Murder is My Business

by Brett Halliday

Shayne looked at the typewritten menu and ordered, "Roast mallard with chestnut dressing." He hesitated, and asked the captain, "Do I dare order an American cocktail?"

  "It will be of the best quality," Rodriquez told him.

  Shayne told the waiter, "Two sidecars," and looked inquiringly at his companion. Rodriquez smiled and said, "I will have tequila with lemon."

  Marquita got up to dance with one of her soldiers. Her dress was as short as the skirt Shayne had seen her wearing previously. She pressed her body shamelessly against her dancing partner and showed the rolled tops of her stockings and an expanse of tanned thighs as she whirled around the dance floor.

  The dining room filled slowly as Shayne ate his dinner. He stiffened slightly when he saw the hunched shoulder blades and bushy head of Neil Cochrane come through the door. He moved his chair slightly so he was farther behind a palm frond when Cochrane stepped aside to wait by the door after a few words with the head waiter.

  Captain Rodriquez alertly noted Shayne's glance and his movement to conceal himself from the waiting man. He lifted his black brows and asked politely, "Is it someone you would avoid?"

  "He's an El Paso reporter," Shayne muttered. ''Could be that he's here for the same reason I am."

  At that instant, Cochrane spotted Marquita returning to her table from the dance floor. He watched her for a moment, and then threaded his way toward her.

  He stopped at her table and leaned familiarly over the back of her chair to speak to her, and from across the room, Shayne and Rodriquez could see that she was introducing him to her companions. He took the empty chair at their table, and one of the soldiers ordered another round of drinks.

  Shayne settled back and shook his head. He admitted, "I don't know, Captain. It looks as though he planned to meet her here with those two lads. If that's it . . ." He shook his red head again and his eyes were worried. "Let's sit tight and see what happens."

  A Mexican girl came out on the stage and sang "Estrellita.'' She had a beautiful, clear voice that hadn't been ruined by too much night-club work, and she sang the song with artistry. She didn't get much applause when it was over, and she didn't stay for an encore. The quartet swung into "Besame Mucho" and Neil Cochrane and Marquita got up to dance. She didn't press herself flagrantly against him as she had with the soldier, and he appeared to be an awkward dancer. They were discussing something as they moved about the dance floor, and neither of them seemed particularly happy. They went back to the table as soon as the one number was over.

  Shayne was watching them, and didn't see Carmela Towne come in the door. He saw Cochrane straighten up after Marquita was seated, and glance toward the door. The reporter then said something to the trio and left them.

  Shayne looked toward the door and saw Carmela standing just inside. She wore a belted sports outfit that was too young for her and accentuated her thinness. Her lips were heavily rouged, but her cheeks were pale. Her dark, deep-set eyes glittered and flashed from Cochrane, who was moving toward her, to Marquita and her two young escorts.

  Cochrane smiled as he approached Carmela. Neither of them seemed surprised to see the other, indicating a prearranged meeting. He took her arm and drew her aside to a small table for two. Shayne stayed behind the palm and kept his face averted. He said to Rodriquez, who was watching everything with alert interest:

  "We may have to separate. You take the Mexican girl and her two companions if they leave first. The woman who just met the reporter at the door is Miss Towne, daughter of Jefferson Towne. I want to keep them in sight."

  Captain Rodriquez said, "So?" He watched the couple intently. "They've ordered a drink and are talking," he reported. "She asks him questions and is not pleased when he shakes his head and refuses to reply."

  "The others are paying their check," Shayne warned him. "You follow them out and I'll take care of the check here."

  "There will be no check at this table," the captain said. "It will be, as you say, on the house."

  The trio had left their table by the dance floor and were going out. Shayne kept his face averted, but Rodriquez chuckled, "I think Miss Towne does not like Marquita. She gives what you call a dirty look as they pass." He pushed his chair back and got up, went toward the door behind the three.

  Shayne lit a cigarette and smoked it, resting one side of his face against the open palm of one hand to shield it from Carmela and Neil Cochrane, occasionally peering cautiously at them.

