Death Has Three Lives

Chapter Seven

Shayne let Timothy Rourke precede him into the sitting-room of his hotel apartment in downtown Miami, pausing to close the door solidly while the reporter moved across the room and slumped into a comfortable chair beside a low center table.

Neither man spoke as Shayne went past him to a wall cabinet and took down a bottle of bourbon and one of cognac. He set a six-ounce wineglass beside the cognac on the table, went into the kitchen, and returned with two glasses of ice water and a tall glass filled with ice cubes. He set them on the table and uncorked both bottles, moved the bourbon close to Rourke and half-filled the wineglass with cognac. The reporter splashed whisky on top of ice cubes, carefully added a minute portion of water, and took a long drink from it.

Shayne settled his rangy body beside him and took a meditative sip of brandy, chased it with ice water, and lit a cigarette.

Rourke grinned at him lazily and said, “One of the most unhilarious wakes I ever attended. Which one of tonight’s stiffs are we drinking to?”

“Both. Damn it, Tim, what do you make of the whole setup?”

“You’re the detective. Start detecting.”

Shayne swore mildly and took another sip of cognac. “You were with Gentry in the dead girl’s room. Give me the whole picture.”

“There wasn’t much. Seems this girl who called herself Trixie and was registered as Gladys Smith from New Orleans, moved into the room a few weeks ago. It isn’t a regular house, I think. No madam or anything like that. Just a joint where a certain type of girls congregate and entertain men as they like with no questions asked. Way we got it, Trixie never seemed to have any dates. Stayed in most of the time, away from the other girls. A couple of them guessed she was keeping a man in her room, but it was strictly her business and they didn’t pry. None of them ever actually saw his face, but a couple of times saw a man going in or out whom they thought had come or was going to her room. There were some men’s clothes in the bureau, and an extra suit in the closet, so that seems to be that.”

“Was it your impression he and the girl were hiding out?”

Rourke shrugged and drank deeply. “The man probably. The girl didn’t appear to be afraid of being seen, but he seems to have slipped out only after dark.”

“What about tonight?”

“A little before nine a girl across the hall had two male friends drop in for a drink, and she went across to see if Trixie would like to, join them for a little party. She knocked on the door and got no answer but saw light inside and opened the door. Trixie lay on the floor, fully dressed, and strangled. By a man’s hands, the doc said. She’d also been slapped around some, two of her fingers broken, and the room had been rather thoroughly searched. That’s every damned thing except the slip of paper on the floor beneath her body with Lucy’s address on it. You know about the taxi driver calling in his tip after he heard the radiocast about her murder. That sent the cops to search Lucy’s apartment house when you messed things up good by keeping them out instead of letting them find Bristow hiding there — giving somebody time to go up the fire escape and finish him off with a knife while he lay unconscious on Lucy’s bed.”

Shayne moved restively under the accusation. “All right,” he growled. “You don’t have to rub it in. If Bristow strangled the girl, he only got what he deserved.”

Rourke shrugged and maintained a discreet silence. Shayne moodily emptied his glass, got up to stride up and down the room with one hand tugging at his ear lobe, the other clawing through bristly red hair. “Will Gentry,” he muttered, “will be checking with New Orleans for anything they may have on Jack Bristow. In the meantime we’ve got a Mrs. Smith parked out in her cabin, but I’ll be damned if I know what good she does us.”

His telephone rang as he spoke, and Timothy Rourke reached out lazily to lift it and say, “Hello.”

He said, “Right here,” and held it out to Shayne, his eyes bright with interest.

The redhead took the phone and said, “Shayne speaking.”

A man’s voice answered him. A voice he did not recognize. It had a harsh quality, with the slurred intonation of a Southerner. “Was that your reporter friend with you?”

Shayne said, “Yes.”

“You want to talk important business in front of him?”

“What sort of important business?”

“Damn important to you. About the runaround you gave the cops tonight.”

Shayne said, “I never have kept any secrets from Tim Rourke. Keep talking.”

“Okay. And you listen, shamus. You’re caught in a wringer right now. Or your secretary is. Did she use the knife on Bristow, or did you do that job?”

