Murder Takes No Holiday ms-36

by Brett Halliday

  “I thought so,” he said after a moment. “I wish now we’d pulled out the phone back there. I intended to, but I forgot about it, what with one thing and another.”

  “Alvarez won’t be doing any phoning,” Shayne said. “If he can talk at all after that left you gave him, he’ll be explaining things to Brannon.”

  “Hope you’re right,” the Englishman said. “I’d hate to get through all this and then find the beggars waiting for us.”

  “Wait!” Martha said suddenly as he reached back to turn off the light. “Paul!”

  The intensity in Martha’s tone lifted the Englishman’s foot off the accelerator. Even Slater’s lips were pale, Shayne saw as he turned toward him. There were great drops of sweat on his forehead. He tried to smile, but only succeeded in exposing his lips in a terrible grimace. He had one hand inside his coat.

  “Are you hit, Slater?” Shayne said.

  Slater shook his head shortly. “Fine. Go on.”

  Shayne opened his coat and gently pulled his hand away from his stomach. With a sigh, Vivienne slid down in the front seat.

  “Damn lucky shooting,” Slater said weakly. “Black as pitch.”

  “Is it bad, Michael?” Martha asked quietly.

  He looked at her. “Bad enough. I’ll need something to use for a bandage.”

  “Yes.”

  Lifting herself, she pulled off her half-slip. Shayne ripped it in two and passed it around Slater’s body, frowning as his hand touched the warmth and dampness in the small of Slater’s back.

  “We have to get him to a hospital,” Martha said, watching Shayne’s face. “Quickly.”

  Slater shook his head. “Airport first. Get you on the plane. I’ll be all right.”

  Shayne completed the makeshift bandage. It would slow up the bleeding, possibly even stop it. But he knew that there wasn’t anything he or anyone could do for Paul Slater now. He had seen too many gunshot wounds, and he had seen the look in Slater’s eyes.

  Powys threw the car into gear and it shot forward. “Make it just as fast going past the airport. What do you think, Mike? Put him on the plane?”

  “No,” Shayne said. “He’s going to need transfusions.”

  “Put Martha on,” Slater said. “Get out of this, darling.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said sharply. “How can you think I could go away and leave you when-”

  He interrupted. “Shayne,” he said, his voice becoming stronger. “I know all about you. Oh, yes. When you were in the papers, Martha cut it out and kept it. Jealous. Funny? You’re the kind of man she should have married. Not me, poor old Paul. Nothing I did amounted to a damn. Couldn’t even be a halfway decent crook. Ashamed. Put her on the plane. I don’t want her. Tell her to go, she’ll go. Stay, all kinds of trouble. All my fault!”

  Martha was crying helplessly. “Paul. Don’t say those things. I won’t go, you know I won’t go.”

  “You will,” Slater said. “Shayne, make her. Won’t be alone. Vivienne. My type, Vivienne. I don’t mean it? I mean it. Never loved you, Martha. Admired you. Different. She wasn’t the first I ran away to. Last of a long line. If I married her, I’d be a better crook, better everything. You and I. Oil and water.”

  “Can’t you go any faster?” Martha called to Powys.

  “Don’t know the road,” Powys said grimly around his pipe. “We’re making pretty good time.”

  The Morris rocketed around a curve, the outer wheels leaving the hardtop, and Slater said fiercely, “Hear me, Shayne? Make her. If she stays, the Camel-kill her.” A spasm of pain shook him. “Bastard thinks I robbed him. Thinks I passed it to Martha. Danger.” He gasped, “He’ll kill her. The truth.”

  Powys took another long curve without slackening speed, and settled down for a straightaway.

  “There’s something in what he says. I’ll take good care of him. If you stay, Mrs. Slater, the Camel’s organization will be after you again. I think we can stave them off, but Paul will worry about it, and that’s the worst possible thing for him to do. He’ll be easier in his mind if you take that plane-The turn’s along here somewhere. Watch for it.”

  After a moment he continued, “And as for you, Mike, you don’t want to let the sergeant get his hands on you again. It’s going to cost a little something. Do you have any cash?”

  “A few hundred pounds.”

  “That should swing it.”

