Shoot the Works

by Brett Halliday

  Gentry pursed his thick lips dubiously. “Not if you’ve withheld vital information. Not unless I feel you were justified in holding back.”

  Shayne said, “I’ll have to take a chance on your judgment.” He reached inside his pocket and drew out the pair of one-way airline tickets to South America, leaned far forward to spread them out on Chief Gentry’s desk. “We didn’t give you the full picture last night,” he conceded. “Though, if you’ll check back carefully, I think you’ll discover neither Lucy nor I lied in any particular. The fact is, I was at Lucy’s place when Mrs. Wallace first telephoned her. She didn’t tell Lucy what the trouble was, and we didn’t know Wallace was dead until we got there.”

  He went on to describe the scene at the Wallace apartment in detail while Gentry picked up the tickets and studied them with hooded eyes.

  “All right,” Shayne ended savagely, “so Lucy did twist me around her little finger as you suggested awhile ago. I didn’t think then, and I don’t think now, that keeping quiet about those tickets made any material difference in your investigation. I checked at the airport this morning and learned as much as you could have about them.”

  He described his interview with the ticket-seller, and Rourke’s unsuccessful attempt to establish that a Brazilian visa had been obtained recently in Miami.

  “That’s item number one, Will. Am I clear on it?”

  Gentry said, “I don’t know,” without raising his rumpled eyelids. “I’ll have to see how it ties in with the rest.”

  “Number two is confidential information I got from Martin and Tompkins at the brokerage office this morning. It was given to me on the express condition that I was not to relay it to the police.”

  “That doesn’t absolve you, Mike, if it has a direct bearing on murder. You know that. Legally, you have no right to accept information under those conditions.”

  “Of course I know it,” Shayne broke in impatiently. “And I refused to give such a promise. I warned them at the time that I would have to use the information as I saw fit, if I thought it would help solve Wallace’s murder. That’s why I’m giving it to you now.” He paused a moment and glanced toward Timothy Rourke with a grimace. “Here’s a headline I hope to God you won’t print, Tim. This morning, Martin and Tompkins discovered that a million dollars was missing from the office safe.”

  Neither man uttered a sound while Shayne described his interview with the two partners.

  “That’s number two,” he ended. “I honestly don’t know, yet, what you would have done with that fact if you’d had it, Will. Sure, it ties up with Wallace’s murder somehow. Maybe it ties up with your suspicion of Mrs. Wallace and her disappearance this afternoon. But she certainly didn’t have the loot in her possession last night when Lucy and I got there … any more than she had the gun that killed her husband.”

  “Have you thought about the possibility of her taking time to ditch both the gun and the money somewhere outside the apartment before she called Lucy?” Gentry’s voice was deceptively mild.

  “I considered it last night,” Shayne told him, “and that’s one reason I was as interested as you in checking the elapsed time between her departure from the restaurant and her phone call to Lucy. I considered it again this morning, when I learned about the stolen money, but rejected it on the basis of Lucy’s appraisal of Mrs. Wallace and my own personal knowledge of her character.”

  Gentry said, “What’s number three, Mike?”

  “This note I found stashed away in one of Jim Wallace’s bureau drawers.” Shayne produced it and passed it over. “I kept it quiet mostly on account of Ed Donovan, who really wasn’t to blame for letting me into the apartment before you phoned him to keep me out. Hell, he knew your boys had cased the joint thoroughly and he saw no harm in letting me have a look around. He didn’t know I’d found anything by the time you called, and you can’t blame the guy, Will, for not admitting I’d already been there. I’d hate to see Ed get in trouble because he did me a small favor.”

  “I’ll handle Donovan as I see fit,” said Gentry inflexibly, studying the note in green ink. “You did lie to me, Mike, when you explained that you’d got onto Lola through a telephone number in Wallace’s address book.”

  “Not exactly,” Shayne argued. “Martin did look in the book as a result of my showing him this note. That’s all. Remember, at the time I had no idea the girl I visited this morning was named Lola. I only knew she was a girl who had once met Wallace for lunch. It was pure hunch, as I told you, that sent me rushing to her place while Martin called in the phone number for a check.

