Shoot to Kill

by Brett Halliday

  “How does that concern you or your client?” Shayne demanded bluntly.

  Mr. Sutter sighed and he blinked his eyes rapidly behind the rimless glasses. He settled himself more deeply and comfortably in his chair and reached inside his coat to take a fat cigar from the breast pocket. He bit off the end and got a lighter from a side pocket and put flame to the cigar. He pursed his thick lips and expelled a cloud of smoke, and began speaking as though each word he uttered was distasteful to him:

  “I came to Miami on a very definite and unpleasant mission. In my briefcase at the hotel I have an envelope containing twenty-five thousand dollars in currency which I was authorized to hand over to Wesley Ames in exchange for documents in his possession which would be ruinous to one of our valued clients if printed in Ames’ newspaper column. I am opposed to extortion and to the payment of blackmail in any form. The very thought is abhorrent to me. But I had no choice in this matter. I came here prepared to act for our client and make the exchange in good faith. Now, Ames is dead. I realize that the documents in question must be there in his study, accessible to whoever goes through his private papers and takes possession of them. I realize now that I will have failed my client if I return to New York tomorrow morning without those papers in my hands. That is why I am here, Mr. Shayne.”

  “Why?” demanded Shayne.

  “It seems to me that you are in a position to recover them at once, before someone else finds them and realizes their possible value. You appear to have the full confidence of the local police and it should not be difficult for you to gain access to the dead man’s study tonight on some pretext. The papers must be there at hand. All arrangements were made and Ames expected to turn them over to me tonight.”

  “Just what are these ‘papers’ that you were prepared to pay twenty-five grand for? What am I supposed to look for?”

  “They consist of certain original documents highly incriminating to our client,” Sutter told him primly. “I hesitate to divulge his name, but I must trust you I suppose. He is Alex Murchinson. The name may be unknown to you, but he is high in the councils of our city government and the documents consist of private agreements with certain prominent contractors in the city relating to what might be referred to, vulgarly, as kickbacks or payoffs for the awarding of certain contracts for services to be rendered the city. It was highly irregular and most imprudent for Mr. Murchinson to have such documents in his possession while vacationing here recently,” Sutter went on severely, “but some of the details were finalized here where it was convenient and safer to meet some of the other parties concerned without arousing suspicion.

  “They were stolen from his hotel suite on the night of his departure for New York,” the attorney continued, “by a woman who had insinuated herself into his confidence and was evidently in the employ of Ames for just such nefarious purposes. I have in my pocket photostatic copies of the original documents which were mailed to our client after his return to the city, with the thinly-veiled threat that unpleasant details would be subsequently primed in the Wesley Ames syndicated column unless payment of twenty-five thousand dollars was made to him. It was my intention to compare the photostats with the originals before turning over the money to Ames.”

  Shayne held out a big hand and said, “Let’s see what I’m supposed to search for in Ames’ study… providing I can get in for a look.”

  Sutter hesitated unhappily. “I… don’t know. I suppose I can rely on your discretion. This is a very delicate matter…”

  “Yeh,” said Shayne grimly and coldly. “I can see just how delicate it is. You’ve got a crooked city official conniving with crooked contractors to mulct the city out of money by passing out contracts on a kickback basis. If you want me to do anything for you hand over the photostats so I know what I’m looking for. If you don’t, get yourself and your stinking proposition out of here.”

  “Really, Mr. Shayne!” Sutter looked astonished, hurt and shocked by this outburst. “I’m not at all sure…”

  “Make up your mind fast,” snapped Shayne, getting up and turning to the table to pour himself another drink, and broadly winking at Lucy as he turned. “Normally,” he said with his back turned, “I consider a blackmailer a vicious scoundrel who deserves to be stamped on. But some blackmailees deserve any damned thing they get and it sounds to me as though your valued client Mr. Murchinson is in that category. If I had a syndicated column to do it in I’d probably publish the damned documents, and the only thing I really blame the dead man for is making a deal not to publish them. Are you going to give me the photostats or not?” he demanded harshly, turning back with his filled glass in one hand and holding the other out to Sutter.

