When Dorinda Dances

by Brett Halliday

  “Do you deny that her real name is Julia Lansdowne?”

  “Hell, I don’t know what her real name is. Neither does Dorrie.”

  “Do you deny that you got her to smoke marijuana at a house party in Fort Lauderdale and got a picture of her dancing nude with you—and used it to coerce her to take this job?”

  Ricky Moran frowned with a look of honest perplexity. “That Dorrie,” he marveled. “How she can spoon it out. I’ve felt all along that she belongs on Broadway.” A slow smile spread his mouth and his black eyes glittered. “Tell me the rest of it. What’s the fancy name she gave you?”

  Shayne studied Moran’s face for a long moment. He turned away abruptly and seated himself on the couch near the cognac bottle, pushed the unused glass to the other side and said, “Sit down. Pour yourself a drink. You and I are going to have a long talk.”

  Moran seated himself in the chair recently vacated by the girl. “I should be plenty sore.” He poured a small drink. “Not that I blame you so much. Dorrie does get under a man’s skin. I know she fed you some kind of sob story at the table tonight—until I came along and broke it up.” He took a small sip of cognac. “So she made a date with you.” He spread out his long, thin hands and shrugged indifferently.

  “Okay,” he continued. “Do you blame me for getting sore? Wouldn’t you?” He settled back with the glass in his hand. “I know a man is a fool to try and hang onto a dame if she’s tired of him. But with Dorrie and me—it’s been different, see? It hurts, damn it.”

  Shayne took a leisurely drink and said, “You’re a lousy liar, Moran.”

  “You mean you still believe the crap that little—”

  “Hold it,” Shayne growled. “Calling Julia names won’t get you anything except maybe some teeth knocked out. What about Mrs. Davis?”

  “What about who?” Moran jerked himself erect.

  “Mrs. Elbert Davis.”

  “I don’t know any Mrs. Davis,” Moran protested sullenly.

  “What else were you doing at the Waldorf Towers tonight?”

  Moran averted his eyes from Shayne’s hard gaze. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Didn’t you intercept the note Mrs. Davis sent backstage to Dorinda night before last?”

  “Lotsa folks send notes back to Dorrie. If I get hold of them first she doesn’t see them.” Moran drank the last of his drink.

  “What about this?” Shayne picked up Dorinda’s publicity photograph from the table where it had fallen, face down. “Attempted blackmail is a felony. I’ve got the note you sent along with the picture to Mrs. Lansdowne.”

  Ricky Moran appeared to be completely mystified. He only glanced at the photograph, then looked angrily at the detective and said, “That’s twice you’ve mentioned blackmail.”

  “I’m in a mood to do more than talk about it, Moran. For my money you stink worse than a skunk.” He came to his feet with big fists swinging.

  Moran arose hastily and took a backward step, licking the crack in his lip where the blood was clotted. “You can’t say things like that to me, Shayne.”

  “I can take you apart and see what makes a rat like you tick,” he said pleasantly. “When I kick you out the door you’ll have an idea of what will happen to you if you ever try to see Julia Lansdowne again, or ever mention her name.” As he spoke, he advanced steadily.

  Moran was backing away. Suddenly, with a snarled oath, he leaped sideways and clawed inside his coat for the weapon concealed there.

  Shayne sprang, a long left striking Moran’s shoulder as the automatic came out, spinning the man around. Circling his right arm around, the redhead’s fingers caught Moran’s gun hand in a merciless grip. With his left forearm under his opponent’s chin, Shayne exerted leverage that lifted the man’s body free from the floor where he hung for a moment, gagging and kicking wildly.

  There was a muffled shot, and Moran’s body went limp. The smell of burned powder drifted into Shayne’s nostrils as he relaxed his hold, and Moran’s body slumped to the floor.

  Shayne stood very still, looking down with brooding hatred at the motionless figure. Presently he leaned down and turned Moran’s body over. His eyes were wide and glazed, the jaw sagging open. Blood trickled from a powder-burned hole in the front of his shirt just below the breastbone, and the automatic was still gripped in his right hand.

