Too Friendly, Too Dead

by Brett Halliday

  Shayne disregarded him and told Timmy, “I guess you know who I am, and why I want to talk with you. You two killed a man last night.”

  “God, no.” Timmy was trembling frantically. He sank back to sit on the floor with his hands on both sides supporting him, shaking his head from side to side. “You got it all wrong, Shamus. Me and Ox, we never hurt nobody. Not in our whole lives. I swear it on a stack of Bibles. Maybe we rolled a drunk, huh, but we never put a hand to him. I swear we didn’t.”

  “What did you slip into his drink at the Sporting Club before you followed him out?”

  “Nothing. I swear it, Mister. The guy was tight. What the hell? He was ready to fall flat on his face. We never touched a finger to him. I swear we didn’t.”

  “You read in the paper about him being found dead this morning?”

  “Sure, we read about it, and naturally we felt bad. We figure somebody else come along and slugged him. There was somebody in a car,” Timmy went on eagerly. “He come along slow, kind of creeping along like he was looking out for him. That was right after he staggered off the road and fell down.”

  “After you and Ox snatched his money and that ring off his hand?”

  “All right. I ain’t gonna kid you. That damn Barney,” breathed Timmy indignantly. “He musta put you wise. After him taking half all the time…” Ox was now grunting loudly and had worked himself up to a sitting posture. Shayne studied him coldly with bleak eyes, then stepped forward and kicked him with precisely calculated force on the side of the head. Ox toppled sideways and lay still.

  “Okay,” said Shayne conversationally to Timmy. “Let’s get this straight. Were you and Ox in the Club last night when Fitzgilpin showed up about eleven o’clock?”

  “I don’t know whether we was or not. We got there maybe eleven. About then. Barney give us the high-sign. That there was a sucker down to the end of the bar maybe we could take. We didn’t push right in,” Timmy said virtuously. “We had us a drink and waited. Oh, maybe half an hour or so. There was this three or four people back there together. Talking and kiddin’, you know. One or two dames and a couple guys. You couldn’t tell who was with who, but it didn’t matter to us. Then this little guy comes stumbling out an’ Barney he gives us the office. Nobody’s with him, so we just went on out behind and there he is in the moonlight staggering down the street. We trailed along figurin’ he’d pass out any minute. Ox, he wanted to tap him a little, easy-like, but I said what the hell? Give him a little minute an’ we wouldn’t even hafta.

  “So, I’m right. He makes it about a block, going from one side of the road to another, an’ then falls flat on his face. So we lifted his wallet and he never knew it. And Ox took a fancy to a ring he had on, and snatched that. But we never touched a finger to him, I swear it. We figured if we didn’t get it, somebody else would.

  “Then he kind of comes to for a minute and gets up an’ staggers on. And there’s a car comin’ real slow, and Ox and me we slips off to the side and hides behind a oleander bush. And we watch while this car comes along slow with him in the headlights, and then he goes off the pavement into the ditch and the car pulls up just beyond him and stops and the lights go off. So we figure it’s a friend of his from back at the Club and they’ll find out he’s been rolled, so we beat it back fast and get in our jalopy and take off. And that’s all to Christ and hell I know about the whole deal, and when Ox comes back to his senses he’ll tell you the same damn thing. We never touched a finger to him, and I swear we didn’t.”

  Ox was groaning and trying to sit up again. Shayne stared down at the pair with unconcealed disgust, and told Timmy, “You’ll have a chance to convince the cops that you’re clean on the killing. Before you do that… think hard and straight and tell me one thing: Did you ever know a gambler named George Nourse?”

  “Sure.” A crafty look came into Timmy’s eyes. “He was a big-shot here… two-three years ago. He really did have a pair of educated dice. Gawd! I seen him one night take three grand in a game with seven straight rolls.”

  “When did you see him last?”

  “Nourse? Not for the last year or two. I heard tell he was out on the West Coast… and doing all right, too.”

  “You’re positive you didn’t see him at the Sporting Club last night?”

  “George Nourse?” Timmy looked honestly surprised. “Is he back in town? I hadn’t heard it around.”