  “I certainly do not care for your attitude, but under the circumstances I fear I have no choice.” Sutter withdrew a long white envelope from his pocket and passed it over with what remnants of dignity he could muster.

  Shayne sat down and opened the envelope, drew out some folded photostatic copies of legal-sized sheets and glanced through them briefly. He nodded and returned them to the envelope and handed them back to Sutter.

  “All right. I’ll see what I can do. I don’t know whether there will be a police guard over Ames’ study or not.”

  “There is,” Sutter told him. “I heard that sergeant directing that a man be stationed there before I left. That is why I thought of you and the possibility that you might be able to gain access to the room even though it has a police guard.”

  Shayne said, “I might be able to work something.” He looked across at Lucy and her glass which was still half-full. “Drink up, angel, and I’ll drop you off home on my way up to Ames’.”

  “Ah… about your fee, Mr. Shayne. If you are successful in recovering the evidence. Do you think a thousand dollars…?”

  “I think,” said Michael Shayne blandly, “that twenty-five grand will be exactly right.”

  “Twenty-five… thousand?” wailed Sutter. “For possibly half an hour’s work. That’s preposterous. I cannot possibly…”

  Shayne got up from his chair and towered over the pudgy seated man, his blunt jaw out-thrust.

  “You said you had an envelope in your hotel room containing that sum which you brought down here for the specific purpose of buying those papers. If they were worth that much three hours ago, they’re still worth that much. Don’t talk to me about any thousand bucks. Me, I’ve got at least as much probity as your client in New York. I’ll do your dirty job for the full twenty-five grand, but not a penny less. Take it or leave it.”

  He turned away angrily and drained his glass and slammed it down on the table.

  Mr. Sutter got up behind him and said weakly, “Well I… I was authorized to pay that amount, of course. It’s still extortion,” he went on bitterly, “but…”

  “It’s legal extortion this time,” Shayne told him cheerfully. “I’m simply gelling paid for doing a job. Go on back to your hotel and wait for me to call you. If I have any luck it’ll be within an hour.” He stood by the table and watched Sutter turn and go out of the room.

  11

  WHEN HE TURNED HIS HEAD THE REDHEAD SAW LUCY looking at him over the rim of her glass with a smile of tolerant exasperation. “You are the damnedest bundle of contradictions, Michael. That poor little man… it is extortion, you know. Pure and simple.”

  “You know what that poor little man had in the back of his mind?” Shayne demanded cynically.

  “He was just doing his job, Michael. Trying to save his client money.”

  Shayne said, “I wish I had your faith in human nature, angel. Saving his client’s money, hell! If I’m any judge of character he was hoping to go back to New York with the evidence in hand. Mission accomplished. Period. With twenty-four thousand bucks in cash stuck deep into his own pocket while I’m supposed to be grateful for one lousy grand for doing his dirty work for him.”

  “Does collecting twenty-five thousand for the job instead of one make it any less dirty?” demanded Lucy with spiri
t.

  “No. Not really. But it sure as hell salves my conscience. How else can I afford to buy you mink coats and things?”

  “I haven’t got a mink coat.”

  “Just what you need to salve your conscience,” Shayne told her enthusiastically. “We’ll go mink shopping tomorrow if I collect from Sutter tonight.” He glanced at the empty glass in his hand and then at his watch. “Finish your drink and let’s go.”

  Lucy Hamilton wrinkled her nose at him and finished her drink. They went out together and down the stairs to his car, and as they drove off she reminded him:

  “You never did tell me why you thought that call would be from Dorothy Larson and that you’d be lucky if it was. Why lucky? Why did you expect her to call you?”

  “I hoped it would be a call about her, at least. We don’t know where she is or what’s become of her.” He swiftly explained the condition of the Larson apartment when he and Rourke went there after the shooting. “What does your woman’s intuition make of that… in view of all the known circumstances?”

  “The last we know about her is when she telephoned you to say her husband had run out of their place with a gun and she was afraid he was going to shoot Wesley Ames? Is that right?”

  “That’s the last anyone seems to know about her.”

