Murder Is My Business ms-11

by Brett Halliday

“Why would he?” Shayne asked angrily. “Lance wasn’t the kind to come crawling back after you kicked him in the teeth.”

  “I know.” Her upper lip trembled, and a semblance of the fire Shayne had seen years ago kindled in her eyes. “I’ve hated myself for letting Father do that to me. But I was so young, Michael. I had been reared to think he was like God. My mother was Spanish, you know. She taught me that it was a woman’s place to submit.”

  Shayne ignored the plea in her voice. He asked impatiently, “Do you know where Lance has been? What he’s been doing?”

  “I heard indirectly that he went to China. And later to Germany. Neil Cochrane called me once to say he had heard a short-wave propaganda broadcast from Berlin by Lance. I didn’t believe it, but Neil later sent me a news clipping giving Lance’s name as one of a group of renegade American journalists aiding Hitler.”

  Shayne scowled over a drink of cognac and was silent. The girl in front of him needed to talk things out. She had kept too much bottled up for too long.

  “And now Lance is back in El Paso,” she went on drearily. “He looks old and bitter and defeated. I thought you might be in touch with him. I thought that might be the reason you are here.”

  Shayne cocked his red head and said sardonically, “If you read the Free Press you know I’m here to help your father get himself elected mayor of El Paso.”

  “That’s not what he says.” For the first time since Shayne had entered the room there was a hint of laughter in her voice. “You should have heard him raving this morning after you left the house.”

  “After I fixed an autopsy to show he didn’t kill the soldier,” murmured Shayne. “You’d think he’d be grateful.”

  “He knows no one will believe the autopsy. He’d much rather take the blame and have the incident forgotten.”

  Shayne said, “He’d make a better mayor than John Carter.”

  “I hope he’s defeated,” Carmela exclaimed passionately. “He’s always had everything his way. He thinks he’s a man of destiny. No one has ever successfully opposed him. Not for ten years. You don’t know his cruelty and his arrogance.”

  Shayne reached for the bottle of cognac. He held it out toward her. Carmela relaxed and nodded listlessly. She picked up the overturned glass beside her chair and held it while Shayne poured it a quarter full. She drank half of it as though it were water.

  “No one knows how I hate him. It’s a horrible thing to say about one’s father, but it’s true. He’s made me hate myself. I’ll never forgive him for that.”

  “What do you suppose he was doing at the corner of Lawton and Missouri when he ran over the soldier? It’s a block off the route out to his smelter.”

  “I suppose he was on his way to see that woman,” she said without looking up.

  “What woman, Carmela?”

  Carmela lifted one thin shoulder in a shrug of disgust and drank the rest of the cognac. “There’s a woman, in the next block on Missouri. I’ve known about her for a long time. Her name is Morales. He doesn’t know I know, but I haven’t cared what he did. She lives in a little house set back from the street with a high cedar hedge in front. I trailed him there once, out of curiosity.”

  “Does he go to see her regularly?” Shayne asked the question in a casual tone.

  “Two or three times a week,” she replied with hard indifference. “I don’t think he has regular days, if that’s what you mean.”

  “It is what I mean,” he said harshly. “You see, Carmela, whether anyone believes it or not, that soldier was dead before your father’s car ran over him. Murdered — and then placed in the street to be run over.”

  Carmela’s black eyes flickered toward the cognac bottle. The tip of her tongue moistened her lips. Shayne poured a small drink and handed it to her. “So I’m trying to find out who might have known Towne would be turning that corner at just that time. Someone put the body there. Someone who wanted Jefferson Towne to run over it.”

  Carmela was turning the glass around and around in her hands, staring into the amber fluid as though it fascinated her. “Would anyone go to that trouble — commit a murder just to make Father think he had accidentally run over a man?”

  “It’s likely to make the difference in the coming election,” he said. “And it might not have been a murder committed for that single purpose.” He paused, then added, “It’s a neat way to dispose of a body, to cover up a murder. It would have stayed on the books as a traffic accident if I hadn’t horned in with an autopsy.”

