Heads You Lose ms-8

by Brett Halliday

  Shayne lugubriously agreed with her and drove back to Miami. It was seven minutes past eight when he parked his car on Flagler Street in front of the Biscayne Building.

  There was a single elevator in operation, and he went up to the fourth floor. Light showed through the frosted glass leading into the offices of the Motorist Protective Association.

  He tried the knob gently. The door was locked. He stooped and put his ear to the keyhole but could hear nothing. He dropped to his knees and examined the lock, got out his keyring and quietly went to work. After a couple of minutes he opened the door and went into the outer office with his hand on his pocketed gun. The reception room was empty, but a door to the right of the president’s office was ajar and light came through.

  Shayne stepped silently across the soft blue rug to the open door. Edna Taylor straightened up from closing a steel filing cabinet which stood beside the south window, She gave a little start when she saw Shayne, then asked angrily, “How did you get here?”

  “Picked your lock.” He sauntered into the office and put one hip to the corner of a polished oak desk. There were several steel filing cases and two straight chairs in the room. Directly behind the swivel chair at the desk was a bookcase of fumed oak, the shelves laden with books.

  She compressed her lips into a straight line and thrust her hands into the pockets of her gray suit, regarding him with a mingled expression of fear and hatred. “That was quite a cute trick,” she said icily.

  “I thought it was a good idea.”

  “And I suppose it was you who telephoned Mr. Brannigan and pretended you were the man who died in my house.”

  “I was playing detective,” he said amiably, “but your president was too smart to take the bait.”

  “Because he never heard of Eddie Seeney,” she said witheringly.

  His gaze flickered over the filing cabinet. He sighed and said, “I suppose there’s no use going through your records now. You’ve had time to get rid of any evidence showing that Seeney worked for you.”

  “If you think that’s what I’ve been doing here…”

  “It’s what you would have done if Seeney had been employed here,” he interrupted. He took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and offered her one.

  “No… thanks,” she said.

  Shayne took one and struck a light on his thumbnail to light it.

  She went stiffly to her desk and sat down, rested her elbows on the table and cupped her chin in her palms. “Why do you persist in believing those things about me, Michael?” she asked in an injured tone.

  “You had some good reason for rushing down here at night.”

  “I often work at night,” she said wearily. “I was upset, and I certainly didn’t want to sit around and look at the blood on the floor.”

  “Did you get in touch with Brannigan about Seeney?”

  “Of course I did. I was anxious to know whether there was any connection.”

  “And he told you?”

  “He had never heard of Edward Seeney… until you made that silly attempt to trap him into an admission over the phone.”

  Shayne said blandly, “I make a lot of mistakes, but I usually come up with the right answers.”

  “And you still think I’m a murderer?”

  “I don’t think… I know. You killed a man.”

  “Oh, why did you come here, Michael? Why don’t you leave me alone?”

  “I didn’t know you’d be here. I rather hoped to go over the records undisturbed.”

  “Breaking and entering.” She twisted her lips scornfully. “You could be shot for that, you know.”

  Shayne looked at her in mild surprise. “That’s the way a detective has to work. Didn’t you know?”

  “You enjoy it, don’t you… snooping around and suspecting everybody.”

  “It’s a living.” He puffed on his cigarette, then asked, “Does a boathouse go with that estate of yours?”

  “Of course there’s a boathouse.”

  “With a motorboat thrown in?”

  “I don’t know. The boathouse is locked and I haven’t bothered to investigate. How does that concern you?”

  Shayne touched the bruise on his face and said, “A man tried to kill me today… and he got away in a motor-boat before I could kill him.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t I, dressed as a man?” Her sarcasm lashed out at him.

  “How about fixing me up with a membership in your organization?” he suggested. “I need to be protected against a lot of things.”

  “If you think I’m going to…”

  “Oh, I don’t want you to give me one.” He took out his wallet and extracted a five-dollar bill. “That’s the initial fee, isn’t it?”

