Never Kill a Client ms-43

by Brett Halliday

  He said, “I don’t know. I was wondering the same thing myself. I’m from out of town.” He paused to take a sip of his drink. It was good, but not quite as good as those he had been served at the Brown Derby. “From Miami,” he added deliberately.

  She looked away with a little shrug, as though to indicate the subject did not interest her… and probably to convince him that she wasn’t an easy bar pick-up.

  Shayne lit a cigarette and drew on it deeply, wondering, now, how well Elsa Cornell knew him… whether she would recognize him at first glance or whether she had only an illusive ten-year-old memory to guide her.

  He thought back over what the captain had told him. Had she seen him at his table when she came into the Brown Derby and was frightened by the sight of another man? One of them, she had said over the phone. It was quite possible that she hadn’t seen Shayne at all back there. The captain would have had no reason to point him out… unless she had asked him to. And he hadn’t mentioned that.

  But if it was Elsa seated beside him, the word “Miami” should have identified him to her.

  She finished her drink and slid off the stool and sauntered toward the door. Shayne turned his head and watched her depart, again recalling more of Joe Pelter’s words: “She don’t sling it around for you to look at. It’s there, and she knows you know it’s there, but that’s all.”

  Well, it could be, Shayne decided judiciously. There was something quite ladylike about her erect posture, her walk. But what kind of cat and mouse game was she playing? If she expected him to follow her…

  Then a real honey-blonde entered the room in a sort of breathless rush, and stopped very still to look about hopefully.

  This, Shayne knew with a sudden, unmistakable conviction, was the woman who had brought him out to Los Angeles. His luck was holding good. She was a real knockout. He mentally apologized to Joe Pelter for ever having thought the woman who had just left the stool beside him could possibly be Elsa Cornell.

  She was quite tall and she held herself proudly just inside the doorway as she openly and coolly inventoried the male occupants of the room. She wore a clinging black sheath dress with a crimson sash and a crimson silk scarf at her throat. She was about thirty-five, and she had full, bold features. Even at that distance Shayne could almost swear that he smelled her distinctive perfume.

  When her slowly moving gaze met his she hesitated momently, but she did not smile or give any sign of recognition. Her eyes moved on along the backs of the other men at the bar, and she completed a full circuit of the room before moving.

  Then she did not look at Shayne, although he continued to stare at her openly. She dropped long, dark lashes demurely over her eyes and walked with sinuous grace directly to the empty stool beside him.

  He did smell her distinctive perfume now with certainty. It was not too strong. Thank God she had not doused herself with it as she had her letter.

  She sat beside him and glanced fleetingly at his cocktail glass, and then told the bartender, “I will have a sidecar, please,” and she had the sort of warmly intimate voice that made the request sound as though she were inviting the man into bed with her… and Shayne knew happily that this was going to be quite an evening.

  5

  “Do you like them too?” asked Shayne in a tone of politely surprised interest. “That’s quite a coincidence, isn’t it?”

  She glanced at him obliquely, as though she wasn’t quite certain what he meant, and he wondered if she supposed for a moment that he hadn’t got a full description of her from the taxi driver… had not recognized the perfume she was wearing.

  Then she said, “Oh? Sidecars, you mean? Is that what you’re drinking? It is a coincidence.” She opened her handbag on the bar and groped inside for a thin gold cigarette case, opened it and extracted a cigarette. Watching her with interest, Shayne caught a glimpse of green that came out with the cigarette.

  He struck a match and held it for her, asking politely, “May I?”

  She cupped her hands, touching his fingers to move the flame to the end of her cigarette. He felt something being pressed between his fingers, and she drew in smoke and moved her hand away from his and said composedly, “Thank you.”

  He shook out the match as the bartender set her cocktail in front of her. When the man moved away, Shayne dropped both hands into his lap beneath the bar and unfolded the tightly creased and minutely folded half of a thousand dollar bill which she had pressed between his fingers. He glanced at her and saw that she was looking down at the piece of currency in his hands, that she knew he had received it safely and must now know definitely who she was.