  “And that’s everything, Will,” he ended. “Those are the three things I held back.” He stood up. “While you’re sitting here deciding what they mean, I’m going out to find Lucy.”

  Gentry said nothing and made no move to stop him as he strode to the door. Shayne expelled a deep breath as he stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him. Up to that moment he hadn’t the faintest idea whether Gentry would release him or keep him under arrest. But now he was on his own and he hadn’t the foggiest idea where to start looking for Lucy or for Myra Wallace.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  He tried his office first. Knowing Lucy so well, and knowing the almost unreasoning devotion to duty that lay behind her absolute insistence that the office must never be left empty between nine in the morning and five in the afternoon lest an important call be missed, he knew it had to be something extremely important that had caused her to break her rule today, and that she would almost certainly have left some message for him, explaining her absence.

  Somehow though, he was unable to actually believe Lucy wouldn’t be there to greet him with her bright smile until he stood in front of the locked, outer door and got out a key to open it.

  It was the first time since he had installed Lucy in this office as his secretary that he had needed a key to get in during office hours.

  And when he opened the door, the emptiness and the silence of the reception room struck him with such force that he had a leaden feeling in his belly.

  He stood inside the door and looked across the low railing at Lucy’s neat desk, noting that her hat and her handbag were missing from their accustomed places, and noting also (with a faint and almost subconscious sense of relief) that there was no sign of disturbance or struggle in the outer office, nothing at all out of the way to indicate that Lucy had left hurriedly or under duress.

  He strode across the small room to look down at her desk and typewriter without finding the message he was looking for, then turned and went into his private office on the left.

  It was there on his desk. He knew it was a note from Lucy the moment he stepped through the doorway and saw the sheet of paper lying in the exact center of the desk.

  He leaned forward with both palms flat on the mahogany surface and read the neatly typed words:

  Dear Michael:

  I know you’ll wonder where I am if you come in and find me gone. Don’t worry. I’ve gone to meet Mrs. Wallace. She just telephoned, all excited about something that she thinks is important. She wouldn’t tell me what because she is afraid the police have our telephone tapped, the way they have Helen’s. I’m meeting her on the street downstairs and I’ll let you know what it’s all about just as soon as I find out.

  Lucy

  Michael Shayne read the whole message through twice without blinking his eyes. Then he straightened slowly and closed his eyes tightly. “Don’t worry. I’ve gone to meet Mrs. Wallace. Don’t worry. I’ve gone to meet.…”

  The trenches in his cheeks deepened and he doubled both hands into big fists, holding them out in front of him stiffly. He opened his eyes and studied his fists bleakly.

  Then he moved like an automaton around the desk to a filing cabinet against the wall. He pulled out the second drawer and reached behind cardboard folders to lift out a bottle of cognac. He uncorked it as he went to the water cooler at the end of the room. He carefully fitted one paper cup inside another
and filled it with cognac. He ran ice water into another cup, carried them both back to the desk and placed them side by side in front of the swivel chair with the bottle beside them, and then sank into the chair.

  He lifted the two cups fitted together and drank half the contents, then took a sip of water. Staring straight ahead across the emptiness of the office, with the silence beating against his eardrums, he lit a cigarette and then lifted the telephone and dialed Chief Will Gentry’s private office number.

  When Gentry’s voice came over the wire, he said: “I’m in my office, Will. Your hunch is right. A note from Lucy says Mrs. Wallace phoned her and Lucy has gone out with her.”

  Gentry said briskly, “Don’t worry, Mike. We’ve already got a pick-up on Mrs. Wallace. I’ll put another one through, urgent.”

  Shayne said, “Thanks, Will.”

  He hung up. Don’t worry. Of course not. Why should he worry? Lucy Hamilton was perfectly capable of taking care of herself, wasn’t she? Well, wasn’t she? And Myra Wallace was Lucy’s very good friend … wasn’t she?