  Shayne felt the man’s wrist for a pulse. There was no sign of life, and he went directly to the telephone. In a steady voice he asked the desk clerk to ring Police Chief Will Gentry’s telephone at home. He gave the number and waited.

  A sleepy voice rumbled, “Gentry.”

  “Mike Shayne, Will. There’s a hunk of dead skunk in my apartment. I wish you’d send the boys to cart it away.”

  “Are you kidding, Mike? How did—”

  “You know I never kid about a stiff.”

  “Oh—that. For a minute I thought one of your relatives—”

  “Cut it, Will.” Shayne sighed wearily and audibly. “He’s messing up my floor, and the city pays you to take care of things like that.” He hung up, poured himself a drink, and a few minutes later the homicide squad was swarming over the apartment.

  CHAPTER VI

  Chief Will Gentry waited impassively until he and Shayne were alone before settling back and rumbling, “Okay, Mike, I know who the stiff is, and you’ve given me your version of how he died. Now, you’d better give me why.”

  “Yeh,” said Shayne morosely. “But you won’t like it, Will.”

  “I wouldn’t like anything at this hour in the morning,” Gentry grunted. “Don’t you ever go to bed?”

  “This happens to be one of my busy nights,” Shayne told him with a slow grin. “I’ve told you Ricky Moran was some sort of a booking agent and was managing a dancer at La Roma.”

  Gentry took a cigar from his mouth and looked at its glowing tip. “You’ve told me that,” he said patiently.

  “I went out there for dinner last night. I saw the girl dance. After the first show, I bought her a dinner, and we talked. When she was through for the night she came here. About four o’clock. Moran got suspicious and followed her. He didn’t know my room number, and when Dick called me from the desk I got him to stall Moran until I called back. That gave me a chance to get the girl down the fire escape. But Moran didn’t buy it when I tried to tell him she hadn’t been here. He got tough and pulled a gun. I’ve told you the rest—straight self-defense,” he ended with a trace of smugness.

  “My God,” Gentry groaned. “You still tomcatting? Maybe it was self-defense in the final analysis, but it’s not good. Fighting over a dance-hall twitch! You steal a guy’s doll—”

  “Moran was her manager,” Shayne broke in evenly. “She assured me he had no other strings on her. How the hell was I to know he’d take it that way?”

  Gentry moved his graying head slowly from side to side. “What in hell does this dancer have that a hundred others don’t have?” he asked disgustedly.

  “For one thing—” Shayne took the picture from its face-down position on the table and handed it to Gentry, then settled back to watch the chief’s face with ironic amusement as it turned a deeper shade of red.

  “This does tear it, Mike.” He slapped the photograph down on the low table between them. “If the papers get hold of this, I’ll have to bring you to trial. Damn it, half the ministers in town will be preaching about it next Sunday. You’ll be lucky to get off with forty years.”

  “Yeh,” said Shayne. “That’s why we’ll have to give the papers some other story. That—and because of Dorinda’s real name.”

  “What’s her name got to do with it?”

  “Everything. I’m going to level with you, Will. I have to. That girl is the daughter of Judge Nigel Lansdowne.”

  Chief Gentry’s rumpled eyelids rolled up, and his slightly protuberant eyes bugged out. “You don’t mean—”

  “I do. Her name is Julia Lansdowne. Relax, and I’ll give you the whole s
tory.”

  Shayne began with Mrs. Davis’s visit to his office and continued with all the subsequent events leading up to Moran’s death.

  “There it is,” he ended. “If ever a man deserved to die, Moran did, but I wish he had stayed alive long enough for me to wring the truth out of him about Mrs. Davis.”

  Gentry shifted his solid body in the chair and chewed his cigar to the other side of his mouth. “Then you think Moran got to her?”

  Shayne shrugged and said, “It’s the only thing I can think of at the moment. It’s broad daylight,” he went on, gesturing toward the east windows, “and she still hasn’t phoned me. What’s your guess?”

  After a moment’s thought, Chief Gentry suggested, “She may have come in after your last call and thought it was too late to phone you—not knowing your reputation,” he ended acidly.

