Shoot to Kill ms-49

by Brett Halliday

  He stopped beside the table as Lucio drew out a chair, and looked down into Lucy’s sparkling brown eyes when she glanced up at him, and she was startled for a moment by the intensity of his expression. Her bright smile faded and she exclaimed, “Michael! You look as though you’d never seen me before.”

  “I’ve never seen you look so devastating,” he told her. “How many champagne cocktails have you had?”

  “This is just my second, but I’ll certainly have several more if they’re going to produce that effect on my boss.”

  Shayne nodded approvingly and said, “You do that. Tim’s paying the bill tonight. Did you hear that, Lucio?” he added to the proprietor as he seated himself between the two.

  “Assuredly, Mr. Shayne. A sidecar for you? With Martel and not too heavy on the Cointreau, eh?”

  Shayne said, “Please,” and Rourke leaned toward him eagerly and asked, “Did you see the lady, Mike?”

  “I saw her.”

  “And talked to her?”

  “Like a Dutch Uncle.”

  “And did you…?”

  “I scared the pants off her.” Shayne glanced at Lucy and grinned. “Don’t take that literally, angel. I don’t even know whether she had any pants on. Anyhow, she promised to start behaving herself like a proper wife and quit seeing Wesley Ames. I don’t know how much Tim told you about this, Lucy…”

  “He told me all about it.” She screwed up her face in a grimace of distaste and then drank from her tall-stemmed glass. “From what I’ve heard of Wesley Ames I’m not at all certain that you did humanity any great favor by persuading Tim’s friend not to kill him.”

  “I’m sure it’s only a temporary reprieve,” Rourke assured her. “There must be dozens of people gunning for Ames and one of them will certainly catch up with him before long. I’ll just be happy if it isn’t Ralph Larson. How did Dorothy react, Mike?”

  A brimming sidecar was placed in front of Shayne by their waiter. He lifted it carefully so as not to spill a single drop and drank half of it with open pleasure.

  “She indignantly denied any wrong-doing with Ames, but she somehow got the impression that her husband had hired me to get the dirt on the two of them, and she certainly wasn’t anxious to have me tell him what I’d found out.” He shrugged and took another sip of his cocktail. “I’d say she’s basically a cold and calculating type.”

  “But ‘damn well-stacked’ according to Tim’s graphic description,” gurgled Lucy.

  Shayne said disparagingly, “Any woman who can fill a B-cup is well-stacked according to Tim. And that reminds me… have you ever seen the Larsons’ neighbor from across the hall, Tim?”

  “What reminds you?” demanded Lucy.

  “Not B-cups,” Shayne assured her with a sidelong, teasing grin. “How about it, Tim?”

  “I’ve never been to that apartment. But I do believe I’ve heard a description of the lady’s charms from Ralph soon after they moved in. Magnified in the telling, no doubt.”

  Shayne chuckled and said, “That I doubt.” He glanced at Lucy and saw a frosty look of suspicion beginning to dawn on her face, and explained hastily, “She’s one of those females who goes slopping around in the afternoon barefooted, angel. Not my type at all.”

  “You seem to have done a fair amount of detecting in a rather short time,” she suggested.

  “Not really. I just happened to catch a glimpse of her while I was ringing the Larson doorbell. What’s the most expensive thing on the menu?” Shayne picked it up and spread it out in front of him, hiding his face behind it while he ostentatiously ran a blunt forefinger down the list of prices at the right-hand side.

  It was just seven-thirty when the trio left the restaurant after an excellent dinner over which they had dawdled comfortably and companionably and for which Timothy Rourke had paid the bill without protest.

  As they went out into the warm night, Shayne suggested, “Suppose Lucy and I go along to her apartment and you follow us, Tim, and stop for a nightcap. You don’t need to get back to the paper for another hour, do you?”

  “No, but my car’s there now,” Rourke told him. “I picked Lucy up in a taxi because I knew you were meeting us here.”

  “Then we’ll all go to Lucy’s together,” Shayne decided. “I’ll take you on to the office whenever you want because I’m headed for an early bed and a solid night’s sleep.”

