Counterfeit Wife ms-14

by Brett Halliday

  The big blonde had lifted her glass with both hands embracing it. She looked at Shayne over the rim of the goblet; her brows lifted slightly.

  Shayne said, “Only thing lacking in that mixture is a couple of ounces of laudanum.”

  She lowered the full glass far enough to say, “They don’t keep it in stock here.”

  “That makes it tough.” He intended his remark to be sarcastic, but she only nodded agreement and said, “It takes a lot more to do the job drinking it straight like this.” She put the goblet to her mouth and emptied it in even, unhurried swallows.

  “But you’re getting it done,” Shayne suggested amiably.

  “I didn’t hear anybody ask your opinion,” she said in a husky drawl. “But if it’s anything to you, nosy, you don’t taste this stuff but once when you pour it down like that.”

  Shayne grinned and said, “I had a big blonde for a nurse when I was a baby, and I’ve had a yen for them ever since.”

  Mrs. Dawson sucked in her breath and her lower lip. Her blue eyes glowed with an unnatural brightness as she began a slow appraisal of Shayne, beginning with the brim of his hat and continuing over his wide shoulders downward until the table blocked her view. She nodded and said, “Come around some time, big boy, and bring your laudanum.”

  “What’s the matter with tonight?”

  She shook her head slowly from side to side, her eyes momentarily dull and troubled, looking past him to the rear of the room. He turned and saw Fred Gurney coming out of the telephone booth.

  “We can ditch him,” he told her.

  She said, “I’ve got more important things on my mind tonight.”

  “You can forget Mr. Dawson, too,” Shayne told her.

  She stiffened at his words. Again he saw the hot blue flame in her eyes that he’d seen earlier. Gurney was approaching the table. Shayne didn’t care much now whether Gurney recognized him or not. He was beginning to be bored with the whole setup. He wished he’d taken that plane to New Orleans and Lucy Hamilton.

  The blonde said, “Dawson?” in a low voice that was almost a whisper, then looked up to ask Gurney, who now stood scowling behind Shayne’s chair, “Any luck?”

  He didn’t reply, and Shayne imagined he must have shaken his head, for Mrs. Dawson said sharply, “Go on back and keep trying.”

  Gurney stepped around to face Shayne, the scowl still on his face. “That’s my chair,” he snapped.

  “Scram,” said the blonde. “He’s buying me a drink.”

  Shayne looked up at Gurney and saw no flicker of recognition in his sunken eyes. The man’s lips curled back from his yellowed teeth. He hesitated for a moment, then turned and went slowly back to the telephone booth.

  Shayne said, “He minds well.”

  She leaned toward him and asked earnestly, “Did you say Dawson sent you?”

  “What makes you think he’d do that?” countered Shayne.

  The lazy waiter with the greasy hair came up and stood beside the table. Shayne still had a little brandy in his snifter. He said, “I’m buying the lady a drink.”

  When the waiter went away, she asked, “What do you know about Dawson? Where is the little bastard?”

  Shayne said, “Let’s dance. You’ll quit worrying about him that way.”

  “You go to hell,” she said thickly.

  Shayne pushed his chair back and stood up with a mocking grin. “Come on, if you can still stand up.”

  She put one hand on the table and rose slowly, stood for a moment to get her balance. Shayne put his long arm around her, and they moved together onto the little dance square.

  There was a clean, animal smell about her, like the odor of a young calf after it has been bathed by its mother’s tongue. Her body was supple and yielding and she danced as she had walked, with a deliberate carefulness and measured rhythm. Her full red mouth, smeared at the corners, was just below his chin.

  “You can give it to me straight,” she told him in a low voice that was slightly guttural.

  “Hell,” said Shayne, “I thought you’d be corseted up to the hilt.” His tone was one of surprise and admiration. His knobby fingers tightened on the hard flesh at her waistline.

  “I don’t wear any of that tight stuff women bind themselves up in. What about Dawson?”

  “Why worry about a shrimp like him when you’re dancing with a man?”