  “All right,” Shayne said disgustedly. “Get your muscle-bound friend in shape to take a ride. I’m calling for the meat-wagon.”

  He turned to the door and unlocked it, opened it and called out to the proprietor. “Call the cops and tell them I’ve got a couple punks that want free taxi service to police headquarters.”

  11

  After Timmy and Ox had been bundled off to jail, Shayne took time out to grab some much-needed nourishment, his first of the day. Thus, it was almost an hour after the two muggers had been locked up when he reached headquarters. He found Timothy Rourke closeted with Peter Painter in the latter’s office, and the reporter looked up with an approving grin as the redhead entered.

  “From what I hear you must have gone back to the Sporting Club after we got thrown out.”

  “Those two punks? Yeh, the bartender finally decided to come clean. How do you like them, Painter?”

  “For a cheap little rolling rap, fine,” Painter said condescendingly. “For a big rap, they’re out. We’ve put them through the mill and all we’ve got on them is they followed a drunk out of a bar and snatched his roll.”

  “After maybe slipping some sodium amytal in his drink first so he’d be an easier take,” Shayne suggested, pulling up a chair and seating himself without waiting for an invitation.

  “Not a chance,” snorted Painter. “While you’ve been chasing all over town after those two-bit punks, I’ve been finding out some things about that redhead widow you were cuddling up this morning.”

  “That so?” Shayne lifted ragged, red eyebrows in surprise and busied himself lighting a cigarette.

  “It is a truism in police work that the most obvious answer is generally the true one. Your trouble, Shayne, is that you can’t see the woods for the trees. Give me a husband-poisoning and I’ll give you a two-timing wife ninety-nine percent of the time.”

  “Linda Fitzgilpin?” Shayne frowned sourly and shook his head. “She seemed a hell of a fine woman. A loving wife and devoted mother. Lucy Hamilton knows her quite well, and that’s her opinion.”

  “Maybe I should put Lucy on the payroll as psychological advisor,” said Painter sarcastically. “These loving wives and devoted mothers,” he sneered. “When I see one of them stacked like that widow is stacked… married for years to a meek little man without too much on the ball… I start digging. And if you dig far enough and intelligently enough you generally find paydirt. I’ve only gone back a couple of years this far, and I’ll lay ten to one I’ll find plenty more as I go back further.”

  “What have you got so far?”

  “Plenty to build a case against her. She had a red-hot affair with a tin-horn gambler about a year and a half ago. Asked her husband for a divorce and he refused to give her one. This isn’t for publication yet, Tim,” he went on to the reporter who was busily taking notes, “though I’ve got all the proof I need. Fitzgilpin went to an attorney at that time for advice, and turned the tables by threatening a suit of his own, naming her lover as co-respondent and demanding custody of the children. I have an affidavit to that effect from the lawyer Fitzgilpin consulted. How do you like that for a loving wife and devoted mother?” he demanded happily of Shayne. “What will the prosecuting attorney do with that in court?”

  Shayne shook his head wonderingly and sighed, “You never know, do you? But that was a year and a half ago. They patched it up and went on living together. If her husband was willing to forgive her, why should she suddenly want him dead a year and a half later?”

  “Who knows how well they patched it up? How do we know how completely
he forgave her? Maybe she carried a torch all this time… or maybe she found another man better in bed than her husband?”

  “Who was the other man?” asked Timothy Rourke alertly. “You got any line on him?”

  “Name of George Nourse. I’ve got lines out on him. He apparently left town about that time, and rumor says he’s been on the West Coast ever since. But he could have come back to get some more of that redheaded stuff. If I can put him in town last night I’ll have an open and shut case against the two of them,” Painter ended triumphantly.

  “Have you talked to her?” Shayne asked curiously.

  “Not yet. I want to be ready to really throw the hooks to her when I do. I’ve got you to thank, Shayne, for preventing me from questioning her this morning before I had this stuff to throw in her face,” he added happily.

  Shayne said, “Yeh. She had me fooled all right. A gambler named George Nourse, huh? I’ll be asking around.”

