The Body Came Back

by Brett Halliday

  “Then why get yourself involved? If it’s open and shut like you say…”

  “Because the guy she shot to death was her own father… only she didn’t know it. You see, the guy deserted her mother before she was born, and she never saw him. Now do you get the picture? Are you going to contend that she should be told the truth… on the eve of her wedding… give her something to live with the rest of her life?”

  “Won’t she find out anyhow?”

  “Not if we’re lucky and can get hold of that damned corpse and dispose of it somewhere a long way from the Encanto. It’s a long story, Tim, but take my word for it. The odds are fifty-to-one she’ll never know it was her father this way. If I’d left the body lying there and called the cops as I should have, there would have been different headlines in tomorrow’s paper. You would have done the same damned thing I did under the same circumstances.”

  “Maybe,” muttered Timothy Rourke. “Fifteen years ago… sure. But we’re growing up, Mike.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Shayne told him blithely. He stretched out his long legs and took a deep drag on his cigarette, and then chuckled happily. “Personally, I haven’t had so much fun in years. When those cops told me I was driving a stolen car… and with a stiff locked up in the trunk there at headquarters… He threw back his head and laughed heartily at the recollection. “That stupid Georgia Cracker putting the handcuffs on me! If he’d just gone around and unlocked the trunk…”

  “I’ll bet you weren’t laughing then,” Rourke said sourly. They were approaching the intersection at 79th, and he slowed and pulled into the left lane to make the turn.

  “No,” agreed Shayne. “But it is funny now… looking back on it.”

  Rourke turned on 79th and drove slowly through the Little River business section to Miami Avenue where he turned south two blocks and then onto 77th Street. Leaving the avenue behind them, they entered a residential section of modest homes where practically all the houses were dark at this time of night.

  In the 200 block, only one house was lighted at either side of the tree-lined street. Rourke slowed to a crawl as he approached it, checking the numbers. He muttered, “That’s the Duclos house with the lights on. They must be celebrating getting their car back.”

  He continued past without actually stopping, and Shayne, looking out the window on his side, saw there was no Ford parked in the driveway, and the one-car attached garage stood open and empty.

  “It’s not there, damn it. Pull in to the curb here at the corner and shut off your lights. Where the hell do you suppose Duclos is? He was supposed to have left the station before I did.”

  “Maybe he had a flat tire driving home,” suggested Rourke caustically. “Maybe every police car in town is looking for Mike Shayne right now.”

  “Maybe. But let’s wait here a little and see what happens. If he drives up pretty soon, we can go back to the Avenue for a drink and wait for him to get settled for the night. It’s pretty dark back there in the middle of the block, and the driveway and garage are well shaded.”

  Rourke sighed and slumped morosely behind the wheel. “It’s your job, Mike. I just drove you out here.”

  They both smoked two cigarettes while they sat in silence and waited, and not a single car came down the residential street. Behind them, the front windows of the one-story Duclos house continued to show bright light, but there was nothing to indicate what was going on inside.

  When Shayne spun the butt of his second cigarette away, he said impatiently, “This isn’t getting us anywhere. We might sit here all night.”

  Rourke pulled himself erect behind the wheel and reached for the ignition key. “My sentiments exactly. Let’s get the hell out…”

  “And drive around the block and come back and stop right in front,” Shayne told him calmly. “You go in and find out what’s what with that Ford.”

  “Me?”

  “You’re a reporter,” Shayne reminded him. “You’ve come out to get an interview with Duclos about how his car was stolen and got recovered so quickly. Nothing queer about that. Ask his wife where he is and when she expects him.”

  “Suppose he’s there?” Rourke was slowly driving around the block as Shayne directed. “He might have left the car some place… loaned it to a friend or some damn thing.”

  “Then find out where it is,” said Shayne. “Tell him you want to examine it for fingerprints to disprove my story that someone else stole it and loaned it to me. He’ll go for that. He was sore at the police station because they didn’t have me locked up in a cell.”

  Rourke sighed and turned back into the block where the single lighted house stood out like a beacon in the night. He said wonderingly, “I get sucked into doing the damnedest things.”

