The Careless Corpse

by Brett Halliday

  Shayne took off his hat and tugged at a red forelock bashfully. “It’s this here humidity, Ma’am. Makes a man sweat right through his flannel underwear. And, when I sweat, I stink, as the girl told her momma, and, when I stink, the boys won’t dance with me. That must be what you smell, Ma’am.”

  The nice nose tilted higher and beautifully arched platinum brows became more severely arched. “Is there something I can do for you?”

  “Not what I first thought about when I peeked in,” Shayne told her cheerfully, “so you might as well let me see Mr. Barker.”

  “Have you an appointment?”

  He said, “Shayne. And how the hell do you know I haven’t dropped in to buy a million bucks worth of insurance?”

  She said, “Mr. Barker is not a broker. He is an adjuster.” But there was the faintest tinge of warmth in the cool depths of greenish eyes as she lowered them from his face and lifted an inter-office phone.

  As she spoke into it, Shayne moved past her toward the single door opening off the reception room. It was closed and marked PRIVATE. He opened it and went in.

  Hamilton Barker was alone in his neat office, just replacing the handset in its holder. He was a slender, stony-eyed man in his early forties, and he greeted the detective without undue cordiality.

  “Shayne. I just told my secretary you’d have to wait a few minutes.”

  “I’ll wait in here,” suggested Shayne easily, closing the door behind him and lounging forward to sink into a comfortable chair by the insurance adjuster’s desk. “A couple more of my witticisms just might cause the blonde to break down and smile, and I have a feeling that would be fatal.”

  Barker was obviously not amused. “Now that you’re in here, what is it, Shayne?”

  Shayne tensed and his gray eyes studied the other man with alert interest. After a moment, he said slowly, “Maybe I do smell bad. I was just kidding with your secretary, but…”

  “Please, Shayne.” Barker held up his right palm and looked pained. “I’m extremely busy. If you have any business with me, please get to it.”

  Shayne hesitated only a second. Then he shrugged and said, flatly, “You’re handling the insurance on the Peralta bracelet?”

  “Julio Peralta? Yes.”

  “Satisfied with it and ready to pay off?”

  Barker’s eyes narrowed. “What is your interest?”

  “Are you?” pressed Shayne.

  “It’s not a matter I care to discuss with an outsider.”

  “You mean you’re not interested in a deal?” demanded Shayne, incredulously.

  “What sort of deal are you referring to?”

  “For God’s sake!” said Shayne angrily. “What is this, Ham? You’ve made some nice pay-offs in the past to recover stolen stuff. You know damned well the sort of deal I mean. Twenty per cent for the bracelet and no questions asked.”

  The insurance adjuster leaned back, shaking his head vigorously, making a tent out of the tips of his fingers pressed together. “That sort of thing is strictly against the public interest, Shayne. If you bring us the bracelet and the thief, naturally we’ll be glad to pay for your services. Say twenty per cent of the insurance. But we certainly can’t promise immunity as part of the pay-off. Actually, Shayne, such an arrangement would make us liable to a charge as accessory after the fact.”

  Shayne shook his head helplessly. “You know it’s being done all the time. Your company won’t be happy paying off the full amount.”

  “Let’s hope we won’t have to,” said Barker, thinly. “If that’s all you have to say…” He pushed back his chair and half rose to indicate the discussion was ended.

  The detective shrugged and rose with him. “What all this adds up to,” he guessed, “is that Painter has sold you a bill of goods that he’s on the trail of the bracelet, and you hope to recover it without any payoff at all. Am I right?”

  “Why don’t you ask Painter?”

  Shayne said equably, “I don’t have to ask him now, Ham. Thanks for the information.” He turned and went out with his brow wrinkled thoughtfully, passed the blonde in the outer office without seeing her and went down to the street and his parked car.

  TWO

  Alton Road on Miami Beach runs north from 5th Street, skirting Flamingo Park and across Lincoln Road to wind circuitously along the eastern shore of Biscayne Bay between the large estates of wealthy landholders which crowd in on either side.