  “Why don’t you leave it the way it is?” Carmela cried out suddenly. “If you solve the case and prove that someone else murdered the soldier and put him there it’ll clear Father completely. He’ll win the election. I thought you hated him as I do. Ten years ago, you said-”

  “Ten years ago,” Shayne told her flatly, “I told your father what I thought of a man who would pay to have me dig up non-existent dirt against Lance Bayliss to prevent his daughter’s marriage. My opinion remains the same today. But I’ve stumbled onto a murder, Carmela. Murder is my business. And I’ve got some money and time invested in this thing now. I’ve got to figure a way to collect a fee.”

  “I won’t help you exonerate Father!” Carmela cried shrilly. “I’ll see him in hell first. I hope whoever did it gets away with it and he doesn’t get a vote in the election.”

  Shayne said, “You should have exhibited some of this brave spirit ten years ago.”

  Carmela Towne put her fingers over her face and bowed her head and began to cry. Her weeping had an obscene sound. It was as though something had rotted away inside of her, and her tears were a suppurating excrement bubbling up under the pressure of long decay.

  Shayne got up and walked away from her. The sound of her weeping followed him across the room. He clawed at his red hair and watched somberly, but made no move toward her and said nothing to halt the flow of tears.

  His telephone shrilled loudly. Carmela took her hands away from her tear-streaked face to look at him as he strode across to answer it. Shayne said, “Yes?” and listened. His eyes narrowed and his gaunt features hardened. He started to protest, “Not right now,” but he shrugged and replaced the instrument.

  “He hung up on me before I could stop him,” he told Carmela quietly. “It was Lance. He’s on his way up here.”

  She jumped up with an abject cry of fright.

  Shayne went to her swiftly and put his arm about her shoulders. He swung her toward the open bathroom door and gave her a little shove. “Go in there and lock the door. It might do you good to listen in at the keyhole and see what Lance has to say for himself.”

  She stumbled toward the door and went inside, pulled it shut behind her. Shayne waited until he heard the click of the lock from the inside, then went slowly across to open his door. He heard the elevator stop down the hall and let out a passenger, and waited to meet Lance Bayliss.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Bayliss would have been almost as tall as Shayne had Bayliss stood erect. He didn’t. His shoulders drooped wearily, and his back appeared to be permanently bowed. His head was lowered, and he walked with a curious shuffle as though to balance his body with each step. Tendons stood out on each side of his neck, and he wore a shabby gray suit and a black bow tie about the frayed collar of a dingy white shirt. Ten years had thickened his torso and he looked well-fed, but his eyes held an expression of secretive wariness, and he seemed prepared to cringe should a hand suddenly be lifted against him.

  Shayne put out his hand and said heartily, “Lance Bayliss!” After a moment’s hesitation Lance put his hand in Shayne’s. He didn’t lift his head to look directly into the detective’s eyes when he muttered, “Hello, Shayne. I didn’t suppose I’d ever see you again.”

  Shayne kept hold of his hand and stepped back, urging him inside the room. “Come on in and have a drink.”

  He narrowed his eyes as he noted the manner in which Lance Bayliss entered the hotel room. It told him a lot about what had happened to t
he man during the past ten years. Lance came in with a sort of furtive stealth, darting his eyes around in all directions suspiciously, behind the door and under the bed, and at the open closet door and the closed bathroom door. He kept moving toward the center of the room, and then stopped to look back slyly over his shoulder while Shayne closed the door. He said, “I guess I could use a drink.”

  Shayne went past him and picked up Carmela’s glass and set it beside his own on the bedside table. He split the remainder of the cognac in the two glasses.

  When he turned to offer one to Lance, his guest said, “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything by coming up.”

  “Nothing important,” Shayne told him pleasantly.

  “I couldn’t help noticing the two glasses,” Lance apologized. “You’re not — married?”

  Shayne said, “No,” shortly. “Are you?”

  Lance Bayliss shook his head. His hand trembled slightly as he lifted the glass to his lips. He murmured sardonically, “To older and happier days.”

  Shayne sat down abruptly in the chair Carmela had occupied. He indicated another chair and asked, “What have you been doing with yourself?”