  “All in a good cause,” Shayne told him heartily. “I’ll slouch down out of sight if a car pulls up.”

  Rourke stopped directly in front of the lighted house and shut off his ignition and lights. He got out and went up the walk to the front door with a porch light on, and Shayne watched from the front seat of the car while he rang the bell and waited for at least a full minute before the door opened to admit him.

  A woman stood inside the door blinking uncertainly at Timothy Rourke. She had a thin face and straggly brown hair streaked with gray, a sharp nose and faded blue eyes. She wore a cotton print dress and a pair of scuffed blue slippers without any stockings.

  He said, “Mrs. Duclos,” and she nodded slowly, considering him without rancor but without apparent interest.

  He stepped forward briskly and she moved aside to let him enter a small, steamy, cluttered sitting room, with shabby furniture and a general run-down appearance.

  “I’m a reporter from the Miami News,” he told her. “I’d like to talk to your husband if he’s home.”

  She said, “He isn’t here right now. But I’m expecting him any minute. I don’t know. They called him about his car being stolen. The police did. And he went down to see about it. That was an hour or so ago. Was that what you wanted to talk to him about?”

  Passing close in front of her to get inside, Rourke got a strong whiff of gin and tonic on her breath, and glancing across the room at a low armchair with a faded slipcover on it and pages of the News scattered on the floor around it, he saw a tall glass on a side table with the remnants of a drink in the bottom of it

  He said hastily, “Yes. It’s about the stolen car. I’m surprised he isn’t home yet I know he picked his car up at headquarters about an hour ago.”

  “George’ll be along I guess,” she said indifferently, closing the door and waving one hand vaguely toward a butt-sprung couch. “You want to wait, he’ll be along, I guess. He was that upset about the car when they telephoned him.” She moved past him toward the armchair, sliding her feet along on the worn carpet carefully, almost shuffling, and giving the impression that she wasn’t entirely too steady on her feet. “He didn’t know it was stolen, you see… until they called him. He’d parked it out front and, when they asked him over the phone, he looked out and then he said, ‘Why, by God! It’s gone.’ You know. You don’t expect something like that to happen. Not in a quiet neighborhood like this, you don’t. And so they had a police car to stop by to pick him up to go down and identify it, and I don’t know why he isn’t back home yet. Won’t you sit down… Mister? Could I offer you something to drink, maybe?” She lifted her own glass and drank the dregs, then looked at him over the rim almost coyly. “There’s gin in the kitchen… and some kind of mixer, I guess.”

  Rourke remained standing. He said, “Nothing for me. Thanks just the same.” His gaze wandered around the room, avoiding the somewhat avid look in her pale blue eyes while he mentally cursed himself for allowing Shayne to push him into this sort of situation. “Not much use my waiting, I guess,” he said uncertainly. “If you don’t know what’s holding him up, you don’t know how long he’ll be.”

  He paused abruptly, his roving gaze caught by a 4x6 photograph in a cardboard folder on t
he mantel of an ornamental (though certainly not usable) fireplace at the end of the room. The woman in the picture was quite clearly Mrs. Duclos, taken ten or fifteen years before, and the features of the man standing beside her brought a strong feeling of recognition to the reporter.

  It was not a prepossessing face. Thin and ratlike. With shifty eyes that were too close together, and a tight mouth that smirked rather than smiled.

  It was definitely not a picture of her husband, whom Rourke had talked to at police headquarters just a short time before. It was just as definitely the picture of a man whom Rourke knew he should recognize… someone whom he had met very recently or whose picture he had seen very recently.

  Timothy Rourke had a sixth sense for the memory of faces. Long years of reportorial training had developed that sense to an acute degree, and he often remembered and recognized the picture of someone who had been in the news five or ten years previously-

  Now he felt a familiar tingle traveling up his spine as he looked across at the photograph on the mantel. He should recognize it. He knew he had seen that face recently… and under circumstances which he should recall. He didn’t know why, but there was that sixth sense working strongly inside him.

  He moved across the room to look at the picture more closely, asking, “Is this your husband, Mrs. Duclos?” knowing, of course, that it wasn’t.