  Shayne was still frowning. Both Powys and Slater must know as well as he did that Martha no longer had anything to fear from Alvarez. He and his men would be in jail-if for nothing else, for shooting at Sergeant Brannon. A performance was being put on for somebody’s benefit here. But whose?

  The Morris was eating up the road. Slater lay with his head against Martha’s breast. Her arms were around him.

  “I love you, Paul,” she said through stiff lips. “Don’t be badly hurt. I couldn’t live without you.”

  She was crying silently. In front, Vivienne sat up with a start as the little car screamed around another unbanked curve. She turned to look at Slater, her face frightened. Slater’s eyes were closed. His head shifted on Martha’s breast with the motion of the car. Shayne thought he was unconscious, but when the lights of the airport could be seen ahead and Powys slowed for the turn, Slater’s eyes opened.

  “Not much we can do if the blighters telephoned,” Powys said. “Let’s be sure we’re in agreement. Mrs. Slater?”

  “No. No. How can you imagine I could-”

  “Stop that!” Slater said. “Settled. Shayne, carry her if you have to. I’m-” He paused, gathering his strength. “I’m through. You-never respected me. Too late for argument. Do what I say. Better long ago if I gave you orders. Wife obey husband. Supposed to. I understand, Martha. My fault. Lousy husband.”

  “We will look after him,” Vivienne said. “They are right, you should hurry. Paul must get to the hospital very quickly.”

  And that made it unanimous, Shayne thought.

  “I’m sorry about everything, darling,” Martha said hopelessly. “Paul, please. If you tell me I must-”

  She was sobbing uncontrollably as Powys made the turn.

  13

  Late the following afternoon in Miami, Michael Shayne knotted his necktie in front of a mirror in the office of Dr. Benjamin Sanborn, the elderly orthopedic surgeon who patched him up whenever some misadventure of Shayne’s made it necessary. Dr. Sanborn tossed a set of X-rays onto his desk.

  “You were lucky, Mike. When I let you out of the hospital I told you to relax. To keep out of trouble. Not to put any strain on your chest muscles. I think I remember advising you to close your office and go on a vacation.”

  Shayne grinned at his reflection in the mirror. “No sermons, Doc. What’s the verdict?”

  “From the marks on your face, from the skin that seems to be missing on the back of your right hand, I have a pretty good idea how you picked up these latest injuries. It wasn’t an auto accident this time. It was a fight. One of these days they’ll bring you in with something I can’t repair. And don’t think it’s going to make me unhappy! I don’t think I ever had a patient as deliberately uncooperative as you. What do you want me to do, put you in a straight-jacket or keep you under sedation till those bones have a chance to knit?”

  He threw up his hands. Then he said gruffly, “There’s no new fracture. Your guardian angel was looking out for you, it seems. There’s been a slight splintering of one of the bone-ends, but I think the new tape will hold you together. Now please, Mike. Take it easy. Take a vacation. I don’t want the job of pulling bone splinters out of one of your lungs. Now will you get out of here?”

  “Gladly,” Shayne said, walking to the door. “Thanks for the grease job.”

  “And don’t come back!” Dr. Sanborn shouted.

  Jack Malloy, the customs agent, was outside in the waiting room. He closed a magazine as Shayne came out, and stood up.

  “I thought I’d find you here, Mike,” he said. “What’s bothering
old sourpuss?”

  “He thinks I ought to take a vacation,” Shayne said, grinning.

  “I’m driving down to the office, Mike. Mind coming along?”

  “If it doesn’t take more than half an hour. I’m picking up Martha Slater for dinner.”

  Malloy gave him a peculiar look, and Shayne said, “What’s the matter, hear anything about Slater?”

  They went out of the waiting room, and Malloy punched for the down elevator. “He’s dead, Mike. He went out around noon. He was only conscious for a few minutes after he made the hospital.”

  “Well, I had it figured,” Shayne said heavily. “Did he do any talking?”

  “A little, all pretty wild. The police stenographer got some of it. A French girl, Vivienne something-or-other, was with him right through.”

  Shayne rubbed his forehead. “I’ll have to break it to Martha. It’s going to be rough.”