  He had no idea why she was playing it this way, but he went along with the act, making it appear that they were complete strangers, drawn together by the coincidence of both liking sidecars.

  He drained his glass and motioned to the bartender for a refill, asking her, “Have you ever tried one at the Brown Derby? They’re pretty special.”

  She murmured, “I’ve heard that.” There was a tightness in her voice and Shayne felt she was trying desperately to convey something to him without saying it aloud.

  He glanced up and down the bar, wondering what she was afraid of here, why she insisted on carrying out the rather absurd pretence to such lengths.

  He became conscious then that someone was standing very close behind him and just to his left, close enough, Shayne realized, to be able to overhear anything they said to each other.

  He said, “I’m a stranger in town… just trying to see some of the sights. I don’t want to seem presumptuous, but… can you suggest a good place to go for dinner… where some of the stars might be hanging out?”

  She chuckled throatily, as though genuinely amused, but behind the sound Shayne thought he sensed overwhelming fear, incipient hysteria.

  “You would not be… making a proposition, I trust?”

  Shayne said lamely, “Well, I…” Then he turned to her with a wide grin, glancing out of the side of his eyes at the man who stood so close behind them and declaring, “A perfectly honorable one. If you happen to be free for dinner…?”

  He turned his head farther to the left and glanced balefully at the man who stood there and told him harshly, “If you’re trying to order a drink, there’s an empty stool right down there.”

  He was a fat man with pale, innocuous features. He looked as embarrassed as though he had been caught in the act of peeking through a keyhole, and muttered, “I’m sorry, I… Of course. I had no intention…” He turned and moved to the empty stool Shayne had indicated.

  Elsa’s voice was low and strained, very close to his ear. “Let’s get out of here.” She slid off the stool and turned toward the outer door.

  He dropped a five-dollar bill on the bar and followed her, noticing that the fat man craned his head around to watch them go out together, exactly as a voyeur might avidly watch a sexual act being performed in front of him.

  Shayne went out the door into the Hollywood night behind Elsa and saw the doorman holding the door of a taxicab open while she stepped inside. He strode across the sidewalk and dropped half a dollar into the man’s hand and got in beside her.

  The door closed softly and the taxi pulled forward. She pressed warmly against him and put her head against his shoulder and began sobbing like a frightened child.

  Shayne put his arm tightly about her shoulders and held her very close, and spoke soothingly with his mouth against her ear:

  “It’s all right now. Relax.”

  “I’ve been so damn scared… so long.” She whispered the words against him, stopped sobbing and held her breath for a long moment, then let it out in a shuddering sigh.

  He began, “Now tell me for God’s sake…” but she hushed him with two fingers pressed against his lips, and murmured, “Just hold me without talking now. That driver…?”

  Shayne repressed a snort of derision. She had a bad case of the willies, all right. Did she think that every taxi driver in town was in league
against her?

  Instead of arguing the point at that moment, he asked her in a low voice, “Where to?”

  “Tell him… the Roosevelt Hotel.”

  They were headed east on Sunset, and when Shayne told the driver, “The Roosevelt, please,” he nodded his head and continued in the same direction.

  The blonde stirred against him and moved away slightly, but not out of the circle of his arm. She turned her head to look up steadily into his eyes, and in the bright lights of the boulevard he saw that her dark eyelashes were wet.

  “Michael Shayne.” She pronounced his name softly, almost disbelievingly, in a voice too low for the driver to hear. “You don’t remember me, do you? But I would have recognized you anywhere.”

  “Ten years ago?” he asked in the same confidential tone.

  She nodded slightly and a faint smile curved her full, red lips that were only inches away from his. “Mary Devon.”

  He repeated the name to himself, frowning and halfclosing his eyes, mentally going back over the years as he had done on the airplane earlier that day. Ten years back? She would have been in her early twenties… and she must have been beautiful even then to have matured into this improbably lush woman whose body was so warm against him.