  The record ended abruptly. They were close to their table. She pushed him away from her and sat down. The waiter was standing by with a tray containing a double shot of gin, a bottle of beer, and a goblet of ice cubes. Shayne sat down and said, “Why don’t you put the lady’s drink on the table?”

  “Was goin’ to,” he stammered in broken English, “w’en you pay for one you have.” Shayne looked at him in astonishment, and the man said quickly, “Don’ get sore me, mister. Thees house order. We not allow serva two drink till first one pay for.”

  Shayne repressed his first impulse toward anger as he realized the punk was merely stating a house rule. He took out his wallet. “Give it to her and bring me another cognac. You can take it all out of this.” He extracted one of the bills Dawson had given him and laid it on the table. “A double shot of Hennessy in a plain glass and ice water on the side.” He drained the snifter bowl and shoved it toward the waiter.

  The man picked up the bill and started away. He turned back, his forehead creased and his black eyes narrowed on the rumpled bill. “This a hunner-dolla bill,” he said excitedly, pointing to the figure in the corner of the bank note. “You mean givva me thees?”

  Shayne said, “It’s the smallest I have.”

  The waiter looked from the bill to Shayne, his eyes filled with doubt. “You sure you gotta no leetle money?”

  “I told you I didn’t have.”

  The waiter shook his head and said finally, “I must take to office.”

  “Get that cognac before you go,” Shayne ordered.

  The waiter thought that over and evidently decided it was a reasonable request. He nodded and went to the bar, brought the drink back to the table, then crossed the room and knocked on a closed door on the other side of the room.

  Mrs. Dawson mixed and stirred her fresh drink, then said, “I’m plenty worried about him and I guess you know why.”

  Shayne grinned and said, “You must at least wear a brassiere.”

  Her eyes glittered. “When this business is over-”

  “Boss say you see him in office,” the waiter interrupted, his frightened eyes staring at Shayne.

  “What the hell? Isn’t there a hundred dollars in change in this dump?”

  “Tony not know,” he answered, jabbing a forefinger against his chest to indicate that he was Tony. “Boss say you see him.” He pointed nervously toward the office door.

  Shayne picked up his glass of cognac and went across to the door, which stood slightly ajar, pulled it open and went in.

  A square-faced man faced him across a bare desk. The office was small, with a bright unshaded globe suspended from the ceiling. The room was shabby and dirty, with two cane-bottomed chairs placed in front of the desk.

  The square-faced man had large ears that protruded at a sharp angle from his head, and a large vise-like mouth. He wore a cream-colored shirt opened at the first button, revealing a thick, ruddy neck. He waited until the detective advanced close to the desk before asking, “Mind telling me where you got hold of this bill?” His voice was rasping, but not particularly unfriendly.

  Shayne frowned and took a drink from his glass before setting it on the desk. He sat down on one of the chairs and asked, “Why? Isn’t it any good?”

  “I’m asking you,” said the proprietor of the Fun Club patiently, “where you got it.”

  “I don’t think it’s any of your damned business.”

  “I’m making it my business.” The square-faced man’s voice remained rasping, yet not particularly unfriendly but colder, and he spoke more deliberately.

  Shayne shrugged and admitted
, “Printed it last night myself. Thought I did a pretty good job.”

  “It is a good job, pal. One hell of a sweet job. You’ll save yourself a lot of trouble by telling me where you got it.”

  Shayne emptied his cognac glass and set it down with a thump. “I don’t see why you’re playing puzzles, but I’m tired of it. I cashed a check at the bank this afternoon.”

  “The bank didn’t give you this bill.”

  “I say it did.”

  “The cops won’t believe you, pal.”

  “Why don’t you call them and we’ll see?”

  “I think I’ll do that little thing.” There was a smirk on his thick lips and his slate-gray eyes stared coldly at Shayne. He picked up the desk telephone with a square left hand, laid it down and dialed a number with the first blunt finger of that hand. His right hand slid from the desk into his lap.