  He need not have taken that precaution. Neither of them was paying any attention to anyone else. They had ordered cocktails but were not drinking them. It was evident that Carmela was tensed to a high pitch. Her movements were jerky, and she puffed rapidly on a cigarette, exhaling the smoke immediately in quick puffs. They were having an unpleasant argument, and Cochrane was evidently enjoying it. There was a sly, sadistic smile on his vulturous face, and he kept shaking his head in response to Carmela's entreaties.

  She got up suddenly, her body stiffly erect and her eyes blazing at Cochrane. He stood up, smiling insolently, pausing to get out a wallet, and let two bills flutter to the table beside their untasted drinks.

  Shayne hunched farther away from them and looked in the other direction. He waited a few minutes before going out. Carmela and Cochrane had disappeared, but he was surprised to see Captain Rodriquez loitering in the outer doorway.

  The captain smiled and beckoned to him when he hesitated. "It is all right," the captain assured him. "Your couple have just gone out. Marquita and her soldiers stopped at the bar for a drink and are only slightly ahead." He looked down the street and nodded. "They are close together down there."

  Shayne stepped out with him. Marquita and her escorts were just turning to the right onto Juarez Avenue, and Carmela and Cochrane were less than twenty feet behind them. When they also turned the corner to the right, Shayne started forward, muttering, "I wonder what in hell this is all about. Looks as though Miss Towne and Cochrane were following the others."

  "I do not think so," Rodriquez objected. "Unless they knew, they would stop at the bar for a drink. They would be long out of sight, otherwise. Of course," he added politely, "I do not understand the connection between all of these."

  "Neither do I," Shayne muttered. He held back as they reached the avenue. "You'd better take a look."

  Rodriquez sauntered past the comer. He shrugged, and paused to light a cigarette, taking some time with it. Then he nodded to Shayne. "It is all right, I think."

  Carmela and Cochrane had lengthened the distance between them to almost a full block when Shayne rounded the corner. The other three were still the same distance ahead. Carmela's bare head with its smoothly coiled braids of black hair was inches above Cochrane's. She held herself proudly and moved with a swinging stride that caused him to hurry his short legs to keep pace.

  Shayne and the Mexican police captain loitered along a full block behind, through a section of respectable business houses, and on into the furtive darkness of unlighted streets lined with heavily curtained houses crowding close to the sidewalks. They moved closer after leaving the lighted avenue behind, up to within fifty feet of the rear pair. The others were still slightly ahead, evidenced by Marquita's light giggle from time to time, and answering laughter from her tipsy companions.

  "I think Marquita will go first to Papa Tonto's," Rodriquez whispered cautiously after they had traversed three blocks in this manner. "We have the report that she is seen there much. It is a bad place," he went on in answer to Shayne's unspoken query. "If they turn down the alley in the next street we will know."

  There were no street lights at all now, and thin clouds partially obscured the moon, but the trailing men were close enough to hear the others moving steadily ahead.

  There was a queer tightness in Shayne's chest and his mouth was dry as he continued on doggedly. He was thinking of Carmela Towne in her living room last night, and, later, crumpled unconscious in her bed. He should have stayed with her until the liquor wore off. She had been in no condition
to be left to awaken alone in that echoing stone house. He thought, "God knows how she must have felt when she woke up and found me gone."

  And tonight she was walking down a squalid street in Juarez by the side of Neil Cochrane whom she detested. Why? Where was she going? What was the meaning of this secret meeting with Cochrane?

  There was a sudden break in the clouds overhead, and a bleary moon shone down on the street briefly, outlining Carmela's bare head and squared shoulders and the shambling figure of Neil Cochrane by her side as they approached the alley entrance. Ahead of them, the street was empty.

  Rodriquez nodded wisely and murmured, "It is as I thought. They have turned in the alley to Papa Tonto's."

  Even as he spoke, the pair ahead of them turned into the alley also. At the same time, the clouds came together again, hiding the moon behind a heavier veil than before.

  Far off toward the river a burro brayed dismally, and Shayne shuddered in spite of himself. He gripped Rodriquez's arm and urged him forward roughly, muttering, "I don't like this. Let's hurry."

  The muffled "burp" of a small caliber pistol from the darkness of the alley interrupted him. A single scream followed the shot, then two more sharp, blasting reports in quick succession.

