The Careless Corpse

by Brett Halliday

  He went swiftly up the sidewalk toward the parked car with the two Beach detectives in the front seat. He tugged the brim of his hat low as he approached, stepped out into the street just behind the car and strode around to the right-hand side.

  The big, paunchy man named Geely was on that side, half-turned in the seat toward his hatchet-faced companion so that his back partially rested against the closed door. Shayne turned the handle and jerked the door open before either of the men were quite aware of his presence.

  Geely grunted and slid partly out, and Shayne’s left arm snaked in around his neck to help him, while he set himself solidly on the roadway and swung his right fist to the big, gum-chewing jaw before Geely could straighten up.

  Shayne stepped back to let him slump to the ground, and then dived over him through the open door into Harris who was cursing loudly and trying to drag a gun from a shoulder holster, somewhat impeded by the steering wheel.

  Shayne locked his big hands around Harris’ thin neck and dragged him out over the seat into the roadway. He hit him once on the sharp point of his chin and felt the body go limp. He dropped him into the street a couple of feet away from Geely’s recumbent figure and stared down at both of them for a moment before kicking the big man lightly in the side. He didn’t stir. They were both breathing heavily, out cold, and Shayne didn’t think either of them had recognized him or could describe him.

  He got the pint of liquor out of his pocket and unscrewed the top, sprinkled the pungent stuff liberally over both men, and tossed the open bottle in on the front seat.

  He turned, then, to look toward the lighted Boulevard, and saw Rourke’s tall, emaciated figure come out of the lounge and hurriedly start to angle across the street toward the opposite side. Shayne strolled across to intercept the reporter in front of the two-story house where Felice Perrin lived, and asked casually, “Get the police okay?”

  “Sure. Said they’d have a patrol car here fast. Let’s get inside. What happened with you?”

  “Why the two damned fools got all excited when they saw the bottle, and knocked each other out cold,” Shayne said good-humoredly. “They’ll have fun explaining that to the Miami cops. Got no business over here on a stake-out anyway.”

  They went up onto a front porch and into a small hallway where a dim bulb burned high in the ceiling. A row of mailboxes along the wall had numbers and names on them. Shayne found one marked PERRIN 2-A.

  The stairway on the right was dark, but there was a wall-switch at the bottom which lighted another dim bulb at the top, and they went up.

  There were two front rooms, both dark behind their transoms, and there was no sound or light in the entire house to indicate that any of the occupants were awake.

  2-A was on the right in front. Shayne knocked gently, and then more loudly. He waited twenty seconds before rapping hard with his knuckles, and he got out his key ring and studied the lock while he waited another brief time. A police siren sounded on Biscayne Boulevard from the south, and Rourke said nervously, “There’s the cops, Mike. If they find us here…”

  “Why should they look for us here?” Shayne’s first key entered the lock, but wouldn’t turn it. The second one opened the lock with a protesting creak.

  The wail of the siren keened down to a low moan and then to silence as the patrol car pulled opposite the house, its red light flashing eerily through an open window.

  Shayne hesitated on the threshold with his hand on the switch beside the door. In the pulsing red glow from the window he saw the outline of a figure lying in the middle of the floor in front of him.

  He said hoarsely to Rourke over his shoulder, “Stay right here and don’t turn on the light until I pull the shade.” He skirted around the figure, stumbling over an overturned chair and a cushion on the floor, lowered the shade and turned with his back to it, and said, “Switch on the light.”

  A chandelier in the ceiling sprang into brightness. The girl lying in the middle of the floor between the two men wore a white cotton dress and her eyes were closed, and at first glance she appeared peacefully asleep. But her head was twisted at an awkward angle and there were angry bruises on her neck.

  TWELVE

  “Mother of God,” breathed Rourke from the doorway. “Is that the gal we’ve come visiting?” He closed the door firmly behind him.

  “Didn’t you see Felice after the robbery?”

  “Yeh. Just briefly before Peralta chased me out. I guess that’s her, all right. They always look different dead,” he added plaintively.