  Timothy Rourke said sure, that would be fine with him, and they all got in the front seat of Shayne’s car and he drove back to Biscayne Boulevard and turned south toward the city.

  They were a few blocks from Lucy’s turnoff when she wriggled uncomfortably on the seat between them and said plaintively, “Michael. I’ve just remembered something terrible. You’re going to beat me for sure.”

  “What’s terrible?” he asked indulgently.

  “I haven’t got any cognac,” she confessed in a stricken voice. “Remember? Last time you were there you finished the bottle.”

  “But that was over a week ago,” he protested. “You’ve had plenty of time to pick up another one.”

  “I know. And the last time I ran out you threatened to beat me if I ever let it happen again. And I forgot.”

  “With a cat-o-nine-tails,” Shayne amplified with relish. “You’re a witness, Tim. These damn secretaries. Won’t even go to the trouble of stocking their boss’s favorite beverage on the chance that he may drop in for a drink. All right for you, young lady.” He kept on driving steadily south, passing the street on which Lucy lived. “We’ll all go to my place where there is cognac. And we’ll have a drink or two or three and I’ll work myself up into the proper mood and then I’ll flog you, but good. While Tim holds you firmly over his knees.”

  “Just so there’s bourbon as well as cognac,” Rourke said firmly. “Last time I was up at your room I had to make do with Scotch.”

  “An entire fifth, if my memory serves,” Shayne agreed drily. “I assure you I hurried out the next day and stocked up with cheap bourbon. Your favorite. Old Outhouse.”

  Rourke said, “Ah,” fondly, and smacked his lips in anticipation, and Lucy giggled and Shayne slowed for the traffic light at Flagler Street and then drove on and made a right turn and a left turn to draw into the curb at the side entrance to his hotel on the north bank of the Miami River where he had maintained a second-floor bachelor apartment since either of them had known him.

  They got out and went in a side door and up a single flight of stairs that by-passed the lobby, and past the elevators to a door which opened into the shabby suite which both his visitors knew so well.

  Entering in front of them, Shayne switched on the ceiling light with a wall switch and tossed his hat on a rack beside the door in passing. He headed straight for the kitchen on the right, saying, “Set out the bottles, Tim, and I’ll get a pitcher of ice. You want Benedictine to settle those champagne cocktails, Lucy?”

  “I don’t want to settle them,” she protested. “What a horrible thought Can’t I have a C and C instead?”

  “Now what in hell,” asked Rourke wonderingly, “is a C and C? I’ve heard of B and B’s, but…”

  “A C and C is Michael’s own private receipt… for a sidecar when he hasn’t any lemons. And he never does.”

  “Cognac and Cointreau,” guessed Rourke, going toward the liquor cabinet on the wall near the kitchen door. “So that’s what he plies his women with? Lucy, I would never have suspected…”

  The telephone on the center table in the living room interrupted him. Both he and Lucy turned to look at it accusingly. Neither of them did anything constructive and it kept on ringing until Shayne came in from the kitchen with a tray that had a pitcher of ice cubes and various sized glasses.

  The telephone continued to ring while he set the tray on the table beside it. He picked it up and said, “Mike Shayne,” into the mouthpiece.

  A woman’s voice came leaping over the wire, shrill with fright and hysteria: “Mr. Shayne! You’ve got to stop Ralph. He’s got a
gun and he’s going to kill Mr. Ames.”

  “Is that Mrs. Larson?”

  “Yes. Of course. Didn’t you hear me? Don’t you understand? Ralph is like a raving maniac. He’s on his way to the Ames house now. You’ve got to stop him.”

  “Have you called the police?”

  “The police? No. I don’t want him arrested. Can’t you hurry and stop him?”

  “Where does Ames live?”

  “It’s Northeast One-Hundred and Twentieth Street. Near the Bay. I don’t know the street number, but…”

  Shayne said, “I’m on my way.” He dropped the instrument on its prongs and whirled to face the other two who were standing in the center of the room looking at him with open mouths.

