Shoot the Works

by Brett Halliday

  As to the events of the preceding night, they were almost equally vague. They had both been watching TV until midnight when they retired, and they agreed that Lola had been in … at least certainly during the latter part of the evening, and they had the distinct impression that one of her orgiastic drinking parties had still been going on when they turned off the TV set and retired, but they couldn’t say who had been present, or how many, or how long the party had lasted.

  Gentry thanked them, after he had extracted all the information he could, explained that he would like to have them come to Headquarters later to make a formal statement and sign it, and then turned with a shrug of his burly shoulders and followed Shayne out into the hall.

  Shayne said quietly, “Thanks for letting me listen in, Will. Keep me informed, will you?”

  He turned hurriedly toward the elevator, but Gentry removed the soggy cigar from his mouth and threw it with unexpected violence at the opposite wall.

  He said, “You’re under arrest, Mike,” and he nodded curtly to Garson, who was hovering between them and the elevator. “Take him in, son. Hold him without charge until I get there.”

  He turned his back on Shayne and reentered apartment 3—A.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Michael Shayne waited patiently for half an hour in a small room, just off Chief Gentry’s private office, with Officer Garson sitting erectly across from him, on guard. During that period, the redhead viciously smoked eight cigarettes down to short butts, alternately rumpled his coarse hair and tugged at his ear-lobe, while he went over and over the meagre assortment of facts in his possession directly bearing on the deaths of Wallace and Lola Berger.

  Three of those definite facts had been withheld from Gentry thus far, and Shayne didn’t know how much longer he would be justified in withholding them. They were the airline tickets to South America, the theft of cash and securities from the brokerage safe, the note signed Lola which he had discovered in Wallace’s apartment. He realized that each of them might well be an important clue to the two deaths, although he couldn’t yet see a positive connection between the three of them. But he knew that Gentry strongly suspected he was holding back some such items of information and that he was likely to stay under arrest as long as he continued to hold out.

  So his problem was whether it would be in the best interests of his clients to give all his information to Gentry in the hope of thus freeing himself to continue his investigation, or to stay clammed up and under arrest where he couldn’t do anything about solving the case.

  He hadn’t come to any decision when a side door opened and Gentry said gruffly, “All right, Garson. I’ll have the prisoner in here. You go back on duty.”

  Shayne got up and sauntered into the chief’s office with more outward nonchalance than he felt. It was empty except for Gentry and Timothy Rourke, who sat in a straight chair against the wall with a worried frown on his face. While Gentry seated himself behind his desk, Shayne protested vigorously, “This is nuts, Will, and you know it is. What possible grounds have you for putting me under arrest?”

  Gentry said wearily, “Sit down, Mike. Don’t go legal on me. I can hold you as long as I like as a material witness, and I’m damned sure you’re that, if nothing else … like an accessory, for instance.”

  Shayne sighed deeply and summoned a wounded look as he pulled a chair closer to the desk and sat down. “An accessory to what? Mrs. Berger’s suicide?”

  “Who says it’s suicide?”

  Shayne shrugged elaborately. “So far as there’s any evidence, she was alone in her apartment when the shot was fired. The powder burns are clearly there, and the pistol on the floor where she dropped it. How about fingerprints on the gun?”

  “With a corrugated butt?” Gentry shook his head unhappily. “You know the chances on that.” He paused, “I’m going to level with you, Mike, though I’m damned certain you’re not leveling with me. I don’t think she killed herself. Ballistics says the gun on the floor is the same one that killed Wallace last night. What do you make of that?”

  Shayne said honestly, “I don’t know. I won’t pretend to be surprised. I assumed there was some connection. So doesn’t that tie it up as suicide? Assume she gunned Wallace last night. We know they knew each other, had met surreptitiously at least once, so we can assume they may have been intimate while Mrs. Wallace was away. He would probably want to break it off on his wife’s return. So you’ve got a woman scorned.” He spread out the palms of his hands. “Happens all the time. She shoots him and goes home and ties on a hell of a drunk. Remember the hangover I mentioned when I visited her this morning.”

