The Uncomplaining Corpses

Chapter Nine: A DIFFERENT ANGLE

Will Gentry was a solid, square-jawed man of fifty. He was issuing orders to two plain-clothes men when Shayne pushed the door open and walked in. He squinched grizzled eyebrows at the redhead and ended the interview with his subordinates by growling:

“Bring them both in and I don’t give a damn how you do it. Mother of God, do I have to draw you a picture for every pinch I want made?”

The officers saluted stiffly and went out. Gentry chewed on the butt of a sodden cigar and tried ineffectually to light it. After the third attempt he hurled it at a shiny spittoon in one corner. It plopped wetly inside. He hunched his big body forward and rumbled:

“Well, Mike, you seem to have sewed yourself up in a sack this time.”

Shayne nodded and with one toe dragged up a chair. He draped his angular body into it in front of the chief’s scarred desk and agreed, “It looks that way, Will.”

Gentry frowned and his blunt fingers fiddled with a fountain pen lying in front of him. “Painter was in here not more than half an hour ago. He had a book-length telegram he was sending the governor. He wanted my signature on it along with the heads of the Ministerial Alliance and the Civic Betterment League. It pointed out in no uncertain terms that your continued presence in our midst with a private dick’s license was a menace to all the laws in the statutes and to the lives of our law-abiding citizens.”

Shayne lit a cigarette and blew smoke across the scarred surface of Gentry’s desk. “Did you sign it?”

“Nope.”

Shayne said, “Thanks, Will.”

There was a short silence between them, broken by Gentry’s fist thudding down on the desk. “Damn it, Mike, I’ve known you more than ten years. You’re bullheaded and reckless and hell-on-wheels when you get mad and you’ve never given a hang for what anybody thought and you’ve got away with everything but murder in this man’s town, but this time you’re washed up if you don’t pull one out of the hat quick.”

“Am I?”

“Hell, yes. Painter’s got you over a barrel. This isn’t something local that we can hush up. When a private detective murders the client he is hired to protect-that makes headlines from Baltimore to Frisco. It’s like the old one about the man biting the dog. The governor’s going to grab your license so fast it’ll make your head spin around.”

Michael Shayne nodded wearily. “I’ve added it up to the same answer. So, I guess it’s up to me to pull one out of the hat, and I may use Painter’s Panama.”

Gentry shot him a piercing glance. He stopped fiddling with the fountain pen and pulled a blunt black cigar from his vest pocket. Worrying the end of it with his teeth, he grunted, “What’s the straight of it, Mike?”

“You knew Joe Darnell? Hasn’t he been going straight since he did that rap for housebreaking?”

“Maybe. But he was pretty hard up. The way it looks to me is that Joe was casing the joint looking for what he could pick up and the lady hears him and sets up a squawk. Joe jumps her and puts on a little too much pressure.”

“That’s the way it reads,” Shayne admitted grimly. “The papers are making the mistake of listening to Painter, as usual. Joe wasn’t on the prowl. He went in on a ready-made lay-planted and primed for him. He wasn’t worried about any squawk. He was expecting some slight interference to make it look good when the insurance investigators checked up on the missing loot. He wouldn’t have jumped the woman. He didn’t.”

“The hell you say.” Gentry’s mouth fell open and he held the cigar half an inch from it. “Then those notes-all that stuff about him guarding the joint for you-is all that phony?”

“There were notes all right-blackmail-but the rest of the setup is phony as hell. But I can’t prove a word of it. My only out is to turn up the real murderer-Joe’s murderer too, by the way, since he swallowed a slug on account of Thrip triggering in a hurry without taking time for questions when he saw his wife stretched out stiff and Joe in the room.”

Gentry’s graying head bobbed up and down. “I knew it had to be something like that. Anything I can do, Mike?”

“I don’t know,” Shayne told him truthfully. “I’m following two or three leads. Joe could tell us a lot if he could talk. He’d know who went in and came out. You can do this, Will. Every visitor with a criminal record is supposed to register when he hits town. See if a Buell Renslow, pardoned lifer from Colorado, is on your list. He probably isn’t because that’s just another goofy law you can’t enforce.”

“Probably not but we’ll see,” Gentry agreed amiably. He flipped the switch on an interoffice communicator on his desk and gave an order.