  “Nothing important. Bumming around here and there.”

  “Writing any poetry?”

  “Hardly.” Lance balanced his glass on his knee and watched it carefully, as though he feared it might disappear from his hand if he didn’t keep his eyes fixed on it.

  “Too busy writing propaganda for the Third Reich?” Shayne purposely made his voice harsh.

  Lance Bayliss wet his lips. He didn’t look up. “So you know about that?”

  “Carmela Towne told me.”

  He winced at the sound of her name. “It was a dirty business,” he said quietly. “I didn’t think anything mattered during those years. I was being very cynical and disillusioned. The war woke me up.” He lifted his eyes to Shayne’s momentarily. “You’ve got to believe me,” he said strongly. “I pulled out of it when Hitler marched into Poland.”

  “Since then?”

  Lance shrugged. “Dodging the Gestapo mostly. I got to Mexico finally and ghosted a book there.”

  “What sort of a book?”

  “Dictators I Have Known.”

  Shayne jerked to closer attention. “That was by the war correspondent Douglas Gershon.”

  “His name was signed to it,” Lance admitted wryly. “I understand it sold well.”

  “It caused a lot of controversy. Half the people who read it found it pro-Fascist.”

  “It wasn’t at all,” Lance protested. “People felt that merely because it represented the dictators as human beings. They are human, and all the more despicable because of that. Hell, the book was banned in Germany and all the occupied countries.” His grayish-blue eyes flashed fire at Shayne, then flickered away.

  “Which might have been smart propaganda to get it more widely read over here,” Shayne pointed out.

  Lance Bayliss sighed and finished his drink. He set the empty glass down and said, “I can’t prove it, but I’m on the Gestapo blacklist for having ghosted the book. I had to get out of Mexico in a hurry. You know what happened to Douglas Gershon,” he ended hoarsely.

  “Had some sort of accident in New York, didn’t he?”

  “They called it an accident. Gershon was murdered. I happen to know the Gestapo got him.”

  Shayne shrugged his indifference to the incident and said in a friendly tone, “What are you doing in El Paso, Lance?”

  “Gathering material for a new book on Gestapo activities in this country.” Lance’s voice became animated and he looked squarely at Shayne. “It will include the true dope on some of our native Fascists who are either consciously or unconsciously collaborating.”

  “Isn’t it dangerous?”

  “I’ve lived with danger so much the last few years,” Lance said slowly, “it’s lost its impact.”

  Shayne took out a pack of cigarettes and offered them to Lance, who accepted avidly. Thumbnailing a match, Shayne lit both of them, spun the matchstick across the room, and asked, “Did you just drop in here to see me for old times’ sake, or was there something in particular?”

  “I wanted to see what kind of man you’d turned into,” Lance told him coolly. “Your championship of Jefferson Towne intrigues me.”

  “He’d make El Paso a good mayor.”

  Lance Bayliss uttered an angry exclamation, and rose to stride up and down the hotel room. His words came in a rush: “That’s typical of this country’s smug way of thinking. Towne is a menace to the community and to America. He has the true Leader complex. Damn it, Shayne, don’t you realize he sees himself as the Man-on-Horseback? The mayoralty of El Paso first. That’s a stepping stone. A springboard to launch him into state and national politics. He’s as dangerous as a Hitler. And you’re helping him get elected by clearing him in a lucky accident that might have prevented his election.”

  “I don’t think he’s that dangerous,” Shayne argued good-naturedly. “You’re in the habit of looking for bogymen around every corner.”

  “That’s the trouble with you here in America.” Lance Bayliss stopped in mid-stride to level a trembling forefinger at Shayne. “You underestimate the danger. You sit back and say blandly, ‘It can’t happen here.’ It can! It happened in Germany. You don’t realize the forces moving us toward Fascism in the United States, with men like Jeff Towne eager to lead the movement.”

  Shayne said, “Perhaps,” remaining unperturbed.

  “There’s no perhaps about it. Men like Towne have to be stopped before they get started. He was stopped until you stepped in with your talk of an autopsy to muddy the issue. You used to stand for something, Shayne. Have you changed so much in ten years?”