  The single front room had been thoroughly torn to pieces, giving every indication that a hasty, but complete search of the premises had been made. Bureau drawers gaped open and clothing was strewn on the floor, the sofa-bed was denuded with cushions and bed-clothing on the floor. Two framed pictures had been taken from the wall and the cardboard backing on both of them ripped off.

  “Someone looking for an emerald bracelet?” hazarded

  Rourke.

  “Maybe.” Shayne studied the picture frames speculatively, wondering if anyone would expect to find a bracelet concealed between the picture and cardboard backing. He moved forward and knelt down beside the dead girl, put his hand on her cold wrist and lifted the arm enough to determine that rigor had already begun to stiffen her flesh. “At least three hours ago,” he muttered, settling back on his haunches and tugging at his earlobe thoughtfully.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here, Mike,” Rourke said nervously. “Suppose those cops across the street decide to pay her a visit and find us here?”

  “Why should they? So far as I know the Miami cops don’t even know who she is.”

  “But they may revive one of the Beach men and he’ll tell them about her… including the fact that I was cruising around the neighborhood looking for a chance to interview her.”

  “Yeh. They might at that,” Shayne agreed happily. He swung to his feet and went to the window to draw the shade aside a crack and peer out. “But I don’t really think so. Looks like they’re pouring them both into the back of the patrol car.”

  “But it won’t be long before they do,” protested Rourke.

  “That’s why you’d better jump the gun by reporting the body first,” Shayne said, turning from the window. “It makes sense,” he insisted. “They shooed you off from visiting her, and you stopped in the corner bar for a drink. Then they got in this street fight and knocked each other out, and you seized the opportunity to come up anyway. Sure,” he said persuasively. “You grab that phone as soon as I get out of here, and call Gentry. That way you’ll be in on the whole story.”

  “The cops will have to go to Peralta when they discover her connection with him.”

  “Probably. That’s why I’ve got to get there first.” Shayne looked down sombrely at the girl’s lax body again. She was fully clothed except for her feet which were shoeless, and her nylon-clad legs were drawn up in tight vees against her thighs, indicating the agony of her death throes. From his position Shayne could see the sole of her stockinged left foot, and his eyes narrowed as he stared at it from across the room.

  “Painter and Erskine will be sore as hell,” Rourke began, but Michael Shayne wasn’t listening to him. He was moving forward slowly, staring intently at the body, and Rourke watched in open-mouthed amazement as he dropped to his knees beside the corpse again, and began tugging the hem of her white dress up over her knees to expose bare white thighs.

  “For Christ’s sake, Mike!” he exclaimed in revulsion. “You said she’d been dead for three hours.”

  Shayne disregarded him, exposing the snaps of her garter-belt and clumsily unfastening them from the top of her left nylon.

  Rourke continued to watch in angry perplexity while the detective stripped the stocking down off the cold flesh and free from her foot. Then he peeled a small square of yellow cardboard from the instep and stood up, looking down at it broodingly.

  “What in hell is that, Mike?”

  “It looks like the
torn half of a claim check,” Shayne told him casually.

  Rourke swallowed hard and his gaze darted about the room. “You think that’s what the murderer was looking for?”

  “It’s a good guess.” Shayne dropped it in his side pocket and went back briskly to the window where he peered out again.

  “Coast is clear,” he announced. “They’re going around the corner headed downtown.” He turned back, tugging Rourke’s own automatic out of his hip pocket, holding it carefully by the corrugated handgrip. He looked down at the gun bleakly for a long moment while Rourke watched him uneasily, and then dropped it on the floor.

  “I’m going to make a trade with Will Gentry,” he announced, “but you don’t have to tell him, Tim. That’s your gun on the floor, by the way. Don’t touch it. I think it may very well have the murderer’s fingerprints on the barrel. Blurred, maybe, but they should be able to get enough for comparison with any prints they can pick up here.”

  “Whose prints, Mike?”

