What Really Happened

Chapter thirteen

SHAYNE CRADLED THE RECEIVER and turned to face the police chief who came stamping in and exploded, “What did Hank Black mean? Why did he phone you?”

“You heard him,” Shayne snapped. “Nick Calloni and another man tried to hold the postman up on Flagler. If Black and Mathews hadn’t been on the spot, they would have succeeded.”

Gentry’s beefy face was a study in conflicting emotions. He said slowly, “Calloni is Jack Gurley’s right-hand man.”

“So I’ve heard,” Shayne told him dryly. “But he isn’t any more, according to Black.”

“Are you saying that Gurley arranged the holdup? Just to prevent Weatherby’s letter from being delivered?”

Shayne shrugged. “Why don’t you try thinking for once? In the meantime, you might apologize for suspecting me of fixing something to prevent your seeing the letter. Unless you think I hired Calloni and his pal to make the snatch — and then put Black on it to prevent it.”

“Damn it, Mike, if you suspected Gurley might do something like that, why didn’t you warn me? I would have put guards on the postman. That’s what we’ve got cops for. You didn’t have to call in private ops for a job like that. It isn’t going to look good.”

“Because your men would have scared Calloni off,” the detective told him evenly. “He’d never have tried it if they had been around.”

“And he’d still be alive.” rumbled Gentry.

“Exactly.”

“Damn it, you mean you sucked him into making the try hoping there’d be a shooting?”

Shayne lit a cigarette and explained dispassionately, “I couldn’t swear to it, but I’m morally certain Calloni was one of the thugs who tried to blast me last night. I’m also morally certain that Gurley sent him to do the job. By sending Black and Mathews to guard the postman instead of a couple of cops — or going myself, I pulled Calloni out in the open where you can see him. And you can cut the moral indignation about his death. If I’d done it your way, you might have a couple of dead cops. You’d do better to pin a medal on me.” he added dryly, “and you know it.”

“Some day,” Gentry said gruffly. “you’re going to guess wrong.”

“That’s better than never guessing at all.” said Shayne blithely.

Gentry walked stolidly around him and picked up the phone. He said, “Get me police headquarters. Lucy,” and waited.

Timothy Rourke lounged in the open doorway, listening with feverish interest. While Gentry waited for his call, the reporter said to Shayne, “Have I got all this straight? You had Henry Black and one of his ops guarding the postman, and they killed Nicky Calloni and shot another hood when they tried a holdup on Flagler?”

“Not for publication,” Shayne told him flatly. “Not my part of it. Let it come out that Black and Matty were on the scene accidentally and were just lucky enough to prevent the snatch.” He stopped to listen as Gentry spoke into the telephone.

“Chief Gentry. Get me Lieutenant Barnes.” He waited a moment, chewing on his soggy cigar stub, then said, “Barnes?… Take some men and pick up The Lantern. Jack Gurley. That’s right. Find him wherever he is and bring him in. Don’t book him for anything. Hold him.” He hung up and turned away from the desk.

The three men heard the front door of the office open and a voice drawl, “Mawnin’, ma’am. Sorry the mail’s late, but there was a little trouble.”

Gentry went out hurriedly, with Shayne on his heels. A wiry young man with a bulging mailbag was in the act of handing a sheaf of letters across the railing to Lucy Hamilton.

“I’ll take that mail,” Gentry said sternly, his pudgy hand outstretched.

The substitute postman turned and looked at him in openmouthed surprise. His mouth gaped wider as Shayne shouldered the police chief aside and said angrily, “Not that way, Will, This is still my office, damn it. Is that mail for Michael Shayne?” he demanded of the postman.

“Y-Yessir.”

“I’m the chief of police,” fumed Gentry. “I’ll be responsible.”

“But I’m Michael Shayne,” said the redhead to the confused postman. “If those letters are addressed to me, you’d better hand them over.”

“Yessir.” The man thrust the sheaf of letters into his hand and fled.

“Now, by God, Mike—” Gentry began, but Shayne cut him off coldly.

“Stop making an ass of yourself. You’ll see Wanda Weatherby’s letter if it’s here. But you’re not going to paw through the rest of my mail at the same time.”