  “And there’s a half-packed suitcase on the bed, her clothes scattered around, and blood in the bathroom,” Lucy recapitulated thoughtfully. “I don’t know, Michael. She would naturally be terribly frightened and distressed. Your earlier visit must have worried her frightfully. I wonder…” She paused. “Under the circumstances do you suppose she might have called Mr. Ames to tell him the way things were going?”

  “Do you mean after she talked to me and before Ralph came back? Or after Ralph went out with a gun and she called me… to warn Ames?”

  “Well, I really meant after you talked to her. While she was sitting there planning what to say to Ralph when he came home. If she was having some sort of affair with Ames, wouldn’t she be likely to call him to break it off?”

  “U-m-m,” ruminated Shayne. “And maybe he was serious about her. Maybe he said, ‘To hell with that husband of yours, babe. Pack a bag and get out of there to avoid a violent scene.’ Is that what you’re thinking?”

  “I hadn’t gone that far,” Lucy said honestly. “But it might have been that way. And if Ralph came back unexpectedly and caught her packing…”

  Shayne slowed and turned off the Boulevard onto Lucy’s side street. He said slowly, “I’m trying to remember whether there was a telephone in Ames’ study. I’d suspect he’d have a private line there, but I don’t recall seeing one. It’s where he closed himself up to do his work, and maybe he didn’t have one. Normally I suppose his secretary would handle his calls. It’s something I’ll have to check on if I can get in there tonight.”

  He drew up at the curb opposite Lucy’s apartment, and got out to go across the street with her and wait in the little foyer while she unlocked the outer door of the building. She turned with the door held open and lifted her face to his, and he gave her a gentle goodnight kiss, and she said, “Be careful, Michael. Don’t get into any trouble over a measly twenty-five thousand dollars. I honestly don’t need a mink coat in Miami.”

  He grinned and patted her shoulder and promised, “I’ll let you know how it turns out… if it isn’t too late.”

  He went across to his car whistling under his breath and telling himself he had a mighty fine secretary and one who deserved mink if any secretary in Miami did.

  The driveway and parking area in front of the Ames house were dark when he approached the gateway, but lights showed in both the first and second stories of the house.

  The floodlights came on automatically and almost blindingly as he turned in between the gateposts, and there were now two cars parked behind the black Cadillac sedan. The police cars and Larson’s compact were gone, but there was a cream-colored, open, convertible Thunderbird and behind it a late-model Pontiac.

  Shayne pulled up behind the Pontiac and got out in the bright glare of the floodlights, and the front door opened and a man stood there looking at him as he approached.

  He was a young man with a slender well-knit body, wearing a yellow polo shirt that was molded to his muscled shoulders and a pair of dark tan slacks. He had close-cropped, burnished black hair and a thin black mustache that was shaved to make a straight line across his upper lip, and he had mobile, intelligent features.

  He blocked the doorway so that Shayne stopped directly in front of him, and he said with cool aloofness, “I think you must be Mike Shayne, the private eye. I understand you were here once before tonight. What is it this time?”

  Shayne said, “Some unfinished business. Are you Conroy?”

  “I am… yes. I understood that the police investigation was closed.”

  “My private investigation isn’t,” Shayne told the secretary in a tone that matched his. “What’s the protocol here? Do you get out of my way or do I push?”

  “For heaven’s sake, let the man in, Vic,” came Mark Ames’ tired voice from the interior of the room. “If he has any further questions let’s get them answered and done with.”

  Victor Conroy shrugged his shoulders with a faint hint of insolence, and stepped backward quietly out of the doorway. Shayne entered and nodded to Mark Ames who stood at the end of a wide brocaded sofa at the right with a highball glass in his hand. A tall, slender, elegantly-gowned woman was slumped back on the sofa beside him with her long legs carelessly crossed to expose a couple of inches of silken-clad thigh, and with a sullen expression on the darkly Semitic beauty of her face. She, too, held a highball glass, and she looked as though she had been belting down drinks in a hurry.

  Ames nodded back to Shayne and looked down at the woman, and said, “It’s Mike Shayne, Helena. The detective who tried to get here in time to save Wes’s life but was about sixty seconds too late.”