  “You do that, and I’ll do the same. Right now I’m waiting for a reply from some contacts on the Coast.”

  Shayne let his shoulders slump dispiritedly and rose to his feet. “I thought I was pretty smart coming up with Timmy and Ox, but I guess they’re not very important in the light of what you say.”

  “You did all right on them, Shayne,” Painter told him magnanimously. “Not that I wouldn’t have gotten around to them myself sooner or later. But, first things first in police work is the way I see it. Sure, I knew he’d been rolled but I figured all along it was just an accidental by-product of him having been poisoned first.”

  Shayne hesitated on his way to the door, “You coming, Tim?”

  The reporter recognized his tone of voice as a request, and arose hastily. “Yeh. I guess I got all I can here.”

  “Not a word in the paper about this other,” warned Painter. “Right now, play up Timmy and Ox as our chief suspects. Give Shayne full credit for bringing them in,” he added generously, “and quote me as saying I’m not completely satisfied and am working on some other aspects of the case.”

  Rourke said, “Will do,” and briskly followed Shayne out of the detective chief’s office.

  “What’s on your mind?” he asked Shayne eagerly as they went down the corridor.

  “Plenty. Let’s stop at Jim’s for a drink.”

  When they were settled in a secluded booth in Jim’s Joint with drinks in front of them, Rourke said anxiously, “You were damn well sold on the widow Fitzgilpin this morning, Mike. Are you unsold now?”

  “Let’s say I’m slightly disillusioned,” Shayne admitted wryly.

  “You got to hand it to Petey sometimes. When he gets a hunch he hangs onto it like a bulldog. If he can put this lover of hers in Miami last night it’ll be tough sledding for both of them.”

  “I can do better than that,” Shayne informed the reporter grimly. “Strictly off the record, I can place George Nourse hiding in Linda’s bedroom when her husband came home unexpectedly from his office last night.”

  “Wha-at?” Rourke stared across the table at him in complete amazement. “All that stuff wasn’t news to you? The divorce threats and all? The way you acted in Painter’s office…”

  Shayne shrugged irritably. “He has his methods and I have mine. Each of them works… sometimes.”

  “You held out on him,” charged Rourke. “Damn it, Mike. If he knew Nourse was in town playing bedsie with Linda! That he was actually at their place last night…!”

  “And,” said Shayne cynically, “for a real clincher, that the husband downed a big drink of whiskey while he was there… which Linda says he fixed in the kitchen for himself… but how in hell does anybody know at this point? Yeh,” he muttered. “Petey would have himself a prima facie against the two of them. That’s why I didn’t hand him the dope on a platter.”

  “You’re on pretty thin ice, Mike,” Rourke warned him seriously. “Withholding important information in a murder investigation. You sat there in his office and blandly pretended you’d never heard of George Nourse before.”

  “He was telling me, he wasn’t asking me,” Shayne pointed out irritably. “He was so damned full of his own self-importance. Hell! I’ll bet that lawyer came to him with the information about the proposed divorce, and now he’s taking all the credit for digging it up.”

  “Still and all…” Rourke paused, shaking his head dubiously.

  “All the little twerp has to do is go to Linda and get the whole story for himself just the way she gave it to me. But he’s playing it smart. He’s so damned busy fashioning a noose to go around her pretty neck that he won’t do the obvious thing. To hell with that,” Shayne went on briskly. “I’ve got more important things that Painter could also find out for himself if he’d go to Linda. There’s a mysterious female named Mrs. Kelly who showed up at the insurance office a day or so after your interview with Fitzgilpin was printed. She talked with his secretary who recalls that she seemed much more interested in Fitzgilpin and his private affairs than in a big policy on her husband’s life. Particularly about his last visit to New York in November nineteen sixty-one.

  “A lot of funny little things seem to point back to that convention he attended in New York. That was when Linda had her affair with Nourse, and immediately after Jerome’s return, she asked for the divorce. And I found this tucked very carefully back in a drawer of his desk at the office.”