Shayne passed the packet of mail to Lucy. “Go through them and see it you find a letter from Wanda Weatherby. Give it to me if you do.”

Timothy Rourke stood behind the two men, an interested spectator. Lucy laid the letters on her desk and began glancing through them. She studied the fourth envelope briefly and said, “Here it is,” and handed her employer the square white envelope he had mailed to himself early that morning.

Shayne studied it gravely, holding it out for Gentry to see. “Here it is. No hocus-pocus. No sleight-of-hand. No nothing. It just happens I don’t like to have a cop pawing through my mail.”

He slid his forefinger under the flap and tore it open, took out the two sheets of folded notepaper before Gentry’s eyes, and extracted the check. He glanced at the check and waved it in the air, saying cheerfully, “This explains the stub you found in Wanda’s checkbook.” He handed it to Lucy. “Better put that in the safe,” he advised, “before Will tries to grab it.”

“Keep the check,” Gentry said angrily. “I want to read her letter.”

“You shall,” Shayne soothed him, “just as soon as I finish it.” He unfolded the first sheet and glanced through it rapidly, raising his ragged red brows and grinning widely as he reached the postscript. He passed it on to Gentry, but warned, “Better get your blood pressure under control before you read the postscript.”

He unfolded the second sheet while Gentry read the first one. His expression was grim when he handed it to the chief, remarking, “Now we know how Gurley knew what was in the letter and why it was so important to keep it from reaching me. I think you’ve got a charge you can book him on, all right.”

Timothy Rourke had withdrawn, standing aside with a look of worried puzzlement on his long, thin face. Shayne grinned briefly, for the moment forgetting that the reporter knew nothing of the replacement of Wanda’s letter by this forgery, and that he believed the letter Gentry was reading was the original copy of the one she had written accusing Ralph Flannagan of planning her death.

Rourke glared and muttered sotto voce, “I thought, damn it, you were going to do something — not just hand it over to Will like that.”

Shayne shrugged and went past the reporter into his office, calling over his shoulder, “Let Tim see the letter when you’ve read it, Will.”

He went to the filing-cabinet and pulled out the second drawer, took out three paper cups, a bottle of rye, and one of cognac. He poured two cups of rye and set them on the desk, filled his own cup with cognac, and closed the cabinet as Will Gentry came in, rubbing his heavy jaw reflectively and exuding clouds of noxious smoke from a fresh cigar.

Shayne gestured to the cups and said soberly, “Let’s have a drink together and forget all this, Will. We’ve been at each other’s throats ever since last night, and I don’t like it. You’ve got to admit that I didn’t hold out on you.”

Gentry hesitated, then picked up the whisky. “I give you credit for a smart play in having Black follow the post man. That pulled Gurley into the open, and now, by God, we’ve got him.” He tossed the whisky off, sputtered, and crumpled the paper cup in his palm. “That bastard has been thumbing his nose at us for years. I never thought he’d be dumb enough to walk into a murder rap. What the hell do you suppose the Weatherby woman had on him that forced him to bump her?”

Before Shayne could answer, Rourke strode into the office beaming happily and holding the two letters in his hand. “I don’t know what kind of frame-up this is, but it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”

“Frame-up?” asked Gentry.

“What Tim means, I think,” Shayne said casually, “is that this has all the earmarks of a phony. We know that Gurley received a copy of that letter earlier in the evening, so it would look as though he’s the one man in Miami who wouldn’t have harmed Wanda last night.”

Gentry’s agate eyes narrowed suspiciously. He sat down heavily in the cushioned chair across from the detective. “Wait a minute, now. Sure he knew about the letter. And that drove him to it. If she’d been alive this morning she meant to come to you with whatever she had on Gurley. He had to kill her before she saw you. Probably had a man planted outside her house last night and heard her telephone you to come over in a hurry. So, that was curtains for Wanda.”

Shayne wrinkled his brows thoughtfully. “I don’t know, Will.”

“Why else would he have risked hijacking the United States mail?” Gentry argued.