  Her lips curled as she looked at the bill in his hand. “That’s not one of my duties,” she said sternly. “If you’ll come around in the morning…”

  “It has to be tonight,” Shayne told her firmly.

  “I think you’re utterly insane, Michael Shayne,” she said without conviction.

  Shayne grinned and said, “It’s very simple,” cheerfully. “The more I learn about the Motorist Protective Association the more I realize I’m just the kind of guy who needs a membership.”

  “We reserve the right to refuse membership to anyone.” She stiffened her body and looked at him, and it was as though she suddenly clothed her body and her expression with armor of steel.

  Shayne laughed softly. “You’re not afraid, are you, Edna? Not afraid of what I might learn if I became a member?”

  “Of course I’m not afraid. Our business is strictly legitimate.”

  “Then prove it by giving me a membership card.”

  She took a keyring from her purse and stood up, walked swiftly through the reception room, and unlocked the door marked PRIVATE.

  Shayne followed her, looking over her shoulder when she opened a steel file drawer. She took out a card and went to a typewriter desk. He followed her again, and while she filled out the card, filling in his description without looking at him, he picked up a blank sheet of typewriter paper and held it up to the light.

  The paper was not Hammond Bond.

  She signed the card and looked up. She said angrily, “Go ahead and search the place if you want to. I don’t believe I’ve left any bodies around.”

  Shayne handed her the bill when she stood up and gave him the green membership card. He asked, “Can the newest member aspire to the honor of seeing the vice-president home?”

  “I’m not going home,” she said icily. “I’ve some work to do.”

  Shayne tucked the card in his wallet and said, “I’m sorry as hell things have to be this way,” and went out.

  The elevator took him downstairs and he went out on the sidewalk.

  His car was parked directly in front of the building door. As he started toward it he paused. The rear window was lowered a few niches. He was positive he had left it tightly closed when he had gone into the building. His nostrils flared and drew in a scent of cigar smoke. He looked to the right and left, but saw no one smoking a cigar.

  Shayne’s eyes narrowed. He took a cigarette from his pack and lit it nonchalantly, tossed the match away, and strode to his car.

  He opened the door and slid under the wheel without looking in the back seat.

  As he pulled away from the curb, a voice from the rear seat said, “Take it easy and keep your hands on the wheel.”

  Shayne recognized the curious hoarseness of the voice. It belonged to Gene, the gunman who had shot Pat at Tahiti Beach.

  CHAPTER 14

  Shayne took it easy and kept his hands on the wheel. A man climbed over the back seat and slid in beside him. Shayne glanced aside and was surprised to see that it was not Gene. This man had smooth, regular features and a tiny black mustache.

  Shayne said, “Mr. B. Antrim, I presume?”

  “It ain’t a bad monicker to sign on a hotel register,” he said.

  “You’re a lousy shot with a ri
fle,” Shayne muttered.

  Gene’s hoarse voice said from the rear seat, “Cut it out. Turn the corner here, Shamus… to the right. Cross the drawbridge and pull off to the side and park.”

  Shayne punctiliously obeyed orders. He eased up to the curb on the other side of the drawbridge and stopped. A car passed with dimmed headlights, and there were no other cars in sight.

  Gene said, “Get out and go around on the other side, Mark. Get under the wheel. You slide over, Shamus.”

  “But what about going over him?” Mark protested. “After what happened today…”

  “Yeh,” Gene agreed, “go over him. And for chrissake do a better job than Pat on it.”

  Shayne sat stiffly erect and let Mark go over him inch by inch searching for a weapon. He clenched his teeth to keep from wincing when the man’s rough hands pounded against his sore ribs.

  Mark, alias B. Antrim, exhaled happily when his pawing hands found the concealed. 38 which was holstered against the front of Shayne’s right thigh. “Here it is,” he announced. “He ain’t got no pocket in his pants and the gat’s right down here where it’ll tickle him between the legs.” He pulled the weapon out as he spoke.

  Gene growled, “I’m damned. Go on over the rest of him,” he ordered thickly.

  Mark went over the rest of Shayne, finally saying, “I’ll swaller whole any gun left on ’im.”