  “Well, thank God for that.” The widow straightened her shoulders and her intensely black eyes were luminous. She spoke concisely, with no slurring of her consonants. “Why did you come back, Mr. Shayne? To collect the medal you so richly deserve for getting here sixty seconds too late?”

  “Now, Helena,” said Ames worriedly, dropping the thin fingers of his right hand to touch her shoulder lightly. “It isn’t necessary to be too blatant about the way you feel.”

  She shrugged and said, “I doubt whether this redheaded man gives a damn one way or the other how I feel. And if he does, he can lump it. Can’t you, Mister?”

  Shayne nodded impassively. “I certainly can, Mrs. Ames. It’s a pleasure to meet a forthright female.”

  “Hear that, Mark? He’s not a sniveling hypocrite. He must have known my dear departed husband because to know him was to hate him. Did you hate him, Mr. Shayne?”

  “I didn’t know him that well.” Shayne turned away from the murdered man’s brother and his widow to the secretary. “I’d like a word with you, Conroy.”

  Victor Conroy shrugged and said, “Okay by me. We’ve already told the police all we know.”

  “Shall we go in your office?” Without waiting for Conroy’s acquiescence, Shayne led the way into the room that Griggs had used earlier. He waited by the double doors until Conroy was inside, then closed them saying, “I’ve got a hunch those two in the living room would just as leave be alone with their grief.”

  Conroy allowed himself to smile reluctantly at this. “My former boss had a way about him,” he admitted wryly. “Helena shouldn’t get tanked up like this… not while Mark’s around. Not that it matters much I guess,” he went on sourly. “Ralph Larson did them both a favor by knocking Ames off the way he did. You can’t put a woman in jail for admitting she’s glad her husband has been murdered.”

  “How about you?” demanded Shayne. “Are you joining in the general rejoicing?”

  Conroy shrugged his shoulders and met the detective’s gaze squarely. “I’ve lost a job. Wesley Ames w
as a son-of-a-bitch to work for, but he paid well.”

  “What will become of the column now?”

  “It’ll automatically be canceled. He was a few weeks ahead and the papers will run those, I suppose. But the column was Wesley Ames. No one can step into his shoes.”

  “What I’m wondering,” said Shayne softly, “is who will inherit his files? The bits of nasty gossip he’s collected but has never printed about a lot of important people.”

  Conroy seemed not to understand what Shayne was driving at. “I suppose it’s all part of his estate,” he said indifferently. “His widow inherits so far as I know.”

  “Will she be likely to keep you on the job for a time? To sort things out and catalog them?”

  “I doubt it.” Victor Conroy scowled darkly. “More likely she’ll just consign everything to the incinerator without even looking at the files. She hated his column,” he explained. “She hated the sort of man it had turned him into. She liked the money it brought him, but that’s all she did like about it.”

  Shayne lit a cigarette and looked inquiringly about the secretary’s office, letting his gaze come to rest on the filing cabinets along the wall. “Did he keep all his material in here? Did you file it all?”

  “All that he trusted out of his own sight. He had personal stuff in his desk upstairs that he considered too explosive for even my eyes. He went to a lot of trouble to explain that to me one day,” Conroy went on angrily. “He was guarding me against temptation, he told me. There was stuff that couldn’t be printed because it would ruin people’s lives if it were, and he was afraid I might use it for blackmail if I got my hands on it.” Conroy shrugged. “To hell with it. He’s dead now and I won’t say I’m sorry.”

  “So far,” said Shayne flatly, “I haven’t found anyone who is. Did he have a telephone in his study?”

  “No. It was one of his idiosyncrasies. That was the Master’s Sanctum Sanctorum. When he closed that outer door and hung the Do Not Disturb sign out he was alone with his conscience. Which means he was pretty damned well alone,” Conroy interpolated with a contemptuous smile. “Anyhow, he wouldn’t stand for any interruption except for special visitors who had definite appointments and whom I was supposed to send around to the outside stairway where he would unbolt the door to let them in and bolt it when they left.”