  Mary Devon? Damn it, there was a nagging memory, but he could not grasp it. He shook his head slowly and said, “Sorry, but you’ll have to help me out.”

  “I was afraid I didn’t make much impression on you, Mr. Shayne. Why should I after all? You only saw me for a few minutes that one time. And you were pretty well preoccupied with my room-mate’s suicide which later turned out to be murder.”

  Cogs clicked in Michael Shayne’s mind. “Helen Taylor,” he said. “The Wanda Weatherby case. You were Helen’s room-mate. A television actress.”

  “It was radio in those days. I never saw you again, but I never forgot you, of course, and I kept reading about you in the papers. So, when I got into this… horrible mess… you were the only person I could think of to turn to. I’ve been so… utterly alone. I feel as though I’m just beginning to come alive again, to emerge from a frightful nightmare.”

  She kept her voice low, but it pulsed warmly and with a new vibrancy.

  The taxi had switched over to Hollywood Boulevard and was approaching the Roosevelt Hotel on the right. Mary drew away from him and sat up a little straighter, and he leaned forward to look at the meter and got out his wallet.

  She took his arm as they went in the brightly lighted entrance, and pressed it tightly against her side while they moved toward the elevators and the desk.

  Just in front of the desk she turned him away from the elevators to the left, past the desk and entrance to the dining room, and out the side entrance.

  He looked down at her in utter astonishment as she paused there at his side. “Where are we headed now?”

  “To my hotel,” she told him triumphantly. “Isn’t that the way a detective does it? I’ve got so careful these last few days that I never take a cab that’s waiting in front of a place directly to my hotel. I always change at least once and then take one that’s just pulling up. Like this,” she added as a taxi drew up in front of the side entrance to let out a passenger. “You see, he can’t possibly be waiting here for me to come out.”

  Shayne said wryly, “I see,” without seeing at all. She looked and acted sane enough, but she either had one hell of a persecution complex or he was right smack in the middle of one hell of a case.

  He helped her into the cab and she told him, “The Perriepont Hotel this time. I’m almost sure it’s safe for us to go there,” she added cheerfully. “I just checked in there this afternoon after ditching my tail at the Hilton as I explained in my note. That’s why I was so long getting to the Brown Derby… and that I don’t understand at all. Did you tell anyone you were meeting me there? But you couldn’t have because then you didn’t even know my real name… just Elsa Cornell… and I made that up when I decided to write to you.”

  “It must have been that taxi driver that brought you the note,” she decided suddenly. “It wasn’t even sealed and he must have read it before he gave it to you. I thought there was something funny about him… the way he pretended he couldn’t tell whether we were being followed or not. Oh, dear God,” she added feelingly, reaching for his hand and squeezing it, “I’m so sick of ducking around corners and being suspicious of everyone I see even looking at me. From now on, you can take over and do the worrying.”

  Shayne squeezed her fingers back reassuringly, although he didn’t know what the devil he was reassuring her about.

  6

  She had a very comfortable, but not ostentatious, two-room suite on the fourth floor of the Perriepont Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

  She closed the door behind the two of them with a long exhalation of relief and exclaimed, “Now I feel I can breathe easily for the first time in days. Sit down and I’ll order up a drink. You can see I haven’t even unpacked yet.” She gestured toward a closed suitcase and hatbox standing side by side just inside the door of a bedroom.

  Shayne sat in a comfortable chair beside a smoking stand and ran clawed fingers through his red hair while he appreciatively watched her sway across the room to the telephone. There was a pleasing air of exuberance about her now that was quite at variance with the first impression of taut strain she had given when she entered the Cock and Bull.

  She lifted the telephone and asked for room service, then glanced over her shoulder at him and asked, “A bottle? If they have it?”