  The elevator was crowded, and they didn’t speak again until they were outside in Malloy’s official Chevy.

  Shayne said, “How about that welcoming committee at the airport this morning? Who told you we were coming?”

  “We have our sources,” Malloy said vaguely, wheeling out from the curb to join the Biscayne Boulevard traffic.

  “I wouldn’t have guessed it,” Shayne said dryly. “And what was the theory behind that shake-down your boys gave us? You thought Slater gave Martha something to carry?”

  “You never know. All the tip said was that something hot was coming in from St. Albans. No names mentioned. But if you want me to relieve your mind, I can tell you now that there wasn’t a thing on that damn plane that didn’t belong there. That goes for Martha, for you and the pilot. It goes for the plane itself. We’ve been over it with a magnifying glass.”

  “So no informer’s fee,” Shayne said, glancing at him. “Tough.”

  Malloy turned right on Flagler. After several more blocks he slid into a no-parking slot in front of an office building.

  “Incidentally,” he said as they were entering the lobby, “Slater left a sealed envelope with the check-room attendant at the airport. Gave him a couple of pounds and said he’d be back later to pick it up. If he didn’t show, the guy was supposed to hand it in person to a local cop. Sergeant Brannon, did you run into him?”

  “God, yes,” Shayne said ruefully.

  “After he was shot, Slater either forgot it, or he decided to let it ride. It was a confession that he and Alvarez killed Albert Watts for informing. It’s in Slater’s handwriting, and there’s no doubt it’s authentic. Alvarez is in jail, hollering frame-up. I gathered from Brannon’s tone of voice that as far as he’s concerned, the case is closed.”

  “Yeah,” Shayne said. “He and Alvarez aren’t what you’d call close friends.”

  “What does that mean? That you think the confession’s a phony?”

  “Hell, Jack,” Shayne said irritably. “I know what Slater told Alvarez about it, and I’ll pass it on to Brannon. Those boys were trying to out-guess each other, and how much truth there was in it, I don’t know.”

  They rode up rapidly in the elevator, and Shayne followed the customs agent to a door marked U. S. Treasury, Customs Division. Malloy had to use his key; it was 5:30, after civil service hours. He had a pleasant corner office looking out on the river.

  The first thing he did was take a bottle of cognac and two glasses out of a file.

  “You expected me,” Shayne said.

  “Hell, I’m getting to like the stuff.”

  Shayne sat down at one end of a leather sofa. Malloy splashed cognac into the two glasses and handed one of them to Shayne. Pushing papers aside, he perched on the desk.

  “I’ve been brooding about this all afternoon, Mike, and it still doesn’t make sense. Here’s something else I picked up from Sergeant Brannon on the phone. He found a dummy attic in the Alvarez nightclub-”

  “I told him about it,” Shayne said, drinking.

  “He didn’t mention that,” Malloy said. “In fact, I got the feeling that if you ever go back to St. Albans without an honor guard of U. S. Marines, he’s going to nail your hide to the barn door. Well, he went over the attic and found one interesting thing-a little folded square of tissue paper. It may not mean anything, but that’s the way diamond dealers usually carry their stones. Anyway. You had a chance to watch Paul Slater in action, Mike. What do you think? Was he the one who creamed Alvarez, with the monkey wrench, and if so, what did he do with the goddamn loot? You didn’t hear a car, which means he probably got away on a bicycle. He had to plant the stuff somewhere, get out of the neighborhood, pick up a taxi and get to the airport by a quarter to twelve. That’s a lot to do in twenty-five minutes.”

  “It’s too much,” Shayne said, “and I don’t think he did it. I’ve got to be going in a minute, so let’s leave it at that. He was too clever for his own good. Somebody found out about the way he set up his dates with Alvarez, and after that it was a cinch to highjack the shipment. If he’d really taken that plane at midnight, Alvarez would have been sure he did it. The real thief wouldn’t have to worry.”

  “You’re a big help.”

  “It means you’re still in business,” Shayne told him. “That shipment is still on the way, and you may catch it. I’m finished with it. It’s not too neat, I admit, and all I’ve earned so far is one British pound. But from this point on it’s up to you and the St. Albans cops, and I wish you lots of luck.”

