Too Friendly, Too Dead

by Brett Halliday

  “I’ve got the percolator ready to plug in.” She released his arm and hurried into the kitchen. He dropped his angular frame on the sofa and lit a cigarette, and Lucy called out to him, “Could you stand a drink first?”

  “First and with,” he told her firmly, and settled back on the sofa and drew deeply on his cigarette until she came in with a four-ounce glass of cognac in one hand and a tall glass of ice water in the other.

  He accepted the drink with muttered thanks, a thoughtful scowl on his face. “Right now, I don’t know what the poison is or how taken, though Petey intimated he was well loaded with alcohol also. Any chance of suicide, Lucy?”

  “No. I don’t think so. I’d swear on a stack of Bibles, no, Michael. He just… well… Lucy spread out her hands helplessly. “He wasn’t the suicidal type, Michael.”

  “If there is such a thing,” growled Shayne, taking a long and thankful pull at the cognac glass and washing it down with ice water. “All right. We skip that for the moment. Any more ideas in that pretty head of yours?”

  With the electric percolator making proper noises in the kitchen, Lucy sank down on the sofa close beside him and rested her brown head on his shoulder. “At the moment… none,” she told him firmly. “A poisoner means, to me, an implacable and vicious enemy. This, I cannot visualize for Jerome Fitzgilpin. I’ve told you, Michael, he was the sweetest, friendliest little man you ever saw. I never knew a man more eager to do favors for people, not fawning or servile, but with real generosity and a great big heart. That’s why they didn’t have too much money, I think. I suspect he was always carrying his poorer clients over bad times… paying their insurance premiums for them himself rather than allowing them to lapse.”

  “Did Linda object to this generosity on his part? Did it gripe her that they had to live cooped up with two kids in an apartment like theirs?”

  “Never,” said Lucy sturdily. “She loved him for being what he was, and didn’t try to make him over.”

  Shayne drained his cognac glass and set it down on the coffee table in front of him with a thump. “You know what you’re handing me, Lucy? An impossible case. A man whom nobody wanted dead. Yet, he is dead. Someone fed him poison last night.”

  “And then stole his ring and wallet with several hundred dollars in it,” Lucy reminded him spiritedly. “Why couldn’t it be that way, Michael? He often stopped in a bar for a few beers after he kept his office open late on Friday night. Many of his clients might have known this. Even a few hundred is a temptation to a lot of the sort of people who dealt with Jerome. Not professional muggers, of course,” she added eagerly. “Some person who would shrink from actual physical violence, but who wouldn’t be too squeamish to put some poison in his beer and then steal his wallet when it took effect.”

  Shayne nodded unhappily. “This I shall attempt to sell Painter. But he’s a confirmed cynic, and he operates according to rules. In his experience, a poisoning is a close-to-home job. I’m afraid your friend Linda is in for a pretty rough going-over when Petey gets around to her.”

  “She has nothing to hide,” Lucy told him strongly.

  “I sincerely hope not.” Shayne turned his head toward the kitchen and sniffed pleasurably. “Hasn’t your coffee-pot stopped perking?”

  “I think so.” Lucy jumped to her feet and gathered up the two glasses she had brought in previously. “With, Michael?”

  “With,” he told her firmly, and when she returned shortly with a mug of strong black coffee giving forth the aroma of cognac, he accepted it from her gratefully and settled back on the sofa, saying, “Let me relax here alone with your heavenly brew, Angel. I think you’d better go back upstairs and take those two youngsters off Linda’s hands. By this time she must have told them whatever she’s decided to tell them, and she can probably use a respite.”

  “Of course. What are you going to do, Michael?”

  “Drink a couple of coffee royals and then hie me over to the Beach to get my teeth into a few facts before doing any more vain theorizing. Tell Linda I’ll be in touch.”

  Lucy nodded and hurried out, leaving him alone with his cognac-laced coffee and his thoughts.

  4

  Twenty minutes and two coffee royals later, Shayne telephoned Timothy Rourke at the News from Lucy’s apartment. When the reporter’s voice came over the wire, he said, “Tim. Have you got anything on the Beach killing… Fitzgilpin?”