  Gentry said, “Suppose you remember what the couple across the hall said about the party last night. Do you see her coming back after gunning her lover and getting drunk with some other guy?”

  “Why not? It might be exactly what a woman like Lola would do,” argued Shayne persuasively. “Suppose she stopped in a bar and tied one on? More likely she was already drunk when she shot Wallace.”

  “And then suddenly gets remorseful today and decides to shoot herself? No soap.” Gentry shook his head decidedly. “Not, as you say, a woman like Lola. I can’t buy it.”

  “Wait a minute, Will. I don’t say it was entirely remorse. Remember the phone call Martin made to her … the one I was too late to stop. With her guilty conscience, she must have figured the jig was up. With that and remorse, it’d be the most natural thing in the world for her to turn the same gun on herself.”

  “I’ll tell you why it doesn’t add up, Mike. I agree with you that the phone call Martin made was the crux of it, but not the way you see it … or pretend you see it,” he added in an ominous growl. “Because I had another talk with the doc and he agrees that there is every reason to believe that she was dead before that call went through to her apartment.”

  “Wait a minute. We checked the timing when I was there. I heard him say twenty minutes to an hour.”

  “The twenty minutes was the absolute minimum. You know how careful Doc is. I pinned him down later and he admits he won’t swear in court it couldn’t have happened just twenty minutes earlier, but the medical evidence is strong, if not overpowering, that it was, at least, half an hour before, although he likes forty or fifty minutes better.”

  “But we’ve still got Martin’s call that sets the time definitely.”

  “Have we?” Gentry got out a cigar and studied it a moment before biting off the end. “I talked to Martin, as you suggested. He never heard Lola Berger’s voice in his life. He doesn’t even claim that the woman who answered the phone said she was Berger. He admits he was excited by his role of playing detective and didn’t give her an opportunity to either confirm or deny her identity before blurting out the fact that she was suspected of murdering Wallace. And she hung up without saying another word except her first hello.”

  “You’re assuming it wasn’t Lola Berger who answered Martin’s call?”

  “That’s what I’m assuming,” said Gentry stolidly. He put flame to the end of his cigar and expelled a cloud of noxious smoke. “I’m assuming Lola was dead before the call was made, and that the person who answered the phone had gone there with the same gun that she killed Wallace with last night to put a slug between Lola’s eyes. And I’m also assuming this, Mike.…” Gentry leaned forward and pointed the glowing end of his cigar at the private detective, “… that you either knew or suspected the truth all the time.”

  “Those are a lot of assumptions, Will.”

  “I think I can prove them all.” Gentry sank back and puffed angrily on his cigar. “So I’m giving you this one chance to come clean. I know the way you work, and I know how you’ll cover up for a client. You’ve stuck your stubborn neck out in the past and I’ve admired you for it. But that doesn’t extend to covering up murder. I’ve given you half an hour to think it over and realize the spot you’re getting yourself in. If you want to walk out of this office without handcuffs on, you’ll tell me every damned thin
g you know about this case.”

  “Those are harsh words, Will.”

  “Think them over,” said Gentry. “This time I mean it, Mike.”

  “Who do you think killed Lola and answered her telephone?”

  “Myra Wallace. And I think you know it as well as I do.”

  “My God, Will!” Michael Shayne was genuinely shocked and surprised. He narrowed his eyes to study the beefy face of his old friend through a drifting haze of cigar smoke. “Mrs. Wallace? In the name of God, why?”

  Gentry said, “It’s perfectly obvious to me. She returned unexpectedly last night and found her husband packing for a trip she knew nothing about. Maybe Lola was with him. Maybe not. If not, there must have been an argument during which Wallace mentioned her name. So she shot the two-timing bastard. Today, the first chance she gets, she finishes up the job by bumping his lady-friend. What could be more cut and dried?”

  Shayne said, “I thought you had a man on Mrs. Wallace.”

