Shoot the Works

Chapter thirteen

Shayne stopped at the Beef House in Miami Avenue for a fast drink and a roast beef sandwich before going on to the Weymore. The bartender saw him enter, and he slid a four-ounce glass and a bottle of cognac onto the bar for him, and as Shayne poured the glass half full he leaned forward and confided, “Mr. Rourke was asking for you. He’s in a booth.”

Shayne said, “Thanks, Pat.” He went back along the line of booths carrying his glass, found Timothy Rourke seated alone, fondling an after-luncheon drink, and slid into the seat opposite him, asking a waiter to hurry along a sandwich. The cadaverous reporter twitched his thin lips into a tight grin as Shayne sat down. “Last time we ate here we had a divertissement in the shape of a jealous husband. Hope you haven’t got one gunning for you today.”

Shayne shook his head, thinking about Gene and the switchblade knife that still reposed in his pocket. He said, “Not gunning this time, Tim. But if you see a character come in waving a knife, get under the table fast.” He took a sip of his drink and reached for Tim’s water glass to wash it down, and nodded slowly when the reporter asked, “Anything new on Wallace?”

“Several things and none of them add up.” Shayne turned the glass round and round between big fingers. “You got anything?”

Rourke said, “Nothing important. Will’s running around trying to knock holes in Mrs. Wallace’s story. I don’t think he’s succeeded except for that gap he turned up at the Olinar last night.”

“It wasn’t a real gap,” Shayne reminded him. “Just a lack of positive verification.”

“I know.” Rourke leaned back and laced bony fingers behind his head. “I saw him in his office about an hour ago. He’s sore about something, Mike. Something to do with you.”

Shayne nodded and downed the rest of his drink as the waiter placed an open sandwich of rare beef in front of him. He said, “Coffee,” and cut into the red meat. “Lucy told me he was throwing his weight around in my office. I gather it’s some hunch Will got after talking with Martin and Tompkins. He acted sore when he found me there before him this morning, though I don’t know why he should be. Did he pick up a new lead from them?”

“He didn’t tell me if he did,” grumbled Rourke, and Shayne knew that the secret of the missing million was still safe from the newspapers even if Gentry had got some inkling of it.

Between bites, he asked, “Is there a Brazilian Consulate in Miami?”

“I… think so. There’s a lot of air traffic these days.”

Shayne said, “Check, will you, Tim? Find out if Wallace had a passport visaed there recently. Or if anybody named James Richards applied for a visa recently.”

Rourke’s deepset eyes brightened alertly. “Was that what Wallace was packing his bag for?”

Shayne said, “I honestly don’t know, Tim. For God’s sake, keep it out of the paper if you do get a line on such a visa.”

“Who’s James Richards?”

“I don’t know that either. I don’t even know whether there is such a guy.” Shayne pushed away his empty plate and took a swallow of coffee, then lit a cigarette. He said slowly, “Things may start coming to a head this afternoon, and when they do there’s going to be one hell of a big black headline for you.”

“You are holding out something,” charged Rourke. “I know the look on your face and the sound of your voice, Mike. Give.”

Shayne shook his red head doggedly. “Not yet. There’s a headline in the making, but I’ve got to earn a fee first. You know you’ll get it before anyone else. Check on the visas, huh?”

He got up and Tim said, “Will do. And I’ll be at the office waiting.”

Shayne left money on the table and went out hurriedly. It was a few minutes after two o’clock when he got off on the fourth floor of the Weymore again. The pert redhead at the desk told him briskly, “I’m sorry but Mr. Martin hasn’t returned from lunch yet.”

“Tompkins in?”

“Y-yes. But… I’m not sure he’s eager to see you, Mr. Shayne. In fact…”

Shayne said, “He’ll see me. Even if it’s only to fire me off the case. Where’s his office?”

“It’s… really, Mr. Shayne. He gave me definite instructions that he wasn’t in to you.”

Shayne started toward the door he had entered previously, “Then I’ll have to start knocking on doors.” He had his hand on the knob when she said in a low voice, “Straight down to the end, but I didn’t tell you.”

Shayne said cheerfully, “Of course you didn’t.” He went through the doorway and down the hall to the end where closed doors on the left and right were lettered, “Mr. Wallace” and “Mr. Tompkins.”