  “I hope so.” Shayne waved a big hand toward the telephone on the desk. “Why don’t you try the Waldorf Towers and see what you can get on her? When she went out last night, whether she had a visitor answering Moran’s description.”

  Gentry heaved his bulk from the chair and went stolidly to the phone. Shayne listened with alert hopefulness until the chief began asking questions that indicated Mrs. Davis was still not in, then relaxed, awaiting a report.

  “I didn’t get much,” he announced as he cradled the receiver and started back to his chair. “The clerk came on at midnight, and doesn’t know Mrs. Davis by sight. I thought you said she was out at La Roma night before last,” he added casually, reseating himself.

  “She was. According to her story.”

  “If I remember correctly, you said both Moran and the girl denied she was there,” said Gentry.

  “Moran would naturally deny it if he heard her asking about the girl—and intercepted the note she sent backstage. And it’s my guess that Davis was just a name she was using, which explains why Julia didn’t recognize it.”

  “But this Dorinda—or Julia,” Chief Gentry contended, “should have recognized the woman herself.”

  “If you had seen her dancing you would realize that she wouldn’t have time to see anyone in the audience. Not even her own mother. Her story sounded pretty factual to me.”

  Gentry’s cigar was dead. He took it from his mouth and regarded the soggy end with distaste, bent forward to place it in an ash tray on the table, then asked, “How do you account for the fact that Mrs. Davis didn’t check into the Waldorf Towers from Washington until four o’clock yesterday afternoon?”

  “Four o’clock? Yesterday?”

  “Right. I had the clerk double-check.”

  Shayne scowled at Gentry’s beefy face and placid expression, shook his head in utter bafflement, and said, “If that part of her story was a lie maybe all of it was.” He paused thoughtfully, then continued. “But the girl admitted her name was Julia Lansdowne and that she was on vacation from Rollins College. Everything checked exactly.”

  “Except that Moran denied every word of it,” Gentry rumbled. “According to him, Dorinda was some nameless waif he’d picked out of the gutter and taught to dance.”

  “Of course he denied it,” Shayne said angrily. “But the girl couldn’t have known—”

  “Hold it, Mike,” the chief cut in. “Think back carefully. You’ve said what hell of a fine actress she was when you and Rourke first questioned her. When you talked to her in your apartment later, are you sure you didn’t give her leads? In other words, I’ll bet you didn’t ask her what her name was. Instead, you asked her if her name wasn’t Julia Lansdowne, and if she wasn’t a student at Rollins. All she had to do was play along and make up a nice story to fit what you handed her.”

  “I may not be as smart as one of your dumb cops,” Shayne told him with considerable sarcasm, “but I’ll swear that girl was telling the truth, Will.”

  “And that Mrs. Davis was telling the truth about everything except being at La Roma the preceding night? Why would she tell you a lie that could be exposed so easily?”

  “Wait a minute. There could be another answer. We don’t know that she checked in at the Waldorf Towers immediately after arriving from Washington. She could have come down the day before, stopped at some other hotel, and then switched to the Waldorf for some personal reason the next day. You can check on that when the day shift comes on. How she made the reservation—whether it was by a local telephone call—”

  “I can,” Gentry agreed readily, “and will. In the meantime, I want to have a talk with your Dorinda—or Julia.”

  “Sure. But you’ll help me keep this quiet. Keep her picture and her real identity out of the papers. I know you’re a damned mossbacked reactionary,” he added with a wry grin. “But I think even you will agree that anything that drove Judge Lansdowne out of public life right now would be catastrophic.”

  Will Gentry snorted. “I don’t admit anything of the sort. The country is full of solid businessmen who could do the same job as well or better without taking us down the road to socialism.”

  Shayne’s dismay was manifest. “But damn it, Will—”

  “At the same time,” Gentry continued, lifting a pudgy, square hand for silence, “I’d feel sorry for the father of any brat who got herself into such a mess. Call Lucy and tell her we’re coming over.”

  Shayne got up and long-legged it to the desk phone and called Lucy’s number. When her sleepy voice came over the wire he said cheerfully, “Don’t blame me if you didn’t get home in time to get some sleep.”