  Shayne shook his red head maddeningly. “I don’t think you should know. Just be sure that they get prints from it, and check them against what they find here.”

  “But it’s my gun, Mike. How shall I tell Will it got here?”

  Shayne paused a moment, tugging at his ear-lobe while he considered this.

  “Tell it to him this way, Tim. That I used your car this evening, and after he and Erskine left my apartment, I told you to be careful handling your pistol because I thought the barrel of it might carry the fingerprints of the man who stole Peralta’s emerald bracelet. Then say you brought it with you when you came up to see Felice, and dropped it on the floor when you saw her lying there. That should cover up pretty well.”

  “Yeh,” said Rourke unhappily. “For you, maybe. If the murderer’s prints are on it, I’m going to be ’way out on a limb.”

  “Why, no, Tim.” Shayne smiled happily. “You’ll be the man of the hour. Reporter’s gun identifies murderer,” he declaimed loudly. He walked toward the reporter. “You got it straight, Tim. Call in as soon as I leave, but stall as much as you can when they get here to keep them off Peralta. There’ll be a certain amount of protocol involved anyway, with Painter insisting on handling the Beach end. It should give me plenty of time.”

  “Time for what, Mike?”

  “To wrap things up and maybe get my hands on the other half of this claim check.” Shayne stopped in front of Rourke who stood stubbornly in front of the closed door. His face was deeply trenched and his gray eyes were bleak. “And maybe find Lucy,” he added as though she were a casual afterthought.

  Timothy Rourke wet his lips and dropped his eyes before the redhead’s hard gaze. He nodded unwillingly and stepped aside to let Shayne go out, and muttered, “Good hunting.”

  Shayne went past him and hurried down the stairs. A little knot of interested onlookers had gathered across the street while the patrol car was there, but they were dispersed now and the last of the laggards were turning into the cocktail lounge for a nightcap and to discuss the queer affair of two drunkards getting out of a parked car to knock each other out cold in the street.

  No one noticed Shayne slip out of the house and hurry back to the Boulevard and Rourke’s car with the key in the ignition where the reporter always left it. He got in and started the motor and drove south toward the Causeway to Miami Beach.

  THIRTEEN

  The Jai Alai Club on South Miami Beach was, like Las Putas Buenas on the Miami riverfront, almost exclusively patronized by a Spanish-speaking clientele, but there the resemblance ended.

  The Jai Alai Club was quiet, well-run, and orderly. There was a small bar, it is true, but it dispensed mostly cerveza. There were two well-patronized billiard tables in front, and ranged along the wall toward the back were a series of small tables where chess, checkers and card games were quietly enjoyed by players who could toy with a single glass of beer for an hour without being noticeable.

  It was eleven-thirty when Michael Shayne walked into the Club. Both billiard tables were in use, and most of the tables toward the rear had occupants.

  Shayne walked back past the bar slowly, noticing that most of the patrons were middle-aged and well-dressed, and that none of them did more than glance at him incuriously as he passed by.

  A middle-aged and very fat Cuban sat with an alert young companion at the last table in the rear. They weren’t playing any game, nor did they have drinks in front of them. Shayne paused beside their table and said, “I am looking for Señor Alvarez.”

  The fat man looked up at him genially, though his eyes were cobra-bright. “Your name, Señor?”

  “Michael Shayne.” The rangy detective automatically removed his hat, showing the shock of red hair that was his trademark in the city.

  The young man leaned forward and said something quickly and earnestly to the older man in Spanish. He nodded and said, “You are expected, Señor. The first door on the left.”

  Shayne went to the first door on the left and opened it. A slender, dapper, brown-faced man sat alone at a table in the center of the small room. He had sensitive, intelligent features, and very even, white teeth which he showed in a pleasant smile when he recognized his visitor. “Mr. Shayne.” His voice was clipped and betrayed no trace of an accent. For many years before the advent of Castro he had been employed as Cuban correspondent and feature writer for one of the American wire services, but his laudatory accounts of the revolutionary policies had earned him disfavor and he had been recalled soon after Castro took over.