Michael Shayne sat down very carefully, holding the phone to his ear. His face was absolutely expressionless, but watching him intently with the intuition gained from long comradeship, Rourke sensed the strain he was under.

“You haven’t told me who you are.”

“That’s right, I haven’t. Can’t you maybe guess, shamus?” The question was a jeering one, but with an underlying note of doubt.

Shayne said, “I don’t like guessing games. Let’s get together and talk this whole thing over.”

“Oh, no, we don’t. And don’t bother tracing this call, either. I’m at a roadside pay station miles from anywhere and I’ll be the hell and gone from here before you could do any good.”

“All right,” said Shayne impatiently. “What’s your angle?”

“The dough, chum. The moola. The cash you lifted off Jack Bristow after cutting his throat so neat.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t give me that crap. I know he had it on him when he went to your girl’s place. I know it wasn’t on him when you dumped him in the street awhile ago. It’s simple like that. I want it. I don’t give a damn about you killing him,” the voice went on unemotionally. “But the cops aren’t going to like it one little bit even if he was a murderer himself. You want I should ring up your pal the chief and tell him just the kind of games you played tonight?”

“Go ahead,” growled Shayne, putting a note of disgust in his voice. “What the hell do you think you can prove?”

“Plenty, chum. Puhlenty. Listen to me so you’ll know just where you stand on this deal. I’ve got the girl, too, see?”

“What girl?” Shayne’s voice was suddenly harsh and there were deep trenches in his cheeks.

“Mrs. Allerdice. That’s who. The cute little number you’ve been playing house with tonight. She’s crazy to get to the cops after I told her you bumped Hugh off, too. How’s it going to sound when she tells how you dragged Bristow out to her with his throat cut — after you and Lucy Hamilton swore to ’em that he’d never come near her place?”

Sweat was streaming down the trenches in Shayne’s cheeks. He said flatly, “That won’t sound so good.”

“You and your sidekick, Rourke,” said his caller happily. “She can identify him, too, you know. So... do we make a deal?”

“What kind of deal?”

“I told you all I wanted. The dough. Then I’ll hand over the only witness against you except myself, and you can take care of her any way you want. You can be damn sure I won’t spill after I get the cash.”

“I still say what cash?”

“Nuts. It didn’t take wings and fly away, chum.”

“Jack Bristow had about two bucks on him,” stated Shayne flatly. “Tim Rourke will back me up on that. If you want those two bucks you can have them.”

“Wait a minute.” For the first time since the telephone conversation began there was a slight note of uncertainty in the other’s voice. “How much did Jack tell you about things?”

“Not a hell of a lot — and nothing at all about any money.”

“Could be you’re leveling,” the man conceded grudgingly. “They say you’re a smart cookie, and damned if I believe you’d try to bluff against the hand I hold. That means your cute little secretary double-crossed you, shamus. If you haven’t got the money, she sure in hell has. I still want it. And either I get it fast or the cops get you. I’m not fooling. It’s not even like I have to show, you see. You hold out the money and I take it on the lam and turn Beatrice loose to sing her song. No skin off my butt, see? If your lousy neck isn’t worth the eighty grand you or your secretary lifted off Jack tonight, why the hell with it. Make up your mind fast.”

“Eighty grand?” repeated Shayne in disbelief

“Maybe not on the head. Something near that. Hell, I won’t be tough on you. Say seventy for me. You keep whatever was over that and no questions asked. What could be fairer?”

“If there were any such sum floating around, I might agree with you. But I say there isn’t.”

“It’s just too damned bad for you if you don’t dig it up, chum. It’s ten-thirty now. I give you just one hour to come across. Here’s the way it’ll be. Listen hard and don’t argue, because there won’t be any its.”

The voice paused for a moment, and Shayne held the receiver to his ear in grim silence and waited for it to continue.

“I’ve got a place I’m stashing Beatrice where she’ll stay put for a couple hours. Say one o’clock for the deadline. I’ll fix it so if anything happens to me, the police will find her at one o’clock. You got that straight?”

“I’ve got it.”

“You get to her first if you cough up the dough by eleven-thirty. Seventy thousand. That’s all I want, but, by God, I want that much. You still with me?”

“I’m listening.”