“And I’d like to locate a Mona Tabor who gives a Little River post-office box as her address”-Shayne waited while Gentry made a note of it-“and dig up anything you can on Carl Meldrum at the Palace Hotel on the beach,” he ended.

A buzzer sounded. The chief said, “Shoot,” into a phone and listened a minute. He shook his head at Shayne. “Nothing on your ex-con.”

“Then wire Colorado for his mug and prints. And circulate the word among your stoolies that he’s wanted. He shouldn’t be hard to pick up if he runs true to form. Another angle will be Mrs. Thrip’s lawyers. They’ve been paying out monthly sums to Renslow. You might tackle them officially.”

Gentry was scribbling notations on a pad. He grunted with surprise and looked up at the detective. “What’s the connection? How does the con figure?”

“Mrs. Thrip’s brother,” Shayne told him briefly. “I’d like to know where he was between one-thirty and two last night. He made something like a million during that half hour.”

Gentry made his lips into a big O and permitted a whistle to escape him. “Nice work if you can get it. Better than a cop drags down.”

“Or a private dick.” Shayne stood up, tangling his coarse red hair. “Will you hop onto that stuff, Will? And phone any dope over to me. I’ve got one call to make before I land back at my apartment.”

Gentry said, “You bet,” and lifted his heavy hand in farewell as Shayne went out.

The detective’s roadster was parked against the curb outside headquarters where it was marked No Parking — Police. He got in and pulled up to the traffic light on Flagler, waited for it to change, and turned east past the Bade County courthouse.

In front of the First National Bank on the corner of Flagler and Northeast First Avenue he parked in the space reserved for armored cars and went in to cash Leora Thrip’s check into a sheaf of twenties,

Shayne’s next stop was the Miami Daily News tower on Biscayne Boulevard. He went up to the noisy, smoke-filled city room just before press time and found Timothy Rourke relaxed in front of a littered desk in a corner overlooking the bay.

Rourke looked up and waggled a finger at Shayne with portentous gravity. “Naughty, naughty, Michael. There’s an old Hindu proverb that says, He who playeth with fire shall someday find himself in the middle of a mighty conflagration.”

Shayne nodded soberly, pushed back some papers to slouch down on a corner of the reporter’s desk. “That’s rank plagiarism on the Chinese. What’s your first-edition headline, Tim?”

“Hot off Petie Painter’s platter. Revocation of Shayne’s License Demanded. And it’s subbed: An indignant citizenry rallied solidly behind police authorities and civic leaders this morning to press demands upon the governor that Michael Shayne’s authority to prey upon innocent victims be annulled at once,” Rourke quoted gravely, “or words to that effect.” He grinned cheerfully and offered Shayne a cigarette.

Shayne shook his head. “So you boys are convicting me without a trial.”

“A trial? What the hell, Mike? Isn’t it open and shut? You don’t deny Darnell was working for you, do you?”

“It wouldn’t do me any good to deny that,” Shayne admitted. “The catch is, Tim, Darnell didn’t choke the dame.”

“Wh-a-a-t?” Rourke choked over a windpipeful of smoke.

“He didn’t,” Shayne said with a driving intensity that riveted all of Rourke’s attention. “I’ve given you stuff in the past,” Shayne went on harshly, “and you’ve made money by listening to me. The Herald nailed me to the cross on Painter’s say-so this morning. Why don’t you guys try printing the truth?”

Rourke’s flaring nostrils quivered like a hound’s on the scent. “Good God, Mike! Have you got any proof?” He was reaching for a wad of copy paper and a pencil.

“Not a damn bit. But I’m telling you. You can quote me, can’t you? Do you think I’m taking this lying down? Joe Darnell didn’t kill Mrs. Thrip. Painter’s willing to let it lie that way because he hasn’t got brains enough to catch the real murderer and because it harpoons me.”

“But what about Thrip? If Darnell didn’t kill Mrs. Thrip what reason did Thrip have for killing Darnell?”

“Plenty of reason,” Shayne insisted. “Breaking and entering. Hell, I’m not blaming Thrip. His story is straight enough. He did what any man would do under the circumstances. My quarrel is with his interpretation of what he saw when he turned on the light. I’m working on the theory that Mrs. Thrip was dead before Joe Darnell entered her bedroom.”