  Shayne’s eyes narrowed at him. “You didn’t dial police headquarters. The number is-”

  “I know what number I’m calling, pal. Just sit tight where you are.”

  The muzzle of a. 45 inched up over the edge of the desk and rested there, leveled at Shayne’s mid-section. The square-faced man lifted the telephone with his left hand and said, “Perry? Put the big shot on.”

  Shayne sat very still with his hands folded in front of him. He wondered if the big blonde in the outer room had finished her drink.

  He studied the bill lying on the desk between them, then reached out and picked it up by one corner. The proprietor watched him with no change of expression, the gun steady in his square right hand.

  Shayne studied the bank note carefully, frowning and turning it over in his hands. It looked genuine enough to him, though he wasn’t an expert. He said so, and the man across the desk grunted something unintelligible.

  Shayne laid the bill down and folded his hands again. Juke-box music came softly through the open door behind him.

  Chapter Three

  PLENTY OF TROUBLE

  “This is Bates, proprietor of the Fun Club,” the man at the desk finally said. “I got a C-note from that batch of fifty G’s you been huntin’.”

  He listened for a moment, his face impassive, his gaze and the muzzle of the gun steady on the detective.

  “Yeh. I got him here. He ain’t sayin’ where he got it. Yeh. Tough-like. Oh, he’ll stick around till the boys get here. I got a gun on him that says he’ll sit quiet. Sure. That’ll be fine.”

  Bates pronged the receiver, picked up a half-smoked cigar from an ash tray, and settled back as comfortably as he could in the straight-backed chair.

  Shayne kept his hands straight in front of him. He got up easily, careful to make no sudden motion. “That gun of yours,” he told Bates quietly, “is going to make a hell of a noise if you trigger it in here. I don’t believe you want all your customers to see you shoot an unarmed man.” He backed slowly toward the open door. A deepening of the trenches in his cheeks was the only evidence that he was under any undue tension. “I’m going to turn around and walk out,” he went on evenly. “I’m keeping my hands where you can see them so you won’t have any excuse for blasting me in the back.”

  He turned in the doorway, dropping his hands limply at his sides. The interior of the Fun Club was just as it had been before, except that the somnambulistic dancers had collapsed in chairs at one of the tables and were wearily sipping drinks. A big fat man and a short plump woman had taken their place on the dance floor, and the man was slowly pumping the woman’s arm up and down to a dismal tune from the juke-box.

  Mrs. Dawson turned her head to look at Shayne as he walked out of Bates’s private office. He went slowly toward her, his hands still hanging limply. He hadn’t formulated any plan but he knew he was fairly safe as long as he remained out in the open in sight of the customers of the Fun Club and until reinforcements arrived for Bates. He didn’t know how soon that would be nor what form they would take.

  Right now he wanted to get close to the big blonde. She was his only contact with Dawson-the man who had slipped him the two hundred-dollar bills in exchange for passage to New Orleans. He had to work fast, gain her confidence somehow-

  Shayne eased himself into the chair opposite her. She emptied the second half of the drink he had bought her, staring steadily at him over the rim of her glass.

  Then she set it down, ran her tongue over her lips, and asked, “What’s all this monkey business about? I know Dawson was trying to get a plane out of town at midnight. If he’s run out on us-”

  “I’ve got a couple of minutes,” Shayne interrupted her harshly. “Shut up and listen to me.”

  Her eyes widened. “A couple of minutes?”

  “Before some gunmen come in after me.” He turned his head to look at the open door of Bates’s office. He couldn’t see the proprietor but knew he was being watched from inside the room.

  “That isn’t long enough to tell you what you want to know about your husband,” he said rapidly.

  “My husband?”

  “Sure. Only he told me his name was Parson.”

  She said, “I haven’t got any husband.” Her eyes narrowed as she concentrated her gaze on his face. “I get you now. You were at the airline ticket office while I was asking about him.”

  Shayne nodded impatiently. “I trailed you here in a taxi. Do we go somewhere and talk things over?”

  “Where is Dawson?”

  “I’m the only man in Miami who can tell you.”

