette and asked grimly, “Wouldn’t you rather have one of me groveling on my knees to Painter?”
    “Naw. This’ll be swell, just reach the cuffs out toward his arm—and you on the other side there! Grab him like you’re afraid he’s gonna make a break for it.”
    Shayne submitted mildly while the cops demonstrated their lack of histrionic ability and the reporter got a pose which satisfied his sense of dramatic values. Photographer and reporter then fled to the press car, to find it stuck in the deep sand when the motor roared. Wheels spun and sand flew until two burly policemen and the two newsmen lifted it easily onto the pavement.
    Shayne laughed.
    Painter whirled around to order him into the back seat of the squad car, handcuffed to one of the cops, and they waited until the body was loaded into the ambulance. While they waited, Shayne said quietly:
    “I suppose you know you’re making a damned ass out of yourself, Painter.”
    Painter, in the front seat of the squad car, deigned to turn his head. He snapped back, “I’ll worry about that. You’ve had plenty of warning not to pull any rough stuff on my side of the bay.”
    “What brought you to the scene Johnny-on-the-spot?”
    “An anonymous phone call. Said a man was being murdered.”
    “And by God you can’t see it was a frame?” Shayne asked incredulously. “Hell, Painter, while you’re satisfying a personal grudge against me, the murderer is getting away.”
    “I’ll hold you until a better suspect pops up,” Painter told him complacently. “You’ll have a chance to prove your story about the telephone call, of course.”
    The ambulance was backing out, and the driver put the police car in reverse, rocked it to get traction in the deep sand.
    Shayne didn’t say anything more. He was quiet all the way to police headquarters where they took him out and created a mild sensation among a couple of lounging reporters in the outer office by leading him through, handcuffed, to Painter’s private office in the rear.
    Both reporters knew Shayne, and they trotted back in loose-jawed amazement, but Painter turned them away at the door of his office, ordered the cuffs removed from Shayne, and went