  “I thought so, too,” grumbled Gentry. “But she drove away from her daughter’s house on the Beach about one o’clock and came across the Venetian Causeway. He stuck along until she managed to lose him in Miami traffic by very skillful maneuvering. We haven’t picked her up yet,” he ended morosely, “but we will. And she’ll face two murder raps when we do. So I’m giving you this chance to get on the band-wagon, Mike. You can’t help Myra Wallace any further. You must realize that now.”

  “She didn’t have any gun last night,” said Shayne slowly. “You know that. You checked her out. Yet you say the same gun killed both Wallace and Lola. How did Mrs. Wallace get hold of it?”

  “I expect you to put me straight on that, Mike.”

  “Me?”

  “You.” Gentry’s voice was ominously quiet “I know Myra Wallace is very close to Lucy Hamilton, and I know how Lucy twists you around her little finger. All right. She’s twisted me around her little finger in the past, and I don’t blame you. But you’re not going to do Lucy any favor by going to jail, Mike. She won’t like that. She’d be the first one to tell you to go ahead and tell us the whole story if she were here and realized the truth.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Shayne angrily. “Are you accusing Lucy and me of knowing Mrs. Wallace killed her husband last night, and conniving to protect her?”

  “Not quite that, Mike.” Gentry’s voice was fatherly and placating. His smile was reassuring. “I don’t think either one of you realized the truth last night. I do know some sort of shenanigans went on between the time Myra Wallace killed her husband and the moment that Lucy reported his death. I think Mrs. Wallace pulled the wool over Lucy’s eyes, and Lucy somehow pulled it over yours. I don’t accuse either of you of deliberately protecting a woman you knew or even suspected of having committed murder. But now that you do know she’s a murderer, I expect you and Lucy both to come clean and tell me exactly what did happen last night.”

  “But I don’t know she’s a murderer,” protested Shayne. “You’re trying to build a case against her out of a thin tissue of suspicions. I’m getting goddamned sick of you accusing Lucy and me without anything to go on.”

  Gentry sighed unhappily. He lowered rumpled eyelids and took a long pull on his cigar. Then he sat erect and demanded in measured tones: “Will you sit there and state unequivocally that you and Lucy told me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about last night?”

  Shayne hesitated before replying. This was the question he had avoided, the moment he had feared.

  Noting his hesitation, Will Gentry pressed the issue. “That’s all I ask of you right now, Mike. Come absolutely clean with me. Don’t think for one moment I haven’t known, ever since last night, that you and Lucy were playing some sort of game to protect Mrs. Wallace. The time for that is past. I swear before God that if you don’t start talking right now, I’m going to pull Lucy in and put her in the cell next to you until one of you comes clean.”

  In a strangled voice, Shayne said, “You wouldn’t do that, Will.”

  “The hell I wouldn’t!” Will Gentry jerked the cigar from his mouth and glared at it for a moment. Then he flung the soggily chewed butt toward a cuspidor in one corner of the office, pushed back his chair and strode wrathfully toward the outer door. “I’ll give you five minutes alone with Tim Rourke. For Christ’s sake, talk to the guy like a Dutch Uncle, Tim. I’m having Lucy picked up and brought in for questioning.” He went out and slammed the door.

  The sound echoed loudly in the office behind him. Shayne turned slowly to the News reporter and said, “All right, Tim. Start making like a Dutch Uncle.”

  Rourke said, “I think maybe I better. I never saw Will just like this before. Right now he feels that Lola Berger would still be alive if you’d told him everything you know.”

  “Do you believe that, Tim?”

  “How do I know?” said Rourke explosively. “I’m sitting on the edge of the volcano, too. What is it with a visa for Brazil and some guy named James Richards you asked me to check on? I haven’t mentioned this to Will, but I’m going to pretty soon if this keeps on. Even if you do want to spend the rest of your life in Will’s jail. I’m damned if I do.”

  Shayne’s gray eyes widened. “What about the visas, Tim? I forgot to ask you.”

  “Nothing. Neither Wallace nor anybody named James Richards has applied for a Brazilian visa recently.”

  The glow faded from Shayne’s eyes and he tugged thoughtfully at his ear-lobe. He said, “The hell of it is, Tim, I don’t know one damned thing that will put Will any closer to the truth than he is already. And I’ll violate a couple of confidences if I do tell him.”