“You do it this way. Go to the Hamilton girl’s apartment and fix up a nice little bundle. Have her walk out the door with it at exactly eleven-thirty. She walks straight to Thirteenth Street and heads across the Causeway. Her being pretty and it being late, several guys may stop to pick her up. She says no and keeps walking. Until one of the cars stops and the door opens and I tell her, “Throw it in, sister.” That’s all. She throws it in and I keep driving. You be waiting at your phone right where you are now. If the money is okay, I’ll call you before midnight to tell you where to find Beatrice and shut her up any way you want to. If not, she’ll be spilling the whole story to the cops at one o’clock. You got all that straight?”

“I’ve got it.”

“You better have.” The telephone clicked decisively at the other end of the line.

Michael Shayne replaced his instrument slowly on its prongs. There was a savage scowl of concentration on his rugged face, and his hand shook as he reached for the cognac bottle and filled his glass to the brim.

Timothy Rourke, who had listened to Shayne’s end of the long conversation with intense interest, could contain his excitement no longer. “Who was it, Mike? What in hell did he want? You look like an atomic bomb had exploded inside your belly.”

“I feel sort of like it had.” Shayne tossed off half his drink, glared morosely down at the glass, then finished it. He said, “Give me one minute, Tim. Then I’ll lay it on the line, and God help us if we can’t figure this one out.”

He lifted the phone and asked the switchboard for Lucy Hamilton’s number. When her voice came over the wire, he said, “Everything all right, Lucy?”

“Yes, Michael. I’ve been wondering—”

“Stop wondering and listen to me. This is dead serious, angel. Did Jack Bristow say one word to you that you didn’t repeat to me?”

“No. That is — of course, maybe I didn’t repeat every word he spoke verbatum, but I left nothing out.”

“Sure about that, Lucy? Not a word about any sizable amount of money?”

“Not a word about money, Michael.”

“All right. Do this fast. Think back to exactly what he did from the moment he came in your door. Search every possible place to which he had access where he might have hidden a small package. Or maybe a money belt. Do it fast, but do it right. Call me back the moment you can say positively he didn’t stash anything there.”

Shayne hung up and told Rourke, “I don’t know who telephoned me. Here’s what he said.”

He went on to relate in terse sentences the gist of the stranger’s statements and threats. Before he finished, Timothy Rourke was pacing the floor excitedly, hands thrust deep in trouser pockets, deep-set eyes glinting feverishly, the familiar mocking smile wholly missing from his lean face.

When Shayne completed his recital, he exclaimed, “My God, Mike. That’s awful. What are we going to do? Who the devil is he and how did he get onto everything so fast?”

“I don’t think that matters so much now. Could be some guy who saw Jack enter Lucy’s building and made some shrewd guesses and hung around to follow us out to the motel and then to where we ditched Jack. A damned professional job of tailing if he did. One of Gentry’s cops, maybe, with sticky fingers.”

“But how would he know about the money Bristow was supposed to be carrying? Eighty thousand dollars! Damn it, Mike. That has a familiar ring to me.” Rourke paused in mid-stride to demand, “What was that name he called your Mrs. Smith?”

“Mrs. Allerdice. And later, Beatrice. And from what he said, I gathered her husband’s name was Hugh. Also dead, according to him, and she believes I killed him.”

“Allerdice?” muttered Rourke, clawing nervously at a lock of black hair that persisted in falling across his forehead. “That strikes a note, too. Damned if I know what.”

“We’ve got less than an hour,” Shayne reminded him. His phone rang as he spoke, and he snatched it up. He grunted into it, then listened a moment and his eyes became more bleak than before.

“All right, angel. I haven’t time to explain right now. Better not go to bed yet. Mix yourself a long drink and be comfortable. I’ll call you or be over.” He hung up and spread both palms out expressively toward Rourke. “No soap. He didn’t ditch any money in her place.”

“That means?”

“Either Bristow didn’t have it when he got there, or the person who came in from the fire escape to kill him relieved him of it before I scared him away.”

“So, what do we do now?”

Shayne said, “God knows, Tim,” and poured himself a small drink.