  “Not much. I’ve just been sitting here thinking about the little guy and what a shame it is. Are you interested, Mike?”

  “His widow is a close friend of Lucy’s. I drove her over to make the identification. What do you mean… you’ve been thinking what a shame it is? Did you know Fitzgilpin?”

  “Not really. I interviewed him a couple of weeks ago and did a piece about him for the paper. Human interest stuff. He got an insurance company award… top ten in the United States for annual increase in number of policies for five thousand bucks and under. He seemed a hell of a nice guy. Knocked off for a few hundred bucks, huh?”

  “That’s not too certain,” Shayne told his old friend cautiously. “I guess he was rolled, all right, but he was poisoned first.”

  “Poisoned? You sure?”

  “Painter is. You better ask him.”

  “Damn right I will. How do you stand in it?”

  “The widow is officially my client. And Painter isn’t pleased.”

  “No. He wouldn’t be.” Rourke’s voice was thoughtful and Shayne could almost hear the wheels spinning around in his head. “He’d like to hang it on her, huh?”

  “You know how a cop is when a husband turns up with poison in him. I’m at Lucy’s place, Tim, and she’s upstairs with Mrs. Fitzgilpin. You want to go over to the Beach and nose around? Painter isn’t going to give me much, but he can’t refuse the press.”

  “I’m practically on my way,” Rourke told him enthusiastically. “Where’ll I meet you?”

  “How about that bar a couple of blocks from headquarters? Jim’s Joint, I think it is. In about an hour?”

  “Right. I’ll have the dope.” Rourke hung up and so did Shayne, tugging thoughtfully at his left earlobe. He looked at his watch and dialed another number that gave him a direct line to Will Gentry’s private office.

  When the Miami Chief of Police answered, he said, “Mike Shayne, Will.”

  “Mike? What’s with you so early of a Saturday morning?”

  “Early?” said Shayne reprovingly. “I’ve been up for hours. Making hay before the sun even started to shine.”

  “What spoiled your beauty sleep?”

  “The Fitzgilpin case. On the Beach.”

  “That mugging? I see a report here on my desk, but I didn’t know… what’s he to you, Mike?”

  “His widow is one of Lucy’s best friends. I wanted to tell you this may be your case, Will. Don’t let Painter hog it. The guy lived on this side of the bay and was loaded with poison that may well have been fed to him at least an hour before he died. That could easily make it your problem.”

  “Fine,” said Chief Gentry wearily. “Nothing I like better than a nice, clean poisoning.” He paused and then added sharply, “Widow’s a friend of Lucy’s, you say?”

  “Lives right upstairs in the same apartment building with two cute kids. Lucy’s with her now. Reason I called, Will, I don’t want Painter throwing his weight around over here with Mrs. Fitzgilpin. He has a perfect right to question her, but I’d like a good man of yours with him when he does. You know how he is about any friend of mine?”

  “And she’s… a particular friend of yours, Mike?” Gentry asked urbanely. “Good-looking?”

  “Yeh,” said Shayne angrily, “a red-headed sex-pot, if you want the truth. Don’t make anything out of it, Will. Leave that to Petey.”

  “Sure, Mike,” Gentry soothed him. “I’ll check into it and if it seems anything for me I’ll go around with Painter myself to talk with her.”

  Relieved, Shayne said, “Fine. I’ll be in touch late
r.” He hung up, knowing he had done all he could to protect Linda Fitzgilpin from over-officious questioning by Painter.

  He hesitated about going upstairs again, decided against it. He had nothing to go on yet. Nothing to discuss with the widow until he’d been to the Beach and dug up more facts. She would be better alone with Lucy at this point.

  He went out to the kitchen and poured himself a very moderate drink and relaxed with it on the sofa until it was time to meet Timothy Rourke on the Beach.

  The gangling reporter was seated in a booth at the rear of Jim’s Joint with a bourbon and water in front of him when Shayne entered the dim interior half an hour later. He looked up with a saturnine grin on his thin face as the redhead slid into the booth opposite him and said admiringly, “Boy! Did you ever rub Petey’s fur the wrong way this morning. What I got is strictly confidential… not to be passed on to an interfering shamus from Miami who thinks, by God, he can run the whole Miami Beach police department.”