  “Thanks,” Malloy said dryly. “You surprise me, Mike. I never knew you to cop out before all the answers were in. Do you want to hear the junk Slater was spouting before he went under?”

  “O.K.,” Shayne said, lighting a cigarette. “Just the high spots.”

  Malloy picked up a folder. “It’s nothing but high spots. The stenographer didn’t get all of it. All right, Slater speaking. A plane goes over. ‘There they go. She should have married him. Not Shayne, not the husband type, but somebody like him, somebody sure. I did it all. I twisted her, I steered her. All wrong.’”

  After two puffs, Shayne crushed out his cigarette. Almost at once he felt blindly for another.

  Malloy looked up. “Nervous, Mike?”

  “Who wouldn’t be nervous? I told Martha I’d keep her husband out of trouble. I didn’t do such a hell of a good job of it, did I? I don’t look forward to telling her she’s a widow. Go on, or is that all?”

  “There’s more of the same. You can have it-I made two copies. I’m surprised he did even that much talking with three. 38 holes in him.”

  Shayne looked up. He said sharply, “Say that again. Three. 38 holes?”

  “So Brannon said. Only one of the slugs was still inside.” He added: “But don’t worry about breaking the news to Martha.”

  Shayne’s voice was dangerously soft. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Where were you going to pick her up, at her hotel?” Malloy said, watching him. “She won’t be there.”

  The redhead could feel his stomach tightening. His mouth was dry. “You had a tail on her.”

  “Hell, yes, Mike. Standard procedure. Two radio cars and four old pros. I wasn’t hoping for much, because if she was trying to pull something she wouldn’t be likely to do it the first day. And she slipped us.”

  “You’re sure your boys didn’t mess it up?”

  “Not these boys. She knew they were behind her, and she dumped them. Did a nice professional job of it. She hasn’t been back to her hotel. I’ve got a watch on terminals and airports, but it isn’t quite big enough for roadblocks. I don’t really expect to see Martha Slater again.”

  Shayne reached for the cognac. He was feeling completely relaxed for the first time since he went bonefishing on St. Albans.

  “Get through to Sergeant Brannon,” he said. “Find out if Paul Slater had a cable in his pocket when they brought him in.”

  Malloy turned over the pages in the folder. “I got an inventory this afternoon. Yeah, a cable saying his mother was seriously ill, to co
me home at once. What’s that prove? We know it’s a fake, to give him a pretext for chartering the plane. I didn’t even bother to check on his mother’s health.”

  “Don’t worry about her,” Shayne said, grinning. “She’s fine.”

  He took the cognac to the window and looked down on the river. When Malloy started to speak, he made a brusque gesture. “I want to work this out.” After a moment he turned. “Have you got today’s News’?”

  “Right here.”

  Shayne took it and flipped through the pages. Malloy circled the desk to see what he was looking up, but Shayne closed the paper and threw it on the desk.

  “Ok., Jack. That’s fine.” He strode to the door. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “Mike! “Malloy said.

  Shayne turned. “There’s one other thing. I don’t have much trouble getting rid of tails, but they slow me down. So don’t put one on me, Jack. Where will you be, if I want to call you?”

  Malloy sighed. “Right here, I guess, Mike. I see this is going to be another night without sleep.”

  “You need a vacation,” Shayne said.

  He went downstairs and out by a side entrance. He picked up a cab in front of the County Courthouse. He gave the driver a series of complicated directions, which carried them north for a time, then east on NW 7th, south on 12th Avenue. He left the cab at the mouth of a one-way street, walked two blocks against the traffic and caught a southbound bus, changing again to another cab. By the time he paid off this cab on Miami Avenue near the bridge, he was sure that no one was following him.

  Now he was within walking distance of his apartment hotel. He went through the driveway to the garages and took out his Buick. After more precautions, he drove to the P amp; O Steamship pier and went inside. He came out after fifteen minutes, headed south on Miami Avenue and found the address he was looking for.

  It was on Bird Road in South Miami, a large stucco house with a considerable expanse of lawn. Shayne drove around the block. Returning, he found a parking space from which he could watch the house. He lit a cigarette and settled down to wait.