  “George? No. ’S my brother Al.”

  “Your brother?” Rourke nodded slowly, studying the picture intently. “I can see the family resemblance now, although I must say you’re a lot better looking. Does he live in Miami?”

  “Al? No. He just lives all over. You know. I don’t see him or even hear from him for years until he just suddenly shows up. You know. When he’s broke and needs a square meal. Like today.”

  “He showed up unexpectedly today?” Rourke kept his voice light and casual, still with that tingle working inside him.

  “That’s right. Like I said. You never know with Al. Never a word for years and then he rolls up like a bad penny. I was afraid George’d be sore, but he wasn’t. Seemed like he and Al got on real good.”

  “Is he staying here with you?”

  “Where else? We got a spare bedroom.”

  “I wonder if I could talk to him,” suggested Rourke, “while I’m waiting for your husband? Just fill me in on background material.”

  “George and him went down to the corner bar on Miami Avenue for a beer after dinner. George came back about ten and said Al looked like he was headed to make a night of it. I told him he shouldn’t give that no-good brother of mine money to spend on beer, but George just laughed and said he’d only give him two bucks and he guessed that wouldn’t break us. And anyhow he was with some others that was buying, and he guessed Al’d be back after he spent the two bucks. But he ain’t showed up yet, so I guess them others must still be buying.”

  She lifted her empty glass and peered at it “Sure you don’t want a drink, Mister?”

  “No. But why don’t you fix yours?” Rourke’s thin features were alert with excitement and his deep-set eyes glittered. He was on the verge of it, damn it. It was important that he remember where he had seen that face before. All of the ingrained instincts of a news-hound clamored at him that it was important for him to remember.

  “Don’t let me interrupt you,” he added politely. “I’ll have to be going in a minute anyhow.”

  “Well…” She studied her glass doubtfully. “I guess I might’s well at that.” She got to her feet carefully. “Sure you won’t have something? Glass of beer, maybe?”

  “No, thanks. You go ahead and get one for yourself.” Rourke stood with his back to the mantel and watched her navigate a calculated course out of the room and into the kitchen. When she was safely out of sight, he turned and snatched up the cardboard folder, closed it and thrust it down inside the waistband and belt of his trousers, buttoning his unpressed jacket across in front of it.

  Then he crossed to the front door where he waited until Mrs. Duclos came back from the kitchen carrying a full glass happily in front of her.

  He pulled the door open and apologized, “I’ve got to run now and keep a date with a deadline at the paper. When Mr. Duclos comes in, ask him to call me at the Miami News, huh? Timothy Rourke. Just ask them for Tim Rourke. I’ll talk to him on the telephone.”

  “Well, all right,” she agreed uncertainly. “If you’re sure you don’t wanta wait.”

  He said, “I’m afraid I can’t,” and went out the door and closed it gently behind him.

  Shayne was waiting in the car when he hurried around to the driver’s seat and got in. The detective growled, “Took you long enough. Duclos there?”

  “No. She hasn’t seen him or heard from him since he went down to pick up his car. Expects him home any minute though.”

  “You and she take time for a quick lay?” Shayne asked with obvious irritation.

  Rourke laughed shortly. “If you could have seen her! Listen, Mike. I’m onto something. I don’t know what the hell it is yet, but it’s something. Listen. There was a picture on the mantel. Mrs. Duclos and a guy she says is her no-good brother. Mike! That guy is in the news. Last few days. God-damn it! I don’t know how or what.” In frustration, Rourke beat his doubled fist against the steering wheel.

  “But I know it in my bones. That guy is a fugitive. He’s wanted. Let’s pick him up first, and then find out what it’s all about.”

  “What do you mean? Pick him up?”

  “She tells me he showed in Miami today. Broke and hungry. So her husband took him down to a local bistro on the corner of Miami Avenue for a beer after dinner, and he came back about ten but the brother didn’t.”

  Rourke turned on the lights and started his motor and pulled away slowly. “Presumably the brother is still down at the corner bar sopping up free drinks. We stop by and pick him up, Mike. You’ll get a headline for tomorrow that will put your stolen car caper in the shade.”