  His resignation had followed, and he had established himself in Miami as the center of a conservative, pro-Castro group, which utilized every means in its power to combat the growing anti-Castro sentiment in the United States that was constantly being fomented by the right-wing press.

  Shayne had met him twice in the company of Timothy Rourke, who had known him intimately for more than a decade, and he had formed a high opinion of his intelligence and his personal integrity. Now, Alvarez stood up to lean across the table and shake hands warmly, “How is our good friend, Timothy Rourke?”

  “Tim’s fine.” Shayne sat down and began without preamble, “I need some straight information fast. Do you trust me enough to answer some pertinent questions without asking why?”

  “I think I trust any friend of Tim Rourke’s,” Alvarez told him gravely.

  “I know that you’re closely in touch with the Castro supporters here. What do you know about the activities of Julio Peralta?”

  “Peralta is a question-mark, Mr. Shayne. I do not trust him.”

  “He is working for Castro. Using his own money to buy arms to ship over for the movement.”

  “Is he, Mr. Shayne?”

  “Isn’t he?” Shayne asked in astonishment.

  “I do not know. He is a man who has carried water on both shoulders.” Alvarez shrugged cynically. “He is involved in many intrigues.”

  “Is he a Communist?” Shayne asked bluntly.

  “Peralta?” The question seemed to honestly astonish the Cuban. He paused before saying flatly, “There are no Communists here among us, Mr. Shayne. Russia is a foreign power that has been friendly and has extended a helping hand. So much for that. She is an unfriendly power to the United States, and here, in your country, we would not conspire to receive aid from the Communists.”

  “Would you refuse arms from Peralta if you could be convinced he were a Communist?”

  “I think nothing would convince me of that, Mr. Shayne.”

  “Let me put it this way.” Shayne looked at his watch and saw he didn’t have much time to waste before getting to Scotty’s Bar. “Do you know the location of Peralta’s house on Alton Road?”

  “I know the house. I know there are many conferences held there between various factions. In my personal opinion, Julio Peralta has not changed his former allegiance.”

  “You mean,” persisted Shayne, “you suspect he is still anti-revolutionary?”

  “I have strong reason to t
hink so.”

  “I have strong reason to think otherwise.” Shayne hesitated a moment, marshalling his thoughts. “I have also strong reason to believe there is a large arms cache being accumulated by small boats from the Inland Waterway at the vacant estate next door to Peralta’s.”

  “I have heard such rumors,” said Alvarez calmly.

  “If they were being supplied by Communists… for the express purpose of being shipped over to Cuba for Castro’s use… you would object to that?”

  “Most strenuously. We want no outside interference from any country. If your own government would only understand that fact, Mr. Shayne… if they would aid us to eliminate Communist influences… a strong Cuba could be built to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with America against subversion.”

  Shayne said impatiently, “Speeches are fine, Alvarez. In fact, I happen to believe you. But I have a definite problem that has to be resolved in the next few minutes.” He paused again, seeking the right words.

  “All hell is going to break loose before tomorrow morning with Peralta right in the middle of it. Don’t ask me how I know. I do. Local police, probably with the assistance of government agents, are going to move in on Peralta and confiscate whatever arms may be stored there waiting for shipment to Cuba.”

  “That would be a great pity,” said Alvarez. “They are needed by my country to maintain the New Order.”

  “You’ve got about an hour. Not more than that.” Shayne looked at his watch again. “Make it exactly twelve-thirty. Can you have a raiding party at the canal dock of the house next door to Peralta?”

  Alvarez said, “It can be arranged.” He paused before adding, “It would be a great pity if we came into conflict with the police… a larger diplomatic error if government agents are involved.”

  Shayne said, “I can’t promise anything. I think you’ll have at least a couple of hours head-start.”

  “That should be sufficient.”

  Shayne pushed back his chair and stood up. “Let’s synchronize our watches. I have thirteen minutes to twelve.”