  Shayne was lunging into the alley, and Rodriquez panted by his side. They halted beside a blurred shape in the alley, and Shayne dropped to his knees and put his arms about Carmela's shaking shoulders.

  She was crouched, sobbing, over the lifeless body of Neil Cochrane, and her face was a blurred oval of whiteness in the dark when she lifted it to look at him.

  "Michael?" she sobbed. "Hurry! You've got to find Lance. In that place! Papa Tonto's." She sank back in his arms limply.

  XIX

  Captain Rodriquez was squatting beside them, and he twitched a stubby pistol from Carmela's fingers before she dropped it. He said swiftly to Shayne, "I will stay here if you wish. Papa Tonto's is where the light shines at the end of the alley."

  "The killer ran that way, too," Carmela moaned. "I shot at him, but I don't think I hit him."

  Shayne let her lax body down on the ground, and stood up. Inhabitants of the neighborhood, aroused by the three shots, were beginning to stream toward them. Shayne muttered, "I'll take a look in Tonto's, for the other three who were ahead, and for Lance."

  He trotted down the alley to a closed wooden door with a dim light bulb glowing above it. The door was unlocked, and he strode into a dark hallway. Light showed through curtains at the other end of the hall. i.

  An old Mexican came out of an alcove to confront him as he started forward. He had thin white hair, and luminous eyes set in a wrinkled face. He laid a palsied hand on Shayne's arm and protested,

  "No, Senor. I am not know you, an' you cannot "

  Shayne thrust him off with a force that sent him reeling back against the wall. He went on to the curtains and thrust them aside. The low room was lighted with a few bulbs in the ceiling, partially obscured by a heavy pall of smoke hanging above the couples who sat at small tables or half-reclined in booths about the wall. The smoke was acrid and biting in his nostrils, heavy with the noxious fumes of marijuana. The couples were young and mostly Mexican. They looked up at him vacantly as he threaded his way between the tables, and those in the booths didn't change their amorous attitudes as he paused to peer in at each couple.

  Neither Marquita Morales and her escorts nor Lance Bayliss was in the room.

  The old man from the entrance panted up to him when he finished his inspection at the far end of the room.

  "Que busca usted?" he demanded.

  "I'm looking for a girl and two Americans who just came in," Shayne growled. "Any other places where people hide out in here?"

  "But no, Senor." His voice trembled angrily. ''Nadie se escondey"

  Shayne snorted, and jerked aside another curtain over the entrance to a short corridor leading off from the main room. The odor of opium swept out strongly. Four doors opened off the corridor into small cubicles fitted with beds and smoking equipment. Two of the cubicles were empty. A middle-aged American woman lay on her back in another bed. Her mouth was open and she was snoring. The small room was stifling with opium smoke. Shayne closed the door hastily after one look at her. The fourth cubicle had two occupants, and two pipes were going strongly. They were young; a Mexican and an American girl. They didn't pay any attention to Shayne when he looked in on them. They were off in a dream world of their own.

  The corridor dead-ended, and there was no other exit. Shayne stalked back through the main room and out through the curtains into the dark entrance hallway. The old Mexican's eyes blazed at him balefully from the alcove as he went by, but he didn't speak.

  In the alley an ambulance and a police car were drawn up at the entrance, with their lights shining on a group of people near the end.

  Neil Cochrane's body was being loaded into the ambulance. Carmela hurried toward Shayne, with Rodriquez a few paces behind. Carmela's face was white and her smoothly braided hair was disarranged. Her eyes burned into his as she caught his arm and cried frantically, "Where is he, Michael? Did you find him? Was Lance there?"

  Shayne shook his head. He put his arm about her shoulders and told the Mexican police captain, "Marquita and her friends evidently didn't go in to Tonto's. What have you done out here?"

  "We will find them," Rodriquez assured him confidently. The pistol he had taken from Carmela still dangled from his fingers. He glanced down at it and suggested politely, "If you will ride in the car with me?"

  Carmela leaned against Shayne with her face pressed to his chest. "I don't understand, Michael. Where's Lance? I don't . . ." She began to sob violently.