  Shayne got the menu with the rosebud and the picture of the young couple out of his pocket and spread them out in front of Rourke. “See the date. His secretary remembered his bringing it back as a sentimental souvenir of his trip. Some young couple, whom he met at the convention and characteristically befriended to the point of being best man at their wedding and blowing them to a wedding dinner in the Village afterward. What do you make of it? Recognize either the bride or groom?”

  Rourke had the photograph in his hand studying it carefully. He shook his head. “Not off-hand. I’ve got a sneaking hunch way down deep inside me that I should know who the man is, but I don’t. Why do you figure this is important, Mike?”

  “That same sort of sneaking hunch that you’ve got,” Shayne told him. “As I say, several things seem to pinpoint this trip he made to New York. Linda’s affair with Nourse. The Kelly woman’s interest in the date he’d been there. This menu, rosebud and picture carefully put away in his desk.”

  He paused and Rourke frowned and said, “None of that seems to tie in together with murder. Isn’t it a pretty far-fetched hunch?”

  “It was until Linda told me about the telephone call last night that took Jerome Fitzgilpin out to his death. All she heard him say was Kelly. She doesn’t know whether it was Mr. or Mrs.”

  “Goddamn it, Mike. You are holding out.”

  “Not really. It’s still nothing that Painter can’t get for himself by simply going to Linda and asking her. Here’s her version of what happened last night.”

  Shayne succinctly repeated what Linda had told him about Nourse’s unexpected appearance at the apartment, her husband’s return and their quarrel about the cigar butt, the telephone call he received, and his opportune departure without discovering Nourse… and his leaving on Jerome’s heels.

  Rourke listened to the recital with absorbed interest, and when Shayne finished, he breathed out excitedly and said, “So if Nourse did follow him to the Sporting Club and they had a showdown there…”

  Shayne said, “There’s nothing to indicate that’s what happened. Don’t forget the phone call that took him out. Kelly. Poisoning indicates premeditation, Tim. You don’t just happen to have a supply of sodium amytal in your pocket handy when you decide to commit murder. Nourse was a gambler. According to Linda, a reckless and violent man. Right now I’m willing to accept her judgement on him.” Shayne sighed and tossed off his drink.

  “I hoped this picture or the name of Kelly might trigger off something for you.” He refolded the menu carefully and put it back into his pocket.

  “I’m sorry it doesn’t. What’s your
angle now?”

  “Since Petey is already on Nourse’s trail, let him run that down. I’m going to check back on that convention trip to New York and the wedding angle. If I can come up with the name of Kelly I’ll feel I’m on the right trail.”

  Shayne put money on the table and got up. Rourke got up also, asking, “Anything I can do at the moment?”

  “Just keep in touch with Painter and let me know fast if anything breaks. I’ll do the same.”

  “How about my going around to get an exclusive interview with the widow?” suggested Rourke eagerly.

  Shayne shook his head. “She’s dynamite right now… until Painter gets around to her. If she did spill anything to you, you’d have to take it to him before you printed a word of it. No, Tim. Goddamn it, I’m trusting you to be surprised when you hear all this from Painter eventually.”

  12

  Back in his own apartment for the first time that day since Lucy Hamilton’s early morning call had taken him away, Shayne shrugged off his jacket and loosened his tie, poured a small drink of cognac and set a glass of ice water beside it on the center table, and settled himself comfortably beside the telephone.

  He had to think for a moment to remember the name, but then it came to him. Angelo Fermi, fingerprint expert for the New York police department who eagerly hoped Shayne could help him get a television series on the air.

  It was Saturday, but he hoped Fermi would be on duty. He put in a person-to-person telephone call for the New York detective, and sipped his drink and waited a couple of minutes while persons at police headquarters in New York shunted the call around, and finally got Fermi’s voice over the wire.

  “Mike Shayne in Miami, Angelo. Did Brett Halliday contact you about your television series while he was in town last year?”

  “He did that.” Fermi’s voice sounded enthusiastic “He is a nice fellow. It is difficult to sell the networks a new idea, but I now have an option. Can I help you here?”