Never Kill a Client

by Brett Halliday

  “Have another,” Shayne said absently, drumming his fingertips on the desk. “Describe her to me, Joe. Blonde or brunette? How old? How was she dressed?”

  “Blonde,” said Joe enthusiastically. “Real, sure-enough honey-colored blonde, that’s for sure. How old? Gosh, I don’t know. No spring chicken, if you know what I mean, but no hag either. Thirty, maybe. Thirty-five. But plenty juice left in her. God, I don’t know what she was wearing. A dress, I guess. Who looks at a doll’s clothes when she’s got that kind of stuff inside of them? But don’t get me wrong,” he added hastily. “She don’t sling it around for you to look at. It’s there, and she knows you know it’s there, but that’s all.”

  Shayne said to Ryan, “She wants me to meet her at the Brown Derby. Is that far from here?”

  “On Wilshire? That’s the one she probably means, if she didn’t say which. There’s another one on Vine…”

  “I’ll run you over,” Joe Pelter offered eagerly. “My hack’s right in front waiting.”

  “Sure.” Shayne drained his cup and got up. He hesitated a moment and told Ryan, “My secretary has the name of this hotel, it’s the only place she can reach me in L.A. If she should try to call in the next half hour or so, you could have me paged at the Brown Derby. Or take a message, and I’ll try to check back with you.”

  “Glad to do it,” Ryan told him heartily. “Don’t forget your bottle.”

  Shayne shook his head with a grin. “Stash it away. You never know, I may be back for another drink out of it.”

  “Any time,” Ryan told him, following him to the door. “Good luck with your juicy blonde.”

  3

  Shayne found the Original Brown Derby Restaurant practically empty when he walked into it at about four o’clock. There was only a residue of hard-drinkers from the long business lunches that had filled the place earlier and a smattering of tourists who had dropped in early to order cocktails and establish beachheads at strategic tables where they would hopefully dawdle over their drinks and wait for Hollywood celebrities to arrive during the next two or three hours preceding dinner.

  A captain of waiters bustled up to Shayne when he paused at the entrance to check his briefcase with a discerning glance at the redhead which failed to categorize the detective as either a celebrity or a celebrity-smitten tourist.

  “Would you like a table, sir?”

  Shayne nodded, “I’m expecting a lady to meet me. The name is Shayne. Michael Shayne.”

  “Of course.” The captain made a notation on his pad and started toward a row of small tables against the wall. Shayne looked at his watch and said, “I think I’ll make a telephone call first.” It was a little after seven o’clock in Miami, and he had promised Lucy he would call her either at the office or at home. He still had nothing definite to report on the length of his anticipated stay in Los Angeles, but it would be pleasant to hear her voice and her comments when he told her about Elsa’s second note and relayed the taxi driver’s description of his mysterious female client.

  The captain paused in front of Shayne and looked over his shoulder to say, “Certainly, sir. I’ll have a telephone brought to your table.”

  He was being a trifle gauche, Shayne realized with inner amusement, hesitating in the Brown Derby and looking about for a public telephone from which to make his call. A telephone at his table, of course. This was Hollywood, he reminded himself. Where fabulous million-dollar deals were constantly being consummated by habituées of the Brown Derby by private telephones plugged in at their elbows for convenience, so there would be no interruption in the sipping of drinks.

  He followed the captain to a table for two, was seated with a flourish, and noted with amusement that he was being covertly observed with a craning of necks by some of the tourists while a waiter hurried up with a telephone which was placed by his right hand and plugged into a jack in the wall beside him.

  Shayne lit a cigarette and ordered a sidecar, telling the waiter firmly, “With Martel and a shade light on the Cointreau. And no sugar on the rim of the glass if your bartender here has that atrocious idea for serving a sidecar.”

  “Indeed not, sir.” The waiter looked properly aghast at the thought, and scurried away.