  “Well?”

  “If I stay alive long enough,” Shayne amended.

  The big blonde considered that statement for a moment, looking away from him.

  Shayne leaned forward and took hold of her wrist. The bone was large under the generous covering of flesh. He said, “I’m not playing games. We’ve got maybe a couple of minutes to get away from here where we can talk.”

  “And if we don’t?”

  “Then you lose your chance to find out about Dawson.”

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “Plenty. I walked out of Bates’s office with a gun on my back. He’s got some boys on the way here now to take care of me.”

  She nodded thoughtfully, and again her eyes traveled past Shayne to the rear of the room. She lifted her free hand and brushed her fingers across her forehead, then pressed her eyelids with the tips of two fingers.

  Shayne realized she had reached that certain stage of drunkenness at which her thought processes were clear and direct but not swift-a condition in which her brain grasped the essentials of a situation and disregarded all side issues.

  She said, “I wondered what Batesey wanted with you.”

  “Is that gray sedan outside yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sober enough to push it?”

  She smiled suddenly. It was the first time he had seen her smile. Her eyes crinkled at the corners and she smiled all over her face like a delighted child. “I’ve been soberer,” she told him, and added, “and a hell of a lot drunker.”

  Shayne released her wrist. He said rapidly and in a low voice, “Go out and crank it up. I’ll wander out toward the door, but I’ll stay in the light, where there are too many people for Bates to do his stuff. Wheel the heap up as close as you can, and I’ll make a run for it.”

  “What about him?” She inclined her head ever so slightly toward a rear table near the telephone booth where Fred Gurney sat glowering at them.

  “Leave him out of it,” Shayne said lightly and swiftly. “You won’t be sorry, if we can get out of this together.”

  The woman said thickly with a hint of excitement, “I don’t think I’d be sorry at that. But I could use a bracer-”

  “Hell! Get going,” Shayne whispered furiously. “You’re carrying a big enough load now.”

  Her face grew sullen and she started to protest, but after a long look into Shayne’s angry gray eyes, she got up and walked toward the front door without wavering. Shayne glanced at Gurney’s table and saw that the fellow had half ri
sen as though to follow her. Gurney looked from her moving figure to Shayne, and Shayne shook his head not more than an inch. Gurney tightened his thin lips, and his scowl deepened, but he hesitated only a second before reseating himself.

  Timing himself impatiently, waiting to give the blonde a chance to get the car to the door, Shayne wondered what sort of a deal they were working on together and what it had to do with Dawson. Why had she claimed at the airport that the dough-faced man was her husband, and now to him declared she had no husband? He wondered whether he was making a fool of himself and whether, after all, there could have been two men of the same description both trying to get tickets on Flight Sixty-two.

  He glanced at the private office and saw Bates standing in the open doorway, his mouth grim and his worried, slate-gray eyes flickering from Shayne to the front entrance.

  Shayne got up and went toward the door.

  Bates moved quickly to intercept him. He said, loudly enough to be heard above the moan of the juke-box and the excited voices of the people in the room, “No you don’t, pal. You don’t get out of here without paying for the drinks.” His right hand was hidden inside his sagging pocket.

  Shayne kept right on walking toward the door. He heard a motor racing outside. Then it was throttled down to a steady purr.

  Bates was moving in at an angle to intercept him before he reached the door. He went on talking in a loud and angry voice. “You’re not walking outta here without paying. That’s a lead-pipe cinch. I don’t want trouble, but I-”

  He was within six feet of Shayne, and his right hand was coming out of his pocket. Shayne hadn’t looked in his direction but now he whirled, took one lunging step sideways, and threw a left hook to Bates’s square jaw.

  Bates reeled backward and went down.

  Shayne sprinted toward the screen door. Bates’s. 45 roared behind him and a slug plunked into the door casing above his head as he went through.

  The gray sedan was pulled up outside with the right-hand door standing open and the motor roaring. He dived into the seat beside the woman, and the car raced forward down the gravel drive to the macadam.