Dead Man's Diary & A Taste for Cognac

by Brett Halliday

  Comprehension shone in Shayne’s eyes. “That’s why you’re refilling legal bottles?”

  “What other out is there?” demanded Renaldo. “Government inspectors checking my stock—”

  “All right,” Shayne interrupted, “but let me in on it. A case or two for my private stock.”

  “I only got a few bottles left,” the big man said.

  “But you know where there’s more.”

  “Go make your own deals,” Renaldo said sullenly.

  “Sure. I will. All I want is the tip-off.”

  “Who sent you here?”

  “No one. I dropped in for a drink and got slugged with Monnet when I ordered domestic brandy.”

  “Nuts,” sneered Renaldo. “You couldn’t pull the year of that vintage stuff. I don’t know what the gimmick is, but—”

  A rear door opened and two men came in hastily. They stopped dead in their tracks and stared at the redheaded detective seated on one corner of Renaldo’s desk. One of them was short and squarish with a swarthy face and a whiskered mole on his chin. He wore fawn-colored slacks and a canary-yellow sweater that was tight over bulging muscles.

  His companion was tall and lean with a pallid face and the humid eyes of a cokie. He was bareheaded, and wore a tightly belted suit. He thinned his lips against sharp teeth and tilted his head to study Shayne.

  Renaldo snarled, “You took long enough. How’d you make out, Blackie?”

  “It wasn’t no soap, boss. He ain’t talkin’.”

  “Hell, you followed him out of here.”

  “Sure we did, boss,” Blackie said, whining earnestly. “Just like you said. To a little shack on the beach at Eighteenth. But he had comp’ny when he got there. There was this car parked in front, see? So Lennie and me waited half an hour, maybe. Then a guy come out an’ drove away, an’ we goes in. But we’re too late. He’s croaked.”

  “Croaked?”

  “S’help me, boss. He was croaked. Lennie an’ me beats it straight back.”

  Renaldo said sourly to Shayne, “Looks like that fixes it for both of us.”

  Shayne said, “Give me all of it, Renaldo.”

  “Can’t hurt now,” Renaldo muttered after a brief hesitation. “This bird comes in with a suitcase this evening. It’s loaded with twenty-four bottles of Monnet 1926, like you said. It’s prewar,” he went on defensively, “sealed with no revenue stamps on it. All he wants is a hundred, so what can I lose? I can’t put it out here where an inspector will see it, but I can refill legal bottles and keep my customers happy. So I give him a C and try to pry loose where there’s more, but he swears that’s all there is and beats it. So I send Blackie and Lennie to see can they make a deal. You heard the rest.”

  “Why yuh spillin’ your guts to this shamus?” Lennie rasped. “Ain’t he the law?”

  “Shayne’s private,” Renaldo told him. “He was trying to horn in—” He paused suddenly and shot a suspicious look at the detective, his heavy jaw dropping. “Maybe you know more about it than I do, Shayne.”

  “Mebbe he does.” Lennie’s voice rose excitedly.” Looks to me like the mug what come out an’ drove away, don’t he, Blackie?”

  Blackie said, “Sorta. We didn’t get to see him good,” he explained to Renaldo. “But he was dressed like that—and big.”

  All three of the men looked at Shayne, studied him closely.

  “So that’s how—” said Renaldo slowly and harshly. He jerked the cigar from his mouth and asked angrily, “What’d you get out of him before he kicked off? Maybe we can make a deal, huh? You’re plenty on the spot with him dead.”

  Shayne said, “You’re crazy. I don’t know anything.”

  “How’d you know about the 1926 Monnet?” Renaldo demanded.

  “Like I told you. I dropped in for a drink and knew it wasn’t domestic stuff as soon as I tasted it.”

  “Maybe.” Renaldo rubbed his pudgy hands together, went on suspiciously and deliberately: “But that didn’t spell out Monnet ’26. Now, my boys’ll keep quiet if—”

  Shayne interrupted dispassionately, “You’re a fool, Renaldo.” He slid off the desk and his gray eyes were very bright. “Your boys are feeding you a line. It’s my hunch they messed things up and are afraid to admit it to you. So they make up a fairy tale about someone else getting there first, and you swallow it.” He laughed indulgently. “Think it over, and you’ll see who is really on the spot.” He turned toward the door.