  Shayne returned the grin and said, “It isn’t difficult to rub Painter the wrong way. You made no promises, I hope?”

  “Not… under oath,” Rourke told him cheerily. “I agreed with him that you certainly were a pain in the neck and didn’t deserve any cooperation whatsoever. But I didn’t say you weren’t going to get it.” Rourke lifted his glass and sipped from it pleasurably.

  “How much dope did you get?”

  “Everything they have thus far. Let’s see. Officer Farrel found him about four o’clock lying off to the side of Lone Palm Road about ten blocks north of the Causeway. That’s a quiet, sort of run-down section on the Bay side. There was an empty car parked on the shoulder near the body. Nobody around that time of morning. Body was cool, but no rigor. Smelled of whiskey and staggering tracks from the car to where he was found. No wallet. No nothing for identification. Routine check on the car registration got Fitzgilpin’s name in Miami and they called the number. You know that much.”

  Shayne nodded, drumming impatiently on the table top with blunt fingertips. “Time of death?”

  “Probably between midnight and two o’clock. The complete autopsy may set it closer. Not a mark on his body to indicate any sort of slugging. He was loaded with sodium amytal and alcohol. It’s a sleeping drug, really, but enough of it is poison. He had enough.”

  Shayne nodded thoughtfully. “Wouldn’t a load of it likely put him to sleep before it killed him?”

  “Doc says it’s probable. At least he’d be knocked out on his feet and never know what hit him. That’s about all I got, really. They’re doing a complete autopsy. Seems he generally kept his insurance office open late Friday nights collecting small cash premiums from clients, and probably was carrying a roll of several hundred in small bills. Might have looked like a lot more if he flashed it in a bar.”

  Shayne nodded absently. “I got that. And it was normal procedure for him to drop into a bar for a couple of beers on Friday nights on his way home. His wife expected it and wasn’t alarmed when she went to bed, with a sleeping pill, about eleven o’clock.”

  “Sodium amytal?” asked Rourke alertly.

  Shayne said, “I’ll have to ask her.”

  “He sure as hell had a lot more than a couple of beers last night. He was loaded, and the doc figures he got the stuff in whiskey. Says it would kill the taste fine. Goddamn it, Mike, I don’t like this one.” Rourke spread out his thin hands in front of him and slowly closed them into tight fists. “Like I said on the phone, I interviewed him a couple of weeks ago and thought he was one of the nicest guys I ever met. Friendly as hell and sort of bubbling over with goodwill toward his fellow men. I got the impression… and I wrote my story that way… that he was a completely satisfied and happy man. One of the very few I ever met. I can’t conceive him having an enemy.”

  “But someone fed him poison last night,” Shayne said grimly. “Unless you think he took it himself.”

  “Not him,” said Rourke flatly. “He was so proud of that citation he’d gotten from his company, and about having a write-up in a newspaper. Hell, you’d thought he’d been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Biggest thing that ever happened to him in his whole life.” Rourke drained off his bourbon and regarded Shayne shrewdly. “What’s the wife like?”

  Shayne replied simply, “She’s a close friend of Lucy’s, who swears by her. They lived right upstairs and she baby-sits sometimes. Two kids… six and nine, I think.”

  “Could she be cheating?”

  “Right now, all I have to go on is Lucy’s judgment, but I’ll accept that until I have some reason not to. Let’s see what we’ve got without the widow. You say there were staggering tracks from the car to where he was found. Any other tracks?”

  “You mean to indicate he was rolled after he died or collapsed. No. Farrel’s report says not. And his tracks didn’t lead exactly from where the car was parked. From the edge of the pavement, rather, starting about twenty feet from the car. I saw photographs and a sketch of the scene.”

  “Then it looks as though he drove there or was driven there… got out of the car and started up the road before he staggered off and died.”