  Michael Shayne drove north along the road at a moderate pace, relaxed behind the wheel and deep in thought. There was little afternoon traffic along the winding, palm-lined street, little to be seen beyond the high hedges hiding twenty- and thirty-room mansions set well back from the road.

  Searching for street numbers on the widely separated gateposts, he paid no attention to the car that idled up behind him and followed closely on his rear bumper for a couple of blocks, noticed it only when it speeded up suddenly and swung around abreast of him. It slowed in that position and honked commandingly.

  Shayne glanced aside to see two men in the front seat, wearing the uniforms of Miami Beach police. The one nearest Shayne was waving him down while the driver stayed abreast, and after a brief moment of indecision, Shayne took his foot off the gas and put it on the brake.

  The police car slowed and pulled in behind him, and Shayne sat fuming behind the wheel of his car while the officer got lazily out of the right side and strolled forward to lean his elbows on the door at Shayne’s right. He had a big paunch, and a seamed, weather beaten face, and he was chewing a big wad of gum as rhythmically and placidly as a contented cow working on her cud. As he leaned on the door, Shayne demanded impatiently, “What the hell is it, Officer? I’m in a hurry to keep an appointment.”

  “Noticed you was in a hurry all right. Wondered right away where at was the fire.”

  “For God’s sake,” said Shayne, wonderingly. “I wasn’t doing over twenty-five.”

  The policeman nodded gravely. “We clocked you the last two blocks. Forty-two you was making by our speedometer.”

  “Then you’d better get your damned speedometer checked,” snapped Shayne. “Step aside, for Christ’s sake, and let me get along.”

  “Resistin’ arrest, huh?” grated a thin voice at his left elbow. A long arm snaked in past him to turn the ignition key in the lock. The driver of the police car had come up on Shayne’s left. He was thin and hatchet-faced and spoke with a sneering, Georgia drawl. “You ain’t goin’ no place. Mister. Speedin’ is a right serious offense here on Miami Beach. We loves our children, Mister.”

  Two limousines sped past in the same direction as he spoke, both chauffeur-piloted and both doing fifty or more miles per hour. Shayne motioned to them with a big hand and growled disgustedly: “Then why aren’t you after those two? They’re driving twice as fast as I was.”

  “Right now, we got you,” Hatchet-face told him. “I say we take him in for resistin’ arrest, Geely,” he went on, speaking past the detective to his gum-chewing partner on the other side.

  Shayne slumped back against the seat and looked from one to the other in irritated amazement. “What the hell are you two clowns trying to prove?”

  “Resisting arrest, sure enough,” agreed Geely, placidly. “Threatening an officer to boot, I reckon.”

  “Wait a minute, damn it!” exclaimed Shayne, controlling his anger as best be could. “There’s some mistake. We’re all in the same racket, for God’s sake.” He reached for his wallet to show his credentials, but as he drew it out, Hatchet-face leaned forward without warning and slapped him viciously with the back of his left hand, while Geely exclaimed, virtuously, “Bribery, by God. Now you are going in for sure.”

  Michael Shayne sat very still with his half-opened wallet in his hand. There were four white marks on his left cheek from Hatchet-face’s fingers, and that lanky individual had stepped back hastily and drawn his service revolver after slapping him. Shayne’s gray eyes blazed and the lines in his gaunt face became deep trenches as
he sat quietly and fought for self-control.

  Geely quietly seated himself beside him on the front seat and closed the door. He interrupted his gum-chewing long enough to say, heavily, “Put your bribe-money away, Mister, and get this heap moving. Turn right at the next corner and back to the police station. You foller along,” he directed his companion. “Resisting arrest and attempted bribery.”

  Hatchet-face holstered his gun and swaggered back to the patrol car. Michael Shayne replaced his wallet with shaking fingers. He put both hands on the wheel and sat there for a moment, fighting the most overpowering anger he had ever known. After a moment, and without looking at Geely, he said hoarsely, “Maybe you know what you’re doing, but, by God, I’m telling you…”

  “I’m telling you,” said Geely, placidly, “to drive to the police station and no more monkey business less’n you want my sap on the other side of your face from where you already got slapped.”