  “Go ahead and violate them,” advised Rourke urgently. “There has been a second murder already.”

  Shayne looked at him queerly. “You don’t think Lola committed suicide either?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve stayed with Will since you left the apartment and heard what the doctor and Martin had to say. There wasn’t any suicide note, Mike. And a woman like Lola … would she shoot herself? Or would she even, for Christ’s sake, shoot a guy like Jim Wallace just because he was maybe getting ready to sluff her off and go back to his wife? It doesn’t seem in character to me. Not after what you told us about Lola. And if she didn’t kill Wallace, why in hell would she kill herself today?”

  “That,” said Shayne slowly, “is one of the things that sticks in my craw too, Tim. Frankly, I agree with you. I don’t think Lola did kill herself.”

  “Then why in hell didn’t you tell Will that?”

  “Because I thought he might go along with it,” said Shayne wryly. “If he had, it would have given me a little time to develop a certain hunch I’m beginning to get.”

  “But he didn’t,” Rourke reminded him.

  “No,” Shayne agreed slowly, “he didn’t. I should have known Will better, but it was the only goddamned thing I could think of at the time to get a little leeway and not be forced to tip my hand completely.”

  “But why hold out on him, Mike? Damn it, don’t you want the case solved?”

  “You know I do.”

  “But you want to solve it,” charged Rourke. “That’s the whole damned trouble, Mike. You’re looking for another headline. And that’s my fault, in a sense. I’ve played along with you in the past. I’ve built up your goddamned ego to the point that you’ll play fast and lose with the lives of innocent people just to hog the credit.”

  Shayne said, “You don’t really believe that, Tim.”

  “You’re making me believe it whether I want to or not.” Rourke’s voice was thin and reedy. His Adams’ Apple bobbed up and down in his throat. He lowered his voice and regarded Shayne steadily. “Don’t make me believe it, Mike. Give Will the lowdown and for once in your life share the credit with him.”

  Shayne got put another cigarette and lit it absent-mindedly. He rubbed his jaw and said, “Maybe you’re right, Tim. Maybe I am kidding myself. When Gentry comes back, I’ll tell him your Dutch
Uncle act did the trick and I’ll tell him everything I know.”

  As though in response to his resolution, the door swung open abruptly and Will Gentry strode back into the room. He came to a stop on widespread legs in front of Shayne and his face was the color of raw liver as he demanded, “Where is Lucy, Mike? Where have you got her hidden out?”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Lucy?” Shayne looked at him blankly. “At the office, I suppose. She never goes out even for lunch when she’s alone there. Insists on having it sent in, as you know.”

  “I do know that quirk of Lucy’s, Mike. And that’s why I want you to tell me where she is right now.”

  “You mean she’s not at the office?” Shayne queried blankly.

  “I mean she’s not at the office. It’s locked up tight. Neither is she at home. So where is she?”

  “How should I know? I haven’t been in touch with her since about twelve.”

  “I think you do know, Mike. I don’t believe for one minute it’s pure coincidence that Mrs. Wallace evaded her tail and disappeared the same time Lucy vanishes.”

  “I’ve told you I don’t know, Will.” Shayne’s voice was very quiet. A muscle worked in his trenched right cheek as he met the chief’s gaze squarely.

  “Is that flat? You have no idea where she is? You don’t know whether or not she met Mrs. Wallace?”

  “That’s flat,” Shayne replied tonelessly. “I have no idea where Lucy is. I don’t know whether she met Mrs. Wallace or not.”

  Will Gentry nodded glumly and went around his desk to lower his heavy body into the swivel chair.

  “She may be in danger, Mike. If I’m right about Myra Wallace, the woman is a homicidal maniac, and, if she’s lured Lucy away on some pretext, we don’t know what she may do next. Hadn’t you better help us find her?”

  “Yes,” said Shayne. “I guess I better.” He hesitated a moment, thinking fast. “I’ll make this bargain with you, Will. Give me your word that if I tell you everything I know about the case, you’ll let me walk out of here to start looking for Lucy my own way.”