The Careless Corpse

by Brett Halliday

Shayne said, “That’s not what I’m going to be talking to her about. Thanks for the drink.” He turned away abruptly and went to the door with silence behind him.

  The roulette room looked just the same as before. Shayne strolled across to the far table and stopped directly behind Laura Peralta who was seated at the end of it. She had a stack of a dozen or fifteen five-dollar chips in front of her. He watched over her shoulder while she spread six of them out in a seemingly haphazard pattern on combinations of the numbers closest to her. The ball went around while other, smaller bets, were being placed about the table, and settled into a slot at the upper end.

  The croupier raked in Laura’s chips, and she listlessly played with the stack remaining in front of her. She turned her head and glanced sideways and up at Shayne with no start of surprise, as though she had known he was standing behind her.

  She said, “Hello,” composedly. “It won’t be long now. This is my last stack.”

  Shayne said, “It certainly won’t be long if you keep on playing them that way.”

  The ball started around the wheel again, and she turned back to the table and began arranging chips again in the same haphazard manner. “Do you know a better way to play roulette, Mr. Shayne?” She hesitated pensively with her last two chips in her hand, then dropped them on a single number just an instant before the ball dropped into the zero.

  Shayne said wryly, “There are betting systems that lose money a little more slowly.”

  The croupier raked in her chips and she pushed her chair back and said to him, “Thank you for a pleasant evening, George.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Peralta. And good night.”

  She turned to Shayne and asked challengingly, “Who wants to lose money slowly?”

  Shayne shrugged. He took her arm and said, “I’ll buy you that drink.”

  “Several drinks,” she amended, moving her rounded hip against his thigh as they went toward the archway.

  “As many as you want.”

  The door of the manager’s office was open, and Alexander Griffin stood on the threshold watching them go by together.

  NINE

  Outside the archway, Shayne hesitated, glancing down at his companion. The entrance to the cocktail lounge was directly in front of them. Laura Peralta squeezed his arm and turned him toward the outer doorway.

  She said throatily, “Take me some place, Mike. Some place that’s rancid and depraved. You do know about the seamy side of life, don’t you?”

  He grinned down at her, fumbling in his pocket for half a dollar and his hat check which he exchanged with the girl at the counter for his Panama. He told her gravely, “I’ll try to think of a joint that fits those descriptive adjectives.”

  “Take your car,” she told him. “I think I’m going to get drunk tonight.”

  “What about yours?”

  “They’ll drive it home for me and leave it. Jimmy,” she called out to a parking lot attendant, “see that my car gets home.”

  “Sure, Mrs. Peralta,” the attendant replied cheerfully, and Shayne led the way around a row of parked cars to Timothy Rourke’s nondescript heap. He said, “It sounds like a regular thing.”

  She said, “If you mean do I usually go off with some man and leave my car here, the answer is ‘no,’ Mike. On the other hand,” she went on composedly as he opened the door for her, “I am a very favored customer and they take very good care to see that no harm comes to me. Which includes driving me home and depositing me there whenever I get too tight to drive myself.”

  Shayne went around and slid in under the wheel. “I can understand why you’re a very favored customer,” he told her grimly.

  She put her hand tightly on his biceps as he stretched out his arm to turn on the ignition. “Why don’t you kiss me, Mike? Why don’t you pretend that I’m your best girl? And then let’s just see what happens.”

  He said, “All right,” and turned slowly to slide his right arm around her shoulder. She pushed up against him and lifted her face with closed eyes and open lips, and her fingers circled the back of his neck urgently.

  She worked her open lips and her tongue against his mouth, and Shayne’s arm tightened roughly about her shoulders. She was a hunk of passionate, quivering woman flesh, and both of them were breathing hard and unevenly when they slowly drew apart. The tips of her fingers trailed around the side of his neck and along his jaw, and moonlight glinted in her wide-open eyes as they stared into his for a full thirty seconds. Then she laughed lightly and turned and moved away from his encircling arm and composedly took a cigarette from her handbag. “That’s the first time I’ve been kissed in the front seat of a little, old, battered-up car for a good many years, Mike Shayne.”