  He nodded comfortably and lit a cigarette. She gave her room number and asked, “Is it possible to have a bottle sent up? Cognac, if you have it. Martel? That’s fine. With lots of ice and two glasses.” She hung up and turned slowly to look at him, nodding her head soberly. “You’re just the way I remembered you, Michael Shayne, only more so. God, if you knew how good it makes me feel just to have you here.” She made a little face at him. “I could kiss you… just out of sheer gratitude.”

  “I haven’t done anything,” he protested. “Later, perhaps. After I’ve earned it. Right now I feel like Alice on the other side of the Looking Glass.”

  He reached in his pocket for the torn half of the bill she had passed to him surreptitiously at the bar, and spread it out on his knee. Then he got her envelope from another pocket and extracted the other half from it, and gravely placed the torn edges together to make sure they matched.

  She seated herself at the end of a sofa a few feet from him and leaned forward to watch him with her chin cupped in her palm. She wrinkled her nose and said, “Whew. I really poured the perfume on that first half, didn’t I?”

  Shayne said, “You really did. Were you wearing that stuff ten years ago when I met you?”

  She smiled and said, “Probably not. I don’t think I could afford it in those days. I just hoped it would bring into your mind the memory of some entrancing femme fatale you’d known long ago, and you wouldn’t be able to resist it.”

  “It was that half of a one-grand bill that I couldn’t resist,” Shayne informed her. He folded the two halves together and carefully placed them inside his wallet. “Now, what’s your problem and what’s this foolishness about little men chasing you all over the metropolitan area of Los Angeles? Taxi drivers, and one of them who scared you away from the Brown Derby? I suppose that fatso who stood so close behind me at the Cock and Bull was another one of them,” he went on sarcastically, “and that’s why you insisted on the cloak and dagger stuff there?”

  “I know it sounds fantastic,” she told him calmly. “I’ll admit I have got the jitters, and I may be seeing them on every street corner when they’re not there at all, but so many crazy things have happened that I just don’t know any more. It’s a long story, and please don’t decide I’m insane before I finish telling it.” She hesitated. “I don’t know just where to start.”

  He stretched out his long legs and blew a contemplative cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. “Why not try the beginn
ing?”

  “That’s the trouble. Where does it begin? Oh well, you don’t need a lot of background stuff: It really began about six months ago when I first met Fidel Castro in Havana.”

  There was a knock on the door and she jumped up to admit a bellboy carrying a tray. She had him set it on a table across the room and signed the check and tipped him although Shayne was waving a dollar bill in the air.

  She put ice cubes in the two tall glasses the boy had brought, and poured cognac in one, and Shayne stopped her before she could repeat it with the second glass, telling her, “I’d like mine straight with water on the side if you’ve got an extra glass.”

  “Of course.” She gave him a dismayed smile. “Forgive me for forgetting your well-publicized drinking habits.” She went in the bathroom for another glass, poured it half full of cognac and brought it to him with a glass of ice water.

  She settled herself at the end of the sofa again and said uncomfortably, “I guess I can’t put it off any longer. I not only met Fidel but I fell for him. I don’t know how much Cuban stuff they’ve been printing in the Miami papers recently, but you may have read stories about an American actress who has been going around with him a lot. Her stage name is… was… Marianne Devlin.” Her voice hardened. “That was me, in case you haven’t guessed. There was a… an unpleasant bit of publicity in Hollywood a few years ago about a television actress named Mary Devon. It has nothing to do with this except as my reason for changing my name.”

  She paused, looking at him defiantly, and Shayne shrugged and said, “Go on with the Cuban bit. I don’t recall reading about Marianne Devlin and Castro. In fact, my impression of the man is that he doesn’t have anything to do with women.”

  “A gross misrepresentation,” she told him dryly. “You know how Cubans are about blondes? Well, I was at one of the luxury hotels in Havana in a floor show and he saw me and… liked me. All right,” she went on angrily, “I liked him, too. I was flattered that he wanted me for his mistress. He’s quite a guy. He’s still quite a guy,” she added, glaring at Shayne as though daring him to contradict her, “although he’s changed one hell of a lot since it’s come out in the open that he’s a communist.