  Shayne lifted the telephone and wondered if he looked like a movie mogul offering joint contracts to Elizabeth Taylor and Tony Curtis to co-star in an adaptation of Darwin’s Origin Of Species written especially for the screen by Harper Lee. A happy feminine voice came bouncing over the wire, “May I help you, please?”

  He grinned, thinking how unhappy the Brown Derby operator would be when he didn’t ask for either Liz Taylor or Tony Curtis, and told her, “I’d like to make a collect call to Miami, Florida. Michael Shayne speaking.” He gave Lucy Hamilton’s home telephone number, and was utterly amazed when the same feminine voice, sounding just as happy as before, gurgled over the telephone, “Certainly, Mr. Shayne,” and added sotto voce, “tall, tough and red-headed.”

  He held the telephone away from him, looking at it in consternation, and then put it back to his ear, reminding himself that this was, after all, the Brown Derby in Hollywood, where anything might happen.

  He heard diallings and pingings over the line, and then a telephone began ringing in Lucy’s apartment some three thousand miles away, and the waiter came back and deftly set a cocktail in front of him while Shayne counted the rings, knowing after the third one that Lucy was not going to answer.

  After he counted eight rings, a dulcet voice broke in and informed him, “That number does not answer. Do you wish me to try again in twenty minutes, Mr. Shayne?”

  He said, “Mike, to you,” and got a little gurgle in reply. “Shall I keep trying?”

  Shayne said, “Thanks. We’ll skip it for this time,” and hung up before his worse instincts got the better of him and he tried to make a date with the soft-voiced operator who had whispered, “tall, tough and red-headed,” into the telephone.

  The sidecar was perfect, clean-tasting and crisp, and Shayne sipped it pleasurably while he leaned back and watched people being escorted to tables about him, tightening up a little each time an unescorted woman between twenty and forty came in his direction behind a captain, relaxing happily when each one passed by his table, because none whom he saw fitted the description the cab driver had given him of Elsa.

  He was working on his third sidecar, at least forty-five minutes after he had entered the restaurant when he saw the captain to whom he had given his name hurrying toward his table.

  He stopped beside him with a worried frown and leaned over deferentially to say, “A most curious thing has just happened, Mr. Shayne. You did tell me you were expecting a lady to join you, no?”

  “Yes,” said Shayne.

  “A few minutes ago one came and asked for you. Mr. Michael Shayne. That is correct, no?”

  “Yes,” said Shayne again.

  “I told her yes and asked her to follow me. I started toward your table and became suddenly aware that she was not behind me. I turned and she had stopped and was looking elsewhere to the center of the room, pale and shaken, with an expression of deathly fear on her face, Mr. Shayne.

  “She turned abruptly and ran out. Ran, Mr. Shayne.” The captain glanced about him and lowered his voice discreetly. “Although no one moved to pursue her. Indeed, I could discover no one who appeared to have noticed her at all. It was as though she fled from a phantom.”

  Shayne sighed and asked matter-of-factly, “Was she a beautiful juicy blonde?”

  “A blonde, yes. Beautiful, yes. Concerning the juiciness, Mr. Shayne…” The captain of waiters paused helplessly.

  Shayne grinned at him. He said reassuringly, “It’s just that you’re not a taxi driver, Captain. You don’t know about the juices.” He drained his cocktail glass happily and held it out to the captain. “Could you get me another of these while I continue my vigil? With just a smidgen… I repeat… just a smidgen more of cognac?”

  “Certainly, sir.” The man hur
ried away with Shayne’s empty cocktail glass, and the redhead shrugged and wondered what in hell was going to happen next.

  He felt a little bit like Alice on the other side of the Looking Glass, and he reminded himself happily that this was Hollywood… it wasn’t Miami, where all the juices were long ago dried up. Wasn’t it just this morning, by God, when he had realized how juiceless Miami had become? He hadn’t used that word, of course, but it was a good one. Very descriptive. It took a taxi driver, he mused, to glom onto a word like that.