  “Like it better than a Cad?”

  “Much better. Though I don’t get kissed in Cads very often these days either.” She flicked on a lighter and held it while Shayne put a cigarette in his mouth, lit his and then her own. She closed the lighter and dropped it back into her bag, inhaled deeply and then blew out a thin stream of smoke.

  Shayne made no move to turn on the ignition again. He folded his arms across the steering wheel and asked, “What’s this all about, Laura?”

  “All what?”

  “Everything.” His voice was angry. Then he gentled it. “Do you enjoy gambling?”

  “Not particularly. It’s a way to kill a few hours when one is married to Julio.”

  “An expensive way… following your system at roulette.”

  “Julio can afford it.”

  “All right.” Shayne doubled his fist and rapped his knuckles against the wheel. “We’ll pass that one for a moment. How about your act just now?”

  “My act, Mike?” She sounded genuinely confused and hurt. “Don’t you think I enjoyed kissing you?”

  “I think you enjoyed it all right.” Shayne hesitated a moment, reaching up to tug at his left earlobe. Then he asked flatly, “What do you want from me, Laura?”

  “I told you inside. I want to bust loose tonight. I want to forget I’m Mrs. Julio Peralta. I want to go some crazy place…”

  “That’s rancid and depraved,” Shayne finished for her when she hesitated. “Any specific suggestions?”

  “Yes.” She rolled her window down a little and spun her cigarette out. “It was like the answer to a prayer when you showed up at the house tonight. The redoubtable Mike Shayne. The big, tough redhead who really knows his way around the back alleys of this town. So I made a quick play for you, Mike.”

  “That was obvious,” he growled. “Why?”

  “Do you happen to know a place called Las Putas Buenas?” she parried.

  Shayne said, “Yes,” then added after a pause, “Now I know where you got those adjectives.”

  “Is it rancid and depraved, Mike?” She sounded delighted.

  “Do you know any Spanish?”

  “No.”

  “Skip it. What about Las Putas Buenas?”

  “I want you to take me there. I had hoped,” she added in a small voice, “that after kissing me you wouldn’t insist on asking so many questions. Maybe if we tried it again… ?” she added hopefully.

  Shayne turned his head to look at her. He said, “If we try it again, Laura, we’ll more likely end up at my place.” He hesitated. “What’s all this got to do with an emerald bracelet?”

  “I don’t know, Mike. Honest to God, I don’t know. But I’m frightened.”

  “Because you’re afraid the bracelet will be recovered?”

  “That’s a strange thing to say.”

  Shayne growled, “Lots of strange things are happening tonight. So… you’re frightened. Why?”

  “I received an anonymous note this morning.”

  “My God, someone is certainly on a writing spree. What did yours say?”

  “Mine? Were there others?”

  Shayne said, “Skip it for now. Was it typewritten or printed with pen and ink?”

  “Neither one. It was scrawled in a heavy black pencil�
� almost illiterate. It said: Go to the bar called Las Putas Buenas in Miami alone tonight between ten and twelve. Sit at a table and order cerveza. You will regret it, if you don’t! Mike! What does it mean?” Laura’s voice became tremulous and she put out her hand to grasp his arm tightly.

  He said, “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “But I don’t know. I don’t know what it means.”

  “Let me see the note.”

  “I don’t have it,” she confessed. “I tore it up. I wasn’t going to pay any attention to a thing like that. But I kept thinking and thinking. Who wrote it? Why? What would happen if I don’t go?”

  “So you decided to ring me in as an escort?” Shayne’s voice was harsh.

  “It came to me this evening when you were at the house,” she confessed. “I’d feel safe with you.”

  “It said to come alone,” Shayne reminded her.

  “I know. I thought you could drop me off and I’d go in alone. Then, when you came in and pretended not to know me, no one would know why you were there. I wouldn’t be afraid, knowing you were there, Mike.”