  Blackie got in front of him. He stood lightly on the balls of his feet and a blackjack swung from his right hand. Behind him Lennie crouched with his gun bunched in his coat pocket. His pallid face was contorted and he panted, “You don’t listen to him, boss. Blackie and me both can identify him.”

  Shayne turned and said to Renaldo, “You’d better call them off. I’ve a friend waiting outside, and if anything happens to me in here you’ll have a lot of explaining to do.”

  Renaldo said smugly, “If I turn you over for murder—”

  “Try it,” Shayne snapped. He turned toward the door again, the open bottle of cognac clutched laxly in his left hand.

  Blackie remained poised with the blackjack between Shayne and the door. He appealed to Renaldo. “If it was this shamus out there an’ the old guy talked before he passed out—”

  A sharp rapping on the door interrupted Blackie.

  A grin pulled Shayne’s lips away from his teeth. He said, “My friend is getting impatient.”

  Renaldo said, “Skip it, Blackie.”

  Shayne moved past the swarthy man to the door and opened it. Myrna Hastings stood outside.

  “If you think—” she began.

  Shayne said, “Sh-h-h,” close to her ear, took her arm firmly, and pulled the door shut. He slid the uncorked bottle of Monnet into his coat pocket and started toward the front with her.

  She twisted her head to look back at the closed door and said uncertainly. “Those men inside—didn’t one of them have a weapon?”

  “You’re an angel,” Shayne said softly, “and I was a louse to treat you the way, I did.” They went out through the swinging front doors of the saloon. He stopped on the sidewalk. “Keep on going and beat it,” he told her harshly. “I have things to do.”

  Myrna looked up into his face and seemed frightened at what she saw there. “Something is wrong.”

  Shayne shrugged and said, “Maybe this will be a case you can write up.” He looked into her eyes briefly, then turned and strode to his sedan parked at the curb and started to get in.

  He didn’t hear her light footsteps following him, but he turned when she asked breathlessly, “Can’t I go with you, Mr. Shayne? I promise not to be in the way.”

  Shayne caught her elbows in his big hands and turned her about. “Run along, kid. This is murder. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Shayne drove out Biscayne Boulevard and turned right on Eighteenth Street. A thin crescent moon rode high in the cloudless sky overhead, and the night was humidly warm. He drove slowly to the end of the street and stopped his car against a low stone barrier overlooking the bay front, turned off his motor, and sat for a moment gripping the steering-wheel. Light glowed through two round and heavily glassed windows in a squatty, square, stone structure at his left. It perched boldly on the very edge of the bluff overlooking the bay, and a neat shell-lined walk led up to the front door. He got out and walked up the walk.

  The little house was built solidly of porous limestone, and its only windows were round, metal-framed portholes that looked as though they had been taken from a ship. The door had a heavy bronze knocker and the hinges and lock were also of bronze.

  He tried the knob and the door opened inward. The narrow hallway disclosed a ship’s lantern with an electric bulb hanging from a hand-hewn beam of cypress. An open door to the right showed the interior of a tidy and tiny kitchen.

  Shayne went down the hall to another door opening off to the right. The room was dark, and he fumbled alon
g the wall until he found a light switch. When he flipped the switch, it lighted two wrought-iron ship’s lanterns similar to the one in the hall. He stood in the doorway and tugged at his left earlobe, looking down at the man lying huddled in the middle of the bare floor.

  He was dead.

  A big-framed man, his face bony and emaciated. His eyes were wide open and glazed, bulging from deep sockets. He wore a double-breasted uniform of shiny blue serge. The buttons were of brass and recently polished. His ankles were wired together, and the wire had cut deeply into his bound wrists.

  Shayne went in and knelt beside the body.

  Three fingernails had been torn from his right hand. This appeared to be the only mark of violence on his body, which was warm enough to indicate that death had occurred only half an hour or so before. Shayne judged that shock and pain had brought on a heart attack, causing death. The man was about sixty, and there was no padding or flesh on his bony frame.