  His fourth sidecar arrived and he tasted it happily and decided it did have a smidgen more of cognac in it.

  And then his own private telephone rang at his elbow. He looked around the room distrustfully, and allowed it to ring a second and a third time before he could accept the fact that it was a call for him, at his own table in the Original Brown Derby Restaurant in Hollywood.

  He picked it up and wondered vaguely whether it would be Liz Taylor or Tony Curtis calling him. Or, maybe Harper Lee, insisting that Somerset Maugham collaborate with her on the screenplay of Darwin’s book.

  He said, “Hello.”

  A husky, voluptuous, bedroom-sort-of-voice came pulsing warmly over the wire: “Mr. Shayne! I’m calling from around the corner. The most dreadful thing has happened. One of them is in there watching you. I don’t know how. I just don’t understand… but I can’t meet you there. I don’t think he saw me. I truly don’t. But we can’t take any chances, can we? You’re a detective and know all about such things, so don’t let him follow you when you leave. Be sure you ditch him. You know. Like detectives do in books. Jump into the subway just before the doors close behind you. Only, there aren’t any subways in L.A., are there? Well then… you still can ditch him, can’t you? Of course you can. You must, because it is a matter of life and death.

  “Look! I’ll meet you in half an hour or so at the cocktail bar in the Cock and Bull on the Strip. Just you ditch him on the way. I’m so frightened. I’m going to run now. I’ll switch taxis two or three times on my way to the Cock and Bull, and that way I don’t see how there’ll be any danger. Don’t fail me.” There was a click at the other end and the line went silent.

  Shayne replaced it slowly, tugging at his left earlobe irritatedly. He turned slowly to survey the entire room that was slowly filling up now, and he could not detect a single person who appeared to be taking the slightest interest in him or what he was doing.

  He finished his drink meditatively, and signalled to the waiter for his check.

  The Cock and Bull on the Strip! That would be Sunset Strip, he assumed. What a delightful name for a place of assignation under melodramatic circumstances.

  He paid his check and got up and went out without looking behind him to see whether he was followed out or not. It would be such a disappointment if he weren’t. It was a lot more intriguing to assume he was being followed… and to use his wits to lose his “tail” and avoid leading him to the elusive Elsa who waited for him on “The Strip.”

  4

  Shayne’s cab driver this time was a thick-bodied, hard-faced individual who appeared to have a grudge against the world in general and particularly against anyone who got in his hack for a ride.

  He turned back to sneer insolently at Shayne when the redhead settled himself in the rear seat and asked, “Do you know the Cock and Bull on the Strip?”

  “Sure. Anybody knows that, Mister. You want to go there?”

  “Well,” said Shayne, a trifle irked, “I’d like to end up there eventually. However, let’s take a circuitous route. Pick out some street where there won’t be very much traffic.”

  “You crazy, Mister? In L.A.? You find me a street where there ain’t much traffic five o’clock in the afternoon in this man’s town and I’ll give it to you. You want to go to the Cock and Bull or don’t you?”

  Shayne said evenly, “Just get going, huh? Down this street the way you’re headed. I’ll tell you when I want to get out.”

  The driver muttered something about people that couldn’t make up their minds and pulled out into the heavy traffic on Wilshire.

  Shayne watched the meter and got a dollar bill out of his pocket. It clicked upward swiftly the way taxi meters do in Los Angeles, and when it said an even dollar, he leaned forward and said brusquely, “Pull in to the curb right here.”

  The driver did so and Shayne dropped the bill on the seat beside the surly fellow and stepped out. He was near a busy crosswalk and there were a lot of pedestrians moving in all directions. Shayne moved in with them and rounded a corner, saw another cab just in front of him discharging a passenger. He stepped out and caught the handle of the open door, swung inside and said, “Get going fast.”