  Shayne drove to the police station without speaking again. He was followed closely by the official car, and Hatchet-face pulled up beside him when he parked behind the station.

  Shayne opened the door to get out and felt a steel band snapped around his right wrist. Geely opened the door on his side and stepped out, tugging urgently on the links of chain binding his left wrist to his prisoner.

  Michael Shayne clamped his teeth together hard and slid over to follow Geely submissively. Hatchet-face sidled up beside him as they went around the walk to go in the front, and he held his gun half-drawn from its holster as they mounted the steps and went inside, three abreast.

  There were half a dozen policemen and a reporter for the Miami Herald lounging about a table with a greasy pack of cards in the anteroom. They all glanced up carelessly, and there was a moment of intense silence. Two of the cops knew Shayne well, and the reporter was an old friend.

  He came to his feet with swiftly indrawn breath as he took in the trio. “Sweet Mother!” he ejaculated. “It’s Mike Shayne. Hey, boys…”

  Geely and Hatchet-face marched Shayne past the table toward the desk sergeant in the rear while all the card players stared at the sight, and Shayne twisted his head to snarl a single sentence to the reporter: “Get Tim Rourke.”

  Geely shouldered him forward roughly as he spoke, and Shayne set his teeth again and went with them in stony-faced silence to face the sergeant whom he had also known for years and who carefully avoided looking at him while he was officially booked for speeding, resisting arrest, and attempted bribery.

  Shayne gave his name, address and occupation in a steady voice, demanded permission to telephone a lawyer and was told he could do that later. The reporter, Edwards, was loudly clamoring for a word from him and an explanation of the charges from the two arresting officers, but he was rudely shoved back and Michael Shayne was marched back through a dingy corridor and unceremoniously locked into a cell.

  He stayed in the cell three hours. During that period he smoked all his cigarettes and worked hard at the job of accepting the situation philosophically. It was the most difficult thing he had ever done, but he knew from long experience that anger wasn’t going to get him anywhere. Nor, he conceded moodily, were mere innocence and outraged denials of guilt. He had been in the business long enough to fully realize that when the police decide to frame a man, there is nothing to prevent their doing so. The sworn testimony of two police officers in court would be accepted at face value by any judge or jury against the unsupported denials of a citizen.

  He knew, too, that as soon as word of his situation got through to Timothy Rourke, the wheels would be set in motion to effect his release as swiftly as possible, and that Edwards would contact Rourke at once.

  So there wasn’t any use wasting time thinking about that phase of it.

  The one thing that remained as a possible subject for constructive thought was the single question: Why?

  His arrest hadn’t been an accident. He wasn’t naive enough to accept that answer. He knew he had been driving less than thirty miles an hour when picked up, and even if Geely and Hatchet-face were two over-zealous eager beavers who had been attracted by that slight excess over the legal limit, their further actions after stopping him were proof enough that it wasn’t merely a routine traffic pick-up.

  Orders from Peter Painter were, of course, the obvious answer. He had been on Alton Road nearing the Peralta address just prior to four-thirty when the incident occurred. If Painter had known the hour of his appointment, it would have been simple enough to have the two officers planted on Alton Road to pick him up on some pretext.

  But again: Why? Why in the name of God should Painter go to such lengths to keep him away from Julio Peralta? True, he and the Beach detective chief had clashed often in the past, and Painter had more than once openly sought to prevent his practicing his profession on the Beach, but a phony arrest and faked charges were going far beyond anything that had happened before.

  By the time two hours and a half had passed and Shayne had smoked his last cigarette, he had achieved to a fair degree the philosophical mood he sought. Painter (if it were indeed Painter behind it) had him where the hair was short, and that was that. He couldn’t, Shayne thought, hold him in jail more than a few hours. Rourke would see to it that bond was forthcoming, and Shayne resolved to circumspectly keep his mouth shut after he was released until he could do some digging into the whys and wherefores. There was the matter of the bad manners of Hatchet-face and Geely to be disposed of, but that could well wait until later.