  Myra Wallace couldn’t possibly have killed her husband and Lola Berger … could she?

  Of course not. The idea was preposterous. Why was it preposterous? Because a very smart private detective named Michael Shayne had decided it was … that’s why. A red-headed, hard-boiled shamus named Michael Shayne who knew more than the chief of police and the whole damned Miami police department. That’s why.

  So … don’t worry. Lucy has just gone out for an innocent ride with a bereaved widow who happened to be the mother of one of Lucy’s very best friends. That’s all.

  Shayne drank the rest of the cognac in the paper cup with cold deliberation. He sat for a long time enveloped in brooding silence while he reviewed every facet of the case and waited for the telephone to ring and bring him Lucy’s lilting voice over the wire or a gruff reassurance from Will Gentry.

  But the telephone did not ring and the brooding silence continued.

  He stood up after a time and went out through the door into the empty reception room and out to the elevator.

  The pert redhead on the fourth floor of the Weymore looked up in pleased surprise when he strode toward her desk five minutes later.

  “I don’t know how you ever found out my name is Alice, but.…”

  Shayne said, “Tompkins in?”

  “Mr. Tompkins?” She flushed faintly at his abrupt tone, and dropped her eyelids defensively. “Not at the moment, Mr. Shayne,” she told him in a formal voice. “But Mr. Martin is.”

  Shayne nodded and went past her to open the door and stride down the hall to Martin’s office. The broker was seated at his big desk making pencilled notations on some papers, and he looked up petulantly at Shayne’s unannounced entrance. “I’ve wondered where you were, Shayne. No news about the money?”

  “No news about the money.” Shayne stood flat-footed in front of the financier, his bleak gray eyes boring into his. “Where is Tompkins?”

  “I believe he had an outside appointment. See here, Shayne. I feel that you blame me, somehow, for that unfortunate girl’s suicide. I assure you that when I made that telephone call to her, I had no idea in the world that.…”

  Shayne brushed his explanation aside with a savage gesture. “Has Tompkins told you privately what sort of alibi he has for last night?”

  “His alibi? No. That is.…” Martin paused with a troubled frown. “I don’t believe it is a breach of confidence to say it concerns a married woman with whom he spent the night.”

  “Do you have a photograph of Wallace that I could take around to Lola Berger’s place to try for an identification?”

  “A photograph?” Martin repeated helplessly, moistening his lips and glancing about the office. Then his eyes lighted and he got ponderously to his feet and went toward a large framed picture on the wall which he lifted down and offered to Shayne.

  “Here is one of the three of us taken four years ago when we first formed the firm. They are quite good likenesses, and.…”

  They were very good likenesses of all three of the partners, Shayne saw as he looked down at the framed picture. He tucked it under his arm and said, “I want you to stay here in your office, Martin, until I come back. And if Tompkins comes in or calls in, I want him to be here, too. I think I’m going to locate your million dollars for you.”

  “That’s wonderful, Mr. Shayne. But I don’t understand.…” The broker’s words were wasted on Shayne’s hastily disappearing back as the detective hurried back to the elevator, hugging the framed picture under his arm.

  Fifteen minutes later he parked in front of the Flagler Street apartment house again.

  Traffic on the street was light at this hour of the afternoon, and there was no outward sign to indicate that violent death had occurred on the premises a short time earlier.

  For the third time that day Shayne went through the empty foyer to the elevator at the rear and pressed the third floor button.

  There was the same dank smell in the air when he got out, and the only difference this time was the uniformed figure of a policeman standing in front of the Berger apartment.

  He straightened briskly as Shayne approached, and said, “You’re Shayne, aren’t you? I’ve got strict orders.…”

  Shayne said, “Skip it, Bud.” He turned his back on the patrolman and pressed the bell of the door opposite Lola’s.

  The door opened after a moment and the bald man with the scraggly, white mustache peered out cautiously. His rheumy eyes brightened when he recognized Shayne. “Come in, Mister. Come on in. I know who you are now. Mike Shayne, huh?”