  “I bet I got home before you did, at least. What is it? Trouble?”

  “Sort of. Is Dorinda—”

  “I knew she meant trouble,” Lucy cut in, “as soon as I saw that picture in your office. And the way you gaped at her in La Roma.”

  “Will Gentry is here with me,” he told her evenly. “We’re on our way over. You and Julia get dressed, and you might put on a pot of coffee.”

  “Julia?”

  “Hasn’t she told you her real name? I thought you two would be chummy by now.”

  “What are you talking about, Michael?” Lucy asked anxiously.

  “Dorinda. Isn’t she still there?”

  “Here? That girl! Why do you think—”

  “Hold it, Lucy.” Shayne’s voice was hoarse. “This isn’t any gag. Didn’t she come to your place about an hour ago?”

  “No. Why should she, Michael? I don’t think I’m the right—”

  “This is serious. I sent her there about four-thirty.”

  “Well, she didn’t get here,” said Lucy. “Perhaps she met a man on the way.”

  “You’ve been right there and haven’t heard anything from her?” Shayne asked, alarmed.

  “I’ve been right here, Michael, ever since about eleven o’clock.”

  “Stay right there until you hear from me, Lucy. If she shows up, don’t let her get away. If she calls up, get hold of her somehow—and fast. You can contact me through Will Gentry.” He spoke rapidly, hung up, and turned with sweat streaming down his face.

  Will Gentry regarded him with a faint twinkle in his agate eyes and said, “I think this is one time Mike Shayne got taken—but good.”

  CHAPTER VII

  “What do you mean ‘taken’?” Shayne growled.

  “What else?” Gentry made an expansive gesture. “This girl feeds you a hunk of boloney and you gulp it down without chewing. Michael Galahad Shayne mounting his white charger to save a strip-teaser from a life of shame.” He threw his head back and guffawed. “She’s heard about you, maybe, and comes to your apartment at four in the morning for a little fun—and you read her a sermon. My God, Mike.”

  “Okay. Have your fun. But I swear she was on the level, Will. She wouldn’t even take a drink.”

  “Then why didn’t she go to Lucy’s?”

  “What’s your guess?” Shayne parried.

  “It’s a cinch. She knew she’d never get by with a story like that with another woman. So she just faded out of the picture after you chased her dow
n the fire escape—while you stay behind to break a lance against the guy she was two-timing.”

  “And it could be that something altogether different happened to her,” said Shayne gravely. “If someone snatched her before she got to Lucy—”

  “Who?” Gentry demanded. “You’ve admitted Moran was waiting in the lobby and he came right up.”

  “He could have left a pal watching the fire escape,” Shayne growled. “Damn it, Will. If anything has happened to that girl, I sent her right into it.”

  “Nuts,” said Gentry. “You’ll be dreaming up an international gang of white-slavers next.”

  “I talked to the girl and you didn’t,” Shayne reminded him. “There’s one way to find out.” He went to the phone again, asked for long-distance, said, “A person-to-person call to Mrs. Nigel Lansdowne in Washington, D. C. I don’t know the number. That’s Mrs. Lansdowne.”

  He waited tensely, his bleak gray eyes avoiding Chief Gentry’s amused gaze, while the operator put the call through. After a brief interval, he heard the Washington operator say, “I’m sorry but the Lansdownes have an unlisted number and we are not allowed to give the information.”

  “Wait,” Shayne said sharply. “This is important. Official police business.”

  “I’m very sorry.” The voice was dulcet but firm. “We would require an authorization from the authorities here.”

  Shayne said, “Hold it.” He turned to Gentry and held out the receiver. “Do you know any cops in Washington who can get you an unlisted number?”

  “Maybe.” Gentry got up reluctantly, took the receiver, and asked the operator to connect him with Washington police headquarters.

  Shayne paced the floor and worried his left ear lobe, listening absently while Gentry spoke to half a dozen people. After a few minutes of passing the buck, the chief nodded with satisfaction and said, “Let me get a pencil.”