He opened Tompkins’ door and went in. It was a large corner room with heavy wall-to-wall carpeting and a huge desk in the center of it. Tompkins was seated in a swivel chair behind the desk, leaning forward and speaking angrily into an intercom. “Damn it, Alice, I told you…”

He broke off at Shayne’s appearance and three deep vertical creases formed in the center of his forehead. He said, “I thought I made it clear this morning, Shayne, that I disapproved of your retention by this firm. If Martin wants to waste time with you, that’s his personal affair.”

Shayne heeled the door shut and his face became grim. “To hell with what you want or don’t want, Tompkins. I’m working for Mrs. Wallace and haven’t accepted a retainer from you yet. You’ll answer questions from me or from the police.”

“My God, man! That’s all I’ve been doing all morning. Chief Gentry was here for an hour and I told him everything I knew.”

Shayne pulled a heavy chair close to the desk and sat down without an invitation. “Including the news about the missing securities?”

“No,” said Tompkins shortly, “though I was sorely tempted to, and am not at all convinced that it wasn’t a mistake not to. Indeed, I had the strong impression that he is beginning to suspect the truth. He wormed the information out of Martin that we had called you in, and he cross-questioned us severely as to our reason for doing so.”

Shayne said lightly, “That’s because he can’t get it through his thick head that people are often willing to pay me a fee to do the same work Will is supposed to do. I hope you told him that.”

“We did, in effect,” said Tompkins sulkily, “but he refused to accept that explanation. Damn it, man!” the broker exploded violently, “Do you realize the sort of volcano we’re sitting on? Every minute that passes, that million dollars may be farther from here… farther from possible recovery. I think we’re fools to entrust the job to you without asking the police for help. Why, Chief Gentry told us you work entirely alone… that you don’t have a single, accredited investigator on your staff. I’d assumed, naturally, that you had certain resources for this type of investigation. What sort of job can one man do in a case like this?”

Shayne leaned back comfortably and said, “You and Gentry must have given me a good going over. During the course of it, how much did you spill to him about your reason for calling me in?”

“Nothing definite. I told you that. But he did force out of us the admission that we had supplied you with certain information that we felt it best to withhold from him. And he stalked out like an angry bear, after warning us that we were liable as accessories after the fact if that information was relevant to murder. And it is relevant, damn it!” He struck the desk in front of him resoundingly with his fist. “I don’t like it at all.”

Shayne said, “You did want me to make a search of the Wallace apartment.”

“That was when I mistakenly believed you carried enough weight with the police to get permission when we couldn’t. But I heard him telephone his guard at the apartment myself and deliver positive instructions that you were not to be given entry under any circumstances.”

Shayne said, “So he called from here? After you had tipped him off, I suppose, what I planned to do.”

“We did tell him you had assured us you would encounter no difficulty in making such a search.”

Shayne shrugged and said bleakly, “To hell with all this. Who is James Richards?”

“I don’t know. Should I?”

“Take your time before answering that,” Shayne urged him. “Think the name over for a bit. Does it strike any chord at all?”

“I don’t think so. Richards?” Tompkins hesitated and then shook his head firmly. “I know several men named Richards. None intimately, and none with James for a given name.”

“Are you prepared to tell me where and how you spent last night?”

“Certainly not,” snapped Tompkins. “I told Gentry as I told you previously, that if the time comes when I must produce an alibi I’m prepared to do so. Until such time, I consider my private affairs strictly my own.”

Shayne said, “You’re making it tough on yourself. Let’s go back to yesterday afternoon. Presumably you weren’t dishonorably bedded down with a female during that period. Were all you three partners here in the office all the afternoon?”

Tompkins’ hatchet face had flushed an angry red at Shayne’s reference to a woman. He said stiffly, “I don’t see what yesterday afternoon has to do with it. We know the money was in the safe when we left the office at five o’clock.”

“I’m still interested in how the three of you spent the afternoon.”

“I’m not sure about the others. I had a long business luncheon and returned to the office in the middle of the afternoon. After that I had conferences with two clients, cleaned up some dictating and called it a day. Is that satisfactory, Mr. Shayne?”

Shayne said coldly, “It will be if you will give me the name of the person you had lunch with.”

Tompkins drew in a deep breath and held it for a long time. He expelled it and said, “My secretary can provide you with that information… thus attesting to my veracity.”

Shayne nodded and said, “That always helps. How about the others?”

“Hadn’t you better ask them, Mr. Shayne?”

“It’ll be difficult to ask Wallace.”