  “How much of this were you going to tell me if I hadn’t dragged it out of you?” demanded Shayne.

  “I don’t know. I was sort of feeling my way.”

  “Why did you use the adjectives ‘rancid’ and ‘depraved’ when you first described the sort of place you wanted to go to?”

  “I honestly don’t know, Mike. I’ve been racking my brains all day trying to remember where I ever heard of Las Putas Buenas. I know I have. I know it strikes some chord. My best guess is that I once heard either Nathaniel or Felice mention the name. I can’t recall the context, but I have the vague impression it’s a very low-down sort of joint.”

  “Felice being your former maid,” muttered Shayne. “Did she and Freed often discuss low-down joints in front of you?”

  “You know how it is,” Laura said impatiently. “You hear people talking.”

  “Then you think one or both of them knew the place?”

  “By reputation, at least. I know I’ve heard the name mentioned recently. Will you take me, Mike?”

  “If you really want something to happen, I think you’d better go alone,” Shayne advised her bluntly. “If I drive up and drop you at the door, the whole deal will be ruined.”

  “Why not let me off a block away?”

  Shayne shook his head. “To do it right, you’d better drive up openly in your own Cadillac convertible. Do you know the address?” he went on briskly.

  “Yes. I looked it up today. It’s down on the Miami riverfront.”

  “All right.” Shayne leaned past her and opened the door. “I’ll go first. You come along in a few minutes. By the time you get there, I’ll be inside at the bar. Don’t pay any attention to me. Just sit at a table and order beer and see what happens.”

  “Is beer cerveza in Spanish?” she asked in a dubious voice.

  “That’s right.” Shayne had not drawn back from opening the car door on her side. Now, he brought his left hand up slowly to the side of her face, and turned it toward him. She didn’t close her eyes this time, but she didn’t close her mouth either.

  When he released her, she slid off the seat and onto the ground, but hesitated before closing the door. She said, “I see what you meant about ending up at your place. Maybe…do you think we can, Mike?”

  He said gruffly, “Get your car and come on down to Las Putas Buenas. If we do end up at my place, I’ll translate it for you.”

  She nodded and closed the door and walked away in the moonlight with her shoulders back and her head erect. Shayne sat and watched her disappear around a row of parked cars. There were a hell of a lot of unanswered questions about the Peralta case. At this point, Laura Peralta was the most important one.

  When she was out of sight, he started the motor and drove out of the parking lot. Las Putas Buenas was located in the Southeast section of the city, on the bank of the Miami River, and was frequented mostly by Spanish-speaking dock-workers and crews from small fishing boats anchored in the vicinity.

  There was a small, private parking lot adjoining the low building that extended out over the tide-flat on pilings. There were only half a dozen cars there, and no attendant in sight when Shayne drove Rourke’s car in and got out. There was only one dim light over the door and the muted sound of a carioca coming from a jukebox as Shayne went up to the door and opened it on a square, very low-raftered room heavy with smoke that was thickly tinged with the acrid odor of marijuana and pervaded by the smell of garlicky sweat.

  There were half a dozen empty tables along the right-hand wall, Shayne noted as he entered, and three or four couples were dancing in a small cleared space between crowded tables on the other side of the room. Directly ahead was a right-angled bar with three stools at the end of it, empty, and Shayne strode forward to the first of them which would afford him an excellent view of the empty tables where Laura Peralta was most likely to sit.

  The bartender was a dapper Cuban with a black hairline mustache that reminded Shayne of Peter Painter’s, and with very white teeth which he displayed in a welcoming smile as the redhead seated himself.

  Shayne studied the array of bottles behind the bar, and pointed to a brand of Portuguese brandy that he knew and liked. “A double shot of that brandy with ice water on the side.”

  The bartender said, “Si, Señor,” cheerfully, and set out a glass which he poured full to the brim. Shayne sat half-turned with his back to the wall, so he could watch the entrance unobtrusively. He had taken only one sip of the brandy when he was conscious of the smell of strong perfume on his left and the insinuating pressure of a soft buttock against his thigh. Without turning his head, he said, “Hi.”