  “All right, let’s get going,” Gene ordered.

  Mark got out and went around the rear of the car to the left side. Shayne slid over and let him get under the wheel.

  “Tie up his glims while I hold my gun on him,” Gene directed. “The boss don’t want him to see where we take him, though I’ll be damned if I know why. If I have my way he won’t be coming back to tell anybody.”

  Two muscles in Shayne’s lean cheeks twitched while Mark tied a handkerchief tightly over his eyes. Then he relaxed and let his head loll against the cushioned seat when the car started again.

  He said, “I hope you boys know what you’re getting into.”

  “You’re the one who’d better be worried,” Gene snarled.

  “Worried? Me? By you two punks?” Shayne chuckled. “You’ve already misfired twice today.”

  The car made a turn to the left and presently swung to the right. “Third time’s the charm,” Gene remarked from the rear. “Your Irish luck has run out, Shamus.”

  “Maybe.” Shayne was concentrating on the various turns Mark was making. He knew this south bayshore part of the city quite well, but all he could do was to keep a hazy sense of direction as the car wound around crazily through the twisting streets.

  After a long time they stopped. Mark and Gene got out and the door on Shayne’s side was opened. A hand took hold of his arm and Gene said, “End of the line for you.”

  Shayne got out and stood on loose dry sand. With a captor on each side he was led blindfolded across loose sand and up a short board walk. He heard a door being unlocked and he was thrust inside a room. He discerned through the handkerchief that the room was lighted. A hand fumbled with the knotted blindfold and pulled it from his face.

  He blinked at a kerosene lamp on a wooden table, then turned with a slow grin to stare at the disheveled figure of Herbert Carlton who bounced up unhappily from a hard chair in the far corner of the roughly finished room.

  “Shayne!” Carlson moaned. “So they got you, too. I had hoped they wouldn’t.” He sighed, wet his lips, and sank back into the chair.

  Carlton was a sorry sight. His gray suit, so immaculate when Shayne had last seen him, was wrinkled and torn as though by a terrific struggle and his face was liberally patched with strips of adhesive tape that drew his features into a horrible grimace.

  Shayne said, “Looks as if you’d been playing drop the handkerchief with a buzz saw.”

  Carlton drew his shoulders up with dignity. “I resisted as best I could.”

  “Damned if he didn’t fight like a wildcat,” Gene said with a hoarse laugh. “He ain’t got as much sense as you, Shamus.”

  Shayne’s gray eyes roamed around the room slowly. There were two windows on one side, both securely closed with heavy wooden storm shutters. The rough pine floor was bare and scuffed, and cobwebs clung to the corners of the room. The walls were of roughly hewn pine boards, as was the ceiling, and there were two chairs and an unfinished pine table for furniture.

  Gene and Mark stood together in the doorway. Beyond them he could see nothing but moonlight on white sand. He could hear the distant sound of waves lapping gently against a shore.

  Gene’s right hand was bunched suggestively in his coat pocket, and Shayne’s. 38 dangled by the triggerguard from Mark’s right forefinger.

  Shayne went across the room and turned the other chair around, and sat down facing its back. He rested his forearms on the highest rung and hooked his chin over them. He said, “All right. Now we’re here… all nice and cozy. What’s the payoff?”

  “That’s up to you,” Gene told him. He brought his hand out of his pocket and handed an automatic to Mark, who disappeared outside with both weapons.

  Gene closed the door. “Mark’s locking the door from the outside,” he explained. “I haven’t got a gun, so it wouldn’t be smart to jump me. This is the boss’s idea. If it was up to me I’d bump you both right now and be done with it.”

  Shayne asked, “When is the boss coming?”

  “He’s here now. He’s kind of bashful about showing his face.” Gene walked over and inserted his finger in a knothole about waist high in the plank wall. He tugged on it, and a short length of six-inch board came loose from the two-by-four uprights.