  “Call the cops, Lucy. Emergency. Get a radio car out to the Wesley Ames residence on Northeast Hundred and Twentieth Street near the bayshore. Ralph Larson is on his way out there with a gun and he’s got a hell of a head start on us. Come on, Tim.”

  He was trotting toward the door as he ended, and he jerked it open and went out hatless. Timothy Rourke was close behind him as he pounded down the hallway to the stairs and down to the side entrance. He ran around to the driver’s seat of his parked car and the reporter slid in beside him as he turned on the ignition. He grimly made a screaming U-turn in front of oncoming traffic, made a sweeping right turn on a yellow light at the first intersection, and gunned the heavy car viciously to catch a green light at the Boulevard and straighten out northward on the long run to 120th Street.

  Timothy Rourke sat tensely beside him, leaning forward with both hands clasped over his knees, his lips moving in a mumbled prayer while Shayne picked holes in the traffic, weaving from the inner lane to the center and outside, using his horn angrily and alternating with brakes and accelerator to hit the traffic lights as they changed color up the Boulevard.

  “You don’t have to get there in nothing flat,” muttered Rourke plaintively. “Better if we make it all in one piece. Lucy will have called the police. If there’s a patrol car cruising nearby they’ll be in time to stop the fool.”

  “If there’s a car close,” Shayne agreed grimly. “If not he’ll practically be there by this time. He was halfway there before we started.”

  “But he won’t be making eighty through traffic the way you are. Goddamn it, Mike.” Rourke shuddered and closed his eyes as the redhead cut in front of a car on his left and slid through a hole that should have taken the paint off both sides of his car but somehow didn’t.

  “Keep your eyes closed,” Shayne advised him cheerfully. “That’s Seventy-Ninth ahead. If I can hit that light…”

  He did hit it a moment after it changed to red, but side traffic hadn’t begun to move and he went through the intersection unscathed. Traffic was thinner north of Seventy-Ninth, and Rourke forced himself to relax and he asked wonderingly, “What in hell happened to trigger Ralph off tonight? I thought you had it all set with Dorothy…”

  “I thought so too. She didn’t say over the phone. Just that he had a gun and was on his way to kill Ames. Goddamn woman probably changed her mind,” he grated. “Threw it in his face or something. Know what kind of car Ralph drives?”

  “N-no. Blue with a white top, I think. One of the new compacts. I can’t tell one from another.”

  They passed 110th Street doing eighty-five and Shayne took his foot off the gas and said, “We’ll know soon enough. If the cops are already there and got him, let me handle it, Tim. Jail is the best place for him until he cools off.”

  He touched the accelerator lightly again to maintain a speed of forty as he approached 120th, braked sharply and swung to the right on a two-lane street that dead-ended against the western shore of Biscayne Bay a few blocks ahead. There were no tail-lights ahead of them. Scattered houses were lighted on either side of the street, large estates that appeared calm and peaceful at this early evening hour.

  “I think it’s on the end at the right.” Rourke was sitting erect scanning the houses as they passed. “I was here at a party once several years ago. I remember there’s a stone wall and wide entrance gates.”

  The last house on the right was a large mansion at the end of a short drive through an arched gateway behind a high stone wall. The driveway and a large paved parking area in front was brilliantly lighted by two glaring floodlights mounted well up at either end of the house.

  Two cars were in sight as Shayne swung into the driveway. A black Cadillac sedan stood under the porte-cochere and a blue and white compact was parked directly behind it. Lights blazed from the lower front windows of the house, and the front door opened and the figure of a man disappeared inside and the door slammed shut just as Shayne swung in behind the compact.

  He cut his motor and leaped out, and heard a loud shout and something that sounded like a crash from inside the house as he sprinted toward the front door.

  It opened inward onto a large square living room that was brilliantly illuminated like a stage setting.

  A man lay on his side ten feet in front of the door, struggling up to a sitting posture, his mouth ludicrously open although no words were coming out, and pointing a trembling finger toward the stairway at the rear.

  A silver tray lay on the floor in front of the stairway, and there were broken glasses and bottles strewn around it. A small, white-coated figure was running up the stairs as Shayne lunged in through the front door with Rourke close behind him, and he disappeared at the top and Shayne heard a door slam loudly on the second floor.