  This driver was a slender, elderly man wearing glasses. He got going fast without asking any questions. Shayne let him continue three blocks in that direction, watching through the rear window without seeing anything that gave him reason to think he was being followed. Actually, he felt the whole thing was pretty silly by this time, and he settled back and told the driver, “I’d like to go to the Cock and Bull, if you don’t mind?”

  “Why should I mind?” the driver asked cheerfully, “That’s what I’m here for… to take people where they want to go. It’s my pleasure, sir. And the way I make a living. The way I look at it,” he went on earnestly, weaving expertly in and out of traffic, “I’m here to serve the people that honor me by riding in my cab. Don’t you agree to that?”

  Shayne lit a cigarette and chuckled aloud. “Some drivers don’t feel that way.”

  “Then they shouldn’t be driving cabs. If they don’t enjoy meeting the public and making the day pleasanter for everyone, they shouldn’t be granted a hacker’s license. Don’t you agree?”

  Shayne said that he did agree, and all the way up Sunset Strip he was treated to a homily on the very fine class of people who rode cabs in Los Angeles, and how freehearted and generous they were with their tips.

  Consequently, he tipped the man a dollar when he was finally deposited in front of the Cock and Bull, and got and affable, “God bless you, Mister,” in return for his money.

  The interior of the restaurant was dark and cool and quiet, decorated to resemble a better-class English pub. Shayne checked his briefcase, strolled into the bar and looked carefully around the small, pleasantly masculine room. There were three couples seated at tables, along with groups of men in twos and threes, and there were half a dozen men on bar stools. No honey-blondes, and no unescorted women at all.

  He started for the bar, then changed his mind and searched out the men’s room instead. There was a comfortable lounge equipped with a public telephone, and he tried Lucy Hamilton’s number again without success. He was a little surprised when she still didn’t answer. It was well after eight o’clock in Miami, and he had an irrational feeling of annoyance with Lucy because she wasn’t sitting at home waiting for him to call. She would be, he knew morosely, if she hadn’t gone out to dinner.

  And she never went out to dinner alone. She much preferred fixing a simple meal in her own apartment.

  So, she had a dinner date. No reason she shouldn’t, of course, but he was disappointed in her none the less. He had promised her that he would call. Granted that he had nothing to report as yet, but she had no way of knowing that. Suppose there were something important…?

  He broke off that train of thought, grinning at himself ruefully as he went back to the bar. He was jealous, goddamn it. Just a little bit jealous of that unknown guy who had taken Lucy out to dinner as soon as his back was turned.

  More tables were occupied now, and there were only a few vacant stools at the bar. One of those was beside a woman who appeared to be alone.

  She was a blonde, even if her hair was not authentically honey-colored. Approaching her from the rear, Shayne wondered if a taxi driver would describe her as juicy.

  Could be, he decided. There was a nice lushness about her figure that couldn’t quite be called plump. He sat beside her
and drew in a deep breath. She was wearing a faint scent that he didn’t think was the same as Elsa’s. But he wasn’t really a connoisseur of feminine perfume, and he couldn’t be sure.

  He ordered a sidecar and glanced down at her right hand that negligently held an old-fashioned glass. It was a firm, smooth hand with tapering fingers that ended in nicely-manicured but garishly red nails.

  There was no mirror behind the bar in which he could see her reflection, so when his drink was served he turned his head to glance aside at her as he lifted it, and caught her looking at him with disconcerting frankness. She had pleasant features, but she was hardly the knockout that Joe Pelter had described with such enthusiasm.

  She colored slightly when his eyes met hers, and turned her head hastily to look straight ahead.

  Her profile was better than full face, and he took his time studying it over the rim of his glass. She was in her thirties, all right, but she didn’t remind him of anyone he had known ten years before.

  She glanced back and found him still looking at her, frowned slightly and said in a low, melodious voice, “I don’t know you, do I?”

  It could be the same voice he had recently heard over the telephone at the Brown Derby but, like the scent she was wearing he couldn’t be sure.