  “The boss,” he went on, “is sitting right outside there listening, and after we’ve had our confab he’ll decide whether you and this guy keep on living or get turned into worm fodder.” He addressed Shayne, as though Carlton had already been apprised of the method of procedure.

  “A very neat arrangement,” Shayne agreed. “It’s nice to know that the boss is listening in.” He turned to look at Carlton, who was huddled in his chair in a posture of utter hopelessness.

  “How’d they get hold of you, Carlton? I thought you were too scared to stir a leg out of your house.”

  Carlton answered miserably, “I thought it would be safe to go to my office. There were so many things demanding my attention. And I had a police escort.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. I had gone a block before the police car suddenly stopped. I slowed and looked back, and another car rammed mine. Then… these… these men… piled out and grabbed me.” His body shivered. “I tried to fight them off but they overpowered me. They blindfolded me and brought me here.”

  Shayne demanded, “Are these two men the ones who killed Wilson?”

  “I… don’t know.” Carlton glanced at Gene, then went on strongly. “That is… no. I’m positive they are not. I’m ready to swear I don’t recognize either one of them.

  “But for God’s sake, Shayne,” he went on in a sudden burst of fear, “I’m sure they intend to kill both of us if we refuse to deal with them.”

  Shayne said sardonically, “That should please the listening boss. But why the hell,” he asked Gene, “are you fooling with Carlton at all? The safest way to make sure he doesn’t doublecross you is to kill him.”

  “Sure. That’s what I told the boss. But I don’t know. He says there’s been too much killing already.” Gene’s hoarse voice sounded aggrieved. “I say we’re fools if we don’t feed both of you lead right here.”

  “Not me,” Shayne told him. “My information will go straight to Gentry if I die. With what I’ve got the police will have all of you and a lot of others rounded up in an hour. But with Carlton it’s different,” Shayne pointed out wolfishly. “The only way he is a danger is as long as he lives.”

  “Please, Shayne!” Carlton cried in alarm. “Are you turning on me, too?”

  Shayne cocked a shaggy red eyebrow at Carlton and said, “I’m just try
ing to get things squared around. You’re done for,” he ended deliberately. “You haven’t got anything to bargain with. I have.”

  Gene said, “Nuts, Shamus. You tried to pull that one this afternoon.”

  “And you’re goddamned lucky Pat didn’t find my gun and I came out of it alive,” Shayne told him, emphasizing each word. “You’ve been lucky twice today. Your only chance to beat this rap is for me to keep on living. And you know it. You know goddamn well you can’t make a deal with Gentry.”

  “Maybe it is that way,” Gene conceded in a surly tone. “Let the boss hear just what you’ve got to say and he’ll maybe make an offer.”

  Shayne said, “No. I want you rats to keep on squirming. I want you to keep on thinking, ‘Hell, maybe Shayne don’t know anything. Maybe he’s just putting up a bluff, but your white livers won’t let you take a chance on it. You’re on the run and you know it.”

  Gene’s black eyes glittered in his dark, pasty face. He drew in an excited breath and said, “That’s just what I’ve told the boss. I don’t believe Wilson had time to tell you a damned thing over the phone. If you know what you claim to know, why don’t you do something? That’s what I keep telling the boss,” he ended in a choked voice.

  Shayne asked, “How do you know what Wilson had time to tell me?”

  “It’s none of your goddamned business.”

  “All right. Maybe I’ve got my own reasons for not doing anything.”

  Carlton pulled himself up straight from a doubled position in his chair. “You mean you’ll listen to reason?” he asked eagerly. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it, Shayne? That’s the only thing we can do. If you’re so stubborn about it they’ll kill us both.”

  “They’re not going to kill me,” Shayne said bluntly. “Anybody but a crazy punk would know they can’t afford to take a chance.” His eyes scorned Gene.

  “The boss ain’t going to make a deal till he knows what you’ve got to trade,” Gene sneered, his eyes wavering.

  “And I’m not going to tell him what I’ve got to trade,” Shayne said easily. “Not yet. That’s what the boss might call an impasse, isn’t it?” He addressed his words directly to the rectangular opening in the wall.