  Shayne ran toward the stairs, skirting the broken glass and bottles, and mounted as fast as he could with Rourke pounding close at his heels.

  Half-way down a wide carpeted corridor at the left the white-coated man was pounding a small fist on a closed wooden door while he ineffectually twisted the knob with his other hand. A printed “Do Not Disturb” sign hung from the knob. He turned a frightened, brown, Puerto Rican face over his shoulder to look toward Shayne as the redhead reached the top of the stairs, and he jabbered something in Spanish while he continued to pound on the door.

  Shayne reached him in four long strides and clamped a big hand on his shoulder to thrust him aside from the door, then drew back and lowered his shoulder to drive his weight at it.

  Before he could make a lunge a muffled shot sounded beyond the closed door. Shayne hesitated momentarily and then hit the door with his shoulder.

  It shuddered with the impact, but did not give a fraction of an inch.

  There was silence inside the room as Shayne stepped back for another try. Somewhere down the hallway a door opened, and the Puerto Rican houseman was slumped back against the wall, his eyes wide and round and staring and his mouth making small whimpering sounds.

  Shayne hit the door again with his bruised shoulder, this time lower and closer to the lock, and there was the protesting screech of screws being torn from wood and the door burst open, almost catapulting the detective forward on his face.

  He caught the door-jamb and straightened himself slowly. It was a large room, fitted up as an office or study, with a big flat-topped desk set squarely in the center of it and a dead man slumped sideways, half-in and half-out of an armchair behind the desk.

  A thin intense-faced young man with a lock of black hair slanted across a high forehead stood flat-footed at the side of the desk and a few feet away from it. He was in his shirtsleeves with a black tie dangling loosely. A. 38 caliber revolver dangled from his right hand and a thin wisp of smoke still drifted upward from the muzzle. He frowned at Shayne in a puzzled manner and said in a perfectly reasonable voice:

  “You didn’t have to break the door in. I would have unlocked it after I killed the son-of-a-bitch.”

  Michael Shayne drew in a deep breath and expelled it slowly. He went toward the young man, holding out his hand, “Better let me have the gun.”

  “Sure.” A twisted grin crossed Ralph Larson’s face and he jerked his head to toss the lock of black hair away from his eyes. He took the barrel of the. 38 in his
left hand and ceremoniously offered the butt to Shayne. Then he looked past the redhead and said indifferently to Rourke, “Hello, Tim. You know I told you I was going to kill him. So I did, by God.”

  Timothy Rourke said tightly, “I know.” He moved slowly into the room behind Shayne.

  The detective slid the gun into his hip pocket and turned to look at the dead man. At that moment the wail of a police siren came to their ears. It rose to a banshee shriek as it approached the house rapidly, and then died to a low moan and silence in the driveway outside.

  “He laughed at me, Tim,” Ralph Larson said earnestly, as though it was terribly necessary to explain things and justify himself. “He sat right there in the goddamned chair and laughed in my face when I told him I was going to kill him. He just couldn’t believe it, you see. His goddamned ego just wouldn’t allow him to accept the fact that I meant what I said. He was Wesley Ames, you see. He was immune from the fate that overtakes ordinary mortals. So he didn’t take me seriously. He laughed at me. Well, he knows better now. He’s not laughing now, by God. Because the joke’s on him. I’m the one who’s doing the laughing.”

  And he did. He threw back his head and laughed. High, shrill laughter that cut through the silence in the room like a knife. Then he put his hands over his face and sank slowly down to sit cross-legged on the floor and his laughter turned into sobbing.

  Outside the room there was the loud purposeful tramp of feet on the stairway, and voices, and Shayne turned to the open door to confront the police officers who had responded to Lucy’s telephone call too late.

  5

  The first man through the door was bulky and blue-coated, with a big protruding paunch and dull-witted, porcine features. He waved a service revolver menacingly, breathing heavily through open mouth; and he narrowed close-set eyes at Rourke and at Shayne, and then at the sobbing man seated on the floor and finally at the murdered man behind the desk.