“Yes. His secretary will be more helpful than I. But I believe yesterday was one of Jim’s golfing afternoons.”

Shayne raised ragged red eyebrows. “Golf? On a business day?”

“Really, Mr. Shayne. I can assure you that more business transactions are consummated every afternoon on golf courses than inside an office like this.”

Shayne said, “It’s nice work if you can get it. Do you know about Martin?”

“We are not in the habit of keeping tabs on each other,” said Tompkins stiffly. “Really, you know, I find this interrogation quite distasteful.”

Shayne said, “All right. Try this one on for size. Who is Lola?”

He was leaning back comfortably as he spoke, but watching Tompkins’ face keenly from beneath lowered lids.

He had an immediate impression that the name did, in fact, mean a great deal to the junior partner. Tompkins was too well-disciplined to make any outward display of emotion, but an inner turmoil was evidenced by an almost imperceptible tightening of facial muscles, a faint intake of breath that was almost instantly checked, a stronger sense of tension between the two men.

“What was that name again?”

“Lola.” The man was fencing and Shayne knew he was fencing.

“Lola what?”

At this point, Shayne didn’t want to admit he hadn’t the faintest idea what Lola’s last name was. He said stolidly, “Just Lola should be enough… if she’s who I think she is. Is she?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, Mr. Shayne. Who do you think she is?”

“I’m asking you. Who is Lola?”

Tompkins said, “The name means absolutely nothing to me,” and Shayne knew he was lying.

“How does she come into this?”

Shayne said casually, “I’m not positive, but it begins to look as though Wallace was carrying on an affair with her.”

Tompkins’ “Preposterous!” came out hard and fast and unexpectedly. He narrowed his eyes at the detective and shook his sleek, black head firmly. “Not old Jim. Really, Mr. Shayne?”

The detective reached in his pocket for the note he had found in Wallace’s apartment. He hunched his chair forward to spread it out on the desk in front of Tompkins. “I’m guessing, of course. But what do you make of this?”

Tompkins put his forefinger fastidiously on the sheet of notepaper and turned it so he could read the words written in green ink. His brow was furrowed and his gaze stayed on the note long enough for him to have read it several times before he demanded, “Where did this note come from?”

Shayne said, “I found it in Jim Wallace’s apartment. Very carefully hidden away in one of his bureau drawers. Don’t you agree that it indicates Wallace may not have been the complete paragon that all of you try to make me believe he was?”

“There’s no salutation. You don’t know that this was written to Jim.”

Shayne agreed easily, “That’s true. I suppose there might be several other explanations of his having it hidden away so carefully… but, frankly, I can’t think of a good one. Can you?”

“Not offhand,” admitted Tompkins. “Still… He pushed the note back toward the redhead as though he were offended by the sight of it. “I’m afraid I don’t understand this at all. You claim to have found this note secreted in Jim’s apartment. When? Under what circumstances? I’ve told you I distinctly heard Chief Gentry issue orders that you were not to be allowed access to the apartment.”

Shayne grinned and pocketed the note. “I have my methods, Tompkins… even though I don’t employ a large staff of investigators, as you think I should.”

A buzzer sounded and Tompkins flipped a switch and the redhead’s voice said through the intercom, “Mr. Martin is in his office now, Mr. Tompkins. I didn’t tell him Mr. Shayne was here.”

Shayne got up. He said, “I’ll have a talk with him. Where is his office?”

Tompkins half-rose from the swivel chair. He said thinly, “I want you to understand I have not changed my opinion in the slightest degree. Turn to your right at the end of the hall. It’s the first door. And you can tell Martin that, if he wishes to retain you, it is his personal responsibility. I shan’t be a party to paying you one thin dime.”

Shayne said, “I’ll tell him.”

He went out and closed the door firmly behind him. He hesitated outside, looking down the hall. There was no one to observe him, and he turned and reached above the door to grip the lower portion of the open transom and pulled himself up so he could look inside. There were two telephones on Tompkins’ desk. He lifted the one on the left side as Shayne watched, and dialed a number. From his vantage point, the detective could see the face of the dial, and he memorized the number that the broker dialed.

He heard laughter and a girl’s voice down the hall at his right, and he dropped back quietly onto the carpet just in time to turn and walk composedly toward the front as two girls rounded the corner and started toward him, talking animatedly about a date one of them had had the preceding night.

They were absorbed in each other and scarcely glanced at the redhead as he passed them on his way to Rutherford Martin’s office.