“Even if he didn’t kill her himself,” Shayne objected, “he knew this letter put him on one hell of a spot when he found out someone else did the job last night. That gave him practically the same motive for grabbing the mail as if he were guilty.” He swiveled back in his chair and tugged at his earlobe for a moment, then added, “I think that’s what Tim meant when he mentioned a frame-up.”

The reporter drew a chair up to the side of the desk, sank into it, and laid the letters on the table.

Chief Gentry’s cigar was dead. He leaned forward to lay it in an ash tray, then asked Shayne, “You mean to say you don’t think Wanda Weatherby wrote the letter? That someone planned to kill her and used this method of throwing suspicion on Gurley?”

Shayne said slowly, “If that check is good, Wanda must have written the covering letter. But she took the precaution of sending a carbon copy to Gurley as insurance against his harming her. It should have worked that way, but we know it didn’t.”

“Sure. But when he killed her last night,” Gentry argued, “he had his plans all made for seeing that the letter never reached you. If you hadn’t figured that move and had Black on the job,” he interposed grudgingly, “he might have succeeded. I still say it was his best bet under the circumstances. We’ll know more about that when we find out exactly why Wanda Weatherby was afraid of him.”

There was a brief silence, then Shayne said abruptly. “Tell me something. Do you know whether private stag parties at the Sportsman’s Club are sometimes enlivened with pornographic movies?”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” Gentry told him.

“I would,” Timothy Rourke said. “The answer is yes. I never attended one myself, but I know fellows who have.”

“Yeh,” Gentry said with deep disgust. “Fellows who’d swear you were a liar if we put them on a witness stand.”

“While you’re checking Wanda’s background,” Shayne broke in hastily, “see if you can find anything to indicate she’s been mixed up in that sort of thing. You might check with Detroit — all the way back to the mid-thirties on that angle. And also look for her husband in Detroit, though somehow I don’t think you’ll find one.”

“Where,” Gentry demanded, “did you get the Detroit lead if you still insist you know nothing about the woman?”

“I made that statement at eleven o’clock last night,” Shayne reminded him. “It was true at the time. I am a detective, Will, and the word means one who detects. I made it my business to learn some things about her.”

“And you’re not telling me how you went about it.” the chief said sarcastically.

“No. But I’m giving you what leads I have. You’re better equipped to follow them up.”

“All right.” Gentry came heavily to his feet. “My department will do the work of convicting Gurley, and you’ll sit back and collect a fat fee for the job.”

“That’s the way it goes, Will,” he agreed blandly. “And thanks.”

Gentry strode stolidly from the room, leaving the door open. Rourke followed him, closed the door carefully, then returned to sprawl in the chair vacated by the police chief. He said, “Damned if you don’t do some fancy skating on thin ice, Mike. Tell me how in the name of God you fixed it to substitute a letter naming Jack Gurley for the one Wanda wrote accusing Ralph Flannagan.”

“Even a newspaper reporter should be able to figure that one out.”

“Damned if I can, Mike. I was standing right there watching you open the envelope. Even if you had Hank Black primed to make some sort of switch during the fracas with Calloni, I don’t see how he could have pulled it. And I don’t believe a man like Black could be hired to tamper with the mail.”

Shayne grinned and punched a button on the intercom. He said, “Is the coast clear, Lucy?”

“Chief Gentry went straight out.”

“Throw the lock on the front door,” he directed, “and bring any other important mail in here — if there is any.”

“There is, Michael,” she said excitedly. I’ll bring it right in.”

Shayne snapped the switch and swiveled back in his chair. Rourke compressed his thin lips in wordless bafflement.

Lucy came in with a square white envelope in her hand, placed it in front of Shayne, and confessed, “I was so scared I thought I would die when Chief Gentry almost got the mail first. And then when you waved that check in front of his face—”

“You were perfect, angel,” Shayne cut in. “Let’s see what Wanda wrote to me.”

He tore the bulky envelope open and shook the contents onto the desk. There were five sheets of folded note paper instead of two, and a check for a thousand dollars folded in the center. He glanced swiftly at the four letters, all identical except for the different names, and pushed them aside. He read the covering letter aloud to Lucy and Rourke.