  Michael Shayne was lying stretched out at full length on the iron bunk with a folded mattress under him when a turnkey opened the door of his cell at seven-thirty.

  Shayne swung long legs over the edge of the bunk and sat up, rumpling his hair and grinning. “Got a cigarette on you, Bud?”

  “I don’t smoke and my name ain’t Bud and front and center with you,” the turnkey said surlily, holding the cell door open.

  Shayne went out and down the aisle to a small, brilliantly lighted room where Timothy Rourke was pacing nervously up and down, and a small, neat gentleman sat quietly on one of the wooden benches enjoying a cigar.

  Rourke hurried to meet Shayne with a worried frown. “What in hell have you stepped into this time, Mike? Goddamn that black Irish temper of yours.”

  Shayne grinned and said, “Give me a cigarette, Tim.”

  “Sure. Keep the pack.” Rourke extended a battered pack and waved to the small, neat gentleman. “Mr. Belknap, Mike. He’s counsel for the News, and arranged your bond.”

  “How much?” Shayne shook out a cigarette, lighted it and inhaled deeply.

  “A thousand bucks. Everything is set for you to walk out, Mike, except Petey wants us in his office first.”

  “Painter?” Shayne frowned down at his cigarette, then asked the lawyer complainingly, “If the bond is fixed, can’t I tell him to go fly a kite?”

  “I don’t advise that course of action, Mr. Shayne.” Attorney Belknap had a surprisingly deep and resonant voice. He stood up and flicked ashes from his cigar. “This way, please.”

  He turned and went sedately through a door and Shayne shrugged at Rourke with lifted eyebrows, then followed him. They went down another corridor to Peter Painter’s private office, where Belknap entered solemnly and sat in a chair near the door. Painter sat importantly at his desk in the center of the room flanked by Cleve Edwards of the Herald and another reporter whom Shayne knew slightly as a wire-man for one of the news services.

  Painter was a slender, dark man who sat very erect behind a big desk. He had a pencil-thin black mustache and very black eyes which glittered as Shayne entered with Timothy Rourke.

  He said swiftly, “I’ve asked these gentlemen of the press to be present, Shayne, so they’ll be able to report objectively that there is no personal animus whatever behind your arrest this afternoon.”

  Shayne thrust his hands in his pockets, dragged deeply on his cigarette and said nothing.

  “You are a mere citizen like
any other man, Shayne,” said Painter severely. “We have laws here in our municipality and officers to enforce those laws. Your license as a private detective gives you no special privileges in Miami Beach. I want you to know, and I trust it will be fully noted in the public press, that I am officially commending officers Harris and Geely for courageous and impartial discharge of their duties in connection with your arrest this afternoon,”

  “So Harris is the name of the guy who slapped me,” said Shayne, lazily. “Thanks. I’ll remember that.”

  Blood came into Painter’s thin, dark features. He raised a small fist and thudded it lightly on the desk in front of him. “Officer Harris is especially commended for meeting with physical force your efforts to resist arrest.”

  “If he’d sapped a defenseless man,” asked Shayne with interest, “would he have got a promotion?”

  Painter half rose from his chair. His narrow shoulders were shaking with wrath and he pointed a trembling finger at Shayne: “You’re out on bail and I advise you to watch your step, Shamus. You know now that my men are incorruptible and not at all impressed by newspaper stories of your physical prowess. You will be well advised to steer clear of the honest indignation that has been aroused in the entire force here on the Beach by your brazen effort to buy your way free this afternoon. Think that over before you come across the Causeway again.” He sank back into his chair and waved a hand. “That’s all. I hope I’ve made myself clear.”

  Shayne said, “Quite clear, thanks.” He turned and strode out of the room on hard heels with Rourke trotting along beside him.

  “What’s it all about, Mike?” demanded Rourke as they went out into the night air from a side exit. “What the devil has Petey got his tail up in the air about this time?”

  “That,” said Shayne, “is what I’m going to try and find out. And God help Harris and Geely if they get in my way again.”