  A soft giggle answered him. “You weel buy me a drink, Señor?”

  “If you’re one of the really good ones,” he said over his shoulder, grinning at the waiter and nodding to him while he spread out three bills on the bar.

  “That you mus’ say for yourself, Señor. After we ’ave a dreenk, maybe.”

  He said, “Maybe,” still without looking at his feminine companion. The bartender set an amber-colored highball in front of her and scooped up Shayne’s bills, leaving a little pile of silver. The carioca changed to a rhumba, and the dancing continued without Shayne being able to see any change in the gyrations of the dancers.

  He lighted a cigarette and sipped his drink and casually kept his gaze on the entrance as he waited for Laura to appear, and suddenly he became conscious that the stool beside him had been vacated and that another person stood very close beside his left shoulder. From the smell of hair oil and pomade he was sure that the newcomer was not one of the girls who gave the place its name.

  He started to turn on the stool to take a look, but by the time he faced directly forward there was a stinging pain in his left side just below the ribcage and a sibilant warning hissed into his ear:

  “Do not move, Señor. Thees knife, she ees sharp.”

  “So is this one, bud.” A new and heavier voice spoke behind his right ear as he sat rigid on the stool facing straight ahead. The needle-sharp point of a second knife broke the skin at a similar place on his right side.

  “Take it easy an’ you’ll make out okay,” the second voice advised him. “One word or a sudden move out of you, an’ Jose an’ me’ll spill your guts over the floor. That right, Jose?”

  “That ees right.” The knife on the left moved a trifle, and Shayne gritted his teeth as he divined its eagerness to enter his body.

  “Here’s what you’re gonna do. Turn slowly to your left on the stool without jerking or turning your head. Keep your hands out in front an’ we’ll stay close behind, like three real good buddies headin’ for the can. You slide off the stool an’ walk real slow down the corridor to that door at the end marked Hombres. You got that straight?”

  Shayne’s face was deeply trenched and rivulets of sweat began running down the trenches. He knew what a sudden thrust of ei
ther of those knives would do to his guts. He said out of a dry mouth, “I got it.”

  “All right. Start moving.”

  Shayne swung slowly and cautiously on the stool toward the rear, giving the man on his left plenty of time to step back and stay out of sight while holding the knife in position.

  He stood erect very slowly, and so far as he could tell neither the bartender nor anyone along the bar was paying the slightest attention to what was going on.

  An aisle led off the barroom to a white door at the end that was lettered Hombres. Shayne drew in a deep breath and held himself rigidly and began walking toward the door. The two men kept pace with him and he was helplessly cornered in the dead-end corridor.

  He reached the swinging door at the end and hesitated, and the gruff voice said, “Go on inside.”

  Shayne put out the palm of his hand flat against the edge of the door and pushed it slowly inward. As it opened, he slid his fingertips around the inch-thick board and got a solid grip on the inner surface.

  Then he drove his body forward, shoving the door open to slide through and slamming it shut behind his body with all his strength.

  There was a shriek of pain beyond the wooden barrier as he whirled to throw his weight against the door, and a long-bladed knife clattered to the floor at his feet, dropped from dangling brown fingers at the end of a sinewy arm that had been trapped by the closing door and the bone in the forearm broken.

  Shayne kept his full weight remorselessly against the door with the broken arm pinned between it and the frame while he stooped down to snatch up the knife that had recently threatened his life.

  Then he jerked the door open and a body crumpled to the floor just outside when the pinioned arm was released. A burly man was running into the big room at the end of the corridor shouting Spanish words in a badly accented voice.

  One glance at the man at Shayne’s feet showed him writhing on the floor, his face contorted with pain.

  Shayne realized it would be utterly hopeless to face the roomful of excited and vengeful Latins at the end of the corridor. He drew back and slammed the door shut instead, throwing the latch on the inside to gain a few moments before they could break it in, and then whirled about to look at the cubicle in which he was imprisoned.