Rourke’s keen eyes dulled as Shayne spoke. “That’s not like you, Mike,” he observed absently. “This is the first time you ever blatted out a theory for publication. I thought you left that angle for the Painters.”

“I’m working on this with two strikes on me before I come to bat,” Shayne explained. “I want the murderer to know I’m on his tail. I’ve got to smoke something out, Tim. There are so damned many angles-” He paused, shook his head gloomily, then asked, “Well, Tim?”

“It’s a story,” Rourke told him. “Right or wrong, it’s a different angle.”

“Play it like it was right and you won’t regret it,” Shayne assured him. He slid off Rourke’s desk and barged out of the smoke-fouled room to the elevator.

Out on the street, he strolled leisurely to his car, got in, and drove to his hotel. Going through the lobby, he saw that the clerk had observed his entrance but was studiously pretending to be looking elsewhere in the evident hope that Shayne would go on up without stopping.

Shayne’s heels thudded across the tiled floor. He stopped in front of the desk. “Anything for me, Jim?” he asked pleasantly. “You know, Michael Shayne,” he added as the young man jerked around with a show of surprise.

“Oh, yes. Sure, Mr. Shayne. Of course, I know-ha-ha-No, there isn’t anything in your box this time.”

“Don’t believe everything you see in the newspapers,” Shayne admonished. He turned to the elevator and the clerk gaped after him, rubbing his diminutive chin with shaking fingers.

Shayne knocked on the door of his apartment, a gay rat-ta-tat-tat-tat-tat which would tell Phyllis that it was himself coming home. When the knock was not answered he opened the door with a key. He called, “Phyl-hey, Phyl,” but the call was echoed back by silence from the four empty rooms.

He made a quick survey of the apartment in frowning perplexity and when no playful hiding-place revealed her presence he came back to the living-room and opened the liquor cabinet.

The note from Phyllis was balanced on top of a half-full cognac bottle. He poured himself a drink while he read her hurried scrawl:

Darling-after seeing that girl I just couldn’t sit here and do nothing. I won’t tell you where I’ve gone because you’d disapprove, though I’m really quite capable of looking after myself. If I’m lucky I’ll come back with some good news.

Your own Angel.

He read the note for the fifth time, then crumpled it up viciously. He didn’t say anything out loud, but his eyes were harried slits. Then for the first time his gaze slid down from the signature, Your own Angel, and saw Dora’s address scribbled in a postscript.

Hastily he opened the table drawer and scrambled in it, hunting for Dora’s pistol. The. 25 automatic was gone.

His blunt, bony fingers drummed against the desk-top for a moment, then he got up and carried the bottle and glass to the center table and set them down, went aimlessly into the kitchen as though his legs were carrying him from force of habit rather than by conscious motivation.

He put ice cubes in a tall goblet and filled it from the faucet, stalked back into the living-room and placed it beside the cognac bottle.

He paced around the room briefly, lit a cigarette, sat down at the table, filled his glass and sat staring at it. With an angry gesture he tossed it off. He said aloud, very gently, “You shouldn’t have done that, Phyl.”

He refilled his glass, splashing some of the liquor on the back of his hand. He set it down, untouched, and got up.

In the bedroom he called the Palace Hotel and asked for Carl Meldrum. He stood on widely spread legs, jaws clamped, listening to the phone ring echo hollowly over the wire, then asked the hotel switchboard to connect him with the room clerk on duty.

The room clerk reported that Mr. Meldrum was not in, that a young lady had called for him not long ago and they had gone out together. Upon close questioning, the clerk described Phyllis in flattering detail. Shayne thanked him and hung up.

With his left ear lobe clutched between thumb and forefinger he stared moodily around the room, then went back to the living-room.

At the desk he found a long envelope and a sheet of heavy note paper. He wrapped the sheaf of fifty twenty-dollar bills which he had secured from the bank in the note paper, placed them carefully in the long envelope, went outside and dropped them in the mail chute after addressing the envelope to Mrs. Dora Darnell at the address on Phyllis’s note.

Then he came back and took up his vigil with the bottle of cognac and glass of ice water.