  “He was driven,” Rourke told him promptly. “Or else someone went to the trouble of wiping his fingerprints off the steering wheel after he got out. No prints at all on the wheel, light switch or gear shift. They’ve still got his car at the lab giving it a thorough job.”

  “Someone who met him in a bar,” suggested Shayne. “Gave him the stuff there or noticed he was already passing out and offered to drive him home.”

  “Could be either way. I’m sorry, Mike, but this time I have to string along with Painter. Poisoning puts it closer to home than just some stranger in a bar.”

  Shayne sighed morosely. “Probably. But don’t tell Petey I said so.” He glanced at Rourke’s empty glass and put a dollar bill on the table. “Let’s drive out and look at the spot. Lone Palm Road?”

  “Yeh. A couple of blocks from the bayshore. I’ve got the address.” Timothy Rourke slid out of the booth with him and they went out to where both their cars were parked outside. Shayne waved the reporter on to his car and said, “You go ahead and I’ll follow.”

  He got in his own car and followed Rourke’s shabby coupe away from the vicinity of police headquarters westward toward the bay.

  Rourke followed a winding course, checking street signs, and finally pulled off and stopped in the middle of a block of quiet homes on a street that dead-ended against the bay a couple of blocks ahead.

  Shayne pulled up behind him and they got out and walked forward in front of Rourke’s car where chalk marks on the edge of the pavement indicated the position of Fitzgilpin’s parked car, then on ten or fifteen feet to a chalked arrow pointing off to the side where the body had evidently been found. There were many tracks back and forth across the soft shoulder here showing that the police had made an intensive search of the scene, and Shayne shrugged and glanced up and down the residential block, muttering, “These people are the kind to all be in bed and asleep by midnight. Painter’s men will have been ringing doorbells up and down, but I doubt that he’ll get anything.”

  “Nothing had come in worth a damn by the time I left his office,” Rourke agreed.

  Shayne stood there and looked toward the bay in the bright sunlight at a large, two-story stucco building built adjacent to the water’s edge. “Isn’t that Pete Elston’s Sporting Club up ahead?”

  Rourke glanced in that direction and nodded. “He’s got a nice quiet little bar downstairs,” he suggested hopefully. “And Fitzgilpin’s insurance office isn’t too far from here, from the address I got. Might be a place he’d stop in at on his way home.”

  Shayne said, “I could use a drink about now. How about you?”

  “Why not? The one you paid for at Jim’s was my first this morning.”

  Without more ado they both got in their cars and drove up to the Sporting Club and parked in front where only one other car stood at this hour of the mo
rning. There was a neon light on over the door to indicate the place was open for business, however, so they got out and went in purposefully together.

  5

  The interior of the Sporting Club bar had subdued lighting and a quiet decor. It was not one of the garish, chromium and red leather cocktail lounges that are characteristic of Miami Beach, but had a homey quality about it that was more like the atmosphere of a neighborhood bar in a small town.

  There were two men seated at the far end of the bar when Shayne and Rourke went in. They had beers in front of them and were engaged in earnest, low-voiced conversation. None of the tables or booths was occupied.

  Shayne and Rourke took the first two stools and the bartender moved in front of them with an indifferent, almost hostile, expression on his horselike face. He had a protruding Adam’s apple, a bald head, and his small eyes were set too close together.

  He swiped a damp cloth across the bar in front of them and asked, “What’ll it be, gents?”

  Shayne said, “A bourbon and water for my friend. Old Crow. And a cognac and water on the side for me. Martel,” he added glancing at the row of bottles behind the bar.

  Shayne lit a cigarette and blew out the match as the bartender set their drinks in front of them. He said, “Had some excitement around here last night, didn’t you?”

  “Huh?” The bartender blinked at him suspiciously. “I don’t recollect any.”

  “Were you on duty last night?”

  “Sure was. Right up to quitting time.” Horseface started to turn away, but Shayne stopped him by asking, “What about the stiff they found down the street this morning? Was he passed out when he left here?”

  “Look here, Mister. I don’t know nothing about a stiff down the street. We run a quiet place here, and nobody passes out if I’m serving him drinks. Get that straight. I already told the cops nobody answering his description was in here last night.”