  He turned back and said excitedly, “It’s that private detective that was here before, Ida. You remember?”

  “’Course I remember.” Ida’s triple-chinned smile was happily welcoming. “I told you I bet he was the one that’d solve it, didn’t I, Peter? Just like in the private eye pictures on TV. I can’t say I thought so much of that chief you was here with last time,” she sniffed to Shayne. “Always interrupting a body like he didn’t really care what was what. The things I could of told him about Miz Berger.…”

  Shayne said, “That’s why I came back without him this time, I consider you and your husband the most important key witnesses in the case. Take a look at this picture, please. Look at the three men.” He held the framed photograph out for the couple to look at. “Have you ever seen any of them before?”

  “That one.” Ida unhesitatingly pointed to Tompkins. “I’d know him any time, anywhere. I’ve seen him slipping in and out of the apartment across the hall plenty of times. You have too, Peter, and don’t you deny it. I know what you told me before,” she went on with a toss of her head. “That it doesn’t sound so good to admit that we peeked out the keyhole sometimes and through a crack in the door to see what was going on, but, like I told you, this is important police business and we’ve got our duty as common, ordinary citizens to tell the truth. So you up and tell Mr. Shayne, Peter. That’s one of her men all right.”

  “Yes, it is for a fact,” said the bald-headed man reluctantly. “I recognize him, all right.”

  “What about the other two?” Shayne’s voice was quietly insistent. “Look at them closely. Have you ever seen either of them here? Any time? Even once?”

  They both leaned forward and studied the features of Wallace and Martin avidly and hopefully. But both shook their heads after a time and confessed regretfully, “Neither one of the other two. But that young, slim one. He was in and out a lot.”

  “Last night? Did you see him last night?”

  They both hesitated, looking at each other speculatively, and then the husband said apologetically, “We’re plumb sorry to admit it, but we just didn’t bother to look out last night. No, sir. We just didn’t. Is it real important? Did he kill her?”

  Shayne said, “We don’t know yet whether anyone killed her or if she committed suicide, but your identification of the man in this picture is an extremely important clue and I
’ll see that you get full credit for it in the newspapers when the whole story comes out.” He hurried out before they could waste his time with further questions.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Shayne stopped at the first telephone booth he reached and put through a call to Gentry. He said, “Mike Shayne, Will. Got anything on Lucy?”

  “Not yet, Mike. Nothing to worry about, though. Nothing on Mrs. Wallace either. Every man on the Force is alerted to pick them up. Sit back and take it easy.”

  “Sure,” said Shayne thickly. “Sure, Will. That’s just what I’m doing. In the meantime, meet me at the brokerage office in the Weymore Hotel. Fourth Floor.”

  “What’s up, Mike?”

  “I don’t know. Except we’re on the home-stretch.” Shayne paused and his voice became more friendly. “Done any thinking about that note signed Lola and where I found it?”

  Gentry said, “Yes, Mike. I have at that. How soon at the Weymore?”

  Shayne said, “I’ll be there in about ten minutes. Switch any calls on Lucy there?”

  “Will do,” Gentry said, and Shayne hung up.

  It took him one minute less than ten to reach the Weymore. When he stepped off at the fourth floor, the reception girl looked at him in wide-eyed amazement and said, “You do get around, Mr. Shayne.”

  “Chief of Police here yet?”

  “No, sir. But Mr. Tompkins came in ten minutes ago. He seemed upset when I told him you’d been here and gone. I think he wants to see you.” She reached for a plug in her switchboard and Shayne said, “Tell him to see me in Martin’s office. And send Chief Gentry in as soon as he arrives.”

  He went in to Martin’s office, carrying the framed picture, and laid it down carefully on the broker’s desk. Martin leaned back in his chair and studied the detective quizzically. “You look like a cat that’s swallowed a lot of thick cream, Shayne.”

  Shayne said, “I feel like hell. Your firm is going to get your goddamned money back, and Raiford is going to hang a murderer, but I still don’t know where my secretary is.”