  Shayne nodded to Rodriquez and picked her up in h's arms. He carried her to the police car and got in the back seat with her. Captain Rodriquez got in the front beside a uniformed driver. The ambulance was already backing away. Rodriquez turned to tell Shayne, "We have blocked off this section and are searching for Marquita and her two soldiers. The man you looked for in Papa Tonto's . . . ."

  Shayne shook his head. Carmela sat beside him, supported by his arm about her, with her head resting against his shoulder. She said tiredly, like a small child just awakened from deep sleep, "They told me Lance was there. I don't know . . ."

  Shayne said, "We'll talk about it when we get to headquarters." He tightened his arm about her, and she sighed and didn't say anything else.

  At the police station, Captain Rodriquez escorted them back to a private office. He seated himself gravely at a desk and had a stenographer brought in, laying Carmela's pistol in front of him.

  She sat beside Shayne and held his hand tightly. Before the captain could begin asking questions, Shayne asked him, "What about the man who was killed. Captain?"

  "Quite dead." Rodriquez raised his expressive eyebrows. "One bullet fired against his body penetrated the heart." He looked at Carmela, "Will you tell us, please, how it happened?"

  "Wait a minute," Shayne said. "She should be told anything she says may be used against her. And you can consult an attorney first," he told Carmela, "or refuse to testify at all, if you wish."

  "Oh, no," she said quickly. "I want to tell you everything. Why should I refuse?"

  Shayne shrugged. "Go ahead, then."

  "There isn't much to tell." She paused to moisten her lips. "We had just turned into the alley, and it was awfully dark. Neil was a step ahead of me, and the first thing I heard was the gun going off. Neil groaned and fell before I realized what had happened. Then I heard someone running. I couldn't actually see in the darkness, but I realized he'd been shot and his murderer was getting away. I instinctively got my pistol out of my bag and fired after him. I shot twice. And then I heard someone running up behind me. I didn't know it was you, Michael." She rubbed her eyes as though still bewildered. "I didn't know you were anywhere in Juarez. And—that's all," she ended simply.

  Rodriquez looked at Shayne and shrugged. He asked Carmela, "You will swear the pistol
was in your handbag when the first shot was fired?"

  "Oh, yes. It was."

  "And you fired only two shots, after Mr. Cochrane had fallen and his assailant was running away?"

  "That's right. That's the way it happened."

  Captain Rodriquez opened the small revolver and drew out three empty brass cylinders, which he carefully lined up in front of him. The gun was a .38, with its barrel sawed off half an inch from the cylinder to make it a tiny though lethal weapon.

  "There is one empty chamber," he pointed out to Shayne and Carmela. "Behind that are three empty cartridges. Then two loaded ones." He drew out the two unexploded .38 shells. They had snub-nosed, leaden heads, and two deep notches in the shape of a cross were cut in the soft nose of each bullet. He lined the two bullets up with the empty cylinders and said, "Your pistol has been fired three times, Miss Towne."

  "Perhaps I shot three times. I don't know. I don't remember." Carmela shuddered violently. "I thought I just pulled the trigger twice."

  Shayne leaned over to pick up one of the bullets, and he studied it with a frown. "Home-made dum-dums," he muttered. "Who taught you to fix your bullets this way, Carmela?"

  "Father fixed them for me. Years ago when he gave me that gun. He said—" her voice faltered and then came clearly, "—they were more deadly that way. And that I should never use it until I had to, but if it ever came to a showdown, that I should shoot to kill."

  "And tonight was the first time you had to use it?" murmured Rodriquez.

  "Yes, I—I haven't carried that pistol, or even thought about it, for years, until tonight." She glanced from the Mexican captain to Shayne. "Why are you both looking like that?"

  Shayne shrugged, and reached over to replace the bullet. "There were only three shots fired in the alley, Carmela. Rodriquez and I were right behind you. One of the three bullets killed Cochrane."

  "Of course! That's what I said at first. That I fired twice after he fell. And then you said there were three bullets fired from my gun and I— Oh!" She caught herself up suddenly, staring at the three empty brass cylinders in front of the captain. "But, if there were only three shots fired altogether”