  Rocking back on his heels and wiping sweat from his face, Shayne went through the dead man’s pockets. He found nothing but a newspaper clipping and the torn stub of a bus ticket. The ticket had been issued the previous day, round trip from Miami to Homestead, a small town on the Florida Keys.

  The clipping was a week old, from the Miami Herald. It was headed: PAROLE GRANTED.

  Before reading the clipping, he raised his eyes and looked around the room. It was bare of furniture except for a built-in padded settee along one wall. Bare, and scrupulously clean, the room had the appearance of a cell.

  As he turned his eyes again to the newspaper clipping he stiffened. He heard a car stopping outside. He thrust the clipping and the ticket stub in his pocket and waited.

  Footsteps sounded on the walk, and the voices of men outside. Shayne lit a cigarette and blew out the match, then turned to look up at the bulky figure of Detective Chief Will Gentry in the doorway.

  Shayne grinned and said, “Doctor Livingstone?”

  Gentry snorted. He was a big man with heavy features, a permanent worry frown between his eyes, and a solid, forthright manner. He was an old friend of Shayne’s, and he said scathingly, “I thought I smelled something.”

  Gentry walked heavily forward and scowled down at the body. A tall, white-haired man hurried in behind Chief Gentry. He wore an immaculate white linen suit and his features were sharp and clear-cut. He stopped at sight of the body and groaned, “My God! Oh, my God! Is he—”

  “Dead.” Gentry grunted as he kneeled beside the dead man and asked Shayne in a tone of casual interest, “Why’d you pull out his fingernails, Mike?”

  The tall, white-haired man exclaimed in a choked voice, “Good God, has he been tortured!”

  “Who is he?” Shayne interposed sharply, turning toward the tall man.

  “Who is he?” the man said excitedly. “Why, that’s Captain Samuels! I knew something must have happened to him.” He turned to Chief Gentry. “I knew something must have happened to him,” he repeated, “when he wasn’t here to keep his appointment with me. If only I’d called earlier!”

  Gentry apparently ignored the man’s excitement and turned to Shayne. He asked calmly, his rumpled eyelids half raised, “What are you doing here?”

  “Nothing much. I was driving by and saw the lights. Something just smelled wrong. I stopped by to take a look, and that’s what I found.”

  Gentry said, “I suppose you can prove all that?” in a scoffing tone.

  “Can you disprove it?” asked Shayne.

  “Maybe not, but you’re holding out plenty. Damn it, Mike, this is murder. What do you know about it?”

  “Not a thing, Will. I’ve told you how I just drove by—”

  Will Gentry raised his voice to call, “Jones… you and Rafferty bring in the cuffs.”

  Jones’s voice rumbled, “Okay, Chief,” and heavy footsteps sounded in the hall.

  At the same time there was the light click of heels outside and Myrna Hastings came in. She said, “You don’t need to cover for me, Mike,” and stopped to catch her breath. There was a sob in her voice as she cried out, “You don’t need to cover up for me. Go ahead and tell them I asked you to stop here.” She turned toward the stalwart chief of detectives, as though seeing him for the first time, and said, “Oh! This is Chief Gentry, isn’t it.”

  Gentry rumbled, “I don’t think—”

  “Don’t you remember me, Chief?” Myrna laughed uncertainly. “Timothy Rourke introduced me to you in your office today. I do feature stories for a New York syndicate. I’m to blame for Mike coming here tonight. I’d heard about Captain Samuels and about his shipwreck and all—years ago, so I thought he might be material for a story. I asked Mike to stop here for a minute tonight, and that’s how it was.”

  Gentry turned his bulky body toward Shayne and asked gruffly, “Why didn’t you tell me that, Mike?”

  Myrna laughed merrily. “He had some idea of protecting me, Chief. You see I didn’t want to tell why I wanted to stop here. Then, when he found the man dead—well—I guess maybe Mike thought I knew something about it. Wasn’t that it, Mike?” She whirled toward Shayne.

  “Yeah. Something like that,” said Shayne stiffly.

  Gentry turned away from them and said, “Put your bracelets away, Jones, and go over the place,” to one of the two dicks hovering in the doorway.

  “Now that you’ve got me cleared up,” Shayne suggested, “why not tell me about it?”