“Damn it!” exploded Rourke. “This is really a toughie. If the tourist camp woman tells her story to the police, we’ll never talk ourselves out of it. If we’d only called Will Gentry as soon as we found Bristow’s body there. Or, if we’d just gone ahead and ditched him without carrying him out and showing him to Mrs. Allerdice.”

“Yeh,” said Shayne grimly. “Second-guessing is always easy. The question is, what now? Let’s look at it straight from the few things we know. The man who phoned may be Bristow’s killer.”

“But he asked whether you or Lucy used the knife.”

“Could be a coverup. He wouldn’t admit it if he did go up the fire escape.”

“Wait a minute, Mike. You suggested the killer must have got Bristow’s money. This man wouldn’t be demanding it from you if he already had it.”

“No. But we don’t know the killer got it. We don’t know Bristow had anything on him when he entered Lucy’s place.”

“Your man sounded pretty positive on the telephone,” Rourke reminded him.

“I know. But he could be mistaken. Bristow might have passed it to someone before he knocked on Lucy’s door.” Shayne paused a moment, then added flatly, “We’ve got to get this guy, Tim.”

“And let the woman tell her story to the cops?”

“We haven’t much choice,” Shayne pointed out grimly. “The way he set it up over the phone, only way we can prevent her doing that is passing him seventy grand before midnight. Whose money do you suggest we use for the payoff?”

“Yeh,” agreed Rourke dubiously. “And there’s no way we can reach him. We don’t know who he is — what he looks like.”

“There’s one point of contact. Lucy. Walking along the Causeway with a decoy package under her arm.”

“Even that won’t get us anything. Even if you’re willing to risk her neck that way. He’ll discover it’s a decoy mighty soon. You still won’t know where to reach the woman before the cops get to her.”

“That’s a chance we have to take. We can’t pass up this contact. Let’s see how we can figure it. He thinks he’s got us bluffed. That we won’t dare try to cover Lucy and cross him up because of the woman. So we do just that.”

“But how? He figured it smart, Mike. Having her walk on the Causeway late at night. There’s no place for anyone to hide out along the Causeway. You can’t follow along in a car without being conspicuous. Also, at least half the cars that pass her walking along there will stop to offer her a lift. It’s not like a girl walking along a street who may be stopping at the next house. Once anyone starts across the Causeway, it’s three miles to the Beach and most anyone will offer her a ride. Half of them will pull up and open the door on her side as he plans to do. If you get the whole police force out to patrol the Causeway, they’d have to start chasing and stopping every car that paused beside her. All he has to do is drive back and forth a couple of times to observe what happens to others before he makes his play. In fact, if he’s as smart as he sounds, he’ll probably stop and offer her a ride the first time just to see what the lay is. Damn it, Mike, it’s an infernally clever plan for collecting a payoff.”

“I know,” agreed Shayne, his rugged face furrowed with intense concentration. “Still, we’ve got to out-think him. He’s probably a killer. At the very least, he’s the key to two murders. One of which was totally unnecessary and the fault of my secretary.”

“Don’t be too hard on Lucy, Mike. Hell, Bristow might’ve died anyway from the slug in his belly.”

“Even so,” argued Shayne fiercely, “he could have been made to talk before he died. She prevented that by hiding him in her bedroom. We’ve got to figure now how to grab this present bastard when he collects the bundle from Lucy.”

“Look. If you’re going to try something like that, why not leave Lucy out of it? It’s bound to be dangerous as hell. If he is already a killer, chances are he may just think it’s simplest and best to bump her, too, when she gives him the package. So she won’t be able to identify him. Get a policewoman for the job, Mike. Wearing a hat at night, no one will know it isn’t Lucy. There’s that slim, pretty redhead on park patrol. Marge. She’s tough and experienced and has brought in half a dozen bad eggs on her own. It’s her job to take chances like this. It isn’t Lucy’s job.”

“This one is,” said Shayne bleakly, his face a mask of determination. “She started the whole thing by harboring Jack Bristow. I’ll be damned if I’ll let another woman risk her neck for something Lucy’s wholly responsible for.” He looked at his watch and got up decisively. “We’ve already wasted ten minutes, and there’s a lot to be done before eleven-thirty. Finish your drink and let’s get moving.”