  He went around two corners and headed back for Miami Avenue. Shayne still didn’t wholly comprehend what he was talking about. He said, “We pick up this woman’s brother? What the hell for?”

  “I told you I don’t know. But I do know he’s wanted by the law… and bad. We take him in and we’ll find out. Mike Shayne comes through again. Nabs desperate fugitive single-handed.” Rourke turned the corner on Miami and nodded toward neon lights glowing a block ahead on the right-hand side. “That’ll be it.”

  He found a parking place in front of the tavern and stopped, turned his head to look at Shayne’s face. “You don’t look real happy,” he complained.

  Shayne said helplessly, “I just don’t get it, Tim. You just saw this guy’s picture. Your intuition tells you that he’s a wanted man. Ergo: We walk in and arrest him. On what charge?”

  “You’re a detective,” said Rourke cheerfully. “You’ve got the authority. Look. Have I ever let you down, Mike? Don’t you know that I know what I’m talking about?”

  Shayne grinned and said simply, “You always have, Tim. Okay, I’ll ride with you. What does he look like?”

  Rourke unbuttoned his jacket and pulled out the photograph he had stolen from the mantel. He showed it to Shayne. “There he is. I still can’t place that mug, but… he’s wanted, Mike. I’ll swear to that.”

  Shayne took the picture of Mrs. George Duclos and her brother, and studied it carefully in the glaring light of the neon sign.

  Then he said grimly, “We’re not going to find him inside that bar, Tim.”

  “How do you know we’re not? She says he and her husband came here after dinner for a beer… and as far as she knows he’s still here. If he’s left, we can maybe show the picture around and find out where he’s gone.”

  Shayne shook his red head firmly and said, “It just happens I know where he is, Tim. Inside the trunk of the Duclos Ford… rolled up in a blanket I snitched from the Encanto Hotel.”

  11.

  “For God’s sake, Mike! You sure about that?
” Rourke turned to stare at his companion with glittering eyes in which the excitement of a few minutes ago was intensified.

  “I ought to be sure. He and I were pretty intimate there for a few minutes. So he’s George Duclos’s brother-in-law,” Shayne said thoughtfully. “Let’s see where the hell that fits in. He was driving George’s Ford when he went to the Encanto…”

  “Is that where you got hold of it?” interrupted Rourke. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “Yeh. I found the parking stub in his pocket and thought as long as I was moving the body I might as well get his car away at the same time… without knowing it was stolen, of course. Which maybe it was or maybe it wasn’t,” he added.

  “You mean maybe Duclos loaned it to him… and then later when the cops called he got scared and looked out the window and reported it stolen?”

  “It’s an old dodge. If so, it must mean that Duclos knew he was hot… or at least that he might be headed for some sort of trouble at the Encanto. In that case he must be wondering like hell how I come to turn up driving the car he’d lent his brother-in-law.”

  “We don’t know he did lend it, of course. The way Mrs. Duclos explained it, the two of them came down to the corner bar for a drink after dinner. Her husband came back alone, saying her brother, Al, was sticking around for a time. Could be that Al just waited until George got safely inside the house, then slipped back and copped the car… knowing it was sitting outside with the keys in it.”

  “Sure it could be either way.” Shayne tugged at his left earlobe impatiently. “You called him Al. That’s the name of Carla’s husband all right. What else did she tell you about him?”

  “Carla?” asked Rourke.

  “Brett’s friend I told you about. The one who phoned me. She claimed she hadn’t seen the guy for ten or fifteen years… thought he was dead. He’d done time in the pen at least once, and she’d heard he’d been shot in a holdup after he was released.”

  “Sounds like our Al, all right. Mrs. Duclos said he had a way of popping up unannounced like a bad penny after she hadn’t heard from him in years. I wish to God I could place that face, Mike. I know I’ve seen a picture of that mug in the last few days, and I know that he’s wanted for some recent crime. Not local, I think. Something must have come over the wires… His voice trailed off. Then he opened the car door decisively. “A couple of drinks may bring it back to me. Why in hell are we sitting out here? I think it’s time you told me a little more about how you got acquainted with the guy.”