  “I don’t know any more than you do,” Gentry admitted. “Mr. Guildford called a while ago and asked me to come out here with him. Seems he had a hunch something had happened to Captain Samuels.”

  “I felt sure of it after I had time to think things over,” the white-haired man said. “I had a definite appointment here with the captain for nine o’clock tonight and I waited almost half an hour for him.”

  Shayne said, “It’s almost eleven now. Why did you wait so long before calling the police?”

  “I had a flat tire just as I reached the boulevard driving away,” Guildford explained. “I had it changed at the filling station there and was delayed. I called as soon as I reached home.”

  Shayne asked, “Were the lights burning while you waited?”

  “No. I’m quite sure they weren’t. The house was dark and apparently empty.”

  “What was your appointment for?” Shayne pressed him.

  Guildford hesitated. He glanced at Will Gentry. “I don’t mind answering official questions, but what is this man’s connection with the case? And the young lady?”

  “None,” Gentry rumbled. “You can beat it, Mike, unless you feel like telling the truth.”

  “But we have told the truth,” Myrna asserted, her eyes wide and childlike. “We were just—”

  Shayne took her arm tightly. He said, “Come on,” and led her out the door.

  Neither of them said anything until they were in Shayne’s car and headed for the boulevard. Then Myrna leaned her head against his shoulder and asked in a small voice, “Are you terribly angry with me, Mike?”

  “How did you get in that house?” he countered angrily.

  “You brought me. I hid in the trunk compartment of your car. Then I slipped into the house while you were searching the body. I was in the rear bedroom all the time, and when I heard you getting the third degree I knew you didn’t want to tell the truth and I thought I’d better stick my oar in. Didn’t I do all right?”

  “How did you know the Captain’s name and about him being shipwrecked?”

  Myrna chuckled softly. “I found an old logbook by his bed. I had my flashlight, and found a clipping that was in the book.” She patted a large suede handbag in her lap. “I’ve got the book in here. It made a pretty good story even if I did think of it on the spur of the moment—the one I told Chief Gentry, I mean,” she amended, and chuckled again.

  “Why did you hide in the back of my car,” Shayne snapped.

  “Because you were trying to get rid of me and I wanted to see the famous Michael Shayne
in action,” she said. “But I must say you didn’t do much detecting out there.”

  Shayne stopped the car suddenly in front of an apartment building on the river front. “I live here,” he told her. He got out and went toward a side entrance.

  Myrna Hastings tripped along with him, trying to keep pace with his long-legged strides. She said hopefully, “I’m dying to taste whatever is in that bottle you’ve got in your coat pocket.”

  She waited quietly behind him in the doorway while he unlocked his apartment door. He went inside and switched on the lights, and she followed him into a square living room with windows on the east side. There was a studio couch against one wall, and a door on the right opened into a kitchenette. Another door on the left led into the bedroom and bath. Shayne tossed his hat on a wall hook and went into the kitchen without a word or glance for Myrna. He returned presently with two four-ounce wine glasses and two tumblers filled with ice water. He walked past her, ranged the four glasses in a row on the table, and filled the wine glasses nearly to the brim with cognac. He pushed one of the tumblers toward Myrna, set one wine glass within easy reach of her hand, then pulled another chair to the table and sat down, half facing her.

  It was very quiet in the apartment, and very restful. Shayne sighed when he drained the last drop from his glass of Monnet. He frowned at the portion remaining in Myrna’s glass. “Don’t you appreciate good liquor?”

  She smiled and said, “It’s so good I’m making it last.”

  Shayne lit a cigarette and spun the match away, then got the purloined clipping and bus ticket stub from his pocket. He laid the stub on the table and read the short clipping aloud. It was an AP dispatch from Atlanta, Georgia.

  It stated that John Grossman, suspected prohibition-era racketeer, sentenced to federal prison in 1930 on income tax charges from Miami, Florida, had been released that day on parole. Grossman announced his intension to take a long vacation at his fishing lodge on the Florida Keys.

  When Shayne finished reading the clipping aloud he placed it beside the ticket stub and said to Myrna, “These two items were the only things I found in the dead man’s pockets.”