  “I draw bigger fees than I did ten years ago.”

  “Is a fat fee more important to you than the welfare of your country?” Lance’s voice trembled with wrath.

  Shayne made a derisive gesture. “I can’t believe the fate of one small city election is so important.” He paused a moment and then added, “What would you have me do?”

  “Drop the whole investigation. Get out of El Paso, and let the voters defeat Towne.”

  Shayne said, “A lot of different people are eager to have me drop the investigation. I’m beginning to wonder what all of them are afraid of.”

  “I’m telling you what I’m afraid of,” Lance assured him angrily. He took time out to choke back his anger, went on in a more reasonable tone: “You’ve got to realize this is something big, and there are people determined to block you. You’ll drop it like a hot brick if you’re smart.”

  “And if I’m not?” Shayne’s voice was hard.

  “I won’t be responsible for what happens.” Lance Bayliss shrugged his thin shoulders. “Think it over. A fat fee from Towne won’t do you much good in your coffin.”

  “That might be construed as a threat,” Shayne mused.

  “Construe it any damned way you want,” muttered Lance apathetically. He went toward the closed bathroom door, asking, “This your bathroom?”

  Shayne said, “Yes. Help yourself.” He emptied his glass of cognac while Lance tried the door.

  “It’s locked.” Lance whirled about suspiciously. “There’s someone in there! By God-”

  “It’s a connecting bathroom,” Shayne lied calmly. “Guy in the next room must be using it. Christ, fellow,” he went on good-naturedly, “you need to quiet down and relax. This is the U.S. Remember? We don’t have SS squads concealed in every hotel room.”

  “I am jumpy,” Lance conceded with a bitter twist of his lips. “I’m sorry you’re determined to be stubborn about going to bat for Towne. I guess there isn’t much more to say.”

  “I guess there isn’t.” Shayne stayed in his chair. “If you feel like settling down to chew over other things, I’ll see if I can get a fresh bottle sent up.”

  Lance said, “Thanks. No.” He was edging toward the door. “Think over what I’ve told you. I’ll be
around and-”

  The bathroom door swung open, and Carmela Towne was outlined in the doorway. She cried out, “Lance!”

  He turned his head very deliberately to look at her. His gaze was impersonal and searching. He drew in his breath, and the small sound was loud in the stillness of the hotel room. He looked back at Shayne and said acidly, “I’m sorry I interrupted your drinking party. I’ll get out and let you finish it.” He went swiftly to the door and jerked it open.

  Carmela swayed forward and cried out, “Lance,” again.

  He stepped out, and the slamming of the door echoed his name.

  Carmela turned numbly toward Shayne. “Did you see his eyes when he looked at me? He hates me, Michael.”

  Shayne said evenly, “Ten years have taught him to hate a lot of things, Carmela.”

  “I heard everything he said. About Father and all. Do you believe them, Michael? Can they be true?”

  Shayne said, “I don’t know.” He sighed. “I’m not even sure that Lance believes them.”

  Carmela came toward him slowly. Her features were haggard and tightly drawn. Her dark eyes glittered insistently. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I’m not sure.” Shayne moved restively in his chair. “I’m only sure that Lance is trying to balk a complete investigation into the death of the soldier. Other people are trying to do the same thing for different reasons.” He got up and jerked his head curtly toward the chair. “Sit down and relax. I’ll order up that bottle and we’ll pour ourselves a drink.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Early in the afternoon Shayne strolled down to police headquarters and went up a corridor toward Chief Dyer’s private office. He was nearing the door when it opened and Dyer came out. He was accompanied by Neil Cochrane of the Free Press and a long-legged young man with tousled hair and a solemn face and round, wondering eyes behind a pair of thick-lensed glasses.

  Dyer was puffing explosively on his inevitable cigarette in its long holder. When he saw Shayne, he told the two men, “Here he is now, if you want to ask him those questions. You can use my office if you like. You know Cochrane, don’t you, Shayne? And this is Jasper Dodge, on the morning paper.”